Piercing Pop Culture

It’s Thursday again. You know what that means! Our next installment in The Virginian Vault. This week, we’re turning our attention to “A Farewell to Honesty” (s3e27). This is an episode that’s really bringing the working-actor goodness we love so well in Piercing Pop Culture. While Douglas Henderson is really taking up space in Kim’s brain with some fascinating (and “new to her”) work, we’d be shirking our responsibilities if we didn’t call out perennial Kim favorite Richard Carlson, Kathleen Crowley, William Boyett, and Burt Mustin. There’s ALOT of actors at play in this crowded episode. There’s alot to discuss.

I’m sitting down for a bit of a shorter, informal piece this week. Today, we’re taking a peek into the Curator’s Notes for a look into what’s coming down the path here at Piercing Pop Culture. My ideas, my experiment,s and some of the pieces currently percolating in my brain. Stay tuned!

Friends, I disrespected William Smith for a long, long time. I didn’t know enough. I didn’t understand him. I certainly didn’t give him enough credit. I’ve been watching the final season of Hawaii Five-O this week, and I wanted to sit down to talk more about William Smith. He’s an actor who I spent most of 2025 catching up with, and there’s a complexity to him I knew nothing about. We know the bruising star persona, but there’s more there. I’m ready to learn more about William Smith.

Kids I've been deep-diving into The Virginian for the better part of a year, so there are plenty of episodes I've watched before beginning to regularly talk about them this month. I'll be stepping into the archive every so often to talk about some episodes I wrote about before starting the podcast. These were initially published on Piercing Cinema dot com, but some of the episodes are too good to miss.  This week, we're talking about Another's Footsteps along with Paul Petersen, my always and forever love of James Drury, and my (then!) struggle to understand John Agar.  Then I watched The Brain from Planet Arous, but that's another podcast.

In a new installment of After the Late Show, I’m sitting down after a week of Russ Meyer first-time watches. On the film docket this week? Supervixens, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Motopsycho!, and Up!. I talk about some of my thoughts after viewing, as well as my varied viewing history with Russ Meyer, as I work towards completing his filmography… at some point in the future. Dolly Read is a Queen, and I will hear nothing more about it.

Ann-Margret is one of those actresses who's always been with me. I remember watching her movies for as long as I can remember. We're not even discussing the rendition of Bye Bye Birdie I tried desperately to stage in elementary school... never mind not really knowing how to read music.  As I've grown, watched more, and come ever closer to finishing her filmography (though I'm not there yet!) I've realized some things. Ann-Margret's work fascinates me. Truthfully, she occupies a fascinating space in early 1960s cinema, and there's so much more that can be said.  We’ve pigeonholed Ann-Margret. We see the mid-sixties “sex kitten”, but she’s also a transitional figure. Through her work, we see society shifting. Ideas of femininity evolving. Women moving from the strict ideals of the 1950s to the evolution of Second Wave Feminism.  Stay tuned!  

Kim returns to The Virginian Vault to find that Trampas (Doug McClure) hasn’t disappeared! He’s back… for this week at least. Meanwhile, Kim also has no choice but to talk about a crazily varied cast, from a baby Robert Pine to grizzled TV writer True Boardman. Stay turned! There’s lots more of The Virginian Vault coming soon. We will not tolerate any James Drury disrespect in this house.

Expectations can be a pain in the butt. Kim sits down to talk about Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. The first film was a favorite when it was released in 2019. Would this surprise sequel be able to tap into the same sense of the wacky? Stay tuned for more here on Piercing Pop Culture! Visit our companion Substack! 

This week, I return to The Virginian Vault for a crazily “Kim Coded” episode. Martin Milner and William Smith in one of the strangest star persona experiments I’ve seen in a long time. And it’s probably not a surprise to admit, I was invested. Check out my companion Substack for more. 

What's your "Gateway Film"? Kim sits down this week to talk about the reason she fell in love with movies. Singin' in the Rain. Here at Piercing Pop Culture, we don't gatekeep films. We watch, we experiment, and we find what we love. Episodes are available every Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday everywhere you get your podcasts. Checkout our companion Substack.