High School Yearbook

References

• Heart Eyes
• Thanksgiving
• Prom Night
• Terror Train
• Carrie
• And Then There Were None
• Peggy Sue Got Married
• Freaky Friday
• The Magic Schoolbus
• Step Brothers
• Back to the Future
• Hot Tub Time Machine
• Quantum Leap
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
• Predestination
• The Wizard of Oz
• Myst
• Almost Plausible: Chocolate
• Almost Plausible: Padlock
• Everything Everywhere All At Once
• Schadenfreude

Corrections

Thomas referred to “the Age books” in the video game Myst, but Ages are (basically) alternate universes or realities. The books that teleport you between Ages are called “Linking Books.”

Shep referenced the famous line, “there’s so much room for activities” from the film Step Brothers. But it turns out that line is never actually said in the film? We could have sworn it was, but apparently literally everyone is remembering it wrong.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
“The worst he could say is no.” And he’s like, “Ew, gross. Hey, everybody!”

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
“Susan tried to ask me out.”

[Emily]
Very ’90s.

[Shep]
“Can you imagine Susan and me? Ahahaha!”

[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 here with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
I hope it’s an actual object this week.

[Thomas]
Well, it is, because today we are making a movie plot about a High School Yearbook, which is what I grew up calling them, but I know some people call them annuals. What did you guys call them?

[Shep]
What? Annuals are a type of flower. It’s not a type of, you know, book with pictures in it.

[Thomas]
They both have leaves.

[Shep]
You!

[Emily]
I’ve actually heard both. I generally have called it a high school yearbook, but I think the old people in my life used to call them annuals.

[Thomas]
You’ve, I think, moved around the most of all of us in terms of, like, not number of times, but, like, distance around the country.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So I would expect you’ve probably been exposed to more of those regional… language? I don’t know. What’s the word I’m looking for?

[Shep]
Regionalisms?

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
I’m trying to remember where I heard annuals the most, but I do think that was here in Washington, in Pasco.

[Thomas]
Yeah. It wasn’t until I moved up here that I had heard that.

[Emily]
Old people, man. They say weird shit.

[Shep]
Hey, now, I’m sitting right here.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s time to hit the books, and Emily, you’re pitching first.

[Shep]
(Pained groan)

[Emily]
Ooh. Be prepared to be delighted. See what I did there? Setting high expectations so you won’t pick mine.

[Shep]
What? Your psychological manipulations will probably work on us.

[Thomas]
Shep, we’re supposed to pick hers now, right? Is that how this works?

[Shep]
I think we’re not supposed to pick hers because of the reverse psychology.

[Emily]
Yeah, because they’re great. They’re amazing. I think they’re the best pitches I’ve ever come up with.

[Thomas]
This is like double reverse psychology.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
As a 10-year high school reunion approaches, alumni start disappearing. The only thing left behind is their senior pictures cut out of the yearbook with an X drawn over their faces. The planning committee thinks about postponing the celebration, but foolishly decides to continue on with the festivities.

[Emily]
And more victims are claimed.

[Thomas]
And it’s a serial killer. Is this your serial killer pitch? Okay, all right.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, it’s my serial killer pitch.

[Thomas]
Just making sure.

[Emily]
So somebody obviously in the class is disgruntled about their past.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I imagine a horror movie like Heart Eyes or Thanksgiving, that kind of self-referential thing. And then it culminates in something similar to Prom Night or Terror Train or Carrie.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
So now the question is, is it one of the popular kids who is disgruntled for some reason-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or is it one of the nerds who does, like, a And Then There Were None-style thing where they take themselves out so everyone thinks they’re dead and they can continue their murder spree?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Spoilers!

[Emily]
Or, double down. Is it a teacher?

[Thomas]
Ooh, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Those little shits will finally show me some respect.”

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
All right, all right. I like this idea.

[Emily]
All right, and my next one is: Brenda is newly divorced and finds her high school yearbooks while packing up to move out of her once-happy home. She wistfully flips through the pages, remembering all of the great friends and experiences she had back then. She thinks that life would be so much better if she could go back to those days and make some better decisions. The next morning, she wakes up in her childhood bedroom. When she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she sees herself as a teen again. This is the second chance to make her life better than what it was.

[Shep]
Isn’t this Peggy Sue Got Married?

[Emily]
Maybe. Probably. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but now that you mention it, yeah, it’s very similar.

[Thomas]
I mean, I feel like this basic plot has been done a whole bunch.

[Emily]
So many times. Anyway, that’s what I’ve got. What have you got, Shep?

[Shep]
Oh, well, be prepared because mine is so good. That’s what we say, right, before our pitch?

[Emily]
Yep. Yeah, we hype ourselves up.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
All right, my pitch is: a popular girl finds her mom’s high school yearbook and discovers the terrible secret. Her mom was an unpopular nerd, but the next day, she wakes up as her mom in the past.

[Thomas]
So it’s like Freaky Friday, 1985.

[Shep]
Yes. 100%.

[Emily]
Whoa. We’re talking about a teen today waking up in her mom’s body.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
It’s not 1985.

[Thomas]
That’s. Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s 2000 at the latest.

[Shep]
Don’t do the math!

[Emily]
Closer to 95.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Okay.

[Shep]
95 is fine.

[Emily]
90s movies. I’m down.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I got lots of ideas for 90s movies.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s all I have. What do you have, Thomas?

[Thomas]
I have two ideas, and they are the best you’ve ever heard.

[Shep]
One of them is so good. I also had the same idea, but you wrote it down first, so I couldn’t.

[Thomas]
My first idea is: when Marcus graduated from high school in the year 2000, his classmates thought the strange notes he left in their yearbooks were just another one of his weird pranks.

[Thomas]
But 25 years later, after his mysterious death, the notes begin to predict terrifying real-world events, causing his old classmates to wonder what Marcus really knew.

[Shep]
Now, did he fake his death so that he could take them out one by one?

[Thomas]
Ah, there we go.

[Shep]
And Then There Were None-style. Spoilers for And Then There Were None.

[Emily]
Not that this is based on a true story, but I graduated in the year 2000, and I kind of vaguely recall writing weird messages like that in a couple of people’s yearbooks. Only like two of them though. And as far as I know, both those people are still alive and well.

[Shep]
For now. So you claim.

[Thomas]
All right, my other idea: Claire has always been invisible, resigned to the sidelines of high school life.

[Thomas]
But when the yearbook mysteriously lists her as part of the school’s popular crowd, reality shifts to make it true. Overnight, Clare finds herself at the center of attention, navigating a world of parties, social validation, and unexpected romance.

[Thomas]
It’s a dream come true. Until she discovers that popularity has a price. Shallow friendships, social rivalries, and the creeping realization that people like her for who the yearbook says she is, not who she really is.

[Emily]
So it’s like those fake boyfriend movies, but instead of hooking up with the star athlete so he can get good grades and she can be popular, it’s the yearbook just is, like, “Hey, check out this hot chick.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, basically, I guess.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Doesn’t the yearbook come out at the end of the year? Like-

[Emily]
That was my thought, too, but I wasn’t gonna question it. I thought maybe it comes out at the end of, say, like, sophomore year, and she goes back junior year, and everybody’s like, “Oh, my god, you’re so… The yearbook was right. You’re so pretty.” Or something like that. I don’t know.

[Thomas]
All right, so which of these fantastic, best-we’ve-ever-written pitches do we…

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
I mean, I think any of these is-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Actually. They’re all pretty good. So they’re all- They’ll all entertain me.

[Emily]
Yeah, they’re all decent. We have a lot of magic yearbooks. That’s what it should just be called. “Welcome to the magic yearbook.”

[Thomas]
Is Mrs. Frizzle the yearbook advisor?

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
So-

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We don’t say that. It’s just, she’s a teacher with frizzy red hair.

[Emily]
There’s a lot of amoebas just randomly placed throughout the yearbook.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There’s like, a lizard hidden on every page.

[Shep]
Yeah. She’s just Ms. F.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah. Shep, I really like yours. Tell me a little bit more about it, because you have the shortest pitch out of all of us.

[Emily]
But it is intriguing.

[Shep]
There’s lots of room for activities.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, are there thoughts that you had, though, for this plot line?

[Shep]
Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Tons.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
But see, I like to do a shorter pitch because often you guys come up with really good ideas that I hadn’t thought of.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And I don’t want to limit your solution space by, like, writing too much.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
But my idea was: So she thinks now that she’s back in time, but she’s the unpopular girl, she can become the popular girl.

[Thomas]
So she thinks she’s gonna, like, fix her mom’s life.

[Shep]
Well, she thinks that at least as she is experiencing it, she could be popular again. But she doesn’t know the fashion of 1995.

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. Yeah.

[Shep]
She doesn’t know the trends. She doesn’t know… She doesn’t like the music because it’s not the music from her time.

[Shep]
And so she fails to become popular. And she has to accept the fact that being unpopular is fine because it gets better later. You know, she knows some of the popular girls as adults, friends of her mom, or people in her neighborhood.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And she sees what they turn into later, which maybe is not great.

[Shep]
So, like, don’t get stressed over the popular girl not liking you because the high point of her life was high school, which is, for me, the saddest thing I can think of.

[Emily]
I agree.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So two things that I immediately thought of when you, when you’re giving your description there is: One, not only does she fail to make her mom popular, she actually loses social cred. Not a lot, but a little bit. She actually makes her mom’s position slightly worse, because she-

[Shep]
Right. Because she tried hard. She’s a try-hard-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Trying to be popular.

[Thomas]
Right. Everyone views her as, like, a poser or something.

[Shep]
Right. She does something that she did in her life that everyone thought was great, but because she is an unpopular kid, everyone sees her do the same thing, and it just comes off as trying too hard.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s disingenuous or something.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It fails spectacularly.

[Thomas]
The other thought I had is: her mom, in 2025, is friends with one of the popular girls from her high school because everyone’s kind of mellowed out and is like, “Wow, high school was dumb, wasn’t it?”

[Shep]
Yes. Right.

[Thomas]
“We’re all just like normal people now.” And so back in time, she sees that person, Candace, whatever, and she’s like, “Oh, an ally of my mom.” But not then.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Candace is a huge bitch.

[Thomas]
Yeah, back then, Candace is a terrible person to the mom. And so when she goes up and is like, “Oh, my gosh, Candace.” She’s like, “Ugh,” you know, “Get away from me, loser.” And…

[Shep]
“You can’t sit at our table.”

[Thomas]
Right. I like those ideas. And again, takes place in the 90s, which we love. So-

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
We love the 90s.

[Shep]
I had the idea for a scene, an unrelated scene where she sees her mom’s mom, who she doesn’t really know, you know, who passed away when she was much younger, and calls her grandma. And her mom’s parents think that she is telling them she’s pregnant.

[Emily]
Oh, nice.

[Shep]
But of course, she can’t be pregnant because she’s so unpopular. So-

[Emily]
That would be a great conversation where she says, “Grandma”, and the mom starts saying, “Are you pregnant?” And then the dad’s like, “Come on. Who’s she sleeping with? She never goes out.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
So what is the outcome? I feel like our main character mellows out a bit about her views on the importance of popularity in high school.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah, she learns to kind of value people as they are. Not for-

[Shep]
Oh!

[Shep]
I thought of a clichéd resolution-

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
And I hesitate to even say it because I’m sure it’s been done many times, but she had a friend, in grade school or middle school, who is now unpopular.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And so they are no longer friends.

[Shep]
Because she’s schlubby and she only just likes to sit in the library and read books and eat paste and like- “No, can’t be friends with that person. She’s too weird. She’s weird.” But then, having gone through this character arc of the movie, when she goes back to modern-day, you know, re-befriends her old friend.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
If her old friend even wants to be her friend anymore.

[Thomas]
That actually could be a really interesting scene back in modern times. She goes to try to hang out with the friend and be social with her. And the friend is like, “You don’t play the video games I play. We have nothing in common.”

[Shep]
Right. “We were friends because we used to live next door to each other, but now we don’t.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. And maybe the friend is like, “Do you need something? I’ll help you out. But we have no interests in common. I’m not sure what we would do.” Maybe it’s real awkward. She’s like, still learning those lessons. Like, “We don’t. You don’t have to force this. Like, it’s fine. I’m not, like, sitting here pining, wondering, ‘Oh, where’s Susan?’ every day. Like, I have a very full and rich life without you.” She’s like, “You do?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
She’s like, “I have tons of friends.”

[Emily]
“I’m in the band.”

[Shep]
“Also, I’m a massively popular streamer. So-“

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
Like, “You think you’re popular, but you’re only popular at school.”

[Thomas]
Right. How does the relationship with the mom change when she comes back to 2025?

[Shep]
So she sees her mom as someone to look up to, who’s very popular, who has it all together. She always knows the right thing to say. She always knows the right outfit to wear.

[Thomas]
Her friends were the popular girls in high school, so her mom must have been popular. Yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
Must have been. Right. So, finding the yearbook, which shows her mom with whatever is unpopular… You can’t just do glasses and braces anymore. Right?

[Thomas]
Right. Chess Club or-

[Shep]
Yeah, the, whatever the ’95 equivalent of-

[Thomas]
The Mathletes.

[Shep]
Yes. The Mathletes. Yes. Her, and the team holding a trophy. Like-

[Thomas]
Yeah. “You did homework for fun?”

[Shep]
Yeah. “Not just homework. Math!”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“You did math for fun!”

[Thomas]
Is, our main character, is she good or bad at math, or just so-so?

[Shep]
Uh, she’ll have to get real good real quick. She’s taking over her mom’s body and having- I mean, that could be- That’s a great idea for a scene where she has to, you know, she believes anybody could do that nerd stuff. You just gotta read the books, and you can do it and it’s fine. And then she tries to do it and of course fails.

[Shep]
So like you said earlier, she’s messing up her mom’s life and making it worse. She’s going to get her kicked off the Mathlete team.

[Emily]
She’s gonna tank her math grade.

[Thomas]
Well, I was thinking that actually, that could be the one place where things are actually okay.

[Thomas]
Like, turns out, our character, she’s actually decent at math. It’s not her favorite thing, but-

[Shep]
I mean, that also is kind of a stereotype. Like, I can think of a couple shows where you have the popular girl and then she turns out to have this hidden talent that she’s never really explored, where she’s really good at math.

[Thomas]
Right. She’s good at singing or dancing or whatever.

[Shep]
I’ve seen math a lot. Math specifically.

[Thomas]
Oh, really?

[Emily]
Mass specifically, lots of times. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. I don’t know why that is, where that’s the stereotype that attractive, popular girls are good at math. It’s so weird. Stereotypes are weird.

[Emily]
They are.

[Thomas]
Yeah. But I was just thinking that could be, like, one place where she gets a reprieve from all of the, those external, angsty forces.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
And then can start to kind of find some friendships and have, like, start to gain that, like, greater appreciation of, like, what her mom’s life was like, so-

[Shep]
Yeah. Well, you’ve brought me around. I’m back on board.

[Thomas]
See, these film stereotypes exist for a reason.

[Shep]
I’d like it if she’s discovering that she’s good at this because she’s never had to try before, and so is learning.

[Shep]
But also having tried to be popular and failed, just getting that little bit of praise in the math club for being good at being fast on the buzzer and getting the answer right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She could see why her mom got into it because there weren’t a lot of options.

[Thomas]
What club or activity is she a part of in 2025 that she wants to try to do in the 2000s or in the 90s that they won’t let her do?

[Thomas]
Dance Team or something like that? You know?

[Emily]
I don’t want it to… I mean.

[Thomas]
I’m just throwing that as an example.

[Emily]
You, no no no, but I, I was thinking the same thing, because in my first, in my brain, I was thinking cheerleading-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And I was like, “Oh, but that’s such the cliche.” But what if it was, like, drama? That’s not as nerdy now, from what I understand. Of course, I went to a high school where all the cliches were contradictory to what actually happened in high school, for the most part.

[Shep]
Yeah. One of the high schools I went to, all the popular kids were in drama, so-

[Emily]
Yeah. Right. And in my high school, all the popular kids were on…

[Emily]
We didn’t have mathletes, but we had, like, a brain… I can’t remember. The brain something team where it was-

[Shep]
Brainolympics?

[Emily]
Yeah, something like that. And it was history questions, math questions. All of them were taking calculus by junior year, and it was like, they were all the smart kids, too.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
So I was thinking maybe that. Is that too cliche, or do we want to stick with the cliches? Because that’s what people are used to seeing and thus relatable.

[Thomas]
It could be Yearbook Club. And that’s how she came across the mom’s yearbook. They have an archive at the school, and they’re like, “Didn’t your mom go here?”

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
“Oh, yeah.” “What year did she graduate?”

[Shep]
Oh, yes.

[Thomas]
That’ll be fun.

[Shep]
Because her mom would never show her her yearbook, her shameful history.

[Thomas]
No.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, yeah. I like that.

[Shep]
Yeah. That’s good.

[Thomas]
Okay. And so, for whatever reason, she can’t be part of the yearbook club.

[Emily]
Because she’s a nerd.

[Thomas]
Maybe it’s always been a popular kids thing.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Even in the 90s, the popular kids got to do the yearbook.

[Shep]
Because the popular kids know who everyone is.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
All the popular people anyway.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They go to all the parties. They have all the photos.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They help make the superlatives, so-

[Thomas]
Yes, that’s true. That’s true.

[Shep]
I was trying to think of something that she couldn’t do because it’s 1995.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
Not that she couldn’t do because she’s not popular enough.

[Thomas]
So, YouTube Club.

[Shep]
Yeah. Video Editing Club.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Streamer Club.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Lego Robotics Team.

[Shep]
She’s on the robotic- She teaches the robot how to do the latest TikTok dances.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
What is the mom’s superlative that she finds in the archived yearbook?

[Shep]
Most Likely to Marry a Calculator.

[Emily]
Why would she have one if she’s so unpopular?

[Shep]
Everybody gets one. Don’t-?

[Emily]
No, no.

[Shep]
Oh.

[Emily]
No. Only a select few in my school got one.

[Shep]
Oh.

[Thomas]
I think it probably depends on the size of the school.

[Emily]
Yeah, I had a… I think we had over 500 students in our graduating class.

[Thomas]
We didn’t do superlatives at my school, so no one got one.

[Emily]
There were, I think, a dozen for the senior class.

[Thomas]
I could see, like, the popular clique does their own, and then they do, like, a mocking one.

[Emily]
Oh, okay. Well, yeah, I… Let’s go with that because then she could be Most Likely to Marry a Calculator.

[Shep]
They mean that in a positive way because she’s on the mathlete team.

[Emily]
Most Likely to Do Your Taxes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s all. It’s. It’s. It’s got to be stuff that, like, they could justify to the advisor as, like-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“No, no, because she’s so good at math.”

[Shep]
“And honestly, I meant it as supportive.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. Like, “No one wants to do their taxes. She’s super helpful.”

[Shep]
“It’s a good thing.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because it’d be funny if in the future her mom’s like this impressive CFO, and so like, yeah, she was most likely to do your taxes, but now she’s most likely to keep your company running.

[Thomas]
Right. If we could get some branding in here, some sponsorship. She’s, like, a CFO at some major tech company.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She went to, the college she went to, there was somebody there who went on to found some huge company, and now she has lots of money. That’s why the popular girls like hanging out with her, because she’s rich now, so they’re like, “Oh.”

[Emily]
I was thinking they were like genuinely hanging out with her because like at the 10th high school reunion, they all started talking and realized, “Oh, I live down the street from you.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
“Oh, I’m- My girl goes to that school too. And-“

[Thomas]
That’s true. Yeah. I guess we don’t want her to rise too high.

[Emily]
Yeah, I mean, she could still be rich. I think that would be great. That would explain her spoiled daughter.

[Thomas]
Is there a dad in the, in 2025? I guess if the story needs him, he can be there.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But I kind of like the idea if they’re divorced and the mom is just like, “Whatever.” She was supporting them in the first place.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because of her job. So it’s not like she needs to get another partner in there to help pay the bills or something.

[Emily]
Oh, so if she’s divorced and the daughter is not seeing her date, she thinks, “Oh, mom just didn’t have enough experience dating younger. She only really saw my dad, so I’ll just get her used to dating around.” And she tries to hit on all the popular boys. Because obviously she’s going to go for the super hot guys. But then I thought, what if they hit it off and then she doesn’t exist?

[Emily]
And then we got the Back to the Future thing, but I guess that just wouldn’t happen.

[Shep]
Right. It couldn’t happen because of predestination.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Can’t change the past. But now it’s like, well, could we turn this into a rom-com? I bet we could.

[Thomas]
You could definitely do something where, in the ’90s, she hits on one of the other guys in the high school. And then in 2025, there’s a scene between the mom and that guy, and he’s like, “Hey, how come we never happened? We’re both single. Maybe we give it a shot now.” And the mom is like, “Hmm, okay.”

[Emily]
That could be fun.

[Thomas]
So it’s like the daughter kind of sets it up in the past, and the mom closes the deal in the future or in the present, I guess.

[Shep]
It’s so weird if you think about it a little more, though.

[Thomas]
That’s a good point, actually.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
It’s. It’s…

[Emily]
What? She’s helping her mom get laid in the future. What? Is that weird?

[Thomas]
Women supporting women, Shep.

[Shep]
Okay. But this means-

[Emily]
She’s not trying to hook up. She’s not thinking of her mother as a sexual being. She’s thinking of her mother needing a relationship with a man because she’s lonely.

[Shep]
Okay. But the effect is she’s trying to hook up with a guy who potentially later becomes her stepfather. So-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So I withdraw the suggestion.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There shouldn’t be a romance. It’s a bad idea.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
See, I told you it was a bad idea.

[Shep]
You’ve convinced me. So she could, like, attempt to woo guys.

[Emily]
Right. And just get rejected over and over again.

[Shep]
Right. So she’s got a friend. She’s got another unpopular girl as a friend in 1995. And she’s like, “I’m going to go ask out (so and so).” Steve!

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Shep]
“The worst he could say is no.” And he’s like, “Ew, gross. Hey, everybody!”

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
“Susan tried to ask me out.”

[Emily]
Very ’90s.

[Shep]
“Can you imagine Susan and me? Ahahaha!”

[Thomas]
The whole lunchroom is just, like, raucous laughter.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Turns out there was something worse than “No” that he could have said. All right, well, let’s take a break here, and when we come back from our break, we’ll figure out what else Susan gets up to in the past in our episode about a Yearbook.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. Shep, during the break, you said you have some questions.

[Thomas]
Let’s hear what those are.

[Shep]
I have several questions.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So what does she, what does Susan, think is going on? She wakes up in the past. I was thinking she’s trying to figure out how to get back to the present.

[Emily]
Back to the Future.

[Shep]
Back to the present, not the future.

[Thomas]
There’s a line. She’s like, “I haven’t been in any hot tubs lately.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
She’s, like, trying to figure out how this happened.

[Shep]
It’s Quantum Leap-style. She’s like, “There’s some problem-“

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
“My mom had in her life, and I’m here to fix it.” That’s why she tries to make herself- She tries to make her mom popular. That didn’t work. She tries to get her mom interested in boys. That didn’t work. Like, she keeps trying to fix the situation, thinking that once whatever it is becomes correct… Because this life is wrong, this life can’t be the mom’s intended life. She’s a nerd. That’s not right. Because she’s cool in the future. So-

[Emily]
I really like the idea where she’s trying to figure out what to do and is watching a rerun of Quantum Leap and it goes, “Oh, that’s probably it.”

[Thomas]
You mean in the past, she sees-?

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I had that same thought.

[Emily]
She watches a past episode of Quantum Leap because that’s not on anywhere right now.

[Shep]
See, you could just have Quantum Leap on.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, the parents are watching it in the background.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. So it stopped in 1993.

[Emily]
So it would be a rerun.

[Shep]
So, yeah. It’s in syndication.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So she tries to figure out what to fix for her mom. Dating, popularity…

[Thomas]
I mean, that could be a good place for her to start, is the dating thing. Like, she thinks her mom isn’t dating. She thinks her mom has, like, I don’t know, needs help with that sort of a thing.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because her mom’s clearly only ever had the one relationship with her dad, and it fell apart.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So she just didn’t get enough practice when she was younger. And maybe, as all kids do at some level, I believe, she thinks, “Well, maybe, maybe if I fix this, they’ll stay together. Because she’ll know what she wants and how to have a relationship.”

[Thomas]
Right. She’ll know what she had.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Is she closer to the dad then, maybe? Because the dad’s not around, she has that, like, the mom is the enforcer of the rules. And so when she goes over to the dad’s house, it’s like, more freedom and…

[Emily]
I think she has a balanced relationship with them-

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
And sees both of them as valuable parents, and that they should have worked together as a team. She doesn’t understand the nuance of relationships yet because she’s a teenager.

[Thomas]
Right. Well. And there could be stuff that she doesn’t know, that they never told her about why the relationship ended.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah.

[Thomas]
That could be part of it, too. She doesn’t know why their relationship ended. It doesn’t make sense to her.

[Emily]
Her assumption at first is clearly mom just didn’t have enough relationship experience beforehand because this girl has already had, like, four serious boyfriends in the two years of high school she’s been in.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Or three. Or however old she is.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. So I think that her nerdy friend that she makes in the past, she has to talk to about being in the past. Because you need that dynamic of… You need the audience surrogate to bounce stuff off of.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Back to the Future had Doc Brown, so you need your Doc Brown character. So she’s trying to figure out how to get back to her time. And so maybe the two of them talk about the various things to try. And maybe her friend in the past warns her- because it’s gotta be clear to people that something is going on with her, because she doesn’t remember anything prior to Tuesday, you know?

[Thomas]
I mean, I think if I woke up in my own body and at 15 years old, I’d have a hard time. Like, I wouldn’t know my friends’ phone numbers or their addresses or anything. Things that I had memorized back then.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
I wouldn’t know that. I don’t know that now, you know?

[Shep]
So like, her mom, her grandma, her mom’s mom, thinks that maybe she’s sick, checks for a fever.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like she’s acting weird at the very beginning.

[Emily]
“Did you have a fall?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Does she get taken to the doctor or something? Right? I wonder if the friend in the past is, like, doing research into, like, quantum mechanics or something like that. You know, trying to do research into time travel and figure out, like-

[Emily]
At the library’s dial-up computer?

[Thomas]
That’s good. Yeah. And then we see in the future, oh, that person has gone on to become, like, a really eminent scientist in this field.

[Shep]
Does she show up at the end? Because she would have been friends with the daughter, and she can calculate, “Okay. She came from 2025.”

[Thomas]
Oh, that would be interesting if they have, like a code word or something like that.

[Shep]
Yeah. Oh, that’s the end of Jumanji, the Jumanji sequel-

[Thomas]
Is it?

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
Where they go to the guy that they rescued, who’s now a grown man with kids, because he was a kid when they rescued him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s a weird dynamic. I really like that scene, though.

[Thomas]
But I feel like, does Susan cause this woman or this person to become a quantum scientist?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or were they always that? We see at the beginning of the movie, that’s what their job is.

[Emily]
Well, I mean, it depends on how we’re gonna handle the time travel experience of it all.

[Shep]
So, Predestination versus Back to the Future.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Between the two, I prefer Back to the Future.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because then you could put in little changes at the beginning and the end. Maybe things she doesn’t even notice.

[Emily]
But I think a big change like that, her going from… I mean, did- So she would know the person, or is it just something she finds out later?

[Shep]
I don’t think that she knew the person before going back in time.

[Emily]
That makes sense to me because she randomly makes friends with, this is, like, the only person she can make friends with. Right?

[Emily]
Outside of the Mathletes.

[Shep]
Right. This is someone who was probably already friends with her mom.

[Emily]
But no longer friends with her mom in the present.

[Shep]
Yeah, possibly.

[Emily]
See, that’s what I was asking. Does she know? Does Susan know the friend, as a child?

[Shep]
Ah.

[Emily]
Or-

[Shep]
So what happened between the two of them? Her mom and her friend?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Maybe that’s the fix. She’s got to get her mom and her friends, her mom’s friend, to stay friends. Best friends forever.

[Thomas]
So is the thing that she’s trying to do in the past, of getting the mom and the friend together again, and she ends up back in the present, and she thinks, “Ah, I understand the lesson. I will go to my friend that I have, you know, sort of left in the social dust, and I’ll rekindle that friendship.” And that’s when her friend is like, “I don’t need you.”

[Shep]
Right. Like, that wasn’t the lesson.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
“People grow and change. It’s fine.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Does she think it’s all a dream when she returns to the future? Or the present, I should say. When she returns to the present, is it a chance that it was just a dream she had? It was so vivid.

[Emily]
You want her to wake up Wizard of Oz-style, and then find out it was true after all.

[Shep]
Right. That’s kind of why I wanted the physicist friend to show up as an adult.

[Emily]
Yeah. Which they can. I think that would be fair.

[Thomas]
Sure. So there’s that moment where she doesn’t know, and we’re not sure. And then the physicist friend shows up and confirms, like, “Hey, you said 2025. I’m here in 2025.” And she’s like, “Oh, my god, it was real.”

[Shep]
Yeah. Maybe she gives her advice in the past, you know, invest in Apple, whatever.

[Thomas]
Hmm. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. I could totally see, like, she, of course, has an iPhone in the present. And so she goes in the past and she’s using like a IIe or something. Or I guess it would be a Mac Classic, probably, around that time. Right? Mid-90s. What do we got? Like, the see-through Macs, the iMacs.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, the iMacs.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Those didn’t come out till the late ’90s, didn’t they?

[Shep]
I don’t remember.

[Emily]
If we’re doing ’95, they didn’t come out till I was in high school, which would have been ’96, ’97, ’98.

[Thomas]
But whatever the thing was then, she’s like, “This is the same thing that made my phone like, it’s. How old is this company?”

[Emily]
And they’re like, “Phone?”

[Thomas]
Yeah, “Apple doesn’t make phones.” “They definitely do. They’re like, going to be the first trillion-dollar company.” And the friend is like, “Oh, really?” So she doesn’t actually give the advice.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
She just makes a comment…

[Shep]
She just let slip.

[Thomas]
And yeah.

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah.

[Thomas]
What does the mom remember of that period of time? I assume this is like a week or something like that, or several days.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe she confronts the mom about the yearbook, and the mom’s like, “I don’t really remember high school.”

[Shep]
“Who remembers stuff from back then?”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “You’re asking me about three specific days in high school? I don’t know.”

[Shep]
Well, I. I don’t mean like after. I mean, like before.

[Thomas]
Oh. Oh, okay.

[Shep]
You know? “How come you never told me?” Like, “Who thinks about high school once you’re gone?”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, that’s-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“It’s just a temporary thing.”

[Thomas]
Well. And you know, I’ve said for years and years, like, when you’re in it, it feels so important. And then pretty much as soon as you get out of it, you realize how unimportant it actually was.

[Shep]
Oh, it’s- I was gonna say it’s like going to a movie. It’s like- Oh, no, I shouldn’t say that. We’re pitching movies. We’re pro movie!

[Thomas]
I just think about, like, when I got to college, you could tell who was popular in high school because they were still trying to be popular in college, and no one cared.

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah. Wearing your high school letterman’s jacket.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yep. All right, we’re most of the way through here. So what are the kind of big story things we have left to figure out?

[Shep]
How did she come back to the present? What happens?

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a big one.

[Shep]
I can’t figure it out. Who pitched this?

[Thomas]
Do we need to worry about the mechanic of how she travels through time? Based off of your pitch, it sounds like the yearbook is kind of the thing. It’s almost like- before we started recording, I was talking about some of the other pitches I had, or the ideas for pitches that I’d come up with. And one of them was the yearbook as a teleportation device, kind of like the Age books in Myst. So I wonder if it’s something like that. Something about this yearbook is different.

[Shep]
Yeah. Oh. So she sees her mom’s superlative, whatever it was.

[Thomas]
Uh huh.

[Shep]
You know, Most Likely to Do Your Taxes or Marry a Calculator or whatever, and she’s like, “This is what I need to fix.” She tries the other things first. She tries being popular. She tries getting with guys, and she’s like, “Oh, it was the yearbook. I read the yearbook, and then I went back, and so I need to change that before the yearbook comes out. And then I will have fixed it.”

[Shep]
And then the yearbook comes out, and she didn’t fix it. But now that it’s out, like the books in Myst, when she wakes up the next time she’s back in the present. She didn’t fix it, but she learned a lesson. I don’t know.

[Thomas]
We said that she’s part of the Yearbook Club or whatever in the present. Maybe that’s where our Ms. Frizzle-style teacher is.

[Shep]
Ah!

[Thomas]
The teacher, the advisor to that club is a witch.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
And sees the girl-

[Emily]
I got this. She also sells jewelry-

[Shep]
I was, I thought you were gonna say bread.

[Thomas]
I thought she was gonna say padlocks.

[Emily]
Because I was listening to Chocolate the other day, and there was a witch who sold a crystal heart in that one. So this is a witch who advises yearbooks.

[Shep]
All right, so in the present, before she goes back, maybe it’s, they’re coming up with their superlatives, and she’s being really mean to people and coming up with really mean ones.

[Thomas]
Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh. And then are they like, “Let’s check the older books to see what maybe there’s some good ideas for-“

[Shep]
Right. And that’s when, you know, she discovers her mom’s.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that triggers the whole thing.

[Emily]
“Gen X is notoriously mean. Let’s see what insults they flung at each other.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And so the teacher is like, “Oh, really?” And wants to teach her a lesson?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay, so that’s how she gets into the past. How does she get back into the present? I mean, I feel like it’s that she learns the lesson.

[Shep]
None of this matters. It’s just high school. You’re all fools.

[Emily]
That’s what she signs in someone’s yearbook, and that’s it. That’s how she gets back.

[Shep]
Yes. After the- after the yearbooks come out.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, right. Because she thinks, “Oh, I need to change the superlative. I need to make things-“

[Emily]
And she sees it didn’t change.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And she gets into this funk, and she’s like, “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”

[Shep]
Right. You gotta bring- You gotta have that friend again-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Who writes something heartfelt, some long message-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
In the mom’s yearbook.

[Emily]
I actually really like this idea. I like that the friend writes this long, heartfelt message, and she’s sitting there angry, scribbling in her yearbook, and then they swap. And her friend reads it and is like, “Okay.” And then she doesn’t read what the friend wrote until she goes back to the present and then reads this long, heartfelt, like, “You’ve changed my life. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

[Shep]
Yeah, I like that letter through time where she feels, “Oh, I can’t tell this person how meaningful this message was.”

[Shep]
“I didn’t seize the opportunity when I could. And now it’s too late.” And then she shows up at the end, and they drive off in her sports car because she’s rich.

[Emily]
Yeah. For brunch and tennis.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And I think that she shows up at the end because-

[Thomas]
Susan has gone back into the past and established this really close friendship between the two. And they’ve been very good friends. But after college, or maybe because of college, she moved away to the East Coast. Maybe they live on the West Coast or something. And so like, they’re super close still. They just live really far apart. And so now she’s showing up to visit her friend, Susan’s mom.

[Thomas]
And so when she shows up, she gives Susan this knowing look, of like, “Hey, remember how we were, you know, hanging out 30 years ago?”

[Shep]
I have a suggestion, but it might be weird.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So the friends in the past, Susan’s mom and this friend. We need to give people names.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And now it’s the end of the episode, so it’s too late now.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So Susan’s mom and this friend have, like, inside jokes or whatever. And then when Susan goes to the past, she doesn’t know the inside jokes-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And the friend is trying to, like, say the thing together, and she doesn’t know it, so she teaches her. And then, in the present, back to the present, at the end, when the three of them are together, the friend says the thing, and then Susan and her mom both say the other half of it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And then look at each other, and then you go to black.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that could work.

[Shep]
So what was the message? Nothing in high school matters. And it gets better. It gets better. Everything is temporary. Actually, everything is temporary. It could get worse.

[Thomas]
Well, that’s true.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The one thing, Shep, that I don’t love about that idea that you just presented is, I kind of want almost like a wink between the friend and Susan that doesn’t include the mom. And then that clues Susan in that, “Oh, wait, this really happened.” And at some point, she needs to go and pull out the mom’s yearbook and find the message that she has never read.

[Shep]
See, I think she needs to find the message before the friend shows up again because she has to feel, “Oh, I wish I could have told this person how much this meant, and I don’t have the chance.”

[Shep]
And then they show up.

[Thomas]
I see.

[Shep]
She could even be holding the yearbook because she just found it and read the message, and wants to say something, but isn’t sure that it happened. Like, maybe she read this message at some point in the past-

[Emily]
And then had this crazy fever dream.

[Shep]
And then had this dream. She forgot she read it. And then it happened in the dream. And so she isn’t sure what’s real and what’s not.

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Shep]
And then they have some winking something.

[Thomas]
I mean, they could have their own inside thing that the mom never learned.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They could have their inside joke.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So this friend just kept a secret from the mom for years and years.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Like, hey, at some point in the future, your daughter is going to go back in time and inhabit your body for weeks or however long it is.”

[Thomas]
I mean, she could have told her that, and the mom could have just been like, “Okay, weirdo,” and not internalize that in any way.

[Shep]
What does the mom think happened? When she goes back, she doesn’t have the memories of like the past… however long the movie is, weeks or months.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She had meningitis and was in the hospital.

[Shep]
She gets hit in the head by a stray baseball at some sporting sports thing.

[Thomas]
Actually, that could be- That could be the point at which the daughter, which Susan, enters the mom’s body.

[Shep]
Or exits. Or both.

[Emily]
Concussion in, concussion out. I’ve seen it happen.

[Shep]
Right. In movies, it’s very common.

[Emily]
Yeah. No, I have.

[Shep]
Concussion caused it. Concussion will fix it.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
But that could be an excuse, like, why everyone is just like, “Oh, yeah, I guess she was just concussed for those few days, and she was acting weird” and nobody cares or… I don’t know.

[Emily]
Yeah. Only her mom cares and the mathletes.

[Shep]
Right. Nobody cares about what’s happening to other people, really.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah, true.

[Emily]
Especially in high school.

[Shep]
Especially in high school.

[Thomas]
What specifically is the lesson that she learns? How do we see that she is applying it?

[Thomas]
Because I don’t feel like the mom’s intelligent friend comes over, they have a little wink and a nod to each other, and then movie is over. I feel like that’s not super satisfying.

[Emily]
Okay. But that could just be the denouement. Like, that doesn’t need to be, like, everything.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because we’ve talked about her going and looking up her friend from, like, elementary school, and thinking, “Oh, I’m sorry I took our relationship for granted, and I miss you. And we had all this fun,” and she tries to do their little in-joke, and the friend’s like, “Whatever.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And that’s where she kind of learns both the lesson that relationships change and high school doesn’t matter.

[Shep]
Oh, we need to bring the yearbook supervisor teacher back at the end.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
She’s got to talk to her or him or whoever. I assume her. Because it’s a witch-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Who sent her through time to learn a lesson.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
What’s the lesson? What’s the lesson?

[Thomas]
Well, does she go back and take those negative superlatives out?

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, she must.

[Thomas]
So the way that we see her applying the lesson she learns is by not being a jerk.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
If it’s, like, kind of a smaller school, everybody could get positive superlatives. Maybe she takes all of the superlatives out. Not even the popular kids get it.

[Shep]
I mean, that- That would be a very unpopular decision.

[Thomas]
She doesn’t care anymore. Right?

[Shep]
Yes. Nothing matters. It’s- She’s Jobu Tupaki. She goes through time and nothing. Nothing matters. No. Her and the witch have to have a conversation where it’s not clear whether the witch knows she traveled through time or not. She’s just asking, “Have I learned a lesson? What have I learned?” It’s mean to be mean? Seems kind of obvious.

[Thomas]
But I do wonder, like, there are a lot of people today who take great pleasure in just being jerks. And I don’t understand, like, what are you getting out of that?

[Shep]
What’s the- There’s a word for feeling pleasure at someone else’s misfortune.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. Schadenfreude.

[Shep]
Yeah, I don’t. I don’t get it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I don’t get it either. Like, especially, like, punching down, you know?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I don’t know.

[Emily]
But it’s a thing that some people still need to learn occasionally.

[Thomas]
And so that’s what she learns in this movie.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Don’t punch down?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Don’t be an asshole. I would like for her, and this is ridiculous, because this amount of time in which to get this done, and her knowledge of the student body wouldn’t be this vast. But to have her go through the yearbook and write new superlatives for everyone in a positive way.

[Thomas]
If it’s a small high school.

[Emily]
If it’s a small high school, and it’s not like tonight’s the night it’s going to be turned in. Oh, that could be the conversation. Okay, so you’re going to tell me “No, no, no, no,” Shep. But here’s what I want to happen.

[Thomas]
He’s stretching. He’s getting ready.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, you’re going to- So I’m just, I’m lobbing it to you, is essentially what I’m doing. They have the conversation based around the idea that this is the final submission and it’s going to go to print. Right? And the teacher, like, part of her conversation is, “Are you sure everything is as you want it to be? Because I could give you an extension.” So she could give her a couple days.

[Shep]
“I could give you more time.”

[Thomas]
Oh, that’s good.

[Emily]
And so she takes the more time and then spends that time talking to people in her class to get to know them or know their friends, have their friends tell them about them, and then rewrites the superlatives based off of that.

[Thomas]
It could be a combination of small high school, and only the senior class gets superlatives. So-

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s how I think it could work. It’s not just a “I’ve learned my lesson.” We see her work with her new lesson, and going and finding out the positives about people, and learning about them. They’re no longer invisible.

[Thomas]
I like that. And I think we could even mirror it to where they’re trying to come up with these nasty superlatives. And they’re like, “Ah, but the yearbook is due soon. Like, I don’t know if we can do it.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And the teacher says, “I could give you more time.” And so she does. She gives her 30 years.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then at the end, she says the same thing. “I can give you more time.” And she’s like, “I got a handle on it.”

[Emily]
Oh, I like that. Because then she says, “Remember, I can give you more time if it’s not ready.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. So then that keeps, Shep, what you were saying, I think about that. It’s kind of unclear. Like, well, wait, is she responsible or-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, Emily. I like that idea. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I really like that idea. If you- Especially if you see some, like, loner kids at the beginning.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And they’re trying to come up with the negative superlatives, you know, Most Likely to Marry a Ghost, something, you know? So she goes around and she’s, like, meeting people and finding out who their friends are and asking them, like, making, like, a chart.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You see all this in a montage of who’s friends with who and who says what about what. And so each one’s got, like, a little note on the thing, and then you have a couple people that don’t have any friends.

[Thomas]
Actually, you could even have some of that at the beginning, where they’re mapping out the social structure of their class.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Specifically to be jerks.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then she takes that and makes it a positive thing at the end.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then you actually see her growth.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
And then at the very end, she comes home. That’s when she reads the letter and is going to ask her mom questions. But then the lady’s there, and then they have their little thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, so she found her, the yearbook that her mom is in, in the archives, which, of course, didn’t have any notes on the pages. Her mom finds her yearbook. “Oh, you were asking about this. I found it.” And then she finds the note from her friend.

[Thomas]
Right. So as soon as she comes back to the present, she asks the mom about it. The mom’s like, “Ah, it’s in a box in the attic.”

[Thomas]
“I’d have to dig around for it.” She’s like, “Well, can you?” And she’s like, “All right, yeah, I’ll do it this weekend” or something. So that way, we’re buying the mom a little bit of time. Susan gets some time in the present, and then, yeah, she gets her hands on the mom’s yearbook. Not right away, but before the friend shows up.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
We get everything we’ve discussed as we wanted it.

[Emily]
And it’s not so like, here we go. Here’s your pretty bow.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I mean, it is. It’s just a very, very pretty bow now.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s just the bow isn’t already tied. We see the bow being tied. Right? We show, don’t tell.

[Shep]
I can’t even follow the metaphor. What are y’all talking about?

[Thomas]
I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

[Shep]
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

[Thomas]
Nothing matters.

[Shep]
If nothing matters, be kind. Kindness matters. Kindness always matters.

[Thomas]
What does matter, though, is that we would love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a High School Yearbook. Was it one for the books, or did we tell tales out of school? You can tell us by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. There are links to all of those at AlmostPlausible.com, where you’ll also find transcripts for every episode, links to the references we make, more information about all three of us, and ways that you can support the show. Wow, what a long, strange trip it’s been. Join Emily, Shep, and I on the next long, strange trip of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
Oh, I totally forgot the joke I was going to make. Oh, well.

[Shep]
Make the joke.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Emily]
Make the joke anyway.

[Thomas]
Because, like, 10 minutes ago, I was going to be like, “So, is this the one we’re picking? Or-“

[Emily]
Like it.

[Shep]
Well, let’s look over the pitches one more time.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.