Will Riley 00:09
In November of 2021 Vancouver was hit by a huge storm off of an atmospheric river, buffeted by the wind a huge wood ship, barge de anchored in the open sea and was tossed by the waves down into False Creek, the inlet that dissects our city. The barge ran aground in English Bay on a public beach right by the sea wall footpath. It lodged in deep enough that it would take over a year to remove it. Four days later, the first article struck, here are the best memes spawned by the English Bay barge. As this huge metal box beached on the rocks right where foot traffic was highest, the barge was impossible to ignore, and because it was such an arduous public to do, getting this thing loose. It was impossible to not be talked about. It was a fast recipe for a new online landmark. We got pictures of spider man trying to pull the barge out with webs. December rolled around and people started cooking ginger barge cookies for the gram photo shops of the barge saying it was the site of the next fire fest. You remember that one? A classic rock station posted a photo with the caption Nirvana being considered classic rock written over the barge. Archeologists are still debating what this was meant to communicate. At some point, somebody constructed a replica of a Vancouver Parks Board sign naming the crash site, barge chilling Park, a reference to dude. Chilling Park, another meme spot where everyone capable of pattern recognition takes a picture of themselves with sunglasses in front of the sign, maybe a vape, too, if they’re daring. The SeaBus memes page did what it always does and pasted characters from the office over pictures of the barge to say lines from the show that theoretically could apply to the barge. Once you take three or four caveats into account in the same post, there’s a picture of Jerry Seinfeld with the caption. What’s the deal with barges? Why are they always barging in? This meme page is a municipal treasure. By the way, you are legally mandated to enjoy it. Every person you tangentially knew in high school is on Facebook right now laughing at sea bus memes harder than they have ever laughed at anything else in life. Yes, the English Bay barge let everyone in the city lay down some real epic bacon. Perhaps I’m being too Stern. It was a neat thing to see, and it’s sort of excusable. This was the pandemic. After all, everyone was desperate for an excuse to pay attention to anything that wasn’t the pandemic. You remember those times you remember convincing yourself into sincerely believing Tiger King was worth discussing. Who are you to judge? Vancouver already had a meme barge beforehand. Anyway, the McDonald’s MC barge, one of the great Expo 86 landmarks. This memetic weather mania isn’t even a unique phenomenon to Vancouver. Places all over Canada remember that weather exists and they lose all sense of cultural perspective in shikhdemi, Quebec, for instance, the flood of 96 somehow split its flow in half right in front of a little white house, sparing it from destruction. Imagine Wiley Coyote has blown up a dam to destroy a house that the roadrunner is in, and the deluge magically parts to protect only the roadrunner. That’s what it looked like this house so inundated the Canadian and Quebecois airwaves that in three days, people were saying that Saint Anne herself had intervened to protect the Little White House. Quebecois cultural figures were insisting that la petite Maison blanc should be put on the Canadian $20 bill, or failing that the Quebecois $20 bill in the inevitable event of Quebec secession. I’ve been to Chicoutimi by the way, the house is still there. It’s a museum now complete with an animatronic puppet of the grandma who lived there. The barge, though, unlike la petite Maison Blanche, was susceptible to internetty copycatting before Vancouver had its barge story in March 2021, the rest of the world had theirs. The ever given barge totally blocking off the Suez Canal. Remember that one? Well, that barge got dislodged in only six or seven days. You know, lame our barge was stuck for more than a year. So much more content to generate there. When the ever given got unblocked, the quick joke to make was, no, no, put it back. So using that same joke here scanned, don’t get rid of the barge. Make it a landmark. Make barge chilling. Park real. Make it a thing. No, really do that. It’s the sole physical reminder that we’ve got something so. That actually happened here. Please keep it personally. I remember a guy in January of that time handing out pamphlets by the barge while contractors surveyed it for removal, save our barge. Save our barge. He’d say people would snap photos with him, and he’d cheerfully profess the virtues of Vancouver’s funnest landmark. Every once in a while, someone would chide him for being unserious or just looking for 15 minutes of social media fame. Aw, you’re no fun. He would tisk by March, though, when the contractors started digging underneath the barge, this had curdled a little. Don’t be a tugboat. Cuck. His placard said, be a sigma barge. Maxer, the guy had a whole booth of shit like this in his new pamphlets, he’d drawn some city councilors as soy jacks and the barge as an alpha. Chad, I was sort of impressed how he managed to draw a beard on a barge and make it look normal. Come on, guys, let’s, let’s do it for the one time the barge it the barge is hilarious. It’s the one joke that never gets old, because it’s still there. Come on, don’t take it down. Come on. Come on. The barge is epic. It’s got big barge energy. Come on, let’s go. Most people ignored him. The next time I saw this guy, he was far more austere as machinery buzzed away on the barge. He stood stock still and simply raised his new pamphlet. Now the size of a small hardcover, the guy remained silent, letting his wide banner do all the speaking for him, the global proletariat demand the reinstatement of the barge. It had been signed at the bottom, the fifth international revolutionary barges, committee brackets, Marxist, Leninist. I tried reading his book a little bit, but the first lines read, the people are like an ocean, and the revolutionary is like a barge floating over it, and I immediately drifted off it after a few months of quiet. Though By August, this guy was screaming. Gone were the slim, hard covers in favor of a continuous scroll of unbroken printer paper. We all know the people trying to stop us from saving the barge, but if you ever say who it is, you get called a bigot, my friends, I’ve been watching the people taking down this barge for months, and folks, I am the only one with enough experience to tell you that they are demons. When they fling their eyelids go sideways. That’s all already come out. Everybody knows it, the Soros and the builder birds and the whole Chai Kong cavalry. They hate the bars because it’s the only pure and good thing in this world. And they want to take it from you, to keep you weak. To be an anti barges
Will Riley 07:44
is to be anti human, and I am a human. Then he fell asleep right there, like he was still standing up. He just closed his eyes and he went to sleep in December 2022, the last pieces of the barge were pulled off the shores of English Bay. The guy was still there, but he was totally sedate. He looked out at the ships leaving with a little smile on his face. I sat next to him. You don’t seem as upset about this as I thought you would be. I said, the last time I saw you here, you were quite animated about this. Yeah, he said I got really racist there for a bit, but I’m all better now. Well, that’s a relief, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was being really silly back there. I cooled out though, after I realized that all of this is part of a bigger plan. Remember when they needed to bring a crane out here to strip parts off of the barge. Well, I’m going to have to take your word for it, sir. Well, tell me this. How do you think they were able to bring that crane out here? They used another barge that was a sign to me, one barge calls out for another. Beached whales call more of their own kind to the shore. And I think it’s the same with barges. They needed to take this barge away to make room for the next, even bigger one. I don’t know when, but a larger barge will hit this shore, and then a second and then a third, all in a row. They’ll keep stacking all in a line, barge after barge until they create a land bridge to Asia all on their own. Think of the brand new economic order that could start from the next barge that will hit this beach. Well, sir, I said, I don’t know if I agree with you, but I’m personally glad that you’ve found some kind of optimism. Here he continued. Well, that’s only half of the grand design, of course, eventually the nukes do start flying anyway, only when the world is set to cinders can true barge ism emerge from the ashes. Then everything in the world can be barges. You know, we’ll be long dead by then, though, obviously, personally, I’m comfortable with my. Role as a theorist of barge ism. Now I’ve had plenty of time to think on it. When I’m not working as a real estate agent, it will fall to others to provide the Praxis. So after that, I didn’t think about that man much. He was still a crank, of course, but he was now a harmless crank. Until yesterday, I opened a paper recently, and I discovered that it wasn’t a real newspaper. The layout was the same, but instead the words inside read the theoreticians of our age have only served to deaden our understanding of our world, its critiques of our ways of life, forming a unity with the systems that reorder us. Liberation relies on direct experience, any rudimentary attempt at directly experiencing the city of Vancouver, a process formerly known as derive always reveals the same thing. We need another barge to crash into English Bay, and everybody knows it. Oh, God, this guy is doing de tournement now I can accept being a barge based Posadas, but I draw the line at being a Paris situationist. Well, at least he won’t be influencing anyone important now, anyone
Speaker 1 11:17
in Danger, danger, danger, danger. Danger Danger hasn’t come home yet Danger, danger
11:33
just never gonna say danger. She
Speaker 2 11:39
could be a danger to herself and dad be a danger to us. Danger.
Will Riley 11:57
Hey everybody, it’s infinite danger. Again, this is will speaking bit of an urgent notice right at the top of the show. I was originally going to talk about the growing army of neon zoo animals and their associated allies spreading to the Iberian Peninsula. I was going to contemplate that and what the impending paella shortage may mean for the global economy. But there’s something more directly urgent right now for my Canadian listeners, you may remember the TV show that’s incredible getting a streaming deal and how that meant that it was legal for everyone here to listen to TV Party by Black Flag. I’m coming in right at the top to tell you commit that audio drop to memory, because this upcoming Sunday, the streaming contract for ABC sketch comedy show Fridays is going to have a lapse. It will no longer be on the Quebecois version of Hey you. After that day, listening to TV Party will be fully illegal yet again, pending any possible renegotiation. Dallas, again. Commit that to memory. Your personal memory will be the only way you’ll be able to access this song after this Sunday. Delete the song off your phone. Make sure any physical media with TV Party on it is shredded. Do not hum the chorus of TV Party, chorus, entertainment will demolish your house. Danger Bay, Episode 15, nature of the beast. Production Code one, Dash 008, what sort of genre this episode is and what it’s trying to replace here? I’m going to leave it a bit of a secret here, because that’s sort of the pleasure of this particular episode. What I’ll say right now is that Alan Eastman is the director, and Rick Drew is writing two names that we are well familiar with at this point. Last time we got around to Eastman, I gave him a really long career retrospective. So I’m going to pull back a little here. I’m just going to blow through a few small but notable accomplishments. He directed a Latter Day Deep Space Nine episode, an O’Brien episode at that it was called honor among thieves. It’s sort of low in the pecking order of O’Brien episodes, because O’Brien does suffer in the episode, as is tradition, but it’s not a particularly existential sort of suffering. So what’s the point? He’s just having a rough day. He did do a brief stint directing for the littlest hobo. He did about 42 episodes. But really, I just think that that’s par for the course. I’m told that this is a staple of Canadian culture. But I mean, really, the country is awash in crime fighting dog shows that you could pick. I mean, the littlest hobo is such a Normie go to as far as that genre is concerned, I have a lot more to say about the writer of this app. Rick drew I put off a lot of his career by just talking twice about ZIX, his version of reboot with the serial numbers filed off. But he has done a lot. I thought about what to focus on, because he is sort of all over the place. A good piece of his career is writing for TV, sci fi and horror anthologies, including goosebumps, as well as dark realm, which is just adult goose bumps. He wrote for Jim Henson productions, brats of the lost Nebula, which is a show I had childhood memories of so distant I’d convince myself I’d actually dreamed it. But in the end, I decided it’s time to finally bite the bullet and talk about the big one. A lot of times when you look at TV writers, they’re just doing an episode here and there, but Rick Drew was a writer and executive Story Editor for a considerable chunk of a teen drama named Northwood.
Will Riley 15:50
How do I introduce Northwood? Well, I suppose I could say that the first minutes of it that I ever saw was some teen dead certain he was going to be caught with a bottle of booze by his dad. Another character goes, we should just flush it down the toilet. And the kid responds, oh, it’s no good. My dad will find out anyway. And I remember this scene because my first thoughts were, what come tomorrow? Your dad is gonna say, Gavin, I drank out of the toilet this morning, as per usual, and I tasted gin. Explain yourself, Northwood is, in some ways, the inverse of the other teen drama we’ve encountered on this show. Michael Berry’s 15. Slash hillside 15, if you remember, was openly a soap opera with a one set structure and a production pipeline that can fairly be described as Fordist. Northwood strives to be a capital D drama. Seasons are only 15 episodes. They’re shooting outdoors. It all looks slick and glossy. All the actors keep getting told by the director, no, no, no. Even more stoic,
16:57
I was fine until I saw you standing there. Just a reflex, I guess.
Speaker 3 17:05
Yeah? Well, after being together for so many years,
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hard just to turn off these emotions.
17:16
Yeah? Well, I got a bus to catch it
Will Riley 17:19
was explicitly billed as a darker, grittier Degrassi, because Degrassi was the show it was replacing on the time slot to put an exclamation mark on that premise, the first frames of the show are a character committing suicide by jumping off a cliff, which would have been considerably more emotionally effective if he didn’t do it with a swan dive do a flip. Northwood is chock full of all the old social melodrama, standbys, underage drinking, pregnancy scares, broken family lives. Look, I was at this party, okay, and this guy was
Speaker 4 17:54
all goofed up. We did a double hit each and then we we started shining these flashlights into each other’s face. Right? I went right into the flashlight, through the bulb, into the battery and everything
Speaker 5 18:04
I catch you, docent, I’m gonna kill you, man, you’ve done it
Will Riley 18:07
because it’s a Canadian teen drama. There’s an obligatory character who becomes paraplegic mid show the works.
18:15
I want to know what she smells like, what she’s wearing, if her hair is
Speaker 4 18:18
up or down, you’re disgusting. No, Consider it a gift.
Will Riley 18:24
I make special note of this because the Rick drew episode of danger bay that we’ve already seen had a character in a wheelchair in it that was Winston record, a Canadian TV really loves having characters with a handicap in them, just so long as the actors playing them aren’t handicapped. IRL, there’s a storyline where a character has to contend with a layabout father who has given up on finding real work. But this was muddled because they visualized it by having the dad live on a houseboat, a now near universal sign for this man made a killing selling anti virus software five years ago, and he’s set for life. So what sets Northwood apart other than grit? Well, it’s in a rarefied position. Not only is it a show where Vancouver plays itself, but it is actually granular enough to say that it all takes place in the Lower Mainland, the technically separate cities of North van and West van. Now I am a North van kid myself, and I’m here to tell you that this is precisely what does the show in. I wrote my notes intending to point out where Northwood diverged from my lower mainland teenager dump. And once I realized everything that made it a functional TV show diverged from reality and everything true to life made it a slog to watch. I just became the biggest hometown hater on Earth, so please bear with me here. The fatal flaw of Northwood is that it’s a show about the social lives of teens, set in a city with no genuine social centers for teens or for. Or anybody, the show has all this glossy B roll under its belt, but because there’s not much in the way of real cultural landmarks here, what’s the editor left with a fifth insert of a hiking trail or a sixth insert of suburban homes? This problem is sign posted every episode in the very opening. What establishing shots do they show the viewer? To give them the North van, Mystique, Lonsdale key and the second Narrows Bridge, the two things people use to leave North van for the day. Kudos for making the second narrows the bridge of choice. By the way, many more people use that one. It would have been so tempting to make Lionsgate the main image, because, you know that one actually looks good, but they went for authenticity. Think of all the other teen dramas you may know. Of 90210, it has the peach pit, right? And all of the other dramas of the era make their formula work by having their own version of the peach pit. Even 15 has a version of the peach pit. They called it the Avalon North van not only doesn’t have a peach pit, it doesn’t have any place it would make sense to put one so you have the teens hang out at a mall, right? Well, not without TV trickery. Malls here mostly exist to sell the condos built around them. Eliminating any kind of loitering is such a priority here that it controls the mall’s very architecture. Northwood actors keep having mall scenes in these nice private nooks, and I keep pointing at the screen going. They made that for the show. They demolished that the moment they stopped filming. Nobody could actually sit here in this part of the mall. It’s simply too expensive for Northwood to continuously use Movie magic to make lower mainland malls look like places for humans to be around for more than five minutes. So the main settings in Northwood, true to real life, are just different characters, parents, houses, because it’s the only place it would make sense for something anything to happen,
22:02
cost is clear at my place. I was at some bingo bash for the weekend. I don’t know.
Will Riley 22:10
Jason has an argument about weed at Maria’s suburban home. Cut to Trevor and Karen having a family dispute at Brian’s suburban home. Little do they know Michael is having a wild all night Bender at Jennifer’s suburban home. But here’s the big twist. Right at the end of the episode, we see Kirk, and the camera zooms out, and it turns out he’s inside Jennifer’s suburban home, and they just roll credits. Oh my god, the disappearance of third spaces in North American life has caused a multitude of social disasters. But I draw the line at making television boring, no matter how dedicated to realism. This show may be, no TV show about North Vancouver teens is going to cover their true omnipresent experience taking an hour and a half public transport to Metro town and cursing under their breath the whole time. Guy was all goofed up the build. Guest star in this episode is named Michael Kirby. Now I’d be a fool if I didn’t say this somewhere at the same time, this guy is doing danger Bay. He is giving voice acting credits for the Star Wars droids animated series, just like Winston record was,
Will Riley 23:32
he is playing the unforgettable characters of bun Dingo and Sise fromg. But why is he a top billed guest star and not Well, someone else. Well, you wouldn’t know it from his appearance or his performance in this episode, but he was once the Canadian figure skating champion, which he had parlayed into a Hollywood career. He was performing as a figure skater while World War Two was still raging, and all of his first film roles only use his scathing chops. Indirectly, he’s in a bunch of big studio musicals that came out immediately after the war. They’re those movies where there’s like 50 backup dancers. He’s often uncredited. Movies like keep your powder dry, a musical about the Women’s Army Corps weekend at the Waldorf summer holiday. Several films where John Wayne was described as a promising new star, because even in 1945 you couldn’t say John Wayne and young in the same sentence. He was in three movies a year, as was the production pipeline back then, he was in a musical about sailors on shore leave. Those things were dime a dozen back then, but this was particularly ill fated. Hollywood execs had been spitballing for a while over what the new exotic party locale might be, and so they decided on the title Jazzy jieville. And Jeju Island, the poor timing of its May 1948 release had disastrous repercussions, and it barely managed to make a $2 million profit. Everyone who made the film was unharmed. Of course, nobody ever actually went to Jeju to make the movie in the first place. It was all done on a set in Burbank. From the start, all the Korean characters in the movie were just played by Italian Americans. It was the 40s. People couldn’t tell the difference back then. There’s a 20 year gap in Kirby’s acting resume, because, well, he was making more money opening all these figure skating schools up and down the continent. But once there wasn’t any money to be made there anymore, he went head first into acting again, taking on five roles in his first year back, including for a gritty drama titled a quiet day in Belfast, where he played a role simply named Protestant. I’ll just tell you. You look at Michael Kirby’s face and you go, Yep, that is the face of a Protestant. There was a scene where he dodged rifle fire by doing a Sal cow, but it didn’t make the final cut. The pinnacle of Kirby’s televisual accomplishment, though I can’t really believe I’m saying this. Perhaps even more important than his role here on danger Bay is when he was a guest character on cats and dog, a Canadian police show about officer Hank Katz fighting crime with the help of his canine partner, Rudy. This show has 106 episodes. You can just make a TV show out of nothing if you’re alive in the 80s, it got some help, though, when the Americans bought the rights. They passed it off as a gritty reboot of Rin Tin Tin, called Rin Tin Tin, canine cop. But if the show was already completed when the Americans bought it, how did they manage to completely change the plot to make it about Rin Tin Tin? Well, they managed this by simply dubbing over all of the dialog every single time Hank Katz said the dog’s real name. So basically, this show exists in multiple universes at once. This brings us back to the start. What did I tell you? This country is a wash in crime fighting dog shows, cats and dogs. Episode count is almost identical to littlest hobo. There’s content there. Why become a little less hobo fan just because it was the first one shown to you what you’re gonna roll over just because the dog carries a gun in his mouth in the opening theme, no cats and dog has a dog with multiple identities and a guest star who could bust out a double axle at any moment, but he won’t, because he’s an artist and he understands restraint. You know, there’s an interesting story about a particular show they filmed on the same set as the littlest hobo. Now that I think about it, it was actually this game show where, well, you know what? It’s not important. It’s neither here nor
Will Riley 28:02
there. I our episode starts with a sunny day on the gray gravelly beaches of British Columbia, a young man with a blonde rat tail in a blue one piece kisses his girl before putting on a life vest and leaving for home on a sea doom.
Will Riley 28:34
This is the coolest you could aspire to be in 1984 he has the closest thing you can get to having sex on Canadian television. Rat tails were widely considered to be cool in the 80s, but nobody in television was actually willing to depict characters with them because, you know, ooh, taste, but danger Bay had the courage to let this actor show tale. This is popularism in action. On top of this, the fact that he apparently has somewhere to be on this Sea Doo. He’s not just doing this for fun. This tells me he actually uses it as a primary mode of transport. You Americans, when you were kids, you thought that the teens who skateboarded to high school were cool. Eat your heart out. Anyone who’s locking up a Sea Doo in front of class is king of the entire school district. As far as I’m concerned, this is a teen who knows what weed is in an abstract sense, but as rattail doos his way off the shore, presumably to play key tar in his jam band, a mass of bubbles surge from under the water before rattail can even react, the gruesome face of a sea monster emerges from the deaths.
Will Riley 29:56
Blood curdling screams from both rattail and his stead. Sea as we cut to the opening. So, yeah, danger Bay’s first sea monster episode here. This is danger Bay’s equivalent to the setup for a horror film, two photogenic teens immediately getting attacked by a monster as punishment for pre marital kissing. The Canadian horror world is well known by cinephiles by now. Of course, people love their Cronenberg down south, but up here, we’re generally more proud of how he got all those nice dentists, a decent ROI with limited taxes, no a true Canadian horror icon is something along the lines of ternov terror, a movie about a summer camp in Newfoundland where criminally insane maniacs keep sending promiscuous counselors, very sternly worded letters, perhaps less violent than you’d expect from an American crowd pleaser, but this is a very disrespectful thing to do. I don’t want to give away too much about Terran of terror, but when they reveal the big twist, and it turns out the lead maniac is actually a New Brunswick Francophone, and that’s why the movie has the name that it does. I mean, once the guy starts talking sheak, I just started screaming like crazy. I had to look away. I had to cover my ears. A few quick notes about the rat tail actor here, because we’ll only see him a little bit after this. This guy was in the German Huckleberry Finn show, and it’s night and day. When he was younger, he was playing Sid Sawyer, the goody, good nerd that snitches on. Tom. Now he’s a sea doing alpha male. By the time this guy is a full adult, he’s in the plane hijacking flick, turbulence, three heavy metal a Red Letter Media pick, where the plane getting held up is hosting a rock concert by Death Metal superstar Slade Craven. He gets a few lines playing a character named shred. Shows you it’s never too late for a glow up, at least before you reach your 20s. By the time you’re 21 your life is basically over. Rat tails girlfriend has also had quite an extensive TV career in her own right. She’s in every episode of the Lonesome Dove cowboy show. No, not the famed Tommy Lee Jones mini series. They’re on the sequel traditional series. They made that instead of Tommy Lee Jones, has Bret Hart as a side character, sort of a lateral move, really. She runs an acting school now, but because we’ve already learned about professional figure skater Michael Kirby, I figure I should mention that she’s been in two totally separate TV movies about the gritty underbelly of professional figure skating. In one titled blades of courage, she plays the lead across from Colm fior, the bonc cop himself. The tagline reads, she wants Olympic gold. He wants her innocence. She’ll have to fight for both. After the opening, we’re treated to a very funky version of the main theme. Grant is being interviewed by an overly slick broadcaster in a double breasted suit. This is Michael Kirby, by the
Speaker 6 33:06
way, a living fossil from beyond the Ice Age. Dr Roberts, what is the official position of the aquarium on the numerous sightings of the creature in Abbott Bay?
Speaker 1 33:15
I don’t think it’s a prehistoric monster. Mr. Sanderson,
Will Riley 33:18
his camera crews all dressed in custom track jackets with the show title Stranger Than Fiction on them. I wonder if anyone’s got one in their closet somewhere. I wonder what that goes for now. He’s doing some sort of a Howard Cosell diction. He is playing a classic media fabulist, running a sort of unsolved mysteries show, asking grant about reports on this sea monster.
Speaker 6 33:43
Could the monster lurking in the waters just to the north of here be a survivor from the prehistoric age? I’m
Speaker 1 33:49
not having seen any evidence of its existence. I don’t even want to hazard
Will Riley 33:53
a guess. Can’t help but feel here that Geraldo Rivera is still catching strays. They really hate their media types in this show. I’m gonna give them benefit of the doubt here and say that they’ve edited this shot reverse shot exchange badly on purpose they’re cutting to grant way too soon whenever the host jabs the mic into his
Speaker 6 34:12
face. One more question. Dr Roberts, if the monster from Abbott Bay were to be captured, you would then have to acknowledge its existence, wouldn’t
Speaker 1 34:19
you? If that thing is out there, I’d be happy to build it its own special tank with a diving
Will Riley 34:23
board, mainly though I’m distracted by the couple in the back that have matching glasses and matching white guy afros, and they’re staring directly into the camera. And
Speaker 6 34:33
thank you for joining us on stranger than fiction.
Will Riley 34:38
Back inside the aquarium, we see grant handling an octopus for what I think is the fifth time in this series.
Speaker 1 34:46
Okay, Delilah, you’re on your way. There you go. Pretty girl,
Will Riley 34:51
apparently this is a different octopus from Houdini. You just sort of have to take the show at its word on this, it looks exactly. The same as one of the species that Houdini has been in this program. They kept switching what breed Houdini was within the same episode. Now they show an octopus that is exactly the same, and they tell us it’s not even the same gender. At this point, we’ve gone through so many octopi that there must have been some kind of Greek buffet at craft services. One day, it turns out that Grant’s appearance on this pseudo Unsolved Mysteries show was Hagen begs his idea.
Speaker 7 35:29
I guess Dunbar’s counting on the PR value from that silly Sanderson show. I can’t stand
Speaker 5 35:34
that may be, but there are millions of them out there that watch it religiously. I want you to go up there and have a look around.
Speaker 1 35:42
Oh, I can’t do that. I’m hip deep in work around here. That may well
Will Riley 35:45
be, this is a very early episode, and every male in this show is dead set on trying to preserve their hair. Hagen Beggs is patting down every last hair on his head in an attempt to give himself basically a Napoleon look. And of course, I’ve already said everything I can about Don Rhodes’s hair dye, except I suppose there was this time he showered with the hair dye on too early, and it ran down, and it dyed Don Rhodes’s skin multiple shades browner. It delayed danger Bay shooting for a few days. But for him, it was like getting back into an old mode from back when he was doing TV westerns, playing, you know, Mexicans and Native Americans doing what they called back then, racial TV magic. It was a moment that inspired one of Rhodes’s particular obsessions, insisting to the writing room that they needed to let him play a second character on the show, Jonah and Nicole’s distant uncle from South America, Augusto Roberts. The writers steadfastly told him this sort of thing didn’t fly in the 80s, no matter how many times he did accents at them to show how good at it he’d be. They successfully shut down the Augusto Roberts project. They only let him do it once.
Speaker 5 36:58
But as a research facility, we have to engage in research. It’s just a matter of protocol, take the kids, make a weekend of it, have fun.
37:06
What’s the big mystery
37:08
that My dear Donna, is what I’m supposed to find out?
Will Riley 37:10
Grant is sent out to search for the sea monster, despite him knowing it’s bullshit, and Hagen begs knowing it’s bullshit, he’s literally told just use it as an excuse to have a vacation with the kids. It’s sort of like the cowboy episode. Just make your job a vacation. Somehow everyone is acting on fully self aware BS, because they all get to benefit from it. It sort of makes me think about back in 2014 when Donald Trump was sending staff to Hawaii to look for proof of Obama’s fake birth certificate back then. I meant like, Man, what a sick deal. That must be. Both you and your boss know this is nonsense, but he’s basically paying you to spend an hour getting photographed in a records library. Then you get a free three weeks lying on the beach in Hawaii, taking in the culture, take the kids, make a weekend of it. I think I’d take that deal. I mean, I’ll have, in part, destroyed America and many other countries besides, but I still haven’t ever been to Hawaii. Basically, what I’m saying is, if you cover my stay in a nice hotel and give me a per diem, I will get to the bottom of Havana syndrome for you, once and for all. After the end of shift, grant and the kids are hanging around at home with Joyce. She’s just sitting on the sofa alongside everybody else, and they’re all watching TV. Nicole is being quite fashion forward here. It’s the 80s, but she’s wearing Caribbean braids from 1995 precisely. Joyce and grant and the kids are all waiting for grant to show up on television. They’re sitting around waiting for his segment on stranger than fiction to show up. I don’t know how people can watch that guy,
38:51
Grant today, Stranger Than Fiction
38:57
is at the aquarium with Dr grant Roberts, the well
Will Riley 39:00
known but imagine how appalled grant is when he discovers that his interview has been entirely chopped and screwed and edited out of context to make it seem like he’s saying the monster is real. I think it’s a
39:13
prehistoric monster. I didn’t say that.
Speaker 6 39:16
If the monster from Abbott Bay were to be captured, would you be prepared to exhibit
39:20
it? I’d be happy to build it its own special tank. Well,
39:23
thank you, Dr Roberts for joining us on
39:25
he can’t do that. He edited the
Will Riley 39:27
words, he took my words out of context. He thinks coolsville sucks. I think coolsville sucks. No, don’t record that. He edited the words, he took my words out of
39:38
context. I think that Sanderson stinks.
Will Riley 39:40
This is such a good less is more. Delivery line from Jonah. He doesn’t treat it like he’s saying a joke at all. He liked the TV show sincerely before the segment, and he hates it sincerely after it. There’s no adornment here. Graham Sanderson,
39:56
I think that Sanderson stinks. I think that
Will Riley 39:59
fools will sucks. Grant is obviously hopping mad about this. But I mean, honestly, you need to be prepared for this. You are a major figure at a public body. You would expect that you would have a little bit of media training. You’ve got to select your words carefully, because taking words out of context is what the media does. I have trouble really sort of sympathizing with him here, because this is just what people do as a matter of course. Now just a second, I got to switch tape. Can I please quickly eat some shit? I love shit, delicious, delicious shit. I’m depraved. Form shit, I’m hard. Form shit, delicious, German shit. Eat the new mint shit. At all of your participating McDonald’s hamburger chains, delicious. Did you? Did you hear some interference there anyway? Grant’s bona fides as a scientist and a skeptic are given exposure here. Could
Speaker 8 40:55
there really be a sea monster? Dad, you know, better than that. What if there was
40:59
take a look at this
Speaker 1 41:00
one. Fuzzy pictures aren’t enough. They have to have families. So we’d see more of them. Maybe it’s the last one. Even if it were, we’d have found physical evidence by now. No. There is no Loch Ness or Abbot Bay monster.
41:12
You’re no fun, dad. And
Will Riley 41:14
of course, this skeptic viewpoint has borne out over the years. Loch Ness Monster, obviously fake. Giant Squid. Well, not giant in the way that you mean. Ogopogo turned out. He was just a run of the mill genetic experiment ho hum. Ogos got a dedicated tank at the Kelowna Zoo. Now, very disappointing attendance numbers. It’s time for the kids to go to bed. They’ve got a big ocean adventure tomorrow. They’re gonna go looking for sea serpents. Okay,
41:44
you guys, we have to be up early in the morning. Good night, Joyce. Thanks
Will Riley 41:50
for coming. Joyce’s sort of unspoken presence here does make me wonder, do these kids understand the sort of relationship that grant and Joyce probably have the kind of relationship that a lot of adults might
Speaker 1 42:04
have. What about Joyce? I like her. I like her too. She’s a good friend.
Will Riley 42:07
Like this isn’t a Check out your new aunt Joyce sort of scenario, but is Jonah telling people, oh, Joyce is my dad’s best friend. She’s almost like a second mom and I get to fly in her plane sometimes. Or is he deep enough into teenagerdom that he’s going, Oh yeah, my dad gives her a call whenever he’s really bricked up. Grant you’re too young and vigorous not to have married again. Anyway, this is just a parenthetical. Send these kids to bed.
Speaker 1 42:33
Okay, ready? Bye. We have to beat the sun up in the morning say, Good night Jonah. Good
Will Riley 42:37
night, Jonah. But first they have to do what is apparently some sort of a prank. It’s some kind of a joke. I’m not entirely sure what this is. Jonah and Nicole take a dinosaur action figure they already had. They drop it in the fish tank and tell dad to look at the tank. Grant looks at the tank, he sees that a plastic dinosaur is in there. And then everybody laughs, and the music tells us that this is the funniest thing that has ever happened. It has been a while since we’ve had a moment like this, but oh my god, the Roberts love being lame. They love being the whitest people on Earth. Do not let this family watch Superman three. Even that level of Richard Pryor humor is going to kill them. It’s a small miracle that they managed to live through to 1984 at all. See
43:39
any sea monsters out there yet,
Will Riley 43:41
after the break, we are out on the sea, on Expedition grant and the kids are going sea monster hunting. I’m just gonna have to keep making note of this any time it shows up on the screen. This is a shot where we should be looking at a big, blue, beautiful ocean, but clearly both grant and the kids have been mandated to wear as much beige as possible to make sure that the shot doesn’t get too colorful. Jonah’s got beige shorts. Nicole’s got a big beige top. Grant is wearing full khakis and a cream white mock neck in the blazing sun, just so that he’s more beige than his kids. I mean, that’s how you show rank on the ship. Evidently, that’s how you know grant is in charge. The more beige you are, the higher your post on the ship. The Roberts dock at a place called Abbott Bay, where they’ve been finding this sea monster. We’ve got footage of various people in sunglasses and visor caps looking at the ocean, some of them in boats. They’re all searching for this monster in random directions. While we’ve seen danger Bay Of late, cast sort of a jaundiced eye towards the media and the various media circuses. This is the first time it’s actually filmed the general viewing public. It with some sort of cynicism,
45:01
like a good old fashioned monster scare to bring up
Will Riley 45:05
media figures and media chasers have been made to look ridiculous in the past. Think of Ross Hagan, but up till now, their audiences have all been off screen. The show is apparently making up for lost time by making these people appear to be clinically stupid. Some of them are using binoculars to look directly into the water. One guy is just casually brandishing a harpoon gun. I’m gonna hook me a sea serpent. You know, I don’t know why, but the moment any group of tourists gets large enough, the sound of a distant oompa band begins to play, the sort that often shows up on the soundtrack when a fat guy is on the screen. This is a diegetic oompa band, though, because they’ve put a distance demuffling effect on it, but no one acknowledges it, and the source of the Oompa music is never shown. I can only assume this serves as some sort of warning system. They play oompa music over the loudspeaker to broadcast warning morons in the vicinity. No, it’s
46:13
worse than that, tourists,
Will Riley 46:18
some aspiring cryptozoologist has put up a banner saying, home of Abby, the Abbott Bay monster. But the thing is, Abbott Bay doesn’t actually exist here, if they’re being sort of playful. Here in the Greater Vancouver area, there is a town called Abbotsford, and there is a Abbott Creek, and there is a mount Abbot even, but there is no Abbott Bay. The closest thing to a real Abbott Bay is in Montana. It’s a recreational park whose top Google review reads relatively close to civilization. They’re just using the Abbott Bay name to hide the fact that they are filming in deep Cove. Again, I can tell, I can see the mansions. A key access point of this episode is that it’s supposed to be this sleepy coastal town that normally gets a very few visitors. But the thing is, I’m looking at all the houses, and I’m going that 111’s mil, that one’s 15 million. That 120’s 5 million. That house over there is infamous because it disappears every midnight and returns two hours later, rotated 45 degrees. The owners never acknowledge that it’s happening as granted and the kids dock up the boat. It turns out that Michael Kirby’s character, the journalist, has been here at least a whole day. He’s busy interviewing rat tail kid,
Speaker 6 47:38
right? Well, thank you, Danny, for sharing with us the tale of your horrendous escape. I’m
Speaker 1 47:45
opposed to violence, but in his case, I’m thinking of making the conception,
Will Riley 47:48
whoa, hey, hold it. Grant Cool your jets there. Buddy. Kirby forces his way through the crowd. He tries to press gang grant into letting him join the little expedition.
47:58
Good to see you again. Any
Speaker 1 48:01
chance of me tagging along on your expedition, Madison, just stay out of my way. Whatever
48:05
you say. Don and Is this your lovely daughter? I bet you like the show, huh? I thought
Will Riley 48:11
it was the tits. I really hate the way that Michael Kirby is dressed in this episode. He has multiple outfits. I didn’t know exactly why I felt this way. It’s not like there aren’t any other tacky dressers in danger Bay, but I really realized the problem is this guy is trying his hardest to copy Ross Hagans flow.
Speaker 9 48:31
Ross Hagan is Mike harbor. He’ll work for anyone, do anything, if
Will Riley 48:35
the price is right. He thinks he’s him. He really thinks that he’s him. Kirby’s got white fatigues with big pocket flaps over an open salmon business shirt and, of course, a gold chain.
Speaker 10 48:47
Well, I’m not at liberty to stay right now, but when we find it, you’ll be the first to know.
Speaker 6 48:52
And thank you for joining us on Stranger Than Fiction,
Will Riley 48:56
dude, stop trying to be him. You ain’t him. You ain’t ever gonna be him. This guy thinks he’s him. Michael, your fatigues are loose and rumpled. If this were a Ross Hagin joint, he’d have his fatigues tailored the tightest fatigues known to man, like he was a vacuum sealed into them. Did you see the Wonder Women movie I mentioned yet that was filmed in the Philippines in the summer? Ross Hagan is the fatigue King. That’s right, they call me the fatigue King chick. It’s what I’m known for five minutes with me, and you know you’re gonna hear, sorry, babe. I’m simply too tired as for you. Michael Kirby, you are a professional figure skater. Shouldn’t you know a little bit more about flashy outfits you look like you’re about to host the $100,000 Pyramid right now? Well, sorry, that’s the modern version of that show. I have to account for the fact that this is Canada in the 80s. You look like you’re on the $20 pyramid right now. Grant blows off. Michael Kirby, and he goes into step one of his onshore investigation, visiting all of the tourist shops.
Speaker 1 50:09
You know, anybody who’s kept a detailed record of all the sightings of the monster,
Will Riley 50:12
some enterprising folks have got an outdoor booth, and they’re selling sheets of loose leaf paper with Abbey sightings mapped onto there’s
Speaker 11 50:22
a map of the sightings on the front and details on the back. We updated every other day.
50:26
Great. Thank you.
50:29
$5 please. $5 so don’t buy it. What’s
Will Riley 50:36
the problem? Hey, wait. What’s the matter? Grant, you’re not gonna support your local zine artists. I thought you were hip. I thought you were down with the scene. Have you even supported Abby’s Patreon yet? Hey,
Speaker 12 50:48
I saw you on Stranger Than Fiction, right? You’re that guy from the aquarium. Dr
50:56
Roberts, guilty. You gonna catch Abby?
Speaker 1 50:58
I’m just doing some research. Looks like the mustard has been good for business.
Will Riley 51:05
After he explains that he is a scientist and an investigator, the folks getting rich off of the influx of tourists start darting their eyes around suspiciously and whispering at each other. What could this possibly mean? The Roberts are back on the boat now, and Joan and Nicole, they’re with it. They are supporting the zine artists. They’ve went and bought a zine of appy pictures that is bigger than their own heads.
Speaker 2 51:31
Hey, look at this. What it’s the same boat in both pictures, probably the same picture from two different
Will Riley 51:40
angles, the distant sound of an aerial motor plays, and it turns out that Joyce has been following grant this whole time. We get a shot that gets reused in the theme song. A lot of Joyce’s plane sort of buzzing right over the boat. Hello,
Speaker 1 51:56
down there’s the monster hunt. Hi, Joyce. What brings you up here? Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on you guys.
Will Riley 52:02
Just a bit of a rubric, sort of dating advice. If you plan on dating in Vancouver, if a woman is trying to use a pontoon plane to check in on you, you might be friends, but there could be a little bit more going on there. It’s if she shows up in a hovercraft. Well, then you can get it Joyce and grant exchange, some very base level riffs,
Speaker 1 52:23
not yet, but I’m planning on bringing Dunbar back an abbey bumper sticker. But then
Speaker 5 52:32
what? There’s something down there. Where is it?
52:36
Never mind. Just
Will Riley 52:38
follow me. The pontoon plane darts off slowly, followed by the boat in a shot that uses the absolute most of both the vehicle and location budget, Joyce gets a look just overhead as the Abbott Bay Monster’s roaring head emerges from the sea, conveniently right in front of a bunch of tourists in A boat. I mean, just look at these morons. Look at these absolute hogs.
Will Riley 53:10
By the time the boat arrives, however, Abby has slipped underneath the waves again, and grant and the kids get to see absolutely nothing.
53:21
Yes, you better start taking this monster a little more serious.
Will Riley 53:26
This forms sort of a convenient act break. The next time we see Joyce and grant, they’re back on land talking about what they saw or perhaps didn’t see.
Speaker 1 53:35
I haven’t seen that since it was my own eyes. I would never with anybody but you, I’d say they were hallucinating. They’re part of a hoax.
53:42
Seeing is believing dad,
Speaker 1 53:44
not necessarily Jonah. Some people only see what they want to believe. Personally, I need more evidence to convince me there’s a prehistoric monster out there.
Will Riley 53:50
This exchange with Jonah really points towards the undercurrent of rational skepticism that traditionally runs through danger Bay. That’s true of the cast and crew two, of course, ocean Helmand isn’t just going to vocally believe that kangaroos are hiding precious diamonds in their pouches. Offhand, she’s going to spend millions of her own dollars on a research center that hunts 1000s of them down a year, which I’m sure will eventually prove her thesis true. I mean, that’s what empiricism is, isn’t it? Thanks
Speaker 11 54:24
for the use of the cabin. Mona, you’re lucky. We had one open last night. Miss
Will Riley 54:27
Carter, it turns out that Joyce and the souvenir shop lady know each other from a previous life. They don’t really explain it that much. I’m just going to assume that they took metallurgy courses at the same time in university. She really goes out of her way to explain how much money she’s making on these Abbott Bay monster sightings like kind of at length,
Speaker 11 54:48
hard to believe we moved up here to escape the crowds in the city. Now this monster thing has everybody at our doorsteps, see ya.
Will Riley 54:58
Why would she say this? Says, why would she do this? Is she stupid? The costuming and makeup department on this show are doing their level best to try and make this lady look sort of tacky, but they really can’t hide the fact that she has got her shit together. They’ve slightly overdone her makeup, and they’ve made her hair a little while. They’ve given her what I would call cocker spaniel hair, like there’s two big tufts on either side where Cocker Spaniels ears would normally be. But I’m looking at her, and she is like the woman on a Bowflex ad for everything else they did they forgot to conceal the fact that she’s got the flattest, tightest tummy that a Bowflex can buy. This is Frances Flanagan, an actress now deep into the Hallmark movie circuit. How deep? Well she’s even in the rare Hallmark movies that don’t have Christmas in their title, things like once upon a prince a dash of love, where two chefs are romantically involved with each other, bottled with love, which I originally thought was some sort of viticulturalist based sequel to the last movie, but it’s actually about a love letter someone sends through a message in a bottle. You know, my boyfriend’s dogs. I still don’t really know what this movie is about, but the placement of the apostrophe tells me that there are multiple boyfriends, each with a different dog. Bye. You guys. Be careful. Joyce grant and the rest of the family goes out to do more investigation, but as they do so, the souvenir lady starts darting her eyes around and looking about giving the audience the universal I am being suspicious. Signal, that’s about
Speaker 1 56:46
my picture, probably somebody who lives here. Oh, Claire, yeah, let’s go
Will Riley 56:56
after this scene. The episode is starting to lag a little bit, so grant decides to endanger his children yet again, sticking them in a motor boat without
Speaker 1 57:04
remember, don’t go anywhere near where the monster has been sighted, and keep clear of the rocks. You got it. Got it, Dad, I’m gonna run a search pattern. If you two happen to spot anything, you radio your position to get back here fast.
57:20
Why? Because it’s there. Why not?
Will Riley 57:22
Let’s go over there. We’ll definitely get kidnap over there. Oh, fun.
57:32
That’s the boat in the picture.
57:34
Maybe we should call dad.
Speaker 3 57:37
Let’s check it out first. We’ll stash the boat around the side, just in case
Will Riley 57:41
the kids motor in as we get a nice, imposing shot of a place called the Bunsen Lake powerhouse. At this stage, they aren’t even trying to hide that this is deep Cove and Abbott Bay doesn’t exist. This is a prominent landmark. If you are a tourist in deep Cove and you ever rent a kayak or a canoe. This is going to be on all of the maps. I’ll give the show credit. It is quite a spooky and mysterious place. It’s almost sort of alien. This very gothically designed box looks like someone just plopped it down from the sky with no care or reference to the natural surroundings around it. It does not integrate into its surrounding at all, and it isn’t even trying to, and that’s what makes it more visually striking. This powerhouse was designed by an architect by the name of Francis raddenberry. He is the same man who did the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, as well as the Empress Hotel, practically right next to it. He basically used one project to create demand for the next one. Good work, if you can get it. He was an English expat. His sort of Gothic style made him distinct. At this time in British Columbia. It eventually sort of fell out of style. This guy was murdered with hammers. Yeah, according to my research, Francis Rattenbury was killed with hammers by his second wife’s secret lover. According to the jury, it was the second wife’s fault. She had manipulated this guy into doing this killing. I don’t really know if I agree with that. That sounds very noir, very tropey, but apparently she thought she was guilty, because she killed herself Soon after, she stabbed herself and jumped off of a building, only the guy who did the killing got off scot free, Francis Rattenbury, despite being a murder victim, he was buried in an unmarked grave because he had been very publicly abusive to his first wife. You know, fuck this province, dude, sometimes fuck this province. I am doing a show about a sea monster right now. I do not need to read a real life version of a frank Norris novel to do this. Okay? What’s gonna happen next? I’m gonna read about more BC, architecture. And I’m going to go, Oh, look at this big building that’s shaped like a peach in Penticton. It’s based off those world famous Okanagan peaches. And I’m going to read, and it’s going to be all three seasons of True Detective all at once. What next? What I’m going to say in the near term is, just forget sea monsters. The Bunsen Lake powerhouse is prime candidate for the most haunted place in British Columbia. Yeah. So Jonah and Nicole, they walk around this fucking Murder House. There’s a bunch of wet concrete, there’s a bunch of drips and drops going through the soundtrack all this time they’re in this scary building where some villains are around who could easily capture them, or worse. What’s crucial here is that you approach this hideout as stealthily as possible.
Will Riley 1:00:54
Oh yeah, you know, you could yell really loud in the most echoey room imaginable. The kids keep searching around the dilapidated foundation of this building. They get into darker and darker caves when all of a sudden they turn around and are face to face with the sea monster. They scream and they cut right in the middle of it, family friendly jump scare back on the boat. Grant is confronted again by the Michael Kirby journalist character. They are not getting along at all.
1:01:26
Never a torpedo around when you need one.
Will Riley 1:01:29
Oh, my God grant. Just really hates this journalist character. He’s been around a bunch of people he dislikes before, but his jokes at their expense are usually pretty tame by comparison, this is crossing a real line,
Speaker 1 1:01:44
opposed to violence. But in his case, I’m thinking of making an exception. Never a torpedo around when you need one.
Will Riley 1:01:49
He’s never made jokes about just killing or punching people out before. Grant and his Vancouver Aquarium just hate the press.
Speaker 6 1:01:59
Ironic, isn’t it? Here we are, both of us out searching for something neither of us believes exists. Funny. Don’t you think it’s hilarious? Well, I was going to suggest we pool our resources. Then
Will Riley 1:02:10
again, I see this guy and his outfits, and I start to agree with Grant. This guy is pairing gold rimmed shades with a boat captain hat, he is not a captain and an argyle sweater with what can only be described as a Charlie Brown color scheme. This is a clear minstrel show version of the classic Ross Hagin esthetic. Although, to be fair, the amount of fake tan Ross Hagin wore did legally qualify as minstrelsy in some American states,
Speaker 6 1:02:41
it could benefit the both of us gotta go.
Will Riley 1:02:51
Follow that boat. This conflict between these two characters gets at a theme that has been recurring throughout danger Bay, one that we really got to delve deeper into with that Ross Hagin episode. Remember, Ross Hagin was treated as fully a bad guy for wanting media and press attention. Meanwhile, getting press attention and every other benefit that comes along with it, like Grant does, is good and moral, just so long as you say that you’re in a huff about it, cut back to the ocean Murder House and the big reveal, the big twist of this episode, apparently, is just going to happen off screen. The kids now are already informed and understand that Abby is actually just some sort of weird little submarine. What’s more interesting is that it’s a submarine made entirely out of fiberglass and garden hoses that, to me, is many more times amazing than an actual sea creature. I mean, forget sea monster scamming guys. Go into mil tech engineering. I’ve got an idea. Me too.
Speaker 3 1:03:58
Let’s get out of here and meet your dad, sure. First we’re gonna tame this so called Monster, right?
1:04:05
Let the wind out of its sail, so to speak.
Will Riley 1:04:07
You got it. The kids open up this sea serpent carapace into what I suppose is the cockpit. And there’s some stuff inside that is supposed to be complicated, submarine pressure gages and readouts. But of course, in modern remasters, you can see right away that this is just an oven thermometer and a wind up kitchen timer. Okay, men depth of rump roast tilt to an angle of 200 degrees Celsius. I mean, this scuffed version of the Tintin shark submarine is operating basically on Warhammer 40k orc tech. Parenthetically, in my personal opinion, this moment with the fake Abbey monster is the first time that danger Bay dips into the mecha genre. I mean, that’s my opinion. Others can disagree. You.
Will Riley 1:05:00
I before Jonah and Nicole can report back to their dad and close this case, though, the folks from the tourist shop barge in and start arguing in such a way that every major point of their scheme is revealed to the viewer, basically just shouting to the back of the audience. If you hadn’t gotten it every time you go
Speaker 13 1:05:20
home, you’re one step closer to blowing this whole scam. Just one more time. Come on, I’m gonna get Abby over the phone.
Will Riley 1:05:31
Jonah and Nicole are stealthily hiding in a corner, and before they sneak away, Jonah decides to do a tricky little bit of sabotage on this Abby robot sabotage that can basically be defined as pulling out one garden hose and putting in a different one. The Bowflex lady leaves in distress, and then the main perpetrator of this whole scam leaves to do one last grift. This means that this is a rare episode in which Jonah and Nicole aren’t actually in danger. That fooled the hell out of me. I’m gonna just admit it. Where are you, Nicole,
Speaker 8 1:06:12
Dad, we found the monster. It’s a fake. It’s with the boat and the pictures heading towards Wallace Cove. Are
1:06:16
you both? Okay? A one,
Will Riley 1:06:19
this whole operation by the bad guys, taking this big Abbey husk and dragging it around in the water on a raft for basically everyone to see. It seems to greatly underestimate how many people actually live in deep Cove. I mean, Abbott Bay. I suppose that the people with enough money to actually live on these islands are too wealthy to really mind. They look out their window, they see some guy dragging this green plastic Plexiglas monstrosity, and they just go, ah, suckering the rubes again, huh? Well, I won’t bother you. I mean, I used to sell Enron. That’s how I got my house here in the first place. So I can’t talk.
1:06:56
Get over to Wallace Cove right away. I’ll meet you there. Okay,
Will Riley 1:07:00
Dad, after the kids have radioed their dad, all the dominoes have fallen into place. All that’s left to do is really spring a trap. Have a little bit of a chase. At this point, we’ve gone from a horror show to a pure Scooby Doo episode. I think coorsville sucks. We just need to unmask the villain. Here we go. People roll up informed of where the abbey sighting will be ahead of time. Grant Michael Kirby and the kids are all converging on the monster at the same time in different boats. Abby’s mechanical monster head emerges from the water. Lets a lot of these dumb ass hog tourists take some photos of it. He submerges, keep writing, and just as the bubbles start to subside
Will Riley 1:07:54
out, it pops again, thanks to Jonah’s weird little sabotage, only this time it’s upside down. All the aluminum scaffolding that’s holding this monster together is exposed, and the scams architect is caught floundering on the surface, harmlessly tangled in a mess of tubes.
1:08:16
I have met the monster, and he is mine.
Will Riley 1:08:22
I so the monsters uncovered, the bad guys have been caught. Now all that remains for grant to do is to figure out what precisely the people doing this, with this Abby hoax, are actually doing wrong that doesn’t involve doing some sort of moral imperative philosophy against lying in general,
1:08:42
I’m gonna take some pleasure in reporting you to the
Speaker 12 1:08:44
police. Was just a harmless hoax. We didn’t hurt anybody or break any laws.
1:08:50
The authorities may take a different view of
Will Riley 1:08:52
that. There’s only three minutes left in this episode. He can’t exactly go into a long lecture on the effect conspiracies can have on public discourse over a longer time scale. I mean, there isn’t even any internet invented yet. We don’t really have much in the way of media ethics studies beyond what we’re doing with Michael Kirby here. So instead, he presents these guys with a hypothetical and you
Speaker 1 1:09:15
have done some harm with your hoax. Someday, a new animal may turn up, and the memory of a stunt like this just may keep it from being properly investigated. Properly investigated.
Will Riley 1:09:23
Did you ever think of that? In essence, what if I meet a yeti someday? If I meet a yeti tomorrow, it’s gonna be your fault when nobody believes me. For the record, I’m not actually being facetious here. You know how these episodes of danger Bay have two versions, right? We’ve got a long version and a short version. In the long version, after talking about all of this rational skeptic stuff, Grant just goes, yeah, yeah, oh, Yeti could exist. There is
Speaker 1 1:09:52
no Loch Ness or Abbot Bay monster. You’re no fun, dad, there may however, be a real Abominable Snowman. Come on. Grant, what are you talking about? There have been reliable sightings deep in the Himalayas, an area so unexplored, there may well be families that we just haven’t found yet. That’s exciting. Yeah, it is the only monster that
Will Riley 1:10:16
might be real. But for some reason, they edited that out in the Canadian version. I’m not exactly certain why, but I mean, it gives a lot more meaning to what grant is saying to these hoaxers right now. It just sort of hinges on yetis possibly being real. Someday in real Abominable Snowman may turn up. And if people don’t believe me, Grant Roberts, when I say that yetis are real, it’s your fault that they do that, which, as all big danger Bay fans know, is precisely what happens eight seasons from now. So Grant’s given his big moral speech. Everybody agrees that he’s a very good person. Unfortunately, the media wins out again. The next day, Grant Joyce and the kids are all back on Roberts Island, and they’re reminiscing about the great adventure they just had. The TV comes on and Michael Kirby, the news guy, has stolen all of Grant’s lecture for the end of his show.
Speaker 6 1:11:12
And I, for 1am, proud of having uncovered this fraud. One day, a new animal might show up, but memories of stunts like this might keep it from being properly investigated, and that, my friends, is the true tragedy. Strange,
1:11:29
yes, stranger than fiction.
Speaker 1 1:11:32
He’s taking all the credit for what you guys did. I can’t believe that guy. First he puts words into my mouth, then he takes them out without so much as a by year leave.
1:11:41
It’s also very unsanitary.
Will Riley 1:11:42
They despise the media on danger Bay, do they not? They’ve got this media figure, and he’s gone and stolen all of these fresh, new thoughts and words from Grant Roberts, almost as if he’s some kind of a poacher. They don’t actually know how to end this episode, so grant just burns some chicken before the credits, roll my chicken.
Speaker 3 1:12:16
You may be a great dad who’s a cook. You’re stranger than fiction.
Will Riley 1:12:28
I’d say this episode is pretty solid. Perhaps it’s less hefty than the others we’ve seen, but it is executing its own premise professionally, and it uses a very good deal of Vancouver specific imagery. And I mean, all in all, it’s fun to see a Scooby Doo approach to water crimes. The water crimes were low stakes here, but it was good to acknowledge that there are low stakes water crimes. I mean, the last time that we saw something like this, it was dumping mercury into an entire river and making all the bears go insane. There was the whole thing about putting blinding chemicals in an underwater pit, and that was all like real grandiose stuff. It is good to see some water crimes that do not merit the death penalty on danger Bay granted legally, all water crimes can be given the death penalty, but it is good to see some of the crimes that they don’t normally enforce the death penalty on. It pays to keep it light, sometimes even in a show with as much deep thematic heft as danger Bay. I mean, think about the season 31 arc where there was a serial killer who was stalking up and down the Georgia strait. He was murdering anybody with expertise in anemones. The writers room still had enough insight to break it up with a comedy beach episode. Even the Last Airbender knew to do that.
Speaker 5 1:13:53
Look, I was at this party, okay, and this guy was all goofed up, and all of a sudden he sees this other guy’s tattoo. It was a snake on his arm. Anyway, he totally freaks out. He runs the kitchen, grabs the knife, he starts stabbing the guy in the arm, trying to kill the snake.
Will Riley 1:14:07
Okay, so Saturday Night Live, Monday Night Football, Vegas. Jefferson. No, no, sorry, you switch Vegas. It’s Jefferson’s then Vegas. Saturday Night Live, Monday Night Football, Jefferson’s Vegas. Okay, that’s incredible. Jefferson’s now
Will Riley 1:14:33
it’s, that’s incredible Monday Night Football, then Jefferson’s, then Fridays, oh, fuck, I’ve got, I’m I’m trying to remember this, but it is hard.
Will Riley 1:14:49
A battleship covered in purple urchin spikes fires a laser into a mass of news boats as a cloud of broken cameras and light fixtures are thrown into the air. Her holy shit. Jonah Roberts exclaims, the sea urchin magic is more powerful than ever. It doesn’t even need an organic host. Now it’s taking over naval machinery itself. Jonah and the rest of the aquarium crew fire a whole volley of RPGs at the ship, but urchin magic quickly diverts it, redirecting every rocket harmlessly into a different fleet of news boats. We tried hacking the sea urchin sir, shouts a nameless 13 year old aquarium employee. But he’s too clever. He gave our computer what we in the hacking business call a blue screen of death. Can it with the technical jargon, Jonah shouts back, it’s time to bring out the big guns. As he says this, the warship fires its artillery exploding a coastal cliff face into rubble, which instantly crushes a news boat floating inland. Wait, sir, you can’t possibly mean that I do. Boy that I do, the teenage war fighter gulps with trepidation before producing a heavy metal attache case inputting a secret 10 digit security code as the air tight seal on the case cracks open. It emits a hiss as preservative gas walks out. Jonah summons his courage. As the gas clears, we finally see the case’s contents, the magic conch shell Jonah received in season 25 Jonah blows into the shell and instantly summons hydrarkos, the serpent of the deep that has terrified sailors since the Bronze Age emerging from the depths with a violent roar the waves produced by the 114 foot monster annihilate yet another news boat. Jonah looks at the reptile and its alligator smile, dead on. Been forever hydrarkos, let’s ride. Jonah unsheathes the sonic Glaive and mounts the serpent’s back, riding it into battle. Hydrarkos agile tail allows it to dodge small arms fire effortlessly, making an advance that 20 aquarium vessels and 15 news boats had already failed. Suddenly, the primordial sea lizard hulks it seems like it’s made itself an easy target for the warships largest cannon, but as its barrel is pointed directly at the Beast’s toothy Maw, the trap has already been sprung. Jonah Roberts performs a 50 foot horizontal leap off of hydrarkos scaly head, winding up the sonic Glaive until he slices the cannon barrel clean in half. The Long Way, the metal casing falls off with a mass of purple sea urchin spikes, exposing the parasites beating heart a bright red glowing weak spot. On cue, Jonah’s mythical lizard friend opens its mouth wide as blue energy charges inside of it. Once hydrarkos Finally fires his Poseidon beam, the gigantic laser pierces the urchin heart of the Warhol before it disappears into a great ball of flame alongside three other news boats. Good job. Scaly. Jonah says we used to have our differences in the past, but for a legendary reptile from the birth of the planet, you’re all right, the giant lizard then leaves the scene via Adobe Premiere, stock Star wipe effect. There have been a lot of characters doing big jumps in danger Bay recently, which has got the discourse machine turning just just a little bit. The big complaint sort of goes, How can these characters be in believable danger if they can just leap out of any problem? The thing is, any long time DB watcher can tell you, Nicole and Jonah are balanced out, because Jonah can leap 50 feet horizontally while Nicole can leap 50 feet vertically. She is the Luigi of the duo in that way. If you’ve ever played SNK versus danger Bay, you’ll know Nicole is a menace in that game, because she can just leap off the screen and wait for time on the clock to run out as for the whole news boat thing, I think Chris Crabb and the gang have the right to be mad at the media right now. I mean, read this headline as the Peruvian arsenic crisis looms nearer, we should remember that gallium arsenide isn’t ideal for all tech. Then the article just goes down the line writing gallium arsenide chips are overheating in electric vehicles, in vape pens, in water purifiers, in pregnancy kits. Which Surprise, surprise, are all Chris crab products. Linus, tech tips. Has always been very unfair to Chris crab. Have some Metro Vancouver loyalty. Why don’t you Linus? Besides. If all these gallium arsenide chips are overheating, you know what I think would solve that problem adding more arsenic. Anyway, that’s it from me. Thanks for listening to another episode of infinite danger. Be sure to check out my social media. I’m chasm cave. Be sure to check out questo you know the deal at this point. And of course, check out the kitty sneezes. Patreon, there’s some very important stuff. Check out the newest article that is asking an important speculative question, if the Abominable Snowman does turn out to be real, what are the prime cuts of meat on that beast? And once we get his pelt, what sort of clothes can we make out of him anyway? Thanks again. See you soon. Danger comes from below.