525: Day of Defense

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They just agree to vaguely meet in the park sometime tomorrow.

Yeah.

The missionaries have nothing else to do.

So they're just going to show up probably at 7 a.m.

and they're going to sit there until Thomas shows up.

I can confirm as a missionary of two years that they had nothing else to do.

Nobody wanted to hear them.

So sitting in the park was an enjoyable thing.

Yeah.

What are they going to do?

Reread that same copy of Charlie that was left in their mission?

God-awful

movie.

Movie movies.

Welcome back to God-Awful Movies, where each week we watch another terrible movie, so you don't have to.

I'm your host, Keith Enright, and I'm joined by the Eli Bosnick.

Eli, how's it going, buddy?

Mormon movie insertion.

Mormon movie something.

Yeah, absolutely.

This one's got some Mormonism happening.

And speaking of which, we also have two brand new guest masochists, Rebecca and Landon from the Mormon-ish podcast.

Rebecca, Landon, welcome to the show.

Oh my gosh, thank you so much.

We cannot believe we're here.

Can we, Landon?

Oh, this is a dream come true.

It's a dream come true.

And I do have to say, between the two of us, we have over 110 years of lived mormon experience that's right ask us anything

solid and that's not even counting pre-existence where you probably got a way more

no who could count that who knows that's just like known mormon okay

and uh tell us a little bit about the mormonish podcast Oh, yeah, we'd be happy to.

I first have to apologize.

I sound kind of raspy.

We are in Utah, of course, where else would we be located?

And everybody gets the fall Utah cold right now.

So a little raspy here, but we are a Mormon podcast in the post-Mormon space.

And we kind of turned a critical eye to Mormonism and just kind of watch that.

We've been up and running for about three years.

Anything to add, Landon?

Yeah, we just like to make fun of ourselves as post-Mormons.

We like to laugh at what we used to think

and look towards new options and new things to new ways of approaching life.

Well, I can't imagine anything you could think of about the Mormon faith that would be, you know, laugh worthy.

So that's

pretty pretty coherent.

Pretty straightforward.

And really, you shouldn't joke about that, but I guess.

It's a pretty serious business here.

Yeah, nothing to see here.

Nothing to see here.

You're right.

All right.

Let's get right into this movie.

Rebecca, what are we going to be breaking down today?

Oh, my goodness.

Day of Defense.

And this is sort of universally known as one of the worst movies in Mormondom, if you can believe that.

Certainly to me.

Yeah.

A lot of competition, but it's pretty bad.

I was going to say there is a lot of competition.

And this is the story of two LDS missionaries who are dropped into a town where it's run by a Christian town council.

And they get arrested and they go on trial, the trial of the century to determine if Mormons are Christian.

Because if they're not, they need to be run out of town.

It's pretty dramatic.

Okay, so I know you are new, so I will just sort of fill you in.

We do a Mormon movie month every single month on this show, which means we've watched dozens and dozens of Mormon movies.

Not only had I not heard of this movie before y'all introduced us to it, I was not aware of the Mormons are pretty sensitive about the fact that some people don't think they're Christian controversy.

So when I googled it while watching this movie, I was barraged with 182 websites that were like Mormons are2christian.com.

I was like, all right.

Yeah, it's huge.

It's a huge issue.

Just the idea that we, of course, the name of the church is the church of Jesus Christ, right, of Latter-day Saints.

They're sort of self-identifying Christians, but there are many hard stops in the religion where you would say, okay, that's not really Christian, but they consider themselves Christian and they're very sensitive about it.

Is it the part where everyone gets their own planet?

Because I feel like that strains a little bit.

That's definitely one of the showstoppers there.

That's like one of the best parts.

But yeah, Christian, I feel like it's, you know, Christ, that's pretty much it.

They're going to argue about it in a whole trial though and okay landon how mormon ish was this movie in your estimation oh this movie is every mormon missionary's wet dream i i was a mormon missionary and this is what you dream of you go into a town everybody persecutes you you end up in jail for the for the cause for god and then you get to go out and have a bible bash with all of the christians and eventually you prevail and you you win them all over to your side side.

This is every Mormon missionary's dream.

All right.

Hey, Mormon-ish-ish-ish.

And Eli,

how bad was this movie?

Well, if you love the rote recitation of a homesick teenager who hasn't pooped with the door closed for almost a year, but you wish they had the stakes of a mental patient who once overheard the plot of Footloose being described through a wall,

you will love this movie.

My friends, we never get to say this to to our guest masochists, right?

Because usually we are introducing our guest masochists to Christian cinema, and we sort of begin every show with deep apologies.

Mormonish brought this movie to us.

So I can truly say from my heart how deeply I resent you in this experience.

Yes, we should be apologizing to you.

I'm really sorry.

But I think your listeners are going to really love it.

So it's going to be good.

We're editing your plug for your show out of the beginning of the podcast.

Just, you know, that's how we're putting it.

And they're just going to be like, who are those?

Fair, fair, that's fair.

All right.

Is there anything y'all would like to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at?

I do.

I think this is the best Mormon missionary love story ever.

They are a delightful couple.

Yeah.

I would agree.

Yeah, but we're going to meet the missionaries, Elder Burke and Elder Davis.

They are in a delightful romance throughout.

Oh, that's who you were talking about the two elders.

Okay.

No, I was talking about the gal at the end.

Yeah, you were talking about honey.

Landon was talking about honey.

He was a romance with

okay.

Beeched was just immediately assuming a gay romance.

There may be a little above.

A little above.

There could be that.

They're very, they're tight.

What did we say about projecting in front of the guests?

Interesting triangle.

It's Shakespearean.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

There's a lot of triangles happening.

Anyway, I was going to say best worst failure of the Bechdel test.

And it's an aggressive fail.

Yeah.

If I had to nominate it for something, I would say best worst telephone ripped off the wall and slam dunked into a trash can.

I thought that was extremely dramatic.

But there is a lot of pent up angst and anger in missionaries because of the restrictions that they live under.

I mean, they are just squeezed to death with rules and restrictions.

And so moments like that, that really is not far-fetched.

There are little outbursts, you know, you have to let it out somehow.

Oh, you wanted that throwaway of the phone to be dramatic and it kind of wasn't.

It was just like, like, oh, okay.

Well, now it's no, I was actually going to go with a similar one.

My best is best, best back throws.

There will be two positively splendid back throws throughout the film.

We'll talk about it when we go.

Truly made up for the entire long, bad movie.

These two terrible back throws.

Okay.

Well, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back to tell you all about Day of Defense.

All right, everybody.

Welcome to the first ever Writer's Writer's Room meeting for Day of Defense.

Yeah.

All right.

I love the enthusiasm.

So I'm thinking a legal drama about Mormon missionaries who come to town and have to defend their faith to stay.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, like at a trial.

Is it illegal to be a Mormon?

In this town, it would be.

Yes.

Yes.

That doesn't seem very realistic.

Oh,

it doesn't?

Not really.

Okay.

Okay.

What about the the municipality has a Christian town council that grants people a license to preach?

And when they learn the Mormons are in town, a local judge orders a jury trial prosecuted and actively run by that Christian council.

Okay, well, that's more illegal.

Yeah, that doesn't make sense for so many reasons.

And, and, let me finish.

A kid dies.

I feel like we should say yes, just so he stops talking.

Thank you, Craig.

Positivity.

Wait, what?

And then we could get a tofu chutney at grass, grapes, and kale.

Yeah, that sounds fun.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Hey, guys.

You ready to get started?

Yeah, I was just planning to take Landon and Rebecca out for some raw macrobiotic vegan pizza after we record.

They're really looking forward to it.

We sure are.

Really?

Because it seems like you guys need to say yes to saying no.

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is that slang sadly no it's a legal requirement i got it

and we're back and we're going to start the movie with a cowboy taking a nap while standing up leaning against a pile of hay bales So vibes established of this very Christian town where we're, I think it's called Marysville in some kind of county and Sweetwater County.

I actually remembered it.

And then we cut to a pair of Mormon missionaries in a truck arguing about the new town where they're going to be spreading the word.

Yeah.

And I just want to say, before we even get into the content of this movie, the 2B video we found of this thing maxes out at 480p, like the archival footage of a UFO.

It is,

you can count the pixels on the screen at any given moment.

We paid the 99 cents and rented it on Prime, Amazon Prime.

This is available on Prime.

Yeah, we went for it.

Any of your listeners can watch this.

And, you know, this was based on a book.

So that's kind of interesting.

Oh.

Yeah.

Did they have the option for like 8K resolution or is this just like the best they could do?

Did you get to watch this in Ultra HD that we missed out on?

Yeah, it was SD and we could have purchased it to own forever for $2.99.

We opted no.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Missed out.

Right.

So they're entering this new town, and one of the elders is worried about getting this new assignment.

And the other one tells him to have faith, which correct me if I'm wrong, Mormonish squad, have faith as Mormon for go fuck yourself, something like that.

Pretty much, pretty much, pretty much.

Well, and it's so interesting because no missionary would fight like that or get angry.

All missionaries get transferred pretty much every six weeks.

There's an option to be transferred.

You would know this was happening, and you also wouldn't be angry that you had a new person to train.

That's kind of a badge of honor.

You want to be the senior companion, so right away, not realistic as far as mission culture.

Okay, got it.

So, that senior missionary is Elder Burke, and he's going to be training a rook named Elder Davis.

Yeah.

And as a podcast that's had a few former missionaries on, the relationship between a senior and a junior elder is a lot less, let me show you the robes, kid, and a lot more, did you get to call your mom yet this year?

I would imagine, yeah.

You're not wrong.

Although they have done away with that, they can actually do it.

They did, yeah,

yes, yes.

But when I was out, yes, we could only come on twice a year.

So, so one of our favorite guests, guys who actually had a podcast for a while, they called themselves the how-to heretics, our uncles.

One of them had to save the other one from his mission.

And so, he has, they're both secular now.

They both live in Utah.

They both live around the Salt Lake City area.

And he admits, whenever he sees a missionary these days, he's like, these kids don't know how good they have it with their cell phones and their toilets yeah yeah twice if you need me to swoop in i'll do it

so then we cut over to i think the break room at that town's courthouse and we meet two of our main characters thomas the public defender in this town and james the da in this town Yeah.

And they are going to establish themselves as the town's like prosecutor and DA, but their like catchphrase is plea bargain, which

I guess the movie intends to be like a comedy beat, but when you consider that there are crimes like murder and rape, it takes on a really dark tone.

Yeah, as I

consider that it does.

It does.

But yeah, they're like, that's their thing.

They plea bargain stuff and then it just makes it nice and easy.

This whole scene is really just to characterize the two of them.

And they do that by showing us a woman who works at the courthouse named Lisa.

And she's wearing, she's she's wearing like a Halloween costume called slutty paralegal or something like that.

It's just like very, very revealing.

And the point is, Thomas is a good, reasonable person who doesn't womanize at all.

And James is going to be the bad guy who hates Mormons and prosecutes the Mormons pretty soon.

But the weird thing is, like, James's womanizing never pays off.

I thought we were going to find out about an affair or making a move on the other guy's wife, but it's just this first scene for us to like shake our fingers at him and be like, how dare he look look a second time at a woman in short sleeves.

Mormons certainly know how to know their audience.

And so they have to set it up.

They know this is going to be a Mormon audience watching this Mormon movie.

So, you know, the whole scene of them coming into town is to make it set up so that the town is a bunch of hicks.

They're non-educated.

That's why they haven't accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ yet.

And obviously you've got to have, you've got to set the tone that the bad guy, you know, he's a womanizer and he's going to cheat on his wife, set that tone right off the bat so that immediately the mormon audience hates this man yeah he's a typical baptist lethario that would hate mormons yeah that's what you're going to do and it's full of stereotypes i mean here's a woman working outside of the home and you're right she's wearing a very short skirt she bends over a lot as she's making the coffee you know everybody in that scene is a complete stereotype that a mormon audience is going to recognize

yeah

it works for the characterization and then from there we're going to to see Elder Burke and Elder Davis, and they're on the street doing their first try at preaching to this town.

And it's not going great.

A little bit of hijinks.

Yeah.

The first woman they approach, she's like, oh, aren't you guys the ones with all the wives?

And again, because this is significantly before Mormonism started pretending that never happened, they're like,

it's complicated.

Yeah, it's very hard to get around that.

They try everything they can, but that still exists.

And that's the first thing out of almost everybody's mouth when they hear Mormon.

You're right.

Yeah.

The first person they talk to is like, oh, polygamy, gross, and runs away.

Yeah.

Yep.

That's it.

And then it's so fun.

This, I laughed because they do, I don't know, like four seconds of talking to one person.

And then immediately a cop puts on a siren and rolls right up next to them for breaking the law of preaching without a license in Sweetwater County.

Yeah, this, this is playing right to the Mormon audience.

Mormonism 101 is you are the most persecuted people on earth because you're persecuted because you have the truth and so here they're going to proceed to break every constitutional law that mormons have always been taught that they've been persecuted and everyone hates them and they proceed to break every law in the book to arrest them and haul them away just as every mormon suspected would happen yes exactly

right and we learned from this cop that the ctc which is the christian town council approves all licenses to do any kind of religious preaching.

And of course, that's just going to be for like regular Christians, not Mormons, which are gross.

And so Elder Burke is like, we have every right to be here.

And he's immediately arrested, which means

you're under arrest.

Yeah.

And by the way, if you're like, oh my gosh, what an unbelievable plot, don't worry.

It will only get less believable from here.

The hard part here is, is what they're describing is every Utah town.

If you turn it around in Utah, the church runs every town.

They run the state legislator.

It's 80%.

The governor, you know, is pretty much handpicked by the prophet of the Mormon church, and then the people just vote him in.

So they're really showing a Mormon town in reflection, just making it a Christian town.

Yeah, a lot of projecting in this movie is what it felt like.

From the church that brought you the mall where gay people can't hold hands comes a day of defense.

By the way, again, regular listeners to the show will know that.

But when my co-host, who's not here this week, found out that they will kick you out of that mall for holding hands, he immediately grabbed me and Heath's hands and insisted on walking around with us holding hands for, I think, the rest of the hour.

I think once we left the mall, he still held our hands.

One of my favorite videos that's on like four phones ago is a montage of us holding hands and just very happily kind of like skipping around that mall.

Yep.

Yeah, we had a good time.

Was that the mall mall in Provo?

No, the one in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City.

The downtown right by

the mall.

Outside the church.

Yeah, outside the church.

The one where former prophet President Munson, when he cut that ribbon, said, let's go shopping, which is what all prophets say, right?

Yeah, of course.

He did a big ribbon cutting and he said, let's go shopping.

Yes, he did.

Yes, he did.

Okay, I love that.

All right.

Well, anyway, they're under arrest here in Sweetwater County.

And then we go back to the courthouse.

We see public defender Thomas defending, I think, street cows, cows in the street.

It doesn't matter.

The cop who arrested the missionaries shows up to just do a hearing on the spot for.

Your Honor, I'm sorry to interrupt what we are supposed to believe is another trial, but I'd like to do this trial now.

And she's like, I'll allow it.

Pop-up trial.

Parents are going to do trial.

And James and Thomas explain to the judge how the town keeps out the Mormons because it's a new judge.

And they're like, oh, just so you know, by the way, we have this counsel and like we keep, they're gross and they're Mormons and we have a whole thing to keep them out.

And the judge is like, okay, I'm, I got to do a recess and figure this out.

And then we see Burke and Davis.

They're back outside of the courtroom, kind of sitting on one of those benches in the hallway of the courthouse.

And they're just like, worried about going to jail.

And they're talking about, I don't know, Mormon, Book of Mormon names.

Yes.

Yeah.

We get some deep cuts here.

He says, we're not Alma and and Amulek.

And I wrote in my notes, I don't know.

You seem pretty boring to me.

I recognized Alma, not Amulek.

Yeah.

And these names would obviously be known by the Mormon audience that this is meant for.

And, you know, the Mormons would think, oh, this town doesn't even know who Alma and Amulek are.

It's another way to show how ignorant the town is because they don't understand.

Sure, sure.

They even sneak in an inside joke because they say, we certainly don't want to be a Benedai.

Yes.

And for those who know Mormonism, a Benedai was burned at the stake for giving his beliefs.

Yes, I wrote my notes.

I hate that I get that reference.

I should have made different choices in my life.

I'm supposed to be a New York Jew, damn it.

Okay, so it was like

bagels and Hanukkah.

We don't want to be a Benedai.

I don't want to get burned at the stake.

Classic, like a joke at the end, I suppose.

Okay.

And then Burke is like, don't worry, though.

We're fine.

We're not a cult.

We're going to be fine.

And I was like, you're not going to be fine.

Okay.

Good luck.

From there, we cut over to the judge's chamber and a reverend shows up in addition to thomas and james and they're all gonna explain the theocracy law of this county to the new judge yes and the judge's response to that by the way is are you saying i'm a bad judge which is a fucking bizarre reaction to have to we are a theocracy i'm sorry no one told you

clearly didn't read the memo when she got in as the new judge yeah we're doing a theocracy in this town yeah She's like, you can't run people out of town.

I don't think that's the thing you're allowed to do.

And they're like, yeah, actually, we are.

We're protecting the flock.

Mormons are gross.

We have this whole town council that does it, the Christian town council.

In order to get a preaching license, you have to be a recognized Christian religion.

So that's going to be the argument in the upcoming trial.

Yeah.

And when she argues with that, he says he's not going to let her turn the town into, quote, a left-wing, free rights, non-Christian ruin.

I was aggressive.

That felt like a bunch of slur stuff was.

Yeah, it felt like New York was in the cough, cough, New York.

Yeah, I got the feeling this was New York versus Texas.

Right.

For sure.

So, of course, Thomas and James are like, oh, well, our catchphrase is plea bargain.

We'll exile them, but we'll set up a plea bargain and they get exiled and everybody's happy.

And the judge is like, no, no, we're going to have, we're going to have laws here.

I'm pretty sure you're breaking so many.

I'm the judge.

We're going to do, we're going to do some kind of trial here.

So then we go back to the courtroom for the first piece of the case of deporting Mormons.

And it's decided that you have to prove you're Christian to stay in town.

Yeah.

Okay.

So this judge has them stand up and then without speaking to their lawyers, without anything, she just declares that they're going to do a trial, which we will later find out is a fucking jury trial to defend that Mormonism is a Christian religion.

That's correct.

The fact that it's a jury trial is insane.

But yes, that's right.

That is the argument.

That would be like if you got caught jaywalking and the judge decided that you are going to defend the existence of Toyota as a company.

And again, this is the dream of many Mormons because it's really hard to live up to the persecution of the past, right?

The mobs in Joseph Smith's time, the hand carts and the deaths across the plain.

We don't have that opportunity, right?

So this kind of a moment where you could stand up in court, be persecuted to the extent of the law, and then defend your faith.

This is something people are waiting for.

Yes.

And it's worth pointing out for those of you who aren't ex-missionaries or unfortunate Jewish podcasters who chose to learn way too much about Mormons.

This movie is also modeled after the six discussions, the first one specifically, which is We Are Too Christian, right?

So all of this this is this weird Mormon fantasy in pamphlet form that we're handing to post-pubescent boys before college.

And every Mormon who has served a mission will recognize those pamphlets and the flip charts that they had.

Oh, yeah, the four planets.

I got excited.

I got excited at

the four layers of planets.

And then we see Davis and Burke back at their house, and they want to check in with the mission president to maybe explain that they got arrested, but they argue about that a little bit.

Well, they have to.

Number one, every missionary knows the number one rule when something happens is you call the mission president.

So a big plot hole here is that they don't seem to call their zone leaders or the mission president for 10 days, and yet nobody notices that they are missing.

Yeah.

But anyone who knows LDS knows that if they made one fold call, Curtin McConkey, the church's law firm that's directly across the street from the church office building, would have hundreds of lawyers there for their defense immediately.

yeah look there aren't a lot of positive things to say about the the mormon church but they will sue the out of you

100

okay well they they decide they're not going to be calling the president eventually because burke is like no i want to we're going to do it ourselves and he this is where he throws out the phone but it just kind of like it doesn't even unplug he just like puts a phone into a semi-full garbage and you just see it there and he's like oh that was that was less impactful than i was hoping but we're not falling.

So they're planning to fight this, at least for now.

Then we're going to meet the, I think, Baptist or Catholic church here.

I think it's a Catholic church, but they have a choir that seems very Baptist.

And they're singing this little light of mine, like way too well.

Yeah.

Actually, it was like a pretty good rendition.

This was almost my best worst in the movie, which is best worst understanding of the other Christian denominations.

So this is supposed to be a Catholic church.

We'll learn later that this is a Catholic church, but they are very much singing like a Baptist church.

Yeah, what you're seeing is how Mormons view other denominations.

They don't understand.

They don't see the nuance.

They don't know the difference.

They don't really understand what happens at other churches or what they would be like.

Yeah, that tracks with this entire movie for sure.

Okay.

So this is where we're meeting Sharon, the wife of Thomas, and Jess, the wife of James.

They're both in this Catholic church together and they're in the choir.

And we see them sitting outside the church after a little bit of singing and this is where they fail the bechtel test really hard wilford the cop walks right up to them as they just barely start talking to each other and he's like your husbands are in trouble let's talk about that ladies i enjoy your matching mormon mom haircuts but it's time for us to focus on the men yeah and the point is from wilford the cop that these two husbands are being pitted against each other because public defender and da which should have been known to you know everybody involved especially spouses but he's a little panicked about that.

So he tells Sharon and Jess.

Yeah, he says she, and he's talking about the judge here.

He goes, she's ordered a mock trial.

And I wrote in my notes, I think that's just a regular trial when a judge orders it.

I think that's just a normal

trial.

A mocking trial.

Oh, that's what it is.

Yeah.

So then we see Thomas and James.

We cut back to them after that crazy little hearing that happened.

And they're going to discuss a little bit of the upcoming plot.

James wants Thomas to convince the heathen Mormon clients to take a plea deal.

Okay, but the best thing about this scene is that James never actually makes any points.

All he says is like, come on, friends, throw these teenagers in jail.

Like every time Thomas said, he'd be like, well, the judge said that we

come on, please.

Neither of them have heard of due process or anything like that.

Certainly not.

I was beginning to question if either one of them had gone to law school.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Seems like mostly no.

Certainly nobody who wrote this movie has done anything close to that.

And this is where Thomas finally agrees, like, okay, I'll think about trying the plea deal thing, but I am going to represent my clients kind of harumphily.

And then this was kind of fun.

James is like, okay, well, your wife makes great pot roast.

Don't fuck this up for me by putting a riff between us.

And I was like, okay, those are the steaks now, the pot roast dinners.

This was foreshadowing.

I knew at this moment that the wife was going to be taught by the Mormon missionaries because she had relief society written all over her.

They couldn't make this more Mormon if she made a green jello salad.

I was going to say, there are major personal conflicts I would overlook for a solid funeral potatoes recipe, right?

If someone's got the good ones with the Krispy on the top, you know what I'm talking about.

The best.

They're the best.

Oh, I've made many of those.

I'll send you some.

Bad funeral potatoes, on the other hand, dead to me, dead for life.

Can you just make that when it's not somebody died?

It feels like a really good dish, but it's sad if that's the actual name.

Is it?

Yeah, there's a lot of

association with it.

If you bring it to an event, people are like, oh, you know, it's a bad moment.

First question.

Okay.

Just seems like that's a good casserole right there.

Anyway, it's a fantastic casserole.

Okay.

So from there, we cut over to Burke and Davis.

They're going to have their first meeting with their defender.

Thomas is just kind of mad at him at at first.

He's like, listen, I'm not religious.

I support our local theocracy, though.

So you're going to have to like really talk me into working for you.

I think the, I'm not religious, that's LDS code for, oh, so we can convert this guy.

Yes, exactly.

He's ready to be prophylatized too.

We also get a hallmark of bad movies here that we see in Christian movies all the time, which is the, I'll meet you in the next scene to continue this conversation ending.

He's like, okay, well, you've said four sentences.

I'd like to hear six more, but I need us to be on a park bench to do it.

See you boys tomorrow.

Yeah.

And they just agree to vaguely meet in the park sometime tomorrow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The missionaries have nothing else to do.

So they're just going to show up already at 7 a.m.

And they're going to sit there until Thomas shows up.

I can confirm as a missionary of two years that they had nothing else to do.

Nobody wanted to hear that.

So sitting in the park was an enjoyable thing.

yeah what are they going to do reread that same copy of charlie that was left in their mission house

that's right and if you're wondering yeah we've reviewed charlie oh gosh

so they agree to meet the park from there we cut over to thomas and sharon's house and we see their little daughter kelly too and this is where we learn that sharon is like extra anti-mormon she's mad right away she's like the judge can't make you do a trial about that and he's like she can though.

She can.

That's her whole thing.

There is a trial.

I have to, I have to do it.

Yeah, it's my job.

And that's what I don't understand.

Does no one understand that it's Thomas's job as a public defender?

Makes no sense.

No, nobody seems to understand that.

And we also learn she's extra, extra evil because this little, delightful, adorable little girl is like, hey, mom, can I have a little dessert?

And she's like, not right now.

We're talking about how Mormons are gross.

Rebecca really had a problem with Sharon at this point.

Yeah, did you guys notice that there seemed to be a sort of large age difference between Sharon and Thomas?

To me, at first I thought he'd gone home to his mom's house.

Oh, yeah, I would say

he's a young looking guy.

A very young looking guy.

And she, yeah, she definitely looks older.

He looks confused at first.

He looks like the big boy mascot decided to like straighten up and get a job as a lawyer.

Tuximo Zempek got a little thin hair.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, like a Mormon Russell Crow, Crow, but kind of like shrunk down a little bit.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, but that definitely showed to the Mormon audience, you know, an unhappy family that needs the gospel because there are raised voices.

There's yelling, there's contention in the home.

They need those missionaries more than they know.

Right, for sure.

And Sharon yells at the little daughter again, a second time, because she's like extra, extra evil.

Then we see Thomas playing outside with Kelly for a second.

They're just throwing the football around.

They have a little tickle fight.

Okay.

All we're learning here is that they're supposed to meet the Mormons in the park.

And the movie addresses the fact that it was like, oh, yeah, I never set a time for that.

I guess I'll go now.

I actually took this scene as they were setting up that Thomas was a good father.

And because he's a good father, he's going to make a good church member.

And so everyone needs to start cheering for him.

Oh, you're right.

Yeah, right.

It felt like they were trying to turn him positive as much as possible throughout the movie.

This is like an early part of that for sure.

So he meets them in the park.

Thomas goes to the park.

They were just waiting there vaguely for some time in the park that day.

I don't know.

And

this is great.

They're going to show Thomas the entire Mormon missionary sales pitch.

Like they've got the books and the pamphlets,

but they're not going to actually.

do that we're not going to hear them do that it's going to be a montage so the music kicks in and it's a long like showing little pamphlets yeah and can i say i need to do this with my own arguments more right like when i'm starting to lose a conversation i need the music to just cut in and then when it cuts out again i've already made all the arguments i need to make seems way easier it's really effective with that sweeping orchestral music because the looks on their face the music it makes it seem really important but they really don't have to say anything so it's very effective i thought and he finishes and he goes well i don't know about all that i need evidence i'm a catholic and i wrote in my notes really man you a big fan of evidence over there at the Catholic church?

But that's the idea.

So the judge just told them they have to prove they are Christian in some sense, but they've decided in the movie, they're going to prove that Mormonism is correct, like the truth of the universe.

So that's what they'll be doing.

Then we see James and Jess, and they're over at Thomas and Sharon's house, I'm assuming, for that pot roast dinner.

And they all get into kind of a crazy fight because James and thomas are still at odds over how much you should actually defend mormons yeah it's weird because it feels like james set an insane trap because he knew they were coming over and like if i was in a big fight with someone i knew they were coming over for dinner i'd probably just call them and say like hey don't come over i'm mad at you but they get there the children start to play with each other and then james is like by the way i'm angry at you about this case that you've taken up that we already knew all the information about before this meeting.

Come on, honey, we're going.

like the car is still air-conditioned as they get into it it's a very weird incredibly fast fight the one thing i liked in in the scene they show us their dinner table for a second at the end of the fight like they they yell at each other for a second leave and then they're like all right well it's just us for dinner sit down for a second we see the table it's just a cherry pie and a bottle of salad dressing right next to it.

Literally nothing else on the table.

Yep, that tracks.

Totally tracks.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

All right.

From there, we cut over to the missionaries again at their house.

Elder Davis is brushing his teeth and he's got a roll of toilet paper on the counter next to the sink while he's brushing his teeth, which was weird.

And then in terrifying fashion, Elder Brooke is like right behind him.

Yes.

It's the horror movie, Go Down for the Splash, Come Up and the Monster's Behind You.

Yeah.

There's not a lot of privacy in a mission and they definitely can't take phones into, you know, like like the bathroom with the door shut.

And it depends on who your companion is, but I've heard horror stories of missionaries that have said, we're taking the bathroom door off, right?

Oh, yes.

Because you're policing each other in case any behavior in the bathroom might get out of control.

So, this was a masturbation chaperone.

Exactly.

I didn't want to say it.

Yes.

Don't want to be touching anything they shouldn't be.

That's clear.

Like, take the door off the hinges instead of just like like leave it open.

I've heard this story and also putting up pictures of Jesus and inspiring messages like you can do it, don't do it.

Oh, that's going to make it worse for me.

In the shower, in the shower.

That's not going to have the effect that they're hoping it's on me.

Jokes on you.

Exactly.

Especially if you give me ripped Catholic Jesus.

That's just a prize.

If anything, you're speeding up my showers.

Yep, that's what I think too.

But yeah, and I'm not exaggerating.

I know scenarios like this.

So, yeah, they're trying really hard.

Okay.

also elder burke was eating cereal in the bathroom which was gross he carries his like half-eaten bowl of cereal he's just like actively eating it in the bathroom right behind him he's brushing his teeth that was weird anyway they decide they're going to go to catholic mass to spread a little Mormonism, but not technically preach because they're allowed to talk to people, but they're not allowed to preach in the meantime while the trial is ongoing.

So fun fact about this scene.

This is the most controversial scene in the movie.

When I was looking it up, there is actually quite a bit of chatter about this scene because I guess at a certain point, missionaries were told you're not supposed to go to other churches, even if you're going to like try and convince people to do a thing.

But then other people believe that it actually was okay to go to churches, especially if you were like doing a dinner meeting with people later.

Anyways, when this came out, there was a big fight about this scene, apparently.

Yeah.

And I think it depends on when you were on your mission, you know, but they definitely, and my thought is this.

I have a friend that was on a mission and he said, okay, I'll go to your church if you guys will come to my church.

When he went to these investigators' church, he's like, God, this is awesome.

There's coffee.

There's donuts.

There's music.

This is super fun.

Why would I even want to bring my investigators called Friends Now to my church?

And so I think there is that sense.

You can't find out what's going on on the other side.

It might be more appealing.

I think that singing is going to backfire on most Mormons because you start hearing that going, wow, that's really cool.

That's not like the hymns we sing.

And oddly enough, that song they were singing earlier, this line of

line just got put in the LDS hymn book, although at a much slower speed.

They've slowed it down.

Yeah, that is kind of the interesting thing about this whole movie.

Let's tame that down.

It felt

a little fast with the Lamanite beats.

Let's just get that.

Yeah, no heavy bass beat.

But it is interesting because this movie, let's see, 2003, the LDS church has moved the needle way, way, way mainstream Christian.

They do sing songs like this now.

They do do a lot of things that in this movie, they're saying they don't do.

So it's interesting to track.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah, indeed.

So they go to the church.

And I thought this was funny, too.

They, Burke and Davis, they show up at this Catholic church.

And then right away, they're just like, okay, Bail, this is going badly.

And they're just out.

They do nothing.

All we see in this moment is James and Reverend Bad Guy is what I have in my notes as.

It's, I think, a Baptist Reverend in town.

Well, so here's the thing, right?

James and Thomas, who go to the same church, will at various points declare themselves to be Catholic.

They will also talk to a Catholic priest in a Catholic priest uniform at certain points, but that's not this guy.

Reverend Bad Guy appears to be a separate Baptist minister who's here on a Sunday at a Catholic church.

None of it made any sense.

And it just shows that, you know, to, I think, to Mormons, all other religions, it's just kind of an amalgam.

they're just out there they're just other denominations there's no right or reason behind all of it in this film yeah they they actually were at two different churches they went to the catholic church to meet the lawyer but he was at the baptist church with his oh okay that's what happened so there were two choirs but they kind of shared each other at the funeral and everything they went back and forth they seemed to just go to whatever church they felt like okay this that makes a little bit more sense so we see burke and davis go to the catholic church and then they get scared they panic they bail and And then we cut to a different church where James, the DA, is meeting with Reverend Bad Guy, who's a Baptist Reverend, and they're planning the evil CTC, the Christian town council meeting that's coming up.

It's just like, see you at the meeting of theocracy.

That's like the whole thing.

That is it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, looks like DA James is going to go.

I don't know.

He looks like he's going to go murder someone in a PERT plus commercial.

That actor who plays James.

That 90s

guy he did he really did yeah and no fuss and no fuss with the great

absolutely well he's gonna do that we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with more day of defense

and so the government would just like take their ids when they found out man you've really thought this through like a lot hey guys you ready to record the rest of the podcast yeah eli was just walking us through that his little spoon theory oh yeah okay that he thinks men who are the little spoon ever, like in bed, shouldn't be allowed to vote.

That's right.

I actually they lose their citizenship, Heath.

It's way more than just voting, right?

Well, that's a terrible idea.

So, can we just get started?

Oh, is it Heath?

Explain in montage while I explain what I'm saying.

I explain, and you are listening.

I say what I say, and then you listen, because I explain what I say

in this montage.

What was that?

Yeah, I'm hoping you learned a lot just now.

A lot about what?

You didn't say anything.

I didn't do a super good job explaining my points in a way that you guys were like really impressed by.

No, no.

Your eyes just kind of glazed over and did a crazy singing thing.

And it smells like you shit yourself.

Oh.

Well, never mind then.

Are you going to go clean up?

I'm waiting for a stasis situation.

Got it.

Sure.

Nobody looking at him.

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So tired.

Okay.

And we're back.

When we left off, the town was planning a very specific version of kind of a Klan meeting just for being like anti-Mormon only.

That's their main thing.

Non-denominational

Klan meeting.

Yeah, exactly.

And now we open on a Christian town council meeting where everyone decided to just kind of rabble, rabble, rabble at the person to their left all at the same time.

It appears that was the stage direction.

We write sketches that opened with rabble, rabble, rabble on a regular enough basis that I have a lot of sympathy for rabble, rabble, rabble.

This was some low-grade rabble, rabbling, let me tell you.

And I love that they have to get out of the way that this is the judge's fault, right?

Because the judge made them do the trial.

The judge is the one who's making the lawyers do the thing.

So everyone at the beginning of the scene just stands up and goes, Look, the judge made her choice.

That's not the plot of the movie.

The plot of the movie is that we're mad at one lawyer and not the other for some reason.

Right.

Yeah, they're mad, of course, at Thomas, Thomas, the defense lawyer, and James is here at this meeting.

Apparently, he's set up some questions for all these Christian town council people to ask during the trial as like gotcha stuff.

Yeah, we were going to talk about this when it actually happens during the trial, but as insane and as illogical as this movie is, it actually gets way more insane because we're about to learn that it's not a trial conducted by lawyers with witnesses.

The Christian town council will also at various points be lawyers, witnesses, and just random jury members at various points during the trial.

Yeah, they seemed a little worried about whether they would win when everyone in the audience ended up being on the jury.

So we see them finish up their little meeting and James actually assigns them a little homework.

He's like, I wrote some gotcha questions for you, but like think of your own too.

We really got to get the Mormons in the trial.

Then we see Thomas meeting with the missionaries to strategize how they're going to win the trial by proving they are, in fact, Christian.

Yeah.

And he gives them this weird, like, how is your so-called true message going to help Farmer Brown with his cows and lady elderly with her rosebuds?

And I wrote in my notes, sorry, are the other Christians on the Christian town council helping with cows and rosebuds?

I think I found the one true religion if they are.

Yeah.

He clearly hasn't studied his Mormonism because we could call seagulls in to eat the crickets off of anyone.

anyone.

Right.

That's true.

Yeah.

Good point.

Good point.

Right.

So they decide they're going to go out and meet some more people.

Again, they're not allowed to preach, but they can kind of learn about the town.

So they, they're going to do that.

Davis kind of wants to quit, but Burke urges him that like, no, we're going to, we're going to Mormon everybody.

It's all good.

You know what?

I'm queuing another montage and we get another montage.

Yeah, the trying to Mormon at people montage.

Yeah.

Now, I like to call it the persecution montage.

That's very important because there's not one person that doesn't just treat them like shit.

Everybody does.

Worse and worse, you know, and that's the narrative.

Completely persecuted.

Even there's this moment where they want us to be like, look, even the homeless guy won't hang out with them.

And I'm like, yeah, no, that's, that's also a person.

I don't know why this movie chose to differentiate, but yes, he is also a human being.

Yeah.

They make weird choices, though, because I'm watching this happen.

It's a montage.

There's like a jaunty fiddle playing and it's supposed to be like positive Mormonism happening in preaching form, but they're just scaring the shit out of everybody.

Like they're terrifying the way they kind of just jump in and accost people and sneak up behind them and like push onto the bench next when they're sitting in there.

I was fully supporting the Christian town council based on this montage, which is not great for the movie.

I have to say I had a bit of a nervous laugh as I watched this montage, only because I know that anytime you tried to say, oh, I'm going to go try to do some service, everyone said, nah, I don't need it.

They knew what your motive was.

They weren't having any of it.

Yeah.

They do get hosed by the lady who's watering her garden and they try to bother her over the fence and get immediately.

I've never got officially hosed, but it wouldn't surprise me if some had.

Oh, okay.

I was going to ask if you ever experienced that as a missionary, not quite the hose officially, but

rejection.

The same rejection.

Rejection was the name of the game.

The vibes of the hosing was happening.

The vibes were real.

Yes.

And Landon serves his mission in Indiana.

So it's similar, you know, small town, Christian, very similar.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, they go from there after the montage is starting to shut down.

They walk into a barbershop.

And

when the Mormons walk into this barbershop, like record needle screeching is happening and everybody's like.

staring over at them.

Yeah.

The guy in the barber share might as well whip a wig off that he's been having cut and like zoom a human-shaped hole out of the wall

it was such an aggressive haircut did you notice that the guy was just like grabbing handfuls of hair and just choking like yeah

aggressively yeah it goes very badly they try to small talk the barber for a second and that guy's like already mad at them he's like okay please leave no okay

we should look for the jury for a guy with a bad haircut that would really uh that would be it that would be it

impartial fury would be gone Yeah, this was, this was kind of like the opposite of an experience I had the other day, actually.

So there's

a group of, I think, yeah, Jehovah's Witnesses, and they set up shop on a corner near where I live.

And on nice days, especially, they're out there all day.

And as I walked past them two days ago, they had a big box of beautiful looking cherry tomatoes.

And I love cherry tomatoes.

And I was like, hey, can I have a cherry tomato?

And the guy was like, yeah, here, have one.

I was like, oh, actually, can I have like 10?

Because I really love these.

And he's like, okay.

And he gave me 10.

And then he's like, so I'd like to.

And I was like, nope.

And I just walked away.

So you're the band.

There it is.

Yeah.

So I had fun with that.

So they leave the barbershop.

Sorry, I know we don't have our cameras on.

I should explain that he's the raccoon.

He's the talking raccoon.

So they leave the barbershop.

And this is where we're going to meet a new character who made no sense.

We meet a cowgirl.

She was apparently in the barbershop, but she follows them them out after seeing that interaction.

And she like flirts slash entraps them into hanging out with her and learning about the town.

This is the beginning of the love story.

That's right.

Yes.

Yeah.

This is the movie being very confused because...

I thought, and apparently in the book, she like lures them into flirting with her so that the boyfriends can beat them up because they get beat up in the, in the book, but I guess this didn't happen in the movie, right?

But what I thought was happening, and perhaps this is just because I have that dirty in mind.

I thought she was like the town sex worker.

Like I thought she was, she was trolling for clients.

And this, so I was very confused by her character for the folks in the movie.

Okay, but they decide that they're going to like follow her to the park and talk about stuff, but it's very clearly like a...

extremely sexual moment.

She's got the Jessica Rabbit music following her out of the barbershop.

She's wearing a cutoff top, right?

So the Mormon audience right now, you know, exactly what kind of a a person she's.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And a girl flirting with a Mormon missionary is like selling water in the desert.

I mean, it's an easy girl.

Right.

So they go off into the very obvious honeypot trap that's happening.

We cut over to Jess and Sharon.

They're on the porch at one of their houses drinking sweet tea with caffeine, I would imagine, because they're evil.

And Sharon is still mad about this case.

Yeah, it's something that they use in this kind of a film to show, you know, these are Christian, not Mormons.

They're drinking tea, you know, and they're having this conversation.

One thing I thought was interesting is, do neither of them realize the role of a public defender?

This is your husband's job.

This is what he is hired to do.

If he really is being paid, I don't even know that.

It's just so confusing the way they keep thinking that he could not do his job in defending.

the missionaries.

It's so bizarre.

He could defend a sex offender or a murderer, but Mormons, heck no.

That's where you're back.

Heck no.

Probably got a few of those first things on the Kushatown Council.

Right.

So from there, we cut over to the park and we see Davis and Burke hanging with cowgirl Honeypot and her friend.

Kimberly, I think is the name of the main Honeypot entrapper.

Yeah, I think it's Kimberly.

Kimberly, yeah.

And then the Catholic street toughs show up.

I'm assuming that's Kimberly and her friend's two boyfriends, and they're going to do some bullying.

yeah i like that these two actors couldn't decide which kind of street toughs they were going to be because one of them is very clearly a cowboy and the other is like a 1980s gangster yeah just in different like village people outfits that don't match up at all yes exactly they both showed up to set and they were like well i'm not going to change well i'm both the electrical worker

this is confusing now So the bullying, by the way, in this movie is just like one little shove and that's it.

Yeah, they didn't need the PG rating.

That would turn

your audience.

Yeah.

That'll get you kicked out of BYU.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the point is, I guess it's established that some violence, violent persecution has happened against these delightful Mormon missionaries.

Then we see them back at Thomas's office for another lawyering meeting.

They explain that their montage went very badly.

They got hosed.

A homeless guy was mean.

They got kicked out of barbershop and they got honeypotted and possibly shoved as part of the honeypot thing and thomas is like okay i feel bad for you guys this is where he invites them to come to the town barbecue which shows that he's kind of softening up toward them yeah kind of feels sorry for these guys he's a good guy how can you not have some empathy for these kids or or this movie wanted another montage because that's what we're about to get oh yes all right one quick detail we do see kelly the little girl being like i want to ride a horse and thomas promises to ride horses all day Saturday.

So that's going to happen eventually, but he does have to work on.

Honey, you can wait.

It's not going to kill you to wait for daddy to teach you how to ride a horse.

But like Eli said, it's time for a barbecue montage this time.

They're at the town barbecue and more persecution is going to happen.

They're going to get yelled at by everybody.

Yeah.

So this is where the Christian town council is there and the mean boyfriends are there and they're like, hey, who invited you here?

And Thomas is like, oh, I invited them.

And then they just keep yelling at the kids.

They're just like, no, well, his invite doesn't count.

You're not supposed to be there.

It's nuts.

So every Christian barbecue you ever go to is completely unwelcoming and nobody wants you there.

Right.

Again, it just flew in the face of what you would expect for a Christian barbecue.

Yeah.

This is where a mean Baptist minister who sometimes shows up at a Catholic church says, Sharon, please tell your husband to banish these children from our town.

Yeah.

And then they all like, this is my favorite part of the scene.

I wouldn't have even brought this this scene up except at the end they all the kids run away and then they like shake hands on her they're like hey good job kicking out those children from our barbecue yeah no that was really good you did it

we did our christian duty yeah they're gone there you go yeah

yeah they get kicked out thomas agrees to give them a ride home the two missionaries because everybody's mad if that's me by the way i'm I'm loading up on food from the barbecue before I have to I'm like taking armfuls into the car.

I'm taking the whole funeral potatoes tins.

I don't care how hot hot it is.

I don't care what it's been sitting on top of.

I have an armful of funeral potatoes.

That's the missionaries' downfall.

They should have brought funeral potatoes to the bar.

That's how you get on the Christian Town.

Yeah, absolutely.

Christian Town Council and Christmas crack.

Are you kidding?

Right.

So the missionaries get driven back home.

They're all sad.

We also see Thomas coming home later that night.

And then he decides he's going to read the Book of Mormon.

You cannot have a Mormon movie unless somebody reads the Book of Mormon.

Yes, exactly.

And usually in the middle of the night.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When they're like in mental turmoil or they're concerned about something, and that's the moment they that they decide to go read.

Oh, yeah.

Center square on the Christian movie bingo card.

And we get a like a montage lit of a tiny bit of in the dark late at night book of Mormon reading.

It felt like the movie was sneaking in another montage.

They were like, I know our last scene was pretty much a montage, but we're just one more little montage.

She was just like, squirreling down, Book of Mormon.

Okay, that's enough.

Yeah.

Well, it's time for day one of the proving Christianity trial.

And the question is repeated to everybody.

The question is, should they get a religion license, a preaching license?

And this James, the DA, the prosecutor of that question, gets to do an opening statement first.

Yeah.

And this is where we learned that there will be a jury trial at this council meeting, whatever it is.

I was very confused.

and this opening statement that james makes is so baffling because he says our founding fathers came up with a plan and then reverend williams enacted that plan and i was like okay so not not our founding fathers that guy's like 40.

i just couldn't get past the da's crazy eyes he just had crazy eyes every time he spoke doesn't he yeah that's because he murdered people in a pert plus universe very recently yeah there's this great moment can we talk about the heckle oh yeah this is is where we meet a very important character, is the peanut gallery of this trial.

So James is in the middle of his opening statement.

He says, are Mormons Christians?

And one of the boyfriends, cowboy boyfriend, goes, no more than Samuel's cows.

And I wrote in my notes, fucking got them.

They were kind of the Beavis and butthead character

of the courtroom.

Yeah,

for sure.

And Judge Nielsen, she has to be like, Billy, Jeff, quiet down.

Yeah, guys.

We said no roasts.

We said no roasts.

So now it's Thomas's turn to do his opening statement.

And he's going to open with, fucking hate it here.

Cool.

I wrote in my notes, not a great open, not a great open for a defense attorney.

Yeah.

So correct me if I'm wrong.

As I understand his opening statement argument here, he's saying, hey, you guys all remember in the Bible when it was like just the Jewish people, like the gross Old Testament part, but then Christians happened, right?

I think we need to be nice to Mormons in case it's like that right now.

I think that's his argument, right?

Yep, I think you nailed it.

That's exactly what he was going with.

It seems like at some point he would just be like, hey, do you guys believe in Christ?

Yes, done.

Cool.

I win.

We're done.

It's crazy.

Nobody thinks of that one.

It's really, it's wild.

He seemed to kind of be defending himself at the same time.

I really didn't want to do this.

I'm just here because I have to.

Since I am, I'm going to kind of defend these boys.

I'm just doing my job.

Yeah.

And he finishes up his little opening statement and then the judge announces the real start of the trial it's not going to be like okay time for calling witnesses and then any kind of meaningful cross-examination at times that makes sense but immediately burke and davis the two missionaries are sort of on the stand and they're being cross-examined by reverend bad guy who's i guess also he's a he's a prosecutor too he's yeah reverend bad guy just gets to start asking questions now for some reason yeah he had the same crazy eyes as James did.

They must have both got that pert in their in their eyes that morning.

This is also.

So the point of this particular scene, right, where bad guy priest is going to ask these questions is a real contention between a lot of Christians and Mormonism, which is that Mormons do not believe in the triune God.

They believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are separate entities.

But because this movie is written by Mormons who have no idea what the fucking triune God is supposed to mean, the pastor's like, so you're saying you have three gods?

Because we've got one with multiple personality disorders.

And the crowd is like,

absolutely true.

Mormonism, we consider ourselves monotheists.

I have no idea why, because we are polytheists all the way.

Jesus, God, the Holy Ghost, three different people, God's married to multiple women gods.

So you've got goddesses.

And all of us, when we end up on the other side, our ultimate goal is to all become gods ourselves.

Yeah.

There's millions of gods.

We are more polytheists than the polytheists are.

Yeah.

As they were getting into this minutiae, I just wrote in my notes, oh my God, can I watch people argue about magic, the gathering or something interesting instead?

Next, they're going to argue about the idea of whether you get saved by faith alone or by faith and good works.

That's going to be the next big, important argument.

And again, like, this is a very funny argument for the lady on the town council to be making because she is sitting next to a Catholic priest who disagrees with her on this question, who is on the council.

I think that was part of what they were trying to show when they had the town council meet before is how all the other churches don't agree on anything either.

So they're trying to get you by default that, hey, you think what we say is weird, but what you guys say is just as weird.

Therefore, we must be correct.

You should have been the defense attorney.

That was perfect.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

Yeah.

It's so silly because they're just showing different parts of the Bible.

And obviously there's some contradictions in all of that.

And it's nothing.

It's just like, oh, look, right here, it says faith without works is dead.

And then, oh, but right here, it says it's just about faith.

It's like,

well, yeah, Eli says like magic together.

We're watching a trial about the rules of Calvin Ball.

It's just nonsense.

And everybody's a liar.

And the funny thing about this whole grace argument is, yes, in 2003, you know, LDS people, grace was a dirty, dirty word.

Flash forward 20 years, it's all about grace.

They

moving that needle toward mainstream Christianity.

I think if this movie had been made now, they would not have been kicked out of the town.

They would have freaking been on the Christian town council.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

We have to remember who the audience is for this movie.

They're trying to convince Mormons that, hey, our arguments are just as valid as their arguments.

You know, they're all weird arguments, but ours are no weirder than theirs.

And that's the point they're trying to make to their believing membership.

I guess that's right.

I agree with that.

They're all equally weird or some other word for sure.

Yeah.

I liked when Elder Davis starts to mention the Book of Mormon to try to justify one of his arguments.

And then Thomas, his own lawyer, is like, objection.

My clients doesn't know what he's talking about.

Shut up.

Shut your fucking mouth.

Don't bring that in anyway.

That's right.

For God's sake, don't.

Another definition of Christendom is you believe in only the Bible.

So he knew immediately if you introduce other scripture, you're right away giving away the case.

Right.

Also funny was when D.A.

James, the prosecutor, is kind of like objection to Thomas's objection.

Let him cook, Your Honor.

I'd like to hear about more of that.

And then the next big argument, we get a new member of this insanely large prosecution team.

So it's somebody from, I don't know, another Protestant church, maybe.

And they explain how the final revelation of God was way before

Mormon stuff happened in the Book of Mormon.

So therefore, mormonism has to be fake so it's like a historical argument yeah they like to pull out that uh i think it's uh the last book in revelations that says no one should add to or take away from the scriptures mormon's argument to that is well that same thing is said in deuteronomy which is one of the first books in the so therefore you're you're not allowing for future revelation so this was a big argument for mormons that the revelation must continue or god isn't why would God reveal his word to some people and and and not to others so that okay so sweetwater County should have to be only Jewish people allowed.

Exactly.

Exactly.

They really want to be tactical about it.

That's pretty solid for dismantling their stupid Christian council.

I'm sure they didn't like that.

And that's a big argument showing that Mormons are not Christian is that, you know, they have additional revealed scripture and a living prophet, right?

There are no more prophets.

Those were all in the Bible.

But, you know, Mormons believe there is a man on earth today who talks directly to God.

And God just happens to order technology blackouts when his daughter's in trouble.

You know, it works out for everybody.

They clearly avoided the book of Abraham, which he took from scrolls that were discovered before anyone could read Egyptian, but after the Rosetta Stone, we can now read Egyptian and we know they were just Egyptian funerary texts that Joseph Smith translated and got completely wrong.

Yeah.

Minor detail.

Minor detail.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

This is also where we get the aliens controversy, right?

So this is like a big no-no within Mormonism, right?

Because Because the four levels of planetariness don't take place in our universe.

And it's very insulting to say everyone's going to get their own planet because they're not technically planets inside this universe.

They're in the extra universe, which you could see in the pamphlet.

If you just pay attention to teenagers, did Eli get all that right just now?

Oh, it's crazy.

The whole planet thing.

And like I said, recently they have dialed way back on that because it's such a, you know, crazy ass teaching.

So which makes Space Jesus make even less sense in his giant dome of stars?

Oh, it's ridiculous to think Mormons believe in aliens.

That's just that, you know, completely off the wall.

We, we believe in Bigfoot.

That was Cain.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

And doesn't Elder Burke essentially try to respond to this by being like, no, we don't believe in aliens.

We believe in the multiverse.

Yes.

That's pretty much.

Kind of the answer.

We get more of the peanut gallery laughing at everything.

And then one of them, Jeff or Billy or whoever was yelling earlier, stands up and says, live long and prosper, elders, and does the like hand thingy.

And everybody goes, fuck wild.

Star Trek burn.

Got him.

Yeah.

When you pull Star Trek out of trial, you've won.

Yeah, exactly.

I think so.

But Mormons love Star Treks.

They do.

It's true.

You know, they love him.

Okay.

And we get one last argument here.

We don't see a new prosecutor, same one.

And she says, Moron E, chapter 8, 18, and because Moron, it's Moroni, I guess.

And she's quoted from the Book of Morbid.

It says, God is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.

But they said God evolved from irregular humans.

That's a contradiction.

And they think they've won there.

And they actually, I think the prosecution rests on that.

It's a good thing to rest on that we're all going to become gods and get our own planet.

I mean, if you want to leave them hanging, leave it with that.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It's a better pitch.

So that's when Judge Nielsen is like, okay,

does the defense attorney want to try to do anything?

Or are you just giving up?

And he's like, I would like a turn.

Can I do it next week?

And so they have a recess until Tuesday for him to have a turn.

Did anyone wonder what do these town people do for jobs?

Because they all seem to just, you know, oh, next Tuesday, sure.

Yeah, I can come in the door.

Well, yeah, all the crops get taken care of with the Catholic magical spells, plenty of rain.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So they're already doing all the revelation.

Yeah.

So now we see Elder Davis.

He's kind of panicking and he doesn't want to come back to the trial.

They walk out of the courthouse kind of angrily.

Davis has a bag of stuff.

And this is where we get the best, best angry bag throw.

Oh, yeah.

Bag throws his bag against a tree.

Oh, so good.

I was so happy with this part of the movie.

It just explodes into books and like letters and stuff that the actor very clearly was not planning on spilling.

It made me so happy.

It reminded me of me trying to get my remote control to work with the TV, you know,

a litany of throwing and curse words.

Yeah, exactly.

The noise and then the like dispirited look of he's just like, ah, shit.

I broke it.

No.

Don't even make a slappy noise.

I do need these papers.

Can you grab that one?

That one's blowing away.

Oh, I dropped something else.

I had my apples.

They're rolling away.

There goes our baptismal recommend book, Elder.

Yeah, that's right.

Right.

We also see just for a second, D.A.

James having a bit of sympathy about the Mormons.

So he's having a little bit of a turn.

They want to show us that for a second because Act Three is coming up.

And then Honeypot Kimberly also has a similar moment, a little bit of sympathy for the Mormons, because, well, of course, Elder Davis is so beautiful and wise, and everything he says makes perfect sense if she really looks into into her heart.

But it doesn't matter.

The bag throw is all that matters here.

That's the important thing.

So, we're going to take a quick break to watch the bag throw over and over again.

At least that's what I'm going to do.

But first, let me get back through the hard cell.

Has the movie seen throwing as a concept?

I wonder how many takes that was for the one we did see.

Is he going to need Tommy John surgery?

Find out that we're going to see another bag throw, and it's going to be amazing when we return for the mormon-tastic conclusion of day of defense

all right everybody if we could circle up real quick first of all i want to say that we're doing a great job on this movie yeah oh thanks alan right but but i've noticed a little bit of a a theme for us to maybe work on yeah yeah none of you can throw

bags.

That that footage of the bag throwing, it looks just extremely silly.

So we're just going to go over that real quick.

Steve, you mind?

No problem.

Right.

So we all saw that.

Looks good to me.

Nice throw.

No, no, not a good throw at all.

So for starters, we don't need to spin our arm in a full circle.

And second,

we can just make a normal throwing noise.

Like this?

No, no.

Still, no, still not.

That's worse somehow, I think.

If it's so easy, why don't you throw something and show us?

Fine, fine.

I will.

Okay, that is trickier than I thought.

I can see.

Yeah, no, no, I see it.

And I hurt myself.

It was crazy.

And we're back.

When we left off, Elder Davis hurt himself so very badly throwing that bag.

And now we open on Thomas getting home and doing a second best, best angry bag throw.

It was like the actor was super sad in between takes and was like, no, everyone's going to laugh at my bag throw.

And Thomas was like, hey, don't worry about it.

I got it.

They're going to think it's a cast-wide problem.

If we all pee our pants, it's fine.

Yeah, exactly.

Felt like one of those.

The entire house is dark for some reason, even though he's going to be talking to his wife Sharon for a minute, which was strange.

and he's decided he's not quitting the case no matter what anyone says and he says sharon you know what the worst part of today was and i wrote in my notes the acting and he goes no i just i sat there and i wrote i mean you're supposed to take turns in a trial i don't know if the movie knows that but you are supposed to just sit there while the other side is going right

yeah but he decides he's sticking with it and he's queuing a montage for the Mormon guys.

So we get a little montage this time of at at first, just Elder Davis taking out the garbage.

And I was like, that's a weird montage they're going for here.

Okay.

But then Kimberly, honeypot Kimberly shows up.

So this is a montage of them having a relationship getting established of some sort.

Now, I will admit, I think that she was supposed to walk up just as he was coming outside.

But in my head, she was just waiting by the trash cans the entire time.

Okay.

But yeah, she just wants to talk to him.

She felt kind of bad about how it went with that shove, kind of saying she's sorry for the entrapment that happened.

And then he's just like, well, I'm done talking.

Bye.

And he walks back inside.

There hadn't been any talking, but he cuts it off right there.

And we see Honeypot Kimberly be like, oh, I was going to, I was about to read the Book of Mormon and I was going to tell you about how, ah, never mind.

And she's got the book in her hand.

She's like, ah, fuck it.

And she throws it in the garbage.

Yeah.

Pin in that.

Or it doesn't matter at all, but they will.

They will pull that pin out for a second at the end.

This was the entire love story.

You you know there was the meeting where she she gets him as a honeypot she shows up at the garbage can and then at the end of the movie they practically ready to run away together yeah i was so confused as to why this was the romance of the i kept expecting them to have another scene together i was watching the movie get shorter and shorter watching the time from the film count down and i got just more and more confused each time because i was like when is this romance going to turn into anything except this weird conversation the two of them had yep that's all you need that'll be it apparently they're engaged yeah exactly

you don't need anything else you know what i i forgot about byu romances i should have known better yep

three weeks three weeks is all you need yeah that was actually long probably yeah for a byu romance they're downright old maids at that point i i i actually had an elder on my mission who thought the bank teller was really cute brought her back flowers He was ending his mission in a couple weeks.

Ended up.

They got married.

So there you go.

It happens.

Well, Elder Davis angrily goes inside.

This was kind of funny.

The montage music, you could like tell it was running out.

And you can see him, the character, seem to be aware that the montage music was running out.

So he like grabs the Book of Mormon to like read a little bit, get ready for the trial.

He's going to find his proof that he is a Christian for real.

Like when Mario's about to die, we're running out of time in the level.

Yeah, right.

The music speeds up.

Yeah.

Then we cut to the next day.

We see Thomas heading to work on the case, but he did promise Kelly some horse riding this day.

And he's like, no, I got to, I have to do my work.

So he has to disappoint the kid.

And then, and then what happens, Heath?

Jesus fucking Christ.

Oh my God.

So he gets in his car.

Kelly, the little girl, runs after the car.

She gets hit by another car and dies.

Why?

This is the thing that I thought about the entire rest of the time.

There is no reason for this to be a plot point in the movie.

None.

It doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the film.

It doesn't mean anything to the rest of the film.

It will just be, it was like genuinely, I wondered if this actress died and they were like, you know what, guys?

People are going to ask where little Kelly is for the rest of the film.

We've got to find a way to explain this away.

Yeah.

No, this has everything to do.

This is actually the point of the movie.

If you watch a lot of LDS movies, which you guys do, death is a huge part of it.

And there's a thing in Mormonism called heart sell.

It's a marketing ploy, basically, where a death or something, a moment where somebody is in just the depths of despair.

And that's where Mormonism steps in.

The Mormons will be able to tell this family that they will see their little girl again.

But I have to admit, I, you know, I did not expect this.

I usually, I'm pretty jaded about it.

There's death all over these Mormon movies.

They like to have mothers die a lot.

Mothers die.

Oh, yeah, no, we've seen quite a few dead mothers.

Yeah, but I was, this hit me, no pun intended, really out of the blue.

I did not expect this.

But as soon as Landon and I saw this, we're like, oh, yeah, here we go.

The missionaries can teach the family of the plan of salvation.

So they can teach the like planets of heaven where you get to see this little kid.

But I mean, you know, Catholicism also has a heaven concept.

It's just not on planets.

I don't understand.

Mormons don't think that way.

They think no one else is going to be with their family.

Only Mormonism allows you to be with your family in heaven.

So the second that girl got hit by the car, I said, oh yeah, she's dead.

Here's where they're going to go with the story.

Now all Mormons know they got to convert this family so they can see their daughter again in heaven.

Interesting.

That was the whole point of that happening.

I guess the little girl could have been like evil and then gone to Catholic hell.

They could have played that up.

But

children under eight automatically go to heaven in Mormon.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

Seven, you can do all the shit you want and you're good.

You're good.

Yeah.

And this has come up.

This has come up controversially in the church, believe it or not.

And I will say that missionaries have been known to peruse the obituaries in newspapers and look for people that are in some of the worst moments of their life and to reach out.

Yeah.

So it exists.

Fucking yikes.

Okay.

Well, I guess they're doing what, what is this called?

As the cinematic technique that makes us feel this extra.

It's called sell.

Heart sell.

The heart to sell.

Yes.

It has to do with music and really intense moments.

And it's an actual marketing ploy that they use.

Yeah, that tracks.

And almost every LDS movie that's not a comedy, if it's a serious movie, someone's going to die and they're going to play a lot of heartfelt music to get you to feel the, you know, the joy that they're going to get to be with their daughter again after you feel all that heartbreak.

Charlie is coming together more and more by the second.

Yeah.

Okay, so Kelly is dead now.

They cut straight to, there's no like hospital.

There's no paramedics.

It's just she's died.

It's implied.

They're crying on the couch.

Thomas is, of course, devastated that his daughter died.

He grabs her teddy bear and he, he walks out of the house.

I guess it's implied that he's so sad that he's considering suicide because we see him much later that day, like that night, he's still walking and he walks up onto a bridge and he steps up onto like the edge of the bridge.

like almost suicide moment, right?

That's what they're going for.

Yes, definitely.

This implies that he, being not a Mormon, doesn't understand he'll see her again.

He's lost.

He has no direction.

He has no hope because he doesn't believe as a Christian, a regular Christian, that he'll see her again.

That's right.

Okay, but they all do believe that.

I know that.

I don't know why they don't believe that.

But they don't get space families out of it.

No, no.

I thought an angel was going to come up and stop him.

It's a wonderful life.

Merry Christmas movie house.

Yeah, exactly.

In this case, it's a mad life because it's a a Mormon movie.

Okay.

So obviously it's a dark moment, but I found it funny, not because of the moment itself in the movie, like as a narrative, but

find dead kids funny.

Yeah, that's not okay.

Not iconic for this episode, everybody.

Look at the episode arc.

As he's walking up to the bridge, they accidentally show us that it's like 10 feet down and over water.

Oh, yeah.

No, he would have gotten his shins wet.

Yeah.

But he doesn't do it.

And he is holding the Book of Mormon at that exact moment that he decides he's not going to do it so he's going to learn about the planet thing and since the planet thing is the extra cool heaven he's not going to kill himself now yeah i suppose all right it was angel moroni and not george that saved him so

you seem really delightsome george are you sure

Right.

So from there we cut to a priest giving a sermon at the Catholic church, of course, about the kid who has died and how that's in God's plan, but it's a mysterious way.

Like, really sorry.

Honestly, I feel like of any religion must really wish they could just take a runner whenever a kid dies, right?

Like, look, I get it.

Every Sunday, you show up.

Oh, Corinthians, this, Romans, that.

But when you're doing baby funerals, it's got to be hard to sell the same old shtick, huh?

I would imagine.

But this is, this is Mormonism showing that the other religions don't have an answer for this.

Yeah.

They try and it's not quite good enough, but we have the answers.

You all know that.

That's true.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, the mysterious way excuse is bullshit, but Mormonism has a better answer because of the planets thing.

Yep.

Yep.

We've got a whole plan, and your kid is going to be in heaven, and they're going to become a God, and you're going to be together as a family for sure.

That's multiple wives having babies.

Still pretty fucking mysterious, I got to say, but okay.

I see.

Hear him out on the multiple wives thing, Keith.

Yeah.

Oh, that last part.

That last part.

Yes, say that again.

Say that again.

Open your heart, Keith.

This is our villain turn.

We talked about this already.

You're going to have just one wife when we turn villain.

Come on.

I don't think we said that on air.

It's actually the opposite.

If you're a villain, you lose all your man parts.

You don't get to do anything.

Nothing.

That's true.

Oh, no.

That's true.

Hell.

You get to be around the women, but you can't do anything.

I'm into a lot of stuff that doesn't involve my man parts.

I also just learned that my teen years were apparently the Mormon hell.

Yeah, it's the great Mormon takeaway that they don't really talk about in the next life.

Okay, that's that's pretty pretty big deal.

All right.

Well, they show us the Catholic version of this, which obviously isn't going to make you feel better about God's plan with your dead child.

The Mormon one will, though, apparently.

One guy at this service has a backwards L.A.

Dodgers hat at church for the service for the dead child.

That was his formal L.A.

Dodgers hat.

Oh, yeah, it's the home blue.

Then Thomas does show up and they're showing us that he didn't jump off the bridge.

He found Mormonism, apparently, and he's fine.

And we cut to the cemetery and we watch the Mormon missionaries, Elder Davis and Elder Burke, crash the burial at the cemetery.

Can you crash the funeral?

I feel like you don't

crash the funeral.

I mean, look, I'm not here to tell people what to do at a baby's funeral, but I feel like crashing is the last thing you want to do, right?

Is that just me?

Is it just me?

Feels like it's not the move.

I think they wanted to offer a message, right?

A message of hope because they have the truth.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Okay.

Are there missionaries doing that?

I know they're looking up dead kids in the obituaries.

They might as well just go to go around to cemeteries and be like, hey, anybody looking for a ambulance dancer that's cooler than the one you have?

They're just chasing an ambulance.

It's a kid with a broken arm.

Damn it, wasted an afternoon.

Yep.

You got to chase the hearse.

That's when it really has an impact.

Yep.

Again, a great opportunity to bring those funeral potatoes.

Oh, here we go again.

There you go.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's all coming together.

Win-win.

You're eating those potatoes either way.

Yeah.

So then we see the post-burial scene.

James walks over to Thomas.

Of course, Thomas is at the grave grieving his child.

James, I guess to characterize him as like taking that arc towards a little bit good,

he tells Thomas, I had the judge move the trial ahead a little bit to next week because, you know, dead child, you're welcome.

And Oscar was like, he's a good guy, I guess.

They had to explain how they got to the trial on Tuesday from her, the girl being killed on Saturday.

So they had to answer why the trial wasn't going to happen.

Yeah.

His answer for his buddy losing his child was, I'm going to go ahead and grant you a delay of game.

Exactly.

Because the trial must go on.

Yes, exactly.

Look, look, I get it that your kid died, but I'm going to kick your ass in this trial.

All right.

I gave you a chance to plea bargain.

Okay.

Well, Thomas and Sharon have a big hug at the end of this cemetery scene.

And then we see Burke and Davis show up at Thomas and Sharon's house to ask about the very important trial that's on Tuesday.

It got bumped ahead a little bit, but they still need to.

Hey, we heard we got a delay of game rather than a full cancellation.

That's messed up.

Well, I thought they were leaving town, right?

They said, oh, I...

Someone got killed over this.

So I guess we better leave town.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And can I just object?

I know we haven't talked about it yet.

Can I object to the notion that someone got killed over this trial?

Okay.

A lack of fencing at this woman's house is what killed this kid, not a trial about Mormonism.

Yeah.

And this is when Sharon asks them, she's angry and she said, well, I mean, justifiably, her child just died, but she's like, I have one question.

Why

this town?

Because here in this town, you murdered my child.

And I mean,

according to the Rising Music, Elder Davis has a good answer here, but I didn't think it was that great.

Yeah.

He explains that.

He had a sister who died of leukemia at like age nine.

You're wondering about the problem of evil.

Well, I'll let you know that I know a dead child already.

I've seen God be immeasurably cruel before.

Right.

That was the answer.

He dead kid bonds with Sharon here, and that seems to be solving the conflict.

No, and this was the big moment for the LDS audience when the grieving mother is at her most vulnerable.

This is when the 19-year-old kids step in.

They know more than she does.

They have the truth.

They can tell her, you know, how to live her life going forward.

This is the big moment.

It's another heart cell.

It's another huge heart cell.

You bring in another dead kid to offset the dead kid.

And between the dead kids, you have a happy ending.

And now Sharon likes them because they've dead kid bonded and that explanation about heaven, I guess.

To Mormons, it makes God not look cruel.

Yes, he took this girl, but he took her for a reason so that this other family could now join the church and have the same happiness and be together as a family.

So God did it for a reason.

It wasn't, it wasn't random or chance.

Right.

It's their answer to evil, basically.

When something terrible happens it's their answer to evil that it was for a higher purpose okay but it's supposed to be in contrast to all the other christian and it's all the same they're all just doing mysterious ways it's all nonsense but they're like we have a pamphlet with planet stuff and we get a contage of them bonding now.

So Thomas walks in.

So now Sharon, Thomas, and the missionaries are all bonding over, looking at the pamphlets about Mormon heaven planets.

Mormons don't believe that other people have an answer or have a i remember on my mission we used to do a survey you know it wasn't a real survey like you we were actually keeping track but you'd ask people questions and one of them it was do you believe that you're going to be together with your family in heaven and everybody answered yes and then we go no you don't

or no you won't yeah no you won't we've been taught no no their doctrine says you there are no families nobody's married nobody well okay you may not but you're together but we'd always tell them no you don't believe that your church doesn't teach that you just gaslight them out out of it?

Oh, yeah.

You'd tell them, no, actually, your church doesn't believe that you're husband and wife in heaven.

We believe you'll be husband and wife in heaven, which a lot of husband and wives don't want to be husband and wife in heaven.

So I don't know how big of a teacher is.

You're really going to disappoint some Catholics that way.

But nobody's like, hold on, I'm Googling this.

No, it's

Google it.

No Googling allowed.

That's neither here nor there.

Okay.

Well, what the missionaries will tell you is that unless you go into the temple, paying your 10% of your income to get a temple recommend, unless you do the ceremonies in the temple, it's the only way families are together.

So it's very specific what you have to do to be together forever.

You specifically have to go into the temple and have a ceremony that says we will now be together forever.

There's a lot of stolen Masonic rituals that have to take place before you can be together forever.

Either Masonic rituals or things that Joseph thought were Masonic rituals, depending on what the day is.

Okay.

So yeah, they have that montage.

We don't hear any of the cool stuff about the Mormon heaven again because they just montage it and they're done.

And they're like, yep, great.

Trust us, that conversation went really well.

Yeah.

Right.

Thanks for letting us do the Dead Kid pitch.

We're all on the same page now.

They get invited to stay for dinner by Thomas and Sharon.

And they're like, no, we got to take off.

We're actually leaving town.

It totally was our plan to prove that Mormon is.

is better and better than all the other Christianities, but then your kid died.

So we figured it's not the time we're leaving town.

And so they let him leave, but Sharon's like, I have an idea.

And then we cut to her idea, which is going over to their house, Burke and Davis, they're like packing their stuff, getting ready to leave.

Sharon Thomas show up to like help them prove Mormonism and really do the trial.

It's time for a buckle down and montage.

Did this seem off to anyone?

I mean, this was the day of their child's burial.

And that night they're over, let's get this case going and prove you guys are Christians.

I know little Kelly would want you to win this trial and be on the Christian town council, teenagers who've already said you're leaving.

Yeah.

And they're like all energized and there's like, you know, the guitar stuff going on and they're doing

the thing.

They've got a handbook of Christian apologetics and they've got manila folders full of apparently evidence.

They seem to think it's like dossiers of evidence that they're going to prove that it's both Christian and the right one, the real Christian.

So they finish up their cram session and we cut to the courthouse the next day and it's time to prove the mormon and so the judge announces that they're all still under oath which is weird it's like okay do you swear you're christian cool end of case like nobody's gonna do that also were they under oath like the whole time were they under oath in their personal activities in between it brings up a lot of questions

did they swear on a bible or a book of mormon

they didn't address that that would have been interesting okay time for thomas to get another speech and he's gonna i don't know give his like intermediate statement that comes after his opening statement that you can't have a Christian town council because that's super illegal.

Oh, yeah.

And this is where we get an objection.

James, the DA, he objects because, yes, you're not supposed to have theocratic town councils, but that's not on trial here today.

It's just about whether or not this trial is legal is not a matter before this jury.

Right.

And the judge is going to allow it.

she's gonna allow thomas to keep going but she does the like you're on thin ice mccoy thing oh god i love that i love look i love that in all movies let alone bad movies but i love it especially in this one because the objection is to her idea and the trial is about her idea so the idea that she'd be like you know what i was wrong to create this trial in the first place got me me too late now let's go ahead yeah exactly We do get a cross-examination of Reverend Bad Guy here.

So apparently without us seeing it, Thomas called Reverend Bad Guy to the stand and now he gets to cross-examine him.

And then he just looks over at Elder Davis and he's like, please tell the court what book you're holding.

So you can just do like prop stuff outside of the witness.

Oh, yeah, no, you get to do prop.

What kind of trial wouldn't let you do prop work?

Yeah.

And of course, this is where we get literally.

Webster's dictionary defines Christianity as, because that's the book that Elder Davis was holding.

He's holding Webster's dictionary and he reads the definition of Christian or Christianity.

And this priest's mind is blown by the Webster's dictionary definition of Christianity.

Let me tell you, he was not ready for this, not even a little.

He knew he'd been bested.

Oh, yeah.

His head exploded.

You could see it right there.

The definition, by the way, I'm sure everybody knows this, but it's anyone who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

It's just like pretty general.

You're Christian, especially if the word Christ is in your name of your church.

You're probably Christian.

Probably good chance you're Christian.

It's super wishy-washy and I love it.

It's like, you know, fucking Christian.

Just what do you think?

Yeah.

Christian-ish.

Christian-ish.

Yes, exactly.

Nice.

So from there, we get a cross-examination of another bad guy lawyer, Father Coleman.

They're basically continuing the argument about that.

Trinity stuff.

And it's all just like fancy word tricks about literal unity versus like figurative unity of purpose.

Well, this is supposed to be the big Mormon gotcha, right?

Because they actually do really freak out about the James thing, right?

Which is like, my people should all be one.

So this is supposed to be them delivering like the big haymaker blow to anti-Mormon bias is that they don't mean unity as in they should all be the same religion.

They mean unity as they should all be one in purpose.

So this is, this is Adrian for the Mormon apologists in the audience.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

There are the big three, the big three arguments, and that's the Trinity, you know, grace instead of works, and also, you know, additional scripture.

And they're just hammering these three things in this trial.

Okay.

Right after this, they go back to the faith and good works thing.

So they make one more argument about that.

And then Thomas calls his client to give a speech here.

You get to do prop work.

Sometimes you can just be like, my client gives a speech now.

So Elder Burke gives a speech now.

Yep, my client gives a speech now is a key part of all trial movies, but especially this one.

And I think most of his speech is about the lost writings that somehow prove that the Book of Mormon does in fact line up with like divine revelation from the Old Testament.

Yeah, well, again, the three things, right?

The Trinity and the grace.

And now this extra additional scripture.

So he's saying original scripture were lost writings that showed up and the Book of Mormon are lost writings that showed up.

So, equally as valid.

Totally counts.

And the timeline, of course, is that, well, how could Joseph Smith have known any of that stuff if it wasn't divinely inspired by God and written down on whatever thing he claimed he was writing it from?

And they don't seem to be able to answer how writings from the King James Version of the Bible that didn't come about till, you know, 1600s ended up in the Book of Mormon word for word.

So with errors of that version of the Bible that was in his home.

Interesting.

Just a big coincidence.

Yeah.

Big coincidence, exactly.

All right.

Well, I guess a lot of stuff got covered.

Check, check, check.

The defense rests.

They believe they have won and proved Mormonism to be Christian and correct.

And then the jury's going to get a closing statement from DA prosecutor James here.

Yeah, you know how you get to do your closing statement after you rest.

Yeah, he rested a while ago.

but da james explains that they have a perfect safe community here it's because we don't let non-christians into town and i thought this was kind of smart it's kind of fucked up but he's like listen I know everybody knows that Thomas on the other team, his daughter just died, but you're not allowed to just give him a free one

because his daughter died.

You have to podcast listeners.

I have to be very clear that Heath is not exaggerating.

That is exactly the statement James gives.

He's like, look, we all feel bad for Thomas, but you can't just let mormons into town because thomas's kid went

you know what i'm saying okay

no

guys yeah exactly sympathy vote here right so then thomas does get his closing statement but he doesn't get it announced he's like okay so i figure judge is gonna you know oh no you're not gonna all right me i'll do my closing now

and he plays the dead daughter card which was also smart he's like okay i'm a better person now because i don't know if you guys all heard but my daughter died.

My daughter died.

So yeah, whatever you want to do, base your trials just based off the fact of whoever has the least amount of daughters.

Like, don't give me the win for that, but like,

I mean, I'm a dead dog.

Did any hands go up about like having this week a daughter die?

You might as well sadly put on a birthday hat and go, did I not mention it's my birthday?

Yeah, it's also my birthday.

Yeah, and then he keeps talking for a minute.

I don't know.

I stopped listening because I found that funny that he used

daughter

But it ends with like, ergo, LDS is Christian QED.

Yeah.

We don't get to see the jury decide or the judge announce anything here.

We just cut straight to the Mormons at their house and they're leaving town.

They're packing up their big pickup truck with all their stuff and they're done.

And they've lost.

So look, there was a lot baffling about this movie, right?

This movie provides us a dead child for absolutely no reason whatsoever, but we just see the after effects of them having lost anyways.

Why?

I would love to know if our guests have any inclination.

Why do they lose the trial?

It just furthers that narrative that there's persecution.

People will not understand.

These wonderful young missionaries leave town.

They probably dust their feet, which means kind of curse the town as they go.

But it's just that narrative that people will never understand.

We're a peculiar separate.

It's because they think Jesus is an alien.

That's not Christian.

I get it.

the the persecution fantasy isn't uh isn't fulfilled unless you lose right oh yeah that's what it is that's but he did get the girl that's the important

of some of the people and so there's this little like anticipation that perhaps perhaps that seed will grow and some of the people will seek out other missionaries.

That's kind of, that is kind of what missionaries who have very little success, they all kind of tell themselves, you know what, maybe we did something.

We won't know it.

Maybe something will happen.

That's kind of what they have to hang everything on.

Oh, all right.

I thought they were leaving it open for a sequel.

Exactly.

Oh, it feels like they were because honeypot Kimberly, like you said, she shows up and they have their little moment of like, oh, we're going to meet each other in California.

Maybe read this Book of Mormon in the meantime.

You throw in the garbage.

I'll throw it in and we'll get married.

Yep.

That's the plan.

Okay.

I like that he grabbed her Book of Mormon that she threw in the garbage.

He grabbed it out of the garbage at some point and he was like, I grabbed this for you.

Please don't throw this out again and actually read it.

Please stop throwing away my religious texts.

This is you.

There's like garbage juice on it.

She actually wipes her hand on his shirt.

Which I thought was fun.

I liked how they got in the pickup truck at the end of the movie.

Anyone who was raised back in the 70s knows.

that you know you get in the back of a pickup truck and the second it goes over a bump all the kids in the back go flying out yeah exactly no exactly that's that's the I was just waiting for that to happen, yeah.

That they didn't mention, yeah.

Well, and that's extremely unrealistic because if you know anything about missionaries, they have very strict driving rules.

They can't even back up unless one of the elders gets out and stands behind the car and kind of guides you as you back up.

You are not allowed to back up if, say, you were driving alone for whatever reason.

So, honestly, that sounds like a murder for our partnership.

But if you run over a little child, she goes to heaven and it's part of God's plan.

And you get it part of the thing, yeah, exactly.

The whole movie wouldn't have happened had they had someone backing up Thomas when he backed out of the driveway.

Exactly.

Exactly.

There it is.

Lesson learned.

All right.

Well, Elder Davis and Elder Burke are like, all right, well, we're going to take off.

We're going to keep bothering other towns.

It's going to be awesome.

And Thomas is like, yeah, cool.

Good luck.

Sorry, I lost that trial for you.

And they're like, yeah, it's cool.

We're going to keep bothering other towns.

No worries.

This is all part of the persecution narrative.

It kind of would have fucked it up if you won.

Right.

And they drive away into the sunset past literal tumbleweed for a second.

And Elder Burke says, I'm worried about the Bryants, you know, tacitly, because, you know, dead child.

Well, there's no missionary there to teach them the gospel.

So now it's worth it.

That's right.

Oh, okay.

But Elder Davis is like, have a little faith.

The end.

And that's the movie.

Okay.

Was there a moral of the story for anybody?

Did you catch an important moral in there?

Dead kids are a great selling point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll agree to that one.

I would say that the Mormon audience would know that that last scene, that last moment, have a little faith, that is actually a happy ending because they're alluding to someday the Bryants will find the missionaries.

Now we've planted that seed.

You know, it's a positive thing.

It's not a reality, but it's a hope.

And that's pretty much all they have.

Yeah, it wasn't a waste of two years, Elder.

Something will go

out of there.

Something happened.

Yeah.

Wow.

So so this is like, and now we wait.

Yes.

And now we wait the ending of a movie.

Yeah.

Yes.

Fantastic.

All right.

Well, that's going to do it for Day of Defense.

But that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we found another terrible movie for next week.

So Eli, what and where

is on deck?

In the early 1970s, a prestigious magicians association is baffled by an up-and-coming mentalist, the great Dexter, who can apparently read minds.

We'll be heading to New Orleans live to watch the Cristiano Brothers film, Mind Reader.

What's a Cristiano film?

All right.

With that to look forward to, we'll bring episode 525 to a merciful close.

Huge thanks to Rebecca and Landon for joining us.

So where can everyone go to hear more from you?

Oh, thanks so much for having us.

This has been super fun.

We are on YouTube, Mormonish Podcast.

We put out episodes every week, shorts, all kinds of stuff.

And also audio, wherever you find your audio podcast to enjoy, you can find us.

Okay.

You can also see more Mormon-ish, fancy YouTube.

No big deal.

Thank you very much.

And the podcast on audio.

Got it.

And of course, a big thanks to our Patreon donors for all the generosity.

If you'd like to help support the show, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash godawful.

That'll get you early access to an ad-free version of every episode.

And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows, The Scathing Atheist, Citation Needed, The Skeptic, and DD Minus, available in all the podcast places.

If you have questions, comments, or cinematic suggestions, you can email GodAffilMovies at gmail.com.

Tim Robertson takes care of our social media.

Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan Slanik at Little Giraffes on Mars.

All other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used with permission.

Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week.

For Rebecca, Landon, and Eli, I'm Heath, promising to work hard to earn another chunk next week.

Until then, we'll leave you with the American Graffiti Close.

The Christian Town Council was legally disbanded 44 seconds after the first Jews moved into town.

Thomas went to Starbucks and cut the line using the dead child card.

He kept using the dead child card.

Elder Davis and Kimberly were married three days after Elder Davis returned from his LDS mission.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, Copyright 2025, all rights reserved.

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