On Cinema’s 12th Oscar Special begins in the front yard of Movie House, which is now locked and the entire group has been evicted. But let’s back up a step: how did we get here?
Spoilers follow!
Season 15 of On Cinema opens with the revelation that Gregg used his settlement funds — which he won from suing The Amato Group following his injuries at last year’s Amatocon — in order to rent the house from the movie The People Under the Stairs and turn it into a movie theater and museum called Movie House. Due to the house’s poor condition he’s hired his friend and W.C. Fields impersonator Mark to perform badly needed repairs… badly.
Tim tried to change his name back from T. Amato to Tim Newman (Newman being his wife Toni’s last name, or really her ex-husband’s last name) but due to a clerical error his name is now Newman Heidecker. He decided to roll with that and is now going by Newman, or “New” for short. Since New and Toni no longer had a place to stay they’re living in one of the Movie House bedrooms and running a massage business there as well.
They don’t seem to have permits for any of these business ventures or building projects, and the police think the massage parlor is a front for prostitution; the latter of which is what got them evicted.
Never one to take no for an answer, New commands Mark to break into the house so they can get the Oscar Special underway.
Now, let’s look at all the crazy things that happened this year at the Oscar Special.
5. Save Movie House with HEI Points
To fight the eviction New has decided to buy Movie House. What’s it worth? Is it even for sale? Who will pay for it?
New makes up a rough estimate for what he thinks the house is worth, then solicits donations via the Save Movie House website. He also invites people to donate via his scam currency, HEI Points, and dresses bandmates Manuel and Axiom in preppy clothes and puts them behind computers and a receipt printer to work out the exchange ratio between US dollars and HEI Points. Naturally, they conclude that one dollar equals one HEI Point.
They seem to be under the impression that donations are rolling despite the Save Movie House displaying error messages no matter what you click on.
4. Adult Protective Services checks up on G. Amato
After all this time we still know very little about G. Amato. Is he a wealthy business tycoon? Some type of criminal mobster? Or just a confused old man being taken advantage of by New?
These options are not mutually exclusive of course, but when a representative from Adult Protective Services shows up to question him, it would certainly suggest the latter.
If that weren’t enough Joey P. appears later in the special in an attempt to rescue Mr. Amato, though nothing comes of it except for a screaming match with New. At least nobody got beat up this time.
3. Smart Start Checkout X and the latest in the Chaplin’s Chili saga
Over the years the Oscar Specials have mostly been catered by Chaplin’s Chili and related corporate entities. This year we get the sad news that Chaplin’s went bankrupt after moving to Germany last year, but Gregg scrounged up some expired bags of Chaplin’s Chili to sell at the concession stand.
With nobody to work the concession stand they’ve pivoted to a self-service model including the latest Smart Start Checkout X technology. Though it may have a few technical kinks to work out.
2. Final Conclusion
During the season Gregg has been enthusiastically promoting his movie Zombie 2 2 (the sequel to Zombie 2.) Newman took over the production and has Toni interview the various actors in the movie throughout the special, all of who are cagey about the specifics of the movie. Turns out there’s a reason for that.
New repurposed Gregg’s movie into a conspiracy-theory laden story about the shooting death of Toni’s son Matt. It’s bookended by segments from LaRoux that are spliced together from segments on Xposed. It’s all a transparent effort for New to deflect blame from himself, but somehow leaves him looking much more guilty.
As the movie comes to an end, we hear New’s latest song, “Shoot to Kill,” play over the credits.
1. The end of Movie House
By the end of the season it was clear that Movie House would be a problem, with black mold, bad plumbing, missing fire extinguishers, and Mark tasked to fix it all. As usual, Mark is in way over his head.
During the special Mark is tasked with setting up the movie screening room in the attic. Aside from the pigeons and the comically tiny screen, New is concerned about the support beams in the way of the screen and demands Mark to remove them.
Soon the roof starts creaking and collapses on top of Mark. The exterminator New hired to deal with the house’s rat problem — Mike from Orkin — comes to the rescue by locating Mark with his inspection camera.
Despite bleeding from a cut on his forehead Mark makes it out okay, but the fire department shows up to evacuate the place and condemn the building. New obstinately refuses to leave, yelling at the firefighters and ranting into the camera.
The special ends with the ceiling collapsing on New, with his asscrack visible as he falls over before the camera feed cuts to black.
Honorable mentions
- New has been borrowing clothes from Gregg the entire season. Here, he’s clearly wearing the red coat from Gregg’s Willy Wonka costume. Meanwhile we get to see Gregg dressed in a Santa Claus costume to commemorate the anniversary of Tim Allen’s movie, The Santa Clause.
- No musical guest this year, unless you include Dekkar’s acapella performance of “Oscar Fever.”
- In a rare moment of clarity Joe Estevez becomes concerned with the safety of Movie House and gets out of there.
- Gregg debuts his new game show which requires contestants to match the running times to various movies, a shaky concept that runs out of steam almost immediately.
- This year’s hallucinatory tribute segment honor’s Hollywood’s Witches and Wizards.
- In an interview with People Under the Stairs star Jeremy Roberts, he reveals that most of it was filmed on a sound stage and not at Movie House. Gregg refuses to accept this.
- Even through they’ve gotten better at hiding it, you can see Tim on the verge of cracking up throughout this special. Personally I think that sort of unfiltered rawness is part of the appeal of live comedy.
This was one of the shortest seasons of On Cinema in recent years, debuting on Christmas and ending in March. Behind the scenes, both Tim and Gregg were (are?) on tour at the time. Likewise Mark has been busy with TV roles lately, most notably the adaptation of What We Do in the Shadows.
Aside from a minor snafu at the start of the stream, the livestream didn’t suffer any glitches this year. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse as I had to wait for the intermissions to take a bathroom break.
Where will On Cinema go from here? No idea, but I bet it’s not the last we’ve heard from the landlord of Movie House… or whatever’s left of it.