The Princess Bride (1987)

Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987) is Steve's pick, and for him it's less a movie than a load-bearing wall. He caught it on TV before he was ten, spent high school and college watching theater kids quote it at each other, and counts William Goldman as a personal screenwriting hero. Nic got there later, in high school or after, having grown up in what he describes as a no-VCR, no-cable log cabin where his dad was busy typing up his manifesto.

What follows is a very happy stroll through Florin. Steve's daughter still calls the movie "Princess Buttercup," while his son, currently convinced Raiders of the Lost Ark is the greatest movie ever made, never really got into it. Nic clocks young Fred Savage's Walter Payton jersey, Steve spots the Fridge Perry poster, and the case is closed: this kid is a Bears fan. From there, grandpa and grandson are simply Kevin Arnold and Columbo. Steve decides Humperdinck's perm belongs to a lady who works the front desk at the local orthodontist. Nic shouts out Mr. Hoover, their old high school history teacher and Andre the Giant superfan. And Steve's Wallace Shawn impression gets so good that Nic starts openly dreaming of a copyright strike.

There's a surprising amount of real-life peril, too. Steve's high school production of the Scottish play, with actual steel broadswords, got canceled over safety concerns (he was Banquo, and at one point the corpse yelped). Years later, a friend set Steve's wool coat on fire in a Walnut Creek coffee shop. On set, Andre's enormous hand doubled as a hot water bottle. Cary Elwes woke up in the hospital, still in costume, after Christopher Guest stopped faking a knockout. And Mandy Patinkin bruised a rib trying not to laugh at Billy Crystal.

Meanwhile, Nic's wife Jeanie cannot deal with Westley's mustache. Nic calls the albino torturer the most in-need-of-Carmex person he's ever seen. And the dads both want in on Fezzik's hangover soup.

As Steve says in his mock promo for this very episode, it's inconceivable that you won't enjoy it.