Tupperware

References

• Tupperware
  • Tupperware parties
  • That one pitcher
• Space Race
• Ziploc
• Rubbermaid
• After Hours
• Friends
  • The One with Ross’s Sandwich
• Falling Down
• John Mulaney
  • New in Town
• Satanic Panic
• Home Interiors and Gifts
• Mary Kay
• Robert’s Rules of Order
• Ding Dong Ditch
• Molotov Cocktail
• Dexatrim
• James Bond Villain Stupidity
• Amway

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Thomas]
So she’s new in town. Has she sold Tupperware previously in another town?

[Shep]
Sorry, every time you say new in town, I think of John Mulaney.

[Emily]
“I’m new in town.”

[Shep]
What was your question, Thomas? I heard nothing after ‘new in town’.

[Thomas]
So she’s new in town.

[Shep]
Why would you do it again?

[Thomas]
That’s why.

[Shep]
All right, all right. I’m bracing myself mentally. I’m ready. I’m ready to pay attention past ‘new in town’. Go.

[Thomas]
So she’s recently arrived in town.

[Shep]
Thomas, I love you so much.

[Emily]
Oh, my god. That was amazing.

[Intro music]

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

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Tupperware is the theme of today’s show, which means we are once again dealing with an object that is primarily used as a container. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ll know that containers have previously proved to be tricky because it’s very easy to focus on what’s inside rather than on the container itself. But fear not, we promise we’ll focus on the Tupperware and do our best to keep things fresh.

[Emily]
I like that one.

[Thomas]
Thank you. With that in mind, Emily, we’ll have you dig in first.

[Emily]
All right. My first pitch is the story of a young widow in the 1960s who begins selling Tupperware as a means of supporting herself and her three small kids. Things are not going well. She’s just about to give up entirely and her car breaks down in front of a seedy bar. And she goes in to use the phone and finds herself in a biker bar. One thing leads to another, she ends up selling drugs for a biker gang, using the Tupperware business as her cover.

[Thomas]
I love the idea that she’s hosting Tupperware parties and all these, like, dodgy people come to the Tupperware parties.

[Emily]
Yup. Yup. I imagine it gets really, like, into the hippie culture and the alt times of the era.

[Thomas]
They would want the glass Tupperware, not the plastic ones.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then for my second one, I only have two today, so here goes. Number two is, in every house in the 1970s and -80s, there was the same Tupperware pitcher. Generally, it stained red due to its frequent use as a cherry Kool-Aid pitcher. A young woman is cleaning out her father’s house after he died. As she’s going through his kitchen, she finds the old Tupperware pitcher. Feeling nostalgic, she opens it up and takes a big whiff. But instead of that sweet smell of fermented cherry Kool-Aid, she smells something disgusting. Blood? Was her father a serial killer? A vampire? What the hell is he using this pitcher for? It’s so gross.

[Thomas]
I know exactly what pitcher you’re talking about.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
We had that picture growing up.

[Emily]
Yeah, everybody had that pitcher

[Shep]
So did we, everybody. It was the law.

[Emily]
And it was red because of the cherry Kool-Aid.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Alright, Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
Okay, so Tupperware parties as a cult. You know, they bring you in with promises and hook you, and if you fall out of favor with the cult, you are sealed in Tupperware. And in the end, once they’re caught, they’re easily convicted because all the evidence was so fresh. All right. My other one is Tupperware in the space race. So Tupperware is a brand name, it’s a company.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So they are sponsoring the first outpost on Mars. That’s their plan.

[Thomas]
Brilliant.

[Emily]
That makes sense.

[Shep]
There are lots of advantages to using Tupperware. The modules stack together, they’re lightweight, but Ziploc beats them to Mars. But they don’t last. And so Tupperware is trying to make a go of it, but things go wrong. Capsules are leaking and sometimes they’re not able to find the right seal. They have a big box of seals, and they keep trying one after another. It doesn’t quite fit right. And after all their woes, they’re eventually saved by the team from Rubbermaid.

[Thomas]
I love the idea that they open a drawer and it’s just like full of different sized seals and they’re like, “Oh God, somebody should have organized this.”

[Shep]
“I was gonna!”

[Emily]
I want there to be a moment where it gets slightly warped because it faced the sun for too long.

[Thomas]
Right. One of them is stained red, mysteriously.

[Emily]
“What is that? Spaghetti?”

[Thomas]
So I have three ideas. A couple of short ones here. So using the Tupperware to capture evil spirits or aliens or monsters or something like that, because it can seal really tightly. So you can seal them in.

[Shep]
How did you get them in there in the first place?

[Thomas]
You catch them? I don’t know.

[Emily]
Trickery?

[Thomas]
That’s what we would need to figure out.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
Guile and gusto.

[Thomas]
You put tasty snacks in there and then when they go in, slap the lid on real fast. Have you guys seen the movie After Hours?

[Shep]
No, I have not.

[Thomas]
It is a weird movie. It was not at all what I was expecting based on the poster and description of it. But my next idea is essentially a story like After Hours. In my version, there’s a guy who’s just trying to return some Tupperware. Maybe- it’s not his Tupperware, obviously. Maybe it’s a friend. Or maybe it’s, like, a friend of a friend. I think that might actually work better. But basically, he ends up in all these wild situations, and they take him all over the city, and he’s got the Tupperware. And it’s like, all night long, he’s just trying to return the Tupperware, but he keeps falling into different crazy scenarios-

[Emily]
Is he trying to return the Tupperware to a store, or to the friend of a friend?

[Thomas]
To the friend of a friend, to the person whose Tupperware it is.

[Shep]
He’s got a bad friend who’s lending out someone else’s Tupperware.

[Thomas]
Well, I mean, I think we could come up with a scenario where it makes sense. Maybe they were at a party at the friend of a friend’s apartment, and there were leftovers, and he was like, “Yeah, sure, just bring it back.” So he didn’t really know the guy. Or I don’t know. Or maybe the guy made brownies and he put them in Tupperwares, and he’s like, “Here, have some brownies.” Whatever.

[Shep]
But they were pot brownies so now he’s all high. He doesn’t remember where-

[Thomas]
I mean, that could be one of the things that happened. My last idea is a farce where everybody is chasing the same Tupperware but for different reasons. So a thief grabs a Tupperware that they find in a fridge in an office, and they dump out whatever’s inside of it, and they put something valuable in there that they’re trying to steal. The person whose food was in that Tupperware. They don’t realize their lunch has been dumped out, but they see somebody with their Tupperware, so they’re trying to get their Tupperware back. At some point, the Tupperware is taken away from the thief, so now they’re trying to get that back as well. Maybe there’s an organ transplant courier who misplaces the organ they were transporting and mistakes the Tupperware for the one they’re looking for. Other wacky scenarios. So those are my ideas.

[Emily]
I like your two ideas, Thomas. Trying to return the Tupperware to the friend of this friend or the thief. And people like, trying to figure out how to get the Tupperware back, but all for different reasons.

[Shep]
I don’t have any strong opinions. None of these are jumping out and hooking me like, oh, we have to do this one.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because sometimes there are pitches where it’s like, “Oh, do I even need to listen to the rest? I’ve already made my decision. I want it to be this one.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Emily in the one where she finds the dad’s Tupperware. What was going on there? Did you have a particular idea?

[Shep]
Oh, he’s a serial killer. It’s Emily’s pitch. It’s got to be a serial killer.

[Emily]
I mean, I had thought of that. I wanted it to end up being like nothing, like it was at one point in time, he had stored some sort of animal blood in it for some reason, like some legit reason of storing animal blood. What that is, I don’t know.

[Thomas]
He just needed a container, and it’s the first thing he grabbed.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And so that’s what I wanted it to be, but I wanted her to go into like, this spiral of what if he was a serial killer? And then have that lead to her thinking he was in fact a vampire and finding all the evidence that points to him being vampire and maybe even to the point where she’s like, “I have to stake him because he’s going to come back and kill people.”

[Thomas]
He took that trip to Transylvania a few years back. That pilgrimage.

[Emily]
Yeah, right. But I also wanted to see what ideas you guys could come up with so that if you weren’t into those-

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, I guess you kind of have to start at the end with that one and figure out what is the solution or the answer.

[Emily]
Right. And work kind of work backwards. I’m always down for capturing evil spirits in Tupperware. I mean-

[Thomas]
I was thinking about our container issue some more. And I don’t mind if the item in question is, uses a container and the focus is more on what’s inside the container, provided only that item could be used as the container. If you could swap out Tupperware for anything else, and it doesn’t work, that pitch doesn’t work, in my opinion. Whereas if it absolutely has to be a Tupperware or some sort of a food storage container like that, then okay, that can be just the inciting object.

[Shep]
It’s tough. So what about container as MacGuffin? Because we have that a lot as well, where it’s like it’s not really about the container, it’s about the things going on around it.

[Thomas]
Right. And that’s kind of with my farce idea, I was trying to figure out how come it’s this specific Tupperware? Because it’s not about what’s in the Tupperware, it’s about what everybody perceives to be in the Tupperware and it would only be in that one specific Tupperware. So even though they don’t actually care about the Tupperware, they care about what’s in the Tupperware-

[Emily]
But it’s only that Tupperware.

[Thomas]
But it’s that one specific one. And so that’s why I feel like it does work.

[Emily]
I can see that.

[Thomas]
Now, that’s not to say I love that pitch.

[Emily]
I actually like it. You have the thief who’s hidden the valuable object in it. You have the owner of it, of the Tupperware who just wants their turkey sandwich.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
Yeah. How valuable is their turkey sandwich that they’re chasing after this person?

[Emily]
They are that episode of Friends. It’s the Thanksgiving sandwich. It’s Ross’s Thanks- It’s the last straw to this person and this toxic work environment. And this is just it. “They’ve taken in my fucking sandwich for the last fucking time.” And they’re just going to go apeshit crazy Falling Down style. And then you have a person who sees the Tupperware and is like, “Oh, this is a vintage 1964, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I need that to complete my, it’s the one size I’m missing for my collection.” So they’re obsessed with finding it. And then you have the organ donor and stuff too.

[Thomas]
Probably wouldn’t be sandwich size if it’s an organ donor, but-

[Emily]
The pancreas isn’t that big. Eyeballs would fit in it.

[Thomas]
All right, it’s a fair point.

[Emily]
I can name lots of body parts that could fit in a sandwich sized Tupperware container. Not that I’ve thought of that. Yeah, I didn’t do a very good job of keeping it about the Tupperware, except for the Tupperware party because I was using the brand.

[Shep]
Yeah. The Tupperware parties are pretty specific to that thing.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Well, do we want to come up with another idea then, if we don’t love any of these?

[Shep]
I think… So Tupperware parties are intrinsically part of the Tupperware total experience.

[Thomas]
Canon.

[Shep]
Right. The Tupperware canon. So it’s not just about the containers, it’s the parties.

[Thomas]
And the story wouldn’t happen like that party wouldn’t happen without the Tupperware.

[Shep]
Right. So Emily and I both had Tupperware party pitches. I want to combine them. So starting with Emily’s, she’s new in town, she doesn’t have any friends. She recently got divorced or something and moved away and went to a new place and has no support and is trying to make a go of it. And so she’s like just going to her neighbors and saying, “Hey, I’m going to have a Tupperware party.” She’s like, trying to get her start, but there is already a Tupperware party group in this neighborhood and they don’t want any of her guff. They’re like, “Look, this isn’t for you. You can join us-” See, this is the cult thing.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“Or you can just not do Tupperware.” And that’s when she encounters the biker gang or whatever and ends up, she’s got her suitcase of samples that’s broken open and whatever, and they take a liking to her. And so she does her pitch in the bar, in the seedy bar, and they’re all throwing out, “Oh, you could put your pot in here and it keeps it all fresh,” whatever.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And she’s rolling with it.

[Shep]
So she has her group, but the Tupperware cult is after her, but now she’s got the bikers on her side.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s a gang versus a cult. You got that tension. That’s it. That’s all. I’m out of ideas.

[Thomas]
I like that.

[Emily]
I actually really dig that. That’s a good idea.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
All right. What’s next?

[Thomas]
So she’s new in town. Has she sold Tupperware previously in another town?

[Shep]
Sorry, every time you say new in town, I think of John Mulaney.

[Emily]
“I’m new in town.”

[Shep]
What was your question, Thomas? I heard nothing after ‘new in town’.

[Thomas]
So she’s new in town.

[Shep]
Why would you do it again?

[Thomas]
That’s why.

[Shep]
All right, all right. I’m bracing myself mentally. I’m ready. I’m ready to pay attention past ‘new in town’. Go.

[Thomas]
So she’s recently arrived in town.

[Shep]
Thomas, I love you so much.

[Emily]
Oh, my god. That was amazing.

[Thomas]
So she’s new in town, and she’s trying to get this thing started because she knows this is or she thinks maybe that this might be a great way to meet her neighbors and make some friends. Has she sold Tupperware previously in the town that she came from?

[Shep]
Oh, maybe.

[Thomas]
Really, I’m trying to get does she have experience at selling, or is she inexperienced at selling and therefore maybe timid or not as aggressive as she needs to be?

[Shep]
I like your idea that she’s experienced at selling. I was thinking that she’s just starting out, but she has tried it before. Her ex-husband never really supported her on it, and so she didn’t get to pursue it as much as she wanted. But she had hosted Tupperware parties before. She had some success with that before. This is a thing that she’s kind of good at. And so it’s really devastating that the neighborhood clan of women are not allowing her to do this thing that she’s good at.

[Emily]
Just like a manifestation of her husband all over again.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
This is exactly what she was trying to get away from. One of the things I like about this idea is that she also already knows that it’s a way to meet people and make friends. It’s a social thing because she has experience doing that. So when she comes to this new place and she’s like, “Oh, how am I going to meet people? Oh, I know. I’ll spin up a Tupperware party.” I don’t know. What do you call- host a Tupperware party, I guess? I’ve been working in tech too long. Right. So does she order a bunch of new Tupperware? Does she have existing stock? What do we think?

[Emily]
I think she still has some of her old stock, but she’s going to want to get the newest, latest and greatest because she’s new to town. She needs something exciting.

[Thomas]
When does this story take place? We know it has to take place after the early 1950s, because that’s when Tupperware parties started. So we have a 70 year window. Where do we want it to be in that window?

[Emily]
I like-

[Thomas]
Is this the 80s? There’s cocaine just falling from the skies, and everyone needs a Tupperware to keep it in.

[Emily]
Well way to steal my thunder.

[Thomas]
Sorry.

[Emily]
Because I think that makes the height of the biker gang era is the 70s, 80s.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. Maybe we can weasel some satanic panic in there as well.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s really good.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Especially if the Tupperware cult is a cult.

[Thomas]
Oh, yes. Okay, so it’s the 80s, so her neighborhood, nobody’s coming. Is everybody polite to her face? They’re like, “Oh, yeah, maybe I’ll come,” when she goes door to door or does she just like, how does she invite people? Is it in person?

[Shep]
She goes, I think, door to door because good chance to meet people

[Thomas]
Yeah, good point.

[Shep]
And gives them a flyer about her upcoming Tupperware party. And a lot of them take it, but don’t say anything. And then later there’s a knock at her door or her doorbell goes off and it’s five ladies.

[Emily]
With really big hair and really big smiles and very red cheeks.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, I can see it so vividly.

[Thomas]
That bright red lipstick.

[Emily]
Yeah. They’re like, “Hey, honey, you’re new here, aren’t you?”

[Thomas]
So they’re the “welcome wagon”.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And they’ve brought her a housewarming gift in a Tupperware. But also they’re telling her it’s not going to fly here.

[Shep]
“Shannon does the Tupperware for our neighborhood.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. God, what an 80s name too. Okay, so she learns that she’s encroaching on Shannon’s territory.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. She still thinks that she’s going to throw the party. Like, this is just five people, right?

[Thomas]
Yeah, sure.

[Shep]
There’s plenty of dozens of houses in this little suburb area. So she’s still the night of the party is like, “Maybe people will show up.” No one shows up. Not one person. So what does she do then? How does she end up at the bar with her suitcase of Tupperware?

[Thomas]
Maybe there’s a regional Tupperware warehouse or store or something like that where she got the new supplies.

[Shep]
Ah, that’s why!

[Thomas]
She recognizes “I’m not going to be able to sell this. I may as well return it. It’s unused. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And she has to take the bus. I don’t know, whatever.

[Shep]
That’s fine.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So she gets off the bus and she sees the Tupperware thing. Does she have a moment where she’s sort of thinking about like, “Do I really want to do this? This sucks.” How does she see the biker bar? Does she get off at the wrong stop? She’s distracted and gets on the wrong bus. She’s new, so she doesn’t quite know the bus route yet. I guess she would have had to have gone there to get the Tupperware. I suppose.

[Emily]
She gets off a couple of stops early.

[Shep]
There are two stops, she has to change buses. So she gets off the bus and she’s waiting at the bus station to get on the next bus that takes her the rest of the way. And that’s near where the bar is.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
And the second bus doesn’t come. And so she’s waiting and waiting and waiting. And then it starts raining and the bus is like 30 minutes overdue. What’s going on? She needs to call someone. She needs to find shelter from the rain. There are multiple reasons to go into that bar.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Maybe she decides to call a cab. Does it diminish at all that she didn’t make the decision? I guess not, because she makes the decision once she’s in the bar.

[Shep]
What decision?

[Thomas]
To do a sales pitch or does she get cajoled into doing it?

[Emily]
The bartender could be, you know, it’s daytime, right? So you got your not attractive old lady bartender serving up the drinks. And she was like, “What you got there, honey?” She’s like, “Oh, it’s just Tupperware.” And she’s like, “Oh-“

[Shep]
Oh, no, she’d go into her pitch because she is a pro at this. She can sell to anyone. She wouldn’t say, “Oh, it’s just Tupperware.”

[Thomas]
She’s in a bad mood because of the bus and the rain and the being stuck outside the biker bar, having to go into the bike bar. So I could see her sort of sarcastically, “I don’t suppose you want to buy a bunch of Tupperware, do you?” And then the woman’s like, “Well, what do you have?”

[Shep]
She wouldn’t say, “What do you have?” She’s not immediately interested. She’d go, “What would I need Tupperware for?”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
That’s the opening

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. And she’s like-

[Shep]
And she’s got 20 things you can use Tupperware for.

[Emily]
In the bar alone.

[Shep]
And so she starts going through her list.

[Thomas]
She sees the peanuts on the bar, and she goes, “Well, at the end of the day, you want to keep the peanuts fresh, so you need somewhere to put them all.” And she opens the suitcase and gets out of Tupperware, and… “You can store them in this Tupperware here, and they’ll stay nice and fresh, and your customers will appreciate it. Or maybe there’s pretzels, so they don’t go stale.”

[Emily]
Yeah. “You can just seal the bowl when nobody’s around and then uncover it when your customer comes.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, and maybe there’s a glass bowl that they’re in. She goes “How many times do you have to replace that bowl every month?” “Oh, like, all the time. These guys are rowdy.” “Well, these are practically indestructible, easy to clean. You have dishwasher right? Put them in the dishwasher,” whatever the whole spiel is. She starts going through it, and the woman’s like- and are other bikers like, some of the biker women are kind of coming around?

[Emily]
Yeah, they’re looking at it.

[Thomas]
They’re, like, grabbing their husbands, like, “Give me money. I want to buy this.” And so the guys are like, “What is this now?” Does she end up standing up on the bar?

[Emily]
Why not? Sure.

[Thomas]
How do they react when she walks in initially? Does anyone really pay attention to her at all?

[Emily]
Yeah. You wouldn’t think they would pay any attention. They might give her like a smug look of like, “What the fuck?”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
But they’re not going to engage.

[Thomas]
She went into use the phone.

[Shep]
Well, she’s tries to use the payphone, and the payphone is out of order, so she has to go up to the bar and say, “Do you have a phone that I could use? I just need to call taxi,” or whatever. And that starts their conversation.

[Thomas]
She uses the suitcase, and she asks something about-

[Shep]
“Are you moving?”

[Thomas]
Assuming it’s full of clothes.

[Shep]
“Are you homeless?”

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“In trouble?”

[Shep]
“Do you need to call a shelter?”

[Thomas]
“What? Oh, no. It’s full of Tupperware.”

[Shep]
Would the bartender know what Tupperware is?

[Thomas]
The 80s? Yeah, I think so.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s been around for 40 or some odd years.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So she sells a bunch of Tupperware. She doesn’t have enough with her, of course. She takes orders for stuff, so she’s going to have to come back.

[Shep]
Of course.

[Emily]
Does she meet the biker big wig, and he’s like, “Hey, I have a little project for you.” Or how do they engage that? Or does she just sell to them to keep their drugs fresh?

[Thomas]
They just keep ordering from her over and over again. She’s like, “Who needs this much Tupperware? Like, I’m not sad that I’m making these sales, but what the hell?” It turns out they’re giving it away because they put the drugs in it. So is there, like, a little mini montage or something where they’re just buying more and more and more, or do we just jump ahead a month and every week she’s in there selling more and more of the same thing, or they just have a standing order with her? Maybe when she comes back to fill that first order, that’s when the head honcho pulls her aside. He’s like, “Come into my office,” and she’s like, “Uh Oh.”

[Emily]
“Please don’t kill me.”

[Thomas]
He’s like, “I want to place a large order.”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, when he’s like “Come into my office,” she thinks she’s screwed again.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, she’s encroaching on his territory. Like she’s encroaching on Shannon’s territory.

[Thomas]
So she’s apologizing. She’s like, “I’m sorry, I won’t sell to your customers, I didn’t even come in here for that. It just sort of happened.” He’s like, “No, no, I want to place an order, a big order.” “Okay?” And he’s like, “Oh, I need 100 units of this one each week.”

[Shep]
The pot sized one.

[Thomas]
Yeah, the little one that you put-

[Shep]
Whatever the size is. Yeah.

[Thomas]
She’s like, “Each week?” And that’s when it starts. Does she become a drug mule for them? Because she’s this nice, upstanding lady who sells Tupperware. Nobody would suspect her. Or is she just supplying them with Tupperware?

[Emily]
I think she just supplies them with Tupperware. No?

[Shep]
Wait, let’s not dismiss it right away. Let’s think about this for a moment, because she’s making a go of it on her own, and she’s, like, being all confident, like, “I can do whatever,” right?

[Emily]
So does she overhear a conversation where they need to get the drugs in somewhere, but they can’t because-

[Thomas]
They know who all of these bikers are.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Well, is she intentionally a drug mule?

[Emily]
That’s the question we should figure out. Because if we intentionally make her drug mule, I have one suggestion, but I don’t know that it’s-

[Shep]
Just throw it out.

[Emily]
All right. Biker gangs supply to prisons occasionally. How do they get it into the prisons? Oh, someone’s mom, aunt, sister, pen pal, girlfriend brings in Tupperware full of brownies. And it’s the 80s so everyone believes that you can bring in food from outside to prison. So they convince her to do it or she volunteers.

[Thomas]
I like the idea that they just walk by the prison and chuck them over to the fence because it’s all in Tupperware. It’s practically indestructible.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Thomas]
It’ll just land in the yard. No problem.

[Shep]
Don’t waste your time on podcasts. You have a brilliant criminal mind.

[Emily]
Let’s go sell drugs in prisons.

[Shep]
I like the idea that she knows that this illicit activity is taking place with her materials, because I want her to be at odds with the cops, because we need the cops to help her at the end against the cult.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So you need that tension upfront where the cops are not the friend.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
How does she make that switch with them, though? Donates Tupperware to the policeman’s ball?

[Shep]
I don’t know. You guys are writers. Let’s figure this out.

[Emily]
How do we establish that the cops are not her friend? I mean, we know they’re not the bikers’ friend, obviously, but how do we know they’re not her friend?

[Shep]
Well, because she’s always at the bar that they are watching, and so they harass her when she comes out.

[Emily]
Do you think they start out at first trying to be like, “Hey, ma’am, excuse me, ma’am, do you know what goes on here? Is this a place you really want to be?”

[Thomas]
The police are not completely incompetent. They probably figure out pretty quickly that she’s supplying them with Tupperware. They’re using that Tupperware to distribute. They want to make things more difficult for these guys. Let’s get her out of the equation. And she refuses.

[Emily]
Yeah. Maybe it starts out as a, “Hey, Ma’am, do you know what’s going on here?” And then she’s like “I’m selling Tupperware. What do you want?” And then-

[Shep]
Yeah. “What they do with it after I sell it is up to them and none of my business.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah,

[Thomas]
Does she have a legal leg to stand on? I mean, I’m not a lawyer. I have no idea.

[Shep]
Well, she’s not committing any crimes.

[Emily]
She’s selling Tupperware legitimately.

[Thomas]
I suppose they would have to prove that she knows what it’s being used for in order for her to be charged with accessory.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
One thing that I would like to have happen- so I was thinking about, we need her to appear on Shannon’s radar and since she’s not hosting Tupperware parties at her house, it’s not happening in the neighborhood. How would Shannon know? Well! The newsletter comes out or whatever. The regional, there’s a regional get together of all the Tupperware sellers and Shannon thinks she’s up for this big award. She’s going to get this award because of course she’s a diamond seller for the region. And it turns out no, our character is, and Shannon is like, “What?” So that brings Shannon back in as a threat. So now the cult is after her.

[Emily]
I was also thinking maybe before that Shannon finds out her most popular item is sold out, she can’t get any more of it because somebody has ordered so much, there’s none available for her.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s good.

[Emily]
And then they go to the party and our character gets the award.

[Thomas]
What is the cult’s plan?

[Shep]
To murder the main character. Cause they’re cult and they worship Satan.

[Emily]
So is that what we’re just going to be like, they’re Satan worshippers and use these Home Interiors, Tupperware, Mary Kay businesses to fund their cult activities?

[Shep]
Yes. Because they’re bored housewives and that’s how they got into the whole cult thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah. They want the thrill of the Satanism.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Even though they’re doing it wrong and don’t understand it.

[Emily]
I love it.

[Shep]
You could even have a meek member of the cult that’s like “Are we sure that we want to take this next step?”

[Thomas]
“Trish, shut up.”

[Shep]
“Okay.”

[Thomas]
“No one’s forcing you to be here, Trish.” “You aren’t.” “Well…”

[Emily]
“You’re in too deep now.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. What’s their cult name? Sisters of Satan?

[Shep]
Sure. And be as on the nose as you want because it’s the 80s.

[Thomas]
Right. The Devil’s Daughters.

[Emily]
Beelzebub’s Belles.

[Thomas]
Brides of Beelzebub.

[Shep]
Is this the Pitch Meeting scene?

[Thomas]
Satan’s Sex Slaves. Is it an orgy cult, or..? they sell Tupperware, they worship Satan. They’re all swingers. God, this neighborhood, it’s all happening.

[Shep]
Where is it exactly?

[Thomas]
Where is this? I’m looking to move.

[Shep]
Is there a scene where they’re starting the cult or is it already an established cult?

[Thomas]
Oh, it should totally be one of those things where the meeting is called to order. Like they’re loosely following Robert’s Rules of Order. They’re like “Old business. Oh, we need to finalize the name for the cult.” Are they straight up calling it a cult?

[Emily]
“For the group.”

[Shep]
“The coven.”

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s good.

[Shep]
And they keep suggesting ideas like “What could we do to advance our (whatever).” It’s like, where do you even find a goat if you want to have a goat sacrifice?

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
“Last week’s goat sacrifice was canceled because Shelley couldn’t find a goat.”

[Emily]
“She said she had a line on a goat. She’s failed us yet again.”

[Shep]
“My cousin has a petting zoo. They wouldn’t give us a goat.”

[Thomas]
Somebody orders a goat from the butcher, but it’s already dead. It’s just like meat. It’s not a goat.

[Shep]
They’re still having the ceremony, but it’s all wrapped meat.

[Emily]
They’re placing it in Tupperware.

[Shep]
Tie it all together, it’s great.

[Thomas]
Everybody takes some home with them.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s very funny.

[Emily]
They hand the Tupperware, “Hail Satan.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Hail Satan.”

[Shep]
All right. I’m on board. I want to watch this.

[Thomas]
So we need a collision between our character and the coven, or the cult.

[Emily]
So after the award ceremony and our character… Should we give our character a name?

[Thomas]
Yeah, because we keep calling her ‘the main character’ and we’re naming all these other people.

[Shep]
And it can’t start with S.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
All the ladies in the cult start with S.

[Emily]
Deborah.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Yeah. So after Deborah wins the award, Shannon is super pissed and they start fucking with her again, right?

[Shep]
Well, yeah. Shannon’s like, “She’s got to go. She’s taken something that was mine. She doesn’t know who she’s messing with.”

[Emily]
“Time to summon our dark Lord and take this bitch out.”

[Thomas]
Do they have a big ritual to summon Satan to try to fuck with her sales?

[Emily]
Yeah, why not?

[Thomas]
Is that when they order the goat?

[Emily]
Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, but they also start messing with her, like house or whatever, like egging it or whatever. Toilet paper. What are 80s pranks that people do that housewives would think are evil?

[Thomas]
Flaming dog shit in the bag.

[Emily]
Yeah. There you go.

[Shep]
Splashing goat blood on her front door, which they kept in a Tupperware.

[Emily]
Yes. Perfect.

[Shep]
Which their daughter found years later and was like, “Why does it smell like blood?”

[Emily]
“Why does it smell like blood?”

[Shep]
They’re using the pitcher.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Well they are now.

[Emily]
Obviously. Well, I think she’s going to go to the biker gang and-

[Shep]
I’m sorry. I was still thinking of the goat blood on the door, and it’s got to be Trish who does it because she’s so nervous. Also, Trish’s name doesn’t start with an S. That’s how you can tell she’s an outsider in the cult.

[Emily]
She doesn’t belong.

[Shep]
She doesn’t belong. She almost belongs, but just doesn’t.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s good.

[Thomas]
I was thinking the prank that Trish would pull would just be something like ding dong ditch. Everyone’s like, “Trish? That’s nothing! That’s mildly inconvenient at worst.”

[Shep]
“Trish, she wasn’t even home at the time.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, man, that’s so Trish.

[Emily]
That’s so Trish. Does Trish betray the cult later?

[Thomas]
That’s not a bad idea, actually.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So I think it has to come up with either she’s dropping off the order and the biker guy is like, “What’s going on with you?” And she’s like, “Oh, my neighbors are fucking with me. And they’re just crazy bitches.”

[Thomas]
I was thinking that she gets a ride home from some of the bikers or one of the bikers or something.

[Shep]
Is she on the back of a bike?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Maybe, yeah. So they get there, and that’s when the goat blood is all over her door. And he’s like, “What is this?” And she’s like, “Oh, my stupid neighbors.”

[Shep]
At first, he’s into it. “Oh, that’s pretty metal.”

[Thomas]
“Damn, Deborah!” So then the bikers are all there the next day, scrubbing the house and helping clean it up.

[Emily]
Nice.

[Shep]
Well, now Shannon knows that there’s all these bikers.

[Thomas]
There’s always a biker in front of the house now. There’s always somebody watching the house. So now what do they do? They got to up their ante. Did Shannon just start buying Tupperware like crazy and stocking it in her garage so that Deborah can’t have any? She’s not selling it. She’s not moving it. She’s just throwing tons of money-

[Shep]
She keeps buying the one that was always sold out before because she knows that’s the one Deborah needs.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So, spoilers for the end, when the cops raid the cult, they find all of those Tupperware that are the exact same size that all the drugs are found in.

[Thomas]
That’s fantastic. I love it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Does Shannon know somebody? She’s like, buddy buddy with someone at the Tupperware factory. So she’s able to get her order placed before Deborah’s.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, because she’s been there longer.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
She has an established relationship.

[Thomas]
So she’s able to just clean them out.

[Shep]
So, perhaps…. Because I’m trying to think of what happens next.

[Thomas]
Yeah,

[Shep]
Perhaps, now that there are guardians basically, in front of Deborah’s house, Shannon and her crew decide they’ve got to take out these bikers. They’ve got to go after the bikers to get to Deborah. So this puts them in direct conflict. So what could they do to go after the bikers? Are they trying to frame them for something?

[Emily]
Why would they need to frame them, they’re bikers? They’re clearly committing crimes. “We just need to surveil them, get the evidence and turn it into a cops.” So they’re, like, tailing it and following them everywhere.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. Okay, let’s think past it a little bit. Let’s say they successfully get rid of the bikers. Now what? What’s their plan after that? Because I think what they want to do might help us decide how they are attempting to get rid of the bikers.

[Shep]
Oh, they want to murder Deborah.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
They want to have a human sacrifice ceremony and murder Deborah. That’s their plan. Because Shannon has gone insane.

[Emily]
It is the next logical step.

[Shep]
It’s a permanent solution to all their Deborah problems.

[Emily]
It gets rid of Deborah. It pleases the Lord Satan.

[Thomas]
Maybe there’s some ritual she’s found in a Satanic book that she got that basically says that if you commit this human sacrifice, you give Satan a soul, then he will grant you a wish or he’ll give you something that you desire. So she thinks, “Great, I can get rid of Deborah. I can get anything I want. I can be super successful or rich,” or whatever she wants. So she’s kind of justifying it in her mind.

[Shep]
Wait, does Shannon actually believe all the cult stuff?

[Emily]
She starts to.

[Shep]
Wait, do they all believe all the cult stuff?

[Thomas]
I feel like Shannon does.

[Emily]
I think Shannon starts to.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think Shannon starts to.

[Shep]
I think maybe a lot of the Ss start to.

[Thomas]
Right. I think Shannon starts to for sure. A bunch of the Ss are kind of on the fence but leaning her direction. And Trish is just like, “What the fuck? This is bonkers.”

[Emily]
Trisha is like, “It was fine when it was for fun.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“You don’t actually…” you know. “Of course we do. Why else would we do it?” “Well, I mean, I go to church, but I’m- just a social activity.”

[Emily]
“For the community connection.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “Why have you been coming to these then?” “Because you guys are my friends.”

[Emily]
“Nobody likes you, Trish.”

[Shep]
“Shut up, Trish.” So if they were following the bikers and follow them back to the bar, perhaps, and know that they’re at that bar and are taking turns maybe surveilling the bar, on Trisha’s turn, she goes into the bar because she doesn’t understand the assignment. So she gets to know the bikers by being in the bar. And so I think that’s part of the way that she gets pulled out of the cult and being on the side of the bikers and on Deborah’s side.

[Thomas]
Does Trish get a ride to the next cult meeting from one of the bikers? The bike pulls up and she’s on the back and she gets off and waves goodbye and goes into the house. And they’re like, “What the hell is that, Trish?”

[Shep]
Is Trish a bored housewife, or is she now dating one of the bikers?

[Emily]
I want her to be dating one of the bikers, because she got into it because her husband left her, and she got a pretty good settlement, so she doesn’t need to work. But she ends up dating one of the bikers because the bikers like her. She’s quirky.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She’s nice. She’s Trish.

[Shep]
She’s unlike the other women that they see at the bar.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That makes her unique and interesting.

[Emily]
She always has the best cookies.

[Thomas]
They’re so fresh. So does one of them decide they’re going to burn down the biker bar? So they throw a Molotov cocktail, but it’s in a Tupperware so it doesn’t break.

[Shep]
They don’t understand how Molotov cocktails work.

[Thomas]
They’re like “Get a container.” Like, “We’ve got all these damn Tupperwares that we’ve been buying.” They fill it with gasoline or vodka or something and light it and throw it. It just goes thunk against the wall and falls down. And then maybe the top comes off and it all spills out.

[Shep]
They’re not even there for that. They peel out immediately.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They throw it and they’re like, “Gun it!” And take off. And it just bounces off the door. And then you see, like, someone from the biker bar open the door, look around, and then finds a container of alcohol on the ground.

[Thomas]
That’s funny.

[Emily]
That is funny.

[Thomas]
Do they summon Satan? Is Satan real?

[Shep]
I don’t know how to tell you this, Thomas. Satan is not real.

[Thomas]
In our movie, I mean.

[Emily]
I’m torn. I want it to just be Satanic panic, and they’re just-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s fake and-

[Thomas]
We’ve had them be fairly inept this whole time.

[Shep]
Okay, here’s how you can have it both ways. So Shannon is literally delusional. So she is having visions of Satan, right? Satan is telling her to do stuff. And so in those scenes, Satan is portrayed as real. But then at the end when she’s being taken away in handcuffs and she’s still talking to Satan, from her perspective, you see Satan there. And then from everyone else’s perspective, she’s just talking to nothing.

[Thomas]
The other thought I had along those lines is that towards the end, she gets possessed by Satan, “possessed” by Satan. So she’s talking in this demonic voice claiming to be Satan. And everyone’s just like “Uh…” Because she’s convinced that the ritual worked.

[Shep]
That’s also fine because that works as well as if she’s just delusional.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s a thing that can happen in the real world. She believes that she is possessed by Satan and behaves so.

[Emily]
Yeah, turns out she just had a really bad batch of Dexatrim.

[Thomas]
All right, let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll figure out the ending for our movie about Tupperware.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. I feel like we have a really solid start and a pretty okay middle. We don’t really have anything that looks like a third act.

[Shep]
Well, we know that the cult takes Deborah hostage.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Takes her down to their, whoever’s got the pentagram in their basement.

[Thomas]
And they’ve purchased up all of the Tupperware she’s been trying to buy so she can’t sell her product. Maybe something does happen to the bikers and they’re not around and they manage to capture her. So this is the low point for Deborah.

[Shep]
Oh, she’s captured for a while. It’s not instantly drag her downstairs and kill her. They’re not ready. It’s got to be the Solstice or the Equinox or something like that.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
Something that’s going to happen in a day or two, which is enough time for the bikers that have been picked up by the cops to get out because they weren’t charged with anything, but they could hold them for 24 or 48 hours, whatever.

[Thomas]
Whatever it is.

[Shep]
But also time for some of the cult members to interact with Deborah because they don’t have a lot of interaction besides that very beginning where they tell her off and so this is their chance to interact. Like, someone’s got to be watching Deborah all the time.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This isn’t James Bond rules where they’re just going to leave her unmonitored in the basement.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
She could escape. And maybe they do leave her unmonitored at the beginning, and she manages to get out of her cuffs or whatever and is almost escaped and then gets caught. And now someone has to stay with her all the time.

[Thomas]
What are those interactions like? Are they trying to get information out of her? Are they just trying to berate her? Do they have conversations?

[Shep]
They’re mostly just making sure she doesn’t escape.

[Emily]
So she’s trying to humanize herself by having conversations with them about life.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We’ve made them, frankly, kind of idiots. Is she smarter than them?

[Shep]
Well, I think I might have mentioned at least once before how much I like to see intelligent, competent people in movies, and they’re all successful in whatever they’re selling.

[Thomas]
Yeah. They also threw a plastic Molotov cocktail, so.

[Shep]
Well, at least one of them is a dummy.

[Emily]
Always Trish.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s always Trish. She got an already dead goat because she’s like, “We’re not sacrificing a real goat.” She threw a plastic Molotov cocktail because she’s like, “We’re not burning down a bar.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
“We’re not committing arson.” She is intentionally hampering their plans because she is actually quite smart.

[Shep]
I like that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like a smart Trish.

[Emily]
Would Trish be an undercover FBI agent trying to infiltrate-

[Shep]
No, that’s going too far. But-

[Thomas]
But somebody should think that.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, because when Trish starts to turn against them, because that’s one of the people that’s interacting with Deborah during the days that she’s captured, they’re on the verge of having two sacrifices because they start to really not trust Trish.

[Thomas]
When it’s Trish’s turn to watch Deborah, she helps her escape, because, again, “We’re not killing a human.” But they get caught. They’ve been suspicious of Trish because she seems to screw everything up.

[Emily]
There’s no way she’s that incompetent all of the time.

[Thomas]
Right. Who is that stupid all the time? So they’ve already been a little skeptical about her. And then as they’re trying to escape, they get caught. So now they’re both being locked up in the basement. It really raises the stakes. My thought is, why doesn’t Trish just help Deborah escape right away? Because she would not be in favor of killing a person, especially if this entire time she has been hampering their plans for things like vandalism. So that pulls Trish out of the equation as a means for Deborah to escape.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
At least in the short term. Deborah’s got to do something, though. Otherwise she’s not a strong enough character. She needs to be the means of her escape.

[Shep]
She doesn’t escape. She gets rescued.

[Emily]
By the bikers.

[Shep]
Or the cops. Or the bikers and the cops.

[Thomas]
But does she have to do something to-

[Shep]
So Trish doesn’t help Deborah escape. Trish takes a message from Deborah to the bikers and lets them know where she is and what the plan is. That she’s going to be sacrificed, because Trish doesn’t want that to happen. And she’s friends with the bikers. So this is how she can help Deborah escape without crossing Shannon, because Shannon is fucking nuts. So she takes a message to the bikers. The bikers know that Deborah has been kidnapped and is going to be killed. They go to the cops, but the cops don’t believe them because they’re a bunch of bikers and it’s the 80s, so the bikers have to commit a crime or something in front of the cops and get them to chase them to Shannon’s house. And so they have to get chased by the cops and then break into the house. So the cops chase in after them.

[Emily]
Do they end up mid-sacrifice. Or is it, she’s still just tied up?

[Shep]
I mean, mid-sacrifice is a great, you know-

[Emily]
Imagery.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They have her tied down to the pool table in the basement, and they’re like-

[Thomas]
I’m just worried that makes Deborah too weak of a character. It’s very… Everything that she does to rescue herself happens to her. Not because of her.

[Shep]
No no no no no no no. You’re missing the scene that I didn’t tell you about.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Where Deborah convinces Trish to take that message and tell the bikers. So Deborah is taking her rescue into her own hands by convincing Trish to switch sides, because Trish is on the borderline, but she’s still afraid of Shannon and toeing the line even though she doesn’t want to.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And Deborah convinces her to finally-

[Thomas]
Because Deborah is a fantastic saleswoman.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
She’s using her skills.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay. What else do we need? I mean, I feel like the second and third acts are detail-light, but I feel like we have good-

[Emily]
We have really strong points, though.

[Thomas]
Anchor points to move between. Probably. If this was going to get written into a full-on feature length script, you’d need some more of that, but.

[Shep]
Right. It takes more than an hour, though.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I do have a terrific denouement.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Okay. Lay it on us.

[Emily]
Trish marries one of the bikers at the bar, and they’re all there. Not Shannon, obviously.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
She’s in jail. But Deborah is the maid of honor, and Trish’s marrying her biker. Her big bear biker.

[Thomas]
And then as the camera is coming into the bar, do we see the gift table and it’s all just Tupperware, all piled, different sizes and shapes of Tupperware?

[Emily]
At least half of them are Tupperware.

[Shep]
Or are they getting out of Tupperware? Because this whole thing has been kind of a nightmare and they’ve heard good things about Amway.

[Thomas]
Yeah. We have to find, like what’s, the brand new MLM in the mid 80s instead of Amway.

[Emily]
Oh, God.

[Thomas]
You put that name there, because I thought I had is that with Shannon gone there’s now- I mean, they still have the Mary Kay person, they still have the Amway, all the other ones, but they don’t have a Tupperware person.

[Emily]
Right. So she joins their cult.

[Thomas]
She could do that. Deborah could continue to do that. All right. Is that it?

[Shep]
Is that it?

[Thomas]
I don’t know.

[Shep]
I think what are we missing?

[Thomas]
I’m not sure.

[Shep]
What important parts are we missing?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I don’t know.

[Thomas]
I guess that’s it. Listeners, if there’s something we’re missing, get in touch and let us know. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Was it something you could make a meal out of or was it just some moldy leftovers? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Have you left a five-star review for us on Apple podcast just yet?

[Shep]
carrcallen has, they say: “Hilarious! The imagination and chemistry of these guys is really great. Love this podcast.” We love your five-star review, carrcallen.

[Thomas]
If you leave us a five-star review on Apple podcasts, we’ll read it on a future episode. And as always, you can hear Emily, Shep, and I again next week on another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]