The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest, Angry at the Lollipop Edition.

It's Wednesday, December 12th, 2018.

On today's show, Ralph Breaks the Internet is the sequel to a 2012 movie called Reckett Ralph.

And this one, a pair of lovable video game characters get uploaded to the internet.

And you'll be shocked to discover hijinks ensue.

And then Dogs is an anthology docu series on Netflix about the deep, abiding, loving relationship, very beautiful

relationship between human and canine beings.

And finally, cliches.

We've been taught to hate them, but should we, at least so reflexively, is that a cliche to

hate cliches?

We discuss.

Joining me today is the deputy editor, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Good work, Steve. Hello to you. And Dana Stevens, who slates film critic. Hey, Dana. Hey, Stephen. All right. Well, why don't we dig right in? Ralph, at least in the fictional universe of this movie, is an arcade video game villain of Yore. I'm envisioning a

1980s video game like Donkey Kong or something like that. Anyway, he's a giant galute with a pair of

massive and massively destructive hands. And his best friend is a young speed racer, a character

from a race car video game that's adjacent to his and this cute little family-owned arcade.

And the Mcuffin here is that after the arcade shuts down, all the characters gather

and all the video game characters gather in a central, almost like kind of like grand

central-like space and share kind of real lives and emotions together with one another.

I guess people who've seen the first movie will know most of this.

To that concede has now been added.

Another one, the arcade is now wired to the Internet, and these two characters, Vanelope Van Schweets Schweets and Ralph, both go up into the Internet off on an adventure.

...