Dog Collar

References

• Flowers for Algernon
• Nichijou
• Marmaduke
• The Shaggy Dog (1959)
• The Shaggy D.A.
• The Shaggy Dog (1994)
• The Shaggy Dog (2006)
• Ed Begley Jr.
• Tim Allen
• Fred MacMurray
• MacGyver
  • Phoenix Under Siege
• Rick Moranis
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
• Plasma Globe
• Jacob’s Ladder (device)
• Being There
• Captain America
• Rowlf the Dog
• Back to the Future
  • Brain-Wave Analyzer
• Louis Pasteur
• Jonas Salk
• Weezer
  • My Name Is Jonas
• The Cat from Outer Space
• Weekend at Bernie’s
• Multiplicity
• Scooy Doo, Where Are You!
• Jason Mantzoukas
• Taskmaster
• Ghostbusters
• Military Animal
• Jacob’s Ladder (movie)
• Community
• Mean Girls
• Stephen Merchant

Corrections

Shep said that in Nichijou, the neckerchief that allows the cat to talk was invented by a 4 year old girl. The character in question, Hakase Shinonome, is actually 8 years old.

Emily said that the cat in The Cat from Outer Space had a collar that allowed it to talk. This is close, but not quite right. According to Wikipedia, the cat’s collar “amplifies…telepathic abilities,” so it turns out the cat wasn’t actually talking.

Thomas described the light helmet in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as being a modified motorcycle helmet. There are actually two light helmets in that film, and both of them are clearly bicycle helmets.

Apparently all three of us need to watch Back to the Future again, becuase we kept mixing up Doc Brown’s dogs. While Emmet Brown does have a dog named Einstein in 1985, he also had a dog named Copernicus in 1955. And although he was using the brain-wave analyzer to try to read Copernicus’s thoughts when Marty knocked on his door, the dog never actually had the brain-wave analyzer on his head. The closest is a scene in Back to the Future Part III, where Copernicus is wearing a mining helmet with a light on it.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Thomas]
This is if we took the movie The Shaggy Dog and let it off the leash.

[Shep]
Oh, my god.

[Emily]
There’s our tagline.

[Shep]
We set it up for him.

[Thomas]
Got it in there a third time.

[Emily]
Oh, I bet you anything it’s, it’s in his outro.

[Thomas]
Oh, shit. I better check. I hope not. It’s not, but you’re not gonna like what’s there.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Today, the ordinary object we’ll be working with is a Dog Collar. We’ve each come up with some story ideas to pitch, and when we pick one we like, we’ll work together to create a movie plot about a Dog Collar. Let’s jump right into those pitches. And Shep, you’re up first.

[Shep]
Okay. A person wakes up to find themselves with fractured memories and stuck in a dog’s body. Unsure of what happened to them, they escape from the building. They don’t have opposable thumbs, but they do have a human’s intelligence. From what little they can remember, they make their way back home only to discover they’ve always been a dog. The collar they’re wearing boosts their intelligence, Flowers for Algernon-style. So it’s a temporary thing, if they take the collar off- Actually not Flowers for Algernon. Have you guys ever heard of the anime Nichijou? It’s an old, kind of absurdist humor anime. I love it.

[Thomas]
I don’t think so.

[Shep]
But there’s a, like, four-year-old scientist, and she invents a neckerchief that she puts on a stray cat, and it gives him the ability to speak. He speaks like a middle-aged man because that’s how old he is in his cat’s lifestyle. Er, lifespan.

[Thomas]
See, I think I’ve heard of that. I think you maybe have told me about that part of it before.

[Shep]
So I, I might be thinking of that for this pitch. It’s that. But a dog.

[Thomas]
So this is the first time this dog is wearing this collar.

[Shep]
As far as I know.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Yeah, it would be nice. Someone else has to take care of you.

[Emily]
Oh, 100%.

[Shep]
Someone else has to clean up your poop.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
That’s how pampered you are.

[Emily]
The dream.`

[Shep]
If you had a human’s intelligence in a dog’s body, would you poop in the toilet?

[Thomas]
I guess it depends how much you like your owners, right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I think it would depend on what kind of a dog I was and what my anatomical situation was.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
A corgi might struggle.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. I forgot there were small dogs.

[Thomas]
If you’re a Great Dane, you don’t even have to, like, bend over. Just walk in there and let her rip.

[Emily]
Sit down. Get your paper out.

[Thomas]
Read your Marmaduke while you’re-

[Shep]
Re-!

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
We were racing for it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s all I have. Thomas, what do you have?

[Thomas]
I have two pitches. Today, in a near-future society obsessed with harmony and politeness, adults who commit minor social infractions are sentenced to corrective programming using repurposed dog collars.

[Thomas]
The collars track speech and behavior, delivering tones or electric shocks to train offenders into compliance. When a burned-out delivery driver is collared for an outburst on the job, he discovers his device doesn’t punish disobedience; it rewards it. As his defiance escalates, the authorities respond in kind, forcing him on the run from increasingly aggressive enforcement drones. But the collar is protecting him, even guiding him. At times, they wanted him to obey, but now he’s off the leash.

[Shep]
Boo!

[Emily]
Also-

[Shep]
Was this pitch just for that pun?

[Thomas]
You know, it was a happy coincidence.

[Shep]
What are you saying, Emily?

[Emily]
Oh, I was gonna make a joke about being a masochist with the shocks.

[Shep]
Yes, that’s what I was wondering about. Where he’s like, it’s a reward, not a punishment. Like, is it or is it supposed to be a punishment? And he just likes being shocked.

[Emily]
He just likes it.

[Thomas]
I mean, we could go that direction.

[Shep]
Who is determining what offenses are punishable?

[Thomas]
I, either some authoritarian-

[Shep]
It sounds very dystopian.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Oh yeah.

[Shep]
But also, a lot of people are assholes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s real tempting to go “Now if people, if assholes had to wear shock collars…” Like, hmmmm.

[Emily]
That’s how dystopic novels start.

[Shep]
I know, I know that it’s bad.

[Emily]
(Laughs)

[Shep]
I know intellectually that it’s bad. But.

[Thomas]
Well, my other: A wacky inventor creates a collar that can swap consciousnesses between beings. But after a test run goes wrong, he ends up stuck in his dog’s body while his unruly golden retriever takes over his. Trapped on four legs and unable to explain himself, he has to convince his family he’s more than just their dog. With his four-legged friend running wild in his human body, causing chaos, stealing snacks, and chasing squirrels in broad daylight, the inventor must find a way to switch back before everything goes off the leash. That’s two off-the-leash jokes.

[Shep]
God damn it. Why?

[Emily]
Wow.

[Shep]
Why?

[Thomas]
I didn’t even notice. That’s the problem with putting time in between writing these. I didn’t bother to read the other one. I was like, “The other one’s done.” And then I didn’t notice I used the same joke twice. Oh, well.

[Shep]
It’s just for punishment. So this sounds like a Disney+ series.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Shep]
Do you remember the old Disney movies where there would be someone turned into a dog? There was like seven of them.

[Thomas]
Were there?

[Emily]
The Shaggy Dog?

[Shep]
That’s one of them. There’s six more.

[Emily]
Shaggy Dog part two through six.

[Shep]
Okay, so you have heard of them. The Shaggy Dog. The Shaggy D.A.. The Shaggy Dog remake…

[Emily]
Oh, I forgot about The Shaggy D. A.…

[Shep]
There were three Shaggy Dog movies. They got- They’ve remade it twice.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
I remember the Ed Begley Jr. one. I didn’t remember the Tim Allen one.

[Emily]
Oh yeah, I forgot about the Tim Allen one. I thought there was another one before the Ed Begley Jr. one. I remember that one. And I like the original. The what’s-his-face that was in all of those Disney movies back then? (Fred MacMurray)

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right. Those are my pitches. Emily, what do you have?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So I just have one today because this was a hard topic for me. A man gets a dog shock collar stuck on him, and he can’t find the remote. Just as he’s about to cut it off, he’s shocked on what he assumes is the highest setting. Thinking it’s just a fluke that he sat on the remote, or the dog did, or something happened. He starts to cut it off again and is once again shocked by it. This is getting ridiculous. He tries one more time, and it happens again. So clearly someone is messing with him. But how? And why? He receives a mysterious text with instructions to meet the sender at a nearby park. When he arrives, all he sees is a little old lady on a bench feeding birds and squirrels. Not knowing who he is actually looking for, he sits next to the little lady. She leans over and starts talking to him in hushed tones. First, about the weather and the animals. Then she mentions the dog collar and how it could be a powerful tool to get someone to do something for you. Soon becomes evident that she is who he’s supposed to be meeting. She gives an address and tells him to arrive there the next day, promptly at 3:57 pm, and he’ll know what he is supposed to do.

[Shep]
He’s got to wear the collar overnight?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Why doesn’t he take that time to cut it off?

[Emily]
He’s a stupid, stupid man.

[Shep]
Why doesn’t he put something between the probes on the collar and his neck?

[Thomas]
I saw that episode of MacGyver.

[Shep]
There was an episode of MacGyver with shock collars?

[Thomas]
No. He stops a bomb with hockey tickets by slipping them into it.

[Shep]
Yes, yes!

[Thomas]
It was like a big plexiglass thing. Yeah.

[Shep]
He puts it between the contacts.

[Thomas]
The contacts.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Now that you mentioned it, I was like, “Why is it plexiglass?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Who designed this bomb?” So, like, take a dishwashing glove. They’re rubber. Just stick that in between the prongs and your neck, and then you can cut off the collar, no matter how much they’re trying to shock you. The problem is, I’m hearing this like a guy.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You know how guys hear a thing and then try to immediately solve the problem when all you’re trying to do is say a thing?

[Thomas]
See, Emily talked about, he goes to the park and sits next to the lady in the bench. And all I could think about was “Pooping back and forth forever.” ))<>(( So-

[Emily]
Hahaha.

[Shep]
Oh, man, you’re unlocking so many memories for me today. You block something out for 14 years, and suddenly it all comes rushing back.

[Thomas]
I think that’s enough. We don’t need to give any more context, and just leave out the reference from the list.

[Shep]
Yeah, just don’t put it on the-

[Thomas]
And so that people are like, “What the fuck was the pooping thing?”

[Emily]
My stupid brain. Much like the man who can’t just figure out to put a thing between him and the actual shock. Just didn’t see it, didn’t think about it. And also the answer to your second question, Shep, is: see first answer. Just stupid, stupid man.

[Shep]
Okay. All right. I mean, it’s like Thomas with his same puns at the end of every pitch.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
I have questions. Thomas, the wacky inventor collar that can swap consciousnesses-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
How does that work?

[Thomas]
We can get Rick Moranis for that.

[Shep]
Oh, man. Is he acting again?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
100%.

[Emily]
Yes, he is.

[Shep]
Let’s get him for that. He’s such a good, you know, bumbly scientist.

[Thomas]
Yeah. How does it work? I don’t know, science, man.

[Shep]
So how does it-? Do you wear a collar and then put a collar on something else, and then you swap?

[Shep]
Or is it just whoever’s holding the collar goes into the consciousness of whatever he’s putting the collar on? Or-

[Thomas]
I think when I wrote this, my thought was: it’s a pair of collars. But now that I’m thinking about it, it would be very weird for a human to continue wearing a collar. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe, maybe the dog takes the collar off. Now that he’s got hands, he’s like, “Finally.” Oh, yeah, you set up earlier in the film that the lab doesn’t like wearing the collar. So he’s trying to scratch at the collar and stuff. So as soon as he does the swap with the dog, he thinks, “Oh, I’ll just… I’ll try it out and then I’ll swap back.” And then as soon as they swap consciousnesses, the dog is like, “I’ve got hands,” and takes the collar off and runs out. And now he’s stuck.

[Shep]
You said lab, and I autofilled laboratory, so I was very confused.

[Thomas]
Oh, sorry. Now this is happening in a dog lab.

[Emily]
Of course, he would have a Labrador in his lab.

[Thomas]
Naturally.

[Shep]
Is the dog lab staffed by dogs?

[Emily]
No, it’s staffed by human, but they have a lab lab.

[Thomas]
I mean, let’s be honest, this is in this guy’s basement. So-

[Shep]
I mean, that’s stereotypical Rick Moranis if it’s just him as a mad scientist.

[Thomas]
Right. You gotta have some of the other props, like the big, the helmet with the lights, you know, from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

[Emily]
Oh, of course.

[Thomas]
It’s just, it’s just like in the background on a shelf.

[Emily]
And of course, one of those static balls.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right, because this movie was made in 1982.

[Thomas]
Is it even a lab if you don’t have a Jacob’s ladder?

[Shep]
Right.

[Shep]
So the dog that takes over his body-

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Does it have a human’s intelligence or is it a dog?

[Thomas]
I imagine it’s a dog.

[Shep]
Does he run around on all fours? Does he speak human words?

[Emily]
I would venture to say that he’s not consciously walking on four legs. He’s not walking on four legs on purpose. That’s the default. Walking on two legs takes effort and thought. So walking on two legs as a human is the default. Doesn’t take effort and thought. Walking on four does.

[Thomas]
It’s a good point.

[Emily]
So both of them would do the natural default walking.

[Shep]
Okay, that also makes it easier to film.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
But now you have a good explanation for it.

[Thomas]
As for whether he talks, I feel like maybe over the course of the film, he starts to gain more human traits. So, like, perhaps the walking on two legs is awkward at first, but he gets more comfortable with it.

[Thomas]
And his vocalizations are bizarre at first.

[Emily]
They’re only things like “Stop”, “Sit”.

[Thomas]
Right. “Hey, hey, hey.”

[Emily]
“Hey.”

[Thomas]
“Bacon.”

[Emily]
That’s all the commands he’s heard from his owner.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He only knows these human words.

[Thomas]
Right. That’s actually, that’s a good point. You set all that stuff up early and then, so, yeah, you have words that like, are sit, stay, roll over, things like that. And then those in a sort of Being There-esque situation. Those- He says those things, and people are like, “Oh, that’s actually a really good point, Rick.” You know, whatever his character’s name is.

[Shep]
You can say Rick. We just call him Rick.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. His name is Rick now.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Even though Rick is actually in the dog.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
So-

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
So-

[Thomas]
But no one else knows that yet because it’s a Disney film, and his behavior is just quirky.

[Shep]
Is his behavior is just corgi? What?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he gets fired. Well, the dog in his body gets fired because they’re cutting his funding.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s why he’s doing these last-minute rushed tests.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
He’s trying to prove that it works. And then the person funding him calls him in and says, “Sit down. I’m going to talk to you about (whatever).” And of course, the dog sits down and listens attentively. But when he’s acting crazy later, everyone goes, “Oh, it’s because he just got fired and he’s having a breakdown.”

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
That’s the explanation.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good. Oh, is this the story we’re doing, by the way? We’re digging into it, so I guess so.

[Shep]
Yeah, obviously.

[Emily]
Yeah. 100%.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
This is 100% what we’re doing.

[Thomas]
All right. All right.

[Shep]
So before we start, what is the collar’s intended purpose?

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

[Shep]
Obviously, it shouldn’t be swapping a human’s brain into a dog’s body. Unless we can think of a military application for that. Like, what is it supposed to do?

[Emily]
Can it be, it’s not supposed to be that powerful? And it’s like a training thing to where you can just can just… An easy peasy training.

[Shep]
Oh, training the dog.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good. And so it’s not meant to swap consciousnesses, but sort of like almost be like a mind meld.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Like, you can kind of communicate back and forth.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
But then in the lab, the Jacob’s Ladder falls down and zaps something and supercharges it.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Thomas]
See, we, that’s why the Jacob’s Ladder is in the film. We need it for- But I like that idea of that’s what it’s for- It’s a training thing, but it gets overpowered somehow.

[Emily]
And then we could have a subplot because it’s the 1980s in my brain always-

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
Where the government is trying to track it down because they found out that they’ve swapped consciousnesses. How? I don’t know. It’s the 80s. Everyone’s being spied on. And so you’ve got a subplot of military hunting him down.

[Shep]
How effective would your spies be if they were just in a dog’s body? You know, you’re not suspicious of a dog wandering around?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Maybe the military was already sort of looking into this as an application for training soldiers. Like, you can train people way faster. If I can just share what I know with you, then I don’t have to spend months teaching you all this stuff. I spend a few hours just dumping all of my knowledge into your brain. And now you have all the strategy, you know how to use all the weapons systems.

[Emily]
Right. Because then you can spend that time as a soldier training physically and building up mass and muscle and stuff.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So not only are you, you’ve got the brawn, but now you’ve got the brains, too.

[Thomas]
That’s right.

[Shep]
Oh, that’s, this is their super soldier program.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re going to take the brilliance of one person who’s got a scrawny body and put them in the body of this big, burly guy.

[Emily]
Like Captain America.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Captain America. So this is why he got fired, because the person funding him got the call like, “Hey, we’d like to give you a billion dollars for this technology.” And he’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna steal this technology from this crazy, wacky guy.”

[Thomas]
Yep. So not only does he have to get back into his own body, he has to stop this meeting from happening or stop this technology from falling into the wrong hands.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
It’s got to stop that contract signing.

[Thomas]
Yes. And so, of course, he does that as a dog.

[Shep]
Of course.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because he doesn’t get his body back till the very end.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
No, I think at the very end, he still stops it as the dog, but he has located the man-dog. Whatever we’re gonna- Rick. What’s the dog’s name?

[Shep]
Rowlf. Rowlf the dog.

[Emily]
Rowlf?

[Shep]
Rowlf.

[Thomas]
Now, it’s got to be named after some scientist.

[Shep]
Oh, well, I can’t use Einstein because that was Back to the Future.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
No, Pasteur. Salk. His name is Salk.

[Thomas]
There you go. Jonas. His name is Jonas.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because then you can actually play the Weezer song in it, too.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Emily]
It’s a funny tie-in, if the dog is flipping through his record collection and finds Weezer and first song he plays is My Name is Jonas.

[Shep]
You don’t even have to play it. You can just show the records as he’s flipping through them, fill in a bunch of references.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s maybe how he’s trying to communicate to the family that, like- “No, I’m not. Clearly, I’m not the dog. I have intelligence. I know about this Weezer album.” We got to hear the voiceover. Right? Of what he’s thinking.

[Shep]
I think we’ve all seen this movie.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I think we’re all remembering this movie that we watched because it’s so clear.

[Thomas]
Maybe it was beamed into our heads with a collar. A training collar.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It was The Cat from Outer Space wrote this and then beamed it into our heads.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, there you go.

[Emily]
That’s what’s happening. He had a special collar, didn’t he?

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Isn’t that how he talked, was through his collar? Why didn’t I remember that?

[Thomas]
Well, that’s a cat collar, not a dog collar.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So-

[Shep]
Completely unrelated.

[Thomas]
Totally different episode.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Save that for our Cat Collar episode. Okay. Is our scientist married? Does he have a wife?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Does the dog fuck his wife? This is my question.

[Thomas]
No, we’re not going to Weekend at Bernie’s this so-

[Emily]
Nah.

[Thomas]
All right. So, no, I would imagine they don’t have sex. This is a kids’ film.

[Shep]
Okay. Just limiting our humor. I see how it is.

[Emily]
Do you want to make an adult version of these, like, Disney movies we watched as children, where it’s just like, we’re just gonna take this up a notch.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. He loses his job, but it improves his relationship with his wife because he’s a real animal in bed. She’s like, “Ha, you dog.”

[Emily]
Oh, my god. It’s like Multiplicity.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes. Multiplicity. She’s just exhausted. She’s having a good time, but she needs a break.

[Thomas]
I’m coming around on this idea.

[Shep]
So what are we missing?

[Thomas]
Yeah. What do we need to figure out? Yeah.

[Shep]
Sounds like we have a lot of it already.

[Emily]
Is that it? We’re done.

[Shep]
Well, some of the- What are the, the issues that he runs into, as a dog?

[Emily]
Well he can’t talk.

[Thomas]
Right. He can’t drive. He has to figure out how to get across town. Does he know where the meeting is happening?

[Thomas]
Does he know that the meeting is happening? Or is that something he finds out once he is a dog? Somebody says something in front of him because “It’s just a dog.”

[Shep]
Right. Yep.

[Thomas]
So then that has to happen pretty early somehow. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter how.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
The writers can figure that out, but he finds that out, and that sort of adds another item to his to-do list. Obviously, get his body back. But also, “Great, now I’ve got to stop this thing.” So there’s our ticking clock.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
He can get his body back kind of whenever, but this thing is happening at 3:57 pm. And no, no laugh for that? Okay.

[Shep]
(Laughs)

[Emily]
I was gonna say. I was gonna wait for you to finish the thought and be like, I appreciate that you incorporated my-

[Thomas]
No. Okay, yeah.

[Emily]
One part of my-

[Shep]
No, Thomas doesn’t wait for the audience.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I expect immediate laughter for my jokes. And-

[Emily]
I’m sorry, I’m a parent. You wait till everyone’s name has been announced before you applaud.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. I don’t think it happens immediately. I think the initial problem is that he’s in a dog’s body, so he has to learn how to communicate with people. He has to let them know that he is Rick and not- What is the dog’s name?

[Thomas]
Didn’t we decide on Jonas?

[Emily]
Yeah, Jonas. That’s right. We did pick Jonas.

[Thomas]
So he’s got to have like an 8-year-old daughter that figures it out. Right?

[Shep]
Oh, yes, because then people won’t believe her.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
But she knows. And maybe like the 10 to 12-year-old brother. Oh, like the 14-year-old brother.

[Shep]
It’s great if the kids know because they’re too young to drive, so they can’t solve the problem.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Okay, but this is directly from The Shaggy Dog.

[Thomas]
Oh, is it? Damn it.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Oh, I haven’t seen it in 40 years.

[Thomas]
Yeah. It’s been so long.

[Shep]
Oh, no.

[Thomas]
That’s probably why I was like, “Ah, this is perfect.” Yeah, it worked real well three times.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Does Rick, as the dog, take the bus?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Just as a dog? How does he pay the fare?

[Thomas]
Oh, he gets in the back door. When somebody comes off, he runs in. Yeah.

[Emily]
He sneaks on with another person, and the bus driver just assumes it’s their dog.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, maybe. Okay, Shep, go with me on this coincidence for a moment. There’s a blind person getting on the bus.

[Shep]
Oh, let me fix your coincidence.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
They’re not blind. They’re just wearing sunglasses.

[Thomas]
Okay, great. And then, yeah, the bus driver assumes that it’s a service animal and doesn’t say anything.

[Shep]
Right. And the person doesn’t say anything because the dog got on with other people.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He just assumes it’s one of theirs.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Everyone assumes it’s someone else’s.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Until it gets off the bus before the guy with the glasses does.

[Thomas]
Right. So, yeah, we were trying to figure out, what are some of the difficulties he runs into besides people not knowing who he is, besides not being able to speak or drive.

[Shep]
I mean, you could have, so he’s trying to get people’s attention, and people are seeing it as a dog being very rambunctious. And the neighbor-

[Thomas]
Oh, there’s a dog catcher, right?

[Shep]
Well, hang on, hang on.

[Emily]
No, no, there’s not, because that’s just The Shaggy Dog.

[Thomas]
Oh, damn it.

[Shep]
The neighbor who doesn’t like the dog is like, “Oh, it’s because you haven’t gotten him fixed.”

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Shep]
“You have to get him fixed. And then he’ll calm down.” This is again, if he has a wife. So the neighbor’s talking to the wife.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Where do they think the husband is during all- Is he just at work?

[Shep]
He had a nervous breakdown.

[Emily]
Oh, and ran away?

[Shep]
And ran away.

[Thomas]
He’s just running around town in, like, a fugue state? And no one’s doing anything about it?

[Emily]
Maybe instead of a dog catcher-

[Shep]
It’s the police.

[Emily]
It’s the police going after the human.

[Thomas]
The men in white coats are trying to-

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
So is that it then? The, the men in white coats are coming for Jonas as human?

[Emily]
Yeah. I think that’s kind of fun.

[Thomas]
I mean, then you, I would say, put a dog catcher in. So they’re both up against the same thing.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I imagine like a Scooby Doo type scene where they’re running in opposite directions and they’re being chased.

[Emily]
Changing doors and going in one door and then coming out a completely different-

[Thomas]
But then, like, Rick sees his own body run by, and he’s like, “Wait a minute.” So how does he find out about this military thing? Is he chasing after his body and is out in the wild somewhere, and overhears a conversation?

[Shep]
Does he have to be out in the wild and coincidentally overhear a conversation? Or could his investor, who fired him earlier, needs to get something from his lab and comes over, and they get a phone call, and so they’re talking about it so he can hear that side of the conversation. Because why would he, you know, “Oh, I can’t talk right now.” Nobody’s around. It’s just a dog.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I guess. Why wouldn’t- If the investor guy broke into his house and is snooping around his lab, why isn’t he barking and growling? And…

[Shep]
Maybe he does it first and gets locked in a closet.

[Thomas]
The other thought I had is he decides to go to wherever the investor is. Maybe there’s a lab in that building, and he’s thinking, “Oh, I can go there to get whatever item that will allow me to switch back.” Or there’s another invention he has, where it’s the dog talking collar or whatever. You know.

[Shep]
I like the idea of a dog talking collar. If he’s arguing that dogs are smart enough to talk, but the way their vocal flaps are arranged, air doesn’t pass over it. So they can bark, but they can’t form articulated sounds. So he’s trying to figure out how to make that work with the contractions on the neck are causing sounds to come out of the collar. And if a dog can learn to make the contractions to make the right sounds to make words. But it hasn’t worked yet because people are saying dogs are just not smart enough to learn to associate the vocal contractions with the sounds that they are hearing. But he’s like, “If I put it on, then I could do it.”

[Thomas]
It could even be something simpler than that, where it’s like- It’s a bark translator device.

[Emily]
Now there’s apps for it.

[Thomas]
Exactly. So- Oh, maybe. Well, again, it’s going to bring the kids back into it. Like maybe the daughter downloads this app and…

[Emily]
And it works?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Why is that app not more popular?

[Thomas]
It’s crude. You know, he can only say certain things he can’t say, like, “Shelly, it’s your dad. I’m stuck in the dog’s body.” Like, it won’t come out like that. It’ll just be like, “Help”, “Problem”, whatever. It’ll be like a single word or a couple of words.

[Emily]
“Shelly, Papa.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“I don’t know where Papa is. He went crazy and ran away.”

[Thomas]
Right, right. He’s going, “Me, Papa.” She’s like, “I don’t know who your dad is.” So that could be a way that he gets someone on his side. Or maybe it’s a neighbor kid, an annoying neighbor kid that’s always coming over and wanting to see what he’s doing in the lab. Do they not have kids of their own, perhaps?

[Shep]
Perhaps. I would like to hear more about the dog’s day.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because it’s gotta start great.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Dog’s going to be having the time of his life.

[Emily]
Ooh, does he go to poop in a park? Are we gonna make one of those jokes?

[Shep]
Is this what gets the police involved?

[Emily]
It could, because he’s got a poop. Right? Bodies gotta do what the body’s got to do.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, but now you’re raising questions like, does he take his pants off?

[Thomas]
I was just thinking that.

[Emily]
Yes. That’s why the police would get involved.

[Shep]
But how does he know to take his pants off? He’s a dog.

[Emily]
Oh, I get it.

[Shep]
This is why you have him have sex with the wife earlier, so that he learns about taking his clothes off and putting them on. He’s in a smart body; he can learn stuff much easier now. And then, at the end, when he’s back in his body, you see him wearing pants.

[Thomas]
I think the biggest question we need to answer at this point is, who is the audience for this? Is this rated G or is this rated R?

[Shep]
Oh, you’re right. We should probably figure that out because that’s going to limit our responses.

[Emily]
PG 13.

[Thomas]
No, dammit, Emily. That makes it- That’s the worst possible one.

[Shep]
Yeah, you got to go full-on whichever way you go. It’s got to be all audiences or limited audiences.

[Emily]
I say limited audiences because it would be The Shaggy Dog for adults.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like-

[Shep]
Because they remember watching The Shaggy Dog as kids.

[Emily]
Right, Right.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Shep]
They’re going to have nostalgia for it.

[Emily]
There’s the nostalgia part.

[Shep]
Here’s the adult version of that.

[Emily]
But this is what it’s really like now that you know what being an adult is like.

[Thomas]
This is if we took the movie The Shaggy Dog and let it off the leash.

[Shep]
Oh, my god.

[Emily]
There’s our tagline.

[Shep]
We set it up for him.

[Thomas]
Got it in there a third time.

[Emily]
Oh, I bet you anything it’s, it’s in his outro.

[Thomas]
Oh, shit. I better check. I hope not. It’s not, but you’re not gonna like what’s there. On that note, let’s take a quick break here.

[Shep]
Oh, jeez.

[Thomas]
And when we come back, we’ll figure out the rest of our story for a dog collar.

[Break]

[Thomas]
Alright, we are back. Any big revelations during the break?

[Shep]
Where were we? Where did we leave off?

[Thomas]
I don’t remember.

[Shep]
I also don’t remember.

[Thomas]
But one question I thought we should probably answer is: how does he get back into his human body?

[Shep]
So I can’t think of that at all. Something that Emily said earlier is: I can only see Jason Mantzoukas as the dog/scientist.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
And once that thought is in your head, it-

[Emily]
There’s no other. There’s no turning back.

[Shep]
There’s no turning back.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Which is great because we could have him play straight at the beginning.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Can he play straight?

[Emily]
I think he can, for the payoff.

[Shep]
For small amounts of time.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He can do it long enough if the payoff’s big enough.

[Thomas]
I mean, look on Taskmaster he wasn’t dicking around too much. He was like being pretty serious. So-

[Shep]
Yeah. For the in-studio parts, he’s serious.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
On the tasks, he’s trying to get on the roof.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So-

[Thomas]
So he has the range we need, I think, is what we can take away from that.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah. That’s what it’s proven.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So we agree. That’s the casting.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
That’s great because he can do the voiceover as he’s the dog.

[Thomas]
But we should still make the character Rick as like a nod to Rick Moranis.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Rick Moranis.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Rick Moranis. Absolutely.

[Shep]
Yes, absolutely.

[Thomas]
And we have the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids light helmet on the shelf in the background. We don’t call attention to it. It’s just there.

[Shep]
Don’t they have the same helmet in Ghostbusters? Do you know what I’m talking about?

[Thomas]
Do they?

[Emily]
Well, it’s similar in Ghostbusters. I, in my brain, they’re the same one, but I’m not 100% sure they’re the same one. And also, isn’t that the one Doc Brown has?

[Shep]
It could just be all the movies in the 80s had light helmets of varying sizes.

[Thomas]
Okay, so Doc Brown’s helmet is much closer to the Rick Moranis helmet in Ghostbusters–

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Than either of those helmets are to the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids one, which I think is basically just like a motorcycle helmet with two giant lights, like bug antennae.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s got the mirrors and stuff and the magnifying glass.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
I was picturing the Doc Brown one.

[Thomas]
The one with the wires and the-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
I got it conflated in my head. I was thinking of the light helmet from Ghostbusters.

[Emily]
Wait, wasn’t Doc Brown trying to use the helmet to communicate with Einstein?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Shit.

[Emily]
So now it has to be that helmet.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Emily]
Is all I’m saying.

[Shep]
That was an earlier attempt.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There’s a… There’s a shot early in the film where we’re panning through the lab and you’re seeing all the, like, prototypes on the shelves. And that, that’s just there.

[Shep]
Now, it wasn’t to communicate with Einstein. It was to communicate with another human.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s right.

[Shep]
But it was to communicate thoughts. So-

[Emily]
And I think at one point, Einstein was either under it or it was on his head.

[Shep]
Anyway, spiritual sequel with Jason Mantzoukas.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
I am on Board. Where do I invest my money?

[Thomas]
So we know that, as the dog, he stops the signing of the contract with the military or the government or whoever.

[Emily]
Mmhm.

[Thomas]
And then it must be shortly after that that he gets his body back. Right?

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Yes, because otherwise they’re going to take this dog that just chewed up this contract, euthanize the dog, and print out a new contract.

[Thomas]
I think what he must have to do is, you said the investor wants to steal the technology, and so he does. And I think that scene happens early on. Like you said.

[Thomas]
He breaks into the house, he takes the collar that the dog took off. Maybe he even takes the collar off of Rick as dog. So now he has both collars. So that actually increases the stakes for Rick as dog, because he’s like, has to get the collars back and find his body and explain to somebody what to do. He’s down two collars instead of one.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so he ends up at the meeting, the collars are there, and then for whatever reason, he jumps and grabs the collars and runs out and, you know, whatever. And so then the meeting or the contract doesn’t get signed, or maybe the contract gets signed, but he’s handing over the collars. The investor is handing over the collars.

[Shep]
If the contract is signed, then the contract is signed.

[Thomas]
Well, anyway, regardless of whether, when the contract gets signed, whether it gets signed.

[Shep]
It doesn’t. It doesn’t get signed!

[Emily]
Okay, fine. The contract’s not signed. I’ll side with Shep.

[Thomas]
But then why is he turning over the collars?

[Emily]
See? Thomas makes a valuable point.

[Shep]
That’s just for a demonstration.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
This is a prototype. This isn’t the real collar.

[Emily]
But if they’ve already drawn out the contracts, wouldn’t they have already seen proof of product?

[Thomas]
Well, I think that in- the situation is they have brought the contracts and they will sign them, assuming the demonstration works. Because it’s like, “Oh, you’ve proved the concept is viable. We will sign the contract and you will get money to move this from prototype to production.”

[Shep]
Okay, I want to change several things.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
Do you?

[Thomas]
Yeah. This is quite unlike you.

[Emily]
This is shocking.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Speaking of shocking, what if there’s only one collar and he gets shocked by the one collar and that causes the transfer? The collar is supposed to operate on its own. Okay?

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Then, if it’s just touch transfer, you could have multiple transfers at the end of the movie and have serious hijinks.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Okay, so if it is touch-activated and two people touching it can swap bodies, then you can have a scramble. The people fighting over the collar at the end are themselves swapping bodies, not just Rick and Jonas.

[Thomas]
So how does the bad guy- Oh, the bad guy gets it off of Rick as dog because he’s wearing gloves because he broke into the, into Rick’s house.

[Shep]
Oh, I like that little detail.

[Thomas]
And he didn’t want to leave fingerprints. So that’s why that happened. And then. Yeah.

[Shep]
So, but this raises the question of how is it supposed to work normally?

[Thomas]
I think the way it’s supposed to work is the collar connects to a computer or something wirelessly and allows you to send commands or whatever. Like whatever the goal it is, there’s some other piece of software that’s how it’s supposed to work.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
But for whatever reason it got supercharged.

[Shep]
Right. It connects to an app on your phone.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Whichever phone company wants to sponsor the movie gets to be featured.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And then is it just, is it still a training app? Is that the idea?

[Shep]
Well, see, now it raises more questions. I just want to have maximum hijinks-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So I might be breaking the plot in order to do it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So, yeah, it- Now we’re back to square one. What is it supposed to do?

[Thomas]
I mean, the training thing still makes sense because that’s why the military wants it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
What is the demonstration that the investor is going to be making? What is his plan when he steals the collar? I mean, it could even be like “We can train dogs in an advanced way” because there’s a long history of the military training pigeons and dolphins, and all sorts of other animals to do spy tasks. So maybe it’s not the military, maybe it’s CIA or whatever.

[Shep]
Okay, I want to roll back a little bit.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
What if there are two collars and they’re linked together, but one of them is malfunctioning? The one on the dog swaps the consciousnesses.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So normally, he’s wearing one, another person would wear one, and he can speak Spanish, and now the other person can speak Spanish. Whatever. It’s training the vocal whatever. So he’s trying to use it on the dog, which is what it’s not designed to do. But he’s run out of tests. He doesn’t have any funding. He’s, you know, desperate times, and that’s the one that malfunctions. And so when they swap, he’s wearing a dog collar, because I like that visual of him wearing a dog collar. But the actual swapping is done just by the one collar, not both. So then you can still have the hijinks at the end as they’re fighting over that collar.

[Thomas]
So anyone, anytime somebody touches that collar.

[Shep]
Without wearing gloves.

[Thomas]
Right. A swap happens.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
I’m really trying to bring the Jacob’s ladder into it. He’s like trying to reach onto his bench to grab a tool and he’s reaching around and he accidentally grabs the Jacob’s ladder and that’s what-

[Shep]
Overpowers the-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
You do know there’s already a movie called Jacob’s Ladder, right?

[Thomas]
Does it have one in it? What’s it about? I don’t actually remember.

[Shep]
Vietnam.

[Emily]
Vietnam.

[Thomas]
No. Okay.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Probably doesn’t have a Jacob’s ladder in it then.

[Emily]
It’s a totally different movie.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
I just didn’t want to say, “Stop trying to make Jacob’s ladder happen, Thomas.”

[Thomas]
No. We will be streets ahead on this. It’s gonna be so fetch. Oh, it works really well! So who all gets swapped around at the end of the film? Obviously, the general or whoever, the high-ranking government person gets swapped somewhere.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
To a private.

[Thomas]
Oh, that’s funny. I like that.

[Emily]
Some lower ranking-

[Thomas]
Yeah. Private and a general get swapped.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Does the investor end up in the dog’s body at one point, or are they permanently swapped?

[Thomas]
I could see the investor and Rick- So of course, Rick as dog is there trying to stop this from happening. So the investor goes into Jonas’s dog body.

[Thomas]
Rick, who was in the dog body, goes into the investor’s body and can now fix everything because he’s a human. And he’s a nice guy. So of course he puts everything back the way it’s supposed to be.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, he’s not going to screw over Jonas because he hates the other guy.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And clearly Jonas is competition for him in the bedroom, so-

[Thomas]
I wonder if, at the end of this swapping wackiness, if the general needs to be in the dog’s body?

[Emily]
For why?

[Shep]
For humor.

[Emily]
Okay, I’m good with that.

[Thomas]
Well, somebody’s got to be in the dog’s body for a while. Rick needs to be in a human body, and he has to go collect his human body and bring it to wherever the collar is, or get, you know, get all of the pieces together so he can put everything back the way it should be.

[Emily]
Oh, actually, yeah, I like that because we’ve swapped, but the private is in the general’s body.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
But he can help get him the access he needs to get the stuff or whatever.

[Thomas]
Sure. Right. He can like, command the police to go do something or whatever.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
So the general gets put back into his own body. Everything gets restored.

[Shep]
Everybody knows that the general is in the dog’s body, and the private isn’t really the general.

[Thomas]
Everybody in the room.

[Emily]
Everyone in the room where it happened.

[Shep]
Right. So you have escorts. You have military escorts around the dog. People are saluting the dog because it’s a general.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
He, like, sits down and raises a paw up to his head to salute back.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe he’s got ribbons on. He’s got his rank.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like this.

[Emily]
He barks at passing soldiers.

[Thomas]
Right. He’s literally barking orders.

[Shep]
Yeah. Oh, he’s got an assistant that he yells at, like, at various scenes earlier. And then when he’s barking, his assistant’s, like, writing it all down. And it’s like, “How do you understand him?” He’s like, “Oh, this is. I mean, he’s just like this.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “We’ve been working together for years.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Then, once everything is put back to normal, do they confiscate the technology? How does Rick prevent the technology- Does Rick prevent the technology from ending up in the military’s hands? Because, like, realistically, they totally would confiscate this.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, but we could do the old Hollywood ending, in that they’re going to confiscate it so the enemy can’t create it. But it’s clearly too powerful to use.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They’re going to put it in that vault.

[Shep]
Or as they’re using it, because it’s a malfunction. It’s not designed for this.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Correct.

[Shep]
It’s, like breaking down and glitching out. And so Rick tries to, like, optimize swapping everyone back with the minimum number of uses. And maybe it fails before the end. So-

[Thomas]
Oh, so the general stays stuck in the dog’s body?

[Shep]
Well.

[Emily]
No, but Jonas needs to go back to his body. He’s a lovely dog.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
We don’t want to screw Jonas over.

[Shep]
Or Jonas gets stuck in the investor’s body, and so everyone thinks that he’s him and the investor is rich, so they just let him be as eccentric as he wants to be, which is good for Rick because Jonas will keep funding his work. What happens to- We don’t have the name for the investor.

[Thomas]
Steve.

[Shep]
Steve, obviously!

[Emily]
It’s clearly Steve.

[Shep]
Yeah. What happens to Steve?

[Emily]
Where does he get stuck? We leave the general in the dog’s body.

[Thomas]
Well, I think Shep was saying, you leave Steve in the dog’s body, right?

[Shep]
I’m asking questions.

[Thomas]
If you want everyone to go back to normal, except for the dog ends up in the investor’s body, then they need to have theirs swapped. So then the investor would be in the dog’s body.

[Emily]
Yeah, because otherwise the investor ends up in the general’s body. And that- Steve should not be a high-ranking military official.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Steve should be the dog he is.

[Emily]
Yeah, okay, but then what happens- What does he tell-? You know what? I’m asking too many questions now.

[Shep]
No. What’s your question? Who tells what?

[Emily]
What, what does Rick tell his children about what happened to Jonas? Because is he keeping Jonas with the investor in the body? Because the investor’s not gonna be good. He’s gonna pee in poop all over the floor just for spite.

[Thomas]
That’s a good point.

[Shep]
It’s gonna bite people.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
No, he gets taken by the military.

[Emily]
Oh, that would make sense. So then what does he tell his children or his wife?

[Emily]
What happened to the dog? “Ah, the dog didn’t make it.” “Didn’t make it from what?”

[Thomas]
Okay, so Rick does not leave Steve in the dog body on purpose. He’s not malicious.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
This is just like you were saying, Shep. The collar’s not working properly. He has no idea why it’s like this. And at some point during all the switches, he’s like, “Now all we have to do is swap Jonas and Steve back into their correct bodies and everything will be back to normal.” And it doesn’t work because whatever reason, the writers can come up with why it doesn’t work. And so he tried. He tried to fix this, but it wasn’t able to happen. And so the military is like, “We’re going to take the collar, we’re going to take the dog. We’re going to take, (you know, whatever).” They take all your drawings and your notes and everything, and we’re going to leave to do whatever, either build more of these or lock it in a box somewhere or whatever.

[Shep]
Oh, they’re paying him. He doesn’t need Steve to continue investing in him.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
He’s got this contract from the military. They’re going to take the dog and the collar and the designs and schematics and whatever, but then he’s going to be wealthy.

[Thomas]
Do they take Steve’s body as well? They’re going to take Steve and Jonas and try to figure it out on their own. They can’t be having some civilian tinkering with this stuff. “Don’t worry. We’ll, we’ll figure it out.”

[Shep]
So they don’t get to keep Jonas in Steve’s body?

[Emily]
Yeah. What then Jonas gets punished. And Jonas did nothing wrong.

[Shep]
I mean, he did several things wrong.

[Emily]
No, he didn’t!

[Shep]
But he did it with an innocent heart.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
I see where you’re coming from. It wasn’t malicious intent.

[Thomas]
Why would the military take just Steve in the dog’s body and leave Jonas in a human body? Why wouldn’t they take both?

[Emily]
I mean, you make a good point. I just don’t want Jonas to have a sad ending. To me, that feels like he’s getting the shaft.

[Shep]
Right. It’s part of Rick’s deal with them. He’s like, “I’ll give you the schematics. I’ll sign the contract that you want to sign.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“But in return, I have one thing to add.” That’s all he says, “I have one thing to add,” and then you don’t see what it is. And then later, when he’s doing the happy family reunion, Steve’s body is there, but he’s acting like Jason Mantzoukas.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I would love to have another actor act like Jason Mantzoukas.

[Shep]
Who can pull it off?

[Thomas]
Yeah. Stephen Merchant.

[Shep]
Steven Merchant?

[Emily]
Oh my gosh.

[Shep]
He’s so tall.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I think it would be very funny.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
It would be very funny.

[Shep]
All right, are we missing anything? We have beginning. We have an ending. Did we do anything in the middle? We didn’t come up with all the hijinks that Jonas gets up to in Rick’s body.

[Emily]
I believe we covered that with “And hijinks ensue.”

[Shep]
Okay. I mean, it is a problem for the writers.

[Thomas]
Because it is basically going to be a lot of throwing weird little things in there, little problems in his path, and then he’s got to overcome them somehow.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We know that’s what happens. So-

[Shep]
Yes. We know what happens. He has a good day, mostly.

[Thomas]
I do like the idea of cutting back and forth. You know, you see Rick in the dog body trying to solve stuff. And then every once in a while, we just cut to Jonas in the human body doing some wacky thing.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Sitting next to people at a patio being like, “You gonna eat that? Can I have some?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Normal dog stuff.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
There must be a bunch of near misses where the human body is somewhere doing something.

[Emily]
Oh, of course.

[Thomas]
And Rick, as the dog, doesn’t realize that, “Oh, it’s just one block over.” Or, “Oh, he just went into that building, then he walks in front of this shop that-” Whatever, you know.

[Emily]
Yeah. The bus drives by, he goes in the building. The dog… Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. That’s how you do your transitions between them.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yes. Yeah. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Dog Collar.

[Shep]
Oh, no, here it comes.

[Thomas]
Did it make you say bow WOW or. Or was it just rough?

[Shep]
(Pained groans) Ah, I wasn’t ready.

[Thomas]
Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email.

[Thomas]
Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. While you’re waiting for the next episode of Almost Plausible to come out, why not spread the word about the podcast? Whether you tell someone you know or a random stranger you met at the dog park, the highest compliment you can pay to us is to tell others about the show. Emily, Shep, and I will get together once again on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
A wacky inventor creates a collar that can swap consciousnesses. Consciousnesses? You know what I mean?

[Shep]
Yeah, consciousnesses.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
This is correct.

[Thomas]
That can swap consciousnesses.

[Shep]
Consciousnesses, bitches.

[Thomas]
A wacky inventor creates a collar that can swap consciousnesses between beings.

[Shep]
Consciousnesses? I’m sorry, continue.

[Emily]
Consciousni.

[Shep]
Conscious- You son of a bitch. Do not 2nd declension Latin this. No, no! I- You know, I let “octopi” slide, but I draw the line here. This far, no further.

[Thomas]
Oh, my god. I think we have our end-of-the-episode clip.

[Shep]
Oh, no. God damn it. I always maximize the things so I can’t see that it’s recording, and I always forget that we’re actually recording and other people can hear this.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
I’m not good at podcasting.

[Emily]
Me neither.

[Shep]
I feel like I’ve been tricked into it.

[Emily]
Thomas is carrying us for sure. Also, to make you both feel better: ‘Consciousnesses’ is the plural of consciousness. But also, ‘consciousness’ is acceptable as a plural.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Not consciousni? I can’t believe it.