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Ep. 136

Couch

08 September 2026

Runtime: 00:52:45

After their cruise ship sinks, a pair of strangers find themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean on a floating couch.

References

Corrections

Thomas and Emily said the monkey from Outbreak and the monkey from Friends were the same monkey. We double-checked this and… Probably? There’s decent evidence pointing that way, including some contemporaneous reporting from the mid-90s. But it gets messy fast. Animal actors were rarely credited, more than one monkey played the Friends role (did you know Marcel shows up in 8 episodes?), and the various sources out there don’t fully agree with each other (including some that contradict themselves). So we’re not saying we were wrong, but we’re also not as confident about it as we used to be.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
They have to come get the guys out of the capsule, right? So, like, that’s how they could get rescued. I think it should be something silly like that.

[Shep]
That’s very absurd. So, the capsule comes down, and the door opens, and it’s an ape inside.

[Emily]
And the ape says, “They did it!”

[Shep]
“Those fools.”

[Emily]
“Those fools!”

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey, there, Story Fans, welcome to Almost Plausible the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. Today on the show, we have Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Yeah, happy to be here, I guess.

[Thomas]
A lazy day for you, huh?

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And I’m Thomas J. Brown. Whether you call it a Couch, sofa, settee, Chesterfield, Davenport, or one of the many other words that describes what is basically a cushioned, high-backed bench, the one thing we can all agree on is that it’s the ordinary object we’ve chosen for this episode. So, Shep, Emily, do you prefer a firm couch that provides support or a soft one that you can just melt into?

[Emily]
In between. As a young person, I preferred the soft, squishy couches because I could just cuddle into them.

[Thomas]
Yeah, same.

[Emily]
Now that I’m old and I have pains-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
All over my body, I like a little bit more support when I sit down, but I don’t want it to be super stiff. I don’t want to be like I’m sitting at a doctor’s office.

[Shep]
Yeah. The couch that I have now is a hand-me-down from a friend who replaced it. And I know why, because the support on the inside is broken off. So, it is very soft. Some might say too soft. And I think it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s definitely a couch you can sleep on.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Shep]
It’s like a bed. It’s not very firm.

[Thomas]
The last time I went couch shopping, I wanted a firmer couch for my back because, you know, like you said, Emily, getting older. And I went to a whole bunch of different furniture stores, and one of the ones I went into, I told the guy, I said, you know, “I want a firm couch. Like, let’s start at the firmest and work down from there.” Right?

[Emily]
Sure.

[Thomas]
And so, he’s like, “All right.” And he shows me to a couch. And, like, I sit down. And within seconds, I’m like, “No,” like, immediately I can tell. No, this couch is not firm enough. And he’s like, “Okay.” And so, he takes me to another couch and I sit down. Same thing immediately. I’m like, “Nope, this isn’t one.” And he’s like, look at me like, you just messing with me? And it’s like, I can tell immediately, like, I’m sinking too much. This couch is too soft. And like, all of their couches were just the super soft, crappy foam ones. I did not purchase a couch from that store.

[Shep]
Yep. When I lived in Japan, when I lived in an apartment, I had a tiny foam couch that you get in the mail-

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Shep]
That is not inflated. It doesn’t inflate like you pump air into it. It inflates like memory foam.

[Emily]
No, you cut at oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
And it was very comfortable, but it was so light that it would slide around just when you sit on it. But it also made it extremely easy to move or to pick up and vacuum underneath it.

[Emily]
Yeah, those boneless couches are a thing in America.

[Thomas]
Boneless couches.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s what they’re calling them.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
They’re a thing now in America.

[Thomas]
Or is it? That’s great.

[Emily]
Yeah, and they come in vacuum sealed, and yeah-

[Shep]
Yes. Yep.

[Thomas]
It is definitely fun, like, cracking those open and watching it all inflate.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
No, this episode is Couch and Emily, you are pitching first.

[Emily]
All right, I got one for you guys this week: A young broke college student brings home a couch he found on the side of the road. He’s just moved into a house with four other friends. Turns out the couch is possessed and begins eating the bodies and souls of his roommates and friends.

[Thomas]
Have you pitched this before?

[Shep]
I think that this was an actual movie.

[Emily]
Is it? Oh no.

[Shep]
Or, no, no. I think it was a chair.

[Emily]
I might have pitched it before, and it could actually be a real thing.

[Thomas]
Well, there’s Death Bed.

[Emily]
Oh…

[Thomas]
And then Death Bed, I guess, was popular and spawned a bunch of other similar ones-

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
From what I recall. Anyway, I just like, I feel like this pitch is one we’ve heard before, specifically this one.

[Emily]
Maybe. I don’t know. I pitch monster horror things all the time. I tried to think of a serial killer one, but you can only fit so many bodies in a hide-a-bed.

[Thomas]
That’s just how he transports them. He’s always got a couch on the roof of his car.

[Shep]
There was a movie in 2018 called Killer Sofa–

[Emily]
There you go.

[Shep]
But it’s very clearly a la-z-boy. Like, on the poster, it’s not a sofa.

[Thomas]
Does it have a premise?

[Shep]
It’s a sofa and it kills.

[Emily]
Yeah, there you go.

[Thomas]
All right. No, we can work with this. Davenport of Doom.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Serial Sofa.

[Emily]
Give me one for Chesterfield. Come on.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I’m working on it. Hold on. Come back to me.

[Emily]
What do you have for us today, Thomas?

[Thomas]
I have: a couple of college roommates think they’ve scored big when they find a couch on the curb…

[Emily]
And it’s-

[Shep]
Hey!

[Thomas]
I think I’ve heard this pitch.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This is Emily’s pitch.

[Thomas]
So, haul back to their apartment. As they’re prepping for guests to come over for movie night, one of them slips between the cushions and deep into the couch, where he becomes trapped. As friends show up, they join in the effort to rescue him from his unlikely prison. And yes, Shep. I have seen Dave Makes a Maze.

[Shep]
I was gonna bring up-

[Thomas]
Or made a maze whatever it’s called.

[Shep]
Yes, yep, 100%.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I mean, this is basically that idea. It’s such a good movie.

[Shep]
Yep, it’s bananas.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Whatever you think it’s be, going in, it’s not.

[Thomas]
Yeah. This pitch is mostly just so that we can talk about that movie. Because I was like, “Oh, this is just like that movie. What a good movie that was. I should watch that again.” All right, my other pitch: In a city under martial law, a soldier-turned-courier takes an oddly well-paid job to move a single couch across town. Adding to his suspicion is the fact that every checkpoint waves him through, like the paperwork itself is magic. When the job goes sideways, he discovers why. Hidden inside the couch’s frame is the daughter of a political dissident. Now, the same protection that’s gotten them this far becomes the reason everyone’s hunting them.

[Shep]
So, Emily, we were talking earlier about The Human Chair–

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Which is an old Japanese story-

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
About a chair with a cavity in it that someone could fit into.

[Thomas]
I’ve heard of this.

[Shep]
Now, that’s a horror story about a chairmaker that crawls into the chair he made and enjoys people sitting on him. So, kind of very different.

[Thomas]
Horror or porno.

[Shep]
It’s, well, 1920s, so a little from column A…? The horror part of it is it’s a letter describing his actions was sent to a writer, and she realizes that he’s talking about the chair she’s currently sitting on.

[Thomas]
Reading the letter.

[Shep]
That’s the, yes, that’s the story.

[Thomas]
That’s pretty good.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, those are my pitches. Shep, let’s hear what you have.

[Shep]
A bunch of friends in New York hang out on a couch in a coffee shop. Like, between five and seven friends. Let’s say, let’s say around six friends.

[Emily]
Okay, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

[Emily]
Six, six friends. Okay, okay, I can see that.

[Thomas]
A lot of friends. I feel like we need an antagonist who’s like always trying to get into the group and they won’t let him. And he like maybe works at the coffee shop.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, and an Ebola monkey.

[Shep]
What?

[Thomas]
Marcel.

[Emily]
Marcel!

[Shep]
Yeah, what? Ebola monkey… What?

[Emily]
He’s the same monkey from Outbreak.

[Shep]
Oh, I didn’t know that.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s the same actor.

[Shep]
It’s-

[Thomas]
Yeah. Actor.

[Emily]
Am I wrong?

[Shep]
See, I watched Friends before, so I didn’t realize he was famous. It’s like when you go back and watch an old movie, it’s like, “Oh, there’s so many famous people.” They weren’t famous at the time.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s uh, yeah, that happened to me the other night.

[Thomas]
This is Giancarlo Esposito in every movie he’s ever been in.

[Shep]
Yeah, he was kind of typecast for a while-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And very different type-

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Than later. And then now he’s kind of typecast the other way.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So, yeah, he is a lot of fun to spot in things. You’re right. Anyway, here’s my real pitch: A ship sinks in the middle of the ocean, leaving a person stranded on a floating couch, rebuilding society with the other people on floating furniture that ebb and flow in and out of range.

[Thomas]
That’s a fun idea.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I mean, I feel like all the furniture would get soaked and sink very quickly, but-

[Shep]
It’s magical realism.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You don’t think about it too hard. There’s one where it’s a couple and they’re each on like la-z-boy chairs and they have a-

[Thomas]
I thought you were going to say there’s a couple and she’s on the door and he’s in the water.

[Shep]
There’s room on for- Anyway.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’ve got like a table, an end table floating next to them with a lamp that’s on. Like, don’t think about it. It doesn’t work logically. It’s magical realism. Anyway, which one of these are we looking at?

[Thomas]
I particularly like… I like your one and my one.

[Emily]
What? What? What’s wrong with mine?

[Thomas]
It was made a decade ago?

[Emily]
Yeah, it was made a decade ago. How many times have they made an Amityville movie? Like, come on, we could do it. It’s fine.

[Shep]
Amityville doesn’t count. Amityville are the movies they make when they’re testing the cameras. It’s just a default.

[Emily]
Amityville is just the demons of Amityville playing around with video cameras that get left at the house.

[Shep]
Yes. Yep. They’re all Amityville student films.

[Thomas]
I do, Emily, feel like yours and my first one could be merged together.

[Emily]
No, I, yeah, yeah. Mine doesn’t, I’m fully aware that mine is not great and already exists. The ship one I feel might, for my brain, and helping come up with stories, I just don’t know how much I could stretch that out. Like, I can see a little couple funny. “Oh, this would be funny if they come this way.” But I can’t see how I would build a cohesive story out of it.

[Thomas]
And since you’re canonically the only person on this podcast-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s entirely up to you.

[Emily]
Entirely up to me.

[Thomas]
You carried the whole last episode, but this one.

[Emily]
What- This is why said, it doesn’t matter because I don’t traditionally- On occasion, I do. But not traditionally.

[Shep]
So, my problem with the City Under Martial Law one is it turns the couch into a container.

[Emily]
But the couch is continuously in the story.

[Shep]
Is it?

[Emily]
Well, yeah, she’s still got hide in the couch.

[Thomas]
Well, I did have a thought that maybe the guy… So, I assume what his job is, is to, like, move goods around the city, and he has whatever permit he needs to be able to do that. He knows a lot of the guards at the regular checkpoints. But, you know, it’s a bit like how in Firefly, they’ve got a secret little compartment that the cops basically can’t find. Same thing here. He’s got a secret compartment, so he can maybe hide her in there, and then the couch is just a couch. But you’re right. It’s more about her and not so much about the couch.

[Emily]
That’s never stopped us before.

[Shep]
I mean, we have done episodes where it’s just a launching point-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And we didn’t really stick to whatever.

[Thomas]
Right. The thing about yours, I guess, is it doesn’t have to be a couch. It could be a pair of armchairs. It could be a door.

[Shep]
It’s a double-decker couch and it’s made out of Legos.

[Thomas]
Oh, I, my first thought was “double-decker couch”. Well, which one do we want to do? What do we think has the most story potential, the best conflicts?

[Shep]
They all have the same story potential because it’s just whatever we can come up with, which is limitless.

[Thomas]
That’s true. I think that movie’s already been done, actually.

[Shep]
And a TV series. So, Dave Made a Couch and the ship both have magical realism elements to them.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
So, I can’t use that to, like, because I prefer magical realism.

[Emily]
To decide.

[Shep]
That’s what I like.

[Thomas]
All right, so we’ve got it down to those two.

[Emily]
No, yeah.

[Shep]
Well, then I did my step. Now you two need to figure out between those two.

[Emily]
So, what is the big conflict in the floating couch? Is it just them trying to get home? Because you say they’re rebuilding society. Are they just rebuilding society while they float away? Is the world flooded?

[Shep]
I think that you’re asking- everything that I’ve thought so far was in the pitch. You know, I don’t have the whole thing plotted out. It’s magical realism. It’s a person. I don’t even have the gender of the main character-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Figured out. It’s just the ship wrecks. It goes down. And they wake up and there’s a floating couch and they get on the floating couch and they’re like, “Oh, now what do I do?” It’s, you’ve got survive. Well, how do you survive in the middle of the ocean? You haven’t drowned, but you don’t have water. You don’t have food. It’s not like the couch came with a paddle and you can start-

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Paddling west.

[Thomas]
I could see later on in the film, like, as you’ve got a bunch of people together, maybe they end up in the North Pacific garbage patch. And so, they’re, like, cobbling things together with what they find, and they end up building, like, an island that they’re living on, that’s just sort of slowly rotating in the gyre. Yeah.

[Shep]
In the gyre. Yeah. Well see, I like that.

[Thomas]
I don’t know how we get to that point, but I think that’s a funny image. And then eventually somebody, like, finds them and they’re like, “Do you guys need to be rescued? Like, what do we do? We can take you back.” And they’re like, “Eh… This is pretty good. We a got a, we got a good thing going here. Don’t have to pay taxes.”

[Emily]
“Food comes to us.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I think that the plastic island already exists before they get there.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And, like, the couch washes up to the island, but they can’t get on the island. They don’t have a visitor’s permit. You know, no one there will vouch for them.

[Emily]
Nobody has, yeah, they don’t have a passport.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They don’t-

[Thomas]
There’s already a population living on the island.

[Shep]
Yes, there’s already a population living on the island.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
We’ve got to keep the main character on the couch, otherwise it stops being about the couch.

[Thomas]
I mean, that solves the food and water crisis because whoever’s living on the island, they’ve got that figured out. So, we can just hand wave that away. That’s done.

[Shep]
Yeah, but they don’t get to live on the island, so they still got stay on the couch. And what do they do? What service can they provide to trade for food and water?

[Thomas]
Oh, they don’t want to give away their couch.

[Shep]
Someone on the island needs help setting up their big screen TV and the person on the couch knows about, you know, electronics or whatever.

[Thomas]
Is the island getting, like, Amazon drone deliveries?

[Shep]
Someone, like, takes their thing out of the package and then throws the package into the water.

[Thomas]
They, like, flatten out the box and, like, patch a hole in the wall.

[Shep]
I- So, I kind of want to do this one now. You’ve-

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think we’re on the path for this one, so-

[Shep]
It’s gotten to the absurd stage-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Which is what I like.

[Thomas]
Yes. Okay, so we know that’s where they’re going to end up at some point.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Maybe that’s either the first act starts at the island or that could be the mid-second act turning point.

[Shep]
No, it’s got, it can’t start at the island.

[Emily]
No, they, it starts on the ship.

[Thomas]
Sorry, the second act starts at the island.

[Emily]
Oh, okay, okay.

[Shep]
Okay, okay.

[Thomas]
I mean, sorry, I misspoke. But either the beginning or the middle of the second act, I feel like, is where the island comes into play.

[Shep]
How much island focus do you want? Like, if it’s going to be a big thing, then you introduce it early. But if it’s just going to be a small thing, you don’t want to introduce it too early.

[Thomas]
I feel like it would work well as the mid-second act turning point because it could be a thing they see in the distance. They see that there’s an island and they’re like, “Oh, we’re saved.” And they’re spending a couple days, like, trying to paddle toward it or whatever, make their way there. And then they roll up and it’s a big garbage island.

[Shep]
You keep saying “they”. Is it more than one person?

[Thomas]
Oh, I sorry. I imagine a couple on the couch so that they have people to talk to.

[Shep]
Ah!

[Thomas]
It’s not just like a guy talking to Wilson.

[Emily]
I imagined that they were floating with the other furniture people.

[Shep]
I like the idea that it’s a couple, but I don’t want them to be a couple yet. It’s now a rom-com. So-

[Emily]
Of course.

[Thomas]
So, it’s a magical reality absurdist rom-com. I’m loving it.

[Shep]
A magical reality absurdist rom-com! When have we done one of tho-? Oh, twelve times already? Twelve?

[Thomas]
Oh, there’s got to be a washing machine on the island.

[Emily]
I was gonna say that, yes!

[Shep]
Okay, so he sees, it’s a he, he meets a woman on the ship before it sinks.

[Thomas]
Yes. Right. Any characters that we want that are ship people, we look- meet all of them.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Right. There’s a buffet or there’s a dinner, you know, the ship, cruise ship entertainment, whatever.

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And so, it’s all the people at his table that he encounters later in the water.

[Thomas]
Hmm. Is there some person who has, like, put food from the buffet in their pockets?

[Shep]
Yes!

[Emily]
And purse.

[Shep]
100%.

[Emily]
There’s a little old couple that have-

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And maybe he sees her. She’s, like, sneaking it into her purse, and he’s like, “This is always here. This is a 24-hour buffet. What are you doing?”

[Shep]
That’s what he’s saying to the girl that he met that he likes. They’re at the table. They’re people watching.

[Thomas]
That’s how they’re flirting.

[Shep]
Yeah, so they see the old couple stealing food from the unlimited 24-hour buffet-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And they’re like, “That’s ridiculous. Ha ha ha. How silly.” And then later when they’re starving, and then they see the couple and they’re the ones on the la-z-boys.

[Thomas]
Perfect.

[Emily]
They’re eating some shrimp cocktails.

[Shep]
Right. They’re not suffering. But, so, the reason that it’s all people that he meets is you don’t, it makes it unclear whether any of this is happening at all-

[Emily]
Mm hmm Yeah.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Or if it’s just a fever dream-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s hallucinating.

[Thomas]
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
That DMT blast before you die.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Man, we reference The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge so frequently. Have you noticed this?

[Emily]
That’s a really good story/short film.

[Shep]
Okay. So, he’s on a cruise ship. Do we want to establish that he’s single? Is this a cruise ship for singles? No, that the old people are a couple.

[Emily]
No, because they’re a little couple. No, yeah, he’s single. What cliché do you want to throw out there?

[Thomas]
He’s got to be, like, running away from something, right?

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Like, something went bad. Maybe this, maybe he recently, like-

[Emily]
This was his honeymoon cruise.

[Thomas]
Maybe not honeymoon cruise, but-

[Emily]
She cheated on him, so he’s alone.

[Thomas]
They had, him and his ex, had this planned and he had paid for it. And yeah, they broke up and he’s like, “Well, you know what? I need to get away from everything. I’m going to go on this cruise.” So, he’s already trying to run away from something. So, when they get to Garbage Island, he’s like, “I could live here.”

[Shep]
Right. And they’re like, “No, you can’t.” It’s…

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
How long after the boat sinks until we see her again. Because I imagine it’s just him.

[Thomas]
Well, whose couch is it? Does he wake up on a door and she’s on the couch and she invites him onto the couch? Or is he on, does he wake up on the couch and she’s, like, treading water somewhere and he’s like, “Oh, come here,” help her up onto the couch?

[Shep]
So, I didn’t imagine that he woke up on the couch. I imagine he woke up in the water and sees the couch and swims to it and gets on it.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, like it’s his couch-

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Right? It’s quote unquote “his” couch.

[Thomas]
So, then after he’s on the couch, he sees her.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe she’s on a door.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
And she’s like, “Come over, get on the door. There’s plenty of room.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
And he’s like, “It would, it would sink. It would, like, there’s, it’s room, but the buoyancy is not there.”

[Thomas]
Is that-? They’re, like, floating next to each other for a while talking-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And he has not invited her onto the couch. And she’s like, “Hey, there’s plenty of room on my door.” Like, she’s clearly fishing for an invite onto the couch.

[Shep]
Fishing! Sorry.

[Thomas]
And he’s like, not quite picking up on it. He’s like, “What? No, the door would sink. Like, that’s crazy. Didn’t you ever watch Titanic?” And she’s like, “Oh, yeah.”

[Shep]
Yeah, I like that. He’s just not self-aware enough to realize what she’s doing.

[Emily]
Did they attach the door though? This is, I just want to see this where they have it like attached to the bottom of the couch. So, now they have a floor.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. They haul the couch onto the door.

[Emily]
Yeah, so now they have a little, just a little floor thing, and then they can get a little rug. They could slowly collect a minimal amount of furniture, like a coffee table and a rug.

[Shep]
So, how absurdist do you want this magical realism?

[Thomas]
Rather.

[Shep]
Because I imagine that eventually she’s using the door as a door. Like, what is it attached to? Why is it opening and closing? Don’t think about it.

[Emily]
She storms out in the middle of an argument.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
There’s got to be like a length of rope that they have for some reason so they can start lashing things together. Maybe when the older couple with the food comes, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, let’s tie all of our furniture together.”

[Shep]
Does the older couple stay with them, or is that just a passing through? Like, they don’t.

[Emily]
I think that, okay, so I would find it funnier if the young couple or the two young people are like, “Hey, let’s band together.” And they’re like, “Oh, no, dear, we’re good.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“We’ll see you back home. Bye now.”

[Thomas]
And then cuts to the old people so we can hear what they’re saying. And she’s like, “He’s just trying to steal our shrimp.”

[Emily]
Yeah, something ridiculous.

[Thomas]
“Paddle away, George.”

[Emily]
“We can’t afford to support them and ourselves.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so the old people represent the boomers-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And they’ve taken all the resources.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
They’re in denial about the ship having sunk.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes, 100%.

[Emily]
“It’ll come back and pick us up in a couple hours. You’ll see. It’s fine.”

[Shep]
Oh, they’re just talking about the upcoming schedule for the cruise ship. Like, “Oh, at three o’clock, there’s going to be ballroom dancing.” They’re using the la-z-boy recliner arm to. to-

[Emily]
As the oar.

[Shep]
Well, they pull it and-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The feet kick out and-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It propels the chairs.

[Thomas]
That’s funny. I like that visual a lot. Well, I feel like the story is shaping up pretty well. What do you guys think?

[Shep]
We’re just starting. Is this-?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, we’re at the midway point. Oh, crap.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, we’re getting a good start to this story.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I think we’ve got-

[Thomas]
I would say sofa so good.

[Shep]
(Pained groan) Why? Why did we let him keep talking?

[Thomas]
Well, let Shep take a little break after that pun, and we’ll take a break too. And when we come back, we’ll figure out the rest of our story-

[Shep]
I’m not coming back.

[Thomas]
For a Sofa.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right. We are back. The older couple has just rowed away on their la-z-boys leaving our couple alone, or not a couple yet.

[Emily]
No, we need to ship them first.

[Thomas]
Hey!

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
I can do it sometimes too.

[Thomas]
Somewhat cruel, Emily, considering their current situation.

[Shep]
Too soon!

[Thomas]
So, do they become… Do they start dating on the couch, I guess is my question? Are there-

[Shep]
No, no!

[Emily]
Well, I mean, they’d have to. Oh.

[Shep]
No, no, no. It’s a rom-com-

[Thomas]
Ah, you’re right.

[Shep]
They can’t start dating until the end because it’s a movie. You pretend that means they’ll be happy together forever. They’re in the flirting stage. They’re not a couple.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I mean, usually in a rom-com they would have an antagonistic relationship, even mildly, at this point.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, at this point, yeah.

[Shep]
That’s why they have the fight and she sets up the door and goes through it and slams it behind her.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And where is she?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We just see this door next to the floating couch. So, if you just see from his perspective, you don’t see what she’s doing on the other side. He can go up to the door and knock on it and talk to her through the door.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
She can talk back through the door. But you don’t see her. You don’t see what’s on the other side of the door. She hasn’t invited him to her side of the door.

[Thomas]
What’s he standing on?

[Shep]
Why are you bringing up these questions? It’s magical realism.

[Emily]
The floor that they built they put the couch-

[Shep]
The floor that just exists under the couch and is holding up the door.

[Emily]
You know, because the couch was bolted to the deck, in that particular room on the-

[Thomas]
Ah, there we go.

[Emily]
So, it’s just a big chunk of floor.

[Shep]
So, that would be great as an explanation at the end when you see the couch out of the water and see that it has this platform underneath it that previously had never been seen.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, because the couch sinks it down, so they’re just still kind of-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, you would never see it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. I like that.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
That’s funny. Do we ever see them standing in the water, so their feet are like a couple inches in the water? And you’re like, “What are they standing on?”

[Shep]
I think that you only ever see them like from higher up-

[Thomas]
Waist up or whatever.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay. Okay.

[Shep]
So, you don’t see where their feet are.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
But you can certainly wonder.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So, yeah, like, when he’s knocking on the door talking to her, it’s only waist-up.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Why did they fight, though? What caused the fight? So-

[Shep]
It’s a mandatory Hollywood fight.

[Emily]
Yeah, I know. What’s the misunderstanding? If they’re not dating, and he can’t have broken into her diary, listened to her sister’s voicemail, or, like, relive the day a billion times so now he knows everything about her-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like, where’s the conflict coming from? He didn’t do it on a dare-

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
He’s not being paid so he can get his inheritance.

[Shep]
You are gonna mess up the references on the website so badly.

[Emily]
These are just tropes. We don’t have to reference anything specifically. I will-

[Shep]
Okay, so I specifically won’t mention the names of the movies then.

[Emily]
No, no.

[Thomas]
Not unless one of you wants to email them all to me. I’m not dealing with that. Don’t forget, though, that this isn’t their big fight. We’re still in the first act.

[Emily]
Okay, this is just a minor fight.

[Thomas]
Or yeah, we’re still in the first act. Or the second act, probably the end of the first act is the ship sinks. So, we’re in the beginning of the second act at this point.

[Emily]
Okay. So, they’ve only been on the couch together a couple days.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, the beginning of the second act is just the new reality, the new normal, which is floating on a couch in the ocean.

[Thomas]
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Where are you going to get water? Where are you going to get resources to survive?

[Thomas]
Oh, suddenly you need all this realistic stuff like food and water.

[Shep]
Well, it’s going to be a thing that’s a concern for him, but maybe not a concern for her.

[Emily]
She’s just like, “I don’t know, it’ll show up.”

[Shep]
It’s one of the things they argue over. Like, she is certain the universe will provide.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And he’s like, “That’s not realistic.”

[Emily]
Okay, so it’s that couple. It’s Dharma and Greg.

[Shep]
It’s Dharma-

[Thomas]
It’s Dharma and Greg!

[Shep]
And Greg.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Oh, you have painted a picture. Well, now it’s going to make the rest of this very easy because these, these archetypes are so standardized.

[Emily]
Yes, yeah. She’s just, like, “I don’t know, it’ll show up.”

[Thomas]
And then it starts raining, and he’s like, “This proves nothing.”

[Shep]
Yep. So, what was their fight? She wants him to come with her and her beliefs that everything will work out. And he won’t.

[Emily]
Well, he can’t.

[Shep]
And she doesn’t want to be with him because he’s so negative. Like, she was having such a good time, but he’s got to be such a wet blanket that it’s bringing her down. So, she goes to the door and slams it.

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. Maybe she’s just trying to stay positive. Like, she’s not an idiot. She knows that this is a rough situation to be in.

[Shep]
Right. But, like, being negative isn’t going to fix anything.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
No, it’s just going to make you more miserable.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so, he doesn’t see the value in doing that. It feels, like, performative to him, perhaps.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He’s too stuck in reality.

[Shep]
Right. This is a difference in perspectives where they really can’t meet in the middle because their ideas are exactly opposite from each other.

[Emily]
And I think this lends to that ambiguity of whether this is all a fantasy or this is real, you know, that magical, yeah, that you were talking about earlier, Shep, of not knowing. I mean, it’s not important, but you always wonder.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Because if he’s like, “No, it’s not, that’s not realistic. That’s not how the world works. That’s not how physics works.” And then-

[Thomas]
And then in the distance, they see an island, and she’s like, “Ha ha! Told you.”

[Shep]
Well, I think that she’s gone when he sees the island.

[Emily]
Is she still on the other side of the door or has she swum off somewhere else?

[Shep]
She’s not on the other side of the door.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Like maybe he even breaks down the door and she’s not there. And that just like for him, is he hallucinating? Is anything real? The door is here-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
But she is gone.

[Emily]
And it was locked. It took a little effort to open it.

[Thomas]
We gotta have a scene where he’s trying to peek through the keyhole because he could just look around the door.

[Emily]
Right, right, right.

[Shep]
Right, she stops responding. He’s concerned. So, anyway, he sees the island, paddles to the island, eventually gets there, runs into border patrol, I guess.

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
Like how-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I don’t know how you want to set that up.

[Thomas]
I mean, if you’ve got a small enough community, they would all know each other.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
But otherwise, why doesn’t he just go on land on the island, not land?

[Emily]
Their Coast Guard, yeah, their Coast Guard stops him.

[Shep]
Right, there’s a little plastic boat that comes around.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s one of those kid boats.

[Thomas]
It’s one of it’s a kid’s swimming pool.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
And there’s guys, a couple of guys with paddles.

[Shep]
Right. With a siren. So, anyway, he talks them into not letting him live there, but like, come on to trade skills for resources-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Whatever we decide his skills are, that would be absurd in this island community.

[Emily]
Is their Wi-Fi down and he needs to help?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
He’s he works in IT.

[Shep]
He’s a, he’s an IT guy. Yeah. He just turns it off and back on again. Anyway, she is also already on the island.

[Emily]
That’s what I was going to say. I want her to be there and him like, “How did you get here?” I mean, he doesn’t have to ask that, but I want, like, the audience and maybe a look on his face of, “How did you get here?”

[Shep]
“We were fighting. I took a passing dolphin, took me to the island.”

[Thomas]
Oh. Depending on how we want to play that, it could be, he could be like, “How did you convince them to let you come on the island?”

[Emily]
Yeah, there you go.

[Thomas]
Like, so you think that he’s going to ask, “How did you beat me here?” And that’s not what he’s thinking. He’s thinking, like, “I had to convince those guys.”

[Shep]
Yeah, what are her skills that-

[Emily]
They are a mostly male-dominated society and they need women.

[Shep]
See, that takes a very unpleasant turn.

[Emily]
But in a funny way.

[Shep]
I don’t think it’s funny.

[Emily]
But in a funny way.

[Shep]
You know, the funny way that being a lone woman trapped in the middle…

[Emily]
No, I didn’t say she was alone.

[Shep]
It’s because of the implication.

[Thomas]
She could be a chiropractor.

[Shep]
Yeah. Wasn’t that Dharma’s…

[Thomas]
Was it? Oh, shit.

[Emily]
No, she was a yoga instructor.

[Shep]
Yeah. So, chiropractor works.

[Thomas]
Or, uh, what’s the pins?

[Emily]
Oh, acupuncture.

[Shep]
Acupuncturist.

[Thomas]
Yeah, acupuncture. I like them putting dirty pins in that they’re just, like, gathering from-

[Emily]
Gross!

[Thomas]
Okay, chiropractor, chiropractor.

[Shep]
We’re imagining very different garbage patch islands. I’m imagining that it’s made of garbage, but they behave like everything’s clean.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Shep]
Like, it’s not dirty pins. It’s clean needles.

[Emily]
They’ve sanitized.

[Thomas]
Oh, they ordered them from Amazon. That’s right.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s true.

[Thomas]
I forgot.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Before the Wi-Fi went down.

[Shep]
Yeah. So, it’s just a society on this garbage patch island-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
From other ships that have sunk. Like, there’s a spot in the ocean where all the ships are sinking and nobody’s doing anything about it.

[Emily]
Oh they don’t notice. It’s one or two a year, and there’s-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
The maritime law is so confusing. It’s whose jurisdiction is it to look for these boats?

[Shep]
Look, what would you want? Do you want big government telling you where you can sail your ships?

[Thomas]
Is there a scene at the beginning or in like within the first act when they’re first getting to know each other? And he says something about, “Oh, I almost didn’t come on the cruise. I’ve been kind of nervous about it.” And he references a person who fell off a cruise ship or disappeared at sea or something like that. And it turns out that guy’s living on this island.

[Emily]
Yes, he’s the president.

[Thomas]
He’s president, he’s a mayor of Garbage Town.

[Emily]
They don’t call themselves that. They have more respect.

[Thomas]
I was going to say, we need a good name for it.

[Shep]
Recycleville.

[Emily]
They’re not, it’s not garbage. It’s not litter to them. They are doing the Lord’s work in reducing and reusing.

[Shep]
They’re not really reducing.

[Emily]
They’re reusing.

[Shep]
They are reusing.

[Thomas]
The Republic of Gyrestan. I don’t know.

[Shep]
Yeah. Freedonia.

[Thomas]
Freedonia.

[Shep]
“I thought there would be free donuts.” No.

[Emily]
The Constitutional Polyurethane. I got nothing else for that.

[Shep]
Polyurethane… Polynesian… Like, there’s almost something there.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Emily]
Yeah, there’s almost something there, and it could be a Constitutional, a Confederate Constitutional Polyurethane… I don’t know.

[Shep]
Okay so the island doesn’t really need them-

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Or any resources or anything. That’s why they won’t let newcomers come and stay on the island permanently. It’s, you can visit temporarily if you have a skill that no one else has, but then you got to go. So, I think this is where they both have a, you know, let’s say a three-day pass for the island.

[Emily]
They need some labor done. The extra hands are good.

[Shep]
Right. So, each one is doing different jobs every day. So, he is trying to convince her to join him again on his couch when he has to leave, and she is hesitant. How does he convince her to join him for the rest of the journey?

[Emily]
Is this a moment? Have they established a relationship enough that he would say something about not being able to go it alone? Maybe not quite like, “I need you. My life is nothing without you,” but more of a-

[Thomas]
They could be taking lessons from being on the island, right?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, look at what all of these people have accomplished together.

[Emily]
Right. He could do that with convincing that neither one of us going alone is gonna be as good as us going together. Yeah, we could probably both survive. I know that’s what you’re gonna say. Yes, but we’re gonna thrive better if we’re together. Why survive when you can thrive?

[Shep]
I think I want to introduce a Steve at this point.

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Shep]
And he is also visiting the island temporarily.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And his couch is bigger.

[Emily]
It’s a pull out.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but our main guy’s couch is firmer?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
A little deeper, a little wider.

[Shep]
Yeah, Steve’s couch has that L bend-

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Shep]
At one end.

[Thomas]
It’s a sectional.

[Shep]
It’s a sectional. So, Steve is on the island and he’s trying to get a harem going. He’s got several women that he’s trying to woo-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
And she’s one of them. And it’s not clear who between the two she’s going to pick.

[Emily]
What does Steve have- Because she’s not a dumb person. What does she see in Steve that would persuade her to go with him?

[Thomas]
I think it’s just more that she’s upset at our main character, who, by the way, doesn’t have a name.

[Shep]
One, Steve asked her to join.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Which our character, what- I don’t want to call him Roger because then I have Steve Rogers in my brain. Okay, I want to call our character James-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
After James Cook, the British explorer.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Ah, okay. And then what’s her name? Amelia.

[Shep]
Amelia.

[Emily]
Too soon.

[Shep]
Too soon? I really like Amelia now that you’ve put that in my head.

[Thomas]
At some point, she sees coconut crabs and she’s like, “Watching you guys.”

[Shep]
What?

[Thomas]
I saw a thing that there was speculation that her body was devoured by coconut crabs.

[Shep]
Ah, that might be too deep of a cut, so it’s perfect.

[Thomas]
As we’ve previously established.

[Shep]
Yes. I like Amelia because she was lost at sea.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This all fits-

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
And you don’t have to, like, that’s enough of a reference, just the first name.

[Thomas]
So, we have James and Amelia.

[Emily]
James and Amelia.

[Thomas]
So, what’s Steve’s big selling point? He’s got a larger couch.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
He has a larger couch, and he’s outgoing-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And fun to be around and positive, like the things that Amelia was complaining that James isn’t.

[Emily]
But is he reckless?

[Thomas]
I mean, it could be the case that Steve presents an attractive option for her, but then the time comes for them to leave, and Steve’s couch is covered in all the other women. And there’s maybe just hardly any room. So, he’s got a bigger couch, but it’s all full of other people.

[Shep]
But they’re all partying and having fun. It does look-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like it would be fun to be on that couch.

[Thomas]
Yeah, there does definitely need to be a thing that is said or that happens that was set up earlier where she realizes, “Ah, this is not where I should go.”

[Shep]
Now, does she join him on the couch when he leaves the island, or does he leave the island alone and she shows up later behind her door? I like it if she just knocks on the door at one point.

[Emily]
I like that too. I honestly like that too. Like, he’s sailing off, she’s gone off with Steve.

[Shep]
We don’t know. He has to leave first.

[Thomas]
Or they could be leaving at the same time, and he sees how much fun Steve’s couch looks. So, he walks to the other side of the island and leaves on his couch.

[Shep]
Yeah, he doesn’t even try to convince her. He’s like, “I know I’m not that fun. So, I’m sure she’ll be happier on Steve’s couch.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. So, then she shows back up on his couch.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
So, how long after he’s left does she knock on the door? Like, does he spend a night alone, or is it within a few hours of leaving the island and not, no longer being able to see it?

[Thomas]
I guess the immediate picture I have in my mind is he hears the knock on the door and he opens it and she’s there and he turns and looks back and the island is like off in the distance.

[Emily]
Yeah, decent clip.

[Thomas]
So, they’re a decent way, you know, distance from it, but it’s still visible. And so, he’s sort of like, “What? I thought you were on Steve’s couch.”

[Shep]
“You were leave without me? You weren’t gonna say anything? How old are you? Use your words.”

[Emily]
“I would never do that to a friend. We’re friends.”

[Shep]
“Oh, we’re friends? Uh.” Friendzoned in the middle of the Pacific.

[Emily]
Well, you know.

[Thomas]
Does Steve have, like, checkers, a travel checker set and she stole it?

[Shep]
I was thinking that he had a flare gun and she stole that.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
So, I have a dumb question. Is this, like, the big garbage island that really exists in the Pacific Ocean?

[Shep]
Now, there is no real garbage island.

[Emily]
No, shush. It is. I’ve- don’t destroy that urban legend for me.

[Thomas]
It is the home of the crabsquatches.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
It’s their native habitat.

[Shep]
So, there is a garbage gyre in the Pacific, but it’s all like sub, you know, it’s microscopic, it’s microplastic.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
And it’s under the water.

[Thomas]
Mostly microplastic, yeah.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s not like it’s all-

[Emily]
But there are big groupings of garbage in the ocean.

[Shep]
Not really.

[Emily]
Well, I mean-

[Shep]
Like, you can, you can see AI generated images of that on the internet, but they’re not real. Or they’re not the ones from the middle of the Pacific.

[Emily]
But anyway, the question was, the imagined, in this world, is there a known garbage heap like this to where that would be some nerdy fact? How nerdy is our friend James here? Would he know and then thus could navigate a little, at least know “Well, we’re going in this direction”? Or could the islanders say “Your best bet is to try and go…” you know, give them a direction? Because-

[Thomas]
“Follow the amazon drones.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re using the door to, like, hit the wind just right to push the couch.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’ve got a length of rope that they can use to adjust their door sail. That’s funny.

[Shep]
Their door-sail fin.

[Thomas]
Hey! Well, how do they get- do they get back to land? Presumably they do. And how do they get back to land?

[Shep]
So, they leave the island-

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And they don’t really have resources and they’re drying out. And so, they can talk more. Like, this is their time to communicate and, like, settle things because I’m sure they believe that they are both going to die. There is no rescue coming.

[Emily]
They don’t have any means of directing the couch one way or another.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They are up to the whims of the current. Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re going with the flow. Right. Which is what she wanted to do originally. And he didn’t. He was like, “We got figure out a way to sail in a direction to save ourselves.” And she’s like, “That’s impossible. We are so far from land. Even if you could pick a direction and sail in it, you would die before you got to land. So, don’t bother with that nonsense and trust in the universe.” Is that the message of this movie? Just trust in the universe that things will work out?

[Emily]
Trust the universe.

[Shep]
I don’t like that. I’m the James in this situation.

[Emily]
I am-

[Shep]
That is counter to my philosophy.

[Emily]
I’m the Amelia because I’m like, “You know, most of the time things work out. Statistically, things will work out.”

[Shep]
That’s survivorship bias.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So-

[Emily]
Statistically things work out.

[Shep]
And the people that it doesn’t work out for don’t make it into the statistics.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Shep]
So-

[Emily]
Exactly.

[Shep]
What, do they run into another ship that’s passing by, and she uses the flare gun and they rescue them? But it’s, this is after they’re dehydrated. Maybe he’s hallucinating at this point.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Okay, so instead of them running into another ship, let’s bring some more absurdity to this. They run into a-

[Thomas]
Talking dolphin. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, actually.

[Emily]
A space capsule. That has landed. And they…

[Thomas]
It’s landed in the wrong spot.

[Emily]
Yeah, but they know that this is, they will be rescued because they have to come get the guys out of the capsule, right? So, like, that’s how they could get rescued. I think it should be something silly like that.

[Shep]
That’s very absurd. So, the capsule comes down, and the door opens, and it’s an ape inside.

[Emily]
And the ape says, “They did it!”

[Shep]
“Those fools.”

[Emily]
“Those fools!”

[Thomas]
Does, like, a Russian submarine come up out of the water?

[Emily]
Yeah, see, I like this ending.

[Thomas]
Ending? This is, like, the end of the second act. What are you talking about?

[Emily]
So, well okay, so, if they did run into the capsule and this is an absurd thing, and the, you know, like, the helicopter or the boat comes to get the guys out.

[Thomas]
The Russian sub.

[Emily]
And they’re like, “Hey, what about us?” Well, if it’s a Russian sub, they just won’t understand them and be like, “Well, you’re not… We’re not bringing American spies onto our sub, obviously.”

[Shep]
I’ve seen Hunt for Red October. All Russian sub captains speak English.

[Emily]
Fine. They’ll say, “Clearly you’re American spies, and I’m not letting you on my sub.”

[Shep]
Spies? Yeah, we put a guy on a couch-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We put a spy on a couch in the middle of the ocean just in case a Russian sub happened to come by.

[Emily]
You would never suspect a guy on a couch in the middle of the ocean.

[Shep]
Right, that makes it the most suspicious. You understand?

[Emily]
Right. Exactly. Or if, like, a rescue boat came, they could just be like, “We don’t have enough room for you.” Or something even more absurd, because I’m just going to go absurd absurd, with this. They’re just like, “We don’t have enough life jackets.”

[Thomas]
No, I’ve got it here. So, they’re on the couch. They’re just, like, baking in the sun, you know, and we’re shooting it like the sun is so bright. They’re so squinty. But then there’s, like, something that’s, like, interfering with the sun. And they’re, like, trying to see like, what is it? And it’s the parachutes of the space capsule coming down. And they’re both like, “Is this happening?” And the space capsule crashes down into the water and they’re like “What?!” And then the Russian sub comes up and lifts their couch up out of the water so it’s, like, balancing on the front of the sub and it opens up and all these guys come out and they send a boat out, and it gets the guys the out of sub, or the chimp or whatever. Chimp is funny, I like that. And they bring it back to the sub-

[Emily]
And then just sink back down.

[Thomas]
And they go back in and the sub just goes back down. And they’re like, “What the hell just happened?”

[Emily]
“Was that it? Was that our chance?”

[Shep]
Put that earlier, put that even maybe before the island.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
And so, that’s just a thing that happens. I like the idea of a rescue boat coming and not having enough room to take them for whatever reason.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s picked up other people from the boat; the old couple is on there.

[Shep]
Right. This- We see the people that we established earlier, the captain from the cruise liner.

[Thomas]
Yeah. he’s like, “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll come back for you.”

[Shep]
Right. No, they have a room for one more.

[Thomas]
Oh~

[Shep]
And so, they, they’re like, “Oh,” he’s like, “You know, you can you can go. I understand,” whatever. And she’s like, “No, I’ll stay with you.” And so, that’s, like, her choice at the end.

[Thomas]
Do they leave them, like, food and water, though?

[Shep]
No, no, what? No. No food and water.

[Thomas]
We said our people were in dire straits.

[Shep]
Yes. Ignore that.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
Yeah, it was just for that one scene.

[Shep]
Yeah, they’re refreshed with the presence of the rescue boat.

[Emily]
Look, they’ve seen Waterworld. They know how to hydrate.

[Shep]
What does that mean? Why’d you say it like that?

[Thomas]
I know what you mean.

[Emily]
Because he filtered his urine to drink it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, does he have a urine filter?

[Emily]
Yeah. I don’t know.

[Shep]
Because if he doesn’t…

[Emily]
They build one out of like couch fabric. They set up a filter system.

[Shep]
The couch fabric is going to filter out the ammonia from the urine? Anyway, that’s the happy ending is she chooses to stay with him.

[Emily]
So, wait. No, no, let’s go back here. You’d rather us just not have any explanation of hydration than suspend your disbelief that they could magically make a filter out of the couch cushion and fabric?

[Shep]
Yes, because fabricating a filter would require science, and this is a world of no science.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I’m with Shep on this one.

[Emily]
It could have bad science.

[Shep]
It breaks the suspension of disbelief-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
If you’re, like, having to explain why or how anything is happening because nothing makes any sense. Although, so I said put the, put the Russian sub earlier, but you see the base platform that the couch is bolted to when it comes up on the sub.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So, maybe put the, the rescue ship earlier before the island-

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
And she chooses to stay with him, but then they have a fight.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Maybe they fight over that. Because he’s like, “Oh,” she’s like, “Oh, no, I’ll stay with him. Everything’s going to work out.” And then the ship leaves. And he’s like, “Are you insane? What are you thinking? You could have lived. We’re going to die.” She’s like, “That’s such a negative attitude.”

[Emily]
“How was that not the universe helping you out?”

[Shep]
Yeah. So, they fight over that. Then they go, they go to the island. And then later at the end, it’s the Russian sub.

[Thomas]
And does the, do the Russians intentionally, like, sink the capsule-

[Shep]
Sink the space capsule? Yeah.

[Thomas]
The space capsule.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, of course. Because they don’t want anybody to know anything’s going on.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Because that monkey just came back from Mars, obviously.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, someone’s got to salute the chimp.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Everyone salutes the chimp.

[Thomas]
Yeah, all the sailors.

[Shep]
Yes, they line up and salute, and then the guy carrying the chimp goes and gets on the sub. And then one of the soldiers turns and shoots into the capsule, and you just see it sinking and bubbling.

[Thomas]
Yeah, he’s got a flare gun. He shoots it right into the open door. It catches on fire and burns. It like, it tilts to the side and like sinks down into the water. Like, real fast, too.

[Shep]
Okay, we don’t have the, we don’t have the budget for any of this, so it’s fine.

[Emily]
I was gonna say, where’s the budget for the Russian-? Well, I mean, they are pretty cheap. Although this isn’t the early 2000s anymore. They need them now.

[Shep]
So, yeah, so the Russian sub leaves, and is that the end? It’s just the two of them on the couch going, “Well, I’m sure-“

[Thomas]
There’s got to be more, right?

[Shep]
“I’m sure the universe is gonna to-“

[Emily]
No, that’s not the end. I want them to, I want them to hit land and, you know, have your-

[Thomas]
I think they should. They’ve got to see land. I don’t think they should make it all the way back to land.

[Shep]
Oh, earlier you said that the rescue ship said something like, “Stay here-“

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
“We’ll come back for you.” Maybe this is how it ends is the rescue ship does come back.

[Emily]
Do they say, “We thought we told you to stay where you were.”

[Shep]
Yeah, what do you, why you…

[Thomas]
Yeah, the captain’s all mad. “What are you doing way over here?”

[Emily]
“We told you to stay back. Took us an extra day to find you.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, “We almost stopped. You’re lucky we found you. Good thing we were able to refuel up at the Constitutional Confederation of Polyuruguay.”

[Shep]
Yep. Worked it in there. I like that the refueling at the garbage island implies that the garbage island has a refueling station-

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And all these resources.

[Emily]
And they have boats and things that they could have-

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Okay, so them getting rescued is the end.

[Shep]
Yes. And this time it’s all the people that, like we said before, all the people that were previously established, the old couple and the cruise ship captain. And so, they’re sitting at a round table on the rescue ship-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And having a meal, but it’s like the rescue rations or whatever. But they’re sitting in the same places that they were sitting on the cruise ship.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s a callback to that.

[Emily]
And the old lady is taking like the crack, saltine crackers and putting them into her pocket.

[Shep]
Yes. yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. Now, does the rescue ship sink, and that’s the end of the movie? That’s the last thing is starting to go down.

[Emily]
No!

[Thomas]
And they’re like, “Oh, here we go again.”

[Emily]
No. Just they ride off into the sunset and there’s a kiss.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they got a kiss, like, out on the bow, right?

[Emily]
Yeah. “I’ve been dying to do this since the garbage island.”

[Shep]
Which one of them says that?

[Emily]
Who knows? They say it at the same time. They go “Jinx!”

[Thomas]
And then the ship sinks, because they jinxed each other. Does Steve get picked up by the rescue ship?

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Shep]
Does he? I think that he is unrelated because we don’t see him on the cruise ship-

[Emily]
Oh-

[Shep]
Earlier. So-

[Emily]
So, he’s just, we don’t ever see him again.

[Shep]
We don’t know what happens to Steve. That’s the setup for the sequel.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
If you want to do a sequel, you follow Steve and his harem.

[Thomas]
I mean, I think it’s fine that, like, they kiss somehow. I don’t know-

[Emily]
Yeah, they kiss at some point.

[Thomas]
The writers can work out the exact sequence, but we know they kiss on the rescue boat and it’s going off into the sunset?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
And then the drone shot gets further away and the credits start rolling.

[Thomas]
Yep. Yeah. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Couch. Did it sit well with you? Or are you left with a sinking feeling?

[Shep]
How did you know?

[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. Please take a moment and leave a five-star rating wherever you listen to the show. And if you leave a written review alongside a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, we’ll read it right here on a future episode. Emily, Shep, and I will see you again on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

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