A Geek History of Time - Episode 351 Vampires Opiods Werewolves Meth Ghosts And Depression Part Vi

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

When I think nuclear annihilation, I think... La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la I'm gonna drink a metric fuck time of coffee and hope that I stop right before I start seeing sounds That's one of my one of my favorite I don't know if you know like yeah favorite awful thing I get it I get it Like bitch took the ice trees meanwhile this guy is going into a unicorn cave This is better than the what is the orientation of the chicken strapped to your head question the essential part of democracy to me is not that I should spend a lot of time in governing myself, for I have many more amusing things to do. But I want to be quite certain that I can change the

person who governs me without having to shoot him. That is the essence of democracy. You mean herge? Probably. Okay. Well, I mean, yeah. I don't know if that's just, you know, my inner drama queen. Okay, so this is really hard because you're talking about like serious important things to you. The amount of jokes that, like, I think they're funny as shit. We connect a murder to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock, world history teacher here in Northern California. And I had the opportunity yesterday morning.

We record, as I think we've mentioned before, on Saturday night. Friday morning was the first time in, I want to say, 10 days, that I was able to bathe in my own shower. Um, the, uh, we, we went through the process of having our, uh, master bathroom, uh, the floor and the shower retiled and redone. And, uh, it meant, uh, spending over a week with my in-laws, uh, in the house and all of us sharing one shower. Uh, for most of that time, thankfully, we had two working toilets, but we only had, we only had, we only had one working shower. And on Friday, the project was complete enough that I was, that I was able to shower in, in my master bathroom for the first time in 10 days. And it was delightful. It's remarkable how you, how you get reminded of things that you take for granted.

So, yeah, how about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmon. I am a U.S. history and econ teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level. And I made a dish tonight. As you know, I encourage my kids to cook all the time, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. And through back episodes of this very series that we're still doing, I found a 1700s cookbook, an American cookbook.

Right. And while that was cool, I am interested in how to dress a turtle. I found I ended up on Do they wear pants or would you No just a bow tie Kilt okay all right All right

But I found that I ended up on that side of TikTok For a little while Weird ass old recipes And so I was on Mesopotamian recipes Side of TikTok Which is really cool Yeah well yeah

I bought that cookbook and I made something, a Babylonian dish called T-U-H-U-H-u-U-T-H-u-U. Okay. So I'm guessing it involves barley? No, oddly enough. Okay. This one involved beets, shallots, leeks, cilantro, an onion, and sheep. Okay.

I can see the lamb meat thing. Yeah. And so I made that for me and the kids. And then I also went to the, because my son made this really delicious sweet potato dish a few months back from the Life Day cookbook. Oh, okay. So I combined two cultures, essentially. Okay. So I like it.

One was for a festival of Marduk, and the other one is for Life Day. And so it was goddamn delicious. Okay. Oh my God, it was good. Okay, so wait. Mesopotamians fucking eat, dude. Holy crap. Right.

So wait. So lamb. Yeah. Beets. Yep. You mentioned shallots? Shellets, yeah. I'm supposed to get Persian shallots, but we don't have those here.

Yeah. Okay. Shallots. Salantro. Salonro. Leaks. Okay. Leaks.

Salt. It's supposed to be two kinds of leaks, but I only have the one kind. So. Okay. And salt? Yeah. Yeah, we did use salt. See salt?

Did you, did the recipe? Okay. All right. Yeah. That was the next thing I was going to ask was like, I'm hearing root vegetable. Yeah. Meat. More root vegetables.

Yes. Herbs. Yeah. And I'm wondering, like, is there a spice anywhere? Okay. And cumin. And then I also, I was, let's see, what topped it off? It might have been cumin that I topped it off with.

I forget now. But yeah, I sprinkled something or other over the top of it. All right. But yeah, it was good. It was good. All right. Yeah. I was stoked.

Man, those fucking Mesopotamians, dude, they can eat. Holy shit. Because my daughter said recently she wanted to try more lamb in more things. I'm like, all right, well, you know, Williams cooked a few things that involved lamb. I kind of want to try lamb ribs or sheep ribs or whatever the fuck there. Yeah for his Aca Benzi recipe

You know the Where oh my God The Obelkanin Recipe Um For Aca Benzi is just amazing It's ribs And it's

Everything that Silent Night Said Jesus was Is these ribs Like just the meat falls right off the bone It's so good Nice I like it All right cool

So yeah that was That was really nice and cheerful Oh and I In my D&D game friends bring over alcohol all the time and they enjoy it right yeah which is fine um and i just ask them to take it home because i don't need to take up my fridge with stuff i'm never going to use well one of them left a ginger beer so i poured that in because it does call for a bitter beer and this one was a fairly bitter ginger beer and then i also poured in some wine hearts

because i was like well it's said to do darker beer and i i looked for beer substitutes for like a week there is no beer substitute because it's a very unique flavor, evidently, to get that sour. So I think the sweetness of those things actually tarted it up and added an extra profile to it. Yeah, I can, yeah, no, it sounds. I wanted to keep it as, yeah. Now that it has some cumin in it and you added, added the, you didn't, you left the beer out the first time. You kind of buried the lead on that. Oh, sorry.

But yeah, I can see how that would be So was it like brazed in that or? It was just you just do it a reduction for like two hours of cooking. Okay, nice. You know, and so I just did that. Like it was, you know, I seared the meat first and then, you know, you put in the onions and then the beats and then all the other things. And then two cups of water plus the beer.

And then you just let it reduce for two hours. And oh, so good. So, so good. Nice. So yeah, it was triumphant. All the, both kids liked it. it like very often it'll be one of us likes it and the other two don't kind of thing um but this was an everybody thing so i was very happy all right cool cool yeah so uh when last we left um

sally came back and found her door was gone and remember when sally the ghost just just to reset for everybody being human if if this is your first episode of this podcast then you need to go back about five episodes to pick up the thread on this one. Or just go listen to Ace of Base or talking Tolkien. Like, you know, if you want to one shot. But Sally is a ghost in a TV series called Being Human. It's about a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire living in a rent-controlled house, trying to basically treat it as a halfway house, keeping their humanity, hence being human.

The most unbelievable part of that is, of course, that it was rent-controlled. But as I've said, the vampire represents the opioid crisis, the werewolf represents the meth crisis, and the ghost represents depression. And what we saw in the last episode was I was talking about all the ways that she avoids dealing with her own shit and at the same time is incredibly narcissistic. Right. So not her fault. she's fucking dead at like 22, 23, right? Actually, I think she was like 23 or 24. Yeah.

So it's so at the end of the first season, Sally helped Aiden kill Bishop. We've talked about that before. She's very attached to her own trauma and her friend's trauma. She trauma bonds with everybody as oppressive sometimes does. And she, it's not like she could help anybody. She's not corporeal. And yet she stays and she finds that her door is gone, which means the odds of her going crazy now go way the fuck up,

which is something Aiden has told us from the beginning, having known all these ghosts. So in the second season, Sally, played by Megan Rath, is stuck in this world. And even though Nora is a werewolf now, you remember Josh had scratched her, she hasn't yet turned. So she can't actually see her hear Sally.

So the trio is kind of turning into a quartet, but not quite. And there's some funny stuff that happens. Now, since Sally is stuck, Nora convinces Sally to go to her 10th high school reunion. So, yeah, she's 28 then. Yeah. And there at the high school reunion, she runs into her friend Stevie, who killed himself during their junior year. Oh, so he's probably nuttier than squirrel shit. Yeah, he's, he is, he's perpetually a 16-year-old.

Which is bad enough. Yeah, but he does have kind of a worn, worn quality to him to himself, where he is, he knows. He's world weary would be a good way to put it. And evidently, suicides don't get a door ever in this year. universe. So he's just doomed. Yeah. Yeah. It's bad. It's it's again, you're kind of getting into some values judgments here, right? Anytime you talk about who gets and who doesn't, you know, at first it was just you don't settle your shit. Well, if you kill yourself, then you die, it's much harder, I guess, to climb back out of that. Right. Okay. So, so she and Stevie catch up. Um, he teaches her more

ghost stuff. He teaches Sally more ghost stuff. And the two of them meet the most popular. girl in school who recently died in Africa of malaria. So she died at like 28 as well. And what's interesting here is that her name is Diane. And Diane basically is a snob still, like kind of ignores him. And she's like, hey, weren't you that kid who killed himself? And he's like, yeah, actually, we had four classes together. And she just moved on, you know?

And like, it's kind of a gross point blank thing. right? And so Sally and Steve are catching up. And when they run into Diane, Sally sticks up for Stevie and kind of bitches out Diane, the popular one and for being a snobby bitch in the afterlife. And she's like, you had it easy in your life life. You shouldn't have to, you shouldn't get to have it easy here too. Like that's not fair.

And that leads to Diane having a moment of realization. She's like, oh, my God. I've been holding in my stomach my whole life. And she has a realization of like she doesn't have to be perfect. She doesn't have to do blah, blah, blah. And she gets her door like immediately. Fuck, really. So, and what stuck out to me was that like, you know, these are all ghosts.

So there's a layer of depression for all of them on some level, right? I mean, Diane's not not gotten her door until that moment. So that means she had some. unresolved shit. Well, her unresolved shit was like body image. Her unresolved shit was feeling like she had to live up to this ideal. And Sally is her psycho pomp by just calling her out. And Sally's, you know, it says that life was easy for Diane and afterlife shouldn't be. And Sally's speaking to the unfairness of it all to someone who has also died and not resolved everything. So she's solving other people's problems instead of dealing with her own.

Yeah And Sally is incredulous that Diane gets her door It just are you fucking kidding me What a way to put quite the point on it there Yeah Yeah And I want to I want to interject here Because something struck me a moment ago

And I didn't want to step on your toes But the The judgment Inherent in You know suicides don't ever get their door Right. Did you ever see the movie What Dreams May Come? Yes.

Oh, they had a line in there about how they're just, they are, what was it, determined to punish themselves? Yes. It was something like that. Yes. The, because the wife winds up committing suicide. Yes. And, I mean, you know, we could do a whole analysis on that film by itself. and all kinds of stuff about it.

But it's a similar kind of, kind of ableist, like emotionally ablest? I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a responsibility that mass media has not to encourage suicide.

Okay. Yes. And also, I think you're right. I think both of these things are true. Like the way that they fulfill that obligation is the most ablestic way. Like is lacking in compassion for people who wind up doing that. Yeah, it's well, you're going to love me saying this.

It's very Protestant. Yeah. You will be punished. Well, I mean, that's Catholic too. Let's be real. But like you will be punished in the afterlife if you commit suicide. Yeah. Like, you know, it's very fear-based, you know.

Yeah. What's interesting on a kind of personal note. One of the priests in my parish in this last year actually ended his own life. Oh, good heavens. He had apparently been struggling for many, many, many years with very, very serious depression. And what I found really remarkable was the extent to which our pastor, the head priest and the whole community and, even the bishop in in their statements they were very uh compassionate and empathetic instead of the warning everyone instead of instead of judgmental and you know the principal

of the school was like you know this this guy was a beloved figure to a lot of the older kids um in the school and uh you know kind of how to how to have conversations with your kids about it and you know um and yeah just the the uh reminders that you know prior church doctrine uh regarding that is not written in stone yeah and you know um yeah and says murder not suicide in the commandments like yeah you know and so so yeah um the yeah but the the the way in which we approach it you know i mean referring to it as a coward's way out um talking about the selfishness of it and all of that kind of stuff is very much focused on those of us left behind yeah well and we as a society yeah haven't learned to well well

I mean, I think we are learning to be more compassionate in the way that we approach it. You know, it kind of reminds me of the approach to truancy is to lock up the parents kind of vibe. You know, it's, we're going to do this punitively. Yeah. And it doesn't address the underlying issue, you know. Yeah. And again, I don't have an afterlife. Like, I'm fully down with focusing on those of us left behind, right?

Yeah. Like, that all makes sense to. me I get that but like gilting people into staying around you're just going to get minimal compliance like yeah it you know there's no fix your life there's a well you're breathing and that's enough like there's yeah yeah yeah so so anyway yeah I wanted to I wanted to touch on that and yeah absolutely it could because you know it's Aden did the thing where and I already covered him you know where he's afraid to die right but like he hated himself for so long at one point he was very seriously considering staking

himself right and then he didn't um and then you know he was he was kind of like committing so it's like that suicide by cop but it was suicide by human who had the flu like he was trying to catch it he was a bug chaser you know yeah um and they had a whole talk about that and and stuff like that and like josh also like he hated his condition he hated being who he was and and so there was talk of suicide there too. Yeah. And, you know, it's, it was never really seriously explored beyond the, here's why you can't and then move on.

Yeah. And I get that, you know, and, and having Stevie there is, is a character who did commit suicide and we can kind of see, I mean, they still shade it the same way. Like, oh, Stevie's doomed, right? He's, he's going to just walk this earth. But, you know, he can, he can, he can give Sally some knowledge, right? Right. And acknowledging that it exists is not the same as, you know, exploring its, it's different facets, but so be it.

So among the ghost things that Stevie does teach Sally include dreaming and sleeping. That's now in her bag of tricks. And so immediately she has a nightmare. Great. And Sally sleeps for the first time, has a nightmare. Nora changes for the first time. And so the next morning, Nora comes home having turned werewolf run around

and like the excitation of meth, you know, because I've already talked about that character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she and Sally see each other for the first time. And they start bonding. Okay, yeah. The trio does become a quartet.

Now, Sally also starts bringing over other ghosts to bond with her as well because, you know, she's got her friend group and they're all really obnoxious friends of stevie's so again if you're a ghost who's been around for a while you're you're touched in the head yeah so so josh is of course bugged by this you know because it's a bunch of like uh you know either i drank too much and i get hit by a car or i you know i committed suicide or i you know just died of alcohol poisoning like that kind of so it's just guys farting on each other and like, you know, watching the Godfather over and over again.

Lord. Yeah. And so Josh hates it. But, and this feels fairly intrusive to both Josh and Aden. But Sally's like, hey, I need friends of my own. And they're both kind of like not willing to pull rank of like, we live here. Note the verb. Right.

You know, and note the verb. I want you to pay attention. And the language we're using. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so they don't do that. And so they're like trying to like dance around it. And she basically says that this should be okay.

After all, you get to have friends over. And again, she's very centered on herself and how her circumstances are prime, but not different. Like. Yeah. And when one of them suggests that they all go to a party, like one of her buddy, her new friends suggests they'll go to a party, she's totally in. Right. So again, anything to avoid dealing with conflict, anything to do to avoid dealing with her nightmare. Right.

Or to do the work to find her door again. Right. So at this party, Stevie's friends teach her how to possess people. Oh. And she is over the damned moon about being able to feel everything again. The air. Like when you inhabit a person, she like starts eating salsa. Yeah. You know, and she's all fucking in.

Even though Stevie keeps warning her, like, it takes you to a dark place. There's a reason I don't do this shit anymore. And so she kind of behaves like someone who's on MDMA, quite honestly, on Molly. Yeah. Touchy-feely. Yeah. But, yes, quite so. Like, just very much like kisses a stranger and all this using someone else's body.

Right. So there's a bit of a disassociation there, right? Yeah. There's also this like elation and all that. Well, do you know what a possible treatment for depression was in the early 90s? MDMA. MDMA. Yeah.

And so the impact that it has on the- Cuddle drug. Yes. And the impact that this has on the person who was possessed is alarming as fuck. But Sally gives even less than that fuck about it. And as the season progresses, is she possesses people more and more. And she's, again, elated at this new thing,

does not spend time to research it or anything. She just dives in. It's, you know, you describe that bonsai mentality, right? But imagine that with no education on a thing. Right. And she's really hurting random people's lives so that she can enjoy feeling things again. Now, I think there's something there, right?

Well, depression is a psychiatric condition that can lead to addiction of various kinds through attempts at self-medication. So I'm seeing a definite parallel there. Yeah. You know. Absolutely. So let's see.

Before all that, she met Zoe. Now, Zoe is a nurse who works in the baby nursery. So a nurse nursery, nurse. And Zoe is a really open conduit. it to ghosts as it turns out. There are some people that the veil is a lot thinner around. And she helps some of the ghosts to reincarnate. Oh.

Which is kind of a permapossession, but it seems more benign. Okay. And so she interviews these ghosts and she like finds a baby that would be willing to like, there's a whole hullabaloo about that. Well, Sally sees this happening. She immediately tries to skip to the front of the line because she's the most important. Yeah.

And these ghosts are like waiting for Zoe to evaluate them and see if they can handle reincarnation, see if the baby can handle them because Sally sees this brand new thing. And that's far more important than anything that any system that's already in place. Right. But she's blocked. So she tries to get to the front line, but she gets blocked because Zoe has salted the doorway to the nursery. And salt, a line of salt stops ghosts. Love that.

Zoe's smart. Now they have a bit of a chat and Zoe straight up sees Sally for being the selfish person that she is. Sally still manages to like, I don't know if convince is quite the right word. And I don't think bully is. I think annoy the shit out of might be the right word. And she convinces Zoe to come and meet her roommates to prove how loyal and true and good Sally is. Now Zoe doesn't know that they're a vampry. empire and a werewolf.

But they do talk about how, sorry, my son just came in and he's laughing at me, they do talk about how they're open-minded and that's how they can see Sally. So they don't admit to. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So they're lying. Yeah. And so like the whole thing is built on lies.

And Sally's like, you've got to give me a good review, right? And so Sally says to them basically like don't tell her the whole truth, you know, pretend to be human. And Zoe interviews them. And then afterwards, she's like, no, they love you. They think you're great. I'm still not going to help you reincarnate into a baby. Okay. Now, of course, Sally goes, oh, well, I'll just do it anyway.

And so she waits until the janitor sweeps up that night. There goes to salt. She goes to dive in. And before she does, her nightmare stops her. Okay. She kind of remembers her nightmare. And there's this dark spirit that's stalking her. And it attacks her just as she's about to jump into a baby, you know, right there in the nursery.

Right. So what I love here is that what stopped Sally was not thinking, you know, I haven't thought this through, was not thinking, maybe this is the wrong thing. Right. It was, I'm dealing with my own personal crisis and that's what stopped me. Okay. She gets the feeling that the dark spirit will be able to kill her more easily if she's a baby. And that's what stops her.

It's because her own survival is at stake. And Zoe walks in on Sally like hemming and hawing over doing it. And she's ready to be fucking done with Sally. But Sally's like, look, the fact that I didn't jump in is proof. that I'm good. And it's like, no, no. GTFO. Now, Sally does let her know, hey, I'm dealing with this dark-ass spirit. Can you help me? Which, again, like, how come you didn't tell me that part? How come you didn't, you know? So many things you could have told me. Right. But she does get, and Zoe does take pity on her because Sally is a pitiful person on so many.

levels. So, Sally, in order to pay Zoe back, tries to help Zoe flirt with a doctor. Oh, no. Yeah, it doesn't work. Zoe convinces Sally to join a ghost support group. She's like, look, I run a group for recovering possession addicts and all sorts of other issues. You should come see it. You should come be a part of it.

Wow. through your shit lady yeah group therapy yeah right it's a start right sally of course balks at the idea because she's just so damned unique and special and they don't understand it even though they've been around longer and yeah and and and yeah avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid and then and then she realizes that zohy and nick are actually kind of dating yeah uh nick she has shown up you remember nick the one who reenacts his own drowning. Right, right, right, right. The one that Sally kind of gets with in the first season of being a ghost.

Well, she finds out that Nick has, you know, like, because Sally was like, I can't be with you if you have to spend five minutes every day reenacting your own drowning. Again, very self-centered. Well, he goes and seeks help, right? And he actually, like, finds this group and he's been working with Zoe. And she and Nick have a lot in common. and there's thing you know. So of course that activates Sally's jealousy, which means she immediately has to find a way to avoid that feeling

instead of dealing with any underlying issues. Oh, Lord. So Sally goes and finds the hot doctor that she tried to get Zoe to flirt with and finds the hot doctor's girlfriend who is also hot. She possesses the body of the hot doctor's hot girlfriend, and Sally gets over someone by getting under someone. And depression,

a hell of a drug, right? Like it absolutely like how much whom's among us does not know somebody or is not somebody who has done that very thing when dealing with a depressive bout, right? Especially feeling the jealousy or the rejection. Yeah. And you look for, you know, the, the closest bit of tape nearby. It doesn't matter if it's scotch tape to heal the wound. It's still going to fucking, you know, stick for a minute. Yeah. So this, of course, hurts this. woman because she and the doctor were fighting and like maybe thinking about breaking up they were kind of on the outs and then Sally jumps in and now the sex is great and blah, blah, blah. And the doctor's girlfriend's name is Janet, by the way, I forget who the doctor is.

Janet feels like she's kind of blacked out for a while after Sally leaves. And so just like Imagine Imagine being blackout drunk and waking up next to somebody that like you you were kind of having trouble with and you've clearly had sex with. Yeah. And he thinks it's all better, right? Yeah. So their relationship between the doctor and Janet was not in the best place.

And Sally, by her possession of Janet, has pushed it into a new direction. And of course, when Aiden and Josh point out how awful that is for Janet, Sally's like, I promise I'll never do it again. So of course she does it again. Oh, Jesus. And since possession leaves a ghost weakened, Sally gets stuck in Janet's body. Yeah, because again,

great. Nobody, you know, she didn't take time to listen to Stevie when he's talking about it. Now, Janet is the girlfriend of the doctor who's in the hospital that both Aiden and Josh work at. Right. So Janet, who's really Sally, goes to Josh for help. Now, Josh is a orderly. Right.

And so that's going to cause issues between Janet and the doctor, of course. And then the dark spirit comes for Sally while she's in Janet's body. And it knocks Sally out of Janet. Thank goodness. But then Janet shows up, having again awakened from this blackout, she shows up at Sally's house, not knowing why. But she's got some of Sally's bad memories that are tied to that house. Oh. Yeah.

It's bad. It's very bad. It's all bad everywhere. Yeah. Because Sally is avoidant. Sally is trying to avoid the depression, right? That's her number one way. Yeah.

Now, Sally goes to Janet's house and tries to talk to her, which, of course, is, makes it so that Sally sees it Janet. Like, so some people are, you know, more sensitive beyond the bail kind of thing. Well, if you possess someone, they're more able to hear your voice. boys. Okay. So that's going to fuck with you, right? Right. You're already like, yeah. But Janet is drawing and Sally sees that Janet's drawing and she's drawn the dark spirit. She has no idea why she's drawn the dark spirit, but she's drawing the dark spirit and she gave it a name, The Reaper. Okay. Yeah. So while this is going on, Sally's mom actually is in the hospital as a patient. Oh. And she's dying. And so Sally goes, you know, she's in the hospital and she sees her mom. She's like, what the fuck. And her mom's still alive, but definitely dying. And she goes to Josh. She's like, get my mom some clothes.

She does not want to die in a fucking hospital gown. And so Josh goes and gets the clothes. And Sally's mom dies. Now, Sally fully expects her mom to want to bond with her over being dead together. Right. Makes sense, right? Because Sally was taken from her mom early on because she was murdered by her fiance.

Right. But her mom, Sally's mom, has spent her entire life pining for an old love, and that guy died 10 years ago. So she actually wants to go hang with him. So you kind of see where she gets it. But also at the same time, Sally didn't stop to think that her mom wanted anything but to spend time with Sally. Right. Because Sally's the main character, right? So Sally's very upset by all of this.

And she might have actually had time to deal with this issue if Danny's ghost hadn't come back to. to haunt her. But instead, Danny's ghost comes back to haunt her and he's a ghost, which means, because turns out Danny got killed in prison. Oh, lovely. Yeah. And he died in a prison, which means there's all kinds of prisoners teaching him really evil ghost shit.

Yeah. So Sally dissipates him with iron, but he shows right back up. And, well, not right back. Maybe like, you know, 15, 20 minutes. Now before Danny shows up and he's like, I'm going to kill you and she dissipates him with iron. And she's like, bitch, I've been to go so much longer and blah, blah, blah. And she's all full of bravado. Now, Aiden preps Sally, pep talks her, gets her ready for Danny's return.

But unfortunately, Danny has learned a lot more about being a shitty person as a ghost from prisoner ghosts. And he's about to kill her again. He's straight up about to kill her again. Um, evidently, as it turns out, ghosts are able to shred each other, um, where she actually, she saw Stevie do this to a friend of his, like one of those idiot friends because he was looking to possess somebody. And Steve is like, no, you're an asshole when you get like this and he shreds him. That's the first time Sally sees a ghost shredded ghost. So now Danny's getting ready to shred her. And instead, the dark spirit shows up and shreds Danny.

now a shredded ghost we'll find out later goes to a very terrible place okay uh the dark the dark spirit finally becomes corporeal for a ghost at least it's no longer just a shadow and it's a it's a guy that kind of looks like uh the wish version of um uh kailo red um okay he introduces himself as the reaper and he tells sally that he needs he needs to shred her too uh but he tells her i'm give you time to settle your accounts. And this is right at the same time as the purebred twins had their hunting party with Aden. So Sally tries to say goodbye to the two to Josh and Aden, but they're fucking dealing with

their own stuff. Yeah. And so the only time that Sally doesn't make everything about her, nobody's able to pay attention to her. Wow. Yeah. Now, the Reaper comes back after about a week or so, right? And he comes with a loophole to get her out of getting reaped.

Basically, he says, you could become the Reaper. And over the next week, he teaches her how to shred ghosts. So now she's got another skill, a fucking lethal skill, but another skill. And she eventually plans to shred the Reaper and then not to have to shred anybody, which is giving very Dean as death vibes. Yeah. Yeah. But, God, we've never done an episode on Supernatural.

No, we haven't. I mean, we did. We did how it should have ended, because you were like, it should have ended after five. Yeah, like, yeah. But like there's 15 episodes of goodness. Well, yeah, 15. There's 14 episodes or 14 seasons of goodness there.

Yeah. But they had 15. But, God, we really, anyway. So her plan, Sally's plan is to shred the Reaper and therefore she doesn't have to shred anybody else, which like, of course, it's like, I don't want to do the thing. Again, avoidance. He's like, look, it's an important job.

We have to do it. I either shred you or you take it over for me. And she's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. And then she's totally going to upset the balance. So what is the metaphysical explanation of we got to, this has to be done. People have to get shredded. Oh, some ghosts go too crazy. Okay.

They just, they become too much of a harm to other ghosts and to the living. So we've got to call the herd. Okay, and who is this just a the universe chose the first one and it's been passed down or is there a body of rule? Okay, she doesn't think to ask and we're kind of seeing it through her eyes. Okay. So yeah, it's it's left open to interpretation. Okay. So when the Reaper interrogates her, right?

So, well, let me let me back it up. So her plan to shred him fails fucking miserably, which is actually what convinces her. that she can do it because the Reaper let her think that he that she'd had shred him so now she's like well clearly I can do it he just faked it and it's like remember one of the symptoms of depression is that like that hyper confidence in yourself that self-focused that you know the mania um and so then the Reaper interrogates Sally about how it felt to shred him she's like well he says you know you thought you shredded me how did it feel and she admits it gave her a huge thrill and he says that thrill is part of the good that they do if you shred a bad ghost you're keeping

others safe and that's your reward and then he tells her her final test to become a real reaper and now she's like you know if i do this final test then i can become a reaper and then i can shred him, right? Yeah. Balance must be restored. And so she must shred Stevie. Ugh. So she's feeling terrible about it, but she also has a sense of purpose and commitment because, of course, she does. Yeah. It just, like, it was really hard for me not to just stay irritated at her all the time.

Yeah. Then I started looking at it through the lens of depression. I'm like, oh, this poor fucking thing. Yeah. Oh, so the Reaper gives her a warm-up shred and she still feels kind of off about it and so then she goes to Zoe for advice and asks, you know, Zoe like, you know, about this Reaper thing. And Zoe's like, come to the support group. When Sally shows up to the support group, the Reaper arrives and shreds every single ghost in the group. Like, hey, thanks for bringing me to like all the damaged ghosts, right? Oh, fuck.

So Sally panics and runs off. Nick finds her Nick the one who's dating Zoe now Sally panics and runs off Nick finds her the reaper kills him and then that's when Sally realizes she's the Reaper this whole time it's been her

total and complete disassociative identity disorder she had no idea she was the one reaping everybody including Stevie and Josh and Aiden end up having to trap Sally on the stairs where she died it's called the death spot because they see the damage that she's doing and the fact that she's completely disassociated from herself. And then Aiden and Josh call Zoe and get her to come over and help. Wow.

Yeah. Like, it's quite the reveal. Oh, damn. Yeah. Wow. Now, what I find fascinating. That's a twist. Yeah.

What I find fascinating is right around that same time, The Force Unleashed, Part 2, which is all about a character having disassociated disorder. And it's played by Sam Whitwer. Yeah. And then in an element of the extended universe that is its own platinum. Like it's Whitwer, it's a shame that Sam Whitwer did, has done so much work in genre because it's prevented people. outside of genre fandom from realizing what an incredible goddamn actor he is. Oh yeah, yeah.

And then also in Call of Duty, Black Ops 2 or 3 or whatever it is, your character has dissociative identity disorder. Like you follow a guy who died years ago. Right, yeah. So kind of a thing happening in the 2010s. So. So, so Sally R. realizes she's the reaper. They've got they've got her trapped on her death spot with I think salt.

Yeah. And of course, this is the same day that it's a fucking full moon. Also, Aiden is in withdrawal. He hasn't eaten in a while. Sally's alter ego complete with pitch warble down voice. You know, you will die. You know, that kind of voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Traps them all in the house after Zoe finally reluctantly agrees to show up and help because Sally killed her boyfriend. Right. Well, Sally's alter ego locks all the doors because she haunts the house, right? Right. So now everybody is stuck in there.

Josh is going to turn. Aden's hungry as fuck. Zoe has no idea that these two guys are this. Yeah. And they're all trapped together. And so Josh and Aiden are like freaking out about like, what do we do? And Zoe's like, what's the big fucking deal? We'll just deal with this problem.

And they're like, so you're going to want to sit down. and the liquor cabinets over there pick your poison because you're going to need a drink Yeah We need to lay some shit on you Right

But they don't tell her Like they do everything they can To keep from telling her Until they have to Right so tick tick tick Right Sally's in a coma And in her coma

We spend the entire episode Now this is the first time We've seen Sally in an outfit Other than her very cute sweater and yoga clothes For nighttime routine Right Right

So she's wearing all like very light gray normally. In this coma, she is living a fantasy world in her own head. She's in a fantasy relationship with the Reaper. Everything in the house is purple or accents thereof. Okay. She lives in a much better version of their house. She has straight hair, which as I'd mentioned earlier, is a bit of an odd thing. but she has straight hair

and she gets to change her clothes she gets to enjoy food, friends, everything, but it's all a fantasy and she's trapped in it without realizing it. And she's in this relationship with the Reaper guy

and she thinks it's all legit, right? Right. And the whole time, they're like, what do we do? You know, TikTok, and she's living this whole life in her head.

So Zoe basically mind melds with her. And with the combination of that and Aiden's screaming in pain because he's so bloodthirsty that Josh has to offer his own blood to Aiden, which is going to cause massive convulsions for Aden so that Aiden won't eat Zoe. Sally starts to realize that she's kind of causing all of this while she's living in the fantasy world. At some point somebody, like she's on her computer and somebody emails her out of the blue. And it's Aiden like telling her, Sally, wake up, Sally wake up, you know. but in her mind, it's somebody stalking her on email.

So she's in this fantasy world. So in other words, it takes someone else to convince Sally to face her feelings and her problems instead of hiding from them. And she finally does. And this lets Zoe out, which, by the way, Aiden has started drinking from Zoe a little bit. And, like, Josh, like, stops him. And that's what leads to him eating Josh. that Zoe realizes, oh, you guys are some fucked up people in this house. So Zoe gets let out.

After all of a sudden done, Sally comes to the fantasy world ends. It shatters. Zoe gets out. They let Josh get to the woods to change. And Sally is alone talking to Scott. And Scott is the name of the Reaper identity. Okay. It's just another part of her.

So she's finally addressing herself. Right. But she really doesn't want to integrate him with herself either. Okay. So she's just really down about the whole thing, which I totally get. But God damn, dude, like you have to reintegrate your personalities. Yeah. Yeah.

So next episode or two, Sally goes and tries to find Janet, who's now in a psych ward because she doesn't know what's happened to her. Sally tries to get Nora and Josh to go talk to Janet to validate her experience that Sally caused, which I get it. That makes sense. But the Reaper's there and he's trying to tell Sally just possess her again. That way you can explain it better. So a bit of an addiction there, right?

Yeah. And that brings me back to Raith the role-playing game. He is her specter. Yeah The nihilistic Right You know

Just just walk into Walk into oblivion And end it all Yeah You know What's the point? Yes Dark literal dark side

You know dark side Yeah So Nora and Sally Work together to help Janet Instead of Sally jumping in Like she she ignores the reaper And they

They let Janet know That they Sally and Nora are going to help her out of the psych ward. And through fixing things for Janet, Sally finally realizes that she's stronger than the Reaper, and he seems to disappear forever. And that, of course, leads Sally to thinking

that she has to fix everything for everyone as best she can, because why deal with your own shit? Sally stalks Zoe and tries to convince Zoe not to turn her back on her gift, because Zoe's like, yo, I had a boyfriend. You killed him. You shredded him. you shredded all my friends

you did all this shit I'm not good with humans and you took away my whole fucking community and my whole purpose don't talk to me and of course the whole reason what's that fair cop

yeah and the whole reason that Sally is really trying to mend fences with Zoe is so that she can get another chance at reincarnation with the babies so there's the appearance of the thing without doing the thing You know, it's the, and again, that is a depressive trap, right?

Yeah. You know, it's, you know, the elation of, no, now I've really figured it out. Yeah, going to therapy endlessly without doing the homework that your therapist gives you. Yeah. It's like going to therapy, but not crying on the way home. Yeah. Like, why are you there? You're doing it wrong.

What the fuck are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I heard what you said and it makes a lot of sense. I'm going to do that now. It's like, you didn't do the work.

Yeah, no. So anyway, so, so Sally's trying this. Now, all of this is coincident, coincident with the eclipse

that caused Josh to kill his girlfriend by accident. Remember his, his former fiancé Julia and they were kindling because Nora had left. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then she'd come back and I've already covered that. So during the eclipse, the shredded ghosts reappear on the spot where they were shredded. Oh shit. And they're there for the duration because the eclipse like, you know, makes the, makes the veil

gossamer. And Sally and Zoe are, are talking and they run into somebody she shredded and, and they immediately have that moment. They're like, Nick. And so Zoe runs back to the house to where Sally had shredded Nick. And Sally gets there as well, so that Zoe can say goodbye to Nick. didn't even get to say goodbye. Now, Sally beats her there because she can teleport.

Danny's also there, and he's kind of glad to see her. But she basically, and he's in a lot of pain. Like, everybody who's been shredded by her is just, like, curled up in the fetal position practically. Okay. Because of where they're from. So she ignores him in favor of talking to Nick. Nick is terrified of her, and he tells her how fucking it awful it is where he is. It's kind of like a limbo.

I'm just going to call it limbo. And then Zoe shows up and Nick completely lies to her about how it is. And he's like, it's really beautiful. It's good. I'm all right. And they get closure, which is really cool. That doesn't change at all the fact that Zoe still wants nothing to do with helping Sally to reincarnate, though. So Sally is now obsessed with yet another escape from dealing with anything really.

she's now trying to find ghost limbo and so that way she can rescue other people I've got to make this right she's feeling tremendous guilt for having done this to people with everybody about Danny and so she's trying to sneak into other people's door oh yeah now

that's what she will do after the eclipse now after Nick kind of goes away Sally's mom shows up like after the eclipse Sally's mom has finished canoodling with you know Mr. Mr. Jeepers next door kind of thing right and the two of them actually kind of work out their shit a little bit so of course Sally's mom's door appears right yeah um now her mom straight up says take my door and Sally's like no that'll drive you crazy I don't want that for you take your own door like but but I'm going to try to steal other people's door but don't not not moms um

So, but Sally's mom's like, I would sacrifice anything for you, blah, blah, blah. And Sally's like, no. And so then instead she shreds herself hoping that that, because everybody who's been shredded, went to limbo, right? So she figures she can get to limbo and then she can find Nick and Stevie and bring them back out of limbo. And so now she's stuck in limbo. And this is right at the same time that Nora and Josh kill Ray and then Aiden gets buried underground. So this is the season finale. Yes.

Yeah. And the season finale, like the radio turns on and you hear like, you know, it's one of them static radios. You know, and then you hear Sally going, guys, guys, I think I really messed up here. So she comes through on the radio. But nobody's home to hear her. Yeah. So then season three, there's a witch named Donna who, who, who. Nora and Josh have found.

So again, remember, season three, Aden's been gone for a year. Sally, they've been, so it's just the two living ones. Exactly. And they've been working for a year to try to find any fucking lead they can on bringing Sally back and on, hey, does anybody know where Aden is? Now, Sally spends most of the season alive. And I actually do mean alive because Josh and Nora find a witch who bring her back to life. Okay. Now this is a very specific kind of blood magic that, you know, you have to use the

blood of a man that you yourself have killed. Well, they killed Ray. Right. So they cut out his heart, and then they bring that blood, and then she smears it all over Sally's corpse. And then Sally and Nick and Stevie, they're all in limbo. And they dive back into her body, and then they find Stevie and Nick's bodies. And I just realized Stevie Nix. But they find their bodies and smear it with the blood and then both

of them become alive too. Okay. So they're all alive, right? Now Sally's back, but she's not really back, but she's back. She can still see ghosts. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'd be surprised if she could.

Right. Yeah. Donna, the witch, tells Sally that she can never see anyone from her past. Okay. She's still living at the same house that she died at. Yeah. It stands to reason there are plenty of neighborhood people who would have known Sally. She still goes out to bars nearby.

And it turns out a couple days later, Sally goes out for a night on the town, partying and drinking and enjoying Boston's bar pub life. Josh is acting as her chaperone, which is hilarious. And of course, she immediately runs into someone from her past. and she spends all her energy pestering Josh that she should be okay to take him home and fuck him. His name's Trent. And Trent actually doesn't try to take advantage of her drunken state

and he just heads out. He still dies the next day. Oh, shit. Donna said so. And his death, Trent's death is what lets Sally know that maybe she should fucking listen to an expert for once. again, when she's alive, she's all about the new. She's all about the elation of being alive and all of that.

And I totally get that. But the novelty is overpowering any sense that she has. Again, it's that same cycle, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's because she's not dealing with her shit. She is still immensely depressed and yet. And look at the harm she's doing. So mostly she wants to not have to deal with the feelings of sadness, trauma, loss,

like, and that leads to people she knows dying if they see her. Now, the amount of romantic partners of people who suffer from depression, who themselves end up depressed by way of their partner's depression, tends to hover around 20% according to a study I found from 2020. Though that study confined itself to a majority of women and an overwhelming majority of participants being white, so take it with the salt lick that it deserves. But that said, a lot of the literature. in the study was based in work

that had been done before and during being human. And intuitively as a culture, we tend to see couples take on each other's traits. Right. Now, I've had minimal success in getting any of my partners to enjoy Star Wars, but, you know,

apparently just, you know, not the good traits. Yeah, I have managed to drag Leanne kicking and screaming into playing tabletop role-playing game. Must be nice. Yeah. It doesn't suck.

It doesn't suck. So anyway, having killed a guy, Sally, of course, thinks that she should go to his funeral to talk with his ghost. Oh, no. Yeah. And remember, she knew him,

which means it stands to reason. Other people at the funeral also knew her. Oh, God. She creates a mass casualty event. She doesn't. She actually thinks for a second and goes early. Okay. Now, Trent, his ghost is there,

and he's pissed and he wants nothing to fucking do with her. So of course, Sally says, okay, well, I should definitely still make things better for him. Um, so Trent, as it turns out,

had a fiance. Okay. And Trent and Sally did make out. So he was stepping out on his fiancee. Right. I would call this a third degree cheating, maybe. Yeah.

Um, so Trent eventually. says, yeah, okay, let her go tell his fiancé that she was making out with him before she, before Trent died. And I assume it's to assuage his guilt and let him find closure. Sally makes a deal with the funeral director, a guy named Max. And he lets Sally talk to Trent's fiance. So Max is the funeral director there. And he's like, why would I let you talk to the, to the corpse's fiancee this makes no sense and she talks him into it um Trent's fiance it turns out was cheating on him and this led her off the hook too

of course this is very upsetting to to Trent which of course makes Sally very sad and that's what matters the most so max the funeral director not knowing the whole ghost thing and the undead used to be a ghost thing that Sally's dealing with comforts her a little bit and she immediately cheers up. She's getting attention, right? Yeah. All it took for her not to be depressed was one single compliment, and now she could flit above the feelings again like a butterfly and a windstorm.

Now, Sally wants to continue being happy, so of course she gets Aden to help her find a new identity, which this makes some sense for once, right? Okay, logical. And he's one of those people who would know. He's lived for 200 plus years. She's like, how did you guys do it? And he's like, well, there were ways. And here's what we did.

But that means finding the social security number of like a deceased child. Right. So she immediately goes back to the funeral home to steal a social security number of a dead person. Now, Max is like, you can't be going through my files. Fuck that. No. But he does agree. He's like, look, I totally get that you need to make money.

You need to make a living. And for some reason, you need to stay off the grid. I'll pay you under the table and so he's willing to pay her in cash for helping him around the funeral home okay now there's also obvious chemistry there too because Sally's nothing if not like

horny and again she wants all the hedonism right like she's been dead for a bit she wants to get some strange I totally understand that actually but you'll notice what she's constantly running from in the last season and in this one, and you notice what she's constantly chasing.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Now, of course, Sally is fine at the job of being the assistant to a mortician, as gross as it is. But she also has to deal with the ghosts of the newly deceased because she can see them. And in so doing, Sally declares that she's not helping anyone and constantly just banishes them with iron instead. She keeps a small cast iron skillet in her.

inner purse. So swinging, literally swinging, but swinging from the polls, right? Like just, I'm going to help everybody to fuck off all of you, right? Yeah. One of the ghosts is actually Max's mom.

And Max's mom is very protective of Max. And Max, who's, by the way, played by Bobby Campo. He was in the Final Destination movie. that came out in 2009. He's the, that was the one that starts with the racetrack disaster. Okay.

Yeah. And he has that premonition. So he's, you're constantly following his premonitions. Okay. So he has kind of a touch of the supernatural to that character too. Nice. But anyway,

Max is a virgin still. Oh, dear. And Sally's mom, or Max's mom's been protecting his virginity and, and sees Sally for what she, and like, it's kind of shock that Sally can see here. But then, like,

sees her for, for quite frankly the damage person she is, but also his mom's been around for a while as a ghost. She's also touched in the head because she's been caught between these worlds, right? Okay. So, Sally doesn't. She's been cock blocking her son. Yes. Man, talk about being cursed.

Yeah. Shit. Right. So Sally doesn't like being not the manic character. And so she sees Max's mom as a child. not as someone who has a real stake in things. So Max's mom possesses Sally, because now she's living,

for a little bit the morning after they had sex, and uses Sally's body to shit on Max, not literally, but to like shit on him and drive him away. So then when Sally, like, comes to, she's like, oh my God, that's what possession's like, that's terrible. It's like, no fucking shit, lady.

But again, you know, so now she's like, well, I have to repair that. not there's a period of reflection over what it felt like to be possessed just like I didn't like that and now I have to go fix things or not even like wow it really sucks to have to clean up a mess that a ghost made by possessing me

none of that just I didn't like that and fuck you lady and I'm going to get my boyfriend back so she does now Sally still doesn't like going out in public on account of the fact that every time she sees someone it kills them

and her brother Robbie comes around so remember Sally's mom died her dad's still alive and her brother Robbie it turns out is still alive and he's trying to scam Josh and Aiden because now the building is in Sally's

dad's name and Sally accidentally runs into Robbie oh no yeah by the way the actor who plays Sally's brother is actually Megan Rath's brother oh that's funny yeah he's joked many times he's like yeah the whole reason I have an acting career is because my

sister keeps getting me jobs to play her brother. Nice. So now once this happens, Sally freaks out because she doesn't want a brother to die. So she goes and makes a deal with Donna. She says, I will give you my soul if you don't let, if you make it so that Robbie doesn't die of this curse. So now she's safe to go out in public.

All it cost her was her soul. Oh, yeah, that's all. Yeah. So, I mean, all it really is is just dyeing her hair red. It's fine. I'm joking. Yeah. Yeah, but, but, yeah, um, so this, this then leads to the question of in, in this universe,

what exactly does a witch do with the soul? As a very good question. Donna is a slow burn character. Okay. She really is. And, and I use that pun on purpose because she's, she's actually, she's one of the witches. Not of Salem. She was like a different town.

But, okay. Yeah. By the way, because we're in Boston, right? Right. Yeah. So, yeah. By the way, the woman who plays the witch, Donna, she, I don't know, did you ever watch ER? Yeah. Okay. In the very early seasons, and actually throughout the whole thing, in the very early seasons, the first season, actually, Dr. Green ends up killing a pregnant woman by accident. Like, it was a bad birth that went wrong six ways from Sunday. Okay. She's the OBGYN. And she's, I think she says something like, what'd you use in here? A chainsaw?

Like she absolutely. Oh. Yeah. So she has played an OBGYN this whole time, which I think it's interesting that she's kind of still playing Yonnic characters. Like she played someone who's a guardian of birth and motherhood and stuff like that. And then she also is playing a witch. where there's all kinds of, you know, so I just find that fun.

Anyway, all of this is happening during Aaron and Kenny storylines for Josh and Aden, by the way. You remember the young lady? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, now that she can, now that she can reach out to people without killing them, Sally immediately reaches out to Bridget. And after some convincing and some lying, it turns out that Bridget has, she and Sally meet, And Bridget has taken up with a local Wiccan coven. Okay. And Sally sees it for what it really is.

There's a couple of ghosts who are just possessing members of the coven during seances for their own purposes. And so Sally breaks that up. So, you know, because they're like, yeah, I feel like just so open to the world. And like, I don't remember what happens. And it's like, yeah, you're blacking out because you're getting possessed. So Sally breaks it up because she knows what the possessions are doing to people. And then she encourages Bridget to forget all this. and just go live her life.

And that night, Sally realizes that she's rotting away. I think she's brushing her teeth and her toothbrush goes through her cheek. That's not good. Yeah, I think she loses a couple teeth. Like, it's body horror. Like, oh, my God, this is terrible. And in the next few episodes, we find out that Sally's appetite is ravaging her to the point where she, like, she eats a ton of raw meat out of the refrigerator.

like a bunch of hamburger just gulping it down um this this is this is not a good sign this is fuck because very bad yeah because you know the next step right she figures out she has to eat live meat yeah so she visits nick who's now living with zohy and the two of them are very happy and Nick is really trying to hide the fact that he's eating the neighborhood animals. So he kicks Sally out. And when Sally comes over, he's like, he's got, he's like, yeah, I'm dealing with these feral cats and we just keep feeding them and blah, blah, blah. He's got a big old meow mix, you know, and he's, I want chicken. I want liver.

You know. And, and Sally has a talk with Zoe at one point. And Zoe says, like, you know, it's really good. Like, we get to physically touch. we get to connect but like he got really aggressive and he bit me the other night oh baby no yeah oh dear so eventually so this leads eventually to Zoe having to kill Nick to defend herself which means that Nick is dead again but he's been eating cats and the thing is Zoe comes home to find him eating a cat out on the porch and he looks up and he's just blood everywhere and because

of course you can't just like cook it up because it has to be raw no but you can't get a napkin right so so just oh god and he looks at her and then he's and he like lunges at her and so she had to kill him now meanwhile max catches sally stealing supplies of of like makeup to hide the fact that she's rotting and then she comes clean about everyone and everything so she literally tells him i live with the vampire and a werewolf. I used to be a ghost. I'm now a zombie and blah, blah, blah, because he's, like, fucking done with her.

Like, she's stealing shit again and all that. Yeah, yeah. He's like, I pay you and all this. He eventually processes things, and he, which is pretty cool, like, because I think he's the first character in the whole fucking show to do any of that. But,

like, he's the only well-adjusted individual. Evidently, you know, he still comes to the wrongest conclusion possible, but, like, all right. You know, okay. Yeah, but like he then helps her to cover up her rod. He comes over with like the makeup kit.

And he's like, let me teach you. You know, he does like that little triangle, the pyramid of foam that you put, you dab on. So Sally comes over to Zoe's house to see how Nick's doing now that she's cleaned herself up and is no longer visibly rotting. And she finds that Nick is a ghost. And Zoe is really upset about having killed Nick, which of course makes sense.

Yeah. Now, Nick straight up warns Zoe. She says, look, you have to stay away from Sally. Even though Sally is a good person, she's going to try to eat you eventually. I mean, not wrong. Yeah. And then his door finally appears. Oh.

And Nick walks through it. Okay. Now, what I found interesting here was that Sally has this huge appetite all of a sudden. Right. Yeah. Depression science, right? Yeah, yeah. But she derives no pleasure from this kind of eating.

Uh-huh. She was chasing sex. She was chasing drinking. She was chasing spicy food at one point. She was chasing all those things. And he laid it about those things. But when it's an actual hunger, she's finding no joy in it. Yeah.

There's no bottom to the hole. Yeah. It's, yeah. There is no satiety. Yeah. and I just again depression right yeah that I've been there

like that's that's a that's a personal experience yeah like I go one of two ways when I get depressed I either eat everything yeah and there's no satiety I actually do this weird thing where I'll bounce between sweet salty sweet salty all fucking night and I'll just stand there at the counter oh god yeah yeah or I will just trying to chase

the neurological response yeah evidently you know, and I'm just following cravings. Or I'll not eat anything and lose like 10 pounds. Yeah. There's nowhere in the middle for me. I've never had to lose 10 pounds depression. Yeah. I've had the, it gave me gastritis, so I thought I was hungry.

Right. And, and, you know, having an ice cream Sunday three nights a week for, you know, half a year. Yeah. You know. And then I've had. the just having a psychological craving that I could not couldn't fill fulfill yeah yeah sucks yeah so Sally then goes and hunts down Stevie because why deal with your own shit why ever look inward right

what'll that do like come on yeah Stevie has eaten his own parents and he's begging to die oh fuck He's also eating the mailman. So. Wow. So he's looking to commit suicide a second time. Oh, God. And so Josh agrees to help him do it.

Okay. Because Josh has gotten kind of real politic about a lot of this. Yeah. Again, he's killed people now. He's, you know, he's buried bodies. He's unburied bodies all year long. Yeah. And so he's like, no, I'll help you do it.

Like that way it's not a suicide. I'll kill you. Hopefully that'll help you get your door, right? Yeah. Dally's reaction to this to seeing that Stevie has been hiding parts of the mailman in the breadbox that Stevie ate his parents months ago, that Stevie is trying to kill himself but can't bring himself to do it a second time. Her reaction to it is, what's going to happen to me?

Because of course it is. Right. She sees somebody clearly suffering. and she's like, oh my God, but what's going to happen to Sally? Like, I don't want this to be me mocking her. She is in a seriously depressive state. She cannot think of any but herself. Yeah.

It's like this depressive narcissism, which I'm sure I'm blending terms that don't belong together. Well, but it's a form of monomania that's part of the thought pattern. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there's a whole subplot that Donna is eating everyone's soul, who was with Sally, by the way. and that includes Nick and Stevie and Trent

because it turns out when they all had a door, it was the exact same door each time. And that doesn't happen. Oh shit. So the door they went through was not. It was a door to Donna's soup kitchen because she works in a soup kitchen but you know which big fucking cauldron, right?

Right. But she works in a soup kitchen which you know she actually, you know, glamors everybody into thinking it's a soup kitchen, but like, you know, she's got a whole, like, back room and all this. So, yeah, they all show up there and then she eats their souls. That includes Ray, actually, the one whose heart, Josh and Nora went, yeah. Oh, wow. So, yeah, Donna has been eating everyone's soul because she's a witch and she's, you know, it's a zero-sum game.

that's her mechanism for maintaining her immortality. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, when Sally realizes this, she, again, has a purpose that she can use to ignore any feeling she has. And she, of course, goes off half cooked after Donna because she's poorly informed about what's going on, but she knows that she must do something to stop Donna without having

done any of the requisite research. Yeah. Meanwhile. I mean, yeah. Go on. Player character syndrome. Yeah. Yes.

Yes. We have to fix this. I have a whole series of resources for you to use right over here to figure out how to I don't have time for that. You could just do a montage. Nope. Like, okay.

Yeah. Now, meanwhile, Nora and Josh are looking to get married, right? Yeah. And Sally's dying. She's rotting. And she's super hungry, right?

The one thing that would stop her rotting would be to eat people. So she begs them to padlock her in her room so she can't hurt anyone any further. So they do. And while Sally and Nora are talking with each other about wedding plans on either side of the door, right? Right. Nora realizes how close to this Sally actually is. And as a result, Nora says to Josh, we're moving up the wedding date to today. And during that time, Aiden let Sally eat part of himself.

Because as a vampire, he can regenerate by drinking lots of blood. Okay. So at first, she goes to find Max and ask if she can eat. one of the cadavers in his care. And that ends their relationship. Yeah. Yeah. But Sally feels better enough that she then goes to the exorcist to help her fight Donna,

because she ate part of Aden, which the exorcist wants fucking nothing to do with. She's like, I ain't fucking with Donna. Are you kidding me? That witch? Hell no. So there's an understanding amongst people. Amongst practitioners. I don't think you understand.

We have agreements. There's a treaty. Never mind the agreement. There's a whole set of rules. That bitch is way too powerful. I am not crossing her. Like she fucks everyone up. No.

I've stayed under the radar. No fucking way. Of course, that doesn't stop Sally at all. So the exorcist gives Sally a Latin incantation to use on Donna. Donna uses the reanimated corpse of Ray to go and kill the exorcist. So Sally gets somebody else killed. Yeah. Now, the next day is Nora and Josh's wedding day.

Aiden and Josh prepare to go through the door that Donna had set up for Sally to go through to fight for their friend. And then Nora brings a bunch of outfits for the dying Sally to wear to death. So it's a, you know, girls checking out outfits thing. Now, at the same time down in the basement, Kenny is turning into the mutated vampire. And Aiden and Josh stick around long enough for Sally to die and say their goodbyes to her. Now, once she dies, they see her as a ghost, right? And she's now in cute clothes that have some purple to them, cute clothes that she wants to be wearing.

And to be perfectly honest, and this is just my own personal aesthetic, I really liked her first outfit way better. Okay. But I totally understand somebody wanting to wear something different. And it's not like she doesn't look cute in it. But right. you know taste um so yeah aden and josh are preparing to go through donna's door um and uh they're gonna fight for sally they wait for her to die she's wearing the cute clothes and then josh aden and sally

all go through the door together um i think nora goes with them too um they fight dana and eventually this is before the wedding oh wow right this is day of the wedding Like, hey, you're going to get married at three. Got to fight a witch at 10, though. Right. Right. So, yeah. And by the way, there's a corpse upstairs now.

Sally's corpse. Right. In a padlocked room. Or no, it's not padlocked anymore. And Kenny is mutating into a vampire in the basement. And there's a wedding at three. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Okay. What could go wrong? Right. Yeah. No. So Sally dies, right? She's in cute or close. They all fight Donna. And eventually, Sally is stronger than Donna thought she was and wins through just fucking luck and will. And interestingly, they go back through the door into the house. Sally notices a few thomiturgic hints of Donna, like candle suddenly springing into really intense flames. Now, if you're keeping count, when Sally, at the beginning of this season, came back into the world, she had three souls in her body.

Right. Her is Knicks and Stevie's. Right. In the first season, she had to deal with the Reaper being a part of her. Right. And now she's been consumed by Donna, but then overpowers Donna and thought that Donna was destroyed, only to have Donna still around. and, quote, delusions, particularly somatic, hallucinations from the DSM. Only in this case, it's actually real because it's a supernatural TV show.

Sally has had three seasons in a row where her own self is inhabited by multiple others at the same time. She used her relationship with Max to avoid dealing with any of this stuff. She sought to literally cover it up physically and through deception. and when her symptoms became too real to ignore, she now has yet another instance of not being the only person in herself because Donna's in there too. Okay.

Now, there was the whole wedding that I think I... I don't know that I talked about this in the other... No, you didn't. Okay, so they had the wedding. Nora's best friend, Kat, is dating Aiden

and they're just baby relationship. remember the one who's the American Revolutionary historian. Cat eventually finds Sally's corpse upstairs. And so she runs out. Aiden gets one of the vampires who is trying to get Kenny to be hers to come and like mind-wipe her and like glamour her into forgetting all that. So that all happened. But we're focusing on Sally, right? Now, Donna does reveal herself to Sally, and Sally tries everything she's got to stop Donna, but it comes down to nothing.

Donna destroys Sally's death spot, which is apparently a thing. And I love this interaction between Donna and Sally at the end of, I believe this is at the end of season three, because it shows the total delusion that Sally is bringing to bear. So I grabbed the script. And so Donna Gilchrist spelled G.I.L. Christ. So Donna says, the one that got away. Sally says, how is this happening? Your presence is very strong in this house. I can feel it.

Now that we're connected, you feel the connection, don't you? Sally, the fire. Donna, I haven't met the likes of you and your friends for in a long, long time. I respect your chutzpah. I really do. and Sally then grabs the poker to swing at Donna because it's made of iron. Donna, honey, stop. So obviously we can't stay here.

Sally, I'm not leaving. Donna, you know how this works better than most. You don't belong on this plane. I'm not going back to limbo. No, you're not. You know what happens when a death spot is destroyed. Like, that's a question. You know what happens when a death spot is destroyed?

Sally, you say we're linked? I'll take you with me. I'll leave you there. I'll shred you. You don't know what I can do. Oh, no, I do. Why do you think I like you so much? And she pushes Sally down the stairway

to reenact her death and then grabs her and pulls her through the death spot down into hell. Oh. Yeah. H.E. double hockey sticks. It looks like it. There's a lot of fire.

There's a lot of like, yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Sally has these self-importance and belief that the thing that she's experienced exactly once, thinking that'll be more than enough to go up against a witch who, as Aiden has figured out, is older than Aiden. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there's what follows is a fair bit of back and forth between Donna and Sally on another plane,

and Sally ultimately gets away from Donna because she finds Donna's death spot and climbs back through that. Okay. It was the woods where Donna was hanged for being a witch, but now it's a super box store, which is pretty funny. Okay. So because Sally's now back on the plane of her friends, she hunts down Aiden and Josh and finds Nora and Aden taking care of Josh. Remember, because Josh is stuck in wolf form now. Right, right. Right, right.

Now, since Josh got his perma wolf status by fighting Donna, that's how he got it, Sally surmises that while that the magic should get him out of it and she eventually finds Donna's spellbook and immediately thinks that she's an expert on all things magic. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, she can't know everything despite acting like it. And so Sally casts a spell and she gets tossed back in time. Remember, this is where she starts time skipping. Every time she casts a spell, she time tops.

And Donna actually confronts Sally and says that, look, every time you cast a spell, you have this witch. is magic in you. Every time you cast a spell, my connection to you strengthens. And because it's because you're using my magic. And so Sally is like, well, fuck, I can't go back to purgatory with Donna, because I think it's purgatory. So Sally ignites the spellbook, and that severs their connection completely. And it sends Donna back to purgatory. And now Sally, somehow, because she set it on fire, she knows every spell that was in the book. Okay But she

Reminds me of like a pro wrestler Who knows how to do every wrestling move But not how to put a match together Okay Like you could do it all But you don't know when and why and where And you don't know which one's not to do You don't know which ones to do you know

So now every time Sally casts a spell She goes back in time And each time she stays for longer And what's interesting here Is that she figures that she's actually able to impact the time that she's tossed back into. Okay. So she's not just a passive observer.

And she figures this out when she goes back, I think, to the 1930s and see, or the 1920s and sees Aden and Henry slaughtering three people in an alley and how evil Aiden is about it. Like he's full on vampire, you know, totally bought into it in the 20s. So this is how Sally figures out. that the house had a fucked up cult thing happen in it and it ends up being the main antagonist for season four. This gives Sally something to hyper fixate on again. She even goes and gets Zoe to help her again,

interrupting Zoe the whole time. This part's hilarious. She gets Zoe to go and talk to the living relatives of the girl who was cult murdered in the house. And Sally's like interrupting her the whole time. And it's again, like if you were talking to me in my my cans right now while I was talking to my son, I would have a hard time keeping my conversation going with my son

when he walks in the door, right? Sally, and she's not even interrupting her with like, ask her this, ask her this. It's more like, oh, well, and then these people fucking murdered her and, like, they haven't said that, had they? You know, it's just like, you are, you need to shut up. So, ultimately that makes it. So Zoe's attempt to help Sally doesn't go anymore. And Zoe says, all right, I'm fucking done.

I want nothing to do with you ever. I helped you once to try to stop you from trying to help everyone else. Because every time you try to help everyone else, you fuck everything up for everyone always. Blunt, but not wrong. Right. And Sally actually takes a second to be sad and reflective on what she said. And then she finds another reason to cast a spell. So, and again, very good intentions based, right?

But every time Sally feels the tether to her own time, getting more and more frayed as she casts these spells, too. So a thing that Sally figures out early on is that she can't use magic while she's in the past. So when she time jumps, she's unable to use magic, but she can possess people in the past. So this is not going to go wrong at all. relapse. So she starts to impact past events.

And eventually Sally time skips to the very night of her own death because she had cast a spell. Basically, she runs into Donna. And Donna's like, I'm done. Let me move on. And please don't ever use my magic again. Can you promise me that? And Sally says, no, I'd like to say I could promise that.

But, you know, I can't. but I will get you out of purgatory. And like there's a real reconciliation between her and Donna. And Donna has reflected and turned into like, like, because she shows Sally how she died and then how she was brought back to life and the sacrifices that people killed other people to bring Donna back. And like, this is what spoiled me and all this kind of stuff.

And like Donna has done, she's done what purgatory is supposed to be for. yeah yeah literally yes and uh and so donna says look i'm i'm ready to be done can you can you get me out of this like use the magic one last time to get me out and because sally's like i i want i really want to help you and don't know's like that sounds great but please don't ever do it again like right and so sally actually uh casts a spell to release dana from purgatory let's donna move on and then she time skips back to her own death sally does um the night of her own death And this time, facing having to witness her own death, which might bring up some feelings, Sally possesses herself.

Okay. And she stands up to Danny and kicks him out. And then Sally goes to the hospital and starts flirting with Aden while he's attending to her because she's got a knock on her head. And this time things go much, much worse despite also going much better. Bridget ends up with Danny, which kills her friendship with Bridget, and then Danny kills Bridget. Because he's going to kill someone.

Sally keeps the house, and she rents it out to Josh and Aden for a while, and it's their best life for a while. But then Sally goes and sees Aiden on a date with Rebecca, and she tells Rebecca that Aden has an STD, Rebecca backs off, doesn't get murdered. Remember, Rebecca is the one whose death kickstarted the whole series. Aiden confronts Sally, he's like, who the fuck are you, and what are you doing?

And Sally tells him everything about the future, and she makes him believe. And she convinces Aiden and Josh to move in, and she tells Josh that she knows what he is, and she makes the kit for him that Ray had taught him originally. in our timeline. Okay. So she's living fully in the past. She's basically living season one over again. Seven months before season one starts, right?

Because she's not dead. She goes and collects everything and, like, creates a better version of it, in finger quotes. Now, she hears that Bridget has died. And then she goes to the funeral. home and gets banned from it because of her groundless and totally based in facts that only she knows having been murdered by Danny in the past of a different timeline accusations. Yeah. And so she's she's very upset.

Aiden comforts her and they have their first kiss. Okay. Now, Sally and Aden know her past and future self, but Josh doesn't. And Sally's trying to recreate everything, but with a different spin because she's alive. and as a result, shit doesn't work exactly the way she wants it to, and remember, she's possessing her own self. Sally tells Aiden that Bishop is going to try to manipulate him back into working with them, and he avoids that.

And then a month later, Sally realizes that Josh went out on the full moon without his change kit. Now, Josh and Nora, she sets them back up. She tells Aiden, like, they're supposed to get married, right? and just like before Josh and Nora are just about to have sex like he's about to mount her they're in the hospital he's trying to go to a hidey hole that kind of thing but Sally interrupts it

and Josh is like oh shit I'm turning right now and she and Josh Sally and Josh run down to the Heidi space that he was going to use he claws Sally across the leg so now she's going to go werewolf Sally who's possessing Sally

is now going to go werewolf Aiden blames Josh for this Sally doesn't and Josh blames himself. So now there's a rift in their friendship. And their trio ends up drifting apart. But Sally and Aiden are falling in love. Josh never quite gets his shit together, just like in the real timeline. And he ends up meeting Ray.

And despite Sally's warnings against Ray, Josh leaves. And Aiden's like, he's going to destroy his life. We should fucking let him. And Sally turns, she turns to Aiden. She's horrified. at Aden's lack of compassion for his best friend because it's not his best friend because Sally has fucked everything up

only by a couple degrees but now we're starting to see the continental divide, right? There ends up being a fight between Ray and Josh and Marcus, you remember Bishop's Flunky, and Aiden and Sally tries to stop it all from happening by keeping Aiden from killing Ray, who then turns around and crushes her skull

in the back of the skull with a pipe. So she's still going to die by a wound to the back of the head. Fate is inevitable. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe you should just accept it the first time through because... Yeah. But at the same time, like, she and Aden were together for a good long while this time, right?

Now, after this, Aden sinks deep into the vampire world. Sally, again a ghost, follows Josh around as he moves from Boston to a quiet little place that makes pies. um, Sally fully avoids the feelings of her interferences and her death and, and disgust, uh, dis, uh,

and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

and, uh, constantly interfering with Josh's life and encouraging him to live his life instead. So she's found another purpose. It's to fix Josh's life. Uh, she's ignoring Aiden now.

He's lost. She still won't deal with any of her own trauma. Um, Josh straight up says, I want to just lay low and fade away into the background of life. And Sally, ever looking out for her own self too, tries like hell to convince Josh to help her by contacting the exorcist who knew Donna. Oh my God. Okay. Eventually, Sally just possesses him and he calls the exorcist.

Her name was Alana, by the way. Calls Alana herself. And then Alana realizes that Josh was possessed and manages to force Sally out of Josh's body. Josh feels totally betrayed Because remember now Sally The body that she possessed her own is dead again So she's a ghost and she possesses her friend right Right

So Josh feels betrayed But also remember what happens to your memories When you get possessed by a ghost Is that you remember some of what they remember And Josh got a taste of what life was like In the other timeline and he wants that timeline better than he wants this one and so he agrees to help Sally find Donna

who Donna had just been released so they had returned to Boston and there's this whole plot about Aden killing Bishop and how they deal with the flu this time around and Aden's worse and worse as a vampire but ultimately Sally and Josh do find Donna and Donna does all that she can to retether Sally to her own timeline

but she says, no guarantee as to when this is going to send you back in your own timeline. So yes, you'll be back on the original timeline, but I don't know how far forward are back, right? It's blind science. Aiden says to Sally, because she does link back up with him and stuff like that. Like they get through that whole plot and he tells her, he says, please make me remember everything that happened between us if you ever get back. Okay. Sally bounces between timelines and witnesses very specific events, including specifically Aiden killing Josh, breaking his neck.

And then as she's bouncing, it's like this montage of like different scenes. Yeah. Like we have seen and then there's like a far flung future one where that happens. You're like, holy shit. And then she finally settles into her own time. And it's literally only one day after witnessing her own brother dying because Robbie was looking to scan. on the house and shit like that and he gets electrocuted by the house so the house killed him this is what led her to trying to get donna's help in the first place but robbie finds his door before donna could help

bring sally back or before donna could help sally bring him back right and that's why sally helped donna go through her own death spot right so now you remember josh and nora were splitting up right right Sally tells Josh everything that happened except for her relationship with Aden and she tells Nora that in the other timeline Aidan basically got her addicted to drugs and used her to find clean blood Okay now you remember how Josh got caged and was made to To turn other folks into wolves

Right Okay this part catches up to that part so Sally and Aiden go to free Josh from the cage Sally possesses wolf after wolf after wolf to help even the odds for Aiden So basically she possesses a guy and stands there and is like hit me. And so he knocks him out. And then she jumps to another. Hit me and knocks him out. Hit me. You know, that kind of thing. So, like, they're getting ready to stake him and she possesses that guy and he, you know, throws the steak, you know, that kind of shit. It's really funny. Now, there's one wolf left and Sally possesses him and plants a huge kiss on Aden, which is not her, but it's her. It's someone else's body. Well, it's the body of like a 400-pound black man. And so you have this like, you know, rotating camera going around this couple that's kissing and it's beautiful. Yeah.

But it's so romantic and it's so funny at the same time. And Aidan says to her after like, it's a good kiss. And then she's like, all right, knock me out. And so he knocks out the guy that she was possessing to kiss him. So she flies out of his body. And then they part ways. And the desire to discuss everything was there. and then Sally went home and fell herself into a coma.

Okay, so I just, I had to show you that scene because. Yeah. Hilarious and romantic is really hard to, to clarify. And yeah. Also, it had to be, it had to be a little bit of a challenge to find an actor who could, who could commit to that. Well, yeah, because that guy was menacing his shit in the fight, too. Like, to be able to, yeah, so that's acting, right? Yeah.

So, so there's a, there's a, so you see their reconciliation and he remembers now, kind of, and he's confused. And they're going to talk, but then she's in a coma. And there's this whole plot with the house and the spirit of the girl who is murdered by the cult. But it honestly doesn't really pertain to this analysis other than to show that yet again, Sally knows one new thing and thinks that means she's all fucking powerful. Right. And as it turns out, she's not. and the evil spirit of the house has each member of the household in their own personal hell. Aden's trying to kill himself.

Sally's faced with doubt. And the malevolent spirit is convinced Aden that Josh led to Sally's destruction and is about to murder Josh by snapping his neck, just like Sally saw before springing back into her own time. Right. And so Sally freezes time because evidently she can do that now. Sally then teleports Josh Nora down to the basement with her to barricade themselves away from Aiden who has gone mad. Okay.

Sally's plan is to knock out Aden and use her spirit to resurrect him, like how Donna was going to do for Robbie before he decided to find his peace and his door. Because Donna was like willing to give up her soul for Robbie, right? So Sally does that and then she disappears. And that, and in doing that, that's what stops Aiden from being a vampire, right? Right, right, right. Right. Sally never dealt with her own issues.

Yeah. Never. Like she came close at the end of season one getting her door. And here's the thing that I think. Going through the door means healing. And while she had done some of the work, she refused to heal. She found three seasons worth of ways to avoid the, pain of healing because healing is painful.

Yeah. Some of it was totally justified. Some of it was totally of her own making. And when Aden dies, he gets his door immediately because he's ready to heal. Because as an addict who's had to do the ruthless inventory of his own failings multiple times, he was capable of being authentic with himself. And the same thing's true with Josh. Right.

And to a lesser seen extent on screen with Nora. But Sally never Four seasons of running from the pain of dealing with healing herself Because she was depressed Now that said She's waiting for Aden inside of his door And the two of them kiss and that ends things for him and her And it's beautiful

And it's it's it's tear motivating But Josh and Nora go on to have two kids They name them Aiden and Sally of course Right They live the quiet good cooking Bucolic close to nature life that Josh always seems to have wanted and that they both have adopted. Aden ultimately beat his addiction. He just did it at the end of his life.

He beat it and then he died, right? Josh and Nora managed their addictions, not letting them interfere with having a good life. Sally escaped her depression by way of suicide. It's ghost suicide, but it's suicide nonetheless. And it was noble and it saved Aidan. but that's her M.O. Okay. Now, during COVID,

someone interviewed all the actors for the 10-year anniversary of the show. I watched the interview, and all the actors all loved the end of the show, and they all loved that the characters got to have a happy ending. And I think that that is, it absolutely is. But Sally didn't have an arc. Sally didn't heal.

She still got a happy ending with Aiden. Like she still was with him for whatever the next step was. Right, right. But depression claimed her. Hmm. That's a sobering thought. So.

On that note, I need another beer. On that note, I'm done. Yeah. Wow. Sometimes you don't get a tidy up like Aiden. Yeah. You don't get a tidy up like Josh and Nora had. Yeah.

You get what appears to be a tidy up, but when you really look at it, Sally never, she just conquered more things. She just beat more stuff, but she never, ever had to look within in a way that that led to actual healing. Yeah. There was, the way you put it is succinct. She didn't have a complete arc. Yeah. or over the course of season one, she kind of did. She approached it.

And then she stopped short of the last leg of it. Yeah. Hmm. Which narratively is interesting to think about on a just a strictly literary kind of low. And ghosts who are on the plane have unfinished business. Yeah. She never got her door. She never got her door.

she was inside of Aden's door. Hmm. She gave herself up for him. Noble sacrifice, sure, but she never got her door. Hmm. So. Yeah. It leads to some interesting questions about the cosmology.

Mm-hmm. But, you know, that doesn't really tie in with the analysis we're doing here. That's just, you know, me getting, you know, narratively obsessive. Yeah. Yeah. I really wish I'd be able to convince my wife to watch this because, holy cow. Have her listen to these episodes. Maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. So, I mean, as far as takeaways, it's really interesting. that we have, you know, Aiden, who is, you know, very, very clearly an avatar for, you know, opioid sex addiction, as, as Whitwer said. Yeah.

And with him saying that, I think that leads credent, that lends credence to the idea that he was acting, he was making acting choices. Oh, yeah. About character based on that, whether that was the conscious intent of the writers or not. what I what I think is interesting is I wonder how much of Sally's arc being incomplete was a choice with with that that level of analysis or that lens being applied to her story and how much of it was was was approaching it from strictly

we have to find a way to tie up loose ends you know kind of kind of thing I think it was even worse than that I think I think the writers and there were many

ultimately she gets a happy ending because she's with the boy I think that they didn't realize that they stepped over authentic character

and And they instead shorted it as like, well, she gets a romantic ending too. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. I think that's what happened personally. That's disappointing. Yeah.

And yeah, that's kind of a letdown. It's one of those you can get real close, you know, but. And again, it felt good to see the two of the, the smile on her. face. Yeah. You know, the warmth of his grin, the, the embrace that they had, the, the radiance that came from it. And then you skip over to Nora and Josh just waking up in a field, calling to their

kids and moving on. It felt wonderful. Right. But it was Sally's, Sally's arc finishing was, yeah, it was, you know, the romance. And also it was the black widow effect It was the sacrifice so that the man can Yeah So which is a bummer

Because I think that there are times where that narratively is really cool But does it always have to be the woman that does that Yeah Does it have to be the only person of color who's a main character Like there's several things going on there that Yeah That's a bummer Yeah but otherwise

Yeah, it's remarkable how that particular triad got characterized in that particular time. Yeah. In that particular time. And I would be interested in seeing what would be different or what would, what themes would wind up being picked up if the same thing. were done again. Like if somebody said, you know what, it's been a decade. Let's reboot

this one. Yeah. I'd be interested in seeing whether the same threads would be picked up or if it would be focused on other stuff. That would be interesting. Because this series took from the British

series that happened, I think, two years or three years prior. And by the way, the ghost in the British version also was a black woman or a woman of color. I believe that the ghost, yeah, that that one was a black British woman. Okay. And the other two fellas were also white. And that went from 08 to 13, and I think there were like 30 plus episodes. And then this one followed the same basic plot lines, beats for the first season, and then wildly diverged.

So if somebody ever wanted to recreate it, number one, I'd be curious to see if it could be done because what what threads are they going to pull on culturally this time? Yeah. Right? But then also, let's assume that they are successful at that. How wildly will they divert or are they going to pull on the nostalgia strands for the diehard watchers from the first time around or from the second time around technically? Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. But interesting. Yeah. So anyway, that was fun. What do you want people to consume? I think I am going to recommend this time, and this is going to be quite a departure. But Carl von Klaus Fitz, the Art of War.

Oh, my God. I was just listening to a podcast that kept referencing him today. Yeah. I'm doing a research paper right now where I'm analyzing the seven years war through the lens of his theory, which his theory wasn't written until going on 70 years after the seven years war. But it is one of the more important works of military theory in the West, in the Western canon. In the east there is Sun Tzu. In the west there is von Klausovitz and a few other people.

Jominy comes to mind, but that's a different thing. Hans Delbrook. That actually is the name of a medieval military story. I know. I know. And as I was doing research. Yes, Abby, Abby someone. I came upon the name Hans Delbrook as I was reading in one of my textbooks for my

coursework this this this uh this quarter essentially that went you're bullshitting me and i looked it up and i went oh my god right and in my head i had to i had to i had to do the scene from yeah frankenstein because if i didn't i wasn't going to be able to get anything else done yeah are you telling me um so um so anyway uh klauswitz what's interesting about Klaus Vets and I think that makes him

very different and and worth reading beyond the kind of stuff that Sun Tsu says is he really gets into the philosophy and the

the the platonic ideal idea of what is war and what is what is absolute war. And when Klaus Witz talks about absolute war, a lot of people who read Klaus Fitts or are exposed to Klaus Fitts thinks he means total war.

And they think he's thinking ahead to the U.S. civil war and Sherman's March to the Sea and thence from there, you know, into the 20th century. And he kind of is, but he's really not. But anyway, it is, it is, it can be very dense, but it's fascinating reading. And I think it's worthwhile to have an understanding of the role of military thought in other politics. Yeah.

So. Bye. Yeah. That's my recommendation this week. What about you? I'm going to recommend people watch Being Human. The American series, it is on Amazon streaming right now. So go watch it

It's great It again I mean obviously there's a labor of love for me But like it really is some phenomenal cinematography and phenomenal acting That you know The directing is pretty good The writing

I gotta say Having people constantly Like having it be the most toxic version of a French farce is It wears on you Yeah But the character work and the character growth is more than enough to make up for it. Okay.

Yeah. So go watch being human. All right. Sounds good. Cool. Where can we be found? We collectively can be found on our website at wabawbubbawbwbwbwbhectorytime.com. And on there, you can go through our archives and find just about any topic you might be interested in to listen to, pick a series and start it off.

we can also be found on the Amazon podcast app, on the Apple podcast app, and on Spotify. And that's where we can be found, wherever you have found us. Please take the time to subscribe and give us the five-star review that you know we deserve. And Mr. Harmony, where can you be found, sir? Let's see. This will come out probably in time that you could probably grab tickets to the January show of Capital Punishment on January 2nd at 9 p.m. Sacramento go to sackcomedy spot.com and click on the calendar grab your tickets $15 for the January 2nd show if you if you miss that one then go to the February 6th show or the March 6th show

hell go to both of them um but bring money for merch come ready to laugh uh the the three of us have just dialed it in and we've got just amazing guests coming up so please come check us out sack comedy spot.com at the comedy spot in Sacramento, 9 p.m. first Friday of every month. Very cool. Yeah. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.