Charts & Hearts Podcast: Still Nerding Out About Rom-Coms

 "Happy 2025! We are kicking off this year of rom-coms with a month of good* Netflix movies, starting with the surprisingly charming."

This is how the Charts & Hearts podcast begins the year. We reviewed this podcast in November 2023 and in revisiting the show since then, it has -- like many indie podcasts -- gotten stronger and more accomplished as the show and the co-hosts gains more experience.

If you're a rom-com fan, then the Charts & Hearts podcast is a natural fit. Although rom-com feature movies have dwindled in number, rom-coms on broadcast and streaming TV still command strong ratings. Movies like When Harry Met Sally, Coming To America, It Happened One Night, and Crazy Rich Asians can still attract people to relax on the couch, break out the honey wheat pretzels, and escape the craziness that is the USA 2025 Edition.

What co-hosts Lindsay Curtis and Sara (anonymity requested and granted)  do in Charts & Hearts is to find and categorize rom-com tropes and discuss them with hot takes and a little bit of science. Sarah is a web developer who likes knitting and tide pools. If you don't know, tide pools are isolated pockets of seawater found in areas where the ocean meets the land, such as rocky ledges. I have it on my bucket list to meet Sarah so I can say I know someone who likes tide pools and knitting.

Lindsay Curtis is a podcast editor/ producer and a digital marketing expert, who likes cetaceans and the TV show The West Wing. I have it on my bucket list to meet Lindsay so I can say I know someone who likes whales, dolphins, and The West Wing TV show.

As co-hosts, Lindsay and Sara work together seamlessly. They're a perfect combination. They finish each other's sentences, and lead each other to natural transitions. 

The tone of Charts & Hearts is sharp-witted and analytical without being condescending to the rom-com art form. I like that aspect of the show. The co-hosts can have fun at the expense of the format, but do not descend into malicious mockery.

 I enjoyed the opening sequence of the show. The podcast begins with bouncy, rom-com adjacent music, then segues to the co-hosts who introduce the rom-com movie covered in this episode and then return to a riff of the intro music.

It's a solid strategy for indie podcasters who need to satisfy loyal listeners while attracting new fans. Also, the co-hosts dive into the rom-com instead of wasting minutes on happy talk. Instead, the co-hosts reveal themselves during the discussions of the rom-com. 

The show's episodes are a refreshing circa 25 minutes in length. That's a welcome departure from the unfortunate trend to extend podcast runtimes to make them appear more substantial. Thanks to the Charts & Hearts' brief runtimes, I'm able to listen to almost three episodes in an hour.

In addition, the co-hosts smartly have an enjoying rating system, pointing out the tropes of the rom-com and then using the concept of the Pie Chart to assign percentages to those tropes.

To be clear, this show is not a rewatch podcast. The show and the co-hosts will not go into exhaustive detail about each movie. They assume you have watched the film. In the case of cozy rom-coms, fans often watch at least 50 times.

I think listeners will enjoy how the co-hosts dissect these films with a mixture of humor and the brain of a scientist. It's like mixing Neil DeGrasse Tyson with Sarah Silverman. In the Mamma Mia episode, for example, the co-hosts discuss how they love the Colin Firth character so much because he revels in his ridiculous nature, while Pierce Brosnan struggles to play his role so straight.

Two of my favorite recent episodes include Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell in April 2024. The co-hosts rightly point out that this 1980s excellent rom-com still overcome the fat-shaming and slut-shaming prevalent in those times. The co-hosts even talk about how the movie fails the Bechdel Test, which is a method for evaluating the portrayal of women.

The November 2024 episode of the Hugh Grant-Sandra Bullock rom-com, Two Weeks Notice, enables the co-hosts to assess Grant's acting career arc and comically point the massive plot holes in the film.

If you're a lover of rom-coms, I recommend Charts & Hearts. The show is equal parts' movie review, analytics, film critique, humor, and wit.