Mystery Maniacs

🎙️ Episode:  https://share.transistor.fm/s/4423387d
📓 Show Notes: https://midsomermaniacs.transistor.fm/214

Mystery Maniacs Episode! In Podcast 214, Mr. Detective Shepherd uses Checkov’s tollbooth and crap in a vat to catch a dehydrated killer. Jared, where are your shorts?

Show Notes
Tragically Hip - No Dress Rehearsal
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33312360/

Nic Sampson as Yellow Ranger

Jared in the Lawn Chair

 
Thanks again for listening!
 
Mark & Sarah

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  • September 30 - The Brokenwood Mysteries S01 E02 - “Playing the Lie”
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Twitter Release

Mystery Maniacs Episode! In Podcast 214, Mr. Detective Shepherd uses Checkov’s tollbooth and crap in a vat to catch a dehydrated killer. Jared, where are your shorts!

Episode: https://share.transistor.fm/s/4423387d

#Brokenwood #BrokenwoodFans #MysteryManiacs #ComedyRecap #PodcastRecap #MurderMystery

Creators & Guests

Host
Mark Bell
Co-host of Mystery Maniacs
Host
Sarah Smith-Robbins
Co-host of Mystery Maniacs

What is Mystery Maniacs?

Mystery Maniacs Podcast is a comedy recap podcast dedicated to British Mystery Television. Formerly, Midsomer Maniacs podcast.

Sarah:

We got a little taste. Sip, but not a real cold. Hey, maniacs. Hey.

Mark:

Maniacs.

Sarah:

Welcome to Mystery Maniacs.

Mark:

Mystery Maniacs is a comedy recap podcast dedicated to mystery TV. Each week, we dig into an episode of the show including the murders, the man, the loonies, and everything else we love. We're back to murders. We're back to loonies. We're back to all sorts of fantastical.

Sarah:

Corpses in this episode. Because we're talking about Broken Wood season 1 episode 2, Sour Grapes.

Mark:

Short names of episodes too. I like that.

Sarah:

We are we are a spoiler podcast. If you've never listened before, we are gonna give it away. So if you've not watched Sour Grapes, stop right now. Go watch it and then come back.

Mark:

Which is literally a decade ago.

Sarah:

But, you know, if you've never seen it

Mark:

Never seen it.

Sarah:

We're gonna ruin it for you. Yep. So you should go watch it first.

Mark:

I'm Mark.

Sarah:

I'm Sarah.

Mark:

And, we are covering Brokenwood. Just to let you know, Brokenwood is on Acorn in the US, or you can purchase it on Prime.

Sarah:

Can't speak for other places. Yep. We need to get one of those international VPN things. Oh, I got we're in Oh, I got pretend we're in other places.

Mark:

I totally got screwed by that this week because there was a post on Facebook for BritBox Nordic, but

Sarah:

I didn't see Nordic.

Mark:

Mhmm. I was like, what are these shows? What we're missing all these shows. And and,

Sarah:

And see if we had one of those VPN thingies, we could probably do that. We could pretend we were in Sweden or something and maybe watch it. I don't know. That's not an ad for a VPN thingy. We don't do ads.

Mark:

We don't do ads.

Sarah:

If you're if you're new to Mystery Maniacs, we don't do ads. We don't have sponsors. There's no commercials. Don't worry about it. The only way we generate any kind of money is with merch.

Sarah:

You can go to our store, and if you buy something, we donate all the proceeds to charity anyway.

Mark:

And I would say that the income that we get from YouTube almost pays for our YouTube premium subscription that our entire family is on,

Sarah:

maybe close to it. Or this server that we use to store the podcasts. Anyhow Anyhow. That that doesn't matter. What matters is we're talking about sour grapes.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

These aren't sour grapes, by the way. They're pea grapes. There's a difference between pea grapes and sour grapes. Urine grapes. Urine.

Mark:

What a week. I have not had an easy week this week. Speaking of bad grapes, my I got poison ivy on my legs, and I haven't stopped specific.

Sarah:

It's on the inside of your thighs. That's way worse than any place else on your legs. It's the worst place to get it on your legs. It I feel so bad for you.

Mark:

And I haven't really slept since Tuesday.

Sarah:

No. You're getting kinda slap happy.

Mark:

I'm feeling better now, but, I was kind of an emotional wreck. Speaking of

Sarah:

One day, he took so much Benadryl. He was hallucinating. It was not funny.

Mark:

Speaking of emotional wrecks, I realized that many of you may not know the Canadian band, Tragically Hip, but I am going to ask you to take a moment out of your life and go and watch the first episode of, No Dress Rehearsal. It's on Prime. It's a documentary about the Tragically Hip, which is the best band that Canada has ever produced and is an epic story.

Sarah:

Is so angry right now.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

That little lead singer is gonna show up at our house.

Mark:

Kenny Lee could come to our house.

Sarah:

You'd be like, I'll insult you any day if you'll show up at my house.

Mark:

Strangely enough, Kenny Lee is in this in this documentary talking about how great tragically hip are. So

Sarah:

No one is going to listen to your recommendations for music of any kind if they took your suggestion last week and listened to I'm on Smoko. They don't trust you for music now.

Mark:

I heard back from one person that said they played Smoko real loud at their office. I'm like, yes.

Sarah:

If you're gonna listen to that song, the only way to listen to it is loud.

Mark:

At the office. The picture I put in the show notes is is them. It looks like a high school picture of them.

Sarah:

They still look like that. They're probably in their thirties, and they still look like that. They haven't changed.

Mark:

The chats.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

That's what those boys are called. This episode originally aired on the 5th October 2014, directed by Josh Frizzell, and written by Ted, Tim Baum. Like, most of these episodes are written by Tim Baum.

Sarah:

So my part of my job on the podcast is I do research into the actors. I look up what else they've been in. Yes. And when we were doing Midsommar, it's like, oh, well, how many episodes of Midsommar has this person been in? Or if they were in Poirot, have they ever been in Midsommar?

Sarah:

None of the people in Broken would have been in Midsommar, so that's not a search for me. So and I also look for bad movies they've been in.

Mark:

Samantha Bond surprisingly has not shown up in Brokenwood. No. She showed up in Murdoch Yeah. But she has not showed up in Brokenwood.

Sarah:

Well, Commonwealth. Yeah. Anyway, so in an effort to find something interesting to look into, I did you know, the actors in common, the collaboration thing that's on IMDB where you can put into 2 shows or a movie and a show or whatever, and it will show you how many actors, writers, producers, whatever they have in common. Yes. We talked about this last week, how New Zealand basically has produced Hercules, Xena, Lord of the Rings, and Broken Wood

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And lots of other good things that are much smaller. How many people in common do you think Broken Wood has with Hercules?

Mark:

Hercules? So this is actors or all cast Only actors. Only actors.

Sarah:

Because I don't count, like, craft services and light grips and stuff like that. I don't count people who might be in common because of the production companies being the same or something.

Mark:

Now I'm gonna go 75.

Sarah:

84. 84. That's probably all the ad

Mark:

does in New Zealand.

Sarah:

Yes. Yes. How many do you think it has in common with Xena?

Mark:

60. 95.

Sarah:

95. Wow. Again, that's like all of New Zealand actors from children to old people. They were all in Xena.

Mark:

Literally, Lucy Lawless from Xena and Sam Neill are pretty much the only 2 New Zealand actors who have not been on this show. On Broken Wood? On Broken Wood.

Sarah:

Nah. And Waititi. Yes. Taika Waititi.

Mark:

Taika Waititi.

Sarah:

But, hey, but, you know, they're filming a new season right now. Who knows?

Mark:

Who knows?

Sarah:

So I kind of knew about those 2. Right? But then I found a third thing.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

That 9 people who are in this episode alone were in.

Mark:

Is this a show called the Mighty Andersons? No. Okay. Because that's another Timbalm show.

Sarah:

You wouldn't guess this if I gave you a 100 guesses.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

It is the Power Rangers.

Mark:

Oh, yes. So so the woman who plays Amanda James Yes. Is Power Rangers royalty.

Sarah:

She's in over 80 episodes of Power Rangers.

Mark:

She is a huge Power Rangers.

Sarah:

And she was in Hercules and in Xena. But even better, Nick Sampson, who plays Sam Breen Yes. Our favorite red headed detective

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

He is Yellow Rangers.

Mark:

He's Yellow Ranger?

Sarah:

He's a child in a leotard. He is yellow ranger. I'm now going to call him Yellow ranger Breen? No. Sam yellow ranger?

Mark:

I'm going to call him

Sarah:

DC ranger?

Mark:

None of those. Breen ranger? Ginger ranger. Ginger ranger? Ginger ranger.

Mark:

Sam Breen can come on the show and talk to us about it.

Sarah:

His name's Nick Samson.

Mark:

Nick Samson can come on the show and talk to you. Anyway Nick Samson. That is like a name that you

Sarah:

That's a Hercules name.

Mark:

That's a Hercules name

Sarah:

on Nick Samson. Power Ranger.

Mark:

Boy, there are a lot of extras at this wine tasting.

Sarah:

There should be. I can't. It'd be kinda weird if there were just, like, 5 people to count.

Mark:

25 extras at the Broken Wood Annual Wine Festival.

Sarah:

That's why you can get, like, 95 people in common between 2 shows because they have so many background Yes. Background artists is what they're called.

Mark:

With Mike, and it's casual Friday. So Mike's wearing the slightly overweight bearded casual Friday guy outfit, which is jeans and a button up shirt that's untucked. Mhmm.

Sarah:

When he's on duty, he tucks it in and puts a sports coat on Yep. And a belt buckle. Yep. Sometimes cords instead of jeans.

Mark:

Ned James is just in this episode to cause trouble and not give any information. Especially, my favorite is when he goes, come with me to get information, and he gets no information. He's just mister Grump. He

Sarah:

is. When you find out later that he's Amanda's dad, you're like, wow. That must have been a fun house to live in. Yeah. Ned and Amanda in the same house.

Mark:

No. Definitely not.

Sarah:

So Paul Winterson, the judge and the first victim, to me, looks like a poor man's Tom Jones. A little bit. I think it's the hair.

Mark:

It's the hair. Tom Jones' hair is appears darker

Sarah:

now. It's not his?

Mark:

It's not his hair.

Sarah:

And the color's not his either? No. I kinda get that that feeling off of Paul's hair. It's a little too curly on top.

Mark:

He is a man of that type. Definitely.

Sarah:

Or maybe it's I don't know. Where do they take hair plugs from?

Mark:

What I don't understand

Sarah:

is somewhere else.

Mark:

All of these judges have drank your wine. Your wine.

Sarah:

It's it's BP wine. Maybe Amanda. It's BP Benoit.

Mark:

Amanda has dominated too long.

Sarah:

Yeah. She's won 5 years in a row. I think it is somebody else's turn, but she's a little obsessive, and she doesn't like to lose.

Mark:

We'll get there.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

So Nick goes to the winery, finds the broken bottle, and then a dude in a vat.

Sarah:

Chris Chambers is the character who finds him.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And I remember the first time we saw this, we were like, dude, in a vat. How many times has that happened? How many people have died? I mean, open fermentation tanks really should be outlawed just because so many people on TV die in them.

Mark:

Oh, boy. Let me go into that. First of all, we've covered 2 episodes of Midsummer that had dudes and vats. Mhmm.

Sarah:

And it doesn't have to be a dude. Person in a vat.

Mark:

The first one is night of the stag where he's in the cider vat, and they all get sick.

Sarah:

Yeah. And

Mark:

the second But

Sarah:

if you drink corpse cider, you're gonna throw up, which is what people who drink pea wine should throw.

Mark:

The second the second one is ghost of Costin Abbey, which again has a guy in a vet, and that's Annette Badlands' first episode.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

But do you remember

Sarah:

those would be PPP noir too. I mean Yeah. If you're if you die, certain things relax. Yep. But I'd be more than pee pee pee.

Sarah:

I'm

Mark:

not worst one. We didn't cover this, but I know we've seen this. I saw that there was a father Brown epistle called the truth in the wine. I was like, oh, yeah. Mhmm.

Mark:

No. There's a dead body in the wine, but it's not a person. It's a dog. Do you remember that episode?

Sarah:

Yes. Is that the one where it's in the barrel?

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Instead of in a vat? Yes. It's in the barrel? Yeah. But the dog was already dead when they put it in.

Mark:

This is

Sarah:

kill it Yes. By drowning it.

Mark:

This is the saddest real story I could find about this This has actually happened? Deeply shocked, town mourns over the the death of 2 winemakers found inside a vat of Spanish wine.

Sarah:

2 people fell in?

Mark:

Oh, it gets worse.

Sarah:

Did one person fall in and the other one tried to help them?

Mark:

Yes. But it gets worse. About that. It gets worse. Okay.

Mark:

60 year old Geraldo Uvera and his brother-in-law, 61 year old Felix Crespo

Sarah:

2 old dudes died in Nevada.

Mark:

Were involved in the accident. What happened was, according to reports, Jespera slipped and fell into the wine vat while checking the fermentation process in the warehouse. Then Crespo wanted to help him, but, tragically, both men were overcome by carbon dioxide fumes and drowned.

Sarah:

That makes sense. It off gases.

Mark:

What, like, what a horrible Put a lid on it. 2 minutes in that winery.

Sarah:

And not some little crappy tarp with bungees on it, like a lid. Yeah. What what else falls in there?

Mark:

I I I don't know. But I

Sarah:

was looking at when

Mark:

That was incredibly sad story.

Sarah:

When the second murder happens and, Chris goes to check the the vat before he gets knocked into it, and it's covered with that tarp. And this one's outside. It's not inside the factory. It's, like, just out. Like, any raccoon could get underneath that tarp and into that wine.

Mark:

We've been watching a lot of videos of wombats. There's gonna be a drunk wombat climbing up in there and drinking.

Sarah:

That would be so cute. It would be so pink when it got out. It'd be a fat little pink drunk wombat.

Mark:

If you wanna make your life better, watch some wombat videos.

Sarah:

They're always cute.

Mark:

They're super cute. I have a question for you related to this.

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

This is a trope. I checked. Agatha Christie never used this trope.

Sarah:

Okay.

Mark:

Okay? But the question I have to you is, what would be the most horrific manufacturing process to die by? Now we saw the steamer in sauce with a goose. In midsummer. Midsummer.

Sarah:

Poor Dexter.

Mark:

Poor Dexter.

Sarah:

Dies naked in the in the bottle sanitizer. Okay. When you say horrific, do you mean it's a horrific death process, meaning slow and painful, or do you mean, like, horrific for whoever finds them?

Mark:

Both, actually. Oh,

Sarah:

I'm gonna go with anything that has, like, industrial smooshing.

Mark:

Smooshing. Yeah. Is that an engineering team?

Sarah:

Well, it's a generic term for squeezing, flattening things like those places, those junkyards where they crush cars into tiny squares.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

Like, you you don't wanna, like a grape you'd pop. I think that'd be pretty gross, and, probably painful because they're usually kind of slow processes too. That'd be pretty bad.

Mark:

I actually have not a story that relates to me, but this is

Sarah:

I'm glad it didn't happen to you. You recovered really well.

Mark:

I worried about it happening to me because

Sarah:

Oh, I know. Let me guess. Is it a big guillotine at a game game design store shop? No. Oh, that when you worked at that board game company and they had that big paper guillotine

Mark:

They did have that told

Sarah:

me about that, and I'm like, wow. That's a figure.

Mark:

Yeah. I worked at a board game company in Canada, a very small boutique

Sarah:

board game. And dad shop. Yeah.

Mark:

In the in the late eighties, I was so far ahead of my time. It wasn't funny. But they had

Sarah:

It wasn't funny?

Mark:

They they were a they were a pay they had a paper guillotine, but you had to put your hands under it, under this platform to make it work, and both hands had to be used to make it work.

Sarah:

So both hands had to be in a safe place before it would even work?

Mark:

You could cut someone else's hand, but you could not cut cut your own.

Sarah:

You could put your nose underneath it, but your hands had to be under the table. The platform that it was on made a dip. You're saying your nose wouldn't have been theoretically possible?

Mark:

It would have been impossible to get your head in it and your hands where they needed to.

Sarah:

Somebody else's,

Mark:

maybe. Someone else's. And I'm sad saddened by the fact that they probably had to check that.

Sarah:

Yeah. That they had to test it to see. Hey, Elmer. Can you get your head in there with your hands right here? Nope.

Sarah:

Okay. We're good to go.

Mark:

Oh, that's good.

Sarah:

What was the actual story? I'm sorry. I thought I had a good guess.

Mark:

So when I was a kid on

Sarah:

the farm, now I know this Farms are dangerous. We've seen movies about this.

Mark:

Know this isn't manufacturing per se, but I remember this when I saw this. So we had a silo.

Sarah:

We have seen somebody murdered by a hay baler. Yes. That was a bad murder.

Mark:

And I

Sarah:

Not not in person. Not on a show.

Mark:

Yes. Having having worked with a hay baler, that would be horrific.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

But so there was a silo on the original farm that I grew up on when I was until I was 5. And in that silo was grain.

Sarah:

We have seen somebody killed that way too.

Mark:

Yep. But there was an auger at the bottom of this silo.

Sarah:

Big screw that turned. Right?

Mark:

Yes. That pushed the grain out in this trough.

Sarah:

Out of chute. Yeah.

Mark:

No. No. It it pushed it all the way down the trough. Like, my father had this huge archimedes screw thing.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

As a child, now I'm 5 or under.

Sarah:

Because you were little. You had to be little.

Mark:

And this thing made an enormous amount of noise because it was moving this screw thing on this wooden trough that my father had put together with good intentions. All I remember was thinking as a kid falling in the side of that and being

Sarah:

Get get caught up in the auger.

Mark:

Archimedes screwed down the Be like

Sarah:

being in a pasta machine.

Mark:

I know I definitely had bad dreams about that.

Sarah:

I bet. I'm glad that didn't happen to you.

Mark:

No. But I I remember it going.

Sarah:

If you know of a horrible way to die in your manufacturing method, let us know. Yes. It's probably been used in the mid summer.

Mark:

More than likely been used.

Sarah:

We'll be giving good ideas to the writers of Broken Wood. Speaking

Mark:

of Nick Sampson, Ginger Ranger is on the scene.

Sarah:

He wrote 4 episodes of Broken Wood. Yep. I was so glad to see him and Gina. Yes. They are not in the first episode enough.

Mark:

But we don't get full Gina in this episode.

Sarah:

No. It's just a

Mark:

little It's

Sarah:

like It's a soup sauce of Gina.

Mark:

It's like in the first episode, we get a wine glass poured, and we get to sniff it of Gina. Yeah. You know? And then this episode, we swished it around the glass. We got a little taste.

Sarah:

Sip, but not a real gulp. And we have to spit it out.

Mark:

No. But she's coming.

Sarah:

Next the next few episodes, we get a big glug of Gina.

Mark:

One thing I like about what they do with Breen here is he's not incompetent. No. He's he is a guy who has obviously worked his self up as a uniform. Mhmm. And now he's plain clothes guy.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

He's not the main guy in the house, but he is a helper. Speaking of houses, I mentioned this to you already. I have a problem with the complete lack of empathy for Gary in this episode.

Sarah:

We don't know how much time has passed. I think we're supposed to assume quite a bit of time has passed between the first and second episodes long enough for Gary to have died or

Mark:

Okay. I don't know. If Gary has died

Sarah:

And for Mike to buy his home and be settled in.

Mark:

When Mike mentions Gary's house, someone, anyone

Sarah:

Should go, aw.

Mark:

I'm sorry about Gary.

Sarah:

That's right. We're sad about Gary.

Mark:

And If he's still sick

Sarah:

Yeah. How is Gary?

Mark:

How is Gary? But, no, it's Gary was a former landowner that I bought a house up. Yep. And you brought up legitimately that Sims is like, he's my mentor, and I've learned so much from him. I don't know who he is now.

Sarah:

Yeah. He's just gone. Gary who? Gary. Mary.

Mark:

Bye, Gary. She's had too much wine.

Sarah:

He's just a vegetable somewhere now. We don't talk about him anymore.

Mark:

And we meet Amanda James.

Sarah:

This is something I don't and there's a lot about wine I don't know because I'm not a wine drinker. But

Mark:

I know something.

Sarah:

Urine does not belong in wine. I know that too. Hey. We know something. Yep.

Sarah:

I do know that if you're serious about wine and you have a cellar of wine that you turn the bottles on occasion and you keep them on their sides because it's important for the corks to stay exposed to the wine to keep them wet because otherwise they'll dry out and crack and the wine won't get exposed and it'll be bad. Right? But Amanda James' wine has a metal screw top on it. Yes. And which is fine.

Sarah:

There there's no judgment. I remember when I was younger, people would say if it had a screw top, it was bad, And that's not the case anymore. It's not

Mark:

the case.

Sarah:

I don't think there's any judgment about cork versus cork. No matter what grumpy Ned says in this episode. But her bottles are in a rack, and they're kind of at, like, a 45 degree angle down, and she turns them. Like, she feels she has to, like, a compulsion. Like, it must be done.

Sarah:

And I'm not sure why she's doing that. Maybe it's to, like, shift the sediment in the bottles, but it's certainly not for the corks.

Mark:

All I could think was to shift the sediment in the bottles. And if your wine has that much sediment in it that you have to do it on a timetable every day, it would be weird.

Sarah:

And if they make as much wine as the Bright Valley who makes 3,000 dozen

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So 36,000 bottles

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

She's gonna be there for a while.

Mark:

She is gonna be there for a while.

Sarah:

Turning bottles.

Mark:

And also because the the bright wine people have a bit of a more upscale manufacturing process

Sarah:

Except that their vats are outside.

Mark:

Their vats are outside, which, you know, if I was a wombat looking for a free drink, Wouldn't they make a machine that

Sarah:

did this? That turned the bottles? Yeah. I assume that there is one.

Mark:

I I

Sarah:

I mean, all you'd have to do is put them on a conveyor and just roll it

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

And then roll it back. Yeah. You know?

Mark:

I I don't like something that is so vital that has to be done on a certain time for your entire stock, you would build a machine to do that. Yeah. Because it has to be done if it has to be done once a day, that's different. But if it has to be done every 4 hours, it has to be done at night then.

Sarah:

No. It would it at most, it would need to be done in reality, like, once a week. So maybe she's only turning a 7th of the 36,000 bottles each day. Maybe. By hand herself.

Sarah:

Because what these wineries all have in common is they are run by an incredibly small number of people, like 3. 3. Yes. And that's it.

Mark:

Oh, it's okay. Every business is run by 3 people. That's true. So well, look at the hotel. We don't see anybody working there.

Sarah:

When Mike goes back to the wine tasting place to get the other to get the leftover wine because it's a crime scene and

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

They're about to sell them for charity. Yes. And he has to, of course, take it off for evidence. Did you notice the names of the other wines that were in the competition? No.

Sarah:

They're interesting. So there's Cabin Bay. Yep. Okay. The barrel.

Sarah:

It's got a picture of a barrel and a corkscrew. Okay. Pee can see. Pee can see? Like like something is pecan't.

Sarah:

Like like salsa is pecan't, you know, like pecan't day. Yeah. It's called pecan see.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

But the best one is called clawhammer.

Mark:

Yeah. They're obviously a clawhammer on the bottom. Obviously screwed with that.

Sarah:

Yes. They're like, wonder if anybody will notice this clawhammer wine. It's so subtle and floral. It's a clawhammer.

Mark:

We learned that Amanda was really upset and is really concerned about her wine.

Sarah:

Well, they did say it was salty and putrid. That's pretty harsh.

Mark:

Is it that pee pee?

Sarah:

It's pee pee wine. It's gonna taste like that, I think.

Mark:

She shows up at the hotel where she confronts the judge and woman x. Mhmm. Where woman x, I was like, is she in the first scene? I had to go back and look. Yes.

Mark:

She is in the first scene. She doesn't say anything. Her name is Erin.

Sarah:

Yes. Erin Formby. She's another judge, and she's in the room next to Winterston.

Mark:

The adjoining room.

Sarah:

The adjoining room. But it takes forever for them to actually say what her name is. I kept like, who is she? Like, I know she's another judge. I know she has the room next door.

Sarah:

What's her name? What is her name?

Mark:

So okay.

Sarah:

She's one of Winterson's mistresses is who she is because she has the adjoining room.

Mark:

Amanda is upset about the wine. She goes to the hotel. Why does she not bring a bottle of wine to the hotel?

Sarah:

Because she wants them to see her facility and to see how clean it is.

Mark:

She's won this gig 5 years in a row. Do you not think they've toured her facility?

Sarah:

Let's talk about Amanda.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Okay? She's an odd duck. Everybody thinks so. And then we find out that she has Asperger's Yes. Which we don't even say anymore.

Sarah:

Now, it's just you're on the autism spectrum.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

We know this because we have a child who used to be considered having Asperger's and now he's on the spectrum.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

As a portrayal of that part of the autism spectrum, they do some things really well with Amanda and some things not so well. Yes. Her inability to interpret social cues and emotional cues from other people, totally accurate.

Mark:

Absolutely fantastic.

Sarah:

Her obsessiveness and kinda single track mindedness, totally accurate.

Mark:

The appearance of a lack of empathy?

Sarah:

Yes. Again, it's the emotional vocabulary.

Mark:

And it's not a lack of empathy. It's an empathy for things that are not your empathy.

Sarah:

Right.

Mark:

So anyone in that situation would say, I'm apathetic because there's a dead human being here. Mhmm. Empathetic. Sorry. And she's, like, I'm empathetic because my wine is at risk.

Sarah:

Because what a waste. An entire vat of wine is gonna have to be thrown out. Yeah. Because not because she doesn't think other human beings deserve to live, but because she's not thinking about that. It's kind of single track mindedness.

Mark:

I do wish, and this is kind of mean, sort of. I wish Andrew was a little more winemaker y and a little less video gaming.

Sarah:

You wanna change what his focus is to something productive that could make him money. Is that it? All of us money. Yeah. Can we can we use, can can we use your Asperger's for profit is what you're saying.

Sarah:

No. There you go. Yes. Yes. Amanda is obsessive as well as being on the spectrum.

Mark:

But then they screw it up. When she sits at Mike's desk, she starts moving stuff around.

Sarah:

Yeah. And that's not

Mark:

That's OCD and controllable issues.

Sarah:

And and those may have a lot of overlap. I don't know. Yeah. People may have one, they have the other. But I can tell you in my experience, not everyone who is on the spectrum is also OCD and neat and needs to have control over the environment because my son's room is a tip.

Sarah:

Yes. He is evidence of this. Yes. The clues are a bit heavy handed here.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

When Mike goes to see Rob at Bright Valley who won, I cut my hand on broken glass, and we changed our lid color. Just saying.

Mark:

Just saying.

Sarah:

That might be important later.

Mark:

Much like no one drives my car but me.

Sarah:

Yeah. Ever. Let's have a

Mark:

little discussion of cars here because my car will be important later. So as we mentioned, Tim Baum did such a good job with the first episode.

Sarah:

The writer?

Mark:

He's he's in the thick of it here.

Sarah:

It's and it's not it's not bad.

Mark:

It's not bad, but

Sarah:

The the clue laying is kind of like a siren.

Mark:

It's a little heavy handed here.

Sarah:

Yeah. I love when they go to confront the third vintner, Dominic, who's only important because he's in debt. Yes. And they say they're police, and he takes off running. Because I I just I always get tickled when bad guys run because, like, where do you think you're gonna go?

Sarah:

Are you gonna run for the rest of your life?

Mark:

Oh, well, we have the ultimate of that at the end of the episode. Yeah.

Sarah:

But he thinks that they're debt collectors pretending to be police, and that's why he takes off running. He's relieved to find their only police. But He's not relieved at the flying tackle that Sims gives him. So Mike looks awesome.

Mark:

Mike looks at Sims like We're

Sarah:

gonna have to get him.

Mark:

No. That look is you're going to

Sarah:

have to get him. Go ahead, Junior. Chase him down.

Mark:

And Kristen in her boots, I I heard an interview with, Fern Sutherland who says she wears almost the same pair of boots the entire series.

Sarah:

Makes sense. So They're the right shoes for the job.

Mark:

Yep. She runs past, and we it's it's cut very well because Mike and the guy are talking, and we realize that we've forgotten about Sims. And then Sims makes the great appearance of tackling him.

Sarah:

And How many times do you think they had to shoot that? How many times did she get to fly from the side of the camera shot to knock him down? I don't know. Probably, even if it was one, it was probably one too many for that actor. Yeah.

Sarah:

Like, a little less enthusiasm, please. It would be weird as her to have to do that because he's just standing there, and you know she's gotta take a running start Yes. From off camera and fly at him.

Mark:

Either her or the, like, the stunt person.

Sarah:

Yeah. But it's her. Yeah. It's an up close shot. Yep.

Sarah:

We do find out that Mike has been married 4 times. 4 times. In the last episode, he gives kind of a range, and now we know that it's 4, and we've met one of them. Yes. We will meet the other ones.

Mark:

Yes. I think it's I think it's interesting, the relationship here with Sims because she says something like, I thought you told me 3.

Sarah:

Yeah. And then she says, I was born in 1989.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Like, I got genes that old.

Mark:

Yes. But as most people are, you are aware of media that happened before you were born.

Sarah:

Yeah. I am.

Mark:

And and so maybe you don't have to be so snarky about it. But she is legitimately upset and rightfully so with the that's a woman thing Yeah. Comment.

Sarah:

Yeah. But I think Mike's explanation of it is good. He's he says that Amanda is, you know, stern and terse, and maybe it's because she's a woman. And and Sims is like, hey now. He's like, in a in an industry that is dominated by men.

Mark:

Yeah. That is a valid way to talk about it. He introduces it bad. Yeah. He doesn't call her girly the way No.

Sarah:

She calls herself later. Yeah. What do you think about Julian's radio show? He's the he's the morning DJ. Right?

Mark:

Yes. So the problem I have with the radio station is this. They don't give gold records

Sarah:

to radio stations. Maybe his favorite band gave him their gold record.

Mark:

And you wouldn't put them in the studio.

Sarah:

Why not? What's that gonna hurt?

Mark:

You want the studio walls to be as soft as possible.

Sarah:

Yeah. For sound. So you probably have it in your office or something inside.

Mark:

Like, much like this is you're gonna be like, what? Much like a spaceship where landscape is a premium. Right? People think Real estate is a premium. Are, you know, full of big corridors that we walk.

Mark:

No. No. They are incredibly cramped type places. Radio stations are also like that, but this is, like, the most beautiful radio station. It's bright.

Mark:

He is sitting at can look out a window.

Sarah:

He is sitting at real audio equipment, though. He is. I looked up the brands of

Mark:

the audio equipment. It's real. He's sitting at real audio equipment. He is.

Sarah:

I looked up the brands of the audio equipment. Equipment. It's real. He's sitting at real audio.

Mark:

I don't know if it's plugged into anything, but it

Sarah:

is real. I wonder if RODE gave that to them. That's not the

Mark:

brand. It's not the brand.

Sarah:

It's like Allen and Barker or

Mark:

something like that.

Sarah:

Because RODE who

Mark:

we use their mixer to do our audio is an Australian brand.

Sarah:

If they'd like to be a sponsor. But this

Mark:

show could sponsor us any old day of the week.

Sarah:

This show is in New Zealand. So it's a it's a different thing.

Mark:

Oh, it's the same thing. We just lose half of our list.

Sarah:

I love that Amanda calls Mike mister detective Shepherd all the time, not detective.

Mark:

Mister detective Shepherd.

Sarah:

Mister detective Shepherd.

Mark:

Yep. That's I think Amanda James does a fantastic job.

Sarah:

Her name is Josephine Davidson.

Mark:

And she plays a number of villains both in Xena and in Power Rangers.

Sarah:

I forgot a really important question I wanted to ask you. Okay. Before we get to the second murder, Paul Winterson, the first murder, the judge, they talk to his wife. They talked to the other judge, Aaron, about his lifestyle as a judge. Yes.

Sarah:

Right? About how he's kind of on tour.

Mark:

And he's from Southland? I think that's The

Sarah:

South Island.

Mark:

He's from the South Island.

Sarah:

Failed he's a a failed entrepreneur. He can't he tried to make wine and couldn't, and now he's a judge. He judges wine competitions, which can't be very lucrative. There can't be that many going on.

Mark:

You can't think so.

Sarah:

It's certainly seasonal, I would guess. No. But he's made a career out of it somehow Yes. Of being a judge. If you were magically going to have a successful career as a judge of competitions, what kind of judge would you wanna be?

Mark:

Oh, well, you know, there's always wine or beer or spirits and things like that, but

Sarah:

You gotta like it because you're gonna have to have a lot of it.

Mark:

Think you're you're gonna have to have a lot of that. I'd rather be a judge, like, 2 things. They're obviously related to my hobbies. I'd love to be at there are several competitions at especially at, at European game conferences like ESN, which is a huge the biggest game conference in the world.

Sarah:

Board games?

Mark:

Yeah. Board games. So you get to be

Sarah:

a board game judge, like best new game of the year judge?

Mark:

Best new game of the year and stuff like that.

Sarah:

That's not bad.

Mark:

And then the second one I'd like to be is something that I could actually be. So it's funny you mentioned this. So the Ringo Awards are for independent comic book, publishers and creators, and the people on that judging panel are people in the industry. Industry. So I could eventually if I become so popular or so.

Mark:

Those are both good answers,

Sarah:

but they're way more thoughtful than I thought they would be. Sorry. I was trying to decide between barbecue and

Mark:

baking. Barbecue and baking would both be very, very good.

Sarah:

I'd like to be a barbecue judge. Hey. Guess what? I get to taste a bunch of different barbecue. It is gonna be good.

Mark:

The barbecue show on Netflix, man, those people eat good.

Sarah:

Yeah. Or I would happily be a judge on The Great British Bake Off and taste all their good stuff. But I'd much rather be a judge at, like, the the baking competition at the state fair

Mark:

Oh, that would be cool.

Sarah:

And get to taste all that stuff. Yeah. No. I need another piece of that pie. Thank you very much.

Mark:

That's the one.

Sarah:

I'm probably gonna have to take this cake home before I can make a decision. Yeah. I think so. Or maybe chocolates, like a chocolatier competition.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

I can see. Wanna be the aesthetic judge. I don't wanna say your chocolate sculpture sculpture is the best. I wanna be like the bonbon judge where you actually get to eat them. Yes.

Sarah:

Of course, you'd have to have, like, jalapeno chocolates or whatever, but I can I can get through those to have the good ones? So the the whole wine tasting competition thing here just drove home to me how much I don't know about wine. They do a really good job of explaining it. Jared is a really good kind of, like, unpacker of the terminology.

Mark:

But they also do a good job of making fun of people

Sarah:

who do it. Who are overly serious about it.

Mark:

When presented with the exact same wine, Mike and Kristen view it differently.

Sarah:

Yeah. They try to say that they're discovering different flavors in them even though it's the same wine.

Mark:

Jared is like, no. You just say they're the same wine.

Sarah:

So I went on a search for weird wine facts that I didn't know before and not terminology like the leg or the aroma or whatever.

Mark:

The nose.

Sarah:

The nose of it. Sorry. Not the aroma. Apparently, it's a thing if you have a wine cellar that people think they're haunted. And the reason why people think, like, underground wine cellars are often haunted is yes.

Sarah:

They're underground and they're dark, obviously. Yeah. But apparently, like, one out of every 500 bottles of wine will just explode. What? If you keep it long enough.

Sarah:

Or the cork will just shoot out because they like ferment over ferment.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

Right? So if a little air gets in there when it's not supposed to then it can keep fermenting or if the cork breaks The pressure builds. Then then then pressure builds up because the yeast gets activated again. Right? And then like it'll just shoot out and make weird noises or break other bottles.

Sarah:

Yeah. I understand that. Spontaneously broken bottles that are across the room from the bottle that the cork flew out of. Poltergeist. Poltergeist.

Mark:

Totally.

Sarah:

I read a great story about a wine tasting host who found dentures in the spit bucket. Woah. So, you know, you you swig it, you swirl it around your mouth, and then you spit it out so you don't get too much.

Mark:

Would you not notice if you spit your dentures out?

Sarah:

What she thought happened was it happened but the person was too embarrassed to admit it. But they're your denture? And also didn't want to fish them out of a bucket full of spit.

Mark:

But they're your dentures.

Sarah:

So they just left them. Oh. She said they were so purple. They were like super super purple when they fished them out. But like who has that job?

Sarah:

I don't want that job of emptying those buckets. No. No. Like here we've got individual judges sitting at tables so it's like one person spit. There's probably not that much in the bucket.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's like 10 mouthfuls. Right? But if you're at, like, a wine tasting party or, like, a big wine tasting event where a lot of people are tasting wine, that's gross.

Mark:

In a in a related but slightly different way, somebody had to make some liquid that the killer poured into the bucket to make it look like pee.

Sarah:

Yeah. Apple juice. Yeah. It's almost always apple juice.

Mark:

Like, it just

Sarah:

please be apple juice.

Mark:

Please be apple juice.

Sarah:

It was bad enough that he had to pretend to be peeing in a bucket. Yes. But, I didn't so this is another thing I didn't know. In 17th century, wine was involved in witch trials. And I know they they used all kinds of heinous torture during witch trial.

Sarah:

I mean

Mark:

it's just Absolutely.

Sarah:

Nutsy bobo cuckoo for coconuts crap. But they would make a suspect drink the wine and if they threw up that was proof of that they were witches. Uh-oh. But I couldn't find any detail like how much did you make them drink? Like a gallon?

Mark:

Woah. We waterboard them with wine and they get sick.

Sarah:

Or did they give them like

Mark:

A little sip.

Sarah:

Like a sip of PP wine and they threw up. Like maybe the wine was really gross. Maybe it was only witch trial wine. It was special. Maybe they made them drink from the spit bucket.

Sarah:

You throw up.

Mark:

Okay. Let's deal with this right now. When Amanda comes back to the station and says, this dude peed in my wine, Mike should have thrown up.

Sarah:

Because he tasted it.

Mark:

He tasted the pee pee wine. And so did she. And so did she.

Sarah:

And so did a lot of other people, like all the judges.

Mark:

But the only person there was Mike, and he should have thrown up

Sarah:

a hat. He should have at least, like, gagged a little bit.

Mark:

I think I gagged a little, and I'm not even on the show, and it's not even real life.

Sarah:

Because you gotta trust her. Because she knows what she's talking about. Yeah. She absolutely knows what she's talking about. If I were him, I would just be in denial.

Sarah:

Like, oh, Amanda's a little off. She's obsessed with not winning.

Mark:

Him later,

Sarah:

like, brushing his teeth. His teeth. Yeah. They probably cut that scene. Getting the getting the mouthwash from his bottom drawer.

Mark:

It just was, like, weird. So let's also deal with this. Fern Sutherland said the people on the show screw around with them.

Sarah:

That's Kristen.

Mark:

Yeah. There is an article with a badly photoshopped head of Amanda James on top of a body in a bathtub of wine. Yeah. That is a bad Photoshop. Yeah.

Mark:

There is an article that accompanies that bad Photoshop. There is 75 lines of chances to make in jokes and stupidity. And there's nothing there? There's nothing there. I read the entire article.

Sarah:

Maybe the Photoshop is bad because it's kind of a a wink and a nod to the the magazine might have actually wanted a picture of that that winemaker in a tub, but she would never do it.

Mark:

She would never do that.

Sarah:

No. So they had to fake the photograph.

Mark:

I think that's the closest we can get, but it's a bad Photoshop.

Sarah:

As far as I'm concerned, Paul's wife and the other judge, Erin, don't even need to be in the episode. I don't care that he was having affairs. I really don't even care that he slept with Amanda. All that could get cut.

Mark:

Yep. All that could be cut. I'd say Ned James almost doesn't need to be in this episode, and he should be in jail anyway after running Mike off the road and threatening him.

Sarah:

Grumpy old men get away with stuff. Oh. They get excused.

Mark:

Wait a minute. Grumpy old men get away with stuff?

Sarah:

You're not old enough yet. Oh. Sorry. You gotta look 10 or 15 years before you can get away with that.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

You gotta be, like, past retirement age.

Mark:

You're gonna drive my ute around and yell at people?

Sarah:

Then you can do that.

Mark:

Well, he is a Land Rover. So expensive.

Sarah:

I don't have a problem with Ned being in the episode because I think he provides an important insight into winemaking culture and into Amanda as a person. He is the one person in the episode who loves her.

Mark:

I agree with that.

Sarah:

And I think that's important. She needs to be a human even though she's kind of like a robot.

Mark:

And he brings in the is art a winemaking or a science thing?

Sarah:

Right. And that's an important conversation to have.

Mark:

And I'm a grumpy old man who doesn't like science.

Sarah:

Then Mike has 2 bottles of wine. 3. And they asked Jared to try them. No. Not not at the police station.

Sarah:

No. That's a different scene. I'm talking about the scene where the 3 of where Mike, Kristen, and Jared are outside.

Mark:

And they're drinking the 2 bottles, one from each finer winery. Yes. 1 from the judging box and one from the regular box.

Sarah:

What the flaming does Jared have on?

Mark:

Nothing. He's got little like, a little banana hammock or something. Big rubber boots

Sarah:

and a tank top. What the hell is that outfit? And the way he's sitting, it is just hairy thighs with a head on top.

Mark:

You see his giant hairy thighs, a little hint of rhinestone.

Sarah:

Pana Hima Taylor, the act actor who plays Jared, very handsome man, awesome smile. He's a very good actor. Oh, I

Mark:

think he looks very good in this episode.

Sarah:

Why did they make him wear that outfit?

Mark:

We have a picture.

Sarah:

Sitting in a lawn chair, and it's just hairy thighs and big rubber

Mark:

boots. We have a picture that we'll put in the show note of naked Jared.

Sarah:

My notes just say, w t f Jared exclamation point question mark, that outfit, and then 6 exclamation points. Then Rob gets drowned

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

In in the vat that a Wallaby could get in. Yes. Or a cap of bear

Mark:

or some other rodent. Again, in a giant facility with no people.

Sarah:

There's nobody around. It's the middle of the day.

Mark:

And health and safety would be like, why do you even have a gate above this bat thing?

Sarah:

That I don't is there one?

Mark:

Yeah. It breaks open and there's a gate.

Sarah:

Well, it's gotta open, but he doesn't need to open it to do what he's doing. Is the alarm going off because the bungee has come loose? I I guess. It's not because Julian is there. He owns he half owns the place.

Sarah:

He doesn't set off alarms.

Mark:

No. I we need to get we need to cover this.

Sarah:

Set it off to to lure him out.

Mark:

We need to cover this, and then we'll go through Julian's story and the problems there

Sarah:

are in

Mark:

the story. So, yeah, all of a sudden, Rob Vizzic's dead, and then we have another scene of the crime. Breen has to go with the body, and this is when Mike begins to figure things out.

Sarah:

Well, there's the big board montage. Yes.

Mark:

The dry stays up all night.

Sarah:

The dry erase board all nighter montage

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Where he circles times and draws arrows.

Mark:

Which again, I think is a Tim bomb. This is my second detective script.

Sarah:

The lids. It's the lids. It's the lids. I cut myself just like he did. It's the lids.

Sarah:

Those foil neck wrapper things are sharp.

Mark:

They are very sharp. And he figures out that maybe it's not the same maybe it is the same wine they were killed in.

Sarah:

But the wine in Winterson's lungs is the the same as in Rob's lungs, so they died in the same vat. So Winterson didn't die in Amanda's vat. He died in his own vat.

Mark:

So he has one In Rob's vat. Sorry. One container with p on it, Pinot, and one container with r on it. A. No.

Mark:

It's not a. Oh, it's r? It's r p and r because she's she says where's a, b, and c?

Sarah:

It can't be. It's gotta be a and and, p because she says, are there 13 other samples in between? Yes. And starts going through the alphabet.

Mark:

Yes. So that was an actual Asperger's ism also. I think they did

Sarah:

It could be.

Mark:

I think they did a good job there.

Sarah:

But he also knows he can trust her to test them because she can't not test them correctly. Yeah. She needs to be correct about it.

Mark:

Yes. So they have to go to the city to get the confession.

Sarah:

We're here to let you confess to the murders.

Mark:

I thought this was a really good last scene.

Sarah:

I did too.

Mark:

Because Mike says, you can either confess to the murders now and we can arrest you, or we can go through it with you, and then you can say, I confess. Yeah. And he is so smarmy. Oh, yeah. He he thinks he's gotten away with it so much.

Sarah:

He is big city smarmy.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

He's I'm recording this, and I'll play it on the air. Yep. Because I have powers, mermaid, and they're like Girlie. Okay. Yeah.

Sarah:

Go ahead.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

That's fine. So You're gonna be recording your own confession. That's great.

Mark:

What they say is that he, Jillian, was at the wine festival. Right? Previous to the wine festival, he had gone to Amanda's winery, caught her access code, broken in later, got rid of the security camera footage.

Sarah:

Back up. His goal is to substitute his winery's wine with hers because he wants to win.

Mark:

He wants to win.

Sarah:

Right. That's why he does the whole, I want Amanda to be my vintner. Yeah. He pretends he's trying to recruit her so that he can see her access code because his whole goal is to get her wine to substitute for this.

Mark:

He's gonna poison her wine with the PP. Right.

Sarah:

Okay. He's even gone to the trouble of switching the color of the collars and lids on his bottles so they match.

Mark:

Yes. And now so that's premeditation

Sarah:

Yes.

Mark:

Right there. And we have the PPC.

Sarah:

We didn't need to see that recreated.

Mark:

We didn't motivation here? You have to go pee.

Sarah:

We didn't even need to see him pouring it into the bottle.

Mark:

Oh, no. Definitely not. Some somebody had to make that.

Sarah:

It's cider in a cup.

Mark:

Yep. But still, it's

Sarah:

apple juice. I just thought that dude's dehydrated.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

He needs to drink more.

Mark:

He cuts the the video feed so he can come back later. Mhmm. He's gonna come back later and steal the wine, switch the wine, and pee in the wine and all that stuff.

Sarah:

Right? He doesn't want there to be video of him peeing in the wine.

Mark:

And I watched. And when did he come back?

Sarah:

Didn't try to pee directly into the bottles.

Mark:

I am also glad. There was no scene of a bottle between his legs and a sound effect. They got away from the sound effect by making it a flash

Sarah:

Yes. By making it a montage. But he clearly goes into switch the bottles out so fast. You'd have to really go too because there's, like, what a dozen bottles in the case. It's like

Mark:

The logistics instructions of the doctor's office to give you sand.

Sarah:

The logistics of it. You'd have to line up 12 empty bottles on the floor and start peeing and then just, like, shuffle sideways down the line. Right? And you're gonna get it on the outside of the bottle. He's he's much smarter to have to have done it into that little measuring cup thing.

Mark:

Yep. He he did

Sarah:

it though. We've talked way too much about pee.

Mark:

You did it the right way, but he has no gloves on.

Sarah:

He's gonna get pee on his hands.

Mark:

His fingerprints would be

Sarah:

Be on everything. All over. We just have to assume that he cleaned it up after.

Mark:

I guess. Sort of. So then the judge figures it out. Wait a minute.

Sarah:

Okay. I just had the worst thought.

Mark:

Do you think Oh, Sarah. What is the worst thought?

Sarah:

You can answer this, and you can cut it if you want to. Okay? But can you pee wearing gloves?

Mark:

Yes. Yes. You can pee wearing gloves.

Sarah:

It wouldn't it wouldn't, like, prevent you from, like, being able to go? No. Okay. So that's not the reason.

Mark:

Okay. We have officially thought way more about this episode.

Sarah:

About Julien's B than anybody ever has ever, except maybe the person who had to go buy the apple juice. I had to go buy stupid apple juice. Craft services probably got apple juice. I got no order to buy apple juice.

Mark:

So Amanda has the judges to the winery. The judge in the winery figures it out that it's the same wine. Yeah. And then calls Jillian and says, you need to give me bunches

Sarah:

Julian, not Jillian. Julian,

Mark:

you need to give me bunches of money. Yeah. He's got a bunch of money. All this money going to go?

Sarah:

Winterson is is a greedy guy

Mark:

I guess. And he's No. No. Where is all this money gonna come from?

Sarah:

Oh, I I think he assumes that Julian has cash because he's, you know, a rich DJ.

Mark:

I guess. Who is

Sarah:

the owner of this winery and drives a BMW.

Mark:

One thing that is actually really great writing here is Mike goes, so while being blackmailed instead of coming to the police, which is the right answer. If you're being blackmailed, you tell the people who who are blackmailing you that I'm telling the person you're blackmailing me from Yep. And I'm going to the police. Yep. That is what you do.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

It takes all their power

Mark:

away. All the power away of the blackmail.

Sarah:

I'm just gonna admit that I fibbed about the wine because I wanted to win and be done with it.

Mark:

Yeah. And you're going to jail.

Sarah:

Because Winterson is never going to stop asking for money.

Mark:

Never going to stop asking for money.

Sarah:

Which is why Julian's like, I'm gonna throw you in a vat. Get out, capabara. I need room for this guy. He kicks a pink capabara out and puts the judge in instead. So Later, I'm gonna pee in

Mark:

the wine. Him over

Sarah:

the head

Mark:

with the bottle, carries him up onto the gangplank walk

Sarah:

Yeah. Throws him in. Fishes him out. Fishes them out. Puts them in the trunk of the car.

Mark:

There would be wine everywhere. Everywhere. They're like, they you were worried about the back of the car. I'm like, what about the giant trail of wine?

Sarah:

He must have cleaned for hours.

Mark:

But, like, there's a gravel driveway.

Sarah:

How do you clean? You you move the gravel. You reorganize it and flip over each of them.

Mark:

Look at it and go.

Sarah:

No. No. No. Each of the rocks that have wine on them, you flip them over. Okay.

Sarah:

What you really should do is knock over the vat. Yes. Thereby confusing the crime scene.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

But he's got an outfit that's got wine all over it.

Mark:

Oh, yeah. He's got so like, they should have shown him driving back to the city covered in wine like blood.

Sarah:

Yeah. Nobody else drives my car because of the wine stains in the driver's seat that I don't want anybody to know about. The leather seats in my car soaked up the wine. It smells like a brewery in there.

Mark:

Now that I've got a taste that this is a trope. Now that I've got a taste for it, I'm gonna kill anybody who attempts to

Sarah:

blackmail me. If I have to kill everybody I've ever met.

Mark:

Now Rob is a good person. He's trying to make wine. He's employing people.

Sarah:

He's doing all genuinely wants to make a good product.

Mark:

He genuinely

Sarah:

wants to Mike wherever he can.

Mark:

Yes. And gets killed for it.

Sarah:

Unfortunately, he has bad taste in business partners.

Mark:

Yes. Wait a minute. Why did Mike and Sims, when they went to the big city, go through a toll booth with a oh.

Sarah:

It's Chekhov's toll booth.

Mark:

It's it's Chekhov's toll booths.

Sarah:

It's gonna be important later.

Mark:

Yeah. So then he says, well, you know, you

Sarah:

you, Your phone has everything. It's gonna tell us exactly where you've been.

Mark:

Your phone has everything. Breen has a picture of you on the speed camera, and then he both tries to attack Mike and run away.

Sarah:

He's like, that's my phone. He's like a teenager. His phone's been taken away.

Mark:

Where is he gonna go? Where where?

Sarah:

I guess he thinks he's gonna get his phone back because it has all the evidence in it, including Amanda's passcode. He's so stupid. He's so like, can you not remember 5 digits? Well, and here's a file with with a number in it. Well, how do you know that's Amanda's passcode?

Sarah:

I don't know. I didn't say that it was, but you just did, you moron. Yeah. He's a moron. He's a moron.

Mark:

Well, somebody disagrees with me.

Sarah:

I gotta kill them. Yeah. I'm gonna tackle you and take my phone away and then run forever.

Mark:

My bloody phone.

Sarah:

Though I'm on an island, I can only go on. So far. That's my foul.

Mark:

My phone covered and talk about poitritis.

Sarah:

Because now Jared is gonna be kind of his vineyard keeper

Mark:

I guess.

Sarah:

Because he doesn't have much on. Right?

Mark:

Done. Well, literally, he doesn't have much.

Sarah:

I was talking about work, not clothing. We're gonna make all the ladies upset. We got so much I got flack last week about criticizing what Jared had on because apparently, there are some people who like his shorty shorts and wouldn't want the producers to hear me say that

Mark:

and put

Sarah:

him in longer shorts because of my opinion here.

Mark:

To remind people, we didn't have a problem with the shorty shorts. Now no shorts, I kinda have a problem.

Sarah:

It's it's as an ensemble.

Mark:

And the fact that his hemispheres are different time zones.

Sarah:

That's what I said on Reddit. Yeah.

Mark:

It's like,

Sarah:

I don't have a problem with the shorts. It's that he's dressed for different climates, each part of his body. That's what I have problem with. Ugh. This time, I do have a

Mark:

brown house. Coat? That lamb coat makes me hot every single time.

Sarah:

It's on the back of the chair in the thigh shot.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

So he did have it on. He took it off.

Mark:

No wonder he has a tank top on that, that

Sarah:

He's got that fleece right against him. That lamb's wool fleece against his bare skin.

Mark:

Oh, I'm gonna have another poison ivy attack just from thinking about it.

Sarah:

That's alright. His thighs are getting lots of air.

Mark:

They are indeed.

Sarah:

Poor Kristen sitting next to him has to not look down. Don't look down.

Mark:

Don't look down.

Sarah:

Don't look down. It's a good episode.

Mark:

It's it's better than I thought it was. I thought these first two were, like, the normal episodes. Mhmm. And then, like, the next episode is weirdy, beardy time.

Sarah:

The first episode, they start the episode with the weird knob at 0.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

And then throughout the episode, they crank it up to about 2.

Mark:

I'd say so.

Sarah:

And in this episode, they start at 2, and they sort of crank it up to, like, a 4.

Mark:

Yep. The next one That cold open in the next one?

Sarah:

It's set at like a 6 from the very beginning.

Mark:

The when when she's storming across the the golf course?

Sarah:

Yeah. It's nuts from the very beginning. The characters are crazy. Yeah. They're all over the top.

Sarah:

The only over the top character in this one well, Ned, but he's just grumpy. Amanda's over the top, but for an empathetic reason that you can't say, oh, she's a loony tune. Yeah. Like, she's not. She's just who she is.

Sarah:

Yeah. And I think they deal with it very thoughtfully. And so it's not it it's not full loony. By the next episode, they've got the loony confidence going.

Mark:

And the last episode is Loony McToonie.

Sarah:

So who's the better corpse? Winterson or Rob?

Mark:

I gotta say that so Winterson does lying on the floor, and he does lying on the slab. He's a he's in it more. Mhmm. And we don't really see a lot of Rob, so I'm gonna give it to Paul.

Sarah:

I'm gonna give it to Winterson too. But I really wonder what they put on them to make them so pink. Yeah. I wonder what that was.

Mark:

What that was.

Sarah:

Like, maybe really diluted makeup that they just sprayed, like, in a water bottle that they just sprayed

Mark:

on them. It had to come off easy peasy.

Sarah:

And not stain or

Mark:

And he changes location, so they had to be able to recreate it.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's probably what it was.

Mark:

Yeah.

Sarah:

But Paul really only had to be pink from, like, the shoulders up. Well, no. They showed him in the vat too. Right? They both had to fall in a vat.

Sarah:

What was that crap in the vat? Oh. I know it's supposed to be grapes, but

Mark:

Yeah. That crap in the vat. It's almost like pee in a bottle. It's under the credits. Mhmm.

Sarah:

You

Mark:

know, what I wish would happen would be Amanda and the other Vintner would join forces.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Because she says that Dominique hates her. Mhmm. And Dominique constantly says, no. I don't hate her. I in fact, I think she's really good.

Mark:

I'm just struggling. I'm just struggling. If they joined forces, I think they could make a new vintage.

Sarah:

She could save his his winery.

Mark:

His winery. Yeah. So I think that that should happen.

Sarah:

I

Mark:

think that Jared should buy some pants.

Sarah:

I think Megan, Winterson's wife, is gonna be happier now once she gets over the grieving process because she doesn't have to worry about a philandering husband who doesn't really know how to make money. Yes. I think Aaron is gonna take her tree shirt and go have a happier life because she's not pining after a married man who Yes. Doesn't care about her.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

I like that shirt she's in. She's wearing a shirt when he talks to her at, like, a restaurant or a bar. It's got it's white.

Mark:

Frog and cheetah, but not the frog and cheetah.

Sarah:

Not yet. Yeah. It's like white on the front and it has black trees on it and has black sleeves. It's a very cool top. Anyway, she's gonna go off and be the preeminent wine tasting judge now.

Mark:

She went to the other hotel in town.

Sarah:

The there's 2.

Mark:

There has to be 2.

Sarah:

The first one looks kinda cruddy.

Mark:

It does. I'm sure

Sarah:

she was glad to move out of that one.

Mark:

When they we need to double check, but in the second season, there's a country music episode where a, musician gets killed in a bathtub with an electric car.

Sarah:

Staying in that hotel. It's The band is in that hotel.

Mark:

It's Absolutely.

Sarah:

Yep. Yep.

Mark:

We'll deal with the problems with that death when we get there.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. There's so much more good stuff. Yes. So that is Sour Grapes season 1 episode 2.

Sarah:

Next week, we'll be talking about season 1 episode 3, play the lie. Play It is a golf episode.

Mark:

But You don't But there's no play well, there is playing of golf.

Sarah:

But you but it's not about golf.

Mark:

It's not about golf.

Sarah:

It's about the kind of loony's who hang out at a golf course.

Mark:

Yes. It is. The the people who run the, basically, the the committee for golf. And And this is not the fancy country club golf.

Sarah:

No. This is

Mark:

the broken wood golf club.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. This is

Mark:

Have you ever wondered that golf clubs are called clubs and they have clubs?

Sarah:

This is kinda trailer park golf. It is They're real classy. Meaning, they're not

Mark:

And then a dude in a suit jumps out and sprays her on the face.

Sarah:

Like Oh, just wait for it. What? Don't ruin it.

Mark:

That is amazing about that episode, I'll remind everybody to watch it again, and that'll be coming out on the, let's see, the 30th September. You dislike her immediately.

Sarah:

Yeah. You're like, good. She's dead. I saw her for 30 seconds, and I couldn't stand her guts.

Mark:

So I feel to be interested to see how they make her unlikable right away.

Sarah:

Mhmm.

Mark:

Yep. And that is sour grapes season 1 episode 2. And then as we mentioned, we're moving on to season 1 episode 3 playing the lie on September 30th.

Sarah:

Have an awesome week. Don't drink any p p y.

Mark:

We will soon have Halloween pictures

Sarah:

Oh, yes.

Mark:

On the broadcast channel.

Sarah:

Yes. As of the first.

Mark:

The Reddit board. So

Sarah:

Alright, folks. Until next time.

Mark:

Bye, maniacs.

Sarah:

Bye, maniacs.

Mark:

Thanks for joining us on the Mystery Maniacs podcast. If you enjoyed our crazy podcast today, don't miss out on future episodes. Follow us on social media for updates, beyond the scenes content, and exclusive sneak peeks. Subscribe, like, and share to spread the word. Bye, Maniacs.

Mark:

Some guy goes to a winery at night and gets finds a broken bottle. Oh, no. This is neck coming in the morning. Mhmm. That's right.