Garden Hose

References

• Romancing the Stone
• The Jewel of the Nile
• King Solomon’s Mines
• Up in Smoke
• Weeds
• Traffic
• Rope Dart
• Jackie Chan
• Shanghai Noon
  • Horseshoe and Rope Fight Scene
• Stephen Chow
• Bluetooth Garden Hose
• Flexi Hose
• Hands Across America
• Welcome Back, Kotter
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Push Start
• Dantian
• Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
  • Midi-chlorians
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
  • The Waitress
• Shenzhen, China
• The Karate Kid

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
He can’t go back yet.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He wants to go back. But he can’t. You need a montage.

[Thomas]
I was just going to say you need a training montage.

[Shep]
You need a training montage.

[Emily]
Of him sprinkling the water with his fingers, painting the fences.

[Thomas and Emily]
Waxing the bus.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary ideas and turn them into movies. Spring is well underway, and with the weather getting warmer, at least it is where we are, we thought to get out into the garden for this week’s show as we come up with a movie about a garden hose. This was another tricky one for me, so I’m excited to get to the pitch session and see what my co-hosts have come up with. My co-hosts, of course, are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Hopefully, I don’t lead us down the garden path as I get us started. Don’t make me hose you down, Shep.

[Shep]
I feel like you had that response ready.

[Thomas]
Maybe-

[Shep]
You knew I was going to be in pain.

[Thomas]
It’s like tradition at this point. All right, I have three pitches. My first one is very short. Basically just garden hoses come to life for whatever reason, and maybe they act like snakes or vines. No idea what the plot is. That’s just the whole thought.

[Shep]
And they’re murdering people, I assume, because when inanimate objects come to life, that tends to be what they do.

[Thomas]
Capturing them or whatever it is.

[Emily]
I mean, isn’t that the secret desire of all inanimate objects?

[Thomas]
We’ve abused hoses for far too long, and now they’re getting their revenge. Just left them out in the sun.

[Shep]
Well, my brother keeps running over my hoses with the lawnmower, so it’s totally understandable.

[Thomas]
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. As long as the hose knows that it’s your brother and not you, who’s responsible.

[Shep]
Assuming a hose can tell humans apart.

[Thomas]
I am. I don’t know.

[Emily]
We all do look the same.

[Shep]
That’s hose-ist. I can imagine, not as murderous hoses, but, like, in the future, where everything is smart technology and hoses place themselves in the lawn and, like, the kid is playing with the hose because it moves.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
And so they make a toy out of it because that’s what kids do. I got nothing other than that.

[Thomas]
I mean, that’s pretty good.

[Shep]
Just a fragment of an idea based on that sentence.

[Thomas]
My next idea is a male pilot and female passenger survive a plane crash in the middle of the jungle. For various reasons, they don’t expect to be found, so they decide to hike through the jungle and try to find civilization. The man says to grab whatever supplies they can from the plane. He gets food, water, flares, a knife, a parachute, maybe some other things. She gets a couple of small things and a garden hose. The pilot gives her a hard time for getting the hose, but she obstinately defends the action. He says, “Fine, but you’re carrying it.” Over the course of the film, the hose proves to be useful in several situations.

[Shep]
Why is it specifically a male pilot and a female passenger? Are the genders important?

[Thomas]
Not necessarily, but I like that he thinks that he knows-

[Emily]
I like the idea of the mansplaining, and “I’m a man-“

[Thomas]
Right?

[Emily]
“I know what to do.” And she’s like, “Fuck you. I grabbed a garden hose. I’ve got this.”

[Shep]
I mean, I’m a man, and I can think of several uses for a garden hose.

[Thomas]
Sure, but if you think about, like, a 50-foot garden hose, it’s pretty heavy, and you got to lug it through the jungle.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Do you have rope? Do you have some other alternative? No? Then take that garden hose. Just wear it over your head, around your neck.

[Thomas]
I imagine it’s sort of Romancing the Stone type of vibe.

[Emily]
That’s what I was thinking. Very Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Nile.

[Thomas]
Exactly. King Solomon’s Mines. Any more?

[Shep]
The 80s were so recent.

[Emily]
So relevant.

[Thomas]
All right, my final one. Some kids are playing in the front yard on a hot day, throwing water balloons and spraying each other with the hose. One of the kids takes a drink from the hose and soon collapses. He’s rushed to the hospital, where it’s determined he was exposed to a powerful and mysterious new narcotic. Enter our main character, a DEA agent who is investigating cases involving this new drug. Eventually, it’s discovered that the drug can be fashioned into a rubber-like substance, which a cartel is using to make fake garden hoses in order to ship them across the border. Somehow, a shipment of these hoses actually got sold, releasing the undiluted drug into the world.

[Emily]
That’s a really good plug.

[Shep]
Yeah. Isn’t that a Cheech and Chong movie, that they could make stuff out of-?

[Thomas]
Kind of, yeah, but, I mean, that’s a pretty common thing with trying to get drugs across the border.

[Emily]
Right?

[Thomas]
Is they’ll make fake watermelons, or they’ll make fake statues with the cocaine, or they’ll make whatever.

[Emily]
Is it Weeds where they make, like, baby dolls or something? The plastic. No, that’s… I don’t remember. I was thinking it’s another Michael Douglas film with all the different stories, and Mexico and sepia…

[Thomas]
Traffic?

[Emily]
Traffic, yeah. In Traffic, it’s plastic and the baby dolls, and that’s how they smuggle it across the border.

[Thomas]
I’ve not seen that since it came out.

[Shep]
It was fine.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right. Those are my ideas. Shep, why don’t you tell us what you have?

[Shep]
Okay. Walking through the desert, you find the end of a garden hose. What is it connected to? Where does it go? This is a hose in a desert that goes off into the distance.

[Emily]
Is it a very long hose?

[Shep]
I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to find it to find out how long it is.

[Thomas]
Probably goes under the sand at some point, you got to pull it out and follow it.

[Emily]
It’s connected to a cactus that is the fountain of youth.

[Shep]
How do you turn it on?

[Emily]
Got to find the right spike.

[Thomas]
Turn the arm.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Pump it up and down.

[Thomas]
It’s a quarter turn. Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. Next is a garden hose that, quote, unquote refines water that flows through it. So flowers and vegetables watered with this hose grow big and beautiful. But what if you put something else through it? This is our magical realism.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. Unless it’s made out of a powerful new narcotic, and that just happens to cause flowers to grow.

[Emily]
Acts as an amazing fertilizer.

[Shep]
You accidentally drink from the hose, and then you see the flowers as more colorful, but it’s the effect of the narcotic.

[Thomas]
Is this just one hose that exists in the world?

[Shep]
Sure.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
What happens if you put chocolate milk in it?

[Shep]
I don’t know. That’s a good question. Okay, my final pitch is a martial arts comedy movie where the protagonist has learned garden hose style and uses the garden hose as their weapon.

[Thomas]
They’ve got, like, noodling arms.

[Shep]
I was thinking more like Jackie Chan, when he does the rope and horseshoe, or like, a Stephen Chow comedy. Maybe the antagonists also use wacky items as weapons that you wouldn’t normally expect.

[Thomas]
I feel like if it was a Stephen Chow one, it would start with some guy defending his village, and he just happens to grab this garden hose.

[Emily]
And then that becomes as a weapon of choice the rest of the film.

[Thomas and Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Shep]
That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
All right, Emily.

[Emily]
All right, I’ve got a few. So going off of your martial arts comedy. I have a superhero who discovers his powers by watering the lawn with the garden hose. And he becomes The Gardener, and his trusty hose is what he uses to fight crime. He can make the water go into it, so it doesn’t have to be connected to, like, a spigot. It can be indestructible. Use it as grappling, hook, ropes. Whatnot.

[Thomas]
It’s like that Bluetooth garden hose video on the Internet.

[Emily]
I thought it was an interesting idea, and I like the idea of him being The Gardener.

[Shep]
Not The Fireman?

[Emily and Thomas]
No, this is a garden house, not a fire hose.

[Shep]
Yeah, but maybe he keeps trying to like, “I’m The Fireman!” Like, “That’s a garden hose, you’re The Gardener.”

[Emily]
We can make it a comedy and go that way with it.

[Thomas]
And then he takes out all the water and he fills it with gasoline. He’s like, “Fine, you want me to be The Fireman?”

[Emily]
Lights it up.

[Thomas]
It’s a villain story. You think it’s a superhero story.

[Emily]
All right. My next one is a door-to-door garden hose salesman is trying to make his fortune on the latest and greatest hose technology. And throughout this, he meets a quirky cast of characters selling door-to-door, and he does not, in fact, make his fortune and dies penniless and alone.

[Shep]
That took a turn.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Have there been great strides in garden hose technology that I’m not aware of?

[Thomas]
There’s this new rubber-like substance. It’s made out of a powerful and mysterious narcotic.

[Shep]
And it gives you super powers.

[Emily]
Gives you super powers.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Makes your flowers grow extra pretty and bright. I was thinking with the latest, greatest hose technology, I was thinking of the ones that shrink up, and then you fill them up and they expand.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. I hate those.

[Thomas]
Those are awful.

[Emily]
I’ve actually heard they’re terrible. The third pitch is a young man obsessed with garden hoses. Who knows why, we can figure that part out. Wants to set the world’s record for the longest connected hose. So he’s planning on getting as many hoses as he can and stretching them across the width of his home state.

[Shep]
You just need the expandable one and then just pull it till it stretches that long.

[Emily]
Yeah. I was thinking this one could be, like, an interesting story of people coming together to create this common goal and have him fulfill a dream of his.

[Shep]
And then he dies from his cancer because this is the Hands Across America again.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
You’re right.

[Thomas]
Does he get out to the desert and discover this really long hose already out there?

[Shep]
Well, his state is Nevada.

[Emily]
He leaves that hose there, he dies halfway through in the desert.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So my final one and my favorite one is also my shortest one. Serial killer uses a garden hose to kill his victims.

[Shep]
He kills them by shoving it up their nose, and they bring an old Detective out of retirement to catch this returning copycat serial killer. And it’s the gritty Welcome Back, Kotter reboot that we always wanted.

[Emily]
“Put a rubber hose up your nose!”

[Thomas]
What would that theme song sound like? (Creepily) Welcome back, welcome back…

[Shep]
Well, I like it.

[Emily]
Get Gabe Kaplan on the phone. We’ve got a winner.

[Thomas]
All right, we’ve heard them all. What pitch is jumping out at us as the one we want to run with?

[Emily]
I don’t think we have a clear winner this week.

[Thomas]
No, this was a tough one. You guys both had fighting stories, and that thought had crossed my mind. But I kept thinking about situations where, okay, why would you grab a garden hose as a weapon? But all the situations I kept thinking of like, well, then why wouldn’t you grab that stick with the spiky things on the end of it for, like, churning up the dirt? Or why wouldn’t you grab a chainsaw or a weed whacker or anything else that would be a better weapon than a garden hose?

[Shep]
Because the enemy is the one that grabbed the hoe, and all you are left with as an option is the garden hose. And you need some sort of weapon that you can get range on because that spiky thing is going to hurt.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Emily]
Do you leave the sprayer on the end of it and grapple things?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. You grapple things. You can grapple up into a tree. Well, I like that one.

[Emily]
We can go with it. I think they’re all going to be equally difficult and satisfying. I think we start with the martial arts. So the village is burning and the enemy is at the gate. Go.

[Shep]
Oh, we’re starting with this one? We’re not even looking at other options? Okay, no, we’re going fast. That’s fine. So what is the age of the main character? Is he an old, retired martial artist, or is he a young guy that studied martial arts but never took it seriously? Never found his calling, never found what he was really good at.

[Thomas]
That’s good, because I could see either one of those working. The older master just grabbing whatever’s handy because he’s just that good. He can use whatever or the younger guy training to specifically use that kind of a weapon.

[Shep]
Yeah. So I’m picturing like the older master being the Jackie Chan type, current Jackie Chan, who is old and wizened and his martial arts style is use anything. Anything can be a weapon. And his favorite disciple, who has the spirit of martial arts, who is like, he has that root. He has that in him but has never expressed it, has never shown it because he’s never had the need to show it because he’s never been in danger. He’s lived a sheltered life in wherever they live. Maybe there are moments early on where he’s trying to pick up whatever weapon and he can use it for a moment. Like that spark is there and everyone can see it. But then the village gets invaded and maybe the old master goes off to fight and leaves the disciple behind. “Hey, protect the house, protect the family, protect whoever else is there.” I mean, do we have the village burned down at the beginning? Because that’s the typical Hero with a Thousand Faces story trope beginning.

[Thomas]
What time period is this taking place in?

[Shep]
Like, it’s got to be after garden hoses were invented.

[Emily]
Nondescript semi-ancient China with garden hoses. Yeah.

[Shep]
Well, it could be said in modern day where the old master is like, “No, use all these old stuff.” And h’s like, “No, we don’t do that anymore. We have-“

[Emily]
Does the master have him going and collecting, like, buckets of water to stream in slowly? And he’s like-

[Shep]
Just turns on the hose.

[Emily]
Yeah, just pulls the hose out, starts watering the flower-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I want to see a scene where the old master has a watering can. He’s like doing Tai Chi style watering over the garden.

[Emily]
And saying things like, “You need to evenly distribute the water so all the roots get the same drink.”

[Thomas]
You see him carefully stepping between the rows as part of his movement.

[Emily]
And the young guy comes out in flip flops and basketball shorts and just turns on water and starts spraying everything down.

[Thomas]
Just spraying. Yeah.

[Shep]
The old master has the bucket, but he’s not pouring from the bucket. He’s dipping his fingers in the bucket and flicking off droplets. It takes all day to water the flowers properly. And then it’s the disciple’s turn and he just turns on the garden hose. I like that as imagery.

[Emily]
I think that’s a great opening.

[Thomas]
So is this a small town? It must be, right?

[Shep]
It must be if it’s a village that is being invaded for some reason.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or it could be in the city and it’s not a whole village being invaded. It’s the communal space next to the apartment complex where the garden is.

[Thomas]
It’s like a gang of ruffians.

[Shep]
Yeah. They want to take over that garden and turn it into their drug hangout.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So which way are we going? Are we going city?

[Emily]
I almost like it being in a city just because you’re using the storylines that you would use for, like, feudal Japan or China and using it as, like a city block in modern day China.

[Shep]
That’s why he has trouble learning from the master, because the master is not accustomed to city life. He grew up in the countryside. That’s what he knows.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he’s trying to teach him-

[Emily]
He’s from a little farming village.

[Shep]
Yes. A specific farming village that he talks about because-

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Shep]
Later, when the main character has to flee, he flees to that village and meets like the other people from that martial arts family and they teach him the countryside ways. And then he returns triumphantly to the city and uses the countryside ways.

[Thomas]
So is the master killed early on or taken prisoner or something?

[Shep]
Oh, he’s got to be killed. That’s to inspire the disciple to seek his revenge.

[Thomas]
Right. The cops are all on the payroll.

[Shep]
Obviously.

[Emily]
Clearly.

[Shep]
Yeah. This movie writes itself. It’s almost like we’ve seen it a thousand times.

[Thomas]
So I guess we’re done. Next week on Almost Plausible…

[Emily]
It was all solved with a garden hose.

[Thomas]
I mean, I think we’ve got the beginning pretty well nailed down. We see what that city life is with the master, how he operates. We see that there’s that not just a generational divide between the two, but methodological divide, I suppose, between how they approach daily life. The bad guys come in, master is killed in the initial sort of kerfuffle that happens there. Are other people forced to flee?

[Shep]
Sure. Yeah. That’s why the disciple goes to that village, because he’s got the other people from the apartment complex with him. He needs to get them to a safe place. He needs to get somewhere that he knows they would be safe. And so all he can think of is his master’s old village where everybody knows martial arts.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The gang invading. That’s got to be led by the master’s previous disciple.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Who uses modern whatever garden implements.

[Thomas]
He knows of a perfect place for their drug hangout.

[Shep]
Yeah. And he wants revenge on the master for kicking him out.

[Emily]
Why is the master in the city now? Why did he come to the city now?

[Shep]
Well, he was trying to expand his family’s martial arts school, so he came to another small town to open a martial arts school and a city grew up around him. So he’s been there for 70 years.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Shep]
So he’s still trying to keep to the old ways. But the area that he can work in is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. The only place that has any natural anything is that community garden.

[Thomas]
Well, I was going to say maybe it’s like his Kung Fu school or whatever that he’s created because I think typically in a lot of these movies you have a bunch of people who are at the school and it’s a group of guys who defend the school or the city or whatever it is. But in this case it’s like him and our main character because nobody’s going to Kung Fu school. This is a modern bustling city. It’s so anachronistic and so there aren’t people to defend it. It’s literally just the two of them.

[Emily]
I’m liking it. Okay, so the old student comes in, there’s a kerfuffle, kills the teacher-

[Thomas]
Oh, there are orphans. The older teacher has been taking in orphans. And those are the people that he takes to the village.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Because they’ve all seen the faces of the guys who killed him. So they got to get out of there.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
Because they’re all now wanted or got a target on them.

[Thomas]
Right. How do they get there?

[Emily]
The bus. They just take the bus.

[Shep]
Or maybe there is like they have a bus because he opened a school. He had this plan to have going on picking up all these students and it’s like “It’s unnecessary. First of all, we don’t have any students. Second of all, we live in a modern city. There’s public transportation.” So the bus is like super old, worn out.

[Emily]
Lots of backfiring as it travels out of the city.

[Thomas]
He should have to compression start the bus. He’s got to get it going down a hill.

[Shep]
Yes. They’ve been trying to make their high speed escape, and it’s just going super slow.

[Thomas]
So they get out to the country.

[Shep]
They get out to the country, the bus breaks down entirely.

[Thomas]
They have to walk the last mile.

[Shep]
Sure. Yeah.

[Emily]
Where’s the garden house in all of this part.

[Shep]
There is no garden hose in this part.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
He didn’t take the garden hose with them.

[Thomas]
There’s the one that’s there that he was using, but.

[Shep]
Right, but he left that behind.

[Emily]
That works.

[Thomas]
Didn’t know he would need it for a weapon later.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Conveniently. It’s still there.

[Shep]
Or it’s not. It doesn’t need to be that specific hose.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
How do the people in the village react to a dozen kids showing up?

[Shep]
Does the main character know anyone in the village?

[Thomas]
I think maybe he knows of people in the village.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like the master’s sister or something.

[Thomas]
You have to have some sort of talisman from the master to prove that he was his disciple.

[Emily]
Okay, so they’re confused because all this guy and a bunch of kids are just showing up to this village and they’re like, “What’s going on? That’s so and so’s bus. Where is he?” He shows up with the talisman and you get that nice moment of head bowed and then raising up the talisman and then women falling to their knees and crying because they know that means he’s fallen and he’s dead.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And this village is desperate for people because everyone’s moved to the city. The kids have all moved to the city. No one’s farming anymore.

[Shep]
Oh, it’s a perfect place for orphans.

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Shep]
They can earn their keep by helping out on the farms.

[Thomas]
Right. So they can stay there and they’ll be safe. No one’s going to miss them in the city because they’re orphans anyway. They don’t have to go back.

[Shep]
So why would he ever go back?

[Thomas]
That’s a good question.

[Emily]
He has to avenge his death.

[Shep]
No, there’s got to be some other reason. The girl that he left behind.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The shopkeeper that was nearby, that he had a crush on, that he would flirt with, she didn’t evacuate with them because she wasn’t part of that apartment complex that housed all the orphans. So she’s in danger.

[Emily]
He keeps thinking about her.

[Shep]
No. Someone comes from the city to tell him that the rival gang, the gang leader, has taken a shine to her and is harassing her and is going to force her to marry him.

[Emily]
Yeah. Okay, I’m buying it.

[Shep]
So now he has to come back to rescue the girl and also avenge his master. But he’s not ready yet. He can’t go back yet.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He wants to go back. But he can’t. You need a montage.

[Thomas]
I was just going to say you need a training montage.

[Shep]
You need a training montage.

[Emily]
Of him sprinkling the water with his fingers, painting the fences.

[Thomas and Emily]
Waxing the bus.

[Thomas]
Yeah. “I thought that thing was broken.” “It is. We’re not taking this back.” How does he get that message? Who contacts him and how and why? How do they know where to find him? He just checks his email?

[Shep]
No, he calls a friend from the city and to let his friend know that he’s okay and he’s alive and they’re hiding out. And then his friend goes, “Oh, man, a lot has been happening here since you’ve been gone.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, maybe it’s taken them a few days to get to the village. They haven’t contacted anybody during that time.

[Shep]
Well, even if they get to the village, yeah. He doesn’t necessarily contact his friend right away. He lets his master’s sister know what happened. The orphans get settled. He’s staying with the sister. He doesn’t know what to do.

[Emily]
Does he forget something that he needs to call to have taken care of? Like, “Send me this. This is where I’m at. We’re settling here.”

[Shep]
I think he’s just eventually calling to let his friend know that he’s still alive.

[Emily]
So like a couple of weeks have passed?

[Shep]
Or a couple of days.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Does he have a mobile phone?

[Shep]
He might not even need a mobile phone. If they have phones in the village, he could just call from a house.

[Thomas]
I was just wondering if somebody called him, wondering where he was, if the friend was like, “Dude, I went by the school and all these thugs are there and they spray painted over the sign” or whatever.

[Emily]
“What happened? Where are you?”

[Thomas]
“Oh, yeah, we had to bail. I’m in the country.”

[Emily]
“They killed my master. I got these kids who came out here to figure our shit out, and they’re happy. They’re getting sunshine and exercise.” I like the idea of it being a few days when the friend calls him because he’s not thinking straight exactly. Big adjustment going on right now. He’s not thinking clearly.

[Shep]
How would the friend… Oh, yeah, he had a cell phone, right.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because it’s a modern-day world. So he’s going to have service. Not great service, but he’s got service.

[Thomas]
I mean, either way works, really.

[Emily and Shep]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Why would he be improving his martial arts?

[Thomas]
Does he start doing it because he’s doing it to honor the sifu? Or does he find out this news and realize that “I need to help her, but I need to get better first.” I mean, that seems like a long training regimen for him to have to undergo to get good enough to fight this whole gang. It will probably be too late to save her.

[Shep]
Oh, he doesn’t save her. He goes back to rescue her and gets beaten down because that’s the classical-

[Thomas]
Yes. Excellent.

[Emily]
He loses his confidence, returns defeated. Shamed-

[Shep]
Well, guess what do they do? They cut the ligaments and make it so he can’t move and break his dantian and cripple his foundation. And so he’s basically dead. And his friend, who was still in the city, carries him out to the village because where else can he go?

[Emily]
Straps on the back of his vespa and drives him out to the village.

[Shep]
Yes, where he’s all wrapped up like a mummy.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I love it.

[Emily]
And then when he gets back, the master’s sister, she’s going to help heal him. Right?

[Thomas]
Right. She’s an herbalist.

[Shep and Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
She has all the acupuncture-

[Emily]
And as she’s doing it, she tells him how her brother was saddened by the failure of the first student, but saw the real potential in this student and knew he was the one that would carry on the tradition.

[Thomas]
She just happens to have all of his martial arts books.

[Shep]
Well, it’s a family martial art.

[Emily]
Well, yes. She learned alongside him growing up.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Emily]
So she’s like, “You were his favorite student. He knew you were the special one. You were the chosen one. You have all the midichloria.”

[Shep]
What a good reference that everyone likes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, not the least bit controversial.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
I think it would be funny if the master was just the worst one in the family at the martial arts. He tried to start a school thinking that teaching it would help him learn it. But everybody else in the family, everyone else in the village is better at it than he is.

[Emily]
I like that. She’s telling him the story of how horrible he was at home.

[Thomas]
His mentality is growth through adversity. And what could be a bigger challenge than trying to teach something you’re not very good at?

[Shep]
That’s why he could never teach it even though the student has that innate talent for it. He could never learn it because the master, sadly, was bad at teaching. So the master kept trying to tell him “Anything could be a weapon.” And the master keeps using old style stuff, and the student keeps using modern day stuff and saying, “If anything can be a weapon, then this can be a weapon.” He’s like, “Yeah, but you’re not using it, right. You don’t have the balance for that. Use this old wooden hoe or whatever, because then you could use that as a weapon because it has balance.” But it’s like, that’s not the teaching. The teaching is anything could be a weapon. So they were at odds over that. And then learning in the village from the rest of the family, he does use modern stuff with balance, as his teacher had always tried to impart to him.

[Thomas]
I just love the idea that he’s there “If anything can be a weapon, then this weapon could be a weapon.”

[Emily]
“I could use this gun.”

[Shep]
That would be great if the sister is also saying that. And he’s like, “But I have a machete. I have a weapon.” And she’s like, “Go ahead and try to attack me with it then.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
“I’m sorry, I thought you had a weapon. Was that not a weapon?”

[Thomas]
Yeah. She just immediately disarms him, turns it around on him. He’s down on the ground. She’s got the machete raised over her head and says that. “I thought you had a weapon. Oh, here it is.” All right, well, I sense that a training montage may be imminent, so let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll figure out the rest of our story for garden hose.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. So we’re in the village. The guy’s gotten his ass handed to him. Now he needs to learn the martial art to go back and save the girl of his dreams. How does that happen?

[Shep]
The sister starts teaching him, and he humbly starts learning, and then she has him learn from all the other old people in the village since they all know it. And then you see, like, each orphan is staying with a different family, and you see the orphan training along with that elder as well.

[Thomas]
Is each elder a specialist in a different type of weapon?

[Shep]
Sure.

[Emily]
Yeah, I like that.

[Thomas]
And the sister uses that weighted rope thing, so that’s why he learns the garden hose. He learns the style that he needs to be able to utilize the garden hose. And then each of the orphans has their specialty. That’s really good, because you’re not all trying to grab the same thing to use it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
You’re going for the thing that you’re best with. And so everyone has a different thing.

[Emily]
Does he take the orphans back with him?

[Shep]
No, he goes back on his own, but when he’s on the cusp of losing, the orphans show up-

[Thomas]
Yeah, there you go.

[Shep]
To take care of the henchmen so that the main character can focus against the lead bad guy.

[Emily]
All right.

[Shep]
Classic.

[Thomas]
How embarrassing would that be for those guys? Have their clocks cleaned by a bunch of little kids.

[Shep]
One of them wielding clocks.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
He’s there, polishing it and like, “No, I’m cleaning your clock.”

[Shep]
“Let’s have a face to face,” hits them in the face with the clock.

[Thomas]
Hey.

[Shep]
Now you got me doing it. I tried to even mumble it. Like maybe it won’t get recorded if I say it quiet enough. So he heals up, he gets retrained. How long has it been? Is the girl now, I assume married to the head gangster against her will?

[Emily]
It’s been a month or more.

[Thomas]
It’s going to be longer than that. Several months to a year.

[Shep]
If it’s a year, he comes back and she has a kid.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, let’s have that. Because then she can be like, “It’s my child’s father. I can’t abandon him.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. It introduces some late story conflict.

[Shep]
Yeah. He beats up the bad guy, he gets to where he thinks the girl is being held against her will and she’s fine. She’s not imprisoned or anything. She thinks it’s her husband coming home. She’s like, “Oh, Darling, oh, no. Invaders!”

[Emily]
“What are you doing?”

[Shep]
“Aren’t you the guy that used to come by the shop that I used to keep?”

[Thomas]
She just had no idea he had this crush. But-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She’s like, “Well, yeah, he was kind of a douchebag at first, but he ended up being nice.”

[Shep]
“He’s passionate.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, he provided.

[Emily]
“I got this nice apartment. I could quit my job. I have this beautiful child.”

[Shep]
“I didn’t ask you to come back.” It’s the waitress from Always Sunny. “What’s my name?” He can’t re- he doesn’t know.

[Thomas]
So how does that end then? The resolution? He went back for her. So he does all this. He defeats the whole gang, gets to her. She doesn’t care or even want that. So then he and the orphans all go back to the village and he has a relationship with the sifu’s granddaughter or something?

[Emily]
Yeah. The sister’s daughter comes back from college on a break.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
And he’s like, “Hey.”

[Shep]
Do you play the same music that’s playing every time he sees the shopkeeper.

[Thomas]
She comes back from her factory job in Shenzhen.

[Shep]
She’s got the coveralls and the big giant wrench, strike of grease on her forehead.

[Thomas]
She didn’t come straight from the factory, I don’t think so. What does happen? Does he go back to the village and find love there? Do we not bother with a love story resolution for him?

[Shep]
I mean, you could always subvert it and just not give him a love story ending.

[Emily]
Yeah. He goes back and his love story ending is he now accepts the old ways.

[Shep]
No, he didn’t accept the old ways. He was modernizing them.

[Emily]
Oh, he helps modernize them.

[Shep]
He reopens the school.

[Emily]
I want him to stay in the village, but maybe you see them off iPads, the old ladies playing mahjong on iPads.

[Shep]
The orphans could have introduced that.

[Thomas]
What is our main character’s need? What is the lesson he needs to learn? What does he need to be happy?

[Shep]
He needed to reach his potential. He needed to embrace his destiny and use his innate talents.

[Emily]
He needed to humble himself, to be willing to learn the hard way, to appreciate all the modern, easy way.

[Thomas]
He does a lot of growing up in this.

[Emily]
Yes, he does. Do we need to actually discuss the fight scene and how he uses the garden hose?

[Thomas]
I guess since it’s the purpose of the episode, we may want to mention it.

[Emily]
You want to explore that a little bit more.

[Thomas]
So do they show up with modern weapons at all?

[Shep]
Who? The orphans or the gangsters?

[Thomas]
Why does he go back on his own? I guess he feels that he can’t bring the orphans. That would be irresponsible.

[Emily]
Right. He doesn’t want to take them because-

[Thomas]
He doesn’t want to put them in danger.

[Emily]
They’re finally happy. They have this life going on there. They found joy. They can’t take them away from that. And they’re young. You can’t put kids in danger.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It turns out they’re all better than him at martial arts. He is once again, just like his master, the worst student in the village.

[Thomas]
That’s great. That’s what the master saw in him. Himself.

[Shep]
He saw himself.

[Thomas]
He thought it was this amazing spark, no, we’re kindred spirits, that’s all. That’s very funny. All right. So that makes sense why he would go back on his own, get this ass handed to him again. The orphans all show up because he’s basically their master at this point.

[Shep]
Sort of.

[Thomas]
They don’t want to let him down.

[Shep]
Or they think of him as the special needs sibling.

[Thomas]
They know that he’s in trouble.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
He’s their mascot.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They need to defend their mascot.

[Shep]
They all come back in the bus which has been restored and is like pristine. And they’re like “Just do maintenance, man.”

[Emily]
“Change the oil, get some new spark plugs. It’s not that hard.”

[Shep]
“I watched the video on YouTube. It told me how to do everything. Live in the modern times.” So they take care of the gangsters. He fights the head gangster who was also the former student of his master, which is all why he’s bad at martial arts. They’re equal.

[Thomas]
Is his plan to show up and grab weapons that are at the martial arts school?

[Shep]
Or maybe he takes a hose with him, the hose from the village that he had been training with.

[Thomas]
I kind of like the idea of him just grabbing the hose there. Like he has some sort of a weapon that he gets disarmed somehow because he sucks at it.

[Shep]
Oh yeah. He brings the machete.

[Thomas]
And they have him out in the courtyard and they think there aren’t any weapons here. He’s in trouble. And he ends up grabbing the hose and they all think, what are you going to do with that? And then he ends up being very skilled with it.

[Emily]
“You brought a hose to a knife fight.”

[Shep]
And the hose got range over a knife. So he beats up the head guy, goes to where the girl is. She is with her child and is happy with her life. She finds out that her husband has been beaten up and goes out and starts nursing him back to health. And all the orphans stop fighting and they’re all embarrassed. The orphans go back to the village. He stays and reopens the school. The head gangster and his wife are now landlords and he has to pay them rent.

[Thomas]
The main bad guy, he was just in a life of crime to get money to go legit.

[Shep]
So you see them at the end, the two of them, the couple are talking to him like “You have to pay this much rent and you have to do these chores around the house. You have to maintain all this stuff.”

[Emily]
Does see he the child. Their child, and is like, “I see potential in you.”

[Thomas]
I think it’s more of like a right at the end of the movie, eye waggle toward the camera type of thing where it’s like maybe potential for sequel? Is there anything else?

[Shep]
Is there anything else?

[Emily]
I don’t think there is.

[Shep]
I mean, this is very cliche and tropey.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
I’d still watch it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I would absolutely watch this.

[Emily]
Depends on the cast.

[Shep]
Depends on the cast.

[Emily]
I think it would be a fun movie to watch.

[Shep]
There are a lot of places that you could put comedy in here.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I think there are some really nice reversals or unexpected moments where we’re moving away from what is expected.

[Shep]
I see. I like that because it’s very tropey. It’s very cliche until the end. Then it’s a twist. It’s like, “Oh, but the whole movie up to this point-“

[Emily]
“He’s supposed to get the girl. This is not how it’s supposed to end.”

[Thomas]
He goes back to the master’s village and finds out the master sucked. He’s like, “Wait, what?”

[Shep]
Yeah. You’re already reversing things even at that point.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s pretty funny. I like that. Like you said, I would absolutely watch this. This seems right up my alley, so it’s almost like I wrote it.

[Emily]
This is definitely a beer and popcorn movie.

[Shep]
Well, now I just want beer and popcorn.

[Emily]
I know, right? Sounds so good.

[Thomas]
All right. Well, is that it? We done?

[Shep]
Can you think of anything else?

[Thomas]
We have, like, ten more minutes in the hour. So.

[Shep]
We are usually so short on time.

[Thomas]
Yeah. We’re usually cramming at the end.

[Shep]
Emily chose decisively at the beginning, and that gave us the extra ten minutes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That’s true.

[Thomas]
Helps if there was a big montage, too. We’re like “And then that happens.”

[Emily]
And then there’s big montage that’s happened.

[Thomas]
And, you know, I think with it being fighting, who sits down and figures out all the fighting?

[Shep]
The choreographer, not the script writer.

[Thomas]
Not the screenwriter. Yeah.

[Emily]
No, the screenwriter writes “Insert fight scene here.”

[Thomas]
Being essentially an action film, should the very first scene be a fight of some sort?

[Emily]
I really like the idea of you seeing him dipping his fingers in the water and flicking it. Close up of the plants in the garden.

[Shep]
I think that’s later. I think the first scene is a fight between the main character and a fly. He’s having trouble hitting the fly. He keeps trying to do all fancy moves to hit the fly, and he keeps not getting it.

[Thomas]
And then the master just grabs it with chopsticks.

[Shep]
Yes. As he’s walking by, hits it with the wooden hoe.

[Thomas]
It would be funny if he’s, like, clamoring around the room knocking stuff over, keeps not catching this fly. The master hears this ruckus and comes in, before he can even ask what’s going on. The fly started kind of flies by, and he just grabs it out of the air, kills it with his hoe, like you said, or whatever.

[Shep]
Or with a flyswatter. He kills it with a flyswatter. He’s like, “What are you doing? It’s a fly.”

[Thomas]
He like “I have this hanging here for a reason.”

[Shep]
“There is a tool for this.” And then the student goes, “Master, you said everything can be a weapon.” He’s like, “Yeah, we have the right weapon for this, though.”

[Emily]
Now I want the master to slip off his slipper and hit him.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
You’re right.

[Thomas]
Anything else that we want to add to this? Is there anywhere else the garden hose can… Do we see a hint of that earlier? Is he goofing off in the village using the garden hose, like the rope weapon, or is it literally just a spur of the moment “I have no weapons, but anything can be a weapon. That garden hose is a bit like the rope thing.” So he grabs it?

[Shep]
So he’s out watering the plants.

[Thomas]
Is this in the village?

[Shep]
In the village.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
And so he stops the sprayer and thinks he’s, like holding the garden hose in his hand. He’s remembering his master dipping his fingers in and doing everything gently and whatever. He takes the end off the sprayer, and he’s using the hose, but with his finger pressing against it. That’s him doing the finger equivalent. The modern way that you would do it, spreading the droplets out. So you see the droplets going in slow motion and he’s starting to get it. It’s starting to sink in and then like a fly buzzes around and he whips the hose and it knocks the fly out of the air and kills it right away. And then that breaks him out of that enlightenment because he’s so shocked at how easy that was.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
I’d like to see a scene early on when they first get to the village and they’re kind of helping out and stuff where he thinks, “Oh, I’m going to really take advantage. I’m going to do it the way the master wanted me to do it.” So he’s out watering stuff with the bucket. He’s flicking it and the sister comes out. She’s like, “What the hell are you doing?”

[Shep]
“That’ll take all day.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, “It’s going to take all day. Use the hose.”

[Shep]
“You’ve got nine more chores after this.”

[Thomas]
Is there anything else or are we done?

[Shep]
I think we’re done. We’re at a point where I want to watch it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I think we’re good.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Are we home and hosed or simply all wet? You can let us know via email or social media. Links to those can be found on our website AlmostPlausible.com Also on our website are links to the many references we make, as well as complete transcripts for every episode. You can also leave a comment there telling us your thoughts on how the story turned out. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join Emily, Shep and I next Tuesday for another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Shep]
Bye.

[Emily]
Bye, guys.

[Outro music]