Bell

References

• Call Bell
• Diving Bell
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  • Bring Out Your Dead
• The Blair Witch Project
• Bell Witch
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Waking Ned Devine
• Goodnight Rita – A Groundhog Day Deep Dive
• The Incredible Shrinking Wknd
• Palm Springs
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
• Jacob’s Ladder
• A Dream Within A Dream
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Bellwether
• The Bell Jar
• Final Destination
• The Last Temptation of Christ
• Faces of Death
• Stand by Me
• Butterfly Effect
• The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
• Groundhog Day
• Happy Death Day
• Taco Bell
• Farscape
  • A Human Reaction
• Michel Gondry
• The Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar
• Dead Like Me
• Liberty Bell
• Michelle

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
I want them to not ring so that they can go after school and try and, you know, they’re gonna go, they’re make it. They go to Taco Bell.

[Shep]
Ha ha.

[Emily]
That’s where the service bell is.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans, welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and the show wouldn’t be complete without these two ding dongs. They are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And no, I’m not trying to insult my co-hosts, I’m just trying to make a terrible pun about Bells because that’s the theme for today’s show. Now, have either of you gotten to ring a bell by yanking on a big rope?

[Shep]
I can’t tell if I’ve actually done that or if I’ve just seen people do that. Memory is so unreliable.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
You, like, had a dream about it once.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I don’t know, is the answer, because I lived in places where that would probably have been a possibility-

[Thomas]
Mm. Yeah.

[Emily]
But have I ever done it?

[Shep]
I mean, when I was a kid, our church had a bell, and the rope was right there. So, it’s entirely possible I pulled on that rope when I was a child and rang that bell.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I can’t be sure that I didn’t.

[Thomas]
And you were incorrigible-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So, it’s definitely a thing younger you would have done.

[Shep]
It’s, it’s not just possible, but likely.

[Emily]
I’m gonna go with no, I haven’t.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I don’t think I have. I would love to. That sounds like a cool thing.

[Emily]
I was in a bell choir once as a child.

[Shep]
That counts. That’s a bell.

[Thomas]
I mean, I have rung bells. I have a bell here on my desk I could ring, but, eh. It’s not, it’s one of those like, you know, you hit the top of it, and it dings type of bells.

[Emily]
Oh, customer service bills.

[Shep]
Yeah, service bells.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I have one of those. Well, I guess none of us, well, maybe Shep got to ring a big bell by yanking on a rope, but none of us knows for sure. So-

[Emily]
Well, now that’s a goal in life is to be able to do that.

[Thomas]
Yeah, we’ll just have to add it to our respective bucket lists. In the meantime, I guess we can get started on some pitches. Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
Four high schoolers, looking forward to a Friday night party, are trapped in a repeating school day over and over until one of them realizes the final bell isn’t the end of class, but a warning. The day won’t stop repeating because they’re not at school. They’re in a car on train tracks, and the bells they keep hearing are the crossing guard warning bells, warning of an oncoming train. So, yeah, I’ll just start with explaining the ending.

[Thomas]
But that’s alright. That lets us, you know, we can decide based off of that-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Whether we like that idea. So-

[Shep]
Okay. That’s what I have. Emily, what do you have?

[Emily]
I have one. In early nineteenth century New England, a serial killer would ring a bell in the woods when he’s made a kill. He traveled from town to town killing unsuspecting people. Once he was finally caught, the townsfolk tied him to a very large rock and threw him in a hidden pond deep in the woods.

[Emily]
Clara studying at a picturesque private university in Vermont. She loves hiking and exploring nature. One evening she stays out in the woods later than she anticipated and won’t make it home before sunset. Traversing the woods in the dark is dangerous enough, but as she follows the path that should lead her to the parking lot, she begins to hear the sound of a bell ringing within the trees.

[Thomas]
I thought you were going to say the townspeople tied him to a big bell, and-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Everyone got a turn yanking on the rope.

[Shep]
I thought it was “tied him to a bell and throw him in the pond, like a witch.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then he lives in the diving bell because there’s air under them.

[Shep]
So, the first thing I thought of was the “Bring out your dead-“

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah-

[Shep]
The guy that’s ringing the bell, except he’s providing his own dead.

[Emily]
That’s right. He’s providing a service for the town. “Tell me who to kill.”

[Shep]
Right. It’s overpopulated.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
Also-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
The Blair Witch Project came to mind. It’s-

[Emily]
Yes. Yeah. I think-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
A lot of it was, I was thinking kind of about the Bell Witch and even though that’s not exactly how that works, but the story of the Bell Witch, I just thought the idea of a bell haunting the woods sounded cool.

[Shep]
There’s also a bit of Freddy Krueger in there because he’s killing people and then the parents get together and kill him.

[Emily]
Kill him. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Spoilers.

[Shep]
Spoilers for Friday- Spoilers for Nightmare on Elm Street, a movie that came out three hundred years ago.

[Emily]
The movie’s really about divorce, just so you know. It’s really about children navigating the world of parents’ divorces.

[Shep]
It all makes sense now.

[Emily]
Anyway, Thomas, what do you have for us?

[Thomas]
I also have one today. A black comedy about a small English town’s beloved sixteenth century church bell. Ringing the bell is a coveted job, and for the last twenty years, every Sunday, octogenarian Nigel Wicks has had the honor. One Sunday, while Nigel is doing his job, the bell’s clapper breaks loose, falls four stories, and lands on the old man, killing him. The town is left with two problems: How to pay to have the bell fixed, and who gets to ring the new bell on Sundays.

[Shep]
What was the movie where an old guy wins the lottery and dies?

[Thomas]
Waking Ned Divine.

[Shep]
Yes. This isn’t that, but it has kind of that flavor. Like maybe the people at the church are keeping it a secret-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Because they all want the job. It’s a coveted job ringing the bell. So, they’re all trying to pretend that Nigel is still alive. He’s just out.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Who would want the job after the previous person was killed by the bell?

[Thomas]
Well, they get a new bell.

[Shep]
It’s the opposite of Saved by the Bell.

[Thomas]
Those are our pitches. Is there one in particular that’s jumping out at us?

[Shep]
No, let’s throw them all away. No, sorry. Go ahead.

[Thomas]
I mean, unless you have an idea.

[Shep]
No.

[Thomas]
Okay, well, I guess we’ll pick one of these then. So, which one do we want to do? Honestly, like, I like all of these equally. I think these all have…

[Emily]
They all have a good merit. There’s all, there’s something to work with in all of them.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, these are all pretty good. Of them all, I think the one that I’m kind of most excited about is the Time Loop one. I like Time Loops. I think that is an interesting story device. So.

[Shep]
I also like Time Loops. I- Have you seen the series on YouTube that’s Goodnight Rita or something like that?

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
It’s a guy that’s watching all of the Time Loop movies, and he’s introduced me to so many more Time Loop movies, which I’ve now seen. There’s a few that I haven’t seen.

[Emily]
Oh-

[Shep]
I haven’t seen The Incredible Shrinking Wknd or whatever it’s called. I think it’s Spanish. So, I haven’t seen that one. But I finally watched Palm Springs.

[Thomas]
Oh, so good. I love Palm Springs.

[Emily]
Oh Palm Springs is good.

[Shep]
Yeah, surprisingly good.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I went in with very low expectations. And it was like, “Oh, this is kind of great.” I mean, it’s got philosophy. It’s got twists. Anyway, so I like, I like time loop movies. So, the reason I was thinking of this as a time loop movie is it gets rid of one of the main problems in time loop movies, which is how is the time loop work? How does it work? Doesn’t make any physical sense! It’s impossible. Well, this one is like The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or Jacob’s Ladder–

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Where it’s, like, all in her head, her being the protagonist, the character that we follow.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
So, it’s not, it’s not happening in reality. It’s happening in her mind as she’s in a knocked unconscious in a car accident because one of the guys was drinking and driving on the way to the Friday party. So, that was the, that was the idea that I had was that they don’t make it to the party. This is all happening in her mind. And that’s where the bells are coming from. It’s the crossing guard.

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
It’s the railroad crossing bells are going off. And so, like, her cell phone bell kind of sounds like that. And at one point, they’re at the office and one of the guys is hitting the service bell, but he hits it at the rhythm, like the same rhythm. And you don’t call attention to it. You don’t point it out. It’s just that people on a second watching will go, “Hey, hey!”

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Emily]
So, we don’t have a close-up of him smacking the bell in the rhythm of a- because you said you don’t call attention to it.

[Shep]
Right. It’s just a subtle thing going on. All the bell references are just subtle things, like, in the background. So, it’s, you’re following this one girl, this high school girl. She’s with her friends. They talk about this party that they’re looking forward to. It’s finally Friday. It’s Friday night. They’re gonna go out. They’re gonna go drinking and have fun. And they just got wait for school to be over. And when the final bell rings, she wakes up at her desk and it’s the morning bell. It’s the first bell. And first she thinks, “Oh, I was dreaming. It was all a dream.”

[Emily]
“I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

[Shep]
Right. Like, it’s weird that I had that dream. But then throughout the day, she has this déjà vu because, like, everything seems real familiar.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
But she can’t be sure until the end of the second loop and the bell rings and she wakes up again in homeroom. And she’s like, “Okay. Okay.”

[Thomas]
“Something strange is going on here.”

[Shep]
Yes. And so, that’s probably the loop where, because, you have a class. She’s in a class where the teacher’s calling out questions and other students are answering.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And the second time she knows the answers, but doesn’t say anything because she’s having that déjà vu, like, “This is weird.” And then the third loop through, she starts answering the questions because she knows all the answers because she just experienced this twice in a row.

[Emily]
Mhmm.

[Shep]
And then as she’s answering the questions, her friends, the four of them, also start answering the questions at the same time she does.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, they’re all speaking in sync by the end. And the teacher’s like, “Whoa, that’s weird.” And the four of them are like, “Whoa, that’s weird.” And after class, they get together and they’re like, “Is the day repeating for you? It’s repeating for me.” So, that’s the reveal that it’s not just her experiencing this. It’s the four of them. Although actually it is just her because they’re figments of her dream. But that’s spoilers.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And is one of the classes, like, an English class, and they’re doing that Edgar Allan Poe Dream Within a Dream poem?

[Shep]
Oh, that’s great. That’s a great detail. So, you have that. You have a statistical teacher talking about bell curves.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, good.

[Shep]
You have, you know, another teacher talking about Alexander Graham Bell. During lunch, so, the school is near a church, and during lunch at 12:00 the church bell rings. And it’s very loud. And actually, it’s getting louder every loop.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because we start to throw in hints that something is going on. So, at one point, she, like, sees for a brief moment, she sees one of the guys looks like he’s got blood on his face. Just for a second.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
And then it goes away. And that’s just more, like, breadcrumbs.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You know, this is going towards a thing. So, I haven’t been looking- I had my extended notes. I haven’t looked at them all yet. Church bell, bellwether, something about bellwether and predicting stuff.

[Thomas]
Hmm. There’s a great book that I read by Connie Willis. I think it’s called The Bellwether or it may just be called Bellwether, but we already have the Edgar Allen Poe one, so-

[Emily]
Oh, come on, we’re gonna use Edgar Allan Poe and not Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar?

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
Because there’s death in both.

[Shep]
I do like death.

[Thomas]
Then maybe the teacher is like, “And don’t forget, tomorrow we’re going to start discussing the Bell Jar, so make sure you finish reading it.”

[Shep]
Yes. Yep. Throw them both in.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Perfect, perfect. Okay.

[Shep]
And there are more subtle references. One of the boys calls one of the girls his Belle-

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Or maybe just says that she’s beautiful. And then, you know, like, oh, Belle means beautiful. And of course, it’s Friday. It’s the last day. And they have freedom after this. So, Liberty Bell.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Like, it’s all, it’s all-

[Thomas]
“You going to the party?” “I’ll be there with bells on.”

[Shep]
Ha ha! But so, as the day keeps repeating, what, they get frustrated. They don’t know how to get out of the loop. One of them goes that they’re “-never gonna get to that party.” Spoilers. And then at the end, the main character realizes that the sound of the bell is the sound of the crossing guard bells and wakes up just in time for the train to hit the car and-

[Emily]
And kill them all.

[Shep]
And kill them all. Because Final Destination. Final bell. Final destination.

[Emily]
Yes, absolutely. Last Temptation of Christ. All makes sense.

[Shep]
And also, don’t drink and drive. Don’t drink when you’re underage.

[Emily]
Yeah. I was going to say do they- I know they don’t anymore. And this is a prime example of why they should show those horrifying railroad crossing videos in schools still.

[Shep]
Right. In school.

[Thomas]
This is like Faces of Death?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Kind of.

[Emily]
Kind of.

[Shep]
In Driver’s Ed. Did you not have to see those?

[Thomas]
No.

[Shep]
Oh, man.

[Emily]
Saw as chi- as third, as a second and third grader.

[Thomas]
Oh, my god.

[Emily]
Yeah they were like-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, we lived near Norfolk, the big Norfolk railroad depot, and-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Train safety was important, and they were horrifying videos, movies.

[Thomas]
Yeah, because it’s fun to play around trains.

[Emily]
It is fun to play around trains. It is.

[Thomas]
It is. It’s a terrible idea.

[Emily]
Not a lie, but it is cool.

[Shep]
When I was a kid, we had to walk along the railroad tracks to get home because the bus stop was miles and miles away. And that was a path through the woods. It was these handy railroad- but like, uh, like Stand by Me-style.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
So. If a train had come through, we would have all died.

[Shep]
Because they go fast. They go way faster than you think.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, they look slow when you’re driving next to them.

[Shep]
Because they’re so much bigger than you think they are!

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So, I have two questions about the plot here.

[Shep]
Uh-oh.

[Thomas]
One is: how many loops do you imagine there are, happen during the film?

[Shep]
Oh, I have no idea.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I’ve already told you all of my thoughts on this.

[Emily]
Would it be a case of where, you know, we see the first few and then we see like one or two in the middle and then it’s more like a montage? Like-

[Shep]
Oh! So, this is not entirely related, but you’ve put a thought in my head just now. So, I’m gonna say it real quick before we forget, before I forget and we move on.

[Thomas]
Yeah, good plan.

[Shep]
They go to the science teacher and they’re like, “Hey, we’re in a time loop. Like, how is this happening? Like, what’s going on?” And the science teacher’s like, “Well, time loops don’t exist. So, you’re wrong. You’re not in a time loop,” which spoilers, they’re not.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But they try to prove it by him, like, running a program that chooses a random number. And on the next loop through, they go and they say the same number, but the random generator spits out a different number.

[Emily]
Because it’s a random generator.

[Shep]
Well, so random generators aren’t actually random. And the science teacher can explain this. But, like, when it’s seeded, it’s seeded by the time.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so, if it starts a single millisecond differently-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Then it’s gonna be a different number. And so, that’s where you introduce the butterfly effect. You could change anything and everything after it might be different.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, they could be trying different things to get out of the loop.

[Thomas]
Well, so that leads to my next question: What are they doing to try to get out of the loop? And maybe that actually answers my first question, too. Once we know what steps they’re trying to take or what their sort of goal is that they’re working toward, that might inform how many loops we want to have.

[Shep]
They want to get out of the loop. That’s the goal.

[Thomas]
But I mean, like, what is it that they’re working toward? Like, how are they trying to get out?

[Shep]
They could try the perfect day, which is the…

[Thomas]
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.

[Shep]
I was gonna say Groundhog Day. I have seen The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, which is another good time loop movie. With multiple people in the loop.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Shep]
So, they try the Groundhog Day thing, where it’s the perfect day. They answer all the questions in all their classes. They ace all their quizzes, like, they did everything right. And the loop still loops. They try leaving the school. One of them has driven to school. And so, you can have a hint at the end as they’re driving off in the car. Obviously, this doesn’t succeed. And maybe something happens. They get in an accident or whatever. And then wake up again. And it’s like, “Oh, if we die, we just restart.” Even though, again, spoilers for the end, they don’t restart.

[Thomas]
So, this thought that I just had was they’re, maybe they’re trying to go to the party. Like, they’ve made it through the day. And they’re like, “Well, let’s just go to the party, then.” And so, they’re in the car and they get to where the train tracks are, where they are currently in real life stuck. And the bells are going and the arms come down and the train goes and the train just keeps going and going and going. They’re like, “How long is this train?” It’s signaling sort of, hey, they haven’t gotten past this point in real life. Like, they’re stuck here in real life.

[Emily]
Oh, so they skip school early because that’s how they’re-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Do it.

[Thomas]
Yes. Yeah.

[Emily]
They’re gonna get out before-

[Shep]
Right. If they’re at school and the final bell happens, they loop.

[Emily]
Yeah, they, okay, so then when the final bell happens at school they restart but they’ve never gotten past the train.

[Shep]
Or it could restart because, so they’re at the train track and the train’s going by and the bells are going and the bells are getting louder and louder and they realize the bells are getting louder. Like, “Is it, is it getting louder?” And then it’s getting intolerably loud and it’s causing them pain and then they loop. And that’s just a thing that’s like, “What happened? We didn’t die. We just were at the train track and we looped.”

[Thomas]
Right, because this isn’t Happy Death Day. They don’t have to die to start over.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Sure, so maybe they’re not going to the- so we want it to be like this particular time of day is what causes the reset or is it just-

[Emily]
Well, it would have to be if it’s the end of the bells. The bells are doing the reset, right?

[Shep]
Well, I was saying it wasn’t the time of day when they’re at the train track-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because that’s earlier in the day. If they’re at school, it’s the final bell. If they’re not at school, then it’s something else happens and causes them to loop. The sound of bells gets louder and louder until they loop. And it’s the bells that do it. They don’t know why it’s the bells. So, maybe they try to cut power to the building so the bells don’t ring, and then the bells ring anyway.

[Thomas]
So, maybe it’s just “bells”, period. So, the church isn’t right next door to the school it’s somewhere else and so they leave school and they’re going and they’re somewhere, they’re, I don’t know, maybe they’re, they’re appealing to god because they’re like “We haven’t tried this!”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then they’re there when the bells ring for whatever reason and then that’s when it resets, and then they’re at a restaurant because they’re trying to come up with ideas someone’s like ringing the service bell and that resets them, and then they’re at the train tracks and the bells ring-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So, it’s like, wherever they are there’s some coincidental bell-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Environmental bell thing and that’s what the trigger is.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So, it has nothing to, it’s not tied to time of day, it’s to do with bells, to sort- again, as like a clue for the audience, like, “Hey it’s bells!”

[Emily]
Yeah. So, I like that idea.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
But when you say that they cut the power to the bells so they won’t ring, but you said they ring anyway, I want them to not ring so that they can go after school and try and, you know, they’re gonna go, they’re make it. They go to Taco Bell.

[Shep]
Ha ha.

[Emily]
That’s where the service bell is. And then they’re like, “What the f—? We just went to Taco Bell,” like-

[Shep]
If you know it’s bells, you wouldn’t go to Taco Bell!

[Emily]
But they don’t know it yet at that point.

[Shep]
I thought they did know it because they cut the power to the bells.

[Emily]
Well, they think it has to be a ringing bell.

[Thomas]
Cutting the bells later, so-

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Maybe they haven’t figured out that it’s bells yet and so all they know is they get to the end of the school day and they reset and they’re like “It has to be something to do with school so let’s skip school.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So, they leave and they go to Taco Bell for lunch or something like that. And then there’s the person like you said ringing the service bell at the taco bell and then they’re like “We didn’t even make the whole day this time?” Like, “What the hell?” So, it’s like an early-

[Shep]
Reset? Yeah.

[Thomas]
Reset, yeah, that’s the word I guess I was looking for. And then maybe one of them has, like, an alarm on their phone to remind them to take their pills or whatever and at one point that resets them and so they’re like “Turn that alarm off.” Like, every time they reset they gotta remember to turn that alarm off.

[Shep]
Right. Every time they reset, they find another bell to disable.

[Thomas]
Or avoid.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So, what causes the ending? How does she wake up?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What’s the trigger?

[Thomas]
You said it’s because she figures something out? Is that what you said?

[Shep]
I don’t, uh… Maybe. I don’t remember. But like, yeah, everything, the bells are trying to clue her in, that she’s hearing the sound of the bells. Like when you’re in a dream, when you’re sleeping-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And your alarm goes off. And-

[Thomas]
And it’s like integrated into the dream.

[Shep]
Yes, it is exactly that.

[Thomas]
And then eventually you realize like “Oh wait!”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Did you watch Farscape?

[Shep]
Yeah, a lot of it.

[Thomas]
Do you remember the episode where he thinks he’s back on Earth?

[Shep]
Yes. Well, which one? Because that’s, there are several of those.

[Thomas]
That’s true. I remember there was one where he was captured by aliens and they basically, like, probed his mind to see what would happen if they went to Earth-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And he realizes at some point things aren’t quite right and he’s like “No, I’ve been here, I’ve seen this. Everyone I’ve interacted with is somebody I’ve seen before,” and so he, like, he’s in this bar, and he’s, like, looking at the men’s bathroom, and he’s, like, “I’ve been in there,” and he looks at the women’s bathroom door, and is, like, “But I haven’t been in there.” And he opens the door, and instead of the aliens just filling it in with what a bathroom would look like, which they should know from the men’s bathroom, it’s this, like, weird swirling orange or something like that. And then the whole simulation breaks down because he figured it out. Anyway, maybe it’s something along those lines, where, like, she starts to realize “Wait, something’s quite couldn’t right. That couldn’t happen,” or “That’s weird,” or- There was a music that, I want to say, oh this is going to be bad. I want to say Michel Gondry did this music video where it was, like, looking out the window of a train, and then stuff passing by the window was passing by to the beat of the music-

[Shep]
Ooh-

[Thomas]
It’s a really cool music video.

[Shep]
Definitely include that in the show notes.

[Thomas]
But maybe it’s something like that where it’s like we keep passing Taco Bells, you know, like there can’t be this many Taco Bells in this town or something like that where there keeps being a repeat of something or, you know what I mean? Like, the weird little dreamlike elements that at first she hasn’t noticed and then eventually, like, that’s what clues her in, maybe, that something isn’t, that this isn’t reality. Or maybe it’s more subtle than that.

[Shep]
So, I have an idea. I don’t know if it’s dumb, but the tradition is I have to say it.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
What if there’s, she has another friend that’s at the school, not one of the four that is repeating, but a fifth friend.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
And she remembers late into it that that friend moved away.

[Thomas]
Oh yeah.

[Shep]
Like, she forgot that this friend left. But- And she’s been there this whole day, actually all of these days with no explanation. And she didn’t think of it because she’s dreaming. And then she realizes, “Oh, you aren’t here.” Oh, maybe the friend died. Or, if, unless that’s too much of a spoiler.

[Thomas]
Well, I don’t know if that’s too much of a spoiler because, so, I guess what I, what I would imagine for a situation like that is that part of the loop is her running into the friend in the hallway and being like “Oh, when did you get back?” And then them being like “Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re back. We’ll have to catch up.” Like, so, she knows that the friend hasn’t been there and we’re sort of establishing that, oh the friend is back, and then late she realizes, like, wait, the friend can’t be back. The friend has been gone because she died however many years ago. Probably we wouldn’t want to make it too many years ago, so she’d be roughly the same age.

[Shep]
One year ago!

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This is the anniversary of her death. She was killed by a drunk driver, and that’s one of the boys. And so, it’s all, this is her revenge. It’s Freddy Krueger!

[Emily]
I was gonna say, so the, the other three you said aren’t actually in the loop-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Because there’s not really a loop because it’s all in her head.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
So, could you do it to where one of them mentions her, the friend that’s dead, and then she’s like “No that can’t be because she died,” you know, that’s, like, because the friends aren’t in on everything, right? Instead of her saying “Oh yeah, it’s good to see you. We haven’t seen you in a long time, blah blah blah.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
One of the friends says something about “Well, you know, so and so was in science today talking about-” and she’s like “Wait, what? She can’t be. She couldn’t have been in science.” Like she’s, because she’s not dead yet, and this is all in her head. But, like, she’s getting close, so it’s kind of like the, you know, the “Come into- I’m, I’m the person meeting you at the end of the tunnel, the light tunnel.”

[Thomas]
Oh, okay I like, I’m gonna mush our two ideas together. So, it starts off with mentions of this friend, and at first the, our main character, like, the first loop she’s like “Oh, great,” or it doesn’t faze her or anything like that.

[Emily]
Yeah, doesn’t think about it.

[Thomas]
And then in, like, a subsequent loop she’s sort of like “Wait,” because, as you’re saying, she’s getting closer and closer to death and so, like, that pull from the other side is stronger and stronger. Or, the influence is stronger, and so, she’s starting to sort of, like, but also it’s- it’s almost like a, like a branch, right? Like, on the one path is the other side and on the other branch is reality and she’s sort of moving toward both of those simultaneously. And so, she has that realization of like “Wait, who? Are you- I didn’t know you knew her,” Like, “That can’t be right.” Or, you know, there’s, like, little things that are, that are where it’s like triggering thoughts or memories for her, and tripping her up a little bit more, until at one point she actually goes and then we see her, and maybe that is when she has that realization of, like, “You can’t be here, you’re dead.” And so, and that’s a late thing, but that’s why we’re now seeing her, because she’s so, she herself, our main character, is so close to death that the spirit of her friend from the other side is coming into her thoughts, or whatever, like-

[Emily]
Yeah, sort of like Dead Like Me, it’s coming to take her soul before the death-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Actually impacts the body.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
And it could be something as simple in the beginning as, like, one of the boys or friends saying like, you know, the first loop is like “Oh I got a D in (whatever), science class. I really miss having (so and so) as partner. She did all the work,” or something like that. “She really got it.” So, it’s, like, mentioning it and it’s not, it’s kind of ambiguous about them being partners just because they switched partners around in the class or she’s gone-

[Thomas]
Well, and that would be like a mention of that girl in the past-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And so, that doesn’t trigger, necessarily, like-

[Emily]
Not right away, right, exactly.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
She’s like, “Oh yeah, she’s great in (blah blah blah).”

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
And then, like, slowly it becomes more like they’ve seen her throughout the day. Shep is pondering deeply.

[Thomas]
I’m bracing for some “No-no-nos” here, we’ll see.

[Emily]
I think he wants to say “No no no,” but he can’t justify it yet.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
He’s working on the justification.

[Shep]
I want to see the friend. I want her to interact with the friend before she remembers that the friend has died.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I- That’s what I want to add. So, I like the idea that you don’t really see her in the early loops. Like maybe you do see her on a rewatch. You’ll notice she’s in the background of a couple scenes.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
But she doesn’t come up. And then, you know, later she gets a mention by one of the other friends. Oh, it’s the friend that talked about science class. Science class is where they’re answering the questions.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s their first period.

[Shep]
That’s whenever it is.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, the friend can talk about how he, because he knew all the answers, it was like back when he was partnered with what’s her name-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because it’s that feeling of accomplishment or whatever. And so, they could, they could talk about she really knows science and stuff. And so, later after they’ve talked to the teacher and they’ve tried all these things, they’re like, “Why don’t we talk to her? Like, she’s good at this stuff.” And so, they go and they talk to her. And that’s one of the early interactions. But maybe you can put in, like, you know, things are weird or the friends are weird in that scene. Something’s unnatural-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And it doesn’t- It’s not right. And you don’t know what, but something is off. And then in a later loop, she’s like, “Wait, how can you be here? How can you be here? You’re gone. You’re gone.”

[Thomas]
I wonder if we, maybe this makes it too obvious, if we have that same girl show up in places, not where she couldn’t be, but it’s like weirdly coincidental that she keeps appearing like, how are you also at the Taco Bell? How are you also at the church? Like that sort of a thing.

[Emily]
Okay, the Taco Bell makes sense. The church, a little weird.

[Shep]
The Taco Bell doesn’t make sense because she would also have to be skipping class-

[Emily]
Oh-

[Shep]
But you just put her in the line ahead of them-

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
And don’t, don’t call it out.

[Thomas]
Maybe that’s one of the, again, because we decided Taco Bell was an early thing, that’s one where we haven’t met her yet.

[Emily]
Yeah, where she’s just in the background.

[Thomas]
So, on a rewatch, you’re like, “Oh shit, she’s in the line. I recognize that outfit from later in the film.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so, yeah, it’s like the clues were there the whole time.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
She’s getting closer and closer and closer.

[Thomas]
Yes, exactly. This is a great start. I’m very excited to watch this movie now. So, let’s take a break here. And when we come back, we’ll figure out exactly how these four students try to get out of the time loop they’re in.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. We’ve got our students in trouble. How do we get them out of trouble? How, like, what could they feasibly do to get out of this?

[Shep]
So, I, my question during the break was: at the end, how does she wake herself up?

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
We know that bells are triggering these loops.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What if she rings a bell on purpose, not to loop, but to wake up?

[Thomas]
Sure, yeah.

[Shep]
So, she pulls the fire alarm bell, or she gets a bell and literally rings it. And it happens to be at the, again, at the same meter as those crossing guard bells. And when it lines up, she wakes up. Like, you have the transition of the sounds from the bell she’s ringing to the train crossing, the crossing guard bells.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Thomas]
Right. And as she’s ringing, that bell is getting louder and louder, and everyone around her is like, “Stop, stop!” And it’s, like, causing them pain.

[Shep]
Oh, the dead friend is trying to stop her.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
So, what bell is she ringing? They drive to Philadelphia and she hammers on the Liberty Bell.

[Shep]
Yes. This writes itself.

[Emily]
Is she like in a band class where she has access to-? Yeah.

[Thomas]
I could see it being at school because it’s, like, the loop has happened again. And she’s like, “Oh my god.” But maybe at this point, she’s figured out what to do, or she has an idea. How does she figure out what to do? Like, we, I like this idea that this is how she does it, but how does she gain that knowledge?

[Emily]
Okay, so in one of the later late late loops, they’re at the point of, you know, they’re just gonna ride this one out because they don’t know what to do and they’re exhausted, and they’re just tired of it. So, they just play out their day. And in gym class it’s rope-climbing day, and they have to ring the bell.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
So, that might be the time when she has the epiphany of, like, the day has been mostly banal and nothing crazy has happened and they’ve just gone through the day as if it’s the day, but that for some reason clicks with her when she gets up and dings the bell.

[Shep]
You’ve put so many thoughts in my head. Let me go through them one by one.

[Emily]
Go for it.

[Shep]
You have the gym class earlier and the bells, everyone’s ringing the bell and like a bunch of people are doing it close at the same time and that triggers a loop. And then later, when things are getting weird, you have that scene again but one of the kids jumps up to climb the rope and it pulls down-

[Emily]
Oh, like a church bell.

[Shep]
Like a bell in a church-

[Thomas]
Ooh!

[Shep]
And that rings and it makes no sense, but it triggers a loop.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Now, you talked about them despairing after they’re in these loops for so long.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Are they couples? Are they just friends? Maybe two of them-

[Emily]
Two of them can be a couple.

[Shep]
Her, the main character.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Maybe they’re a couple or not, but the main character and one of the boys are in the, like, the band storage room.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
And they’re like, you know, “We’re, we’ve been in this loop for who knows how many years. Like, we’ve been here forever. We’ve known each other for a very long time. Let’s just start fucking, you know.”

[Emily]
Yeah, of course.

[Shep]
And so, they go into that room to have private time with each other. And they bump against the cabinet that’s storing the bells and the bells fall off the shelves and ring and that loops. And so, that tells her where bells are that she can access for later. And also, is another, just another example of the inopportune looping. Seems to always loop at the worst time.

[Thomas]
I like that, and I like seeing a whole bunch of different opportunities. So, there’s the service bell at Taco Bell, they could go ring that bell. She could ring the handbells that you just mentioned. She could ring the gym bell. Maybe we see an open door at the church, and you see where the guy is yanking the bells. So, we know they could go ring those bells. Like-

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. You see that before the gym class.

[Thomas]
You see when an alarm happens.

[Shep]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, you know, you could pull the alarm and that would cause, it’s like all these different opportunities of, like, which bell is the one they’re gonna ring?

[Shep]
So, all these bells are being rung by other people-

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And it’s never the main character.

[Thomas]
One thought that I had had, I like the gym bell idea that Emily brought up as the one that she ends up ringing to get out of it. And what I imagine is the day starts over. She is just so fed up that PE is not her first period class.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
But she just, like, gets up out of homeroom and runs out the door, and goes into the gym and maybe there’s a PE class that’s happening and some kid is about to climb up the rope and she pushes the kid out of the way and clambers up the rope, and everyone’s like “What are you doing?” And she’s going up there and they’re, like, grabbing the rope and, like, I guess they wouldn’t probably be shaking the rope. Maybe one of the kids is shaking the rope, and the PE teacher’s like “Hey, don’t do that. That’s not safe.” She gets up there and she’s ringing the bell and ringing the bell. And then she loses her grip and falls. And then just before she hits the ground, that’s when she wakes up in reality in the car.

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
I like it.

[Shep]
I like that. I would say they are shaking it because the constructs in the dream are trying to prevent her from-

[Thomas]
Oh, yes. Okay.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Thomas]
That makes sense.

[Emily]
So, they would be.

[Shep]
Waking up.

[Thomas]
Yes, yes.

[Emily]
And they’re kind of shaking in that motion of ringing a church bell.

[Thomas]
Right. Are we seeing her bell, like, bobbing up and down, like, church bell style? Or is it just shaking like-

[Shep]
Her, oh, her rope?

[Thomas]
Oh, sorry? Yeah, her rope I meant.

[Emily]
I like-

[Shep]
Yeah, just throw that in as like a little subtle effect.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And so, she’s got to try to climb this crazy moving rope and she reaches up and ding, ding, ding, and then loses her grip and falls.

[Shep]
And it keeps ringing as she’s falling.

[Thomas]
Yeah, oh yeah.

[Emily]
And then wakes up in the car right as the train (smash sound).

[Thomas]
Yeah, so how long after she wakes up? Is it seconds? Is it-

[Emily]
Honestly, for shock factor for me to be, like, “What the fuck?” Which would be a good reaction. It would just be like, she does it. She wakes up in a car. Everyone’s there. They see the train. Done.

[Shep]
See, I would make it a little bit longer because you want to give the audience hope that now she’s awake, she can save the group. So, you have her wake up in the car and she looks around and she could see her four friends, or I’m sorry, her three friends. She’s the fourth.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re all unconscious. One of the boys is driving. She’s tried- She tries to wake him up. He doesn’t wake up. And she tries to, like, maybe she starts the car and she’s trying to step on the gas to move them forward, because she can hear the train. And it’s Romeo and Juliet ending where it’s like, just one more second. Just one more second would have avoided tragedy.

[Emily]
So, she has to get out of the back seat to run into the front and shove the guy over.

[Shep]
Oh, no, I thought she was in the passenger seat in the front.

[Emily]
Oh. Okay. See, I’m picturing her in the backseat. Just to add that extra time of having to run around the car. But no, okay.

[Shep]
Well, if she gets out, then she can just leave the car.

[Emily]
But she doesn’t want to sacrifice her friends.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay, but I also have terrible nightmares where I have to take over driving a car from the passenger seat, so this also works for me.

[Shep]
Yeah, I think that’s, I mean, that’s a fear people have. So-

[Thomas]
So, I had a thought when you were describing that when she’s in the dream world and those bells are ringing, we have sort of a weird abstract audio cue that sort of indicates to the audience the loop is about to start. We’re about to do a loop. And as the film goes on, as we loop and loop and loop, you sort of maybe by the end realize that it’s a train whistle is the sound. And it’s becoming more like a train whistle the more loops that happen. And so, she wakes up and you hear bells ringing and you start to hear that train whistle sound and you’re like, “Oh god, she’s gonna loop immediately.” No, this one’s the real one.

[Shep]
I like that a lot. I would say, don’t make it obvious that it’s a train whistle, but like the bells ring and you have an effect like going through a tunnel or something-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
You know, or, you know, you distort the screen.

[Emily]
Some kind of sound distortion.

[Shep]
Some kind of visual distortion.

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Shep]
And while that’s happening, you hear a sound, which is a train whistle, but you don’t say it’s a train whistle. It’s just the whoosh as you go through time-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Back to the start of the loop. And then at the end, you hear the bells and then you hear the whistle.

[Thomas]
And you think, “Oh, gonna be another loop,” and then no, they’re dead.

[Shep]
Nope.

[Thomas]
That’s it.

[Shep]
Nope.

[Thomas]
Cut to black.

[Shep]
Don’t drink and drive!

[Emily]
Which is why I don’t want to see her struggle. I wanted to just immediately cut to black because you already have that hope is, oh, she’s finally woken up.

[Shep]
Nah.

[Emily]
But I guess we won’t know that it’s real. I mean, you would because it’s finally different.

[Shep]
Yeah. See, I like that struggle. If she had just, she had thirty seconds, if she were a little bit faster.

[Emily]
It’s really impactful when you are expecting that-

[Shep]
Ha ha, “impactful”.

[Emily]
It’s really impactful in stories and movies to me when you, that’s your expectation, because that’s where it goes. It’s always, and even if you have, okay, it’s a false hope, but it’s still gonna end badly. Or it is real hope. But to have no hope at all that it just boom, done-

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
It’s really-

[Shep]
My problem with that, it might be a personal one. Here’s the thing: I am dumb.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
It takes my brain time to process stuff. So, if it, if it cuts to, instead of the beginning of the loop, which we think it’s going to be, because she’s falling and then you have the tunnel effect and you hear the whistle. And it’s like, oh, it’s, she’s just going through the loop.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
And then she wakes up in a car. I’m like, “Oh, what’s going on?” And then a train hits right away. I’m like, “Wait, what’s going on? What happened? What?” I blink-

[Thomas]
Yeah, I could see that.

[Emily]
Yeah, okay.

[Thomas]
People will be like, “Wait, i, did I miss something? What’s-” Yeah, I can see that.

[Emily]
I can see that.

[Thomas]
We need to have a particular shot of like her face waking up every time. And so, we do that in the car as well.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, that’s that one more moment of you think it’s the beginning of the loop and it’s not.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s in the car wreck. She’s in the car.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
But you need that, I need that time. I need really like 45 seconds to understand what’s going on.

[Emily]
Fair. No, you’re, it’s fair. It’s fair. The majority of people would need that, and it is very rare that movies do that. Probably for that reason, which is probably I like it, is because it’s, no, because it’s very rare and that it’s very unexpected. So that I do sit there and go “What the frick did I- What just-” And then I have to sit in, like, darkness for a little bit to, like, piece it together. I like that feeling though. But I understand not everyone’s gonna enjoy that or get it. So.

[Shep]
Right. And that’s not how you want to end the movie.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
You don’t want to divide the audience at the very end. Audiences only remember the end.

[Emily]
That’s true.

[Shep]
So, you need that, that strong ending.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
You want to stick the landing.

[Emily]
Fair.

[Shep]
So, you want to dangle out that hope for forty seconds while she wakes up and tries to wake up the boy and he doesn’t wake up and then starts the car. You can hear the engine struggling.

[Emily]
So, my quick question is: why are they passed out?

[Shep]
Oh, they crashed. They crashed. In fact-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
You can have an earlier version of the same crash in an earlier loop that just causes them to loop.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
And then later, when you see the situation she’s in, when she wakes up, it’s like, “Oh, that crash really happened.”

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
She’s remembering parts of what happened after school.

[Thomas]
Maybe on that particular loop, the one where they end up crashing, we don’t get any of the weird dream shit.

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Thomas]
Everything just goes normally. We don’t see the dead friend. We don’t see things happening that shouldn’t be. There aren’t five Taco Bells that they pass. You know, whatever all the little background visual cues are that we’ve been doing, we don’t do those ones on that one.

[Shep]
Oh, so you do this one kind of early. Maybe this is the one where they leave school and like, “Hey, let’s just go to the party.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, so then their day goes the way it actually went. They go to the convenience store, they get beer, whatever. They’re pre-gaming on the way to the party.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And then they hit the whatever it is they hit and die. So, we don’t see, like, there’s the moment of impact, cut to black. They all wake up in homeroom and she’s like, “Oh, well, apparently dying doesn’t do it.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And yeah, that’s her remembering all of that. Now, after we see the train hit the car at the end of the film, what do we have after that? Is there any sort of… Is there any anything that happens after that? Is there one more weird little bell thing we can-?

[Emily]
I mean, you could have the solemn church bells of a funeral.

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
So, they’re actually slow this time versus the-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Like slower versus the train one.

[Thomas]
I don’t know if there’s any kind of denouement that we want to have on there to drive home that impact.

[Emily]
Well, you know my opinion on that, so-

[Thomas]
Well, my thought is that along the same lines of, because I think what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna kill the kids, and you’re going to just, like, roll credits, and audiences are gonna be like “Wait, so did that really happen?”

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so, I feel like we gotta, if we have a scene where it’s like “And here, they’re all dead. They’re being buried. What a tragedy.” Yeah, that fucking happened, man.

[Emily]
Okay, all right.

[Thomas]
Like, that’s my thought, but I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other because I also don’t care if not everyone- I don’t feel like everyone needs to understand.

[Emily]
I firmly believe not everyone understand-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Needs to understand, and that if you want to rewatch it, and then you’ll understand.

[Thomas]
Ooh, that’s good.

[Emily]
And then, like, on the fifth viewing, you’ll be like, “Yeah, that’s what happened.”

[Thomas]
I actually like that. I think if it inspires a rewatch, I’m all for it.

[Shep]
I often don’t understand anything that’s going on. So, I got that part covered. I think that she needs to talk to her mom on the phone at some point. Maybe she had a fight with her mom.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And now that she’s stuck in this loop, she has more time to think about it. And like, that stuff’s not important. And she calls her mom and they have a better, you know, maybe they have a heart-to-heart or whatever, as part of their perfect day attempt.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And that doesn’t work. But then at the very end, at her funeral, her mom is there. And we’ve already established this character. It didn’t come out of nowhere.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Shep]
And the mom can even say, like, “We had a fight the morning of.”

[Thomas]
Maybe at the funeral scene, the mom lays down a picture on the headstone of our main character and the dead friend who we’ve been seeing.

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, I was thinking there should be something in there to, like, they’re buried next to each other or something, like, made sure the graves were nearby because they were such good friends.

[Shep]
And they were roommates. Oh, no. That’s. So, did the other three friends exist in reality? Yes, they did. Sorry.

[Thomas]
Yes, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, and they’re dead.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
But we don’t care about them.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right, because we’re not focusing on them.

[Emily]
No, no.

[Thomas]
We’re focusing on our main character. We never named our main character.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
No.

[Emily]
It’s fine.

[Thomas]
Angel?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Michelle, Michelle, my bell.

[Emily]
I like Michelle, my bell. Because then that could play.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, there you go.

[Emily]
One of them could sing it to her dorkidly in the cafeteria.

[Thomas]
Or that’s just like the credits song.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. I like that.

[Shep]
Yeah, subtle.

[Thomas]
“Subtle”. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Bell. Was it appealing?

[Shep]
Ha ha!

[Thomas]
Or did it ring hollow? 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. Hey, do me a favor and leave a ringing endorsement of five stars wherever you listen to the show. And if you leave a written review alongside a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, we’ll read it on a future episode. Emily, Shep, and I look forward to having you join us on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Shep]
You’ve really stepped up your pun game, by the way. These are, like, I, I, I, on the record, I don’t like puns, but like, these are real good.