Now, coming hot off our last episode, I have to say, I was a little surprised by some of the feedback we got over a rather aserbic review of the third installment in the Clerks trilogy.

I said in that episode that that film basically did not connect with me

and I did not connect with it on any level, despite Will's constant assurances that, no, the first

clerk's film is actually good. You know, in spite of everything, if you watched it, you'd have a

good time, et cetera, et cetera. But I could tell in the feedback we got

that, like, clerks does mean something to some people. There were a lot of people who agreed,

like, I don't think people got too defensive over Clerks III, but there were a lot of people

who very much had your experience with the movie rather than mine, which is to say, you know,

they were kind of saddened by

Clerks 3, you know, because it was such a degeneration from the original, whereas I just found

the entire thing totally illegible. Well, like I said on the last episode, I'm sad, I'm not losing

sleep over it, but I'm slightly sad that the clerk's well has probably been poisoned for you,

because I do very earnestly believe that if you saw the first one, you would like it.

Watching the third one, Christ, for the second time, I was struck again by how the convenience

store in the movie, the metaphor, what the convenience store means has changed so much. Like in the first movie,

the convenience store was purgatory. The convenience store was simply a commercial space where

these overeducated, under ambitious guys trapped in this sort of malaise. That's where they were

fated to be. And all the pop culture stuff, you know,

that's them getting a little bit of relief during these agonizing days working at the convenience

store. I don't think we quite addressed this, but in Clerks 3, during the end credits,

Kevin Smith, like, his voice appears. Like, Kevin Smith is heard doing a five-minute monologue during the end credits,

giving some of his thoughts. And among what he says, he says that his perspective has changed.

...