#the case of the greater gatsby episode 8

[man-down-in-hatchet-town]

Sheep Go To Heaven

Just to be clear, I ALWAYS listen to these episodes the day they drop. I'm just tragically busy and ADHD (also PULP WEEK asdfghiohwefgoiaje damn those fucking torpedoes) so it sometimes takes me a while to get to the actual re-listening and writing up my thoughts.

Anyway, spoilers for Episode 8 of The Case of the Greater Gatsby below the cut!

Well, guys, it took us eight episodes but we finally got some answers! We now know what's going on in Bixby's back room: a daily meet-up of Socialist creatives run by Dorothy Parker! Anyone who actually reads these will know that I had theories that turned out to be completely wrong, but who cares? Honestly I'm just relieved that "one of the last few good men in Hollywood" isn't into anything questionable, but is actually doing something very cool and decent indeed.

But it wouldn't be a complex 20+ episode murder mystery if our first real answer clicked everything into place. For the one question answered, other have sprung up like heads of a hydra. For one thing, what exactly is Mo's game here? Are the Socialists his main project, and Fitzgerald's death an inconvenient sideplot he now has to deal with (perhaps explaining part of why he's stayed private on the murder--he doesn't want anything so trivial to get in the way of his career-making Socialist Bust)? Or did he start with Fitzgerald, and work his way to the Socialists just as Fig and Ford have? That doesn't seem very likely, judging by how quickly he's moved. Or perhaps it's all one and the same, and he's investigating the murder as part of his anti-Socialist crackdown, and keeping it under the radar for some other reason (I imagine it's easier to investigate a murder if the perpetrator doesn't know anyone's looking for them). Or maybe, weeks after he's receded from our list of most suspicious figures, we're getting clues that Mo really is the murderer after all? Could his investigation into Bixby's back room have spun out of control and led to Fitzy's death? On a meta-level, making the murderer super suspicious at the start and then pointedly distracting and moving away from him is a really clever way of obscuring the solution from a genre-savvy audience.

Oh! A thought! Perhaps Mo's presence on the lot had nothing to do with Mel at all! Maybe he stopped by to speak with her as an excuse to get an eye on Darby and Leery, since they're both members of Bixby's Brigade...

(Regardless, Comrade Ford is about to get in Mo's way. I love Ford.)

But then we have The Grapes of Wrath angle. Last episode, we learned that all of the actors receiving death threats were connected with adaptions. This episode, however, we learned that two of the adaptions, The Grapes of Wrath and The Philadelphia Story, can be tied back to the Brigade. So which is it? Do all of the threatened films lead back to Dorothy Parker's lunch club? That seems unlikely... On the other hand, Barnaby Nightingale is not directly associated with any film adaption but IS connected to the Brigade, since they're getting advanced copies of the Nightingale Gazette. Is there more to their deal with Barnaby than meets the eye?

And there's the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald, noted genius, wrote the absolute garbage-fire script for The Grapes of Wrath. We're living under capitalism, many professional writers have bad commercial they're not proud of, but there's something out-of-character about that particular career move that I can't quite ignore.

And not to mention the fact that Vivian lost out on the lead role in a film her lover wrote the script for...

In other news, Dorothy has pointed them in the direction of one of Fitzgerald's old enemies, Donald Ogden Stewart of The Philadelphia Story fame. While I think it's safe to assume that real historical figure Stewart won't be the bad guy, I'm interested to see if he'll be an important step on the way to cracking this case, or just another complete red herring soup for the cast to stick their faces in. And Zelda's come to town, which means we should finally be getting the wonderful Tessa Netting soon!

Now I'm off to listen to the next episode!