After taking a week off, we’re back with an all-new episode of The Flickcast. We’ll try not to take any more time off, but no promises. Hey, we have lives too.

Anyway, on this week’s show, Chris and Joe discuss and debate The Expendables 3, the upcoming HBO series Westworld, the look of the new stormtroopers (and  more) from Star Wars: Episode VII, TV series like The Last Ship, The Strain and Outlander and yes, even the relative merits of Jedi facial hair. Of course, that’s not all they talk about. There’s also the usual “more.”

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the FX series The Bridge and Joe’s pick of Portland hot spot Pip’s Original Donuts.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS

J.J. Abrams was supposed to talk to the press to promote his new NBC series Believe, but we couldn’t resist asking him questions about some of his other projects…such as Star Wars VII. Getting any good responses out of him isn’t easy as we all remember with the secrecy regarding the last Star Trek move. Mr. Abrams is a master of obfuscation, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t try.

QUESTION: Where are you on the Star Wars script? Is it done?

J.J. ABRAMS: Yeah. We’re working really hard. We’ve got our script and we’re in deep prep. We’re full steam ahead. We’re working real hard on it and it’s quite a thrill.

Q: What are some of the craziest rumors you’ve heard?

ABRAMS: God, there have been so many of them. Honestly, I don’t know. It’s amazing to see how many there are. It’s really remarkable. But it’s sweet because it shows that there’s an interest in this movie that we all obviously know is there. It is an incredible thing to see how many crazy things get thrown out that people then often write commentaries about how happy they are or how disappointed they are about something that’s completely false. But it’s a lot of noise, frankly.