Winter illness season has officially begun, and that means more sick days — with hours of comfort movies.
Context: My kid kicked off Flu Season 2025 with a doozie: five days of fever, ralphing and a Labor Day camping trip detour to the ER.
We're now 15 movies, four "Alien: Earth" episodes and two seasons of "Friends" into it.
The intrigue: To avoid contagion, only non-puking humans are allowed to wield the remote control.
As a result, the kid's watchlist has been curated by her "very old" parents, who associate the flu with edited-for-basic-cable hits from the golden age of the VCR.
The high point: "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," which reaches its true apex when they sneak their coterie of historical figures past Bill's stepmom by changing their names to "Dave Beeth-Hoven," "Maxine of Arc" and "Bob Genghis Khan."
Zoom in: My favorite Utah-specific sick day movie is undoubtedly "The Wizard" (1989), which is set here and I'm assured was not a fever dream but rather a 100-minute-long infomercial for Nintendo.
Help us: We've officially scraped the barrel with "You've Got Mail" (woof😬) and need more sick day movie recs.
Hit reply to this email to add your suggestions to a master list we can share as we enter this annual gauntlet of germs.
