My Brother, My Brother And Me: MBMBaM 466: Food Train

July 2, 2019 5:06 AM

All Aboard*! The Food Train's pulling into the station, and its sixty robot chefs are prepared to meet your every culinary desire! (* - Do not board the Food Train under any circumstances. Your body will be annihilated.)   Suggested talking points: Songland, Stealing a Big Lamp, The Scullery, Vacation Clothes, Reba Mayo, Intangible Cutsies
posted by Tevin (15 comments total)

This was a real banger. I was listening to the titular bit in the gym and I nearly dropped my ding dang weights on myself from laughing so hard.
posted by Tevin at 5:07 AM on July 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

You know how I feel about the Colonel's Mayo!
posted by moonmilk at 10:57 AM on July 2, 2019

Man the front half was lefty as hell and I was here 👏 for 👏 it 👏. Expected Travis to go full Best Buy loss-prevention goon but well done him.

Title bit got better and better. I've heard people hate it when they get to fewer questions than average (and re decreasing averages) but you can't beat a buckwild spiral like that.
posted by supercres at 11:02 AM on July 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Help, I'm in a restaurant and just actually was murdered by the Ruffalobots while waiting for a hamburger.
posted by Sequence at 2:52 PM on July 2, 2019

So if somebody wanted to start on this podcast, where is a good place?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 4:30 PM on July 2, 2019

After I first started listening to MBMBaM I tried going back and starting from a couple of earlier points (not the beginning, never the beginning with MBMBaM) and this is my conclusion: The best place to start MBMBaM is right now. If you want to binge on it, maybe just listen backwards from the latest one. There's a few tropes and in-jokes that might seem a bit opaque at first but the McElroys are pretty good about frying their comedy up fresh every week such that you're really not missing anything important if you never go into their back catalog.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:03 PM on July 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

Maybe also check out MBMBaM Highlights or MBMBaM animation playlists which will let you listen to some of the bits from past episodes in a one-off fashion. This is good when you want to get 5 or 10 mins worth of content; the animated ones will definitely highlight some particularly good bits, since nobody bothers to animate the less-good ones.
posted by axiom at 5:26 PM on July 2, 2019 [4 favorites]

nothing before episode 100, which I think is what the brothers themselves recommend, but other than that, I agree with Mr.Encyclopedia, the best place to start is now. It's just an intimidatingly big backlog otherwise, and it's not like there's, you know, super important continuity. Start with the latest, and listen to older episodes if you want, secure in the knowledge that you'll be set for a steady stream of MBMBaM for a good long while.

That said, the Amelie and Glass Shark bits are must listens.
posted by yasaman at 9:44 PM on July 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

the episodes before 100 are Fine and some of them are even Great and some of the best bits of all time lie in that stretch. definitely start with the newer stuff but if you intend on binging it all eventually don't let people scare you off. the brothers were less progressive then, but they were still good people and good comedians
posted by JimBennett at 10:10 PM on July 2, 2019 [1 favorite]

I started with current eps and listened backwards, and found that some of the most fan-referenced moments were mentioned at most twice. They do an amazingly small number of callbacks, really. There are occasional recurring bits (usually involving Justin interrupting with an annoying song in a big brother kind of way) but they drift in and out and make no more sense the first time than the last. And for a newbie, I’d recommend skipping the live eps. There was a string of them when I first started listening and they put me off, personally.
posted by tchemgrrl at 3:42 AM on July 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

When I first started listening I just started with the most recent episode, but then after I decided "yes I like this" I went on Youtube, found a playlist compilation of excerpted bits, and listened to it on shuffle.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:49 AM on July 3, 2019

There are also "clip show" episodes of the podcast that collect the best bits from a dozen or so episodes. The are called "Bro's Better, Bro's Better, Bro's Best" and they cover the first 100 or so episodes pretty well. I haven't listened to them in a while, and it's possible some of the garbagey stuff is in there, I think they are probably a pretty solid listen.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:51 AM on July 3, 2019

Here's what I did that I heartily recommend:
* all Bro's Better Bro's Best compilation episodes starting from oldest (it hadn't been as long since the last one then)
* once that's done, start listening to new episodes as they come out
* listen to a year of episodes in forward order, but going backwards through years, like all of 2019 in forward order, then all of 2018, then etc etc. Maybe skip live episodes while doing this, or skip the live question back half.

Now I'd probably watch all the fan animations first, then the compilations (overlap here for the older bits).
posted by supercres at 10:31 AM on July 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

I’m still cry-laughing about the Ruffalobots.
posted by beandip at 10:51 AM on July 3, 2019

Just listen to new episodes as they come out but if you want more, I recommend picking a point and listening to them in order from there. Just because otherwise you miss the meta experience of them living their lives outside the podcast and how that seeps into and informs their comedy. And also back then there used to be more tie-Ins between episodes. Also it's fun to hear recurring bits emerge and then die off in real time.
posted by bleep at 12:52 PM on July 3, 2019 [2 favorites]