88: The Harry Potter Episode | Bertie Botts | Fantastic Beasts | Chocolate Frogs | Butterbeer

Welcome to the Harry Potter episode of The Real Brian Show! From beginning to end, front to back, this is Harry Potter through and through We're drinking butterbeer, eating chocolate frogs (or nuance chocolate...), talking about our favorite (and least favorite) Harry Potter things. Basically, if you love Harry Potter, you're going to have a blast joining in this week.

In This Episode

Introductions all around!
What does Harry Potter mean to you?
Favorite characters! Least favorite characters!
TRIVIA
Taste testing Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans

Harry Potter

If there was ever a conversation I wish I could have been a part of, it was this one! Harry Potter is such a unique book series in how so many different people from so many walks of life can connect to it in different ways...at various stages of life. In one of the most powerful world-building series ever written, we can completely lose ourselves to a story of misfits, of outcasts, and of severe friendship.

So because I want to join in on the fun, here are some of my favorite Harry Potter things!

Book: & the Prisoner of Azkaban (because we're introduced to Sirius Black and Harry learns the truth about who betrayed his parents. And there's time travel.)
Movie: ugh. If I had to choose one I like... Prisoner of Azkaban. It's the least awkward. And there's time travel.
Primary Character: Hermione. Duh. Book smart, goofy, she does her thing and always does what she says she's going to do.
Secondary Character: Remus Lupin. It's almost a toss up between Remus and Sirius, but in some odd ways I identify with Remus... and he's such an integral part to Harry's education (and continuing education)
Subject: if I could enroll in Hogwarts, I would spend all of my time in Transfiguration. That is so friggin' cool.

...And my least favorites

Book: & the Sorcerer's Stone. It's just oddly written. If JKR was given a chance to produce a "second edition", I hope she'd focus on that one and clean it up.
Movie: just one? Uhm. Whenever Dan Radcliffe started drinking. Was that the 4th or the 5th? I also dislike the ones before he started drinking.
Primary Character: is it possible to hate a primary character? I guess in the movies I dislike Harry.
Secondary Character: Vernon Dursley. The fact that he was an abuser was never addressed, which is totally fine... but what a rotten person who never got what was coming to him. It was only because Harry was who he was that he even survived.
Subject: Divination. It's a wooly subject.

Interestingly, even though these books came out when I was a kid, I didn't read them until I was in college. I remember sitting in the cafeteria with a friend who was telling me about these "Harry Potter" books. The sixth book had just come out and she was in fits. I told her that I didn't know what she was talking about, but I wasn't planning on reading them, so she told me what happened at the end of book six. (And we all know what happened at the end.) Well, months later when I actually picked up the books and read them... I totally forgot about that conversation until maybe a chapter before IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. It didn't ruin it for me, I just started crying a couple chapters earlier.

Share your favorite Harry Potter memories, characters, movies or books in the comments!