The Big Lebowski (1998)

In 1998 the Coen Brothers spent $15 million on a shaggy detective story where almost nothing happens, a rug gets peed on, and a middle-aged stoner named the Dude drinks nine White Russians while getting mistaken for a millionaire. That's The Big Lebowski, and it's Steve's pick, a movie he first caught the second it hit Blockbuster in college, when he showed up mostly for John Goodman and left with a lifelong favorite. He brought it to the pod half worried it might be a Boondock Saints situation, the kind of thing you loved as a teenager that curdles on rewatch. Good news: it held.

Nic, meanwhile, comes to this one with actual credentials. He reveals he's descended from bowling royalty, his great-grandfather Archie Walsh, a New England candlepin legend enshrined in a Hall of Fame that Nic estimates is roughly the size of an armoire in the corner of a Holiday Inn. Steve counters with his own dad's bowling trophy, the one topped by a little guy bowling backward through his own legs, awarded for finishing dead last.

From there it's a loving tour through everything that makes the movie tick. The dads marvel at how the Coens hand rich, pointless backstories to characters onscreen for three minutes, chief among them Larry's dad being a famous TV writer stuck in a steampunk iron lung, which sends Nic on a tangent about where exactly he'd like to be positioned in the house should he ever end up iron-lung-bound (spoiler: a back room, not the foyer). Steve offers up "Sobchaking," his personal verb for when you're not wrong, you're just an asshole, man. They clock Walter debating the tenets of National Socialism, the "say what you will" bit, purely to win a fight he's already lost, and both hold their breath through the second dream sequence, the two-minute bowling-porno-musical detour nobody needed and everybody is glad exists.

There's Larry's homework, a Folgers can, and a stranger who orders a good sarsaparilla. The Dude abides. So did the dads.