#i'm still :( over the last scene before the credits of this episode

[trillscienceofficer]

from Sci-Fi Universe magazine, October 1996

KISS ME DEADLY: In REJOINED, one of the season's finest episodes, a kiss proved to be more than just a kiss

Maybe it's another sign of format maturity, but the modern Trek era has never seen anything like the controversy that erupted over the airing of DS9's Rejoined, which takes the science fiction story opportunity made possible by Dax's Trill host/symbiont race and twists it into a social comment on sexual orientation Gene Roddenberry would have been proud to call his own.

"Last July," begins Terry Farrell, whose Dax character is at the heart of the story, "Rick Berman called and asked me if I would kiss a woman, and at that point I guess I didn't take it that seriously. I said, 'Yeah, as long as she's beautiful I don't care!'

"And then it spurred me to thinking about it before it actually happened, and I felt bad I had been so flip, because I didn't realize how serious a love story it would be—and how nervous I would be about it, really want to be sure I'm honest and I'm doing the story justice, and I really want people to talk about it and think about it afterward. It really meant a lot to me.

"I think it's really important to love people for who they are, and spiritually it was a great show for me too, because it just reinforces that all of us—whether we want to admit it or not—can really be judgmental at times. That was a really important show to say, to the smallest degree, you've got to remember that people's lives are always so much more complicated than you think they are."

"We had a lot of advance buzz, but we also sat on that show a bit,' adds producer Steve Oster, who recalled the flap in 1969 when Kirk and Uhura made history with television's interracial kiss in Plato's Stepchildren. In fact, the show didn't go looking for attention.

"Because it had a kiss in it, and because of the Roseanne hoopla a few years ago (concerning the high-profile star's on-screen lesbian kiss), our publicity people wanted to have them come over and take pictures of 'the famous kiss scene,' have a news crew like Entertainment Tonight there—and we opted not to do that for a couple of reasons.

"For one thing, because we didn't want to become the Roseanne issue where stations were deciding not to air it, and secondly, to Rick's credit, he did not want to make that what the episode was about. It was not about two characters kissing—it was not about making that a tantalizing factor of the episode."

As directed by Avery Brooks, the episode maintained a remarkably naturalistic feel through the acting of all concerned, including Farrell and guest star Susanna Thompson.

"They chose to play it as real, as we would any other scene with those emotions going on: not 'Okay, a girl is going to kiss a girl,' but it was 'This is someone you were in love with before and you still are,' and that's the arc of the scene. It was not about the kiss," says Oster.

"I think we were trying to be as realistic as possible," Farrell agrees. "Really, the only scene I remember going way out and pulling back was the last scene were I give her the ultimatum—where Avery let me basically go all out and cry my eyes out and then pull me back. So that was the only time I remember going from one extreme to the other, trying a range; otherwise it was pretty natural."

In fact, the scene with Sisko was one of the easiest to play, she revealed, because of the natural affinity she feels tor Brooks, the actor. "He was so supportive of me during the first year of DS9 when it was really difficult for me, he was the only one who reached out and really made me feel comfortable, and tried to help me build my self-confidence and self-esteem in really healthy way," she says. "So I felt like I didn't need to do a lot of homework."

Farrell reveals that, in fact, the hardest scene for her as an actress was the moment in which Dax and Lenara Kahn realize at dinner, without voicing it directly, that they are still in love. Aside from the new situation of seeing Dax giddy like that, Farrell recalled it was the first day of shooting on the episode. "I felt a little uncomfortable and was feeling nervous about the whole thing," she says, "and I remember trying to make her comfortable at the same time."

The chemistry that sparked between Farrell and Thompson—finally out from under the makeup as a Romulan and Tilonian, both on TNG [on The Next Phase and Frame of Mind respectively]—came as no accident, since the producers had taken pains to have Farrell read with those who came in during casting for the role.

"We auditioned and auditioned and auditioned," Oster reports. "We needed to find that chemistry, someone who can play that role as a human being, not as someone who's wondering about kissing another woman. And if someone has delivered for us, we'll bring them back if they've been in makeup before because that can change."

"And," agrees Farrell, "we made sure we had a meeting before we started the show—Susanna and Avery and I—to discuss the show. Usually we don't have time for those kinds of things to happen on our show, but they just made the time. And it really made a difference, I think."

Before the show aired, executive producer Rick Berman said he hoped it would be "received with some controversy."

"I think it does deal metaphorically with homosexuality in the sense of how society puts taboos on certain sexual orientation," Berman said. "It deals with it from both sides, I believe. And I'm sure there are those in the gay community who will probably feel that, again, we haven't gone far enough. But our objective in this story was very specific and very related to the big points that are exhibited in the story—it was never designed to be 'how far can we push this?' It's another step in our attempts to supposedly open stories that deal with a variety of sexual orientation [sic]."

The low-key strategy seemed to have worked: among the affiliates who knew what was coming, Oster reports, none ever dropped the show completely. All ran the episode on first airing—with a parental advisory added by the Atlanta station—and "two or three" others cut the scene out when repeated.

"The studio was very supportive of it; it was one of those things that when Roseanne became the cutting edge and it passed by, it suddenly became not much of an issue."

—Larry Nemecek

"Negative callers couldn't make the leap between seeing this kiss and the famous one between Uhura and Kirk in 1969 as both being a matter of prejudice."

—Producer Steve Oster

[maxwell-grant]

The Penguin Ep3 - "Bliss" Breakdown

oh

(Episode 1) (Episode 2)

So that's what Victor's image in the credits was meant to represent the whole time. A still of him inside the last memory he has of his home, his perspective on the window before it all went to shit.

I get that it might have been obvious the opening was a flashback given the election was still ongoing and given we get to see Vic's friend, the one who was shot by Sofia, still alive, but they also peppered enough bits that hade me fully convinced we were just watching Victor's present life when he was out of earshot from Oz. The bombs were a genuine shocker.

Credit to @davidmann95 for pointing out that the rooftop pebbles are Victor's equivalent of the Crime Alley pearls, an extremely important detail to add to the other Batman parallels Victor's gonna be shown having in this episode.

I'm loving a lot of the choices that go into Oz's outfits and specifically what kind of outfits he wears around specific characters, the whole chameleon thing he's got going personality-wise reflective in his choice of wear, and I like how this extends to the people around him and his choice of vehicle and base and everything. He may not wear fine suits everywhere and for all occasions, but this is very much a Penguin concerned about fashion particularities and branding and ways to dress up himself and the people acting in his behalf.

This scene where Oz pays Victor is funny, but it importantly sets up an element that's gonna come into play regarding their relationship by the end of the episode, that is how hard Oz projects on Victor and how much of his insecurity and need for affection comes through in his attempts to deal with the kid. Two episodes in after all the shit Victor's done for Oz and it's the first time we're seeing Oz talk about giving him a salary. It's not an unusual comedy beat, sadly not a real life one either, but the thing is, Oz is not a cheapskate, far from it. Across the last two episodes, he's been very quick to fork over cash to smooth over negotiations, and he's more than happy to pay the kid and praise him for demanding double (even if he shuts down the idea), it just genuinely never occurred to him until the moment that, right, the kid whose job is driving me around and burying bodies and putting his neck on the line for me needs a paycheck, of course, he's gonna get a nice thousand per week because I'm a good boss who does that kind of thing.

Nice little reminder of the class disparity element of the show, in how Sofia looks at Oz's set-up and dismisses as tacky garbage, while Graciela calls it bougie and thinks Victor's basically set if his boss is letting him crash in a place like that. Also illustrated in the money scene earlier, because from what I've researched, a thousand per week is an average salary for a driver in New Jersey (which is where this Gotham is located), and despite Oz calling it a start, Victor's already shocked at how much money Oz is paying per week. Just these totally different conceptions of what money and good living entail across the board for our characters. SPEAKING OF totally different standards,

So it turns out that Sofia has been planning her own meteoric ascension into ruler of Gotham for about as long as Oz, and more effectively at that, and if there's anything this episode will establish for sure about her, it's that Sofia Falcone is an actual supervillain the way Oz is still some ways from being. Alberto's shipment wasn't the ticket for the two of them, just for Oz, and Sofia just needed him to drive her around and open the door once more.

Oz the whole time basically happy with running a club and pushing dope out of a warehouse to the point of crying to her in the end that it was the best thing that ever happened to him, while Sofia here casually unveils a Gus Fring hidden meth lab with a mushroom forest full of Arkham Super Drugs and another Batman Villain working out in the backroom to produce them. Oz spent the last years ass kissing and spinning plates and seizing his own little levers of power all over Gotham, while Sofia was enduring soul-redefining torment entrenched inside the Supervillain Factory of the world where she would discover and pillage the tool that would let her conquer the city in one swoop.

A tool that she debuts before the underworld with an intimidating yet casual speech, above the city writhing before her and falling by the minute into her grasp, before casually leaving and telling her grunt to wrap up negotiations for her. The Riddler showed Gotham what a supervillain is and can do, a call to the maladjusted victims and freaks everywhere to grab their masks and bombs and get in the action because this is how the world works now that Batman exists, but Sofia here shows us not just a different way the rot spreads across the city, not just a way in which Arkham can become the other force filling in the power vacuum, but that being a supervillain is also a business model every respectable criminal in the city is gonna have to get on board with real fucking quick.

I love/hate that we get to have a few scenes of Sofia and Oz working together and how good they are, glad they could at least give us those before everything gets turbofucked forever further.

I definitely encourage you to keep up with the Penguin podcast, and particularly the latest episode where they talk with Rhenzy Feliz and fluency consultant Marc Winski, where they go over the thought and care that went into depicting Victor's stutter and incorporating it into the character and show, it's a very insightful conversation.

Oz's empathy for people with disabilities shows up in him complaining at the waiter for speaking over Victor, and later in their scene with Johnny Viti when he berates him for calling her a psycho, and is consistent with lots of other little moments where it's come up. I like that this is a consistent thing with Oz, and not just one of the things he does for show - even when he's complaining about Sofia to Victor, he never disparages her based on mental illness, he calls her uptight and elusive and a problem he wants off his back, but he never insults her the way all the other mobsters do.

Even in the bathroom scene by the end of the episode, where he does lose his patience and rushes Victor to explain himself, only happens after they've reached a boiling point. I do think it's important, for his character and role, that Oz maintains some important principles, even if they are still self-serving.

Again, love how the show knows just when to drop the Penguin name to maximize hurt on Oz.

What a fucking show Farrell and Miloti and Feliz give us in this episode.

I said back when the trailers dropped that Sofia Falcone looked like she was going to be the prestige crime drama protagonist that this show would have if it wasn't about The Penguin, and that's the vibe you get out of these two together. She is the tormented HBO leading lady and he is the charismatic side character, he is her driver with a wacky voice and face that bites it tragically to motivate her revenge / bites it after the reveal of how he backstabbed her. Which is exactly where the Falcones liked him, that funny guy in a supporting role who drives them around and runs their club and digs up their graves, and it's partially how their last scene in the episode plays out.

"Yeah I know I ruined your entire life and led to irreparable damage to your mind and sanity and reputation and all that, but I really wanted a little piece of the action as a nightclub owner, is that so bad?" is a confession that Oz only survives because he's the main character. In any other show, him bearing the depths of his embarassing pathetic soul to Sofia like that would be the last thing he does before dying, tragically or cathartically.

But to his credit, it worked. Sofia actually sheds a tear for him. It's the first time Oz has seemed genuinely honest with her, and more importantly, it's the first time anyone has been honest with Sofia ever since she got back from Arkham. She really has no one else she can possibly trust but the least trustworthy person on the planet. Who on Earth could possibly be willing to make an ass of themselves before her like that if they weren't being truthful?

Lauren LeFranc: You know, I think Oz is a bit of a walking contradiction and I think he deeply believes what he believes in that moment. I think he genuinely feels that way. Also understands the benefit of her being on his side at the same time. Right? Like, if she doesn't believe in him, their operation currently goes to hell. Not to say that he's playing that up, I think that is a moment of genuine emotion from him. But I also think for a man like him, he's not quite sure where it begins and ends. He doesn't believe that it's bullshit. That doesn't mean that it's not. Like, I don't know if he can even identify it or if, honestly, if Oz takes the time to unpack that. He's not a guy who's like, "Hmm, let me think about my actions today.", you know? - The Penguin Podcast: Episode 3

I'm extremely curious as to what the Sofia-Oz dynamic is gonna look like in the rearview. Does he have enough of a lid on his temper to fake that masterfully being offended on Sofia's behalf while playing her attack dog? Does he genuinely regret that she got sent to Arkham over whatever he did? I think this and the ending scene go a long way in pending towards either way and that's interesting to me. Even if 90% of what he says is bullshit there's some of that regret / kinship that feels genuine

I am very curious to see what becomes of Eve and what more will we learn about her. She seems to be Oz's second-in-command when it comes to businesses he does with her and the girls, and I like that the girls and Victor form a personal squad for Oz (and crucially, he's promising all of them a bigger slice of the pie when he becomes a big shot, and just as crucially, all of them have massive targets on their back right now).

It is genuinely funny how appalled and offended Oz is, at the idea that maybe the kid he roped into this with a gun to the head only stuck around out of fear, not because the kid thinks he's a great guy giving him a chance. I call him the Michael Scott of crime and I mean it. But like most funny things about the Penguin it also has something sad and lonely and pathetic and human about it, the ever present disconnect between the gentleman he wants to be and the thug he acts like.

Like with the salary thing, it just did not cross his head at any moment prior to this, not when he threatened to kill the people he cared about or openly argued with Vic whether to shoot him and stuff him in a trunk, not when threatening to gut him like a fish for messing up or spilling his secrets or telling him to lie with corpses, that Vic was sincerely scared of him and his power and did not leave because he feared this known gangster would do exactly what he said he was going to do. To Oz, doing those things to "his guy" now would be unthinkable, but the question that Vic wanted to leave never even popped in his mind.

And it makes him genuinely upset. That scene at the bar, where he is fully alone, sad and tired with his drink, tired from all the plates he's had to spin and all the indignities he's endured and still endures, tired from all the hats he's had to wear, and sad because the only person so far he's been able to let down his guard around, the one person with whom he could at least wear a hat he liked just bailed on him.

Of course he'd never kill Vic for just wanting to leave, once he realizes that this is actually a factor in how Victor views him and obviously he'd be a bad boss if he did that. Of course he gets angry at Victor for wanting to throw away an opportunity given to him that Oz would have (and probably has) killed for, he's giving Victor the kind of help he desperately wishes he got and he's gonna throw it away? Of course he gets shocked at being reminded Victor is a guy with needs, a guy that Oz holds lethal power over, and not just a kid version of Oz that he can live out his Rex Calabrese fantasy by helping out and mentoring. And of course, none of the cruel and hurtful things he says to Victor before he leaves would sting if there wasn't just enough of a bitter truth to them, or at least, enough of it to stick with Victor.

What an excellent scene Victor's panic attack was, totally get why it was the editor's favorite

I was waiting for a Victor-centric episode and was not dissappointed, this is the episode where he first comes on his own as a character and we see how crucially important he is to the show, the from-the-bottom ground floor perspective on everything that Reeves and LeFranc have repeteadly defined the project around. I love getting to see such an on-the-ground perspective of how fucking monstrous Riddler's plan was, and the kind of lives it ruined. This poor kid thrust headfirst into a Batman/Robin origin story and situation.

It's like Feliz said in the podcast, the end of the episode is the first time we've ever seen Victor, and maybe the first time Victor's ever seen himself, outside of survival mode, outside of simply living to try and get to next hour and do what his parents/Oz tell him to, which is a painfully real state to be in for anyone who's dealt with poverty growing up or is dealing with poverty right now. It's the first time he really has an opportunity to decide on his own what he's going to do on his own. As much as we may know he's making a doomed choice, that he really should just hop on the first bus out of Gotham and join his girlfriend in the sun, well, he's a Batman character, he doesn't get to do that.

Victor wants to live his life and protect himself and the people he loves and make good choices and be a good person, but on a deep fundamental level, he just wants his family back, he wants his dad back, he wants to do right by them more so than by himself, even if that means doing things they would find detestable. Like the son of a doctor, a son who now chooses to inflict violence every night if it means he can avenge their memory, here we have the son of a nurse presented with a choice: He gets to honor the intentions of his parents by dying as a well-meaning decent nobody like they did, or he gets to make up for the shame of how they died by living a good life, one which was denied to them, by surviving and thriving as a criminal. He gets to honor their ideals, or get back at the shameful cruel reality of how they died, but he cannot do both. So he makes his choice.

Oz, in this episode, burns nearly every single bridge he has: with the Falcone family, with the Maronis, and with Sofia, and he even does it with Victor. If Victor hadn't come back, Oz would have died on that parking lot, and still Oz is ecstatic that his guy's come back, because all he wants is for someone to like him enough to stick around with him. Victor is not so sure he's not in for a horrible time now, but in his own way, he also burned his bridges, and he also got what he wanted.

Okay Vic, you wanted dad to not take shit from others and shoot for a better life, you got a dad who will teach you to do just that. You wanted to pal around with small-time criminals you were friends with even if your parents insisted otherwise, well, the king of hoodlums is the only guy you have left in your life now.

You have committed yourself body and soul to a dangerous life within the city you love, spurred on by the tragic injustice that took your parents in an event that destroyed your entire world? Great, welcome to Gotham, here's even a new name you get out of it.

[noneorother]

The grand unified theory of Good Omens S2 - A Detour! We all misunderstood the Bentley scene, and it's going to blow your mind. *Part 5*

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 l Part 5 l The End?

Welcome to the Bonkers Meta Series featuring your favourite Art Director/Clue detective. I have to take a detour around Crowley and the final fifteen, so sorry!

So I'm still trying to wrap my head around WHY the Bentley changes in Scotland, but I think I've worked out what happened in the Bentley as Crowley drives away in the final scene of S2E6. Lots of people have speculated that the music is a last ditch miracle message from Aziraphale, or even the Bentley sticking the boot in, or trying to be consoling. I think it's a gut punch for Crowley, but also... a ✨Clue✨! So we know from the S2E3 that Aziraphael has "trained" (?) the Bentley to play his music that stays his music.

And the next time we hear music in the Bentley it's "Something modern", as Shax is threatening Aziraphale that she knows where Gabriel is. Aziraphale is now making this face :

Also known as the OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT. But then the credits roll, and we are introduced into the 1941* Minisode directly. Which is quite weird, considering the other two historical flashbacks we get are preceded with Aziraphale interacting with something and then *remembering* because it jogs his brain. If we roll over the 1941 Minisode we get this scene directly after it. Aziraphale is parking the Bentley and makes this face.

Also known as the Wasn't that a fun jaunt. And then precedes to NOT TELL CROWLEY ABOUT SHAX. It's like he's forgotten the threat ever happened. So the Bentley goes back to where it was parked after being scolded, and no one uses the radio again (Crowley does drive it but there's no music playing at the beginning of S2E5, my bad!). No one has used the radio since Aziraphale got out of the car in the end of S2E4. So here's the bonkers part.

I think Aziraphale played A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square to calm himself down on his way back to tell Crowley about Shax, and it triggered the Minisode/memory about 1941. Then when Crowley drives his car for the final time, the radio starts up where Aziraphale last left it when he parked it before the ball.

So Crowley is hearing that when Aziraphale was driving back from Scotland, he was playing their love song. Which he really can't handle right now, and turns it off.

BUT BUT BUT. How do I know it's their love song? If I'm right about it triggering the 1941 minisode/memory, then that means that the song was a record of that story, just like the book of Job or Aziraphale's journal, but it's been erased. Want to know which scene in S2E4 HAS NO MUSIC?

Yeah that's what I thought. Not a date my ass. ___________________________ *If you want, I have more on the 1941 Minisode and it's altered state in Episode 2 of this series.

[princeasimdiya12]

Return to Nyan Nyaight Love-A Happy Ending in Sight?

Before I begin my analysis for Episode 9's NNL segment, I would like to thank everyone who reblogged my previous post and left kind and wholesome compliments about my analysis. It really warms my heart that so many of you guys enjoyed my thoughts on these segments. Especially if they helped provide a clearer understanding of what thematic purpose they serve in the Bucchigiri series. I'm more than happy to help and I appreciate the compliments.

Secondly, I'd like to thank @saph-yells-into-the-void for providing a majority of screenshots for me to use. Even though you didn't mind not being credited, you still deserve it for these great screenshots!

So just as a quick recap, the NNL segments serve as a Greek Chorus as they parallel the main story of Bucchigiri by using the customer's relationship with Jasmine to symbolize various relations and plot events. This time, their relationship parallels the main relationship of the series: Arajin and Matakara.

Episode 9: A Heartfelt Reunion

The segment starts with the customer being nervous as usual about whether he should go in, only to hurry inside as to avoid being spotted by Arajin who's on his way to the bathhouse. The customer is greeted by the receptionist who is still uneasy with him avoiding Jasmine. And even the customer himself looks less indecisive and more somber when he's asking for Pu'er instead of Jasmine.

As I mentioned in the Episode 1 segment, the customer is meant to symbolize Arajin while the catboy receptionist represents the colorful delinquents that Arajin encounters. And even though the first episode had Jasmine stand in for Mahoro, this time she stands in for Matakara.

The receptionist describes Jasmine as being strong-willed, clingy, and too much at times. Many of which are traits that are associated with Matakara.

-While Episode 9 shows him slowly succumbing to Ichiya's twisted therapy sessions, it's worth noting that it's been several days since when he first merged with the Blue Genie til then. So it's worth noting that Matakara lasted a good while before succumbing to Ichiya's will. And even before that, it was his strong will that helped him become stronger and find a place among Minato Kai while also evading the shadows that constantly haunted him. His determination in becoming stronger helped him to evade those shadows; maybe not vanquish them but not to succumb to them either.

-The clingy and too much at times qualities seem to go hand in hand as most of Matakara's screentime has been spent trying to reconnect with Arajin while holding him on a pedestal. Even as Arajin kept pushing him away, Matakara still clinged on to his idealized version of his best friend. One who constantly inspired him to be a Honki person and do the impossible. The too much at times part also works since Mataraka just wouldn't stop gushing over Arajin to his other friends or tries to force Mahoro to talk with him about Arajin and his involvement in Siguma Squad. While is very much a sunshine puppy boy, he can be quite overbearing when it comes to his old friend.

As of the last episode, Arajin made his true feelings for Matakara painfully clear and how he wants to avoid him at all costs. Only now the rest of the cast have taken notice and how much it's effecting Matakara given his refusal to talk to his other friends Zabu and Sakigake mixed with him running away from home. It's become a serious problem and they're all worried about him.

Something peculiar about the receptionist's behavior, and the whole scene overall, is how it's played for dramedy.

The receptionist treats the customer abandoning Jasmine as something tragic and how badly it's effecting her. There's soft music at play as the receptionist speaks his heart out about the cat's distress and how only the customer can help her.

But at the same time, it's just so ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous! There's no reason that the receptionist should need to be so invested in the customer's preferences in cats. They haven't actually bonded with each other apart from letting the customer in so he can spend time with the cats and spend Lord knows how much money. This is his job so it shouldn't matter which cat some random, pathetic everyman chooses to play with since he's still getting paid rather handsomely at the end of the day.

But it does matter to him.

Maybe (as far as we know) the receptionist doesn't know the customer very well but he (supposedly) knows that Jasmine truly misses him and is miserable without him. The receptionist could try to make Jasmine feel better herself given that he sees her more often and knows more about her. But he knows that she holds the customer in his heart and implores him to go back to her.

And while the Minato Kai boys don't care much for Arajin or flat out tell Arajin to patch things up with Matakara, they do make it clear that their friend isn't doing so well after their falling out. He's in need of help and they unfortunately can't do anything about it given how they were brushed aside. And even Mahoro, who also happens to be a colorful character that Arajin met when he entered the Ichizu gang life, has also picked up on Mataraka's despair and wants him to feel better. She clearly doesn't care for Arajin but she knows how much he means to Matakara, someone who understands her when it comes to valuing an older brother figure. She even flat out orders Arajin to go see how he's doing.

Something to consider is that while the Minato Kai boys and Mahoro have their respective but serious scenes with Arajin, they still have their quirky (questionable in Mahoro's case) personalities at play. Such as Sakigake singing his heart out in the bathhouse with Arajin while in his birthday suit to Mahoro having a tea party with a blow up doll of her big brother before learning about Matakara's brother. They're still weird and silly but they show how much heart they have and how they can empathize with someone who's at their lowest. And while they might not be the best person to help out, they know that Arajin is the best person to help them out.

Just like how the customer is the best person to help out the upset cat. And what does he choose when he's asked a second time?

He loses his mopiness for just a moment, becomes slightly more confident and chooses his precious Jasmine. Much to the receptionist's jubilation.

I'm gonna be leaning on the optimistic side and say that this will foreshadow Arajin reconciling with Matakara.

As much as I find Arajin to be a detestable and disappointing human being, I will admit that he is capable of growth. Particularly with bonding with his old childhood friend.

Right after defeating Akutaro, we see Arajin help out a grievously wounded Matakara while mildly complaining about it. We see them being on speaking terms during the Pro Wrestling Episode and Arajin even took the time to teach him how to make gyoza. Not to mention that Arajin was also willing to stick around for Mitsukuni's Welcome Party. The guy is not a good person (ESPECIALLY towards women) but he is capable of becoming better. Maybe at a snail's pace, but it's possible.

And we see those glimpses of growth in Episode 9 with him secretly admitting that there was one person (Matakara) who actually would like his rock for a gift.

So I want to be an optimist and say that Arajin will be able to save Matakara from his despair and they'll reconcile. Maybe accepting that he took Matakra's feelings for granted and how he should have treated his former friend better. How he was acting like a dunderhead and how he doesn't expect to be forgiven after treating him like yesterday's trash. I don't know if the puppy boy will forgive and accept Arajin again so quickly after everything that's happened (it actually would make for an impressive writing choice if Matakara chose not to accept him right away but with their being hope that they'll be friends in the future) but their relationship status will be a hopeful one.

Random Thoughts

When the receptionist brought up how the customer has seen other cats, I had two thoughts in mind. The first is from the Group Date til now, the customer has seen other cats at NNL apart from Pu'er.

The second is that this could be an implied parallel to Ichiya. I don't have enough information since we don't know much about Honki People and the Pasts of the Two Genies, but it's possible that Ichiya has encountered other masters in the thousands of years from when he was human to the present. The other cats could have been masters that Ichiya encountered and tried to possess to take revenge against Senya. But as the receptionist claims, Jasmine kept waiting for the customer. In this case, Jasmine was Senya. Ichiya's oldest friend who still longs to see and reunite with him after so many years of separation and regret.

Another thing I want to bring up is how conclusive this segment feels. It feels like it was wrapping up the plotline between the customer and Jasmine. I find this odd since this happened in Episode 9 and we supposedly have three more episodes before Bucchigiri is officially over. Does that mean we won't get more NNL segments in the final 3? Or will we still get them but in different formats? Like an epilogue of the customer bonding with Jasmine (along with getting an official reveal of who she is) or maybe we get a new customer who's set up to meet another cat potentially foreshadowing a final plot point in the series.

And those would be my thoughts on this segment. No lie, I did not expect this to be this long. But given how conclusive this NNL segment was, I felt there was alot to say about this. And what did you guys think of this segment? As before, feel free to reblog this if you agree with what I wrote, disagree or have another interpretation for this scene. So if you think of something, please say that you know.

"Do you know? Do you know? Do you know what this means?"

[lurkingshan]

Breaking Down the I Feel You Linger in the Air Finale

Okay pals, I got some sleep and I'm ready to dig into this finale and all its beautiful messiness. I love this show and I'm frankly a little frustrated that we got such an incomplete resolution to the (hopefully) first season when there was ample time to do it right. As ever, pacing and time and information management continue to be major weaknesses for Tee Bundit. As I said last week, the writing for this show has been undeniably messy but it's still holding together on the strength of the production and the performances and the success of some of its big themes and character arcs; that take held firm through the finale and some of the baffling choices made about where to spend our time in this final installment. So, let's dig into it!

The Long Goodbye

I'll say upfront that this is my biggest beef with the pacing of the finale. We spent all of last week on a long and painful goodbye for Yai and Jom, perfectly executed, but for some reason we did another 45 minutes of it this week, not so perfectly executed. While I loved the covering of the mirrors, the saddest sex scene ever (complete with sex moans running as the audio over a memory montage how dare you show!), and the pain of Yai realizing he drew the final picture and watching Jom disappear, we didn't need to retread them saying goodbye to each other over and over again for two entire hours of story time, and we didn't need a long, sappy, on the nose speech from Jom saying things we already knew. As I told @neuroticbookworm, this might be my aro showing but I found the series of repetitive emotional goodbye conversations and memory montages exhausting and not in a good way. If I were the script doctor, I would have kept the mirrors, sad sex, and Yai drawing as the start of the episode and cut the rest, moving much more quickly into the next phase of the story.

Back to the Future

Jom returning to his present day life, trying to cope with his anguish and loneliness and adjust back into things, and further investigating the time travel mystery to figure out a way to reconnect with Yai should have been the main narrative of this episode. Instead, we got a truncated version of it that didn't have time to breath because we'd used up so much time on the above mentioned retread. For my money, Jom's devastation upon finding Yai's letter to him was the most emotionally resonant moment of the finale and the first part of the episode where I almost cried. But we had barely sunk into that feeling before it was abruptly cut short because we were out of time and Tee needed to wrap this baby up.

Eyebrow Scar Yai

Here’s where I get actually kind of peeved, because this final (pre-credits) scene was so poorly set up and executed that to even call it a resolution is a stretch. A modern version of Yai walks into the room, asks Jom why he's crying, tells him he's been waiting for him, kisses him, and then the credits roll!

Now I've been in the tags so I know this caused confusion for anyone who has not read the novel (me too, fam!). And that's because the show had not bothered to establish:

That Yai does in fact have a modern doppelgänger

Who the heck that doppelgänger is and how he’s connected to 1928 Yai

How that doppelgänger would be able to remember Jom when no other doppelgängers in the story can remember their past lives

Based on what we know, could we piece together a reasonable theory about who this man is, how he got there, and the final pieces of the mythology that make sense of it? Sure. In fact, bookworm and I pretty much guessed exactly what the explanation for this was after watching the show, and many of the elements at play here were theorized in conversations we had last week. Book readers like @tipsyjaehyun have now confirmed the full explanation for anyone who cares to go read it.

But the show did not tell us any of this information. If you have to read the novel or have novel readers spoil you on aspects of the story that the show didn't bother to cover in order to understand the ending of the story, the execution has failed. And given the pacing notes above, there is really no reason we couldn't have gotten a better set up for this ending with Eyebrow Scar Yai (yes I know his name but no I'm not using it because the show didn't bother telling me; I am petty like that). Jom could have found this descendant during his time of processing and the ending could have hinged on us realizing this modern Yai is a reincarnation who has his past life memories intact; had we gone into a final kiss between them feeling grounded in all of that knowledge, it would have landed so much better.

Hello Commander

And now on to the post-credits scene, where Tee puts a plea into the universe to give him a second season so he can play around in another time period and explore what is evidently the origin of this soul tie between Jom and Yai. I chose to read this episode tag as separate from the actual season 1 narrative, and I think that was the intention given its placement. If they secure funding for a second season, this tag scene becomes the beginning of that next story, with Eyebrow Scar Yai's kiss sending Jom into another time travel adventure. If they don't we can just ignore it and pretend the pre-credits scene was the end (which is why I'm not happy it was so poorly done). I, for one, would love to see a second season to explore another time period and give Tee a chance to clean up some of this mess he has made of the mythology and season 1 resolution. Shouts to @clairedaring for reporting back from the live showing of the finale on what the possibilities are looking like there. Fingers crossed we get a continuation of this story some day!

Tagging in @waitmyturtles and @twig-tea who also have linked posts above. And shouts to @blmpff @cankersoregirl @pharawee @wanderlust-in-my-soul @italianpersonwithashippersheart @bengiyo @dragonsareawesome123 @wen-kexing-apologist @junghaesin @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @slayerkitty @respectthepetty @chickenstrangers @sunshinechay @btwinlines for posting about this show every week and making it such a fun watch despite having a small audience on here. It was a pleasure watching this with you all!

[waitmyturtles]

THE MORNING AFTER: ONLY FRIENDS, EPISODE 3 ("BINGBONG! MUST BE THAT WIRETAP THAT I ORDERED") EDITION

Before I get started on my episode review, I just want to gather some quick thoughts about my observations of yesterday's internet:

1) Tumblr was a lot more subdued than after the first two episodes of Only Friends. Now that I've seen episode 3, it makes a lot of sense: I've noticed that I've gotten myself prepared unconsciously before watching OF much later after everyone else through the streaming vibes on my dash. I even saw some Laws of Attraction gifs before the Only Friends gifs, ha! But there's a lot going on to dig into with OF, and it makes sense why feelings are starting to get complicated over what's happening.

2) The Ephemerality Squad ( @ranchthoughts, @chickenstrangers, @lurkingshan, @slayerkitty, @twig-tea, and honorary shout-out @neuroticbookworm) hit spot-on in analysis yesterday. This was definitely another episode about the fleetingness of just about everything. Let's do this.

@ranchthoughts in their ephemerality analysis yesterday hit on the two big themes of episode 3: the continued fleeting of time, and stronger attempts of control. (@slayerkitty also nailed some excellent observations about voyeurism, which I'll hopefully have time to get into in a bit.) We were left to see how Top, Sand, and Nick, respectively, dealt with the attempts of Mew, Ray, and Boston, the three college friends, to control their environments -- and their people -- around them, all to varying degrees of.... I don't think we can say success.

I wonder if I can try to map this out, this web of attempted control. But before I do this, I want to repeat something that I jotted down in my notes as I watched the episode:

These guys are spending a disproportional amount of time -- especially Boston, Sand, and Ray -- explaining that their dalliances are only fleeting and non-committal. I noted that Sand seemed to be weakening just slightly at that during the car make-out sesh with Ray. (At the same time, I think Sand was also like, this guy's available rn? Well -- awlright, whateves, shrugs, I'm in the mood.)

But more surprisingly, WOW -- is Boston EVER BAD at setting boundaries. (Considering the discussions we on Tumblr were having about Boston's shower scene last week, that is very not surprising.)

My dude. My DUDE. "YOU CAN CALL OUR RELATIONSHIP WHATEVER YOU LIKE?" You call THAT being clear about friends with benefits? Well done, dumbass. Bro, Khai from Theory of Love is waving his damn hands in front of you, being all like, "NAAWWWW, THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO THIS, DUDE, NOOOOOOOOOO."

And THEN Nick taps the car, but hold up, let me get back to THAT in a sec.

Anyway: @ranchthoughts did an excellent control outline here, but I'm just going to do a very quick interpersonal web to demonstrate how these guys are actually failing spectacularly at keeping things together for their own selfishness sake:

Boston -->

1) is trying to manage his "relationship" with Nick, quite failingly 2) is trying to convince Top to sleep with him by planting in Top's mind doubts about Mew and Mew's alleged virginity

Mew -->

3) is... doing what, at this point? Top is calling Mew his boyfriend. Why is Mew still holding out on sex? What's the point of the game at this point?

Ray -->

4) is clearly intrigued by Sand, to the point of hanging out at the bar alone, and inviting Sand to perform at the pool party. But, Ray: 5) is still clearly drawn to Mew. Back to Mew:

Mew -->

6) is still very aware that he has a draw on Ray (cc @neuroticbookworm). As @neuroticbookworm noted to me last night: Mew didn't call Cheum or Boston when he lost his key. He called Top first -- of course, he had to, Top is his boyfriend. And THEN, he called Ray. Mew knew Ray was checking out Sand all night. Mew called Ray out on it. MEW ENCOURAGED RAY TO GO FOR IT. And yet, Mew called Ray, knowing likely that he was going to be interrupting something. And in a Pavlovian reaction (credit @neuroticbookworm), Ray stops everything with Sand in the car to run to Mew.

Top -->

7) is trying to control his urges around Boston, and fails quite spectacularly

Sand -->

8) tries to give Ray the ol' "just friends" razzle-dazzle, but listen, when the boi be cute like that and all kissy-kissy, then, Sand, I'm not holding it against you, you had every right to dive on in, my man. And finally:

Nick -->

9) Nick is outta control, ha. I see some corners of sympathy for Nick around this way and that, but a few words here on this.

Boston is a terrifically BAD communicator. I want to say that Boston has had a consistent message for Nick: there's nothing going on here. But that's not quite the case. Boston's ALLLLL over the place with the way he's talking to Nick.

I've been in situations where I desperately wanted a man that I was sleeping with to be my boyfriend. I know the ache of being held at arm's length. It's a horrible feeling to not quite know what your FWB is thinking about you at any given moment.

On the flip side -- oh, that flip side. This kind of reminds me of how I thought about Third in Theory of Love. Boston's inconsistent communication with Nick should, arguably, be a red flag for Nick. If Nick wants, say, a relationship with Boston, welp -- do you really want a relationship with a guy who's holding you at arm's length? I might argue that Boston's inconsistent communication is CLEAR communication that he's not ready for whatever Nick is wanting from him, whether it's a relationship or even an exclusive FWB arrangement.

Again, I know and remember the feeling of being held back, of being pushed away. But as I grew up throughout my 20s (A LONG TIME AGO, DAMN IT), I figured out that the way I could find happiness was by being accountable to myself and any future partner I might have. If a guy was wasting my time, then -- he was wasting my time, and there was no other story to it. I had to learn to move on to find what I really wanted and needed for the betterment of my life.

My man, Nick, on the other hand, taps Boston's car and hears and sees the bang-bang. Boston's up to no good, no doubt, he is messing with EVERYONE. But, Nick -- what do you want from this? Where do you think this is going to go? If I were you -- damn, brother, if I were YOUR MOM -- I'd be like, sashay away. But, no, you tapped his car, and we'll find out what's really going on with that, hopefully, in the next episodes.

Last little bits. Some blue-balling in this episode. Oof. Arguably, Mew's been putting the squeeze on Top over the long haul. But to see Ray do that to Sand in the car -- eeeeyikes. Sand walked away from that with clarity -- I was impressed.

I am not getting enough Jennie Panhan in this show. First off -- FIRST OFF -- she is SLAMMIN'. Did you see those biceps? And her calm demeanor as Yo. As opposed to Cheum, who knows that Ray can get whatever he needs, fiscally, from his father -- Yo encourages Ray to get off his ass and seek out answers to his questions and feelings about Sand himself. (@twig-tea attributes this to Yo knowing that one can't control everything in one's life, an analysis that I love.) Yo encourages a touch of independence from her friends. I wonder if this is a theme from her that will continue to unwind moving forward.

We finally saw Title! And I would like to see more Tee Teeradej, pretty pwease.

Finally, rolling back to @slayerkitty's thoughts on voyeurism: @slayerkitty posited that each episode had a different modality of voyeurism and passive participation in engagement with others, an analysis that I love. (I think that absolutely speaks to the sense of aloofness and disconnect that I continue to get out of Ray and Boston in particular.) @lurkingshan also noted that a lot of the flirtation and sex in the first three episodes have involved cameras, photography, audiences, and so on.

Voyeurism: you're watching something, but you're not necessarily participating IN IT. Your engagement with an event is at arm's length.

I want to think that this, in part, is a continued commentary on the shipped couples acting in this show, and how we're SEEING them continue to break down. We might see a kiss between Khaotung and Book next week. We've seen Neo and Force together now, acting out intimacy. There's something happening between the characters of Sand and Top that will have First and Force interacting. The passive act of expecting the shipped couples to continue to ship -- is that not voyeurism on demand on behalf of the fandom?

I don't want to be passive about this: I actively continue to cheer for the ships to sink. This episode was GREAT, it held a lot, it was complicated and very open-ended, and there's a lot that needs to be explained next week.

(Speaking of next week: I will likely not have OF meta, as I'll be moving. If I do have meta, it'll maybe be stream of consciousness from the depths of my disorganized despair. But I'll be back in action after America's Labor Day -- SUPPORT UNIONS!)

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

finished my rewatch of gravity falls today so here's some random thoughts i wrote down over the course of the last few episodes (sure most of this has been mentioned already but eh. no harm in repeating things):

-could you imagine how differently things would've gone if any of the pines members knew about ford's nightmare (especially stan)

-ford visibly shaking from how hard he's digging his fingers into the floor (referring to the security droid grabbing him)

-ford almost dies three times before bill actually captures him

-'i haven’t been able to find grunkle stan anywhere' was stan not at the shack at that time or did you just not consider checking his house

-a full limerick for 'man from kentucky' wasn’t allowed, but onscreen death is??

-shapeshifter wink + mabeland fake wendy wink

-why is the unicorn half petrified? what caused the gnome to be mostly petrified, but not quite? how was woodpecker guy able to keep his petrified woodpecker? so many questions about these guys. what occurred here

-first time ford gets turned to "gold", he appears cracked. the second time, he’s free of cracks. implication: either the stone/"gold" people get turned into cracks over time or bill roughed ford up a bit even before the torture

-bill disassembles ford and reassembles him on the other side of the room. interesting to consider for. y'know. torture

-speaking of bill, WHY DO YOU HAVE EIGHT EYELASHES NOW. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE SEVEN

-love fiddleford so much. and also zanthar. and craz and xyler. and soos. and-

-manly dan hugs wendy more gently than soos does

-'(strangely genuine) good to see you too bro >:(' i'm sorry stan did seeing your brother trapped in a horrifying gold-ish statue change your tune a bit

-i agree with the circle actually. the fuck are you doing, stan. 

-i feel like the stan twins were strangled in different ways. it seems like ford was literally being strangled and bill was doing something directly to stan's lungs, based on the way they reacted to it. or i'm looking way too much into the animation who knows

-the way stan kneels on the ground :((((

-actually every scene with post-deal stan in it

-ford ultimate depression

-waddles was waiting for them :(((((((((

-stan lies in different ways depending on what he remembers (referring to him lying about the destroyed house being a nice place to be polite)

-'someone get waddles off of me!!' ford: :0 :D

-this also implies that ford learned waddles name at some point

-was wondering why pacifica seemed to have a bit of a character regression. then realized that she had to live with her abusive parents after the party. they uh. they need to be obliterated (heck you can even tell there's a sort of distance between them based on the fact that pacifica's parents wait for her to come to them, as opposed to the corduroys running to wendy immediately. it's not even a durland + blubs situation, they are fully aware of their surroundings at this point)

-pacifica's still trying her best though!!

-ford sings happy birthday with everyone else :)))

-ford's hair grows out really quickly

-'heh' resulting in an immediate :0 until ford keeps talking, at which point stan smiles again

-stan did you think that laugh was intended to be a 'that's ridiculous stan why would you ever think that' type deal and not a 'wow i love talking to you this is great' type thing

-'SHUT UP FOREVER'

-'CAN IT SOOS' in sync (hey ford you learned his name!)

-stan's 'don’t test me >:(' implication vs ford's 'i have killed and i will do it again' implication

-ford comforting hand on shoulder. stan looking shocked until he sees ford smiling at him. grgaggasgg

-fucking love these two

-stan writes in print in all caps (this might mean nothing to you but trust me there is a reason i'm pointing it out)

-ford doing the hand thing in the credits

-'ford hates mabel' DID YOU MISS THE FUCKING TURKEY

that's it that's all of the thoughts

it can go in the tag cause. why not, y'know?

[jmdbjk]

It's time for the Weekly Bangtan Report!

Happy Birthday Hobi! Neuron Crew has posted a happy birthday tribute on their social media channels. Here is the video on YouTube:

Neuron Crew are a group of Hobi's dance colleagues and friends from pre-debut. He's known them since middle school. This video was shot at Daedong Plaza in Gwuangju, Hobi's hometown city.

I was wondering last time if we'd see him in between training groups and here he is! The birthday boy himself was out and about. He saw his birthday banners and posters! I suspect this is possibly near his apartment building.

And COMING MARCH!!! HOPE ON THE STREET!!!

Personally, I hope its a series and not just one full length documentary type thing.

Ok, now news for the thirsty folks (thirsty folks=all of us) I was going to start this weekly recap with this, but...

I decided to spare everyone. I'm sure y'all are tired of seeing naked Jungkook (of course that was a joke).

EDIT: CK pulled a bonehead and did not add this particular hoodie to their website before dropping the pics. It supposedly is there now.

As I predicted months and months ago, these brand ambassador deals are the gifts that keep on giving (thank you jesus and tight pants).

Jungkook's deal with Calvin Klein ... he said he wears the "tight kind" ... dare I even go here? will we...? did he...? We Wait™️

There is a video of behind the scenes of his music show recordings he did from Seven's release to Golden's promotions is available on BangtanTV.

Yoongi's Valentino campaign is beginning to appear in Japan.

We still know nothing about what he's up to but we keep getting episodes of Suchwita. Perhaps we'll get one with his good friend, producer El Capitxn. We Wait™️

Taehyung has a photo spread in the current issue of WKorea. Flowers. Lots of flowers:

And he posted on Valentine's day but not really a love note (lol, he's a goofball) but the boy is gaining some weight. He's up to 160 lbs...

I present to you my interim report. Attained 72.5 kg I will come again. Salute Trans cr; Aditi @ bts-trans © TAKE OUT WITH FULL CREDITS

Namjoon.... there is that sus image of him playing the saxophone in a red military band uniform (not gonna post the pic). Is it an edit? Ok, so let's think about this.

When have we ever heard Namjoon say he knows how to play the saxophone? That would be approximately zero times he's ever said that. You'd think we would have had some Taehyung/RM interactions or conversations over the years involving saxophones. Nothing.

Do you know how hard it is to learn to play a wind instrument?

And there is only that one single suspicious image. Usually there are multiple weird sneaky angles, blurry shots, etc. I'm just saying I remain skeptical until I hear more from a different source, or from Joon himself. I've seen several pics supposedly of Jimin and Jungkook, one of them sitting in a cafeteria that looked hella real and then the original pic is shown and it's just... wow... edits can be very deceiving.

Joon posted a Lunar New Year message to us on Weverse:

Hello ARMYs, I hope you're doing well. I've come to my assigned military base and am adapting and doing well. I've had some tteokguk* too. Since it's Seollal, I've also been resting a bit, and I'm living well. I will need to spend one more Seollal here before I can see you but, I'm spending my time well. I really believe that this time will lead to different kinds of learning and experiences. Whenever, wherever you are, please stay healthy, and I hope that your life has a lot more good than bad. Hoping that the connection we share continues, I wish you a happy new year ! (*Rice cake soup traditionally eaten during Seollal, or Lunar New Year.) Trans cr; Aditi @ bts-trans © TAKE OUT WITH FULL CREDITS

And his @ rpwprpwprpwp Instagram account posted some pics this past week. Since comments are open on that account, Armys are trying to outdo each other with the corniest pickup lines:

IS THERE AN AIRPORT NEARBY, OR WAS THAT JUST MY HEART TAKING OFF? If you were a triangle you'd be acute one 💋 If I'm the pencil, you're the highlighter. Because I'm gonna draw our future and you're gonna make it brighter.

Jimin also posted a short but super sweet Lunar New Year message on Weverse and mentioned Jungkook:

It's Lunar New Year ARMYs! I hope you have a happy Lunar New Year and I hope this year for you is a healthy year filled with happiness Jungkook and I are doing well so please don't worry about us too much. I'll check in with you again! Hope you have lots of good food and eat a lot today   Trans cr; Annie @ bts-trans © TAKE OUT WITH FULL CREDITS

I was so happy to see a message from him and so glad he said they are both doing well. But I'm still going to worry...

Nothing new from Jin, we've already had his February message. 116 days left. But here he is and I am looking forward to having his grown ass, mature, military experienced man back with us in a few months:

Other Bangtan related news this week: Enhypen released a cover of I Need U. Some people are speaking negatively about it. What the ever loving fuck is wrong with you people?

That song was important for BTS, it was their first TV music show win and it was IMPORTANT and a big WIN for them that broke the door open. They were about to give up!

Be flattered that BTS is of a calibre that other well-known artists want to cover their songs! That being said, if you don't like the way they covered the song, fine, just move on, there's no need to be mean-spirited about it.

Last weekend, a Japanese TV show seemed to tease/spoil a hint that possibly high profile celebs stayed at a resort in a town outside Sapporo recently... the hint was "Dynamite." This was the resort:

Uh... nice... delulu brain activated...

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

So, to follow up on this post that I just made that details my thoughts on the Taskmaster s18 lineup: Jack Dee, Rosie Jones, Emma Sidi, and Babatunde Aléshé...

I’m totally kidding! Obviously I’m totally kidding. Obviously. Obviously I was kidding in that entire post, suggesting that I give one fuck who those other four people are. It doesn't matter! Obviously in reality, seats 2-5 of Taskmaster s18 could be filled by Leo Kearse, Jim Davidson, Jordan Peterson, and Suella Braverman, and I’d still consider this to be a fantastic lineup.

Okay. Finally, after several weeks of losing my God damn mind, sitting on the spoilers and being good about not mentioning it (mostly…), I can say this. Finally.

Let’s talk Zaltzman.

First of all, let me set the scene. I've just finished my work for the day. I'm waiting in the break room while my co-worker files her stuff so we can close up the building together. I check my phone, because it's Taskmaster lineup spoiler day, and I've been waiting on confirmation.

I read the words and drop my phone in amazement, scrambling to catch it before it hits the ground. I look again, trying to make 100% sure I am reading this right, because I refuse to get my hopes up that high just to be disappointed. No, it says what I thought it said. I jump up, bang my fist against my chest and then into the air and then back again, mutter “fuck yes fucking right holy fuck” under my breath repeatedly, and then look around and am pleased to see my co-worker has not come into the room. And then I’m not allowed to post about it for several fucking weeks.

Andy was top of my wishlist. Possibly the number one person on it even if I could have literally anyone, including the people who definitely wouldn’t do it. He was definitely the number one person on my Taskmaster wishlist, out of the people who would possibly ever do it. But I wasn’t sure he belonged on that second list. Every time I’ve posted about a Taskmaster wishlist in the last couple of years, I’ve said of course Andy Zaltzman’s number one, but I know it won’t happen.

I know Taskmaster casts people who aren't already TV famous, but they're usually young. Taskmaster casts older people who are well established in a TV career, and young up-and-comers. Not people who turn 50 this year and did an episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats one time in 2008.

I mean, Andy Zaltzman isn’t completely obscure. It’s now been several years since he took over as host of The News Quiz, which I think is Radio 4’s flagship comedy program. The Bugle has been going for nearly 17 years and is quite successful. It’s not fair to imply that 2008 was his last TV credit; he was on Alternative Comedy Experience in 2013, where he had some chats with Stewart Lee that are among the most socially awkward things I’ve ever seen in my life. Sometimes they let him on TV in Australia. He did Matt Forde’s TV thing a few times. He does actually have a very successful career as a cricket statistician/commentator. He wrote for Bremner, Bird and Fortune in 2006. He’s doing fine. He's doing absolutely fine.

And he has an impressive stand-up career. He's done tours in the States, off the back of The Bugle's international success. He's performed in Asia off the back of his cricket commentating popularity. He's sold out big rooms to hordes of Bugle fans.

Taskmaster has cast lots of people who were less famous at the time of casting than Andy Zaltzman is now. They're just not usually Andy Zaltzman's age. But it doesn't matter, he's there now. So let me tell you about this man.

Andrew Zechariah Zaltzman was born on October 6, 1974. He grew up in Tumbridge Wells, Kent, a place he has described as so right-wing that they think you're a bit of a leftie if you only cast one Tory vote per general election. Raised by his father Zechariah "Zack" Zaltzman, who was a sculptor and a Lithuanian lapsed Jew who grew up in South Africa. Along with his sister Helen and brother Rick. I don't know his mother's name and it's probably fine to keep it that way, as I'm pretty sure Andy Zaltzman attracts a lot of fans like me, who have my combination of information-gathering autism and a good memory, that means I did not have to do any Googling to write that paragraph. I could have included the name of his school without Googling just because I've read his Wikipedia page so much, but I'll refrain from doing that.

To be fair, it's not some obscure piece of trivia to know his sister's name, because Helen Zaltzman is one of the only people in Britain who's had a podcast for longer than Andy. Podcasting was quite new when The Bugle started, but Helen started her podcast Answer Me This just before it. Helen Zaltzman's not technically a comedian, but she's quite comedy-adjacent, her podcasts are funny and she's been in plays at the Edinburgh Festival. Hangs out with comedians. Was friends with Josie Long at Oxford, so that's pretty cool. Used to be flatmates with comedy flatshare expert Matthew Crosby. Did an episode of ComComPod.

Anyway, after being raised with a future comedy-adjacent podcaster, Andy went to study Classics at Oxford University, where he also worked for the sports page of the student newspaper. It was here that he discovered his love of made-up bullshit, as he once wrote an entirely fictitious article about a game that never happened. When told they couldn't print it because it was libellous, Andy tried to argue that he hadn't libelled anyone because none of the people he wrote about in that article exist. Andy Zaltzman swears that story is true, and I think it probably is.

Andy Zaltzman did one stand-up gig at university that went very badly, then didn't do any stand-up for a bit, and then eventually did some more gigs that went less badly. Ended up in the finals of So You Think You’re Funny in 1999, where he lost to David O’Doherty (other finalists included Jimmy Carr, Russell Howard, and Josie Long, the latter of whom beat David O’Doherty in the BBC New Comedy Awards in the same year, a year of traded victories that they still amusingly and adorably reference on social media sometimes).

Andy Zaltzman got in with Avalon management, and in 2000, he went back to Edinburgh as part of The Comedy Zone. Also in 2000, he supported Stewart Lee on a stand-up tour around the UK. A lot of the venues were not told that there would be a support act and couldn’t fit him in at the last minute, so essentially, it was less like doing tour support and more like Andy just followed Stewart Lee around the country for a few weeks. Stewart Lee got so exhausted by the effort of trying to hang out with someone as socially awkward as Andy Zaltzman that he quit stand-up for several years (that’s a joke, but he did actually quit – eventually going back to stand-up but never back to his agency – because he got frustrated with Avalon on that tour, largely because they kept doing things like failing to tell venues that he was bringing a support act). In 2005, Stewart Lee returned to stand-up, and shared a flat at the Edinburgh Festival with Andy Zaltzman that year. Across the next 15 years, Stewart Lee took several opportunities to marvel at how it was possible for one person to watch as much sport as Andy Zaltzman did, when on tour and in Edinburgh flats.

In 2001, Andy did his first full-length Edinburgh show, called Andy Zaltzman Versus the Dog of Doom, which got nominated for the Perrier Newcomer Award. It was mainly a solo show, and billed as a solo show, but it featured a few bits with a man he'd met on the stand-up circuit named John Oliver, who was performing in The Comedy Zone. In 2002, Andy went back to Edinburgh with a show called Andy Zaltzman Unveils the 2002 Catapult of Truth, which also featured bits of John Oliver. John did his debut solo hour that year as well, a show that Chortle’s Steve Bennett called “a fairly pointless concept, which is then tiresomely illustrated”. Clearly, John made the correct choice in deciding that in future years, he’d stick to the stuff with Zaltzman.

In 2003, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver began writing more comedy together, and were both specifically interested in political comedy. They found this could be difficult on mixed bill gigs where the audience hadn’t come for political comedy, and wouldn’t take well to all the dating and travel mishap stories being interrupted by satire on the colonial immigration process. So they started a comedy night in London called Political Animal, where they would co-host with their own jointly-written political jokes, introducing other comedians who would do exclusively political material. This allowed them to perform to audiences who would get what they were expecting, and it led to them being chased off stage less often (okay, their stories about those years of terrible gigs only include one where they got literally chased off stage). Comedians who performed at Political Animal included Robert Newman, Al Murray, Stewart Lee, Jeremy Hardy, Daniel Kitson, Chris Addison, Frankie Boyle, Andrew Maxwell, Will Hodgson, and don’t worry about the other name on the list from which I've copied this (it was one of those Russells they have now, and by far the worst of the three, despite the other two’s flaws).

On these early Political Animal nights, Zaltzman and Oliver used to do a sketch in which they'd interact with God. If Daniel Kitson was part of the show that night, he'd join them for that sketch and Kitson would play the role of God, which is a little on the nose even for him.

They did Political Animal once a month in London for several years, and also took it to Edinburgh for quite a few years in a row. In 2005, they recorded a pilot for BBC Radio 4, a radio show that would broadcast highlights of each act in a Political Animal night, interspersed with little Zaltzman and Oliver sketches. This got picked up and ran for two seasons, ten episodes in total.

In Edinburgh 2003, Zaltzman and Oliver did Edinburgh and Beyond, a mixed bill with each other and Rob Deering. Some of Andy’s material from that show can be heard in the Radio 4 program 4 at the Fringe. It opens with “Are you all glad to be alive? About half of you. Good. Aren’t festivals fun?” Then he goes into a complex explanation of how King Harold threw the Battle of Hastings and he has proof. This also contains the earliest known recording of Andy Zaltzman's classic joke about how voters' commitment to apathy is a paradox.

Then he says the words: “There are more celebrities now than ever before, in the world. There are also more facts in the world than ever before, and that’s just one of them. There are more celebrities now, and if the current rate of the increase in celebrities now continues, then by the year 2052, celebrities will outnumber ordinary people. And if that continues then by 2142, 99% of the world’s population will be celebrities. At which point the market will implode, and all celebrities will be merged into one giant celebrity, known as God. And the process will start again from scratch. Only this time, God will make the differences between men and women even funnier, and comedians will be the most powerful race on Earth. And after a savage and brutal war between the observationalists and the surrealists, into the power vacuum will come the singing comedians, and the world’s only currency will be amusingly altered pop lyrics. So please, be careful.” And you can begin to see why audiences occasionally chased him off stages. I don’t know what John Oliver was doing with his portion of that shared 2003 bill. Probably some stuff about penguins, given what he was into at the time. He was also very busy ripping cows apart that year. 2003 was a big year for people giving John Oliver large facsimile animals that he did not want and making him deal with them.

In 2004, Zaltzman and Oliver decided to stop messing around with little sketches in each other's shows, and just do the joint stand-up hour that the world had been waiting for. They went to Edinburgh with a show called Zaltzman and Oliver’s Erm... It's About the World... I Think You'd Better Sit Down, which is a hell of a title. They filled in a questionnaire about it for the BBC, which is a lovely little relic. If you want to know what Zaltzman and Oliver were doing during the Edinburgh Festival in 2004:

What will you be doing with the other 23 hrs of the day? JO: I will assign around 8 of those hours for sleep. I'll try and eat three times, spaced out in the time remaining. I will insult my flatmate for a further 3 of those hours. And I will think about sport for the rest of the time. AZ: Table tennis.

(Note: I'm 95% sure the flatmate John Oliver was going to insult for three hours a day is Daniel Kitson.)

They took the show on tour the following year, including performing it one time in 2005 with someone recording the audio. They didn't do anything with that audio until about six years later, when they released it during a filler week for The Bugle. It contains many of their classic joint bits, like the immigration sketch and the state of political discourse sketch.

In 2005, they did another joint Edinburgh show, called John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman Issue a List of Demands and Await Your Response with Interest. Not big fans of titles that fit easily into blurbs. This show unfortunately has been lost to history, or at least, it had better be lost to history, because at this point I will be furious if it turns out Andy Zaltzman has a recording of it somewhere and has been holding out on us all this time (not really, please let me know if you have this, Andy, I would pay you money). Steve Bennett called it: "As a double act [Zaltzman and Oliver] bring out the best of Zaltzman’s towering intellect and Oliver’s  sneery cynicism, feeding off each other’s presence." Which is a pretty solid summary of their double act dynamic in general.

I know there are reviewers besides Steve Bennett, by the way. But Chortle, for all its other admin-related faults, does archive its reviews in a way that makes old ones easy to find, so it tends to be my go-to reference for times like this. I have read other old Zaltzman and Oliver reviews, and a lot of them can be basically summarized as "They have good, intelligent, and funny material, but God, those guys can be really annoying." Brian Logan called them "Better writers than performers", which is maybe technically true but also he can fuck off. We like the socially awkward lack of charisma, okay?

Anyway. Back on topic. While they were establishing their live double act, Zaltzman and Oliver also teamed up with their friend, the excellent comedian Chris Addison, to write a radio show called The Department. This is a fictional show set in a secret government department that secretly runs the entire world, and they spend each episode solving a different problem. It ran on BBC Radio 4 for three seasons and 14 episodes in total, from 2004 to 2006. It featured a bunch of old Zaltzman and Oliver stand-up bits, shoehorned expertly into the mouths of the characters. Zaltzman, Oliver, and Addison co-wrote it and played the three main characters (except Addison didn't write season 3 as he was busy with other projects, but he still did the voice acting), with the other major character being voiced by Matthew Holness, and Lucy Montgomery doing some additional voices (Matthew and Lucy were both in Cambridge Footlights with John Oliver a few years earlier).

They hoped The Department would translate to TV someday, but that didn't happen. Even as late as ten years later, Andy Zaltzman, according to one uncharacteristically vulnerable interview, was still holding out hope that it could someday get picked up as a TV sitcom. John Oliver, on the other hand, said years later that he looked back on The Department as something that wasn't any good. John is, in my accurate opinion, entirely wrong about that. There are some old Zaltzman and Oliver things that I can recognize were objectively not great comedy, I just like them as adorable historical relics. The Department is not like that. I think it was a really, really funny and well written show. It had good characters and dense jokes and I wish it had become more.

These were the glory years of Zaltzman and Oliver. The Department on the radio, joint stand-up shows, hosting mixed bill stuff at Political Animal. But that double act was just a small subset of a larger group called the Chocolate Milk Gang. The Chocolate Milk Gang was an international crime syndicate that sometimes organized soccer matches, to borrow a phrase from John Oliver (John was talking about FIFA when he said it, but it still applies). You can see one of these matches in The Greatest Video on All of YouTube, featuring a lot of comedians who are hard to recognize because it's got about 8 pixels per inch, but you can always pick out Andy with his curly red hair, and John Oliver as the only one wearing long pants instead of shorts. I'm definitely not going to go look at the building where they filmed that video when I go to London this summer. That would be a weird thing to do. I mean I can't confirm whether I'm going to do that, but I will say that one time on his radio show I heard Elis James say Crystal Palace isn't a tourist attraction, and I laughed and said "That's what you think."

Anyway, the Chocolate Milk Gang was actually a bunch of comedians who were all friends in the early 00s, they frequently appeared in each other's stand-up shows (and occasionally radio shows and things like that), told stories about each other on stage, played football on Tuesdays, shared mixed bills, ritualistically sacrificed cows together in the middle of the night, things like that. They got their name because they drank alcohol either not at all or not very much, and after late-night Edinburgh shows they'd go for milkshakes while other comedians were getting drunk, so some of those other comedians started calling them the Chocolate Milk Gang. Glenn Wool has been specifically credited with coining the term, Andrew Maxwell and Jason Byrne were also said to be involved. An absolute cunt who goes by David McSavage was a dick about it. Basically they were a bunch of nerds who got bullied by the Irish and Canadians (not really, they've said they were on friendly terms with those guys and it was friendly banter, except for David McSavage, who is genuinely a cunt). They go by other names sometimes. Stewart Lee apparently used to call them "The Hanging Around Guys".

Further information can be found in the weirdest fucking article I've ever read (on the subject of me knowing about reviewers besides just Steve Bennett - Jay Richardson, what were you fucking talking about?), but basically, they were known for differentiating themselves from a previous generation of showbiz shouty fancy comedians, by doing things like wearing t-shirts and listening to indie music and putting a modicum of creativity into their art and not being alcoholics. Membership lists for the Chocolate Milk Gang changes depending who you ask, but the main people involved, in general, were: Josie Long, John Oliver, Andy Zaltzman, Alun Cochrane, Russell Howard, David O'Doherty, Gavin Osborn, Demitri Martin, Flight of the Conchords. Taika Waititi - Cohen at the time - is sometimes mentioned in that mix. Isy Suttie was definitely around and fit the remit. And Daniel Kitson was their, according to those weird fucking articles about it, king.

To get that list of people, I've taken the name that Glenn Wool invented for people who got milkshakes in Edinburgh, and applied it to a slightly more general concept. Not everyone on that list got milkshakes in Edinburgh in 2002, but most did, and all were part of a larger group of nerds doing comedy who crossed over with each other personally and professionally in that era, which is generally what I mean when I say "Chocolate Milk Gang".

Andy largely ended up in this group because his writing and performing partner, John Oliver, was so close to the ringleader/king Daniel Kitson. John Oliver and Daniel Kitson had repeatedly described each other as best friends. John also brought in Gavin Osborn, his friend from school and/or youth theatre. Gavin was flatmates with John's girlfriend for a time. Basically, John Oliver tied all these people in his life together, and then he fucked off to America, leaving the rest of them behind to keep making stuff with each other. Which they did, but managing it without John in the middle clearly wasn't always their first choice. The number of Chocolate Milk Gang members who have performed art that I have heard on the subject of how it upset them when John Oliver left is... more than three. It's four. I'm thinking of four specific pieces of work right now, though to be fair one of them is just Andy Zaltzman shouting the words "Percy Primetime" at an audience (the others are a song about mix tapes, a show about an apartment that I'm definitely not going to go look at when I fly to London because Crystal Palace isn't a tourist attraction, and a song about a penguin). That's a lot, really. People really, really liked that guy.

Zaltzman and Kitson in particular were a funny combination; whenever they used to end up on stages (or in a radio studio) together, there would be this strong sense of "your best friend is my best friend but God, do we ever have nothing else in common". But they'd give performing together a go, even though Andy Zaltzman is the most socially awkward man in history and has chemistry with no one on Earth except John Oliver. Neither of them seem to "get" the other's comedy in any way, or find much crossover in what they found funny. They shared a flat together in Edinburgh in 2007, where they wrote a sketch for Late 'n' Live in which Andy would pretend to be Daniel Kitson's penis, so that's fun. Andy Zaltzman had a set of about four deliberately bad impressions, which seemed to be the only part of his act that Kitson found funny, but Kitson found them hilarious and made Andy do them every time they performed together.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm trying to tell this story chronologically, and I've moved right past what Andy Zaltzman has referred to as: “The day in June 2006 when [John Oliver] told me he wanted to do the Daily Show job in America instead of going with me to Edinburgh to talk to twenty-five people a day in a darkened room.”

At the time, Zaltzman and Oliver were in the process of writing their third joint stand-up hour, for Edinburgh 2006. This show had already been submitted to the festival, as evidenced by some screenshots of the 2006 Edinburgh program:

The 2006 Edinburgh program also advertised:

And it was the debut year for the Chocolate Milk Gang mixed bill Honourable Men of Art, also already in the program with John's name:

According to Andy Zaltzman, in June 2006, he learned three things very close together, on almost the same day. The first thing he learned is that the BBC had cancelled The Department. This radio show was the only consistent thing Andy had going in his career besides live stand-up. He was counting on The Department getting bigger and maybe picked up for TV, so losing it was a significant blow. The second thing he learned, at almost the same time, was that his wife was carrying their first child. And the third thing he learned was that John Oliver was going to move to America right before their Edinburgh run was set to begin. Andy Zaltzman has described June/July 2006 as not a particularly fun time (John Oliver, on the other hand, has described summer 2006 as the time he lost his radio show and thought his career was fucked, so it's a good thing The Daily Show job came along to save him, because otherwise he'd have ended up stuck in the career path he was on in England, which was terrible, it sure would suck to have to stay on that path).

Andy Zaltzman has even said that if it hadn't been for his marriage and having a kid on the way, he might have moved to New York with John to try to keep performing as a double act, since he didn't have enough of a career in Britain to be worth staying for, and all the success he'd had had come from the Zaltzman and Oliver partnership.

I see why Andy Zaltzman found that partnership and briefly considered whether it might be worth moving across an ocean to preserve it. They worked so well together. They got each other's style of comedy, they were similar enough to fit together but different in the right ways to complement each other. They had incredible chemistry together, of the type that Andy had with, as I've said, no one else in the world. Andy had had to start his own comedy night (Political Animal) just because his style was so offbeat that it didn't fit in on regular mixed bills and it annoyed audiences who hadn't come for that specific niche, and the Zaltzman/Oliver double act saved him from having to sell that niche by himself. He was, as he describes it, not excited to have to go back to doing it alone.

He was also not excited to have to turn their double act Edinburgh show into a solo show at the last minute. But he did it, going to Edinburgh 2006 and performing a show called Andy Zaltzman Detonates 70 Minutes of Unbridled Afternoon ("It's important work Zaltzman is doing, at least compared to most other comics, and deserves to be heard ­ if only he was a bit more fluid in its telling" - Steve Bennett, 2006). I guess it's a better title than Andy Zaltzman Goes By Himself to Edinburgh to Talk to Twenty-Five People a Day in a Darkened Room. In Edinburgh 2006, Andy also hosted Political Animal on his own, and turned up to Honourable Men of Art, where they occasionally had John Oliver via the best live video linkup technology 2006 had to offer.

After this, Andy Zaltzman spent a year performing on his own. In 2007 he performed at MICF for the first time, where one time he stayed up all night in a radio studio with Daniel Kitson, playing BBC sound effects and Boney M songs, and Daniel made him do his Marvin Gaye impression. He also went on the Triple M radio show Get This, and was very socially awkward. Then he won the Piece of Wood Award for having other comics vote his show the best one, so that's cool. Clearly he must have been doing something all right, in a year that he's since described in interviews as very rough overall.

And then he was approached by TimesOnline, a subdivision of The Times, to start a trans-Atlantic podcast. The idea was that John Oliver would go into a studio in New York City, and Andy Zaltzman would go into a studio in London, and they would talk to each other about the week's news, and someone would produce and edit it, and that would be a newfangled thing called a podcast. Like the thing that Andy's sister Helen had just started doing. Andy Zaltzman said yes because, in his words, he had "Jack K. Shit" else going on and it was a chance to reunite the double act that had been working for him. John Oliver said yes because, in his words, it is a treat to get to listen to Andy Zaltzman talk for an hour a week. I think John meant it when he said that, because John Oliver had a very good and very busy job as a writer and correspondent on The Daily Show at the time, in addition to a stand-up career in the States and an increasing schedule of events with major American comics, so it's not like he took the Bugle job because he needed the money or the profile boost. I think he really did consider it a treat to listen to Andy Zaltzman talk for an hour a week. And what a treat that is.

They set up a format in which they'd talk on the phone for a bit earlier in the week, to establish a list of topical subjects to cover. Then they'd go away and each write their own material on those subjects. Then on Fridays, they'd connect from their separate studios and discuss the subjects with their material ready. The best bits made it into their respective stand-up shows.

From the beginning, they both contributed a lot to the podcast, but Andy drove the dialogue and tended to come a little more prepared, as is reasonable, given that John Oliver had other shit going on. The Bugle ran in its original form from October 2007 to March 2016, and in that time, Andy Zaltzman turned over an incredible amount of material. It is honestly amazing how much new stuff he came up with every week. Yeah, he had some ideas and concepts that he re-used, and yeah, not 100% of it was solid gold. But a lot of it was very funny. Funny, dense comedy that was new every single week.

Andy Zaltzman is the most creative comedian I've ever heard. I mean, obviously I guess that depends on your definition of "creative", I've seen some comedy shows where it's so creative that I have no idea what's going on (these are called "clowning"). But within the parametres of just writing straightforward stand-up material, I have never heard anything as creative as Andy Zaltzman. He hits a topic from so many directions that no one else would think of. He reaches for absurd comparisons, turns of phrase that make me run back the recording because I could never catch all the meanings at once, five or six different jokes embedded into one sentence. The number of obscure references to history and/or sport and/or Greek mythology (he didn't study Classics for nothing) he can get into any paragraph is blinding. He's fucking amazing.

More than that, The Bugle with Zaltzman and Oliver was an amazing piece of media. It is incredible how they blended interactivity with tightly written material. Comedians riffing with each other is fun because it feels real and immediate and unrehearsed. Carefully written stuff is good because writing something with care gives comedians the time to make it funnier. The Bugle was Zaltzman and Oliver taking their jokes that they'd crafted to be as funny as possible, and using them as the basis for otherwise spontaneous interaction, so they got the best of both worlds. And it worked, every time, because they have the best chemistry I've ever heard in all of comedy. They were like athletes who could always tell where the other was going to end up, they could take their bit and make sure it would land in just the right spot to work with what the other person would have. Even though they didn't know exactly what the other person had, because they didn't write it together. But they knew each other so well that they could anticipate. It's amazing. It's a fucking amazing feat of comedy and it should be in some sort of hall of fame.

In 2008, Andy Zaltzman wrote a book. It's called Does Anything Eat Bankers? and it's a collection of absurd comedy mini-essays about the credit crunch. It's the most 2008 thing I've ever read. It made me laugh out loud a lot. It's available on eBay for insultingly cheap prices and is an excellent summary of Zaltzman's offbeat sense of humour.

From 2007-2014, Andy Zaltzman hosted Political Animal in Edinburgh every year. Usually on his own, though in 2011, John Oliver flew to Edinburgh and they did a few reunion Political Animal gigs, featuring Daniel Kitson reprising his role as God in their God sketch. Andy also kept up his Chocolate Milk Gang membership over those years, doing the Honourable Men of Art gig when it came back in 2008, appearing at some Kitson-compered Late 'n' Lives in the 00s, and at some Kitson-compered Chocolate Milk Gang reunion shows in later years (ZOCK, Fuckstorm 3000, Fuckstorm 3001). Andy did the impressions when Kitson told him to, even though by then he'd long dropped them from his regular act. Andy also performed new Edinburgh solo shows nearly every year from 2007 to 2019 (missing 2009, 2012, and 2015), usually with long convoluted titles in the style of Zaltzman and Oliver ("Life is convoluted, my comedy merely reflects that" - Andy Zaltzman).

In 2014, Andy started doing Satirist For Hire, a show he continued touring off and and on until 2022, in addition to his regular stand-up shows. In Satirist For Hire, the audience could write in with the date they were attending and a subject for Andy to satirize, and the show would consist of him satirizing audience-requested topics. It wasn't improv or anything, he'd get the topics in advance and write stuff about them, new stuff for every show. Which sounds like a ridiculous amount of work, but he was already doing that kind of thing for The Bugle, writing new stuff constantly. Some of these got recorded and released on filler weeks of The Bugle. Topics he got asked to satirize included all 721 Pokemon by name, the autumn equinox, the rebellion in Syria, and his own mother-in-law. He released a DVD of Satirist For Hire that was filmed in 2014, in which he performed the bespoke satire as well a "best of" his other old and new jokes, including some stuff that dates back to the Zaltzman and Oliver catalogue of the early 00s. It also has a DVD extra that's Andy just telling a weird story with no punchline, it's really annoyingly rambling and pointless, even for him. It's great.

During the original run of The Bugle, there were a lot of jokes in which John would tell a star-studded story about his life with celebrities in New York City, and Andy would say he'd had a good pastrami sandwich that week. There were slightly less funny parts at the end of the episodes, in which John would plug some big American event he was doing, and Andy would make a vague plea about small-time stand-up gigs that he couldn't sell. As The Bugle went on, Andy started doing slightly bigger stand-up gigs and sounding slightly less concerned about lack of tickets sold (due to him building up an audience of Bugle fans), though it still didn't look great when put next to John Oliver's projects.

Alongside this, Andy Zaltzman started getting jobs in the world of cricket as well. He was a massive, utterly obsessed cricket fan, made a lot of cricket references in his stand-up and on The Bugle, and at some point some people took notice and started inviting him to do cricket things. Spots on sports shows in which he'd analyze cricket. Cricket commentary. Collation of cricket stats. After several years of this, he started getting to travel for it, announcing on The Bugle that he'd be doing stand-up gigs in Bangladesh because he was going there anyway to attend cricket games and be paid to commentate on them. He doesn't have personal social media, but he does have a Twitter account that Tweets nothing but obscure cricket stats that he has personally worked out. What a weird guy, spending all his own time gathering information about one niche subject and then collating all the stuff from various sources and posting his findings on the internet. Nerd. You wouldn't catch me doing that.

Off the success of The Bugle, he started getting some other stuff. He was a regular host for a while on the Radio 4 panel show called 7 Day Sunday, where he worked with Chris Addison and Al Murray and Rebecca Front, I have frustratingly never been able to find episodes of that show. He got a Radio 4 mini-series called Andy Zaltzman’s History of the Third Millenium, which I have also never been able to find. He started appearing as a guest on The News Quiz somewhat regularly. He did that one episode of 8 Out of 10 Cats one time, and it was very awkward. Stewart Lee put him on Alternative Comedy Experience.

In 2008, John Oliver released a stand-up DVD called Terrifying Times. Andy flew to New York to appear in the recording of it. He came on stage a couple of times, for a few minutes each time, interacting with John so they could include some of their joint sketch material in the DVD. There's also a DVD extra that's a conversation between Zaltzman and Oliver, which is hilarious.

In 2012, Andy Zaltzman again went to New York, to perform some stand-up on John Oliver's New York Stand Up Show (along with Chocolate Milk Gang's David O'Doherty), a confusingly titled American television program with various comedians doing short sets compered by John Oliver. After years of relentlessly making fun of John on The Bugle for how he started saying "gotten" once he'd been in America for a bit, Andy got on American TV and immediately said the word "sports", which was adorable. He tried to fit in. It didn't really work and the crowd didn't know what to make of him, but he tried.

In the original run of The Bugle, Andy Zaltzman really honed his trademark style. It was marked by absurd analogies that treat any of the following like each other: sports, politics, Greek mythology, religion, current events, and occasionally a movie or something. He started doing "pun runs", where he'd spend several minutes doing one coherent monologue in which he'd make as many puns as possible themed around a single subject, usually while John Oliver screamed in agony in the background (you'd think it would stop being funny but it didn't, at one point he started using a little bell to mark each pun). Jokes with footnotes. Jokes where the joke is that the story is pointless. Everything he said carefully and tightly wrapped in at least 18 layers of irony. A running joke in which he'd introduce each Bugle episode by discussing something obscure that had happened in history on the day they were recording. So many cricket and snooker references.

An audio cryptic crossword that ran for the first thirty or so Bugle episodes, in which he'd read out a clue every week, but the clue wasn't to anything that made sense, it was just to some shit he'd made up in his head, and he never released a visual to accompany it. Yet it did work, some people at home actually solved it all and wrote it all out and it all fit together perfectly (that is how you do a crossword, Pemberton).

Massive truckloads of absurdity dumped with increasing urgency all over current events, as though he thought he could bury the dark realities under it. Zaltzman and Oliver's name for this absurdity was "bullshit"; it used to be a running joke that they'd advertise The Bugle by promising it would be completely free of facts, providing the best bullshit you've ever heard. Long, intricate bullshit that all ties together and keeps going just when you think there can't be any more to this story that Andy has entirely made up. Like the athletes he wrote about at university, no one can sue him for libel because they don't actually exist.

One time their producer Chris Skinner accused them of having an especially sweary Bugle, so far containing "twelve fucks and one cunt", and Andy said that's the Jewish view of the New Testament, and they (rightly) talked for like three years about how good a joke that was to come up with off the cuff. Andy's lapsed Jewish-ness is also a frequent topic of his jokes, usually how incredibly lapsed he is, being a massive fan of bacon sandwiches and one time his sister gave him an entire dead pig as a Christmas gift, a story that made it into a Daniel Kitson stand-up show as well as a lot of Bugle jokes about how in most cases that would be a hate crime.

There were also jokes throughout that Bugle run about John Oliver's increasingly high-profile career; Andy gave him the nickname Johnny Showbiz and cheerfully kept telling stories of pastrami sandwiches after John's stories about meeting Samuel L Jackson or whatever. I first listened to The Bugle a few months after I listened to the old Russell Howard/Jon Richardson BBC 6 Music shows, and those were basically an audio documentary of a friendship slowly cracking apart due to one party's jealousy of the other's increasing success (I mean, there were other issues too), so I found The Bugle an odd contrast at first. Because Andy made those jokes, but it sounded like there was absolutely no genuine jealousy behind them. If anything it went the other way, he seemed to vaguely pity John's weird hectic life, and John seemed to generally agree that this was too much celebrity and Andy was better off in his shed. I started wondering: how is Andy this okay with the disparity? Is he hiding the jealousy really well or is he made of stone?

A while into my the first listen-through of The Bugle, after wondering this for a few weeks, I came to the conclusion that the reason Andy Zaltzman sounded unbothered by John Oliver meeting Samuel L Jackson is that Andy Zaltzman truly, deep down to his core, did not want to meet Samuel L Jackson. That man was not impressed by anything in the world that's not a cricket stat or a bad pun, and he entirely meant it when he mercilessly mocked John for the embarrassing transgression of winning an Emmy. That wasn't masked bitterness, he just thought winning an Emmy was genuinely embarrassing. And John Oliver, once again, seemed to basically agree.

In 2011, there was the News of the World scandal, owned by News International, owned by The Times, which owned The Times of London, which owned TimeOnline, which funded The Bugle. Andy and John decided to really go after everyone behind the phone hacking scandal, for several weeks in a row. They didn't just talk about the shit journalists, they went for the entire system of tabloid press and its collusion with government, the people at the top of the both sides of that, everything that allowed this to happen. While doing this, they had a running joke in which they'd tap their mic and ask "Is this on?", implying that their overlords at The Times would cut their mic in retaliation for talking shit about Rupert Murdoch. Then The New York Times wrote an article about what they'd been doing, and they started to sound slightly more genuinely worried that this might get them in trouble.

A couple of months later, for what both sides called unrelated reasons, TimesOnline fired John and Andy, pulling The Bugle's funding. In a Bugle episode in December 2011, they said this might be their last one, they were scrambling to find alternative funding sources but might have to just end the podcast. The tone in that episode made the discrepancies in their careers clear. John repeatedly emphasized how much he loved The Bugle and everything they'd built together, and how he'd like to save it. While Andy had a lot more genuine desperation in his voice as he again used the term "Jack K. Shit" to describe what else he had going on in his career, he actually needed to #SaveTheBugle. You can see that as well in how careful they both were. John and Andy both said they were dropped for apolitical reasons, just lack of funding. But John messed around a bit and implied that this may not be the whole truth, while Andy sounded less willing to possibly get them in more trouble. Years later, in a 2023 episode of the rebooted Bugle, the subject of The Times came up, and Andy offhandedly mentioned that The Bugle used to be funded by The Times, until they were dropped "suspiciously shortly after" they made a bunch of Rupert Murdoch jokes. This was the first time Andy had acknowledged a possible connection, and I liked that, like a sign that he'd finally achieved enough success independently so he could afford to talk like that a bit too.

I made a compilation of this situation a couple of years ago. Most of the Bugle bits in it are John Oliver's lines, because the compilation was meant to contrast John Oliver's running joke on Last Week Tonight where he'd talk shit about HBO's parent company AT&T, referring to them as "business daddy" and gloating about how he could do that without getting in trouble, with the time in 2011 when he went on The Bugle and talked shit about their business daddy and did in fact get in trouble. Andy had a lot of good jokes about Rupert Murdoch and The Times during those episodes, they mostly aren't in this compilation because they weren't as relevant to the Bugle-LWT John Oliver Versus Business Daddy narrative, but the compilation still tells the story. Also I illustrated it with a bunch of amusing old Zaltzman and Oliver pictures.

In early 2012, they came back and announced that they had managed to sell enough listener subscriptions to keep The Bugle going independently. The Bugle continues to run that way to this day, free to listen to but funded by optional listener subscriptions, no ads (aside from a short time in 2018 when they partnered with Radiotopia and Andy had to read out those mattress ads and stuff, and you could hear his soul sinking into the floor, luckily that didn't last long), just because they created a product that's good enough to be worth its audience paying for. It also gets funded by merch sales and things. They have hats and socks.

The Bugle ran for a couple more glorious years as an independent podcast fronted by Zaltzman and Oliver. Then in summer 2013, Jon Stewart went away to film a movie and John Oliver filled in as a guest host for The Daily Show. John Oliver would do a fantastic job fronting America's flagship topical comedy show all week, and then come on The Bugle on Friday and lament how badly it was going and how he couldn't wait to get back to the sidelines where he belonged. But after that, as he'd proven his abilities as a host, HBO offered John Oliver his own weekly show. In December 2013, John Oliver proceeded to have a breakdown, but still left The Daily Show to start Last Week Tonight.

As shown in the compilation I've just linked, which is entitled Johnny Showbiz Gets His Own Show and Has a Breakdown, they promised at the time that this would absolutely not affect The Bugle. They promised! Repeatedly. I mean, they sounded at the time like they were trying to convince themselves and each other as much as the listeners, but still, they promised.

They mostly kept that promise for about a year, taking a few more breaks than usual throughout 2014 to accommodate John's busier schedule, but I don't think The Bugle declined in quality when it did go out. And given how few weeks off they'd had since October 2007, even The Bugle with extra breaks was still a hell of a lot of comedy material for them to turn over. They took a break for the whole summer in 2014, their first time taking more than a couple of weeks off in a row, but came back with a great run of episodes in the fall.

Andy did mention to Stuart Goldsmith, in a 2014 interview, that he was hoping he might be able to be involved with Last Week Tonight in some way, at some point. It's not clear whether he ever mentioned this to John Oliver. Seems like the sort of thing he should have maybe mentioned to John Oliver, instead of saving it for an uncharacteristically vulnerable podcast interview. But maybe he did ask John Oliver for that and it just didn't work out. He doesn't say. It certainly didn't end up happening.

Then, throughout 2015, The Bugle died a slow and incredibly painful death. They kept doing filler episodes, in which Andy would explain that John was busy, but promise he'd be back next week. Then, often, nothing, not even a filler episode, for weeks. Before 2015, they always put out an episode every week, usually a new episode, but if they didn't have one, there would be filler: an outtakes show or a best-of show or some recordings of stand-up or something. One time the producer Chris Skinner strung together a whole filler episode by doing things like interviewing their friend Alun Cochrane (back when Alun Cochrane was cool, Alun Cochrane is now no longer cool). But in 2015, they began to hit the limit on the number of weeks in a row when they could do filler episodes, so they started just putting out fuck all.

John Oliver did turn up for Bugle episodes occasionally in 2015, but when he did, he sounded increasingly distracted and like his heart wasn't in it. Which is fair enough, because we now know that he spent 2015 trying to write and present a research-intensive weekly HBO show, as well as caring for his wife while she had a high-risk pregnancy. It's as good an excuse as I've ever heard to not be able to talk shit about Bashar al-Assad or the band LMFAO with Andy Zaltzman every week (also, you have to give John Oliver credit for the fact that he did The Bugle very well for years despite never actually needing it, and was just in it for the love of the game). But he probably should have just said that, rather than clearly telling Andy all the time that he'd be back soon, which we know he was doing because Andy sounded like he believed it when he relayed that message to the listeners, and then it kept not happening.

To be fair, Andy also should have called time on the podcast way earlier - at the very least announcing an extended break, if not just acknowledging that it's not going to work anymore and ending it. Instead, Andy kept coming back to introduce filler episodes and promise us John would be back soon. And every once in a while he'd do a frustrated new episode with a checked-out John Oliver. I listened to the worst of this period of The Bugle within a couple of days, and that was rough, hearing it all at once like that. Had me yelling at my phone, "Oh my God, stop it! Just put it out of its fucking misery! This is an ex-podcast! Stop nailing it to a perch and trying to sell it back to us!"

Andy mentioned the "Jack K. Shit else going on" thing a couple of times as a reason for why he kept trying, but I don't even think that was true anymore. He had a big stand-up audience garnered by the success of The Bugle. He had his cricket career. He had regular radio work. He didn't have some big TV career or anything, but he had enough to be getting on with. Enough so he did not have to be as desperate as he got about trying to keep a podcast going when it was clearly over.

I think he was scared to try to do his comedy career without basing it around bouncing stuff off John Oliver. As his comedy career did have a history of spectacularly not working when he wasn't working with John.

Throughout 2015, Andy's increasing frustration could be heard in his voice during intros for the podcast filler episodes, and in the recordings of his 2015 stand-up that got released as said filler. He developed a joke in which he'd ask the audience who's heard of John Oliver, find the one or two people who said no, and shout, "Fuck you Percy Primetime, everyone in this room has heard of me!" "Percy Primetime" was a nickname spat with quite a bit less affection than the old "Johnny Showbiz". For the record I don't think they had a real falling out or anything, but there was some genuine bitterness there for the first time after all those years of fame disparity, it finally became clear that Andy Zaltzman's not actually made of stone.

In early 2016, The Bugle came back with one full episode that was actually very good, John and Andy were both really into it. John Oliver apologized for the many jokes he'd made in previous years about how funny it would be if Donald Trump ran for president, and they announced that The Bugle would be continuing for the forseeable future, just going once a month instead of once a week, so they could stop with the filler stuff and be more realistic about what was possible around new schedules. Then two months later, they came back and admitted this was not, in fact, realistic, and John was leaving The Bugle. Andy announced his plan to reboot the podcast in the fall, with John Oliver replaced by a rotating series of co-hosts from around the world. Andy sounded fairly terrified of this prospect.

The last episode of the John Oliver-era Bugle was number 295, and for reasons that Andy Zaltzman finds funny, he made the first episode of the new era episode 4001. This came out on October 24, 2016, and featured Hari Kondabolu as the guest co-host. Hari's a New York comedian whom I assume was recommended by John Oliver, as I can't imagine how else he and Andy would have crossed paths, and they sure didn't sound like two people who had ever encountered each other before. It was fucking awkward. It didn't help that it was a couple of months before the Donald Trump election, so a pretty intense time to try to just jump back into topical comedy with a "get to know the rebooted podcast" episode.

Basically, if Andy Zaltzman feared that his offbeat niche humour would not work without the one comedian in the world who was tailor-made to fit into it... those fears were not alleviated in that first episode. Hari Kondabolu is awesome, he has since become one of my favourite Bugle guests and I've gotten into his own stand-up, but that first time, he had no fucking idea what to make of Andy, and not much of an idea of what he'd signed up for with The Bugle. Andy had no idea how to talk to anyone in the world who isn't John Oliver. It was weird.

Episode 4002 featured Nish Kumar, who came in and immediately shouted "Fuck you Chris!", which was a running joke from the John Oliver-era Bugle (referring to producer Chris Skinner, John and Andy and the listeners would affectionately say "fuck you" to Chris a lot for reasons that made sense at the time), an instant way to assure the audience that he knew exactly what he'd signed up for. Nish had been listening to The Bugle since it started when he was still doing student comedy, and as far as I can tell, he'd pretty much climbed the ranks of the comedy industry in the hopes of someday getting to touch the garment of his heroes Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver (he might have had one or two reasons besides that, but it was mainly that one). And he got his wish. He's now the second most frequent co-host of the Bugle 4000-series (after Alice Fraser), and one time he got to play football with John Oliver and they got into fights on the pitch.

The Bugle continued on shaky ground for the first 25 episodes or so, really for the first 50. Andy has said since that he knows those episodes were rough, that he'd got so comfortable in his familiar rapport with John Oliver that he just couldn't generate the same thing with people he didn't know as well, and he didn't know anyone as well as John. Though it clearly wasn't just about who he knew as well as John, but who he could comfortably work with as well as John (which was no one). Helen Zaltzman came on a few of those early episodes, and she was a fantastic guest, really funny and took Andy to task and held her own on every subject, but it is incredible how little chemistry Andy Zaltzman managed to have with his own sister. He brought in Anuvab Pal, a comedian from Mumbai whom Andy knew from his time covering cricket over there, they were friends in real life, but they often sounded like they'd never met before. The only person Andy sounded like he knew how to talk to at all was Nish, whom he'd known for a few years through stand-up by the time the Bugle 4000-series started. The Nish Kumar episodes were the best ones, especially early on, but it wasn't anywhere near the levels of Zaltzman and Oliver chemistry.

Andy has said in interviews since that he was struggling during that time, and that started occasionally making its way into the Bugle content, which previously had rarely been particularly personal. At the end of 2016, Andy Zaltzman did a year-in-review stand-up show (something he did every year for a while, a whole stand-up show written to only be performed one time to mark the end of the year), and (on the subject of reviewers who aren't Steve Bennett), Dominic Maxwell in The Times (fuck off, Times) wrote a review in which he called Andy "John Oliver's left-behind sidekick". Andy brought that up on The Bugle several times, citing the "sidekick" line with real bitterness, and rightly so. Partly because he has never been anyone's sidekick (except maybe Daniel Kitson's once in a while at old Late 'n' Live gigs), and partly because that was a solo stand-up show that was not affiliated with The Bugle and definitely had nothing to do with John Oliver, so he shouldn't have been put in John Oliver's shadow in a context like that. It was actually a 4-star review, Maxwell liked the show. But the review's first paragraph was:

Why has John Oliver become a star in America while his old partner in seemingly shambolic yet secretly serrated political satire, Andy Zaltzman, remains a cult comedian with a sideline as a cricket stats man? Is it because Zaltzman, with his receded Harpo Marx explosion of hair, is less telegenic than Oliver, with whom he co-hosted the podcast The Bugle until last year? Is it because, although he is every bit as grounded in reality as Oliver, Zaltzman is a more devotedly loopy joke-writer, so that he always adds his own twist of wry absurdism to our leaders’ already skewed logic?

Starting a four-star review with that is one hell of a backhanded compliment, no matter how positive you go on to be about the show itself. I assume that review was the main one - probably among plenty of other reviews that had built up Andy's resentment over time, but that Maxwell one was clearly the straw that broke his back - that led Andy to record this "interview with himself" to put in the "in the bin" section at the beginning of a Bugle episode in early 2017.

So the stone was starting to show serious cracks at that point. At one point in 2017, Andy plugged his upcoming run at MICF, saying it would be good to perform in Australia because his career could "flush down the toilet in the other direction" for a bit. Nish Kumar laughed way too hard at that, I remember saying to my phone, "Nish, stop! Can't you see he's having a breakdown? Stop laughing at that and give the man a hug!"

It was hard to listen to the most stoically-dedicated-to-irony-and-bullshit man I'd ever heard have a breakdown, but things eventually got steadier. Andy did some episodes from MCIF in Melbourne, and on Bugle episode 4023, in April 2017, he brought in Australian comedians Tom Ballard and Alice Fraser. Tom and Alice both became Bugle regulars, but Alice especially started doing it all the time. Alice, like Nish, told stories of how she'd been a dedicated listener to the original run of The Bugle since before she'd started stand-up, and you can see Andy's influence on her comedic style (you can see it in Nish's too - John and Andy both influencing Nish a lot, while Alice is a lot more like Andy than she is like John).

The inclusion of Alice Fraser changed the game for the rebooted Bugle, as she quickly became a very frequent presence, and Andy developed as good a rapport with her as he could have with almost anyone. There are some sweet moments in her early episodes when Alice would pull out some Zaltzman-esque puns or absurd analogies, and Andy would sound genuinely touched that someone else was into his weird niche humour. He immediately started including her in some bit parts of his stand-up shows too, whenever he was in Australia or she was in England.

The Bugle also got better once they started doing two guests at a time instead of just one. Andy has said since that at some point he realized he and John Oliver had good enough chemistry to carry an entire episode, but he couldn't manage that with anyone else. However, he could do it if there were three people, so the guests could interact with each other too, and the three different types of interactions could get them through the 40-45 minutes more easily. They also started doing Bugle live shows, which went well, got toured in England and even in America.

Since then, The Bugle has grown into a thing that is new and very different from its original form, but also very good. As of May 2024 they've just hit episode 4304, having recently passed the 295 episodes that Andy did with John Oliver. Its format has changed. People still turn up with pre-written stuff, but it's not the same perfectly choreographed/somehow improvised dance of tightly written material that it used to be. It's got a wider range of guests, more diverse topics, fewer insular in-jokes. Some other format changes too, like dropping the listener correspondence. But a lot of the guest co-hosts breathe new life into it, bring different perspectives and styles of humour, contribute more than the original version with only two people ever could. It's introduced me to lots of great comedians from various countries (well, mainly Britain and America and Australia, but a couple from India, a couple from Ireland, one I really like from NZ), I've gotten into a lot of people's stand-up because I liked them on The Bugle. They've also created spinoff podcasts, like The Gargle, hosted by Alice Fraser.

The Bugle 4000 has brought in a bunch of comedians from the younger generation, but also let Andy bring in some old friends. David O'Doherty and Josie Long of the Chocolate Milk Gang have done it a few times, they make top quality episodes. Mark Steel's been on a bunch of times, who used to do the earliest days of Political Animal and of course is a king of Radio 4 along with Andy. Mark and Andy are great together, you can hear how much they enjoy each other's company, to the point where part of me dreads the day when Andy decides to be nice to his buddy Mark and let Mark bring his son to work. I don't think they'd do that though, The Bugle has standards. No Elliot Steel, please.

A big highlight of Andy bringing back old friends is Chris Addison, who worked on The Department back in 2004-06. Addison stopped doing stand-up years ago as he got a bigger career in acting and directing and things like that, and he's said he loves doing The Bugle because it gives him a chance to write comedy material the way he doesn't anymore. And because it's the only time he does that, he's not throwing his scraps at a topical podcast while spreading ideas across multiple platforms. He's coming up with solid gold, and letting The Bugle have all of it. Every time he comes on, he does his homework so well beforehand that the other comedians, including Andy, have to raise their game to keep up.

As for Zaltzman himself, he had some shaky times for his comedy material in those early reboot days. He started seeming burned out from writing so much without getting anywhere, and was re-using a lot of concepts for a while. It wasn't bad, but he did stop innovating for a while after John Oliver disappeared. The absurd scenarios in his monologues got a bit by-the-numbers.

However, as The Bugle found its feet in the new era, Andy broke through that and started writing better than ever before. He, as they say in sports and video games, jumped levels. Suddenly came out of a plateau and immediately jumped to a much higher spot than one would expect, like the slow and steady escalation of talent suddenly caught up to him all at once. Like magic. That is one of my favourite things about sports, when an athlete suddenly jumps levels, like magic. Andy jumped levels a couple of times in the late 2010s, and it was so cool to listen to. A big part of it was the way he'd tie together lots of ideas at once instead of hitting them one at a time, the way he'd make connections that turned his monologues into more than the sum of their parts.

He really, really hit a stride in 2019, as the world went to shit around him, and he started incorporating a bit more genuine emotion than he ever had before. So many emotions, all of them various flavours of searing fury at the state of the government. At first the bits of emotion were added unexpectedly, like he was experimenting with it, but then he learned how to blend it seamlessly into his previous knack for absurd ironic bullshit, it was amazing and I think he was growing into one of the best comic writers there is.

I sort of have a theory about that, which unfortunately gets me into a sports analogy so I hope I can be indulged in that briefly. As a coach, I am very familiar with the phenomenon where two athletes work with almost no one but each other for years. In some ways it makes them much better than they could be otherwise, because they're constantly being challenged by someone who knows their style inside and out, so they have to constantly evolve in order to stay ahead of the other person figuring out how to counter what they do, pushing each other to higher levels of the sport. But in other ways, they often end up with big holes in their game, because they never learn to respond to anything their main training partner doesn't do.

I think that may have slightly happened with Zaltzman and Oliver. And more to Zaltzman than to Oliver, because John was doing all kinds of other things, writing for The Daily Show with lots of people who weren't Andy Zaltzman. While the main thing Andy did was write for The Bugle. Even in his solo stand-up career, most of his shows were the best bits of what he came up with for The Bugle, so they were still written first for the purpose of bouncing off John Oliver.

So much of the beauty in the original Bugle was the way John and Andy found each other so funny, they were writing to make each other laugh. But this meant Andy Zaltzman was restricted to material that would fit his established role in a double act. The role of being the intellectual one who comes at things sideways while John tackles them head-on. That role did not leave him space to experiment with things like genuine emotion, even in spots where that could make a routine stronger. I can think of a few Zaltzman routines from 2019 that wouldn't have worked on the original Bugle, not because they wouldn't make John Oliver laugh, but because they wouldn't really have complemented John's stuff in the right way. The original Bugle had a perfect balance of comedic styles, which was what made it great, but you can't go throwing curve balls at a balance.

So my theory is that, once Andy got away from being restricted to the perfectly chosen double act role, and he then got over his slump from when he was upset about losing the double act/possibly worried he couldn't do it on his own, he had a couple of levels that were ready to be jumped. The Bugle released a bunch of the recording from Andy Zaltzman's year-in-review stand-up show from the end of 2019, and it's incredible. The "best of" from an absolutely stellar Bugle year, taking the strongest bits from all those weeks he'd spent writing, and tying them around some structure. It's one of the best fucking things I've ever heard. Andy Zaltzman does everything at once in it.

In 2019, Miles Jupp left The News Quiz, a major topical comedy panel show on Radio 4 (I'm pretty sure it's the major comedy show on Radio 4). Angela Barnes, Nish Kumar, and Andy Zaltzman - three of The News Quiz's most frequent guests at the time - each spent some time guest hosting it, as they applied for the role of permanent host. Andy got the job. He mentioned this on The Bugle during the week before his first episodes of The News Quiz as permanent host, and did it with his usual flair for self-promotion, which is almost none, he just said it's happening. Fortunately Nish Kumar was on that Bugle episode with him, and Nish insisted on interrupting Andy to tell the listeners what a big deal The News Quiz is, that Andy won't brag about it but he got a huge job on a flagship show after years and years of smaller spots on radio shows and earning his place there, and it's really cool. It was adorable to hear Nish hyping up Andy for getting a job for which (Nish didn't mention this part) Nish Kumar had also applied.

In October 2022, John Oliver came back for a special Bugle 15th birthday episode, just him and Andy for half an hour, and it made me have to pull my hat down on the bus so people couldn't see that I had tears in my eyes from laughter (honestly, I should have anticipated that and not listened to it on the bus). It had been years since they'd worked together, and they mentioned during that episode that they hadn't seen each other in years and hadn't even had much contact since the end of The Bugle, but somehow they fell right back into the perfect rhythm. It's nice to know the magic's still there, even if they're not using it anymore.

So that pretty much brings you up to speed with where Andy Zaltzman's at now. For the last few years, his career has been hosting The Bugle in its expanded form that includes live shows sometimes, hosting The News Quiz, collating cricket stats and still doing lots of cricket-related work. He hasn't done a new Edinburgh hour since 2019, but he toured Satirist For Hire in 2022. He definitely can't describe his career with the term "Jack K. Shit going on" anymore.

Quick question, just asking for a friend - how many thousand words do you have to write before something goes from being "quite long for a Tumblr post" to "quite short for a biographical book"?

In fall 2023, Andy Zaltzman mentioned that he "might" have some new stand-up to announce soon. That surprised me, because to be honest, between The News Quiz and The Bugle and the cricket, he's fucking busy these days, and he must be making enough money to not need stand-up. He turns 50 this October. He's been slowing down the stand-up over the last few years, after about twenty years of doing it constantly. I thought he might be winding down that side of his career.

But suddenly, he's mentioning possible new stand-up in 2024. He mentioned it briefly in the fall and then didn't bring it up for so long that I started to think he must have changed his mind about it. But then, in spring 2024, he suddenly started talking about live gigs again. He booked some WIPs in May and June and plugged them on The Bugle. He slowly, with his usual level of self-promotional skills, barely admitted to the fact that he has a whole stand-up tour planned for November 2024. "November 2024?" I thought. "That seems odd. Andy rarely plans so far ahead, he's usually scrambling to plug gigs he forgot he has next week. And now, when I'd thought he might be leaving stand-up behind, he's planning an entire tour many months in advance. Why did he suddenly decide to do a whole big stand-up tour again, and once he did decide that, why did he plan it for so late in the year? I mean, I'm not complaining. More Zaltzman stand-up is great! But it's a break from his usual pattern."

That is what I thought, to myself, as I listened to his updates on The Bugle. And then I sat in the break room at work and I refreshed a page and saw the Taskmaster season 18 lineup and I jumped into the air and all became clear. He's capitalizing. Andy "No Commercial Promotion Skills Whatsoever" Zaltzman is going to capitalize on his fall 2024 Taskmaster bump in popularity by following it up with a tour. I'm so fucking pleased for him.

Guys. It's going to be so good. He's so good, you're all going to love him, I promise. Do you know what it will do to Taskmaster to have someone who can run circles around Alex Horne in the field of analyzing everything via obscure statistics? He's going to make Alex look like an amateur. He's going to have an explanation for every single thing that happens and none of the explanations will be rooted in any kind of reality but they will all make internal sense.

Oh God, people are going to have to talk about him. It is so funny to listen to people try to work out what to make of Andy Zaltzman, particularly if they're not in Andy's carefully curated niche of people whom he's decided he can manage to talk to. Ed Gamble is going to talk about Andy Zaltzman. 17 years after sharing a stage with Andy at Late 'n' Live where Andy declared Marek Larwood the most fuckable member of We Are Klang (he was incorrect, but not for the reasons Tumblr thinks, I would like to immediately apologize for saying that), Greg Davies will have to judge whatever absurd bullshit comes out of Andy's brain. There will be so many cricket references.

Have I mentioned that a cornerstone of Andy Zaltzman's comedy is turning everything into a sport? That's part of his absurd analogies, he analyzes everything as though it's sports. And I love people who analyze Taskmaster as though it's sports. Andy Zaltzman is going to go on Taskmaster and treat it like sports. Oh it's going to be so much fun!

I cannot wait. I cannot fucking wait. I've just realized he's going to have to plug Taskmaster on The Bugle. That'll be weird. Who's on TV now, Johnny Showbiz? I mean, still John, still very much John Oliver, but Andy as well now! You did it, Andy! It only took 17 years!

[sonkitty]

The Sideburns Scheme Post #22

(For reference: The Sideburns Scheme)

Crowley, Good Omens 2, Episode 2, The Clue, so were the goats

...

Hairstyle Notes

The red hair is not as fluffy and a little longer compared to the earlier minisode portion that started off the episode.

This style is what most closely resembles a "human" reading with short sideburns from the season 2 present day. Crowley is with two humans and no supernatural beings. The humans assume he is human during the scene.

Even though it's the accessory on the head, even the headband itself changed with its appearance in the back. While that looks to be a continuity issue, it's good to keep in mind that Crowley can control his own appearance so is likely mixing this headband appearance with the reading from the space.

...

Earthly Objects

(For reference: Earthly Objects)

Job sits on the ground against some rocks. Sitis touches her own clothing.

Crowley likely receives credit for a miracle touch on a human when he says, "You tell me," and hisses at Sitis. This action looks like compelling someone for an answer though that answer is something Sitis herself decides. The name, "Bildad the Shuhite" is then said.

That name is his alias for these two. It's a human name from the Book of Job itself, and it's going to be reused later when he has this same hairstyle. While these circumstances are understandable in the context they happen, it's also a clue about the potential rule that Crowley isn't allowed to say his own name for any time period during the entirety of Good Omens 2.

Crowley has several questions when first talking to Job. Job says Sitis' name. They both say "God," in a way that I think qualifies as a name.

It's hard to really see much in the way of pockets. Everyone's separated and contained in their own cuts for most of the scene.

While Job and Sitis occasionally make pockets, those pockets are small and hard to notice to begin with. Their thumb joints do suspiciously align with edges of their clothing at times even though the Tied Hands aren't around.

Crowley's headband is like his substitute Belt Head at least. Sitis also wears something over her head.

Crowley still has the threads on his robe making pockets over his chest for where his Tied Hands would be.

When Crowley turns to show his back to the camera, then shows his front again, he does receive some extra lighting over the part of his chest exposed, before his beard covers it. He receives lighting generally in that area sometimes, and it's where the upper portion of his Tied Hands would be in the present day.

There's one cut with Job on the ground and Crowley standing, so a pocket generally exists between them though it doesn't seem to do anything special. There's another cut with Sitis pocketed between Job still sitting and Crowley still standing. Again, it doesn't seem to do anything special either.

For my tangential reading in my desperate attempt to improve my play, I finished The Sandman Volume 3. I'm still re-reading the Good Omens book.

...

Story Commentary

From the last scene, the story greatly implied that this part of the minisode is from Crowley's point of view. Aziraphale isn't around, and Crowley himself received stronger focus from the camera work.

When Crowley is talking to Job, the lighting on him is darker and favors his left.

When Sitis arrives, the lighting shifts. It then favors Crowley's right. With more light on him, his hair looks more red. After that, the hair generally stays as more red and favoring his right, regardless of the camera angle.

In trying to study the space and understand what's happening with the hair, the camera work ensures it is known that the space still has a roof—or at least roof edges—of a human-built structure, even if it is damaged and with an open threshold. Light pours in, presumably from that damage.

Crowley is not giving off the impression of someone secretly trying to save goats and children here. Without knowing how the minisode ends, the goats seem "destroyed", and now he's after the children.

Things don't look good. Well, things don't look good for people like Job, Sitis, and Aziraphale. Hell would be rather pleased.

Crowley expects Job to be furious with God and says so.

But Job isn't furious with God. He's furious with himself.

Then comes the main hint of Crowley's sympathy from the questions, "Yourself? Why, what have you done?" Then he looked like he wanted to say something more to Job's answer, but they were interrupted with Sitis' arrival.

We'll get a glimpse of Crowley's real scheme for this minisode in the next scene.

...

That's it for this post. Sometimes I edit my posts, FYI.

...

Before the next post in this series, I am going to take some time to review things for The Pocket Trick that I'm hopefully starting to piece together and may update the main Sideburns Scheme post as well.

...

Main post:

The Sideburns Scheme

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s2 ep22: Innocence

I remember most of this episode, especially how dumb the twist at the end was, but it had so much good stuff for Tuvok, I can kind of forgive it.

I forgot that a redshirt got killed off in this one, they really are dropping like flies this season! That brings this season's grand total to six so far, and the season isn't over yet! I remember at the beginning of the season they specifically mentioned Voyager having 154 crew on board, and now they should be down to 148. Idk how they're gonna have anybody left at this rate- I'm interested to see what the final numbers end up being, and if they fudge the numbers later.

The main point of this episode, though, was getting to see Tuvok be a good space dad, and he was. The three kids he rescued were thankfully pretty cute and non-annoying, so it was a lot of fun to watch Tuvok wrangle them. (With only slightly more exasperation than he wrangles the Voyager crew with, lol.) It was wonderful to get a Tuvok focused episode that actually focused on him as a person, rather than as a prop for evil mind takeover nonsense like they gave him last time. Vulcan philosophy requires detachment and controlled responses to everything, but when Tuvok gets to take care of people, like he does for these three marooned children, and for the dying ensign at the beginning, we get to see what a deeply caring person he actually is underneath. Whenever he talks about his family back home, he has so much love for them, and it's a poignant reminder that Tuvok, of all the main characters, has lost the most by being marooned out in the Delta Quadrant, but he also has the most reason to keep fighting to get back home to them.

I honestly don't think Tim Russ gets enough credit for how diffiicult a role he had to play as a Vulcan, who isn't supposed to show emotion, and yet he managed to convey Tuvok's whole personality, and the emotional life he keeps hidden underneath, with the smallest, subtlest gestures. He gives a truly masterful performance each and every episode, and he's so good you almost don't notice, except in episodes like this. I almost cried when Tuvok sang the song he used to sing to his kids. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Tuvok is the good space dad we all deserve.

I really wish they'd have come up with a better explanation at the end than the ridiculous 'these aliens age backward!' nonsense they had. Literally any other explanation to make it more plausible would have helped, because even as a kid, I was sitting there trying to think of how reverse-aging could even work, which took away from the emotional impact of the story. (Also, if they reverse age, the people on the planet would be referring to them as 'elders' not 'children'- but nobody apparently thought very hard about this one, so I wont either!) In the end, though the dumb ending lowers my estimation of the story itself, I'm still appreciative of the character scenes this ep gave us with Tuvok.

Tl;dr: A great character piece for Tuvok, despite a weak plot.

[thegeminisage]

whoops, i almost forgot about the star trek update. tuesday we watched tng's "firstborn" and "bloodlines" and last night we watched ds9's "the wire" (honorific)

firstborn (tng):

i was actually bracing for this one to suck ass bc everyone says worf is a bad dad. and i dont think he is!!! like, it doesn't come as easily to him as it does to sisko, and he sometimes forgets to be gentle or kind with alexander because he's so laser focused on how things SHOULD be he forgets to the importance of taking others' feelings into account, but that's how he is ALL THE TIME with EVERYONE not just his kid. considering the circumstances i'd say he's doing well

before we get started, GREAT cameo from the duras sisters. i was initially really annoyed with their tit windows but im becoming rather fond

i really liked "the family protector guy "k'mter" at first because he said all the right things to alexander...like, it's scary not being able to defend yourself, etc. then he also was a dick to alexander and i was really exasperated...but then he IS alexander so that totally fixes it. he's angry with himself and conflicted and just wants a HUG FROM HIS DAD and that FIXED it!!! like when he said "nobody will look at you and see a human you are alone on this ship" initially it felt like racism but it being like, not quite self-loathing but just bitter experience...that's actually so clever

this is the only episode where they brought up alexander's mom kind of hating ""klingon stuff"" and how that could possibly have negatively impacted him and it only got two lines of dialogue but still. i think it's really damning that she hated her own heritage and also brought her kid up to hate it and now he's sort of out here...pretending to be human, almost, to the point where he doesn't want to participate in hsi own culture or even bond with his own father (a klingon). like it sucks so bad for him

i was afraid that the plot twist would be "k'mter talks alexander into wanting to be a warrior after all just when worf realizes he doesn't have to be" which would have been sad but a real "oh shit" of an ending. mixed feelings about them not doing that but i understand why they wanted to properly wrap things up for s7

i almost forgot but rare w for picard for bending the rules a little bit to give worf time to go to the klingon festival with his kid. credit where it is due

bloodlines (tng):

i have never been so BITTERLY DISAPPOINTED.......................

they gave. picard. an affair baby.

THEY GAVE HIM AN AFFAIR BABY!

what have i been saying since farpoint! he has an affair baby! AND THEY GAVE HIM ONE

AND THEN TOOK IT AWAY

what was the POINT OF THE EPISODE

if that's not his fucking affair child

pussy ass little FUCKS couldnt commit to changes...

i can't even remember what else happened in this episode i was so disappointed about this plot twist

oh yeah actually i do remember picard made a bald joke which i THINK was the only time he's done that in seven seasons? i think the only time ANYONE'S done it? please correct me if i am wrong but i was so shocked it got a big laugh out of me. also a rare w for picard. if he made bald jokes more often i'd hate him less maybe

oh yeah i'm coming back to add this later but it was really hilarious that picard was so torn up over his not-son being a little criminal. his horrific unforgivable spelunking crimes. so true.

the wire (ds9)

ooohhhhhhhhhhhh my god. oh my GOD. let's fucking...get into it

i rly thot garak was just a guy but not only is he a former assassin he's a current junkie. A JUNKIE! he's just like me fr

also, he can act? like that scene where he was withdrawing and saying horrible shit to julian......i was on the edge of my seat.

i love that he gave us 3 different stories about how he got kicked out. i'm gonna be honest, i looked it up, and apparently we never find out the truth? that is a bold fucking move. a daring choice. we, like julian, will never have any certainty. like, sure, i WANT to believe he released some kids from being tortured, but it's also equally as likely that he killed civilians or did a number of other horrible things

like, the fact that he can lie about it even while under significant distress.........king. like you could say oh that's the true one because that's the one where he was physically unwell but he also referred to "elim" in that one which gives it the ring of a potential falsehood

julian forgiving him anyway, even after all the horrible stuff he said, even after being physically ATTACKED (WHICH WAS SCARY!!! i was scared of him!!!!!) for "whatever he did," just because garak said "i need to know someone forgives me"..........AUGHGHGH JESUS CHRIST

THE FACT THAT HE WON'T TALK ABOUT IT. he won't tell even US what he did. eliot spencer core actually. i am beside myself about it all

maybe he's right and it is all true. maybe he destroyed a ship and framed a friend AND let some kids go. it's literally none of business though like he's not gonna tell us

anyway, i heard the term "brain implant" and nearly died on the spot, so 10/10 episode

honestly, they should have just upgraded this guy to a regular. he is so good

NEXT TIME: tng's "emergence" and ds9's "crossover" AND YES I KNOW THAT'S MIRRORVERSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[acciocriativity]

PAYBACK (IT ISN'T OVER) - JYH

(Pictures aren't mine, credits for the rightful owners)

Pairing: Actor!Yunho x Actress!Reader

Genre: Fluff

Warnings/ Tags: Actor! Yunho; Mentions of smut and angst, but not real life; Ateez is still a kpop group in this; pure chaos

WC: 865

N/A: This was requested by @ynxxho! I'm so sorry it took me so long, dear and I hope you enjoy it <3

Payback I

Ateez Masterlist

He was dressed like an angel that came from above to bless people with his mere presence for an hour or so.

But you knew better than to believe the innocent smile on his face right now, he IS the definition of wolf in sheep’s clothing.

They all should’ve known better, so you don’t even feel bad for what was about to happen.

The ringtone echoed through the walls of the dorm.

Seonghwa was the one that got the honorable mission of retrieving the food safely.

The food arrived right on time as everyone got as comfortable as possible to watch the very last episode of the drama you both did together on Netflix

It was Yunho’s request, one that nobody thought anything of it because it made sense, right? It was an event worth celebrating for in every ateez member’s mind, the end of a very promising drama, that could lead to a very successful career in the future, for both Yunho and you.

They were elated for this. Everyone promised to watch on their own and wait for the last episode.

They were dying to know if the couple got together or not, even it was obvious it was supposed to be a romance-focused drama. It was engaging, ok? No one can judge them for caring way too much about those fictional characters. (Maybe there was a huge debate about who was right or wrong on the last episode three days ago on their group chat, but that’s normal!)

The last episode ended on a high tension scene, both characters were hurt, and now they were confronting each other, saying things that they didn’t mean and making everything worse than it was before.

Wooyoung came barging in Yunho’s room to hit him with a pillow for being so dumb that same night.

“Why did you hit me??”, it was Yunho’s response.

“You know why”, Wooyoung said and left the room.

Yunho texted you about the incident, first confused and then extremely offended that he got punished for his character’s actions when he found out, but more importantly, because Wooyoung was on YOUR side.

Wooyoung, in fact, was on your side since that traumatizing day, because you weren’t on Yunho’s plan and therefore, you were now replacing Yunho as his favorite.

“It’s time”, Jongho said as he pressed play on the 16th episode.

You exchanged glances with Yunho before the room went dark.

He smiled as he held your hands in his, that same smile you learned meant business.

Up until now, the spiciness of the drama stayed in the first episode for the most part. The rest of the scenes were the perfect mixture of fluff and angst, something the viewers could relate to and then get to know the characters to a deeper level, but now there are only a few knots to tie and some happy endings to show, including yours.

What’s better than a full ending cycle?

Close to the 20-minute mark, you excused yourself to grab some water in the kitchen.

You waited for the chaos, for some screaming and curse words, the absolute drama that only them could pull off, yet there was silence.

Silence in their dorm always means something’s up. It’s a warning sign for trouble. In this situation? You could guess the whole group fell dead on the ground all of a sudden.

The scene you walked into was just as amusing as it was in the first episode.

The 7 of them were still on their seats, mouth agape, eyes wide as the scene kept on going.

Yunho sat there with an easy smile on his face, just as entertained as you were. He was having the time of his life as he watched their expressions change to pure shock.

There wasn’t much revealing than it was already done before, no, that wasn’t the cause of the silent commotion. It was the bold dialogue, to put it lightly. It wasn’t cringe, otherwise all of them would be rolling on their backs laughing right now, it was good, the writing of the drama was excellent in general, something you’d always be thankful for, it made your job easier.

“Damn, that’s hot”, Wooyoung broke the defying silence in the living room.

After that, it was a chain reaction. Mingi laughed, then Hongjoong, who pushed Wooyoung to the ground. Then everyone was laughing.

You laughed so hard, you felt tears pooling in your eyes.

When you managed to find Yunho again, he was laughing on the floor.

The rest 30 minutes of the drama was completely forgotten after that.

"What do you mean that's hot?", Jongho was the first to ask, still flabbergasted on his seat.

"Because it was, come on, every single on of you though the same thing, don't act like you didn't!"

"It kind of was, I mean, the writing is good and it's Yunho, he's a good actor", San said as he shrugged.

"OK, let's stop with whatever conversation is this and finish the episode", Hongjoong said.

And his wish is a command so, that's exactly what happened.

But it was clear that no one was going to forget this drama anytime soon.

[fanofmyth]

The Hunter’s Fury: an Avatar the Last Airbender story

———————————-

This is the first story I’ve posted here, so please be nice.

This occurs just after the siege of the North in season one's final as a post-credit scene. This is not canon, but something I thought of after listening to the Kyoshi stories. It is part of a headcanon I have, considering how the Avatar state works. That is, the last four Avatars have the greatest chance of being called on by the current one in times of distress and who was the one Aang called on before he and La merge.

Avatar the Last Airbender and other works are not mine and never will be. There are some spoilers if one hasn’t read, listened to, or known about what happens in the Shadow of Kyoshi novel or have watch the Legend of Kora episode: Darkness Falls.

The story is under the cut.

————————————————-

Summary: Killing spirits never ends well. Zhao finds out the hard way, but before he ends up in the Fog of Lost Souls, someone wants to speak with the so-called 'Moonslayer.'

Cold and dark were all Zhao could feel after the glowing hand grabbed him just after his near defeat by the banished prince, and the moon somehow came back into existence, and then light and warmth filled his system.

The area where he found himself was outside a mangrove forest. Although it was preferable to the tundra of the Northern Water Tribe's capital, he still longed for the temperate heat of the Fire Islands.

"Is this the Earth Kingdom?" Zhao asked no one. "What was that thing, anyway? No matter, it will pay once I return to the Northern Water Tribe." As a member of the Fire Nation, Zhao held honor in high regard, even if he had very little of it.

"This is the spirit world, and you're not leaving; La will ensure that." A Male's voice answered. "but first, you will be dealing with me."

The former Admiral yelled while spinning around, letting loose a wave of fire, trying to burn whoever spoke only to have his foot caught on the side of a water tribe weapon made of bone.

The owner of the bone weapon appeared to be around Zhao's age, maybe in his early thirties. He was a Water Tribesman with tanned skin and what seemed to be black or brown hair and a bread, although it was difficult to tell as he had a beast pelt draped over his head. His eyes were a striking shade of blue, colder than any pole. He was dressed in typical Water Tribe attire but with a more ancient style than Zhao had seen during the siege. He wore a dark blue and white outer parka with tassels, blue pants with white fur over brown boots, and various bone jewelry.

"Who are you?" Zhao demanded, trying to move the weapon by fire bending with his foot.

"Who I am is not important, boy," the water man said, keeping his weapon steady and then using it to knock the Fire Nation man off balance. "Only someone furious at what you nearly did to the world."

"You Water RAT, I was fulfilling my destiny as the Conqueror of the Moon." Zhao snarled, getting up while launching fire at the man, not knowing or caring if his opponent was a water bender. Not that stopped his opponent from making Zhao eat dirt five times in a row using only his weapon.

"You're wasting your fire, Brat. I am not sure how you kept your bending when you were dragged here." The water tribesman yelled, "Once I'm done, you won't bend fire again." He slammed his fists into parts of Zhao's body, causing him to fall to the ground and the fire to stop.

"You're a Chi-blocker?" Zhao said as he tried to move.

"Hopefully, this place heals like it did when Kyoshi's boy was killed," the man muttered, ignoring Zhao as he gazed at the scorched earth. "Not that I have an attachment to this part of the spirit world since the world-borer disappeared."

"You're not making sense," Zhao yelled as he moved a bit at a time.

"You angered a very ancient spirit and will now suffer the consequences," the man yelled. Then, he slammed his spear into the ground in anger. "Someone like you doesn't understand."

"Like you can do anything to me." Zhao snarled, "Spirits have no place in the world." he had made it to his knees.

"You have done something I would never dare do. One doesn't kill spirits and get away unharmed," the water tribesman snarled, sounding more like the beast whose pelt he wore. "You will never leave this world; your destiny is finished." The snarl was frightening, but what was more alarming were the glowing eyes the man now possessed.

"You're an." Zhao started to say, realizing who the man was, only to get grabbed by the throat.

"I'll repeat it: who I was is of no concern," the former Avatar said. "Only where you will be staying." Then, the area started to shift, and the light and sound blurred together. The two humans were the only solid things Zhao could comprehend. Before long, the world righted itself, and Zhao found himself hanging over a ridge with dense fog below.

"What is that? "Zhao croaked out.

"The Fog of Lost Souls," came the answer, while the voice that spoke sounded like multiple people talking simultaneously, both Male and Female. "It's a fog that one doesn't get lost in but one that keeps people lost in their own minds."

"I'm Zhao, the moon slayer; a simple fog won't keep me contained. I'll walk out." Zhao arrogantly said as he tried to kick the man holding him, but couldn't reach being held at arm length. "I will get out and capture your current life."

"I'm not repeating myself, " the Water Avatar said, the echo effect leaving his voice. "Now La's punishment will fulfilled." He let go of Zhao's neck, dropping the Admiral into the fog.

"No," Zhao cried as he disappeared.

"Destroying dark spirits out of necessity because you don't have any other way to placate them is one thing," Kuruk said solemnly, moving from the edge to his spear. "Killing a pure light spirit, however, to win a war out of misguided destiny is the height of arrogance." Squaring his shoulders and picking up his spear, the great hunter ran to find Koh the Face Stealer.

Kuruk temporarily stopped pursuing the spirit because Aang, the current Avatar, was overwhelmed with grief at not being able to stop Zhao from killing Tui, the moon spirit. As the most recent Avatar with the most knowledge of spirit matters, he took charge, acting as a buffer and conductor for La.

Before dragging the Admiral to the spirit world, they had a conversation: Kuruk's actions wouldn't absolve him of his past killing of spirits, but helping La did redeem him to some extent in the eyes of the Ocean Spirit.

——————————————

[fillingthescrapbook]

Let's Talk About: Mentopolis and Emergency Powers

Before we begin, I just want to say that all of my personal Dimension 20 posts will have spoilers because it's hard to discuss things without accidentally spoiling something. Even when I am very conscious about not doing so. Sometimes, even more so. With that said, let's talk about Mentopolis and this week's episode: Emergency Powers.

Wow. Brennan's recap really reminds us of how much happened in the last episode. Things truly got wild. But we're leaving the events of last week to the past. Let's focus on how great this episode was.

First off: not as wild. Understandably--and I really credit Brennan's deft hand at storytelling here--this episode lets us breathe for a while. It still delivers quite an emotional scene midway through, but for the most part--this was a much needed breather before next week's finale.

Oh my god, next week is the finale! Aaahhh!!!

Going back to the episode at hand; I love how the D20 Newbies have really come to their own and have become more comfortable at the dome: Hank is more animated, Freddie more assured, and Alex… Wooh, baby. Alex really swung for the fences and hit a home run.

And I really like that the Prefontal P.I.s are unafraid of splitting up to cover more grounds. Because there is quite a lot of ground to cover…and I still can't believe we only have six episodes for this masterpiece.

Also, Siobhan is right. I'm only saying Prefontal P.I.s mentally, and I'm still tripping over the moniker.

This week, my MVP is the editing team. While I still do not like the jitters they're introducing anytime the psychometer is at play, their musical cues and everything else they have been doing has been on point. The heroic swell during Frank Freeze's speech? Masterful. Everything added in post has been subtle but has added so much to the world that we've been inhabiting these past five weeks. And, really, I just want to throw a kudos to the editing team. And the sound team. Y'all are doing amazing work.

In terms of players… Danielle Radford. Oh wow. All the choices she made in this episode was chef's kiss. Truly. Her decision to go up against Mark Bition at the courthouse. Her interactions with Fanny Fawnsworth. And that big reveal with the woman from the Wanted Posters? Holy macaroni. That's not even mentioning all the thoughts and side comments she said aloud that, I don't think, were meant for us to hear. She was a hoot and a half multiplied by multitudes!

And then we get to the part with the catchphrases. Oh my goodness. We get a "get in the comments," an "I'm gonna kill that dog!" and a "you're my best friend" all in one scene. We're truly going through it.

Amazing episode. Truly, truly, truly amazing.

Final thoughts: I need a fan art of Dan Fucks wearing fairy wings and a trilby hat. And the proposal times two that was both out of pocket and completely in character. Holy rigatoni.

[rocketturtle4]

Only Friends and the communication pay off that I desperately need to scream about. (Plus a little bit of meta about themes of acceptance)

Back after Ep ah 3? 4? what is time anyway, I wrote a post about:

I love how Only Friends is exploring and portraying communication

I have been continuing to enjoy this central theme of communication and honesty being portrayed. And me and the watchbuddies have been fascinated by the way forced honesty, rather than honesty by choice, has been flowing through the last couple eps and wrecking the relationships.

But this ep? Oh. My God.

The Pay off

THE PAY OFF

Lets start with the quite little victory laps me, @shouldiusemyname and @plantsarepeopletoo were doing through nearly every convo of this episode...

Ray Mew:

Kind of hard to read in tiny but we got it completely, Ray and Mew went to progress things physically, it got stopped, Ray got angry and then lo and behold we got that final (Beautiful) Ray Mew convo about how they were both basically using the other... Also Orya calling the survival of the Friendship as well 10/10

Also Paprika gets all the credit for the Honesty Theme

Also Sand Ray...

FINALLY COMMUNICATED SOBER (and then they kept doing it we got, what, 4 talking scenes??)

But then This Ep was all...you want honest communication huh?

HOLD. MY. BEER.

Sand Ray communication (plus more there was so much this ep, their journey of communication was so goooooood)

Ray Mew Communication (x2)

Boston Nick communication - or well Nick to Boston, but we got to leave something for the rest of the series

Nick Sand communication, not that they needed it but again oh my god, honesty leading to continued/further closeness.

Only Friends is really hammering home the point

And the point, in this ep, was about Honesty, Communication and ACCEPTANCE

Top voiced acceptance for Mew's needs in that moment, even as it wasn't what he wanted.

Nick accepts Boston's choice in that moment, even though it wasn't what he wanted.

Sand accepts Ray's conflicted feelings in that moment, even though it wasn't what he wanted. And in this case, also clearly conveyed that he wouldn't be waiting around if he got a better offer, while Ray figured himself out. and Ray had to accept that.

Even Cheum and Mew got a bonding moment over honesty and acceptance

...

There's so many things I could say with all the themes and connections whirling through the show.

The way honesty and surviellance are intertwined with forced honesty causing breakdown and Top's choice not to force Ray and Mew into that, even after he'd been forced, lead to him unknowlingly regaining some of Mew's trust.

Further links into discussions on the generational divide and the juxtoposition of presenting a queer community so reminiscent of the decades before technology permeated through our society and yet dogged by technology at every moment (@shouldiusemyname and I have been talking about this one a lot - how the present and the past are colliding in this show to show how things have and haven't changed from before the turn of the millenia)

The way hope continues to permeate through because being in your 20s is messy, and it's supposed to be, but that doesn't make anyone to broken to be loved.

More pain shall definitely come

Because a moment of honesty does not lead to perfection, and these characters still have a lot of growing to do...

But I am continuing to adore the honesty of the show

it's characters

it's themes

it's relationships

it's emotions

I'm adoring the heart of Only Friends

and I can't wait to see what's next