#026 - Alien Nation 1.20 "Gimme Gimme"

0:01 Humans and aliens working together.

0:02 I really want to dig more into their culture.

0:04 It's a mirror up to humanity. Social commentary through

0:07 allegorical storytelling. Wild, angry old man opinions.

0:11 Car like this better than sex? Really.

0:14 What? That's just an expression.

0:17 Oh, and I don't know if I'm going off on a on a huge stage.

0:20 You have. 3 pineapples won the lottery.

0:24 Always an alien a sites. I know Star Trek.

0:27 I'm all about Star Trek. I really did go off on a pitch.

0:30 I don't know if I made a point there that is rambled.

0:32 You've been podcasting for six years now.

0:34 I don't know if you've made a coherent point yet.

0:36 Oh, it's just not great police work.

0:39 You got the touch, Shay girl and foe.

0:42 Fun. This is fun.

0:43 I'm going to save the rest for later.

0:45 George Francesco is one of my all time favorite characters.

0:48 This show is going to go to places that I really enjoy.

0:50 Sour milk is a good thing to the tank.

0:52 Stay tuned listeners. Wheel Wheel of press kit.

0:55 Yikes, Sykes. We're both fans of Star Trek.

0:58 Watching Alien Nation and we enjoy.

0:59 It I am one of your hosts, Todd, this is Nick.

1:01 This is the Alienating Ourselves podcast.

1:05 I don't think this is better than sex.

1:08 Greetings, humans and newcomers, and welcome back to Alienating

1:10 Ourselves, the podcast where we examine sci-fi entertainment

1:14 with a focus on aliens and the humans that almost pass out from

1:17 toxic fumes given off by alien fabric production.

1:21 I am one of your hosts, Todd. I have to wear a vest at my

1:24 current job. I don't want to wear one

1:26 anywhere else. And joining me, as always, is a

1:28 guy who has invested in fabric ribbons to go on convention

1:31 badges as a way of advertising this podcast.

1:34 It's Nick. Nick, how's it going?

1:36 It's going so good, Todd, I am coming off the high of the three

1:40 day weekend convention, Stellarfest, which happens down

1:44 here north of Atlanta. It's much smaller convention

1:47 than Dragon Con where Todd and I typically go every year.

1:50 So Stellarfest is, I don't know, many hundreds of people instead

1:55 of 10s of thousands, and it's a little bit more able to get in

2:01 touch with smaller groups of people.

2:03 But I did get a chance to do a ton of panels and one of them

2:06 was my first ever Alien Nation panel.

2:09 So I represented, I kind of reintroduced the show and

2:13 reminded people and I was so thrilled.

2:14 I didn't know if anybody would show up.

2:16 People show up based on interest, and people were

2:18 interested, like Todd and me. It rang some bells.

2:22 It reminded them something. So they came out to remember to

2:25 talk. And you really want people to

2:27 share in panels and hype up and say what they had for their own

2:32 experiences and stuff. And some of them did.

2:34 They were like, Oh my gosh, I remember that.

2:36 I did actually argue with one nice lady about how many seasons

2:39 there were. She was just committed to there

2:41 being 20, no, 22 seasons and not one.

2:45 And I was uniquely aware of things about the show in this

2:50 one particular case. So I I stopped arguing after a

2:53 second. But it was great that they were

2:54 passionate and what Todd's referring to.

2:58 If you do attend Dragon Con or another convention, even

3:01 professional conventions, people started this thing where they

3:04 make their own little badge ribbons that you could stick to

3:07 the bottom of them. I think originally legitimately

3:09 just like speaker, it might say or something, but now people put

3:13 things like Luke, I'm your father or you smell like a

3:17 hamster. Your father smelled of

3:19 elderberries kind of things. And we just pass them around and

3:22 share them. So I had this crazy idea with

3:25 making one that's about Alien nation on the front, and I put a

3:29 little sticker QR code to the podcast on the back.

3:32 So Todd and I are advertising. We're out there.

3:35 We're mostly just having fun still, and that's my whole

3:38 purpose. But now people can join in if

3:40 they so choose, and I'm letting people at conventions know about

3:43 it. So fun.

3:45 We'll have more of those badge ribbons to pass out a dragon con

3:48 if you happen to find us, but that's the high that I'm on

3:51 right now. I'm trying to talk Todd into

3:53 going to Stellarfest next year, so we'll see if we branch out,

3:56 yes. Yeah, it does sound like fun.

3:58 So I I might try. I don't know if I want to talk

4:01 on any panels. I, I, you were telling me ahead

4:03 of time that you kind of broke a record for how many panels you

4:06 were on. I am still not a great public

4:08 speaker. That's confirmed.

4:09 I'm not even sure I'm that great in my own living room on

4:12 podcasts. Definitely not.

4:14 But at least I feel comfortable doing that.

4:16 But in front of a group, people staring at me?

4:18 I don't know. I don't know if.

4:20 I think, I don't know. One of the tricks is if I got

4:22 you there and we did Alien Nation, you'd mostly be talking

4:26 to me just in a room where there are other people standing

4:28 around. Yeah.

4:29 Yeah. And it gets easier that way.

4:32 And it is at Dragon Con, Todd and I would be in a room, a

4:35 panel with like more than 100 people.

4:37 And here it's, you know, like 12.

4:40 So it's a little bit less intimidating, but oh, OK.

4:44 Yeah, this is this is kind of exciting.

4:48 So tonight, looking on to what we're up to now, let's get into

4:53 it. We're looking at Alien Nations

4:55 episode 20, Gimme Gimme, which originally aired on Monday

4:59 night, April 9th, 1990. Director and writer is David

5:05 Carson. Well, David Carson is the

5:07 director and he also directed the excellent episode The Game

5:11 which was a favorite. He directed 4 episodes of Star

5:14 Trek The Next Generation including the truly excellent

5:17 season 3 episode Yesterday's Enterprise and 4 episodes of

5:20 Deep Space 9 including the pilot.

5:22 He did some Smallville, the award-winning HBO series From

5:26 the Earth to the Moon, which was a project of Tom Hanks after

5:28 Apollo 13. And this is another episode

5:30 written by Schneider and Froloff, who have a great track

5:33 record and will see us through with the last episode of the

5:36 series and three of the TV movies.

5:38 Even when they're not writing, they seem to be producing, which

5:40 for this show I think means guiding the tone and content.

5:44 So tonight on Alien Nation, George and Susan Francisco are

5:48 at a presentation for potential investors in a new product

5:51 called New NIT, like NU. And then the word NIT that's

5:56 it's strong, it's stain resistant and reverse engineered

5:59 from something on the ship. They invest when the cloth is so

6:03 strong that George isn't hurt by a stabby criminal with scissors.

6:07 Even Captain Grazer invests, which sets a tone of conflict of

6:10 interest and worry for the rest of the episode as the business

6:13 gets shadier and shadier. Buck has a high school teacher

6:17 who's inspiring him to care about several causes at once,

6:20 including worker rights at the very same business.

6:25 And there's a quickly a murder of one of the business owners.

6:28 Noxious fumes, an illicit affair, A completely unconnected

6:32 subplot where Matt and Albert figure out how to best spend

6:34 lottery winnings. All that and more.

6:36 So what was your first take on this episode, Todd?

6:40 Well, for some reason I was remembering this episode vaguely

6:44 as maybe having approximately the same feel of the TV movies,

6:50 especially since this is getting near the end of the season and

6:53 I'm not sure exactly why I thought that.

6:56 And when I did watch it again, I realized it's really, I don't

7:01 know. For one thing, maybe I'm not

7:02 remembering the TV movies as well, and maybe this is more

7:05 similar to previous episodes than I thought as far as look

7:09 and feel. But it is an overall good

7:13 episode at the same time, kind of middle of the road, similar

7:17 to some of the ones we've had recently where nothing is

7:20 massively bad about it, but also nothing massively good.

7:24 I don't even feel that bad about saying that because later when I

7:28 talk about some stuff from the unofficial companion opinion

7:31 book, one person in there basically said the same thing

7:35 there was kind of null the road. So it's fine.

7:38 Nothing hugely wrong with it. Still pretty cool.

7:41 And I guess we'll go in more detail about the good and bad

7:44 stuff in a few minutes. But yeah, unfortunately nothing

7:48 spectacular to say one way or the other.

7:50 How about you? Well, I like some of the

7:53 messaging of this episode, although it's a mess until the

7:56 end when they kind of straighten everything out.

7:59 I feel like there were a couple of lessons and the execution was

8:02 better than the actual sense of the script.

8:05 So overall I liked it, but I get what you're saying.

8:10 And as we're going through it and looking back on, I'm

8:13 remembering what happened now. Like, wait, what happened then?

8:16 Oh, is this the one with like the the truck accident or

8:21 something? So now I'm wondering if we're

8:22 going to stumble upon more to it than I remember.

8:25 But we can move into our sour milk.

8:28 So what's, what's your first sour milk for this episode,

8:31 Todd? This does have an overall good

8:33 plot. I like the idea of an advanced

8:36 Tynanese technology that can be used for everyday use, and it's

8:41 a nice exploration of the good and bad things about money.

8:45 So, so, yeah, I mean the premise, the premise kind of

8:50 works. I, I think you may have said the

8:52 opposite for me. I think you said that this is

8:54 good in execution, but the script wasn't great.

8:56 Maybe I feel the opposite. There was a good premise and

8:59 then the execution was maybe just a little bit.

9:02 So so maybe that's why one way or another, this works out to be

9:06 middle of the road because not quite everything is firing on

9:10 all cylinders. But yeah, I, I think it's a good

9:13 setup. And I think maybe that's also

9:14 why I thought it was similar to the TV movies in that I was

9:18 thinking that the concept was maybe a little bit grander than

9:22 previous episodes. But again, I might have been

9:25 thinking of something else because it's it's one of those

9:28 episodes that kind of had potential for more, but it's

9:31 just kind of OK. Yeah, And I, I get deep into

9:37 thinking about the execution. And sometimes I'll see a movie

9:40 or show and I will see glimmers of maybe some brilliance in the

9:44 screenplay, like somebody had a vision and and sometimes that

9:49 translates even an alienation. And I'll be like, this is what

9:52 they were going for. And sometimes it doesn't.

9:54 And I'm like, oh, they had an idea and they didn't get to do

9:57 it. So in this one, there's this

9:59 unintentional message for just this episode that Matt Sykes is

10:03 a sour puss. He tends to make his own bad

10:07 luck, and he's one of those people that just, it seems to

10:10 never work out for him, at least in the context of this episode.

10:14 And if you try and help him find happiness, you're probably going

10:18 to sync right along with him. So I like that by the end of the

10:22 episode, he does find happiness for himself.

10:26 I like that he has interactions with Albert and Kathy and

10:29 they're each trying to understand like what he thinks

10:31 makes him happy, which we see very quickly.

10:34 Those things that he says only make him sad.

10:37 My example, so I'm not still just being vague.

10:40 One of them is lottery tickets. He thinks they make him happy

10:42 but they consistently make him sad.

10:45 Maybe getting the car of his dreams makes him sad and at one

10:49 point getting a second job and he's like this is the worst

10:52 thing ever. So everything Matt moves toward

10:55 is like Oz is terrible. I like this because both Albert

10:59 and Kathy are so sweet and genuine in their affection for

11:02 him, but also their confusion about what it takes for the man

11:05 to have joy in his life, how screwed up his priorities seem

11:09 to be, and how it turns out that they're right and he's wrong.

11:13 I like that when it turns out that he's wrong and he needs to

11:16 pay more attention. I really like the scene with

11:18 Kathy as she reacts to his spiritual and intimate attitude

11:22 toward the car. I don't know if you're going to

11:24 talk more about the lottery, but Matt has lottery tickets.

11:28 He's having a miserable time losing at them over and over

11:30 again. Albert buys the last one off of

11:33 him for fun since they're all losers.

11:35 Matt doesn't care. And of course we the viewer know

11:37 what happens. Albert is going to win what Matt

11:39 keeps losing. He ends up buying Matt his dream

11:43 car and he shows it to Matt, shows it to Kathy and he is like

11:49 intimate with it. He's spiritual with it.

11:51 He's talking about how wonderful the car is, and Kathy is like,

11:57 what? She doesn't understand his

12:01 affection for this thing. I've never seen a car like this,

12:05 is it yours? Yeah.

12:07 Oh, what happened to your other one?

12:09 Nothing. Then why do you need this one?

12:12 Well, I don't need it. I want it.

12:14 A car like this, it's better than sex.

12:16 Really. That's just an expression.

12:18 I guess that could have been the materialism, could have been

12:20 what the whole episode is about, but it's not.

12:23 I really like Albert's character moments.

12:24 Jeff Marcus is just the sweetest punch we can give the yeah, but

12:29 Albert is just the best. One of the things that we've

12:31 talked about over on the Discerning Geeks portal is how

12:35 in some ways, we're all geeks about something.

12:38 You know? We've come a long way in the

12:41 last two or three decades as far as geeky stuff becoming more

12:45 mainstream. In fact, when you look at the

12:47 way the MCU is as successful as it is, in some ways geeky stuff

12:52 has become the mainstream. But I remember in high school

12:56 being a geek didn't feel good. You know, it was, it was still a

13:00 little bit in the age of, you know, geek versus jock type

13:05 stuff. But one of my Co hosts over on

13:08 Discerning Geeks portal, he used to say that we're all geeks

13:12 about something. Even if you're into sports,

13:14 you're geeky about that. If you're into cars, you're

13:16 geeky about that. And so I'm sure that if Matt

13:20 were a real person instead of a character, he would probably

13:22 never admit this, but he is a geek.

13:25 He's just a car geek and a sports geek.

13:27 And we've seen a sports geekiness in a previous episode,

13:30 the one where George wanted to coach baseball and and Matt knew

13:36 all the stats and everything. And then of course, in this

13:38 episode, he knows all about cars.

13:40 And so it it shows that we're all geeky about something.

13:44 And you were talking about Stellarfest again.

13:47 I can't remember if it was you or the host of Fandom Hybrid,

13:52 but one of you posted on Facebook the map of the hotel

13:56 where Stellarfest was at and how it was divided up into different

13:59 rooms. And each room had a theme.

14:00 And we were talking about a little bit before recording

14:02 tonight, and you were saying that there was a Star Wars room,

14:05 a Star Trek room, a Doctor Who room, and the several rooms that

14:09 were miscellaneous. And I know that they included

14:11 things like your alienation panel and, and Hanukkah's MCU

14:16 panels and stuff like that. And even within what would

14:21 classically be called geeks, there are still sub geekinesses.

14:27 Like, you know, I, if I, if I were to go to Stellarfest, I

14:31 would probably want to go to the Star Trek room and the

14:34 miscellaneous rooms. I would probably, maybe might be

14:38 interested in maybe one or two panels at Star Wars.

14:41 I would also be content to skip Star Wars because it hasn't been

14:43 that good lately. And Doctor Who, I could skip

14:46 that all together. So even even within us geeks,

14:50 there are sub geek categories. And I don't know if I've gone

14:52 off on a huge tangent you have. But yeah, just to say that,

14:55 yeah, I agree with you about about Matt's obsessions.

15:00 It is interesting to see him, you know, have such passions

15:04 about things. But in some ways, his fandom of

15:08 these things can sometimes resemble our fandom of things

15:12 and about how there can be within a fandom, there can be

15:18 like warring factions. And we're kind of seeing a

15:21 microcosm of that in this one person in that Matt loves this

15:24 stuff and and it's not as good as he thinks either.

15:28 So I really did go off on a Ted. I don't know if I made a point

15:31 there or that is rambled. You've been podcasting for six

15:34 years now. I don't know if you've made a

15:36 coherent point yet. My last point, I mean I've got a

15:39 few others, but I'll jump to it, is essentially the same as what

15:42 you're talking about. As a teacher, I appreciate them

15:45 giving an honest talk about how expensive a free sports car ends

15:48 up being. You're going to have to pay for

15:52 maintenance and of course the thing breaks immediately.

15:54 I don't typically love cars unless they're Deloreans or

15:57 Batmobiles, but I like seeing what you're talking about, Todd.

16:01 It's people's childlike love for something.

16:04 Fanaticism. Being a fan, I may not be into

16:08 some of the things y'all are into, but one of the things I

16:11 love about conventions is that I'm just excited about how

16:14 excited other people are. So yeah, if if Todd and I met up

16:18 at Stellarfest and I didn't really see him for most of the

16:21 weekend because he was hanging around the Star Trek room most

16:24 of the time. I do something similar at Dragon

16:27 Con, where I almost entirely spend time between Atlanta.

16:32 What is it? Not just sci-fi classics, but

16:35 there's another one where it's like science fiction and fantasy

16:39 and they're in the same hotel. And I'll just kind of go back

16:41 and forth between those two rooms for most of it because

16:44 those are my favorite topics. There's a million other things

16:47 at multiple hotels, but I get really happy in one area, so it

16:51 doesn't matter. But if I don't, if he's happy,

16:53 you know, it's like, oh, you go, man, I got to participate in

16:57 Star Trek trivia and I came in late, but I won round 3 and

17:02 unfortunately that made me qualify for the last round.

17:05 And I was like, Oh no. And I oh, I lost so

17:08 spectacularly listeners because what you're talking about, Todd,

17:12 I know Star Trek. I'm all about Star Trek unless

17:16 it's a couple of things and I just don't know that much about

17:18 Star Trek. So there were questions that I

17:22 was like, what a lot of different special interests.

17:26 I think I did OK ish. But if you really put me on the

17:30 spot in like the final round, it's not going to be pretty.

17:33 So Matt tells us that once he owns a car and once he gushes

17:37 over it and he's a fan like all of us, then he tells us that

17:41 he's going to have to pay for insurance.

17:43 He's going to have to pay for storage.

17:45 And then when the car breaks, he's going to have to pay for

17:47 maintenance. He still loves the car, but he's

17:50 just slowly adding up all the stuff.

17:53 But I like the rapture in his voice when Kathy asks, well, the

17:58 mileage must be good. Then he's so happy.

17:59 And he's like, oh, the mileage is terrible.

18:02 He's happy about it at the time because he's just stoked to have

18:06 the car. So as an adult, I'm coming up on

18:09 50 and well, Todd and I both are, but it's like I own way too

18:12 many popcorn buckets listeners. And the Mandalorian and Grogu is

18:16 coming out of the time of us recording this and they're going

18:19 to have they have a popcorn bucket shaped like an ad at, I

18:23 think with the Mandalorian climbing up the side spoilers

18:25 popcorn bucket people. And they got one just shaped

18:28 like Grogu in his little floating thing.

18:30 And you just fill the back up with, I have no space for these

18:34 things. I got no more room for action

18:36 figures and stuff. But I just, I love that they're

18:39 making things that are so fun. So yes, I like his fanaticism.

18:43 What else do you got? That sour milk?

18:46 I like the police work is downplayed compared to the alien

18:50 culture aspect because the, if I remember correctly, the last two

18:55 episodes have been very matte focused.

18:57 And one of those was also very police focused.

19:01 I think it was the previous one, the one right before this that

19:04 was a little bit more spiritual, but it was still Matt centered.

19:07 And so it's nice that we get back to alien stuff where George

19:11 has more to do, where there's more about the Tanktonese.

19:14 And usually when stuff is about the tanks and knees, it is about

19:18 their culture, their religion, their biology, stuff like that.

19:22 So it's also neat that it's still about alien stuff, but

19:25 this time more about their science and technology.

19:29 So yeah, I like that we kind of went a different direction with

19:31 this episode, yeah. It incorporated a lot of the

19:34 parts of the show well, like if I was writing a spec script for

19:37 Alien Nation and I was telling them you'll like this one.

19:40 It has some stuff for Matt, some stuff for George, some stuff for

19:43 Susan. I've got Albert doing a thing,

19:46 Susan Kathy's doing a thing. Even Grazer has like a role in

19:50 this. And it's going to involve

19:51 technology from the ship and it's going to involve like

19:54 different people that yeah, it's that's great.

19:56 It involves the different parts. So I totally see that.

20:00 I'm going to say that I really like that there's a happy

20:04 ending, and a lot of these episodes have happy endings,

20:07 even if it's a sad episode like Night of Screams is.

20:11 It doesn't really have a happy ending, but it makes us feel

20:14 like it does because he comes home to his family and just

20:16 hangs out warmly with them. So that tells us to feel OK at

20:19 the end. But I'm good with that too.

20:22 But this one, just spoiler alert, y'all.

20:25 If you have a story that's about ecology, about the environment,

20:29 about conservation, it's probably not going to have a

20:32 happy ending because that's something we just all have to

20:34 keep working at. It's like taxes.

20:37 You just got to keep paying. Best case scenario.

20:41 An ecology story has like responsible forward thinking at

20:44 the end and this does that, but it also has a happy ending.

20:48 The evil factory is going to become a good factory.

20:51 I'll spare you guys and not give details.

20:53 The obnoxious teacher is actually a clever and insightful

20:56 social activist and an inspiring teacher.

20:59 The obnoxious teen is now a right minded idealist.

21:02 Matt's pretty happy. Albert's happy.

21:04 George, Susan and Grazer's bad investments are going to turn

21:07 out OK ish. So they're happy.

21:10 The gross couple having an affair is happy.

21:12 The only ones not happy are the murderer who gets caught and the

21:16 guy he murdered. His wife didn't love him and

21:18 after he died in excruciating pain she was hooking up the very

21:20 same day. But if you forget about him,

21:23 it's a very happy ending, so I did appreciate that.

21:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that too.

21:29 And in fact, that's a little bit related to my Next Hour Milk.

21:33 Not necessarily about the ending, but about more, you

21:35 know, good stuff along the way. It's good to see Buck taking

21:39 school and important issues so seriously.

21:43 I know that sometimes we've picked on him a little bit for

21:45 always chasing A cause and he's doing that again, but at least

21:49 he is chasing positive causes. And does he get a little bit

21:53 obsessed and does he sometimes get involved in for the wrong

21:56 reasons or just via the wrong people?

21:59 Maybe. Is it happening again?

22:01 Maybe. Regardless he is trying to do

22:04 the right thing. He also continues to be a great

22:07 Big Brother to Vesna and sometimes it almost seems like

22:10 he's being a better family member to Vesna then their

22:14 parents are. Now, that might just be

22:16 coincidence because George and Susan usually have more stuff

22:21 going on. They're the adults, they've got

22:22 more plot in the story. They've got, you know, their

22:26 various work responsibilities and things like that.

22:29 It could also be that they're just simply trying to give bucks

22:32 something to do. But I and I just thought of this

22:35 like a minute or two ago, but I also can't help but wonder if

22:38 there is something cultural about that where maybe in

22:42 Tectonies society, the parents, you know, they obviously, you

22:45 know, are both responsible for helping to give birth to the

22:48 baby once it is born. I can't help but wonder, are

22:51 older siblings supposed to step in and do more?

22:55 Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, it could just be

22:57 total coincidence because of the the way things are on the show.

23:00 And then another little aside because it is Buck related.

23:04 This is our introduction to Buck's teacher, Marilyn.

23:07 And I say introduction because she is in at least one more

23:10 episode. I can't remember she's in any of

23:12 the TV movies, but it might only be two sightings.

23:17 I can't remember. But this is it's this is

23:19 definitely not the end. It's more than one episode at

23:21 least. That's, I did not have her

23:24 pegged for someone who'd ever show up again.

23:26 So that's interesting. She's presented as kind of like,

23:31 well, George is investing in a company and she's the one who

23:33 comes along and makes you feel guilty for investing in the

23:36 company after you've already done it.

23:38 And I don't, they give us 'cause to be a little bit frustrated

23:42 with her. And I don't know, they give you

23:45 'cause to kind of be worried that she has too strong a

23:49 connection with their teenage son.

23:52 Just just hints that we could latch onto if we want to.

23:55 There's nothing going on there. But we do come around to find

24:00 out that she's a pretty decent person.

24:02 And when they kind of accuse her of stuff like manipulating their

24:05 kid, getting him riled up by something, misleading him,

24:08 pushing her own agenda, which was not as big a thing for

24:12 teachers in 1990 as it is now. But to accuse people of that

24:18 when they do that, she mostly just smiles and stares.

24:21 She mostly doesn't defend herself or go off or give a lot

24:25 of rhetoric or anything. You know, she mostly just says,

24:27 you know, something very basic. But I'm, I'm glad she turned out

24:31 to be a fairly decent person. I think Buck I've mentioned

24:35 before in a couple of episodes he is a joiner and I'm trying to

24:40 look up a good word for it. Another one is cause Hopper, but

24:43 he is just Buck is at higher risk for anybody to say, hey,

24:48 we're all doing this. Do you want in?

24:50 Buck is like, not only do I want in, I'm going to be the best at

24:54 it and like, oh gosh, calm down, man.

24:56 So he's just so into the cause of the week and his teacher

25:00 gives him plenty to be interested in.

25:03 My last sour milk for today is just that when we find out Matt

25:07 is doing the lottery, he has a very, very smart partner.

25:12 So George literally stands there and says how much money Matt has

25:16 spent on lottery tickets in the short time he's known him.

25:20 And they've known each other for at least a year.

25:24 And he's like, in this amount of time, Matt has spent $750 on

25:29 lottery tickets. And Matt is offended and he

25:32 protests that George is forgetting the time that Matt

25:35 won $25, as though that obviously makes it better

25:39 instead of so obviously worse. So I do like them doing that.

25:43 I don't want to dash the hopes and dreams of lottery fans.

25:47 And like Todd and I just said, I want you to enjoy what you enjoy

25:49 while I enjoy the silly things I enjoy.

25:51 But I don't need these popcorn buckets.

25:53 But you know, he does not have fun scratching off losing

25:57 lottery tickets. So I hope you do if you're big

26:00 on that, because it is. It's you're not doing it for the

26:03 money, but it's the dreams. The dreams.

26:07 But yeah, I do like that. He did the math for us.

26:09 That was pretty fun. And that's it for me.

26:12 So what else do you got in sour milk?

26:13 OK, well, in about Marilyn Buck's teacher had forgotten

26:18 this until just a few minutes ago, but I I have a feeling

26:21 you're going to have a really good Star Trek alumni score in

26:24 this episode. And I just now remember that she

26:27 is part of that score because she was kind of like a minor

26:30 role in one episode of Star Trek the Next Generation.

26:34 It's the one where Deanna Troi temporarily loses her empathic

26:39 ability, so I'm sure you'll have more to say about that later.

26:44 Let me see. Also, I can speed through this

26:46 one because you've already kind of touched on about how this has

26:49 a happy ending and everything. That was actually one of my

26:51 bullet points too. I like how happy Sykes himself

26:54 is at the end of this episode for giving a gift to Albert.

26:58 We usually see Sykes being pretty self-centered, so the

27:01 fact that he got joy and given a gift was a nice change of pace.

27:06 And then the only other thing I have is is technically just a

27:09 mention of biology and culture, and that is that the production

27:13 of Nunit apparently doesn't bother the tincton knees.

27:17 And not only did the fumes from the production of it not bother

27:21 them, they can't even smell them.

27:23 Which is interesting, but also a little bit confusing because

27:27 they've got such a keen sense of smell that you would actually, I

27:31 think all their senses are pretty keen, if I remember

27:33 correctly. So you think they would at least

27:35 smell it even if it didn't offend them.

27:38 But apparently they can't. They don't even recognize that

27:41 there's anything to smell. So I thought that was a little

27:44 bit odd, but at the very least notable too.

27:48 Yeah, like the gas. So if they lived on a planet

27:51 without humans, they could make this material all they wanted.

27:54 And the terrible thing about the substance that it creates, they

27:58 don't talk about another, another ecological effect.

28:01 It's that the gas that it generates is deadly to humans

28:05 very quickly and pungent. So yes, if it's completely

28:10 doesn't affect them at all and they go out of their way to show

28:13 it being really, really yucky too.

28:14 But yeah, it's ineffectual. They don't even sense it, which

28:18 was different. All right, well, let's look at

28:21 salt water. I think I have more than you, so

28:24 I'll start on that. But George and all the investors

28:28 get a free vest made from new knit which is too strong to cut

28:32 without a laser and which is stain resistant.

28:37 And when they find out the company is sort of evil, George

28:40 takes off the vest. And I feel like he kind of paid

28:43 $10,000 for that vest. I mean, that's what he invested,

28:47 no pun intended, but that's what he put in.

28:49 And they give him like the free vest is like a show of thanks

28:53 for being an investor. I think he needs to keep it.

28:57 And I mean, we know that it's knife proof because the guy

29:00 stabs him with scissors and it doesn't go through the vest.

29:04 That's what gets Grazer to go in.

29:06 I'm going to bet it's bulletproof.

29:08 Grazer should see if he can buy up all of the remaining display

29:13 vests as the company is transitioning to its new

29:15 purpose. So I think he has to get consent

29:18 for that from like a higher up. They his guys can still wear

29:21 bulletproof vests. He's just like, hey, puts a

29:22 little vest on over it. I'm just saying.

29:24 And like his one little department has a sharp drop in

29:29 bullet wounds and stuff. That would be great.

29:31 But no, it's just like, you know what, it's morally wrong.

29:33 Take them off like shoot, pick those up.

29:36 I looked it up listeners Mink though almost everyone has

29:41 stopped raising them to skin and turn into coats.

29:43 You can still buy, sell, and trade mink coats second hand.

29:47 There's no legal consequences currently, at least based on my

29:50 2 minute Internet search, and a lot of folks do.

29:53 So as long as you're not breeding new minks, it is fine

29:56 to buy, sell, trade used mink. And if you're a crazy fan, you

30:01 can find The Golden Girls episode where the ladies start

30:03 raising minks in their garage, which just sounds unbelievable,

30:07 but it's true. What's the salt water you have,

30:12 Todd? Well, let me see.

30:13 So my first one is that several characters in this episode

30:17 really wear their emotions on their sleeves.

30:21 For instance, at the party at the beginning of the episode, it

30:25 is super obvious that Edgar Allan Poe is really upset.

30:29 And it is so upset that you would think that anybody at that

30:32 party should have been able to pick up on it.

30:35 Also, later when we see Mr. Alan Poe about to go for a swim, he

30:42 isn't just like, you know, content or maybe slightly

30:45 looking forward to it. He's practically beaming about

30:47 the fact that he's about to take a dive in a swimming pool.

30:50 And of course, it's got salt water in it.

30:52 It's about to kill him. So it just seems weird that he's

30:56 that happy about I mean, don't get me wrong, it's nice to go

31:00 for a swim, but he's he's acting like he hasn't, you know, gone

31:05 swimming before or or, you know, he's owned this pole.

31:07 He probably swims every day or something, but he's acting like

31:10 he's never done it before. He's just that happy about it.

31:13 And then later after Poe gets killed by the the salt water and

31:20 his wife is crying over his death, it's pretty obvious that

31:24 she's faking. So.

31:27 So yeah, everybody is kind of super obvious with their

31:30 emotions in this episode. I guess I knew it was going to

31:32 happen. We all know we haven't had a

31:35 real reference to salt water affecting the newcomers like

31:38 acid in several episodes. But for old hats like Todd and

31:42 me, it's like the guy's going toward the pool and he's way too

31:45 happy. I kind of felt like I knew this

31:47 is going, but at the same time my brain was saying this has got

31:50 to be the worst way to try and murder someone.

31:54 Like how much salt does it take to turn a pool into a salt water

31:59 pool? And how much time and effort and

32:01 manpower carrying sacks of salt and it's all going to settle at

32:05 the bottom, man, You got to stir that up.

32:07 And and what if he dipped a toe in and the jig is up?

32:11 And even then it's like the most obvious murder weapon.

32:14 I mean, you could have just stolen the car and hit him with

32:16 it and it would have been much easier.

32:17 But anyway, anyway, it was really good for like sweeps

32:20 week. But yeah, that was salt water

32:25 pool. The old salt water, the old acid

32:28 pool gig gimmick. Yeah, that's my next.

32:34 So your your salt water was salt water.

32:36 That's nice, man. Oh yeah.

32:40 My second one is the seemingly sleazy human company man named

32:44 Lee and the victim's wife Rita are really stupid and obnoxious

32:49 to hook up the day after her husband is found dead and

32:53 they're in the pool where he was found dead topless.

32:58 Especially knowing that they lied about both their alibis

33:01 because they were hooking up at the time that someone salted the

33:05 pool. So they're just really dumb and

33:09 they used another one of my pet peeves.

33:11 This defensive argument, it just drives me crazy.

33:14 This is the do you really think I'd be stupid enough to do this

33:18 thing that makes me look extremely guilty if I really was

33:22 guilty? I hate that in top stories.

33:25 I hate the you think I'd you gonna be dumb enough to carry

33:29 the murder weapon around with? I mean, yes, I think you're

33:33 dumb. And Sharon Stone does the same

33:35 thing in Basic Instinct. Her first alibi for not being

33:39 the murderer is that she wrote about the murder in her book.

33:43 So clearly she couldn't kill someone in the same way because

33:46 it would implicate her. And I'm like, yeah, you're dumb.

33:49 Why? Why is he why do you think that

33:51 defends you? But they try it in this and

33:54 they're like, yeah, I guess so. Obviously I'm innocent.

33:58 I'd be really dumb. Really.

34:00 In the movie and in this episode, the police seem to be

34:02 completely foiled by this argument.

34:05 They're like, yeah, no one would be idiot enough to hook up in

34:08 the very pool. They just murdered their husband

34:10 the same day. I guess you're off the hook.

34:13 So it just, I don't know, it's the tone drives me crazy.

34:18 Yeah, they actually use that trope a little bit in a recent

34:21 episode of High Potential, which is a really good cop show on on

34:27 ABC. And it's more of a detective

34:29 show. And it's where a woman, she's

34:32 not even a detective, but she gets hired by the police as a

34:36 consultant because she's kind of a super genius.

34:40 And there is a trope in that episode of somebody kind of

34:44 playing that it's like, how stupid would I be?

34:46 Or I wouldn't do this to my own, you know, in my own business

34:50 place of business or whatever. And sure enough, he was guilty

34:53 or whatever. But that show is so smart, not

34:57 just about a smart person, but so smartly written that they

35:00 found a creative way of doing it.

35:02 So even though it's the trope you're talking about, it didn't

35:06 feel trophy when they did it. It actually felt like an

35:08 interesting twist, but here maybe not so much.

35:11 Sometimes it's the writing. I I mean, I didn't think it was

35:14 obnoxious when I watched Basic Instinct.

35:16 I just, you know, I feel like the two idiots making out in the

35:20 pool are just idiots. It's not like obviously we're

35:26 innocent, officer. No one could be this big a

35:28 moron. Like, yeah, so when Matt is

35:35 frustrated with these lottery tickets, and like I said, he

35:38 gives the last one to Albert, Albert buys it from him for a

35:41 buck or 5 bucks, and then Albert wins thousands of dollars.

35:45 The writers needed Matt to have somebody to commiserate with,

35:48 and they didn't want to do George because he wouldn't have

35:51 understood or he would have been on Albert's side.

35:53 And they didn't want to do Grazer because that's not their

35:55 dynamic. And they got rid of Dobbs.

35:58 So there's this new cop in the station.

36:00 His name's Phil and they should have cut him.

36:03 He's bugging me, Albert. Damn, what's Albert?

36:07 He went to collect his money. Money.

36:10 What money? 3 pineapples.

36:13 He won the lottery. It's always an alien, a Sykes.

36:16 Commiserating with Matt is his only reason to live.

36:19 He's also there so he can offer Matt a second job opportunity to

36:24 help him realize the burden of owning something big and fancy,

36:29 like a boat or a car. He's like you.

36:31 Will you come work at the second job I work at?

36:34 Because Phil also has a big stupid thing.

36:38 He has a boat. I'm just jealous.

36:40 Boat owners, I'm not knocking you, but.

36:43 But I like where they took it. But this guy feels really out of

36:46 place. Like they crammed a desk in for

36:48 him where 1 does not go. They acted like he's been there

36:51 the whole time when he definitely has not.

36:54 And then the second job just sort of gets shrugged off

36:57 because Matt's busy. Like he goes and he shows it

37:00 this whole second job and that's like, oh, wait, I gotta go.

37:03 Yeah, this is not going to work out.

37:05 It's lame. The uniform is mandatory at this

37:08 job, so what's even the point? Phil and Mr. Elias, a dude

37:13 having a fit and the loading dock, we're all just to give

37:16 Matt a chance to be like, yeah, no.

37:20 You have to wear the uniforms. Oh.

37:23 Yeah, they're real sticklers about that.

37:26 Anybody to talk to around him? Well, the boss goes home around

37:29 midnight. There is Bernard.

37:33 He does inventory. He's not real social.

37:38 Mr. Elias, this is my friend, Detective Sykes.

37:42 He's interested in a job. Phil, last night you missed

37:45 clock box #4 again. You are sleeping.

37:49 Oh, Oh no, Mr. Elias, the the key must have must have jammed.

37:53 Phil, Phil, don't lie to me, OK? I give this man your job.

37:59 He's a great kidder. I'm not kidding, Phil.

38:01 Tonight you sleep the loading dock OK.

38:04 No, Mr. Mr. Elias, I am a security guard, not a janitor.

38:09 Don't argue with me, OK? And Dobbs totally could have

38:12 done this. You know what?

38:13 Zapeda could have done this. We just met her and she's going

38:16 to be back. So I don't know why they had to

38:18 bring in Phil. But yeah, that's it for me.

38:22 For salt water. I have like a brief Yikes Sykes,

38:26 but what else do you got? So actually my second bullet

38:30 point is ideally similar to my first one.

38:33 So let me try to distinguish them a little bit.

38:36 So in my first one, I talked about everybody kind of wearing

38:39 their emotions on their sleeves. It's not that anyone was acting

38:43 badly, they just weren't subtle. So we're still good

38:47 performances. This is nobody was doing a good

38:49 job of hiding it. But my second bullet point is

38:53 that there is just a lot of overacting in the episode and

38:57 particularly from somebody I think you may have just been

39:00 talking about Sergeant Phil's boss at his security job, Mr.

39:04 Elias. Yeah, yeah, I don't remember

39:08 exactly. I'm watching the episode now and

39:10 it just had that scene because I had on mute, I I couldn't hear

39:13 his voice. But if I remember correctly,

39:15 it's either his accent that's over the top or just his volume

39:19 or his inflection. There's just something about

39:20 that that is over the top. And I'll have something to say

39:23 about him later because he's more than just an actor.

39:27 He's also a writer and a producer.

39:29 And so it could be that he didn't dive, you know, head

39:32 first into the acting aspect of his career.

39:36 And so. Yeah, and in this little brief

39:38 appearance he makes, he's he's a bit over the top.

39:41 And maybe some of the other performances are a bit over the

39:44 top here and there. So yeah, overall there's just

39:48 not a lot of subtlety in this episode.

39:52 Well, my last 1 is really just that when George is in this,

39:59 they're working through this whole factory final scene and.

40:04 Cyril hits George over the head and leaves him to die in the

40:07 flaming factory, and Matt catches Cyril climbing out a

40:11 window. Matt says, excuse me and hit

40:15 Cyril in the face of the briefcase, which sends Cyril

40:17 cartwheeling down more than 20 stairs, which could have easily

40:21 killed him, which is just it's just not great police work.

40:29 You know, we we tend to frown on that in the force.

40:32 But yeah, there could have been a better way to take that person

40:34 down. And that does it for me for.

40:37 Yeah, salt water. There's some salty things in

40:40 this episode. So I think we're ready for

40:43 connecting the spots. All right, well, mostly in this

40:48 one. I don't have any real world

40:50 connections for the ecology angle or the maybe you shouldn't

40:54 invest in things that aren't tried or check out the factory

40:57 first. But there are several notable

41:01 appearances, a few David E Kelley connections that I'm not

41:04 going to list at the time. A few from the show Sledgehammer

41:07 Man from Atlantis, which is a favorite of one of the show

41:10 runners because they've mentioned it before and it's

41:12 been playing in the background in one episode.

41:15 I didn't even know about that Patrick Duffy show until I think

41:17 I was looking it up for this Mantis, a favorite of mine more

41:21 Doogie Howser. So like sleepy Phil, that guy

41:26 that I didn't especially like coming in.

41:28 He's in Quantum Leap. His name's Alan Fudge in real

41:31 life, and he is also in a forgotten movie that I like

41:34 very, very much called My Demon Lover, which is just.

41:38 Oh, God. It's like it's it's really,

41:42 really stupid. That was made for you to

41:44 discover on home video rental at the height of those times and

41:48 just be like, what is this? But I loved it.

41:52 Kim Braden is Marilyn Houston. And this.

41:58 Yeah, I think this is the person you're talking about, maybe the

42:01 teacher. Yeah.

42:03 So Kim Braden is actually married to the guy who directed

42:06 this episode, David Carson. And yeah, so she's just a very

42:11 pretty red headed lady. And you're right, she's the

42:14 Ensign in the the Lost episode of TNG.

42:18 But it's funny because she's in Star Trek Generations, the

42:22 crossover movie in the Nexus, playing Picard's imaginary wife.

42:27 Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's

42:30 like, oh, OK, there were other contenders they could have

42:34 brought in, but no, they just said we'll pick an entirely new

42:36 woman that you like this actress from one episode way back when,

42:39 We'll reuse her. And you know who directed Star

42:42 Trek Generations? That's right.

42:44 It's David Carson again, the director of this episode.

42:48 He's not just favoring his wife. Kim Braden has done, like, a lot

42:52 of stuff. She's very successful.

42:54 So I think she was doing him a favor more than vice versa.

42:58 But she will, like you said, she'll return in the last

43:01 episode. Green eyes and Joseph Calley is

43:06 Lee Smith. And I really just want to

43:09 mention that he's in that show that I keep bringing up that I

43:12 intend to make Todd watch at some point called Something is

43:14 out there exclamation point. I want you to do 1 because I

43:19 think I know one of the ones you might do.

43:22 Yeah, and I apologize beforehand.

43:23 I said I had two. I actually have three.

43:26 But what I have to say about him might not be as in depth as what

43:29 you have to say about him. So if one of us beats the other,

43:31 you know, we can supplement. So the first one is, of course,

43:37 Armand Shimmerman, who plays serial Roman in this.

43:40 Yeah. So the reason I want to bring

43:42 him up was because he does play Cork on Star Trek Deep Space 9.

43:47 And I just remember this few minutes ago, I think he also

43:50 played the principal in at least one season of Buffy the Vampire

43:54 Slayer, if not all three seasons that they were in high school.

43:57 Yeah. And another thing I want to

44:00 mention is I've recently started listening to the Delta Flyers

44:03 podcast where Garrett Wong and Robert Duncan Monique McNeil 2

44:09 actors from Star Trek Voyager. I've only started listening to

44:13 the podcast now, but apparently their first seven seasons were

44:16 the two of them re watching their own show Star Trek

44:20 Voyager. And then I think they did one or

44:22 two seasons where they did miscellaneous Star Trek stuff.

44:25 But they have started re watching Star Trek Deep Space 9

44:28 and I didn't pick up on it right away, but I think I started

44:31 listening to them when they were doing either season 4 or season

44:34 5. And I think they're either still

44:35 in season 5 or or maybe season 6 I I can't remember.

44:39 No, I'm pretty sure it's season 5.

44:40 They haven't gotten to season 6 yet, but anyway, that is a

44:43 really good podcast. It's the two of them, but then

44:47 also Armand Shimmerman and Terry Farrell, who played Cork and Dax

44:53 in in Deep space 9. They trade off episodes and

44:56 every once in a while they'll both be in an episode together.

45:00 So it's either three or four of them who are on this podcast and

45:05 it's it's a really good podcast. In fact, they take about an

45:10 hour, hour and a half, sometimes even 2 hours to talk about a

45:14 single episode of Star Trek D Space 9.

45:16 So they really analyze it and that's just their free material.

45:20 Apparently they give you even more conversation about an

45:23 episode on their Patreon if you're willing to pay a few

45:26 dollars. So I mean they really get deep

45:29 into it and of course they get really good with behind the

45:32 scenes information. But the weird thing is that they

45:35 are also super objective because, you know, obviously

45:39 they were, you know, they're involved in Star Trek and two of

45:42 them were in Deep Space 9 specifically.

45:45 But Robert Duncan McNeil is also a producer and director and

45:50 possibly a writer. And so he's able to talk about

45:53 how, you know, I like this camera shot, but I didn't like

45:56 this camera shot. And they should have done a

45:58 Dolly here. They should have focused more on

46:00 character moments here. The the special effects weren't

46:02 good enough here. They were better here, you know,

46:05 that type of thing. And the others are a little bit

46:07 critical too. In fact, sometimes Arm and

46:09 Shimmerman will get a little bit critical, but in a very

46:12 objective and very polite way, sometimes about his own

46:16 performance, sometimes about others.

46:18 And he'll say as respectfully as possible, I think this part,

46:21 this director of this actor should have chosen differently.

46:24 But he won't say it in an offensive way or trashing

46:26 anybody. He's just like, you know, that

46:28 wasn't the best moment. They could have picked something

46:30 better or done a second take or something like that.

46:33 So it's it's very interesting. And also Armand Schumerman, when

46:36 he's on that podcast, he also does nomenclature isn't the

46:42 right word. It's whatever the study of words

46:45 is. Etymology.

46:47 And he'll basically take the title of the episode and then

46:50 break apart each word in the episode.

46:52 And what the not scientific, but basically the origins of each

46:56 word in the title. And so he gets analytical where

47:00 I think Garrett Wong does a haiku, Robert Duncan McNeil does

47:05 a Limerick, and I can't remember what Terry Farrell does.

47:09 I think she might do a poem. But they each do this kind of

47:11 like either artistic or analytical thing at the

47:14 beginning of each episode. They also do birthday shout outs

47:17 before they get into the the meat of the episode where

47:19 they're actually talking about the the Deep Space 9 episode.

47:22 But yeah, it's a it's a really good podcast, so I would

47:24 recommend it to everybody. Well, that So you're saying we

47:27 need to be more out there and creative and bizarre in some of

47:30 our editions? Oh well, no, no.

47:36 But we can't, we can't copy them.

47:37 So haikus are off the table. But you know, yeah, we weren't

47:41 shopping, man. Yeah, haikus.

47:44 Anyway. Armand Shimmerman is a funny guy

47:47 and he's in What the Bleep Do We Know, which is sort of a fiction

47:50 and sort of a documentary and it's fun to see him sometimes

47:54 out of the makeup. But he was very easy to spot in

47:57 the makeup. And I don't think it was just

47:59 because I was looking for him. But he is a Ferengi in the first

48:04 season of Next Generation when they were horrible and hunched

48:07 over and ridiculous and and then he's a Ferengi again shortly

48:10 later is slightly better. So he gets to keep improving

48:13 over time before he kind of masters the craft.

48:16 There is a guy named David Selberg who plays Edgar Allan

48:20 Poe and he's in the pilot for Voyager as well.

48:24 He's in Enterprise and he's 2 separate characters on TNG.

48:29 He's the guy. He's a tall lanky guy so he

48:32 lends himself well to probably play aliens and stuff.

48:36 But he's the tall, lanky, handsome fellow in the fedora

48:39 who gets shot in the famous season 1 episode The Big Goodbye

48:43 and Next Generation. Very.

48:45 I think he's a historian or something, but his wife Rita

48:49 Allen Poe, which I think is also a play on words.

48:54 She is in the video game Star Trek away team, which I do not

48:58 count toward the score, but she is in an episode of Voyager.

49:01 She's in Babylon 5 episode. Season 2 Episode 2 is Elizabeth

49:07 Sheridan. So that's probably why you

49:08 remember 155 episodes of Square 1 television slash Math Net as

49:14 Sergeant Kate Monday. For those of you who used to

49:16 watch or be forced to watch Math, Net and Square 1

49:21 educational TV for kids in the 80s was just usually so

49:24 typically horrible that This is why we have fond memories of a

49:28 few shows. It's just because they were

49:30 watchable and we were forced to watch.

49:31 So like The Electric Company is the best thing ever just because

49:34 it was so much better than the other stuff.

49:36 In this case, it's Dragnet, except with math.

49:40 So Rita Allen Poe was our guide for so many episodes of these

49:44 episodes. I never would have spotted her.

49:47 But yeah, I'm shocked to discover this is one of the

49:50 places she went. Michael Zand is Mr. Elias, and

49:55 like you mentioned, he'll be back in Dark Horizon.

49:58 Interesting dude in a very different role.

50:00 He's not going to not going to see Mr. Elias again.

50:03 Bob Miner is a cop. He's another stuntman, stunt

50:07 coordinator turned actor. He's done a lot of cool stuff

50:10 from both Blaculas back in the 70s through a Fast and the

50:13 Furious movie. He was also in the Practice Deep

50:16 Space 9, Buck Rogers, Wonder Woman, Spider Man TV show, the

50:21 original 1975 Rollerball with original movie Matt Sykes, James

50:26 Caan Fun. And he was in several

50:29 exploitation films in the 70s like Foxy Brown, Switchblade

50:32 Sisters and Delinquent Schoolgirls, which I'd like to

50:35 check out for the sake of research.

50:37 When you finish this episode, Lance Nichols plays a delivery

50:42 man and he has a ton of credits, mostly in my blind spot.

50:46 So they may be shows you all watch.

50:47 And I don't fan Forstick, the 2014, 2015 Fantastic Four movie.

50:53 This is very questionable. One episode of West Wing, one

50:56 episode of Buffy practice pick up fences.

51:00 He's coming up on 50 years of very steady work, this random

51:03 delivery guy. So yeah, and that's it for me

51:07 for connecting the spots. OK, so my two others were the

51:11 ones that you mentioned Misses Allen Poe.

51:14 Now I'm not sure you mentioned the actresses name though.

51:17 It's Beverly Leach and I didn't realize that that was her name

51:21 until I looked it up for tonight.

51:23 But yes, she played Elizabeth Sheridan.

51:25 And in case you're warning who that is, that is the sister of

51:28 Captain John Sheridan. Bruce Box Lightner played John

51:32 Sheridan, and he came in Season 2 to become the new captain of

51:37 Babylon 5. And I won't say anything more

51:38 about that in case he's a spoiler, but he's kind of not so

51:43 sure about his position. It's very different from his

51:46 previous work as a Starship captain.

51:49 So he's not exactly thrilled about it.

51:50 And Elizabeth is his sister who comes to visit the station to

51:55 give him a message from his his wife, who passed away years ago.

52:00 And because apparently his sister and his wife were best

52:05 friends at at one time. And so she comes to station to

52:09 visit him. And I won't say anything spoiler

52:12 about what happens, but let's just say something kind of big

52:14 and shocking and monumental happens in that particular

52:17 episode. And so not only could the viewer

52:21 possibly be shocked by what happens if they don't know it

52:23 ahead of time, but the character John Sheridan is kind of

52:27 shocked. So there is one scene after that

52:29 shocking thing happens where he's talking to to Lizzie and

52:32 he's like, yeah, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

52:35 And, and she's like, well, was it what was going on though?

52:38 Was it this or was it that? And he's like, I don't know.

52:41 So yeah, she's only in that one episode.

52:44 But it does make for some interesting scenes.

52:47 And then Michael Zand, who played Mr. Elias, the security

52:52 guards boss that I was talking about earlier, I kind of

52:56 mentioned that he was in more than just acting.

53:01 Yes, he does show up in an Alienation TV movie later, but

53:04 he also wrote 11 episodes of Silk Stockings.

53:09 He wrote 12 episodes of Pacific Blue and produced 18 episodes of

53:15 Pacific Blue. And if you're wondering what is

53:17 Pacific Blue, that is the Bike cop TV show from the late 90s

53:24 that I watched almost entirely because of an actress named

53:26 Paula Tricky. It was the 90s.

53:29 I was a teenager in my early 20s, so you can probably workout

53:32 why I liked Paula Tricky. So yeah, I just thought I'd

53:36 elaborate a little bit on Michael Zand.

53:38 And then did you say you were done with connecting the spots?

53:41 I am. OK, so the only other thing I

53:44 have is that Matt's hat is back. Uh.

53:47 Oh. And more specifically, it's the

53:49 hat from one of the earlier, very early episodes of the show

53:54 where he wore a hat. And I don't know how you

53:56 describe it, but it's almost like a gentleman's hat that you

53:58 would think would be worn with either a suit or an overcoat.

54:02 But of course, he's just wearing his normal, you know, jeans and

54:04 T-shirt, and so it doesn't really match everything else.

54:08 But, you know, he's wearing it anyway because I don't know,

54:11 he's just, I guess just has a thing for hats.

54:14 There again I was watching one of the myth Busters.

54:20 I'm blanking on his name, but the one with well, they both

54:24 have glasses anyway. The one of the two myth Busters

54:27 who's more outgoing. Adam Savage.

54:29 He has his own YouTube channel and there was an episode

54:32 recently where he was touring. I don't know if it was Skywalker

54:36 Ranch or Ware, but it was some kind of studio where there was a

54:39 lot of Star Wars stuff and the. I'm black on everybody's name

54:44 tonight. But the the director of Iron Man

54:46 One and Two, who is also an actor who also played Happy

54:50 Hogan in the MCU movies. Jon Favreau.

54:53 Jon Favreau. Yeah.

54:54 He, you know, he's involved in Star Wars now and he was giving

54:57 that guy a tour of everything. And the myth Buster was wearing

55:02 a hat. And I was like, OK, so it's not

55:04 just Matt Sykes. It's also one of the myth

55:06 Busters. So I guess sometimes people

55:08 really do wear formal hats with informal clothing.

55:12 Well, and I still have my theory that the SEC set designer put a

55:16 big hat rack in the corner of the character's apartment, and

55:19 now Gary Graham playfully grabs a hat off of it without

55:23 permission at random. That's still what I think the

55:26 case is. And because it explains his

55:30 myriad strange hat choice. And they're like the one person

55:35 is saying to the other, I didn't think he was actually going to

55:38 wear that, that little baseball cap in this episode.

55:41 I don't know. Gary has it on.

55:42 Just let him wear it. When we get to the Albert

55:45 Einstein Award, I tried really hard, listeners, I wanted to dig

55:50 up something on some of these names.

55:51 But we got a Smith, we got an Elias, we got Cyril Roman.

55:56 And I try, there's nothing there.

55:58 So you really are left with the pose, Edgar Allan Poe and Rita

56:02 Allan Poe. And I think her name is a play

56:04 on reading and Edgar Allan Poe novel read and Allan Poe Oh.

56:08 OK. Yeah, I didn't think about that.

56:11 But I could just be reaching there.

56:12 So I'm afraid our default winner is Edgar Allan Poe, the guy who

56:17 died by swimming pool. Yay Edgar Allan Poe.

56:22 Yeah, yeah. And you know, me, I I

56:24 intentionally don't research these because I want to pick

56:27 whatever is the most obvious. And yeah, there's nothing more

56:33 obvious than him. So if you dug and couldn't find

56:35 anything, then yeah, that's the default winner.

56:37 They haven't been trying that hard with these.

56:40 In some episodes they're more generous, but a few episodes do

56:43 not have a lot to go on. So we are up to I have to talk

56:47 about this. I think I have a few more than

56:50 you do, so maybe I'll do like 3 short ones for everyone.

56:54 You do, but go for it. Oh, I thought this was really

56:57 weird. Why does Matt have a picture of

57:00 a Corvette framed in his desk? For one thing, it's kind of

57:04 quaint that he's using one of those clear plastic box frames

57:08 that were popular in the 90s. I think I had some of those

57:10 myself. But if he went to the trouble of

57:13 framing it at all, why is it in a drawer inside of his desk

57:18 instead of on top of his desk? It's like a dirty magazine.

57:25 You know, some men, they're keeping the Bible in their desk

57:27 drawer. We already, I think, figured out

57:29 that Matt has a car magazine in there and a dirty magazine in

57:33 there from the kid little brother episode.

57:35 Well, we're never going to see that poor kid again.

57:37 Maybe he's better off. But yeah, so Matt keeps his

57:40 framed car picture in there to pull out every now and then.

57:42 Go. Yeah, that's the stuff right

57:44 there. I'm glad you spotted that.

57:47 I did not catch that at all. When investors get their free

57:50 new knit vest, it comes in the colour of the Caves of Tankton.

57:56 That was just a weird choice. You see colour better than I.

58:00 I don't see colour very well. Listeners, what do you remember?

58:02 What colour those look like to you, Todd?

58:05 Oh, the vest. Yeah.

58:07 I thought they were kind of a gold colour.

58:10 And I was thinking about that a little bit earlier.

58:13 I I couldn't help but wonder if they chose that color because of

58:16 the obvious connotation of gold being like wealth.

58:19 And this was about, this whole episode was about money and

58:23 riches and, you know, investment and stuff like that.

58:26 And so it makes sense that they make it a color that reflects

58:32 the type of thing that would either represent money, wealth

58:35 or investment. I'd say as good a guess as any.

58:38 I couldn't tell you I I would have guessed coral or something.

58:40 But yeah, when he gets it, they say in tanktonese fusala

58:47 nuslifa, which means we're in good health, the Franciscos.

58:53 So they invest big in this company and they start

58:56 fantasizing about how they'd spend all the money they'll make

58:59 from the investment. George dreams of having AUV

59:02 room. We found out in previous

59:03 episodes that newcomers need AUV bath frequently.

59:08 It affects your energy level. Susan wants something called an

59:14 adiash wheel because Vesna likes to climb so much.

59:18 She orders one for $700.00 and we see a big box delivered with

59:22 the name of the product on the side and a rough drawn image

59:26 that looks like an adiash wheel is essentially an oversized

59:31 gerbil wheel for tectonies. Toddlers of.

59:34 I think that's supposed to make us laugh, listeners, but maybe

59:37 I'm biased and even though that sounds dehumanizing, put your

59:42 kid to giant hamster wheel. Maybe a giant hamster wheel is

59:45 just what these ridiculous little ball of energy toddlers

59:48 need. Maybe we've been close.

59:52 She likes to climb to get her a giant gerbil wheel.

59:56 And there's an extra shout out to the customer in this episode.

1:00:00 I like Kathy's outfit. I'm sorry, the costumer Kathy's

1:00:04 outfit. Buck had a button up shirt with

1:00:07 some weird choices that I think worked.

1:00:10 I I'm sorry this isn't a visual medium y'all because I want to

1:00:13 show you these, but it is. It's like when you try and

1:00:15 design slightly future outfits just in the very, very near

1:00:19 future and you want to do something kind of quirky and

1:00:22 outfit. Kathy's outfit was just smashing

1:00:24 for the late 80s. But Buck has a shirt that is

1:00:26 just not quite our shirt. And at the investors meeting

1:00:30 Susan wore this low cut red dress with almost a lady vampire

1:00:35 collar. So that was kind of awesome.

1:00:38 Do you got another one? Yeah.

1:00:41 Now you reminded me something that is actually not about this

1:00:44 episode, but about I think it's the previous one.

1:00:47 Yeah, I think it's I think it's the episode right before this.

1:00:51 So it's the episode where something happens to Matt and

1:00:55 the Franciscos and Kathy are getting the news about it.

1:00:59 And we see the outfits that Susan and Kathy are wearing.

1:01:03 And I kind of remember them being a little bit bizarre too.

1:01:07 It was like this weird mix of late 80s pretend mid 90s and

1:01:13 alien. It was just kind of bizarre

1:01:17 fashions that they were wearing. So I know that's about another

1:01:19 episode, so I'm delve into that too much.

1:01:22 But but yeah, what you what you said happened to make me

1:01:24 remember what I was noticing in the previous episode.

1:01:27 Yeah. So bouncing back to this one,

1:01:30 this might be kind of related to what you're just talking about

1:01:32 with the the hamster wheel. Albert is super easy to please

1:01:37 because he considers scratching a lottery ticket so much fun

1:01:40 that he saves 1/3 of it from later.

1:01:43 And I'm like, it's just scratching a ticket.

1:01:47 It only takes a few seconds and you're getting so much joy that

1:01:49 you're like, I want that one second to come an hour or two

1:01:52 from now. It's just weird, but also oddly

1:01:57 refreshing for a character like Albert.

1:02:00 Yeah, well, and I mean, Matt is claiming that he is getting joy

1:02:05 out of scratching tickets and not just the the winning or

1:02:09 losing because clearly he's losing.

1:02:12 And Albert really is like, you're right, the anticipation,

1:02:15 the excitement, this is great. Which only makes it worse for

1:02:19 Matt because clearly he's not having fun.

1:02:21 And Albert is a pineapple, a Peach and a banana.

1:02:27 Where'd you win? Nothing, Albert, Nothing at all.

1:02:31 Sergeant Sykes, could I do 1? Albert they don't give these

1:02:36 away for free. Oh, I'll pay for it.

1:02:39 To waste the money. Please.

1:02:41 Do you insist? If he insists, huh?

1:02:44 Just don't blame me. You're just throwing away your

1:02:47 money, Albert. One pineapple, 2 pineapples.

1:02:56 What are you doing? Go on.

1:02:58 This is fun. I'm going to save the rest for

1:03:00 later. You start to get this theme idea

1:03:03 that Albert is making his own joy and finding it and Matt

1:03:08 cannot be happy even if you give him what he wants.

1:03:11 So that's just an example of that.

1:03:13 It's like, Oh my gosh, I scratched 2 off.

1:03:15 This is great. I'm saving it for later.

1:03:18 Just lives in a happy world. Albert does of the car that Matt

1:03:22 is mooning over is a 63 split window vet.

1:03:25 The IMDb is full of people telling what kind of car or gun

1:03:28 you see on screen, which I typically find pretty dull.

1:03:30 I mentioned this car because while listing its virtues, Matt

1:03:34 mentions that it has pause attraction.

1:03:36 And if any of you remember My Cousin Vinny, you know that you

1:03:39 can't get pause attraction on the Buick Sky Lock.

1:03:43 So that was really great that it has pause attraction.

1:03:47 This episode mentions multiple facts of previously established

1:03:50 Tanktonese lore. The coroner reminds the viewers

1:03:53 at home that salt waters like acid and newcomers, just in case

1:03:56 they didn't know. And they skipped to this one.

1:03:58 It's been a while since that came up, like I said.

1:04:00 So previously, we found out that newcomers have better hearing

1:04:03 and vision and smell. That came up all the way back in

1:04:07 the pilot movie. So in this one, Matt tells

1:04:11 George to trust his sense of smell for a change, and that's

1:04:14 what you were talking about, Todd.

1:04:15 Whereas the roles are reversed. And we found out earlier that

1:04:19 tanktonese are bred to adapt in multiple types of atmospheres,

1:04:23 so they don't reference that specifically.

1:04:25 But we can see how the nauseous fumes don't affect the newcomers

1:04:29 at all while they're deadly to humans.

1:04:30 So there are just some biological differences.

1:04:34 There are two subtle race comment references that I caught

1:04:37 in this episode, which is standard for the first 3

1:04:39 episodes, but they haven't happened as much since then.

1:04:42 When Albert says he already spent his lottery winnings,

1:04:46 Phil, our useless cop that's been added just for this

1:04:49 episode, tells Sykes. You give them a little money and

1:04:52 they spend it right away and Matt replies by looking him in

1:04:55 the eye and asking who the other one is.

1:05:03 Where Matt is suspicious of the human woman who married the

1:05:05 scientist Edgar Allan Poe. And George kind of accuses Matt

1:05:10 thinking she's in it for the money because they're a mixed

1:05:12 race couple. And neither of those little bits

1:05:17 of line is developed Any. It's just like a moment.

1:05:20 So the idea, you know, like, why would this woman be with this

1:05:26 scientist guy? And it's like, hey, you know

1:05:29 what? They could.

1:05:30 She could like him for who he is, not just because he's

1:05:32 wealthy. I mean, the fact that he's a

1:05:34 newcomer. Yeah.

1:05:35 So they're just one and done's near the finale.

1:05:38 A semi truck full of the factories toxic waste is in a

1:05:41 crash completely by accident. OK, It has nothing to do with

1:05:45 the plot. It's just a convenient way for

1:05:48 moving the plot along. So we have to find this out.

1:05:51 It's just like, oh, you know what, It's really nice that

1:05:53 there happened to be a semi crash out of the blue because

1:05:57 that drove the plot back over to the factory.

1:06:00 But that was that was nice. And you know, it gave us a big

1:06:03 scene of a crime kind of thing. Big accident shirtless Sykes

1:06:08 soaks his shirt in to breathe fumes through, which I heard

1:06:13 about when I was like really young.

1:06:15 So I appreciate them adding that in.

1:06:17 That was cool to see in action. They're like, I think a fireman

1:06:20 came to our elementary school and told us, you know, if

1:06:22 there's smoke in the house, you could like get cloth wet and try

1:06:25 and breathe through the wet cloth and it might make it not,

1:06:28 not as bad for you to be breathing the smoke.

1:06:31 There are not as many shirtless men in this show as there are in

1:06:34 like season 1 Star Trek with shirtless Captain Kirk.

1:06:37 But I feel like it is happening a little frequently.

1:06:41 They mentioned holes in the ozone layer and the the Montreal

1:06:45 Protocol was ratified by every country in 1987.

1:06:49 In the real world, the only treaty ratified by every

1:06:52 country, which that's just a weird sentence to read, but I

1:06:55 read it. It eliminated 99% of ozone

1:06:58 depleting substances like CFCS, chlorofluorocarbons.

1:07:02 We're seeing a lot of progress in 2025 projected to close all

1:07:06 holes in the ozone layer by 2066, even over Antarctica, but

1:07:11 most of the rest of the world as early as 2040.

1:07:14 I did not know that. I looked it up for this.

1:07:16 That's interesting. So here's your ecology facts.

1:07:19 I don't know if we've Todd, did we say what ended up happening

1:07:22 with the money in the car? Did we give that twist away?

1:07:25 Maybe not directly. Do you want to go ahead and tell

1:07:28 them what happens with the money in the car?

1:07:29 Because I thought it was just wonderful.

1:07:31 Yeah. So we kind of implied a little

1:07:33 bit about how it's a happy episode and Matt does something

1:07:37 nice. Basically what he does is he

1:07:38 sells the car and then uses that money to get a whole bunch of

1:07:43 trees for Albert to plant wherever he wants to plant them.

1:07:46 Yeah, Albert's obsessed with trees, and I think he tells Matt

1:07:49 that he would have spent the money on trees at one point.

1:07:52 And Matt is just like, that's not what makes you happy.

1:07:55 Cool things like cars make you happy.

1:07:57 And there's a part of us that says that he's right, stuff

1:08:00 does. But then Matt tries out the

1:08:02 idea, you know, that like doing something for somebody else

1:08:05 makes you happy, which worked for Albert when you got in the

1:08:08 car. But it's like, it's awesome.

1:08:11 It's really awesome. And we as the viewer, they made

1:08:14 it easier for us because we found out how much upkeep all of

1:08:19 the having the car would mean and how expensive it would be

1:08:24 for Matt to have that gift. Whereas Matt is saying that the

1:08:27 money that he spent not only pays for the trees, but it pays

1:08:30 for the guys to plant them. So at that point, you know,

1:08:33 they're good. I mean, I'm not going to talk

1:08:36 about like, you know, the wildfires of California or them

1:08:39 needing to be water and stuff. But the idea is you're not going

1:08:42 to have to pay maintenance and upkeep.

1:08:43 Plant those trees anywhere you want, Albert.

1:08:45 And it's a self-sustaining thing that's just good and happy and

1:08:48 brings joy. So I think Matt found out

1:08:51 something really cool. I really do believe that that

1:08:55 was a nice message at the end. So yes, awesome.

1:08:59 Are we all good? Yes, I've got a little bit more.

1:09:04 I've got the usual stuff from the Unofficial Companion.

1:09:08 Yeah, a book that I got for Christmas.

1:09:10 It's about alienation. And there's nothing too

1:09:13 spectacular about this particular episode, so I'll

1:09:15 mostly be skimming it. In this, producer Andrew

1:09:18 Schneider said that they wanted to do an ecological show, and he

1:09:22 also describes this as a lighter episode, which I guess to a

1:09:26 certain extent it is because there is some comedy in it.

1:09:29 Co story editor Craig Van Sick. He actually disagrees.

1:09:33 He said that they tended to go darker.

1:09:36 Let me see. I guess his disagreement was

1:09:38 that he thought that more of the episodes were darker, but that

1:09:42 they were starting to get fluffy and some alarm bells were going

1:09:46 off. And so, yeah, he describes this

1:09:48 as being not one of his favorites.

1:09:51 Then story editor Stephen Mitchell said that for the most

1:09:56 part, Andy and Diane stuff was lighter.

1:10:00 He said our stuff, and I think he's referring to himself and

1:10:03 Craig Van Sickle, who usually work together, was a little bit

1:10:07 darker, and Tom's stuff fell in the middle.

1:10:10 On the one hand, I think that was one of the strengths of

1:10:13 Alienation. When you tuned in, you weren't

1:10:16 sure what you're going to see, sort of what they did on Magnum

1:10:19 Pi. You didn't know if they were

1:10:22 going to have an intense show, a light show, a straight Pi show.

1:10:26 It's too bad we didn't get to go on with that creative team.

1:10:30 And that was the end of that quote.

1:10:32 Let me see. Producer Tom Shahack, he pointed

1:10:36 out that oh, so originally there was a concept conceived by

1:10:41 Diane, which is kind of weird because this is a dark concept

1:10:44 that she came up with, even though she's been described as

1:10:47 being one of the ones that usually comes up with the light

1:10:49 and fluffy stuff. But she had an idea for a

1:10:53 factory for newcomers who were known to have eaten the dead on

1:10:58 the Starship and that they were basically responsible for

1:11:02 getting rid of the waste and that they would be, you know,

1:11:07 hated by other people. And they were basically just be

1:11:10 looked down upon for being associated with garbage waste,

1:11:14 stuff like that. And I can't, he doesn't spell it

1:11:18 out super clearly, but I get the feeling the studio didn't like

1:11:21 it because he said originally was a fascinating idea, but the

1:11:25 sensors, the networks and all kind of kinds of forces kind of

1:11:29 got in the way. And he said that stuff went

1:11:31 away. And so he said, wait, that they

1:11:33 could have done some really interesting things.

1:11:36 And then he kind of implies that one of the TV movies that's

1:11:39 coming up gets back to darker elements, including possibly

1:11:45 either this concept or something similar to it.

1:11:49 Then actor Gary Graham, he had forgotten how funny this episode

1:11:53 was. He said that sometimes the show

1:11:58 was walking a tightrope between drama and comedy.

1:12:02 Let me see. And then Eric Pierpoint, he

1:12:05 doesn't have too much to say about it, but he does mention

1:12:07 how it is a reflection of how sometimes you can have, you

1:12:11 know, financial troubles in real life.

1:12:13 And he kind of implied that he had some of his own at one time

1:12:17 that didn't kill him, but it kind of damaged his financial,

1:12:21 you know, stability, at least for a little while until he got

1:12:24 back on track. He mentioned the gaudy colors.

1:12:28 So you were asking about the color of the vest.

1:12:31 And he thought it was interesting that it was kind of

1:12:34 a gaudy color and that sometimes the tinctonies tended to

1:12:37 gravitate toward, you know, things that might be either

1:12:41 gaudy or plain where, you know, you know, not the same kind of

1:12:45 colorful things that humans might gravitate toward.

1:12:49 And then he kind of agreed with some of the others that this was

1:12:52 a middle of the road episode. Well, and I found out recently,

1:12:57 just by accident, that Eric Pierpoint is a published author.

1:13:02 He has 2 completely unrelated historical fiction books he's

1:13:07 written for young adults. And I'm honestly, I'm not sure.

1:13:11 I may be the kind of person who's a big enough fan to, like,

1:13:14 pick up the one that's available at my local library and check it

1:13:17 out. But yeah, that's just cool.

1:13:21 There is one fun piece of trivia for this episode before you do

1:13:24 the next segment, and it's just that there was a show I was too

1:13:30 young to see called Route 66. And in Route 66, it was about

1:13:34 two guys traveling the countryside and a Corvette.

1:13:37 And when Sykes and Kathy start driving in his new Corvette,

1:13:41 they start playing a little bit of the song of Route 66, the

1:13:44 theme song. It's spiritual.

1:13:47 I have always dreamed of having this car now.

1:13:50 Here it is. Come on, I'll take you for a

1:13:54 ride. OK?

1:13:58 Not many cars had bucket seats back in 63.

1:14:01 Or a cluster dash. Listen to that engine.

1:14:12 What was that? Who?

1:14:13 Nothing, you just have to get used to clutch.

1:14:19 Sounds like your U joint went out.

1:14:20 Oh. Geez.

1:14:23 Matt, I don't think this is better than sex.

1:14:26 The people watching who are Route 66 fans were like, oh, I

1:14:29 see what you're doing there. This is an Easter egg for a

1:14:34 niche niche group. Yeah, I didn't realize that that

1:14:39 the piece of music did kind of stand out as being different

1:14:41 from everything else, but I didn't know what it came from.

1:14:43 OK, so the last thing I have is wheel of press kit and I will

1:14:50 spin the wheel 6. OK, paragraphs one to four and

1:14:58 the last paragraph OK. So from the press kit that came

1:15:04 out to help advertise the show when it first premiered in the

1:15:08 80s, I have the profile for Jeff Marcus, who plays Albert

1:15:12 Einstein. Jeff Marcus plays Albert

1:15:14 Einstein, an introverted Police Department maintenance man who

1:15:17 is very simple and sometimes a bit slow.

1:15:20 And then a quote from Jeff Albert has a vulnerability about

1:15:24 him that I enjoy working with. I think everybody has this trait

1:15:28 in common, but Albert hasn't been told enough to conceal it.

1:15:34 And that's the end of that quote.

1:15:36 Jeff has played several characters who aren't

1:15:38 necessarily considered the norm. In the theater production of The

1:15:42 Boys Next Door, he had the opportunity to be on the other

1:15:45 side. His character had the

1:15:47 responsibility of caring for five mentally challenged men.

1:15:53 I had to change a word there. While preparing for this role,

1:15:57 Jeff spent a great deal of time working with mentally

1:16:01 handicapped patients. I found this back to a quote.

1:16:05 I found the experience very rewarding and moving more than

1:16:08 anything. These people want to give and

1:16:10 receive love much the same way Albert does.

1:16:13 And then last paragraph. Albert is really the child in me

1:16:17 who knows when no when to flash a warm smile and project that

1:16:21 lovable side to get attention. He just has a harder time

1:16:25 pulling it off with that oversized alien head.

1:16:30 Well, and if you guys don't know from a previous episode, Jeff

1:16:33 Marcus has some unique acting credits.

1:16:36 So like he's he's a depressed patient in the background in the

1:16:40 original, not the original, the first Lindsay Lohan, Freaky

1:16:44 Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis. They just did a sequel.

1:16:46 So he was just a guy over to the side in that.

1:16:49 I love these people without their weird alien head on like

1:16:52 in other things. But he also for some reason is a

1:16:55 voice character actor in Frozen, like the 20131 German dignitary

1:17:01 just over the side. So I love that Albert from Alien

1:17:04 Nation isn't that. It's great.

1:17:08 And then I went ahead and spun the wheel again.

1:17:12 And so the next item comes from the Alien Times, the quasi fake

1:17:17 newspaper. It's just a one page kind of

1:17:20 fake newspaper. Some of it is actual information

1:17:23 about the show itself, like when it premieres, and then some of

1:17:26 it is kind of like in universe jokes.

1:17:31 And one of these is an article. And now, granted, it's only

1:17:34 three paragraphs long, but still.

1:17:36 I must have had this one on the list for a while because I do

1:17:38 have bullet points to kind of paraphrase it.

1:17:40 The article was written by Milwaukee, obviously.

1:17:46 Yeah, obviously. I take Denise writer play on

1:17:49 words of Milwaukee. Milwaukee.

1:17:52 Is it Wisconsin? Maybe Milwaukee or either

1:17:56 Wisconsin or Minnesota. I don't know.

1:17:58 I'm blanking on everything tonight.

1:18:00 Wow, what's your damage tonight, Grandpa?

1:18:03 I thought you told me one time that you're actually good at

1:18:05 geography. But anyway, it talks about how

1:18:09 George was the first officer to be promoted to Detective 3rd

1:18:13 grade. I see.

1:18:14 I've got in my bullet point that Michael Miami was the head of

1:18:18 the National Bureau of Newcomer Affairs and said that Georgia's

1:18:22 promotion was signed, that the LAPD was bending to pressure by

1:18:27 the NBNA, the National Bureau of, of Newcomer Affairs.

1:18:32 And then there's a quote by Captain Grazer.

1:18:35 And so maybe I should just read this.

1:18:37 Let me see, Captain. OK, Grazer emphasized.

1:18:41 We make no promotions except those warranted by outstanding

1:18:45 conduct above and beyond the Call of Duty.

1:18:48 So, yeah, this continues to be a neat little piece of

1:18:52 memorabilia. I don't know if they do these

1:18:54 press kits nowadays, but it's kind of neat to see if they went

1:18:57 to the trouble of, you know, both advertising the show but

1:19:00 also being created by by making stuff that is like quasi in

1:19:05 universe. Yeah, yeah.

1:19:07 And I mean, I've looked up press kits a little bit since you've

1:19:10 gotten into it. That's, and I mean for our, for

1:19:13 our five listeners in Wisconsin, we know where Milwaukee is, I

1:19:17 promise you guys. But yes, that's awesome.

1:19:24 So are we ready to score this episode?

1:19:28 Yep. All right.

1:19:29 Well, blisters. I usually give 2 scores.

1:19:32 I give a watch and skip score and I give ASTA score for how

1:19:35 many Star Trek alumni I managed to spot doing pretty well for

1:19:39 this one because it starts off with a base four.

1:19:41 I've got Sykes Mr. and misses Francisco in every episode but

1:19:45 Grazer's in this one. So we're starting strong.

1:19:48 And then I've got the legend himself, Arm and Shimmerman

1:19:51 Quark bringing us up to 5. Beverly Leach, as we said, that

1:19:56 makes 6. And then we've got Bob Miner,

1:19:57 David Selberg and Kim Braden. So this episode has 9 which is.

1:20:03 I think time for the highest score we've had so far.

1:20:07 I don't think we've ever crossed the 9 threshold into 10.

1:20:10 So excellent score in terms of Star Trek alumni, and I think

1:20:15 you kind of called that last week.

1:20:16 But in terms of watch and skip, I don't think you need to watch

1:20:21 it for the cleverness of the detectives or for the twists and

1:20:24 turns of the mystery. But yeah, I think y'all need to

1:20:27 watch this episode to see all the characters dealing with

1:20:30 labor issues and environmentalism, investing,

1:20:34 lottery, upkeeping luxury items. When your former gang member son

1:20:39 goes from criminal to socially conscious so quickly that he's

1:20:41 annoying like both his parents are like, I just want to make

1:20:44 money and he's like, we've got to save the environment.

1:20:48 I do. I think this is an episode you

1:20:51 cannot skip. I think you're going to need to

1:20:52 see all these characters doing these fun, strange, weird

1:20:55 things. What about you, Todd?

1:20:56 How do you score this episode? Probably not a huge surprise,

1:20:59 but I give this one AB kind of like I said at the outset, you

1:21:04 know, nothing hugely bad, nothing hugely good.

1:21:07 So it is middle of the road and even some of the producers and

1:21:11 stars, he said this kind of middle of the road episode.

1:21:14 So I think everybody agrees. So that's not bad.

1:21:18 I think the only thing that's disappointing about it is I

1:21:20 could have sworn that this was a better episode.

1:21:23 So it's still fine. I was just thinking this was

1:21:28 like more top tier and I was wrong, but at least it's not bad

1:21:34 either. So yeah, yeah, it's a beat.

1:21:36 Well if y'all don't know, in like the 80s and 90s you'd get a

1:21:40 lot more credit as far as critics go if you had like an

1:21:45 ecological message. So if they weren't all shunning

1:21:48 this show and about to cancel it anyway, this would be the Emmy

1:21:51 winning episode just because it had an ecology thing.

1:21:55 That's just my opinion. Like I think Captain Planet won

1:21:58 multiple Emmys and I liked it OK, but that cartoon was like

1:22:01 middle of the road at best, but it was just like they were so

1:22:05 proud of it for having a good message.

1:22:08 I think that's how Whoopi Goldberg E got it is from

1:22:10 Captain Planet. But yeah, so B.

1:22:14 So we are ready to move on. Y'all coming up next time on

1:22:18 alienating ourselves. Join us as we explore

1:22:21 alienations episode 21. The touch you got, The touch you

1:22:27 got the Kathy finds a boy she knew from the ship, but she

1:22:31 suspects he has been abused. I know I said they were getting

1:22:35 formulaic exploring Matt's and George's past traumas each week,

1:22:39 but it sounds like next week we're switching to the trauma of

1:22:41 the pretty neighbor. And the cherry on top is

1:22:44 possible references to child abuse.

1:22:46 So come on back next time to see how Todd and I can put a fun

1:22:49 spin on that when we inevitably once again succeed in alienating

1:22:53 ourselves. I continue to be Nick.

1:22:55 I'm Todd, thank you for investing your time in listening

1:22:59 to us and we hope we made you feel like you just won the

1:23:01 lottery. We'd love to see some reviews

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1:23:45 And Alien Factory have a great week.

1:23:48 That's just good advice. Good night everybody.