Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 18) - "Fallen Idol"
Had to do something. I couldn't just
Natalie:stand by and watch.
Natalie:Should you give him? Maybe 2 cc's, a very small dose. Look. He gives you a lead, Henry goes free, and then everything goes back to normal.
Nick:Including Joey.
Rachel:I am Rachel.
Matt:And I'm Matt.
Rachel:And this is Come in, 81 Kilo.
Rachel:A forever night podcast.
Matt:Welcome back friends.
Rachel:Welcome back.
Rachel:It's time for another episode. Forever Knight season 3 episode 18, fallen idol.
Rachel:A little bit less dark than the last one.
Rachel:What do you what do you think that title means? Is it is it less dark? I feel like that is such a low bar. Yeah. Okay.
Rachel:I mean, sort of.
Rachel:It's not as unceasingly dark.
Rachel:Oh, it's pretty relentlessly dark, but it's a more obscure dark topic. It's more like
Rachel:I guess it's more approachable. It's more socially acceptable.
Rachel:It's easier to it's not even easier to talk about. I was gonna say it's easier to talk about than domestic violence, which, again, is a really low bar.
Rachel:Still child abuse.
Rachel:This feels less like it was, whoops, snatched from the headlines and dropped into this procedural drama to give us Yeah. In fact, I think they each take turn directing the last couple because there's one in a few episodes that's directed by Nigel Bennett. So I think they're all just playing around. Yeah. Why not?
Rachel:The game is made up and the stakes don't matter because we're already canceled, bitches. Do what you want, which is what this feels like Yeah. A little bit. What do you think that title means, Matthew?
Rachel:A doll shaped like an eye that fell over.
Rachel:Is that what you're going with? No. Okay.
Rachel:Never meet your idols.
Rachel:Who do you think fell? Do you think it was Henry? Or do you think it was Natalie?
Rachel:Poor k. No low dose.
Rachel:Indeed. Because remember how last episode, the only people who came out the river of shit smelling like a rose were Natalie and Reese? Well, don't worry y'all. Natalie caught up.
Rachel:Natalie's got some flaws.
Rachel:Not to be left behind.
Rachel:Acknowledging flaws is how characters grow.
Rachel:She was like, I see you, Nick, letting people die, and I think I will actually, try to kill a small a child. I think that's what I'm gonna do this episode. She she frames it to herself as I'm being I am being, helpful. I am
Rachel:trying to savior?
Rachel:Yes. Oh, and you know what's really funny? Because I was sitting on the couch, and I thought, well, I will watch Friday. And I didn't feel like getting up and changing the DVD or figuring out where any of our files were. So I was like, no.
Rachel:I think I'll just watch whatever's on Roku, which happens to only be season 1 and season 2. And so I was watching I Will Repay, which is the one where, Natalie's brother gets shot and turned into a vampire and loses his shit, and then Nick has to kill him. It's a whole thing. I totally forgot that his nickname is the white knight.
Rachel:Natalie's brother?
Rachel:Natalie's brother.
Rachel:Nickname?
Rachel:He's such a good dude. The people at his lawyer office call him the white knight.
Rachel:The people at my office call me the juggernaut.
Rachel:It's not the same. The people at my office call me mama.
Rachel:Just kidding. Well
Rachel:I mean, it's true, but
Rachel:At a previous office, they called me the juggernaut. I've just started laying the seeds of, oh, yeah. By the way, now that I'm going to be on a new team unrestrained on this brand new project
Rachel:Yeah. I'm the juggernaut, bitch.
Rachel:Skye Fred said, that's what
Rachel:That's what I'm counting on.
Rachel:That's what I'm counting on.
Rachel:Yeah. Yep. We open on this dude.
Rachel:I would say in the first five minutes, we get, oh, no. What? No. Because it's, oh, is this the steroid episode? No.
Rachel:No. No. This is the professional wrestling episode. Wait. No.
Rachel:It's not the professional wrestling episode. It's the
Rachel:We're gonna go with cognitively impaired.
Rachel:Never go full cognitively impaired episode.
Rachel:Yes. That's after some debate as to how we will be referring to Joey. What I came down with was
Rachel:Rachel said she would edit out anytime I quoted the line from Tropic Thunder.
Rachel:Yes. Please don't. Please don't. We do try to be sensitive on this podcast, which, let me tell you all, is a little bit like patting your stomach and rubbing your head and jumping up and down and filing your taxes all at the same time when you're talking about nineties television shows. So this is a moment where we all need you to put on your context lenses because it was very appropriate to hire an actor to pretend to be cognitively different in an episode of television like this.
Rachel:And honestly, he doesn't do that bad of a job. Trust me. This could have gone a lot worse.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:This could have been so much worse. If you wanna see a good example of an actor who, had to act as someone who was, cognitively spicy, cognitively different.
Rachel:Do not watch Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder.
Rachel:No. No. Not not that. But also, and absolutely knocked it out of the park. Go check out It's Okay to Not Be Okay, which is a k drama.
Rachel:Yep. And if you know anything about k dramas, they are not particularly known for their stellar portrayal of people with any kind of difference. But this particular series, it's only 16 episodes long, was really really good. And the guy who played the brother who is supposed to be autistic, does a really good job. The Good Doctor, which is actually a show which is on American television, is based on a k drama of the same name, The Good Doctor.
Rachel:And just like in the American version, the main doctor is actually autistic. Do not watch that one as a good example. It's not
Rachel:Is it bad? I
Rachel:you know what? It's culturally different the way they portray the people. And when you watch it as an American, it's challenging. And some of that is because maybe the portrayal is problematic, but also some of it is just cultural. And there is a level of acceptable for how you, like Represent.
Rachel:Represent these people, which is not okay here, but it's different there. And it's just one of those things where you have to, like you're hands off. You're I'm not Korean. I don't get to weigh in. But from an American point of view, the it's okay to not be okay Korea because of the realistic way he portrayed someone with autism, so that's a great one to look into.
Rachel:Honestly, Joey doesn't do a terrible job. The actor plays Joey. So just kinda we're gonna make it through this and it's gonna be good. But know that we know and it's on we're just gonna put that on the table like we normally do. Do.
Rachel:I'm just gonna set the table and then put that on one of the plates. There it is. We open on this beefy dude and he is shooting up in the locker room like, something. We don't know what. And he injects whatever it is, and he, like, throws his head back, like, it hurts.
Rachel:And we immediately transition to him lifting weights, which is actually a really cool transition.
Matt:Mhmm.
Rachel:I really like that, and he's, like, lifting it. And later later, he says he these are steroids, obviously. And later, he says that he started steroids because he was losing his cut. He was losing his definition and his edge, and he needed steroids to look like this?
Rachel:The, like, mid thirties dad bod?
Rachel:And I'm not sure what cut meant in 1997.
Rachel:Okay. So I think for some context, if you just Google, like, WWE or at at the time, it was WWF 1995, for example, and look at the cast, they're not they're not, like, 20 twenties
Rachel:Yeah. It's a
Rachel:little bit of, like, bodybuilder cut.
Rachel:Yeah. You look at, like, Andre the
Rachel:Giant. Yes.
Rachel:It was more about actual strength than it was about muscle definition. They were not, like, if you wanted to do straight muscle definition, you were like a Arnold Schwarzenegger. You were like a bodybuilder, somebody who went and did displays.
Rachel:A competitive bodybuilder.
Rachel:Yeah. And so it was more about being actually strong, but he phrases it as if it is about muscle definition, and you have more muscle definition than you
Rachel:would have. Looking at this guy, and I'm like, I'm bigger than this guy.
Rachel:And that's not like that you have, but, like like, Matt is stick. Matt is fairly fit, so it really it it suits. Like, it's a good comparison. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:You're probably he's really tall, though. Like, he's tall, tall, tall. Anyway, I just wanna point out that later, he's like, I did it to keep my cut, and you're like, oh, okay. Alright. I don't think it worked.
Rachel:Like, your your competition's not that. Yeah. Or I guess your I can see why you felt insecure compared to the other guys. Yeah. Just because you're not 6 foot 8.
Rachel:Correct.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. So there was somebody who was watching him shoot up. We saw, like, an eyeball, and that same person arrives at the gym. And the guy who is lifting weights puts the weights down and he goes, 100% industrial grade cut steel.
Rachel:And the guy who has walked in, who at this point from his haircut, I guess, we're supposed to get is maybe a little bit cognitively impaired. I don't it looks like somebody cut his hair with weed whackers. Like, why? What was the choice there? Like, why would you do that?
Rachel:We we get it. His acting's gonna sell it to us. Okay? Don't don't do the haircut thing. Okay?
Rachel:Don't just a memo for everyone who's considering including a character like this. Just let them have a normal haircut. Okay? Maybe it's supposed to be, like, Henry's doing his best. Like, his guardian, Henry is doing his best, but he's
Rachel:still struggling to take care of a
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:A kid.
Rachel:Yeah. Because this is not his child. He was not given This is nephew. It's his nephew. Both of his parents died in a car accident, and now he's his full time caregiver.
Rachel:Maybe this is supposed to be like, he's doing his best. He's doing a good job, but there are certain things he's still struggling with. And let maybe let's go with that.
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:And Joey actually says
Rachel:some grace.
Rachel:He goes, no, silly. Bulldozer is cut steel, not you, Henry. And that's supposed to be our first. Oh, he doesn't know that bulldozer and Henry are the same person. He doesn't realize that once his uncle Henry puts on the costume, he's still Henry, which matters later.
Rachel:And then we go to them filming a promo, and for, like, a hot minute, I thought these were actually supposed to be people in the background and that this was, like, a Yeah.
Rachel:Like, it's a
Rachel:cheap matte
Rachel:Cheap matte painting background for a realistic audience.
Rachel:And I was like, oh, no. We could have just done it empty. And then they're, oh, no. Okay. Oh, they were filming a promo.
Rachel:Okay. This is fine. This is fine. Because this background is terrible. Like, it does not look like people at all.
Rachel:And bulldozer, we find out, actually has on a full face mask because it's bulldozer and this other guy named Nitro who are filming this promo. And at first, you think they're kind of riffing, but then the scriptwriter pops up, and he's like, come on, man. Like, have you forgotten your lines? What's going on? Because he's reading out the lines, and bulldozer's like, sorry.
Rachel:I just can't, like I'm real foggy today. I can't think of anything. And Nitro actually says, maybe you should let Forrest Gump do your lines. And for those counting, that's our first nineties movie reference. And of course, Forrest Gump is the classic portrayal by Tom Hanks of Forrest Gump, who is an individual who is of extremely average intelligence, according to the movie, because we get that part where he has the IQ test, and he's, like, your son's right here, and we need him to be here.
Matt:And
Rachel:then she fucks the principal when he gets in school. Yeah. I'll just go put that on the table. There's another plate, and I'm just gonna drop it right on there.
Rachel:I don't think we'll be covering for, Forrest Gump
Rachel:on this podcast. No. And then they get to fight for real because Nitro is an asshole, and Henry attacks him. Bulldozer attacks him because he called his nephew Forrest Gump, which was really rude. And he's like, you want me to bury him?
Rachel:I'll bury him right now. And he's, like, throwing him down. He ends up getting beat up by Nitro because as we find out, Nitro is actually the better wrestler. Like, the bulldozer is not actually that. He's what does the promoter say?
Rachel:Bulldozer is the type of wrestler that exists just to be beat up by other wrestlers like Nitro?
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. Okay. But he's, like, laying on the ground after he got pummeled by Nitro, and Joey drapes a robe over him. And Henry, like, grabs his hands, and he's like, hey, man. Can you go get me some extra towels?
Rachel:Like, can you go grab some towels? And then Joey carrying the towels comes into the locker room, and he finds bulldozer and nitro fighting, and bulldozer actually breaks nitro's neck. Bulldozer being just a man in a suit, which again has a full face mask, canonically has a full face mask Yeah. And, like, sunglasses because we see a promotional picture of him later, and we find out he's, like, completely covered in black. Right.
Rachel:And he actually breaks Nitro's neck in front of Joey, and Joey tries to talk to Bulldozer, but he doesn't respond. And then Joey looks at Nitro after the guy dips, and he's like, you got dozed. And then
Rachel:we He's he's playing up his hero, his idol.
Rachel:Yeah. And then we come back, and it's like Nick and Natalie walking. And Natalie's like, yep. He had a broken neck. And Nick's like, yeah.
Rachel:And a bruised face, which means and they chime in together. Someone tried to separate that guy's head from his body. He got his head. He got his neck broken. Okay.
Rachel:Great. And Natalie's actually like, really? We might get we might be able to get some prints from his face. Because if he grabbed his face hard enough, he could have left a palm print. Yep.
Rachel:And Tracy pops up, which Tracy is very, she's taken over Natalie's role of I only pop up when important information is needed in this particular episode.
Rachel:Do you think that's because this episode is directed by Gere?
Rachel:I don't know. But she just goes and she, like, appears in a puff of smoke, and she's like, Karl Hibbert, known in wrestling circles as Nitro. That's the guy who died. And then she points over at Henry, and she's like, that's the last person to see him. They were filming a promo together, and then she like spins and leaves.
Rachel:And Nick says it takes a lot of beef to kill someone that way.
Nick:Well, it takes a lot of beef to kill someone that size that way.
Rachel:And the know how to do it. Try not to OD in all the testosterone. And Natalie goes, yeah. And the know how to do it. Like, they're testosterone.
Rachel:And, actually, Tracy's still there because she and Natalie share look like. Like, I don't know. This isn't exactly. If I were in 2024 and I was around a bunch of, like, really cut wrestlers, maybe this look would make sense. It's a bunch of men in very small spandex suits who, don't say no to cookies.
Rachel:That that's what we're like, that's the the theme of the room. And I'm not like they I have no judgment of this body type. It's perfectly fine. Just if you're presenting these people to me as, like, testosterone wrestlers, they need to be something other than tall and beefy. And not beefy, like, I work out beefy just, like, I eat a lot of beef beefy.
Rachel:I don't know how to describe this. I'm trying to be gentle here. There's a lot happening. There's a lot happening.
Rachel:I think dad bod
Rachel:covers it. Yeah.
Rachel:Where they're muscular, but a little rounded
Rachel:around the edges. Toft around the edges, which is not an unattractive look. It is when you're wearing really tiny spandex outfits.
Rachel:Yes.
Rachel:Yes. So Henry actually tells them that Joey is missing. He's like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. You wanna talk to me about the guy that died? Whatever. My nephew, who has a cognitive disability, he's missing, and we need to find him.
Rachel:And this guy does a really good job of portraying a guy who's, like, the primary caretaker of of this teenager and being like, look, I'm legitimately concerned about my nephew. I'm his guardian.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Because his parents died. My highest priority right now is my nephew. Yeah. Nitro, yeah. I feel bad about it.
Rachel:Shit's hard.
Rachel:I didn't have anything to do with it. My nephew's missing. Let's go
Rachel:find it. Missing. We need to find him. Yeah. And I think that that is a really good, like, introduction to this character.
Rachel:Yeah. It's very I had sudden scary responsibility thrust upon me, and I am attempting to rise to meet it with every fiber of my being without really having any idea what the fuck I'm doing. But the way I'm dealing is by making sure he's the center of my world at all times, which is a really fair assessment of this character. And it kind of follows through the whole episode. And we find out that Joey's parents died in a car accident.
Rachel:Henry is his only guardian, and he's got to find him because he is his person. He's the person that takes care of Joey, and Joey needs him.
Rachel:And Joey doesn't do well with strangers. Right.
Rachel:And then we cut to Natalie, and Natalie gets in the car, and Joey sits up from her back seat. And he's like, I'm not supposed to ride with strangers. And Natalie, nopes, right out of the car. She's like, hold on. Nope.
Rachel:Oh, no. I have had way too much
Rachel:She has had too many close calls to to just ride this out.
Rachel:She don't fuck around. There was that one time she got roped to a gun for, like, hours, and nobody cared, and she didn't get any vacation days. And there was that time she got driven out to the florist shop with the serial killer. Like, a lot has happened to Natalie in cars. She is not about this.
Rachel:She gets right the fuck out.
Rachel:In contrast, my my company had some layoffs recently.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And for, like, a week after the layoffs, like, every day, there was some executive or manager or somebody, like, emailing or messaging people, like, hey, FYI, just in case you didn't remember, our health insurance covers free therapy visits. If anybody needs to just take some time off, Don't worry about putting in PTO. Don't worry about getting anything done. Just and and take advantage of this health care benefit for free therapy. Yeah.
Rachel:Natalie really needed something like that.
Rachel:Yeah. Natalie didn't get that.
Rachel:For, like, a week afterward, everybody that meets up with her. Natalie, have you taken advantage of your health care free therapy benefit yet?
Rachel:Remember how you were chained to that gun?
Rachel:I expect you to be taking the next 3 days off.
Rachel:Didn't she get flipped in a car?
Rachel:Don't don't use any of your saved up PTO. You'd we just won't worry about you getting any work done I think for the next week.
Rachel:I think they get, like, run off the road, and her car gets flipped with them all in it. I'm almost positive. I'm gonna have to look at whatever he said it is. That's not goblins. You just wanna watch goblin.
Rachel:I just wanna watch it.
Rachel:Because I watched I talked about k dramas, but she nopes out of the car, and she's like, officers, there's a person in my back seat. She's even specific. She's like, I am having a crisis. There isn't a stranger in my back seat.
Rachel:I think she even points at the officers.
Rachel:Yeah. And then he pops out. Of course, they pull him out, and then we get yield. Now we are introduced, and so we aren't strangers anymore routine because he's like, I'm not supposed to be in the car with strangers. And she says, well, I'm Natalie.
Rachel:What's your name? And he goes, Joey. And she's like, see, now we're not strangers anymore. Because Henry has a rule that he's not allowed to get in the car with strangers, which makes a lot of sense. And so he's just trying to do the right thing.
Rachel:And so Joey says, Henry's inside, because she says, where's Henry? And then Natalie takes him in. She's like, I'll take you to Henry. We'll get you to your person. We'll get you safe.
Rachel:Everything's gonna be fine. I hope you enjoy this version of Natalie, because she's gone in about 10 minutes when she gives no shits about how Joey is feeling or what Joey needs or anything like that. And he's actually naming posters as they walk down the hall. He's like, this is so and so wrestler. This is whatever.
Rachel:And then we get to bulldozers, and he refuses to name bulldozer. She's like, who's that Joey? And he's like, I could talk about it.
Rachel:But we don't get to, like, highlight that because Henry shows
Rachel:Yeah. Nick and Henry and Tracy all walk up and and Henry's like, Joey, where were you? Where did you go? I was missing you. What happened?
Rachel:And he's like, I saw a bad thing. Like, I saw something happen, and it it, like, it threw me for such a loop I fled is basically what he's saying. And he went and hid in Natalie's car. And he says he saw because Henry is like, what did you see? What happened?
Rachel:Just just say it. It's fine. No one's gonna harm you. Everything's gonna be okay. Even Natalie's like, what's the worst thing that could happen?
Rachel:Nothing bad is gonna happen to you. And he goes, oh, okay. Cool. I saw bulldozer kill Nitro. And this is after Henry was, like, it's okay.
Rachel:You can tell them. They're like detectives, like Ace Ventura.
Rachel:Movie reference number 2.
Rachel:Let me tell you, I watched Ace Ventura with the kids and that did not age well.
Rachel:I heard the rhinos the rhino escape
Rachel:Yeah. The rhino is still peak cinema. There's a couple moments where you're like, okay. That's alright. But for the majority of it, it's like nineties nails on a chalkboard.
Rachel:It is so hard. And I remember thinking it was so fucking funny. Like, I had both movies on tape. I had them memorized. I used to we used to quote them when you went over for a sleepover, like, like a glove, like, when he's in the soda.
Rachel:I saw an air in
Rachel:the clip of
Matt:Jim Perry.
Rachel:And he's like, I did not expect Ace Ventura to take off like that. I thought it was gonna bomb.
Rachel:He didn't wanna do the 2nd movie Yeah. But he was under contract, so they made him cut. That's a whole other story. Anyway so they immediately believed Joey. They're like, oh, Joey said bulldozer killed Nitro.
Rachel:Hell, yeah. He did. That's what's that's what happened. And they take Henry in for a grilling. So then we go to the precinct, and Henry is in the interrogation room, and they're doing the, like, walk around top down filming thing to, like, show us how serious they are about getting a confession out of Henry.
Rachel:And no shade on Joey. Absolutely people with cognitive differences can give honest testimony, but no one, even a neurotypical person was going to walk up and tell police officers. I saw a bulldozer in a full face mask kill this other guy and they're gonna be like, well, that is a game set match. Total lock. We have this thing now.
Rachel:We don't need to investigate. We know exactly what happened. We just spent an entire episode talking about how this guy who was in the room when his wife got stabbed, who has prior convictions for violence against the same woman, could not be arrested off handedly because they had no evidence. And yet, as soon as Joey is like, I saw him kill kill Nitro.
Rachel:I saw Bulldozer.
Rachel:I saw Bulldozer kill Nitro. They're like, slam fucking dunk, y'all. We got the bitch. And then we just take him straight to the precinct, and he even reads
Rachel:Once again, they have a traumatized, unreliable eyewitness Yeah. That has a close relationship to the perpetrator.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And in one situation, nah. It's a hysterical woman. She has a vagina.
Rachel:Yeah. Even Reese is, like, book that motherfucker. Right. Everyone is like, woo. That was an easy one.
Rachel:Thanks, Joey.
Rachel:Well, this witness has a penis.
Rachel:Oh, is that what it is? I mean, it could be. I'm not saying it's not.
Rachel:Or at least he presents as a person who has a penis.
Rachel:I'm just saying this feels a little inconsistent, and I think, spoiler alert everybody, this is one of my least favorite episodes. So if I go off a little, that might explain it. But Henry, of course, denies any participation, and Nick goes, I don't think Joey would lie about that. Do you? The fuck you know?
Rachel:You don't know Joey. You met him 2 hours ago. You had one interaction, and it was
Rachel:There are no contradictions in nature. If you encounter 1, check your premises.
Rachel:Check your premises. He doesn't know anything about Joey. He doesn't know whether Joey how Joey perceives reality. He doesn't know how Joey expresses himself. He doesn't know anything about how Joey communicates.
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:He doesn't know anything
Rachel:about him. A storyteller? Is Joey
Rachel:Does Joey perceive reality the same way we do? I have family who have cognitive disabilities. One of whom is in a group home, because they struggle with their perception of reality, and they do things like talk to fire alarms and any blinking lights. And it's just, it's who they are. It doesn't make them dangerous.
Rachel:It doesn't make them scary. It's just a different way of perceiving reality.
Rachel:But you have to take that into consideration when you are interpreting something they say.
Rachel:Right. And they are just as likely to tell you that, yes, Henry killed the bulldozer killed Nitro, and the queen talks to me through the TV, which is actually a real life story. So I didn't make that up out of thin air. Not the Henry part, but the queen on the TV. So, I mean, without consulting Henry, who is his closest caregiver and who can actually interpret Joey's perception of reality for them, the fact that they're immediately like, oh, he saw you kill him, and that's game over, my friend, is a little bit, tone deaf.
Rachel:It feels tone deaf. It feels tone deaf. Unprofessional? Unprofessional. Because Henry's like, I didn't fucking do it.
Rachel:And they're like, you're playing hard and fast with the truth, Henry. They're just immediately, like, well, Joey wouldn't lie. They and then there were, like, rapid firing questions at him to try to trip him up. And they're like, oh, well, you hit Nitro. He's like, yeah.
Rachel:We're wrestlers.
Rachel:It's literally my job.
Rachel:Legit my job to beat that guy up.
Rachel:See this paycheck? The memo says, punch Nitro in the face.
Rachel:I was literally just paying my bills. Like, I don't know what you want from me. He says, well, you beat up Nitro during the promo, and he's, like, yeah. He made a crack about Joey. And Nick goes, don't you think that was a little overreaction?
Rachel:Fuckers say, what? You killed a man. Last episode.
Rachel:Hold on. Hold on. Pot, black kettle?
Rachel:Meat because you're the same person. Again, this time, he's not looking in a mirror. He's just looking through the window at him. It's like, you would absolutely overreact in the same way. Don't even with that with me.
Rachel:He's looking at a selfie of himself.
Rachel:You don't know. He doesn't know the history of how Nitro treats Joey. Nitro may be physically abusive to Joey. You have he has literally no idea whether that was an isolated incident or a pattern of incidents that would have resulted in Henry slash bulldozer being physical with Nitro. Is it ever okay to use our hands and not our words?
Rachel:Not necessarily, but we didn't delve into that at all. They're just like, well, you overreacted. You don't know anything about it. You didn't even ask. You didn't ask anybody else.
Rachel:You only interviewed Henry. That's it. And Henry's like, okay, I get it, like I'm a little cranky, but we were on this was a wrestling promo. I was trying to drum up interest in our wrestling venue and in people coming to see us wrestle. It was a promo.
Rachel:I was selling fucking tickets, bitch. What do you think I was doing? And they're like, killing Nitro. Like, they just it's so frustrating because there is nothing. They have nothing.
Rachel:They had more evidence tying mister Henderson from the previous episode to the murder. Then they have this guy, and they could not arrest the other guy, but they booked this man immediately. Like, be consistent. That's all I'm asking. Just be consistent.
Rachel:Yeah. And they're, like, okay. Well, you sent Joey away for towels so that you could be in the locker room alone. And he was, like, no. I didn't even go to the locker room right away.
Rachel:I went to see the trainer about a pulled muscle in my back, and then I went to the locker room. And they're, like, okay. But we're gonna keep you here until we confirm your involvement.
Rachel:For the sake of discussing consistency.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:I thought, well, maybe maybe somebody else directed Avenging Angel. Right? That was the last one? Yeah. Since Garrett's directing this one, and we're going all over the place Yeah.
Rachel:On police procedure and by the book professionalism. Whereas previous episode, we were like we were like full legal, perception of, like, following the rules. Yeah. Okay. So, Garrett directed this episode, but the previous episode, Avenging Angel, was directed by Alan Simmons
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:Who, according to IMDB, directed 4 episodes of Forever Night in addition to 3 episodes of The Crow.
Rachel:Stairway to Heaven. Stairway to Heaven. Yes. Correct.
Rachel:Alan Simmons directed season 2, episode 18, partners of the month. Aw. And queen of harps. And fever.
Rachel:That's a good one. Queen of harps is like, the fuck? But Yeah. The rest were good.
Rachel:And avenging angel.
Rachel:Yeah. Okay.
Rachel:So we have different directors. Okay. I wonder about the writers. So looking at the writers, both episodes have James Parriot and Barney Cohen as writers, but probably, the person who did the bulk of the writing was the guest writer. Episode This episode was Michael Sadowski.
Rachel:So different writers, different directors
Rachel:Different show?
Rachel:Same people. Yeah. Okay.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:So I I think we can't really expect too much consistency if it's a different writer and director.
Rachel:I think at this point, if we are asking for consistency, it's sort of like, what's the definition of insanity? You know, trying to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Yeah. We couldn't even remember how old Jeanette was, so it's fine. It doesn't diminish how good the last episode was.
Rachel:It does diminish how good this episode is.
Rachel:Oh, here's some trivia.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:Rob Stefanuek, the actor who plays Joey, later in 2009, wrote, directed, and starred in a vampire film.
Rachel:Did he now?
Rachel:This must be formative to his film experience.
Rachel:What what vampire film would that be?
Rachel:Suck.
Rachel:I think I've seen that.
Rachel:That's the only IMDB trivia on this episode.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:Oh, wait. No. There's a quote. Never mind. Never mind.
Rachel:Okay. So after they're like, book them, Dano, fuckers going nowhere. He's like, woah. Woah. Woah.
Rachel:Hold up, y'all. I am Joey's sole caregiver. What are we gonna do about Joey?
Rachel:So Reese jumps in. Oh, I'll call, like, social services
Rachel:or whatever. They just look at him. He's like, what about Joey? What do I do about Joey? And they're like, you should've thought about that before you killed somebody in front of him.
Rachel:And then they leave the room. They just brush him off.
Rachel:Oh, I forgot. They're not they're not in the room when they figure out who's gonna take care of him.
Rachel:No. He does not know what happens.
Rachel:So I jokingly pretty much every episode, I jokingly say, oh, you need to take care of somebody. You need a safe place for them to go. They could just go to Nick's place.
Rachel:Even though we haven't done that in, like, a seasonality. Done
Rachel:that in a long time.
Rachel:It just felt so consistent for a while. It was a good guess. Still a good guess because guess what? Y'all. It's where we're going.
Rachel:No. But they don't tell him where Joey is. They don't tell him what they're gonna do with Joey. They inform him not at all as to Joey's whereabouts or how Joey is or what's happening with Joey.
Rachel:At least not on screen. I imagine he
Rachel:on the limb here and say they don't.
Rachel:In my mind, he keeps making a bunch of noise about, where's my fucking nephew? What did you do with him?
Rachel:I hope so.
Rachel:And somebody does. Somebody probably told him.
Rachel:Oh, we sent him home with this random detective. It's perfectly fine.
Rachel:Because he later on, he finds out that Natalie and Nick have been, supervising him. And
Rachel:Oh, we'll get there. Oh, don't blow our load down.
Rachel:Like
Rachel:No. We'll get there.
Rachel:Surprised by that.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if he asked, and they're like, well, there's this detective. We think he's human.
Rachel:He does a really good job. Anyway, we sent him home with him. Here's a child. Take it home with you. Just like in father
Rachel:Nick has taken home several children to his birthday on police business.
Rachel:The first one worked out so fucking well. They just thought
Rachel:He really likes the police department stipend.
Rachel:Is that he's a fucking billionaire. He doesn't care. He just keeps kicking these children off.
Rachel:100 millionaire. Okay. A 500 millionaire?
Rachel:Yeah. Adjusted for inflation, that's $1,000,000,000.
Rachel:Oh, that's right. Yeah. We calculated that.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And still, he's like, well, sure.
Rachel:To be fair, he does not volunteer. Natalie volunteers
Matt:him.
Natalie:Yes.
Rachel:Yeah. So, anyway, he's like, I'm his sole caregiver. What y'all gonna do? And they're like, you don't get to decide. And then they go in Reese's room.
Rachel:You forfeited that that privilege.
Rachel:Well, Reese asks Reese asks Nick, do you think there's any chance the kid could be mistaken? And we're not just calling him a kid because he is cognitively different.
Rachel:But he's 17.
Rachel:17. So he's legally a child. Legally a minor. And so he's like, do you think there's any chance that the kid could be mistaken? And Nick goes, oh, yeah.
Rachel:Totes. He's like, yeah. Totally. This kid could be just yeah. Yeah.
Rachel:He could yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes, actually, I don't even think Henry did it.
Rachel:I just think he's hiding something. I don't even think Henry did it. I think he's hiding something. So instead of taking him back into the interrogation room and getting out whatever it is he thinks he's hiding and or pursuing the investigation to get clues in order to leverage what he thinks he's hiding out of Henry. They're just like, well, we're just gonna arrest him for the murder.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And Reese is like, cool. Okay. Fine. Well, I'll call Juvy. I'll get a place for Joey.
Rachel:And Natalie's like, oh, no. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Rachel:Actually, she shows up. She pops up right after Nick is like, oh, yeah. He could be making this up. I don't know. And she goes, well wait.
Rachel:Okay. Hang on. She goes, well, the killer is right handed, and so is Henry. And Rhys goes, well, that seals it. It.
Rachel:He's like, well, there you go. Exactly. It's like That's greater than 50% of the fucking population. And then That
Rachel:is that is a lower resolution criteria than, oh, the killer was male
Rachel:Or blood type.
Rachel:And so is this guy.
Matt:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes.
Rachel:Or blood type. And they're like, oh, he had a palm print. Nitro had a palm print on his cheek, and it matches Henry. And he had black and yellow fibers under his nails just like the bulldozer costume. And they're all like, well, hell yeah.
Rachel:And Nick goes Nick like raises his hand and he's like, actually, that can all be explained by the promo fight that they had literally just had. And they're all like, who gives this shit? Sounds like evidence to me. And then Tracy pops in. She, like, leans in the door frame, and she's like, I found Eddie Phelps, the trainer that Henry claimed to have gone to see, and he says he was nowhere near the arena that night.
Rachel:So I guess we can say bye bye to Henry's story, and Reese is, like, well, there's the nail in the coffin. We found the trailer. A guy named Eddie Phelps. He swears he was nowhere near the arena tonight.
Matt:That would be the nail in the coffin. May not feel right, but there when is that alright? Okay.
Rachel:The fuck you're doing?
Rachel:What coffin? What evidence?
Rachel:Reese, what happened in the last week for you to change Maybe. From avenging angel, we can't arrest this guy We don't have evidence. The law stops us.
Rachel:And if you're asking yourself, well, of course, we didn't have evidence, but we had an eyewitness in that one. Guess what, y'all? We have an eyewitness in avenging angel as well. So both setups are exactly the same.
Rachel:The only the main difference is in Avenging Angel where we are upholding the book. Yeah. The witness is a woman. Yeah. And in this one where we are minor.
Rachel:Completely. Oh, okay. We have an adult female and a male minor.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we went from, oh, no. No.
Rachel:We need evidence. We need an eyewitness. We need a signed confession.
Rachel:Eyewitness is an adult.
Rachel:Well, I guess, Joey
Rachel:do it by the book.
Rachel:Joey's not a catalog of teenage angst.
Rachel:There's also that. Although he will be.
Rachel:He will be. Yeah. Thanks to Natalie. But he's like, alright. Book Henry.
Rachel:I'm gonna contact Juvy, and this is when Natalie is like, woah. Woah. Woah. He has special needs, and that means he needs special care, like my care. And Reese is like, are you proposing that, like, we keep him like, we babysit him?
Rachel:Like, you know, and Nick is like, well, he isn't. Oh, Tracy, I think, says, oh, he's an eyewitness, actually. Like, he's our only witness. We need to make sure he stays safe, because Natalie says he did not handle even one upset of his routine very well. What if we send him to juvie?
Rachel:He leaves, and he climbs in a car. And this time, he's not as good about his choice of whose car he climbs into. Yeah. And Reese is like, alright. Who wants him?
Rachel:Who wants to volunteer to
Rachel:be his So Natalie volunteers to do it.
Rachel:Parent. And Tracy makes this weird face like, not it. Ew.
Rachel:On on a a chat at work. Yeah. Somebody was like I was asking for some help with updating something, that hasn't been touched since, like, 2021. And so I asked somebody on the that appropriate team, and they said, oh, and it looks like it has so and so's, like, custom thing that they wrote. So it's gonna take some more work to get that, get that working, and I just said, ew.
Rachel:And I think that sums up, which the other guy thought that was funny. Yeah. No. I think this sums up Tracy's reaction of Great.
Rachel:Ew. Although we have to mention, when Natalie says he won't be so lucky about the company he chooses, it begs the question, was he lucky about whose company he chose?
Rachel:In retrospect, after having watched this episode
Rachel:That's a negative captain.
Rachel:Feels lucky?
Rachel:That's a negative captain. That would be a no. And so Natalie volunteers a tribute, and Reese is like, okay. Fine. Great.
Rachel:But it has to be a cop. It should be a cop. Like, sorry, Natalie.
Rachel:Sorry, Natalie. I totally appreciate you volunteering, but you are not an officer of the law.
Rachel:Sorry. You're not in the boys' club, so you don't get to do that. And he looks she looks over at Nick, and it actually whooshes him into a flashback. He's like
Rachel:It's so intense. He's
Matt:like, the thought
Rachel:The obligations she's throwing at him.
Rachel:The I he goes to catch it, and it just it back into the past. And it's Nick and Lacroix watching a grave get filled in, and Lacroix goes, losing a family member is never easy, especially when you had the power to prevent it.
Natalie:The loss of a family member is never easy, especially when you had the power to prevent it.
Nick:It is not what my sister wanted.
Natalie:Time has dulled your memory, Nicholas. It was not what you wanted.
Rachel:That's a fucking burn right there. That's a LaCroix fucking burn because he was like, oh, it's hard to watch her go, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It'd be really bad if you weren't fucking fated mates and somebody stood in between you being able to be together for all of eternity.
Rachel:Yeah. That would be really that would really fucking suck, wouldn't it, Nick?
Rachel:Yeah. Let's just entertain this idea that I was deeply in love with this woman, and and I wanted to turn her into a vampire. And she kinda
Rachel:She dug it.
Rachel:She she was digging it.
Rachel:Yeah. And you were all like,
Rachel:And then you, instead of saying, get the fuck away from her, you said, oh, Fleur, my lovely sister. You are in love with this man, and this man is in love with you. I wish you well on your relationship.
Rachel:Yeah. What do you have
Rachel:leftovers to that extent? Childbirth. What do you think about what would have happened if you'd done that
Rachel:Well, what do you
Rachel:instead of Yeah. Cock blocking me?
Rachel:Yeah. And what Nick actually says is, well, that wasn't what she wanted. And Laquagh goes, oh, friend. Time has dulled your fucking memory, fool, because it is what she wanted. It just
Rachel:been like a week.
Rachel:It just wasn't what you wanted. And Nick goes
Rachel:baby vampire Nick.
Rachel:And Nick goes, I loved her too much to let you subject her to your hell. And Laquaza goes, and I loved her so much. I offered to spend eternity with her. What has your love given her?
Nick:I loved her too much to let you subject her to your help.
Natalie:And I loved Fleur so much that I offered her the gift of eternity. What has your love given her?
Matt:Oof.
Rachel:That's a real good question, isn't it? A short life and a sudden death. That's what his love gave her. A child she didn't get to watch grow up, and a love she never got to be with. And I'm still fucking mad about it, and I can't talk about it anymore.
Rachel:We should move on because LaCroix goes, Au revoir, mon amore. Goodbye, my love. Like, I'm sad about it. It's I'm still sad about that. It's the I want an alternative timeline where they get to be together, and they're just, like, the best.
Rachel:Like, she softens the croiss. Thank you. I don't need a tissue. I appreciate you. I'll I'll make it.
Rachel:I'll make it.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:And Nick is like, well, sure. Whatever. Okay. So, she didn't must not have loved you that much because she wrote me a letter and told me to look after her son. Actually, you made her forget that he existed, so fuck you.
Rachel:Anyway, but Quaas' like, okay. Well, you play the charade. You ease your conscience and, if you wanna, but I think we all know where this is gonna end up, which is truer words, honestly, because we do all know where this is gonna end up. And then we come back to the present because Nick is like, woah, god. Where did that come from?
Rachel:Just poof popped into my head. And Natalie is convincing him to take on Joey. She's like, come on. You've had kids at your house before, and it was they they're still alive somewhere, we think. Actually, we just let them
Rachel:go. Them.
Rachel:We just let them go without actually solving that mob hit thing. So, honestly, I don't know if she's
Rachel:a scam. Heard, they were alive.
Rachel:When they were last fleeing to Alberta, I think they were fighting. And Tracy actually looks really excited about this, and it begs the question. Does she think she is setting them up? Tracy's no fool. She knows Natalie likes Nick, and this is gonna get Nick and Natalie to spend a lot of time together that they wouldn't normally spend time together.
Rachel:Yeah. Because Nick agrees
Rachel:It might give Tracy a break from Nick.
Rachel:Oh, I know. And Nick agrees, and he does this, like, okay. This is, like, little frog. Okay. And Natalie's like, and there are those who say you have a cold heart.
Rachel:Who Natalie?
Rachel:The last episode. Who who Natalie? Dream Who
Rachel:does that?
Rachel:About caring for a child with Natalie.
Rachel:Oh, about her being pregnant. That's the weirdest scene. Well, in no man to let no man tear us under. That's the one where he's, like, cold feet, warm heart, or warm heart, cold feet, or whatever. But, like, who, Natalie?
Rachel:Who says that? Do you? Is that you? Well, you know Nick. He's got a cool heart.
Rachel:And then Reese is like, oh, okay. But I'm gonna go ahead and call juvie anyways because y'all hinky as shit, and I just don't think this is gonna work out. He's like, just in case. And Natalie
Rachel:Sounds like one of Nick's hunches.
Rachel:Natalie looks at Nick and goes, your place or mine? And Nick just goes, mine. It should probably be Natalie's, but that's fine. And Natalie already has, like, a kitchen with food in it and shit and more than 1 bedroom.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:But it's fine. Okay. Anyway, it's fine. And Nick ends up going back to the arena. He's like, I need a minute to process what just happened to me.
Rachel:I just got railroaded into taking yet another human child into my house, so I'm gonna go to the arena. And this is when he finds the janitor cleaning in this closed off crime scene, and he's like, don't clean in here. And the guy's like, oh, okay. I'm sorry. And he's like, you should be.
Rachel:And he just lets the guy go. Like, this guy isn't in a crime scene with cleaning materials. He doesn't verify his employment. He doesn't get who he is. He doesn't ask him for ID.
Rachel:He doesn't ask him any questions. He's, like, just don't clean in here right now. And the guy's, like, oh, okay. Thank you. And Nick's like, you're so welcome.
Rachel:And then he just walks around the corner, and there's, like, an one open locker. There's
Rachel:Okay. It's his locker that had crime scene tape over it, and the tape had fallen down. Yeah. And it's open. Somebody had opened that locker
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:That had been shut and sealed. And a guy just left that had been around the corner right where that locker was.
Rachel:And Nick's like, oh, good. He's like, I don't have to break the tape. Sweet. And he just opens the door, and he pulls out 2 bulldozer costumes, and he's like, hell, yeah. That's evidence.
Rachel:Let me rub my hands all over it.
Rachel:He's not shocked. This thing is unlocked. This is the least secure crime scene I've ever seen in my life, and he's like, hell, yeah. That's evidence. And then we go back to Nick's, and Joey is actually cooking in the kitchen, which okay.
Rachel:Great. It's got, like, a counter with a sink in it and and a stove. It's like the weirdest little galley kitchen. It's the bachelor kitchen. It's like the definition of bachelor kitchen.
Rachel:It's the appearance of a kitchen, the seeming of a kitchen.
Rachel:Yeah. And he's like, well, you know, I I knew most of the cooking. Joey's telling Natalie. He's like, I knew most the cooking. Henry likes how I cook.
Rachel:And she goes, oh, do you like Henry as much as you like bulldozer? Or he says, actually, I like Henry almost as much as I like bulldozer. And Natalie goes, you know they are the same person. Right? And he goes, you don't know much about wrestling, do you?
Rachel:Which is kinda cute. You know? Yeah. Yeah. He has, like, a superhero alter ego.
Rachel:And Nick arrives, and Natalie's like, we're making soap. She, like, announces it really loud. And then he walks she walks over to Nick, and he goes, oh, how domestic. Just please don't make me eat anything. And then he pulls up this costume, which is stuck in, like, a spirit Halloween bag.
Rachel:It's, like, shoved in this plastic bag with, like, ends popping out the end, and he's like, I'll find some evidence. And she's like, oh, it's black and yellow. That must mean bulldozer did it because we found black and yellow fibers under nitrous. This is so bad. I can't even with this episode.
Rachel:Nothing. We don't swab the inside for DNA. We don't there's no chain of custody. We don't know where this bulldozer costume came from, except it came out of that locker, but the locker was sealed and then unsealed.
Rachel:Was tampered.
Rachel:And there was a guy in the crying fucking cat. Anyway, and she tells him that she doesn't think Joey knows that Henry and bulldozer are the same person, which we kind of got as a hint at the very beginning. And Nick's like, oh, okay. Cool. So he walks over to talk to Joey, and he actually tries to hypnotize him into remembering more than he already said, even though Joey is clearly scared and upset and unsettled by this conversation, And we get this weird zoom in eye hypnotism thing where they're like, Nick's eye, Joey's eye, Nick's eye, Joey's eye with like a heartbeat sound.
Rachel:And it doesn't work obviously because Nick sucks at this. And then we cut to, like, Joey's asleep on the couch, which again, this is a studio apartment, so it's all one room and Nick and Natalie are in the kitchen. Like, that's private and isolated, And they're having, like, a shout conversation in the kitchen about how Joey's testimony is going to get him put into a state facility and get his uncle behind bars.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And Nick actually says, we aren't done investigating yet. They aren't.
Rachel:You've barely done anything.
Rachel:I mean, they kind of are in that they never actually intended to investigate this because Joey was like, bulldozer did it, and they were like Slam dunk. Fucking yes.
Rachel:Case closed.
Rachel:And then Nick says, if only his brain was normal. And that's a quote. And Natalie goes, it was normal though. He got this way from like a high fever and meningitis when he was little. So it's damage, and damage could, and I'm just spitballing here, be healed.
Rachel:And maybe there's a way that you could do that. And Nick just goes, no. And she's like, it's just it's just a teeny little wafer. It's just like the tiniest little
Matt:bit of
Rachel:A tiny little drop of vampire blood.
Rachel:He's like she's like, I'm not asking you to bring him over. I'm just telling you to give him just, like, the littlest bit of vampire blood. And he's like,
Rachel:no. Did I stutter?
Rachel:Did I no. Did I fucking stutter? I believe I said no. He completely shuts her down. He's like, we are not even entertaining Didn't we have a whole episode about what happens when you give people vampire blood?
Rachel:They stay young, and then they go a little bit crazy, and they kill people. I'm pretty sure we had that episode. It's if looks could kill. It's in episode 1. Go find it.
Rachel:Season 1.
Rachel:Season 1. Sorry. Season 1 episode, whatever. If looks could kill. And Nick goes, it's not worth the risk.
Rachel:It might even be temporary. And that goes, we don't know that. We don't know if it's risky. We don't know if it's temporary, which means it could be risky, that. And he says, and it's true, it's not fair to Joey.
Rachel:It is not fair to Joe to treat Joey when he cannot consent to the treatment you are giving him because even you don't know the parameters of the treatment you are giving him.
Rachel:It's an experimental treatment.
Rachel:Yeah. And Natalie goes, and sending his uncle to prison is? Do you know what the reason?
Rachel:It's not even experimental. So, literally, the scientific method is fuck around and find out.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And but you have to write it down for it to be an experiment.
Rachel:Yeah. Because she's,
Rachel:like, Natalie Natalie's, like, no notes.
Rachel:Have no notes. Well, she says in sending his uncle to prison is, and then, they're still investigating. The only reason his uncle is gonna go to prison over this is because everyone is doing what Laura Stone thought they were doing in the previous episode, which is being wildly incompetent at their job.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:If for one second we were like, why was that janitor in a sealed crime scene cleaning up? None of this would be necessary. And Nick actually says he's like, come on. We are still investigating. We have literally nothing on this guy.
Rachel:He doesn't say this, but it's true. We have literally nothing on this guy except that Joe it's Joey seeing him. And Joey still he saw a man in a full face mask kill another guy. This isn't getting through any court of law. Okay.
Rachel:Hopefully. I don't know. Maybe if you had a really lax jury in judge. But
Rachel:Maybe in Texas.
Rachel:Maybe in Texas. They're like, oh, black eye? God. Done. Okay.
Rachel:Oh, black mask? Same thing. So Natalie
Rachel:Close enough.
Rachel:Nicholas enough. Natalie's like, Natalie wanted a guinea pig is what she wanted. She wanted a guinea pig, and would you look at that? The universe just threw one in her lap.
Rachel:Woah. Not even like she volunteered for this.
Rachel:Oh. Oh. Wait. Oh. Yeah.
Rachel:And they actually wake up Joey because they're literally shouting in the kitchen, and Nick is like, I think we all need some sleep, actually. We all need some sleep. Where's Natalie gonna sleep? He goes upstairs to bed. He's like, I'm going to my fuck sheets.
Rachel:I'll see y'all later. And Joey has the couch, which means Natalie has the
Rachel:the sheets.
Rachel:The painting table, the kitchen I don't know where she's supposed to sleep.
Rachel:Where's the woman supposed to spend her time? The kitchen.
Rachel:Don't even with me right now. Uh-uh. Hang on. I needed a minute to mentally recover from that. And then Joey is like, it's not even really bedtime because the sun's up.
Rachel:And she's like, well, if you've been up all night, then day is your night. You know? And then
Rachel:Unless you are our daughter.
Rachel:We're not talking
Matt:about our daughter right now.
Rachel:She's it's okay.
Rachel:At her sleep or lack thereof.
Rachel:Just doesn't like to sleep. There's too much happening in life. Well, you can't be unconscious for half of it. That's what
Rachel:I'm doing. Out every hour through the entire night just to check that I'm not missing out on anything.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Because
Rachel:The FOMO is faxed. FOMO. Yeah. Yeah. And somebody turned it up to 11, and she didn't know how to turn it down.
Rachel:And Joey is actually like, I wish Henry was here. Is he coming back? When am I gonna get Henry? And Natalie's like, oh, I know a way to get Natalie. I know I know a way to get Henry back.
Rachel:And so she goes into the refrigerator where she has a sample of Nick's blood. She what is it doing? Aging? Why does she
Rachel:not do this? Why it's in Nick's fridge. But Well,
Rachel:it's not like she can take it to I don't know. It doesn't fucking
Matt:have it.
Rachel:Oh, oh, the plot device put it there.
Rachel:Oh, okay. Because she pulls the blood out, and she's like she puts it back. And then and then she, like, leans on the refrigerator and puts her hand in her mouth, like, I just don't know. And she must just be contemplating her treachery because as soon as we come back from the commercial break, she's giving Joey blood against his wishes. He's like, I don't want it.
Rachel:And she's like, of course, you do. And he's like, it's gonna hurt. And she's like, well, it might hurt a little, but it's gonna help you. He's like, I don't like it. Drugs are bad.
Rachel:And she's like, not this drug. He's like, no. I do not consent. And she's like, what's consent?
Rachel:Who needs consent?
Rachel:It's fine. She goes, I think you're brave just like your wrestling friends. Aren't you? And he goes, I guess, and she goes, good boy. But I think you're brave.
Rachel:Just like your wrestling friends, you are brave. Aren't you, Joey?
Natalie:Yeah. I'm brave.
Rachel:Good boy. Now show me how brave you can really be. That's some fucked up shit, Natalie. Yeah. Using his interest against him
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:In a way that you're not sure whether it will actually cause permanent harm. That's some what if this had done something? What if he had actually succeeded in ending his own life at the end of this episode? Right. Good boy.
Rachel:I know you're brave just like your wrestling friends. And then we cut to the arena, and they're making a promo memorializing Nitro, And they immediately go from, like, we're sorry. Nitro died, and the other guy's like, I'm not sorry. And then they go to some showmanship. And they needed a promo to replace the one that they had with Nitro and Bulldozer because, of course, Nitro is not gonna be fighting anymore.
Rachel:So it's sort of like the heartless business is just rolling on sort of thing. My favorite part about this is the promoter guy is like speaking into the camera, and behind him, the wrestlers are like cuddling. Like, they're supposed to be fighting, but one has the other guy in his arms, and they're just, like, hugging each other. It's
Rachel:really funny. I noticed or I remarked that the promoter does a pretty good job Yeah. With acting.
Rachel:Yeah. Oh, no. He's good. He's sweet.
Natalie:From a
Rachel:full, like, full aggressive, you know, talking, like, selling this
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:This event. And then as soon as the camera's off, he's like, boom. Yeah. Chill.
Rachel:He Yeah.
Rachel:Like, instantly changes body language and his facial expression.
Rachel:Yeah. Yeah. And the same janitor who we saw earlier who looks a little bit like Stone Cold. Every time I see him, I'm like, not him. Not Stone Cold.
Rachel:He actually, like, tries to call the promoter guy over. He's like, can I talk to you for a minute? He's like, not right now, Johnny. I got police business. And he just turns around and They're
Rachel:right there in the corner of the ring. They had to have been there the whole time. That would have been so awkward. Like, they were behind the cameraman.
Rachel:He's like, I can't
Matt:I can't.
Rachel:The police have literally been standing in there. This
Rachel:feels like a slapstick bit. It's like, hold on. I gotta go do I gotta go talk to these people. And he just turns around
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And the camera pans 6 inches to the right. Boop. There they
Matt:are. Yeah.
Rachel:It feels like the slapstick bit where it's like the people sitting at the table and then the guy in the kitchen, and he's running back and forth between the doors. Mhmm. Yeah. That's exactly what it feels like. And then we go up to his office.
Rachel:He's like, to my office because it's really awkward that you guys have been fucking staying here this whole time.
Matt:We gotta go
Rachel:Just watching this film.
Rachel:So he takes him up to his office, and he's like, that Henry is gonna cost me a lot of money. I hope he rots. And they're like, wow. That's not a lot that's not nice to say about him. He's like, Nitro was my top wrestler.
Rachel:The only reason wrestlers like Bulldozer exist is to get beat up by wrestlers like Nitro.
Rachel:And so Nick pulls a, well, actually, we we don't really have any evidence. So we're back to square 1.
Rachel:Oh, no. No. Not yet. No. They're convinced this guy is the bad guy.
Rachel:They're just here to to dot the i's and cross the t's.
Rachel:Do the due diligence. Excuse me.
Rachel:The i's and dot the t's. That's what they're here to do.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And so, the promoter is like, the bull bulldozer was, like, moody. He was hard to deal with. He's annoying. He didn't have a lot of friends in the last couple of months. And Nick is like, so why'd you keep him around?
Rachel:And he goes, well, because he was getting kinda better, and he had that kid to support. I had a weak moment. I'm human. Okay? And Nick is like, well, why do you think he would risk it by killing Nitro?
Rachel:Like, what's the motive here? Well, oh, well, the the the what?
Matt:The the
Rachel:Wait. You have to have a
Rachel:Motive. Motive? Motive. Motive? Motive?
Rachel:Motto? Is that, like, a saying that like, take back the night is a motive. Okay. Alright. Does he have a motive?
Rachel:And the guy's like, Yeah. Nitro was threatening to bring him up on charges with the wrestling association, And Nick's like, ding ding ding. Got him again. Then we come back to Joey
Rachel:Slam double slam dunk.
Rachel:Hell, yeah. We're just buttoning this up so darn.
Matt:This feels
Rachel:so good. And then we come back to Joey watching the promo, like, the wrestling promo that we just filmed, and he actually turns it off. And he turns around to talk to Natalie because Natalie's like, don't don't don't don't don't. Fucking damn it. She's trying to work on this laptop, and it's giving her rage.
Rachel:This sounds exactly like Rachel using the computer.
Rachel:Shut up. Then nobody needs to know that.
Rachel:Just a okay. Rachel. Rachel. Imagine you are trying to modem something
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Somewhere else. Yeah. Would you struggle with that?
Rachel:Of course, I would. I don't even know what she's talking about. She goes, I'm trying to do modemization. She goes,
Rachel:I'm trying to do Modeming modem. This is the first time I've ever heard modem
Matt:as a verb.
Rachel:Maybe Nick wrote this line. Yeah. Yeah. I wrote this line. He was like, modems are on computers.
Rachel:Right? It's fine.
Rachel:This is English. You can verb any noun and noun any verb.
Rachel:Yeah. It's fine. Natalie's had a computer at her home because in undue process, she looks up the bad guy at her own house. So she has Yeah.
Rachel:But she does that. It's a modem a report.
Rachel:That's true. She's trying to modem a report to her office, and she's got, like, a little booklet, like, a extraction This is whatever this runs. And Joey comes over and he's like, oh, she gets up to get coffee to, like, calm down. He sits at that and he, like, tap, tap, taps 2 things, looks at the at the book because as we all know, and I think everyone in this room can agree, and everybody listening to the podcast can agree, the only kind of smart is computer smart.
Rachel:I have a spin on this.
Rachel:Oh, okay.
Rachel:Vampire blood.
Matt:I
Rachel:love it. You, like, literally spun that up with your hand. You, like, rolled it around for a minute. Okay. Go ahead.
Rachel:Go ahead.
Rachel:For vampires, blood conveys memories.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And we all know that Nick is really proficient with computers.
Rachel:He's always f nineing when he should be f 10ing. No. No. No. No.
Rachel:No. No. You wanna get rid of it. Okay. Hold on.
Rachel:Alright.
Rachel:Nick
Rachel:Alright.
Rachel:Corrected Skanky when Skanky was f 10ing when he should have been f 11 Back
Rachel:when we used to have computers on our desk at the precinct, which we don't anymore.
Rachel:When Yeah. When Nick's partner always has a computer at their desk
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Which is still the case.
Rachel:No. No. Tracy doesn't have one.
Rachel:Tracy has one.
Rachel:Does she?
Rachel:She did on the last episode.
Rachel:Oh, okay.
Rachel:Maybe this episode. But I I remarked on it last episode. So when Natalie injected Nick's blood into Joey
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:It carried with it all of Nick's computer proficient. Wait.
Rachel:Wait. And now he knows how to modem?
Rachel:And now he knows how to modem things.
Rachel:Wait. Wait. Wait. You really wanna go there? Okay.
Rachel:Let's whoop whoop. Let's back up a little bit because we also know that the only blood in a vampire's body is the blood of the things, Rick. So he now feels extremely proficient at.
Rachel:Except this blood has been processed by Nick.
Rachel:Yeah. But it's still cow blood. It's not like he turned it into people blood. Natalie injected this kid with vampire processed
Rachel:cow blood. Jeanette would do their bitey bitey thing.
Rachel:Yeah. Which they haven't in a while.
Rachel:That's They would they would convey memories to each other.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:So when Jeanette bit Nick, she would get some of Nick's lived experience. Right?
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:So, ostensibly, after the blood has been processed into Nick's veins, it now contains
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:Nick's memories.
Rachel:Alright. Alright. I'll give you that one. That's fine. I'll give you that one.
Rachel:In fact, Nick has probably been drinking human blood, so it's probably human blood. Oh, yeah. Anyway
Rachel:Same Lacroix as usual.
Rachel:She is now able to modem her report over because he figures out her computer with, like, 2 tap taps. And Natalie goes, it worked. It worked. And, spoiler alert, she doesn't mean the computer. She means
Rachel:That's not what she's excited about.
Rachel:No. And let me come back to Henry in the interrogation room, and they're like, so when were you gonna tell us that Nitro, was bringing you up on charges? And he was like, oh, it's just like locker room talk. That's fine. They're like, oh, no.
Rachel:He had scheduled a meeting with the governing board. This was fucking happening, and Henry blandishes a little. He obfuscates some, and then Nick is like, okay. Okay. So let me guess.
Rachel:It's drugs.
Rachel:Sniff sniff.
Rachel:It's drugs. And he's like, what? No. What? No.
Rachel:No. No. And then Nick looks over at Tracy, and he's like, cool. Cool. Tracy, can you go order a blood test for our friend here, for mister Henry Ellis?
Rachel:And he's like, okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
Rachel:We don't we don't we don't need to do that because, when I said I was I
Rachel:just remembered.
Rachel:See how I said I was in the room because I had a twinge in my back? I was actually in the stairwell making a buy.
Rachel:With the guy who said he never saw me that day.
Rachel:Yeah. And he says, I started using a couple of years ago. Things weren't going well. I was losing my cut.
Rachel:Losing my cut.
Rachel:I was losing my edge, and he said, Joey's hero was the bulldozer. Because when his parents died and he came to live with me, he didn't have anything. And then as soon as he found wrestling, he lit up, and that was his thing. And I was his hero, and I didn't wanna stop being his hero. And he goes, you don't know what it's like to have someone put you on a pedestal like that.
Rachel:And Nick's like, I do actually, like, switched back into a flashback. And this is when
Rachel:Nick Now that you mentioned it.
Rachel:This is when Nick and Hayden Christensen, who is also called Andre, but it's Hayden Christensen, are eating at this table. Actually, Andre is carving a cross because Nick's come comes over, and he's like, oh, a cross. Yeah. That's that's looking great. You can set that over there.
Rachel:You could set that over on the side. And Andre goes, uncle Nicholas, why don't you eat with me? And he goes, after I eat after you're asleep, Andre, which, truer words as we will soon find out. Are you looking to see if this was the first thing he was in? And then we hear, like, tap, tap, tap, and it's Lacroix.
Rachel:I think it's funny that Lacroix literally means the cross.
Rachel:Yeah. Lucian Lacroix is like the light of the cross. Yeah. Yeah. He knocks.
Rachel:Lacroix knocks, which I don't know why because then he just walks right the fuck out. Tap, tap, tap. Oh, yeah.
Matt:He just walks straight.
Rachel:And then he goes, aren't you gonna introduce me?
Matt:It's it's
Rachel:just a little bit of warning before he comes in. It's not a request to enter It's
Rachel:a I'm coming. Work. I'm here. He goes, aren't you gonna introduce me? I knew your mother.
Rachel:The first pop up notification.
Rachel:He is the 1st troll, so why not? Yeah. And then Andre goes, really? Mom never talked about you. And Nick is like, shh shh shh shh shh shh shh.
Rachel:Just go to bed. And Andre is like, cool. See you later. Bye. He goes to bed.
Rachel:And Lacroix goes, he has her eyes with this really longing tone.
Rachel:Poor Lacroix.
Rachel:God. We had Nigel Bennett for 3 seasons, and 4 episodes from the end, we finally like Nigel. Just go for broke, man. Do what you want. We could've done that 3 years ago.
Rachel:Make us feel all of LaCroix's emotions.
Rachel:Oh, I'm so sad that this is we finally get, like, the LaCroix you always want. Not the, the, like, mustache, girly villain, but the, like, I am a complex, deep character. And for a for a villain to feel real, he should have a point you agree with.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:And I completely agree that look that Nicholas was not in the right speaking for Fleur. And, of course, she wouldn't have had Andre, but, I mean, what happens to Andre? Andre runs off. Nick doesn't chase him. We don't find out what happens to Andre.
Rachel:We never find out.
Rachel:He could run out in the snow and starve to death in the forest. We have no idea. And if he dies, like, a month after after he runs off, then all of it was for fucking nothing. It was for nothing.
Rachel:She could for Nick's vanity.
Rachel:She could have had a love. And even if they were only together for, like, I'm sorry. Here I am. This is why you handed me a tissue.
Rachel:Yes.
Rachel:It could have been together even if they were only together for like a 100 years, and then they realized that they had grown apart, they could have eventually come back together. She would have at least
Rachel:gotten back together. Years and 11 months longer than they got.
Rachel:I'm so fucking mad, and I'm never gonna not be mad about it. It's fine. It's fine. And Lacroix is like, okay. Cool.
Rachel:Does he know your secret? And Nick is like, what? No. Andre loves me for who I am. And LaCroix is like, you don't know who you are.
Rachel:And he's like, you look back to show that. He's like, no. No. What's more what's important to him is who I am, not what I am. Andre loves me for me.
Rachel:He loves me for me, Not because and LaCroix goes,
Matt:mhmm.
Rachel:Sure. And then he just leaves. He's like, yes. Let's see how that plays out. And then we come back, and we find out from Henry that it's actually Eddie Phillips.
Rachel:Yeah. Eddie Phillips, the guy who is the trainer. He's the one who's the seller because he's like, what if because he's like, you know, that's a drug can you know, using drugs is not great, but it doesn't get you off the murder charge. He's like, what about if it's my alibi? And I can have somebody back me up that I was there.
Rachel:And then he actually goes, is there any chance we can keep the steroid thing quiet? No. That's not a okay. That's fine. That's fine.
Rachel:And then they end up walking out, and Nick returns to his apartment to find Joey typing on the computer and trying to access a university library. And he's like, Natalie, it's asking for a password. Do you have one? And she goes, password? I thought you were in a chat room.
Rachel:So not only did she give this child vampire blood, she gave him unrestricted access to early 2000's Internet. Natalie, chat rooms were not all okay. And then Natalie comes out of the bathroom, and Nick gets
Rachel:might be on 1
Rachel:of them. I know. Hey. I made a friend. His name is Rosebud.
Rachel:She seems really cool, But Natalie comes out of the bathroom and Nick gives her this look. That's like, are you fucking serious right now? And she's like, what? I mean, the betrayal. He let her have his blood as a like, that was a gesture of trust.
Matt:Right.
Rachel:He's contagious. He's fucking contagious, and he gave her her his blood as, like, a, I know you're gonna do good things with this. You're gonna help me.
Rachel:I know you only have my best interests at heart.
Rachel:So I'm gonna let you have this, and she takes it and gives it to somebody
Rachel:Injects it into a literal child.
Rachel:After he explicitly told her, no. That's a fallen idol right there. Yeah. Yeah. And she goes, I'm sorry, Nick.
Rachel:I had to. And he looks at her like, the fuck you did? Sorry, Nick. I had to. She goes, I had to do something.
Rachel:I couldn't just stand by and watch. And Nick goes, how much did you give him? He's gotta know. Is this kid gonna turn into a vampire? Vampire?
Rachel:What am I working with here? What the fuck did you do, Natalie? And she's like, it wasn't a lot. It was like, I don't know. I didn't write it down.
Rachel:I have no notes.
Rachel:I took no notes.
Rachel:2 cc's maybe. I don't know. A very small dose. And he maybe now he can give you a lead, and you can get Henry off the hook. And then everything's copacetic.
Rachel:Everything's fine now and Nick goes, including Joey. Is Joey fine now? And that's when Joey starts yelling at the computer and throwing stuff. Almost, like, one might say irritable as if you were on steroids, which is probably the paradox you're making here. And Nick pulls him back, and he's like, unhand me, sir.
Rachel:And Nick's like, do you understand what is happening to me? And Joe what's happening to you? Do you understand what's happening to you? And Joey goes, yeah. Natalie said she gave me a shot, and it made me smarter.
Rachel:And Nick walks over like, oh, is he fine? Did that look fine to you? And Natalie goes Can
Rachel:you, Natalie, can you pronounce mood swings?
Rachel:Irritability? Homicidal? Can you can I buy
Rachel:Violant tendencies?
Rachel:Can I buy a vowel? And Natalie goes, oh, so he's a little edgy. It's totally understandable. And he's like, you didn't even consider the side effects. How many times do I have to tell you that you don't have even the tiniest fucking clue of what I go through every single day.
Rachel:You have absolutely no conception of what it means to be a vampire and what I am always not doing. Remember when you asked me to change your brother and you asked me what happened to my humanity and I told you that you were the only one that ever thought I had any? Did I fucking stutter?
Rachel:I wasn't exaggerating.
Rachel:Do you remember when I changed your brother into a vampire and you told me he was the best guy ever and he was actually a white knight, and within 24 hours, he went on a murder spree? Do you recall that, Natalie? And then we cut to Joey giving a pre a new statement at the precinct, and he's giving basically the same story. And Tracy goes, wow. He just seems so much more articulate.
Rachel:Thank you, Tracy. Thank you for the observation. And Natalie just goes, yeah. He's a lot more relaxed now. He was under so much stress.
Rachel:He is still in the precinct. His uncle is still arrested. He's giving another statement. He's not under stress now, but it's fine. It's fine.
Rachel:And Nick is actually in there leading him through this statement. And not leading him as in feeding him lines, but, like, okay. Let's put ourselves back in there. Like, let's really remember. What else do you remember?
Rachel:Was there anything unusual? And he says, well, he didn't have this robe that I gave him after the promo, and he was wearing these weird gloves. Like, they weren't they weren't leather gloves. They were different, and he actually refused to talk to me. Well, he might not be Henry.
Rachel:If it was Henry, he would have just talked to me. It's not Henry, and they're like, goddamn it.
Rachel:Wipe the tape. No. We can't lose this case.
Rachel:Got nothing now. He said it wasn't Henry, and we'll slam fucking dunk it's not Henry.
Rachel:This statement is contradicting our eyewitness right after the scene.
Rachel:He's like, okay.
Rachel:Throw it out.
Rachel:Okay. So giving him medicine to clarify his statement, to make his statement more valid implies that Natalie believed his statement was unreliable previously, and that they were hinging a whole murder conviction on just his eyewitness statement which she did not believe was accurate. Because she felt he needed to have a shot of vampire blood in order to be out actually able to say what happened to him, which implies she didn't believe he was previously capable of saying what happened to him.
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:I just wanna throw that out there. The application of a remedy implies she believed he had a problem that needed to be remedied. Yeah. I'm just gonna get 2 plates already. Why not throw a 3rd plate on there?
Rachel:I'm going to drop that right there. And this is when Joey says, Henry would have talked to him and it proves it wasn't Henry and Henry, and everyone's like, well, there goes that. Even Reese is like, you're without a suspect now, veteran. And Tracy goes, working on it. And Joey goes with Natalie back to the morgue because they're like, well, that just lets Henry completely off the hook.
Rachel:After we confirm his alibi, it actually does. So congratulations. All they ever had to do was confirm that alibi, and they could none of this all was necessary. And while they're there, Joey's like, can I check out the cold room? And Natalie's like, are you sure you wanna include this on the tour?
Rachel:He's like, I can't go to the morgue and not look at a couple of stiffs. Oof. And then he goes in and checks out Nitro's body and he says stupid. Like he says stupid a lot in this episode and it it's always jarring to me because we actively don't use stupid at home. It's just one of those words that I just find triggering.
Rachel:So we usually say silly or something else, but never stupid. So he when every time he says it in this episode, it stands out to me, and so he looks at Nitro, and he goes stupid. And Natalie goes, what's stupid? And she's like he says stupid what my uncle does to look like this. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. And this is when we catch Eddie, and Nick actually just shortcuts it. He whooshes into the stairwell, and he's like, hi, Eddie, and he just grabs him and takes him. Yoink. Yeah.
Rachel:Yoink. He goes, where the hell did you come from? And bap badda da. We have now caught Eddie. So that just we didn't need to make that plot any longer.
Rachel:We got Joey shit to talk about. And then Nick is actually on the phone in the promoter's office, and he's like, well, we got Henry's alibi, and we got our drug collar. So 2 birds, 1 stone, good to go. And the promoter is, like, shouting on the other end of the line, and he goes, can you make sure that they know that to the best of my knowledge, this is a drug free sport? And Reese goes, yeah.
Rachel:And blue pigs whistle Dixie in the dark.
Natalie:Please tell him that we knew nothing of this. To the best of my knowledge, this is a drug free sport.
Nick:Did you get any of that?
Matt:Yeah. And blue pigs whistled Dixie in the dark. Alright.
Rachel:I don't know what that means.
Matt:I don't
Rachel:know what that means.
Rachel:It sounds unlikely.
Rachel:It was I feel
Rachel:like I should know that.
Rachel:That was the quote on IMDB.
Rachel:Blue pig's little Dixie in the dark? Yeah. I feel like we should know. This is we live in land, so which is to say the shitty southern United States. He goes, find me another suspect.
Rachel:Turn that place upside down and shake it hard. I feel like this is really, really thoughtless advice for Reese to give. Like, just pick a guy and make him your suspect. Jesus Christ. How hard can it be?
Rachel:We picked that guy at random. Pick another one. And I like to think that the turn that place upside down and shake it hard is actually in honor of Beefcake Booty Short, who for sure died of the plague because we have not seen him since fever.
Rachel:I Googled blue pigs whistle dixie, and the only result
Rachel:Is forever night.
Rachel:Is the forever night episode.
Rachel:Can we take a moment of silence for beefcake booty short? Thank you for joining us.
Rachel:Now you just have to remember to not trim that silos.
Rachel:I can make I could put it back in. So at the morgue, Joey's using a computer still, but he's like, boop boop. This is me using the computer. Kinda boop boop. Goddamn it, Matthew.
Rachel:Come fix it. And so he can't use it anymore, so, obviously, that means he's going back to the way he was. And this is when Henry shows up, and he's like, Joey, my buddy. Like, I'm so excited to see you. And Joey's like, no.
Rachel:He's yelling at Natalie. He's too busy to greet Henry. And he's like
Rachel:He's like, give me more of the shot.
Rachel:He's like, if Henry can have a shot for his muscles, I should be able to have a shot for my brain.
Rachel:And Henry's like
Rachel:You what now?
Rachel:The fuck are you talking about?
Rachel:You what now? Henry is confused and frustrated as he damn well should be.
Rachel:Yes.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Outraged? Completely ragely.
Rachel:Yeah. And he's like, Joey, sit down. We're gonna figure out what's happening. He's like, don't talk to me like that, Henry. I'm not stupid.
Rachel:I know you shoot up. And he, like, confronts Natalie. Henry's like, what is he talking about? What the hell did you do to him? What the hell did you do to him?
Rachel:Which good question. That's an excellent question.
Rachel:Sanctioned medical procedure did you give my minor child without my consent and directly against his consent? Natalie.
Rachel:Yeah. And so Joey snatches Natalie's bag and pushes Henry down and yeeps. He leaves. And then he goes to Nick's to get more blood because he knows where the blood came from, and now he's got a syringe in the blood. Pack and play.
Rachel:He's ready to go. So let me go back to the arena, and Nick and Tracy are looking through the lockers. This is a really fucking long time after the crime, and these lockers are in public spaces when people have had plenty of chances to dispose of evidence. Yeah. What are you hoping to find?
Rachel:And there's actually a moment where this wrestler behind Tracy slams his hand on the locker, and he scares both Nick and Tracy like they both jump and turn. That's aggressive. That's a super aggressive action, to these 2 police officers who are investigating a murder, and they don't say anything. We, in fact, make an immediate joke because Tracy pulls a jockstrap out of the locker and holds it up
Matt:Yeah.
Rachel:And makes a face. Okay. And then we immediately talk to that same asshat wrestler because he's getting his mended uniform back from Johnny, who's, like, the jack of all trades. And they're like, oh, what what was that all about? And he's like, oh, that guy does everything.
Rachel:He fixes all of our stuff. He fixes our mends our costumes, everything. They're like, oh, does he have access to all the lockers? And he's like, yeah.
Rachel:Duh.
Rachel:Did they never ask? Did no one ask if anyone else had access to the locker room or access to the lockers? They were just like, well, if it's in his locker, it's his and it's evidence, and he did it.
Rachel:We already have an eyewitness statement. Oh my god. We don't need to investigate anymore.
Rachel:And Tracy goes, he's kinda big for handyman, and the guy's like, yeah. He tried to join, but he washed out, and he keeps looking for another chance. Wow. Is that what they call a motive? Is that is that a motive?
Rachel:Once again, this guy is just, like, mid thirties dad bod.
Rachel:Yeah. And he actually bolts. Nick, like, looks over at him, and he's like, oh, shit. And he dips, and then Nick pursues him. And then we go back to Joey because Joey's at Nick's, and he breaks the mirror, like, the mirror that has been in every season over on the wall.
Rachel:It's the one that he sees in Laquan and Curioser and Curioser. Mhmm. It's like a it's been there forever, but, hey, we don't need to get this set together at
Rachel:the beginning. Of the end.
Rachel:So he just bangs on the glass with the end of a candlestick, and he breaks it. And then he, like, stares at himself in this broken reflection, which is really heartbreaking because what Natalie does to this poor child is really fucking heartbreaking. And then Nick whooshes up behind Johnny meanwhile, and he ends up throwing him against the wall. Like, they're, like, grabbing each other's neck, and he goes, give it up, Charlie. And he's like, vampire voice.
Rachel:And this is where you know Garrett, this is like this one. Garrett's vanity scene.
Rachel:Yeah. Because he's like, nah. He throws him against the wall and he goes, now I know why he washed out.
Rachel:If I, a mild mannered homicide detective, can just toss this guy against the wall, what chance does he have in a real wrestling match? Or maybe I'm just so manly that I could be a wrestler.
Rachel:Well, maybe that was his next line, but then his phone rings. And it's actually Natalie telling Nick, Joey's missing. And he's like, oh, okay. Tracy
Rachel:Totally takes the wind out of Nick's side.
Rachel:Know. He's like, can you can you wrap this up? Because, they're having a problem with Joey. And she's like, oh, okay. And so meanwhile, Joey's still in Nick's apartment but apparently investigating his fuck sheets because he's in his room.
Rachel:He finds the box of raven matches. Like, you thought their use as a plot device was over, but ho ho no. They're back because he's like, oh, the raven. That sounds great. So Nick flies to the loft, and he actually arrives just before Natalie and Henry, and he finds the fridge open, and he runs over, and he's like, oh, shit.
Rachel:He took the blood, and he doesn't close the fridge.
Rachel:Come on, dude.
Rachel:Just fuck. He's not used to having anything in it that matters, I guess. Yeah. So So it doesn't matter. But then we go to Joey at the Raven, and we actually get a look of what his vision looks like, and it looks like the lady's vision did and if looks could kill the, like, swimming thing.
Rachel:But to him, it looks like everybody's laughing at him. So this woman comes over to talk to him because he's combed his hair. He got his
Rachel:hair wet and brushed it forward.
Rachel:Yeah. And
Rachel:And this this girl comes over, I guess, to flirt with him.
Rachel:Yeah. And then he gets all ragey, murdery. He breaks a glass bottle, and he, like, holds it up to this lady's neck. Is everyone at the Raven 12? Everybody in this scene looks like bring your child to work day.
Rachel:We'll put them in the Raven.
Rachel:Okay. So after fever, right, there's a lot of there's a lot of opened up space. There's a lot of vacancies in the vampire population.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:So we need some new recruits.
Rachel:And we know it was not about changing a child into a vampire.
Rachel:Teenagers.
Rachel:Yeah. I don't know. I just wrote, is this the bronze, like, from Buffy?
Rachel:The the the club that the high schoolers go to?
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. And then we cut back to the precinct because Johnny is, like, in the interrogation room with his head down, and they're like, wow. We got a full confession. All we had to do was ask the guy who actually did it, and he just told us everything we needed to know. Who fucking knew?
Rachel:And that's just to wrap up that plot line. Did you like that plot line? Because it does now.
Rachel:It's gone.
Rachel:It's gone.
Rachel:Bye bye.
Rachel:And Reese looks over at Tracy, and he's like, where's your partner? And she's like, no. He's having some problems with Joey. And he's like, oh, okay. And then then we come in because Tracy not Tracy.
Rachel:Natalie and Nick and Henry are at the precinct, and Natalie has handed Henry a an unlabeled bottle of pills. And he's like, oh, you gave these to Joey?
Rachel:The handwritten on the white label is good brain pills.
Matt:No. No. No. No. It's
Rachel:Smart pills. Ritalin.
Rachel:And she goes he goes, you gave these pills to Joey? And she goes, yeah. We had to help his mental processing so that we could use, like, processing so that he could, you know, give us a proper statement and get you off the hook as if that were the only way to exonerate.
Rachel:It's the only way.
Rachel:So to be clear to be clear, they took Joey immediately at his word without attempting to confirm anything even knowing that he was cognitively impaired. They took him to a random detective's house and not an official safe house. That random attack detective, keeps telling Henry, his legal caregiver, that, oh, yes. I confess we gave him experimental drugs, and we're sorry with unknown side effects without your permission. Even though all of this is Natalie and Nick is being extremely generous in
Rachel:making even
Rachel:small amount
Rachel:of money. Saying, we're sorry.
Rachel:Yeah. No. No. Who's no. Anyway and lucky you, you're staying out of prison because we gave him this experimental medication, which means we did not do any fucking investigating.
Rachel:You're welcome. And then the random detective is, like, oh, I have since lost your child because the side effects of volatility and rage made Joey stable, and now I have no idea where he is, if he's in danger, or if these side effects are permanent. This poor guy did nothing. He did nothing.
Rachel:He was doing his best
Rachel:He was
Rachel:to live his life and take care of his nephew.
Rachel:He took yes.
Rachel:He did Good, like, dad.
Rachel:Yes. He did steroids. Yes. He was buying them illegally. Yes, he was taking them in pursuit of being able to continue a career he perceived as bringing Joey joy.
Rachel:And in response, he had his child taken away, administered experimental medication without his consent, without Joey's consent
Rachel:Held without evidence.
Rachel:Ultimately almost leads to Joey's death at his own hand. It gives him suicidal tendencies.
Rachel:And paranoia.
Rachel:And they are so lucky that Henry is only mad that Joey now knows that he was taking steroids, and now he's no longer Joey's hero. And then he can never get that back. That's all he's focusing on, and they are so lucky because that man that man had a lot of ammunition. And it's so much, it actually forces Nick back into a flash back.
Rachel:Again.
Rachel:Again. And this is when he remembers his little snacky closet.
Rachel:The the giant, like, pit room.
Rachel:Yeah. This is, I guess, the state
Rachel:of the building.
Rachel:The basement? I don't know. It's his snack basement, and it's full of unconscious
Rachel:strewn upon the floor.
Rachel:Just lying about in pods, which he feels he feels compelled to talk to in the creepiest, weirdest way possible. He's like, oh, hello.
Rachel:He didn't even have lines. Gary just improvise.
Rachel:It's just like, just riff, man. He's like, I got this. He's like, oh, hello. You're all I've been thinking about all day. Was it as good for you as it was for me?
Rachel:And then he, like, throws her over in the head because because he hears another heartbeat, and he's like, oh, look. A second snack has appeared, and he's like, oh, I've been saving the last of your life force for tonight. And he, like, tips this woman back against his chest. And then he's, like, rubbing his open mouth under her hair while he's, like, whispering sweet creepy nothings into the like, it's so weird. And, of course, Andre shows up right when he's about to bite this woman, and he gets really mad, and he runs away.
Rachel:And Nick's all like, aw. He he didn't understand that I was a vampire, but I still loved him. No, dude. He's running away because you have a murder basement. It's not the fact that if you had just sat him down and been like, look.
Rachel:I'm different from you. I'm a vampire, and that means that I have different needs, but I also have cool abilities. I'm kinda like a superhero. I could take you flying. It'll be really fun, but, like, I'm never gonna be able to eat with you, and I'm never gonna be able to go out during the day with you.
Rachel:I'm sure Andre would have been like, okay. That sounds really cool, uncle Nick. Instead
Rachel:of like be able to take care of you your entire life.
Rachel:Instead of like, oh, you mean you eat after I go to sleep? Because that's when you go and bite the women in your murder basement. Who are these women? And he's Nick is clearly having a really good time. This is his this is what he does after Andre goes to bed.
Rachel:He's like, time to go get a snack. And, like, it's a real good thing. We didn't have a sign.
Rachel:It's his, hold on. I'm trying to come up with a pun for root cellar with blood. Anyway, go ahead.
Rachel:It's a real good thing we didn't consign Fleur to this life that he is clearly suffering through. Okay. I'm not over it. It's fine.
Rachel:He suffers later.
Rachel:And then he's like, no, Andre, wait. Stop. Don't go.
Matt:Don't go. And then right
Rachel:after right after Andre leaves, in comes Lacroix.
Rachel:He's like, damn you, Lacroix. I would have told him, and Lacroix is like, you mess with the bull, you'd fucking get the horns.
Matt:That's what happened.
Rachel:Told you.
Rachel:I told you.
Rachel:Never let you forget Yeah. What you have done to me.
Rachel:Guess what? We have all of eternity for me to keep punishing you. I hope you like that because it's just the fucking beginning. And I wanna point out that the last time that he had a flashback because a child was in his care and he needed to take care of it and he needed to not show this this little person that he was a vampire so that she would run away in terror. He only remembered Danny.
Rachel:He didn't remember Andre.
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:He was like, didn't I have another kid? Didn't I have a oh, yeah. Fleur had a kid, didn't she? Oh my god. That's when I had that murder basement.
Rachel:God, those were good days.
Rachel:I miss that murder basement.
Rachel:I just can't keep them like that anymore. They get up. They run away. They make phone calls on their cellular phones or whatever. God, days are these days are complicated.
Rachel:And he comes back to the present, and Nick is consoling Henry. Like, it's okay, Henry. You didn't do anything wrong. What the fuck? Who do you think is wrong in this situation?
Rachel:He's like, Henry still needs your help, and we can get him out of this thing, which is totally your fault and not my fault or Natalie's fault. In fact, it's all Natalie's fault, but that's fine. We can get him out of this. We kinda work together. And then after this point, they are at the precinct because they have no idea where Joey is.
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:Luckily, Reese comes out, and he's like, y'all, there's some serious shit going down at the Raven. We just got a phone call, and there's a guy matching Joey's description, and he's right in the middle of it, and you think Tracy would be like, oh, no. The vampire club. But Nick just looks at her and goes, could be a regular bar fight, and she goes, okay. I'll hang out here.
Rachel:Okay.
Rachel:It'd be fun to add the, like, USB connect to USB disconnect noise for each time Tracy enters the scene and exits the scene.
Rachel:Yeah. Just like do do do do. Yeah. So Nick says, okay. I'm on my way, captain.
Rachel:And Reese goes, you know what? Actually, next time you 2 ask for joint custody, hire a babysitter. Reese, a child with a cognitive disability that you put in their care is involved in a violent altercation at a shady nightclub.
Rachel:You you, Joe Rees, you signed off on these 2 taking this kid for protective custody.
Rachel:And this isn't like, Teehee. He's on the he's gone off, and he he joined the circus or he's at the fair, and we can't get
Rachel:him on the stairs. We candy bars.
Rachel:This is he is involved in a violent altercation at a shady nightclub, and you got jokes, sir?
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:This is meanwhile, Joey's at the Raven, and he's still threatening threatening this lady, and LaCroix comes out and goes, oh, a floor show. Is LaCroix wearing a Henley? I think LaCroix is wearing a Henley. He's got a Henley with a jacket over top of it, and his guy
Rachel:It's an uncolored knit with buttons.
Rachel:Is it hot in here? It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. No.
Rachel:LaCroix sees Natalie, and he's like, oh, it's gonna get good. He picks up his class.
Rachel:I know. He's just like,
Rachel:oh. He's not caring.
Rachel:He really needs to, like, pull out a bag of popcorn and start Well,
Rachel:see how your experiment is doing in the field, doctor? And Natalie's like, come on home, Joey.
Rachel:Wait. Who who asks about the experiment in the field? Joey.
Rachel:She Joey says, did you come to see how your experiment it does sound like a LaCroix line, but it's Joey. He goes, did you come to see how your experiment is doing in the field, doctor? And then Joey's like, I can't go home. I'm gonna miss out on all this fun. Aren't I what you expected?
Rachel:Isn't this what you expected to happen? Actually, no, Joey. I didn't. I didn't know what was gonna happen at all. And she goes, Joey, the medicine you took has a dangerous violent side effect.
Rachel:No shit, Natalie. Thank you. And they're like, Joey, would you let her go? We're like, sorry or whatever, and that's what Nick says. He's like, we're sorry.
Rachel:Can you please let the woman go? And Joey's like, all I wanted to do was be like you. I am like you, but nobody sees that. So they're like, can you just let her stop being a drama king and just let the woman go? And he's like, you don't understand.
Rachel:You gave me the chance to let other people see me the way I want to be seen, and now that is going to all go away, and I'm going to never ever, ever, ever, ever get it back. And I'm not even gonna remember that I had it. And then he lets the girl go because this isn't actually Joey. This is what Nick's blood is making Joey do.
Rachel:Yeah. He's in an altered state.
Rachel:Yeah. And he looks at Natalie, and he's like, you knew this wasn't gonna last, didn't you? And Natalie's like, actually, no. I had absolutely no idea. Joy.
Rachel:I didn't know what duration I was working with here, and I didn't write it down. So I guess I'm gonna have to do this again.
Rachel:And then can't call it an experiment.
Rachel:Because I didn't write anything down. It's
Rachel:fuck around and find out without writing it down is just a mistake.
Rachel:Whoopsies. And Natalie goes, I did it to give you a chance. Like, I don't understand why you're mad at me. I did this for you.
Rachel:Oh, by the way, thank you for helping me modem something.
Rachel:And Joey goes, all these years, I finally know what it feels like, and tomorrow I'm not gonna remember any of this. And poor Henry is just standing there like, what are we talking about? What did you do to him? I thought you gave him those brain the smart pills that you handed me.
Rachel:I thought you just gave him some Ritalin.
Rachel:I don't understand, but at least he is sincere when he apologizes. Nick is just like, I'm sorry, whatever. Put the bottle down. But Henry is like, listen, I am sorry about my drug use. I just wanted to make you happy, but that's on me and I'm really sorry.
Rachel:And Nick has a flashback to when Andre ran away, like, oh, an apology? What? Oh, shit. Is that what I should've done? Oh, shit.
Rachel:I never even went to find that kid.
Rachel:I guess I really should've found him and apologized
Rachel:I really just scaring him. I really just thought
Rachel:It's too bad that I missed that chance
Rachel:Oh, fuck.
Rachel:By 789 years.
Rachel:Oh, fuck. Oh, well. It's fine. It's but next time, I'll know for next time.
Rachel:I'll remember that lesson for the next time this happens.
Rachel:Then Henry goes, Joey, I need you. You're what keeps me going. Don't take that away from me. I love you. I need you.
Rachel:I accept you for who you are. I love you for who you are, which is exactly what Joey needed to hear, but Joey's not in a state where he can hear it. And he actually looks at Natalie, and he goes, thanks for the insight, Natalie, and then he slits his own wrist with the cup bottle that he has. Yeah. And Natalie's like, oh, Nick, would you get that?
Rachel:Nick Nick does save him. They save him. Nick and Natalie save him, and Henry's just standing there like, shouldn't I be the one over there? What the fuck is happening right now? And then Lacroix looks over, and Nick looks over at Lacroix, and Lacroix is this, like, like, half smile.
Rachel:Like, thanks for the show, man.
Rachel:Lacroix is like, I am
Rachel:can I get in here? That's actually my that's actually mine. That's I
Rachel:bet Henry was headed toward him, and Nick was like, yoink.
Rachel:No. No. Let Nat have this. Okay? She needs this moment.
Matt:What the fuck
Rachel:do you mean she needs this moment? This is my child.
Rachel:She needs this moment with this child that she was responsible for.
Rachel:For, like, 2 hours, and look what happened. Look what happened. This is why she shouldn't have.
Rachel:Don't you understand how bad she feels about what she did to this child?
Rachel:Apologize to that woman. She feels so bad already. And then we go to Nick and Natalie at this arena at the arena, the wrestling arena, and Nick is wearing this old man sweater and matching clothes. Of all the choices in this episode, it's the least worst thing, but, honestly, it's up there. And Natalie goes, aren't we a little early?
Rachel:And Nick's like, not for this show. Like, they sit down and he points over, and it's Henry and Joey, and they're, like, setting up chairs. And Natalie's like, ah. Shoot. Oh, because he says nice seats, though, and she gets this, like, manic laugh.
Rachel:Like, that was so funny, man.
Rachel:Kathy is so uncomfortable in this situation.
Rachel:And he says that he talked the promoter quote, talked to the promoter, hypnotized the promoter into giving Henry Johnny's job. And Joey gets to work at the arena, and he still gets to see the shows, and everything's copacetic. And Natalie still smiling goes, he's super lucky. You know? If he'd opened up his arm one more time, he probably wouldn't be here.
Rachel:Oh, really, Natalie?
Rachel:Yeah. And then she goes
Rachel:Oh, really?
Rachel:She goes, what do they remember? And Nick goes, the only the part that matters, which means he wiped their memory of what happened.
Rachel:Yes.
Rachel:And then Natalie goes, was I wrong, Nick? Hang on. Let me try to say that with some more composure.
Rachel:This is the most gaslighting part.
Rachel:Was I wrong, Nick? And Nick goes, I guess what you have to ask yourself is, are Henry and Joey happier now than they were 3 days ago? Was I wrong, Nick?
Nick:I guess what you have to ask yourself is, are Henry and Joey happier now than they were 3 days ago? Well,
Rachel:Yes. Thank you. So who do you pick in the 4th? I mean, yeah. Because you hypnotized them into forgetting all of the shit that she did to them, so that they wouldn't sue the ever loving pants off of your tight white ass.
Rachel:Okay? You are so fucking lucky you can hypnotize people. And then Natalie looks at Nick, and she's just like, you tell me. And he goes, yes. They are.
Rachel:And she goes, oh, oh, thank god.
Rachel:That's a load up.
Rachel:What just happened? Natalie was like, tell me I'm pretty and that everything's okay. And he's like, okay. Okay. You're pretty and everything's fine.
Rachel:And she's like, oh, thank god.
Rachel:Dodge that bullet.
Rachel:I'm pretty sure Nick and Natalie are not the ones who get to decide whether they are happier now or whether that was the correct decision. Do you know who gets to decide whether that was the correct decision? The person that was wronged.
Rachel:Yeah.
Rachel:Okay. And then we get, like, a joke. We gotta have some fucking jokes. Natalie goes, who do you pick in the 4th? And Nick goes, that's horse racing.
Rachel:This is wrestling. And she goes, oh, right. And then And? Cut to credits. What just happened?
Rachel:I feel like I got hit by a plot train, and none of it was good. And it all just rammed into me. And you know what? I don't rewatch this episode. I just I don't, for several reasons.
Rachel:1, the cognitive disability representation is a is not bad, but it's nineties, and I just I don't know. It's just not my favorite. It's my lee is it my least favorite? There's some boring episodes, and there's some bland episodes, and there's some okay episodes, but this one is actively bad. Like, it actively doesn't make sense in a not in a, hoo hoo isn't that funny.
Rachel:We're doing quirky things that don't make a lot of sense. But in a I am actively working to harm a child
Rachel:Yeah. I am I am making harmful, exploitative way.
Rachel:I am making exploitative gas lighty decisions, which could have very easily resulted in this child taking their own life. And I don't know. I feel like if there's a bar, maybe that's the bar for a bad episode. And it's really interesting that it's couched right in here in the final five because we got avenging angel, which is killer. We got this one.
Rachel:Great. Killer being great. We got this one, which is, like, what the actual I don't even fucking just like we're about to knock it out of the fucking park in a a lot. And yet right here in the middle, it's it's this up. It's it's fallen.
Rachel:I don't I just and I'm glad we had fun, and it makes the episode a little bit more fun because we but also, like, oh my god, Natalie. What the actual shit? I I fully fully say, I will go on record. My canon is the fallen idol in this is Natalie, because Natalie has been nothing but above board. She has been nothing but our conscience.
Rachel:She has been our touchstone for reality. She has been the one who grounds Nick when she he needs it since I will repay. And in this moment, all gone. All she makes that decision to give that blood to Joey. You how do you come how do you fucking come back from that?
Rachel:Right.
Rachel:You don't, which is why they laugh at all.
Rachel:Undermines her her moral
Rachel:As a character.
Rachel:Authority. Yeah.
Rachel:Yeah. And I had honestly forgotten. She I had, like, blacked out. I had forgotten that she gives him vampire blood to make him better, make him neurotypical. And I just I don't even wanna talk about this episode anymore.
Rachel:I just wanna be done with it. Do you have anything else you wanna say about it?
Rachel:Until next time, friends.
Matt:Bye.
Rachel:Bye.
