Potato

References

• Pomme de terre
• The Martian
• Almost Plausible: Bag of Chips
• Steins;Gate
• History of the potato
• Antoine-Augustin Parmentier
• Frederick the Great
• Peruvian Potatoes
• How to Turn a Potato Into a Battery
• Zn/Cu-vegetative batteries, bioelectrical characterizations, and primary cost analyses
• Norman Borlaug
• The Metamorphosis
• Hot Potato
• The Fly
• Rick and Morty
• Pickle Rick
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force
• Total Re-Carl
• Johnny Appleseed
• Sexploitation Film
• This Is Your Life
• Saving Private Ryan
• Genetically modified organism
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Mob Song
• King Kong
• Memoirs of an Invisible Man
• Cocoon
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• A24
• I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
• Swamp Thing
• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
There’s so many people in the world, there’s got to be someone out there that’s open minded enough-

[Emily]
To love a potato.

[Shep]
To love a potato. He could work from home. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a potato.

[Emily]
This is true. And I’m sure there are several people in the world that would love a potato. Biblically, I mean.

[Thomas]
Right. There’s got to be a tuber joke in there somewhere.

[Emily]
Right? I was trying to get there.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. Today we’re coming up with a story about the humble Potato. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and the meat to my potatoes are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Now, I know for a fact that all three of us love potatoes-

[Shep]
True.

[Thomas]
But what is your favorite way to eat potatoes?

[Emily]
That’s so hard. There’s so many ways.

[Shep]
See, I like just baked potatoes. I know that’s very basic. Sorry, I’m a basic Irish guy. I like baked potatoes. I’m trying to describe it, and my mouth is watering just talking about it. I make them in the air fryer. It’s super easy, super convenient. They come out very crispy. Spray on a little coconut oil. Put some salt on there.

[Thomas]
That sounds amazing. Now I’m drooling.

[Shep]
They’re so good! They’re so.

[Emily]
I think mine would have to be, like, a home fry style fried potato. I like the big chunky cubes of, like-

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
A baby red or whatever.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
And just drizzled in some kind of oil and heated and salt and garlic.

[Thomas]
Well, the correct answer was, any way I can get them.

[Shep]
That is correct.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Hasselback is also really good, but it’s such a pain.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like the British-style roasted, where they’re like big, chunky guys, and then you sort of, like, boil them to get them all fluffy, but then you finish them in the oven so they got that really crispy exterior. Do it with some gravy.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I also really like twice baked potatoes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, yes.

[Thomas]
Very good.

[Shep]
I think that there’s just no wrong way to eat a potato.

[Emily]
There’s no wrong way to eat a potato. Except for raw.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Raw, maybe.

[Emily]
I guess.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
No, they taste like apples. It’s fine.

[Thomas]
Starchy apples.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Oh, they are ground apples. Right? Pomme de terre? So there we go.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right, well, Shep, you’re pitching first today, so let’s hear your potato pitches.

[Shep]
Okay. An astronaut is left behind on Mars and has to grow potatoes to survive.

[Thomas]
Feel like this one has appeal.

[Shep]
How about a heist where they have to steal potato-based computer chips?

[Thomas]
Brilliant.

[Emily]
That’s a good one.

[Shep]
Yeah. Have we already done potato?

[Shep]
Because we did Chips, and it was potato chips.

[Thomas]
That’s true.

[Shep]
Okay, here’s a real pitch, that’s new! Possibly.

[Thomas]
Knowing us, probably not, but.

[Shep]
Yeah. Well, so I started typing it out. A scientist turns his microwave into a time machine. Then I realized, isn’t there an anime that’s based on this? Isn’t that what Steins;Gate is-?

[Thomas]
I’ve never heard of it.

[Shep]
They send messages back on the microwave. I have never watched it. I heard that it’s good. But anyway, a scientist turns his microwave into a time machine, and unwittingly, a family member tries to microwave a potato and accidentally sends it back in time, which messes up the timeline and wacky time travel hijinks ensue.

[Thomas]
So what gets sent back in time? Just the potato?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay, so this is like before baked potatoes were invented. And so it gets cooked and sent back in time. And some person is like, “Baked potatoes? I’ve never thought of that!”

[Shep]
Or it doesn’t get cooked at all. It just goes back in time. I don’t know, decades, centuries.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Wow.

[Shep]
It just ends up in the early Americas and plants itself in the ground and then spreads across North America.

[Thomas]
And then Columbus shows up and is, “Huh.”

[Shep]
“I was going to india and ended up in Ireland.”

[Emily]
Wait, aren’t potatoes from the Americas?

[Shep]
Oh, are they? Oh, well, then never mind.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’re from South America, aren’t they?

[Emily]
Yeah. Isn’t that how they ended up in Ireland with Columbus and the discovery of the new world?

[Thomas]
Probably.

[Shep]
I didn’t know I had to know stuff for this.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I thought this was a creative writing exercise.

[Emily]
It is. I just have this one vague knowledge.

[Thomas]
Emily. Emily. How do you think they got there?

[Emily]
Good point.

[Thomas]
So I have a few here. My first is a biopic about Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who is credited with popularizing potatoes in France in the late 18th century. One great trick that he had, because at that point in time, people thought, “Oh, potatoes are poisonous for humans, but we can feed them to animals.” And there was not enough food in France. And he was like, “Potatoes are great. They’re delicious. They’re amazing. How can I get people to eat potatoes?” And so one thing that he would do is have armed guards around his fields, but only during the day, so that at night peasants would come and steal the potatoes because they think, “Well, if he’s got armed guards, that must be really valuable.”

[Shep]
That sounds familiar. I think I’ve heard that story.

[Thomas]
That story is also sometimes credited to somebody else. There’s another, I forget who, There’s another person in history who has a similar story.

[Shep]
According to Wikipedia, the same story exists in Germany about Frederick the Great.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Shep]
But he could have just heard the story before and is like, “Oh, that’s a great idea.”

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
“I’ll just do the same thing. I don’t think the peasants have wikipedia. They probably don’t know the story.”

[Thomas]
It’s not like the Internet existed back then.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Like, “Hey, could you write this? But with my name?”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So there are over 5000 different types of potato in the world. My next pitch is one guy decides to eat as many as he can, and he travels all over the world trying to find them.

[Shep]
I love it. I’d love to do this. Forget the pitch.

[Thomas]
Yeah. This sounds like my ideal life.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I mean, if you look at some of the photos of the different kinds of potatoes that are out there, they are bonkers. They look so weird. And apparently they’re all like, different flavors and textures and are used in different preparations. Potatoes are really quite amazing.

[Shep]
But he only does 4999. And the last potato field is guarded by armed guards.

[Thomas]
How is he supposed to get that last one?

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
My last idea, and the most fleshed out of them. It’s also the least probable of them. A container ship sinks. A few people from the ship are stranded on an island. Several containers wash ashore with a random assortment of stuff. Galvanized nails, car breakdown kits, and potatoes. Lots of potatoes. Eventually, someone discovers an old broadcast station, but there’s no way to power it. It clicks in someone’s head that they could use the nails, copper from the jumper cables in the breakdown kits, and a lot of potatoes to build a giant battery, which would power the broadcast equipment for a very brief time. Just enough to send out an SOS. It takes a lot of work, but they succeed and are rescued.

[Shep]
Okay, I have some thoughts on this one.

[Thomas]
Okay,

[Shep]
So, potatoes don’t. They’re not batteries.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’re just providing the salt to allow the electrons to flow.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But did you know that a boiled potato works better than a raw potato?

[Thomas]
I did not know that.

[Shep]
Like, eight times better or ten times better? Some large amount.

[Thomas]
Is it more concentrated salt? Is it less resistance in the potato?

[Shep]
That’s a good question. There was a paper on this, like, ten years ago. I don’t remember the details, but, yeah. So boil it for eight minutes. Maybe that’s where the eight comes from. Boil it for eight minutes, and it’s ten times as good. Or it lasts ten times as long, and then slice it so you have large surface area. So each potato is a half a volt. About. So how many volts would it take? I, see, I’m approaching it like it’s a puzzle to solve. I like this pitch a lot.

[Thomas]
Well, Emily, let’s hear yours, and then we’ll decide.

[Emily]
Oh, I think we’ve already decided, but-

[Shep]
Ha.

[Emily]
We’ll humor me.

[Thomas]
Well, we’ve got to hear, at least, we’ve got to hear your serial killer pitch.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, that’s a good one. I actually fleshed out a couple of interesting ones.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
A man’s life quest is to create the hardiest potato hybrid there is. He spends his life trying to germinate the perfect variation. He finally thinks he’s found success at a very old age. He cooks one of the new potatoes, eats it for dinner. It’s the most delicious potato he’s ever eaten. Without anything added to it, it’s the perfect texture, it’s buttery and salty in flavor, and it’s just fantastic. He goes to sleep knowing he’s completed his life’s work. But his one regret is that it happened too late in life. The next morning, he wakes up to discover he’s become a young man again. He can now enjoy the success of his creation and live the life he missed out on the first time around. But he soon discovers there’s a dark side of this unexpected fortune. He’s growing eyes on every part of his body as he slowly turns into a potato himself.

[Shep]
What a twist.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I like how he starts as Norman Borlaug and ends as Gregor Samsa.

[Emily]
Right? All right. The one you’re all waiting for. The serial killer one.

[Shep]
Spoilers.

[Thomas]
Yeah, Emily, let us get there naturally.

[Shep]
He’s making poison out of potatoes because they’re poisonous to humans.

[Thomas]
They have all that battery acid in them.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
You’ve guessed it. All right. A young woman finds a gift box on her porch one evening when she returns home from work. There’s no note or a clue as to who it was from. She opens it, and it’s one of those potatoes with a message on it saying, “You’re next”. She enters her house. She is attacked, and the next day, her body is found skinned with the potato lying next to her. Soon, there are more victims and more potatoes as the city is terrorized by the Potato Peeler.

[Shep]
Also, her eyes are gouged out.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, that would have been a good detail.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Imagine being the detective who finds the “You’re next” potato, and you’re like, wait, I’m next? Yeah. The serial killer is watching, and he just follows whoever takes the potato.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s a hot potato.

[Thomas]
Ay!

[Emily]
You guys are helpful. This is making it brilliant. Let’s do this one.

[Thomas]
All right, which one do we like.

[Shep]
Much like potatoes, a lot of these are delicious.

[Thomas]
Very good. Yeah.

[Shep]
I think any of these would work. So I was leaning more towards the body horror one or the island one.

[Thomas]
I like the body horror one. What’s the conflict like, how does that one resolve?

[Shep]
He gets killed by the Potato Pealer!

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yay.

[Emily]
Well, I was thinking the conflict would be because he’s wasted his whole life, so he’s never had love. He’s never had real relationships, so he kind of falls in love with a woman, and then he’s slowly turning into a potato, so that’s not going to be great for them.

[Thomas]
Maybe she likes potatoes.

[Emily]
And he’s kind of becoming a monster. I envision him, like, The Fly style. So maybe the government kills him.

[Shep]
There’s so many people in the world, there’s got to be someone out there that’s open minded enough-

[Emily]
To love a potato.

[Shep]
To love a potato. He could work from home. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a potato.

[Emily]
This is true. And I’m sure there are several people in the world that would love a potato. Biblically, I mean.

[Thomas]
Right. There’s got to be a tuber joke in there somewhere.

[Emily]
Right? I was trying to get there.

[Thomas]
So I feel like the container ship one has a clearer arc, but is potentially less interesting.

[Emily]
Right. Body horror can go super campy.

[Thomas]
I mean, a guy’s turning into a potato, so I feel like-

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s got to be super campy. There’s no- Yeah.

[Thomas]
So does he become just, like, a classically potato-shaped potato? Does he still, like, a human shaped potato? Can he move? Is he losing his mobility?

[Shep]
Yeah. Is he Pickle Rick but a potato, or is he a man and a potato?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Is he a man-tato?

[Emily]
Since I imagined it would start with, like, the eyes popping up. Like, I was thinking, you know that little spot in your elbows where the little dimples are? Like, those would be where the first ones would pop up, and he’s like, “What the heck’s going on?”

[Thomas]
Can he see out the eyes?

[Emily]
That was the next question was, would they be actual functioning eyes, or are they, like, actual potato eyes? I think if we’re going to go body horror, we got to go full on, he can see out of them, and they are real eyeballs. So I guess he’s a man-potato. Like, maybe he keeps his man shape and can move, but his skin becomes potato skin, and he becomes covered with eyeballs, and his hair turns into roots.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Can he see out all of the eyes simultaneously, or does he have to kind of sort of change his focus of, like, “I’m looking at this one, I’m looking at that one.” It’d be hard to sneak up on if you can see out of all of them.

[Emily]
Right. I kind of want him to be able to see out of all of them, but now I keep imagining that episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force where they use their cloning device to give Carl the body of eyeballs. Yeah. He would see simultaneously out of all of them, which would at first be very jarring for him because that would be really disorienting, and you’d have to relearn how to function, your body.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So I think that would create some tension and interest, at least in one scene.

[Thomas]
I mean, if we’re going camp, we could push it all the way in both directions. So he becomes a potato, but the eyes are actual eyes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Also, he can float, and that’s how he gets around. He just hovers.

[Emily]
He’s just a hovering potato.

[Shep]
Is he potato sized?

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
No, he’s like a gigantic-

[Emily]
Yeah, he’s man- He’s like a six-foot potato.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That hovers.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What is his goal when he becomes a potato? I mean.

[Shep]
He wants to spread his good potato-ness to all the humans.

[Emily]
Does he then become Johnny Potato seed?

[Thomas]
Oh, if we’re going camp, let’s lean hard into this. Yes. And the way he distributes his seed…

[Shep]
Oh, golly.

[Emily]
I know where this is going.

[Shep]
Oh, no.

[Thomas]
Ah.

[Emily]
Ew. But I love it.

[Thomas]
It’s like full on b-movie ridiculous 70s sexploitation potato body horror.

[Emily]
I don’t think we need to go that far, but love the enthusiasm.

[Thomas]
Where in the story, like, how much of his life-?

[Shep]
I’m still thinking about his potato seed. Is it buttery flavored? That’s my question.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I mean, yeah, obviously.

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Shep]
Okay, so this is what we’re going with for sure. We’ve already started going down this route. We’ve passed the point of no return.

[Thomas]
Okay. So what are the… Like, how much of the story of the movie is before he wakes up as a young man? Like, at what point in the film does he wake up? Is that like-

[Emily]
Really early, like-

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s going to have to be.

[Emily]
I want to be like, we’re kind of getting the backstory through the credit sequence here, watching him making the potato, and we could even go back and have him explain it to somebody else at some point.

[Thomas]
Okay. So it opens up and it’s like a documentary retrospective type of thing. He’s being given some big award at the beginning of the film. And so this is like, you know how at those award dinners they play a little This Is Your Life type of thing?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And here’s why we’re giving you the award. So it’s “In 1973…,” all that sort of stuff. And then it ends and we see him and he’s an old man. And he comes up and he’s like, “Oh, thank you so much for this great honor.” And, yeah, maybe he even says in that speech or he’s giving an interview or something like that. And he says, “Oh, my only regret is that I dedicated my whole life to this. But I feel like I missed out on a lot of the other things that life has to offer.”

[Shep]
Okay, I’d like to make a small change.

[Thomas]
Unacceptable. What would you like to change?

[Shep]
Okay, so you open with that montage of, like, his successful life, but it’s all in his imagination because he hasn’t succeeded.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Ooh.

[Shep]
That’s the opening, is he finally does the potato, but he’s now an old man and nobody cares. People don’t eat potatoes anymore.

[Thomas]
Right. They eat the boxed, flaky powder.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Instant potatoes.

[Shep]
Is that how you stop this guy at the end? You spray him with liquid nitrogen and freeze dry him?

[Emily]
Sure.

[Shep]
Spoilers. I guess.

[Thomas]
The last shot is his casket being lowered down. But his casket is just a big box of instant mash. No, wait. If you bury him, he’ll grow. No, hold on.

[Emily]
Sequel!

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, actually. All right, so we know A and we know Z.

[Shep]
So I like the idea of the montage at the beginning.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You know, he declares as a young man, “I’m gonna do (whatever).” And, you know, you see him working on it and his girlfriend or his wife grows farther away from him and then leaves him, and he’s all alone and it’s not working. Every experiment, failure.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Have the big failure x on a computer as if that’s how science works. And he just gets older and older and then he gets more and more depressed. And it’s the scene from saving private Ryan where he gets really old in one shot. And then the computer dings or whatever. It’s like, success. He’s like, “Oh, triumph!” And then immediately eats the potato with no further questions.

[Emily]
Right. He goes, he bakes it. He doesn’t even season it, but it doesn’t need to be seasoned.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s the perfect potato.

[Shep]
Yes. And a tear goes down his cheek. He’s like, “I did it.”

[Emily]
You see him shuffle off to bed satisfied. And then he wakes up.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
And he wakes up and he’s young because we had that actor from earlier in the montage, we just reuse that same guy.

[Thomas]
Right. So we’re like ten minutes in at this point.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Okay, so what’s the first thing he does as a young man?

[Shep]
He’s got to have the disbelief scene.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Where, “Did I fall asleep with my glasses on? I can see everything.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. Does he connect it to the potato? “I guess they were right about GMO.”

[Emily]
Like, what else would he think it was?

[Shep]
He can’t at first.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Otherwise, you’re going to speed run this movie.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
You need that time to explore the mystery. He’s a scientist, right?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
He’s a potato scientist, but a scientist nonetheless. And so he’s going to explore what has happened to him. It’s a miracle of some sort. But miracles are just science that hasn’t been explained yet.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So he’s going to figure out how this miracle happened.

[Shep]
Well, first he has to understand what that miracle is like. Is he dreaming or is this real?

[Emily]
How does he determine that?

[Thomas]
Well, he goes outside and asks a woman out, and she rejects him. And he’s like, “Oh, I guess it’s not a dream after all.”

[Shep]
No, he asks a woman out and she doesn’t reject him because he’s young and handsome. Now.

[Thomas]
I guess that’s probably what would happen. But then that’s not evidence of this is the real world. That, to me, is more evidence of I’m in a dream.

[Emily]
What can old people do that young people can’t?

[Shep]
I mean, he’ll try to read something, you can’t read well in dreams, it’s difficult, and he can read just fine.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s-

[Emily]
Yeah, there’s that.

[Shep]
How does he deal with people not recognizing who he is? He’s living in this old man’s house, and the old man is missing.

[Emily]
But people didn’t really know who lived- Like he was sort of a hermit because he was working on the potatoes all the time.

[Shep]
See, I thought we could introduce a neighbor character.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Unless we don’t want any other characters. Forget it.

[Emily]
No,

[Shep]
We’ll just do a single room movie with one actor.

[Emily]
Let’s add it, another, a neighbor. Sure. Because I wanted there to be a love interest anyway.

[Thomas]
I was going to say, yeah, she could be like a younger woman who had moved in next door at some point.

[Shep]
That’s really convenient. I thought that he would track down his old girlfriend, that left him in the early montage.

[Thomas]
She’s like 80 now.

[Emily]
But she’s like, yeah!

[Shep]
That’s who he was in love with. And he doesn’t realize how much time has passed. And so he goes to track her down. And she’s an old woman, but her granddaughter is super hot.

[Emily]
I’m going to go for the convenient neighbor.

[Shep]
It’s so convenient.

[Emily]
Just like his old girlfriend’s having an attractive young granddaughter.

[Shep]
So if we’re going for Beauty and the Beast, The Fly, King Kong, whatever, where he’s turning into a monster, and you have this romantic interest, you need that third party to bring the police in, so that the police come after him at the end of the movie for the climax. That’s what the neighbor’s job is.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So he goes out and sees his neighbor, and he says “Hi.” And the neighbor is like, “Who are you?” And he’s like, “Oh, I’m (whatever).” And the neighbor, of course, doesn’t believe he’s the old man. He’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know so and so had a grandson.”

[Thomas]
Right. They just assume, oh, you. You’re a grandson with the same name.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And maybe that’s what kind of clues him in, like, “Oh, I need to be careful what I say.”

[Shep]
Of course, the neighbor later concludes that this is just some guy that has murdered the old man and is taking over his house.

[Emily]
Murdered the old man. Yep.

[Thomas]
I just watched Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and in it, he talks about, like, “Oh, you think that it’s going to be so easy. You’ll just be invisible, and you’ll just kind of do whatever. But the reality is that it’s super impossible. You can’t do anything. And if you eat stuff, people can see it inside of you.” And it wasn’t an amazing movie, but it did sort of talk about a little bit about, like, it’s not what you think it is. And so it’s the same sort of thing.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Like, “Oh, if I could wake up tomorrow and be a young man.”

[Emily]
Mmhmm.

[Thomas]
Well, there are logistical challenges that you haven’t considered that are going to work against you.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because his driver’s license would show an old man, which he’s clearly not.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Everyone works from home these days. And driver’s licenses you can renew online. And they just keep the same picture for years and years and years. You just do that long enough, and then you look like your picture again.

[Thomas]
Ha.

[Shep]
Of course, it will say that you’re 180.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right. Okay, so where does he meet the love interest? Does he go to find his, like, why wouldn’t he realize that time has-? He knew that he aged. Why would he forget that his lovely lady friend also aged?

[Shep]
I don’t know if he forgot. Maybe he’s just optimistic, or maybe he wanted to throw it in her face, like, she left him. And you know what? His potatoes are so amazing, they made him young again. How does she like those potatoes? Or ground-apples.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, what if he takes the bus to get into town because he was an old man, he doesn’t actually have a car anymore because he couldn’t drive what have you.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So-

[Shep]
They took his license away.

[Thomas]
He sold it for money for his potato research.

[Shep]
Oh, yes. He doesn’t have any money. He’s poor. He’s young and poor.

[Emily]
Yeah, he’s young and poor.

[Shep]
That’s the worst thing. The best part of being old is that you have money, and he doesn’t even have that. He poured everything into his potatoes. I like it.

[Emily]
Yeah. So he’s taking the bus downtown to do something, and he sees a lot of young people on the bus in love and canoodling. And that makes him think of his long-lost love. And he just decides he’s going to look her up to see what happened to her because he hasn’t thought about it. He’s been thinking about potatoes this whole time. He didn’t even have a second thought when she left him. So now he’s like, “I wonder what happened to her?” And that’s why he goes to see her. Not because he thinks she’ll be young and they can rekindle their relationship. And he goes to her old folks’ home where he meets her young granddaughter.

[Shep]
She happens to be visiting the old folks’ home at that time?

[Emily]
Well, yeah, she visits every Tuesday at 03:00 p.m.

[Shep]
And that’s the time that he happens to-

[Emily]
Yeah, because he discovered the potato on a Monday night and he spent all Tuesday morning running around.

[Thomas]
I mean, it’s possible he could go and visit her in the old folks’ home, and say “Oh I’m, (you know), Norman (or whatever),” and she’s like, “What? No, what are you talking about? You’re his grandson?” So he’s like, “No, I’m Norman.” And he can share with her stuff. Like, “Only we would know this. We had this relationship,” and she’s like, “Oh, my gosh. How are you young?” He’s like, “It’s the potato.” And they could just be talking for hours. And then the granddaughter shows up. It’s less coincidental.

[Emily]
She could live with the granddaughter. The granddaughter could just house her.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like that one.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Okay. He looks her up in the phone book or whatever. The phone book… What year is it?

[Emily]
He is old. He manages to find one.

[Thomas]
Somehow he figures out where she’s living, goes to the house, rings the doorbell. The granddaughter answers the door, and his first thought is, she turned young also.

[Shep]
Yeah, I like it.

[Emily]
Oh! Because he doesn’t know it’s the potato yet.

[Thomas]
Right. He hasn’t figured it out because this is day 1, hour 3 or whatever. Right?

[Emily]
Okay, good.

[Thomas]
So he says, “Mary!” And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, my grandmother? She’s here. Why would you want to see my grandmother, person my age?”

[Emily]
“She doesn’t have any money.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
“Get your gigolo-ass out of here.” So is Mary with it? Does she have dementia? Does she… she’s just old and living with her granddaughter because it’s convenient and affordable?

[Thomas]
It’s the other way around. The granddaughter is living with her because she’s young and poor.

[Emily]
That tracks.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It doesn’t matter. So he goes, he sees her.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He meets the granddaughter, call her Sarah, and he’s become smitten with her.

[Shep]
I have a doubt, but we can make it work. Give me a second. Okay. He is in love with Mary.

[Emily]
Right. Okay.

[Shep]
That’s the love of his life. He’s never loved another woman. He promised that they would get married after he finished his potato research. It just took a little bit longer than he anticipated, but he’s done now. So he tracks her down, and he goes to tell her the good news. Now they can get married. Meanwhile, she’s had a whole life.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, she married some other guy and had kids and those kids had kids. She has a granddaughter now. She’s not interested in this guy from her past other than, “Hey, let’s catch up on old times, because there are so few of our friends in our circle group that are still alive. So let’s reconnect, but not romantically. That part of my life is over.” And so maybe she rejects him, or maybe they catch up and they have a wonderful afternoon, and then she dies because she’s old.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
She’s super old. And what was the granddaughter’s name?

[Emily]
Sarah.

[Shep]
Sarah comforts this guy who came to visit her grandma. They were obviously very close. And he’s distraught. He’s distraught over the apparent love of his life dying. So Sarah’s there to comfort him. And then that blossoms into a romantic relationship.

[Thomas]
What is it that he tells Sarah? Why does Sarah think that this young guy and her old grandmother were good pals? I mean, does she know the truth?

[Emily]
Grandma had been taking classes at the community college for figure drawing, and he was the model.

[Thomas]
And grandma has rizz, so…

[Shep]
Oh, he goes and cultivates more potatoes because he’s going to make her young. He’s going to make Mary young. But then she passes before they’re ready.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So it’s extra tragic. Like, it was so close to happening.

[Thomas]
So this isn’t just in one day. This is, like, over the course of a while. And so we think this is the trajectory of the film.

[Emily]
Oh, that she’s gonna turn young with him, and they’re going to have this blossoming romance.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s going to be… Is it Cocoon where everyone gets young?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s what you, you think, like, “Oh, it’s like that.” Like, “Oh, they’re all going to be young. He’s going to get all their friends. They’re all going to eat the potatoes. They’re all going to be young.” No, that’s not what happens at all. Maybe the mid second act turning point is she dies or something like that. And we’re starting to see weird little things. His skin’s a little flakier than normal, and strange, like, lumps on his body. They’re itchy and kind of… It hurts when he rubs them. It feels strange.

[Shep]
You can have a part, just a little detail, but don’t point it out that when he’s crying over Mary’s death, like, spots of liquid show up on his shirt where the lumps are.

[Thomas]
That’s good. Yeah. And so the first half of the movie, we set up this fake story arc to sort of throw the audience who hasn’t watched the trailers for some reason. And then the second half of the film.

[Emily]
We’ve. We’ve subtly. We’ve hidden it very well.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s Everything Everywhere All at Once.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Lots of eyes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This tracks. So this is an A24 picture?

[Emily]
Absolutely.

[Thomas]
I think so.

[Shep]
Yeah, it all lines up.

[Thomas]
And so then the second half is the Metamorphosis aspect of it where he becomes the potato man or man potato or whatever.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Man-tato?

[Shep]
Man-tato!

[Emily]
Man-tato. Yep.

[Thomas]
All right, well, this seems like a good time to take a break. When we come back, we’ll see the conversion from man to potato.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Norman has just lost the love of his life, who he was going to try to make young like him by feeding her one of his potatoes. But she has passed away before he could do that. So now does he have a bunch of these potatoes?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, he has to have cultivated a bunch so that you can have the horror finale where he is trying to spread the potatoes and get other people to eat them, put them, replace the potatoes at a potato chip factory or something.

[Emily]
Set it back in the 90s. So there’s baked potato bars in all the restaurants.

[Thomas]
At what point does he realize he’s turning into a potato? He’s, like, getting a little heavier set, too.

[Emily]
Yeah. And he’s getting a little more… We decided he was going to be potato shaped?

[Thomas]
I mean, we went pretty hard into that at one point, but I feel like maybe this story is not going quite that far.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So he’s like a humanoid potato.

[Emily]
Well, we’ve mentioned that he’s getting these little bumps, and they’re itchy, and they kind of hurt if he pokes at him too much. Well, and I really like the image of one being, like, right in that elbow dimple.

[Thomas]
On his elbow. Yeah.

[Emily]
So I think he should just be kind of nonchalantly not thinking about it, itching that spot, and he flakes off part of his skin. And then we can do an actual cut to what would that eye see? His finger poking it. And then he’s like, “Ah!” And then we see that there’s a blinking eye on his elbow.

[Thomas]
I mean, if he’s seeing out of all the eyes simultaneously, then all of a sudden there’s like his normal stereoscopic vision, but also some other thing. And. Yeah, his finger is there, and he’s, like, swatting around in front of his face and maybe he loses his balance or something because all of a sudden there’s this other totally bizarre angle.

[Emily]
Right. I mean, at first, that would also be very confusing because it’s still not obvious that he’s turning into a potato. He just now knows he has a new eye on his elbow.

[Shep]
Yeah, he’s got to go to the doctor.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. What doctor would he be able to go to with no insurance, no id, no money?

[Emily]
Free health clinic.

[Shep]
He’s got his Medicare card. It doesn’t have a picture on it.

[Thomas]
But he doesn’t have photo id either.

[Emily]
This is a movie. So he just goes to the free clinic in town.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That works.

[Shep]
So how campy is this movie? I’m curious what the doctor is going to come back with his test results.

[Emily]
Blood sugar is off the charts.

[Shep]
Yeah. “Are you made of carbohydrates?”

[Emily]
“Your A1C can’t be this high unless you are literally a potato.”

[Shep]
Spoilers. Oh, this is after he started gaining weight.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So the doctor’s like, “Oh, it’s because you’ve gained weight.” Because that’s the excuse for everything. “Get off the couch and exercise,” because he’s a couch potato. That’s the doctor’s assumption.

[Emily]
“This will make my elbow eye go away? Exercise?”

[Shep]
“You won’t know until you try it.”

[Thomas]
“Look, this is the free clinic. What did you expect?”

[Shep]
They send him out, and he’s just wearing an eye patch over his elbow.

[Thomas]
Haha.

[Shep]
Problem solved.

[Emily]
Okay. He goes to the doctor, and the doctor is dumbfounded. He’s like, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before. Did you absorb a twin in utero and it’s just coming out now?”

[Thomas]
Oh. Tumors grow teeth and hair and all sorts of weird shit. So maybe he has, he must have a tumor on his elbow.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Tumor or tuber?

[Thomas]
Hey!

[Emily]
So the doctor explains it away, that way.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“It’s a tumor, but good news, it’s benign, so, hey, lucky you’ve got a third eye.” He and the gal getting a little closer?

[Shep]
Yeah. They got to have sex at some point before he turns too far.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He can’t have too many eyes when they have sex. Although.

[Shep]
They can have sex, and then all of his eyes open up as he climaxes.

[Emily]
Yeah, I like that. Let’s do that. That’s good body horror.

[Thomas]
So does she run out screaming then?

[Shep]
But see, I want her to comment on his semen tasting buttery. Got to have two sex scenes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I was going to say it’s not the first time they’ve had sex.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
The first time she just gives him a BJ and “Very buttery.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“And not in a bad way.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. She’s like, “This is going to sound crazy, but tastes like butter?”

[Emily]
“I can’t believe it’s not butter.”

[Thomas]
Haha. I don’t think they’d be too thrilled with that line.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, yeah, that’s the first time.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. So that’s the first time. He’s just got those little scabs here and there. And then he has the eyeball. The one eyeball open. Then they have sex again. And then all the eyeballs open.

[Thomas]
Oh, and they’re both freaking out. She’s freaking out because he’s covered in eyes, and he’s freaking out because he can see in all these directions at once, and it’s overwhelming. So she runs out and do we ever see her again?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s The Fly, it’s Beauty and the Beast. It’s King Kong.

[Emily]
She’s going to try to love the monster for the man that he is.

[Thomas]
Okay, but he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed for a while. It would take getting used to.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. Because he’s going to be constantly throwing up and dizzy.

[Thomas]
Right. He has to get that new muscle memory for how to control the lids of all the eyes.

[Emily]
Well, and he has to actually get that muscle memory of how to move his body now because he can’t-

[Thomas]
Yeah, that would be so, like, you’d throw up from moving your limbs with eyes on them. You’d be like, “Whoa~!”

[Shep]
Right. Because you’d see movement, but you wouldn’t feel movement.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So then do we see him, like, he’s got, like, a long sleeve shirt, like, pants and stuff? He’s covering up as much of his body as he can to cover all the eyes so they can’t see anything. He’s just looking with the two normal eyes.

[Emily]
Yeah. Okay.

[Thomas]
At first. That’s his initial solution. But then as he becomes more potato, he gets used to that. He starts to develop the ability to use those eyes.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so by the end of the film, he’s basically just, what, going around naked?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Because he’s a potato.

[Shep]
It’s not a disability, it’s a superpower.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s what he’s got to come to see it as.

[Thomas]
Does his genitalia disappear? Do we just have a, like, Ken doll smooth…

[Shep]
If you want to have him run around naked towards the end of the film, then, yes, let’s keep that PG-13 rating.

[Thomas]
Or he could be, like, Hulk style, where he’s just wearing some shorts. He’s just wearing a potato sack skirt.

[Shep]
When does his skin become potato skin? It’s got to be after the eyes. Like, he thinks there’s something on his skin, and he tries washing it off, and it doesn’t come off.

[Emily]
Right. So he started to wear the clothes, the turtleneck and gloves and long pants, and he goes and finds her and kind of is like, “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sorry.” Does the whole, “We can work this out.” And then he goes about his days kind of wearing the gloves, and then he goes to take a shower, wash his hands, and that’s when he notices the skin has kind of become more waxy.

[Shep]
Right. It changed when he couldn’t see it.

[Emily]
Right. So he didn’t even notice it. So he thinks it’s like some kind of rash that he’s developed from wearing the clothes covering his skin for too long.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good. Why was he trying to create these perfect potatoes in the first place?

[Emily]
For nutritional value to feed hungry people and give them a tasty meal.

[Thomas]
So when does his attitude turn from benevolence to malevolence?

[Shep]
From his perspective, it’s still benevolence. He’s trying to solve world hunger, and he realizes ever since he became a potato, he hasn’t needed to eat so much. Just spend some time in the sun. That’s why he’s naked all the time.

[Emily]
Get his feet in the earth.

[Shep]
Yeah. Feels really good.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And so he wants to convert all of humanity into potato people for humanity’s benefit. Imagine if there were no more hunger.

[Emily]
Because then you wouldn’t have to have cattle farms, you wouldn’t have to have all this food manufacturing that’s causing pollution.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
You’re solving so many problems at once. Not only are you solving world hunger, you’re solving carbon emissions, you’re solving energy dependence.

[Shep]
You’ve kind of convinced me. I’m kind of on potato man’s side.

[Thomas]
He’s, like, the ultimate environmentalist. You just need water and light, and we have those two things in abundance.

[Shep]
Oh, is he Swamp Thing? Did we just make Swamp Thing again?

[Thomas]
Does he convert her into a potato? Sarah?

[Shep]
No, he can’t, because that’s The Fly where he tries to join the two of them without her consent, and she’s like, “No.” He does, I think, try to convert her, but-

[Emily]
Yeah, but she doesn’t want to.

[Shep]
Right. She did not agree to that.

[Emily]
She loved who he was, not the monster he’s become.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Is he forcing other people to become potatoes without their knowledge and consent?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yeah. What can he do? Oh, he goes to the homeless shelter-

[Thomas]
Oh…

[Shep]
And decides to work in the soup kitchen and just throws some of his potatoes into that night’s soup.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There we go. Now we have a scene where all the homeless people get converted to potato people and run rampage through the town. Why are they not like him?

[Emily]
Why are they angry and evil?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, he didn’t do anything to the potato that he ate. It was a plain potato.

[Shep]
If we put salt on it, it makes you crazy.

[Emily]
Yeah. Salt and pepper.

[Thomas]
It’s because they had sour cream. It turned them all bitter and sour.

[Shep]
Yeah. Yes. That’s the campy answer we’re looking for.

[Emily]
Yeah, I’m… Great! Yeah, let’s do that.

[Shep]
I was, like, thinking of logical reasons. It’s a different batch of potatoes than the one that he had, and he messed something up, but he could fix it. He is a scientist. But no, they added sour cream. They turned sour.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So I feel like the potato people have to be able to just create new potatoes themselves.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Because if we want-

[Emily]
When he was growing the second batch- And this will make the logical part of why they would be bad. He has to add something so it grows faster, because it took so long to grow the potato that he ate and he was growing it for the love of his life.

[Thomas]
Right. Potatoes take months.

[Emily]
And he was trying to make it go faster. So he did something, he added an additive to it so it would reproduce quicker.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They want to produce faster, so they’re driven to tackle people to the ground and shove their roots in their mouth and turn them into potato people.

[Thomas]
How does he feel about the angry homeless potatoes and their violent conversion of other people? Is he just sort of like, “Well, I mean, it’s turning people into potato people, which is what I wanted. So…”

[Shep]
Are they calm after they’ve turned other people? Because then he could be okay with it. Like, yes, they are violent and crazy for a while, but then they turn back to a person. They’re just a potato person. That accomplishes his goal. Like, this wasn’t by design, but he does want to convert the planet.

[Thomas]
Honestly, I would love it if he, like you said, Shep, goes to the soup kitchen, and he has baked potatoes, and he has intentionally brought sour cream because he knows that this will make people sour. And it’s just like, sure, okay, fine.

[Shep]
Right. He’s a scientist.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s concluded this is the result of his theorem. Add sour cream. I just see the chalkboard or the whiteboard.

[Thomas]
Or the AI on his computer says, like, “Oh, well, if you do this…”

[Shep]
Right, he asked the AI, “How do I spread potatoes the fastest?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s the solution. He had ran the calculations.

[Emily]
Add sour cream.

[Shep]
Add sour cream.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Can’t argue with that.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
It’s science.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What else do we need to figure out for this story?

[Shep]
What happens to him at the end?

[Thomas]
Well, we said that he dies, right?

[Shep]
Yeah. How do we get there? So he converts the people, and they run rampage.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Do all the potato people die? Does this stop spreading? Because otherwise the world would become potatoes and there wouldn’t be a sequel.

[Shep]
All the other potato people have to die.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They have to die, or they have to be contained. I guess they don’t have to die.

[Emily]
Well, what are you going to do with a bunch of potato people?

[Thomas]
Right. Because they could just, like, make their way into the ground and spread that way.

[Emily]
One, they’re scary. We don’t understand them.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And if I recall the lyrics to that song, in Beauty and the Beast, we fear what we don’t understand. So we have to kill the beast.

[Shep]
Well, that checks out. You can have a line earlier about how these days nobody knows their neighbors. Society is all divided, but then you see the town come together as a group to mash all these potato people, make it be very patriotic. Put the american flag in the background and have them, like, murdering the potato people that are calm now because they’ve already spread.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And, like, “I’m stopped. I’m not a threat.”

[Thomas]
Calling the National Guard to cordon off the town.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What do we call this? Attack of the Killer Potatoes? Wait a minute.

[Shep]
Oh, no.

[Thomas]
But, yeah, I think there are so many different ways to prepare potatoes. I think you could have, just, there is that guy with a flamethrower who’s, like, roasting the potatoes and they’re mashing them.

[Emily]
Masher. Someone hasselback-

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. There’s people with, like, machetes and stuff, and they slice them all up into bits.

[Shep]
Oh, they use a lawn mower, and it just-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And you see the potato slices shooting out. Like a salad shooter.

[Thomas]
You see french fries shooting out.

[Shep]
Or you have, like, a grate. Just hit him with a big grate and then you see the fries shoot up.

[Thomas]
Yeah, there you go. So a bunch of stuff like that.

[Shep]
What happens to him at the end?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, right.

[Emily]
Well, they figure out he’s the source, right?

[Shep]
Do they figure out he’s the source?

[Thomas]
Does Sarah turn on him?

[Shep]
No, I think Sarah comes back to him because he’s lamenting his wrongdoings.

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. She comes to him like, “You need to control this.”

[Shep]
Oh, maybe. They’re watching it on the news.

[Emily]
Oh, she confronts him. “Look what you’ve- Look what you’ve reaped.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. “You’ve become a monster.” Because she knows he wanted her to become a potato person, and she refused. And so she knows exactly what’s going on. She’s like, “You’ve turned all these poor people, innocent people, into potatoes against their will.”

[Shep]
Right. And he repents and he’s sorry. And he’s like, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. We can live in peace separately.” And that’s when the police show up and shoot him.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because his neighbor called the police. Because this young guy is taking over his neighbor’s house.

[Thomas]
Did they break into his house with a buttering ram? I mean, a battering ram?

[Shep]
Well, they see that he’s one of the potato people and so they just shoot him.

[Thomas]
Right. And then there’s a funeral. Is that the credits sequence is-?

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s her crying over his grave.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s like a real slow zoom in on his gravestone, on the headstone. And then it gets real tight. It’s filling the frame and it sort of stops and then up from the fresh loose dirt, these vines just kind of crawl up around the headstone, and they have the little potato flowers on them and everything.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And freeze frame.

[Emily]
Put it in the can. We’re done.

[Thomas]
Yeah, sounds good. All right, well, we would love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Potato. Was it all eyes on us, or just small potatoes? 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 We’d love it if you could give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else that has podcast ratings. And if you leave a written review along with your five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, we’ll read it on the show at some point in the future. Emily, Shep, and I hope you’ll join us for the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Emily]
I love that we picked this one.

[Thomas]
This is great. This is very funny.

[Shep]
I got to tell you the truth, I was not sold on this at first.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Ha. Neither was I.

[Shep]
But the deeper we go, the deeper I dig, the more there is to this potato man.