Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 15) - "The Games Vampires Play"
Matter where she is right now. She's online with this game, and the only place she's gonna slip up is in the game.
Reese:Oh, yeah. And she's in there dropping little bread crumbs for you?
Nick:Virtual clues. Yeah. Virtual clues. Captain, each virtual clue leads me to a real clue. And every time I move up a level, something brings me closer to a real piece of evidence that's going to convict her.
Nick:But there's a clock on this. Time's running out. I need to get to the next level. You are on
Reese:the next level if you ask me.
Tracy:Hi. I'm Rachel.
Matt:And I'm Matt. And this is
Tracy:Come in 81 kilo.
Matt:A forever night podcast.
Tracy:Although, I honestly don't need that to sound garbled this time. I don't know. They linger. I can't help it. And if I waited until my voice was all the way back, we'd never record another episode.
Tracy:So here we are. And by here we are, I mean, forever night season 3 episode 15, games vampires play.
Matt:This is another one that I've I people keep throwing the name out. Oh. Oh, you're almost at games that vampire play on on the discord. But then nobody talks about it because I haven't seen it yet.
Tracy:Yeah. The discord was a Twitter about this one because we all knew you would like it because it's the nineties, oh, technology is scary episode.
Matt:I feel like Video games are addictive, and they promote violent tendencies.
Tracy:Especially if you're already a vampire and you're like, oh, I get to kill people with impunity. I feel like this was as regular as the Native American Mysticism episode was the, oh, let's create this mystical future technology and extrapolate how it's gonna fuck with all of us and make us into murderers. Hell, yeah. This was like it just happened, you know. It was like a thing.
Tracy:It was like the body swap episode.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah.
Tracy:And here it is.
Matt:When when do we get the body swap episode?
Tracy:I mean, we don't. But we get, like, universe swap because we get curiouser and curiouser. And we also got the amnesia episode, which was night in question. Yeah. We don't really get a body swap episode on account of, oh, maybe Sons of Billiell was kind of like the body swap episode.
Matt:I guess.
Tracy:The I have given my my body over to another entity.
Matt:Yeah. My body is being used by something else.
Tracy:I forgot how chaotic the second half of season 3 is because we got sons of Billio where he, like, goes on a murderous rampage, kind of. And then he, like, makes out with the lady's tits and asks for Lacroix's help. And then we got night in question where he forgot about his past completely. And then when he does remember even a little bit, he goes and, like, flies off and kills a guy. And then we got the fever episode, which we didn't even talk about the fact that Screed, the guy who passed away in the episode
Matt:Oh, yeah. For representation.
Tracy:Who's played by Greg Kramer, is, like, one of the only openly gay actors who was working on this show. And he's the one who dies of vampire, not AIDS.
Matt:And wasn't the actor HIV positive?
Tracy:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he died kind of under mysterious circumstances. He was found dead in his apartment.
Matt:The actor was?
Tracy:Yeah. Because he was, like, a playwright. He was a poet. He did a lot of stuff. I mean, he was a very active in the theater community guy.
Tracy:And I think in 2014, he was putting on a new play, and right before it premiered, he was found dead in his apartment. Just like we mentioned, the other guy with a Cockney accent, Danny, Danny the kid from the first season, he was also found dead under mysterious circumstances. So I don't know if you had a Cockney accent forever night. Just be aware that it's a thing that happened. And apparently, he had no idea what what Screed was saying.
Tracy:Like, Screed's dialogue was written out for him, and he had to perform it word for word and was not allowed to adlib. And he was like, I don't know what the fuck
Reese:screen is saying.
Matt:My head canon was that this actor was just completely off the wall and adlibbed all of Screamflies.
Tracy:No. Those were given to him and he was not allowed to ad lib them. And he was, like, what you see on the screen is an actor just doing his best.
Matt:I mean, he pulled it off.
Tracy:Can you imagine you get, like you know, you're trying to make it. You get a part in a television show.
Matt:You show up British accent.
Tracy:You show up and they're like, you're the bald guy that lives in the sewers and you sound like this. You're like, I'm sorry. What? What? And, apparently, he shaved his head for something else, so so they just kept it.
Tracy:And then that little hat he wears
Matt:Mhmm.
Tracy:Is a thing that, like, he brought that with him. That's his thing.
Matt:Oh, that was Greg's thing.
Tracy:He wore it because in another play, he used it to protect his head because there was a scene where he got, like, fire shot at him or something. So he wore this leather cap. And so he just brought it, and they were like, yeah. Sure. Go with it.
Tracy:So the only parts of Screed that are him are the bald head and the little hat, the little leather hat that he wears. Everything else was like, okay. Hear me out. You're the vampire that only eats rats. I'm sorry.
Tracy:I'm what? I get to be a you're like, oh, yeah. I get to be a vampire. I get to be like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. I get to be like, oh, sexy vampire.
Tracy:And they're like, no. You're the you're the rat sewer guy. Oh, and you're gonna die in episode 13. I'm what? After you get to be in, like, 4 other episodes.
Tracy:Anyway, I was remiss in not discussing the fact that Greg Kramer, the guy who dies in the AIDS awareness episode, It was the only openly gay. Oh, I don't know if he was the only, but he was one of the only openly gay actors on the show at the time. I'm just gonna put that right there on the table, and I'm just gonna let you guys, you know, think about those things. You kinda gotta remember, like, the Internet wasn't I mean, the Internet was there, but it wasn't as all pervasive as we discussed in this episode that we're about to talk about. Mhmm.
Tracy:So there was not the, ever present awareness of all actors' lives and sexual orientation.
Matt:It was just the tabloids.
Tracy:Yeah. It would have popped up somewhere, and you might have caught it. You might not have. Maybe it came through on the, email listserv. Yeah.
Tracy:The 4 night l 4th night l. It was the the way that fans would keep in contact, I gather. And it was like an email listserv that you signed up for. And this was a thing where you emailed the listserv address and it would go out to everyone who was signed up. And you could either get individual emails, which probably at the height of it, you didn't wanna do because that was probably a lot.
Tracy:Or you could get digests where it would compile them and it would send them out. And they would have fan fiction wars. They would have all kinds of stuff on this thing. And I actually foul Meg found and sent to me this really old graphic where it was like, you know, you're on the fork night, like.
Matt:Oh, like a meme?
Tracy:Yeah. Like, somebody made a list of, like, oh, here here we are. Like, here's the oh, and I I wanna read it because there was one on there that I really felt spoke to us as podcasters. And I thought, you know, one of the thing about being a part of a, being the part of a fandom that is as old as this is you have to be aware of there is decades of fan culture behind you and sometimes it pops up and it's like, wow, these people were my age when they were doing this And they were just as into this as I was. And it's kind of cool to see how fans gathered and identified themselves and discussed things before you could go to, like, for you could go to the the Facebook forever night page and join there.
Tracy:That wasn't a thing. You had to find another place to congregate. And I first of all, I love this list service is still active and it is still available and you can still sign up for it. And I'm a member and I get an email, like, once a month. And I just in my head canon, this is hosted on a server at Pennsylvania State University.
Reese:Mhmm.
Tracy:And there are no archives. It saves nothing. It is a tidy piece of code that just redirects emails. And in my mind, it is buried so deep. They just don't know it's still there.
Tracy:And every time they get a new server, they just image the server and put the image on the new server, and it brings the code with it without anybody knowing it's in there. This this is my Yeah. Do not do not correct me.
Matt:It's you're not you're not wrong. Yeah. So listservs are they've just been around forever. It was like a really it still is a really popular way for groups of people to communicate, with each other, like, back and forth in a way that's visible to other members of the community. And you can, like, tag things, and you can it it gets a little more complicated, like, subscribe your feed to specific tags.
Matt:But, my exposure has been, like, the Linux kernel listserv or specific Linux related projects or communities, listservs. And I think that's how they started. But the listserv is a service that runs on a computer
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:In at at this school. And that listserv server has a whole bunch of listservs that it hosts. And you can have a, like, redundancy set up where there's multiple instances of this listserv at different places.
Tracy:Right.
Matt:And you can have it archive things, or you can like, for a digest, it has to archive things for, like, the last month or something. It just doesn't preserve them after that. But it's like there's a, like, email address for the this listserv
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:The, like, the forever night one amongst the, like, other 200 listservs that are running as part of this listserv service, and all it has to do is rebate emails. Right. It's like it's like so computationally cheap that it it's not worth it to, like, clean up old stuff Yeah. Especially if it's still being used. Right.
Matt:Probably they have something where it's like, hey, everybody on this listserv, there has been zero activity for 6 months. If there's zero activity for another 6 months, we're going to shut this down Yeah. Because it's not being used, and then send out monthly updates. Alright. It's a 120 days until this goes dead.
Matt:It's 90 days, 60 days, 30 days. Right. You know, 5 days. It still
Tracy:gets used. Yeah.
Matt:The forever night one still gets used. And so the it's effectively free for this university to keep running the listserv that supports the forever night listserv, so they keep doing it.
Tracy:Or maybe the professor that set it up is still there. Right. Who knows? The other day, the lady who owns the Cadillac, not the hero Cadillac or no. Maybe she owns the hero Cadillac.
Tracy:Not the one that got wrecked, but the other one. She sent out an update that was like, it's still doing great. I'm not doing as well, so, like, I don't go to, car shows as much as I used to. But, like, it just got in and got a whole bunch of work done because the brakes were locking up, but, like, it's still running, and I still have it, and it's still cool. And I'm like, can you be my friend, and can you will that to me, please?
Tracy:But the thing that I found, the Ermig found, the all I needed to know I learned in life all I needed to know in life I learned on 4 night l.
Reese:Mhmm.
Tracy:In my head, it's fork nai l, but that's it's 4 night l. And, I will put it up on Instagram. So if you wanna go read the full list, you can because it's quite extensive. But the one that I thought really, really resonated with us still, and I thought, wow, we're this far away from the original airing and the original fan community, and yet getting the hang of the art of cheesy rationalization greatly enhances your life.
Matt:Yes.
Tracy:And then there's another one later that's like, Mick wins. You'll see. Wait. No. See cheesy rationalization above.
Tracy:And I felt like that one really applies to this particular episode because it's the technology is scary. And,
Matt:And I have a cheesy rationalization for all of the technology.
Tracy:Well and I am so glad because I really feel like this is us just carrying on our inheritance as, the new wave of fans coming to this. I mean, new. I guess I have also been in it for 20 years, but saying that out loud sounds absolutely fucking ridiculous. Guy predate Facebook, so I had a forever night page. I had, like I was on the web rings where you click on the WebRings thing, and it would take you to another okay.
Tracy:Do I need to explain what WebRings are? I guess I do. So everybody used to have their own personal pages because I'm sorry. You didn't have, like, a Facebook profile page. You would go to GeoCities and set up 1 or maybe you got fancy and paid, like, a lifetime loan, like, a lifetime
Matt:Lifetime domain registration.
Tracy:Lifetime domain registration for, like, racheloak.com or whatever. And then because there was only com or gov or edu. And you would put that up, and then you would make your little website that said, like, I'm a fan for overnight, and you would put all your links and your pictures and you would make all your little whatever. Everybody did it. It was a thing.
Tracy:And then if you wanted people to find you, you would sign up for WebRings, and you would apply to be in the WebRing. You put a little graphic at the bottom of your page, and it was like, I'm a member of the Forever Knight WebRing. Go to next page, go to random page, whatever. And you could click forward back or random, and it would take you to another page
Matt:in the WebRing. There would be some server running the WebRing thing, and you could say, send me the previous, like, web page in the list of members of this WebRing
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:Or give me a random, like, web page link for a member of the list of
Tracy:Yeah. And you might find somebody who is super cool, and you like their page, and you wanted to see they you'd check their updates to make sure they'd update recently to know it was not a dead page, and then you would bookmark it so you could go back later. And that was how the Internet worked, folks.
Matt:And
Tracy:this is the era in which this whole episode is taking place. There is no social media. There are no cell phones that have the Internet. This is literally, you went to the Internet. The Internet was away from you.
Tracy:You had to go and purposefully engage in the Internet. That's why they're like, where was she logged on? Oh, she was logged on in her office. So we're just setting this stage.
Matt:That kind of thing? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Tracy:Yeah. No. Yeah. Pretty easily. Yeah.
Tracy:It's fine.
Matt:So this episode would have been, like, filmed and produced in 1995. So I remember in, like, 94, 95, my uncle took us to this, like, trade show at a local, space, convention center space, whatever. And it was a whole bunch of, like, computer ish stuff, but they had, like, at the time, the full immersion VR experience. And they had the, like, the pedestal, like, circular thing that you stand in and this really heavy headset. Like, it was hard to hold my head up straight.
Matt:And you had gloves and, like, a a toy gun. And I think it there were 2 of them, so you would play, like, multiplayer or, like, 2 player, point and shoot combat game. But it was just, like, there were 2 levels to it, and there was an 2 elevators that you could take to go up a floor or down a floor. But it was all wireframes. But you could see the outline of the other person.
Matt:You could see, like, if you looked down at your hands, you could see roughly where your hands were because they had, like, the position detection because of this, like, pedest this platform with the wall half walls and the rings. They had all the position detection sensors built into that, and it was this huge heavy rig. And all you could show, like, graphically, was wireframes. Okay. And then and so that would be representative of, like, cutting edge VR technology in, like, 95.
Tracy:Yeah. You mean it wasn't a sunglasses with a wire glued to it and a couple of leather gloves with some lights on it?
Matt:That never turned off.
Tracy:Lies. I'm sorry. They, you know, they didn't bring the good shit to the trade show Okay. Clearly.
Matt:So my headcanon about the VR technology in this head in this episode, LaCroix was working with the hardware developer.
Tracy:I love it. It's always LaCroix.
Matt:Yeah. It's always LaCroix.
Tracy:It's always LaCroix.
Matt:LaCroix was working with the the guy who developed the the VR hardware. Yeah. And they were investigating how does vampire hypnotism work. And so the the headset, the the glasses, all that's doing is, like, interfacing with your brain and your eyes the same way vampire hypnotism does. Oh.
Matt:And that's why and so it's receiving, like, brain computer, of what's happening, like, on the multiplayer server.
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:And that's why sometimes you see the we we only ever see, Nick, the the hardware dev, and the lady wearing the the VR rig.
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:But I think that's, in my head, this is why sometimes you see them, like, moving their hands in the real world Yeah. Mirrored in the game. And other times, Nick will just be sitting still Yes. That's right. Real world.
Tracy:Yep.
Matt:And but in the game, he's actually moving around and, like, doing hand to hand combat stuff, but he doesn't have to do the the hand to hand combat moves in the real world. It's because it's actually a purely mental interface, like, masquerading as this, like, haptic feedback glove technology Yeah. With position sensing relative to the glasses. So that's that's my headcanon
Tracy:for why
Matt:how this stuff will work. Okay. And you can't convince me otherwise.
Tracy:This cheesy rationalization moment brought to you by Matt's second cup of coffee. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Okay. So I guess we should start the episode.
Tracy:So we open on a guy in sunglasses and gloves with lights. This is our VR rig. I will accept no notes. This is this is how this works. We have
Matt:a rotating wireframe cube on a CRT computer screen.
Tracy:I mean, that's fucking high-tech. Okay. He tap tap tap tap taps. He debugs code. Okay?
Tracy:He debugs.
Matt:It. He does. Yeah. Because With with keyboard clicks.
Tracy:Yeah. Because he's like, oh, this feels almost real. I guess I better debug the code. And then he takes everything off, and he's like, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I am doing my job.
Tracy:And he puts it back on, and he's like, oh, yeah. This is so nice. Because he's talking to the the sexy vampress in the game who is wearing nothing but a leather vest strategically located over her decolletage. And he he's like, oh, I've got an hour to kill. Because she says, are you here to play?
Tracy:Are you here to work? Are you here to work or play? And he's like, I'm here to play. I got an hour to kill. And she goes, but it only takes a second to die.
Tracy:And he's like, oh, yeah. This is so real. This is the moment where I have to say, did he program her? Because if he programmed her, he would be aware of what her responses should be.
Matt:Okay. So here's my my interpretation of what's going on with Oh. With this game.
Tracy:I knew you were gonna
Matt:like this episode. He he developed the hardware Yeah. The interface. Yeah. But she did so she mentions that she was doing animation Yeah.
Matt:In, like, a video game school.
Tracy:I don't know. And The computer school that they went to. Yes.
Matt:In my head, she designed all of the the story in the game and the characters and the animations, and he worked on the interface Okay. The VR rig.
Tracy:Right. So he doesn't know what to expect from her.
Matt:Right. Because, oh, she added a new thing to to the game.
Tracy:Oh, it only takes a second to die? God, she's sick. I love it. Okay. Alright.
Tracy:Fine. Fine. And he can feel her fingernails. She's, like, dragging.
Matt:The LaCroix consulting con and the LaCroix consultation Yeah. Process, that's why it's vampire themed.
Tracy:What does Lacroix call his his contracting, like, his contracting company?
Matt:Nightcrawler Consulting.
Tracy:Oh, you think so? And then their tagline is with a friend in the Nightcrawler who needs enemies, and yet somehow he still gets business. I don't know how it works. So I can't even get followers on Instagram.
Matt:He gets every contract that he wants to get
Tracy:Oh, this is yeah.
Matt:Because of hypnotism.
Tracy:Yeah. And, that's the contracts
Matt:he doesn't
Tracy:want. It's Nick Sucks.
Matt:Leave away leave him alone.
Tracy:I think it's Nick Sucks with an x. Nick, s u x. Nick Sucks.
Matt:No. That's his password.
Tracy:Oh oh, for everything. Don't worry. I wish Nick would suck.
Matt:Nick is such a puritanical loser.
Tracy:Wow. That's a lot of no. It's 8 and under, and I need a I need a special character and a capitalization letter.
Matt:I was, working with a code thing at work the other day, helping somebody debug something, and we were complaining about variable names
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:In the computer code. And, I think this part of the code had really short variable names, which really short variable names are really hard to figure out what they mean Yeah. If it's just a letter. And so I was explaining that way back in the day, like, the first after, like, writing raw assembly code, but before, like, Python, There was a period of time where you had, like, a higher level language for writing code where you could write, like, basically English words and mathematical symbols to to do stuff. But the length of the variable name was limited because of memory.
Tracy:Mhmm.
Matt:And so they would have, like, longer variable names, but only the first eight characters of the variable name were used, it would truncate the rest of the it would cut off the rest of the variable name. And so I was explaining that, like, a lot of, like, old school coders from, like, the eighties early nineties, they got into the habit out of necessity of using short variable names.
Tracy:Right.
Matt:And if they've just kept coding for 30 years, then they're still they might still have that, like, built in habit. The habit. Yeah. And so that was my speculation on why this particular section of code was written with really short variable names.
Tracy:Nick sucks. Trying to bring bring you back.
Matt:Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I was trying to reconnect the dot.
Tracy:I know. I could see that I could see that look in your eye, the how did I get here from where I started?
Matt:So, yeah, if he was if he was writing code, yes. But for passwords, if you're just storing text as input in a computer program, you can Yeah. You can store an arbitrarily
Tracy:But imagine he takes it to, like, the nerd herd, the geek squad, and they're like, okay. What's the password to your laptop? And he's like, okay. Are you ready? He was brought across in 12/28.
Tracy:I'm sorry. Is that all one word? No. There's spaces. Every word's capitalized.
Tracy:Okay. So, anyway, this guy is in his virtual reality world again because he's, like, I'm here to play. I got an hour to kill. And so the lady After
Matt:he's debugged the code. Mhmm.
Tracy:And he you can we know he's debugged the code because she's dragging her fingernail across his cheek, and he's like, oh my god. I can feel that. It feels so real. There's nothing on his cheek. There's nothing to create this sensation.
Matt:That's why it's hypnotism based VR technology.
Tracy:Okay. Fine.
Matt:Because that could produce the sensations in your body
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:Anywhere, based on just
Tracy:the code from the beginning. Why he believes it it because he invented the hardware. He should fucking know what the limitations of the
Matt:hardware are.
Tracy:And he's like, oh, I can feel that. It feels so good. And she's like, okay.
Matt:No. He says he says, I'm so fucking good.
Tracy:Oh, yeah. I'm so well, he just says I'm good because it's
Matt:Yeah. Because it's
Tracy:It's network television. Television. And then, Pew Pew, he died. And I'm like, uh-oh. He died in the game.
Tracy:Does that mean he stays in the game?
Matt:The neck. This at the same time, he got stabbed in the neck in the game? Yeah.
Tracy:Oh, that feels so real. He's so good at this. He's actually died. It's like being in the holodeck with the safeties off. It's fine.
Tracy:Right. And then he goes into the into the intro. He, we, we, collectively, as people go into the intro. And I would like to point out that I paused it.
Matt:He goes through the outro.
Tracy:He does. He done. He gone. Led by by low. R h low is gone.
Tracy:And so we go to the intro and I wanna point out that I paused it because my son came out and needed something. And then Matt goes, when did they change the intro? Because I happened to pause it right when Tracy is in the intro. And I'm like, at the beginning of season 3, they
Matt:changed. I've I've seen the, like, here's Tracy, like, clip. Yeah. But I thought this was, like, a longer sequence. Oh.
Matt:A longer scene that was, like, put plopped in the middle of the the intro because you unpaused it, and it immediately went black to the
Tracy:Black to black.
Matt:Unpaused it, and it immediately went back to, like, black background with white text. Yeah. And, oh, okay. We're just in the character introduction flip flop.
Tracy:Right. Yes. So then we come back from the intro and it's Tracy and Nick driving in the car. And Nick is driving and he's staring out the front window and Tracy is like, Nick, I just wanna tell you that I'm really feeling overwhelmed at work because I'm swamped with paperwork. Our paperwork.
Tracy:I literally have it piled up to here. She gestures above her head. And she's like, it's our paperwork as in you and me. And so my question for you, Nicholas b Knight, is why am I the only one doing the paperwork?
Tracy:Ow. Paperwork. As in you and me? So my question to you, Nicholas B. Knight, is this.
Tracy:Why am I doing all the paperwork myself? I mean, partners work together. Right? So that means you should be helping me with the paperwork. You and me.
Tracy:Good.
Tracy:Got that off my chest.
Matt:What is his middle name? Brabant. His active legal name is Nicholas Brabant
Tracy:Knight. Knight. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
Matt:Is this the first we're seeing this?
Tracy:I mean, we know he's Nick b Knight, I think.
Matt:I don't know. This this is the first Bertram. Like, reference I've seen to him having a middle name.
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:So I I was I wanna I
Tracy:think he shows up as Nick b Knight when we looked up his badge number, and the only thing that showed up was his name and his picture. And they're like, this can't be right, and he's like, be right back, and then he goes off. Maybe it was Aristotle's joke. He's a he could've made him knight Nick Brabant. That would've been really funny.
Tracy:Are you k knight Brabant?
Matt:Yeah. That'd be funny.
Tracy:Yeah. Well, yeah, here we are. We didn't get it. So Nick is not responding. He's just looking out the window.
Tracy:And so Tracy keeps going because she's making an emotional bid and he is not. He's not picking up what she's putting down. And she's like, partners work together. Right? So you should be helping me with the paperwork.
Tracy:You and me doing paperwork together. And he does not look at her or respond to Viola. She goes
Matt:head, he's thinking, Skanky never complained about doing all
Tracy:the paperwork. Listening. I like to imagine the only thing in his head is
Matt:He's hearing the nightcrawler, but he doesn't have the radio on.
Tracy:Oh, he's listening to the
Matt:buzzer. Maybe. I'm finally He was listening to the nightcrawler, but then Tracy turned off the radio
Tracy:Yeah. And
Matt:he's just getting his spiel. Yeah. But he's still listening in his head.
Tracy:Right. So I like yeah. That that would be good. But she finally wraps up with, good. I got that off my chest.
Tracy:I feel much better. And she's like, Nick. Nick. And he's like, yep. What?
Tracy:Yep. I was listening. She goes, did you hear anything I said? He goes, yeah. You said you feel much better, and that's good, isn't it?
Tracy:And she's like, what the fuck is wrong with you lately? You're so out of it. He's like, out of what? Poor Tracy. Poor Tracy.
Tracy:All she wants to be is a good cop. She got put with this guy because there was series of really traumatic circumstances. He was the only one available. And then she just Everyone else
Matt:was paired up, and she was the last match.
Tracy:Yeah. She gave up
Matt:dodgeball game.
Tracy:She gave up a career building move to stay with him, and he's like, mhmm. Yep. I'm listening. What did you say?
Matt:Yeah. Up till now, it's been mostly, like, shit.
Tracy:Shenanigans. It's been mostly shenanigans. Don't lie. Don't lie. Don't lie to yourself.
Tracy:Nickolized himself enough. So then we go to the crime scene. We respond to the crime scene, and they're like, oh, he didn't react. I don't know how you know that. He just shot got shot in the neck.
Tracy:So they're like, yeah.
Matt:Well, there's no signs of struggle?
Tracy:I guess. I mean, they didn't hear he didn't hear the killer clearly or, he didn't see them or he knew them is what Reese says. And then Nick picks up the headset and he's like, or or he was in the virtual reality game, and he was oblivious to everything else. How does Nick know about virtual reality? Nick can't Nick doesn't even have a computer on his desk.
Tracy:Nick forgets his cell phone
Matt:half the time. High-tech, his computer is built into his desk.
Tracy:Is that what it is? Okay. He just does feel like, oh, in the 19 eighties when we're like, oh, like in Tron and we're like, the future is your computer will be your desk and so he's like tapping on the glass top of his computer because that's where his desk or of his desk because that's where his computer is. End of line. Yeah.
Tracy:I guess. But he's like, oh, yeah. Virtual reality. Yeah. That's what this is.
Tracy:Okay, Mick. Sure. You yep. Sure. And Tracy comes over and she's, like, actually, this was r h Lowe.
Tracy:He's the co owner and software developer at this company, and he had a partner. Thank you. That was, like, literally the Thank you
Matt:for actual police work.
Tracy:That is, I mean, are you guys ready? The only investigating that we do in this entire episode.
Matt:No. No. They're trying to solve anagrams.
Tracy:Which Nick solves with a piece of paper faster than they do. But that's fine. We're not there yet. We're not there yet. I mean, that's the most I guess they do look into her background, and they're like, there's nothing here.
Tracy:She didn't do anything. Like, there's nothing going on. Yeah. And they're like, well, who else could we look into? The janitor?
Tracy:Anyone? Did we look at who had access to the building? Did we figure out who might have been in the room? Are there security cameras? Are there fingerprints?
Tracy:Is there literally anything? They're like, I think she confessed in the game, though, so I'm pretty sure that's the answer, and we just need to go with it. Well, Nick does that.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:And we don't know what Tracy is doing while Nick is off shenaniganizing because this is the one time she's, like, step too far, Nick. I'm not going with you. She's probably back doing paperwork, But I wanna point out that Natalie is wearing her camel coat in this scene, and I knew Natalie had a camel coat, but when we went to meet Katharine Disher, she mentioned that she actually kept one of the camel coats because there's 2.
Matt:Mhmm.
Tracy:And that she wore it to like a play and so she got easily identified as Natalie. And then the Knicks fans or Gare's fans ratted her out for leaving at halftime
Matt:Mhmm.
Tracy:At intermission because halftime, like, is football, for leaving at intermission because they spotted her leaving because she was wearing her camel coat. And I honestly did not I was not as aware of the camel coat until now, and then I'm like, wow. She is wearing that camel coat in every scene. It's just like the Natalie, okay. I put on an outfit, and now I put on my coat.
Matt:Yep. Yeah. So why is it called a camel coat? That's the color. Oh, camel coat.
Tracy:Or that that type of coat is referred to as a camel coat, the, like, khaki.
Matt:Gotcha.
Tracy:Yeah. I don't know why. And I think it's the type of fabric too. It's like a wooly, pelted wool type of fabric. I don't know.
Tracy:It's called a camel coat. Just is. Okay. So I don't make the rules. It's like the what no.
Tracy:Meg looked up what the the puffy pants from the last week. That we didn't get a flashback in this episode. He didn't remember he didn't remember the last time he was he was hanging out with the guy.
Matt:Like, an imaginary environment.
Tracy:I like to think this will be a flashback 40 years from now when he's solving another crime involving virtual reality. He's like, I remember virtual reality 40 years ago.
Matt:Anyway the virtual reality scenes replaced the flashback.
Tracy:Yeah. Yeah. They must have because I mean, that would have been a lot to get that and the virtual reality scenes and a flashback. Yeah. And Reese is like, oh, yeah.
Tracy:Video games. I know video games. I have a nephew who mainlines this stuff. Oh, okay. I mean, that's fine.
Matt:Like Tetris?
Tracy:Didn't the PlayStation come out in 94? Yeah. Yeah. The first one. So Nick's Spacey.
Tracy:I mean, he's just standing there like, I would literally rather be anywhere else. And surprise, surprise, everybody notices. And Reese says, I hope we aren't boring you. And Nick is like, what? No.
Tracy:Nope. Yawn. No. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine.
Tracy:I'm not bored. I'm not bored. And so Reese is like, great. Can you follow-up on ballistics? Which the only thing that means is he follows Natalie back to the borg because ballistics is in the room with us right now, y'all.
Tracy:Look to your left. There she is. So we go back to the morgue, and we literally get this, like, Catherine Disher has the dish tipped towards the camera. And she just goes
Matt:It looked like a really unnatural angle to hold this metal container.
Tracy:Right. It's just so she can go plink and drop the bullet in it Yeah. And then turn to Nick. And Nick is like, don't you ever get tired of it? And Natalie's like, of what?
Tracy:What would I get tired of?
Matt:You, Nick? Yes. I get tired of you, Nick.
Tracy:I get tired of your bullshit is what I get tired of. And Natalie's like, of what? And Nick goes, the routine, the mundane, the mortal, like, day in, like, going to work every day. I would like to point out that Nick is a billionaire, and he absolutely does not need to work. He could quit and just keep coming to the morgue and hanging out with Natalie and have no other obligations, and it would be just fine.
Matt:Right. He chose this life.
Tracy:Yeah. He chose this. Every day, he's choosing to work because he doesn't need to work. He probably owns Toronto. And finally, Natalie's like, okay.
Tracy:And Nick's like, yeah. I'm bored. I'm just really bored of all this. And Natalie's like, well, that's not good because bored cops make careless mistakes, and that won't matter much to you because you could get hit by a truck and it wouldn't matter, but it's gonna matter to Tracy if you being bored gets her in the line of fire. And Nick is, like, I mean, I'm not, like, that bored.
Tracy:I mean, I'm just, like, bored bored. She goes, if it was any other cop, I'd prescribe a week's vacation and call it burnout. But with you, what do you usually do when this happens? And Nick is, like, I move on. And Natalie goes, whoop.
Tracy:There it is.
Tracy:I hate to say this, but boredom on the job is a very common human dilemma. If you were anybody else, I'd prescribe a week on a beach somewhere and write it off as burnout. But you're not anybody else in the past when this happened. You've just
Nick:Moved on.
Tracy:Moved on. Well, there it is.
Nick:Look. I'm not saying that that's what I'm going to do.
Tracy:Look, Nick. Like, well, see you later then, son. Like, I begged you to stay at the end of Black Buddha and I regret it every single day because I could be done with you. And she says, I get that being a vampire is thrilling and losing it has to feel boring, but you wanted this. Like, you wanted a mortal life.
Tracy:This is a mortal life, sucker. This is it. This is what we do. We go to work. We go home.
Tracy:We watch some TV. We eat dinner. We go to bed, and then we repeat the process. And she goes, just do what humans do. If you're feeling stagnant, get a hobby.
Tracy:Start a podcast. Learn to live with it.
Matt:Yeah. But Claw was bored hanging around Toronto to keep an eye on you. So he got a hobby. He bought a he bought a nightclub. Well, first, he started a podcast Yeah.
Nick:And then
Matt:he bought a nightclub.
Tracy:Yeah. And now he, has a consulting
Matt:Look at look at all of his things LaCroix is doing to keep himself, like, engaged and entertained in day to day life.
Tracy:Yeah. What are you doing, Nick?
Matt:I never thought I'd say this, but, Nick, you could learn something from Lacoste.
Tracy:And then we go back to the precinct with Reese, and he's like, Nick in my office. So he pulls Nick in his office, and Reese is like, I'm worried about you. Do you need time off? Do you need a change of pace? What is happening here?
Tracy:And he goes, I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but I don't like what I'm seeing from you.
Reese:I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but I don't like what I'm seeing from you lately. I think you need to take stock of this situation and work it out.
Matt:He says it all the time.
Tracy:You said that in the last 4 episodes, Reese. I don't know what to tell you. Just look back at the part where you were, like, did we follow-up on whether or not she used her car phone? No. No.
Tracy:Well, I did because y'all are not investigating this crime. How about the episode where we we found 1 guy? We interviewed 1 guy, and then all of a sudden, everybody had a sick friend and just stopped coming to work for, like, a week. You say that all the time.
Matt:A repeat of this, Nick.
Tracy:Again? Again? I don't know. It doesn't matter. And he goes, cops are human, Nick.
Tracy:Sometimes they lose focus. Sometimes your partner, might have to start watching her own back when she's out on the street, and Nick is, like, I resent that implication.
Matt:I am human. Some cops are human.
Tracy:I I resent both the implication that, a, I am human, and that, b, that I'm putting Tracy in the line of danger. In fact, I leave Tracy behind all the time. I am taking such good care of her. And Nick is like, you know, he he tries to set the record straight, but Reese is not having it. He's like, you know the signs.
Tracy:I know the signs. There are no what was the line from Solaris that we just heard? It was like,
Matt:there are no solutions. There are only choices.
Tracy:Yeah. There are no solutions, only choices. And you just have to decide what you're gonna do about it. We don't get to decide the time that is given to us. What we decide is what to do with the time we have.
Tracy:And Reese is like, that little chestnut, I'm a let you go out into life and just chew on that for a little bit. So Nick walks out of the office, and we hear from across the room, it's a vampire. What? And Nick is like, oh, no.
Matt:They finally
Tracy:they finally figured it out. Oh, wait. It's not about me. I would love for, in that moment, him to be like, and then Ralph. They're like, what just happened?
Tracy:Other than Nate, what?
Matt:This isn't Gary. The take where
Tracy:Oh, yeah.
Matt:They said it's a vampire, and he went
Tracy:He does look bored in this episode. Like, I feel like he's bored in this episode. Like, I would rather be quoting Shakespeare.
Matt:He's such a good actor.
Tracy:Is that what it is? That's that's definitely what it is. It's because there's no well, there is a female costar, which he gets to. He doesn't get to make out with her, though. That's it.
Tracy:That's it.
Matt:He doesn't get to make out with anyone in this episode.
Tracy:He doesn't. No wonder he was like,
Matt:oh, damn. The script for this episode, and he was, like, I don't get to make out with anyone?
Tracy:Not even in the past.
Matt:And so then he doesn't even wanna be here.
Tracy:I mean, look at the previous episode. He got to have, like, a a weird bed scene where he was making out
Matt:with the lady in bed. There is the the Do you trust me? 1 of the first VR scenes where the lady is, like, rubbing on his face.
Tracy:Yeah. That's the one where he's like, woah. And they're like, oh, good.
Matt:To make out with her.
Tracy:It's okay. We're almost there. Let me get there because he's like, And then he walks over because Tracy is with, like, a computer ops detective. And you can tell because she's got a plaid vest on and matching pants. That's how you know she's computer.
Tracy:And so she's like, hi. I'm one of 2 people who investigate computer crimes in the entire in the entire department. You're welcome, and I'm here to be a detective and help you out. I've been looking at this game. It's a virtual reality game.
Tracy:I I stopped because I wanted to write this down because here's what it is. Are you all ready? It is a virtual reality game combined with an online service. So it's an online virtual reality game that connects with a digital cell phone to a high speed mainframe at Virtual Dimensions Lab.
Matt:Which is not horrible. It's not a horrible way to describe this technology in in a TV show compared to compared to, like, other portrayals of technology in TV shows, which they have no idea. They actually talked to a tech person to say, okay. What would what would it look like to have a functional VR game, like a multiplayer online game, that that you could have, like, a rig in a portable rig? Yeah.
Matt:Oh, well, you can't use, like, landline, like, dial up Internet because it's too slow. You're not gonna get, you're not gonna get enough bandwidth to transmit the information, and you're not it's it's not gonna be low enough latency to have it feel like interactive, like real time interactive
Tracy:Right.
Matt:With the other players on the online service. Okay. So it needs a dedicated form of communication. Well, you get a cell phone, and you say, oh, it's a fancy cell phone. It's a digital cell phone.
Tracy:A digital cell phone.
Matt:Okay. You're making up technology anyway.
Tracy:Yeah. Go for it.
Matt:This sounds realistic enough. And then the computer that it runs on, like, for the shared service needs to be fast. Well, the fastest computers at the time, the most powerful computers at the time are mainframe computers, which mainframe computers aren't really used anymore. There, some banks still use them because they're really, really good at, like, high speed, like, high speed trend like, lots of small transactions for bank stuff. And and the code is, like, proven to, like, not have bugs for, you know, dropping things.
Matt:Anyway, mainframe is the biggest, most powerful computer word in the vocabulary at the time. So I'm not upset at this description of the technology. Good job, everybody.
Tracy:Garrett Wendavies directed this episode. Yeah. And I was looking up the writer because I wanted to see if she'd written any other episodes, but it looks like she's written 3 episodes. She wrote false witness. She's written a bunch.
Tracy:She wrote false witness, love you to death, if looks could kill. So false witness is the one where he breaks up the porn ring, and he claims to have seen the the killer, but he didn't see the killer. That's false witness. And then love you to death is oh, that's the one where he remembers, like, the death of the model. Like, the the model gets kidnapped, but she also looks like that lady from his past that he thought she was a pure ballerina, but it Lacroix tricked him.
Tracy:It's the
Matt:same thing. She was a pure ballerina. But
Tracy:Yeah. She was fine. But he
Matt:killed her anyway.
Tracy:Right. He killed her anyway. And if looks could kill, which I'm almost positive is the one with the 3 ladies that they've been giving they've been getting vampire blood, and so they're young.
Matt:Right.
Tracy:Yeah. And then Killer Instinct, which is the season 2 premiere, and that's the one where Nick gets framed. And then Faithful Followers, the episode where he joins the cult, and then Games Vampires Play. So she wrote all of those episodes. I was trying to figure out if she had a theme.
Tracy:Like, apparently, there's one guy who writes Star Trek episodes. And every Star Trek episode he writes, somebody devolves into
Matt:Oh, like animals? Something.
Tracy:Like, they turn into a lizard person or they turn into a spider or they turn into whatever. And that's literally what he writes every single time. So maybe she writes the the off ball, like, the odd ball ones, but no. No. But, I mean, Garrett, when Davies directed this, I just wanna put that out there.
Tracy:Yeah. Anyway, the computer ops detective is looking at the game. She breaks down all the the tech tech tech tech tech tech tech, and then she goes, this is next generation stuff. And Tracy goes, I prefer reality. And so the lady goes, yeah.
Tracy:But reality doesn't have vampires. So Nick puts on the glasses. He's like, okay. Cool. Let me try this out, and so he puts the glasses on, and, he gets awkwardly into it in front of everybody because he's like, oh, like, heavy breathing.
Tracy:And they're like, oh, is it a pretty lady? What? What is I would be like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I just have to go to the bathroom. I cannot watch my partner get super turned on by this video game right in front of me.
Tracy:He can't help it. He sees a pretty woman, and he's just like, must have. And then he takes it off, and he's like, Pretty girl,
Nick:Yeah. Very pretty. God.
Tracy:It's so
Nick:awkward. It is
Tracy:they're like, wow. That was that good, hon. He's like
Matt:He's just putting on sunglasses. Yeah. So so who knows what when Gare was portraying that
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:What he was imagining that Nick was seeing.
Tracy:Oh, we know what he was imagining.
Matt:Oh, yeah.
Tracy:Yeah. No. It's fine. And then he turns around. In real life, he turns around, and she's walking through the precinct, the lady from the video game.
Matt:And he's like, wow. This is good.
Tracy:He does not get shocked. He's like, I manifested that shit. Hell, yeah. He's so excited. And so it turns out that this is Rita, the co owner of Virtual Dimensions, which is the company that is making this VR headset, and she met r h Lo at school, and they clicked.
Tracy:And Nick does, like, a eyebrow lift, and she goes, we clicked professionally.
Matt:Only.
Tracy:Only. We did not slap, if you wanna put call it that. We just clicked. And Nick is like, okay. Well, it's lost that he didn't hit that because I just about did, and it was just a virtual version of you.
Tracy:And then she's like, we are pioneers. We design the hardware. He designed the hardware. I designed the software. And, like, that's what our company is all about.
Tracy:Like, we're gonna change the world. And he's like, mhmm. Okay. Cool. So where were you 4 hours ago when he was murdered?
Tracy:And she says she was on the Internet giving an interview to some computer rag. Probably buzzed. Buzz wire. No. Buzz wire is from
Matt:food life.
Tracy:Sorry. I just got my vampires mixed up there for a second. And they're like, where did you log on? Where did you go on the Internet? And in my head, I can just hear the log on sound, the, like yeah.
Tracy:Yeah. You didn't know what that was. You are under the age of 30. Congratulations.
Matt:A audio
Tracy:you know what I always dial up and everything. Think about when I hear that? Do you remember, that animated television show? It was one of the first computer animated television shows. It was called,
Matt:Reboot?
Tracy:Reboot. And they go out on the Internet. They go through a terminal and go out on the Internet. And the people on the Internet, that's how they talk. They're like, like, when they're trying to talk
Matt:to them. Pirates.
Tracy:Yes. On the Internet. Pirates. Yes. And, you don't go back and watch it though because it's way better in your memory than it is in real life.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:I remember it being like, oh, that was so cool in 3 d. It's like Beast Wars, like the first Beast Wars. Mhmm. And you're like, oh, that was the so that was so cool. Then you watch it now, and you're like, I could probably make that at home on my phone.
Tracy:Like, the anyway, it's fine. So she's like, in my office. I logged on in my office, And they're, like, oh, okay. Can we check that? And they're, like, yeah.
Tracy:That's fine. So then we kinda cut from that because Nick is, like, yes. Yes. This is very nice. But where did we put the headset?
Tracy:I'm just wondering. Like, where did we put the VR game so I'll know for later when I am logging it into evidence like a good police officer? And they're like, oh, it's in it's in lockup. And he's like, okay. Cool.
Tracy:So he, like, leaves to go get it. So he he goes into evidence lockup to, quote, check out the goods, AKA the headset and the gloves. And he just puts them on in lockup. He's like, I can't even wait. I gotta do this again right now.
Tracy:There's a hot chick here. I could make out with her with impunity, and I'm about to go do it. And so when it turns on, hey. They're in the room. They're in that little entrance room in the room Yeah.
Tracy:Where we filmed dark night in
Matt:the area.
Tracy:And where we hung out with Meg when we were on our Toronto trip.
Reese:Mhmm.
Tracy:And, ironic. So then I just wanna point out that the voice recognition I was before you know that this is actually her, which how could it be her? Wasn't she just at the police precinct?
Matt:Right. This would have to be, this would have to be preprogrammed.
Tracy:This woman is a pioneer. She created a real AI before AI was even a thing and voice recognition software that actually works.
Matt:Another oh, maybe maybe the vampire Hypnotek is really good at converting it it's not actually it doesn't have a microphone on it. It's just converting the the ideas of the words in your head into the actual words.
Tracy:I love the level of bullshit that you have ascending to to explain all that. Thank you. You are making it work. Because I remember the first time my dad got a text to tie or a tight like, a talk to text Mhmm. Thing, and you had to speak in a British accent to get it to recognize that you were talking.
Tracy:So, I mean, this is doing great. And then he ends up in this baroque, boudoir room with a victim. It's like a lady in a red dress. Oh, no. I was gonna say, when did the Matrix come out?
Tracy:99. So obviously, the matrix copied this, the woman in the red dress, clearly.
Reese:Yeah.
Tracy:So in the game, surprise surprise, he's a vampire and he has to kill to keep up his strength. And he has, like, a little timer in the corner and then he has little crosses that are his blood points, which if you've played vampire the masquerade, you know what I'm talking about. Those are your blood points that he has to expend to use vampire powers. White Wolf already did this, y'all. It's just not virtual reality unless you go to a LARPing game, and then it's basically virtual reality.
Tracy:And so, Rita is like, go ahead. Kill her. She wants to die. She wants you to do it. So the lady walks over, and she's like, I want you to kill me.
Tracy:Bite me. Do it. Kill me. And all I could think about was from, like, the cow from the restaurant at the end of the universe.
Matt:Oh, yeah. But my flank is especially tender.
Tracy:Yeah. I've been force feeding myself acorns for months. My liver is is bloated and tender. Like, if you haven't read that, that's from Douglas Adams' restaurant at the end of the universe, which is one of the sequels to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and they go to literally the restaurant at the end of the universe, like, when the universe is about to die. And a cow comes out because they have, bred animals to want to be eaten.
Tracy:And so the cow was like, what part of me would you like to eat tonight? And then So it's ethical. It's ethical, obviously. And Rita is like, it's cool. It's just a game.
Tracy:It's not like you're killing people in real life. It's not like you're really a vampire. And I wrote in my notes, does the Rita character react in real time or have a set of responses? AI, that's actually where the money is and not in this virtual reality game because probably this hardware is priced out of almost everybody's price range, which is what happened with the, the Nintendo Virtual Boy.
Matt:Oh, yeah.
Tracy:Do you remember the Virtual Boy? I remember
Matt:the Virtual Boy.
Tracy:The only thing I remember about Virtual Boy is going to Best Buy, and they had one of the things that you could wear to, like, test it out, and it always smelled weirdly. Like, it always smelled like weird sweat because it had this soft band that pressed against your face. And it had done that to, like, dozens of people already that day, and so all I can remember is the smell. Plus, it was only red.
Matt:Yep. It was only red lines.
Tracy:There was only red lines. So and it was super expensive, which is why nobody made video games for it, and nobody bought it.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:So AI is where the money is, Rita. That's all I'm gonna say. But Rita confesses to killing Lowe. She's like, yeah. I killed him.
Tracy:Of course, I fucking killed him. But I just confessed to you in a virtual game. And unless you're gonna take me to virtual court, I don't think it's admissible.
Matt:I I love those on point your
Nick:Thank you.
Matt:Your recreation
Tracy:of that was. I really felt like I was Rita in that moment. And she says she's hidden the answer at the end of the game, but he must get to the end of the game to find it, and to do that, he has to play. And Nick's like, well, I'll fucking play, and then he kills the lady. He's like, oh, yeah.
Tracy:And he kills this lady.
Matt:And his blood points.
Tracy:Boop boop boop boop boop boop. Yeah. And then Rita disappears, and the plus signs at the bottom of the screen fill up to indicate his health slash blood And we find out the display is displaying both the time that he has left in the game, which is roughly 12 hours, and the blood, like, how much blood he currently has in his system because vampires only have the blood that they
Matt:have. The only blood
Tracy:in a
Matt:vampire's body is the blood that they've recently consumed.
Tracy:Correct. And so Reese interrupts him because he's just standing in the middle of evidence lockup, heavy breathing. They probably heard him from outside the room. They're like, is somebody hyperventilating in there? And they look in there, and Nick's just like
Matt:Which the evidence locker is supposed to have, like, a dedicated person. The detectives can't just go into the evidence locker by themselves.
Tracy:Oh, I beg to fucking differ. He did. And then Reese comes in. He's like, have you lost your fucking mind? And Nick's like, I'm sorry.
Tracy:What? I was I was busy. I was busy in the game. And he's like, Nick, that's fucking evidence. And he's like, yeah.
Tracy:That's why I'm investigating it, because it's evidence.
Matt:There's evidence inside here.
Tracy:Reese is like, do you know where your partner is? And he's like, skanky? Yeah. He died. She's, no fucking Tracy.
Tracy:Where is she? And he's like, oh, no. I have no idea. And Reese is like, yeah. She's off actually investigating the crime, you know, with the computer detective lady whose name I never caught.
Tracy:I'm so sorry. And Nick says, he thinks that Rita is actually playing a game with them. Yeah. He she's playing a game. She's she's toying with me.
Tracy:I can tell, and I I just need to get in this game and figure it out. You you gotta understand. I mean, it's easy to see how Reese is like, the fuck is wrong with you? Because Nick is like, she's playing with me. I can tell she's playing with me.
Tracy:This is all a game to her, and she's toying with my mind. And Reese is like, you need to get out of here, and you need to go back with your partner. And Nick is like, I mean, whatever, but I'm pretty sure all the evidence we need is in this game. And Reese is like, get the fuck out and go find your partner.
Matt:Stop arguing with me. Put that away.
Tracy:And re Nick just carries it out. He's like, yeah. I'm a go I'm a go find my partner, and he just sticks it all in it. He doesn't even stick it in his pocket. He's just carrying it when he leaves.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:And I have to imagine, Reese is like, this is a victory. This feels like a victory. He left the evidence lockup. He didn't leave the evidence, but he left the evidence lockup. At least he'll go heavy breathe at home and stop making everyone in the precinct uncomfortable.
Matt:And
Tracy:we go to what I actually think is the computer crimes office with LED underlighting and all of these programming manuals up on the top and not virtual dimensions. I think this is actually supposed to be, like, the computer crimes division.
Matt:Because the the, like, investigation room later has the same, like LED under lighting. Yeah. Backlit, like, pillar things with with the gray walls.
Tracy:Right. And the computer detective
Matt:What kind of police station is this?
Tracy:It kinda reminds me of the glow up between Lucifer season 1 and Lucifer season 2. So Lucifer season 1, she's in, like, a regular police precinct with, like, damaged tiles on the ceiling, and it's kinda crummy. And then season 2, all of a sudden, it's this huge brick concept. Open concept building with glass walls walls and modern architecture, and that's what this feels like. This is what they were going for, I think.
Tracy:But, really, it just feels like this is a corner set. It's just this corner because there's no ceiling either.
Nick:Mhmm.
Tracy:And so this pillar disappears up, which is probably just there to hold cables. I don't know what it's there for. And it's got underlining. And then this lady is sitting in her computer and she's like, oh, yeah. No.
Tracy:She actually logged in at that time. Like, she was actually on the on the Internet. It's fine. Like, I checked. And Nick is like, well, can we fake that?
Tracy:And she's like, it'd be hard.
Matt:But you could.
Tracy:But you could.
Matt:Yeah. It's called a VPN. Yeah.
Tracy:And They're
Matt:coming now.
Tracy:They're coming now. And Tracy goes, yeah. Well, according to this paper that I conveniently have in my hand, if Lowe's dies, she gets everything. So when he died business. She got the whole business.
Tracy:Now that the hardware is developed and it will need no tweaking and no changes
Matt:No improvements.
Tracy:It is perfect, and it is ready to go into production right now. And there will be no need to do any kind of updating or and I'm lying. I'm joking. That that doesn't happen.
Matt:She's she's very shortsighted.
Tracy:No hardware survives first contact with the enemy. Drill because she's a psychopath. Apparently. She coulda just made the virtual reality game where she got to kill him at the computer since she's so good at that. So then Nick and Tracy start fussing because Tracy is like, Nick, please.
Tracy:I just want you to be my partner. I want you to help me with this, and then at the end, I want you to do the paperwork. We already discussed this. Like, I need you on my side, and Nick is like, no. The clues.
Tracy:She'd have to be online somewhere to do that, but that's hard to trace and harder to prove.
Tracy:God, Nick. Come on.
Nick:I know. I know. We have no evidence. K? I I got the same speech from Reese.
Nick:But look at this way. Right now, we have nothing. If there's a clue or clues in the game, it can't hurt to keep playing.
Matt:He cannot say the word clues without that accent.
Tracy:A truly stupendous amount of times. It made me feel like I was listening to, I think, crime junkie with the kids because I am who I am. And they were talking about semen. They were like, oh, there was semen on the shoe. And my daughter was like, what's semen?
Tracy:And I was like, well, it's genetic material that comes from a man. And, you know, I kinda I explained it without having to kinda get in-depth about it. And I was like, that's fine. They're never gonna mention it again. And the whole rest of the episode was like semen semen semen semen semen semen semen semen.
Tracy:It was like they just No. The clues are in the game. I'm telling you. And she's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Help me to investigate this crime.
Tracy:This is my career we're talking about. You clearly are torpedoing your career, but I am still here, and I'm still trying to figure this out. And Nick is like, yes. But we have no clues right now. So we have to, like, we have to look where we can, and where we can is in the game.
Tracy:And what harm will it do if I just play the game for a little bit? It's fine. Tracy's like, well, it's not really procedure. Yeah. But, I mean, it's not like they wrote about VR games in the handbook because they would just be brand new slash nonexistent slash just a pair of sunglasses with a wire.
Matt:Just think about it like, oh, there's a serial killer, and they sent in, like like, a puzzle to the police station. Yeah. And, oh, if you can solve this puzzle, it'll be a clue to catch me.
Tracy:Yeah. That's what the zodiac killer did. Yeah.
Matt:So Nick just needs to explain it like that. Yeah. Like, I have a hunch that she's
Tracy:Playing a psychopath. Yeah.
Matt:And, she left a trail of clues in the video game because the thrill of the potential of getting caught just like, for example, the Zodiac killer
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:Sent in puzzles to the police station because
Tracy:Yeah. It's not unclues. Existed.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:Yeah. And instead, he's
Matt:Reese doesn't have enough imagination?
Tracy:No. Nick is being too skeevy about it. He's like, no. I think I just need I think I just need to play this game, y'all. Because, look, it takes place in real life Toronto locations.
Tracy:That that's a clue. Right? And they're like, no. It's not. What is wrong with you?
Tracy:And he's like, well, I say it, and so I'm gonna run. And it's in my pocket already, so you can't fucking stop me. And the computer lady is just standing over there, like, okay. So, I was looking at the game while you guys were arguing about clues, and it says that, it's randomized. So every time you play it, it's different.
Tracy:And it's also self deleting, which means you have one shot to find out whatever it is, and you have 12 hours to do it. How does she have access to the source code for the game, but she can't?
Matt:She may just have access to the mainframe and she's looking at the game files.
Tracy:Because I feel like you should just be able to tell who made these changes and when, and it'd be like, oh, read it programmed this.
Matt:That's that is a a common problem, like version control in the source code. And Mhmm. A lot of really small, shops don't use version control.
Tracy:But they're not small.
Matt:There's 2 people.
Tracy:There's the owner and the co owner, and then there's other people.
Matt:Small as in the number of people writing code.
Tracy:Oh, okay. I mean, I guess. I like to think that she looked in there, and all of the documentation was just LaCroix rants. What is version control except a way of trying to go back
Matt:to the main menu where There's some, like, there's some, like, dashboard or something on the mainframe. Yeah. Like, here's here's the game stats for ongoing, like, game sessions. And, like, here's the folder with the files for, like, the game session that Nick is playing in. And, oh, like, each time he completes a level, the file for that, like, virtual reality space gets deleted.
Tracy:Yeah. That makes sense. Well, Reese calls while they're in the middle of this and tells them both to come in. And Nick's like, yeah. Okay.
Tracy:That's really nice, but I really need to get back in the game. And Tracy We
Matt:even hear Tracy say, yes. He's here too or he'll be there too.
Tracy:Right. And Tracy's like, no. Reese insists that you come in. So we go back, and Rita is at the precinct because Reese has called her in. And I have to imagine it's just to highlight to Nick how, like, ridiculous he's being, but it does not work.
Tracy:Because Rita is like, are you saying I'm here as a suspect because I confessed to you in the game? The shit are you talking about? And Nick's like, mhmm. Why did you hide why did you hide your clues and clues in the game? And she's like, what?
Tracy:And he's like, I know you're playing with me. I know you killed Low, and I can prove it. And she's like, can I go? Which smart move, Rita. That's exactly what you should do.
Matt:Being detained?
Tracy:Am I being detained? Can I call my lawyer? And Nick says, no, At the same time that Reese says, yes. And Reese tells Nick after she leaves, you're close to getting yourself an unscheduled vacation. And Nick is like, fuck you.
Tracy:And he just leaves.
Matt:Maybe that's what I need.
Tracy:I'm going. And so they don't. I he is so erratic in this episode. And the fact that Reese is never, like, you are suspended for the next week. You need to go home and check your premises.
Tracy:Like, you are freaking the fuck out. So You're freaking me out. You're freaking her out. You're freaking Tracy out. You are torpedoing this case.
Tracy:And Nick, no. He does never say that. He's just, like, careful, Nick. And Nick's like, I'm gonna be fucking careful. I'm gonna be fucking careful all the way back home.
Matt:What stands out to me is that all of this back and forth in and out of the station over and over and over again is all happening in one night. Yeah. Because he has 12 hours for the game.
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:And so that's 1 night shit.
Tracy:Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Tracy:Yeah. Reese is like, where are you going? And he's like, fuck. Go. So he just leaves.
Tracy:And where he's actually
Nick:I'm going
Matt:to play video games in my room.
Tracy:I'll go home to my play video game, dad. So he goes actually where he goes. It's the real life boudoir where he was in the video game. He recognized it. He knows right where it is, and he goes right to him.
Matt:I've been there. I've made out with, like, a lady here before.
Tracy:Nick knows a boudoir. Okay? He even he even calls it a boudoir.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:This a boudoir is that's where he goes. So he goes and he's, like, looking around, and then he sees the door that he leaves through in the game, and so he walks in there, and there's a silver skull. Oh my god. There's actually a clue. And so he picks it up and, puts it in his pocket because he immediately goes to the next location, which is some kind of terminal.
Tracy:He says it's something BC Place or something. I'm not from Toronto. Someone's probably gonna be like, it's this. And you know what? Thank you.
Tracy:I really appreciate that. I heard it from all the way over here, but I can't repeat it. So he goes to this terminal, and he puts on the glasses again to play. He does not need to specifically be in this location, but here we are. He's here.
Tracy:And Rita is already there, and she's like, wow. Good job. You already found this call. But the challenges are going to get a lot harder. And, Megan over there is all for you.
Tracy:So Megan, in question, is heading up the escalator, And he's like, oh, hell yeah. So he runs over there, and she's like, no. No. And she pulls out a cross. And he ends up, zooming away, getting around behind her, and killing her.
Tracy:And I have to imagine, at what point was Rita like, wow, he is surprisingly good at this for a cop.
Matt:His his vampire neck bite technique is impeccable for a human detective.
Tracy:Yeah. Wow. Okay. But, she's too into her game, I guess, because he, he does all of this at the station. I because he starts out on one side, and when he comes back after he's killed the lady, Megan, and he is grabbing this fence, he rips the glasses off, and he is vamped out at the station and he's over by that that fence.
Tracy:So he must have walked across the station while he was wearing the glasses, and there's lots of people here. And he's like, whew. Wow. Okay. He pulls himself together, and he's like, where would it be?
Tracy:Ah, in this potted plant over here.
Nick:And so he just walks over and he's
Tracy:like Seems like such
Matt:a weird place to put, like, the clue.
Tracy:It had the clue. It has nothing to do with anything that he's doing. He's just like, okay. I'm by this fence. There's a potted plant by this fence.
Tracy:Okay. I mean, the first one kinda made sense because it was through the door. This one doesn't make a ton of sense. I don't know. But he takes the clues back to Tracy, and he's like, look.
Tracy:I found a skull and a piece of paper. I think they're clues. And Tracy is like, Nick, you are not okay right now. Reese is going to blow important blood vessels. That's what she says.
Tracy:Nick, is this your idea of a joke?
Nick:Rita said I'd find what I was looking for if I kept playing the game.
Tracy:Rita in the game? Right. Right. Nick, Reese is going to blow an important blood vessel if you don't stop pushing this.
Tracy:And the computer lady is standing there because she's with she's apparently assigned to Tracy for this entire night. Mhmm. And she says, maybe we should try something different. She's trying to be the, disinterested third party that can redirect Nick's vibes right now.
Matt:Mhmm.
Tracy:And he turns to her, and he actually hypnotizes her into agreeing with him.
Matt:He's like In front of,
Tracy:Tracy
Matt:Natalie and Tracy.
Tracy:In the middle of the precinct. He's just like, no. I'm right. You know I'm right. Tell Tracy I'm right.
Tracy:And the lady's like, he's right. And Natalie is like, oh, hell no. Because she's standing right there, and she sees the whole thing. And she's like, can we talk in private? And he's like, can it wait?
Tracy:And she goes, I don't think it can.
Tracy:Could we have a private chat? Can it wait? Absolutely not.
Nick:I really don't have time for this.
Tracy:What the hell is wrong with you? Tracy was right there. You hypnotized a cop right in front of her.
Nick:Yeah. I know. I shouldn't have.
Tracy:Shouldn't have?
Nick:Look. There's been a murder. No one seems to wanna solve it but me.
Tracy:I mean, no one wants to do it your way through that game.
Nick:It's the only way.
Tracy:I love how sassy Natalie is
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:In season 3.
Matt:She's like, slap slap. Get your act together. She's
Tracy:like, the fuck. Line. The fuck, Nick? In the middle of the precinct? And he's like, well, I mean, I I needed her to agree with me.
Tracy:She's like, what is wrong with you? And he's like, well, was it that wrong? I got away with it. And Natalie's like, you get to kill in this game, don't you? And you fucking like it.
Tracy:Thank you, Natalie. You just just write out me.
Matt:Right to the
Tracy:Just just right to the
Matt:core of the issue.
Tracy:Love it. Fucking love it. And Nick is, like, I mean, I don't you know, you're not my mom. It's about the clues. And Nick Nick is, like, well, whatever.
Tracy:And so he takes the game home. He storms off. He takes the game home. He goes over to his fridge. He pulls out a bottle of blood, and he's like, okay.
Tracy:I am going in. I am not letting this game control my life, but I'm going to play it literally every second of the day that I possibly can. And this kinda reminds me of season 1 when we would have the Euro minutes.
Reese:Mhmm.
Tracy:What are you looking up?
Matt:His middle name.
Tracy:Rabant.
Matt:I'm looking in the, like, fan lore. Okay. If there's if there's a reference to what his actual middle name is.
Tracy:Well, this kinda reminds me of season 1 when we would have the Euro minutes. And every once in a while, it would be like, I'm going to go home in the middle of my shift, put on my black silk pajamas, and I'm going to think while putt putting.
Matt:Or throwing playing cards.
Tracy:Or throwing playing cards or playing chess or bouncing the ball against the wall or whatever. He had a series of ones that he would do. Oh, I miss season 1. Anyway so this kinda feels like that because he's like, I'm back home. I'm back in the precinct.
Tracy:I'm back home. I'm back in the precinct. So he goes back to back home. He drinks a little blood. He's like, okay.
Tracy:I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.
Tracy:I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm gonna play the game. And then he goes to play in front of his fireplace because this is the only acceptable what place to play a virtual reality vampire game. And LaCroix shows up.
Tracy:And LaCroix is like, hi, Nick. How's it going? I brought you a present, and it's a bottle of human blood. And he says, it's a bit young, but it's still got an earthy flavor and a smooth finish. He describes it like wine.
Matt:Oh, yeah.
Tracy:And Nick takes it, like Reluctantly. Okay. Fine. And so he takes it from him. And LaCroix is like, so I've been sensing that, you are I mean, like, I've just been having the weirdest dreams, and they're about you being all vampire again.
Tracy:Am am I really dreaming, Nick? And Nick actually opens the human blood and drinks it, and then he's like, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. But, also, I've been playing this video game, and video games, it turns out, makes people violent.
Tracy:Did you know that? Lacroix is like, okay. So this game is what has rekindled your vampire ness, and Nick is like, I'm doing it to solve a crime, dad. And Laquaza's like, yeah. Mhmm.
Tracy:Yep. That's very nice. So have you killed in this game? And Nick's like, I don't I don't know. Yeah.
Tracy:It's for the clues. It's for the cues. And, like, why goes, well, that's impressive, you know, and I approve. Yeah. I'm so glad this game that, I I mean, that that was made is helping you to come back to me.
Matt:I'm so glad this game that this is the first time hearing of it is is helping you, slowly come back to to our side of things.
Tracy:Yeah. And then he just dips. This is, like, the third bottle of human blood he's given Nick in, like, several episodes. And then he's like, yeah. So I'm just gonna leave that with you, and I'm gonna go.
Tracy:But you know what? Have fun in your game. And then he just leaves through the skylight, I assume, because skylights are the natural means of ingress and egress for all vampires. And so I didn't even point out that in, dead of night when Nick breaks into the mansion the first time oh, no. When he breaks into the, building where the guy is dead of fright, he breaks into the skylight.
Matt:He, like,
Tracy:shatters the skylight. So then Nick goes back in, and now we're in a
Matt:And I wanted to highlight. Okay. When Natalie is chewing Nick out Yeah. She makes reference to the numerous setbacks we've had recently.
Tracy:Oh, is that is that, like, a reference to a previous episode?
Matt:Like like demon possession?
Tracy:Like demon possession and the the thing where you lost your memory, and then there were the ghosts. And oh, thank you for pointing that out. Good good eye.
Matt:Continuity.
Tracy:Yeah. Nick has effectively abandoned his his desire to become human at this point just in favor of, a never ending series of shenanigans.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:Because he goes back into the game, and now we're in this factory slash warehouse thingy. And Nick almost gets killed by an attacker, and he ends up hunting around the facility with his mouth open the whole time. I mean, these fangs are bigger than his normal fangs, so maybe he was, like, at a heart attack.
Matt:He closed his mouth. Yeah.
Tracy:He's also heavy breathing, and I encourage everyone to listen to this scene with some really good headphones on because it's louder than the background music. It's like
Matt:And it's not it's not synchronized with the video. No. So so this is like a voice over.
Tracy:Yeah. Some Foley artist had to be like
Matt:So so we're seeing, like, the video game version of Nick move around. Yeah. But I think the the heavy breathing is coming from Nick in the real world.
Tracy:I don't wanna know. Twaying. I don't wanna know this is Gare heavy breathing to the microphone. But he comes back to himself, after he kills this guy in the video game. And then he's like, well, look.
Tracy:There's human blood on the table because he's already forgotten Lacroix was there. So he drinks the human blood and that Lacroix, quote, left. And then he goes straight to that factory or slash warehouse. Now the boudoir, I get. The terminal, I get.
Tracy:But how did he know which specific factory slash warehouse this was so that he could just go there? I mean, he's been in a couple. He's in that one. He's in one in the episode.
Matt:Maybe in the video game, he just, like, opened up the the, like, quest menu.
Tracy:And it And it listed it?
Matt:So it has the location name?
Tracy:He's in 1 in in dead issue because that's the one where Stonetree's friend, kink shames his wife, and they end up having a showdown in a factory.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:And then he's in one again in Hunted, which is the one with the
Matt:ripper 1?
Tracy:No. The unnamed unnamed hunter is after him, and she catches his safety.
Matt:He is in one in the Jack the Ripper episode. Yeah. Because that's where the, like, new detective dies.
Tracy:So he's been in his fan number, I guess. So maybe he's a connoisseur. He's like, oh, that's the one where I got attacked with Stonetree, but that's the one where I saved Skanky. It must be this one. So, anyway, he goes straight there, and he just walks through it.
Tracy:I don't know how he gets in. It doesn't matter. And then all of a sudden, he's like, oh, look. Upon the floor, there are some cues that just been left there.
Matt:Okay. So these especially in this one, like, there's employees walking around. This is an active, like, industrial facility.
Tracy:Yes.
Matt:And there's just shit on the floor. Otherwise, it's pristine. They're keeping it very clean. And some employees just walked by. Yeah.
Matt:Why didn't why aren't they picking up this stuff on the floor? I'm wondering how did Rita place these items here? I because I think part of the challenge that she's, like, setting out for these clues is it would be difficult for just a regular person to get into these places. But I guess she knows that it's a detective, playing the game, so they can just flash the badge. But how did she get in?
Matt:Maybe oh, oh, I guess, any of these places any of these places, they would have had to, like, scan. They would have had to map them to make the game area, that virtual space in the game video game. So they I guess her company would have had some kind of contract with these locations to say, hey. We want to use your your industrial factory space
Tracy:Right.
Matt:As a virtual area in our video game, so we need access to it to, play whatever.
Tracy:Yeah.
Matt:So I guess Rita could have said, hey. I need to go, like, check some details on this area for the whole video game thing. You remember that? Yeah. I just need to go check on something.
Nick:Yeah.
Tracy:And I'm gonna leave this stuff behind. Don't touch it, k. Thanks. Bye.
Matt:Yeah. I just need to leave this here for a few minutes. Yeah. Don't move it.
Tracy:Okay. You feel better about it now?
Matt:I feel better about it now.
Tracy:Okay. So he ends up finding an hourglass and a nightstick to join the list of clues. They're just there on the floor. And, okay. So then he takes that back to the precinct, and Tracy's like, great.
Matt:Thanks, Nick. More collectibles from your video game?
Tracy:Yeah. That's what Reese says. Reese is like, oh, look. More collectibles from the junk
Tracy:shop? Captain thinks you've lost it.
Nick:And you think he's right. Well
Reese:More collectibles from the novelty shop, Luke?
Nick:I know how you think this looks. Listen. I can drop this game right now if you want me to, but I swear Rita Scott walks if I do.
Tracy:Is everybody? I mean, I get it. Okay. I mean, I know. Nick didn't come to this from a place that really felt very healthy.
Tracy:But at this point, he's actually finding shit. He found an hourglass on the floor at a warehouse, and they're like, well, I mean, yeah, that's how they time thing. That's what the
Matt:Okay. So what if, they choose interesting words for the items? Yeah. And it feels a little contrived when they finally say, oh, it's an anagram. May maybe it's a riddle.
Matt:Maybe it's what do all of these things have in common?
Tracy:Right.
Matt:Like
Tracy:No. They go straight to anagram. Straight to anagram.
Matt:Straight to anagram. Yeah. Okay. Great. Maybe each of these items has, like, one of the little label maker, like, sticker things
Tracy:on it. So they know what to call it. So they know what to call it. Well, the the point at this point is that Tracy and Reese are still, like, you're being fucking ridiculous. But, honestly, he is finding shit.
Tracy:Like, why was it
Matt:making progress.
Tracy:Right. I mean, the skull, you can kinda be like, oh, maybe it was left over from Halloween decorations at this museum that has this boudoir in it. But also, like, why was there an o type blood bag label shoved in a potted plant? And then he finds a it's not a nightstick. They call it a truncheon.
Tracy:He finds a truncheon and an hourglass on the floor at a factory, and they're all like, god, Nick. Give it up. So just so we're clear, Tracy is Tracy and Reese are shaming Nick for at least attempting to investigate this.
Matt:And, usually, this level of criticism of Nick's, like, technique is, like, over a few days. They feel like he's wasting time. But for him to say, hey. The video game that the dead guy was playing Yeah. It still has an active session with a countdown.
Matt:We have 12 hours to play through this game, like, because I logged in, and it said, this is, like, a limited time thing. Yeah. You have one chance. And then our computer ops detective has confirmed that the game is deleting itself as it gets played. Yeah.
Matt:Okay. Let's spend one whole, like, work day.
Tracy:Let me work this through. Let me work through this.
Matt:Let me follow this lead to the end
Tracy:They find the guy
Matt:so I can discard it.
Tracy:They find the guy within 4 hours, and then Nick has it solved in 12 hours. From the time this man dies to the time this murder is solved is 16 hours. Nick solves a case in 16 hours, and we don't even need an additional murder to solve the case. This is the most successful he has been investigating a murder in, like, 7 episodes. And yet they're all like, Nick, god.
Tracy:Get your head in the game. His head is in the game. That's literally what he's doing. I can understand at the very beginning when they're all upset at him because he's being really hinky about it. I get it.
Tracy:But then by this point, he's actually finding shit. What do you like, he says, what do we have to lose trying to go through this? Like, let me see what happens. Let me chase my tail for a little bit. Maybe I find nothing.
Tracy:Maybe I find something, but this is timed. This is that Right. But This is
Matt:a The lady is not running away.
Tracy:This is a collectibles quest in a video game. Yeah. You know, the collectibles quest in the video game that's like, oh, no. I don't have a preservative. This stew will go bad in 2 minutes.
Tracy:You have to get it from this side of the video game map to that side of the video game map. This is what's happening right now except when it runs out, he doesn't get a second chance to
Matt:take the stew again. Right.
Tracy:I just wanna put that out there. He's being ridiculous, but he's not being as ridiculous as they're making him out to seem.
Matt:Right. It's it's not what he's doing. It's the way he's doing it.
Tracy:Yeah. I mean, if Tracy's bothered, she could follow-up on ballistics. Nick isn't. We never figure out ballistics. We don't look into it at all.
Tracy:That gun is owned by someone.
Matt:Nick just says, here's the gun. It should match the ballistics.
Tracy:Yeah. Okay. Oh, alright. That's fine. But Reese is like, you're being ridiculous.
Tracy:These virtual clues are ridiculous. Actually, Reese is like clues because Reese is, I think, actually American. So he's, like, yeah. No. These are ridiculous.
Tracy:You're being ridiculous. And Nick's, like, cool. Yeah. Whatever. I gotta get to the next level, and Nick Reese goes, you are on the next level, Nick.
Tracy:You are next level weird right now.
Matt:No. No. I'm not. And Nick's like I literally need to get to the next level in the video game.
Tracy:In the video game. So Nick's like, fucking fine. And so he just leaves. And he leaves Reese and his partner at the precinct so he can go home, have a little snacky, and then play some more video games. And so he's like, oh, look another factory.
Tracy:Because he goes immediately back into the video game and he's back in another factory. And this time there's a guy standing there and he's like, I light a cross on fire. And Nick is like, oh, yay.
Matt:And that bunch of ninjas come out with him with swords.
Tracy:Yes. And there's a magical disappearing antagonist. A guy comes at him with swords. He ends up electrocuting the guy. Actually, I think the ninjas were in the last factory.
Tracy:In this one, he electrocutes the guy, but doesn't work.
Matt:Okay.
Tracy:And he ends up flying around the warehouse. And I have to wonder, was flight a part of the original programming? Or did Nick do that? And then it just copied it like it It coded on the fly for him that he's flying around in this video game. Because I want in real life for him to have flown and banged his head on the ceiling.
Matt:His own ceiling in his apartment.
Tracy:Not actually here.
Matt:Yeah. He just went through the skylight.
Tracy:But he ends up killing the guy or whatever. And we go back to the precinct because Tracy and the computer lady and Reese are really trying to wrap their head around what the fuck is going on right now. And the lady's like, the computer lady is like, well, you know, people really like video games and the Internet. I mean, people are doing it. They're going out on it because it gives them something to do, and it's kind of an ego boost when you win these games, especially when you're playing against somebody else.
Tracy:And maybe this lady is just hooked on her own game. Maybe she's hooked on the ego boost of being the winner.
Matt:The thrill of the risk of being caught.
Tracy:Yeah. And maybe we should just believe Nick for, like, 2 seconds and see what happens. I mean, I was hypnotized into this opinion, but also maybe we should just give it a shot, because she is our only suspect, our only suspect.
Matt:Tracy says she's our only suspect with a motive. Actually, she's our only suspect.
Tracy:Yeah. So maybe a minute, we just pretend Nick is right. And if after an hour like, I'll tell you, you have 10 minutes, and then we're gonna move on. Let's give this an hour and just see how it plays out. And in the meantime, Nick is, like, still looking around.
Tracy:He's actually found the second warehouse just from the video game. He's like, oh, yeah. I electrocuted a guy in that warehouse before. I'm gonna go back there. And Tracy is like, okay.
Tracy:Well, maybe these are actually clues, but if they're actually clues, maybe they're a game within a game. And Nick finds a noose. I don't know how he just finds these things, because they're not really tied to anything that's happening in the game. Maybe he smells her. Yeah.
Tracy:Smells Rita. Maybe. Let's go with that. Because he finds the noose and then he finds a knife. And then he comes back down to pull out his cell phone to make a phone call, which there's no way anyone's making a phone call inside all of this metal, especially not in 1995 when you had the service of, like, I can't even describe how bad the service was.
Tracy:Like, you there's no way you were inside a building and you made a phone call. And the one thing that kind of I don't I like Garrett as an actor just fine. But when you watch a lot of his stuff, you get deep into a lot of his mannerisms. And he has this, I'm being really serious right now, jaw thing where he, like, sticks his jaw out and, like, moves it side to side. He does that a lot in this episode along with the heavy breathing.
Tracy:And so every time he does it, I'm like, oh, there he is. But, like, oh, yeah. I'm doing real serious right now. Anyway, he pulls out the he doesn't actually pull the cell phone out to call them yet. He goes back in the game.
Tracy:He's like, well, I don't have much time left. I gotta get back in the game. So he puts the game headset on, which, again, this is a digital cell phone. There's no way this is connecting to the Internet from here, but it's fine. And there's Rita, and she's like, oh, no.
Tracy:You can't get to the next level until you figure out the clues. And he's like, oh, damn it. It's an anagram, and she's like, yes. She kinda confirms it's an anagram, which is helpful because Yeah. Then you're like, oh, okay.
Tracy:That's why they went there immediately and sort of stayed there. And so he logs off, and then he calls Tracy, and he's like, okay. I found 2 more clues. I found a noose, and I found a jackknife specifically. Not just a knife.
Tracy:Thank goodness. They realize it's a jackknife. Otherwise, we couldn't have gotten to our j.
Matt:Right.
Tracy:And that it's a trench and not a nightstick. Anyway, it's fine. It doesn't really matter. Who cares? Why are we nitpicking about this particular is this the worst part of this episode?
Tracy:No. So he's like, okay. Here's the last clues, and they're like, alright. Great. We're gonna figure this out.
Tracy:So Nick writes down the clues on a piece of paper. They put theirs into a computer program.
Matt:A computer program which is not helpful.
Tracy:My favorite part favorite part is the rotating dice picture, the moving three-dimensional dice. And Tracy's like, oh, what does that have to do with it? And the lady goes, we get bored. Like, I programmed this for fun, and I just threw that in for shits and giggles, obviously. Oh.
Matt:Okay.
Tracy:Okay. Okay. And so Nick figures it out in 2 steps. He's like, do do do. Ah, Saint John's.
Tracy:Oh, okay. Great. It's a church, and he goes, a church. And then we pan out to outside, and we find out that the sun is also on the rise. So it's day now, and he has to go to a church.
Tracy:And so while he's driving to the church, because he figures this out, like, immediately, it takes them a really they're like, how about first letters? And Tracy goes, no. Too e too obvious. And so then they go through
Matt:really Tracy.
Tracy:They go through a whole bunch of different and they're like, could it be a place? Could it be a proper name? And Reese makes a crack about, oh, yeah. I was at, like, the other day or whatever. So an animal helpful.
Matt:This is a common thing you do. Like, if you're in a computer programming class, it's like, okay. Make a program that, like, combine does all the combinations of all these letters in every order and match them up against, like, dictionary words Yeah. And score them as, like, how well they match. And then print out a list of all the matching dictionary words for this anagram.
Matt:Right. We didn't get anything like that.
Tracy:No. Well, there's no Internet, so she's probably not running this from an remote server. She probably has it on a floppy disk.
Matt:Yeah. And she but you can fit the whole dictionary, like, the whole, like, 10,000 words in the English dictionary
Tracy:Honestly, the
Matt:on one of these old computers quibble. In small space. It's not
Tracy:The the thing for me is we don't eliminate the first letters first.
Matt:Right.
Tracy:We're immediately, like, nope. Too obvious.
Matt:Because they need to draw out.
Tracy:Start with the obvious.
Matt:They need to delay
Tracy:the Figuring it out.
Matt:In the Yeah. Precinct. Yeah.
Tracy:In the most, Nick is clearly the better cop in this scenario. That's how you can tell this was directed by Garrett Wyndavies, because Nick goes total cowboy, and he's right. And he figures it out before everybody else, and he catches the bad guy, and he denies his own nature and overcomes his baser urges. He's, like, the hero in this episode. Yeah.
Tracy:Yeah. Because he drives over to the church, and he has to run into the church while he's all smoky and whatever because it's day. And he makes it in. He throws his jacket off very dramatically, and then he comes in and puts on okay. She's just sitting over in the chair.
Tracy:If he had not put his VR glasses on immediately, he would have just seen her sitting up front. But instead, he's like, no. I gotta solve this in the game. And so he puts he puts the glasses on and the gloves. And Rita shows up, and she's wearing a different outfit this time.
Tracy:And she's like, oh, good job. You figured it out. The murder weapon is somewhere in the church. Matt goes, oh, it's in the holy water font. And so Nick in the Nick in the game looks over at the holy water font, and she's like, ah, yes.
Tracy:Good choice. Meanwhile, Reese and Tracy and the computer lady are like, oh, maybe it's the second letter and then the third letter and then the 4th letter and then the 5th letter, and it makes a whole sentence. And it's they're like not getting it. And this is the most not cringe because I hate the word cringe, but this is the most secondhand embarrassing section of this entire of this entire episode because she's like, oh, very good job, detective. And he goes, in here, I'm not a detective.
Tracy:You can call me Nicholas de Brabant. Yes. But you'll never get to it.
Nick:Oh, I'm not a detective in here. Here, I'm a vampire. You may call me Nicholas de Bravo.
Tracy:That's the whole point of games like this, Nicholas de Bravo. People can be anything they want to be, except who they are.
Matt:I am a vampire. I am
Tracy:a vampire. So from her perspective, this detective started playing this game and was really fucking into it, like, so fucking into it. And then by the time he shows up at this church, he's like, no. I really am a vampire, and this give. Can you not tell by my sex appeal?
Tracy:He's just like, no. I'm real vampire. Oh, I'm Nicholas de Brabant. Then she's like, okay. I'm really glad I'm gonna shoot you now because you're scarier than I am.
Matt:Which it could be perceived as, like, encouraging for her because she's like, my VR business is gonna make so much money.
Tracy:Yeah. He got real real into this.
Matt:Oh, yeah.
Tracy:And she tells him people can be anyone they want to be in here, except who they actually are, except he's actually being who he is.
Matt:He is what he actually is.
Tracy:It's fine. Okay. Alright. It's fine. Everyone wants to be someone they aren't.
Tracy:And who do you wanna be? And she goes, I am exactly what I wanna be, and that's the winner. And then she shoots him. Shoots him in real life. Pew pew.
Tracy:Because she's only got half of the goggles on, so she can,
Matt:like, close my eyes. Reality.
Tracy:Yeah. Okay. Fine. So she shoots him with the murder weapon.
Matt:And In game, she shoots him with a crossbow. Yeah. And in the real world, she shoots him with a gun.
Tracy:Right. Which a good thing he wasn't so into it that he killed himself with, like, psychosomatic. Like, I thought it was a crossbow. So she shoots him, like, 3 more times, and she's like, He's dead, which is the second episode where people shoot him, think he's dead, and then he comes back and ends up touching the bad guy. It's fine.
Matt:Which yet another person who's
Tracy:Yeah. At least he hypnotizes it out of her. Only you didn't see me like
Matt:this, though. See me like this.
Tracy:Not you shot me, and I seem to be okay. Right.
Matt:No. So she still remembers shooting him, like, 4 or 5 times. Right. And then he got up and wasn't bleeding.
Tracy:Right. He gets up, and he he says, if you're playing a game, you should know who you're playing against. And then he's, like, like, fighting with himself to not bite this lady because, he's gotten real real into this game. It it it provided the hobby that Natalie told him he
Matt:should do. Reawakening old reflexes.
Tracy:Again. Just again. So then he turns around. He's like, okay. You didn't see me.
Tracy:You didn't see anyone or anything flying. You're gonna wash my car later. No. Wait. That's an earlier episode.
Tracy:You didn't see me turn into a vampire. You definitely didn't see me turn into a vampire. And she's like, okay. And then, of course, Reese and Tracy show up right now because, they finally figured out the anagram. Congratulations.
Tracy:They're like, John Street? They go John Street, and then Reese goes, no. Saint John. So it's probably a John Street, so good thing one of them was like, oh, no. It's a church.
Tracy:A church in the vampire game.
Matt:Okay. So in this situation, they're in the church. Yeah. Nick Nick has her. Tracy puts handcuffs on her and walks her out.
Matt:And Nick's like, you go ahead, guys. I I'm just gonna
Tracy:I'm gonna pray for a little bit.
Matt:I'm gonna sit down here for a little bit, and, and then I'll just go home.
Tracy:You're like, why does it smell like barbecue in here? Oh, no. No reason. Yeah. He's stuck in this church all day.
Matt:Yeah. Unless he covers himself up again and
Tracy:runs up his car. Church, so there's not iconography everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe he gets out later.
Tracy:Maybe Natalie comes and drives him to home in the trunk. I don't know. And Tracy gets the line, Rita, there's no get out of jail where you're going. And she's like, maybe not, but that's okay as long as there's a game to play. A channeled or, again, I don't
Matt:know.
Tracy:Yeah. And then we do 100% accurate. Thank you. Okay. Well, they're like, I am addicted to the game.
Tracy:Okay. Whatever. So we go back to the to the loft, and Natalie's in her sassy red shirt. I love this shirt so much. And Nick, like, what?
Tracy:Hang on. This whole episode, he's wearing, like, a black button down shirt, black pants, and then this black overcoat. And then all of a sudden, he's like, what if and now I'm just spitballing here. What if I looked a little bit like Steve Jobs, but not, like, exactly like Steve Jobs? Like, I went blue shirt instead of black shirt.
Tracy:And then that would be a tie in to the whole tech development thing, and we could, like, make it about how Apple is evil and shit. Okay? Which, like, agreed, but also, what what were they doing in 95? Because we they had almost died out. We don't get the renaissance of Apple until we get the colored the colored Imacs.
Tracy:Actually, we just looked it up, and Steve Jobs might have not been with Apple at this point. He leaves for a little while, and then they're kind of floundering. And he's like, alright. Fine. I'll come back.
Tracy:And then he comes back and effectively saves the company, which kinda sounds like a hero story, but I don't know. Look Steve Jobs up. Make your own decisions. So Nick Nick is wearing a, turtleneck tucked tucked into a pair of jeans, and these are both actually tight and slightly form fitting, which is the closest we will ever, ever, ever, ever get to seeing what Garrett Wind Davies looks like without clothes on. On purpose, apparently, according to his Playgirl article.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:What did he call it? Wanna stay classy so I don't show my assy or something like that. It's so really weird, like, the way he phrases it. So he's like, no. Basically, I I'm not confident enough to be nude.
Tracy:Like, I get it. It's fine. I also don't put videos of myself on the Internet. Certainly don't put videos of myself out onto television where I am shirtless. Although that's different because I have, you know, I have secondary sex characteristics on my top half.
Tracy:He does not. He could be shirtless on television. Yeah. And yet and yet here we are. It's Victorian.
Tracy:If I see his ankles, I get all excited. So we I guess that works. You know? He's created the a scarcity mentality. We're just happy to have what we get.
Matt:He's, controlling the market.
Tracy:Yeah. And Natalie is standing there with the glasses, and she's like, what are you gonna do with them? And he's like, I don't know. Maybe we'll keep them. Like, let's think about keeping them.
Tracy:I mean, there's no if they shut the mainframe down, there's nothing Right.
Matt:Yeah. There's not all they're just an interface.
Tracy:Yeah. Yeah. And Natalie's like, okay. But, like, I got really scared because I knew what they meant to you. They thought you were just being weird and investigating the crime.
Tracy:I knew you were just being weird
Matt:You were fulfilling
Tracy:edging towards homicidal.
Matt:Yeah. These fantasies of actually killing people.
Tracy:Yeah. Because I know you're a serial killer, and this was giving you the the thrill, like the serial killer buzz. This was entertaining your dark passenger in a way you haven't done in a really long time, and it freaked me the fuck out. And he's like, alright. Fine.
Tracy:Do whatever you want with him. So she tosses them in the fire. Is there a lithium battery in these?
Matt:Oh, I don't know what.
Tracy:What type of battery was powering these?
Matt:It wouldn't have been a lithium battery, but it would have been some kind of chemical battery that could explode.
Tracy:Yeah. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's fine. It's a gas fireplace.
Tracy:You can burn anything in those. It's perfectly fine. So she throws them in there, and then we, like, zoom in on them as they're melting. And that's the end. Thank goodness he has Natalie to be his exterior And they need to turn it on and been like, where'd the game go?
Tracy:And then
Matt:I need my fix.
Tracy:And then he buys virtual dimensions, and he hasn't put it up just for him.
Matt:Who's to say he didn't anyway?
Tracy:I know. And LaCroix is like, yes. I know. Maybe he had a backup pair. Yeah.
Tracy:There was that other pair that she was wearing that had, like, half the glasses and half not the glasses. So there's other pairs of these. Maybe he was like, yeah. Burn those. And then there's another room in the warehouse that has, like, 6 pairs and a server and just a guy chained to a desk, and he's like, program new scenarios.
Tracy:I don't want to mister Nick. He's like, I need to kill a man today and you don't want it to be you.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:That's in virtual season 4. Just kidding. So, anyway, we finally got to and thoroughly enjoyed our technology, a scary 19 nineties episode. I've been waiting to get to this with for you for so long because I know how you feel about, like, hacked together hacky episodes where they're like, I'm a computer guy, and you can tell because I use the words, technology words, like mainframe and digital and, debug and code. And, sometime we'll have to do, hackers.
Tracy:Maybe we'll do hackers as a Patreon only episode. Yeah. And you can just rant for an hour and a half about when they go to the pay phones and they connect through the pay phones, and they're like, tap tap tap tap tap. Like, they just bang on the keyboards.
Reese:Mhmm.
Tracy:Matthew Lillard is in that. And his keyboard is like camouflage, and it has stickers over all the letters. Yep. Yeah. So my niece okay.
Tracy:My niece hunt and pecs. She doesn't I don't know.
Matt:The Pecor types.
Tracy:Pecor types.
Matt:Just her.
Tracy:Two fingers and a thumb. Yeah. And her she was like, I'm as fast as you are. Like, I'm sorry, honey. No.
Tracy:You're not. And she's like, I mean, how do you put your whole hand on there then you can't see the keyboard? Like, that was like the game winner. If you put your whole hand over it, you can't see the keys. I was like Slam dunk argument.
Tracy:Mic drop. Beat that. I'm like, you should be able to type without looking at the keys. And she was like, nobody does that. Like, yeah.
Tracy:It's okay. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.
Tracy:This is why when we watch Dune and there's a Gen z person like Timothy Chalamet in Dune, I'm like, I have a hard time with you because I have niece trauma. I'm just kidding. She's not traumatizing. I love her to death, but she's also just so Gen z. It's like having a window into this alien world where they are somehow completely consumed by technology and yet know absolutely nothing about it.
Tracy:Oh, yeah. Like, by her age, we were building websites because otherwise, what did you do on the Internet? Nothing.
Matt:Right.
Tracy:Anyway.
Matt:Yeah. I had a website, by her age Yeah. It because it was during high school.
Tracy:Yeah. You had an Angel Fire website.
Matt:Yeah. For my the role playing game club that I ran at the high school.
Tracy:Listen. When you're a nerd, you commit for life. Okay? This is a life sentence, and, I don't care as long as there's games to play. So what did you think?
Tracy:How did you feel about the technology is scary episode?
Matt:This was good.
Tracy:It was good.
Matt:This was good. Yeah. Yeah. This was one of the better episodes, like, any TV show that uses technology as a core part of the plot.
Tracy:Yeah. They did pretty good. I felt like
Matt:I I did have to work a little bit to rationalize Yeah. Like, the the feed the, like, sensation stuff, the haptic feedback Yeah.
Tracy:Part of it. Okay. Yeah. Once you realize this is all LaClaw, it's it's turtles all the way down. If you go back far enough, it's always LaClaw.
Matt:Yeah.
Tracy:So once you realize it's Lacroix, it's fine. No. It's not really Lacroix. Yes. That's fan canon.
Tracy:Yes. I know. But isn't it better if we think it's like when we decided that Skanky knew. Isn't it better if all of this is actually Lacroix fucking with Nick and ever so slowly pushing him back towards being a vampire?
Matt:Right. He's he's switched to playing the long game
Nick:Yeah.
Matt:Of indirect manipulation. Correct.
Tracy:And he's doing a great job. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess we'll just leave it there, unless you have something else you want to say about it. We don't hate season 3.
Tracy:I don't. Remember at the beginning of this, I said, I'm gonna help you to understand that season 3 is really good. And, actually, some of my favorite episodes are coming up. Like, some of my favorite episodes in the whole series are coming up. Is games vampires play?
Tracy:No. It's not. But only because of a the heavy breathing. Like, just the heavy breathing is really awkward, and I don't know. It just feels I I don't know.
Tracy:It's just not my favorite. It's fine. It's good. It's a good it's a good episode. It's good.
Tracy:I like fever a lot better. Fever is probably top 10 episodes for me. Yeah. I'm really excited. We're getting down to the, like, pedal to the floor.
Tracy:We just got canceled. Let's do some real crazy shit.
Reese:Mhmm.
Tracy:So I'm really excited. And I guess until next time, friends. Bye.
