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February 20, 2024 • 60 mins
Thank you very much to Max for commissioning this episode, but also no thank you, and I hate you.


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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering what we do in The Shadows season five episode.
What is this? Seven hybrid creatures in this episode. I

(00:24):
don't I don't like this one, guys. These creatures are
too creepy. M hmmm. No. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome

(00:55):
to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very
much to Max for commissioning this episode. Y'all. This one
is a it's so here's the thing, and I know

(01:15):
there are people like me out there who will get this,
and then there are people for whom this is so
nothing that they will really be like, stop being such
a baby. I am a very very visual person. Things

(01:35):
that are not beautiful hurt me to look at. And
I mean this in the most dramatic and literal way
that I can explain. I hate ugliness, especially ugliness that
is like easily remedied. You know, it bothers me and

(02:00):
I feel much calmer and more at peace when everything
around me is tidy and lovely. And this is part
of the reason why my asthetic is so precise, because
I need it to be that way for my brain
to relax, Like right now, from where I'm sitting. I

(02:24):
have my lovely planner that is so pretty. I have
my tee set that is like all you know, it's
this like complete set and it's all very beautiful. I
have a cup right here that is a sleek, simple
design that I love looking at. It's just so could

(02:49):
like self contained and pretty. The colors. Everything about my
space is very very careful picked out. And I have always,
from a child, had a really knee jerk reaction to

(03:12):
combination of ugly look and upsetting like story or behavior.
There have been a lot of movies as a little
kid that I couldn't watch because they like upset me
in such a visceral way, and I seemed to be
very alone in that. Who Framed Brought a Rabbit for example,

(03:35):
I burst into tears during that movie and couldn't finish
it because it was freaking me out so bad. And
there's just a lot like the garbage Pale Kids is
when that Owen brought up while we were watching this episode,
and I was like, oh my god, yes, so I know,
I said, last episode, I want to see more of
these like weird frogs with Gerrimau's hair and see how

(03:57):
they like interact with the household and if they're still around,
and I meant that in that exact sort of like scale,
These little weird frogs that are flying around the house
are the perfect amount of weird that I can cope
with that don't take up too much space and they're

(04:18):
not hideous enough to bother me. These hybrid creatures that
we wind up with in this episode are so deeply
upsetting to look at, to hear, talk, to watch move around.
And then there's the whole like you've got to kill

(04:40):
them aspect of it, which shouldn't be as upsetting as
it is for me, but it bothered me, you guys,
it really really did. It was like a combo of
the fact that he is expected to kill them when
they're like live things that look like him, and just
the whole, like you know, that aspect of it, but

(05:02):
also the fact that we find out these creatures are
conscious enough to know what's happening to them. So at
one point, they're all like outside lined up against a wall,
trembling in fear as he brandishes a pistol. And I'm
so sorry I couldn't find this funny. It was just

(05:23):
upsetting to me. And you know, if it were a
person who's trembling because there's a vampire about to kill them.
That's just a whole different tone. You know, the vampire
vampires aren't real. The uh person is one of many
victims that we have seen of their type. The vampires

(05:44):
kill people constantly, so we're very used to seeing that,
and there is a campiness to that that feels so removed.
But these are like pets, you know, and the killing
with a pistol is too real. I know people who
have had to put their own animals down with guns.

(06:08):
This is a reality of like having worked on farms
and stuff. This happens, and I just you, guys, I
really wanted this to not bother me as much as
it did. But they are so weird looking, like I've
got to give some props to whoever did the makeup

(06:28):
in this episode. Wow, Like especially the dog creature. I
don't know if it's all makeup. It very well, maybe
like some makeup, and then we do post cgi stuff.
It doesn't matter because it looks excellent, like practically seamless,
and yet it's horrible. So from the moment that we

(06:56):
see them, my whole self like rejected this storyline. These characters.
I was not here for it, and every time we
left this plot and went to something else in the episode,
I felt the surge of relief, and then every time
we came back to it, it was just dread, like
this terrible feeling of like overwhelming, I don't want to

(07:20):
see where we're going with this, and you know, to
be fair, in the end, what he winds up doing
with them with like finding them a place at this
old folks home, it was like a pretty happy ending,
like as happy as you're probably gonna get with a
storyline that starts off this way. So I'm not trying
to say that like the story ended up being as

(07:42):
upsetting as it seemed like it was going to be,
but it was that feeling of dread. And it's also
like the anxiety aspect of the fact that like Laslo's
doing this without Giermo even knowing about it, and then
as soon as shit begins to go left, Laslow wants
nothing to do with it anymore and is like, I
can't kill them, You're gonna have to do it, and

(08:04):
that Guillermo is now like put in this position through
no fault of his own. He didn't ask for Laslo
to make these weird, little fucking creatures, and yet he
is now expected to basically commit murder, and they're these
creatures that like worship him. I mean, this is a nightmare.

(08:25):
This is a literal nightmare. He's talking to one of
them and they're discussing like the prophecy of one who,
you know, the one who was like the original and
all this stuff. He's a god to them and so
like they take it as a sort of matter of
course that their lives belong to him, and even though

(08:46):
they don't want to die and are terrified, they are
just like willing to stand there and allow it to happen.
I hate all of this. I hate all of this.
It's I just really do, guys. It's like and then
also just the experimenting with animals aspect of it, which
is again something that's like all too real and a

(09:09):
genuine like issue. And we just got this stew of
particular like fears and I don't want to go so
far as to say triggers because that's too dramatic. But
just like all of this was like a mixture of
my least favorite tropes and esthetics and everything. So forgive me,

(09:38):
you guys. For not being a good sport about this one.
Mostly the show has been a big hit for me.
There have been some episodes that really failed, but considering
like what the premise of the show is, it's a
lot better than you would ever expect for a show
that is about modern vampires, that's a comedy in Staten

(09:58):
Island that's gone for five seasons, Like, you wouldn't expect
this to have maintained the level of quality that it has.
They're just not all going to be winners. And like
I said in the beginning, I know I am particularly
sensitive to certain things in a way that doesn't bother
other people excuse me. This is part of why I'm
like not great with watching horror movies as well. It's

(10:19):
not just like the fear aspect, it's also in horror movies,
like the esthetic understandably often has to be off putting,
and it like it's actually hard to watch for me.
And I don't know if that ties in with sort
of like an obsessive compulsive thing that I've got, because

(10:39):
I definitely have like a touch of this where I
have to like fix and change things and get them
to look a certain way. But that feeling that people
who are OCD describe of like I need to like
step in the room three times or else something bad happen.

(11:00):
That's kind of the way that I am with things
looking a certain way. It's like if it's if it
doesn't like if I am not able to make things nice,
there's almost a sense of danger for me. You know
what I'm saying, And I know that sounds super dramatic,
and I'm aware that it's dramatic. I know that about
myself at this point, that like, I can't help the

(11:22):
reaction that I have. I don't know exactly where it
comes from, but it's it's not something that I can
change about myself. And it is very specific in a
way that I have found only a couple people in
my life understand. And so when I have this sort
of response to things, I immediately recognize what's happening inside myself,

(11:48):
and I know that from here on I'm not watching
this in good faith that I have had a sort
of like immediate response that's gonna color the way that
I see the rest of the thing, and that I
have to take that into account with the way that
I feel at the end of the episode, just recognize
the fact that like I wasn't able to watch this

(12:09):
real like as impartially as I normally am, because I
was so affected by various aspects of it that it
just kind of tainted everything for me. So anyway, this
is something, you know, like we all have our things right,
and part of the the aspect that I have also

(12:31):
brought up in other episodes is like a real kneejerk
reaction that I have to the concept of like medical
torture on human beings as well. We have like experimenting
on animals, but it's a very different thing than what
I mean here, which is just like especially in horror

(12:52):
movies or when you're talking about like hauntings and stuff,
if those hauntings went on in like a hospital, the
way we have treated patients, either people who have mental
illness or people who were not white or not men,
we have put people historically through truly hideous tortures in

(13:15):
the name of medical science, and I have a reaction
to that. I'm able to turn that off in a
lot of this show, for example, when we're doing like
weird shit with Laslow and Colin and nandor because they're
not people. And so for me, you know, being vampires
and there's a completely different threshold, and it's done in

(13:35):
such a campy way. I can just divorce that from
my reaction. For whatever reason, I couldn't do that. And
I think that Kiermo is just always in this position
of having to like put fires out that I felt
so terrible for him in this episode of having to

(13:56):
be the one to fucking cope with this situation. You know. Again,
it just seemed like always there's something and this was
a particularly cool one. So all that said, off the top,
we have to like get into what's going on with Naja.
So Naja has this history. She tells this story about

(14:21):
how she was basically really really disruptive when she was
a kid in the little schoolhouse that her village had
set up, and they kicked her out eventually because fucking
nobody could focus with her around. As somebody who was
like a pretty quiet kid, mostly I would be the

(14:44):
kind of person who would be like, get out. And
in response to being kicked out, she burns the place
down iconic and thankfully, like nobody was hurt, but it
was just like the building was no longer there, and
as she puts, nobody ever learned anything ever again in
my village, Like they don't try to keep teaching them

(15:04):
in another location or rebuild or anything. That was just
like the end of it, which is the sort of
thing that feels silly, But also I could see that
really happening where there's there. You know, if there's not
enough resources or enough interest, if the benefits don't feel
like they're outweighing the amount of work you're putting into it, yeah,

(15:26):
you're just gonna be like, all right, well we tried it.
I guess that was a no. So back to the
fields with you. The children long for the minds. So
what she's thinking is that this hex that's on her
she can resolve by teaching a class. And so she

(15:50):
is teaching like a group of people who are from
little Antipaxos about American culture. And there's a point where
she's got a map of the US divided into three sections.
All of the east is Staten Island, all of the
west is Hollywood, and everything in the middle is Texas.

(16:12):
And she just points at them and says films, newspapers,
and then to Texas beef, which honestly is pretty on point.
It's hard to get mad at this. Sometimes people are
just correct, you know, And it's like, I'm sure this

(16:34):
is like this is there would be plenty of people
that would have issues with this. I can't support their arguments.
This is just so in my bones as an American,
true I have to support it. And she's like singing

(16:54):
the Colonial Patriot Hymn, which is the song of the nation,
Burgers and fries, Mickey Mouse, Mount Rushmore, and she's like
swinging above her head as if she's got a lariat
A uh, what do you call it? I keep wanting
to say a noose, which like essentially is what it is,

(17:15):
but you know what I'm talking a lasso. And you guys,
this is the sort of thing where I feel like
these jokes they shouldn't be funny anymore. Like what I
mean by this is jokes about the way the world
sees the United States have been done a billion times

(17:38):
and how many new ways can you find to get
this across? But what they've done interestingly here is because
she's a vampire, there's like this extra layer of disconnect,
so it gives it just enough of a fresh spin
that it doesn't feel super tired. So I go into

(18:01):
this scene a little bit like oh, we're doing these
kinds of jokes, okay, and kind of felt like I
was sitting back with my arms crossed, going impress me.
And then they did a little bit like this did
keep being funny, the Mickey Mouse Mount Rushmore, you know,
jokes about American fatty food, very very like low hanging fruit,

(18:27):
bottom tier. But then you get into like the corporatism
aspect with Mickey Mouse, the nationalism and the desecration of
like native lands with Mount Rushmore, and it feels very
concise and yet like hitting all the points if you
really stop and think about it. And I was sort
of like, these are pretty solid jokes. Actually, I'm kind

(18:51):
of down with this. And then she has the Thanksgiving
where this is like just chef's kiss gorgeous. She's got
a frozen, solid turkey sitting on a mat in the
middle of this otherwise like almost completely empty table, solidly frozen, right,

(19:14):
and then sheet pans of raw potatoes and carrots straight
up raw. And then the camera pulls out and everybody
is wearing football helmets and she is explaining to them
that this is like when you worship the turkey and

(19:37):
that they should blow it. Kisses. I am very into this.
As an overall concept, Thanksgiving is super problematic. We all know,
like the origins of it are ali The whole way
that this has been like structured in the US was
whole like part of this weird fantasy that we perpetrated

(19:58):
as whites about the the relationship between white people and
the native people. And I very much respect anybody who's
like I just don't celebrate it. I would very much
like to like give up on it, to be honest,
but because I have family that is still super into it,
it's just not really an option for me to completely

(20:18):
pass it over. But I have decided, like in my household,
we're gonna be doing much more like of a Mai
bond thing and not Thanksgiving the same way that we
had used to. But the idea that like looking at
it from the outside, it's about worshiping a turkey, and

(20:38):
that she as a vampire doesn't get that this food
needs to be cooked because they never get that they
do not understand how people eat. Like all of this combination,
and then like the football thing, where I don't know
if she's aware of like the point of the connection
with football and Thanksgiving, but the helmets just feels like, oh, well,

(20:59):
you know, I a thing in the kind of way
that like somebody who is trying to understand a culture
in another country, but red stuff that didn't that they
didn't fully understand the language of that material from in
the beginning. It feels like that, like just a mistranslation

(21:20):
of a lot of stuff. And the way that all
of these people who are gathered around here are playing
it very seriously. They are not doubting what she's telling
them at all. They're full on going for it, and
they have great dead pan faces and seem so sincere
about it, and it just makes these scenes work really

(21:43):
really well. So this is when we go to like
the uh, the guide looking at this picture that showed
up in the house. That was what tipped them off
about this hex which I don't recall if we have
ever had confirmation that she placed this yere, but I

(22:03):
think she did, right. But yeah, she discovers something that
via like the use of what looks to be lemon juice,
where you hold it over a flame and then words
begin to appear for those you've burned, you must atone
And so she thinks that the burning thing is about

(22:24):
the burning of the school, when really it could be
any like burning is a metaphor a lot of the
time for leaving somebody hanging or screwing somebody over, anything
like that. So we get this like really amazing. Oh

(22:46):
my god, I forgot about like the talking about the
water cooler around and how Colin and nandor they came
in to sit on her class to sit in on
her class one time, and she just wanted that initially
to make it seem like there's enough people here that
I won't get fired, that they'll still like they'll let

(23:07):
me do the class. But evidently these two won't get
lost now, so she's just having to deal with them
sort of like asking weird questions and stuff in the back.
And I love I love the direction that things go
with Colin. Like Owen asked me the other day, which
one of the vampires is your favorite? And before this episode,

(23:32):
I was saying Laslow. At this point, I'm like, I
don't know Laslow. This is pretty fucking awful. But Laslow
is just somebody who has a really interesting value system
and a very inquisitive mind in a way that I
appreciate and that can be really fun to watch. Owen said,
Colin because the jokes surrounding Colin always tend to be

(23:55):
really like different from episode to episode, but they all
follow the same general thing. It's just the way that
the writers find new ways to express this type of
personality is it's extremely fun to watch them like find
ways to do it. And yeah, this episode, it's like he.

(24:17):
Eventually he and Nandor get given the assignment of like
running the class, and so Colin decides to play the
role of cool teacher. I feel very lucky. I have
never encountered the cool teacher, and you really would have

(24:38):
thought I would because I went to my senior year
of school at a private arts based boarding school in
southern California. There is no more ripe of a recipe
for the cool teacher. And yet I was really blessed.

(25:03):
And all of my teachers were actually genuinely cool because
they did not try. They were just passionate about the
thing that they taught, and that translates into being cool
because that's just how that works. Or they were simply
like your typical teacher and this happened to be the
school that they worked at, and there was not really

(25:23):
a feel to them that was different. The way that
Colin plays this I found so fascinating because it's like, again,
not something that I have run into, but I know
it exists, and it's the sort of thing that I
could easily have seen myself falling into this trap, you know.
But like the closest I ever came was probably when

(25:47):
I went to school. The first year that I was
in college at Carnegie Mellon, I had a teacher for
a playwriting class, and part of the playwriting was reading
plays as well, and this teacher wanted very much to
not only be cool but also like edgy in a
way that was appropriate for the time. You know, two

(26:10):
thousand and three, two thousand and four, we're talking the
type of jokes that are actually like really fucked up
when you look back at them. Shit that was like sexist,
vaguely sexual harassing, definitely like borderline racist, just all that
sort of like the way that Colin is playing it
is he's doing much more of a like woke thing

(26:32):
where it's about you know, history is written by the
victors and blah blah blah. So he's trying to be
a little bit like again anti establishment, and that it's
so interesting to me how anti establishment looks so different
twenty years on from what it looked like when I
was in school, because it used to be a lot

(26:55):
more mean spirited and a lot more like kind of
almost like bullying to other students and stuff in a
way that was like, oh, I'm one of you guys,
I'm cool like you, because I also see who the
losers are, and you know that sort of like weird
alignment that some teachers have where they're like, I have

(27:15):
to be your friend. And now I could see it
like definitely being a lot more like overwoke, white liberal
nonsense where it's like, technically what you're saying isn't untrue,
but the way that you're waving it around feels very
performative and like you're not trying to teach anything. You're

(27:36):
just trying to show off the fact that you're above
it all, which has a very different vibe to it.
And the teacher that I had, those type of jokes
were combined, unfortunately, with a alcoholic personality. So this dude
would show up to class hammered, and he really thought

(27:58):
we couldn't tell he really did. He would go up
and do these lectures that were meandering and slurred and
he thought we that he was like either pulling it
off or the fact that he was drunk we would
find somehow amusing. And we were the wrong type of
class to come at with that energy, because when you're

(28:22):
at a school like Carnegie Mellon and you are taking
classes that are required for like one of the harder
majors tech theater was grueling, You've got a lot of
overachiever kids that take their own education quite seriously and
take themselves seriously. So none of us would like ever

(28:42):
show up to class drunk, even though that's kind of
a joke amongst like college kids for like a lot
of other schools and friends that I have talked to.
And so we wound up reporting him because we were
just like, we're paying a lot of money for this
class and you're not even having the decency to come

(29:03):
in and be fucking coherent, Like why am I wasting
my time? So yeah, it was like that's the only
time that I've really come close to this sort of attitude,
and seeing the way that Colin, like, you know, he's
wearing the Trillby hat and he's got his feet up
on the desk at one point, he's wearing some shorts
and he has his knees pulled up so that one

(29:23):
of his balls is hanging out that I have encountered
not in a teacher but a person. And I genuinely
do not think he realized. With Colin, he one hundred
percent realizes like he's doing this on purpose. Of course
he is. But actually I said, it wasn't a teacher
I'm remembering now. No, it was an art teacher. It

(29:45):
was an art teacher. He was great too. He was
like a really funny, like very hippie guy, one of
those where he definitely smoked a ton of weed. But
he was also like a runner, and so the shorts
he would wear were those like really high cut running shorts,

(30:05):
and yeah, he thought those did more than they did.
I forgot about that until just now, And it was
the sort of thing that like, even though everybody was
a bit freaked out by it, nobody thought he was
like a creep because his energy otherwise was so harmless.
And now I'm like, I wonder if he would have

(30:26):
been able to get away with that today, you know,
probably not. But I just really like the fact that,
like there's a combo here of Colin attempting to be
this cool teacher, and then Nandor trying to get everybody
to focus solely on like the history of his own
peoples and and those who you know, he finds to

(30:49):
be like worthy, and he we get this amazing little
twist where they I think they don't even like set
it up. It's just that Nandor goes in and glamourus
the guards to make them fall asleep. But they go
into like this museum about the immigrant experience on Staten Island,

(31:14):
And as soon as we saw the outfit, I was like,
oh my god, this is gonna be Nandor's clothes, Like
this is gonna be his stuff. I didn't realize there
was gonna be a whole journal thing, which was genius.
But the way that this turns up, it takes Nandor
a minute to understand that not only are these his clothing,
but like his underwear has his name written on the inside. Amazing.

(31:40):
And then the people who translated his journal straight up
think that he was writing erotic fiction because the shit
he wrote about was so outlandish, not just because of
probably the sheer number of partners that he had ever
slept with, but also he was like talking about fucking

(32:00):
in mid air and stuff because he's a vampire and
he could literally do that. They don't, you know, they
don't get that. So they're talking about it being like
one of the first examples of erotic fiction that they
have found. And I love that the paragraph about this
wraps up with them saying that it's probable the person

(32:23):
who wrote all of this was a virgin because they
just seem to have no real idea of how sex works.
And truly, you guys, I found that really funny, Like
this is something that I'm sure we have all run
into on the interwebs, people who say shit about sex
that you're like, you're not serious, right, you know, that's

(32:45):
not how that works, right, And it's the sort of
thing where you can't decide what you would rather be true.
Do you want them to be a real person who
is genuinely making this comment because they believe it, or
do you want them to be like somebody trolling who
isn't this stupid? Because sometimes it's like when you're a woman, especially,

(33:09):
two factors come into play. One the fact that straight
women are like only orgasm during sex like thirty percent
of the time. It's a really low percentage of the
time because men do not make an effort to understand
our bodies and how they work. And two that our

(33:29):
reproductive rights are always being challenged by dudes who do
not know the first thing about how ovaries and wombs
and vaginas work. And so you have these dudes out
here saying shit, and it makes you want to face
palm because you're like, and you are part of the

(33:52):
ruling gender who decides if I am going to be
forced to carry a baby to term. Wow, this is
so depressed. So anyway, this bit with like and how
upset nandor gets about it and he feels like he's
being personally mocked in this targeted sort of way. There's

(34:13):
even this medallion that they show as like a superstitious
trinket to comfort the you know, ignorant peasant who was
coming over the water, and he's just like, that was
a key chain given to me by my mommy. And
I love the way he says, mommy, it was so

(34:34):
the delivery on that was perfect. I love this sort
of thing as well. When something has been removed from
history to a degree that like, you can understand why
the interpretations that were made were made but when they're
given a different context, it's like, oh yeah, we like

(34:56):
ascribed a certain level of meaning that might not necessarily
have been there or was like a deeply personal meaning
and not like a universal thing. I don't know if
any of you guys have ever Thirty Rock in many
ways has not aged well, but there are some real
gems still buried in there. And one of my favorite

(35:17):
bits is when Liz gets the opportunity to do an
advice show called That's a deal Breaker, and she gets
like women like saying telling her situations with their significant others,
usually men, and she tells them what they should do
about it. And these women are coming to her with

(35:38):
what seemed like very open and shut situations. So Tracy
Jordan's wife comes in and says that she found out
her husband is booking a hotel room once a week,
and of course the assumption is that he's having an affair,
and it turns out he can't take a shit in
private with his kids at home, so he like waits

(36:02):
all week and then books a hotel room so that
he can go take a shit alone and just take
his time and hang out in there and have the
whole bathroom to himself, and like just things like that
where from the outside you're like, oh, I get why
you thought X y Z I would too, but then
the explanation is something that's like, you know, completely understandable

(36:25):
and very different that that's like one of my very
favorite types of jokes, and this just really reminded me
of that, like the ways in which everything got misinterpreted,
and you know, Nandor's sitting here like no, it's this,
and you're like, oh, that makes sense too. The other
thing also honestly did make sense to me as well,

(36:46):
but you know, and it's a combo of like them
getting it wrong and the way that they describe him
as being basically like a fucking ha seed. You know,
he's from a different country, so when you think hated,
you really think like Southern American, but it's the equivalent

(37:06):
sort of rubish, wide eyed, fucking I don't know anything
about the world, kind of innocent and knowing that like
by the time he came here, he was already a vampire,
Like this dude is, don't get me wrong, a goddamn
fool even now. But they just had the wrong idea

(37:30):
about who he was as a person, and the condescension
in the tone with which they write about him, I
would also find infuriating and like deeply insulting. So I
just really loved this. And eventually, what Colin does is
he changes up Nandor's display in the museum so that

(37:56):
he's got like a man and woman in underwear like
up next to him, and he's wearing these really cool
modern clothes, and the description of him makes him seem
like this totally red dude. And I love the fact that,
like Colin Robinson does this because you can tell Nandor's
upset by it. Even though the thing with Colin Robinson

(38:19):
is feeding off of people being frustrated or upset, he
like sometimes cares enough in a way that is truly surprising.
Every time, you know, he just comes out of the
woodwork doing something nice for somebody and you're like, oh,
what is nice, and Nandor thanking him and being like

(38:39):
you're a good friend, and immediately Colin pulls back and
is like this is awkward, awkward and gets out of there.
I just I really liked that. I thought that that
was all extremely well done. Oh my god, Colin talking
about how he went to that writing group, I wrote
a poem call called an ode to my Father's masculinity

(39:02):
Easy drain, Oh my god. Then the talk around the
water cooler how many people did you have sex with
this weekend? And the woman says seven, and the man
in the middle, whose arms are out, says one, and
Naja has to chime with no water cooler does not

(39:23):
talk write that down, and she storms out this bit
with a guy just playing the water cooler between them. Beautiful.
So she's in the hallway and she's saying, I don't know,
maybe I'm not very good at this, but she's also
you know, I am worried that, like, how am I

(39:45):
supposed to get rid of this fucking has And this
woman turns up in the hall behind her. I don't
know if I have seen this actress in other stuff.
I must have done, but she has a fabulous look
about her. First of all, amazing hair, loving it really

(40:09):
am She's got like a shawl draped over this jacket,
so it gives her just enough of a sort of
like bohemian look. But she has clearly overheard Naja talking
about this hex and has decided to like use this
for her own ends. And I was really delighted with

(40:30):
the direction this went in, because of course, you know,
I hear a woman scamming somebody else talking about a
hex and pretending that she knows something about it, and
I'm thinking she's gonna be trying to play Nada to
get money out of her, and like, indirectly that is
sort of it. But what she does a woman after

(40:53):
my own heart, truly she is. She got kicked out
of Dunkin Donuts, she names them specifically and banned, and
there's like a picture of her later on when Nauja
goes in that is taped up and says, do not
serve this woman. I can't remember what it is that

(41:15):
she says she's done, but what she tells Naja repeatedly
is that she needs donuts in order to help lift
this curse. And she's doing the most half assed job
at pretending to be a witch, because of course Naja
right away is willing to believe that, you know, I am.

(41:40):
What does she say? She first starts off with like,
there's I see something around you, a dark spectral specter.
I love her how she's really not trying even that hard,
and she says, my name's Helen, Oh just Helen. That's it.
I thought it would be uh Helen the Magic Woman.

(42:02):
Oh my god. So later on she's like, oh, well
your name, it says here is Helen Johnson and she's like, oh, yes,
well my full name is Helen the Magic Chunce, which
is funny in like so many ways. That really cracked

(42:27):
me up. That one really got me, guys. But anyway,
so she she is like changing up what Nagen needs
to get for her every time that she like finishes
one donut, she needs another one, wants more of them,
increases the order, sends her back out again. At one

(42:47):
point she like is like, oh, I need to you know,
enough donuts to put in this pot or into a
pot and not just like do you mean like a cauldron.
And she's like yeah, yeah, yeah that. And it's like
she's not even a trying to make this seem believable.
Naja is just so prepared out of the gate to

(43:09):
believe it that she's filling in the gaps for her,
which is actually a really like That's when you know
you have succeeded in really conning somebody is when they
are explaining away that the holes in your own story
for you, I mean that's just a pinnacle here it is. Yeah,

(43:34):
I need a eye of newt a black cat's whisker,
and a dozen Oh no, first, it's just a chocolate
glaze from the duncan on Forest Avenue And she says,
is this an enchanted forest and she explains, no, it's
a pastry shop. They are what in these modern times

(43:56):
are called donuts. Why would you need a donut? Normally
I would require you to retrieve the sweetest flower from
the peak of Mountain Juktas, But honestly, it tastes a
lot like a donut, so amazing. I just there's something
about the fact that she like comes up with these

(44:17):
little things here and there that feel like maybe you
are trying, and then you know, you think I can
put this in my big bowl. Because Naja brings back
a white frosted sprinkle doughnut instead of a chocolate glazed
I'm just gonna say, I am the type of person

(44:42):
that if I can't have almost exactly what I asked
for in the first place, most of the time I
would rather have nothing. So yeah, if I ask for
a chocolate glaze and you come home with a vanilla
frosting and sprinkles. That's like almost the polar opposite. Just

(45:04):
don't do it, don't bother. It's not like it's just
not worth it. I want what I want. If I
can't have when I want, fine, I can't have it,
But like getting a half measure is so much worse somehow,
you know, especially because as a person on the receiving end,

(45:26):
you see that person come in with a bag, and
you fully anticipate that they were able to do the thing.
So now you get your hopes up, and then they
have to tell you what's in this bag. Isn't what
you think. It's gonna be the worst? Just yeah, do
you mean a cauldron? Yes, that's the word. You're gonna

(45:47):
have to go back out. Why don't you also grab me?
And she shows this, She has this list on her phone.
Three Boston Creams, three chocolate glazed, four jelly, and five
glazed Crullers, And I personally have always been a major

(46:08):
fan of Boston cream. Curious what the audience's favorite donuts are.
I also used to back in the day really like
Dunkin Donuts coffee rolls. The thing is now Dunkin Donuts
does not make their donuts on premises. Anymore. When I
was young, they made everything in house, and so their
flavor was unparalleled. They were just as good as a

(46:30):
Krispy cream. Nowadays Duncan stuff is all shipped and it's
got this really stale, preservative heavy flavor to it. It sucks.
And the coffee rolls used to be like the size
of like a cocktail plate. They were big, and now

(46:51):
they're the size of like a regular donut, which is
likely better for our health. But also there's so much
more just ordinary. And I saw them. I hadn't been
to a Duncan in ages, and I found one here
in Texas. They're very rare down here. They're here, but
you don't see them often. And I saw it and
I was like, oh, this is just like the saddest
shadow of what the coffee roll used to be. So anyway,

(47:17):
not just saying I don't know much about hexes or
how to get rid of them. Maybe the donut is
something to do with the circle of life. Also, Helen
said she had this magic wand for thousands of years.
But I'm pretty sure I saw her go outside and
pick up a stick off the ground. And we see
Helen with this stick and she's just put the doughnut

(47:39):
over it, and she's just eating it from the stick.
I mean, just the joy that she's taking and eating this.
And I also just really want to say thank you
to the show in general. And this is such a
low bar, but I have to mention it. She isn't fat.
You know, so many shows from a very short time

(48:01):
ago to now, like we have really finally started to
get maybe the fat jokes with people eating a lot
is not the best. Maybe we just kind of shouldn't.
And it's really wild looking at some of the shows
that have had a great track record for the most
part and how much they have managed to like fuck

(48:21):
it up in terms of that sort of thing. Like
Brooklyn ninety nine, there's an episode in the first season
where a fat man has been murdered and the fat
jokes are unbelievable, Like it's I can't watch the episode anymore,
I have to skip it. And now I know that
they wouldn't have done those jokes. I'm sure they kind

(48:43):
of regret that episode, but at the time it was
like nobody thought anything of it, and it would have
been I feel like a similar episode to this set
five six years ago, ten years ago she would absolutely
have been a fat woman, no question. Instead they have
I asked a woman who is like almost willowy. She's
very slender, and I just really appreciate that because, like,

(49:06):
people can be big eaters and not be fat. There
are all different types of body types out there, and
depending on what people do in their spare time for
exercise or what their metabolism is, like, it's just not
going to like sit on them the same way. So anyway, Uh,
oh my god, I forgot about the fact that Colin

(49:28):
has brought an acoustic guitar and he's gonna play night
Swimming by ram. Oh my god, this dude, we're having
a class on the quad man kind of a college tradition.
I catch your drift, though. How about we get the
old blood pumping with some hacky sack. Oh my god,
hacky sack? Do you guys? Did you ever play this?

(49:52):
I could not do it. But the stoners at my
school were kind of incredible, Like I would just sit
outside and want them, and considering the fact that they
were like otherwise pretty lazy in the way they approached
their lives, the dedication to perfecting shit with hacky sack
was truly something to see. So anyway, this is when

(50:17):
they go into the museums. I forgot about this. Uh.
The Naja threatens to like stop working with Helen, and
she pretends that the HECKS is growing so overpowering that
she is going to like probably be killed and not
be able to save. Naja eventually gets Naja to go

(50:40):
get some munchkins powdered ones like the powdered sugar. The
powder represents the ashes of your ancestors. Oh my god.
So this is when Naja goes into the duncan and
she sees the uh you know flyer do not? And

(51:02):
she's like, this is my friend. How do you know Helen?
And this girl says, I guess I know her from
like harassing me and my coworkers. That's mainly how so harassing.
It's very vague. I'd really like like a little bit
more detail on what she did. I'm assuming that it's

(51:22):
just sort of wanting free stuff or like camping out
inside the dunkin Donuts and you know, I don't know,
but uh yeah. This is when Naja goes back and
flings this this flyer down in front of her and
is like, well, you said you were the magic woman

(51:42):
and this is you know, and she tries to play
it off as, oh, well, this is textbook hex this
solution is a strawberry. And na just starts to leave
and she says, you have no idea what it's like
to not be allowed back to the place you feel
at home. And Naja, when she's doing the talking heads thing,

(52:07):
is like, I do know that feeling I was driven
out of my village. It ain't great. My hecks may
not have been lifted, but with just a little hypnosis,
at least Helen's has been. And we see Helen inside
the Duncan Donuts, reclining on the counter with her head

(52:30):
on the cash register and just the girl behind the
counter feeding her munchkins, like when they dangle grapes above
a person's head in cartoons and have giant feather fans
to indicate that this person is really living the fucking life. Honestly,

(52:54):
I loved this ending because Naja is so all over
the place with how much she gives a about people.
There are times where it's she's sort of like the
way that Colin was this episode where he did something
nice at the end and you're like, oh, you just
you know she'll there will be people with things that
are totally valid, like concerns and problems, and she's like,

(53:16):
shut the fuck up, Oh my god, stop whining. But then,
like you know, in the first season, she turns that
college girl and like teaches her how to be a
vampire and seems to actually take an interest. And this woman,
she's just like, let me set you up so that
you get your heart's desire for the rest of your life.
And you know, who knows how long this lasts. What

(53:37):
happens when this poor girl behind the counter who's been
mesmerized gets seen by her superior and fired. But like
in the short term, it's like really adorable, and she says,
you do not need to be sad anymore and gives
the camera this little look, and it's truly precious. I

(53:59):
really enjoy this. So anyway, I'm sorry, guys, there's I
forgot about the moment where Guillermo is just like pretending
to shoot these creatures and he shoots into the sky
and without meaning to, kills a bunch of like, well
seemed to be seagulls, and the dog creature darts forward

(54:22):
and grabs one, and he's like, no drop it. That
is too real. That is too real, Pip in the
other day, you guys, I was, Oh, my god, do
you ever have these moments where you're just like the
realization of what's happening comes over you, and there's just
this thrill of horror. He like ducked into the shrubs

(54:43):
and he came running out, and I'm like, what is that?
And I realized too late that it was like the
desiccated carcass of a dead squirrel. And it was pretty
much almost all gone except for the skin, and you
could I see the whole white of its spine vertebrae,

(55:03):
and he had like grabbed it by the head and
trotted into the yard with all of its like spine
bones sticking out of his mouth. And it took me
a second to like make sense of what I was seeing,
and then I was like, oh God. And it was
the kind of thing where I know I should take
this away from you, but I don't want to touch
it either, So what do I do? And like I

(55:24):
went in the house and I found like gardening gloves,
and I came out and he had eaten it already.
I like it was gone. I looked all over. I
don't know what he did, if he actually like straight
up ate it, or if you just sort of tore
it apart and the parts are so small I couldn't
find them. And even though I was like, I should
be worried that you maybe ate that, all I could

(55:45):
feel was relief that I wasn't going to have to
touch it or deal with it in any way, you
know anyway. Yeah, so that bit just got me a
little bit. Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot that. Colin said,
I stole the key ring there Mommy gave you from
the music, and I also took the liberty and he

(56:07):
shows nandor the footage of somebody like taking video. I
really like the way that this is done, because somebody's
at this museum and they're filming, and there's an adult present,
but she is very clearly glued to her phone and
not paying any attention. So this kid is reading highly

(56:29):
questionable material. But the person who should be noticing that
isn't at all set the world's record for having the
most constant sexual intercourse, often while flying, and he was
never scared of boat rides. It's really funny, and Colin

(56:49):
ends it with, you know, history is a construct. So yeah.
The episode, like the very very end is when we
see all of the uh weird little creatures that were
brought to the Old Folks Home, and oh, that's right.

(57:12):
Gizmo as he is called, is out here. He's keeping Binky.
It was hard for me to see. Is Binkie the
frog or it almost looks like a fish. I can't
tell it. I think it's a fish. And then Laslo
interrupts and is like, what are you doing out here

(57:34):
having a wank? He just says having a wank to
fucking everything, and Guillermo just says, uh, oh no, He says,
what are you doing out here? And Giirmo says having
a wank? Ah good man, carry on. Oh my god,
this fish, you guys, I don't want him to have
kept this fish. He's horrifying. Oh my god, I just

(57:57):
hated it. I just saw its face and I wish
I hadn't. I just hated it so much. Oh no,
Cassie's in the chat saying, we found an empty tortoise
shell in our backyard once my dog got sick for
a few days. Not sure if the two were related.
Oh god, I'm so sorry. It's always like do I

(58:18):
would I even want to know if I had the
option to find out what I want to One time,
Pippen we were at the park and there was like
a little gap in the fence that went into a
basically woodsy area. He darted back there and it was
not big enough for me to get in after him,
so I just had to call him and wait. I

(58:38):
almost went home and like, you know, got some food
or something to try and lure him out. But he
finally came out and he's got something in his mouth.
He trots up and puts it down and it's a
fucking tortoise. It's alive, and the poor little guy was
probably terrified being trodden through the forest in the dog's
mouth and its little head and arms and legs were
retracted because when he put it down it I was like, oh,

(59:00):
did he find an empty shell? I picked it up,
and the shit was heavy, and I looked in and
saw its little head and I was like, oh, my god,
And so I had to put it down and just
be like, no, don't bother these poor animals. But yeah,
I often wonder if, like, if he had been left
to his own devices, would he have eventually killed it?
Like I don't know what his reaction would be. He

(59:22):
seems to have a strong prey drive sometimes and then
he doesn't seem to know what to do. He'll chase
the cats, and then he stopped short and seems confused.
And I'm like, if he ever got a hold of
a squirrel, would he kill the squirrel? Would he back off? Like?
I don't know what you know? Anyway, that's how the

(59:43):
episode ended. Didn't love this one, you guys. Like I said,
sorry to be about a bummer at the beginning, but
these creatures are horrible looking. It's like it's something out
of a nightmare. And the fact that the one that
we kept around is a fish with a person's face,
I mean, this is like some heronumous boss shit. I
don't like it. I hope we never see this fucking

(01:00:06):
fish again. All right, thank you all again until next
time to lou motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled Network podcast.
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