Episodes

  • Damn It I Want This Family To Love Me – The Royal Tenenbaums
    Feb 23 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums as a story about adult children trapped inside the myth of their own childhood genius and a father desperate to rewrite himself back into relevance, while asking whether Anderson’s ironic stylization deepens or dilutes the emotional stakes of estranged parents and adult children.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • This Is For Your Own Good – The Savages
    Feb 16 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith take on caregiving, cold winters, and fluorescent-lit reckoning in Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, where estranged children are forced into proximity with each other and with a father they barely know.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Just in the Nick of Time – On Golden Pond
    Feb 9 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith explore On Golden Pond (1981), a film about identity at the end of life, the persistence of childhood hurt, and the possibility of connection in the shadow of death.

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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • The Wish to be Free – Tokyo Story
    Feb 2 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith unpack Tokyo Story as a quiet reckoning with aging parents, drifting children, and the emotional cost of modern life moving too fast to look back.

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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • Everyone Is Doing Their Best – Make Way For Tomorrow
    Jan 19 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith discuss Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and how ordinary decency, practicality, and exhaustion slowly erode responsibility toward aging parents.

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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • The Lie of Simple Answers – Weapons Reloaded
    Jan 12 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith return to Weapons, correcting a rushed first recording and unpacking its abuse allegory, generational parasitism, and the dangerous desire for simple answers.

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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • 2025 Family Pictures Podcast Awards
    Jan 5 2026

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith recap the year with their first ever awards show.

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    1 hr and 50 mins
  • A Home Between Cliff and River
    Dec 22 2025

    Jim Groom and Michael Branson Smith trace Jeremiah Johnson’s journey from escape into solitude, through an accidental gathering of strangers that becomes a real family, and how its loss traps him in a cycle of violence he never truly recovers from.

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    1 hr and 12 mins