Carrots

Guest Links

• The Other Half
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Discord
• Bluesky

References

• Chekhov’s Gun
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
• Second Audio Program
• Audio Description
• Almost Plausible: Polaroid Camera
• Gérard Depardieu
• Jean Reno
• The Voices
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Aubrey Plaza
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Wes Anderson
• Quentin Tarantino
• Watership Down
• Animal Farm
• Once Upon A Forest
• Johnny Mnemonic
• The Running Man
• Godzilla
• Titus Andronicus
• Joe’s Apartment
• Sausage Party
• Foodfight!
• Lemon Party
• Flubber
• Dumbo
• Josh O’Conner
• Brain Damage
• Frank Henenlotter
• Little Shop of Horrors
• Her
• Ted
• Why Your Rabbit Cannot Live on Just Carrots and Lettuce
• Emily in Paris
• Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu
• Duolingo
• Monkeybone
• Bridesmaids
• A24

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Mike]
The thing I think this thing needs to like get across is like, obviously she’s in a really shitty time. She needs to relax. Maybe she wasn’t able to like, you know, really be herself in this relationship. And now she has this carrot and she can find herself. And then she finds herself and then she’s like, “You know what? I’m willing to start again.” And then she has to like get rid of the carrot. Like maybe she was the one that was broken up with the beginning of the movie and now she’s the one that is breaking up with the carrot. Like she has to like come to terms with having control over her relationships essentially. That’s my thought.

[Shep]
Is she dating the carrot?

[Mike]
No, no, no, no. He’s like a friend, right? So I mean, she could, I mean, she could, she could date the carrot.

[Thomas]
No, no, no, no.

[Shep]
No, no.

[Thomas]
She could not.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there story fans, welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. We make our movies by starting with pitches. Each of us will share some story ideas that we’ve come up with, and together we’ll choose one of those ideas and then develop it into a full movie plot. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and joining me today is F. Paul Shepard-

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And for the first time since we started this show four years ago, we do not have Emily. She couldn’t be here today, but in her place are our friends from The Other Half podcast, Mike-

[Mike]
Hello, everybody.

[Thomas]
And Ethan.

[Ethan]
Hello.

[Thomas]
That’s right, it takes two men to replace one woman.

[Mike]
Very true.

[Ethan]
Yeah, and we probably won’t even measure up.

[Mike]
Not at all, no. Does Emily know that we’re here?

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Mike]
Okay, good. She’s going to come in, in the middle of the episode and just go like, “What are you guys doing here?”

[Thomas]
And we’re going to be like, “You’re not supposed to see this. It’s not what it looks like.” Now, you guys have been on our show before, but in case this is someone’s first time hearing you, can you give us just like a quick explanation of how your podcast, The Other Half, works?

[Mike]
So The Other Half Podcast is essentially every episode, one of us watches one half of a movie and the other one of us watches the other half of the movie. So, one episode, I’ll watch the first half, Ethan’ll watch the second half, next episode we’ll alternate. And then when we record, we get together and we try to piece together the movie by memory, by being able to not understand how the movie started or not understand where the movie is going. We do all kinds of movies. We love all different kinds of films from all over the world. We started out trying to piece together the three-act structure, and the more movies we’ve watched, we’ve understood that not all movies fall within that structure.

[Ethan]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s true.

[Mike]
And it’s kind of interesting to see when one of us jumps into the second half of a movie, oh my gosh, suddenly the movie is a comedy and the other person might have thought it was a drama or something.

[Mike]
So that’s sort of the elevator pitch of what we try to do every week.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s always so interesting, too, when you guys happen across a movie where right after the midpoint of the film, someone conveniently sums up the plot thus far.

[Mike]
Oh, that is a gift.

[Ethan]
Very common, though.

[Mike]
Weirdly common.

[Ethan]
I’m surprised how common it is.

[Mike]
But yeah, so we’re pretty like well-versed in the idea of how movies work, like the function of certain characters.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Like I think that’s something I find interesting is a lot of times when we’re telling the first half of a movie, a lot of times we’ll be like, “So this character had like a mustache. Is that important at all?” And then the person watching the second half is like, “No, that character literally never shows up again.” So it’s like interesting as we’re like, “Oh, this must mean something” because you assumed that this thing would mean something important. Everything in a movie is important.

[Shep]
There was a gun on the mantle the entire first half.

[Mike]
Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas]
That reminds me of, I watched at one point back when CSI was on, the original CSI. I had like videotaped it and somehow my VCR got onto secondary audio programming where it was narration for the blind. And so the characters would speak, but then in between them speaking, there’s a person who’s like, “This is happening, that’s happening,” describing what’s on the screen. And I was like “This is really cool!” At one point, because at the beginning of the CSI, they sort of show you the crime that happened. And then like “The killer is wearing white sneakers.” I’m like, that’s totally coming back.

[Mike]
Right.

[Thomas]
Why would they bother to point that out? Never came back at all, ever. I’m just like, “What? Why point that out?”

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Well, for mysteries, you gotta include some red herrings.

[Mike]
You gotta clean a couple of red herrings, that’s true, but that’s for mysteries.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Mike]
Like, for most movies, it seems like, you know, you want an economical like film structure, you’d think, you know, like introduce everything that’s important at the beginning, and then it all pays off at the end, which is hopefully what we’ll do with our pitches today.

[Shep]
Well, now you’ve jinxed it.

[Thomas]
Well, we did ask the guys more questions about The Other Half back when they appeared on our Polaroid Camera episode. So if you’re interested, you can go and give that a listen. Now, although we don’t have Emily on the show today, she did choose the topic for the episode, which is Carrots. So let’s hear those carrot-themed pitches, starting with Shep.

[Shep]
A buy-the-books rabbit security guard, Carrots, has been tipped off that a master thief is planning to heist his boss’s 24-karat Golden Carrot Award. But when he learns that the supposed award was a bribe and his boss runs with some corrupt crooks, he’s conflicted. Should he really be protecting this?

[Thomas]
That’s a lot of carrots, and you might even call it a bunch of carrots.

[Ethan]
Ooh.

[Mike]
Oh, Shep, you have literally stolen one thing I also wanted to pitch was the concept of 24 carrots also standing in for something that was valuable.

[Ethan]
Yeah, that’s definitely something you guys did, not something I did either. So.

[Shep]
There’s also the carrot symbol on the keyboard, you know, shift six, and I kept trying to come up with something for that.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I didn’t even think about that.

[Shep]
Okay, another pitch: A man becomes convinced that a single carrot in his refrigerator is judging his life choices. Is it a manifestation of his paranoia? Or is it a ghost? Or is it just a very smug vegetable? Also, the carrot is French.

[Mike]
Played by Gérard Depardieu.

[Shep]
It could be Jean Reno.

[Mike]
That’d be better. I love this idea. This reminds me of like some of my favorite movies. Like, did you guys ever see the movie The Voices with Ryan Reynolds?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I really like that movie. It also has like almost like a Everything Everywhere All at Once vibe as well. Like I just love this like really out of the box kind of like weird concept of like, is this carrot real? Is it all in his head? I dig this idea personally.

[Thomas]
Oh, I can totally see Aubrey Plaza getting mad at the carrot, like, “Uh, okay.”

[Mike]
Oh, 100%. Yes, 100%.

[Ethan]
Yeah, absolutely.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s it for me. Mike, what do you have?

[Mike]
All right. The name of mine is called 24 carrots.

[Thomas]
I wonder what it’s about.

[Shep]
Now, is it 24-karat gold or is it two dozen carrots?

[Thomas]
Right, yeah.

[Mike]
It is two dozen carrots.

[Shep]
But they’re made of gold.

[Mike]
But they’re, no, they’re just normal carrots.

[Thomas]
Ah, they’re made of crystal, and they’re the other kind of carat.

[Mike]
The other kind of carrots. I want to sort of put in your mind, imagine sort of like Fantastic Mr. Fox style like movie. That’s what I’m going for.

[Shep]
All right, I’m on board.

[Thomas]
Totally, Mike, one of my pitches has the same vibe.

[Mike]
Fuck off! All right, well, we’ll see what happens. So imagine Fantastic Mr. Fox-esque.

[Shep]
All right.

[Mike]
A society of woodland creatures. We follow a family of rabbits. Mom, dad, son, and Daisy, the daughter. Now, in this society, all creatures have jobs. The birds sing, the beavers build, and rabbits collect carrots. But there’s also dogs, which are owned by local humans, who come and terrorize the animals. So they ensure that birds sing only certain songs, that beavers build dams in certain rivers, and they ensure that rabbits only steal carrots from certain fields. Now, mom and dad rabbit have secretly been hoarding some of the carrots and taking them from fields that are owned by the dog owners. And they’re doing this because sweet Daisy is wilting, you see. She is sick and she needs her energy for the coming winter. And mom and dad rabbit secretly have actually had a child die already due to extreme weather. And so they’re like really nervous that poor little Daisy is also going to go by the wayside. But when the dogs realize that the carrots are missing from certain fields, they send one of their compatriots to go pay the rabbit family a visit. And then after backing the family into a corner, one of the dogs like arrives, digs into their hole, terrorizes them. They’re just like, “Where are the carrots? You stole our carrots. The carrots, we give you these specific instructions, these specific rules.” The son, out of fear, opens the door to where all the carrots are in like their little rabbit hole. And because they’ve taken all of these carrots and hoarded them for so long, the carrots, which are plentiful and heavy, topple all over the dog, killing it. The dog is dead. And so now the family has a dead dog in their rabbit hole. And they must be clever. They must be very smart about this because ultimately this is a good thing because obviously like the threat is dead. They don’t have to worry about it anymore. But they can’t let anyone in the small woodland village know because someone might rat them out.

[Shep]
Probably one of the rats.

[Mike]
Exactly. Exactly. And so I have some other like smaller ideas that we can go with this. I have this idea of like they talk to like the local skunk who’s very down on his luck and doesn’t really have a job, but he ends up befriending the family and helping them. He uses the stink to cover up the smell of the corpse. They meet a badger family. The badger family ends up like digging into their hole accidentally. They’re a warm jovial family. They have connections to other families across different fields. And they use their joy and their warmth to spread word that the dogs can be vanquished. And then the last note I have is things start to get a little too good for the birds and the beavers and the other animals. And the rats, who are suspicious, decide to look into this matter of the rabbit family and what’s been going on.

[Shep]
Now, you said that this is like Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson style.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It seems like it’s more Fantastic Mr. Fox if it were made by Quentin Tarantino.

[Mike]
Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. No. Children need to learn two things: Life and death, and they need to learn standing up for your fellow man against the forces of evil out there. The only way to teach that is to also introduce them to like Plague Dog, like Watership Down style, like good and evil.

[Ethan]
It’s a tough lesson, but you gotta learn it.

[Mike]
Exactly. It’s important.

[Shep]
Is it good and evil or is it order and chaos? The dogs are limiting the fields that carrots can be stolen from because they know if you steal from too many fields, they’re going to bring the exterminators out and they’re going to kill all the rabbits. The dogs are protecting the rabbits from themselves.

[Mike]
I don’t know.

[Ethan]
That could be a good reveal.

[Mike]
See, that could be like a third-party thing, but then the rabbits can go, like, “Well, dogs, like, you guys are fucking scary and powerful. I bet if enough of you guys went after the exterminators, we’d be sitting pretty.” And then third act twist, you know, they take over everything.

[Shep]
The dogs aren’t gonna go after the exterminators. The dogs and the man are friends.

[Mike]
Well, I don’t know. Maybe they are, but maybe the dogs have been treated terribly by the men, you know, that happens, you know, the sheep dogs and all them. I don’t know. I don’t know. These are just concepts. I just like this idea of like an animal farm style thing, but I don’t want to like have this thing where like they steal stuff.

[Shep]
It sounds like you want to defund the dogs.

[Mike]
I do want to defund the dogs.

[Ethan]
They won’t bite the hand that feeds though, come on.

[Mike]
So that’s my pitch. Ethan, do you have an idea?

[Ethan]
Yeah. We’re going to start off with a man named Evan Edible, a 42-year-old carrot farmer in rural Minnesota, is struggling to keep his family afloat. Once known for producing some of the best carrots in the area, his farm is now threatened by rising costs and competition from massive farming companies.

[Mike]
Holy shit.

[Ethan]
When his deranged brother Eric comes back for the funeral of their father, Eric has been bro-pilled by his fellow finance bros, so he decides to put gunpowder on the carrots to make them stronger, more ion-dense, as a way to make a new market for Bro Carrots. But the night after, during a thunderstorm, the gunpowder is ignited and it explodes and destroys the entire carrot fields. Now, while Evan is upset, he then goes down and realizes that they’ve discovered a massive diamond mine under the fields. What ensues can only be described as Aggro-culture.

[Thomas]
Oh, my God.

[Mike]
Ooh, Ethan, you got me with these puns, man. These puns are killing me here. Oh, and I love how you’ve brought in because, like, again, Emily’s thrown us a real curveball here with Carrots. I love the idea that the carrots are pretty much gone by the first half and or the first third of the movie. And now we have to deal with the diamond mine underneath.

[Ethan]
Diamond carats, though.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s just a different type of carrot.

[Mike]
A different kind of carrot, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Ethan]
Well, that’s my pitch. What do you have, Thomas?

[Thomas]
Set in the aftermath of World War I, this animated film follows animals living in a remote, abandoned manor. Soldiers tore apart the manor’s garden for food during the war, but they overlooked a single small carrot. The animals nursed the carrot back to health and use it to revitalize the garden, with each species having a role in tending the carrot crop. Things unravel when a trio of human criminals on the run take shelter in the forgotten house, raiding the pantry and threatening the precious carrot stores the animals depend on. Despite initial turmoil among the animals, they organize a woodland heist to steal back their carrots, protect their home, and drive out the intruders.

[Mike]
Well, I see what’s going on here, Thomas. I see what’s going on here. We’re doing a very similar concept of the woodland creatures, Once upon a Forest style filmmaking here.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yep, yep.

[Mike]
I do like this idea a lot, and I like that you’ve said it in an actual, like, time period. Have you already established the concept of like these are people in war? Like, they are intruders, obviously. They’re taking food, but like, they’re starving. Like, is the third act twist going to be like, oh, like, we need to give them some of the food so that they can survive? Or are they, like, evil World War I people?

[Thomas]
I just imagine that they were looters.

[Mike]
They’re just looters. They’re bad guys.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’re just bad guys, yeah, right.

[Mike]
Okay. Okay.

[Shep]
They’re humans, therefore, evil.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Easy Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s okay if they starve to death.

[Shep]
What is the message we’re teaching kids with this?

[Thomas]
It’s okay to starve humans, right? That’s, yeah.

[Thomas]
I have one more idea. In a 1980s retro future city, where diamonds store encrypted data, a mid-tier pickpocket, unknowingly lifts a massive 60-carat data diamond, which has recently been stolen from a high-security vault by a professional crew. When he tries to scan it on his home rig, his machine pings the citywide registry, alerting the authorities. Panicked, he brings the diamond to a seedy broker with an air gaped reader, but the broker, sensing a reward, immediately tips off a crime boss. Meanwhile, the original thieves review surveillance footage of the courier who lost their prize and spot our pickpocket in the crowd. Now all three factions are hunting the same unlucky crook who has to figure out what’s inside the diamond, who he can trust, and how to survive while holding 60 carats of pure trouble.

[Mike]
Ooh, very Johnny Mnemonic.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s exactly what I was thinking.

[Mike]
Meets Running Man, which I love. I love this concept. I’m not saying these as derogatory. These sounds very fun. I like this a lot. Can it at least be like on a USB stick that looks like a carrot? Because I feel like we’re… I don’t want Emily to go like, “I gave you carrot and then you went-“

[Ethan]
“I spelled carrot a specific way.”

[Thomas]
She knows the rules. She, in fact, herself has pulled these sort of shenanigans, so all’s fair.

[Ethan]
Okay.

[Mike]
That’s fair, but she usually pulls these shenanigans and then puts them into like cute rom-com style stories, you know?

[Thomas]
Or serial killers, either way.

[Shep]
Yeah, we don’t have any rom-com in the bunch.

[Mike]
That is a good point. I really should have come up with a rom-com concept just to like represent.

[Shep]
I mean, proposing with diamond rings, which is gross, but fine.

[Mike]
These diamond rings are gotten ethically.

[Ethan]
Lab grown.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Mike]
So what, well, yeah, how we feel. I mean, I got to tell you, I’m going full force in that either my concept, obviously, or Shep’s idea of a French carrot that’s in the refrigerator played by Jean Reno.

[Shep]
You know, there are new French actors all the time.

[Mike]
I can’t name one, though. Like the guy from The Artist?

[Shep]
You just want the classics.

[Mike]
Yeah, Jean Reno needs a comeback is what I’m saying. I mean, what has he been in since like Godzilla and I don’t know?

[Thomas]
He’s been in a movie since Godzilla, hasn’t he?

[Mike]
Has he? I don’t know.

[Shep]
Name one, Thomas, name one.

[Thomas]
Okay, fair point.

[Ethan]
I do quite like either Mike’s or Shep’s. I do like the idea of the carrot in the fridge. I feel like that gives us a lot of-

[Mike]
A lot of leeway.

[Ethan]
A lot of leeway and a lot of challenge, to try to make a whole movie out of that because it’s, it’s-

[Mike]
The carrot in the fridge. Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah, but it seems like very difficult but also very satisfying.

[Mike]
Yeah. The only thing I don’t want to do in this, if we were to go with the carrot in the refrigerator, I don’t want to… The question is, yeah, is there something mentally wrong with this person? And if there is, we really need to be careful about not like making it sad or funny.

[Shep]
It’s not allowed to be funny?

[Mike]
We’re not allowed to make fun of people with mental issues is what I’m saying. We can’t go that way, you know? Shep’s like, “Can we make fun of mental people?”

[Thomas]
I think we’re making fun of the French.

[Mike]
The French we can make fun of. The carrot’s stinky. It’s smoking a cigarette.

[Mike]
It’s got a beret. There’s a baguette in the fridge next to it. And it’s like, “Hey, baby, how’s it going?”

[Shep]
Right, he’s trying to mac up the baguette.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Shep]
All right, Thomas, what do you- one are you looking at?

[Thomas]
I mean, I agree. I like those two. Okay, so the carrot in the fridge. What is the story?

[Shep]
Damn it.

[Mike]
Shep didn’t want this one picked!

[Thomas]
Hey, we’ve gotten great stories out of jokey pitches before, so.

[Mike]
Yeah. Also, I will say, as the person who’s also pitching like the Quentin Tarantino, Titus Andronicus-esque, like Fantastic Mr. Fox movie, I’m just, I’m just willing to, I’m willing to budge a little bit. We don’t have to make it as gruesome, obviously, but just want to throw that out there. Shep, what’s your thoughts?

[Shep]
I have no strong opinions. I think both of those are strong pitches.

[Mike]
No strong opinions.

[Shep]
Either of them would work, and I’m okay with whichever you guys-

[Mike]
Hmm.

[Shep]
You guys are our guests.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Which one would you have more fun doing, do you think?

[Mike]
It’s a good question. Ethan, what are you thinking?

[Ethan]
Hmm, I feel like the fridge carrot, it’s just so open-ended.

[Mike]
It is open-ended. I mean, I’m down with this. Although, I will say, I think in your pitch, you said it was like a guy finds a French carrot in the fridge. I really like the idea that Thomas pitched, which is Aubrey Plaza.

[Ethan]
I agree.

[Shep]
That’s also fine, yeah.

[Mike]
I love this idea. I think this will be a lot of fun.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Mike]
Now, where does she get the refrigerator?

[Ethan]
It’s definitely a May- Maytag refurbished edition.

[Mike]
This is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, like, her refrigerator breaks in her apartment. She needs a new one. She goes-

[Thomas]
Or does she move into a new apartment? This is her-

[Mike]
Ooh.

[Shep]
She recently broke up with her boyfriend that she lived with, and then she moved out, and this is her new place.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, there you go.

[Shep]
And so she’s going through depression right now.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s heartbroken. She doesn’t want to do anything. And then her carrot starts talking to her.

[Mike]
Yes. I love this.

[Shep]
Because she bought vegetables to eat healthier and like get her life in order and then never ate them.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
And they’re getting old and wilting.

[Ethan]
Everyone is mentioning the fridge. Is that implying that more vegetables could come to life later on and it’s more the fridge’s fault? Or are we thinking it’s this one particular carrot?

[Mike]
Yeah, is this a Joe’s Apartment style movie where in the middle, all the vegetables like do a weird dance sequence or whatever?

[Shep]
That’s when she gets high later in the movie.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
I do want to try to avoid any comparison to Wiener Party as much as we possibly can.

[Ethan]
You mean Sausage Party?

[Thomas]
Sausage Party, yeah.

[Mike]
Sausage Party, I apologize.

[Ethan]
Wiener Party is a much different thing.

[Thomas]
And Food Fight.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s a good point.

[Thomas]
Uh, and while we’re at it, lemon party. Let’s keep that out of the mix as well.

[Mike]
Let’s see. Oh, there has to be a lemon party joke at some point where she’s like, “Oh, god, a lemon party.”

[Mike]
And then it’s like a bunch of lemons like rubbing against each other. And they’re like, “Do you mind?” And then she closes the fridge door.

[Thomas]
Listeners, do not Google any of this.

[Mike]
See, this is the kind of shit you don’t get when Emily’s on. For the better, for the better, obviously. Okay, I like this idea. I do like the idea that maybe not other vegetables or stuff in the refrigerator turn. I like the idea that it’s just the carrot, but I do like the concept of her being high, opening the fridge one time. And then there’s like a scene like Flubber when like all the fridge is like freaking out and going crazy. And then she, or like the pink elephant scene, and then she like, it dissipates.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
And then she’s like, “Oh man, I’m fine. I’m fine.” And then the carrot’s like, “Oh, mes amis, you are doing okay.”

[Thomas]
I do like that idea that basically the inciting incident of the carrot is she gets high, everything’s going nuts, and then yeah, she comes down and she’s like, “Oh, right, it was just because I was high.”

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
But for some reason, the carrot is still around and talking.

[Ethan]
Ooh, I like that.

[Mike]
The still talking to her.

[Thomas]
Like, it’s the one thing left.

[Mike]
Yeah, I like that.

[Shep]
So, all the vegetables being alive is the opener? That’s where you start?

[Ethan]
You gotta get the audience hooked.

[Mike]
Yeah, I mean, she’s, yeah, she’s, she’s just freshly broken up. Maybe she’s cross-faded, you know? She’s like laying in front of the fridge. She just bought all this like vegetables, like you guys said, because she’s like, maybe her, her ex-boyfriend is, like, shitting on her, like, weight or whatever. And she’s like, “I gotta, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And then, yeah, then she ends up getting high in front of the fridge. And she orders a pizza. She doesn’t end up getting the pizza because she’s too high in front of the fridge.

[Thomas]
So the opening credits is like, it’s just a static shot of the fridge, and we see the door open, and all the vegetables go in, and the door closes. And we see her legs like moving around, the door opens. There’s like a sudden lighting shift, the door opens, and like the vegetables are not looking so great, and the door closes. And again, another lighting shift, things keep changing.

[Mike]
I love that.

[Thomas]
Stuff on the fridge is moving around. The door opens, and then like, the vegetables are like really gross. Like, the lettuce just rolls out under the floor and falls apart, and she like sweeps it up or something. And it’s like, we’re seeing vegetables go away and go away.

[Mike]
I like that.

[Thomas]
Until just the carrot is left.

[Mike]
I like that a lot. I like that. And for some reason, the carrot remains fine somehow.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
Yeah. So the carrot never goes away.

[Ethan]
Hmm. It’s immortal.

[Mike]
It’s immortal. It’s an immortal carrot.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And maybe something like she has the leftover pizza in the box and she sort of puts that on top of the carrot. So the carrot gets hidden for a while.

[Mike]
Yeah. What’s the carrot’s name? Pierre?

[Thomas]
What’s a funny name?

[Mike]
We can go back to it. We can go back to it. Maybe that’s how the movie ends or something. I don’t know.

[Ethan]
I do want to also wonder if like this carrot got like pickled or something, and that’s why it’s like living so long and is like zesty. I don’t know.

[Mike]
Like, imagine her opening the fridge and she’s just, like, coughing because there’s this smoke coming out of it. Because the carrot’s been, like, smoking so much because it’s French. And then it’s friends with, like, all the French cheeses. It’s like, “Just get me cheese. Mademoiselle, give me cheese from the store.”

[Ethan]
But it’s all moldy and shit.

[Mike]
Yeah, but it loves that kind of shit. Okay, so here’s a question now, too. Is the carrot a force of good or a force of not good?

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a good question.

[Mike]
Yeah, because like, I like the idea that maybe the carrot is there to make her feel better, but then at the end, she realizes like, oh, this carrot’s actually, it was good for a time. Sort of like, I went through a really shitty breakup. I got to feel better. And then at the end, she’s like, oh, this carrot is actually like just there for comfort, not necessarily there for improvement. And then at the end, she eats it. I don’t know. That’s my idea.

[Shep]
Okay, I think the opposite of all that. I think it’s a force for good. Now it comes off, as just a crazy rude judgmental carrot. But, it really wants the best for her. It wants her to get her life together. And it’s trying to guide her in that direction, but it’s not very good at it. But that’s like, it’s one goal in life. If he’s not going to get eaten, and it looks like she’s not going to eat any of her vegetables, then at least he wants to improve her life by putting her on the right path. Now, he does start to wilt as the movie goes on, and he gets essentially sicker and sicker. He’s basically got a terminal illness, because he’s a carrot in the fridge. He’s got a limited lifespan. So, she grows attached to him, even though she doesn’t like him at the beginning, and then when he dies at the end, she plants them in a planter box as like a little grave, and at the end, like a little sprout pops up or something. Like a carrot plant.

[Ethan]
My thought was like, halfway through there’s a whole scene with her trying to revive the carrot like while it’s like dying. So she does- I was mentioning the pickle thing earlier, and I think that could come into play as like, “You must preserve me somehow. You must learn how to ferment properly.”

[Shep]
He wants to be pickled?

[Ethan]
Maybe, to survive longer.

[Mike]
Okay, I know that people don’t necessarily listen to these episodes like one after the other. This is getting dangerously close to our original episode that we were on, where it’s like a person has another person that is there to improve them and they need to preserve them.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, you’re right, it’s Polaroid.

[Mike]
Yeah. Yeah, it’s getting dangerously close to Polaroid. So I think we need to maybe like zig instead of zag. I think we need to like, we need to look at this from a different perspective. I think we need to have, I think we need to be teaching a different lesson than just like a carrot is there to make someone good. And then in the end, the carrot is like, “I must leave you.”

[Ethan]
I think the character could be actually like a force of bad, but you can learn lessons from that, right? Like you can take away some real character growth from experiencing such horrible people.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Mike]
The other thing I want to avoid is a male carrot telling a woman how to live her life.

[Shep]
You’re the one that made it Aubrey Plaza.

[Mike]
Yeah, but I love the idea that Aubrey Plaza is the main character.

[Shep]
How about Aubrey Plaza is the carrot, and it’s the guy who’s French?

[Ethan]
Whew.

[Mike]
I feel like it was a guy that wanted to be like Josh O’Connor or something. He strikes me as the kind of guy that needs a carrot to love.

[Thomas]
So it sounds like we’re doing a carrot-based version of Brain Damage.

[Mike]
Yeah! Yeah! Fucking Henenlotter this shit. That’s what I’m talking about. For those who don’t know Brain Image, this movie is incredible. It’s about this guy who has like a parasite attached to him. And it is like a, it’s almost sort of like Little Shop of Horrors–

[Thomas]
Kinda, yeah.

[Mike]
Except for it’s this parasite that’s attached to this guy and is like feeding him poison in order to like make him feel better because he’s going through a bad time. Incredible film. I like that idea, but I love the idea that it’s like stuck in the fridge. The thing I think this thing needs to like get across is like, obviously she’s in a really shitty time. She needs to relax. Maybe she wasn’t able to like, you know, really be herself in this relationship. And now she has this carrot and she can find herself. And then she finds herself and then she’s like, “You know what? I’m willing to start again.” And then she has to like get rid of the carrot. Like maybe she was the one that was broken up with the beginning of the movie and now she’s the one that is breaking up with the carrot. Like she has to like come to terms with having control over her relationships essentially. That’s my thought.

[Shep]
Is she dating the carrot?

[Mike]
No, no, no, no. He’s like a friend, right? So I mean, she could, I mean, she could, she could date the carrot.

[Thomas]
No, no, no, no.

[Shep]
No, no.

[Thomas]
She could not.

[Mike]
We could go Her. We could go like Her or something, but no, no.

[Thomas]
I was thinking there’s maybe a scene where the carrot’s in the shirt pocket and then they’re going out in the world.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Ooh, I like that.

[Thomas]
What you said about her being the one who got broken up with, that actually tracks with an idea that I had a little while ago, which is that, because we talked about, oh, she buys all these vegetables and then doesn’t eat them. But what if the boyfriend breaks up with her and he moves out and those, it was like his vegetables?

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He was the more health-conscious person.

[Mike]
Oh, I like that.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
And so shh, it’s just there.

[Mike]
That’s brilliant.

[Ethan]
Ooh There you go, I like that.

[Shep]
Now you’ve brought it up why is she not throwing this stuff out as it gets too old? It’s her last remnant of him. She’s still in love with her ex-boyfriend who has broken up with her and left.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
That’s brilliant.

[Shep]
That’s more heartbreaking.

[Thomas]
That’s my role on this show.

[Mike]
I like that a lot. So, I love this as like the act one, you know, she gets high, she wakes up the next day, everything’s fine, and then she realizes the carrot can talk to her. So what is the thing the carrot is-? Because like, I’m sort of seeing it as sort of like, you guys ever see Ted, where it’s like the bear is like a nice, cool person, but he’s just a little bit like goofy.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
So it’s like, I think that’s sort of like where act one and act two start out, where like the carrot is like actually doing something. I’m just, I’m sort of realizing where this plot is going, but it’s very funny. Where the carrot is like somehow improving her life or improving her like mental health or like self-worth. What is the carrot going to be doing that’s like making her feel better, you know? Like I’m trying to figure that out. Because it’s a carrot in a fridge.

[Thomas]
Well, I guess the question is: does the carrot stay in the fridge the whole time, or does she like watch TV with it-

[Mike]
Or does she take it with her? Yeah.

[Thomas]
And it’s sitting on the couch next to her.

[Mike]
And then in the end, does she end up in like a different relationship? Or does she, like, that’s the other question is like, in the end, does she end up figuring out who she is?

[Mike]
And then she’s like, oh, I don’t really, like, need a man. Or like, you know, I don’t know.

[Shep]
She doesn’t it man. She’s got this carrot. No, no.

[Mike]
She gets a rabbit. She gets a, like a pet, and then she feeds the carrot to the rabbit.

[Shep]
Don’t feed carrots to rabbits. Carrots are junk food.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re full of sugar.

[Mike]
That is true. That is true. I did read that, that carrots are actually not that good for rabbits. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, I mean rabbits like carrots because they’re junk food. I also like junk food, like, I totally get it.

[Thomas]
So, is this carrot a bit like Dumbo’s feather or a safety blanket or something along those lines where she uses it as an excuse to give herself permission to do certain things?

[Mike]
Yeah, I like that. I like that.

[Thomas]
So, like, the carrot’s not actually really talking to her, but we’re seeing sort of like what is going on in her head. Like, we’re seeing her thought process by virtue of the carrot talking to her.

[Shep]
Right.

[Mike]
It gives her an excuse to externalize her internal thoughts, essentially.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I want the carrot to prompt her to do something early on that she does that doesn’t go well. I don’t know what that would be but that she comes home and yells at the carrot. And the carrot’s like “I didn’t go to college. Like, I don’t know how the real world works.” And this is why the carrot is out later and they’re watching TV together.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Or she goes to work and the carrot is left on the couch-

[Mike]
Oh to teach the carrot.

[Shep]
Yeah, so he gets to see more of the world. And he’s like, “Put it on whatever channel” he wants a specific channel while she’s away at work.

[Thomas]
Now I imagine this like Everything Everywhere All at Once scene where she’s off at work and the TV’s on, and there’s like a sort of a push-up toward the TV, and then we get a reverse angle and it’s like a push-up to just a carrot on a couch.

[Mike]
Yes, this is what I was imagining. This is what I was hoping for.

[Ethan]
I like the idea that the carrot has like a lot of street smarts, aka ground smarts, because it grew in the ground, but doesn’t have a lot of real-world knowledge.

[Mike]
Ooh.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Mike]
What if it helps her like set up like a dating profile?

[Thomas]
Eventually, yeah, I think it could.

[Mike]
And then the date goes poorly. And then she’s like, “I need to take you on my next one.” And then she has to like hold on to this carrot. She puts it like on the plate. And the guy’s like, oh, do you not, like, eat carrots? Cause it’s not, like, she’s not touching it. Like, she has to, like, find a way to, like, hide the carrot.

[Thomas]
Oh, no, the carrot’s in her purse, it’s again, it’s like a dumbo feather type of thing, right, where she’s got it for confidence.

[Mike]
Right, right, right. Yeah, right.

[Thomas]
And whatever she orders at dinner has carrots in it, and she’s like scooting the carrot slices or the carrot pieces off to the side and not eating them.

[Mike]
Yes. Yes. That’s good. That’s good.

[Ethan]
Like that, yeah.

[Mike]
I like that.

[Shep]
You talked about having it in the purse. She’s got to like open the purse and talk to it real quick.

[Thomas]
Oh, totally. Yeah. All right. Well, let’s take a break here, and when we come back, we’ll find out what other things this carrot helps our character do.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. So our main character has gone through a rough breakup, and she’s using a carrot as like a safety blanket to try to improve her life.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
When we left her, she was on a date with the carrot. Now what happens?

[Shep]
Oh, sorry. I have an unrelated thing, not related to the question that you’re prompting us with.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I’m thinking of like the actual cause and effect. Like what is this happening to her? And whatever she got high with. She talks to her friend, who is the one who gave it to her in the first place, like, “This helped me when I had a broken heart,” whatever. And her friend is like “Oh yeah, I took that and I felt connected to everything.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like the universe were alive. And that feeling lasted for months. That, like, puts a timer on it. Like this is a side effect of that drug. Like it seems real, to her, in the moment, but it’s just that after effect, and it will start to fade as time goes on.

[Mike]
The shrooms were grown in carrot fields, and this is why there’s like a deep connection between them. Yeah, because it’s like date shenanigans. We need date shenanigans, right?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Mike]
So it’s like they go on a date. I like the idea of like she keeps ordering stuff with carrots. She feels awkward eating them.

[Shep]
She didn’t know that it had carrots in it. She ordered something that-

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right, it just says whatever with seasonal vegetables.

[Shep]
Right, yeah.

[Mike]
Yes, yes, exactly.

[Ethan]
She’s like, “I’m trying to eat healthy, so…”

[Mike]
Yeah. Yeah. Is there any other issues in her life that need to be like resolved? Like maybe like a job that she’s like finding unfulfilling or something like that? Or is it just like a relationship that she needs to overcome?

[Shep]
I mean, everybody’s job is unfulfilling. Not everybody, but I think the majority of people work, they get paid to go to work because if they didn’t get paid, they wouldn’t do it. You know what I mean? Like, that’s what a job is.

[Mike]
But like, what if in the end she ends up like working at like a farm or something? You know, like, what if, what if she realizes like, “Oh, I don’t want to work like, you know, a nine to five in a, in a-“

[Ethan]
A jewelry store.

[Mike]
I like that.

[Ethan]
She’s a salesperson for rich assholes who want to buy expensive jewelry.

[Mike]
Yeah. I like that. And then does any of this also come into play with the carrot being French? Is there any sort of like way that we can play with the French carrot aspect of it? Like, is it just French because it’s funny? Or-

[Shep]
The carrot is French that I said at the end, that was a very much an afterthought after I had this pitch for a while.

[Mike]
You don’t say.

[Shep]
It was just like very last minute.

[Mike]
Like, does she go to France? Maybe she realizes, like, she expands her horizon. She’s like, “Maybe I’m not, like-“

[Ethan]
No, that was where her and her ex last traveled to, and they’re getting- had a huge fight.

[Thomas]
Or they were going to, like, they had- were planning a trip.

[Ethan]
That too.

[Mike]
Yeah. They were going to go to France, yeah.

[Thomas]
Does she already have the tickets?

[Shep]
I was going to say that should be the after thing. Like the end of the carrot is her going on that trip to France.

[Ethan]
Oh, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Hmm. That’s true, because customs would never let her through with a fresh vegetable. Like, that’s not allowed.

[Shep]
Right.

[Mike]
They never would.

[Ethan]
No, of course not.

[Mike]
And then she goes to France and she goes to like a little cafe and then Jean Reno is there and he’s the one that’s like taking her order.

[Shep]
Or whomever we get, whoever famous French person we get to voice it.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Whoever we get to voice the French carrot. Yeah, exactly.

[Shep]
And he’s also the voice of a baguette at her table. So.

[Mike]
Also, we’ve been using like male pronouns for the carrot. It could be a woman carrot. Like maybe we can do, what’s her name? The boss from Emily in Paris, you know?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Ethan]
Hmm.

[Mike]
Is there any other French actresses that we can-?

[Shep]
I didn’t know there was going to be a quiz on French actors.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Should have thought that about it before you put the French carrot in their script.

[Shep]
It was last minute!

[Mike]
But yeah, it could be like some cool ass boss bitch woman carrot. Like, that’s telling her how to live her life. This is such a silly concept we’ve chosen. I love this. Okay. Where else do we go with this?

[Shep]
Thomas, what was your question after the break that I completely ignored?

[Mike]
It was what else do we do on the date, right?

[Thomas]
Well, it’s just like, what other sorts of things does the character give her the confidence to do? The dating is just sort of one thing.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
I think taking that trip to Paris alone, like maybe she doesn’t want to do things. Like there’s a lot of people I know who don’t want to do things alone.

[Thomas]
That’s like the climax, right?

[Ethan]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s demonstrating to the audience that, like, she is, I don’t want to say cured, but like, she’s gotten over whatever is holding her back.

[Mike]
What if it’s a situation where the carrot’s also just like, “Look, I’m French. I know French. I will go to France with you.” And then in the end, she’s like, I can’t take a carrot on customs with me. And so she has to do it alone. She can’t do it with the carrot.

[Thomas]
It could even be the case that, like, she feels like, well, “I couldn’t, my boyfriend spoke French.” Maybe he was like from Quebec. She’s like, “Well, he spoke French. And so we were going to go to France. And now I can’t go by myself. I don’t speak any French.” And the carrot’s like, “Well, I’ll help you learn French.”

[Mike]
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

[Ethan]
Hmm.

[Mike]
I love that. Oh, that’s good. So the carrot is doing-

[Shep]
Now, does the carrot actually speak French?

[Mike]
Oh, hell yeah, it does.

[Thomas]
And English.

[Ethan]
I love this Duolingo ass carrot over here.

[Shep]
Or is it just in her mind?

[Thomas]
It’s just in her mind. The carrot’s not actually speaking at all. It is just a carrot.

[Shep]
It can’t be anything she doesn’t already know, so it can’t teach her actual French.

[Thomas]
Well, no, but it’s not teaching her French, but she has created this idea or this construct of like “The carrot will teach me French or will help me learn French.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And so she starts taking French lessons or studying French or whatever it is because she’s like, “Oh, well, I’ve got the carrot in my corner to help me out.”

[Mike]
Yeah. They watch like French movies. They watch like French New Wave or whatever.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah. With the carrot. And I love the idea. Oh, that’s okay. This is fun. So she goes to like a French learning like adult annex class.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
She goes there. And then she meets like the teacher. And the teacher’s this like gorgeous, like vivacious woman. And she’s just like, “Oh my god, like maybe I’m like a bisexual woman or maybe I’m like a lesbian.” Like she, she realizes like, “Oh my god, maybe there’s a part of me that has been like untapped that I’ve like not been able to like access or open up to because I’ve like fallen into these particular gender roles.” And then she realizes like there’s actually way more to her than she realized originally. Like she’s, she’s actually, not just by learning French, she doesn’t just like learn something that her boyfriend was originally going to access to her, but she actually realizes like there’s a part of herself that might have been dormant, you know? Like that could be another aspect of it, you know?

[Shep]
Or she makes a pass at the French teacher, and the French teacher is like, “No, no, that’s, it’s very common for people to come to the French lessons and think that they’re suddenly bisexual.”

[Thomas]
That’s funny.

[Shep]
“I see it all the time.”

[Thomas]
I will point out that Aubrey Plaza is 41, so she’s a little old to be in a relationship that’s so casually discarded and discovering her sexuality.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s a fair point. That’s a fair point.

[Shep]
Yeah, but we’re casting her, Aubrey Plaza, in her 20s.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Mike]
I am imagining early Aubrey Plaza.

[Shep]
Or recent equivalent.

[Mike]
Yeah, is there an equivalent actor that we could be working with? But yeah, you’re fair. Yeah, that’s a fair point. Aubrey Plaza is a little old to be discovering who she is. But yeah, like, I think that could be another thing, right? Another avenue of like, she goes to these French lessons. She comes home. She almost like flashcards learns with the carrot in the fridge. And then she’s a really good student. And she thinks that she’s like, “Oh my gosh, like I’ve learned something or I’m falling in love with this new person.” And then that person like denies her. And rather than like how she was at the beginning of the movie, when she realized it was like horrifying and like disturbing, she’s like, “You know what? Like I can, I can keep going. It’ll be fine. Everythings will be okay. Like I’m my own person now.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Do we see her like cleaning the apartment? Like it got to be a huge mess because she was all depressed and not taking care of stuff. And now she’s… As things are improving, the apartment’s getting tidier.

[Mike]
I like that.

[Thomas]
I do like the idea of her sitting in front of the fridge. The doors open. She’s holding up flashcards. And the carrot’s just sitting there. Not alive, not doing anything.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s just in the fridge.

[Mike]
Just watching. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Do we have a visually stylistic difference for what she is imagining or seeing where the carrot is alive? And then, like, what an outside observer would see of a woman talking to a carrot.

[Shep]
Like, we have an actual carrot, and then we have like a carrot puppet with a little face on it.

[Thomas]
Yes, right.

[Mike]
I’m thinking like Monkeybone carrot, like a stop-motion carrot in a fridge.

[Ethan]
Ooh, I like that.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
That’s very French.

[Mike]
Yeah, very French.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
But yeah, I like the idea that it’s just, and then you look in there and just like a normal carrot. Yeah. Maybe like a date comes over and then, you know, she’s like, “Oh,” he’s like, “Oh, do you have anything in your fridge?” Opens it up, sees the carrot.

[Thomas]
Totally, the carrot has to be in peril at some point.

[Shep]
Oh, she’s in the bathroom. Her date looks in the fridge, and just you can, she can hear him eating something that’s crunchy.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Mike]
Oh, shit.

[Ethan]
Oh, yeah, she like freaks out and runs over.

[Shep]
And she panics and comes out, and it’s celery.

[Ethan]
That’s good.

[Mike]
I like that. I like that. That’s a good idea.

[Thomas]
Now, are we going like Bridesmaid style with it? So she comes running out with her underwear around her ankles and she’s like-

[Shep]
We’re not doing Bridesmaid style anything ever. That’s the rule.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah. She has to poop in a sink. Yeah. Shep’s face is in his hands. Yeah, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could be something goofy. Yeah, she runs down the stairs. She’s like half naked. She’s like, “Don’t touch the carrot.” And then her date’s like, “I was just having a snack” and it’s like a celery piece or something.

[Shep]
Okay, imagine you’re dating a woman and you go to her house and she’s like, “Don’t eat the carrot!” That’s going to put you off.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Oh, yeah. He leaves.

[Ethan]
Big red flag.

[Shep]
It’s an orange flag, but yeah.

[Mike]
Orange flag. Ethan, what are your thoughts on this? Do you feel like we need to add anything more to this story?

[Ethan]
I’m just like wondering, like, what happens in the third act? Because I think it looks like fun beats, but I’m just like, how does this wrap up? What are the lessons that are learned? And where do we go from here? How do we tie this all up together? Because so far it just seems like little wacky antics with carrot. Which is fun, and like learning opportunities. But what is it building forwards?

[Mike]
What is it building to?

[Thomas]
It does feel like maybe over the course of the second act, things are starting to get better, but then there has to be the carrot gives her advice, quote unquote, the carrot gives her “advice” that she follows, and some big negative thing happens.

[Ethan]
What if it’s the carrot is like rotting, slowly getting worse and worse, so therefore it’s giving worse and worse advice?

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Ethan]
I don’t know if that really works for the story, but that’s an interesting concept. I don’t know how we can really tie that in.

[Shep]
So, I like the idea, because like I said before, I like the idea of the carrot starting to get old and wilt and like pass away at the end. It could be the worst advice. It’s having a harder time staying awake. This is, of course, in reality the drug is wearing off and the side effects are going away. And so she has to like wake up the carrot to get him to talk. She had a problem at work. She wanted a raise she didn’t get. She didn’t get her bonus. Whatever it is. And the carrot is like “Just go and demand it. Stand up for yourself.” That kind of thing. Which is the kind of give-her-confidence thing that it’s been telling her all movie. But this time, it backfires spectacularly. And it doesn’t go her way. So maybe she even gets fired. And then she comes home and yells at the carrot. And the carrot’s like, “I’m so tired. I don’t got much time left. Just so you know.”

[Mike]
Hmm. What if it’s a thing? Because like standing up for yourself at work is like one thing, but maybe it’s something more like the carrot… Every time I like start to like pop into reality and I realize I’m talking about a carrot talking to this woman giving her advice.

[Ethan]
Yep, yep.

[Mike]
What if it’s actually her like the carrot going like, “You know what? Fuck that job. Like just stay home. Like call in sick.” Like gives her like genuinely bad advice. Like putting yourself first above other people. And then it ends up actually like screwing over like her friend at work or something. Something like that.

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Mike]
Or like her friend at work ends up getting the promotion that she’s been looking for because she’s been taking too much time off or something. Like it could be something like that, where it’s like, yeah, put yourself first above everyone else. And then it ends up actually like not being the right move in this particular situation.

[Shep]
I like that.

[Ethan]
I think the thing that’s tricky about this is trying to figure out why the carrot is giving good advice at first and suddenly doesn’t.

[Shep]
Because it’s rotting, like you said. You solved this already.

[Ethan]
It’s true. But I’m trying to think of like what’s the narrative reason for that. Like, what lesson can you take away from like this thing is giving good advice, suddenly it’s giving bad advice.

[Thomas]
Well, I wonder if all along the advice, some of it was good, but a lot of it was like, “Girl, take a day for yourself, go shopping.”

[Mike]
That’s what I’m thinking.

[Thomas]
And it’s like, well, but hold on, that’s not actually constructive. Or like, she doesn’t actually have the money for that. You know, so the positive things that happen earlier start to sort of come back to bite her in the butt.

[Ethan]
That’s a good way of doing it. One other way I was thinking is that like maybe the whole thing is like, she confides in the carrot that like “Oh, I don’t trust my gut. I don’t trust my instinct. I was always relying on him.” And as time goes on, the carrot starts giving more and more wild advice that maybe she doesn’t agree with. And then she does it, it backfires, she’s like “I should have just trusted my gut. I should have just did what my gut says, what my heart says.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, I like that.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
That could be that could work. Like she’s found another shitty relationship that she’s in, essentially.

[Ethan]
Basically yeah. And it’s like, actually this carrot, even though it started off great, goes like all my relationships, and gets shitty at the end. And I just need to go away and take the flight to France.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Mike]
I’m willing to go that way or like how Thomas said where it’s this thing of like because I like the idea of like at the beginning maybe she’s this sort of like meek sad person that doesn’t have any sense of self and like then the carrot gives her a ton but then it just gives her a little too much. It’s this thing of like this needs to be in like moderation, you know?

[Thomas]
Right, it’s a pendulum swing. She was too far one way, and then thanks to the carrot, she’s too far the other way.

[Mike]
She’s too far the other way and she’s got to like find her own way on her own.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s got to find her way into the Goldilocks zone. She’s got to be just right.

[Mike]
Exactly. That was my thinking. So then does she end up eating the carrot in the end? Does she end up realizing like-

[Shep]
No, it’s all old.

[Mike]
Yeah, it’s old, right?

[Ethan]
Compost goes to the compost bin and then she uses it, the dirt after she gets back from France to make a new field with new carrots in it.

[Mike]
Mm-hmm. Hmm. So here’s the question: Does she go to France and then she comes back and the carrot’s wilted and dead, basically? And the shrooms have worn off after she gets back. And that’s the end of the movie.

[Shep]
I think that it’s got to end before she leaves to France. Her going to France is the climax.

[Mike]
It’s the epilogue.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s the success. That’s the, yeah, the epilogue.

[Thomas]
Right, we can see the end of the film can be her at the airport or going to the airport or whatever.

[Mike]
I like that. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think she needs to, I don’t want to say discard the carrot, whatever the ending is with the carrot, yeah, definitely needs to happen by then. And I think maybe that’s sort of the climax of the film, right? Is her realizing, “I don’t need this.”

[Mike]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Ethan]
I like that.

[Mike]
And then she can say something like, “Carrots are good for eyesight,” and now she can see her future.

[Shep]

(Pained groan)

[Thomas]
But maybe not quite in such a heavy-handed way.

[Ethan]
Carrots aren’t a girl’s best friend.

[Mike]
But yeah, what does she do with the carrot in the end? Does she end- so she just like ends up composting it and like putting it in the in the ground?

[Shep]
Does she live in an apartment or does she live in a house?

[Mike]
I imagine apartment for some reason.

[Shep]
I imagine an apartment as well. So

[Thomas]
Yeah, it could be a community garden.

[Ethan]
Could be a community compost, yeah.

[Shep]
So yeah.

[Mike]
Ooh, that’s a fun idea. Community garden.

[Ethan]
And her neighbors always nagging her, like getting- trying to get her to join, but she’s like, “No, no, I don’t want to.” And then she’s like-

[Mike]
And then in the end, she ends up joining and she puts the carrot- I love that fucking idea. Because then that’s the other thing of like, she’s like, “I am my own person. I can go up there.” And then maybe she finds someone at the community garden that’s like, you know, someone that she does end up like relating to and understanding. And, you know, the person up there is just like, “Oh yeah, like, I’m just doing this because I think it’s whatever. Like, I’ve never done something like this before.” And she’s like, “I’ve never done this before either.” And then they can like figure something out. And like, that’s a new, relationship anew, basically, in the, in the community garden.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Mike]
Yeah. Okay. I feel like we’ve got an idea of a first, second, and third act. Are we missing anything here?

[Thomas]
Yeah, are there any key details that we need to make sure we hit? Obviously, the girl’s name is Emily, so-

[Mike]
I was going to say the woman’s name’s Emily. That’s right.

[Shep]
Is it because Emily’s not here today or because she goes to Paris? Like, it works on multiple levels.

[Mike]
Emily in Paris.

[Ethan]
Ooh, that’s so good.

[Mike]
That’s perfect.

[Ethan]
Did we figure out a new person to cast, or does that even matter?

[Shep]
That’s a problem for the casting director.

[Mike]
Do we have a scene where the carrot is actually smoking a cigarette? And if the carrot is smoking a cigarette, is it the size of an actual real-life cigarette? So the cigarette looks massive? Or is the cigarette small enough that it scales to the carrot?

[Shep]
Scaled to the carrot size?

[Mike]
Exactly. These are the real questions I’ve got.

[Shep]
I think that if we ever see it smoking, it’s in that first vision where all the vegetables are alive.

[Mike]
I like that. Okay. And it is an actual real-life cigarette size or it’s a…

[Ethan]
This is very important to you, Mike.

[Mike]
I want to know. I want to know what to imagine in this.

[Ethan]
I think it’s a real-life size cigarette.

[Mike]
It’s a real-life size cigarette?

[Ethan]
And maybe she takes it out of its hand or something. He’s like, “Ah!”

[Mike]
I know people will put cigarette packs in refrigerators and freezers to save them, to like preserve them.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Ethan]
Oh, that’s a good idea.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Like, you broke into it.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. I think an unexplained cigarette is much funnier. Like, “Whoa, what? Where did you get this?”

[Mike]
I think it’s a lot funnier. Yeah.

[Shep]
Also, how did he light it? You know?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
That’s a good question. There’s no established. Yeah. Even if they do, like…

[Shep]
Don’t overthink it.

[Mike]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Thomas]
The carrot doesn’t even have arms. The cigarette’s just dangling out of its mouth.

[Mike]
Yeah, I like that. I like that. So yeah, it ends with her in the community garden. She has like a nice conversation with like somebody else that like lives in the area, but it’s not like anything big or anything. Like it’s not a thing where she’s like jumping from one relationship to another relationship. She’s just like her own person, basically.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, maybe there’s, we talked about there’s some neighbor who’s been trying to get her involved in the community garden, like an older woman.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So maybe as she’s on her way to the airport, the woman’s like, “Oh, are you going to help with the community garden?” She’s like, “Yeah, maybe I could help with that.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She’s like, “I was thinking we could plant some carrots.” She goes, “Maybe something else.”

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

[Ethan]
“I have too many carrots in my household.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “I’m a little tired of carrots.”

[Mike]
I like that a lot. All right. I think, I think we figured this. Honestly, I’d watch this movie. I think A24 would pick it up.

[Ethan]
At this rate, yeah, I think so.

[Thomas]
We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about Carrots. Did our story develop like peas and carrots? Or was listening to this episode more stick than carrot? 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. Mike, Ethan, thank you so much for joining us again. How can our listeners find the other things you guys are up to?

[Ethan]
Well, you can find us on TheOtherHalfPodcast.com or look for The Other Half Podcast anywhere podcasts are available pretty much.

[Mike]
We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, and we also have a Discord, and we have a Bluesky that you can check out as well.

[Thomas]
And we’ll include links to those in our show notes, which you can find at AlmostPlausible.com. We hope you’ll join Shep, and I, and yes, Emily as well, on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Mike]
Ohoho, here we go. Sacrebleu! Those are going in the episode, right? I want those in the episode.

[Thomas]
Sure.