Anchor

References

• Cabin by the Lake
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• Popeye
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Our Flag Means Death
• ALF
• Curse of the Pharaohs
• Ted Danson
• Shelly Long
• Beetlejuice
• Harry Potter
  • Death Eaters
• Fathom
• League
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
• Ghostbusters
• Friends
• Theme from New York, New York
• Good Will Hunting
• Oak Island Mystery
• Rick Moranis
• William Kidd

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
They have a dog and a tortoise?

[Emily]
Yes, yes. They are very fancy people.

[Thomas]
Well, she has the dog and he has the tortoise.

[Emily]
That’s how they met.

[Shep]
They’re walking their pets-

[Thomas]
Well, the dog park and the tortoise park are right next to each other.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. In her triumphant return to the podcast, it’s Emily.

[Emily]
Hey guys, did you miss me?

[Shep]
Emily, that’s what your name was. It was on the tip of my tongue.

[Thomas]
Also joining me is F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here. As always. I’ve never missed an episode.

[Emily]
Oh, low blow!

[Thomas]
And I’m Thomas J. Brown. Emily, it is good to have you back on the show. We definitely need you today because our topic is Anchor, and you have more naval experience than Shep and I put together.

[Shep]
I thought you said we were going to say she is the anchor holding the show together.

[Emily]
No, no, no, that’s too much pressure. No, no, we know that’s a lie.

[Thomas]
All right, well, I will pitch first today. A man adrift in life drunkenly staggers into a mysterious tattoo parlor and fixates on a nautical anchor design. The tattoo artist gently warns him that this one “carries weight”, but he insists. The next morning, the man wakes up aboard a 19th-century ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, greeted by the crew who treat him as their newly arrived navigator. The other sailors all come from different eras in time, each marked by a tattoo that placed them in the role they needed to grow into. As he battles storms, conflict, and his own drifting sense of purpose, the man begins to understand why the anchor chose him. When he finally returns to his own time, the tattoo remains as a quiet reminder that the voyage gave him the steadiness he’d been missing.

[Shep]
So, this is a rom-com?

[Thomas]
Could be, could be. He falls in love with sailing. My other pitch: A cloistered news anchor lives and works inside of an automated studio, believing their daily broadcasts provide a vital public service. Each day brings the same routine. Scripts arrive, cameras activate, and after the broadcast, meals appear. When the fan in their bathroom breaks, it provides a perfect distraction from the boredom of their rote life. Behind the cover, they find a manufacturer’s tag dated two years in the future? Puzzled, they start to investigate and notice more little inconsistencies in timestamps, equipment logs, and even their own archived broadcasts. The anchor begins to suspect the world they report on is engineered and that their role isn’t to inform the public, but to maintain a carefully managed fiction. All right, those are my pitches. Emily, let’s hear from you.

[Emily]
All right, I’ve got a few. A serial killer hides his victims at his lake house using anchors to keep them below the surface. You know what? That’s the Judd Nelson USA Network original movie Cabin by the Lake. I was like, “Oh, I have a perfect serial killer one.” And then as I was writing it down, I was like, “Oh no, that exists. That came out.”

[Thomas]
It’s another one of those “That’s just- the words are coming so quickly and easily.” And “Oh, wait a minute.”

[Emily]
So much. For my second pitch: A high school relay track team loses their anchor to a sprained ankle just before the regional meet. They find an unlikely candidate in a drama kid. They have three weeks to convince him to join the team and get him qualified for the competition.

[Shep]
I like this one.

[Thomas]
He’s so good at running because he’s always running away from bullies.

[Emily]
May have crossed my mind.

[Shep]
Or he was bullied and then couldn’t catch the bus, so he has to run after the bus. And they’re all on the bus talking about how what are they going to do. And then they see this kid-

[Emily]
Just-

[Thomas]
You get that view out the back window, yeah.

[Shep]
Terminator 2 style running.

[Thomas]
I like that. This is good.

[Emily]
And finally, the anchor of a long-forgotten shipwreck is found off the coast of Florida. When it’s bought at auction, Ted and Shelley, its new owners, get far more than they bargain for when they are haunted by the ghost of an incompetent pirate captain. Silly hijinks ensue as Ted and Shelley try to release the spirit and reclaim their lives.

[Shep]
I like this one too.

[Thomas]
It’s hijinks on the high seas.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Ooh, there’s the tagline. This one writes itself.

[Emily]
How about you, Shep? What do you got today?

[Shep]
Okay, my completely unique idea. A sailor gets a Popeye-style anchor tattoo, which gives him great strength when at sea, but also makes him heavy. If he falls into the water, he would sink to the bottom. And the tattoo artist said, “this one carries weight”. No.

[Emily]
I almost had a tattoo anchor one about like the tattoo giving like stability if they need to do something else, but I couldn’t make it work.

[Shep]
Yeah. I had to look up, because I couldn’t remember if Popeye had anchor tattoos or not. He famously does on his forearms, but I can’t, you know, it’s very rare that I see Popeye naked. And so I couldn’t fix it in my mind.

[Emily]
Well, and you know, that’s definitely going to be one of those Mandela Effect things where you’re like convinced it’s anchors and no, it was a compass this whole time.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Compass on one hand and a sextant on the other.

[Shep]
See, that would be good. No, I thought it was on his chest.

[Thomas]
You’re thinking of the captain from Tintin.

[Shep]
Yes, I’m always thinking of the captain from Tintin. Popeye has a battleship on his chest.

[Emily]
Yes, yes.

[Thomas]
That’s right. That’s right.

[Shep]
Another pitch: Mystery in a coastal town, as a missing fisherman’s empty boat is found adrift, its anchor chain deliberately cut.

[Emily]
Bomb bomb bomb!

[Thomas]
All right, which of Emily’s stories are we picking, Shep?

[Emily]
For real, I thought these ones were throwaway today.

[Shep]
I like both the high school track team and the ghost pirate captain. I can go with either of these. And nothing else.

[Thomas]
You said these are throwaways, Emily, but do you have more of a sense of a story for either one of these?

[Emily]
Nope.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
This is what I have.

[Thomas]
Well, I feel like the track team one, we have the ticking clock, we understand what the stakes are, so it’s a pretty straightforward story from that respect. Whereas the other one is like, what’s their goal? Is it getting rid of the ghosts? What’s the timeline? Like, those things aren’t, you know.

[Emily]
Okay, well, you could always have something like the next appearance of this comet or the lunar eclipse or some eclipse means that he’ll be stuck in this plane and never able to cross over. And so they have to get rid of him because he’s an annoying pain in the ass. Also, they want to release his spirit into the beyond.

[Thomas]
He’s a pain in the ass because he’s stuck in this realm. He’s got nothing else to do, so he might as well like mess with people.

[Emily]
Yeah, and he’s kind of stupid. I imagine not exactly, but similar to the guy in Our Flag.

[Shep]
Our Flag Means Death?

[Emily]
Yeah, just kind of that incompetence, but maybe tweaked up higher.

[Thomas]
They find out about him because they bring the anchor into their house or their apartment or whatever. Apartment. Into their house, let’s be honest. No one’s putting a giant anchor in their apartment. Well, I mean, New York, you could be really rich. And he watches TV because he’s like, “Wow, this is great.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He always wants to hang out with them.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’re his best friends. So-

[Emily]
Yeah, and they have lives.

[Shep]
Right, and he’s annoying.

[Thomas]
Because he’s been stuck at the bottom of the ocean for… Because there’s like a proximity. He can’t get a certain distance from the anchor.

[Emily]
Right. From the, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And he, you know, like our pillow character tries to repay their kindness and make them dinner, and it’s some horrid hagfish dish or something. Because he discovers Instacart.

[Thomas]
Ah, there you go.

[Shep]
Right. Or whoever sponsors.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
I’m just picturing like it’s almost time for the eclipse or whatever the deadline is. And they’ve got everything ready. And so he can pass on. And then he’s like, “Or I could stay if you wanted.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
And they’re like, “No, uh…”

[Emily]
“It’s fine.” Honestly, I would prefer this one because I feel like it’s more creative and fun, but I can see your sense.

[Thomas]
Oh, no, you fixed the problem.

[Emily]
Okay-

[Thomas]
We can do this one.

[Emily]
I gave it a challenge.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay, because I was thinking like the high school one would be fun. We could make it fun for sure, but it also feels very like there’s a genre, there’s a plot, there’s a formula, you know.

[Thomas]
Yeah. We’ve already started down this path, so let’s just keep going.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
We’re all happy with it.

[Emily]
All right. Ghost pirate it is.

[Thomas]
So does he also order like 20 pounds of limes on Instacart? And they’re like, “What?”

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Or did he die during the time when they forgot what causes scurvy?

[Thomas]
Oh, right.

[Emily]
He keeps trying to convince him to get a goat.

[Thomas]
He’s always talking about how good the Galapagos tortoises are. “They’re so delicious.”

[Emily]
“So delicious. I wish I could make you the soup. It was just divine.”

[Shep]
Or they have a pet tortoise and he keeps trying to cook it.

[Emily]
Just ALF’s it?

[Shep]
Yeah. Easy to catch, doesn’t run away very quickly.

[Thomas]
Well, so then obviously the anchor came off of the SS Melmac.

[Emily]
And he is Captain Alfred something something.

[Thomas]
Ah, yes, very good. I love that as just like a thing, and you don’t explain it, and people who know, know.

[Emily]
Now. I just wanted to be played by the puppet ALF. And since I chose Ted and Shelly for the names-

[Thomas]
I mean, this is basically like an ALF movie already. He likes food. He wants to watch TV. He’s kind of annoying and won’t go away.

[Emily]
Trying to eat their turtle.

[Thomas]
Right. Tortoise.

[Emily]
Tortoise, sorry.

[Thomas]
So let’s set up the stakes or the timeline, whatever.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So he’s annoying. He’s causing problems through his hijinks. And so they want to get rid of him. And so somehow they find out about the ticking clock.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
There’s some sort of, you know, there’s a curse that was placed on him or something like that.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Or, or, oh, maybe there was like cursed treasure that he opened, you know, mummy’s curse style.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And so now the curse has been put onto him and something like that.

[Emily]
And his soul is trapped, tethered to the anchor, and can’t go to the beyond.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So one of them, Ted or Shelly. Or, you know, we can give them new names. I just needed to give them names for-

[Shep]
No, it’s I’m already picturing Ted Danson and Shelly Long.

[Emily]
Okay, so one of them is a archivist librarian, because that’s why they would be at the auction to buy the anchor, right?

[Thomas]
Yeah, makes sense.

[Emily]
And so they’re doing some more research on it, and that’s how they discover the… They’re out, essentially.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Does one of them… No, they both hate him, right?

[Thomas]
It’s like a Beetlejuice sort of situation, right?

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Where like they’re a team and he’s like kind of a roommate, but also like really annoying. Is there some sort of B-plot where there’s like an awful neighbor that he’s able to help them mess with?

[Emily]
Yeah. Because he can go into the next apartment or the neighbor’s house.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Like, it’s a pretty good radius.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like, maybe he walks the dog, but you know, the people just see the dog. They don’t see him.

[Shep]
They have a dog and a tortoise?

[Emily]
Yes, yes. They are very fancy people.

[Thomas]
Well, she has the dog and he has the tortoise.

[Emily]
That’s how they met.

[Shep]
They’re walking their pets-

[Thomas]
Well, the dog park and the tortoise park are right next to each other.

[Shep]
That’s a rom-com waiting to happen.

[Thomas]
That’s the prequel to this movie.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Well, she threw the ball for the dog to catch, and the tortoise came back with it at the park.

[Thomas]
Gives them lots of time to have a conversation and get to know each other.

[Emily]
So we’ve built their backstory.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So no one else can see the captain except for them.

[Emily]
I don’t know. We could have him be visible to other people, but I don’t know.

[Shep]
No, I’m just working out the mechanics.

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah, I think they own it. It’s in their possession, so they see him. Nobody else can.

[Shep]
Okay. The neighbor that he messes with, they are too polite to say anything to the neighbor, but he thinks he’s helping them by messing with that neighbor, but he’s causing more problems.

[Thomas]
Hmm. Is the reason they’re able to see him and nobody else is because they’ve touched the anchor with their bare hands. Whereas, like, the movers were wearing gloves and it was like wrapped up and stuff like that. No one, other people haven’t touched it with their bare hands yet.

[Emily]
I buy it.

[Shep]
Even when they were examining it for the auction, they’re all wearing gloves to protect it.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And obviously one of them will have touched it before the other one, so then they can see the ghost. And they’re trying to convince the other one, “Just touch the anchor and you’ll see.” But before that, there’s like weird stuff happening, like 20 pounds of limes getting ordered to their house, and the TV keeps turning on.

[Emily]
No, I think the limes would come after because they would have shown him their stuff at that point. Or does he watch TV and then see the commercial for said delivery service and is like, “I’m going to be helpful” and swipes their phone because he’s observed all that. I mean, that would be a long time of him living with them in order to understand all that.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah, I think maybe Instacart is the thing they have to show him-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Whereas he watches them watch TV, so he understands how it works.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
How much can he move? What is his limitation? I can see him typing on a keyboard. That doesn’t take a lot of energy. Pressing buttons on a remote, as long as it’s facing towards the TV.

[Thomas]
But he couldn’t physically pick up the whole remote control is what you’re saying.

[Shep]
Right, so he can’t physically pick up the tortoise and cook it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Otherwise, he would have done that.

[Thomas]
Right. So perhaps he could do something like that, but it would take a great deal of energy. And what’s the downside to that?

[Shep]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
It destroys the anchor a little bit. If the anchor is completely destroyed, then he is stuck here or he ceases to exist or-

[Emily]
Disappears into oblivion?

[Thomas]
Death eaters come to get him or something.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Why would he do that then? If it were a temporary loss, like he loses a bit of energy, but he’s recharged by the moonlight or whatever.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So his powers can come and go with the moon, because the moon also controls the tides. It’s very nautically themed.

[Thomas]
Perfect. Yeah, makes sense.

[Emily]
Yep, done. Sold.

[Shep]
So on a full moon, he is at his most powerful.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He can cook food on the stove. He can handle a spatula.

[Emily]
He’s out in the backyard setting up a giant pot, and they’re like, “What’s going on?” And he goes to get the tortoise. “Best if we cook him alive.”

[Shep]
Is it?

[Emily]
I don’t know. I just feel like that’s something a crazy ghost pirate would say.

[Thomas]
What other hijinks does he get up to? What is his range away from the anchor?

[Emily]
One fathom.

[Thomas]
Because underwater, he can go quite far.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
One fathom, I like that.

[Shep]
One fathom’s not very far.

[Emily]
Twenty fathoms.

[Thomas]
How much is a fathom?

[Emily]
What’s the- how many fathoms below is it?

[Thomas]
That’s a league.

[Shep]
Yeah, those are leagues.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
I know these words. I don’t know what they translate to in terms of distance.

[Emily]
I thought fathoms were depths.

[Shep]
Yeah, leagues aren’t depths. Leagues are distance.

[Emily]
Distance, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So twenty leagues under the sea is wrong.

[Shep]
It’s 20,000 leagues, and it means they went 20,000 leagues distance while in a submarine.

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Shep]
It didn’t mean 20,000 leagues down. That would go through the earth.

[Thomas]
Well, they should have called it that. The title is confusing.

[Emily]
That makes more sense.

[Shep]
“20,000 leagues while under the sea.”

[Thomas]
There we go. See, one word would have fixed it all.

[Shep]
Yeah, fathom’s less than two meters, so it’s not very far.

[Emily]
Okay, a thousand fathoms, because then it’s-

[Thomas]
That’s quite large.

[Emily]
500 fathoms.

[Shep]
Why such a-

[Emily]
I don’t know. I want him to give the fathom distance and have them have to have the conversation about how far that is. And then have them get it wrong, where one would be like, “Oh, so that’s two miles?” “No, a fathom is less than a meter.”

[Shep]
A fathom is almost two meters!

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s just the argument they could be having.

[Thomas]
And then another sponsorship opportunity to ask Alexa or whatever.

[Shep]
Oh man, can he interact with Alexa?

[Emily]
Oh!

[Thomas]
That’s a good question.

[Shep]
Because this opens a lot of possibilities.

[Thomas]
Oh, that’s how he’s ordering the limes and stuff. He doesn’t need to interact with the phone.

[Emily]
Then yeah, well, yeah, because you can hear scary ghosts’ voices.

[Shep]
So people can hear him, but not see him.

[Emily]
Yes. Yes, let’s do that.

[Shep]
Okay. So I’m thinking of potential hijinks. They have a dinner party at one point. Gosh, if he can’t follow them to work, if he is stuck at the anchor, that really limits things.

[Emily]
So that’s why I was thinking it would be like a little less than a kilometer, maybe not like a half kilometer distance or half mile distance because they could live in a suburb-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
A little housing development and he could be around the development and hang out in their block, you know, around their roads, but not follow them to work or anything.

[Thomas]
Frighten the neighborhood children.

[Emily]
Right. Spook the dogs.

[Thomas]
Right, terrorize the neighbors.

[Emily]
Yeah. Spy on the old lady down the street in her bikini, sunbathing in the backyard.

[Shep]
So a league is about three and a half miles.

[Emily]
That’s too far.

[Shep]
Is it too far?

[Emily]
You told me that 100 fathoms was too far. Or whatever I said to make it a kilometer.

[Thomas]
Well, because the thing I was thinking is like underwater, a thousand kilometers is, there’s still nothing.

[Emily]
Yeah, you can’t go very far.

[Thomas]
You can go a thousand kilometers away from the anchor in any direction and there’s nothing there. Whereas on land, there’s quite a lot within a kilometer.

[Emily]
And the reason I was thinking fathoms was because anchor. Could be a league.

[Thomas]
That does make sense, right? If it’s a measure of lateral distance, a league?

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Sure. So if they work within five kilometers of their New York apartment. So you said one of them was a curator, what were they?

[Emily]
Uh-

[Shep]
Or a nautical-

[Emily]
Archivist.

[Shep]
Archivist. Okay.

[Thomas]
So they could work at the library or at a university.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So you can have a scene in the library where the books are moving on the shelves, Ghostbusters style.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Does he slime somebody?

[Emily]
Eww.

[Shep]
You’re going to get letters. So one of them works at a library. What does the other one do?

[Emily]
Barista?

[Shep]
Barista. Right, because it’s a New York apartment, so how much could it cost?

[Emily]
How much could it cost? Underpaid archivist and a barista.

[Shep]
I’ve seen Friends.

[Emily]
I don’t know, they could be anything. It’s New York. You can be anything.

[Thomas]
I mean, if you can make it there… It could be like a dean at a college.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That way they’re both academics. It would make sense if they were, you know, in the same circles. That’s how they could have met each other. I know we liked our tortoise park, dog park.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
We can retcon it in the sequels.

[Shep]
Prequels, the prequels.

[Thomas]
The prequels, I mean, yeah.

[Shep]
All right, what hijinks can he get up to at the college?

[Emily]
And not an 80s movie, so I’m out of ideas.

[Thomas]
Right, no panty raids.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Depending where their apartment is, he could go down to the pier. He, like, solves the really difficult math equation on the board.

[Emily]
Oh my god, no. No. No more math at college.

[Thomas]
That’s what you think he’s doing, then he’s just like doodling.

[Emily]
Just draws a really obscene, dirty picture.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Or it looks like he’s doing math equations. And he’s like, “Those are all the numbers I know.” So if he can be heard and he can operate a computer, he could be in like Zoom calls as long as the camera’s off and no one would even think anything.

[Thomas]
Does he like get a job?

[Emily]
Accidentally, somehow.

[Shep]
Answering phones.

[Emily]
Yeah, he senses their annoyance and he wants to contribute more to the household, but his seafood dinner didn’t go over well, so “Perhaps I could get a job.” And he answers one of those infomercial ads about working from home.

[Thomas]
And he becomes one of those like telemarketer type people, so he’s on the phone all day.

[Shep]
Oh man, that’s great because he’s good at annoying people.

[Emily]
Yep. He doesn’t care if you say no.

[Shep]
So.

[Thomas]
Right, it’s all interesting to him. He’s been stuck underwater for a couple hundred years.

[Shep]
Right, he could really sell whatever it is they’re trying to sell because to him, it is actually amazing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s magical.

[Shep]
So it’s a fish out of water story.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So was the high school track meet one.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I guess this is just the kind of story I like.

[Emily]
Yeah, let’s find some romance for him, and it’ll be tied up in a perfect bow for you.

[Shep]
He meets a blind woman. She can hear him. He can talk to her. And she doesn’t know that he’s a ghost.

[Thomas]
I feel so bad for her.

[Emily]
Yeah, they meet up every day at the same time at the park, have a lovely conversation, and then one day he doesn’t come back.

[Shep]
Is that how it ends? Does he actually move on?

[Thomas]
That’s a good question. We talked about him not wanting to at the end.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, he doesn’t want to because he’s having the time of his afterlife.

[Shep]
Well, yeah, at first it seems that he wants to move on. You know, they find out all the stuff that they have to do. Whatever it is. Problem for the writers.

[Thomas]
Right. Some ritual that needs to be performed.

[Shep]
Right. The time comes.

[Emily]
So do they just make the decision to donate the anchor somewhere more centralized that he could have…

[Shep]
Would he want that? Because he wants to stay with these people. He’s already attached himself to them.

[Emily]
I’m trying to make it a rom-com and have it work with the blind lady in my head. So I’m trying to figure out a way for them to give the anchor to her as a gift so he moves in with her.

[Thomas]
Is she old and she dies?

[Emily]
I don’t like that. Never mind.

[Shep]
That could be what convinces him to move on at the end is she’s old and she dies. And he’s like, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other again.”

[Emily]
So how does he meet her?

[Shep]
She’s walking her tortoise.

[Thomas]
She could just live in another apartment if he’s able to ghost his way into other apartments and stuff.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, they meet in the elevator. He’s coming back from walking the dog.

[Thomas]
Does she have a seeing eye dog?

[Shep]
I mean, it would make sense.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Their dogs can be friends.

[Shep]
The dogs can be friends.

[Thomas]
Her dog is kind of like weirded out and she’s like apologizing. Like, “He’s not normally like this.” So it sounds like though we want the pirate captain to move on at the end.

[Shep]
Or he can seem to move on and then show up at the very end. Set up a sequel. Because he is very annoying, and it would be the most annoying thing to not move on.

[Emily]
Right. He comes back. “I just missed you guys too much. I couldn’t stay.”

[Thomas]
Does he move in with the blind lady? No, she’s going to want to have a real relationship, and that’ll be very difficult for a non-corporeal entity.

[Shep]
Well, on a full moon, so once a month.

[Thomas]
He can give her the time of her life. And the time of his death. Okay. Well, we should probably decide a few of these things. Like, does he move on? And does he have this relationship with the blind woman?

[Emily]
Let’s put it to a vote. Who votes he stays? Oh, that’s one to two. Okay, moves on. Answers that question.

[Thomas]
I feel like that’s the job of the sequel is to retcon it. Like, “Ah, just jokes. I stayed. I’ve been hiding in the coat closet.”

[Shep]
Something has to happen at the end, even if he moves on to, like, “Oh, the story is not over.”

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
So he moves on. They tell the blind woman that he’s gone.

[Thomas]
She dies of shock because she didn’t know she was dating a ghost.

[Shep]
Well, yeah. He moved on. “He got a job and moved away without telling me?” Anyway, another ghost has to show up because now they’re good at handling ghosts.

[Thomas]
So this is like six or seven months after the story ends. They get something in the mail. It’s like her next birthday. They get some sort of antique thing, a vase. “What’s in here?” They open it up and it releases some ghost. “Here we go again.”

[Shep]
Aren’t there archives of stuff? There could be like lots of ghosts in all that stuff.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And now that she can see ghosts, she opened the door.

[Emily]
Oh, maybe one of these library patrons, archive patrons she’s worked with for years who’s there doing some hobby research. She finds out at the end is actually a ghost.

[Shep]
Yeah. In fact, you can hint at that throughout. You know, one of her coworkers mentions books being left out.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Hmm. That’s good.

[Shep]
“Did you move this around? Because…”

[Thomas]
I like that. All right, well, let’s take a break here. And when we come back, we’ll figure out exactly what happens for our ghost and our couple in our story about an Anchor.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back from our break. Something I was thinking about over the break is it would be nice to establish a clearer timeline for this story. So I almost wonder if, like, we see evidence of the pirate during the first act, but we don’t actually see the pirate until the end of the first act. And that sort of leads us into the second act shenanigans.

[Emily]
I can get behind that.

[Thomas]
And then the mid-second act turning point is either they figure out how to lift the curse, not that they have all the resources to do it, but they figure out how to do it. Or he meets the old woman, or we could combine both of those things. I have no idea what the lowest low is. But then the third act, just focused on sort of tying up all of the story threads that we’ve started. Dealing with the neighbor, resolving whatever needs to be resolved with the blind woman, getting all the pieces together for the ritual, and then doing that. I feel like that’s the climax of the movie, right, is doing the ritual just barely in time. Perhaps the reason he gets a job is because they find some thing, some talisman or something they need for the ritual, but it’s preposterously expensive. So they have to earn more money. Or maybe it’s just very expensive. And they’re like, the woman is like, “Yeah, we have to buy it.” And he’s like, “It’s $10,000. I’m not spending $10,000 on this guy. He can get a job.” Not that he’d be able to make $10,000 in that period of time, but.

[Shep]
What are his views of money? Like, he came from a time when money was more valuable. So if he made $100 at his job, it’s like “$100! It’s more money than I’ve ever seen at one time.”

[Emily]
Do you learn how to use YouTube and then look up what $100 is in Spanish-

[Shep]
Doubloons?

[Emily]
Doubloons?

[Thomas]
And he’d be bowled over by the concept of a minimum wage. “And it’s how much? Seven dollars?” Does he, being a pirate, does he know where there’s treasure? And so they’re like lamenting money woes. He’s like, “Well, we could go get the treasure.” They’re like, “The what?”

[Emily]
The Canadian treasure.

[Thomas]
Okay, this is new to me.

[Emily]
There is a treasure, a rumored treasure, up around, I want to say it’s like Nova Scotia. The Oak Island treasure. He knows where the Oak Island treasure is. Like, that’s all I have to say. So crazy treasure hunters would be like, “Oh!”

[Thomas]
Here, I thought you were going to say the Canadian treasurer is Rick Moranis.

[Emily]
Well, I mean.

[Shep]
Excuse me, Rick Moranis is an international treasure.

[Emily]
This is true. He’s the North American treasure. So yeah, there’s this, in Nova Scotia, there’s this place, Oak Island, and there’s this rumored treasure to be buried because they found like this board deep, deep down. And-

[Shep]
Oh, yes.

[Emily]
It keeps flooding and they can’t dig it out.

[Shep]
Oh, yes!

[Emily]
And they’ve spent millions and millions of dollars.

[Shep]
You’ve unlocked a memory.

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
I remember reading about this in middle school, which, as we both know, was 300 years ago.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s very sandy. It’s near the water. So when they try to dig it, it just floods again. It’s impossible to dig it up. But they did dig up boards. So they know there was something there. What I’m sure they did was break apart the chest and mix it with the sand.

[Emily]
Yeah, that is a theory that’s been out there. Okay, so it’s rumored that it’s Captain Kidd’s treasure that was buried there in the late 1700s. So I think it would be perfect if they’re like, “Blah, blah, blah, money, money, woes.” And he’s like, “We could get the Oak Island treasure.”

[Shep]
Now, where is the treasure if it’s not where they think it is? Because you can’t dig up that spot.

[Emily]
No, no.

[Shep]
So he’s got to be like, “Oh, that’s a false treasure.”

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. She could be doing some research on it and like sigh and lament. “If only we could find the Oak Island treasure.”

[Thomas]
Right, she has like papers in the apartment because she’s been doing the research on it.

[Emily]
And he’s like, “Oh, it’s not there.” He sees one of the theories or whatever and the rabbit hole she’s going down.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And he goes, “Oh, that’s not, that’s not where that is.” And she’s like, “What?” He gives her some, you know, like, I don’t know.

[Thomas]
Some other place they can dig up and find treasure.

[Emily]
Yeah, some other place they can go and find it quietly.

[Thomas]
Right. Now, do they have to take the anchor with them?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I guess he could just point out on a map where it is.

[Emily]
That’s what they tell him. And he’s like, “No, no, it’s going to be, it’s, what if it’s dark and you can’t find it? I don’t know what you guys’ map reading skills are. I’ll just go with you. Load up the anchor. It’s fine. I don’t mind. It’s no trouble at all.”

[Thomas]
He’s like, “Don’t leave me here.”

[Emily]
They’re all looking at B&Bs to stay ahead for a nice weekend away from him.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He just books one. He books a B&B that he thinks sounds nice.

[Thomas]
It’s nautically themed.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They’re just like, “Ugh.”

[Emily]
He points out that it has a king-size bed so all three of them can sleep in it together.

[Shep]
Does he need to sleep?

[Thomas]
I was just going to ask.

[Emily]
No, he’s a ghost. And the moon recharges him. Of course not.

[Thomas]
That’s why he stays up all night watching TV, browsing the internet.

[Shep]
So, anchors, I’m looking this up. Anchors often weighed 2,500 to 3,000 pounds, so more than a ton.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think weighing the anchor is like one of the hardest things the crew does.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s also the most dangerous.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So they are able to leave it and convince him to just point it out, even though he’s insistent that it wouldn’t be that big a deal.

[Shep]
Or he could use them as his anchor point because they’ve touched the anchor. And then you could have him follow them to work without worrying about how far away that is.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
All right. It’s the enchanted object or whatever. Maybe he keeps saying “Enchanted objects”. And they’re like, “So the anchor.” And he’s like, “And anything else that has been enchanted by the curse or by the anchor.” So they’ve become enchanted objects as well.

[Emily]
Maybe they think he’s not going to come along because they can’t take the anchor. And even though he keeps saying, “Well, the enchanted objects allow me to follow where they go.”

[Thomas]
I mean, would this be the first time that he’s gone with them somewhere or would he have gone to work with them?

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. It would have gone to work with them, I think, by then.

[Thomas]
This is great third act stuff, by the way.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Going to get the treasure. That’s the…

[Emily]
Yeah. And is the lowest low the money issue, or do we need a lower low?

[Thomas]
It’s a good point.

[Shep]
When does his blind girlfriend die?

[Emily]
We could kill her at any moment. I don’t care if they’re blind. Death is always welcome at my door.

[Shep]
That’s a pretty low low.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah, okay. So they’re talking the whole movie, the whole second act, they’re talking about how “We got to get the stuff together.” And he’s like, “I mean, you know, this is pretty great. Like, I’ve just spent the last 300 years, like, sitting in one spot with nothing to do. Light didn’t get to me. There were just like, fish, I guess. Like, it’s boring. This is great.” He’s having the time of his life. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. Who knows what the afterlife is going to be like? It might be boring again. He’s having fun here. So the whole second act, he’s like, “Yeah don’t worry about it.” But then she dies. The blind woman dies that he’s been developing this relationship with. And he wants to go to the afterlife because that’s where she is.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
“Maybe I’ll see her again.”

[Thomas]
Right. There’s hope.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Whereas, you know, he’s sort of been perhaps at the beginning of the second act, he’s very like, “This is great.” And then by the end, he’s sort of like, “Oh, this is just a different kind of prison.”

[Emily]
Yeah, because he’s lonely now because he’s he’s lost his ladyfriend.

[Thomas]
Oh, and sure, he realizes eventually these people are going to die and he’ll be stuck there forever.

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah. The consequences are actually like bearing in on him.

[Thomas]
Yeah, exactly. He really starts to realize the weight of his decisions.

[Shep]
Aha.

[Thomas]
So yeah, then he is much more into it. So that’s when whatever, those money problems or access to something or whatever, there’s some something, or maybe he knows something. Like maybe they come across a poem or something like that, a riddle to solve. And he knows something about that. He knows where some something is. It’s with the buried treasure. The cursed treasure. He knows where the cursed treasure is. And it’s not cursed anymore because he got the curse. And then Captain Kidd stole the treasure and sailed up to Canada and buried it. Somehow he knows where it is. How would he know? Ah, Captain Kidd wasn’t Captain Kidd. He was quartermaster Kidd or first mate Kidd.

[Emily]
He was just Kidd.

[Thomas]
He was cabin boy Kidd. But then he led a mutiny aboard our captain’s ship, Captain ALF’s ship, and became Captain Kidd and stole the cursed treasure, buried it, and then later they threw Captain ALF overboard.

[Shep]
You mentioned a poem.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And I had the idea earlier. If he can interact with a computer, he could record his memoirs. And then after he’s gone, they could publish it as a fantasy book, but it’s actually his first-person real perspective of life in the whatever time when he was alive. That’s what they think he’s been doing. He’s been writing this book. It turns out it is a book of just awful poetry about his blind lady friend.

[Thomas]
That’s funny.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
More hijinks, even after he’s gone.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Has he sent it off to a publisher without them and they read the rejection letter? Or-

[Thomas]
Do they make a promise to him before he goes that they’ll get it published? Because they think it’s a memoir.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And so they’re like, “I mean, we promised.”

[Shep]
I mean, you could self-publish on Amazon.

[Thomas]
I was just thinking that, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, this is that’s what the husband says.

[Shep]
That counts.

[Emily]
“Just slap it on Amazon. It counts, right?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. Get some Amazon sponsorship in there. Make this an Amazon Prime movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Featuring Alexa.

[Shep]
Featuring Alexa! Like, it works on multiple levels. What are we missing? What’s left?

[Thomas]
I think just like the sort of very, very end is the only thing that we need.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
It’s like somehow they solve the riddle or they get all the pieces together or whatever it is, and they’re able to open a portal or break the curse or-

[Shep]
Right. Open a portal, then he has to walk through it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This is where you can have second thoughts and talk about staying.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
And they politely encourage him: “No, no, your lady friend, she’s, she’s waiting.”

[Shep]
Right. “Remember Pearl. She’s on the other side. Possibly.”

[Emily]
“We hope. Fingers crossed. Have a good life.”

[Shep]
So they do the ritual. Portal opens. He wavers, but eventually goes through.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re relieved. They go back home.

[Thomas]
With a chest full of treasure.

[Shep]
With whatever’s remaining. Yeah. They see his memoirs, which aren’t memoirs. And then what?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I mean, she sees more ghosts at work at the very end, but how do you get to there?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I mean, we’ve already lost the pirate ghost. That was the anchor of the episode, or the anchor of the movie.

[Thomas]
Hey.

[Shep]
So how do you keep the audience paying attention after he is gone?

[Thomas]
I feel like you don’t have very much time from him going through the portal to the end of the movie.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, you’ve got like a couple minutes tops.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s got to happen quickly.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
He goes through the portal. They go home. They’re starting to relax, getting things back to normal. One of them says something like, “Well, doesn’t smell like fish anymore.” You know, “Kind of miss him.” And then-

[Thomas]
“Where’s the tortoise?”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then the post-credits scene is her going into work, and that’s when we find out other ghosts exist.

[Shep]
Sure.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay. Anything else? We good with that?

[Emily]
I’m happy. I’m satisfied.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Well, it was your pitch. Is this what you envisioned?

[Emily]
Yes, this is what I envisioned.

[Thomas]
Perfect. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about an Anchor. Was it anchors away or were we just unmoored? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. This episode marks the completion of four full years of Almost Plausible.

[Shep]
Holy crap. I’m sorry.

[Thomas]
It’s a long time.

[Emily]
Four?

[Thomas]
Four. This is the end of our fourth year.

[Shep]
So, if we do another episode, it will be the fifth year?!

[Thomas]
We’re starting the fifth year.

[Shep]
Wow.

[Thomas]
This isn’t Bucket, so I guess we’re doing another episode.

[Shep]
Oh, that’s right. We’ve got to do Bucket last.

[Thomas]
Long time listeners will know the format has changed a bit during that time as we experimented with some ideas and settled into our rhythm. That doesn’t mean we’re set in our ways, however, and we’re constantly trying to make this show better. You can let us know what we’re getting right and what areas could use some tweaking by filling out the contact form on our website, AlmostPlausible.com. Join Emily, Shep, and I as we kick off the fifth year of this podcast on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]