The Jerk

Episode 203: The Jerk (1979)

Theme: Insulting Titles Month
Hosts: Oz & Curtis

This week, Oz and Curtis dive into The Jerk — a movie marriage of Deuce Bigalow + Dumb and Dumber + Evil Con Carne, somehow filtered through the sweet, clueless optimism of Steve Martin in peak early-career chaos mode. It’s silly, warm, absurd, endlessly quotable, and stitched together with the kind of joke-per-page commitment that only Steve Martin and Carl Reiner could pull off. From sharecropper porches to carnival love triangles to accidental entrepreneurship, this one is pure, uncut goofball magic.

Join your two favorite “all I need is this chair… and this paddle-ball game” podcasters as they unpack:

• Naven R. Johnson’s journey from “poor Black child” to inventor, millionaire, outcast, and ukulele-strumming romantic.

• Marie — the trumpet-carrying soulmate who somehow finds his idiocy charming.

• Patty Bernstein, the world’s most chaotic carnival seductress and destroyer of daisy bouquets.

• The Opti-Grab empire: the rise, the lawsuit, the cross-eyed downfall.

• Cans. The defective cans. The very dangerous, very defective cans.

From dog-named Poophead to pizza-in-a-cup to M. Emmet Walsh sprinting like an angry demon, Oz and Curtis break down a comedy that’s as bizarre as it is genuinely heartfelt.

Final Verdict

Oz — 89 Paddle-Ball Games
Curtis — 250 Big Ones
Both — Still wondering how Naven kept ending up EXACTLY where the sniper could find him.