Dice

References

• Community
  • Remedial Chaos Theory
• Donald Glover
• Jumanji
• Mandela Effect: Sinbad in Shazaam
• The Kids in the Hall
  • Love and Sausages
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Mazes and Monsters
• The Dungeon Master
• MythBusters
• Isekai
• Timer
• Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
• License to Drive
• Almost Plausible: Toilet Brush
• Almost Plausible: Fireworks
• Extract
• Radium Girls
• Almost Plausible: Chicken Noodle Soup
• The Office
• Newsies

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Thomas]
I think a good excuse for him to be there is if she needs help with something around the house that she doesn’t know how to do.

[Shep]
Oh, she needs a shit ton of help. No man has been to her house for almost a year. Do you know how many jars still have the lid stuck on them?

[Emily]
Do you know how many spiders are crawling around that bitch?

[Thomas]
There’s only three working light bulbs in the whole house.

[Shep]
That’s why women are into candles. It all makes sense now.

[Emily]
You found us out. You found the secret. We have no pockets. We like candles because we don’t know how to change a light bulb.

[Thomas]
How many widowed housewives does it take to replace a light bulb?

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. This episode’s ordinary object is dice, and helping me create a movie plot about dice are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
First, we need to figure out what the overall plot of our movie is, and that means it’s time for a pitch session. Shep, it’s your turn to pitch first.

[Shep]
Great. Okay, imagine this: Bunch of people hanging out, and someone has to go leave and pick up pizza. So they roll a dice to decide who goes, but that splits it into different timelines for every number.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s do that one.

[Shep]
Yeah, it was a great idea.

[Emily]
Community did it very well.

[Thomas]
Yes, they did.

[Shep]
I agree. It’s the best episode.

[Emily]
Do we get Donald Glover too?

[Shep]
Oh!

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, I’m in.

[Shep]
Yeah. We get Donald. Okay, how about this? A couple of kids playing a board game, and they roll the dice to decide determine what effects happen, but the random effects from the game happen in real life.

[Thomas]
That could be a good movie.

[Shep]
Okay, here’s one that possibly hasn’t been done yet…

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
So lucky fuzzy dice that hang off the rear view mirror in a car.

[Thomas]
I can’t think of a movie that already has that.

[Emily]
I can’t either.

[Shep]
So, like, picture a guy who doesn’t believe in luck. He’s like, an engineer or whatever, and his boss gives him lucky dice, and so he hangs it in his car because his boss can see his car in the parking lot, so he’s like, you know, whatever. But then it turns out, like, that dice, that particular color or whatever, the big fuzzy dice is like a gang symbol. And so rival gangs see him driving around with those dice, and then people come after him. And so it leads to a crazy adventure or misadventures, except at the end, when he is triumphant, it turns out that it was good luck that he hung those dice in his car.

[Thomas]
Like actual mystical luck? Or just like, “Oh, I’m glad I did that,” type of-

[Shep]
I mean…

[Thomas]
Like, had he not done that, he wouldn’t have gone on these crazy adventures that made things better.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
It’s just sort of a coincidence. Not like there was actual magical luck.

[Shep]
Well, it could go either way.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Emily]
He could be lucky because he’s is it to garrote someone and then survive.

[Thomas]
Wow, you’re starting early with a serial killer one.

[Shep]
That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
Well, your lucky fuzzy dice is very similar to one that I have: In the 1980s, a kid at an arcade wins a pair of fuzzy dice from a claw game. It’s not what he was going for. And some other kids tease him for winning such a lame prize. The kid somehow discovers that there was a genie living in that pair of fuzzy dice. 80s movie antics ensue.

[Shep]
Is the genie played by Sinbad?

[Emily]
Stole my joke.

[Thomas]
Yes, he should be played by Sinbad, since there’s not a Sinbad genie movie.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
Exactly.

[Thomas]
We all think there is. So let’s do that, finally. Let’s make one.

[Shep]
Yup. So let’s get in our time machine and go back to the 80s.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Another idea I had is that the main character works in a factory that makes dice, and he’s in love with one of the pip painters.

[Shep]
I’m on board. We have our rom-com.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I imagine it more like the sausages sketch from Kids in the Hall. All right. And my last idea here is dice literally made from bones. And the dice are cursed. Because ‘bones’ is like a nickname for dice. Right? Roll the bones.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So I like that idea.

[Emily]
I am for that one.

[Thomas]
So I don’t know what the story is.

[Emily]
There’s going to be a witch in it.

[Thomas]
I just like the idea of cursed bones that are dice.

[Emily]
I just know that. Yeah.

[Shep]
You can see the different genres that we like because I’m all about the rom-com and she’s all about the cursed dice.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Curse dice made from bones.

[Thomas]
I mean, it could be a rom-com. The witch and the Dungeon Master fall in love.

[Emily]
There you go.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Shep]
Dungeon Master?

[Thomas]
We’re talking about dice. There’s got to be a D&D one, right?

[Emily]
Yeah. Why didn’t you guys pitch D&D?

[Thomas]
So I kind of have an idea for that. Although, much like my cursed bones one, which I thought was more interesting sounding, I don’t really know what happens. But basically, the idea would be that D&D players get sucked into their game, and the DM is the bad guy of the story, and so they have to work together to survive and escape from the game.

[Emily]
I was going to say I feel like that’s an actual movie that already exists, but I think I am trying to morph that into that Tom Hanks movie that was very anti-D&D from the 80s, where he slays a bus with a sword.

[Thomas]
Oh right.

[Shep]
So there is a movie called The Dungeon Master where the guy that gets sucked in is a computer programmer, but it’s just one guy, and he’s an adult man. But it’s a very bonkers movie, if I’m remembering it correctly. It’s like seven short, unrelated films, all written and directed by different people because the Dungeon Master keeps sending him into these other worlds to challenge him.

[Emily]
Maybe we should just watch that movie and not record this episode.

[Shep]
So he has a thing on his arm. Like, his home computer AI ends up on his arm as a device. This is where the Mythbusters quote where he goes, “I reject a reality and substitute my own.” That is a line from this film. So the kids being sucked into the D&D game-

[Thomas]
It could be adults.

[Shep]
Or whoever, the people, the players getting sucked into the game. This is a popular genre in the Asian web books that I read. So isekai, or portal fiction. It’s not always a fantasy world. Sometimes it’s a game that they end up in.

[Thomas]
So it sounds like there’s a good audience for this idea.

[Shep]
I mean, it has been very popular in the past. I don’t know what the current trends are, but yes. So these people end up in this world, and they have a system, a D&D system. They can level up, and sometimes everyone can, but sometimes it’s just them. Like that’s their golden finger, as they say. That lucky thing, that special power that they get that makes them overpowered.

[Thomas]
So a bit like D&D anyway, where it’s like there are a lot of NPCs and you happen to be an adventurer, because not everybody can be an adventurer.

[Shep]
Yeah, right. Someone’s gotta tend bar.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Where else are you going to spend your gold?

[Thomas]
Someone has to sweep the inn. All right, Emily, those are my pitch ideas. What do you have for us?

[Emily]
I have a dice-of-fate type story where you roll the dice and the number that you get tells you the number of days to a significant life event. What that life event is is something we can decide together as a group. Marriage, love, death.

[Shep]
It’s how long until you meet your soul mate and they turn it into a clock and implant it in your arm.

[Thomas]
Why does that sound so familiar?

[Emily]
And then for my second one, serial killer.

[Shep]
What?

[Emily]
Shocking, I know. Uses the dice to determine which victim to kill next from his dungeon of captives.

[Shep]
Ah, he’s the dungeon master.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Emily]
He just goes around collecting D&D nerds and slowly kills them one by one.

[Thomas]
I’m trying to decide if it would be better or worse to be the person who just has been there for weeks and weeks because your number just never gets rolled.

[Emily]
Right?

[Shep]
“This is the worst escape room I’ve ever been in.”

[Thomas]
All right. Those are some good pitches.

[Shep]
Yeah. These turn out to be surprisingly good because I was like, “What hasn’t been done already?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So which one of these do we like?

[Emily]
Yeah. Which one do we like?

[Shep]
I like several of these. I like the people that go into the D&D game, although that’s been done. But I like that. I mean, there are interesting ways to do that. I like the romance one where the character is in love with the pip painter. Obviously, I like the romance one.

[Emily]
Romance one is good.

[Thomas]
Go on. I had two more that you can like.

[Shep]
I liked my lucky fuzzy dice one, but then in my mind, I’m like, “Oh, it’s just a sequence of events,” like most 80s movies, where it’s The Babysitter’s Dead or License to Drive or, you know.

[Emily]
Two of my favorite 80s movies. Seriously, like, you picked THE two. And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I love those movies.”

[Shep]
Right. But they are just a sequence of events. What’s the character growth? What’s the story arc?

[Emily]
I think we did a good job with our sequence of events movies, with Toilet Brush and Fireworks.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Well, Emily, which ones did you like?

[Emily]
I did enjoy the pip painter love story. I think that sounds super cute.

[Shep]
All we have is some kind of love story, end of-

[Emily]
Yeah. Some kind of love story, but I imagine that’s like this cutesy artisanal dice factory in like, a charming little town. I don’t know.

[Thomas]
It feels a lot like Extract, doesn’t it?

[Emily]
A little bit. Seriously, the cursed ice made of bones. That speaks to me. The 80s one and the lucky fuzzy dice are good.

[Shep]
The fuzzy dice ones.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Thomas?

[Thomas]
I mean, I agree with all of those. What would the story be for the rom-com? And what would the story be for the cursed bones dice?

[Shep]
Well, it wouldn’t necessarily be a com–

[Thomas]
That’s true.

[Shep]
It would be a rom, potentially, because all we have on here is MC works in a factory that makes dice.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s in love with one of the pip painters.

[Thomas]
That’s true.

[Shep]
There’s nothing about it being reciprocated.

[Emily]
Could we make him- Okay, so he works in a dice factory. Is he also a D&D player? Could we make it like he seeks advice from his D&D crew on how to approach her?

[Shep]
So he is a DM for his D&D group and he keeps putting them in situations where they have to talk to a woman so that he gets these ideas so he can try them out, but he never does it the way that they do it. As soon as it goes off script, he doesn’t know what to do. And it’s just a series of failed attempts.

[Emily]
Does the group eventually catch on and then, like, legitimately try to give him advice?

[Shep]
I don’t know.

[Thomas]
I don’t know if I can write that, because I feel like I’m in his position of, like, I don’t know what the fuck? Like, how do you approach a woman and start a conversation that you hope is going to lead to a relationship? I have no idea.

[Shep]
Well, start a conversation that you hope leads to a friendship first. Or don’t, because you’re old and it’s like, don’t waste time. Either this is going somewhere or it’s not. No, haven’t you seen the thing that people decide, like, within the first 8 seconds of meeting you, once they get that first impression?

[Emily]
Oh, shit. Really?

[Shep]
So just start by asking them out. Start as that’s the first thing.

[Thomas]
I guess that’s a good thought because if everyone’s being honest, we do base our interest in somebody largely off of appearance. And so if somebody doesn’t like your appearance and says no to going out with you, great. No more time wasted.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What was that? 10 seconds.

[Shep]
Exactly.

[Thomas]
Cool. Move on.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s Hollywood that has this fantasy of winning people over with your personality.

[Thomas]
Right. What genre of film is that that they do, where the people don’t like each other at first and then one of them wins the other one over?

[Emily]
Enemies to lovers.

[Thomas]
Trying to think. Not one that we like, though. Right?

[Shep]
Right, right.

[Thomas]
We don’t watch any of those.

[Shep]
Something else.

[Emily]
No, no, no.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Nothing comes to mind.

[Emily]
Totally different thing.

[Thomas]
So cursed bone dice.

[Emily]
Cursed bone dice!

[Shep]
Okay. Someone that works at a dice factory is in love with someone who draws pips on dice. Now, is this a sad story where, you know, because she keeps (mimes using mouth ‘pointing’ a brush)

[Thomas]
I was just thinking that-

[Emily]
Slowly poisons herself and dies at the end.

[Thomas]
Like the Radium Girls.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. Except it’s not radium. It’s just, you know-

[Thomas]
It’s like lead.

[Shep]
Yeah, exactly.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so do we want a funny movie or a moving movie?

[Thomas]
Well, a lot of our romance movies tend to be funny.

[Emily]
Let’s go for moving. We haven’t really done a l… I mean, we’ve done a handful of moving movies. Chicken Noodle Soup.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s the big one.

[Emily]
So yeah, it’s time to hit that market again.

[Shep]
Okay, so not the guy with the D&D group that asks-

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Okay, so this is just a regular guy who’s in love with this woman from afar. Why doesn’t he ever ask her out?

[Emily]
Is she with somebody else? Like dating someone else?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. She’s dating Roy, who works in the warehouse downstairs.

[Emily]
Damn it.

[Thomas]
It’s a good thing our female character isn’t, like, an artist or anything.

[Shep]
Hahaha.

[Thomas]
Shit.

[Shep]
So why hasn’t he asked her out? If he’s not doing anything, if he’s not pursuing her, I don’t want it to be because she’s with someone else. I want it to be because he’s shy or he has low self confidence and thinks she can do better than be with some factory worker or whatever.

[Emily]
She is a widow.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
Freshly widowed. Not fresh-fresh. Within a year. And he doesn’t want to ask her out because how is he going to live up to her dead husband?

[Shep]
Do they know each other?

[Thomas]
I don’t think so, because then our two characters would know each other relatively well. And I feel like the movie should be more about their discovery of their relationship.

[Emily]
I think him being shy and her having that tragedy is enough of a barrier for why he hasn’t asked her out yet.

[Shep]
Why would he know about her tragedy if he doesn’t know her?

[Emily]
They all had to sign the card.

[Thomas]
There was a card. Yeah. Is he fairly new? He hasn’t been there super long. They’ve never really interacted much. Presumably seen each other around and maybe said “Hi,” or something.

[Shep]
Yeah, I would imagine that he doesn’t really know her at all.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Like, he has to walk past where the pip painters workstation is, on his way to his section of the factory, so he’s seen her and it’s like love at first sight, but he doesn’t know anything about her.

[Thomas]
And that could be a good reason why he’s not asking her out. “I have no idea what her interests are.”

[Emily]
Does he ask a couple of the employees- Okay, so then he asks, “What’s her story?”

[Thomas]
“Oh, her? Her husband just died, like, six or eight months ago or something,” and so he’s like (awkward sounds).

[Shep]
Or they don’t tell him that.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
They just say, “Don’t bother her, don’t go out with her. Don’t bother. Just leave her alone.” And he’s offended because he think he’s not good enough or whatever.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
How long ago did her husband die? Because maybe everyone in the factory has been walking on eggshells, and she’s kind of sick of it. So it has not been a full year since her husband died, because we should have that anniversary happen.

[Emily]
Yeah. So I think eight months.

[Shep]
How long are they dating? Let’s jump ahead. How long do they date for? Because we have to have that anniversary overlapping.

[Thomas]
How soon into them dating do we want that to come into play?

[Shep]
Within the first month, because after that, they’re in an established relationship, so it’s got to be pretty early on.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s almost the anniversary of her husband’s death, and he’s new to the factory, and he asks coworkers, “Hey, is she single?” And they’re like, “Jeez, dude, no. Leave her alone.”

[Emily]
“Just leave her alone.” Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because it’s nearly the anniversary of her husband’s tragic death.

[Thomas]
And ever since he died, ever since she came back to work, everyone’s been treating her, like, with kid gloves type of thing, and that’s irritating to her. People aren’t treating her like a normal person, and that’s just extending the misery and pain that she feels, because it’s like every time somebody interacts with her, she’s reminded of it.

[Emily]
Right. She can’t get back to normal because nobody is being normal.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
At lunch, she sits on her own and reads a book. And she reads the book because nobody sits with her during lunch. From his perspective, it looks like she’s aloof and alone by choice. She would rather read her book than interact with her coworkers during this time, this social time when everyone’s having lunch, but really, nobody knew what to say to her, and so they didn’t sit next to her and have lunch. And then they just formed new groups, and so people they used to sit with her no longer sit with her. They sit in their new groups, and no one ever came back to her. And so she’s just been sitting on her own for a year. So she’s very alone, and she’s been very alone for almost a year.

[Emily]
So she’s going to be receptive when he asks her out.

[Shep]
Maybe, although she is also in the habit of being alone. So I think that initial time when he asks her out, she doesn’t have an answer for him.

[Thomas]
Is there a moment where, for whatever reason, she spills a tray of some dice and he rushes over to help? He’s like, “Oh boy, an opportunity,” and he runs over to help pick them up or whatever, and then that’s when he asks her out.

[Shep]
How often are trays of dice being spilt?

[Thomas]
Not very.

[Shep]
See, it would make more sense to me is if he’s transporting a tray of dice and intentionally spills it near her-

[Emily]
Okay,

[Shep]
As he’s trying to put the move on, and he needs just any excuse to be next to her for a second.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Emily]
I buy it.

[Shep]
Is she helping him, or is she just continuing to work while he’s awkwardly-?

[Emily]
I like that she’s continuing to work, but she like, scoots them over with her foot closer to him.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s good.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She doesn’t say anything, and he’s trying to talk there, and she’s not responding, but she does look up, and then when he’s like, “Do you want to help?” And she uses one of her feet and slides them toward him.

[Thomas]
Does she wear headphones while she works?

[Shep]
Yeah. What year is this set in?

[Emily]
We can have it set now.

[Shep]
Because if it’s set now, why is this not a completely automated factory that has machines to paint the pips on the dice? I thought that this would be set in the past.

[Emily]
Probably. I would assume in the past.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
So to answer Thomas’s question, no, she’s not wearing headphones. They have not been invented yet.

[Emily]
I’m imagining the Newsies era for some reason.

[Thomas]
I was thinking, like, 30s or 40s? Probably 40s. Because you have more-

[Emily]
Women in the workforce.

[Thomas]
More women in the workforce, and you have more people just buying goods. So it makes more sense that you have a whole factory making dice as opposed to, like, right after the Depression.

[Emily]
Are we strict factory settings where you do not talk while you’re on the line. And that’s why she’s not helping him or doing it, because she’s got a-?

[Shep]
They’re not on the line together. They’re in completely separate sections.

[Emily]
Yeah, but I’m saying is that why she’s not talking to him or helping him?

[Thomas]
She’s got a quota.

[Emily]
Because she’s got a quote to do and that’s why she shifts her foot to help him. But-

[Thomas]
So then does he wait around for her after? So when she’s leaving the factory, he kind of runs up, and he’s like, “Hey, thanks for helping me out today,” because she kicked a few toward him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So now he has this excuse to begin a real conversation, and he could even ask her out, like, “Oh, well, where are you headed? We should go get a drink or something. I’ll buy you a drink for helping me out.” She’s like, “Nah I got to get home.”

[Shep]
Why does she have to go home? To take care of her three kids?

[Thomas]
Because-

[Emily]
She’s gotta feed her cat.

[Thomas]
She doesn’t want to have a drink with him. Because she’s used to being alone, and maybe she hasn’t seriously considered going out with anybody.

[Shep]
So at what point does this turn into workplace sexual harassment?

[Emily]
This is in the past and that doesn’t exist.

[Shep]
Right. But if it’s playing to modern audiences who don’t understand how culture has changed over time-

[Emily]
He hasn’t harassed her yet.

[Shep]
Well, I’m saying she has to be somewhat receptive and not just flat out saying no.

[Emily]
Right. Well, she’s not rudely, flat out saying no. She’s like, “Today is not a good day.”

[Shep]
So what I’m saying is she should go to a drink, but she should turn them down while they’re working. That’s the first time he asks. He spills the tray of dice, and he’s trying to talk to her, and she moves the dice over with her feet, and then he picks up all the dice, and he’s like, “Hey, do you want to grab a drink after work or whatever.” Or maybe he hasn’t asked her out. He’s still talking to her, and she’s just like, “I have a quota. I have to get X number of these done before I can leave.” And he’s like, “Oh, okay, okay.” And then when she’s done and she’s leaving, then he goes up again because that’s his window of opportunity. It’s like she told him when would be appropriate to talk to her.

[Emily]
That works.

[Shep]
Which it can be interpreted that way is what I’m saying.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Even though she also could be perceived as saying, “I have a quota,” as a polite way of saying no. But she didn’t say no.

[Emily]
“I have a quota. There’s no talking on the factory floor.”

[Thomas]
Is there like a strict overseer lady?

[Emily]
Or man. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, you know, they’d have like a matronly woman to keep all the younger women in line.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, that’s true.

[Thomas]
She reports to a man, but-

[Emily]
Make sure their eyes aren’t wandering towards those young men to entrap them in their womanly snares.

[Thomas]
So she’s like, “I can’t talk to you.”

[Shep]
That’s part of why he spilled the dice, because he could be down by the floor where maybe he’s not seen by the line matron.

[Emily]
But the line matron knows that he spilled it and she’s like, “It’s taking an awful long time to clean that up there, Sparky.”

[Thomas]
Maybe she comes over and thinks that he’s trying to look up their skirts like it’s a misunderstanding. What is his job at the factory?

[Shep]
He carries trays of dice.

[Thomas]
He’s the new guy. That’s his job. So he’s basically just told what to do. “Go take these over there.” “Go get this.”

[Emily]
Sweeps the floor.

[Thomas]
“Go help Steve.” Yeah. So he waits up for her after work and asks her out. How does that go?

[Shep]
He first asks her to go out. “Let’s go see a movie” or whatever. And she’s like, “Oh, I don’t have time for that.” He’s like, “Well, let’s go get dinner.” And she’s like, “Oh, I already have stuff at home.” And he’s like, “Okay, let’s get a drink on your way home.” And she’s like, “Okay, fine.” He’s negotiated down to-

[Emily]
They go and have a good drink and then they make out.

[Thomas]
So you’re just going to cut out the whole second act?

[Emily]
Yup.

[Shep]
Oh, this is where he finds out that her husband has died because it’s got to go badly. And she brings up that she hasn’t been out in a long time. And he’s like, “Oh, why? What has happened?”

[Emily]
How did her husband tragically die?

[Thomas]
He died in an accident at the dice making factor. Oh, shit. Why do you think there’s an opening?

[Emily]
It took them almost a year to fill it. No one wanted it. It’s so dangerous.

[Thomas]
Job was cursed.

[Emily]
Did he die in the war? Did he die of cancer? Was it a horrible automobile accident?

[Shep]
He died in the war. But which side?

[Thomas]
The war is good because then there’s that perception of like, “Oh, he was a hero. He died for freedom and America” and what not. Yet another thing that he has to try to live up to.

[Emily]
Yeah, I can see that. And that would explain why they were married for three years and don’t have children.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yup.

[Thomas]
So they get married right before he was deployed.

[Shep]
Yup.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
As is tradition.

[Emily]
Yup.

[Thomas]
Perfect.

[Emily]
They knew each other well enough.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’ve been dating for a while. So he finds out this news. How does he react to that?

[Emily]
How would you react? You’re a man. How would you react if you’re-

[Thomas]
Shock, surprise, slight embarrassment. Apologies.

[Shep]
Apologies?

[Emily]
Sorry for touching that nerve?

[Shep]
Maybe I should be more apologetic because that didn’t even occur to me. My first thought was like, “Geez, that sucks for you.”

[Emily]
I mean, it could be either way,

[Thomas]
Does she go there right away? If we’ve talked about how she’s trying to move on?

[Emily]
Right. I don’t think she brings it up. I mean, they talk for a little bit before that comes up. Right?

[Shep]
Oh, is this a place she used to go with her husband back in the day? So he’s new to the area. That’s why he’s new to the job. And so he asks her out for a drink, but doesn’t know where to go. And she’s like, “Actually, I know a place,” they go there, and maybe she comments on, “Oh, it’s different. They’ve remodeled,” or whatever. And that’s how it comes up. She’s not intentionally bringing up her husband. She happens to say ‘they’ve remodeled’ because she hasn’t been here for a while. He finds out she hasn’t been here for a while and presses her to find out why, if she likes this place so much, why doesn’t she come here?

[Emily]
Before that comes up. Does she ask if- Because this is post war. He’s of the age that he should have been serving. Does she ask him, “Where did you serve?”

[Shep]
Ah. But he didn’t serve.

[Emily]
But he didn’t serve because of some fluke medical thing, like he’s got a lazy eye or something really stupid that kept him out and he’s embarrassed about it because it looks like he’s a draft dodger, essentially.

[Thomas]
Yeah, he has some sort of minor physical issue that kept him out of the war and also is the reason why his best job he can get at the factory is the guy who runs around and grabs shit for people and sweeps the floors and stuff.

[Emily]
So she’s hit a nerve with him and he’s trying to evade the conversation about him not serving, and then somehow it comes into conversation that her husband did die in the war. Then that builds into Thomas’s point about him having to having that shadow of a hero who died in service when he didn’t even serve.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, if he’s recently new to the area, she could assume that he’s new to the area because he just came back from the war.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so that’s her assumption, is, like, “You moved here after you got back,” or whatever. And he’s like, “Actually, I didn’t go because of-“

[Emily]
Yeah. “Because of this. And I moved here kind of to get away from the small town of everybody knew me and knew that I didn’t.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He’s got confidence issues now based off of being belittled.

[Thomas]
So he tried to go.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
He went down to the office, he signed up with everybody else, did the physical, and they were like, “No, thanks.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And so he got rejected, and everybody thinks that he tanked it on purpose or something. Is it a non physical issue so it’s not immediately obvious to people? People assume that he did something somehow to get out of it, because otherwise, if he has a bad leg or something, club foot, everybody will be like, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And people wouldn’t hold it over him.

[Emily]
The only other thing I can think of is like, he is asthmatic.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that could be really good. That’s a thing that you wouldn’t necessarily see. It wouldn’t be a very obvious thing.

[Emily]
Right. And it could be like exercise induced kind of asthma where it’s like detected in a physical but not affected every day.

[Thomas]
Right. So what is the tone at the end here once all this information comes out?

[Shep]
Awkward.

[Emily]
Awkward. Yeah, I think they’re just left with that.

[Thomas]
He doesn’t know what to say, and they’re just sort of sitting there in silence and-

[Shep]
Yeah. Yes. The date ends like a damp squib.

[Thomas]
She finishes her drink, and she’s like, “Well, thanks. I’ll see you at work.” And leaves.

[Shep]
Yes, that’s great.

[Emily]
So what gets them together again?

[Thomas]
He sits with her at lunch or asks if you can sit with her at lunch.

[Emily]
Why would he do that? After that awkward encounter?

[Shep]
He still likes her.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And he has something he wants to say.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. He wants to justify why he wasn’t in the military, because in his mind, that’s how the date ended. She found out he wasn’t in the military. There was awkward silence. She thanked him for the drink and got up and left. And so he’s like, “Oh, I was rejected because I wasn’t in the military, but I have reasons.”

[Thomas]
He just walked up to where he’s like, “I have asthma.”

[Emily]
She’s like, “What?”

[Thomas]
She’s like, “What?” “I have asthma. That’s why I couldn’t serve.” I mean, would he do this at work in front of everybody, though?

[Shep]
No, because he wouldn’t want people to know that he didn’t serve. Like, it’s not a secret, but don’t volunteer that information.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. So is he waiting for her outside again after work?

[Shep]
Wait, does he have lunch with her?

[Thomas]
I feel like he probably doesn’t want to call attention to their interactions yet. Does the date happen on a Friday evening? So he has a couple of days to stew in everything that happened and come up with a plan. So then Monday after work, he approaches her after as she’s leaving the factory and just sort of “I have asthma.”

[Shep]
Yeah, I think you’re right that them having lunch is a big scene and should come later after they’ve had a second date that went better.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And this is him advancing the relationship via having lunch publicly with her.

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah. Then him coming up to her immediately after work the next day-

[Shep]
Well, the following Monday.

[Emily]
The following Monday, and him saying, “I have asthma,” and she’s just like, “Why are you telling me this?” And then he goes into a spiel about, “I couldn’t serve, I wanted to, I went down to sign up, turns out I have asthma and I can’t serve.”

[Shep]
And she’s like, “What brought this up?”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, “Why are you telling-?” Like she doesn’t remember that part of the conversation at all?

[Emily]
“And why are we talking about this?” And he goes, “Well, isn’t that why you got up and left?” “No, it’s because I told you I was a widow and you got all weird.”

[Thomas]
“Just like everybody else.”

[Emily]
Yeah. “And I don’t want to live in that world anymore, so I left.” And he’s like, “Oh, no, no, let me make that up to you. Could we have dinner tonight?”

[Thomas]
Alright, well, why don’t we take a break and when we come back, we’ll figure out the rest of our story for Dice.

[Break]

[Thomas]
Alright, we’re back.

[Shep]
Okay, so they went on a second date this time to dinner, is that correct?

[Emily]
Yes. They have a full meal, a little more time together.

[Shep]
Right. And this date goes better.

[Emily]
Right. Because they’ve gotten that awkward conversation pieces out. The two things they didn’t want to talk about, they’ve already talked about.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But he doesn’t know how her husband died at this point.

[Emily]
But it’s clear… is it clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it right now and he’s not going to push it or-?

[Shep]
So how does he find out that her husband died in the war?

[Thomas]
I mean, I think she has to tell him at some point.

[Shep]
He goes to visit her at her house and she’s got a shrine to her husband with the flag and the-

[Thomas]
That seems very fast for a single woman in the 40s to be having male company over. Does she live on her own? Does she live with her sister? Does she have a roommate, one of the other pip painters? Is she in like, a boarding house type of thing?

[Shep]
Boarding house for young widows unfit to live in society properly.

[Thomas]
Every apartment comes with a cat.

[Emily]
Well, why couldn’t she have a house at this-? I mean, this is a clear and easy way to empower her through the system at the time, in that she’s a widow, so she gets to keep the house.

[Thomas]
That’s true.

[Shep]
Oh, because it was her husband’s house who inherited it from his parents.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He didn’t buy the house because he was still young, so he inherited it from his parents and then dies in the war. And so she inherited this hand-me-down house that wasn’t where she grew up. She doesn’t have any emotional attachment to it. But it is a house.

[Thomas]
I think a good excuse for him to be there is if she needs help with something around the house that she doesn’t know how to do.

[Shep]
Oh, she needs a shit ton of help. No man has been to her house for almost a year. Do you know how many jars still have the lid stuck on them?

[Emily]
Do you know how many spiders are crawling around that bitch?

[Thomas]
There’s only three working light bulbs in the whole house.

[Shep]
That’s why women are into candles. It all makes sense now.

[Emily]
You found us out. You found the secret. We have no pockets. We like candles because we don’t know how to change a light bulb.

[Thomas]
How many widowed housewives does it take to replace a light bulb? Do we start getting information about her husband on this date?

[Emily]
Yeah, why not?

[Shep]
Well, do we? Or is this the date where she convinces him to continue pursuing her because she’s open to it? She’s had time now to think about it. She had all weekend. She thought that it was awkward and he wasn’t interested in her because of her husband. But now that she discovers that maybe he is interested in her, she’s like, “Well, maybe this won’t be so bad.” So I’d say second date, he’s trying to smooth out things and she is thinking that they are going out on a date, like a date date. Nothing needs to be smoothed out to her. So second date is when she laughs at his joke for the first time.

[Thomas]
I mean, I feel like that’s kind of the big moment, right. It’s a little awkward. They’re starting to get a little bit comfortable with each other and like just starting to open up. He says something, she laughs. He’s like, “Oh okay, that’s good.”

[Shep]
Right. You can see his whole face light up.

[Thomas]
Right. Does she suggest a third date because she wants to go dancing? She hasn’t gone dancing in forever.

[Shep]
Oh yeah. She says “Next time we should go dancing.” Like just establishing right away they’re going to have another date.

[Thomas]
And then do we just cut straight to that? They’re walking into the dance hall or club or whatever it is?

[Shep]
No!

[Emily]
No, because-

[Shep]
They also work together.

[Thomas]
Do we see them at work kind of giving each other eyes?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Googly eyes.

[Shep]
Because their next date is not the next night.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
The next day is going to be Friday. This was a Tuesday night.

[Thomas]
Yup.

[Shep]
They have a couple of days where they’re just going to see each other at work. They do the googly eyes, they do whatever, and they just say good night at the end of the night, he’s not walking her home.

[Thomas]
Okay, so now third date, right? Dancing?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Are we there?

[Shep]
Third date dancing?

[Emily]
Third date dancing.

[Shep]
Oh yeah.

[Thomas]
She’s more forward now. She’s dragging him into the dance hall.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
She’s excited for this.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Because she has been desperate to dance.

[Thomas]
Is he worried about his asthma?

[Shep]
Oh yeah, he’s got to be worried about his asthma.

[Emily]
A little bit.

[Shep]
He can do the slow dances cause they’re slow.

[Emily]
It doesn’t take a lot of energy.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And then she wants to get out there and do a big fancy swing dance.

[Shep]
This is another place where he will feel inadequate, which we’re building up to.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. Because other guys it’s so effortless for them to just run around all night dancing and doing all the swinging moves and fast paced stuff and he just can’t.

[Emily]
She should not care that much because she likes the slow dances.

[Thomas]
Oh no.

[Emily]
The slow dances are great.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She enjoys being around the people. She enjoys watching it. This is the forties. It is okay for her to dance with another man at the club,

[Thomas]
Is she concerned about him? Is he just sort of sitting at a table and she comes over and is like, “Are you having fun?”

[Shep]
When she comes over to the table, she is happy and she’s talking about how much fun she is having.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Not thinking at first that he’s not having fun, and then realizes he’s just been sitting there.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And she sits down with him and is concerned for him. “Are you having fun? Is it okay?” Because she’s not oblivious to his situation.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
During that conversation is he saying, “Oh, I wish I could dance with you more?” And then a slow song starts and she goes, “We can dance to this one, right?

[Emily]
Yup.

[Thomas]
He’s like, “Yeah, I can dance to this one.”

[Shep]
Good. Nice. Perfect timing.

[Emily]
Excellent.

[Shep]
Standard for romance movies.

[Emily]
And they get to hold each other close.

[Thomas]
This is like a couple of minutes long, the sequence, right?

[Emily]
Of course.

[Thomas]
It’s just them googling at each other.

[Shep]
Or do they use this opportunity to have another awkward conversation?

[Thomas]
Is there a positive conversation? They’re both sort of “This is nice.” “Yeah, this is nice.”

[Shep]
Oh, she’ll say, “I missed this.” And that’s what’s going to bring up the awkwardness.

[Thomas]
Yeah. He doesn’t know what to say.

[Shep]
Yup. Now, are they googling eyeing each other or is her head on his shoulder during this conversation? So he can’t even see her face.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
At that point-

[Emily]
When she says that, she lays her head on her shoulder and says, “This is one of the things I’ve missed the most.”

[Shep]
Right. So she can’t see his face and how-

[Thomas]
He’s like, panicked.

[Shep]
Right. Oh, this is the third date, isn’t it? Yeah. Maybe he thinks something is going to happen.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So does the date end well or not? I’d say that it doesn’t end well. I think that it goes up and down. And the first the drinks didn’t end well. The dinner did end well. Here we have another one where it goes the other way. Why does it not end well?

[Thomas]
Well, not only it doesn’t end well, but it was on a very strong upward trajectory for a while there and then all of a sudden it doesn’t end well.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
I think that on that walk home, because he’s going to walk her home this time. It’s the 40s. She trusts him. She says something to bring up that conversation about her husband, maybe sort of continuation of the “This is what I’ve missed.” And maybe she’s even saying, like, “Thank you for going out with me, I haven’t done this-“

[Shep]
“In almost a year.”

[Thomas]
Well.

[Shep]
Oh, no, you’re right.

[Thomas]
No,

[Shep]
Because he was gone at war, so-

[Thomas]
He was gone for a while, so he sort of is maybe nervously asks like, “Oh, how long were you guys together? And how did he die?” And all that. And so that conversation totally brings the tone way back down in whatever way it was heading towards something was going to happen, it definitely isn’t going to happen now.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But he’s got a better understanding of the situation and new things to feel shitty about her war hero husband or what he perceives as war hero.

[Shep]
When is the anniversary of the death?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Soon.

[Shep]
Soon. I think that should be date four.

[Thomas]
She doesn’t want to be alone that day.

[Shep]
She doesn’t want to be alone that day. She goes to the graveyard. She wants him with her.

[Emily]
She’s like, “Hey, so do you want to go to the cemetery with me?”

[Thomas]
I think she should slip him a note at work that says, ‘Meet me after work’ or something, ‘Wait for me after work,’ or something like that.

[Emily]
So she just kind of blindly leads him there?

[Thomas]
No, I think that’s when she says, like, “I have a big favor to ask,” or something along those lines.

[Shep]
I think that she should say, “I would like you to accompany me to a thing. I don’t have anyone else to ask.” And he’s like, “Sure, no problem.” And she’s like, “Okay, because Sunday is the anniversary of my husband’s death, and I’d like to go to the cemetery.” And then you have your scene transition so that you don’t have to see his response, but, you know, that put him in an awkward place.

[Emily]
Because we’ve already established, anytime she mentions it, he’s just like, “Ugh.”

[Shep]
Yep. He can’t dance. He didn’t serve. He’s inadequate in every way.

[Emily]
So do we find out that the husband was an abusive prick and she’s happy he’s dead?

[Shep]
No, no. They weren’t even together long enough for him to be an abusive prick, or at least for her to even know that he was an abusive prick.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. That’s actually really good. She doesn’t know how to act because she didn’t know him. Like, she knew him, but she didn’t know him.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So she’s visiting the cemetery out of a sense of, like, “This is what I’m supposed to do.”

[Emily]
“This is the obligation I have as a war widow.”

[Shep]
Right. She’s living in his house still.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Right!

[Emily]
She can bring that up to him. Like, maybe she has her breakdown at the cemetery and is just like, “I don’t know how to do this.” And he thinks she’s saying, “I don’t know how to live life without him. I don’t know how to do this.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“I don’t know how to be in the world with his absence.”

[Shep]
Really digging in.

[Emily]
And what she’s actually saying is, “I don’t know how to be a widow. I barely knew him.”

[Thomas]
Not just, ‘I don’t know how to be a widow,’ ‘I don’t know how to be his widow.’

[Emily]
Yeah. “I didn’t know him. We met, we fell in love, we got married because he was going off to war and I don’t know what kind of a man he would have been.”

[Thomas]
And she’s been feeling that at work with people, the way they’ve been treating her and stuff.

[Emily]
And the fact that she lives in this house, she now owns this house, that she has no right to essentially, like, she moved in because he had it.

[Thomas]
And she had to get a job.

[Shep]
Right. They had all these plans for when he came back, but…

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s like really poignant idea of what it means to be a woman, especially in that time of, like, your identity so wrapped up in your spouse.

[Thomas]
Right. Her plan was to be a housewife.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
That plan is out the window now. Any plan she had is out the window now.

[Emily]
“What do I do now?”

[Thomas]
Right. So she’s lost at sea, basically.

[Shep]
Ironic, because he was also lost at sea. That’s how he died.

[Thomas]
Too soon.

[Shep]
Too soon? It’s been almost a year.

[Thomas]
For our fictitious character from 80 years ago.

[Shep]
So does he pull back from her after this breakdown, after he misinterprets it?

[Emily]
No, because I think this is where he gets the understanding of what she’s going through that he doesn’t necessarily- Like, he still has to live in the shadow of the man because nobody knows what he would have been like, right? Now they’re both sort of living in the shadow together.

[Shep]
Does she still have her husband’s name?

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
So that house that she’s living in is like the Johnson house, which is her husband’s name.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because nothing is really hers.

[Thomas]
Not even her name. So how does our main character react to this information dump that he misinterprets? Is he rethinking pursuing her?

[Shep]
Yeah. She suddenly showed up with all this baggage he didn’t know about.

[Thomas]
And in his eyes, she’s clearly not over her husband’s death.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or his life, his existence.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
He thinks that’s what she wants is that back, and she’s not ready for anything else.

[Shep]
So after this, when you see them at work again, he’s not giving her the googly eyes. He’s trying to respect her boundaries. And she sees it as him pulling back like everyone else has, leaving her all alone. Again.

[Thomas]
“I opened myself up. I was vulnerable, and look what it got me.”

[Shep]
So how does date five happen?

[Thomas]
Well, he needs to be at her house.

[Emily]
I want him to end up at her house to help her with the house maintenance.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh, this is something they planned before that, before he sees her at the graveside.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Do they have to put up the winter shutters or take down the storm windows?

[Shep]
Right. Just some series of chores that he’s offered to help with, because when she was asking for his help, going to the gravesite was only one of the things.

[Thomas]
And again, he’s committed to this already.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And he’s not a dick, so he’s gonna follow through.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But this is the last thing.

[Emily]
Yup.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
This has got to be some day where they’re going to her house after work, so they have that walk to her house to clear the air and clear the misunderstandings.

[Thomas]
Actually, I disagree for two reasons on what you’re saying right now. If it’s a big enough chore that she needs help, why would they do it after work? Wouldn’t they do it on the weekend when there’s lots of time? And then two, I like the idea of, he’s come over, he’s done the chore. She’s like, “Here, lemonade,” or whatever. And he’s being very short with her. She’s trying to establish a connection or reestablish a connection, and he’s being very short. And then that can lead to her being like, “What the hell, man?” Because then we’re building up the tension and the passion.

[Shep]
Right, because it’s going to explode.

[Thomas]
Yeah, exactly. It starts as this, like, angsty type of passion and then flips around to sexy type of passion.

[Shep]
Right. So I don’t want it to start after he’s done whatever, because he would just leave because he’s trying to respect her and give her a space, whatever.

[Thomas]
Well, that’s his plan. Maybe he’s putting his tools away, and that’s when the conversation starts.

[Shep]
Right, but why would he engage at that point? He already thinks he knows what’s going on.

[Thomas]
Because she’s accusing him of something that he’s not doing. And so he feels the need to defend himself. Or he wants her to understand that he’s giving her space. He’s not being an asshole. He’s being respectful. But basically, she hasn’t considered it from his perspective. She doesn’t know that he has misinterpreted what she said. She only knows what she feels. So she doesn’t understand why what she feels has caused him to react this way. Then that’s what she, I think, is trying to figure out, like, “What did I say that has pushed you away?” And Shep, I like what you’re saying about he’s like, “You’re clearly not over your husband. I’m going to give you space.” And I don’t know what her retort is necessarily, but she can certainly push back against that idea of “That’s not what I want, though.”

[Emily]
“I have nothing but space.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “I’ve had nothing but space for the past year and a half.”

[Emily]
Yeah. “I have been nothing but alone I need-“

[Shep]
“I need some of my space filled.” So the reason I wanted them to have the conversation on the walk to the house before he does the chore is for them to clear the air and admit that they like each other and want to be closer and maybe even hold hands. And he’s like, “You know, we can take it slow if that’s what you’d like.” And then you see them bursting through the doors in our bedroom.

[Emily]
So which one do we like better? Cause they both have good-

[Thomas]
Don’t think it really matters which one we choose. The outcome is the same.

[Shep]
The outcome’s not the same.

[Thomas]
How is it not the same? They have the same conversation in both situations.

[Shep]
In mine, he’s still gotta do the chore after he has had sex.

[Thomas]
Oh, my God.

[Emily]
Can I just say how much I love this argument is between the two of you?

[Shep]
We have strong opinions on romance movies.

[Emily]
Well, I’m thinking I’m leaning towards Thomas’s idea just because then the chore gets done first and there’s none of this “I’ve now had sex with you. I don’t have to finish the chores.”

[Shep]
I just thought it would be funny if they talk about taking it slow and then immediately have sex because she really wants it.

[Thomas]
And actually-

[Emily]
I do like that.

[Thomas]
I’m about to totally change sides and support Shep here. She said it was a big chore she couldn’t do on her own. They should do the chore together.

[Emily]
Yeah. After they do the “chore” together!

[Thomas]
Exactly. So alright, forget everything I said.

[Emily]
All right.

[Shep]
I like it now because the doing the chore is romantic.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And it becomes more foreplay.

[Thomas]
Is there a nosy and judgmental neighbor who sees them canoodling?

[Shep]
Oh yeah. She’s got some neighbor that comes by all the time. “Hey, Mrs. Johnson.”

[Thomas]
Oh God, that would be awful. Oh, man.

[Shep]
Well, her life is not great.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But it’s getting better.

[Thomas]
Okay, so broad strokes. What happens next?

[Shep]
After this is where they sit together at lunch, at work.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Yeah, totally.

[Shep]
They’re now public with their relationship. Now, does she get scorned? Does she get flak for being a widow who’s not faithful to her dead husband?

[Thomas]
The matron sees them eating at lunch and being all googly toward each other. And this is unacceptable behavior. I mean, does she end up getting fired? What are the roadblocks we’re going to introduce here?

[Emily]
One of them should get fired.

[Shep]
Why would they fire her? She’s the one that’s worked there for a while. She has experience where he’s just the new guy.

[Thomas]
That’s true. It’s a skilled job.

[Shep]
Yeah. Whereas he is just the do anything guy.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s going to get fired.

[Shep]
So where does this movie end? I would like a happy ending. I want them to live happily ever after. They’ll have to move. She’ll have to sell the house and get out of that town.

[Emily]
Yeah. They can’t stay in the house.

[Shep]
So I think that’s the happy ending, is they go off into the sunset together.

[Emily]
Is she afraid to jump into another quickie marriage?

[Shep]
We’ve already established she had all of these plans for married life-

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
That she didn’t get to pursue because her husband died. I don’t think she would be the one to go, “No no no, let’s not get married.”

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
She already had all these married plans. Maybe he’s the one that’s like “Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.”

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, he would be, because he can’t support her.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh yeah, because he just got fired.

[Thomas]
He just got fired.

[Emily]
He just got fired and he’s not going to live in another man’s house. That’s not you know, he’s still going to have that mentality of-

[Shep]
“I have to be the breadwinner.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“I have to bring home the bacon.” Because it’s the 40s.

[Emily]
So I think that’s a good problem for them to have is he just lost his job. He still needs to assert his masculinity by the terms of the era, in that he’s not going to live in another man’s house. He wants to provide for her.

[Thomas]
He still doesn’t feel-

[Emily]
Worthy.

[Thomas]
Good enough. Yeah. Worthy of her. And so he’s trying to prove to her, not really that he doesn’t need to.

[Shep]
Okay, so I think that he’s leaving town. Like I said. Does she know that he’s leaving town? Because they don’t see each other at work every day anymore.

[Thomas]
So he’s just bailing on her without saying anything?

[Emily]
“We’ve only had five dates.” Sure, they’ve had sex, but it’s only been five dates.

[Shep]
Yeah. Like you said, he doesn’t feel worthy of her. Especially now that he’s been fired. He already was feeling inferior before with the shadow of her dead husband looming over him. This dead war hero husband.

[Thomas]
Right. But I think we need a little bit more of that then, of seeing his doubt before we can just have him skip down. It just seems so sudden.

[Shep]
All right, so what does he do? Let’s forget skipping down. What happens next?

[Emily]
He left his hometown to get away from that shadow of not serving and everyone thinking less of him because he didn’t go off to war. So he kind of left to go make it on his own. But now he’s failed at making it on his own in this new town. And so he had a job offer from his father. Maybe he could work with his dad as a plumber. Or-

[Thomas]
Some other working class job, though.

[Emily]
So he decides right now he still wants to earn her affection and everything. So he’s going to take the job because it’s the only job available that he can get right now.

[Shep]
But this is still him leaving.

[Emily]
Yes, but he’s not just skipping down. He’s going to have this conversation with her.

[Thomas]
It could be that he’s working like two jobs or three jobs or something like that to save up a whole bunch of money. Because in his mind, he’s like, oh, “I’ve got to buy a ring. I’ve got to buy a house. Like, I’ve got to provide for us. And so I’m going to work super hard right now.” So he doesn’t have time for her because he’s doing all this stuff. And she’s like, “I’ll sell the fucking house and we’ll have money. Like, I don’t care about that.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because I think they each are thinking about themselves. And it’s not that they aren’t thinking of the other person. It’s just that they aren’t thinking about what the other person can do or wants necessarily. They just have their own picture in their head of like, “This is what I will do and that will make everything good.”

[Shep]
So are they together or not? He doesn’t have time for her because he’s working two other jobs. Because-

[Thomas]
I mean, she’s got to talk about that.

[Emily]
She’s going to talk him out of it.

[Thomas]
I think we need him to get over his hangup and that needs to be his big shift.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Can she help him with that by converting the house to their house? It’s not his house anymore. It’s their house. So she offers that, like, “You want to get rid of all his stuff? Great. Let’s do it. If you want to totally paint the house, let’s do it. You want to rearrange things? Let’s do it. You want to get all new furniture? Let’s do it. Let’s make the house ours. Let’s do it together.”

[Shep]
I think she should sell the house.

[Thomas]
And so maybe that’s the end of the conversation. She’s suggesting all this stuff. And he’s like, “It doesn’t matter. It’s still always going to be his house.” She goes, “Then we’ll sell the house.”

[Shep]
Yeah. Why would she want to keep the house?

[Emily]
She doesn’t. I think he thinks she wants to keep it because she’s had it and it’s secure.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Because in his mind, he’s (especially now) out of a job. He has roommates. He’s trying to make it work. “Why would you give up a house? You have a free house that you own.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Nobody in their right mind would do that. But that’s what he’s thinking-

[Shep]
She’s like, “I have the house, but I don’t have you.”

[Thomas]
Right. What she’s thinking is, “That’s not what’s important to me. What’s important to me is us together and we’ll make it work. And if I sell the house, we’ll have enough money to buy another house.”

[Shep]
Right. “We’ll make it work together as a team.”

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Is that the end of our story?

[Emily]
Did we get to the end?

[Thomas]
I’m not sure.

[Shep]
They’re on the train going off to their future life somewhere else. Not in this town that knows them and has specific images of them.

[Emily]
Maybe that’s part of her speech. “I can sell the house and we can start over somewhere else.”

[Shep]
Oh, she should convince him to go back to his hometown because his parents are still alive. She doesn’t have her parents. She wants a family again. She says several times throughout the movie that she wants a family, not just to have a family of her own, but she misses having-

[Emily]
But she wants like grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, all.

[Shep]
Right!

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah.

[Thomas]
We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show.

[Shep]
Hahaha.

[Thomas]
Were we playing with loaded dice or did we roll snake eyes? 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 Have you left a five star rating for us on Apple podcasts? zaaaayyaaaa has. That’s how it was spelled, I don’t know. They said “A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. My go-to podcast! Worth every enjoyable second to listen!” If you leave us a five star review on Apple podcasts, we’ll read it on the show at some point in the future. Emily, Shep, and I will be back soon for another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
Quick sidebar about the sausages sketch, that’s like, my favorite one. It’s so weird and out there, and it’s clearly like a film nerd type of thing. I watched a documentary about the making of that one sketch and it practically broke up the group. It was a whole big thing.

[Emily]
I need to see this documentary.

[Thomas]
I’ll see if I can track it down.

[Emily]
I am obsessed with that sketch.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I love that sketch. “Sausages!“

[Emily]
That’s how you know a true Kids in The Hall fan is if you go “Sausages!“

[Shep]
I have seen that sketch because both of you have referenced it before and I can remember nothing about it. So whatever hooks it has that got into the two of you, it just missed me.

[Outro music]