Come in 81 Kilo: A Forever Knight Podcast

Come in 81 Kilo: A Forever Knight Podcast

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Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 6) - "My Boyfriend is a Vampire"

/ 01:37:24/E58
Gerry:

We're back, and talking about supernatural lovers. Now, if you were amazed by Ralph's intimate encounters with ghostly nymphomaniacs or Lavonda's accounts of phone sex from the grave, wait till you hear this. I want you all to meet Maggie Dwyer. Maggie says her boyfriend

Maggie:

My boyfriend is a vampire.

Gerry:

Now, Maggie, vampires don't really exist, do they?

Maggie:

I used to think that until he showed me. He grew his fangs, his eyes turned blood red, and he started to speak French.

Rachel:

Hi. I'm Rachel.

Matt:

And I'm Matt.

Rachel:

And this is Come in, 81 kilo.

Matt:

A Forever Night podcast.

Rachel:

Welcome back, friends.

Matt:

Welcome back.

Rachel:

It's time for another episode. Forever Knight season 3 episode 6, My Boyfriend is a Vampire.

Matt:

The most clickbait title.

Rachel:

I mean, it fits

Matt:

So far.

Rachel:

It fits because that clickbait now is what nineties talk shows were of their time.

Matt:

Yeah. I think it's representative of the overall theme of the episode.

Rachel:

Yeah. I will get you with this catchy title, like monks and punks or my boyfriend is a vampire or sexism and swimwear. I mean, we had the Jerry Springer show, Rosie O'Donnell. We had the Ricky Lake Show. We had Jenny Jones.

Matt:

A whole bunch.

Rachel:

In fact, at one point, Reese mentions, I don't want this to turn into another Jenny Jones 3 ring circus because this actually happened on to a guest who appeared on the Jenny Jones show.

Matt:

Oh, they got murdered?

Rachel:

Yeah. There was a guest. His name was Scott Amendure, a m e d u r e, and he was murdered in 1995, like, 3 days after he appeared on an episode of The Jenny Jones Show. These were actually referred to as tabloid talk shows.

Matt:

Okay.

Rachel:

There was talk shows category. Where you were like, oh, we're serious. We're investigative journalists. We're gonna talk to these, you know, people in their field about the stuff in their field. And then there's like, I think this guy had sex with a whale, and I'm gonna chat about it.

Rachel:

K?

Matt:

And then there were the the late night just entertainment ones.

Rachel:

Oh, okay. And it was, the Jenny Jones show was that emendur emendur, he revealed that he had a crush on, like, a guy, and it was like a kind of a gay panic kind of thing. Really, really nineties and of its time. Just the, like, oh, no. This dude has a crush on me.

Rachel:

I'd rather murder him than I don't know. It's a it was a huge scandal. They reference it in this. This may, in fact, be a reference to it.

Matt:

Oh, this whole episode?

Rachel:

Yeah. To the ramifications of making these kinds of people into a voyeuristic attraction, that when you draw these people out into the public just for the public to, like, jeer at and feel, like, I don't know, entertained by, that there are ramifications for that type of behavior.

Matt:

And also for motivating these people to divulge very secret aspects of themselves.

Rachel:

Yeah. You also drive people to extremes because then it's like, if you wanna get on my talk show, you

Matt:

can do that. Best ratings.

Rachel:

Real real hinky. And, I mean, that's what social media is right now. That's what clickbaity social media is. You know, watch this person do this thing, or you won't believe what this person did.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

So we haven't gotten better. We haven't gotten better.

Matt:

We just refined it.

Rachel:

We just we just made it easier for everyone to make their own. It's less visible. Oh, it's more visible than it ever was. It's just not siloed anymore. People beating each other up aren't just on Jerry Springer.

Rachel:

You don't have to watch Jerry Springer to watch people get beat up. You could just go on social media.

Matt:

I guess it's less conscious. Now. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe it's just everything's so streamlined?

Rachel:

It's pervade pervaded the zeitgeist so deeply Mhmm. That we don't even recognize it in the way that we did before. Like, Jerry Springer was controversial. He was everyone knew what you were watching, the Jerry Springer show, to watch. You were there to watch the conflict and the drama.

Rachel:

And this is the Jerry Tate show, which I'm sure is not a coincidence. Not at all. And in fact, Jerry Tate is played by Jordi Johnson, who plays, Alexander Lucard in the Dracula, the television show. Interesting. So this is a cameo of somebody from Garrett Wyndavy's sordid other vampire past.

Rachel:

Yeah. We open on the Jerry Show, like a taping of the Jerry Show, and we talked to a lady named Maggie Dwyer. We talked to a couple other people too who were like, this lady, something about ghosts, everybody has a relationship with something supernatural. And, apparently, Maggie Dwyer's boyfriend is a vampire, hence the title, my boyfriend is a vampire, in case you didn't make that connection. It's apples to apples.

Rachel:

They're exactly the same. In fact, it says underneath her name, my boyfriend is a vampire. Sometimes you have to stretch to figure out why the title is related to the theme, and sometimes you do not. There's 2 people watching this show that are of note, and that is Natalie, who is watching this on a portable television show, like, portable television thing. So high-tech.

Rachel:

So high-tech. While she is, you know, while she's filing some paperwork or whatever, and Tracy is actually attending the filming of this show and is in the live audience. Very bold of them to both film this live and air it live because Tracy's there while Natalie is watching it.

Matt:

Yeah. That's that's in because usually, if it's filmed in front of a live studio audience Yeah. They film, like, 5 episodes in one day, and then they air 1 per day.

Rachel:

Sometimes. What I think is really interesting about this and I I made a note of it because I was like, oh, yeah. You know, in season 1, we had a lot of overarching themes. What is the lesson we're supposed to be learning in this episode? What's the the theme of this episode?

Rachel:

And then season 2, it was kind of like, hey, everybody. We're just happy to be here. Today, we're gonna do this thing. We've kind of gotten back to themes where whatever is happening in the murder is actually playing out thematically in other relationships in the characters' lives.

Matt:

Yes.

Rachel:

And this one is for sure that's happening, because the question of the episode is, when is a relationship a relationship? And what obligation do the people in this undefined partnership have to each other? Because Tracy is wrestling with that with Vashon. Nat is wrestling about that with Nick. Nick is wrestling with nothing.

Matt:

His guilt.

Rachel:

His guilt, maybe. And the lady who ultimately ends up being our murderer for the episode is kind of wrestling with that with Jerry. And I thought it was interesting that we had sort of returned to everything in the episode is informing what's happening in the crime because we have definitely dialed down the importance of the flashback. Mhmm. Because we don't even get a Nick flashback.

Rachel:

We get a Vashon flashback, which, let me tell you, the Vashon storyline in this episode made me uncomfortable.

Matt:

And I have It was weird.

Rachel:

I have not watched this episode in a while. I get this one and games vampires play mixed up, And both of them, I are good. We always like I like we, like you do too, but I Mhmm. Enjoy these episodes. But there if I have an hour and I've got an hour to watch an episode, there are ones that I will pick.

Rachel:

And my boyfriend is a vampire, and games vampires play ain't it. So I haven't watched this one in a while, and I had not seriously watched the Vashon flashback and paid attention to the Vashon story arc in this episode as closely as I did when we watched it this time, and I have a lot to say about it. And I'm really excited to unpack unpack it with you, honey, because I feel like you probably have a lot to say about it too. But the whole cold open is super long because we talked to Maggie Dwyer and she they say, how do you know he was a vampire? And she goes, well, he told me, and then he grew fangs and his eyes glowed red, and he started to speak French.

Matt:

Little tongue in cheek.

Rachel:

Yeah. We all know that's genetically passed from master to to sire to to progeny. Right? Is you wake up as a vampire and you just get a download of French. Mhmm.

Rachel:

All relevant French phrases.

Matt:

Like in The Matrix.

Rachel:

Yeah. Like in The Matrix. Exactly. Instead of, like, I know kung fu, it's I know French. And they actually ask her straight up, okay, but how's the sex?

Matt:

What is it like to have sex with a vampire?

Rachel:

Because, of course, this is supposed to be scandalous and scintillating and whoo.

Matt:

And kinky.

Rachel:

And a little bit kinky. And she goes, well, that's between me and him, but let me just say, he knows how to please a woman. And everybody's like, woo, yeah.

Matt:

And then we cut to Natalie.

Rachel:

And Natalie's like, yeah. And then we cut to the love doctor, the psychiatrist on staff. And she goes, well, you know, there's 2 kinds of love. There's wellness love, which is respect and understanding and great sex. And everybody's like, woos.

Rachel:

And then she's like, the other kind is unwellness love, and that's when you put up with abuse, neglect, all while fantasizing and rationalizing that you are of use in this relationship. And let me just say, the sex is nonexistent. And Natalie's like, oh, shit. I know which one I'm in. And then, of course, Jerry is, like, well, let's pull the audience, see how they feel.

Rachel:

So he walks directly over to Tracy, and he goes, what do you say to someone who says they're in love with a vampire? And she goes, that they need to go get their head checked. Like, maybe they're not okay. Right? Is that the right answer?

Rachel:

And they're all like, whoo, because it's, you know, live studio audience or whatever. And then we cut to Maggie, and Maggie is in her cow themed living room with her.

Matt:

We we have jumped forward in time after the show. She went home.

Rachel:

She went home to her cow themed living room, and she's getting attacked, like, beat up, stabbed, and then we cut to the apartment exterior as, like, a bum bum bum bad things happen.

Matt:

And it is the apartment exterior.

Rachel:

Not the apartment building exterior, but the last act apartment exterior. The one that we've recycled from all the way back in season 1. Actually, it shows up in that one, and it shows up in the one where, the 3 women are getting dosed with vampire blood to make them be younger for too long. And then we go to the intro.

Matt:

Because our crime has occurred.

Rachel:

Yeah. Now our crime has occurred.

Matt:

It just had a longer setup than usual.

Rachel:

Yeah. Because we needed to establish the theme, and we needed to make sure we saw Natalie squirming a little bit when she realized that some of the stuff that Maggie was saying, squirming a little bit when she realized that some of the stuff that Maggie was saying felt a little bit too on the nose. Because we cut to the crime scene at at Maggie's, and Tracy instantly recognized her. She's like, oh, shit. She was on the Jerry Tate show tonight.

Matt:

And Natalie recognizes her.

Rachel:

And Natalie does, but Natalie plays it off. She's like, oh, who? Really? On the Jerry Tate show? Weird.

Rachel:

I don't ever watch that ever. That was a good episode, though. Right? And Nick actually makes a crack. She he's like, oh, do you think your boyfriend was a vampire?

Rachel:

Vampire? Tracy's like, shut up. From time to time. Okay? It's just fun.

Gerry:

The boyfriend was a vampire.

Rachel:

Like I said, it was just fun.

Matt:

Yeah. So is bowling. Night. Better. So we're we're playing playing real close to the the secret that Tracy doesn't know that Nick's actually a vampire.

Matt:

But at least Nick knows that Tracy knows vampires are real.

Rachel:

It almost feels like Nick is daring Tracy to figure it out.

Matt:

Oh, very much so.

Rachel:

Yeah. Because he's like, oh, vampires, Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And Tracy's like, vampires don't exist. And Nick is like, I didn't say they did. You said, did you say they did?

Rachel:

And she don't know what you're talking about.

Matt:

And then she asks him, and he gets to avoid answering the question.

Rachel:

Yeah. She goes, maybe she's sick? Well, that that's what they say when they go back, because they eventually go to talk to Jerry. Because we go from there to Tracy's like, look, I asked around. I talked to people about Maggie and, like, she's lonely and quiet, but she seemed pretty, like, self contained.

Rachel:

There wasn't a whole lot about her life that gives us any clue as to why she might have been stabbed in her cow themed living room.

Matt:

30 times.

Rachel:

Yeah. So they end up going to the Jerry Tate show studio to talk to Jerry and Charlie, his, like, showrunner, producer person.

Matt:

Because they were the last ones to talk to her before she died.

Rachel:

Right. And as they're walking in, Nick and Tracy are talking. And he's like, well, if, you know, if her boyfriend wasn't a vampire and the reason he killed her wasn't because he was a vampire, what are some other things? And Tracy's like, I don't know. Maybe she was sick, or maybe her boyfriend was sick and he really did think he was a vampire.

Rachel:

Do you believe in vampires? And Tracy's like, no. No. Do you, Nick? Do you believe in vampires?

Rachel:

And he does not answer.

Matt:

He just does a little smirk.

Rachel:

Yep. Yep. We just cut to Jerry Tate issuing a formal apology on air. It's gonna be the promo hook for their next episode. He's like, I am so sorry that Maggie died shortly after being on this this television show, but it had nothing to do with us, and we accept no responsibility.

Rachel:

And please do not at us about this. Like, don't slide into my DMs. I don't wanna talk about it. We didn't do it. It's not has nothing to do with us.

Rachel:

And if we could all avoid any kind of tabloid hoopla over this, that would be super great. Thanks. Did it sound good? Did I sound sympathetic? Oh, yeah.

Rachel:

My god. Oh, Jerry. You sounded so sympathetic. It kind of reminds me of in The Fifth Element when every time Ruby Rod stops, like, stops podcasting Yeah. Those 3 dudes show up, and they're all like, oh my god.

Rachel:

You sounded so good. Oh my god. It was the best show ever. And they're like

Matt:

He he needs reassurance.

Rachel:

Yeah. He needs yeah. Because he goes over to talk to them, and he doesn't even end up really talking to them. Like, they're there to ask him questions, but he just talks at them the whole time. He's like, oh, you guys wanna stick around?

Rachel:

We're doing a thing on sexism and swimwear.

Matt:

Right. He's on, like, autopilot of, I'm the host of this

Rachel:

Yeah. He's promoing for

Matt:

that. Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. And they're like, okay. Well, I know you talked to Maggie Dwyer before you put her on show. Like, you had to have interviewed her to make sure she was gonna make good television, and they're like, oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel:

He's like, okay. Did you meet the the boyfriend? And they're like, no. No. No.

Rachel:

The boyfriend wasn't the point. Like

Matt:

Did yeah. They asked if he followed up on the story at all to, like, verify anything. And they're like, no.

Rachel:

No. That's not the point.

Matt:

True or false was not the point. It's that she believed it.

Rachel:

Yeah. The the exploration we were going after was, these people that believe they are in these relationships with these supernatural creatures. And, like, why do they believe that? And what kind of person believes that? And he's like Nick says, oh, yeah.

Rachel:

It was an in-depth, an in-depth exploration of the human psyche. And they're like, come on. It's television.

Gerry:

The lengths shall go to to feel loved. Absolutely. I see. It was a deep investigation of the human psyche.

Rachel:

Detective, this is television. We all know that. No illusions here. It's it's not. He actually says, we have to walk the fine line between social relevance and entertainment.

Matt:

Yep. Which sucks. Harder than it looks.

Rachel:

And it's harder than it looks. And they're like, we don't know who the boyfriend was. We don't know anything about him. We did not care. We don't know anything about any of the boyfriends.

Rachel:

We did not give a shit. Thank you so much. And that's it. He actually walks off, and he's like, you know, if you need anything else but, honestly, I had nothing to do with it, and I have nothing to say about it because I didn't do it. And please don't at me about it.

Rachel:

He just is like, it happened. I don't know what to tell you, but I feel no personal responsibility. Jerry feels no personal responsibility for anything that happens in this episode.

Matt:

Not even when he himself gets punched in the head.

Rachel:

Never. Not even once. Not even at the very end.

Matt:

When he gets shot.

Rachel:

When he gets shot. He's like, it kinda sounds like a personal problem. Look, I would shoot him too after what he says to her, but we'll we'll get there. So they're walking out, and they look over, and there's, like, shirtless, like, ripped dudes. And Nick goes, is that sexism, or is that swimwear?

Rachel:

Just trying to bait Tracy. You know what's like, funny moments, like this moment when he's like, is that sexism or swimwear? And then he looks over and it's, like, half naked women, and he stares for a minute, and Tracy goes, that's sexism. That's really fucking funny. Okay?

Rachel:

That's a really funny moment. And somebody had postulated, like, hey, maybe blind faith is not as bad of an episode as you guys made it out to be. I don't think it's a bad episode. Is it the greatest episode of television? No.

Rachel:

Is it a horrible episode? No. It's middle of the road. It's a dog that rescues his owner from MS by becoming a vampire and turning his owner into a vampire. It is what it is.

Rachel:

My primary problem with blind faith is they're in a fucking funny moment in that whole episode. You had an episode

Matt:

The whole thing is a joke The That's waiting for the punch line.

Rachel:

Yeah. You're waiting for this to be funny the whole episode.

Matt:

It just needs, like, one moment of campiness. Yeah.

Rachel:

And you would have been, like, cool.

Matt:

Now, we're all in on the joke.

Rachel:

It would have been the best episode had we just leaned into as ridiculous of a premise as

Matt:

it is. When Nick walks into the room and she's been bit and she, like, turns her head to look at Nick and she's got the eyes and whatever Yeah. And then Nick looks at the dog and then the dog, like, exaggeratedly winks at Nick.

Rachel:

That would have

Matt:

been funny. That would have made it. That would have been the punch line of the entire episode.

Rachel:

We have a lot of moments in there where we could have gone a little less serious, a little more funny. And we could have kept we could have kept the themes of, you know, sometimes people get sick. It doesn't change who they are. You still have to like, they're still your friends. They still deserve your attention and your respect and your love even though they've had this diagnosis that fundamentally changes their life span and maybe their capabilities.

Rachel:

We could have kept that in there. We could have kept the Karush dive, like, bomb that we dropped on everybody. We could have kept we could have kept everything. And if we had just done that, whoop, that slight, like, 20% turn to humor, It's one of the best episodes of Forever Night. Yeah.

Rachel:

Because it's heavy, it's funny, it has meaning, and it also is entertaining. It couches all of those things together in this nice, neat, little package, which are always the best episodes. It's like the musical episode of Buffy. The musical episode of Buffy has one of the most dramatic reveals of the entire series.

Matt:

Oh, yes. It does.

Rachel:

It has Absolutely. Heaviest fucking moment in the entire series, but it has some really fun in this really funny premise. And the juxtaposition of finding that one really dramatic thing out in this moment where you were expecting levity really makes it memorable.

Matt:

Right. It carries you through the the traumatic reveal.

Rachel:

I would say that the Buffy musical episode is a top TV episode ever.

Matt:

I agree.

Rachel:

And it's because we got that really complex mix of comedy and seriousness.

Matt:

And even the whole thing with the the the whatever effect, the creatures that are around that make everyone sing. Yeah. That's a really dark plotline.

Rachel:

That's some dark shit. Yeah. Yeah. Because it kills you eventually. Yes.

Rachel:

Yeah. Like, the singing and the dancing. And it's anyway. So I

Matt:

think that'd be a great clip. Just it kills you eventually, the singing and the dancing.

Rachel:

And the dancing. So if we had leaned into that at least a tiny little bit, it's a better episode. And in this episode, we make a 180. We go back. It's always nice when an when a television show is in on the joke with you.

Rachel:

Mhmm.

Matt:

Yeah. It makes it feel like you're participating.

Rachel:

Right. It's a little bit ridiculous that Tracy knows vampires exist, but she hasn't put 2 and 2 together, that her partner who is allergic to the sun is a vampire. And that's fine. I'm willing to accept this. You told me that's the premise.

Rachel:

I'm here for you. But when we get these little moments where Nick is like, do you believe in vampires? And she goes, no, but do you? And he doesn't answer. Now we know the show is in on the joke.

Rachel:

We're all in on the joke. Now we all feel like we're we're, like, in camaraderie with the plot line, in camaraderie with the show. We're not in opposition to it. We're all in on the same joke. But you gotta have the joke.

Rachel:

Like, if you're if there's the joke, you gotta know what it is and you gotta let the audience know you know without making it into the purpose of the show. Right. So that was my soapbox about how I feel about blind faith. Is it a terrible episode? No.

Rachel:

It's not. Is it a great episode? Also, no. But it's okay. It's fine.

Rachel:

These 90 shows had a lot more up and downs than the shows we have today because you didn't have to nail it 8 times in a row, and that was your season. You had 20 plus episodes. You could have ones that people are like, what the hell? What the fuck?

Matt:

Right. And it's not it's not significant No. To the whole season plot because there's no whole season plot.

Rachel:

No. It's like when you took a class and the professor's like, the only grades you're gonna get are on the midterm and the final. Well, fuck. Now I gotta do great on the midterm and the final. Whereas if you have a homework assignment every single week and a test every month, you can bomb a couple and you're gonna be just fine.

Rachel:

Anyway

Matt:

It leaves some room for grace.

Rachel:

It does. So we get the sexism joke, and then Tracy's like, actually, I need to go let a plumber into my apartment who's there to do some work. I'll catch up with you later. And Nick's like, a plumber. A plumber at your apartment?

Rachel:

And she's like, yeah. Yep. Plumber. Yep. And he's like, cool.

Rachel:

Have fun with the plumber. Don't lay any pipe I wouldn't lay. So then she's talking to Vashon, and she's like, I don't know. This lady said she was dating a vampire. And Vashon's like, do we think it's a real vampire?

Rachel:

And she's like, I don't know. I don't know. And he's like, well, does Nick what does Nick think? And he's like, she goes, Nick's so he doesn't believe anything. He's such a skeptic, and Vashon goes, know him that well, do you?

Rachel:

What if it is a vampire? How do I explain something like that? People think I was nuts. Nick, especially, he is such a skeptic.

Matt:

No one that well, do you?

Rachel:

Well enough. And then she goes off on this thing where she's talking to Deshauna, and she's like, I mean, I get it. I feel for Maggie because, you know, sometimes you think you're in a relationship, and you think that the boy thinks you're in a relationship, but it turns out that you're not really in a relationship.

Matt:

And Vashon are at this, like, very atmospheric, like, romantic restaurant.

Rachel:

Thing. Yeah.

Matt:

Like, having coffee or a dinner or whatever.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And she's talking about how that she she thought they were in a relationship, but he didn't think they were in a relationship. And how is a woman supposed to deal with that? And

Rachel:

Yeah. How's a woman supposed to how's a woman supposed to get through being in this type of relationship where it's really ambiguous, whether you're in a romantic relationship or whether you're in a platonic relationship? What are you supposed to do? And Vashawn's like, I don't know. What can you do?

Rachel:

And she goes, nothing. Men. And then she just gets up and leaves. And of course, this is his opportunity to just start one of the most uncomfortable flashbacks since the Oedipus scene.

Matt:

I okay. So we go to this flashback, and, apparently, he hung out with Screed more often in the past. Yeah.

Rachel:

Me and Screed are longtime buddies. Yeah.

Matt:

And so and they're with another vampire guy. Does this vampire ever show up again?

Rachel:

I'm almost positive he does not.

Matt:

Okay. So and they have some women, and it implies

Rachel:

They have some women. They've picked up some women of loose persuasion somewhere, and they have brought them to this pile of hay in the alley by a fountain. It's like a horse area, because there's a horse trough and there's the hay and the hay is kinda piled up, but there's no horses and there's no posts and there's no place to tie horses, and it's just sort of an ambiguously historic area.

Matt:

It would fit into a lot of time periods.

Rachel:

It's a place for a good, quote, roll in the hay. Let's put it that way.

Matt:

Yes.

Rachel:

So they brought these women. And then

Matt:

They're making some bad euphemisms. They're making And Vashon's like, uh-uh.

Rachel:

Screed is rambling. I don't know. It's just I got I got nothing.

Matt:

He's screeding.

Rachel:

He's screeding. And then Sean stands up, and he's like, gentlemen, a moment of your time. And then one of them makes a crack, and he's like, I

Matt:

will whole speech.

Rachel:

I will kill the first one who dares speak another word, and then he goes the fuck off about

Matt:

I only caught about half of this.

Rachel:

That's because you were so uncomfortable. You were groaning audibly over in the corner. So it's like, I we all know how to treat a lady. He goes, these men are not gentlemen. They are not what they seem.

Rachel:

And his buddy, who I don't even sure we get his name, he stands up and he's like, ho ho ho. Hold the fuck up, Fashon. We can't just tell him we're vampires. That's part of the big reveal. And he's like, he doesn't he's like, they are forget exactly how he says it, but he's not saying that they're vampires.

Rachel:

He's like, they know that when you properly court a woman, her virtue bursts forth and it pools in her lush fertile valley. And then we can sail her waters on or sail her virgin seas on blah blah

Matt:

blah blah blah

Rachel:

blah. Oh my god. It is so long and it is so uncomfortable and I don't know what he is going on And then we leave the flashback.

Matt:

I think he was trying to, like, imply to the women that these are not boring gentlemen.

Rachel:

He was trying to make a moment of it. Yeah. He was trying to make a moment of it for him and his bros.

Matt:

But then also convince the women that these are the kind of guys who are going to give you a good time too.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think we can describe any real motive to this. It was him enjoying the moment.

Rachel:

It was like him to like, let's not rush through this. Let's take a minute and savor what we're about to do. And then we zoom back out, and Nick is talking to Natalie. And Natalie's like, could be vampire, could be human, don't know, don't care, don't give a shit. And he's like, oh, okay.

Rachel:

Well, what Natalie,

Matt:

you seem a little riled up.

Rachel:

Yeah. Because he's like, what what what's going on? She goes, well, you know, the only thing that maybe if he really was a vampire and she went on this talk show to talk about it, and Nick is like, yep, Then he wouldn't have killed her the usual way because he would have been on alert or other people would have been on alert. So you gotta be a little bit more discreet when they know there's a vampire hanging around. And the only thing that really changes if it's a man or a vampire is we would know the motive if they were a vampire.

Rachel:

And Natalie's like, yep. End of discussion. And just stands up, goes back about her work. And Nick is like, okay. I am in the doghouse.

Rachel:

He says that. He goes, clearly, I'm in the doghouse, and I don't know why.

Gerry:

Alright. I'll bite. I'm in the doghouse. You're angry with me, and I don't know why.

Rachel:

Angry? Am I wrong? It's just, I don't know. I I don't know. I I I don't even know what I'm looking for here.

Gerry:

Nat, why don't we just take this one word at a time?

Rachel:

Maybe you could tell me. Why are you mad at me, Natalie? I just showed up to work today and you were pissed. And I don't know why you're pissed and I need to know why you're pissed because I've been thinking about it. And unlike in Only the Lonely when I gave you the with affection card, I don't have a real clear trigger here.

Rachel:

I can go back to my room and play in my play golf in my satin fuck pajamas. Would that help us all? She's like, no, no. That's season 1. We don't do that anymore.

Rachel:

But she goes, you know, I watched that episode, and I couldn't help feeling a little bit like Maggie. And all I kept saying to myself while I was watching it was, Maggie, ease using you, girl. And you know what? I feel a little used, Nick. And Nick's like, well, do you remember that thing that happened at the restaurant?

Matt:

Dosch doesn't.

Rachel:

Because I didn't mean anything that I said about how I was using you and stuff. That was all lies. Remember how I explicitly said that? That's not true. Maybe subconsciously, she remembers it.

Rachel:

I don't know. But Nick is like, what do you mean I use you? I don't use you. You were like Biffles or whatever. And she's like, Nick, when was the last time you took a prescription that I made for you?

Rachel:

When was the last time you drank a fucking shake that I put the work in to put together for you instead of just telling me it tasted horrible and setting it down? When was the last time you used my any of the skin creams? What about the supplements? What about literally any fucking thing that I have told you to do in the last 2 seasons? Have you done any of it?

Rachel:

And he's, like, well, I took that medication, that one shot thing that you gave me. I took that, like, all day until you took it away because I, like, got addicted and went on the radio list or whatever. And Natalie's like, okay. Well, I feel a little bit used. And Nick goes, well, that was not my intention.

Rachel:

And she goes, okay. Well, what was your intention? And he goes, I I don't know how to I don't know. I don't know what to tell you about that. She's like, okay.

Matt:

I can't articulate that.

Rachel:

Maybe you need to sit with that for a little bit. If you know that's not, quote, your intention, but you don't know what your intention actually is, maybe you need to sit around and figure out what your attention actually is in this. Meanwhile, they're staking out the apartment, and Tracy shows up and she's like, okay, what's going on over here? And they're like, nothing, except we figured out there's 11 different kinds of bugs in this apartment, and they like pepperoni pizza. And she's like, well, as long as it doesn't eat the crust.

Rachel:

And then they see somebody. They're like, oh, Tracy, look. Somebody's walking to the apartment. She's like, okay. And she just runs straight across the apartment.

Rachel:

And they call Nick, and they're like, okay. Somebody's at the apartment. He's like, okay. Nobody goes in until I get there. Like, everybody sit tight.

Rachel:

And they're like, oh, does that apply observe. Does that apply to your partner? Because she's already halfway across the street. And he's like, fuck. I'm having a fight with Natalie right now.

Rachel:

Because he has to turn to Natalie, and he's like, Tracy might be in danger. And she's like, fine. Go. It's fine.

Matt:

Could you have picked a more inconvenient time coming to me about this?

Rachel:

Can you have picked a more inconvenient time to let Tracy have a crisis right now? Because I feel like we're in we are in a tiff. And Nick is like, I gotta go. Can I go? And she's like, fine.

Rachel:

Go. It's fine. It's perfectly fine, Nick. We can leave. And he's like, okay.

Matt:

He's like, yes. She said it's fine.

Rachel:

She said it's fine. So he leaves. He leaves, and we get Tracy heading into the apartment, And it's so dark and dreary and scary and spooky. And there's an unknown, is it a vampire? Is it not a vampire in the apartment?

Rachel:

And then we get Nick flying through the street real low too, like, real fucking low. Like, if you if you looked up at all, you'd be like

Matt:

Above the cars and traffic.

Rachel:

Did anybody see this? I was just they're like, you know what? At this point, it's probably so pervasive in Toronto. It's one of those, like, ghost stories like that. Guys, I think I saw the phantom flyer.

Rachel:

The what? You know, the phantom flyer.

Matt:

The guy who flies, like, 5 feet above traffic?

Rachel:

And they hears Tracy hears some kind of screaming struggle in the dark. So she flicks the light on, and it's Nick and Vashon tackling the guy. And they both look at each other, like and, again, Tracy's not like, how did Nick get here? She's just like, oh, that's Sean. Come on.

Rachel:

Clay, cool. And Nick goes, I'm with Metro homicide.

Matt:

She's she's so preoccupied with the fact that she needs to participate in covering up, maintain the illusion of, like, Vashon as a human around Nick that she completely misses the whole aspect of wait. Why is Nick here? It's, oh, no. Nick is here.

Rachel:

No. Effectively,

Matt:

I need surprise. I need to do some extra work to maintain this fiction about Vashon just being a platonic friend.

Rachel:

This is my regular human friend. This is a Vashon, my regular human attendant friend. I don't know what you but Nick goes, I'm with Metro Homicide. And Vashon goes, I'm not.

Matt:

And he just backs up his means.

Rachel:

He's like

Matt:

Like a super cool guy.

Rachel:

Oh, yeah. Because he's he's so cool.

Matt:

Oh, that guy. He's so cool.

Rachel:

Yeah. Unknown means of support.

Matt:

I ended up on IMDB at the end of this episode. Yeah. And he looks a lot better with short hair.

Rachel:

Yo. Yo. Yes. He does. In fact, I sent some pictures of the short haired Ben Ben Bass.

Rachel:

Ben Bass to Meg, and I was, like,

Matt:

we could have had this. I was, like, why?

Rachel:

We could have had this.

Matt:

Why the hair?

Rachel:

What? And instead, we got nineties mom hair. Okay? We look at what we just look up a picture of Ben Bass with short hair.

Matt:

I would say his his, like, outfits are, like, nineties fashion.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Right? He's, like, peak, you know, hot nineties guy

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Below the neck.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

I guess, there's still some hair below the neck, but without the hair.

Rachel:

It's like that meme of Mel Gibson with the cigarette. Have you seen the meme of Mel Gibson with the cigarette? And he has this exact same hairstyle, and the thing underneath of it is always, honey, hold it up so everybody can see what you got. And it's the, like, nineties mom, like, the nineties mom at Christmas, like, hold the present up, Smith, so everybody can see what you got. That's what it reminds me of every time I see it.

Rachel:

He's not bad looking. He's not a bad character. He's an interesting, attractive, like, morally gray character with mom hair. And it's just a nineties hairstyle that maybe a lot of what's happening fashion wise in this television show is coming back. So it doesn't actually feel as dated now as it might have if we were watching it, like, 5 years ago because a lot of this fashion is now in fashion again.

Matt:

Right. I would say the casual fashion is coming back. The business casual that they wear in the police precinct is not.

Rachel:

Yeah. If he put on a trucker hat, he'd be in style.

Matt:

Oh my god. He would be a teenager.

Rachel:

Yeah. What? Okay. Now that

Matt:

I've made myself nauseous. Like 30% of the teenage boys I see.

Rachel:

Yeah. Okay. So, Nick actually arrests this guy, and he's walking past Tracy. And he goes, are we expecting anyone else, or can I go? And Tracy's like

Matt:

It's getting crowded in here.

Rachel:

Tracy's like, you can go. And she's like, okay. So they're at the apartment not at the apartment. They're at the precinct, and Nick is like

Matt:

I I love Nick's just little smirk, like because he's in on all the secrets.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And Tracy is just, like, squirming

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

With, oh, no. He might find out, and then I'd be ruined. But it'd probably be fine if she found out. It would just remove opportunities for this awkward fun.

Rachel:

Yeah. Exactly. It would take away one of our really good running jokes. So they end up back in the precinct, and Nick is like, okay. So now who's Vashawn again?

Rachel:

And she's like, oh, he's just an old friend. You know? I know him from,

Matt:

Places.

Rachel:

Back at the before the plane crash, right around

Matt:

Back at the thing. Thing. Yeah. That happened.

Rachel:

Yeah. And he goes, okay. So you were crossing the street, and he saw you?

Matt:

He just happened to be walking by.

Rachel:

And then he And

Matt:

he was overcome with with cancer

Rachel:

for your safety. Okay. Alright. And then he goes, actually, how did it work out with that plumber earlier? How'd that go?

Rachel:

And then he gives her this look like, I know Vashawn was the plumber, Tracy, and you needed to go

Matt:

Wink, wink.

Rachel:

Let the plumber in, so to speak.

Matt:

So so the last couple weeks, I've been working on this project for, but we have our house, and then we have, like, a garage. We'll hang out space, whatever. Where the pod lab is. And we don't really have Internet out here. So I dug a trench.

Matt:

I put down some conduit. I ran Ethernet, between the house and the shop. But I got to, yeah, to make a joke with Rachel. I asked her if she want to help me come lay some pipe. I've been laying pipe off all week by myself.

Rachel:

Oh, yeah. It's a

Matt:

good it's a good one.

Rachel:

Yeah. It is. Yeah. Yeah. So back to the episode.

Matt:

Speaking of laying pipe, how'd that plumber go, Tracy?

Rachel:

Yeah. And then we find out the guy who was Maggie Dwyer's boyfriend, her vampire boyfriend, who is, like, the most stereotypical nerdy looking accountant fellow. But after Nick calls Tracy on her little bit of bullshit in this episode, they go in to talk to mister Upton, who it turns out is, Maggie Dwyer's boyfriend, and he is extremely stereotypically normal. Meridy, it's very much to make sure we are well aware that he is not a vampire. Although, it reminds me of the moonlight episode where there's a guy who's both a rocket scientist and a vampire.

Matt:

Mhmm. Or Fred the vampire accountant.

Rachel:

Or Fred the vampire accountant. Yeah. He kinda looks like maybe Fred the Vampire Accountant looks like. But he's like, I don't know. She was a real kinky chick.

Rachel:

You were cheating on your wife. No.

Matt:

She wouldn't say it that

Rachel:

way. Look. It was just for fun. Look. Maggie's a real kinky chick.

Rachel:

You know how it is. Did you kill it?

Matt:

It was just sex.

Rachel:

I know. He was just having fun is what he says, even though he was cheating on his wife. And he's like, my wife isn't gonna find out, will I? Because she's, she's fiery, he went along with the whole vampire thing because it got him Maggie. Yeah.

Rachel:

And if that strikes you

Matt:

as a little find it was a little more, like, role play kind of Yeah.

Rachel:

Like, we were pretending, but he didn't he maybe deliberately didn't clarify with Maggie whether or not she was pretending.

Matt:

Right. He distracted himself from maybe how committed Maggie was to the role play.

Rachel:

I think maybe the secondary theme of this whole episode is just how clueless all of these men are in their relationships. Clueless and or unconcerned with how the women felt. Yeah. Vashawn and Jerry are unconcerned about how the women felt in the relationships we see them portraying. Nick is clueless in how he is presenting himself to Natalie, And this guy was he was deliberately clueless about how Maggie really felt because he was enjoying being with someone who was a little bit fun and a little bit different, and he didn't want it to end by realizing that he was exploiting someone who maybe needed help Yeah.

Rachel:

Which makes it just as ugly feeling as you think it does. But it's the nineties, and it's supposed to be like, men. Men. And not men, is that that sexual sign? Okay.

Rachel:

Tracy calls him on it though, because he goes, when this all comes out, is this gonna get, like, published anywhere? Like, is my wife gonna find out that I was Maggie's boyfriend, That I'm the one who she said was a vampire? And Tracy goes, maybe. And then I think you're gonna lose something very specific, and she makes, like, a motion.

Matt:

Well, yeah. He says he says he's gonna be a dead man. And she leans over and makes a shink noise and just says, maybe a little less of a man.

Rachel:

Oh, when was Lorena Bobbitt?

Matt:

We've talked about Lorena Bobbitt because Skanky made a comment.

Rachel:

About Lorena Bobbitt. So she's gotta be near around this time.

Matt:

Yes. It would be in the in the recent past, in the cultural headspace.

Rachel:

1993. Yep. So, yeah, this would be very much in the current zeitgeist of this woman who literally cut her man's penis off for reasons that you should definitely go and read more about because, goddamn, did we make the wrong people the villain in the nineties?

Matt:

Yep.

Rachel:

Like, oh, that poor guy and his poor penis. Not like maybe he should have stopped being an asshole and a sexual predator. Yeah. Yeah. Alright.

Rachel:

So that's my little bit. You just go look that up. We're not gonna talk about that oncoming 81 kilo.

Matt:

Again.

Rachel:

But Tracy does make a reference again. Tracy makes a reference. She goes, a little less of a man. And when they walk out, Nick's like, seriously? And she's like, yeah.

Rachel:

I don't know. I felt inspired. She goes He

Matt:

had it coming.

Rachel:

He had it coming. You know, he was lying to her about their real relationship, or he was lying to himself about their real relationship. And they were just

Matt:

And he's lying to his wife about their real relationship?

Rachel:

Yeah. And all of his relationships are based on dishonesty.

Matt:

And I'm just sick of men lying about relationships. Oh,

Rachel:

man. She's like, I don't know where that's coming from. Yes. You do, Tracy. We all do.

Rachel:

And she goes, you don't think he was making that up to you? And it goes, who would make up anything that embarrassing? Like

Matt:

I feel like at some point, Nick has made up an embarrassing story to cover up a potentially, compromising story?

Rachel:

Probably.

Matt:

I'm trying to think back. It's it's, like, tickling my memory. Like, there's there was an episode where something happened where Nick might have been exposed, and he made up an embarrassing story to distract people away from investigating it.

Rachel:

Are you talking about feeding the beast where he pretend to be an alcoholic?

Matt:

Maybe.

Rachel:

I don't know. To cover up his actual addiction? He does it a couple of times where he's like, here's this thing I know you're not gonna ask me about. Yeah. Because at the time, Skanky would reliably be like, nope.

Rachel:

That's too much emotional intimacy. I can't even ask you any further questions. We're done here. So we've lost that now, can we get Tracy?

Matt:

We are 2 humans with penises. We cannot have an emotional connection. We we cannot have an

Rachel:

which he relied on. But we don't get that now because Tracy would be like, oh, tell me about it.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

Talk to me about this thing that happened to you. And so he has to sort of bluster his way things through things more. But he's really like he he wasn't lying. He he was telling the truth. And Reese walks up, and he's like, well, we know where the wife was.

Rachel:

She was in Winnipeg for the last 2 weeks at a science fiction convention. Okay. So he maybe has 2 wives that think he's maybe she thinks he's an alien. I don't know. That'd be an interesting side story.

Matt:

He's he's lying to multiple women about being a supernatural slash otherworldly creature.

Rachel:

And then we get some kind of insensitive language about the fact that Maggie Dwyer maybe needed some more mental support than she was getting because, they're all like, oh, this whole thing sounds a little nutty, and Rhys goes, sounds like a whole nut cluster to me. Okay.

Matt:

He goes

Rachel:

he goes, this is why I stick to hockey shows. I leave this kind of shit to my wife because apparently his wife is a big fan of the Jerry Tate show. And so Tracy drops the bomb that, actually, Jerry Tate asked me if I would be in on the show and it's, like, a special about women in dangerous jobs and the crap they have to deal with. And Rhys goes, that little barb was aimed at me, wasn't it? She goes, yes.

Rachel:

About, women in dangerous traditionally male jobs and the crap they sometimes have to deal with. Hey. That little barber's into me, wouldn't it?

Gerry:

Oh, yeah. You know, I think she should do it.

Matt:

But in good humor.

Rachel:

Good job, Tracy. Good job for calling him out on his super, super sexist and inappropriate comments he's making right now about poor Maggie Dwyer, the victim of a murder. And then he says, you know, normally, I'd tell you no, but I think I'm gonna order you to do the show because it's gonna get us in a little bit deeper. It's maybe gonna get us some answers. So let's do this.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Just think of it as more of the crap that you have to put up with.

Rachel:

And Lacroix has apparently been tuned in to whatever the fuck is happening in Nick's life because then we get some LaCroix podcast time.

Matt:

So he it looks like he's just in a back seat in the Raven.

Rachel:

Yeah. He's in a booth behind the Raven. He says that in an earlier episode. He's go he says, I've got a little recording studio here now.

Matt:

But it doesn't look like there's a door or anything on it.

Rachel:

It's a window. It's a big old window. It's a

Matt:

big window? Yeah. Do we see his recording room later?

Rachel:

I don't know. We're always looking out the window because he's always watching people in the bar while he's talking.

Matt:

Okay. Maybe it's implied that there's just a big pane of glass there.

Rachel:

Yeah. I think there is. Okay. Yeah. Because we do it pretty much anytime we see him recording now in The Raven, we're gonna see the big window.

Rachel:

Yeah. And he's talking about love, and love is shit. Love is some real big fucking shit. Right? We all know love is shit, but why can we not stop trying to get it?

Rachel:

And then every time it burns us and destroys us and totally wrecks our souls and leaves us dead and bleeding and dying on the ground, we crawl back for more love.

Matt:

And yet we must have. It rules us, uses, abuses,

Rachel:

misuses.

Matt:

And yet, why do we always crawl back?

Rachel:

And Natalie's listening to this whole thing like me. I don't know. That's fucking right. From Nick's apartment. From Nick's apartment.

Matt:

She broke into his apartment this time.

Rachel:

His code. It's fine. So Nick shows up at his apartment and for once, Natalie's waiting for him, not the other way around. And And Natalie's just sitting in his chair with her head back, and he walks up and he's like, okay. Alright.

Rachel:

Why are you here? And she's like, have something I need to say with you say to you. And he goes, should I sit down? She goes, nope. Won't take that long.

Rachel:

Then she's like, I'm done. I'm giving up on you. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm giving up on you, and I'm going now. Goodbye. And he's like, Natalie, wait.

Rachel:

Let's talk about it. And she's like, nope. She just flips him off over her shoulder and leaves. She's done. She's done.

Rachel:

Can we blame her? Nope. Can we? No. Which is why it makes this a compelling storyline, because you can see it from both perspectives.

Rachel:

Nick does not believe he is not doing what she asks. He's trying. He takes, like, 2 or 3 pills when she asks him to take them. For, like, a week, he stays on them. He takes a sip of everything she makes for him.

Rachel:

I think from his perspective, he is trying.

Matt:

And and so it's justifiable for him to think that their their relationship's good. I think part of what's happening here is she's been sending a lot of signals that there's more that she wants as part of this relationship, but she feels like she can't say it explicitly

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Because it would

Rachel:

You'd come up with demanding.

Matt:

It and it would damage their friendship.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And so but because she can't just explicitly state what she wants more out of the relationship, Nick the Brick is in the dark Yeah. In the night. And so he's oblivious to our expectations. And she's frustrated because she can't communicate her frustrations Yeah. Her expectations.

Rachel:

She's trying not to nag him because she's trying not to be like, did you take your pills? Did you take your pills? Joseph probably doesn't want the cognitive load of keeping up with everything he's supposed to be doing. So that every day, she's like, okay, Nick. Time to take your pill.

Matt:

Right. And she knows that she would have to enforce every single dose.

Rachel:

Right. And it could ultimately lead to resentment Yeah. Of her pushing him when he doesn't wanna be pushed. So she's trying to push him just enough, but not too much. And he's not really giving her good signals about where that line is.

Rachel:

And so she's stuck in this weird limbo where he both wants her to help, but he's not actually doing any of the things she asks him to do.

Matt:

Right. And she's stuck in this weird limbo.

Rachel:

It's super confusing.

Matt:

She's tired of dropping hints and then not picking them up.

Rachel:

Right. Which, I mean, both of them have a leg to stand on in this argument. Mhmm. He is not human. He doesn't work on human timelines.

Rachel:

He doesn't work with human expectations. He hasn't been human for 7 centuries. He's not gonna act like a human in this situation. He can't even articulate to her what his differences are. He could not tell her what is different about me and my expectations and my timeline and how I will fulfill things because he doesn't have that amount of introspection.

Rachel:

He's not that self aware, and she cannot articulate to him her expectations because she does not know what will trigger him.

Matt:

Exactly.

Rachel:

Because in the back of her mind, it always has to be there that if she pushes him too hard, he can just kill her and leave. He can kill her and get away with it.

Matt:

Yes.

Rachel:

There is nothing that will stop him from doing that except his own morality. And how can you tell she's only known him, what, 3 years at this point? How can she tell she knows him well enough to know where that line is and to be willing to risk it? And so at this point, she's like, I don't feel comfortable doing any more than I'm already doing, and what I'm doing is too much for me, and I'm finished. I'm leaving.

Rachel:

Goodbye. And then we cut back to the Terry Tate Tate show where there's a fight going on because apparently they had the monks and punks episode, and inevitably conflict broke out. And even Jerry got punched because they're taking him back to the room. They get him some ice, they break up the fight, and Charlie is trying to give him juice, and he goes, orange? She goes, no, carrot.

Rachel:

And he just looks away. He doesn't even tell her no. He just dismisses her. Because, of course, Tracy's there, and he's focused on Tracy because, he's a lecherous asshole.

Matt:

Absolutely.

Rachel:

Yeah. And he's like, oh, I'm so glad you agreed to be on my show. We need to really come up with something really scintillating, really, really get the blood going.

Matt:

A police chase.

Rachel:

Like a police chase, or maybe we could film you, like, on the job in a seedy neighborhood, and she's like, actually, I'm homicide, and that's usually after the fact, which means most of my job is, you know, thinking. And they're like, yeah, that's not

Matt:

That's not sexy.

Rachel:

That's not sexy. We need to maybe stage something. And she goes, well, I do have an informant that I could call.

Matt:

A snitch.

Rachel:

A snitch. I do have a snitch that I could call who would probably be willing to go on TV. And they're like, okay, cool. We would hide his identity. You know, we could definitely use the computer to hide his identity.

Rachel:

That would be great. And she's like, okay. Let's do that. And they're like, okay. Now let's discuss your makeover.

Rachel:

She's like, my makeover? And they're like, yeah. We gotta sex it up. She's like, okay. Oh, god.

Rachel:

And then she's talking to Vashon, and Vashon is going through her refrigerator. And he goes, did you organize this alphabetically? Because he cannot resist an opportunity to shame her for the fact that she is neat. It's just so unrealistic. I look goofy.

Matt:

You arranged this stuff alphabetically?

Rachel:

Hey. Are you listening to me?

Matt:

You're afraid you'll look stupid.

Rachel:

Well, won't I? I mean, I could just see it. They'll put me in this tight spandex dress cut up to here, and then neckline somewhere down around my waist, 4 inch spikes, leather, babe cop.

Matt:

But he doesn't even eat.

Rachel:

He doesn't eat. He's just doing that to be an asshole. That is the only reason he is in that refrigerator.

Matt:

He he doesn't feel like he can just stand next to her and have a conversation until he's shamed her about something that she has no reason to be ashamed of.

Rachel:

Well, he's neat. She is neat and practical. This these are many these are established over and over again as part of her personality traits. He lives in an abandoned church with his electric guitar and his wine bottles.

Matt:

Yes.

Rachel:

He needs to just shut the fuck up about it. Like, when he was shaming her for a car, I bet this gets great gas mileage. Yeah. It really does, Vashon. Okay?

Rachel:

It does. And sometimes that's a good reason for buying a car, and I don't need you to judge me for it. Maybe if she's thinking really hard about whether or not she wants to be in a relationship with Vashawn, she should realize that he makes who she is into a joke.

Matt:

And that's a problem.

Rachel:

And that's a problem. You can have little foibles that you tease each other about. That's fine. But who I am fundamentally is who I am fundamentally. And if you use that as continuous fodder for a joke, I'm ultimately gonna feel like I'm ridiculous and I either have to change or I'm always gonna feel like I'm just being stupid to you.

Rachel:

Like, I'm just being a joke. And that's not a great place to be in a relationship.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

Just relationship advice with Rachel and Matt. But she's talking about, can you imagine me in a leather mini skirt cut all the way up to here with a cleavage that goes all the way down to my waistline, my hair all done up, heavy makeup, studs, leather, boots, a whip. And Vashon's like,

Matt:

stop. Slow down.

Rachel:

She's like, they're gonna make me into a total babe cop. And Vashon's like, and he's like staring at her, he's staring at her ass is what he's doing. And she goes, what are you looking at? And he's like, I was just remembering something that happened a long time ago. We cut back to this terrible flashback of them making out with these women who they ultimately kill in the flashback.

Rachel:

Mhmm. And is it this point that they killed them? Oh, no. I think that's the little bit later.

Matt:

Isn't this after? Or is there another I

Rachel:

think they're like, it's really brief. Like, they're just making out with them in the anyway, it doesn't matter. It's it's I blacked it out is what I did. And then this is an important note. Nick is back in jeans.

Rachel:

Nick's like, I gotta get I gotta get Natalie back. What can I do? Oh, I know. Jeans.

Matt:

This works?

Rachel:

I need some boot cut. Get it while we get it to me.

Matt:

75% of the time, this works a 100%.

Rachel:

Percent of the time. Yep. He's back in his little jeans, his little suede jacket, and he's like, mama, go get Natalie back. He has helped to go try to track her down. Because he made the phone call and she didn't pick up.

Rachel:

And he was like, damn. I wish I hadn't paid for her to have a caller ID. There was a time, listener, gentle listener, there was a time when you answered the phone and you didn't know who it was.

Matt:

Blind. Blind.

Rachel:

And you just and there was

Matt:

It was a surprise every time.

Rachel:

One phone for everybody in the household, and you picked it up. And it might be a friend, might be a telemarketer, might be your parents, might be for your parents. You had no idea. You just picked it up. Remember getting lessons on how you're supposed to answer the phone?

Rachel:

Like, don't say this residence because then they'll know who they're calling. Just say, hello. How can I help you? All the privacy stuff that we went through as children that now it's just like, yeah. It's okay.

Rachel:

Tell everyone who you are on the Internet. It's not a problem. But we go back to the love doctor, because earlier, after Jerry got hit on the head, she popped in when he was talking to Tracy, and Charlie was a little skeevy about it. She was like, you can go. And the doctor was like, I'm just here to check on Jerry.

Rachel:

Just trying to see how he is. And she's like, he's fine. You can leave. We picked up on some tension there, and you immediately thought the doctor was the bad guy?

Matt:

Yeah. She she felt like she wanted to stay, but Charlie was making her leave sooner than she wanted to leave, which seemed really suspicious at the time. And so my first instinct was she did the murdering.

Rachel:

You were right on one account. Yeah. She did the murdering. It was just the wrong she. But she's leaving, and she gets in her car, and someone comes up and starts breaking all of her windows.

Rachel:

And she's like,

Matt:

Or hold on. Hold on. With the she did the murdering, you didn't know what you said, but you said it.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yes. You didn't know what you said, but you said it. You were like, oh, she did it. I was like, who?

Rachel:

You're like the doctor. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Matt:

From Dune?

Rachel:

Yeah. Okay. Oh, I know. Okay.

Matt:

I was not sure

Rachel:

if you got I

Matt:

got I wasn't sure if

Rachel:

you got her. What you were putting down. So, of course, now it's a crime scene because she was bludgeoned to death by this crowbar, which she totally could have just started the car and driven off. But instead, she was screaming at every window as it was broken. I don't know.

Matt:

She shifted into drive.

Rachel:

She just panicked. I don't know.

Gerry:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. I used to deliver pizzas. I used to deliver I've done a lot of jobs, but I used to deliver pizza in some pretty, sketchy areas of the town that we lived in. And definitely, one of the things I would do is if I was delivering a pizza and I was unsure, you don't shift out of drive.

Matt:

Right. You just keep your foot on the brake.

Rachel:

Because one of the things people would do was order pizza, have it delivered to an abandoned house, and then when you pulled up at the house, they would pull up behind you and they would come to the window. And you just hand the pizza out the window, they hand you the cash, and you drive off. So that's a moment where you leave the car and drive. Because at any moment, you can just punch it.

Matt:

Right. Your reaction is to, like, pull all your limbs in. And when you do that, the car starts moving forward.

Rachel:

Yeah. And go. Yeah. So anyway, maybe that's why I was like, you can drive off. Just drive off.

Rachel:

It's okay. I haven't had anybody break my windows or anything, but there was definitely some, like, just they're here for the pizza. Just remember they're just here for the pizza. Just they're just here for the pizza and just give the pizza and drive off. But the lady producer, Charlie, and Jerry are there, and they're really no help.

Rachel:

They're like, I don't know. We'd already gone home. I don't know who could have done it. Whatever. And Reese is like, get their alibis.

Matt:

Yeah. Checking.

Rachel:

I don't know. Because I don't know. This seems a little sketchy. And Tracy's like, do you want me to cancel the, like, hitting camera ride along thing? And he's like, no.

Rachel:

Keep doing that. Doing great. This kind of is like

Matt:

This is no reason to stop.

Rachel:

Is it in father figure where they're in a drive by shooting on the way to Nick's house? Remember, he has the little girl who's like a witness to a mob hit.

Matt:

Mhmm.

Rachel:

And there's a drive by shooting of the car on their way to Nick's house, And they don't kill him, so they just get back in the car and drive the rest of the way to his house. Like, this is fine. This is perfectly fine.

Matt:

We survived the event. It's definitely not continuing.

Rachel:

Yeah. That's all done. Thank God. 2 people have died related to this talk show, but that's fine. Let's just let Tracy continue to put herself in harm's way in this way.

Rachel:

And the most notable thing here is Nick walks up to Natalie. Natalie's on the job. She's trying to do her job, and he walks up and he's like, Natalie, we gotta talk. And she's like, honestly, I said everything I wanted to say. And when you keep coming over here and trying to talk about it, it makes it way harder than it already is.

Rachel:

I think you just need to fucking let it go, and you need to fucking let me go. And Nick is, like, I don't really wanna. I'm not ready. I'm not really let you go. Poor Natalie.

Rachel:

That's hard. She's like, I said my piece. I need you to be a grown up about this, and he's like, well, I'm not a grown up. I don't want to do this. And so Tracy spots this little bit of interaction, and Tracy gets a moment where she tries to talk to Natalie about it.

Rachel:

And I don't know how I feel about this scene because it feels like if my niece tried to give me relationship advice. Because Tracy walks up and she's like, listen, she does say, like, I don't know if I'm overstepping my boundaries here. Like, I don't know.

Matt:

Feel free to tell me to shut up

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

At any time.

Rachel:

Feel free to tell me to stop because I realize that maybe we don't know each other in this way or maybe this is not something that you feel like our relationship is ready for. But I really don't feel like I cannot say it. So I'm gonna say it until you stop me from saying it. But, you know, sometimes in relationships, it can be hard to tell where you stand with each other and you know, that can lead to some tension, and I'm kind of working through that on my own right now too. And like, I get it.

Rachel:

I understand, but that Nick is a good guy. He saved my life a couple of times. He's a really good human being. He would never lie to anyone. He tells the absolute truth at every moment, and he really trusts me.

Rachel:

And I trust him, and we have no secrets. And Natalie is like okay. She's like, you know what? I I really, I hear what you're saying, but I just feel all used up. And I wanna know what kind of relationships Tracy has been in in the past because her immediate response is, well, that happens sometimes.

Rachel:

You use them and they use you. That's what a relationship is. Mhmm. Tracy.

Matt:

It reminds me of some of the conversations that me and you have had with Kate and Hannah, where, like, I'll come in after you record an episode, and you'll be like, hey. We're thinking about going out to dinner. And Yeah. I'm going out to dinner. I'm gonna be eating anything back.

Matt:

They're both like, oh my god. You can just do that?

Rachel:

You can just tell them what you're gonna do. Yes. Because I'm an adult. I'm a sovereign individual, and I get to make my own decisions. If you felt like this was a bad time for me to go, you would articulate something like, okay.

Rachel:

I really wish you could go and have fun with your friends, but it would be helpful for me to have your help here with the kids for a little bit. And I would say, okay. Can I wait half an hour and help you with the kids and then go to dinner? And you'd be like, cool. That'd be a perfect amount of time for me.

Rachel:

Thank you.

Matt:

Just bring me something back.

Rachel:

Just bring me something back.

Matt:

Actually, I I usually don't even ask, and you do anyway.

Rachel:

Yeah. Because I'm

Matt:

We understand each other. We've been

Rachel:

in a relationship for a really long time. But I have never phrased myself, I am using that right now, but that's okay, because he uses me too. I'm just I get where she's going with this, which is each relationship is give and take. It's give and take.

Matt:

Yeah.

Rachel:

You know, every relationship is sometimes I'm giving more, Sometimes you're giving more. And in the end, it all balances out. You don't have to keep track of that shit because in a good relationship, the scales balance in the end. And I think she's trying to say, like, even if it feels like Nick is using you right now, maybe it's a period in his time where he needs you more than you need him, and maybe that script will flip eventually, and you'll he'll be there for you when you need him. You remember, like, when your brother got murdered and you coerced him into turning him into a vampire, and then he had to murder him in his own home?

Rachel:

That part. And then there was there was that part where your goddaughter died, and he helped you through that. And, oh, there was that time you dated that guy who turned out to be a serial killer.

Matt:

And he rescued you?

Rachel:

Yeah. And then he rescued you. And then there was that other time that I dated that guy who he thought was a serial, who actually turned out to be a serial killer and rescued me then too. You know, like, really, he's done a lot for you. And, like, maybe you need to just keep everything in perspective.

Rachel:

And I get where Tracy is coming from, and I get where Tracy where Natalie is coming from. She's tired. She's tired of feeling like she's getting taken for granted in this relationship, which is what she never articulates to Nick, but it's exactly how she's feeling. And you don't really resolve this. Natalie's like, thank you so much for this, Tracy.

Rachel:

Like, I'll take that into consideration, but at the moment, I'm just really feeling tired. And then we're done. And then we got to Tracy after her makeover, which turns out means a miniskirt, matching jacket, tube top, and a beehive. The hair. There are several times where we, like, sexy dress Tracy up, and each time we do this hairstyle.

Matt:

Oh.

Rachel:

And I think it's because she had short hair, and the this was our only updo option.

Matt:

Gotcha.

Rachel:

That's what I'm going for. But Jerry tells her to keep it hip, cool, and cutting edge, And Tracy goes, great. I don't know what any of that means. She's like, I don't know. I am neither hip cool nor cutting edge.

Matt:

And then along came Vashon.

Rachel:

Yeah. Vashon shows up, and he's like, what does he it must be a movie quote that he says, because he's like, the big man landed in the house, and he set the bird free or something.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

Try to move in close on him. Hey, Vinny. What's going on?

Matt:

Looks like the deal went south. Batman had his guns a lice Thursday, then he took off with the bird. Great. This sounds so street.

Rachel:

I don't know. To me, it sounds familiar. Where's the bird now?

Matt:

On his way to Cairo.

Rachel:

And Tracy's like, okay. Great. Something about the bird, because Charlie goes, doesn't this sound familiar? So he must be quoting a movie. If you know what movie it is, do let me know.

Rachel:

But then a real threat appears, like a guy walks up with a knife and tries to stab Tracy. And Vashon doesn't just push

Matt:

spidey senses. He doesn't just

Rachel:

push Tracy back, like, gently nudge Tracy out of the way. He, like, whole ass shoves her off into the ground. She flies several feet back and lands on the pavement. I mean, he saves her life, but he breaks her hip. I don't know.

Rachel:

It's just a really great situation. And he ends up running this guy off and chasing him and leaving, like, he chases him and doesn't come back. And then we come back to this is now kind of an active crime scene, and Rhys is talking to Tracy. And he's like, okay. I want the tape, even though you guys say that you didn't get a clear picture of his face.

Rachel:

And I want your snitch, Tracy. Like, whoever it was that you met with, like, he's gotta come back. She's like, we didn't go he didn't come back. He ran away, and he didn't come back. And Nick is like, actually, he's mine.

Rachel:

I've used him a couple of times over the years. I know where to get in touch with him. I'll go do it. So he steps up and takes the fall for this because Reese is like, wait. You actually had them meet with, like, one of your informants?

Rachel:

Tracy, the shit. Didn't you watch amateur night where we let them

Matt:

We don't do that.

Rachel:

We don't do that. Remember keys, Tracy. Remember keys. And Tracy's like, I don't know what you're talking about. That was a whole season ago.

Rachel:

But Nick goes to see the Shawna the Raven, and he's like, oh, so you're a snitch for Tracy now. And he's like, I guess, you know, every once in a while or whatever when she needs me to play the part.

Matt:

Well, Veshad's like, wait, she told you? And Nick's like, no?

Rachel:

No. I figured this shit out of my mouth.

Matt:

I'm a fucking detective.

Rachel:

I'm a fucking detective. I'll put 2 and 2 together. Okay. I mean, it's funny, but, honestly, I get so distracted by this weird fucking vampire bro moment that happens right after this. Because Vashawn is sitting there with Nick, and he looks over, and he actually goes into a flashback, and he remembers, like, they've all murdered these women.

Rachel:

All of these women have been killed, and they're like, oh, God. Being a vampire dude is so fucking great.

Matt:

There's no better way to be a man than to be a vampire man.

Rachel:

Yeah. He's like vampire men are we're the real alphas. This is some red pill bullshit right here because we get to love them, kill them. They we get to do anything we want to with women with no consequences, which is what Screeve says.

Matt:

And they never have to nag us.

Rachel:

Yeah. He goes, we don't have to marry them, which means we never have to worry about the old ball and chain. We get to just be with them and then never have to worry think about them ever again. Ain't it fucking great? And I'm not sure if we're supposed to see Vashon as unsettled by this statement, these statements that Screed is making.

Matt:

I think so.

Rachel:

Because he's, like, wiping his lips and listening to him like, I don't know. But then when we come back to the present, Vashawn is looking over at these women at the bar, and he says, do you remember the good old days

Matt:

The good old days.

Rachel:

When we could just walk up to a woman like that and do whatever we wanted to.

Matt:

Remember the days when you could see something like that pass by and just take her, not worrying about the consequences?

Rachel:

Can we all sit with that for a minute? He is waxing nostalgic about when he could just rape anybody he wanted to and there were no consequences. And Nick is like, I think I did that for a little bit, but he gets interrupted because LaCroix comes over and LaCroix is like, you're barking up the wrong tree, Vashon. He's one of them women have rights and get to make no means no.

Matt:

The times have changed, and Nicholas has changed with them.

Rachel:

Yeah. He's, like, he's gotten worse because he thinks that women should be able to, quote, choose who they get to be with.

Matt:

Women get to stay alive. Cute.

Rachel:

And then he's like, Vashon, I'll let you in on a little secret. You can still do that. You can still walk over there, and you can do whatever you want. In fact, I got a whole room in the back for it. We're about to find out about it in Sons of Belial.

Rachel:

I mean, I'm just saying, you can still do whatever you wanna do as long as you're not stick in the mud like Nick. All you have to do is be discreet and don't get caught. Gross. That's fucking gross. This whole flashback, this whole moment is just so hard.

Rachel:

Hard. Okay. We can make as many jokes as we want to about the way they portray Native American mysticism. We can make jokes about vampire dog. We can make jokes about a lot, but there's not enough context lenses in the world to reframe this in a way that feels even remotely palatable, especially after we just had that discussion in Black Buddha, where we talked about how hand in hand the vampire mythology and sexual violence go, and how hard it is to separate the 2.

Rachel:

And then we have this moment where Vaish Sean is literally jonesing for the time when he could just kill any woman he wanted to.

Matt:

And the thing that's, like, his surface thoughts are that, you know, that one time way back when I did just that?

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah. That was a good day. Nick does not speak up. We don't maybe he does and we don't see it, but he's just standing there like it's how I imagine a a Knuff guy, but an Allen in a group of Kens, and the Kens are all going off about whatever.

Rachel:

And it's like, I could speak up, but what would that gain? Like, what I'm just gonna be me, and I'm gonna leave. So he leaves, and he goes back to the precinct. And he's in they're watching the show. Like, they're watching the film that they took, the footage that they took of Tracy with the attacker.

Rachel:

And Nick actually says, like, Fashon agreed to be in this, and she's like, yeah. They were gonna hide his face digitally. And Nick is like, hide his face. Look. The hit man is deliberately hiding his face from the camera as if he knows it's there even though it's a hidden camera.

Rachel:

Mhmm. And Rhys goes, maybe I should start paying attention to my wife. Yeah. You should, Rhys. Because, apparently, a couple of episodes For

Matt:

more reasons than just that.

Rachel:

Yeah. Apparently, a couple of episodes, Jerry had some hitmen, like, hitmen who've married their targets on and talk to them. So they have hitmen that they can hire. And so, apparently, somebody has hired a hitman to take out Tracy. But why?

Rachel:

We still don't know why all these people are dying around the Jerry Tate show. And Natalie is walking through the precinct, so they're getting ready to leave. Reese is like, go go talk to them. I'll make sure a search warrant meets you there. Just go.

Rachel:

And Nick is like, okay, but hang on. I gotta go talk to Nick, to Natalie. And so he corners Natalie again, and Natalie is like, I told you I was done talking about this. And he's like, listen. I just had to listen to Lacroix and Vashon reminisce about some really hinky shit, and I just need a a shoulder to I need to be Alan with you for a minute.

Rachel:

Can I be Alan with you for a minute? And she's like, fine. I'll listen. But he says, what do you want me to say? How can we communicate this?

Rachel:

What do you want from me? What kind of intimacy are you looking for for me? I need more explicit instructions. I don't even know what I did wrong.

Matt:

Yeah. At one point, he's he tells her, I don't know how to convince you that I'm not using you.

Rachel:

Because I'm not using you. I'm not. But I don't know how to tell you that I'm not.

Gerry:

Natalie. Natalie.

Rachel:

Why can't you just let this go?

Gerry:

Because you're wrong. That's why. I'm not using you. I wish I could prove that to you, but I don't know

Rachel:

how. Alright? Well, that's your problem, isn't it?

Gerry:

What what am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to say to you? I don't know what to say. Tell me what to say.

Rachel:

I don't know. Maybe there's nothing left to say. And she goes, yeah. I think that's probably your problem, that you can't articulate that you're not using me. They had almost the same discussion in Only the Lonely.

Rachel:

In fact, we were making cracks about it while we were making drinks before we came down here.

Gerry:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Because he does this repeatedly. Here's the thing. Here's some more marriage advice with Matt and Rachel. If you have an issue with each other and the way you solve it is with love bombing and gifts instead of communication and actual resolution, spoiler alert, it's gonna pop back up again. It doesn't last.

Rachel:

Because the problem still exists. Yep. They didn't solve this problem in Only the Lonely. He just loved bomb her until she forgot about it. They didn't solve this problem in Dance by the Light and the Moon when he was a raging asshole to her.

Rachel:

He just gave her perfume and she forgot about it. And wouldn't you know, it's reared its ugly head again. Guess how we're gonna solve it.

Matt:

I wanna know what he writes in the card.

Rachel:

I don't know. It must have been saucy. Maybe he printed out some fan fiction and pasted it.

Matt:

No. It's a in the card is a URL for one of Christian's music videos.

Rachel:

There's a couple really good ones. Nick and Natalie ones. Night vision 1228. Look it up. Alright.

Rachel:

So, ultimately, Natalie is like, I don't know. If you don't know what to say, I can't give you those words. Maybe there's nothing left to say. And Nick just walks away. He's like, okay.

Rachel:

I'm not getting anywhere right now, and I got things I gotta do. But, like

Matt:

And sometimes in the moment, you can't articulate your feelings or why you're upset or whatever. And sometimes it takes a few days.

Rachel:

I feel like Natalie had to live with it for 2 or 3 days. I do that. She just had to live with it and figure out what she was really upset about so she could articulate that to him. But they head to the studio to search because now they have a search warrant. And immediately, Charlie takes Tracy hostage, which is really fortunate, because honestly, I don't know that they would have figured this out if the if the producer hadn't actually just straight taken Tracy hostage.

Rachel:

It's one of those ones where they're, like, damn. We don't know how they're gonna put these clues together. Let's just have the killer reveal themselves.

Matt:

I'm wondering I mean, obviously, it's a plot device, but why is it only Nick and Tracy serving the warrant and doing the investigating, like, the searching? They have teams of people. They have teams

Rachel:

of procedural drama. It's just supposed to be

Matt:

like plot device for this, but, like, the whole the plot hole here that the device is covering is Yeah. If they were serving a warrant to, like, look through the records, they'd have a team of people to, like, collect all the records

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And, like, monitor them so that employees wouldn't be randomly wandering around the building with a gun.

Rachel:

Yeah. But sometimes time is of the essence. If you wanna make sure they don't have time to get rid of the the card in the rolodex that has the phone number for the hitman you hired.

Matt:

Right. Which is why they usually seize the documents and take them somewhere safe.

Rachel:

Right. But But if if time is of the essence and you can't muster a team real quick, then you would send 2 detectives to go kinda secure the scene Yeah. And wait for backup to arrive. Why she kept the rolodex card for the hitman she hired in the rolodex in the because she goes, it's under d. If you're looking for the guy that I hired, you you could've just taken that one out and thrown it away.

Rachel:

For death. For for death dealer. I don't know. So, yeah, Charlie takes Tracy hostage, and she ends up taking her out and putting her on stage and turning the camera on. And she's, like, today on sex and the talk show host, we're gonna talk to Tracy who couldn't keep her fucking hands to herself.

Rachel:

Tracy's like, I what now? What did I do? Because Charlie thinks that Tracy was having sex with Jerry just like the doctor and Maggie.

Matt:

It's it's not that Jerry was having sex with Tracy. It's that Tracy was having sex with Jerry.

Rachel:

Right. So Jerry comes out and she's like, hi, Jerry. You love me. Right? That's what you told me every time you slept with me.

Rachel:

And he's like, every time I what? I mean, he slept I slept with you. Yeah. But I don't remember saying I loved you. It's just sex, Charlie.

Rachel:

Okay. So this guy is talking to this woman who is clearly having some kind of crisis. She's holding a gun on a police officer, and he, for the first time in his entire life, can't lie. Because he's like, I didn't love you. It was just sex.

Rachel:

You can shoot her. That's fine. I'm just telling you, it's nuts. It would just for the record, so everybody knows, because this is getting taped. I don't love that woman, and I never did.

Rachel:

And she's like, I have always been there for you. I have been there for you. I have pushed your career forward. We have done this together, and you did not give even a single shit. And he's like, no.

Rachel:

No. I didn't care about you at all. I never said I loved you. I never said it, and I have no obligation towards you. This is the moment to go, oh, yeah, baby.

Rachel:

I'm so sorry. You just put that gun down, and we can be together. You just give that gun to Tracy. Come right over here. I'll tell everybody.

Rachel:

I'll tell everybody it was me that I drove you to this. You come over here. You just put that gun down and come over here.

Matt:

Right. He literally does this professionally to incite people Yeah. And then calm them down when things get rowdy. Yeah. He knows how to

Rachel:

do it. He doesn't do it, though.

Matt:

But he doesn't do it.

Rachel:

He calls her crazy. He's like, you're crazy. Loved you? No. I fucking love you.

Rachel:

You're you're nuts. So she just shoots him. She's like, I should have thought of this first. And so she shoots Jerry And before Nick can get there, because Nick shows up and he tries to hypnotize her, and it doesn't work again. Maybe he's becoming more human than he's led on to Natalie because the last couple times he tried to hypnotize somebody, it hadn't worked.

Rachel:

Because he tries to hypnotize him to hypnotize Charlie, and it doesn't work. And, ultimately, Charlie shoot Charlie shoots Jerry before Nick can get there, and we kinda leave it at that.

Matt:

Well, she kind of wakes up a little bit and realizes, oh, no.

Rachel:

She's like I shot Jerry. I'm so sorry, baby. And so she goes over in his whole neighborhood.

Matt:

You're alright, aren't you?

Rachel:

You're fine. You're fine. And then we're like, whew. Alright. So glad we solved that case with hard ass police work and serious dedication.

Rachel:

We absolutely did not get distracted by our all of our own ambiguous relationships, how every single relationship in this episode is now ambiguous because we don't have the Myra Skanky bedrock to hold us all together anymore.

Matt:

Right.

Rachel:

We're all just out there flapping.

Matt:

Captain Reese ain't helping.

Rachel:

Yeah. Captain Reese ain't helping. The oh, maybe I should pay attention to my wife when she talks. I stopped listening 15 years ago.

Matt:

I pay attention when you talk, honey.

Rachel:

So Nick is watching TV, and Tracy is on TV, and she's actually talking to Jerry. And it's like a serious she's not wearing her stupid makeup. She's not doing all that stuff. She's just sitting there talking about, you know, being a woman in a high risk situation and what it takes to be taken seriously and what it takes to be taken as a real cop and, you know, all that stuff. And Natalie walks in behind Nick, and she's like, Nick, these flowers.

Rachel:

But I do the best I can. They're beautiful. And the card

Matt:

About your personal life. How is that

Gerry:

Well, I had to get you here somehow.

Rachel:

It worked. Well, it's turned up So what have you been up to this last little while? I need some very unusual characters. And that card. Oh.

Rachel:

And Nick turns around and goes, had

Matt:

to get you here. Music video.

Rachel:

Nick turns around and goes, had to get you here somewhere. I like to think it's the enigma one. Yeah. Yeah. I

Matt:

I have not personally watched the music videos. I just know of their existence.

Rachel:

Well, now we need to go watch the enigma one. Oh, no. It might be why I owned that CD when I was in high school. Yeah. And Natalie goes, you know, I realized something.

Rachel:

You could have made something up at the precinct and you didn't. You just floundered. You could have you could have lied to me, and you didn't lie to me, and I saw more than you think I saw. And Nick says, I really wish I could articulate to you how much you mean to me, but I can't because you don't mean anything to me. Just kidding.

Matt:

In my head, I was following up her lines about I saw more than you think I saw with, I'm inferring more than was actually there.

Rachel:

I know. She's like, I saw more than you think I saw. And he's like, well, good. Because I didn't mean anything more than I said. But that's fine.

Rachel:

I think he really is trying to say, like, I don't know. I'm not human enough to be able to communicate that with you. I'm not human enough to be able to know what our relationship is. I'm not human enough to be able to do fulfill all of the expectations that you have of me, but I'm trying. That's part of my journey back to humanity isn't just reclaiming mortality, but learning how to be with humans, like learning how to be in human society and interact in a way where I'm not in unintentionally harming people.

Matt:

So Maybe he sees it as his relationship with Natalie is deliberately non sexual because he would still struggle so much with separating the, like, sexual and, like, bloodthirst Yeah. Aspect of a relationship

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

With the the actual, like, reciprocal, like, personhood nature of a relationship.

Rachel:

It kinda And so

Matt:

that's what he's trying to focus on with Natalie.

Rachel:

It reminds me of in the British Being Human. Mitchell and Annie, 2 of the characters, become romantically interested in each other. So there's a whole episode where she's trying to figure out how they can be physically intimate. And so she's trying because she's a ghost, she's trying to figure out how to satisfy what she perceives as the need for this relationship to have sex in it.

Matt:

Yeah. A physical component.

Rachel:

And it keeps failing. And ultimately, Mitchell tells her, like, I don't see sex as part of a relationship. I see sex as a means to an end. It's something that I have used to hunt. It's how I hunt, and it's how I kill people.

Rachel:

And so when you're trying to do that with me, I'm not seeing it as a romantic part of a romantic relationship. I'm seeing it as, like, a tool that I use. And looking at how Vashon and Lacroix were, like, jonesing for the days when they could use sex as a means of attracting women and attracting prey and getting what they want, you can kind of understand how Nick refraining from having a physically intimate relationship with Natalie is his way of showing an actual interest in her.

Matt:

Right. That is Nick's version of an intimate relationship.

Rachel:

Yeah. Because sex is not romantic, and it's not about love for him, assuming he's even capable of having a traditional physical reaction to arousal, which we don't know. And, of course, we're not gonna talk about because it's 19 nineties. So I think it's important to keep that in mind, and it's something that he can't articulate to Natalie. He might even be embarrassed to articulate with to Natalie that, like, yeah, I've had sex with, like, just so many people.

Rachel:

Like, Nick, stop talking about it. He's like, no, this is important. Hang on. And none of it was about because I loved them. All of it was because I wanted something from them.

Rachel:

And so the

Matt:

Because I was using them.

Rachel:

Because I was using them.

Matt:

When I use women, I have sex with them.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

And I have not had sex with you.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Matt:

Ergo.

Rachel:

I am not using you. She's like, can can you use me just a little just a little peril? It's just the tiniest about apparel. Exploitation. Yeah.

Rachel:

Just I just is it if I'm complicit, it's fine. Right. Let's role play.

Matt:

We won't mutually exploit each other.

Rachel:

I don't know. So I think that's important to keep in mind. I I don't I think that maybe that is something where we are ascribing all of this meaning, and I don't really I don't really think the show runners were like, listen. I really think that, like, this is about his unique relationship with sex and intimacy and how really this almost asexual relationship that he has with Natalie is what he views as more intimate than intimacy. They no.

Rachel:

That's not the discussion that was being had. It's like, we gotta keep them on the hook because if they go ahead and get together, we're gonna lose our audience. So this is the nineties version of a slow burn romance that didn't know it was a slow burn romance and didn't know if it was a slow burn friendship. Didn't know what it was, just didn't know what it was. We don't know.

Rachel:

We never know. We never know what it is, and that's okay. It's fine. I don't think it ultimately takes away from the show. I think if we had shoehorned in some kind of weird saccharin relationship where they get together and they're happy, and that would have felt weird.

Rachel:

This push and pull ultimately feels more authentic to what they were going for. Mhmm. I just wish they hadn't done Natalie so dirty by not giving her consistency and then not giving her alternate love interest that would you know, Nick may feel like this is a sufficient amount of intimacy, but if she doesn't, then they're not compatible. Right. And so they either need to have that discussion and find a place where they find compatibility or they need to move on.

Matt:

Or she needs Nick for the the, like, companionship part. And, you know, another somebody else on the side for the physical.

Rachel:

Yeah. She can have an emotional relationship with more than 1 person.

Matt:

Need all of your emotional needs met by the same person.

Rachel:

Okay. But this is not a 90. This is not 2023. This is the nineties. No.

Rachel:

You need 1 dude, and that dude needs to be so much for you and everything for you. And anyway. Okay. So we're gonna leave that there. We're going to leave that there because, we could go on forever about that.

Rachel:

So I guess we'll just leave it here at the end of this episode, which was partly about having his his buddy come in and be in the episode in the show, Jordy Johnson.

Gerry:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And I think partly about reacting what was happening in the zeitgeist and also giving Tracy a chance to have chats with Vashawn about, like, what are we? What's happening here?

Matt:

Right. We've had this thing, the elephant in the room. Yeah. Something's going on with Tracy and Vashawn, and that needs to be developed. Right.

Rachel:

Because he he has been in a couple of episodes. Right. He's been sporadically. He was in Blackwing a little bit, but we haven't had a good Dashawn and Tracy moment in a while. Yeah.

Rachel:

Alright. So I guess until next time, friends.

Matt:

Until next time. Bye. Bye.

Forever Knight (Season 3 Ep 6) - "My Boyfriend is a Vampire"

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