Claddagh Ring

References

• Claddagh Ring
• How to pronounce “Claddagh”
• Outlander
• Almost Plausible: Shamrock
• Assassin’s Creed
• Germ Theory of Disease
• William Shakespeare
• Demolition Man
• The Dollop
• Doctors back in the day
• Back to the Future
• Isekai
• The Hunt for the Red October
• The 13th Warrior
• Monty Python – Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook
• General Hospital
• Wonder Woman 1984
• Boston Legal
• William Shatner
• James Spader
• The Wizard of Oz
• Kate & Leopold

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
She might just romanticize the past and wishes she were in the past. People do that. They don’t realize how bad things were in the past. You know what you’re gonna miss when you go in the past? Toilet paper, first of all.

[Thomas]
All they have in the past are three seashells. And it’s coming back around, though. I’ve heard. That’s the rumor.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[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 holding my heart in their hands are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
It’s so sticky.

[Thomas]
Our ordinary object for this episode is a Claddagh Ring, and we feel that right at the top we should address pronunciation. We looked online and found a video from the YouTube channel My Irish Jeweler where it’s explained that most modern Irish folk pronounce it cla-da. So that’s how we’ll pronounce it.

[Emily]
I’ll probably pronounce it clod-uh because I’m lazy.

[Thomas]
Something along those lines.

[Emily]
I will try my best to say Claddagh.

[Thomas]
None of us is Irish, so. Perhaps in descent, but not in accent?

[Shep]
Well.

[Emily]
I mean.

[Thomas]
Whatever the word is I’m looking for.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Irish in descent, but not accent. Yeah, I’m genetically Irish, but not ethnically Irish.

[Emily]
Phonetically Irish.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Phonetically Irish. I like that.

[Shep]
That’s great.

[Thomas]
There’s a link to that video in the list of references on our website. With that out of the way, Shep, you’re pitching first.

[Shep]
A physicist, grieving the passing of her grandmother, detects weird readings from the Claddagh ring her grandmother had passed down to her. She discovers that parts of the ring can be moved, such as the hands can be turned to rotate around the heart.

[Shep]
And while manipulating it, she unwittingly opens a portal to 18th-century Ireland. Stuck there, she tries to navigate the political turmoil of the time and find her way back. But she falls in love with a revolutionary who gives her a Claddagh ring, which is the same ring that her grandmother had.

[Emily]
Is she her own grandmother?

[Thomas]
This was my first question as well.

[Shep]
I don’t know. Reading this, you know what this reminds me of or what it sounds like? Are you guys familiar with the show Outlander?

[Emily]
I’ve only seen parts of it. Yeah, but yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. So that’s in Scotland, and it’s with the standing stones and not a Claddagh ring, but it’s kind of-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
No wonder this image was so clear in my mind as I was writing it down. Like, “I can just see this whole thing.” Yeah, because I watched it.

[Emily]
As you’re reading it, and I’m like, “I could get into this. This sounds like something I would do. Oh yeah.”

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

[Thomas]
I have two pitches today. During a rally at an international metal detecting conference in Ireland, Eric finds an old Claddagh ring. Detectorists at the rally are supposed to declare all finds to determine if they’re allowed to be kept or must be turned over to the Historical Society. Eric wants to use the ring to propose to his girlfriend Charlotte, and worries that if he declares it, he won’t be allowed to keep it, so he slips it into his pocket. Upon returning home, Eric proposes to Charlotte and she accepts, but unbeknownst to either of them, the ring is cursed. By wearing the ring, Charlotte becomes possessed by an ancient spirit obsessed with taking her revenge on the man who broke her heart 300 years ago.

[Shep]
That’s going to be a little difficult. I’m pretty sure that man is dead.

[Thomas]
Shep, I assume that the revenge she is going to get will be on the man’s lineage and not on him.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
It might be time to let go of grievances.

[Emily]
Not until that line is dead and no man can spawn from his loins again.

[Shep]
300 years is a lot of time to spread out your line.

[Thomas]
My second pitch: While visiting her grandmother in a small Irish town, Ember receives a Claddagh ring from the aging matriarch.

[Thomas]
Ember is an influencer, so she’s taking pictures all over the place to show off the ring. She sets the ring on the edge of a fountain to get an artsy shot, when Lucas accidentally knocks it into the fountain. The ring goes down a drain. Ember is angry at Lucas, who instantly dislikes her because he finds “influencers” annoying and distasteful, especially this entitled American one. Ember starts causing a scene, complaining loudly on Livestream about how Lucas lost the ring. Lucas walks away and Ember assumes he’s ditching her, but he comes back a moment later with another man who is able to access the drain and retrieves the ring. It’s a rom-com in a small Irish town, so they keep bumping into each other until they fall in love.

[Shep]
We haven’t done a rom-com in a small Irish town in a while.

[Thomas]
Those are my pitches. Emily. Let’s hear from you.

[Emily]
Nothing like your first pitch, Thomas. Rebecca buys a vintage gold Claddagh ring at an antique store while on vacation in Galway. She plans to make it an engagement ring for her longtime girlfriend, Sarah. The ring is beautiful, and the shop owner tells Rebecca that it has a very tragic history. Each of the previous owners died under mysterious circumstances. This just makes Rebecca love the ring more, and she knows Sarah will adore the lore around it.

[Emily]
After the proposal, Sarah starts acting differently. At first, it’s little things like not liking her coffee her usual way and humming a strange melody. But as time goes by, there are bigger personality changes, and Sarah talks about things that Rebecca doesn’t recall ever happening. Eventually, Rebecca realizes Sarah is not Sarah anymore. She’s become possessed by the ring’s original owner, a bride who was left at the altar and is still searching for her absent groom. When the ghost realizes the current groom is not the man she loved, she falls into despair and ends the life of the woman she is possessing. So not exactly like yours.

[Thomas]
No, no, very different. I mean, you have two women who clearly listen to true crime podcasts in yours. So-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Write what you know.

[Emily]
All right, my second pitch.

[Emily]
I think you’ll get a kick out of this one, Shep. As a college graduation gift, Amelia gives her daughter a Claddagh ring that has been passed down through the generations. The family lore surrounding it will lead Melody, the daughter, to true happiness. Melody is excited and scared to be starting her first real job in a new city. The ring is a reminder of the love and support of her family back home. But things are not going well. She loses her job about six months into it due to company downsizing and has to get a roommate to continue to afford her rent. She’s tempted to just pack up and head home, but she also really wants to make it on her own. From this point, we could make it a rom-com where she meets a cute young man and they fall in love. Perhaps he’s an Irish visitor. Or it could be a story of her discovering her true passion in life and opening an Irish pub with an excellent Taco Tuesday.

[Thomas]
Do we even mention Taco Tuesday in that episode? Or is that something that got entirely cut out?

[Emily]
No, no.

[Shep]
No, no, no.

[Emily]
We talk about it, and more than you think, we do.

[Thomas]
All right. Is there one of these pitches that we like more than the others?

[Shep]
I like the one with the Claddagh ring.

[Emily]
I like the one with the Claddagh ring. Well, obviously, I like the one about the ring possessing the owner.

[Shep]
There are a couple of those.

[Emily]
I’m fine with either one. I do like the Outlander ripoff. I mean.

[Shep]
It’s not a ripoff!

[Thomas]
What about the idea of merging the Outlander one with our possessed spirit one? So it’s like she gets pulled back in time and perhaps embodies this woman or their spirits swap places, and so she has to do right by the spirit in order to set things back to normal.

[Emily]
So she can come back to her present body.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, I like this idea a lot. Not if they’ve swapped bodies, necessarily. Just the idea that she is not physically back there, she’s mentally in the past. And maybe at first thinks, “Oh, this is a dream. None of this matters,” and then encounters the guy that gives her the Claddagh ring that she recognizes as her grandmother’s Claddagh ring and realizes, “Oh, this woman, whoever this is, is one of my ancestors. I need to keep her alive so that I’m alive, or at least so that I’ll be born in the future. Even if I don’t make it back home, I have to live so that I’ll be born to be here now.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So she is the one possessing another body. So it is a possession story, but it’s-

[Thomas]
But it’s the other way around. It’s a future person possessing a past person.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Interesting. Okay.

[Shep]
So I like this more and more that I’m thinking about it. Like, she has future knowledge. Is she a scientist? Because I had her as a scientist in my pitch. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be what she is. Maybe she’s just a modern-day person, but she’s going back into the past with current-day standards, and she’s going to be possessing the body of this woman. You know, the past is not great for a lot of people, including women. So she’s not going to have the rights that she’s accustomed to.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And just speaking her mind, just being her normal modern self is going to get her into trouble.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So I’m trying to think of what advant-, because those are all disadvantages.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
What advantages does she have? If she were a scientist-

[Thomas]
Working at, say, Abstergo or…

[Shep]
Accidentally cut off one of her fingers. It’s the ring finger in Assassin’s Creed.

[Thomas]
That’s right.

[Shep]
Oh, my gosh.

[Thomas]
She could be like, a nurse. That would definitely be very helpful in the past.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It would be very helpful. Oh, my gosh. When did she go back into the past? Do they know germ theory yet?

[Thomas]
Probably not.

[Emily]
Germ theory is probably just emerging. If you said the 18th century. So I think it’s early in the 18th century that it starts to really take off.

[Thomas]
The basic forms of it were in the mid-1500s, but no one really paid attention to that for another couple hundred years. But yeah, Emily’s about right. Like, the mid-1800s is when people really started paying attention. That’s when Louis Pasteur was doing his thing. And…

[Shep]
Okay, I want to change what we have so far.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I don’t want her to be a nurse. I want her to be a surgeon.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
I’m just saying ladies can be doctors too.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
Emily.

[Emily]
The doctor was the mother.

[Shep]
So she is a surgeon. She puts on the Claddagh ring and then wakes up hundreds of years in the past. But she still knows the future. She knows how to operate.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So she disguises herself as a man. And gets work as a surgeon. So she’s a foreigner surgeon. Which explains a lot of “Why does he look that way?”

[Emily]
He’s a small guy.

[Shep]
Right. This- in his country, this is normal size. Lots of men have bumps on their chest in his country.

[Thomas]
All the men are very fair-skinned where he comes from.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Aren’t they very fair-skinned in Ireland?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
But, like, she wouldn’t be growing facial hair or anything.

[Emily]
Oh, okay, okay.

[Thomas]
So-

[Shep]
Anyway, you still make it a… A romance, but now the- You have the awkwardness of she falls in love with a fellow doctor who doesn’t know that she’s a woman. Or is that complicating it?

[Emily]
I mean Shakespeare did it a lot and it worked out fine.

[Thomas]
Yeah, we’re in good company.

[Shep]
All right.

[Thomas]
I like that a lot. We should probably name her.

[Shep]
Oh, that’s right. You guys had names for all of your characters.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I had no names.

[Thomas]
I mean, I have Charlotte as one of mine.

[Shep]
Charlotte.

[Emily]
Charlotte’s a good name. What name does she go by while she’s a fake male surgeon?

[Thomas]
Charlie. Charles.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Charles. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, it’ll be Charles, but I like that she goes by Charlie because that’s what she went by as Charlotte too, so she doesn’t have to think twice about it.

[Thomas]
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Right. So how soon after Charlie puts the ring on does this happen? Is it the next day she wakes up in the past?

[Emily]
It’s immediate. It’s a whirlwind…

[Shep]
Or- She puts it on and then feels strange for the rest of the day, but she doesn’t know why. And she thinks it’s because she’s grieving over the passing of her grandmother, who she was very close to. Maybe her grandmother was medically oriented.

[Shep]
Her grandmother was a nurse or whatever. This is why she went into medicine in the first place. Something like that. She felt very close to her grandmother. So her passing is really rough on Charlie. So she gets the ring and puts it on and like, goes about her day. Do you want to introduce any other characters from modern day? Because this is your opportunity to do that. I mean, I imagine she has a friend in the present.

[Shep]
That she confides in. This is where you can have some of the exposition of what’s going on in her life. Because she’s talking about how hard it is to her friend. Her grandmother passed a while ago, but they’re settling her estate now, and they mailed her the ring or whatever. And so it’s hitting her again. And then in the past, she doesn’t have that friend to talk to anymore.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And she tries to talk to other women in the past who then don’t treat her the way that she expects because they don’t have her modern sensibilities.

[Emily]
Because they’re hard women with shit to do and they don’t got time for this lollygagging.

[Shep]
Well, also, at some point, she is passing as a man.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
So it makes it very difficult.

[Thomas]
It’s untoward.

[Shep]
Right. She wants to have just a friendship with a woman, and it’s impossible.

[Thomas]
What is Charlie’s character arc? Because I feel like we could establish some issue she’s having in the modern time. She goes through all of her past stuff, and then when she comes back to the modern time, the lessons she’s learned from the past she’s able to apply to whatever problem she’s having now in the modern world.

[Shep]
She might just romanticize the past and wishes she were in the past. People do that. They don’t realize how bad things were in the past. You know what you’re gonna miss when you go in the past? Toilet paper, first of all.

[Thomas]
All they have in the past are three seashells. And it’s coming back around, though. I’ve heard. That’s the rumor.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So she’s romanticized the past, and that’s getting in the way of modern relationships for her? Does she read a lot of historical- or, not “historical romance”, but romance set in past times?

[Emily]
Those are called historical romance.

[Thomas]
Oh, okay. All right.

[Emily]
You are correct.

[Thomas]
Does she read a lot of historical romance? And she’s like, “Ah, that’s true romance.”

[Thomas]
“That’s the way it should be.”

[Emily]
Probably.

[Thomas]
And then, I mean, that feels like a really basic issue.

[Emily]
What would she romanticize about the past as a surgeon in present day?

[Thomas]
It’s a good point.

[Emily]
Like she would know the medical history knowing that that’s not great.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I hope they know some sort of medical history if you’re a doctor. I don’t know. I should go to med school.

[Thomas]
But, yeah, I think we should figure out what her story arc is, what change she needs.

[Emily]
What could you learn from the past that will make you better in the present?

[Shep]
I’m still- I have the picture of her reading a lot of historical romance. And so she has trouble forming relationships, romantic relationships.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because she wants this, you know, chivalry that doesn’t exist and perhaps never existed. At least not in the form that she is imagining. So no man lives up to what she fantasizes about.

[Emily]
I would say as a woman who reads, not historical romance, but romance, this is an actual problem. You get used to these male characters being this way and then realizing that this is why it’s fiction. Like, this is-

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
This is what we want.

[Thomas]
It is a fantasy.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
This is. This is what we want.

[Emily]
You know, maybe not the whole package, but that’s not really out there.

[Thomas]
Well, so perhaps Charlotte has sort of a twofold desire to be a man in the past. One is to give herself freedoms that she immediately knows that as a woman, she would not have. But then, two, she can play that role of, “I know how to be a chivalrous man. I’ve thought so much about what I would want. I can give that.” And then she finds out. Nobody acts like that.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And in fact, it’s weird that she does those sorts of things.

[Shep]
So is she romancing people in the past? Is she romancing women in the past? She’s being a chivalrous man. Is that… I, I, I’m trying to understand.

[Emily]
I think she would act the way she thinks she’s supposed to based off of the novels when interacting with women. But if she’s reading the historical romances, I think she’s more interested- You know, she’d have a crush on one of the other doctors or something.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but how… she can’t pursue that relationship and maintain the fiction of being a guy.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
She finds a guy and gets him to pretend to be a woman.

[Emily]
Well, I was thinking it would be that she learns about him, they become friends, and then she develops the crush and she’s trying to figure out how to dissuade him from marrying someone because she’s not right for him.

[Emily]
Because Charlie’s right for him.

[Thomas]
Or because he’s, like, talking about how this is a marriage of money or power or whatever, and Charlie keeps saying, “Yeah, but do you love her?”

[Emily]
And he’s legitimately like “Love really doesn’t matter.”

[Thomas]
Right. Like, it’s not- It’s not that Charlie’s trying to break up the relationship for her benefit. It’s because she thinks this guy is going to ruin his life.

[Emily]
Is this guy her grandfather and she’s got to introduce her grandmother to him. Is that the tract we’re going with it?

[Shep]
Well, how far back in time did she go?

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Did she just go back to her grandma’s time?

[Emily]
That’s way too far.

[Shep]
Or did she go back to her great, great, great, great…?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
We wanted to be in the 1800s, so it’s got to be like, four minimum grandmothers back, right?

[Shep]
Some even number, if they pass it down to their granddaughter.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
The Claddagh ring.

[Thomas]
Again, let the writers work it out.

[Emily]
Yeah. It doesn’t matter.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s a grandmother. It’s a matriarch. Matriarchal. I hate that I can’t talk.

[Shep]
It’s fine. It’s your ideas that we nod- that we need.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That we need that we nod? I can’t speak. It’s contagious. Does she even know who the man would be in her ancestors? How could she possibly know? Have you memorized your ancestral tree?

[Thomas]
I mean, it depends where I land. There are a few key moments in the past where if I were to land there, I’d be like, “Holy shit.” But that’s like three. And it doesn’t go back very far. A hundred, maybe 150 years.

[Emily]
Mine only goes back a hundred years possibly. And I don’t know names.

[Thomas]
And even then, it’s not like I could see the person and be like, “Aha!” You know, I wouldn’t know them on sight.

[Shep]
“I definitely see the resemblance.” So what I’m saying is she couldn’t know whether this man is supposed to be her ancestor or not.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Does she even know that she is in her ancestor’s body? So whoever she’s inhabiting has a name and a last name, and it’s her family name.

[Emily]
But her family names something like O’Shaughnessy or O’Connor.

[Shep]
Whatever it is.

[Emily]
Well, I mean, just saying. Very common, but, yeah. There’s like, six families in Ireland. It’s fine.

[Thomas]
If she’s inhabiting her ancestor, surely there are people in this town who know her and know that she’s not Charlie and not a man.

[Shep]
Oh, I thought you said she’s not whatever her name is in the past. Like, her personality is clearly different than it was. So in my mind, there was an explanation. Like she inhabits this body that’s just getting over a fever. This is back when a fever could easily kill you.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So she lived, but her personality is different. Clearly, they’re diagnosing her. She has memory problems. She can’t remember people that she used to know. She’s lucky to be alive. But, you know, that just happens sometimes when you get that sick.

[Thomas]
I’m more concerned with the people who already know her rather than the people she can’t remember.

[Shep]
This is what I’m saying. The people that already knew her know that she is not behaving the way that she used to, and they can rationalize it to themselves as side effects from having that fever. So her trying to pass as a man, as a surgeon, she can’t do that in her hometown.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Wherever she wakes up. She has to travel somewhere else and assume the new identity on the way.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So when she arrives in the big city or whatever, she is already dressing as a man and introducing herself as Charlie or whatever era-appropriate, male name insert here.

[Thomas]
One thing that I’ve learned from the history podcast that I listen to is you can basically just show up anywhere and be like, “Oh, I’m a doctor.” And everyone goes, “Oh, okay.”

[Emily]
Oh, 100%. What’s my favorite little meme about 18th-century doctors? It’s like, “I don’t know, you’ve got ghosts in your blood. Do cocaine about it.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, yeah, Right.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s her plan for survival in this historical past until she figures out what’s going on and how to get back to the present. Back to the future? Has everyone used that as a… As a movie title name?

[Emily]
So the family or friends or community are all like, “She’s not the same now since the fever.” Would they send her to a “special place” far out of town, so she’s not a problem in town anymore?

[Thomas]
Right. They might send her to some sort of medical facility to rehabilitate.

[Emily]
Yeah. Or keep her.

[Thomas]
Well, yeah. So on the way, she runs off or assumes this identity or whatever, and then shows up at the medical facility as a surgeon looking for work.

[Emily]
Yeah. And that’s why the town and family don’t ask questions when she doesn’t come back or write them, because they’re like, “We put her in a home. It’s fine.”

[Thomas]
Right. “Job done.”

[Emily]
So now she’s in a city versus a farming, fishing, what have you, village.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Shep]
Right. Because she couldn’t do the work anymore. Whatever it was that she was supposed to do.

[Thomas]
Well, and she kept saying weird things.

[Shep]
She kept saying weird things. She kept being uppity.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She’s supposed to be making nets, and…

[Shep]
She doesn’t know how to tie the lines anymore.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Useless to us.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Can’t gut a fish. This is not helping.

[Shep]
I mean, she could gut a fish.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Shep]
She is a surgeon. She could gut a fish.

[Thomas]
But it takes forever. Just, like, unnecessarily precise.

[Shep]
Okay, so we’ve established she leaves that town. The only other place that she knows is this medical facility. How does she get male clothes?

[Emily]
Well, if my knowledge of any movie is accurate, they’re just lying around places like laundries. Men are at the whorehouse. She could grab a stack while they’re busy with the lady of the night.

[Thomas]
I mean, depending on how they’re sending her there to the facility, she may need to run away at some point. And while she is away, she could come across a clothesline.

[Emily]
She could come across some handsome Irishman bathing in a river and steal his clothes after lingering a little too long.

[Thomas]
She leaves him her dress.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Later, there’s this guy who is wandering around in a dress. Don’t call attention to it. It’s just a background thing.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or where he’s like-

[Shep]
He’s being hauled off by the police.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, for indecency. Or there’s an article in the paper she’s reading or whatever.

[Shep]
Right. Okay. Is this in Ireland? Does she speak Irish?

[Emily]
That would be a barrier.

[Thomas]
I mean, it could be one of those things where, like, “I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I understand everything everyone’s saying, and I can speak the language.” If she’s inhabiting the body.

[Emily]
Yeah. The synapses exist, and the language processing center is separate from the personality, Soul center, obviously.

[Shep]
I mean, that’s just science.

[Emily]
Right? Wasn’t that an isekai theme sometimes? Where they, even when they drop into that new world, they understand it because they do.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s part of the welcome package.

[Emily]
Right. I mean, that’s. That’s a common thing.

[Shep]
It is actually a very common trope in Isekai stories.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Luckily, she, in medical school, she minored in Latin, so-

[Emily]
She’s of Irish descent. She spent a semester or two abroad in Ireland, and she studied the language.

[Shep]
What if she has family in Ireland that she visited multiple times? So when she wakes up in the past, she’s like, “Oh, I know this town. I’m familiar with this town.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Some of these buildings, in fact.” All right, you know, “The church is still exactly where I thought.”

[Emily]
Are the same.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s cool.

[Shep]
You know, it looks exactly the same. So maybe she spends some time in Ireland with her Irish family and speaks Irish. Or maybe the person whose body she’s inhabiting is still in the body and comes out in various ways.

[Emily]
I think that’s a minor detail that the audience isn’t necessarily gonna care about. Like, because I know if I sat and thought about it, yeah, I would be like, “Wait, how do they know that?” But if I’m just enjoying the story and the characters are enough and the plot’s enough, I’m not gonna think about it. I’m not gonna care. It doesn’t matter, you know? So we just have to make sure the story and the characters are good, and then no one will care.

[Shep]
So you start her in the past speaking Irish, and then you zoom in on her mouth and she starts speaking English, and you zoom out again. Hunt for Red October-style.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You laugh, but I thought that was a great way to do it.

[Thomas]
Or we could do it like a 13th Warrior, right?

[Emily]
She sits at the fire, listens to everybody, and then just can talk.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And then later, bears attack.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So I want to start the movie at the grandmother’s funeral in the village in Ireland.

[Shep]
Ah. Ah, good. We can reuse sets. This will save money on the budget.

[Thomas]
So we introduce that she is familiar with this town, and then we do something where it’s like, okay, six months later, or whatever, the estate has been settled. She’s back in, you know, Jersey. Or wherever.

[Emily]
Okay. I was gonna say it would be convenient then for why she wakes up in the middle of the night, knows how to use the sink and everything that’s not in her apartment in the city in the US but. Okay.

[Thomas]
Well, but the sink wouldn’t be there 300 years ago or 200 years ago.

[Emily]
That’s what I’m saying. Like-

[Shep]
See, I like the idea of the sink not being there. No, she goes to the bathroom, and she’s splashing water on her face or whatever, and everything goes all woogie. And then the toilet just turns into a hole in a board, and she’s in the outhouse.

[Thomas]
I imagine it’s, she wakes up, and it’s just dark, and she stumbles her way into the bathroom, and she can’t find the taps because she’s not in now. She’s in then. There aren’t taps.

[Emily]
There wouldn’t be a separate bathroom. The pitcher would- and bowl, would be on the dresser.

[Thomas]
Right. She doesn’t know that. She hasn’t figured that out yet.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
She’s just in whatever the room was then.

[Emily]
The closet or something, in the storage room.

[Thomas]
Right. And she’s like, “What the? Is a bag of grain in here? Like, what’s going on?” She’s looking for the light switch. Can’t find it.

[Shep]
I think if we don’t see the transition, it will be more confusing for the audience. Although maybe that’s what we want to put them in her place because she is also confused at first.

[Emily]
I think you could do it either way. But I always like the confusion without explanation. And then, you know, she gets outside and you’re like, “Oh.”

[Thomas]
Right. There’s got to be some modern thing, like, oh, maybe there’s a tobacconist across the way, and they’ve got a neon sign, and it’s keeping her up at night.

[Shep]
I can’t hear “tobacconist” and not think of the Monty Python sketch.

[Thomas]
I don’t know if I’m familiar with this one.

[Shep]
“I will not buy this record. It is scratched.”

[Thomas]
That sounds familiar, but.

[Shep]
You don’t know this sketch? A guy goes into a tobacconist and he’s got a phrase book, and he’s trying to interact with the guy, and the guy’s like, “This is not a record shop. It’s a tobacconist.” And it’s like, “Oh, I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
The punchline, in as much as Monty Python has punchlines, is that the writer of the phrasebook intentionally wrote wrong phrases.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Thomas]
But anyway, so my point was that she could run out of the building, into the town square, onto the street and realize, like, everything’s dark, there aren’t cars, that neon sign isn’t there anymore. Like, what is going on? The street’s not paved. It’s just mud.

[Emily]
So is she transitioning from… Is she in the same location or is she back in the States and then goes to Ireland?

[Shep]
So the original pitch was that she was back in the States and then goes, but if she went over for the funeral and they gave her the Claddagh ring at that time, then she would still be there and she could transfer back at that time. And I think that also works and that you skip the explanation of how did she- How did she get to Ireland? None of this makes sense.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, forget the time travel part, but how does she move across the globe?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Don’t worry about it. Well, now you don’t have to worry about it because she’s literally in the same room.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. If we still have her wake up in the middle of the night, she could be woken up by her family in the morning and be confused then. Again, this might all be problems for the writers.

[Emily]
I think it is. I think she wakes up, she’s back in old-timey Ireland.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
And she’s sent away because she’s crazy now because she survived a fever and she’s not able to do her job anymore. And she talks weird and she says weird things.

[Thomas]
And she’s uppity.

[Emily]
And she’s uppity.

[Shep]
Yeah. That last one’s the deal-breaker.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right, well, we’ve established how she gets to where she is in the past, and we have the next step where she starts her new life as Charlie the surgeon in the city. We’re going to take a break here, and when we come back, we’ll figure out the rest of our story for Claddagh ring.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. Charlie has shown up to this mental institution. She’s dressed as a man, going by Charlie. She claims to be a surgeon or a doctor or something along those lines. So what happens? Do they happen to need a surgeon?

[Shep]
So is it just a mental institution, or is it like a general hospital?

[Thomas]
(Saluting) “General hospital.” I saluted. The audience can’t see. I did the-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It is full of scandal and love affairs and they have been an unexpected evil twin or two.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
I think facilities at that time would probably service both. I mean, you would have separate ones for sure, but I think you’d also have one large facility.

[Thomas]
Sure. There could be a mental patient wing.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
And then just like a sick people wing.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or maybe she doesn’t even end up working here. And they refer her to, “Oh, you’re a surgeon.”

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
“There is this other place that does surgery.”

[Thomas]
Oh, maybe she. Maybe she gets, like, a letter of introduction.

[Thomas]
Because that’s another thing in history where if you show up with a letter of introduction, everyone’s like, “Oh, good enough for me.”

[Shep]
That’s really good. Especially if the letter they wrote to them about her is ambiguous enough or that she can repurpose it to sound like, “This is my cousin Charlie, please take care of him.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
And then she’s like, “Here’s my letter of introduction. Please refer me to a place that does surgery,” and they write a new letter of introduction.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So she takes that, you know, she’s laundering her dirty letter of introduction for a clean one that can be referenced easily because it’s in the same town.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. This firmly establishes her identity as Charlie the surgeon.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So she gets this job at whatever hospital. She knows what she’s doing, but is maybe a little more particular than other surgeons because she’s more modern.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She knows things they don’t. Like germ theory.

[Shep]
I mean, I imagine they don’t just, like, start giving her a salary and put her to work. They have, you know, not like a job interview, but like a…

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Maybe there is a surgery coming up and they have her assist or have her do the surgery, and they are ready to assist if she has any problems.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I would say that there’s probably some patient and none of them have experience with this type of surgery yet. They’ve read about it in books, but they’ve never had a chance to practice it. And she’s like, “Oh, I’ve done it before.”

[Thomas]
It could even be the kind of thing where, like, “There’s no known cure.” And she’s like, “What?”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“This isn’t that complex of a surgery. I could do this.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And she’s like, “At a previous position, we had a similar case. We could try this.” And they’re like, “I guess, if you want to. What could it hurt?”

[Emily]
“It’s a dead person anyway.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Shep]
Because her persona is someone who is trained overseas or trained abroad-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Which will explain away some of her quirks and eccentricities.

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. “This is how it’s done in Denmark (or whatever).” Places that these people have never been.

[Shep]
Right. Yeah. I mean, France is close enough to be an actual place that people could have gone to.

[Thomas]
That’s true. Yeah.

[Shep]
But different enough that a lot of people haven’t been there, but they’ve heard of it, they know it’s a real place.

[Thomas]
So she establishes herself as a competent surgeon.

[Shep]
Yes. When do we get to the romance?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I was going to say that needs to happen pretty quickly.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, I think this- This is like a quick montage maybe just to sort of, like, lay that groundwork of like, “Okay, she lives here now. She has money. Okay. This is what’s happening. Now onto the good part.”

[Shep]
Right. Well, so her romantic interest, is it a rival surgeon?

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Or is that too on the nose? Because if she’s spending most of her time at the hospital, I’m just trying to figure out who can she interact with a lot.

[Thomas]
Sure. Other doctors, definitely.

[Emily]
Yeah. She would be invited to other doctors’ homes for meals and social hours.

[Thomas]
Or to, you know, the gentleman’s club, but not the way that we- Not the gentleman’s clubs we have now.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah. I was thinking she would go to a club with them.

[Thomas]
Right. A men’s only kind of place. I don’t know that they necessarily need to be rivals because there’s already the roadblock of: they think she’s a man.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
Oh, no, they’re not rivals. Because he’s interested in her new-fangled ways. He’s one of the few doctors at the hospital that’s like, “That’s interesting. I’ve never thought of that.”

[Shep]
Oh, he’s young.

[Emily]
Yeah, because she’s also young.

[Shep]
He’s younger than her.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. Get it, girl.

[Shep]
So from his perspective, this is an older, more experienced surgeon. “I would be a fool not to learn from them.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah, that explains his motivation.

[Emily]
And he’s seeing the results. Like, he’s not stupid. He’s like, “Clearly this worked.” Even though the older, grumpier doctors are like, “That’s not how you do it. And you’re wasting valuable time and grumble, grumble, grumble.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So what’s this guy’s name, the love interest?

[Emily]
He’s a doctor, so he’s going to be of a higher class, which means he’s going to have a more anglicized name.

[Thomas]
Hmm. William?

[Emily]
Or Sean.

[Shep]
Which spelling of Sean?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It would still be the Irish spelling.

[Shep]
So Sean, the younger surgeon who is our romantic target.

[Thomas]
So I think we can jump right to the end. Do they get together?

[Emily]
How does that work? Because she’s not. It’s not really her body. Like, people have problems with people inhabiting other bodies. Like in Wonder Woman 1984.

[Shep]
Wonder Woman 1984. Yes. What they did was wrong.

[Emily]
Where they force the body to do things that the body’s owner would not necessarily consent to.

[Shep]
Yeah. Whether he would object or not, he didn’t consent. In fact, couldn’t consent.

[Emily]
That’s what I’m saying.

[Shep]
So it’s not okay.

[Emily]
So her body.

[Shep]
Her body, her choice.

[Emily]
Her body’s original occupant cannot consent to things, so we can’t make it dirty, is what I’m saying.

[Thomas]
Is she pursuing him or is he pursuing- He would have to be pursuing. Well, no, he couldn’t be pursuing her because she’s a man.

[Emily]
He can’t because she’s a man. Yes.

[Shep]
So they could be very good friends, like Alan Shore, Denny Crane friends. If you’ve seen Boston Legal. Have you guys seen Boston Legal?

[Thomas]
No.

[Shep]
Oh, it’s William Shatner and James Spader. They get married at the end. They’re not gay, but they do love each other and they’re best friends. So this could be a situation where Charlie and Sean are friends. And Sean can lament he doesn’t get along with women. And, like, if only Charlie were a woman, that would be ideal. Maybe when they’re drinking and he’s had too many, you know, he could lament. Now he’s not. He’s not gay. He’s not coming out as gay. He just wishes that he could talk to women the way that he talks to Charlie. Or the original owner of the body is still in the body. Maybe it’s a voice that she hears in her head sometimes.

[Thomas]
And when they see Sean, the voice is like, “Get it, girl.”

[Emily]
Ha.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
What if Charlie sets- Basically, like, tees up the relationship, and then once she leaves the body and returns to the modern day, the original owner of the body is like, “Yes, this is a thing I want.”

[Shep]
See, that just feels like the movie is blue-balling me. You know, you set up this romance that can never culminate. I want to advocate for my idea that she talks to the host during the movie. Like, maybe it’s someone she talks to multiple times.

[Emily]
Like in the mirror or something.

[Shep]
In the mirror. Or just like in the room or whatever. And she can be overheard. People can walk in. There are plenty of humorous situations you can build on this premise of: she talks apparently to herself, but she’s really talking to the original body.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, that’s one of the reasons they sent her away, because they caught her talking to herself a lot.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So that all works into that.

[Thomas]
She hears voices, though.

[Emily]
Yeah. So this doesn’t have to make it into the episode, but so we’re talking about, like, a psychological threesome then, when they finally have the sex, because both women are into it, but they share one body.

[Shep]
Yeah. Do you show the sex scene in the movie? Is it that type of movie? And do you hear both of their voices?

[Emily]
I think that maybe we don’t need to have the sex scene.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
We could just have the romance and lingering looks and close calls and… Because he’s drawn to her. That’s a common trope in these things, when the woman is dressed as a man and the guy’s confused about his feelings because he’s drawn to her for some reason. But it’s a dude, and he likes chicks, and that’s weird.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So there could be lots of instances where he’s like, “I really want to touch your hair.” Or maybe she does that. She does that, like, touching the hair thing. And he doesn’t think anything of it till afterwards. He’s like, “Whoa, that was weird.”

[Shep]
Oh, maybe the host still controls the left arm and she does stuff.

[Thomas]
No, no, that’s gonna fuck up surgery.

[Emily]
I think just having them talk is fine, and we can still do the romance. But isn’t Charlie gonna end up heartbroken? Or she’s just attracted to him and then the original lady’s falling in love with him? I think we’re making it more complicated, to be honest. My brain’s having a hard time wrapping around.

[Shep]
I’m just trying to think of a way to circumvent the consent issue. And also it introduces potential avenues for humor.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Thomas]
We never really established what does Charlie need to learn. We never, I guess, nailed that down.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. She wanted to not romanticize the past. We just kind of skirted around that.

[Thomas]
And if anything, sort of romanticized the past a bit for her.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I don’t think we want her to fall in love with Sean because that’s terrible for her when she goes back to the present. If we’re trying to dissuade this romantic idea for her, then I almost feel like Sean needs to start off as this dreamboat. This is the guy she’s been fantasizing about for years. But then it turns out, oh, no. He’s like, kind of a dick.

[Shep]
He is a man of his time.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I’m just like, do we just see him having normal thoughts of his time? He’s, you know, he’s a doctor, which is-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Is a prominent position at the time. So he’s got, you know, ideas about the poors. And he sees women- because this is during the Enlightenment era. Ish.

[Emily]
Or just after. So there would be women who are starting to try and become more than just what they’re told in society they are. And he could just bitch about them and how this is wildly inappropriate. A woman is meant to bear children and take care of the home. And, like, he’s sincerely, like, full-on that.

[Shep]
So I want to come back to the host being in her mind. The host could be like, “That sounds great.”

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, “I’m all on board.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She’s like, “Yeah, I want a home. I want a house. I want a husband who can take care of me.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“All I’ve ever wanted were children.”

[Shep]
She is a woman of her time.

[Emily]
Right, Right.

[Thomas]
Sure. If they go over to Sean’s house, she’s like, “This place is great. This is way nicer than anything from the village.”

[Emily]
Maybe part of the thing she has to learn is not just not- Not romanticizing the past, but not looking down on other choices. Maybe since she is a doctor, she’s very like, “You have to.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“You have to want to do these things because then you’re just not fulfilling your life. You can’t be fulfilled in your life if you’re not a doctor or high power,” you know, “If you’re not girl-bossing it up out there, what are you doing?”

[Shep]
Right. “If you’re a stay-at-home wife, you’re enabling the patriarchy and are a traitor to other women.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right.

[Emily]
So maybe she has to realize that that’s a valid choice in life.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And that with the help of the voice, that would help kind of her learn that lesson around the same time. And then, then you could see her growth as a person.

[Shep]
How does she get them together after she’s gone? Because Sean, if he has feelings for Charlie, has feelings for Charlie, the surgeon who’s not going to be a surgeon anymore.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Or a man.

[Shep]
Nor a man. I mean, she was never a man, but.

[Emily]
Well, because she talks to herself sometimes, Sean could walk in on it and be like, “What the fuck?” And she could be like, “Oh, I miss my cousin Siobhan, whatever. And so sometimes I pretend she’s here and we have conversations. I think about what she would tell me to do in this situation. She was my best friend and my rock.”

[Emily]
“We were like,” or “My sister Siobhan,” or whatever. And then she could pass it off that way and then kind of talk about her a lot. And then, so at the end, obviously, a letter to him that Siobhan is arriving in the city. Oh, Siobhan’s there very quickly, and she’s got this beautiful dress that Charlie bought with her doctor money.

[Shep]
All right, what are we missing?

[Thomas]
How does Charlie get back into the present?

[Emily]
She takes the ring off. It’s the ruby slippers. It was: She had the power the whole time.

[Shep]
Oh, because I had her receiving the ring.

[Emily]
Does she give that…? I was gonna say she can’t give it to Siobhan because she’s in Siobhan’s body.

[Shep]
Right. But maybe she can put it on in the past and that completes the circuit and then she goes back to the present. So she’s not-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
She puts the ring on in the future and wakes up in the past and doesn’t have the ring. Because if she had the ring, you would experiment with it right away. Like, “I put it on and I’m in the past. I’m going to try taking it off.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. She’s wearing it in the past when she wakes up, and that’s the first thing she does. She tries to take it off. Nothing happens. And she’s not wearing the ring for the rest of the movie. And she leaves it in the village. That’s the excuse. She goes home as Charlie. Or she leaves the city as Charlie, returns to the village as Charlotte or Siobhan, whoever the body is that she’s inhabiting, gets the dress, gets the ring, writes the letter of introduction.

[Shep]
Sorry. If she- I know it’s a problem for the writers about how she got men’s clothes on the way to the city, but maybe if she stole them off a line, they’re, you know, farmer’s clothes. And on the way back, she’s much more wealthy. So she puts on the line like fancy clothes.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
So she comes back to the present, and then how does that lesson manifest itself? Yeah.

[Shep]
So if she had the friend that I talked about earlier, if she had that friend in the present, maybe she judged that friend for being a stay-at-home mom.

[Emily]
Oh, maybe that friend was like a nurse or somebody she went to med school with. Who-

[Shep]
Yeah. Someone she went to med school with. That’s how they met. That’s how, why they were friends.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They went through med school together. She became a practicing doctor and a surgeon, and her friend got married and became a stay-at-home mom. And she’s like, “You’re throwing your education away.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And her friend’s like, “But I’m… I’m happy. I’m happy with my life.”

[Thomas]
Right. “I’m super fulfilled.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“I didn’t know I wanted this until I had it. And I couldn’t go back to work. I wanted to be home.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So does Charlie leave in the middle of a fight? Like, they’re having an argument and she has to go to Ireland. So when she comes back, there’s still like that tension there and Charlie’s like, “No, don’t worry about it. I get it now. You’re right.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
And then a surgeon shows up at the present-day hospital and he looks like Sean. He’s a descendant of… I guess that would be her cousin at some level though, so never mind. Forget that.

[Emily]
They’re far enough apart at that point.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s not Kate & Leopold.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
It’s fine.

[Shep]
They cut that out of the released version of Kate & Leopold, so it’s fine.

[Emily]
I know they cut it out, but it was there, and that’s all that matters, in my opinion.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show about a Claddagh ring. Are you shocked we had the Gall, or did it go all the Way?

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Okay, okay. I have an alternate.

[Shep]
No, no. The alternates can only be worse.

[Shep]
Otherwise you would have gone with them first.

[Thomas]
Do we have our fingers on the pulse, or did we earn a one-finger salute?

[Shep]
That… See. Okay, I’m wrong. That one was better.

[Thomas]
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, where we also publish transcripts for our episodes, provide links to the references we make, have more information about the three of us, and let you know ways that you can help support the show. Emily, Shep, and I propose that you join us on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Shep]
“Propose.” Nice.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So my dad’s Irish. I texted him because he always wants me to learn Irish, Whatever.

[Shep]
And I’m like, what stories do you have of Claddagh rings? And he texted me back something in, I assume, Irish because it’s accented all over the place.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
I cannot read it. And because it’s on my phone, I can’t, like, hold- So normally when I see text that I can’t translate, I use the Google app on the phone and point it.

[Thomas]
Oh, right.

[Shep]
But it is the phone. I don’t know. I have no way of knowing.

[Emily]
Can’t you just copy-paste it?

[Shep]
Oh, yes! Yeah, you guys with your computer knowledge. Okay, hang on. Paste. Translate from Irish. It detects it correctly.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
(Laughing)
So there’s a lot of text and it has an exclamation mark at the end. And I had assumed this is like- “I’m so glad that you’re finally asking!” It says (through Google Translate): “Shame on you for not knowing who you are! Exclamation mark.”