Next of Kin

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The Outsiders...

Red Dawn...

Dirty Dancing...

Steel Dawn...

These are all movies that Patrick Swayze starred in during the eighties. He was also the star of the greatest movie--nay, the greatest thing--of all time...

Of course, they couldn't all home runs. And this time around, Jake and Derek watched one that was, at best, a bunt that resulted in an out: Next of Kin.

Patrick Swayze is Truman Gates, a Chicago cop who was born and raised in Appalachia. His brother, Gerald (Bill Paxton), follows him to the Windy City in order to make his fortunes in the field of cigarette machine filling. Unfortunately, Gerald gets caught in an extremely hostile takeover  of the vending machine company by some shady Mafia guy, led by Joey Rosellini (Adam Baldwin).

Not even remotely Italian.

Truman and his wife, Jessie (Helen Hunt), take Gerald's body back to Kentucky. Truman's family holds a funeral, and his older brother, Briar (Liam Neeson!), wants Truman to find the guys that killed Gerald and kill them right back. Truman wants to let the police do their job and arrest the bad guys. Briar is not willing to wait, so he heads to Chicago himself.

Upon arriving, Brian finds a hotel and befriends the clerk, Harold (Michael J. Pollard). Then he goes to visit the vending machine company, where he meets Rosellini and shoots the place up. Almost immediately after, Truman, who has returned home, shows up at the vending machine company and finds an empty shell from his brother's shotgun.

More Italian than Adam Baldwin.

Meanwhile, there is a power struggle going on within the Isabella crime family between Joey and his cousin Lawrence (Ben Stiller). Joey decides that Lawrence needs to go, and kills him after he finds out Truman had tried to get him to turn state's evidence against his own father.

Also more Italian than Adam Baldwin.

Truman finds Briar and arrests him to keep him safe, but not before they pound the snot out of each other in a bar. Truman then goes home and discovers that Jessie is pregnant. She tells him in the weirdest way possible, involving a teddy bear sitting at the dining room table. It's a short scene, but really odd.

While Briar is in jail, Joey's goons find out where he was staying and search his room, finding the shotgun he hid in the floorboards. (And possibly a lot of corn cobs, all symmetrically stacked and stripped of corn in an almost mechanical fashion. Maybe.)

Probably the closest to Italian, and furthest from Adam Baldwin.

Briar's gun is found at the scene of Lawrence's death, and Papa John Isabella (Andreas Katsulas) puts out a hit on Briar. Briar returns to the company and gets in a gun fight with Joey and his men. Briar kills two of Joey's men before Joey kills him.

FINALLY...Somebody who is at least a little Italian.

When Harold hears about the shootout at the company, he calls a number that Briar gave him in the event of something like this happening, and tells Briar's family what happened. Also, someone throws what may be blood or possibly marinara sauce at Jesse for some reason.

Meanwhile, Truman and the rest of the police figure out that Briar's gun at the crime scene was a plant, and Truman resigns so he can go after Rosellini. But will he be able to do it alone? Or will his family show up and help? Will Joey get away? You'll have to listen to find out!

Jake is shocked that, in an action movie from the eighties, starring Patrick Swayze, the female lead (Hunt) did not have a topless scene. It's not that he was particularly looking forward to it or anything, but it happened often enough in that decade that it would not have been a surprise here.

Derek is so very not impressed. Also, he and Jake both think that the movie should have been about Briar instead of Truman. Also, there's the whole corn cob thing mentioned earlier. Seriously, you have to have been there, but he does his best to explain it.

So put on your fedora, try not to make cousin-fucking jokes, and listen to this week's episode!