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Super Fan Rachel and First Time Watcher Matt make their way episode by episode through the groundbreaking 1990's Canadian vampire cop television show, Forever Knight.
I am out of here. I'm history. That's all she wrote. Not only is the fat lady sung, sung, but she left the theater with Elvis.
Rachel:Hi. I'm Rachel. And I'm Matt. And this is Come in, 81 kilo.
Matt:A forever night podcast.
Rachel:Welcome back, friends. It's time for another episode.
Matt:Every ending is a new beginning.
Rachel:Every new beginning is some other beginnings end.
Matt:This was the end of a lot of things.
Rachel:Don't make me laugh right now. Okay? It's a really sad episode. Of course, this is episode 1, season 3, black Buddha part 1. It's a 2 parter.
Rachel:The first half of a 2 parter in which a lot of sad things happen. Now tell me, Matt, were you expecting any of this?
Matt:No. No. No. I figured it'd be like season 1 where they just keep doing the same old shit.
Rachel:Oh, good. 22 words.
Matt:Same old shit, different place, but it's same old place, different shit.
Rachel:Yeah. It's some bullshit is what it is. Yeah. It's some bullshit. Season 3 gets a lot of flack.
Rachel:A lot of people don't like season 3. I don't dislike season 3. I think the easiest way to think of forever night is really 3 retellings of the same story because we get effectively repeat plot episodes. I mean, we're gonna repeat a lot of what we said in Killer Instinct in this season premiere.
Matt:And it seems like the beginning of every season reverts back to, oh, yeah. Nick and Natalie, we're working on this thing where Nick's gonna be mortal and he does this stuff like try to eat food and take vitamins or whatever.
Rachel:Right. It's like Dark Knight and
Matt:Killer Instinct. Forget about it.
Rachel:Yeah. It's like Dark Knight had a dark night and killer instinct had a baby, and then that baby killed Skanky and Jennette and Cohen.
Matt:And they don't even get a cameo.
Rachel:They don't even get a fucking cameo. You know what? They get a picture on the wall.
Matt:Jeanette doesn't even get a picture?
Rachel:No. She doesn't even get a picture. God. This is so scorched earth. They're just like, okay.
Rachel:We're in a new place. We're in a new network. They wanted John to come back and be the captain, but his screen time was gonna be super diminished. So he was gonna be having to stay here and work here, but have such a small role. It wasn't worth his time.
Rachel:So he ended up just walking away. Deborah Duchene, word on the street is they felt she was not pretty enough.
Matt:Bullshit.
Rachel:That's some bullshit. I don't know who looked her in the eye and said that, but shame on you. Shame on your ancestors. Shame on your cow. Shame on everything.
Rachel:I cannot believe you could look that woman in the eye and be like, I think I'd rather have Vashon. Get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out, whoever said that. They also wanted to get rid of Natalie, but, Garrett threatened to quit. He was like, I'm sorry.
Rachel:Is this the same show? Being Human did this. Being Human, the British one, at the end of, I think, the 3rd season, they all wanted to leave. So there's a, at least, there's an explanation that makes sense, and they get we get to see them leave.
Matt:We get to see the main characters actually participate in the plot shift.
Rachel:Yeah. So the last two seasons has an entirely different cast, but it makes sense.
Matt:I really do like Hal.
Rachel:I do like Hal. Hal is Hal greater than sign Mitchell.
Matt:Absolutely. Gigantic greater than sign.
Rachel:Yeah. I mean, Mitchell's alright, but, god, could someone make that man take a shower? So, anyways, so season 3 gets a lot of flack. Here's how I kind of feel. Okay?
Rachel:Season 1, we had hot Nick. We had, I probably can ride the motorcycle that's in my apartment where I not restricted because of insurance reasons. I spend my night out being like the vampire arm of the law that sort of follows the law when it suits me, but I'm also willing to be a bad boy and do bad boy shit, and then I get chicks on the sides. We get, like, cool hot Nick. Right?
Matt:Player Nick.
Rachel:Player Nick. And then season 2, we get, I'm a compassionate interesting character skanky, like cool dad skanky. And then season 3, we get LaCroix is a fleshed out character who you can sympathize with and who you see as a three-dimensional thing instead of just a voice on the radio or, a smug look.
Matt:Or a foil for Nick.
Rachel:Or a foil for Nick. Had we gotten all 3 of those things all in the same season? Magic. Right? Every single season.
Matt:Imagine the sound of all those panties dropping.
Rachel:Just could we have gotten all if we had just squished these all together and ditched the parts that don't make sense. Like, Tracy's alright. I mean, if you had never watched season 1 and you had never watched season 2 and you're picking this series up right now, Yeah. Tracy's fine. She's fine.
Rachel:There's nothing wrong with Tracy, but she's not skanky and she's never gonna be skanky. And then you get Vashon, who's okay. But as a vampire semi companion for Nick, he ain't Jeanette. Okay?
Matt:Yeah. He's a poor replacement for Jeanette.
Rachel:Correct. He had boobs. That's what you're thinking. But, anyway, we're gonna get into it, but I don't think season 3 is deserving of the, like, the condemnation that it often gets. It has some wild, really bad episodes, and we're gonna have so much fun with them.
Rachel:I I can tell already, but there are some really good episodes too.
Matt:You know, here's my hot take. Black Buddha part 1 and 2 would have been a much better season 2 series finale or season 2 finale.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. But they didn't know they were gonna come back. That's the problem, is at the end of each season, it was like, it's not like now where it's like, wow. Before it even aired, they're already renewed, and we can plan for that.
Rachel:It was like, well, we're not sure. And then season 1 ended. They weren't sure. They actually thought they were done. Then they come back and do season 2.
Rachel:They weren't sure. And then they got came back for season 3. And I think that's why each one feels so disjointed because they were never sure enough to be able to write a long term storyline. Yeah. So anyway, on that note, we open with a sex scene.
Rachel:This is, this is energetic sex scene.
Matt:But yeah. There we go. I mean,
Rachel:this woman is selling it.
Matt:This is like a tumbling Yeah. Lesson.
Rachel:Yeah. There's it's acrobatic. I don't know what is happening. She's on all fours, and then she's on her back, and then she's on top. And there's, like, gasping, and then, voodoo black magic is playing There's
Matt:a radio attached to the bed.
Rachel:Yeah. Well, she we know because she grabs the headboard, and the whole headboard shakes. There's so much happening in this scene, and, wow, what a bold season opener. You turn on crime time after prime time. You put on forever night, and first scene, first episode, this chick is getting graphically.
Rachel:I mean, this is graphic for the nineties, this scene.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. The nineties on broadcast television. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:This is really graphic, and this is actually the woman who played in last act. I promised way back in last act that she was gonna come back, and here she is. And it turns out she's a pilot because while she's having this tantric moment with Toronto, Jerry, I don't think we ever get his real name.
Matt:Yeah. I don't recall. I
Rachel:don't think so. That, she is having this moment, and he is also building a bomb, and we're going back and forth between the 2. And then we see him put the bomb in this music box and put it in this box, and he ends up giving it to her. And she's like, oh, is this for me? And he goes, yeah.
Rachel:But only if you promise to not open it until you get in the air. And she's like, that's fine. 911 hasn't happened yet. I'm not suspicious of this. Oof.
Rachel:This actually aired on September 11th originally, not of the same year, but
Schanke:Right.
Matt:Right. But foreshadowing?
Rachel:No. God. But then we go to the intro because we like pan back. She's putting on her pilot's uniform. Yeah.
Rachel:We're like, oh, my gosh. She gave that bomb to a pilot and then bottom bottom. And this is our first intro for season 3. So we get to see our new characters. We get to see Vashawn.
Rachel:We get to see Tracy, and we get to see Blue Man Kuma. And after we come back from the intro, our brand new intro, which ends with, I think, a new clip.
Matt:Yeah. New vampy face, Nick.
Rachel:Yeah. My favorite is still the first one where it's just and it's his face panning slightly across the screen, the green eyes.
Matt:Why didn't we have Nick and Vashawn?
Rachel:Technically, this is still a show about Nick. It's not forever Javier.
Matt:It's forever. Valdez.
Rachel:Well, JD Valdez is his. It's a street name. His real name is Javier Vechon.
Matt:No. His The Spaniard street name is little Javi.
Rachel:Oh, that's Sean. So we come back from the intro to a flashback, and the flashback is the Titanic. And we know that
Matt:Bold choice.
Rachel:Because it says s s Titanic on the life rings.
Rachel:Wait.
Matt:Hold on. I need to I need to check something.
Rachel:Yes. It sank at night. Is that what you're looking for?
Matt:No. The the flotation devices on the Titanic didn't say SS Titanic.
Rachel:Well, they do now, sir.
Matt:Technically the RMS Titanic.
Rachel:It's size the SS Titanic.
Matt:Let's go with that.
Rachel:Just go with it.
Matt:It's it's a Fine. It's an alternative history.
Rachel:This is the lesser known sister ship that also sank in the exact same way. You know, somebody was like, what if we got Nick to blame himself for the sinking of the Titanic? Do you think we could make that work? And they were like, yeah. Oh, we totally still can make that work.
Matt:And so, ironically, the production for this episode would have very closely coincided with the production of James Cameron's Titanic that released in 1997. I
Rachel:wonder if he had RMS Titanic on the life rings, the life buoy things. What are those called? Lifesavers?
Matt:Lifesavers, I think. Yeah. The pictures I found didn't have SS or RMS or anything. It just said Titanic.
Rachel:That's okay. But, like, a a doll falls down the stairs. Everybody's moving in slow motion, which I'm pretty sure is historically accurate. And Nick is standing there with this woman, and she's like, it is me who did this.
Matt:Bless you. Hubris to say
Rachel:Bless the woman's French accent.
Matt:This ship sinking is my fault.
Rachel:Well, it is.
Matt:I'm that important.
Rachel:Yes. As we will find out, this season leans a lot more into mysticism than the previous 2 seasons?
Matt:I'm so excited.
Rachel:Are you? Because the first two seasons were like, yeah, vampires exist, but nothing else.
Matt:Oh. Does this have the ghost episode that you've mentioned? I don't know what you're talking about. That's a is that in the season 3?
Rachel:It might be. It might be. You definitely flush out the there is more things under heaven and earth than are talked about in your stories. Like, there's more going on here, and that's season 3. Season 3 was like, we got vampires.
Rachel:What else can we throw in here?
Matt:Werewolves.
Rachel:No. Stonetree does not come back for
Matt:this. Scorpion?
Rachel:Were scorpions?
Matt:Were scorpions.
Rachel:Yeah. Well, this is it also undoes something else that we have we have come to rely on over the last 2 seasons, which is this woman talks about how she's responsible, and Nick's like, uh-huh. Yeah. Whatever you say, honey, because she's got a really long neck. That's a pretty fucking tempting neck.
Rachel:Because he's, like, behind her. He's, like, caressing her neck. And then he does the and bites her. I did the whole head motion, which this is 1912, so this is well past his never again a 100 years ago deadline.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Maybe he forgot. Maybe he didn't count it because she was gonna die anyway.
Matt:Right. It was like, does it count as ending a life if they were gonna die anyway? But, also, wasn't the agreement with her that he would turn her into a vampire? Correct.
Rachel:But she says no know? No. Because towards the end of the episode, she says, no. I don't wanna be a vampire anymore. Could you live with thousands of lives on your conscience?
Rachel:And Nick's like, I've got quarter of a 1000000, actually.
Matt:What did The answer to that is yes.
Rachel:What did you think being a vampire was gonna make you do?
Matt:And I would kill to make sure that I continue living. Yeah. Did you did you get the memo?
Rachel:Yeah. Did I fucking stutter? Am I not a vampire? You wanted to be a vampire? What do you think I eat, dandelions?
Rachel:How did you think this was gonna play out, Claire? Because her name's Claire Gibson. But then he wakes up. He wakes up right after he bites her, like he's having a nightmare, and his forehead is all covered in blood sweat.
Matt:He wipes his forehead and licks his finger. He goes Oh, it's his finger. So weird. So okay. So we've established previously that the only blood in a vampire's body is blood that they have consumed Correct.
Matt:According to Natalie, who's not really an expert on
Rachel:Well, no. No. She and Nick said that together because that's back in stranger than fiction.
Matt:Okay. So Yeah. What would it taste like?
Rachel:You know what?
Matt:Would it would it be half digested blood?
Rachel:Did they just did they put Ribena in a spray bottle and go spray it in his face?
Matt:And at
Rachel:this point, he was so addicted to it. He was just like, oh, that's completely ass.
Matt:Or at this point in the, like, production process, had he consumed so much Ribena that he actually sweated red droplets?
Rachel:You know what I think? He probably did it just to fuck with them, and they left it in. That's my suspicion.
Matt:Oh, wiping his forehead in. Yeah. Because it
Rachel:snuck in there. If you weren't, like, super paying attention, I'm not sure you would notice that he licks his finger after he touches his forehead.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. But then he goes downstairs because he's getting dressed, and he gets a phone call and he picks it up. And this is actually a phone call with Skanky even though we'd we don't hear John's voice.
Schanke:Night. Yeah. It was just on the news. Wear the good suit, skank. You can expect some press out at the airport.
Schanke:Yeah. Don't worry about them. I'll drop in and see if they need anything. Maybe Myra will want to fool around a little. It's a joke, Skank.
Schanke:It's a joke. Okay? Joke. Yeah. Yeah.
Schanke:No. I I think we can all survive a week without you. Just give me a call when you get there. Okay? Yeah.
Matt:Because John's already been kicked out.
Rachel:He wasn't kicked out. He elected to not return. Yeah.
Matt:If he elects to not return to a hostile work environment, that's still getting kicked out.
Rachel:Correct. And he tells him, oh, no, Skanky. We're the good suit. There's gonna be press. And he's like, oh, yeah.
Rachel:No. No. I'll check-in on Myra. Maybe Myra will wanna fool around. Fool around is what he says.
Rachel:And he's like, oh, no. No. Skanky. Yeah. I'm I'm just kidding.
Matt:The Welsh sneaks in.
Rachel:I mean, that's a weird joke. Right?
Matt:That that's it's in very poor taste.
Rachel:It's so weird. And I I Meg pointed out in the watch along that usually it's skanky ribbing Nick. And so this was a nice reversal of Nick, you know, ribbing Phantom Skanky on the other end of this phone call because this kind of sounds like something that Skanky would make a joke about. And so I'm wondering if it was Nick trying to make a joke that he thought Skanky would think was funny because it's the type of joke that Skanky would make.
Matt:What do you think about this? This is exactly the kind of thing that Garrett used to play off John Caplos with, and they would they would just do a whole bunch of iterations on it and refine it and get, like, a really good joke at the end that actually made it into the show. But now, Gare's coming in. Alright. This is how I normally do it.
Rachel:I mean, I'm sure this is scripted.
Matt:We try it 10 or 15 times.
Rachel:Yeah. The the cowboy days of season 1, where I'm sure they got a lot of say over what they said in the show, are long past.
Matt:Gare is the director on this one.
Rachel:That is true, but he's not the scriptwriter.
Matt:Yeah. James Perio.
Rachel:James Perio. Perio. Perio.
Matt:I think. Was the scriptwriter.
Rachel:And he's one of the original creators of the show.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. The the whole, I guess, the cast thing may not have been his choice. He may have said, here's the cast.
Rachel:Here's what he's got to have. I think they got, hey. You guys can stay on the air if you come to this network. Here you go. It kinda reminds me when remember when Buffy left LPN or UPN?
Rachel:Oh, yeah.
Matt:That was a whole big That's a whole big deal.
Rachel:And they killed Buffy off. UPN killed Buffy off.
Matt:Killed Buffy and then said, okay. Here is Buffy. He should show. JWV is like, what the fuck did you do?
Rachel:So I have a feeling that sort of what happened where they were like, oh, this is what you gave us. Okay. Great. Well, here's the shake ups we're gonna make because we think this is gonna appeal to a younger audience.
Matt:And this reminds me of the Martin Scorsese McDonald's MCU stuff we were talking about earlier
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Where the executives of the studio are making creative decisions and forcing the actual artists to comply with those even though it's making bad content?
Rachel:Because there's too much chaos in pure creativity. If you leave it up to just creativity, you get the chaos of season 1. But there's a, there's a lot more. The highs are higher in the, like, creative chaos.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:And there's the chance for there's a higher chance for failure, but there's a greater chance for, like, unique magic success.
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:And then season 2 was like formula, formula, formula. Let's stick to the formula. And then season 3 is like, okay. We're gonna try to make it a little bit like season 1, but not with you, Nick.
Matt:You're too old now. We're gonna follow a similar recipe, but we're gonna substitute make some substitutions.
Rachel:Yeah. Because, Vashon is very similar to season 1, Nick.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Reckless, cocksure, like, just thirst trappy. I mean, that's what season 1 Nick is.
Matt:Okay. That's a good point.
Rachel:And then they got Vashawn back. They were like, we can't make Garrett, 6 years younger again, but we can we can get a new guy in. You know? Because, yes, this is the 3rd season, but remember filming started in 1992. So more time has passed than just the 3 seasons you would normally get out of this.
Rachel:But this phone conversation continues unless you have something to say about how I just compared to Sean and season 1, Nick. Oh. I'm sorry. That was sacrilegious, and I apologize to literally everyone who is screaming at their
Matt:Especially Meg.
Rachel:But, I mean, look at it from a nonjudgmental perspective. We get a lot of the same, like, reckless behaviors.
Matt:Look at it from the perspective of an uneducated butthead executive Yeah. That doesn't know what the fuck's going on.
Rachel:Right.
Matt:They don't They're just following the numbers from focus groups and that kind of thing.
Rachel:We say this all the time, and it's true, is a lot of times these properties get picked up because they're successful. But what made them successful to start with gets lost or forgotten or not just not understood. Something they made this thing, it turned out to be magic, but nobody remembers. It's like when I make food, I don't ever use a recipe or follow anything. And sometimes I make something that's really good.
Rachel:I can never make it again. I don't know what's in it.
Matt:So a common thing that I say to Rachel when she makes, like there's this gigantic, I don't know, like, 3
Rachel:Stock pot.
Matt:3 gallon pot of soup, and it's really good. I've been having, like, 3 bowls a night for the last, I don't know, 6, 7 days.
Rachel:That's a really big pot.
Matt:And I told Rachel, I will enjoy this for the, you know, ephemeral thing that it is, knowing that I'm never going to have this soup again.
Rachel:And doesn't it increase your enjoyment of what I cook?
Matt:Yes. I I appreciate it because I'm not I'm not going to be like, oh, yeah. The soup's great. I'll just have a couple bowls right now, and, well, like, I'll focus on enjoying enjoying the next one because I'm never going to have this soup again. It's kind of like each season of Forever Night.
Rachel:Yeah. It also kinda reminds me
Matt:You're never gonna get that same vibe again.
Rachel:Right. It also kinda reminds me of Murderbot. So stay with me here. Murderbot is an excellent science fiction series. Every single Murderbot novella or novel is a hit.
Rachel:100%, 5 out of 5 stars. I have no notes. They're perfect. Martha Wells also writes fantasy. Martha Wells is not as successful as a fantasy writer because I don't think she really understands why Murderbot has the appeal that it has.
Rachel:If she did, she could apply that to her fantasy novels and she could make these brilliant fantasy novels that were on par with her science fiction novels. But she stumbled on this magic, and it it feels like magic because all she has no idea how it's happening, but it just keeps happening. And that's what happens a lot of times is they stumble on this magic. They made season 1 of forever night, and it was fucking amazing, and nothing had ever been made like it before. And then they had no idea how to do that again.
Rachel:So they kept the same characters. They made season 2. Season 2 is fine. It's fine. It lacks the kind of cowboy spontaneous, like, chaotic quality of season 1.
Matt:The fuck me energy energy?
Rachel:The fuck me energy of season 1, the statement jackets, the the all of it. But it's fine. It's serviceable. It's good. It it's good.
Rachel:It's fine. And then they got to season 3, and now we're so far removed from season 1. They they hadn't they didn't know what to do except try to recreate the characters that we had in season 1, and that's the best they could do. And, anyway, that's my end of rant. We'll go back to the phone call.
Matt:End of this rant.
Rachel:End of this rant. Oh, they're gonna come thick and thick and heavy for for the rest of black Buddha, probably.
Matt:That's what she said.
Rachel:This this conversation is actually kind of heartbreaking because he's talking to, not Skanky, but the phone. And he says, I think we can all survive a week without you. Just call me when you get there. Okay? Just really sweet and really sad because they're bros.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:It'd be like your bro leaving for a week and you being like, hey, man. Just text me when you get there. Send me some pictures. Let me know how Alberta is. And then we go to Nick in the morgue because he doesn't have anything to do.
Rachel:Skanky's not here to harass. So he goes to harass Natalie. And Natalie's like, I'm just saying, if you want results, you've gotta work the program. And he's like, work? What program?
Rachel:She's like, everything I've been telling you to do, Nick. You
Matt:stopped doing that.
Rachel:You you were taking garlic supplements. You stopped doing that. You were taking vitamin a. I even got you a pill box. Do you know how long you kept that pill box?
Rachel:One fucking episode, Nick. And then I made shakes. You never
Matt:drink the shakes.
Rachel:I gave you fake blood at one point, like, synthesized blood. Remember this the episode where there was blood bags in his freezer? And he calls it nonfat nonfat soy vegan blood. Non no fat non flavor, soy vegan blood. That's the one where she's like, I can see your reflection in the mirror.
Rachel:And he's like, yeah. Sometimes.
Matt:Oh, hold on. Hold on. Is he not supposed to have a reflection, or was that just a joke?
Rachel:That was at 1 in one episode, Father's Day. A father figure father figure. She remembers she comes to remove the bullet from his shoulder and it hurts, and they're sitting in his bathroom, and he she can see him in the mirror. And she's like, wow. I can see you in the mirror.
Rachel:And he's like, yeah. Sometimes.
Matt:Sometimes when there's not a wall in the way.
Rachel:I can understand why you don't remember that episode. That's the one where he had the blood cask, and he was
Matt:bottling his blood. I remember them sitting in the bathroom. I remember him going back to the bathroom, later because he was screaming, because he got blinded because
Rachel:No. Remember we made the crack about because he calls Natalie and he's yeah. I've got something long and hard in my body, and I need you to help me take care of it. I'll be over, and
Matt:she gets
Rachel:over, and it's just a bullet. Because remember they get in a drive by shooting, and then he still goes home. He's like, well, that's not gonna happen again. And it just anyway, this isn't about father figure. This is about black Buddha.
Rachel:But she's basically lecturing him, like, you aren't doing anything that I'm telling you to do, and then you're complaining that the thing that you're not doing is not working. And he's like, I'm trying really hard.
Matt:I've tried nothing, and I'm all out of ideas.
Rachel:All out of ideas. He's like, I can barely keep raw hamburger down. She's like, well, isn't that nice? You couldn't do that before. And he's like, it has been 4 years.
Rachel:And she's like, you are 800 years old. 4 years is nothing. Don't give up on me, Nick. Look. If you want a shot, you gotta do it.
Rachel:And he's like, okay. Fine. I mean, this is his quest.
Matt:Right. He he wanted her to help him.
Rachel:He wanted to do this. But then the phone rings, and she picks it up, and she's like, oh, it's Joe Rees from this other place, Castle something. And he's like, oh, yeah. He's taking over for Cohen while Cohen's gone with Skanky. And so he picks up the phone and says hello, but then we cut to him talking to Reese in the precinct, and they're repainting the precinct.
Rachel:And I can only imagine this is because they moved sets, and they couldn't get the exact same color.
Matt:I'm imagining the situation where, you know, Nick and Skanky caught this guy, and it's a big fucking deal.
Rachel:Big fucking deal.
Matt:And Cohen's like, alright, Nick and Skanky. You we need somebody to escort this guy to, like, the place that
Rachel:he
Matt:has to go Yeah. To do whatever justice stuff.
Rachel:He's getting extradited back to where he committed his original crime, but that's fine. You go. You do this.
Matt:And Nick being, like, uh-uh. No. No. No. No.
Matt:I'm not going You caught him. You caught him. You get, you know, weeklong, all expenses paid, trip, like, the first day you have to escort this guy, but the rest of it, you just get to hang around and expense everything and, you know, just enjoy some time traveling and not having to do, like, the regular day to day grind. And Nick just being like, no. No travel.
Rachel:No eat.
Matt:No eat. No travel. No plane.
Rachel:He can't go. He can't go. Right.
Matt:He can't. I'm I'm just imagining, like, what what that would have been like.
Schanke:It
Rachel:was probably more like, I think Skanky deserves this. He's the one who really did the collar. Yeah. He's the one who should go.
Matt:But then Cohen being like, well, we need more than one person because we need to, like, take shifts being the active person monitoring this guy. So, Nick, if you're not gonna go, like, who else is gonna go? I need a vacation. I'll go. Right.
Matt:And so she volunteers herself.
Rachel:And the rest is history. So
Matt:I can see why Nick would feel real real guilty.
Rachel:Yeah. And he obviously caught this bomber using his vampire powers. So he vamp caught this guy who would not have gotten caught had he not used his vampire powers to catch him. And then if he hadn't caught him, which he says later, if I hadn't caught him, if I hadn't used the vampire to catch him, he would've gotten away. If I hadn't caught him, Skanky wouldn't have had to be on the plane with him.
Rachel:If Skanky wasn't on the plane with him, Skanky wouldn't have blown up. End of end of story. And that's when now but we'll get there because I love how sassy Natalie is in this, and I wanna I wanna get there, and I wanna savor how sassy Natalie is. But Joe is talking Reese is talking to Nick, and he's like, you call her the bomber. You're basically a hero, and you don't have a partner right now.
Rachel:I think you're the one that needs to do this. And he's like, are are you serious? This is this because her dad's a commissioner, a police commissioner? And he's like, maybe you need to just keep her safe.
Matt:I wasn't gonna bring that up.
Rachel:But if you did
Matt:you're right. He
Rachel:is. Basically, all you have to do is keep her from getting hurt for a week. Do you think you can handle that? And Nick's like, I'm not sure you're asking the right person.
Matt:Do do you know who I am?
Rachel:Know who I
Matt:am. I'm sure my reputation has spread to other precincts.
Rachel:I'm sure it has. But then they go out to find his new partner, Tracy Vedder, and she's sleeping.
Matt:Snoozing in the waiting room.
Rachel:I'm sorry. I'm more of a day person. Oh, Tracy. In one of the strongest
Matt:Canadian accents on this entire show.
Rachel:Tracy's faction, by the way, if you were a fan of Tracy, you were a percolator.
Matt:There was a faction for Tracy?
Rachel:Yes. There was. So then they go riding in the convertible. They go riding. She's not that bad.
Rachel:She's just not skanky. Okay? We can't all be skanky.
Matt:That's bad enough Okay. For now.
Rachel:Yeah. It's like how I feel about Fleur. We can be mad about it. We can be mad about it for a while, and we can be unfair to Tracy for a little bit here. But they go riding in the convertible, and basically, Tracy is just lecturing Nick about how, she's not a nepotism baby.
Rachel:And till he's like, well, I'm
Matt:just so hard.
Rachel:He's like, well, I've got everything
Matt:handed to me on a silver platter.
Rachel:You must have gotten here on your own merit. And she's like, yeah. We we all know that's not true. I am my own person with my own talents and who my father is
Schanke:Has nothing to do with where you are in your career.
Rachel:No. I'm not gonna say that. We both know it's a lie. I'd just like to be
Schanke:Judged on your own merit.
Rachel:Exactly. Thank you. And And he was she's like, but I do wanna be judged, you know, for what I do. I don't wanna be judged for what my dad does or anything. Like, I I wanna be a real person, and he's like, okay.
Rachel:Fine. I get it.
Matt:Then you pull a Nicholas Cage
Rachel:And change your name.
Matt:Change your name so that you are not attached to your father by last name.
Rachel:Well, she's also in the same like, she could have moved to another province
Matt:too.
Rachel:Yeah. But, anyway, she makes a comment, like, they let you drive this fossil. And he's like, I won't tell anybody if you don't. Everybody knows he drives us.
Matt:Everybody knows he drives
Rachel:this. Fine. And she goes, see, that's my point exactly, which does not make any sense. It does not make any sense. See, that's my point exactly.
Matt:Maybe maybe she's calling out the the double standard of his mediocre white man privilege versus her daddy is a police commissioner privilege. And she gets, like, judged for it, and Nick gets celebrated for it.
Rachel:I mean, he's driving a Cadillac, and she got a whole career. I'm not sure that those are apples to apples.
Matt:For this Cadillac.
Rachel:Okay. This Cadillac.
Matt:Maybe maybe it's equivalent.
Rachel:Oh, you know, I'm just gonna put that right there. I'm just gonna you put
Matt:a plate I'm just I'm just putting It's fine.
Rachel:It's what we do. Giving you We set the table and sometimes we put stuff on it that we don't eat. We just leave it there for other people to eat. Throw it in the trash. We haven't used that one yet.
Rachel:My son used to say that. I don't want it. Throw it in the trash. Alright. So they head to the airport because she's like, where are we going?
Rachel:And he's like, oh, you know, we're just, driving around. She's like keeping me out of harm's way, aren't you? And he's like, maybe. And she's like, well, we're almost all the way to the airport. And he goes, oh, my subconscious must be working overtime because Skanky's plane should be taking off any time now.
Rachel:And she's like, I can't believe you gave up a week in Alberta. And he's like, Skanky. Skanky did it. He he made the color. And she's like, no.
Rachel:From what I heard, you somehow made it to the end of the block before he did.
Matt:Before his car did.
Rachel:And then scared him off the road and he ran into a wall. And he's like, he panicked. I got lucky. Yeah. He panicked when I showed him my fangs.
Rachel:Maybe maybe he pulled the remember the one, false witness where he just, like, slowly lowers down in front of the car? Like, I pressed off. And she's like, well, you could have gone anyway. I mean, why why give it up? And he goes, ugh, I hate to fly.
Matt:Wink.
Rachel:And then we're seeing the bomber, like, on the side of the road, and he pulls out a cell phone, and he ends up dialing something. And in the cockpit, the music box begins to play. And as she's talking on the radio to the air traffic control, she pushes the button to turn the rate to turn the music box off and the music box blows up.
Matt:Boom.
Rachel:And Nick and Tracy see the explosion in the sky. Oh, but we missed one part. Just before we get to the really dramatic part of this episode, Natalie, not Natalie. Tracy is asking Nick, why do you have a convertible if you're allergic to the sun? And she goes, aren't you allergic to the sun?
Rachel:Like phototropic or something? Phototropic, like, isn't a thing at all. And it made me realize that Nick just says he has an allergy to the sun. He didn't give there are legitimate, like, medical reasons why people can't be out in the daylight.
Matt:There is a condition where you actually have an allergy to sunlight.
Rachel:Yeah. But instead, he just wrote it down like known allergies. What's the the common antibiotic that everybody's allergic to?
Matt:Like, penicillin?
Rachel:Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin, the sun.
Matt:He he didn't even put the sunlight. He could just put the sun.
Rachel:The sun. Garlic religious items that have been charged with somebody was like, okay.
Matt:Sure.
Rachel:I don't have a box for that, but that's fine.
Matt:He had hypnotized them into just entering all the data into the system. So but then people scrolling through it just you know, I'm just gonna see what's in
Rachel:what Yeah.
Matt:You know, what was in their, like, application they're hiring for.
Rachel:He's been there long enough. They've gone from paper files to computer files and then to, like, networked Internet files. So every single time they had to reenter his information, somebody had to type out both sides.
Matt:Or or at least, like, on the second transition. Yeah. They just had to, like, review it. But some feel like allergies. The
Rachel:sun. The sun.
Matt:Faith imbued religious symbols.
Rachel:Garlic and commitment.
Matt:His 4 allergies. And they're like, someone's Johnson, you're pulling a joke on me this time. I'm just not gonna react to this one.
Rachel:That's fine. You know what? It's one of, like, SEP problems. It's nobody it's somebody else's problem. You're like, I don't know.
Rachel:I can't deal with it. Is this guy's a vampire? I don't know. Who cares? But then they see the plane blow up in the sky.
Rachel:So the hardest part is I know skanky just died, but then we pull back to the full view of Toronto and we see the I am trying to be in this moment and, like, feel the feels of knowing that one of my favorite characters just died, but the
Matt:It's like the most, like, simplistic animations.
Rachel:I mean, it's the best they could do. Right? But I don't know.
Matt:An explosion large enough to provide that illumination on the other side of the city, the crater would just be a smoking pile of of, you know, carbonized whatever was around.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:You wouldn't end up with, like, a baby.
Rachel:Plus it blew up. It would just rain pieces. Right. It wouldn't rain one chunk.
Matt:Well, if the explosion was just in the cockpit. So the
Rachel:I mean, that was a big explosion.
Matt:Right. The that explosion was very large and visible. But the amount of explosive in the music box
Rachel:Could not have been
Matt:too much. Would have been enough to, like, blow out the windows and destroy the control equipment in the cockpit, causing the entire rest of the plane to crash, but it wouldn't have been like a fireball in the sky.
Rachel:Yeah. So there's a famous case.
Matt:Oh, you know what it could be? We could be seeing this with night vision, and that's why it was so bright.
Rachel:I mean, I hear you. I hear what you're saying. Okay. Well, you know what? I have a lot of cataloged, actual airplane crashes that I'm not gonna get into right now.
Rachel:Because I was thinking there's actually a case where this plane went down over the Everglades or the, like, swamp in Florida, and it crashed because the cockpit blew out. But most of the people survived, and that was in the seventies. And if just the cockpit got blown out and the plane itself crashed, there's a chance there would have been more survivors. So I think it's implied that the whole plane just
Matt:blows. It depends on the landscape where it lands. If it's in the Everglades, there's water that's going to, like, give it a chance to actually, like, straighten out and just hydroplane for a little bit and absorb some of that energy. But if you're just crashing into, like, a little, like, you know, bowl in some
Rachel:hills Well, anyway, it happens. It happens. The plane explodes, and it crashes. And Nick is like, call it in, Tracy. And she's too panicked, and he's like, call it in.
Rachel:And then they pull up next to where it crashed because it wasn't far from the from the
Matt:airport.
Rachel:Thank you. I was like, airplane terminal? No. What is the name of this? It wasn't far from the airport, and this set is a really great set.
Rachel:This whole field is, like, on fire. There's airplane pieces. This was a lot of work. This was an expensive set. Like, it's well done.
Rachel:Yeah. And Nick gets out because he hears a baby, and so he's running down this hill, and we're actually chasing after him. Like, the cameraman is chasing after him. And he points. There's, like, a point where he points.
Rachel:He goes
Matt:sticks his right arm out.
Rachel:And he goes, look over there or watch out over there. And it really feels like Garrett was running down this hill, and he spotted, like, a, like, a stump or a hole. And he was warning the cameraman expecting that to get cut out, and it didn't. Right.
Matt:They didn't cut the audio.
Rachel:Because, I mean, I guess Tracy's behind them, and this is supposed to be, like, her POV camera. I don't know. But it's just an odd, like, oh, look over there.
Matt:Right. If there had been, like, 4 or 5 of those comments, like, follow me this way. Oh, there's a hole. Like, watch out there. It would have fit in better.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:But it's a solid, like, you know, 15, 20 seconds of following him down this slope. And right at the bottom, he's just like, watch there. Yeah. Like, really clearly.
Rachel:Watch out, hero. So he runs over to this pile of debris, and he starts chucking
Matt:large Chucking large pieces of chunks of the airplane around like they're
Rachel:So if you thought he was gonna be more chill in front of Tracy Mm-mm. Try again, son. He's gonna be up to his usual shenanigans. So he's chucking large pieces of metal around, but it's all in the effort to save a baby. Because he picks this baby up, which this baby is completely unharmed.
Rachel:It's not even dirty, Which is good. I'm glad the baby lives. So he gives the baby to Tracy. She's like, I can hold her. And then he looks down and there's a ticket stub and he picks the ticket stub up.
Matt:He recognizes the flight.
Rachel:He recognizes the flight number and he goes skanky. And he, like, collapses. He drops to his knee. Like, oh my god. My best friend just died.
Rachel:My best friend
Matt:My best mortal friend.
Rachel:And that woman, god, Cohen, after all the shit she gave Skanky, died at his side.
Matt:Just imagine them walking to that glowing door in the afterlife
Schanke:Yeah.
Matt:Together. Why are you following me?
Rachel:Oh god. I just can't. This is so I almost cried during the watch along. I'm not gonna lie. I haven't sat and watched the entirety of season 1 and season 2 together and then watched Black Buddha ever.
Rachel:Because when I first the first time I watched this through, I watched it as a marathon. They had a marathon on sci fi. And in between the episodes, Garrett was doing a special thing where I think he was in the set, and he would give you a little factoid. Oh, when you see me drinking blood, I'm actually drinking this thing called ribena ribena. And then, you know, whatever.
Rachel:And but they played, like, highlights of season 1. They played highlights of season 2. Then they played Black Buddha. Then they played 1 episode in season 3, and then they played the series finale. So in one day, I got everything spoiled.
Matt:Oof.
Rachel:I mean, you know me. I don't really care about spoilers, but
Matt:you, In fact, you prefer to know the ending.
Rachel:I do. But, you know, it's one of those things where I didn't understand enough about the show to know what was happening when I got to the series finale. But anyway, this was not as impactful because I was not in love with the characters. I was just like, oh, okay. He gets a new partner in season 3.
Rachel:Cool. And then you go through and watch it, and you're like, oh my god. They were best friends, and he lost his best friend. And then they're like, here. Have a young blonde woman.
Rachel:Take her with you.
Matt:That's something Lacroix would do.
Rachel:And then and then we put this in here that Skanky dreamed his own death because Nick and Natalie are hugging. What the fuck is this? K. Nick and Natalie are hugging. And Natalie is selling this.
Rachel:Katharine Disher looks like she's genuinely upset that she's now at John Capellas's death scene. And Nick is like, if I hadn't caught him, if I'd gone and she's like, listen. You can't think like that. You didn't. You just have to move forward.
Rachel:You you don't have the luxury of looking back and feeling guilty about something that you had no control over. And he goes, you know, Skanky dreamed his own death. He dreamed he was standing naked at the end of a bowling alley, and Myra was at the other end holding a giant ball.
Schanke:You know, Skank had a dream last week. He dreamt his own death. He was standing at the end of a bowling alley, and Myra was at the other end holding a good ball.
Matt:Myra.
Rachel:Maybe there was more because they then get interrupted by Reese.
Matt:I'm wondering I wonder if Garett was ad libbing the
Rachel:dream scene. I hope not. Because this is such a sad scene. And then we get this really fucking poignant line, like, oh my fucking shit. This is the most poignant line Nick ever says.
Rachel:And Reese is trying to be helpful, but being wildly unhelpful. He's like, I don't know what to tell you, man. Death is gonna come for us all. One way or another, we are all going to die. And Nick goes
Matt:It's inevitable. Right?
Rachel:It's inevitable. And Nick goes, I sincerely hope you're right.
Rachel:But what it's worth, things like this never make sense. We're all gonna die. One way or another, it's another.
Matt:For that. Delta, you know, papa.
Schanke:I sincerely hope you're back.
Rachel:And then just turns and walks off. Like, yeah. I really hope death comes for me one day. We can all hope for that, Reese. And then he just leaves.
Rachel:And it is so sad. Like, I have had to stand in the wreckage of the life that I built over and over and over again. And now I am literally standing in the wreckage of a life that I loved, and I know I can never get it back. And the only thing that's gonna happen is eventually there will be more distance for me between this moment and the moment I'm currently living. But it's never going to end because I'm never going to end.
Rachel:The only thing I have to look forward to is this happening all over again.
Matt:Right. It really, like, sets the tone of this existence is a curse.
Rachel:Yeah. So naturally, the best option for Nick at this point is to remember the Titanic. So he goes into his flashback, and he's standing. This is we've looped back. We started at the end where the Titanic was already sinking, and he killed that woman.
Rachel:And then we go back to he's just standing at the rail, looking out at the ocean, and this woman approaches him, approaches him. And she's like, my, I wonder about your, your lack of discretion, you know, traveling in style like this with mere mortals.
Matt:Of an extremely forced French accent.
Rachel:I know. I'm not gonna fake it the entire time, but just know this woman is trying to be French so hard. And she goes, I have a fascination for danger. She, like, takes her glass, and I think this is supposed to illustrate how wild and free she is. Yeah.
Rachel:She just yeets it off the side. She doesn't even yeet like Chuck It. She just holds it out and then goes bloop and drops her glass. And then she's, like, see? I know what you are.
Matt:See how crazy I am?
Rachel:Oh, I'm so
Matt:I'm wild and unpredictable.
Rachel:I've also sharpened my fingernails into knives because she then slits her wrist with her own fingernail and holds it up for Nick. And this is Nick's moment to go, oh my god. What are you doing? That's so gross.
Matt:Let me pull out my handkerchief and cover your wound.
Rachel:But instead, he's like, oh, hello. It's nice to
Matt:meet you.
Rachel:She's like, I am Claire Gibson. And then he, like, eats her wrist. He, like, mauls her. And then when he picks his head up, he does this, like, flick.
Matt:And he has this, like, big glob of blood at the side of his neck.
Rachel:I know. And she's like, I need your help. And he's oh, he says, Nicolas de Brabant. And she goes, I need your help. Okay.
Rachel:And then we go back to the plane scene because Nick is leaving. So he's climbed up the hill. He gets in his car, he drives off, and as he drives off, we see that the bomber is standing there looking at the wreckage, holding his extremely nineties plastic insulated coffee cup.
Matt:That fits in the cup holder.
Rachel:I know. My mom is very
Matt:too. He's
Rachel:oh, yeah. He's practical. And then we go back to the flashback again, and this is when she's talking to him about the Buddha, the black Buddha that she has, which Meg said
Matt:Thank you for that pronunciation.
Rachel:Which Meg said in the watch along, kinda looks like they went to Michael's and got some, like, bedazzled jewels.
Matt:So while we were watching the watch along, I was googling about what is a black Buddha? What does it mean? What does a black Buddha mean? And black in Buddhism, the like, Buddhism has a lot of strong associations with colors, and black is, like, related to volatile emotion and, like, killing and anger is one example. So there's some connotations that go along with, like, a color of something associated with Buddhism.
Matt:And then the Buddha has some associations based on what does the statue look like. If it's like a big fat smiling Buddha, it can be associated with prosperity. But if it's a skinnier Buddha, it can be associated with, like, sacrifice or, you know, self denial or whatever. Anyway, we see this. She has this statue The
Rachel:black Buddha.
Matt:Of a black Buddha.
Rachel:The black Buddha. And she goes, it said that a great curse or a great unfor misfortune will fall on anyone who removes it from its temple, but I believe that is the standard curse they put on these things. And she goes, I paid $1,000,000 for it, which would be 30,000,000 $31,000,000 today. And she's like, well, you can have it. It's yours because it has the power to grant one wish, and you are my wish.
Rachel:Because when we arrive in New York, I will be immortal.
Matt:I did not understand what she said until Rachel explained it to me.
Rachel:Her. It's more tough. She's gonna be it's gonna be
Matt:a vampire. It's more tough. It's more tough.
Rachel:It's more tough. She's gonna be a vampire, obviously. And then we go back to the plane, and Tracy is walking along behind Reese, and she looks down just in time to see this corpse blink. And she's like, hold on. I think we got a live one.
Rachel:And Reese, like, kicks him. She's like,
Matt:no. That's dead. This is the only humanoid body in any piece or form that we've seen other than the baby. Yeah. So either they didn't wanna go to the trouble of making props for a bunch of
Rachel:You can't. Not on broadcast television in the nineties. You could not have that. Uh-uh. You can have gore on a living person, but you can't have a bunch of dead bodies lying around.
Rachel:So Reese literally run walks over, pokes him with his toe. I mean, he leans down. But he's like, boop.
Matt:Nope. He touches his face.
Rachel:He goes, he's cold. He's dead.
Matt:Yeah. He touches his cheek with his hand.
Rachel:He says he's got no pulse.
Matt:Yeah. But he doesn't actually check his pulse.
Rachel:He didn't wait the 10 minutes it takes for them to have one heartbeat. Perfectly fine. And so as they walk off, Vashon takes this moment to hop up and, like, yeet off into the woods. Okay. And so Nick is riding around doing the only thing he knows will make him feel better, which is listening to the nightcrawlers podcast.
Rachel:And it's Lacroix saying, who knows death better? The dead guy or the people left behind who have to smell his decomposition.
Schanke:Who knows the pain of death better? He who gasps his final breath or those of us who must breathe the foul air of his decomposition. Which bears the greater burden? The cold bones of the dead man in his coffin or the spine of pallbearer carrying his load? No one knows this burden better than we.
Schanke:Dear listener, we who have seen so many paths.
Rachel:And who whose bones bear the greater load? The man in the casket or the spine of the paw bearer who is carrying him?
Matt:I'm just imagining Lacroix in his, you know, new, you know, podcasting studio.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Or, like, he's he's out he's out in the bar, and he's like, hold on. I sense a disturbance in the force. Nick is having a strong emotion. I need to get on the radio right now and pontificate about it. He's perceptive to my Yeah.
Matt:To my
Rachel:This is my moment.
Matt:Rambling. Right now, I need to get him when he's emotionally, you know, sensitive.
Rachel:Yes. And we we follow-up
Matt:So Lekwahlek runs to the back of the bar.
Rachel:I gotta go.
Matt:Gets Slants his glasses. End of the business meeting, stripper, put your clothes back on. I I have important business to do.
Rachel:I gotta record. Or does he have a whole bunch of lectures just queued up and all he has to do is go back and just hit play.
Matt:He he just he just gotta pull up the cassette.
Rachel:No. No. He's got a little sticky note on each one. Unexpected death, unexpected theft of money, unexpectedly complicated case, mommy issues, daddy issues, Natalie issues. He just has to
Matt:So that he doesn't even necessarily have to do it. He can be like, you, like, whatever your name is.
Rachel:Play on the one labeled death.
Matt:Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.
Matt:Go. Quick. Quick. He's receptive right now.
Rachel:But he he must be long because it goes all the way from him being in the car to him getting home. The sun is up, and he's, like, standing in the one little corner because we've moved his stairs. The stairs are now in a different location. His his loft is configured slightly different. And he's standing in the one little corner where there's no sunlight, and he ends up pushing the blinds to lower them.
Rachel:As Lacroix is saying, what weighs you down? Is it the would've, should've, could've game called guilt. Oof. And then the next day, Nate goes back to the precinct, and he's talking to Reese, and he's like, so was it a bomb? So,
Matt:since you mentioned
Rachel:You made the rewind motion with your hands.
Matt:So Since you mentioned they moved the stairs in his apartment. Yeah.
Rachel:I'm pretty sure they did.
Matt:I think we threw around the idea that they between season 23, they had to, like, tear down the set where his apartment was and then rebuild it. We know that Gare still has the mantle. Yeah. So at the end of season 2, when they're tearing down the set, does Ger say, like, hey, I I wanna keep that. I I leaned It's the same mental.
Matt:I leaned on it a lot. So I'm gonna take that home.
Rachel:It's the same mental, though. Well, I Okay. Alright. Sorry.
Matt:And then season 3 starts for, like, hey. We're roof. It got renewed for a 3rd season. We're rebuilding the set for Nick's apartment. Gary, we need the mantle back.
Matt:I don't want it. It's installed in my wall. I can't just rip it out of the wall.
Rachel:There wasn't as big of a gap. There wasn't enough of a gap for them
Matt:to have
Rachel:to do that. I think
Matt:they did. I'm just imagining Okay.
Rachel:Garrett
Matt:I think he did. In his home
Rachel:For filming purposes. K. Go ahead.
Matt:I'm just imagining Garrett in his home doing monster hands and ripping the mantle out of the wall of his house and carrying it back to the studio. You can, like, have it back.
Rachel:He he only plays a vampire. Right? Yeah. Yeah. He only plays a vampire.
Rachel:Let's just say we don't need to spend a lot of money on the flying scenes.
Matt:May. Maybe that's why he didn't like the flying scenes because it was hard for him to go along with the, like
Rachel:Go on a wire.
Matt:The special effects stuff.
Rachel:It would make a lot of sense. It would make sense as to why neither Mick nor I can still remember meeting him. Really fucking wild.
Matt:We only saw him at night.
Rachel:We did only see him. And then as soon as he came out the door, nothing gone. Just in complete standby mode till so weird. That's never that's not happened to me.
Matt:It's it's because you stood next to him and got your picture taken. That's when he did it.
Rachel:I I don't know. Meaghan, I can only remember when he comes out and goes, hi. I'm Gare, and that's it. Like, I've got nothing until I said where we were from, but didn't clarify. And so he had to look to you to finish the sentence.
Rachel:And then I remember him signing the posters because I was mildly embarrassed about the posters. And then I remember the photo, because I thought he was gonna do hover hand, and he did not. He, like, grabbed my shoulder. And so the amount of physical contact, like, snapped me out of standby mode. And then I remember being like, we need to let this man go before he feels like we're being weird.
Rachel:And then I was like, okay. So thank you for your time. He was like, yeah. Great. Thanks.
Rachel:It was nice meeting you guys. I went back to the party and that's that's it. I know you talked to him. I know somebody said we had a podcast, kind of. So weird.
Rachel:But anyway
Matt:If Garrett is actually a vampire?
Rachel:Yes. Yeah. It would make sense.
Matt:Yeah. It would fit.
Rachel:So, anyway, we go back to the precinct, and Nick is talking to Reese. And he's like, was it a bomb? And Reese is like, listen. I can't that's not even can you please give me a fucking break here, Nick. He's like, it's out of our hands.
Rachel:It's the ABC, the CDF, the FDG, the GGG, the whatever. All of the letters are are over this right now. And, you know, maybe the accomplice want a dollar dead. And we're getting we're getting reamed for having tried to move him on public transport. Like, there's a lot going on here that's bigger than you right now.
Rachel:And he follows him all the way into his office, and Reese turns around. He's like, do I have a door of this office?
Rachel:Does this office have a door or not? Oh, Nick. Cut me some slack here. I know I'm new at this, but listen to me just a little.
Matt:Yeah. And you didn't close it, Ricky.
Rachel:Does not respond. Nick just stands there like, get used to it.
Matt:And then This is your new normal.
Rachel:And he looks over, and Cohen's pictures that she had up on her desk are just in a box.
Matt:Reese has already cleared Cohen's desk.
Rachel:I don't think we're supposed to like Reese. Yeah. I honestly think he's supposed to start out as an unlikable character because he has already cleared Cohen's desk off. He is already talking to the commissioner and being like, oh, thank you so much, sir. Like, I'm so glad to have gotten this position.
Rachel:Not being like, oh, I really like, I'm really sorry about the the way I got this or whatever. It's a very much like, I've played my cards right, and now an opening has appeared, And Cohen's name's still on the door. Yeah. Like, he is already making himself at home, and I'm not even certain he's officially gotten the position yet.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Because it's not until Nick comes in to listen to the tape that he congratulates him for being appointed
Matt:captain. Congratulations, captain.
Rachel:Yeah. But he's like, Nick, you're supposed to be taking the week off. You're not even supposed to be here. At least Tracy has the sense to take the time off when I give her the time off. And he does this look like, mhmm.
Rachel:Yeah. She's taking the time off, which ends up being mildly prophetic because Tracy is not taking the time off. Tracy is heading to the airplane scene, which everything has been moved into a warehouse so they can identify the bodies. Yes.
Matt:Standard procedure.
Rachel:She walks up and he's like, you know, gotta see your ID. So she pulls her ID out. She gets let in. Nick is right behind her because as soon as she walks off, his arm extends from off screen holding his wallet. And the guy's, like, close to Metro.
Rachel:And he's like, she just got through. Yeah. Well, she was with the commission. And so he leans forward and he's like, boom, boom, boom, boom. So am I.
Rachel:The guy's like, oh, of course, sir. Totally missed that. And then he follows her, and then he's like, Tracy, is this Tracy, I will never use my dad for my own gain better?
Matt:She's like, you weren't supposed to notice.
Rachel:She's like, I'm checking on the baby. How did you get in here anyway? And he goes, a few well chosen words. And then Natalie walks over, and she was like, no. This is not where you need to be.
Rachel:And Nick just hugs her. He's like, quick distract her. Distract her with physical contact. And so he like you know, I don't think he hugs her. I think he just, like, leads her off screen.
Rachel:And Tracy turns around, and she's looking at the board that only has 3 pieces of paper on it. And it's 2 women who they haven't found and a JD Valdez who doesn't even have a picture. He's just in his mid twenties, resident of Toronto, heading off who knows where. But up on the board up on the board are the pictures of Cohen and Skanky.
Matt:The only thing that Nick can look at.
Rachel:With the identified yes or no. Yes. Checked. Which means Natalie had to identify Cohen and Skanky's bodies. Cohen and Skanky, who she worked with every day for years, they couldn't call another coroner in to work on this?
Matt:Nope. No Metro Police.
Rachel:I mean, they called another coroner in when her goddaughter was killed.
Matt:Yeah. But that wouldn't serve to add cheap conflict to
Rachel:the plot. Sad. It's just sad. I mean, I don't know. Maybe she wanted to be the one that did it.
Matt:Maybe. Yeah. She could have volunteered.
Rachel:But as they're leaving, Tracy actually sees a shadow move across the wall. And so as they're walking out the door, Tracy's like, hey. I think I forgot my keys. She's not like, I think there's an intruder in there, and I think we all need to go after him and get him because Why
Matt:does she have to feel like she why does she feel like she has to play the hero?
Rachel:We suspect this might be a bombing. Why would you not assume that the bomber would show up to do something?
Matt:Right. If the plane has been moved here, this is now the scene of the crime.
Rachel:Right.
Matt:And They always say they always return to the scene of the crime. Well, she
Rachel:just automatically is like, this is something I need to check out on my own and not tell anybody about or tell anybody where I'm going or anything.
Matt:Which is rookie bullshit.
Rachel:I mean, it's not great. But Natalie starts crying. She's like Doesn't
Matt:look good on her.
Rachel:What doesn't look good on her?
Matt:Oh, the real bullshit.
Rachel:Oh, I thought you're talking about Natalie. I was like, don't even. We already did skanky dirty. You don't get to do Natalie dirty.
Matt:No.
Rachel:She's crying because she's like, nothing could get me to go back in there. It was a bomb. And it's like, it was a bomb. And she's like, yeah, it was a bomb. Like, we're for sure confirmed it was a bomb.
Rachel:And we cut back to Tracy because Tracy has found somebody. And instead of calling anybody in for backup, knowing that there's 2 people waiting for her, she's like, freeze. Put your hands up. And then Vashon's like, oh, you people. Is you people really say that?
Rachel:It's like that game that kids play, statue or whatever. She's like, can you just turn around and put your hands up? And he goes, that's gonna be real hard because the lost one in the crash. And he, like, puts his hands up, and he's holding one hand, and he's got a stump on the other side. But Nick must take Natalie back to his house to, like, relax her and help her unwind by telling her that he is responsible for Skanky and Cohen's death because he owns a statue of a black Buddha.
Rachel:And that was
Matt:Cultural appropriation.
Rachel:And Natalie's like, oh, yeah. This is really pretty. I learned about it in one of those documentaries about the Titanic. What? I wanna see that one.
Rachel:And Nick goes, yeah. It's supposedly in the ship's safe. And she's like, hang on. You think the Titanic sank because of the curse?
Schanke:The black Buddha.
Rachel:And then we cut to the another little Flashback? Flashback. Thank you. And this is the one where we see the lamp plugged in in the background. I mean, she's talking about blah blah blah.
Rachel:It's cursed, blah blah blah. That's why the Titanic is sinking, blah blah blah. Blah. But were there outlets on the Titanic? I Googled a little bit, and, yes, some of the higher end cabins would have one outlet for, like, a lamp or a table fan.
Rachel:Mhmm. But if you were in steerage, you only got electric lights.
Matt:Okay.
Rachel:So, yes, this is I'm sure they made sure that that was period appropriate before they included that in the background. But my favorite part about this scene is Natalie is having none of Nick's bullshit. She's like, I'm I'm sorry. Are are you telling me that my friends died because you own this statue? And he's like, yeah.
Rachel:That's what I'm trying to tell you. And she's like, I'm sorry. But that is that is bullshit. It is absolute bullshit.
Schanke:You don't understand. I thought you were the wish that the Buddha granted. I I thought your work, what we were doing
Natalie:Oh, well, that makes me feel fabulous. The Buddha is working its magic through me that just sends thrills right up my spine. Natalie, please. Stop it, Nick.
Rachel:You wanna believe in black? Are you why did you even keep it? And he's like, well, I was waiting for my wish, and I thought you were my wish.
Matt:Here here's the, like, better version of this conversation that happened in my head Okay. Is when when Natalie is, like, you know, scolding him for, you you're an idiot. And him being like
Rachel:serious right now?
Matt:Well, sorry. I was just you know, that's what I thought was gonna happen. And and then him being like, I was born before the scientific revolution. Can you please give me a little slack for the fact that my entire, like
Rachel:Way of thinking.
Matt:Processes Yeah. And my worldview were shaped and, like, solidified before all of this science stuff happened. Like, that was how you explained things, and I'm trying really hard to be more scientific about my worldview, but it's been 100 of years.
Rachel:And I'm a fucking vampire. Yeah. Do you know how hard it is to not believe in magic when you are a magical creature?
Matt:So cut me some slack, Natalie.
Rachel:Cut me some slack, Natalie. That's fair. That's all those are all really relevant points. They're really good. But I can also say that Natalie
Matt:Put on your context lenses. Yeah.
Rachel:That's that's fair. Natalie doesn't have a very good set of context lenses, but she does make a good point because he's like, I thought the Buddha sent you to me. And she's like, oh oh, I'm acting on behalf of the Buddha. Okay.
Matt:That makes me feel magic working.
Rachel:That makes me feel real fucking great, Nick. Is that why you don't drink my smoothies because the Buddha's gonna fix you? All I have to do is be present? God, I'm so fucking over this. I'm going home.
Rachel:She's like, I'm really tired. And he's so stressed out about this conversation that he has a flashback. And he's like, you know, I could still bring you across. Like, I could do that. That's fine.
Rachel:And then we just fly you we don't have to fly off. We can go under the water. This is established.
Matt:This is this is canon.
Rachel:I can propel myself through any medium. It's fine. If we go deep enough, we can even keep travel during the day. So it's gonna be great. And she's like, would you like to live a life with a 1,000 deaths on your head?
Rachel:Yeah. That's yeah. That's actually
Matt:He's done that a bunch. Yeah.
Rachel:It's like that's yesterday. I don't know what you're talking about. Like, yeah. I have killed if you do the math, he could have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people at this point. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. Not including the last 100 years where he didn't kill anyone, but maybe he did because it looks like he lied. I don't know. So, yeah, he knows exactly what it's like to live with a 1,000 deaths on your conscience. Yeah.
Rachel:Let's go leave that there. She didn't think that through, I don't think. And then we get to this kind of funny scene. This is what I'm talking about. I think Tracy and Vashawn could work if you didn't know what you lost.
Rachel:Yeah. If you didn't know what you lost, this is a funny little scene because Yeah.
Matt:If you weren't aware of what this is replacing.
Rachel:Right. Because Vashawn is driving, and I gotta admit, Vashawn's a bit of a, a hipster prick because he's like, oh, did your parents buy you this car? And she's like, what are you talking about? And he's like, I bet
Matt:you this one out yourself?
Rachel:I bet it gets great cash mileage. Like, what the fuck, Vashon? You don't even own a car. Get get out of here. You have to have her buy you clothes at Goodwill, which you're about to ask her to do.
Rachel:So I need you to stop being a little judgy judgy bitch. Okay?
Matt:And and she says that he has, what is it? No no known means of support. Yeah. And he's like Which means he's unemployed?
Rachel:Yeah. Do I look like a slacker to you is what he says. But she goes, your hand. And he goes, yeah. All better.
Rachel:And he goes, your face. And she go he says, can you try starting a sentence with a different word? And she goes, my gun. And he goes, there's one, and he just takes the gun and hands it to her. And then he has looked at her ID, so he knows who she is.
Rachel:And so he's like, you're gonna he tries to hypnotize her. He's like, you're gonna take me to get some clothes, and then we're gonna buy another plane ticket, and I'm gonna be out of here. K. Cool. And she's like, no.
Rachel:I don't know what you're talking about because, of course, Tracy is a resistor. And then we get
Matt:Is that a name?
Rachel:Yeah. It means you can't be hypnotized. Natalie's a resistor. Maybe I just can't be hypnotized. Yeah.
Rachel:So we get back to, Lacroix because Lacroix, he he turned the tape over from side a to side b so it could keep talking about death. He's like, there once was a man with a suitcase full of guilt.
Schanke:There was a young man with a suitcase of guilt that weighed his immortal life down. He just couldn't see. All it took to get free was to drop it and
Rachel:get out of town. And he didn't realize that all he had to do to get free was just drop it and get out of town.
Matt:And this is not Nick?
Rachel:This is oh, yeah. But then Nick goes to the Raven because he's lost, and he needs to talk to Jennette. And he walks up to the bar, and he's like, where's Jeanette? And the guy's like, who? And he's like, Jeanette.
Rachel:Where's fucking Jeanette? And he's like, I don't I don't know what you're talking about, man. He leaves. And then Lacroix comes out, and Lacroix's like, Nick, you should come by more often. Yeah.
Rachel:Jeanette's gone. Like, gone gone. Like, we're gone.
Matt:Gone gone.
Rachel:Like, ain't coming back gone. Like, she'd been here 20 years, and she's out of here. Sold me the club. She's gone. And, oh, do you like what I did with the place?
Rachel:No Lacroix. Nobody likes what you did with the place. There is a half naked man in silver booty shorts dancing on the dancing in the background. Okay? And there's a live band for some reason, which is perfectly fine.
Rachel:But the number of just ridiculous costumes loitering about this room, Plus, the bar is covered with glasses full of, like, different colored liquid. Nobody's drinking them. They're just all on the bar. It's it's like he read about a club. And he was like, I think I can make this better if I just add blackjack and hookers.
Rachel:I mean, I'm sorry. That's an inappropriate reference, but it's from Futurama. Blackjack and sex workers.
Matt:That's what
Rachel:we're gonna put in here. He says, sex is back. We even have a stripper on Fridays. And I record from my pod lab in the back. Isn't that nice, Nick?
Matt:It's so convenient.
Rachel:Yeah. And this is really Nick's, like, ain't you tired, boss episode. They're like, haven't you seen enough suffering? Haven't you watched enough of your friends die here? Aren't you ready to start fresh and leave?
Rachel:And Lacroix actually gives us a really poignant line here where he's like, you know, the only time that it feels like a burden and you start to feel that loneliness is when you stay too long. And so if that's what you're feeling right now, it's probably your time to move on too. Yep. And then we cut to Tracy and Vashon because we have to establish Vashon as the sexy thirst trap version of
Matt:They they try so hard.
Rachel:Of the vampire character. Because he's taking a shower, which he did not bother to shut the door.
Matt:She is not hypnotized, but she still
Rachel:Took him
Matt:brought this strange man
Rachel:because he said he knew something about the crash.
Matt:To her apartment.
Rachel:Listen, Tracy, you know, is not if there were a bunch of sharp pencils, Tracy wouldn't be the sharpest. Okay? And if if there were a lot of bright crayons, she might not be on the brightest end of the spectrum. Okay? Tracy is not skanky.
Rachel:She is curious and inquisitive, but I would not label her as, like, suspicious or skeptical. She very much taste things at face value. She does try eventually to become a little bit more, like, hardboiled detective, but it's never gonna work. That's why she's why her group was the percolators because she's just, like, perky and bubbly and the perky bubbly Barbie detective. I don't know what to tell you.
Rachel:This is this is what you're in for. Okay? Yes. She took this strange man home who she has not yet to tell anyone about even though she's
Matt:bound in disappeared.
Rachel:Yeah. She just dipped. Nobody even knows where she is or what's going on, and she took this man back to her apartment. Now she's got a gun, I guess. I don't know what she's hoping for.
Rachel:Even though she's seen him reattach one of his hands, which she remembers him doing.
Matt:Right. Because she's not getting hypnotized.
Rachel:Yep. But he comes out, and he's got, like he versus taking a shower without shutting the door. And then he comes out, and he's got the, like, chest hair happy trail combo going on, and he's, like, gently towelling his mullet.
Matt:It's just the hair.
Rachel:The hair. Oh, god. And she's like, I bet you're a dead ringer for JD Valdez, and he goes, good choice of words, Trace. And she goes, okay. Tell me about the crash.
Rachel:Because theoretically, that's why she brought him back to her house and he's like, no time. Gotta go. And she's like, wait a minute. How will I find you so you can tell me more about it? And he goes, too dangerous.
Rachel:You don't find me.
Matt:I'll find you.
Rachel:I find you. Like, how does her hair? He reaches really awkwardly behind her head and undoes her hair clip, but her hair is so short. It doesn't actually change the silhouette of her hair. What they're going for is he's hungry and he's covering up her neck.
Rachel:That's what they're going for. But since it's this just kinda doesn't I don't know. But then we get, like, he leans in to kiss her, and then he leans a little farther in, and she actually tells him to stop. She goes, Vashon, stop. And that's when he does the, like, kind of empire thing, and then leaves back.
Matt:The viewer.
Rachel:And he's like, okay. Sorry, Tracy. Gotta go. And he leaves. And then we come back to the precinct because Nick is on this.
Rachel:He's like a dog with a bone. Of course, he is. His best friend just died, and he's got to know why. He has to know why. So he's listening to this tape, and he can hear this music box, and he's trying to tell Reese about it.
Rachel:And Reese is like, Cohen may have let you get away with this shit, but those days are over.
Rachel:Reese, enough. Okay? Now look. Maybe Cohen will let you go off on tangents like this, but I'm not. Taxpayers pay for this.
Rachel:I'm not gonna have this guy logging hours on a debt issue that's out of our jurisdiction. Clear?
Rachel:Clear. I'm not about this anymore. This is why I don't think we're supposed to like Reese.
Matt:Right. Because he's he's pushing back against Nick.
Rachel:He is immediately trying to rein in Nick. He's like, this man is getting paid by the tax dollars. You are keeping him overtime. That's ridiculous. He just needs to go.
Rachel:You need to go. Why are you here anyway?
Matt:Brett, the feds have been all over this.
Rachel:Yeah. If they if they didn't find anything, you're not gonna find anything.
Matt:And so Nick is like, Reese says, why are you even here? Like, GTFO.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:And Nick is like, oh, I I just thought I'd clean out Skanky's death desk before the funeral. And I was thinking, Nick probably always has, like, an excuse or, like, a plausible story.
Rachel:Why he was there.
Matt:But yeah. Oh, yeah. He was oh, no. I think he was there. Like, his primary purpose was to poke around and see what more he could investigate
Schanke:Yeah.
Matt:About the plane crash.
Rachel:And also empty the desk.
Matt:But also empty the desk just as his cover story.
Rachel:And goddamn if he doesn't pull out the partners of the month plaque.
Matt:They kept the props. Oh, god.
Rachel:Just stab me in the fucking heart.
Matt:And the bowling photo?
Rachel:It made me wanna get one of those partners the month plaques made and put it up in the pod lab. I'm not gonna lie. I was like, can I get that made at a trophy shop? Probably. But Reese is our most political captain.
Rachel:We had Stonetree, who was just like the stoner bro dude who ended up becoming captain for some reason. And then we had Cohen, who was the, like, I had a high ranking position in, like, the FBI, and now I'm here. And I have too much experience for you to reasonably make me a beat cop, but I don't wanna do anything else. So, okay, let's make me a captain. And then we have Reese, who is there because he has maneuvered his way into that position.
Rachel:He's not a bad captain as we'll find out. He actually gets a lot of gets more depth than Cohen does because it's the nineties, and we know how to write male characters. We don't know how to write female characters. But right now, I think he's supposed to feel like something that is driving Nick away. Everything is supposed to feel like something that's driving Nick away.
Rachel:Yeah. And wouldn't you know it works? Because Nick is like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm done.
Rachel:And he hands Reese his resignation.
Matt:He walks into the office, and Reese is on the phone schmoozing with the the commissioner. Yeah. And he's like, you know, I I suck up. Everybody sucks up, and
Rachel:they say, okay.
Matt:The cans of paper.
Rachel:I'm done. And he goes, what's this? And he goes, I'm resigning effective immediately.
Matt:Too many changes. Not getting enough back.
Rachel:Not enough coming back.
Matt:Yep. Which is what the line that Risa just used, when he got the chocolates. And of note is Nick turns in his badge, but Nick does not turn in a gun.
Rachel:No. He does not. He has 1. He has 1.
Matt:Was it? Is it his personal
Rachel:firearm? Just left it in his desk.
Matt:Maybe.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. But then Tracy comes in because Tracy didn't listen to Vashon at all. Or maybe she did, and it was just like, I think he's trying to tell me to go find him. Maybe he's playing hard to get because she looks him up on the computer, and somehow his last known address is an abandoned church.
Rachel:And I think Meg mentioned on the on the, watch along, she's like, how do you have your last known address be an abandoned church? Did a social worker walk by?
Matt:Like Right. Like, noted down. Got assigned to a social worker, and the social worker, like, asked you what your address was to check up on you
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Or whatever. And that was the address.
Rachel:Right. Because if he owned the church, it would not be abandoned.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:I don't know. I don't know. But this is another one of my favorite shots because Natalie comes in, and Natalie is wearing this banging, like, rose light dusty rose colored power suit. This entire she looks amazing in these two episodes. Everybody looks amazing.
Rachel:Everybody. Nick looks so good in his black finally, he's not wearing a vest. Thank you, fucking Jesus. The vests were fine, but they age him up. Okay?
Rachel:Yeah. And so when we put him back in this
Matt:really And he's, like, super clean shaven.
Rachel:Yeah. He's like
Matt:Which we have not seen since season 1.
Rachel:No no mullet. Haircut. He's clean-cut. He's got a black, like, suit, shirt, jacket, pants on. He looks fucking amazing.
Rachel:Natalie looks amazing. And she shows up, and the door slides open. And as it's sliding open, the camera pans back. And we see that Nick is sitting at the piano playing music, and everything in his apartment is packed up or covered.
Matt:Yep. Covered in white sheets. Like, it's gonna be there for a while.
Rachel:And the only yeah.
Matt:What's his face is gonna take a while to move his
Rachel:Felix.
Matt:Thing, stuff around.
Rachel:Felix twist. Felix. And that but, I mean, just this scene is so poignant because Natalie is just standing there, and the only music is what Nick is playing on the piano. And she walks over to the piano, and she's like, the actual fuck, Nick. And he's like, well, I found it in the past.
Rachel:It was better if I just leave. And she's like, I had to find out from a desk sergeant. Do you know how that makes me feel?
Matt:And shame on you, Nick, for not telling Natalie.
Rachel:Shame. And she is there to pull no punches. He has fucked around, and she is here to help him find out. Because she's like, oh, you thought this was gonna be better? You mean better for you?
Rachel:Because when you leave, guess who still gets hurt? Me. And guess who's still out there hurting people? The bomber that killed Skanky and Cohen. Oh, but you don't care about that, do you?
Rachel:Because you're just gonna run away and feel sorry for yourself. Yes. Well,
Natalie:you're not. Oh, there there is a black Buddha. I firmly believe that, and he did kill Skanky and all those other people as sure as I'm standing here, but you are not that man. And he's out there. He's crazy, and he will probably kill again.
Natalie:Oh, wait a minute. That won't matter to you, will it? Because you will be off starting a
Rachel:new life
Natalie:somewhere, feeling sorry for yourself, running.
Schanke:Natalie.
Natalie:No. No. You know what?
Rachel:That's real fucking mature, Nick. You know what? I'm not mad. I'm disappointed because I thought you were better than this, and it turns out you aren't. So I'm out, And Nick is like, Natalie, please.
Rachel:And she's like, mm-mm. You know what? This isn't a debate. I'm not here to discuss this.
Matt:I could just see Nick sitting there, like, tearing up, feeling like, Natalie, I can't believe you used the d word.
Rachel:You're disappointed. And she's like, no. No. No. No.
Rachel:Don't even. This, I think you'll find I'm done. We're done, and I'm leaving, and I'm gone. Have a nice, have a nice running away.
Matt:Bye, Niclicia.
Rachel:But then we go to Tracy because Tracy's at the church, and she has to climb up the stairs. I don't know how this church functions. Somehow the stairs go up to the church, but you I don't know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Rachel:And she goes in to find Vashon, but it's not Vashon.
Matt:Oh, she goes in with no flashlight. Yes. And there's a light downstairs, but there's no lights upstairs.
Rachel:Alone without telling anybody where she's going. I mean, she leaves it up on the computer because Reese sees it. But
Matt:Right. Maybe maybe that's, like, how she's been trained. Like, okay. You just leave it up on your computer screen. Well, you
Rachel:know what? This is what happens when daddy gets you your job. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Rachel:So she ends up going into the church, and the Inca is there. And the Inca is like, Okay. Which thank you at least for making him speak not English, I guess. Although, somehow, he hasn't changed his tunic in 500 years because he's still dressed Right. Vaguely Hispanic, but he's not.
Rachel:He's
Matt:Central American?
Rachel:He would not be speaking Spanish if he's speaking the language. If he's supposed to be speaking the language he spoke, he'd be speaking, Quechua, I think is how you say it, which is the Incan language. Right. Instead, he's demanding information from her in Spanish, which we don't know if Tracy speaks. So she's just like got
Matt:here.
Rachel:I don't know what you're saying.
Matt:Out later. He's, like, 500 years old. Yeah. He got here, and he's been around for 100 of years. He should know better.
Rachel:What he should probably do is just go be a translator, because it isn't which one of them has one that we have not translated yet? Is that the Mayan or the Incan? There's one of those South American cultures that has a specific type of rune that we have not translated yet. I'm gonna look that up. Yeah.
Rachel:He would be talking Quechua, talking speaking Quechua, which actually is not an extinct language, but it is a dying language. And I looked it up, and I was right. There is a civilization that has a, a system of writing that we have not deciphered, but it's the Minoans, which are not the Incans at all. They have linear a and linear b. We've translated linear b, but not linear a.
Rachel:The Incans actually didn't have a written language. They had strings with knots in them.
Matt:Oh, yeah. I've heard about that.
Rachel:Although we think they may have had a secret language spoken by kind of the upper echelon of the society around Lake Titicaca, which is where Vashon and the Inca have their mighty showdown of the gods. Yep. But oh, you know what? Nick is at his apartment, mulling over Natalie's harsh words, and Reese calls him. And he actually has his phone over on a box over by the window.
Rachel:So he picks the phone up, and he's talking to Reese because Reese is like, hey. So I know you quit. So it feels like something my mom would do. Oh, hey. I know.
Matt:But I need your help.
Rachel:Hey. I know you're not actually in charge of this or involved in it or know anything about it at all, but I have a question. Do you think you could answer it for me? Yeah. Sure.
Rachel:It's fine. And he's like, Tracy ran off to go find this guy named, JD Valdez. Does that Valdez, whatever. Does that does that ring a bell to you? And he's like, yeah.
Rachel:He was one of the missing bodies from the plane. Like, he was in the air airplane, but we don't know what happened to him. And then Nick sees it.
Matt:We see a flash of light through Nick's window.
Rachel:And Reese is like, what was that? And Nick's like, I see it. It's the 23rd precinct. I can see it right here from my window. And then he hears the music first.
Matt:For context, this precinct that they worked in in season 1 was the 20 7th precinct.
Rachel:Yeah. And now they're in the 96th.
Matt:Right. So it was the 23rd precinct Yeah. Which was not his old precinct.
Rachel:Stone tree didn't die. You know how much of a shit thing that would have been to be like, oh my god. That was the 27th precinct. Stonetree. God.
Matt:If they'd kept track of the details, they would have done it.
Rachel:You think so? Those assholes. After this episode, I believe everything. But then he hears the music box. Music.
Rachel:And he's like
Matt:Over Reese's phone.
Rachel:And he's like, what is that? And Reese is like, the fuck are you talking about? Because Nick was trying to tell him, like, I hear a music box in the background of the black box
Matt:before the bomb.
Rachel:Right. Yeah. I hear it. And, still, Reese is like, what what are you talking about? What and he's like, are you what where is that music coming from?
Rachel:And he goes, it's coming from the chocolates that I got given. And Nick is like, don't touch that box. And he goes, Nick, I've cut my hand on a piece. I wanna stop a moment and address this chocolate box. Where are the explosives hiding in this chocolate box?
Matt:So plastic explosives are well, some of them are kind of like Play Doh. They don't have to be, like, compressed into a, like, a cylinder or a sphere. So you could, like, roll it out flat Yeah. And make a flat sheet But what connect the detonator to it.
Rachel:But it's still not very much because it's just No.
Matt:It wouldn't be much. It would be enough to, like, blow out the windows in the room Yeah. With some fire and shit.
Rachel:Yeah. Which I guess it does. Maybe the other places got bigger. No. We saw all the chocolate boxes.
Rachel:Right. So I was thinking
Matt:he the bomber went for, like, the $15 box of chocolates that you find at, like, the pharmacy, like, convenience store and, you know, installed a bomb with a music box. There's not enough room between the, like, plastic tray that holds the chocolates and the cardboard box to hold a music box. But maybe that's just another sign of his genius at music box bomb making music bomb making.
Rachel:Yeah. Because he also had to put the little music playing thing in there.
Matt:Right. So I was thinking he should have gone for, like, the $100 box of chocolate that's in, like, a wooden box, and the weight, it'd be easier to hide the weight of a bomb inside of that box because the box would be so heavy, and you'd have more space to hide the music mechanism. Anyway, it's not completely believable that there's a, like, music playing mechanism inside of this box of chocolates. Yeah. As well as a bomb, and, like, the weight felt fine for a box of chocolates.
Rachel:Correct. It's even floppy because at one point, he hands it out to Tracy, and it's, like, flopping over in the corner like a cheap box of chocolates does. And that's when Tracy tells him, no. Thanks. My dad doesn't like chocolate.
Rachel:He thinks it acts like a germ collector in your throat.
Matt:Nobody actually says that. What?
Rachel:What, Tracy? Come on, James Parriot. Your dad is a police commissioner, and he thinks that chocolate makes germs gather in your throat.
Matt:That that actually sounds about right.
Rachel:Oh, yeah. Alright. Well, anyway, Nick is talking to him, and he's like, don't touch it. And he's like, my hand's already on a piece. And Nick goes, vacate the building, call the bomb squad.
Rachel:I'm on my way. And then he's at the precinct and Reese goes, how did you get here? You just got off the phone with me. And Nick goes, I flew. And Reese goes, what?
Rachel:And he's like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my hand on this piece, and then I need you to go. And Reese is like, what? No. This was addressed to me. Like, I'm the one who's gonna take this.
Rachel:And Nick is like, yeah. You have a wife and you have kids and I have no one, and I'm gonna survive this. I mean, I'm gonna be I'm gonna do this. Okay? And he actually gives
Matt:them one for the team.
Rachel:He gives them a little hypnotic push. Like, this way, I can disappear and Natalie won't know I've just fled. She'll think I died instead. It's a win win for me, Reese.
Matt:Except she's seen what happens to him when he gets blown up by a pipe bomb.
Rachel:But there is a chance that that could kill him. Yeah. I mean, if it severed his head Yeah. He would die. If it if shrapnel in the shape of a wooden stake went through his chest, he would die.
Rachel:So there is a chance it could kill him. It just is not as likely. He's not going to die from gross bodily harm in the same way a human would.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:Or what's the thing where a bomb actually makes your internal organs explode? It's like the it's like a concussion effect
Schanke:Okay.
Rachel:Where it's not always heard,
Matt:like, a technical name for that.
Rachel:Oh, it's there's a name for it, but they talk about it in World War z. And it's not actually, like, the heat or the whatever. It's the concussion force of the air displacement from the explosion. It just shuts your body down.
Matt:Blast induced neurotrauma?
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Blast injury?
Rachel:Barotrauma.
Matt:Baro for pressure?
Rachel:Yeah. It's due to compressive expansive forces leading to the overstretching of tissues.
Matt:Gotcha.
Rachel:And it's the differential between the surrounding gas or fluid and an unvented body cavity. So your the pressure around you rises really fast, and you get like a
Matt:A shock wave.
Rachel:A shock wave. Yeah. Inside your body. I knew it had a name. It's probably why I'm on somebody's watch list somewhere.
Rachel:But, anyway
Matt:Just imagine all the FBI agents that have to listen to all our podcasts.
Rachel:I I hope they're having a real good time. You know what? I really hope they are. But he ends up trading places with Reese. He's like, this is something I need to do.
Rachel:And so Reese gets up and he he does hesitate. He's like, Nick, are you sure? And he's like, yeah. Get the fuck out of here. So he leaves, reluctantly.
Rachel:Meanwhile, the Inca has Tracy, and it's just continuing to actually, at this point, she shot him. He turned into a vampire, and now he is floating in the middle of the church.
Matt:Carrying her.
Rachel:Carrying her and continuing to demand in Spanish that she tell him where Veshad is.
Matt:Read the room. She's like, I don't We know he's we find out he speaks English later.
Rachel:Yeah. Maybe he's real keyed up right now.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. I don't know. Maybe she thinks he's maybe he thinks she's close enough with Vashon that she speaks Spanish. But Vashon doesn't ever speak. I don't know.
Rachel:It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I think we need a t shirt that just says it's fine. This isn't that television show, and it's fine. This isn't that movie.
Rachel:Yeah. It's fine. This isn't that television show. But Natalie does arrive at the precinct as Reese is leaving, and she's still in her, like, hot as fuck pink power suit. And Reese, like, pulls her away, and we get the, like, no, Nick.
Rachel:Like, are you going to be okay? And then Nick does this like eye widening thing, like, let's go of the chocolate, jumps out the window. And then we see kaboosh, the, you know, the big explosion.
Matt:The flame follows him out the window.
Rachel:Yeah. Meanwhile, Tracy, gets saved by Vashon because Vashon flies in and sticks the, Inca. Oh my god. I just realized how much of a parallel this is to dark night because that's what Nick does in the in the butcher in the, like, slaughterhouse.
Matt:And he
Rachel:sticks him on the wall. Oh, god. So he sticks him on a cantaloupe.
Matt:This is like episode 7 of Star Wars.
Rachel:And no. Hang on. And Tracy is like Elise, except Elise that doesn't get turned into a vampire and then just disappear completely from the fucking plot forever.
Schanke:Yeah.
Rachel:Tracy gets to, like, be a part of the vampiriness. Yeah. Wow.
Matt:But just, like, almost plot beat for plot beat, a force the force awakens is a plot beat for plot beat reproduction of
Rachel:A New Hope.
Matt:A New Hope.
Rachel:Well, I mean, if this if the formula works. Plus, we're reestablishing Vashon as our hot young vampire character. And we're reestablishing Nick as our mad daddy energy vampire, which we will find out.
Matt:He's our daddy vampire.
Rachel:So soon. Oh my god. So but, this is when Vashawn turns around and he's got, like, vampires. And he, like, picks Tracy up and he just stares in her eye with a contact. You may not know where he's looking depending on how opaque these contacts are.
Schanke:Yeah.
Rachel:And she's like, I can't forget any of this. He's like, I wish I could make you forget this, Tracy. And she's like, I can't. I won't. And he goes, I know.
Rachel:And then Nick comes out of the alleyway because, of course, he's perfectly fine. And he ends up hugging Natalie, and then we go back to his apartment, and he's completely unpacked, and he's uncovered everything, and he's back to everything's back to exactly where it was. He was like, alright.
Matt:Magic. Magic.
Rachel:He was like, I was really hoping that bomb would cover it up, but then you were conveniently there when I came out. Damn it. I meant to go out the other end of the alley.
Matt:I should have used my night vision.
Rachel:Right. But he's also over the black Buddha. He's like, okay. I get it. Like this, I've done a good deed.
Rachel:It made me rethink my my values for a minute. I I it takes longer for him to process some of these things. Yeah. Because he's probably stuck in the same mindset as he died in, which is a very mystical, when you get a cold, demons have possessed your lungs sort of shit.
Matt:Your humors are out of balance.
Rachel:Yeah. And and now he's in this world where everybody's like, yeah. We know how that works. It's bacteria. And he's like, demons.
Rachel:Little demon bacteria.
Matt:Little tiny demons? Those tiny demons. Oh, those demons. They're devious. They got so small, we can't even see them.
Rachel:It's fun. We have anti demon pills now. Oh, magic is it? It's witchcraft.
Matt:What? You can scrub the demons off of a surface?
Rachel:So, anyway, he does say he's gonna go ditch the black Buddha out in the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where it belongs, which implies he could fly out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and back in the night. Yeah. Or travel underwater.
Matt:All the way to England In one night.
Rachel:We're never gonna solve the vampire air speed debate. Okay? But we're gonna have fun with it. So that's I guess that's good. Right?
Rachel:It's good.
Matt:Do we get do we ever get, like, a dick measuring contest between Nick and Veshan on, like, air speed?
Rachel:No. I mean, I guess we kinda do later in the next in part 2 when they're racing through the tunnels to save the city. The ragtag team of vampires saving the city from the bomb threat. But,
Matt:yeah. Scruggs, whatever
Rachel:his name is. Screed?
Matt:Scruggs.
Rachel:God. But we find out the baby has a family. We find out the baby has a family, which is really sweet. And her dad was on an oil rig, and he's fine. So she still has a dad.
Rachel:And if Skanky were here, he would shame that dad for continuing to work to provide for his child. That's what happens in father figure.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Oh, Skanky. And then at the end, Vashon flies off with Tracy, and that's the end of the episode Yeah. To be continued.
Matt:The the Scruggs thing came from there's a a movie that's just completely off the wall, called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Rachel:Mhmm. Yeah. It's more of a series of vignettes.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's off the wall.
Rachel:I got all the way up to the guy that had no arms and no legs, and Liam Neeson throws him off a bridge. And then I was like, I'm good. I am perfectly fine.
Matt:I just remember that it's the goofy guy from Oak, O Brother Where Out, though.
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:And he's supposed to be this badass, like, gunslinger.
Rachel:Yes. There's also the one with,
Matt:But the the I got the name of the stuff.
Rachel:The hang, like, the hanged guy.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:Who goes first time?
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:That's where that meme comes from too. Yep. Yeah. Liam Neeson trades the guy with no arms and no legs who recites poetry for a chicken that can do math.
Matt:Yes.
Rachel:Because he's god. And people think forever night doesn't make sense.
Matt:Do you think we should cover The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Rachel:on the podcast? We have a moment of silence for Skanky and Cohen and Jeanette.
Matt:A moment for each of them.
Rachel:Aw. Poor one out for Skanky. Are you gonna miss Skanky?
Matt:I think so.
Rachel:Are you impressed that I never once told you that Skanky dies?
Matt:You haven't told me since we started doing the podcast.
Rachel:Yeah. I didn't realize you didn't know. But then as soon as I realized you didn't know, I was like, crap, I have to keep the secret.
Matt:But once once I realized that it had happened, I remember years ago
Rachel:But I didn't tell you Janette left.
Matt:You did not tell me Jeanette
Rachel:left. Were outraged. If you guys get the watch long track, which I am so sorry, I thought I could sell it for a dollar. Turns out the minimum price is $3. It's going to a good cause, you guys.
Rachel:But the watch along track, which is available for sale on Patreon, or you can just join Patreon for a dollar and be our dollar tier Patreon and get it for a dollar, or you can one time buy it for $3. Anyway, on the watch long track, you can hear Matt's like, Jeanette's gone? What?
Matt:I think I was subconsciously primed for skanky being gone because years ago, you'd said something offhand about Forever Knight, and that Skanky
Rachel:Yeah.
Matt:Got killed off in the last season. And so when when I realized it had happened on when we were watching the episode, I was like, oh, no. Oh. Skanky died. Oh, but Rachel mentioned that, like, a long time ago.
Matt:Okay.
Rachel:So And then you're like, where's Cohen?
Matt:But then then I was like, wait. Cohen was on the plane too? Because I couldn't
Rachel:They just put all the characters they didn't want on the plane. Cohen was on the plane. Skanky's on the plane. Jannette was not on the plane.
Matt:Yeah. But then we got to the club, and I'm like, what the fuck did they do with the Raven? And then Leclerc comes out, and he's like, oh, yeah. Jannette's gone. I'm like, what?
Matt:No. It's just one after the other.
Rachel:Yeah. Matt's like, it's compounding. Because I was like, how are you madder that Jeanette's gone and skanking? He was like, it's just all kind of building. Like, it's all just kinda hitting me all at once.
Rachel:Yeah. I mean, they were our favorite characters. They were our crew. Yeah. And now we gotta have a whole new crew.
Matt:Yeah. And the only one we got to keep
Rachel:Is Natalie. And Natalie. And Natalie. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:That's really it. And Natalie is gonna be anyway, I'm not going to because that will be more spoilers. And I'm trying to live a spoiler free life, and I think I fucking did it.
Matt:You're succeeding.
Rachel:So you are welcome. I've been deleting Meg's spoiler tags. Tag I've been deleting Meg's spoiler texts out of the discord. No. No.
Rachel:She got it pretty quick. So it didn't I didn't have to do too much, but she did one the other day and I deleted it. And she was just like, fair enough. So, yeah. We're still posting more cocktails.
Rachel:Those are coming up on the Patreon. I think I might have 4 more that are going to be posting. And then I have, the Instagram, if you wanna go join us there. Patreon's another place to join us. All of that's on our website.
Rachel:It's at strangeandbeautiful dotclub, including pictures of our trip to Toronto. So if you wanna take a look at our trip, I put pictures up there, and that's atstrangeandbeautiful dot
Matt:club. Alright. And I
Rachel:think that's a good place to leave it because now we get to do season 3 episode 2, Black Buddha part 2. So until next time, friends.
Matt:Bye.