Light Bulb

References

• The Mist
• Love and Monsters
• Columbo
• Harrison Ford
• Blade Runner
• Peter Falk
• Red Dwarf
• The Net
• Hackers
• Fisher Stevens
• Cocaine Bear
• 28 Days Later
• Serenity
• Firefly
• Joss Whedon
• Ram Trucks
• Home on the Range
• Predator
• Jurassic Park
• Contagion
• Hobo Signs and Graffiti
• Chekhov’s Gun

Corrections

Although the opening of Contagion does show the film’s MEV-1 virus spreading, this is not the information dump Thomas was thinking of. Most likely he was thinking of the opening credits from the video game The Last of Us.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
It was a single green bulb in an enclosed room, very small room, no windows. And because I cannot see green, it was a very strange experience to turn that light on. And everything is apparently green, a color I cannot perceive. I don’t know how to describe it. With you and your color viewing eyes, you can’t really experience what I experienced.

[Thomas]
I just like to imagine that you open the door and you’re like, “Oh, bathroom is a bit dark.” Flick on the light, and it’s like “The bathroom is gone!”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Where did it go?”

[Shep]
So I have told you this story.

[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 helping to illuminate the show are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
On this episode, we’re going to create a movie plot where a Light Bulb is somehow crucial to the story. Before we do that, however, I was wondering, do either of you have those smart light bulbs where you can change the colors?

[Emily]
Not yet. I really want one.

[Shep]
No. The whole purpose would be lost on me since I am completely colorblind.

[Thomas]
That’s true. Is that color light therapy stuff, is that only for people who can see the colors?

[Shep]
I have no idea. I did get a full spectrum light that I keep at my work desk that I turn on in the winter. It seems to help, or at least I don’t get Seasonal Effective Depression anyway. So-

[Thomas]
Could be placebo.

[Shep]
It could be placebo. But if it works, and it’s a placebo, it doesn’t matter that it’s a placebo because it worked.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. I don’t have one of those color changing bulbs either. I think it’d be kind of neat, but… It’s the same reason I don’t have a drone. I’d be like, “Cool toy!” And then a week later I’d be like, “What am I going to do with this?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“When will I ever use this thing?”

[Shep]
How many short films are you making that you need a drone shot?

[Emily]
Mhm.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I remember as a kid, my sister getting a green light bulb and putting it in the bathroom, which only had one light socket because we lived in a little trailer. Because, if you recall, I grew up very poor.

[Thomas]
I think that’s the first time you’ve mentioned it.

[Emily]
Wait, where was the trailer? Was it in the city?

[Shep]
(Dies laughing) No, it was in the woods. I can’t believe I’ve never told this story.

[Thomas]
That’s weird. It’s never come up.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh!

[Thomas]
That sort of sounds like the upbringing that would be really formational to who you are as a person.

[Shep]
Right. But you can hardly tell.

[Thomas]
No.

[Shep]
So it was a single green bulb in an enclosed room, very small room, no windows. And because I cannot see green, it was a very strange experience to turn that light on. And everything is apparently green, a color I cannot perceive. I don’t know how to describe it. With you and your color viewing eyes, you can’t really experience what I experienced.

[Thomas]
I just like to imagine that you open the door and you’re like, “Oh, bathroom is a bit dark.” Flick on the light, and it’s like “The bathroom is gone!”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Where did it go?”

[Shep]
So I have told you this story.

[Thomas]
All right, well, let’s check out these pitches. Emily, you’re up first.

[Emily]
All right, so for my first pitch, I have: A glass eater in the circus tries to eat the world’s largest light bulb.

[Thomas]
How big do you imagine this light bulb being?

[Shep]
I imagine the size of a building. It is its own attraction.

[Thomas]
Right. They’ve built the tent around the light bulb.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh, no. It’s a traveling circus, and they happen to be in the town with the largest, world’s largest light bulb.

[Thomas]
Oh, I see.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
And so he wants to eat it, but the guy who owns it doesn’t want him to eat it because then, that, he would lose his attraction.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s a big publicity stunt for the circus.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
This is a compelling story. This is one man’s life- Two men’s livelihood rests in this light bulb.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
All right. I see some natural conflict.

[Shep]
Good strong start.

[Thomas]
Yeah, good.

[Emily]
All right. I have: A mad playwright traps the souls of the actresses who have scorned him inside a stage’s arc light.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Emily]
And then sometimes they spark and they can get out and haunt things.

[Thomas]
I like the idea of it being like, a spotlight that projects, like, a ghostly figure onto the stage.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s a good one, too.

[Shep]
That’s what I was going to say, is, like, sometimes there would be actors on stage and there’s one extra shadow.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Thomas]
That’s cool.

[Shep]
Strong start!

[Emily]
And then I have a weird one. Everyone can see when a man has a thought by the light bulb that appears over his head. And sometimes it makes for awkward situations.

[Shep]
Now, is it just one guy this happens to, or is it all guys?

[Emily]
Yes. No, just one. Just one dude.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
Normally it’s fine, whatever. But, you know, a pretty lady walks by, and then he gets a light bulb.

[Shep]
I mean, that happens to all guys. Now, is it luminescent? Can it light up?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Ooh.

[Shep]
Can he find his car in the dark just by having a good idea?

[Thomas]
The idea would be to get the light bulb above your head. Can it feed back on itself?

[Emily]
I don’t know the rules. We would have to make those parts up.

[Thomas]
Is it a tangible light bulb?

[Emily]
No, you can’t grab it.

[Thomas]
Okay, so it’s just like an image of a light bulb.

[Emily]
Image of light bulb. Yeah.

[Thomas]
I’ll go next. My first pitch is that an evil spirit that haunts an abandoned psychiatric hospital uses a bare light bulb in one of the rooms to lure in curious teens so it can kill them.

[Emily]
Did you steal my brain?

[Shep]
This is not one of Emily’s pitches? Yeah.

[Emily]
What the heck? How is this not mine?

[Thomas]
I like the idea of, they see it and then, “Oh, there’s a light on up there.” So they all go up there, and then they get into the room, and the light turns off all of a sudden, and… My next pitch, in a post-apocalyptic world, a group of survivors must venture outside their bunker when their grow lights start to burn out. So depending on what kind of an apocalypse, there’s all sorts of crazy dangers that could await them.

[Shep]
Not zombies!

[Thomas]
No, not zombies.

[Emily]
No. Alien invasion. And now they have to fight a world of weird monsters. Like the fog, The Mist.

[Thomas]
Well, that also sounds like Love in the Time of Monsters or something like that. Love and Monsters? I think it was.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I haven’t seen that one.

[Thomas]
They live in bunkers and there are monsters, and he falls in love with this girl and he goes to her bunker, but he has to cross the monster infested land to do it. It was an okay movie. My last idea, a hacker infiltrates the home of a well to do and well-connected judge through a security flaw in one of these smart light bulbs installed in his chic modern home. She snoops around the network and starts to spy on the judge when she suddenly makes a grave discovery. The judge has a young woman tied up in his basement. The hacker must do what she can to help the woman escape without getting caught herself.

[Emily]
I like it, and here’s why. It combines a lot of my favorite movies. And by favorite movies, I mean really cheesy ones that I have guilty pleasure of enjoying.

[Thomas]
All right, those are my pitches. Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
I’m realizing all of our pitches, ironically, are very dark this week.

[Thomas]
That’s pretty funny, considering.

[Emily]
That was hilarious.

[Shep]
Okay, pitch number one. In a neon-noir city-

[Thomas]
Love it already.

[Shep]
Someone is attacking people seemingly at random. The mysterious attacker targets unsuspecting victims and blinds them with a flash of light, disorienting them, then overpowering them before they can recover. But on the case is a detective who, due to an accident, has lost the use of one eye.

[Emily]
Is this Colombo meets-

[Shep]
No, I didn’t even think about Columbo! Yes.

[Emily]
What’s the Harrison Ford noir movie?

[Thomas]
Blade Runner?

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s Colombo meets Blade Runner.

[Thomas]
Man, I really want to see that movie now.

[Emily]
Right?

[Shep]
I’m replaying the scenes from Blade Runner with Peter Falk as the actor.

[Thomas]
Yeah, same. Yeah.

[Shep]
Man, I would watch that.

[Emily]
I would watch the crap out of it.

[Thomas]
I think we need a fan edit. Somebody needs to create that. That’d be amazing.

[Emily]
“One more thing…”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
So it’s not just Peter Falk.

[Emily]
Yep, yep. Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s Peter Falk as Colombo investigating the blade runners. Okay, pitch number two. After a terrible earthquake, a handful of survivors are trapped in a small cavity under a collapsed building. Their only light a single working bulb hanging from a wire.

[Thomas]
You may even call their space a bunker of sorts.

[Shep]
Haha.

[Emily]
I’m the only one who doesn’t have people trapped in the dark underground.

[Shep]
Yeah. Considering our history…

[Thomas]
Yeah, really.

[Emily]
Very strange.

[Thomas]
Look, you’re just having an off week.

[Shep]
Off, like a light switch.

[Thomas]
Hey.

[Shep]
Hey. All right, my final pitch. Years after a catastrophic event ended life on Earth, a small community of humans remain alive on Helios station, a long-term experimental space station orbiting the sun. However, without resupplies from Earth, the station is now a decaying remnant of what it once was. There are no facilities for repairing things and no materials even if there were. They grow crops on the quote unquote “top” level, which has windows for a ceiling facing the sun at all times. And through mirrors, small amounts of light can be reflected down the stairwells to the second and even third levels. But now there are sounds coming from the long-abandoned depths. Dare they take their last remaining light bulb and rig a lantern to investigate those unsettling noises echoing from the deep dark? Dare they not?!

[Thomas]
Turns out it’s a cat that’s evolved to be a human.

[Shep]
Ha. Why was there only one cat on Red Dwarf?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Where are all the other cats? Always bothered me.

[Thomas]
Isn’t it like 3 million years in the future too? So there should be a lot of corpses around. Like cat corpses around.

[Shep]
Yeah. All the tables are covered with piles of dust from the people that- And the cats never knock that onto the floor?

[Thomas]
Yeah, really! Or poop in it.

[Shep]
Yeah. You’re raising a lot of questions. I’m beginning to think Red Dwarf wasn’t a documentary.

[Thomas]
All right, well, we’ve got some great dark choices, so which one do we want to shine a light on?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
I think of Thomas’s, my favorite is the hacker infiltrating the home, because it’s got a lot of those, like, 90s movies that I really liked. And I was actually thinking about this on the drive home yesterday. I was like-

[Thomas]
About trapping a girl in your basement.

[Emily]
Well, I mean, how do you know I don’t have one down here? I was thinking about The Net and Hackers, and I was thinking that those are, like, two movies I’d be okay with them remaking because they could do a better job now.

[Thomas]
I mean, Fisher Stevens is still alive, so.

[Shep]
Okay. Going through Thomas’s, the evil spirit one, I think might end up too much like Cocaine Bear in the sense that the big draw is the evil spirit. But because of the way these movies work, you’d have to pad out a bunch of stuff that’s not the evil spirit, but that’s what we really want, is the evil spirit parts.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But you can’t make a movie that way. Whereas the post-apocalyptic one is so wide open-

[Emily]
Mmm.

[Shep]
Because anything can be outside that bunker.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Giant cats.

[Shep]
Giant cats. But is the hacker one about light bulbs?

[Thomas]
The light bulb is crucial to the story in that that’s how the whole thing kicks off. She wouldn’t have made that discovery if not for the light bulb. And perhaps she’s able to turn the lights off or change the colors to light the path or whatever.

[Shep]
Of course. I assume that is part of it. Right.

[Thomas]
It could come back a few times.

[Emily]
I like the satellite around the sun one. But what’s in the basement?

[Shep]
That’s the mystery. There’s some sounds coming from deep, deep down.

[Emily]
Why is it abandoned?

[Shep]
Oh, there’s no light down there.

[Emily]
Because they can’t reflect it down that far.

[Shep]
They can’t reflect it down that far. And the lights have burned out. All right, so you’re not interested in the earthquake one at all, is what I’m getting.

[Emily]
The earthquake one’s okay.

[Shep]
Harsh. Okay. Well, your glass eater one’s okay.

[Emily]
My glass theater one’s terrible. What are you talking about? You guys knocked it out of the park this week.

[Shep]
I like the playwright. I like trapping souls in lights. That’s-

[Emily]
Yeah, the playwright is kind of fun.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s cool.

[Emily]
It’s kind of fun with the bunker and venturing out into the world-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Are we going to see what’s out there right away?

[Thomas]
Oh, for sure.

[Emily]
Okay. Are they going to be out in the world or is, like half the movie going to be them discussing whether or not they should go?

[Thomas]
No, I think most of the movie is probably them outside the bunker.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
That’s what I imagined, anyway. We’ll see a little bit of life in the bunker. We’ll establish the characters, and then we’ll see, like, “Hey, the grow lights are starting to burn out, and we don’t have any replacements. And this is how we live.”

[Emily]
Why did they bunker up? So we have to know why they bunkered up in the first place. Right?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I imagine there was either some sort of, like, chemical or nuclear war. And so it was going to be something where they needed to stay in the bunker for an extended period of time. It would have to be a situation where they would want to continue to live in the bunker or feel that they needed to continue to live in the bunker.

[Shep]
Right. Okay, so some- a virus caused all animals to go go crazy and become super violent.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that works.

[Emily]
So it’s like 28 Days Later, but with animals.

[Shep]
Right. 28 Days Later, except only animals went crazy and humans are fine.

[Thomas]
So are the animals violent toward each other?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Different species are violent toward each other. Intra species, they are unified.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Okay. I like that.

[Shep]
You can even lure them to fight each other while you make your escape.

[Thomas]
Right. We have the intellect, that human intellect, that’s our weapon-

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
In the battle against these crazed animals.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So their bunker has to be a certain distance from the nearest town where they know that there is a small hardware store. And of course, when they get to the hardware store, it has been looted.

[Shep]
Of course. I’m trying to think of places that you could get lights that would be effective as grow lights that wouldn’t have already been looted. I’m thinking, like, high school gymnasiums. They got those big lights way, way high up. They’re hard to get to. They’re probably still there.

[Emily]
What’s the difference between a grow light and, like, a regular light? Is it just the intensity of it? Or does it… the spectrum?

[Thomas]
It’s the spectrum, I believe.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
I believe it’s the intensity. I actually don’t know.

[Thomas]
You just being contrary.

[Shep]
I’m just being contrarian. It’s both spectrum and intensity.

[Thomas]
Hey!

[Shep]
So it’s everything.

[Emily]
But, like, stadium lights and gym lights would probably be close to a grow light spectrum because they’re that bright white light, usually.

[Shep]
Right. Stadiums. That’s another good one.

[Emily]
Yeah. So a stadium would be good because it’s already outdoors, or is it worse because it’s outdoors and that’s where all the crazy animals are.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. They go up to get the bulbs out of the stadium lights, and then birds come and find them.

[Thomas]
Well, I mean, you’ve got an entire grass field. Animals are, of course, going to be living in that area.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. What is some harmless herbivore that could be living in the stadium now, that they don’t view as a threat initially because it’s a cow or something.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Like a sheep or goat.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like sheep.

[Shep and Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They’re, like, fluffy and docile.

[Emily]
They’re stupid and docile.

[Thomas and Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So how many people set out to find the light and how many make it back? Because we got to demonstrate how dangerous it is outside-

[Thomas]
That’s true.

[Shep]
By killing off a few people right away.

[Emily]
Five or six always seems to be the trope, I feel.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Do we have four go out, one of them dies immediately, but then they find two other people who are out and join their group. So four leave, five come back? You got to have, like, the cocky guy-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Who should be the one that dies, but doesn’t die until the end.

[Shep]
Right. You have the effective leader who sacrifices himself right away.

[Thomas]
Right. Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And you have a timid-

[Thomas]
The, like, dark horse hero.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And the token girl.

[Emily]
Is she the token “I am smart and I have to come along because I’m the only one who knows XYZ, but I’m also weak and easily scared?” Or is she the “I’m a butch bad bitch? Don’t fuck with me.”

[Shep]
I thought she was a bad bitch.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
She’s was the character on Serenity?

[Emily]
Zoë?

[Shep]
Zoë. Thank you.

[Emily]
Yeah. Okay.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Zoë’s a good one.

[Shep]
Right, so now I’m picturing the cast of Firefly heading out, and you have the captain-

[Thomas]
Are we just creating an episode of Firefly? They’ve got a-

[Shep]
We’re creating an episode of Firefly where half the crew dies.

[Thomas]
So half the crew goes out, and then they find these two siblings while they’re out. And-

[Shep]
Oh, no, we are doing Firefly because we have the effective leader. We have the badass girl, the timid guy. That’s Wash.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s only going because Zoë’s going.

[Thomas]
There’s the cocky guy.

[Shep]
The cocky- Yes!

[Emily]
Oh, my god. They’re just archetypes.

[Shep]
They’re strong, effective archetypes.

[Emily]
They are. They’re a very strong example of archetypes. You could say we’re doing Buffy, too.

[Shep]
Yep. We’re doing any Joss Whedon show.

[Emily]
Oh, no!

[Shep]
Yeah. Oh, no. But Joss Whedon made billions of dollars, so maybe… okay?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I assume this is the one we’re doing because we’re-

[Emily]
I think this one is going to be the easiest one for us to work through without a lot of stammering and dead ends.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I agree. Yes.

[Shep]
All right, then let’s name these characters, because we can’t keep calling them Captain Mal and Zoë and Wash.

[Thomas]
So we have Mel is the leader, and-

[Emily]
So our effective leader is named Arthur.

[Thomas]
I think that the braggadocious, the overconfident guy is Steve, obviously.

[Emily]
Obviously. Steve. I thought the same thing. Token girl is-

[Thomas]
Chloë.

[Emily]
Not Chloë, although that is what I thought.

[Shep]
Now I’m going with Chloë. It’s great.

[Emily]
And then. Oh, the timid, wimpy guy is.

[Shep]
Rinse. No, it’s Pete. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s Pete.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Emily]
It’s Pete.

[Thomas]
Love it.

[Emily]
All right, good.

[Shep]
That’s only four characters. Okay, we’re doing four characters.

[Emily]
Well, they’re going to find others, right? That was the plan.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
We’ll come up with-

[Shep]
They find siblings. I, see- You’re joking, but-

[Thomas]
It works really well.

[Shep]
It works.

[Emily]
It does.

[Shep]
Yes. Arthur is the leader of this expedition. I don’t think he’s the leader in the bunker.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
No, just the expedition.

[Shep]
Right. So perhaps Arthur is the son of whoever is the leader inside the bunker, but he’s confident and effective as a leader. He’s charismatic. He’s brave. Steve wants to be the leader, but he’s overconfident. He’s impulsive. He’s not good leadership material. He’s physically strong, and he is brave, and he’ll jump into danger. Partly because he doesn’t recognize the danger.

[Thomas]
Right. Physically strong, but mentally weak.

[Shep]
Yeah. And we have Chloë, who is self-confident and capable woman.

[Emily]
And that’s why they brought her. They brought her specifically for her confidence and capability.

[Shep]
Yes. Arthur relies on her. They make a good team. Steve is also an effective part of the team if he follows Arthur’s directions. And then there’s Pete. Pete is the audience surrogate. He is scared.

[Thomas]
Is Pete an electrician or as close to an electrician as they have in the bunker?

[Shep]
Is that the reason that he gets himself on the team?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Could be. Because otherwise they’d be like, “You’re a liability. What are you doing?” But he points out, like, “You may have to unwire/unrig something.”

[Shep]
Oh, he’s small. He’s small and wiry and fast. They might need someone-

[Thomas]
Wiry.

[Shep]
Yeah, wiry. They might need someone to crawl through a duct to get into a room or something. So he’s not a very manly guy. Steve is a big, giant, manly guy.

[Emily]
He’s good at carrying the big, heavy lights that they’re going to bring back.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And Pete is good at climbing up to loosen the lights.

[Thomas]
He’s scrappy.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then there are several other people in the bunker. Like a hand-? A small handful of people.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. There’s a community’s worth.

[Thomas]
Are they going to grab other stuff while they’re out?

[Emily]
Why not? Why wouldn’t they?

[Thomas]
They must have, like, a shopping list, right?

[Shep]
Right. Seeds for different foods, because they-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Boy, are they tired of tomatoes.

[Emily]
And zucchini.

[Thomas]
How long have they been in the bunker? Canned food’s no good anymore.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, canned food’s long. I mean, 20 years, 30 years.

[Thomas]
Right. I’m just trying to think of, like, what things would not have rotted or molded or disintegrated.

[Shep]
Oh, one of the old ladies asks for wine. “If you can find some wine while you’re out…”

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s true. Alcohol wouldn’t necessarily have gone bad.

[Emily]
Oh, a lot of garden plants are perennials and would grow wild, so they could come across a bunch of wild vegetables that maybe they’re, well, even ones they wouldn’t recognize because they’ve cross pollinated. Or something.

[Thomas]
Oh, interesting. Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Are insects affected by this virus or just…?

[Shep]
Probably just mammals.

[Emily]
It has to just be mammals because otherwise they would die immediately.

[Thomas]
What about birds and fish?

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
Are they mammals?

[Thomas]
No, they’re birds and fish.

[Emily]
Then no.

[Thomas]
But I want the birds to attack them. I like that.

[Shep]
Okay, so warm blooded creatures are affected by this disease, except humans?

[Thomas]
Right. Because science.

[Emily]
Because we have an enzyme. That’s it. That always works. Like, oh, yeah, that human enzyme. Totally get it. It’s fine.

[Shep]
How about this? Anything that can produce its own vitamin C, which has a specific gene, is susceptible. This is most things, but not humans and other apes. Insects, bats, guinea pigs. And some birds and some fish, but pretty much everything else. So other birds, they’re susceptible. Most animals are susceptible. It’s a very specific thing. Humans don’t make vitamin C.

[Emily]
Okay, so we have an actual scientific explanation, should any Internet trolls come at us.

[Shep]
“Scientific” in quotation works.

[Emily]
A more scientific explanation. So most animals that they encounter will come after them.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
And eat them?

[Thomas]
Try to, I think. Right? Or attack- Is it just violence? Or is it like-

[Shep]
I want them to be eaten. Because I, picturing the herbivorous sheep eating Arthur-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
That would be quite hilarious.

[Thomas]
Do they leave the bunker and go to this nearby small town… They maybe grab a couple of things that are on the list. But the hardware store is ransacked. There aren’t grow lights. There’s nothing. They can’t find anything that’ll work. So they come back to the bunker to formulate a new plan, and maybe Arthur, excuse me, Pete doesn’t go the first time.

[Shep]
Yeah, I like this. Arthur, Steve, Chloë, they go, it’s a bust.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They come back.

[Thomas]
They don’t know where to look. And Pete’s like, “Well, what about stadium lights? There’s the high school just down the way,” or whatever they come up with. So they take him along because-

[Shep]
Because he’s a nerd and he’s smart.

[Thomas]
Well, because if that doesn’t pan out, they’re going to need some other thing. And he was clever enough to figure that out.

[Emily]
Yeah. Besides, he’s slow. They can throw him to the sheep.

[Thomas]
I like how it’s throwing him to the sheep and not to the wolves. All right, well, it sounds like we have a pretty good initial start to our story here. We’re going to send our group out after the break.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Our group of characters has gone out on their first journey, and it was kind of a bust, and they realize they need a new plan. They need to be able to find some grow lights somewhere.

[Emily]
Now, in their first outing, before they come back for Pete-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Was it so dangerous? Did they encounter a lot of danger, or did they just happen to skirt around enough things that they were like, “There’s some threats, but it’s not that bad.”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. They also set out with four and came back with three.

[Thomas]
No, actually, I like the idea that they skirted around it. Like, “It’s actually not as bad as we thought it might be,” because first they’ve got to be super cautious coming out of the bunker for the first time in 20 years, or whatever it is.

[Emily]
Right. Well, because I was also thinking that maybe part of Steve’s thinking, because he’s not, you know, smart, is that “It’s not that bad. We’re surviving fine as is. We should just go back and get everybody out and just farm above ground.” And Arthur’s like, “No, we just got lucky.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So then that creates more tension later when they actually do get in trouble with the animals.

[Shep]
Yeah. Once the animals are triggered, they don’t stop.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, that could be a thing. The sheep find them and they flee into the building and try to block the doors. But now the sheep are just throwing themselves into the doors, trying to break the doors down.

[Thomas]
They have those bleachers that will extend or retract, so they scramble up the bleachers. They’re retracted, so they climb up them like it’s a ladder, sort of. The sheep can jump up pretty high, but-

[Emily]
Yeah, but not that high.

[Thomas]
Not that heigh. Yeah.

[Shep]
And the sheep start forming a sheep pyramid. And you’re like, “Oh no.”

[Thomas]
But then they could start trying to kill the sheep, which is what they would end up having to do, unless they can escape out a window or something.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
But I don’t think they’d be able to get the bulbs without, like, while the sheep are there.

[Shep]
So here’s a counter idea. Perhaps Pete climbing up, they have those bars near the roof of the gymnasium, and he’s trying to take the light bulbs out, but the sheep are in the gymnasium down below, so there’s a risk of falling.

[Emily]
Oh, into the sheep.

[Shep]
But also- Yeah, if he survives the fall-

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
He’s not going to survive the sheep.

[Thomas]
See, the problem is, you land on a sheep, it’s nice and fluffy, but…

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right, there’s got to be a ram as well.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
Because how are the sheep reproducing?

[Thomas]
There would have to be. Yeah.

[Shep]
There would have to be. So I imagine, like, lots of dainty little sheep and then a giant monster ram.

[Thomas]
And they have to dodge the ram?

[Shep]
(Pained groans)

[Emily]
I like that one.

[Shep]
Boo.

[Thomas]
That’s how we get the funding for the movie.

[Shep]
All right, you had me at funding.

[Thomas]
I like the idea that they go to the high school with the plan to go into the stadium and get the lights and they’re trying to sneak around, but somehow they accidentally get the sheep’s attention and then, yeah, like you said, they go into the gym and they scramble up the bleachers and the sheep are just, like, slamming into the bleachers. I don’t know, they’re wood or plastic or- I think it’d be interesting if they’re wood, because then you get that splintering wood flying everywhere.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So they have to jump out a window. They just bail on the high school altogether. Yes. There are lots of lights around that we could use, but we can’t get to them because it’s way too dangerous here.

[Shep]
I still can’t figure out why they don’t get the lights from the gym. They crawl out the window. Maybe they crawl onto the roof.

[Emily]
But they’re only able to get one or two, maybe?

[Shep]
They only need one for now.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
So they crawl onto the roof or something from the window to get out of the sight line from the sheep. And once their smell dissipates, the sheep are going to calm down. This is when you have the scene of Pete crawling back in and trying to get the one bulb. Or if he’s got a backpack, he’s, like, slowly taking the bulbs out and putting them in his backpack. But maybe one of them misses and falls and shatters on the gym floor, reactivating all the sheep.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Another thought I had is maybe they do get a bulb in that initial encounter with the sheep in the gym, but it breaks later.

[Emily]
That’s their lowest low. Something happens and it breaks.

[Shep]
Right. They could get several bulbs, but, like, if they’re in a backpack and he has to dive, he has to dodge out of the way of a ram.

[Thomas]
He gets knocked over and falls back onto the backpack.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. That’s inevitable. So is this the moment where Arthur dies, or do we have him die a little bit later?

[Shep]
I think he should die early. I think he should die to the sheep.

[Emily]
Okay, so the sheep get him.

[Shep]
Right. This is how you get your lowest low. Arthur’s dead. All the bulbs are broken. This is why they don’t get bulbs from the gym. There were only three working bulbs left. How do they know if they’re working or not? They don’t, because unless there’s electricity, which there isn’t, maybe there’s only three bulbs remaining.

[Emily]
Okay. There you go.

[Shep]
Because it’s been 20 years. People have stolen all the other bulbs, and there’s three in the middle that are really hard to reach. They’re the hardest to reach, and those are the only ones left. So they go and they take all three of them, and these are the ones that break in the backpack. So they have no reason to get any more from the gym because there are no more.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Otherwise, it’s like, why don’t you try again? Why don’t you try again?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I see so many movies where they try one thing and it doesn’t work, and like, “Well, I’m all out of ideas.” Try again. Just try a second time. So the outside stadium lights. I am picturing, like, birds have nested in them, so there’s no way to get them.

[Thomas]
Right. Did we like the idea of the group finding a couple other survivors and having those two people join the group?

[Emily]
I do.

[Shep]
Yeah, you got to have that turning point.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
When do they come across these kids?

[Emily]
Why are these kids out on their own? They’re a little young to be on their own.

[Shep]
Right. How are they surviving?

[Thomas]
Well, their parents are dead. Their parents recently died. They were a nomadic family. They didn’t have a bunker to live in. They were just doing their best, going from structure to structure.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And they needed supplies. They needed to move somewhere else for some reason. And their parents were killed by antelope or something. I don’t know. In North America, deer.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
A cow-

[Emily]
The range has antelope. What are you talking about?

[Thomas]
Does it? I don’t know.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
It’s where the deer and the antelope play.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So they had to leave their home on the range. And-

[Shep]
I have a question. Do they have weapons?

[Emily]
The children?

[Shep]
Everyone. Does anyone have a weapon? Who has weapons? And what weapons do they have?

[Emily]
The children definitely have weapons, because if they were a nomadic family living out, they have some kind of weaponry.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
What that looks like, maybe it’s a bow and arrow. Probably not a gun.

[Shep]
Right. What could you fashion out of supplies in the wild? Slings?

[Emily]
Yeah. Slings. Slingshots.

[Thomas]
Got the classic baseball bat with nails through it.

[Emily]
Yeah. Baseball bat in general.

[Shep]
Does Steve have a weapon?

[Thomas]
Steve’s got to have a gun, right? He would insist on carrying the gun.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Are they manufacturing their own bullets in the bunker?

[Shep]
They’ve got to be. There’s still a limited-

[Thomas]
When are they using bullets? They’re the same bullets from 20 years ago.

[Emily]
Would the gunpowder still be good?

[Shep]
I imagine one of the old people in the bunker was kind of a gun oriented fella, and so he’s got his own press for making bullets.

[Emily]
Yeah. Okay.

[Shep]
But, yeah, they are still limited.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so Steve always wants to fire the gun, but the noise would attract animals, so Arthur won’t let him. Does Steve use the gun at the end? That’s what attracts the animals and kills him. That’s his heroic sacrifice.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I think maybe they’re being hunted by a bunch of different animals.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And, yeah, he’s like, “You guys go left, I’ll go right, and I’ll get their attention.”

[Shep]
Oh. They are being hunted by a pack of dogs. They get chased at one point, and then they lead the dogs into another herd of deer or whatever and manage to get away as they fought each other. But then those dogs come back again later. After they get away from the sheep, they are once again chased by the dogs. It’s this relentless pack of animals that is following, that is tracking them.

[Emily]
Mmm.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
Over time. So you have that villain, that baddie, the alpha wolf, if alpha wolves were a thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Except it’s also dogs. The alpha chihuahua. So did we figure out how the kids are surviving and not attracting the animals? Are they packing themselves with mud, predator style, to mask their scent?

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Emily]
Oh, actually, yeah. They probably are masking their scent in some way.

[Thomas]
Right. And actually I think they’re pretty capable.

[Emily]
Mmhmm.

[Thomas]
They’ve learned a lot from their parents on how to survive over the years. So they’re very quiet.

[Emily]
Yeah. They’re very quiet and in town, they only stay in multi-story buildings.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And they manage to go-

[Thomas]
Barricade the first floor.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then they can manage to travel from building to building.

[Shep]
Do they find the kids or do the kids find them?

[Thomas]
I was just thinking about that. I feel like the kids would find them, right?

[Emily]
Yeah. Because they’re quiet and stealthy.

[Shep]
Why would the kids approach them? What do they have that the kids want? These twelve-year-olds are extremely capable. They’ve been living on their own for long enough and they don’t need anyone to take care of them. They approach these people who are camping in the woods or something to let them know, “Look, you clearly just came out of some shelter, but you are going to attract all the animals here.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“You are not masking your scent. You built a fire. You’re going to kill everyone. For everyone’s safety, I’m going to teach you how to survive. Even though you’re an adult and I’m half your age, because you are like a baby. You’re like a newborn infant in this world.”

[Thomas]
I like that idea that it’s like “You are a threat to me, not because you’re a shit person, but because you’re a shit survivalist.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And I imagine they have encountered other people. They know where other bunkers are because they trade for resources. So they approach these people not just to let them know how to mask their scent so they don’t attract animals and kill everyone, but also let’s trade resources. Let us know where your bunker is. We travel around a lot, so if you make a list of things that you need, we might be able to procure them for you. They’re traveling merchants, these kids.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But they first approach, one of them approaches, he’s like, “Look, I’m not armed, but I’m also not alone, so don’t attack. I’m here to talk.” I would like the reveal of the sibling, whichever one is hiding, to be, like, right next to the group.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That would be great.

[Thomas]
“Here’s a demonstration of how bad you are at this. Look to your left.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Hi.” “Oh, shit. Where did you come from?”

[Emily]
It’s the raptor scene in Jurassic park.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Clever girl.”

[Shep]
Right, so you have, that’s, that’s Steve’s line.

[Thomas]
We know which sibling is the one hiding.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
It’s the girl.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
That’s good. Steve doesn’t know his own joke, does he? He doesn’t understand. That’s a reference.

[Shep]
No, he’s not making a reference.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
He’s just saying a thing that reference is for the audience.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They don’t have movies.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They don’t have streaming services anymore.

[Thomas]
Right. How do we tell the audience about the history of- Is Pete also the teacher? And so he’s teaching a class to the kids and, “Oh, we live in the bunker because of this thing.”

[Emily]
Why can’t it be that they’re noticing the grow lights going out and they have a council meeting and they discuss-

[Thomas]
Well, I just don’t want them to say, like, “Hey, information we all already know for the sake of the audience.”

[Shep]
“As you know…”

[Thomas]
Right. What was the movie? Was it Contagion that started off with a really compressed history of, like, “Here’s how we got to the start of the film.” And it was sort of like, “In 1993, scientists at the (whatever lab) developed a chemical…”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And that’s like, the opening credits. Is that, like two-minute-long sequence? That’s like, here’s 40 years of this world’s history in two minutes. And now you’re up to speed as the audience, go.

[Shep]
Right. You just do a montage over the opening credits of news reports.

[Thomas]
Right. And you’ve got the grainy, shaky cam footage of riots and looting and people getting into their bunkers and animals goring people in the streets.

[Shep]
Right. Then you have just a black screen and it says “20 Years Later”.

[Thomas]
All right, so we see a little bit of life in the bunker, and maybe there is a council meeting, and it’s like “Another grow light went out today.” So we established in that one line this is an ongoing issue, and so “We’re going to have to get something. We’re going to have to go out.”

[Shep]
“Unless we want to live on a diet of rhubarb and mushroom.”

[Thomas]
Right. Is Steve right away, like, “I’ll go.”

[Emily]
Yeah, because he’s a adventurer, buccaneer type guy.

[Thomas]
Yeah. He’s young and dumb and wants to prove himself. So they get the group together. Arthur, Steve, and Chloë.

[Shep]
So you, like, want to skip the bunker, it sounds like. And I’m saying don’t skip the bunker. Like, the first half hour is in the bunker.

[Thomas]
Well. So I imagine that the end of the first act is the second voyage out of the bunker. So we get a little bit of time in the bunker. Actually, we don’t need to leave the bunker. We don’t need to see the first journey.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We can stay in the bunker when the first journey happens.

[Shep]
Right. Because we’re following Pete, and he didn’t go on the first trip.

[Thomas]
Right, right. So, yeah, we should. Wouldn’t make sense to follow them. So they come back, it was a bust. We got a few things, but not the grow light. Another council meeting. “Now what?” Pete, “I have an idea.” They need a slightly larger group. Why do they need a larger group? They need to take Pete because he knows wiring and electricity and stuff, right?

[Emily]
Right. They need to take him and they still need Steve because he’s strong and burly and these are not light lightbulbs.

[Thomas]
Right. No, that’s the beginning of the second act as they set out on their journey?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I feel like Arthur’s death is the mid second act turning point.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
That would make sense.

[Thomas]
And then the bulb breaking is the lowest low. It’s the end of the second act.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then finding the kids is the third act?

[Thomas]
Yeah. Right at the beginning of the third act. And so the kids kind of train them. They have to get, like, chased away from the school. Oh, yeah. So they escape from the sheep only to be chased immediately by the dogs. And maybe that’s when they get the dogs to chase after the deer or something.

[Shep]
Then how do they escape from the dogs the first time if these are returning dogs?

[Thomas]
Well, we’ve never seen the dogs before as the audience.

[Shep]
Have we not?

[Thomas]
I guess we should hear about them at least. The dogs have to have chased the first group, right? Yeah. Because that would add tension at the beginning of the second act. When they go out, they’re like, “Look, there were these fucking crazy dogs that we barely escaped from.”

[Shep]
Yeah. Okay.

[Thomas]
And so they’re already on edge, so there’s- every noise, they “What’s that? Is it the dogs?” So that was how they got rid of the dogs the first time, was they set them on the deer.

[Shep]
That’s after the sheep?

[Thomas]
That’s prior to the sheep. That’s the first time they got away from the dogs.

[Shep]
Oh, so we don’t see that. They just talk about that.

[Thomas]
We don’t see that. Right. It costs less money that way, too.

[Shep]
Okay, good point. You had me at funding.

[Thomas]
So how do they get away from the dogs the second time? If the high school is in or near the city, do they run into a building and slam the doors shut behind them and barricade it and run up the stairs? And that’s when the kids come out. Like, “Okay, look, you can’t be bringing animals here.” Oh, do the kids have some sort of attractant trap or something that they can do that will cause the dogs to leave? And the survivors, our group who are out there, they don’t quite understand why the dogs suddenly left. But they’re like, “Whatever. We’re happy they’re gone.” And then the kids reveal themselves like, “Hey, we did that. We saved your butts.”

[Shep]
Right. “You now owe us.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“That cost us resources.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Resources are not free.”

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“So we will trade information and food.” Yeah. What is the rule? If you’re being chased by dogs, you don’t want to lead them to buildings. Where are you supposed to go?

[Emily]
The river. Because famously, dogs can’t swim.

[Thomas]
Right. No, dogs hate water.

[Shep]
Wasn’t there a swimming stroke named after dog? I’m thinking of cat paddle.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Cat paddle.

[Shep]
That’s what I’m thinking of.

[Emily]
Cat paddle.

[Thomas]
That’s the one.

[Shep]
Cats love water.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yes. Can’t get mine out of it.

[Thomas]
That’s why they’re called catfish.

[Emily]
What do you do with the dogs if you’re not going into this-?

[Shep]
Maybe there was some sign, some signal. Survivors all know the rules.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So, like, when you’re in a building, you hang a- You stick a sheet out the window or something so that other survivors know this building is occupied. They want to come and trade, that’s fine, but if you’re being chased by dogs, don’t run to a building that’s got a sheet hanging out the window. You’re going to kill everyone. And these new bunker people, they don’t know these rules. Like, society has been living for 20 years in this situation. They have, like, established conventions.

[Thomas]
There’s, like, the hobo markers. Right?

[Shep]
Right. So that’s one of the things that the kids are teaching them, is if you’re being chased by dogs, don’t run to where other people are. You’re just going to kill them, and you. It’s not going to work out.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So that’s why where they’re being chased at the end and they’re close to the bunker, they don’t run toward the bunker. That’s how Steve ends up sacrificing himself is because he can’t run to the bunker for safety, because that’s the rule.

[Thomas]
I imagine that the bunker is on a farm kind of property. Does he run into a barn and light the barn on fire? He, like, gets all the dogs to follow into the barn, and he’s like, “Shut the doors behind me, and I’ll deal with these dogs.” And he ends up lighting the barn on fire. He kills as many as he can with his gun and then burns the barn so that they’re not going to have to worry about that pack of dogs anymore?

[Emily]
I’m okay with him setting the dogs on fire in the barn.

[Thomas]
Does the bulb break because they’re being chased by the dogs?

[Shep]
I mean, maybe. This is right after Arthur has died, right?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So Arthur dies so that they can get the bulbs, and then the bulbs are broken immediately. So Arthur died for nothing, really. This is your lowest low, right?

[Thomas]
Well, but if Arthur dying is the mid second act turning point, we need more time before the lowest low. There needs to be probably a couple more scenes.

[Shep]
Okay, but sometime after Arthur dies and they escape from the sheep, they’re chased by the dog. I mean, when else are they going to break the bulb? They got to break the bulb before they run into the kids.

[Thomas]
Yes. It could be that they’re chased by the dogs and they run into the building, and in trying to get away, the bulb breaks, and then immediately after that, they meet the kids.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, there doesn’t need to be really any time between the lowest low and meeting the kids. That can happen immediately.

[Shep]
Right. Because they’re sitting around going, “What do we do now?” And that’s when the kids show up. Like, “What you do is you pay us back for saving your lives.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So maybe one of the dogs, as they’re being chased-

[Thomas]
“We have all this delicious glass you could eat.”

[Shep]
Well, do they have the backpack anymore or not? Because I was thinking maybe one of the dogs got close enough to grab onto the backpack and he has to get rid of it to get away.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah, right. Pete was wearing the backpack. Right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It was his turn to carry the backpack. Right. Because Steve couldn’t be burdened by the backpack. He’s got to stay agile.

[Shep]
Yeah. It’s full of heavy light bulbs.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We don’t have Chloë doing a lot.

[Emily]
I was going to say, what is-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
What’s happening with Chloë during this? She’s just hanging out? She’s just there?

[Shep]
Basically, I pictured she’s the new leader after Arthur dies.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I think we’re all just thinking it’s a given that she is just always, like, second in command and helping and figuring things out and just, she’s the right hand of Arthur. And then when he dies-

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Is she the one who says to run into the building that they later learn they’re not supposed to? Like, she’s a capable leader. She made a good decision.

[Emily]
Right. For them to survive, she made the right decision.

[Thomas]
But it demonstrates that even the intelligent person in the group doesn’t know the rules.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
None of these people know the quote unquote “rules”.

[Shep]
What kind of building is this? Is this an apartment building?

[Thomas]
I imagine it’s like a three- or four-story apartment block.

[Shep]
Okay. How are the kids remaining unseen if they’re covered in mud indoors?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I mean, I don’t imagine our group is going room to room, checking everything. They’re probably just build a fire in one of the rooms. And “Now what do we do?”

[Shep]
Why do they need a fire? I was just picturing a fire as a bad idea. And that’s why they did it, because they don’t know any better. Like, the elder people are teaching them how to live, but they’re teaching them from knowledge from the before time.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so it’s like “You build a fire like this.” And, you know…

[Emily]
Oh, I like that idea.

[Thomas]
If there’s another way that we can get the dogs to go away, then they don’t have to go into the apartment building yet. They could be in the woods and build a fire. I mean, this might be a problem for the writers.

[Emily]
Yeah. The point is, they run into the building.

[Shep]
Or not. We don’t know.

[Emily]
Let’s pick one. That’s all we have to do is pick one.

[Shep]
Well, I’m saying we don’t have to pick one. They encounter the kids.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They tell them they’re messing up and endangering everyone and not to live like that. And then later, perhaps they’re chased with the kids by the dogs. And want to run into the buildings. And the kids are like, “No, don’t run into the buildings. There could be people in there. You don’t lead animals to people.” And that’s when they set off like a scent bomb or something.

[Emily]
Stink bomb would be actually something that the kids could have and manufacture on their own.

[Shep]
Right. And that drives the dogs away temporarily.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But how do they get rid of that dog pack at the end? I think Thomas is right. For them to continue living, that particular dog pack that is on their trail has to be dealt with. How do you get all of the dogs in the barn? That’s what I am-

[Thomas]
Well, that’s why you get them chasing Steve and he runs into the barn.

[Shep]
Does he know he’s running to his doom?

[Emily]
Not at first, because he thinks he can overcome them.

[Thomas]
Right. He’s got a gun. He’s going to be brave.

[Shep]
He’s got five bullets.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
How many dogs are there?

[Thomas]
Like a dozen at least. It’s a pack. Probably about a dozen. Eight to twelve.

[Shep]
What if there is exactly five? And he’s like-

[Thomas]
Okay, sure. Or his magazine holds ten rounds and there are ten dogs or something like that.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And he’s been- Oh, he has been itching the whole movie to shoot this gun.

[Shep]
Does he actually shoot the gun or does it, like, jam right away?

[Thomas]
Oh, no!

[Shep]
No. He’s got to shoot a couple of them.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He gets a few shots off.

[Shep]
To build up the hope in the audience.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“Steve’s going to pull this off. He’s actually as badass as we think he is.” Or as he thinks he.

[Thomas]
As he thinks he is.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
How does he light the barn on fire?

[Thomas]
How would he start a fire?

[Shep]
Okay, if it’s not a fire? If he has a bomb of some kind or grenades? Let’s just say he’s got some grenades, because remember the other guy, the old guy at the bunker, was war oriented. What we really need to take out is that alpha dog.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
The big scary one that’s leading the pack, which I’m sure is, It’s actually just its family.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he fires off a few shots, he kills some of the dogs, but then the gun jams or whatever.

[Thomas]
I mean, he could go through all the rounds and it’s like, a few of them are dead, several more are injured. The alpha dog’s taking a couple of hits and just not affecting it at all.

[Shep]
Okay, so if his last thing is just to pull the pins on the grenades that he’s been wearing on his vest this whole movie.

[Emily]
That could be a whole conversation, too, where they’re like, “Why do you even have those? What are we going to use those for?” And he’s like, “I don’t know. They look cool.” Because if they have grenades, why didn’t they use them on the sheep earlier? Or the pack of dogs earlier?

[Shep]
You can’t use them on the sheep because it’s just sheep. And they’re precious. They’re precious grenades. These are like the last two.

[Thomas]
So grenades are basically impossible for civilians to get their hands on. So these are the only two grenades that the bunker has.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And Steve has stolen them. He wasn’t supposed to take them.

[Shep]
Oh!

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because they look cool.

[Thomas]
He’s trying to be the Rambo of the bunker, and he’s got to have grenades. He’s got to be prepared for anything. So he steals them, and at some point it gets revealed he has them so that we can, Chekhov’s grenades, I guess.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
All right, so does he sacrifice himself, or does he successfully kill the dogs and manages to come back? Is he being attacked? Like, have the dogs getting to him and this is his last-?

[Emily]
I like the imagery of him being attacked. And this is his last, like, this is all he has left. This is the only thing he can think to do to save the others.

[Thomas]
Does he survive, but very injured?

[Shep]
I don’t think so.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
I think he exploded with the dog.

[Shep]
If he’s that close to the grenade.

[Emily]
I think he more or less just pulls the pin. There’s no throwing involved.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s got to be him. And the alpha is the one that- All the other dogs are dead at this point, and the alpha is still the one coming after him? And he it’s him, the alpha, and one grenade. And, yeah, you’re right, there’s no throwing it. Like, what are you going to do? The dog is on you. He’s laying on the ground on his back, and the dog is there, and he’s doing his best to hold the dog back. Or maybe the dog’s on his arm. He’s, like, given up his arm and he’s trying to get his other hand in the pin together so he can yank the pin out.

[Shep]
That wasn’t the plan, but that’s what he ended up doing.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
His plan was to take out all the dogs with the gun and return home triumphant.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So it’s just Chloë and Pete who come back. Right? The kids stay out because they don’t want to come to the bunker. They’re traders.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, they live outside where there’s sunlight and vitamin D, they’re not going into that dark-ass hole.

[Thomas]
Right. Arthur and Steve both die on this one trip. Wow.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So half the group is killed, but they successfully get back with the grow lights.

[Shep]
Did they? Because we last had them breaking the light bulbs that they had and then meeting up with the kids. Do the kids go-

[Thomas]
Right. During the third act, the kids help them out.

[Shep]
All right, we’re just skipping that part.

[Thomas]
Oh, okay. So you said before there are only three lights in the gym, so they get all three lights because they need multiple grow lights. Why would you leave any behind? And so it’s even more impactful at the end of the second act when those lights break, because it’s like, “Well, now what?”

[Shep]
Right. Yeah, that’s all the lights. That’s why they don’t go back to the gym. There’s no point.

[Thomas]
Right. They don’t know where to get other lights, but the kids do.

[Shep]
Right. The kids are like, “Just get the stadium lights.”

[Thomas]
Right. And there’s, there’s something they do for the kids in the third act that the kids are then willing to help them.

[Shep]
They give them the strawberry plants.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
They’d collected more plants or whatever, and they gave those up in return for the grow lights.

[Thomas]
The kids need to come back to the bunker with them. They don’t stay at the bunker, but the kids need to learn where the bunker is because that’s going to become part of their-

[Shep]
Right. Oh. They want to meet the leaders of the bunker to establish trade relations.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Not with these guys. These guys don’t know what they’re doing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re not in charge of nothing.

[Thomas]
Right. And maybe that’s what they demand in return for saving their lives is like, “We’re always looking for more people to trade with, so.”

[Shep]
Right. So you can have a scene at the end with them meeting with the elders of the bunker, and the old lady finding out that, yeah, they’re still making wine.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There are people out here making wine. You can trade with them.

[Emily]
Oh, I love that. She’s going to get her wine.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That sounds like an excellent way to end it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Light Bulb. Did you see the light or are you burned out from listening? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. This episode marks two full years that we’ve been making Almost Plausible. If you aren’t subscribed, what are you waiting for? Follow or subscribe right now in your podcatcher of choice and you’ll be ready to join Emily, Shep, and I when we kick off year three on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]