Triple Click - Triple Play: Papers, Please

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason grab their passports and get ready for a trip to Arztotska, the setting of Lucas Pope's brilliant 2013 game Papers, Please, which just came out for phones. They talk about the game's brilliant design, the moral questions it poses, and what it's ultimately trying to say. Who would've thought that being a border inspector could be so fun?One More Thing: Kirk: The RehearsalMaddy: Not Okay (2022)Jason: Long snappersLinks:The famous “Aaron Burr” Milk commercial from 1993: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znGJf1ZKnTUThe Papers, Please theme by Lucas PopeCaitlin Dickenson’s 2022 Atlantic expose on the U.S. child separation policy: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Excuse me. Do you know how fast you were going? Do you know why I pulled you over? Before you enter Triple Click where we bring the games to you, I'm going to need your license and registration. Could you please verify your gamer tag? Because this one doesn't match up with the one we have on file. Actually, I just feel bad for you at this point.

Go ahead and listen. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello. It's us again. Welcome back. Welcome back.

Do you all think about how my last name and Jason's last name rhyme every single time now? Because I do. I do think about it. It's a small curse that has been inflicted on me. It's like when someone tells you to think about your breathing. And then you're like, oh, no, no, I have to think about my breath for the next 30 seconds or so. Wait, now I'm thinking about my breathing. If somebody mentions an earworm of a song and obviously, of course, if I have a song stuck in my head.

I would never, ever curse the listener with that because I'm a kind person and I'm looking out for the listener. I got the songs from six stuck in my head. You guys know the musical six? I do, but I don't know the music very well. Oh, my God. If you want some earworms, God, it's like, oh, my goodness. It's like quintessential pop.

There's a music called six and it's not the same as the musical called nine. That alone is kind of blowing my mind. Six is pretty crazy. I haven't seen it, but my wife did. And so she's been playing the music. and my daughter, my three-year-old daughter loves it. It's basically it's about some king, like King Henry VIII or something like that.

He had six wives. Oh, got it. And the wives all sing. You know, the famous Ann Moline. And it tells the stories of each of the wives, and each of them has a song, and the songs are all pop songs, and they're written by the creators of the musical,

these two brilliant writers and songwriters. And they're all incredible and, like, super catchy and just, like, amazing pop songs. Not all of them, I should say. The ones I've heard are. There might be a few duds in there. Who knows? Yeah, but the ones that I've listened to, like, there's one called Don't Lose Your Head about, well, I won't say that.

That's ridiculous. That's a complete, whatever. Jason refuses to spoil the story of Henry the 8th. Yeah. Who does everybody think maybe could be singing the song, Don't Lose Your Head? Quick clue, she was married to Henry the 8th. Who could it be? Who could it be?

Hey, some people, I mean, I don't know. If you go into Hamilton, you might not want to know that America won the Revolutionary War. Like, you might not. Spoilers, man. Yeah. That's true. Although at the beginning of Hamilton, they actually spoil that he got shot. They spoil the end of it.

Yeah, they do spoil. Well, there was a milk commercial that spoiled that several decades earlier. That's true. The infamous Ironbair milk commercial, yes. That is what the musical is based on. It's just a really long version of that. Oh, wow. I just want to let the listeners know

that we have a further option for them that they could opt into that would support the show if they're so inclined. They could go to maximum fund.org slash join and they could become a member of MaxFunn, which is our lovely podcast network. And if they were to do that for the low, low price of $5 a month,

they would have a warm, fuzzy feeling. That's the most important part, I think. But then also just on top of it. that. Just bonus, frosting on the cake, you get a bonus episode from us every month and other Maxxon shows, even if you don't click the tiki box to support them too. You still get their bonus apps, which I just think is nice. But you get one from us every month. And this coming month, we're going to do a bonus beans talk. It's not a beans cast this time. We're not spilling the beans about something. We're not spoiling something. We're going to just do a beans

talk together about video games from our childhood. Or I guess it's just games from our childhood. If one of you wants to talk about D&D, I think that's permitted. We're each going to talk about the games that like our formative game experiences growing up. Our formative games. Yeah. I'm thinking elementary school. I don't know if we put an age cap on what childhood is defined as, but that was

how I was picturing it. In some ways we were all still children. So true. And in some ways we are not. Also true. So true. true, like legally, for example. But spiritually, we're children.

So maximum and fun.org slash join is the URL that you'd want to go to if you wanted those bonus EPS and fuzzy feelings. But let's get to it, shall we? We are talking about the piece of musical theater called Papers, please. Just kidding. It's a video game. Kirk, I believe you have an intro prepared.

I do. I'm excited for this. This is a triple play of a game from quite a while ago. Yes. And we're going to talk about it. Well, it did just come to mobile phones. Mm-hmm. That's true.

And I played it on my mobile phone. I played the iOS version of it. Brand spanking new, Papers Please. Well, for anyone who doesn't know it, let me do a little preamble here to explain it. Papers Please, a dystopian document thriller, was first released on PC almost 10 years ago in 2013. It was the first solo game by Lucas Pope, the Air. ex-naughty dog designer who would go on to make Return of the Oprah Dinn, among other things, which is a real triple-click fave that we've talked about a lot.

A triple-click pick, you might say? A triple-click pick, even. In Papers, please, players control a nameless border inspector for the fictional, totalitarian eastern block nation of Arsottska in the fall of 1982 in the height of the Cold War. The game is broken into a series of similar days which play out similarly in real time. person after person approaches your bunker-like kiosk. They slide their passport and other relevant papers through the slot. You must investigate their paperwork on your desk and drew them a green stamp for entry or a red stamp for rejection.

You are paid for each person you accurately process and cite it and eventually find for each mistake you make. For example, a person's name on their entry permit might not line up with the name on their passport or their passport might come from a non-existent region of their nation of residence. As the story progresses, your goals and restrictions will change due to the whims of of your leaders and various regional conflicts that often play out within view of your station. One nation may be deemed a terrorist threat necessitating a dehumanizing full-body scan for all of its citizens. Forge documents may begin to circulate with just slightly wrong-looking official seals in the corner. And as time goes on, spies, resistance members, and foreign diplomats will all try to bribe

and otherwise entice you into helping their cause. At the end of each day, you must choose to spend your extremely limited earnings on basic survival needs like heat, food, and medicine for your family, grow cold, sick, and can die if you fail to provide for them. It's a complex, stressful, and singular game. There really hasn't been anything like it since it came out all those years ago, and we thought it'd just be interesting to play it and talk about it. So that's what we did.

So here we are. Pay first please. Let's talk about it. What did you each think getting into this game? So, yeah, this is my first time playing it, actually. I did not play it when it came out. I did play and love, love, love, love, return of the Uber-Dinn. So it was fun revisiting paper or visiting paper plays for the first time and seeing kind of like the bones for some of the things, some of the mechanics and ideas and music that would then go on to be in Obra Dynne.

Music composed by Lucas Pope, we should say. Really great music. Did it all. Music, programming, writing, etc. The UI, like there's a lot of interesting, interesting, even a lot of the graphics of the characters wind up being pretty similar in Obra Dynne, which all makes sense. This feels very much like, Kirk, I really enjoyed your use of the word singular, because this is a very singular experience. It's something unlike any other game, even though it borrows a lot from other games. It certainly is a simulator, for example.

It is a puzzle game in some ways. You are looking at things and comparing them and matching pictures against one another to see what is different. And that's a common mechanic among games and puzzles and kind of magazine activities. but there's really nothing else like it in that it combines the kind of that puzzle aspect of it with the morality and the moral questions that you have to kind of make to yourself. And it leads you down some interesting roads where like mechanically you're like, you know, I know that it doesn't really matter if I let this. The one that I always stood out to that stood out to me in my playthrough was the husband

who came in and his documents were all fine and then his wife comes behind him and is like, please let me in and she clearly does not have the right documents. So if you let her in, you will get a citation. You will get punished. If you don't let her in, then you did your job correctly and you're kind of faced with that moral dilemma. But as far as I know, the game doesn't actually reckon with that as far as giving you any consequences one way or another, other than the citation, getting the citation or not. So at the end of the day, you just have to kind of live with your decision and you're like, well, I let this fictional wife go or let this fictional husband go without his life and screwed over, like split up this family. So yeah, lots of interesting

questions and I just really enjoyed it even though my ending was flat out bullshit. But we can get into that a little bit later. That's life in Arsatska, I think. Maddie, what did you think? Did you play it originally? Or are you playing it for the first time? I don't know that I ever beat it. I think I played it a few times. which is not a weird way to play this game for what it's worth. I think you get the gist after a few days and if you don't want to play an entire month of it, I can't really blame you

because it is grueling. Like you really are doing the job. It's a simulator, but I don't know, can we call it a simulator when you really are comparing every single document that comes across your desk or is that just a recreation digitally, virtually?

And it's grueling. But I've remembered it at the time and played it at the time because in 2013 it was a really big deal. It was like Games Critic Catnip is what I call this kind of game. It's a thinker. It's got a lot going on beneath the surface. It seems very simple at first, but there's, and basically, I almost called it environmental storytelling, but that's not quite the kind of storytelling that there is here because it's not the environment. It's like just extraneous dialogue that people say to you as they're waiting at the desk for you to finish checking them in. And then also some of it is just

the few images that you happen to see, like if people give you posters or flyers or things like that. But it's all so limited that it's kind of amazing that there's a story at all. And there are, I think, 20 endings. There's several different kinds of endings you can get, different ways. You can get fired. You can also die. So yeah, I ended up playing it for six hours. I got one of the endings that happens close to the end of the month. I think I almost made it to the very last day, but the ending I chose is an option that pops up like a couple days before the final, it's like your final performance review that you get on December 31st or whatever the final day is. I didn't make it to that. But yeah, I played for six hours, really enjoyed it, but I also was like,

this is very tedious. And I think if it came out now, it maybe wouldn't have quite the same effect that it did in 2013 when people were so surprised and delighted by the idea of a game having this type of storytelling. And I was too. I was very impressed by it. And I still am. I think it's a formative game that it's inspired a lot of other games since then. Yeah, it's interesting that it's inspired other game developers, I'm sure, just because it's an inspiring kind of creative success, even though I haven't really played that many games like it. There was kind of, I was looking back over what people were saying about this game when it came out. And there were some games around this era.

Like cart life, do you remember that game? Richard Hoffmeyer's game, which was a very, it's very different in a lot of ways, but another sort of job, like that I think people called it an empathy generator. It's sort of about generating empathy with normal people. And this kind, so this had some things in common with games of the era. But then again, playing it now, to me, it feels like a game out of time. It works just as well now as it did then, and it feels just as different now as it did then. there's a lot of different things I think we could talk about something you said, Jason, about the morality of this game.

I think maybe we can start there because this game's morality is really interesting. To me, very successful. I think because it's so ambiguous, it withholds information and doesn't tell you when you're being judged and when you're not. And you can have things happen like, Jason, so you're ending, which I remember. I don't think I got it. The first time I played this game, I guess I should say, I played a lot of it. I think I got the ending that you got also, Maddie, where you like forged documents and get it. out of the country.

I do. Yeah, that's what I did. When you play this game, you can go back to any day that you played and do it again, and it forms this kind of tree. So you don't have to go back to the beginning each time you fail. So you can spend a lot of time, which I did again this time playing it, like kind of fine-tuning and like getting the day right. Some of the stuff is procedurally generated, but some events happen every single time

on a certain day. So once you know what to do, you can start to kind of game in a little bit more and see all the outcomes. So the thing that happened to you, Jason, is where your son gives you, is it your son? Is it your son? He gives you art that you can hang up and then you can just get arrested for it, like on the second place. Well, okay. So the story here is that there's this inspector who comes by your booth every so often to check on you and is essentially your boss. And he comes in and if you have something illicit hanging on your wall, which could be this painting from your son. It could be this banner, this sports banner that you get from one of the dudes who tries to get in.

Anything like that that you have hanging on your wall. The first time he comes in, if he sees it, he's like, you shouldn't have this here. I'm going to give you a penalty for this. And then what he doesn't tell you is that if he comes back and sees it again, he will immediately fire you and you will get a bad ending. So that is what happened to me. Right. So it's kind of the, I think that it really accurately captures the unfair wins of this kind of totalitarian regime

in a way that feels unfair sometimes and kind of unknowable. And I really liked that, especially playing at this time. It had been long enough that I really kind of just forgot how to play it and got just some of the really basic bad endings first. And that example that you cited, which I think is the first time when the game really makes it clear to you that you have some choice in what you're doing, which is when the husband shows up and says my wife is right after me, please let her through. And then she shows up and she doesn't have her papers. And I at least found myself doing that little mental calculation of, well, I haven't gotten any citations today. I know I get two for free. this woman needs to be with her husband, so I'm just going to let her through.

And that is like the kind of tiny act of goodness that you can absolutely imagine some sort of functionary in this position in this kind of situation doing or not doing and not really knowing whether it's going to, you know, cause him to be arrested or killed or something or maybe just no one will even notice. And I really like that ambiguity in the game's morality throughout because it doesn't just gamify it. It doesn't just give you rewards or punishments for things that you do. Sometimes, you just do things and you never really know what the outcome is going to be. Uh-huh. Like, do you decide to go with this like mysterious, shady order that keeps trying

to get you, give you tasks and like gives you notes that you then have to return to them? I want to address something you said Maddie before about a feeling grueling for you. And for some reason, even though often games like this do feel grueling for me, this did not. think there were, and I don't know why. I think I found some, some sort of satisfaction in doing it, like the way that, so what I did was I followed kind of a similar rhythm every single time where I was like, okay, vaccine first, then your entry permit, et cetera, et cetera, then looks to check the matching, make sure the city is matching, et cetera, et cetera, which is sort of. I did the same thing. But it meant that I would get so much more annoyed if I skipped something

by accident. And that would be the thing. Oh, the sound of like, when you get noticed. that you got to find, I get so upset. Yeah. Pavlovian response to that like, like, yeah, but I think that like doing it that way, I don't know,

I took a certain sort of satisfaction in finding those discrepancies or not finding them. And yeah, I don't know. I, I kind of enjoyed that aspect of the game. And I was doing,

I think when I was at my most efficient, I was doing like 10 to 12 of them a day. And it wasn't, I didn't, yeah, I don't know. I don't think I ever was. I feel like you are the answer to my question, which was there's an endless mode. Who is playing the endless mode?

No, I'm not playing the endless mode. People like you, I think. So, okay, so one of the things that drove me to keep playing was I actually wanted to see how the order story would end, which is one of the reasons that I, like, rage, quitted frustration when I got an ending that didn't let me see it. And yes, I could have gotten back to the day before that, but I was just kind of like, no, I'm done. This is, this feels like a fitting ending point. Kind of a good way to end. Just bureaucracy.

see just ending my playfew so I never actually get to see what happens. I don't know that it's satisfying though. That ending. I don't know that any of the endings are ever fully satisfying. They're all kind of sweet. Yeah. Like even if you escape, I don't think can you ever take your whole family with you? I didn't afford to.

I mean, I think maybe if I had really min-maxed it, I could have afforded to take everybody with me. But the problem was that a lot of times I didn't want to do the unethical thing. I really didn't like having to detain people for extra. extra money, for example. There's this plot line where there's another guy who gets... He's a guard. Yeah, he's a guard, and he gets a bonus every time you detain someone, and he's like,

I get the bonus. You don't, but I'll share it with you if you detain more people. And he will keep coming over to you and being like, come on, man, detain more people. We need the money. And I'm like, I know, but this sucks. And I don't want to do this. And that, I agree, Kirk, is one of the most effective parts of the game, is that, you are being punished in the sense that you're deciding every moment what you think will make you

enough income to do well for you and your family. But I always care too much about video game characters and I worry about them when I'm playing a game and I'm like, I don't want the digital people to suffer and I just want them to be okay. Perhaps the worst example of this is the search mechanism that you were describing. Like the fact that the only way to find out if somebody's gender matches their passport is to force them to take naked photos like that i was like i did not remember this being a part of the game in 2013 but damn lucas pope was really out here being like maybe we shouldn't treat trans people like criminals like insofar as i think the game is saying anything i think that's at least one of the things that this game is saying but i thought was pretty prescient

for its time you know i found it really frustrating i kept getting penalized for not not recognizing the gender discrepancy because I would even not be attention to the gender or just like you're supposed to like act on stereotypes or act on physical appearance in a way that is like yeah it's interesting

it's an interesting question and I saw this this conversation come up a lot in return to the Obrids Inn which asks you to make racial stereotypes with some of the characters or at least assume that like this person looks like he's from East like East Asia as opposed to

from Europe and he probably is an Eastern Asian name as opposed to a European name. And so this does the same with gender where it's like, yes, it's making that point, but it's also putting you the player in this position where you have to discriminate based on gender, which is an interesting, certainly thought-provoking position of the year. Or take a penalty if you choose not to. Right, right. But that's my point, is that it's saying that to do the right thing to optimize your progress in this game, you have to do that. I like that, though, because it's a way for the game to point out that sometimes the rules are immoral. And I mean, that is the whole game is like sometimes the rules are immoral, the video game. But hey, it works, you know? It does. Yeah. No, I mean,

you are so constantly dehumanizing the people who you're analyzing in sometimes little ways, just like you look at them naked on a scanner before letting them through and sometimes in, in more overt and clearly cruel ways. And it's just that it's that bureaucratic cruelness. I think it captures that so well. And that gets to the endless mode and how this game is pleasurable to play. I found it that way. I was playing on an iPad, which I never had done. And the iPad version is really good, because it's really well designed and you kind of drag everything around with your fingers. And, you know, it has that nice tactile feeling. The sound effects are really good. The sounds of just papers moving around. The little voices, I want to shout out also. Your guy always just

goes and like makes that one voice. And then they always make the other sound. I'll probably play them play them here in the show just so people can be Pavlovianly triggered when they hear them. But that stuff is also well done and it gets you into this groove where if you just follow the incentives that are in place, you become basically like this cruel, corrupt person who is, you know, just like a small cog in a pretty evil machine. And that I think is something that games are really good at and don't actually do that often. It reminded me, actually, of Sadie Green's game from tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That is exactly what I was thinking as you were talking.

Yep, yep. It makes it. There is a quote-unquote good ending where you can just be a good cop for Rastatska, and you just do everything right, and you try to get a 10 out of 10 of your cop job, and that's it. That's the ending. What's funny is that I'm pretty sure about this, that that initially was the only way to unlock endless mode.

So basically, you had to play the game, like you really, loved playing it and really get good at it. And then it rewards you. I'd be like, okay, you can do it forever. You're beautiful for the rest of your life if you want. That's funny. It's also funny that like the game, even though you're meant to care about your wife and son and mother-in-law and stuff,

they only show up as just literally the word wife and mother. You don't see their pictures. They don't see anything. They're just obligations for you. Like, and you never talk to them. You're spending so much more time at work, which I think is also you're working long hours. You've literally never see your.

family is how I took it. So what's funny about that is that you're asked to care about them, even though there's just these names, whereas the people who are coming to you, you actually see their faces and learn things about them. You see their names. You learn where they're, how well they are, where they're from. And you wind up, I think any normal person playing this or most people playing this, I imagine, would wind up caring more about the people whose, like, faces and details are learning than, like, the one single line that says mother at the end of each day. And that's another funny intersection, I think, between like the world, the storytelling and the systems. Because if you lose your whole family, I forgot about this and my family got sick and I was doing really bad when I first started.

And if they all die, then you just get taken out of your job. You lose your job and you're replaced because, you know, like we can't have people who don't have families working for us. It's basically weird. So it's a fail state. So they are, you do have to keep those scores going somewhat. You have to keep them kind of healthy and, you know, warm. and fed. Right.

And it winds up being this kind of mercenary thing. And then like you say, yeah, you're seeing these people, especially recurring characters. What's the one guy's name? Georgie Costava?

Oh, the one with the forged documents. He has a whole storyline. And I love him. Like, the best is his fake passport with, it's called like monkey standards. I can't remember what it's called.

It's written in crayon. It's like, comic sounds. It's like does not need entry permit. He writes on it. Right. And he's so good-natured about it. You keep denying him and he says, oh, well, I get it.

Got to be serious. Okay, I'll get that next to. So he's the one who clues you into the ending that I took, which is where you emigrate to Oberstan, I think it's called. And I took his passport as my passport. And he's like very good nature. Like at first he's like, hey, you're taking my passport. And I'm like, yeah, you told me that I needed a really good passport to start with so that I can create a forgery. I'm going to take yours.

And he's kind of like, yeah, fair. Fair point. All right. I guess I'm going to have to go get another one. It's like wild. That's interesting that you did that because if you don't do that, he'll just say, take my passport and he'll let you do it. Anyway. Yeah, because I took it without asking or waiting. I just took it. That's hilarious. And you pretty much have to compensate. I was like, I'm desperate and I know he has access to other passports, so I'm not worried about him. But then I took, I think, one other passport from somebody for my son. And then I was like,

I can't keep taking people's passports. I'm so stressed out. And also, by the way, if you do that ending, I think that might be the only way you get to see a picture of your entire family, or did you guys get to see that picture? I don't know. That's right. I did not. Is that at the end? Yeah. 10 years ago or whatever that sounds from me. Well, I just think it's interesting in light of Jason's point, though, about how dehumanize the family is, if you choose them in the end and quote unquote, try to save them and go to another country, which is kind of dubious as to whether that's going to be a better life for you or not. But if you do that, then you do get to see a photo of them at the very end.

As a reward question mark. It's like some of the people in this photo are not. That's like how you get to see the Samas bikini photo at the end of that's right. It's exactly the same. It is kind of similar, actually. Yeah, you finally get to see your hot wife right before you do her to a life in Arsatska without you because you're only, you can only afford to take your son. Obviously different in some ways, too.

I'm going to look this up later because I really want to know how the EZIC, easy I see order ending played out because that's what I was going for and I followed other orders except when they told me to snipe the guy in red. Yes. I knew that would just lead to a game over regardless. And also the woman, I don't know how if you guys followed the whole story, but like there's a woman earlier on who is like, I don't think the man in red is really a threat. And she kind of hints that you don't have to do anything to him. So anyway, it's a really interesting story. you have to poison somebody like you literally murder someone who you wind up doing a lot of yeah I poisoned that guy I did a lot of the Ezek plot line just because I was

interested but also against the country so I was like I guess this is my only way to be a rebel in this scenario but I also was trying to earn money at my cop job so I was I was a morally gray complex character I love it when they give you Ezek gives you like a thousand credits and then And then the government takes it away. Yeah. You get reported by your neighbors, right? Yeah, you get reported by your neighbors. And then what?

It's a whole thing. That's another, man, so one thing this game does so well, I think, is that because it's so simple and it all takes place at this desk, it has all these different endings and these different branches like we're talking about. There's so many. I was looking through them. There are a lot that I'd never seen or didn't know about. And they're amazing.

It's amazing that that's possible because in so many of the kinds of games that we play, there may be some ending. but it's not, you know, most games that are designed to be really elaborate and take place in big, you know, open worlds or whatever. Like, you can't, it's just a lot harder to write that many different kinds of ending. Most of the time it'll be like a slideshow at the end and one slide will be a little different if you made decisions. Right, right, the Witcher 3 thing, right, it gives you a little. The Sweet Codin 2. Well, I was thinking like Mass Effect style or whatever.

Yeah. The Dragon, the Biware RPG style. Right. We're here because it's, you know, just a different kind of game and it's all structured in this, one very tight space, they can do all these little things where you can, you know, they can give you a bad ending just for hanging up your kid's picture, which makes a really fun narrative point and provides, I mean, fun, you know what I mean, like, unenjoyable, a kind of clever, if dark point, that then you can just easily rewind and just go do again and fix. And that's,

it's true across the board for all this kind of stuff. Like there, when you get the money, I love that. Because I really struggle, I mean, I think you're, you just have to struggle with money in this game. And it's such a like powerful and obvious but powerful point about just the role that poverty plays in pushing people into this kind of a situation and into enforcing unjust laws and doing bad things. And then the moment when you suddenly have a thousand credits and you know it's too good to be true and you can burn it, you can choose to burn it or you can just take it. And it's kind of right. It's like day 11 or 12. It's somewhere around there. It's right where you're feeling the heat or the lack of heat, I guess. Your family is feeling the cold because you can't

afford to heat your home. Yeah, I looked it up and apparently if you burn it, they give you 2,000 credits the second day. So they like double down and give you like a double temptation. And I think you have to probably burn it twice in a row if you want the good cop ending. I don't know. I wasn't obviously wasn't track for that. I took the 1K right out. I was like, all right. Maybe these easy guys have a point. Well, I'm desperate and I need to, you know, I need medicine for my family or they're going to die. The game just told me that. So you're kind of pushed into this and then you go through this whole thing where because you've been caught and you're being investigated, there's then this whole storyline that plays out where you have to let through people that

Ezek have told you to let through because if you do, I think if you let at least one of them through, they can get the investigation stopped. But if you stop them both, then the investigation carries on and you lose the game. So it's another situation where you just wind up through these small decisions trapped in one storyline or another storyline because that's how things work. That's how this kind of stuff works. When the stakes are so high, you are constantly making decisions like that. It's really amazing how many of these decisions there are. It has a really beguiling feeling where you never quite know what the outcome is going to be.

It's like when you make one small gamble with a mob and suddenly you're selling them your house and business. Did you guys think it all about while you're playing about how this is set in Soviet-Russia and we're playing it while Russia is bombing Ukraine? It certainly was on my mind because I've been obsessively reading about this war every day and now I'm playing this game that said in basically Soviet-Russia. So yes, it was certainly... It's also purposefully not said in actual Soviet Russia and Lucas Pope has said that.

Yeah, no, it's interesting. It's interesting to look at that, to look at this exploration of quote-unquote Soviet- Russia or Arsotka and how how things could have worked in this theoretical like Eastern European heavily bureaucratic, bureaucratic just like I guess communist country or certainly ruled by Politburo style like government officials and bureaucracy and thinking about how sort of different and also not different things might be today. I don't know. It got me thinking a lot, certainly. Especially with like the newspaper headlines there.

And then suddenly the random dick tots you'd get. Like, today we are banning everyone from the United Federation. So you must reject everybody from the United Federation or whatever else it was. Or like today you must confiscate all the passports from people in this district. Like that sort of thing got me thinking about like, oh, yes, that is totally what Russia might do today. Well, and it also got me thinking about immigration in America. I mean, since I played this game, I've thought a lot more. and learned a lot more about how American immigration works, which is its own whole can of worms and is also

often a very dehumanizing bad. Yeah, talking about separating families. Yeah. Exactly. And so it kind of underlines the way that immigration dehumanizes people in general, like that the fact of immigration, the whole way that a national body has to consider people is not as people at all. It's as a series of, you know, categories basically, which is what you know.

this game is doing and what any immigration official is, you know, doing just according to the laws of their country. Just by putting you in the shoes of someone who has to enforce those laws and making you enforce or not enforce them, it really, I mean, it's a learning game in a sort of way. Like, it really puts you in that place. I think in a way that even, you know, a great article, that recent amazing, super tragic Atlantic article, did other of you read that about the childhood separation policy of the Trump administration? Reading something like that, does give you a lot of insight into how something like that happens. But a game like this does give a specific and unique understanding for just the day-to-day

actions of someone in that position, I think, in a way that nothing else really can. I mean, there's also a whole whole part with a pandemic in the game that I found very weird to play. Because by the time I got to that, I was like, damn, Maddie, you got to question your morals now. you're okay with people checking Vax cards and you don't think that's a police state thing, but this is a game from 2013 where that is positioned along with all these other police state elements and maybe the world is complicated and you have to think about times when paperwork and regulations are necessary in order for people to be safe. Personally, I got a lot of satisfaction out of rejecting people who are like, I don't believe in vaccines.

I was like, goodbye. I'm going to detain you. Yeah. And even the people who are. who were like, I just don't have a vaccine yet. I was like, I have to reject you because you might be sick. And the person who was like, I'm perfectly healthy. I was like, I have no idea if that's true. And I don't know how I would have felt about those lines in 2013, probably pretty different, to be honest. But now I'm like, sorry, you got to go.

I trust no one anymore when it comes to this. Yeah, get your frigging polio shot. Well, the funny thing is they're talking to polio and now polio is back. I don't know. Because of people who didn't get their vaccines. I know. It was wild, but it was also polio, which... Yeah.

Very relevant. Yeah. It's just, it's interesting to play a game that's set in essentially the real world. And while it is set in 1982, is about things that are just real world things. And there's something really fantastical except for the fact that so much of this country's, you know, so much espionage and so much happens at this one border station. But, okay, but you can kind of suspend your disbelief. And compared with so many. games that I play, including

Return of the Obridin even. I mean, it's remarkable to play something so grounded that still manages to be so engrossing. This game sold well, too. I'm honestly kind of surprised that there aren't more games like it. I guess it's a pretty big risk to make a game like this unless

you're working by yourself and just making something because you want to. Yeah, I mean, it's also, and I think so much credit belongs to Lucas Pope the designer, because it's also extremely difficult to make the act of looking at papers fun and yet somehow he does in the same way that he made the act of like going around a ship and just like examining people's deaths like being what is it a claim

suggestor like he he manages i think to do what a lot of designers would not be able to do which is just make these ridiculous concepts into actually fun satisfying experiences that sustain themselves over the long haul and i think that's really really impressive I think the other part of it that people would be too tempted to do now is insert more voice into the game. And it's pretty astounding the extent to which the game doesn't take aside. And I mean, I'm even reading into it by saying, I think this game is saying that sometimes rules are unfair and you should question them. But the fact that you can just play the game completely uncritically, I don't know if I think that's a bad thing because I think that's just part of how this game works. and the game is actually refusing to take that stance

and is instead encouraging the player to investigate the world as presented and draw their own conclusion. But of course, the world itself is constructed to have conclusions in mind. So I don't know, but it's not constantly just chouting at you to do the right thing in the way that it's not moralizing, is basically what I'm trying to say. No, and I'd say that that's essential to how it finds media. because you have to be the one to make the choice.

And in order for it to be a choice, you have to be choosing between two things. It does have to be a viable option to just be a great tool of the state who enforces the laws because, yeah, you can choose to do that or you can totally choose not to do that. And the only way the choice matters is if you give players both options. And yeah, the game does a very good job of just showing you things. And, I mean, it seems clear as a human being when you see a husband being separated from his wife, most people would probably feel bad about that. but you could talk yourself into some...

Yeah, and just being like, this is the law. You could rationalize it in some way. Of course. And it's important, I think, that you're able to do that throughout the game. So I've seen criticism of other games in the past for presenting you with, like, heinous moral options and then not giving you consequences for those actions. In fact, I think one of the most popular games of all time is often criticized for that in GTA 5 in that you can run around killing civilians and then escape the cops and there are no consequences for your actions.

So it's interesting that a game like this, maybe it all comes down to themes or execution or something else. I don't know. But I'm curious as to maybe those same critics who criticize GTA for that reason would also criticize this for a reason and would say, like, actually, no, a game shouldn't allow you to do amoral things without shoving it, like without punishing you for it in some way. I don't know. It's an interesting question. I think the difference is that GTA doesn't also include a plot line where being a good citizen is also really fascinating. has its own gameplay arc. Like, I would say that the good cop version of this game, I don't, I didn't play it that way,

obviously, but it's certainly a way to engage with the game that some people might find entertaining. And then also, the Ezekat line is interesting. Even if you are choosing to reject it every single time, that's always a part of your story. And having to balance your budget, like, those things are part of the game no matter what the moral choices are that you make. And your story is equally compelling either way. So GTA isn't, I don't think, an apt comparison because it's a game where it's actually the most fun to be a criminal and there isn't really any other way to engage with it that makes any sense.

I mean, following traffic patterns in GTA and trying to play it honestly is like a hilarious bit that streamers do. And I always love it when people do that. But like it's not what you're supposed to do in that game. Yeah, there's a significant, like structural narrative difference between GTA and Papersplease because Papers Please is entirely structural. structured around the choices and the narrative that you're playing through, where Grand Theft Auto pretty much has a delineation between just running around the open world and doing whatever and the story that they're telling. And then there's a lot of dissonance and whatever between those two things as well.

But it's two very different experiences. And the experience of playing as Franklin and Trevor or whatever through that story, that's one thing. And you kind of, like the game draws a line between that and then what happens in the open world because it's not giving you consequences to anything that you do in the open world because you know that would be less fun or they've they've decided that's not the kind of game they want to make so that comparison you know it's it's a it's they're pretty different i'd say near in terms of narrative structure just because of that's true also i was thinking about uh the dying light game that

we all played which is also a game where you can choose to either be a good cop or like a badass revolutionary and in either way you have to kind of hang out with some assholes that you might not like very much. I think there's also a third option in that game, but as I recall, none of us really tried. But those were the two main threads in that game. And they're both kind of bad and kind of good options in different ways. But I feel like the other problem with that game is that I remember not thinking either narrative option was that interesting or really had that much to say about the choice you were making. And also power is really flat in that game. Like both options will make you just as leveled up, just as powered up, just as awesome of a dying light parkour guy, either way.

And that equivalency of both sides is something that really irritates me in video games and doesn't happen in papers, please. Like, yes, Ezek exists. They give you a thousand credits right out of the gate. But they're not powerful. They're not your employers. They can't give you citations at the end of every job that you do wrong. They are not like the Arsottska establishment.

that is very much the like terrifying bureaucratic machine that is in power for the entire video game and that is clear throughout. And Isick is just like this little weird terrorist organization that is like, I wouldn't say succeeding. Like it's not it's not a both sidesism. I wouldn't say. It's instead presented as realistically as possible in the sense that you are both pressured to take the $1,000 from them and pressured to enlist in their organization and just

the same way that you're pressured to keep being a good cop so that you can get money the good quote unquote good way. But it's also different because getting money from Isick isn't exactly that viable of an option. Yeah, there's a big difference between the two games that's really interesting and really important. And it's that dying light or a game like that feels like it needs to be fair when they're making it. There has to be some fairness in, you know, how you get rewarded for the choices you make. And that's partly because of the time frame. Like in dying light, commit to one side. I think they've maybe changed this now, but when we played it, you commit to one side and you have to keep going to unlock the really good stuff on that side, so you're super

committed. And so then you're like so far in that you can't even go see what it's like to commit to the other side, where the timing in Papers Please is you can die and then just go back a day and then try it again. It's designed to be kind of broken apart in that way. So it doesn't need to be fair in the same way where it's like, well, whatever you commit to, it needs to be equally good because you're putting 20 hours into this so it better not feel like you picked wrong and you didn't get to do anything fun where if you'd pick the other way you did it's so much shorter time frame that the game can just be unfair in a way that makes it way more interesting and allows for just a ton of variable outcomes because it doesn't have to be

balanced I think that's like a really interesting and important difference plus our satska's unfair it's unfair to live there it is it is does that seem like a pleasant a pleasant place to live. I would not want to live. No, that is underlined. It is not a fair place to live. Yeah, that's why I moved away. But, I mean, for such an unfair place, a lot of people want to emigrate there. I know. I don't imagine what it's like in all those neighboring countries. It can't be great. I mean, I don't know. A lot of people want to come to the United States, and we do things unfairly all the time. So, there you go. That's a good point. That is a good point. Well, this is really an interesting game. I'm so glad that we played it. I was really happy to play it again. And it was fun to talk. about it. So that's papers please. Let's take a break and we'll be back for one more thing.

What happens when you give a bug recreational drugs? What was the first recorded sound? How do we figure out how old the earth is? Let's find out together on our show. Let's learn everything, where we learn anything and everything interesting. My name's Caroline and I studied biodiversity and conservation. My name's Tom and I studied computer science and cognitive blah, that did you? And my name's Ella, and I studied stem cells and regenerative medicine. On our show, we do as much research as you would for a class, but we don't get in trouble for making each other laugh. And we get to say, fuck.

Maybe not in the trailer. Subscribe to Let's Learn Everything every other Thursday on Maximum Fun. Are you ready to binge watch something old? The Greatest Generation is a podcast about Star Trek by a couple of hosts a little bit embarrassed to even have a Star Trek podcast. hosted by me, Ben Harrison. And me, Adam Pranica, we get into the critical, the technical, the science fictional aspects of the show we love, while roasting it and each other at the same time.

We've completed an entire series about Star Trek The Next Generation and another one about Star Trek Deep Space 9. And we've just begun Star Trek Voyager. So now is a great time to start watching a new Star Trek series with us. So subscribe to The Greatest Generation on Maximumfund.org or wherever you get your, podcasts and become a friend of DeSoto today. And we're back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you go first? What's your one more thing? Sure. Mine is a movie called Not Okay. I watched it on Hulu. I don't think it's in

theaters. Have either seen this? No, I know about it, but I haven't seen it. Great. So the premise is that there is a young woman, 20-something woman, played by Zoe Deutsch, and she is a very unlikable character. And I will explain why. She is on Instagram. She's on social media, but she's not very popular and she's not very cool or fun to be around.

And so she decides to invent a writing seminar in France that doesn't exist, but she creates a fake website, kind of slapdash style, and then says she's going to it and takes a bunch of pictures that make it look like she's in France. This is a set in the modern day, by the way.

A 2020 movie set in the modern day. And then there is, in the setting of the movie, a terrorist attack in France at the Arcto Triov, which is where she had just posted a fake photo of herself. And so then she fully commits to the bit for the rest of the movie, pretends that she was there and survived this attack, saw the terrorist before he attacked herself,

is totally traumatized by, it writes a memoir. Except the female character at the center of this story is so much more irritating and terrible as a person that it's very interesting to watch an entire movie about her because almost every other character in the movie is actually quite likable. And I thought that was an interesting writing exercise. I don't know that I liked the movie, but I'm really glad I saw it because it was, again, it felt like a fun writing exercise. And I also really liked this quote from the writer-director, Quinn Shepard, about making the movie. So she wrote it. And when they first screened it to audiences, people were apparently like really alarmed and were like, why is this whole movie about this character? Why have you done this to us? And so she created a joky content warning that plays at the beginning of the movie. And this is what it says. Content warning. This film contains.

flashing lights, themes of trauma, and an unlikable female protagonist, viewer discretion advised. And so I saw that content warning and I started laughing. And Dina, like, hadn't seen it yet because she was still walking in and was like, what are you laughing at? And I was like, oh, you know, it was funny content warning. So this has an unlikeable female protagonist. And we kind of laughed at it. And then honestly, I think it helped me enjoy the movie more. And that is apparently, according to Quinn Shepard, precisely what audiences told her after she added this one sentence to her before it plays. In screenings, people were like, oh, I get it. This whole movie's about someone we're supposed to fucking hate. So you just kind of enjoy it from like a weird hate watch

perspective where you're like, this person isn't redeemable. They're not going to be redeemed. They're not going to get a redemption arc. That's it. You just hate them and you can feel free to hate them and you can like everyone else. It's really weird. I feel like that's so, that's so smart because you're always looking for whenever you watch a movie, or anything. You're always looking for like, okay, what can I, like, what's going to resonate with me about this character? How can I attach to them? And so to be freed like that is, yeah, that's cool. It's kind of incredible, but it feels so weird to watch something like that. And I also, even thinking back on it, and I'm like, should she have been more successful at

the beginning so that watching her takedown would feel better? But like, that's not really what the movie's about. It's not like delight in her takedown. It's just like, this is a regular annoying person. It's weird. I don't know. So I guess I recommend it, but it's very weird to watch. Not okay. So you're saying it's okay. Yeah, I would say that not okay is okay. It's okay. Nice. Jason, what's your one more thing? All right. Well, as you guys might know, much to my

wife's dismay, the NFL is back, which means the return of my NFL stories, which I'm not going to do every week, but once in a while, when there's some incredible tale from the world football to tell, I will bring up an NFL story. So this week, I want to talk about long snappers. One of the things that I like love about football is that so much of it is invisible and yet essential, because every team has 53 people. And that's a lot of people compared to basketball where it's 15 people on a team, and you're only really seeing eight or nine of them on a given night. 53 people

and everyone pays attention to the star quarterback or like the fast wide receivers you guys know who Tom Brady is you guys might know who like Pat Mahomes is but it's often the guys in the trenches who are like winning or losing games there are blockers up front

there are quietly effective cornerbacks in the back field and of course there are long snappers so in case you guys are you guys familiar with a long snapper do you guys know what a long snapper is I mean I can pretty much Do a long snap?

You do a long snap. The longsapper is probably the most underappreciated member of an NFL roster. The long snapper has one job to snap the football, to throw the football back really far. And he only comes on during punts, kickoffs, and extra points. Essentially, whenever there's a kick in the game, you get a long snapper. And I guarantee you that 99% of NFL fans could not name a single long stapper. I can't even tell you who the long snapper is on my favorite team, the Jets, and I know their freaking like seventh round picks they made last year or something.

Like I have no idea the long snapper is. Like when I think about what it would take to do that as well as you would need to do it in the NFL, it seems like an amazing skill. It does. It's an incredible skill. So let's talk about the long snapper. So this weekend, there was a great game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers. And the Bengals, I, along with probably some other people, predicted that because they lost the Super Snobacco,

ball last year, they would come in with a Super Bowl hangover. Basically, the loser of a Super Bowl often under delivers the year afterwards. And of course, that's what happened. The sealers were up big, double digits. Joe Burrell, the Bengals quarterback, threw four picks. But by the end of the game, in the fourth quarter, Joe Burrell started coming back. And he drove all the way into the end zone for this touchdown that seemed like a game-winning touchdown. He throws to Jamar Chase. It is, I believe it was 20 to 14. So the touchdown made a 20. 2020, and all they needed was an extra point to win the game. I think you guys might, you might have a sense.

You might be able to guess what's happened next. What happens next? So the Bengals also, by the way, they have one of the best kickers in the league, probably the second best, if not the best kicker in the league, who essentially got them to help them get to the Super Bowl last year. So he comes out, extra points should be a guaranteed thing. Extra points, you hit them like 80, 85% of the time. Almost always going to hit an extra point.

Comes out, bam, misses. Game goes to overtime. Then in overtime, I won't go all into the details, even though it got pretty crazy towards the end. Bengals are set up to win the game. Kicker comes out. Holly has to do his kick a field goal, win the game. Bam, kick shanks way to the left, like you shanks it. Nowhere near the goalposts.

Why did all those kicks miss? Because earlier in the game, their long snapper, Clark Harris, now I know his name, got injured. And they had no backup. Because no NFL team is a backup long snapper. like that would be a huge waste of a roster spot. So they went to this guy, Mitchell Wilcox, who was this random tight end, and he was able to like do it,

but he wasn't quite as precise as the long-stopper. The timing was a little bit off. And with any NFL play, like timing has to be perfect, especially a kick. Kickers, like, have this rhythm that they go through. And if you're even half a second off, throws them off completely. So because of Mitchell Wilcox,

they lost the game. Steelers won. No long-stopper. Cost them in the game, not once, twice. But you know what? Who out there is going to appreciate the long snapper after this? Well, I'll tell you who. I am. I am. And I just want to say, oh, to the long snapper and to everyone out there, to those of you who are listening, to everyone out there, whose job is

essential, but unknown and invisible and never appreciated. Thanks to you. Long snappers everywhere. The longsnappers of the world. Unite. Wow. Longsnappers of the world unite. Now I'm thinking of, I feel like this has never been done, but now I think they should do, you know, the trick plays they always do in sports movies. There should be a trick play where the long snapper switches places with the quarterback and the quarterback snaps to the long snapper and he takes the ball back behind the line and he turns around and then he long snaps it down the field to a receiver for a touchdown. It feels like the end of like little giants or whatever that

because that's the only one he can throw with such precision is through his legs. So two problems of that. First of all, the quarterback would not be capable of doing it like that. Only two problems. Yeah, only two. Second of all, if he long snapped it down the field, it would be so low that someone would just catch it. No one would see it coming. It would go between their legs. Can you picture the camera like following the ball for everyone's legs? I don't know if you know this, but there's actually no rule.

Also a golden retriever would be there. There's no rule that a dog can't play. That's what I was going to say, Maddie. There's no rule that a dog cannot play. Great minds, Jason. Great minds think alike. It's true. It's true. Anyway, owed to those of you out there with invisible but essential jobs. The long snappers and the golden receivers. Well, my one more thing is a TV show that was Jason's one more thing that now we've all watched. I want to talk about with some spoilers. So this is the rehearsal. This is Nathan Fielder's HBO show, much talked about HBO show that we've all watched. And we're just going to talk about the whole thing. This is the end of the show. So if you want to bail, it's just going to be goodbyes after this. If you haven't watched the show and don't want to hear anything about it.

Though it's kind of not that spoilable, so I don't know. Yeah, that's so weird. Just throwing that out there. Yeah, so I watched this show. Emily and I did. We watched it kind of one episode per night, which I think is a good way to watch it. It would be kind of a more intense experience to watch it, like to kind of marathon it. I marathoned it, so I can.

Yeah, we did three the first night and three the second night, and I don't know that I recommend doing that. Go on. Right, like disassociating from your TV by the end of it. What a wild experience that was. I've never seen a TV show like it. So this was Jason's one more thing to really quickly explain it to anyone who hasn't seen it. This guy, Nathan Fielder, who is the comedian behind Nathan for You, which is a show I didn't watch. Sort of similar vibe where he helps people in generally very weird and unhelpful ways.

And you're never quite sure if he's being serious or not. He has a little bit of like an Andy Kaufman kind of energy or like Sasha Baron Cohen. But it purports to be a reality show. Like, Nathan, for you, purports to be a reality show, but you never really know how real it is. And same with this show. Yeah. So the idea is, at least at first, he's going to help people rehearse for things that they're nervous about. So as Jason explained in the first episode, he's helping a guy rehearsed to explain to his trivia team or his trivia friend, really, that he lied about having a master's degree.

And so that then involves building a whole replica of the bar. and hiring actors to play everybody. And then soon he reveals while he's in the meeting with the guy for the first time to talk about the rehearsal, that he actually built a replica of that guy's apartment so that he could rehearse the meeting to make sure that it's all right. And the whole time you're watching him interact with this supposedly real person, the guy just seems off. Like his energy seems really heightened. Like he's an actor. What Emily said to me when we were watching it at first, he first started talking.

She said, I watch a lot of reality TV. That dude is not a real person. And that's the feeling throughout this show. Then episode two and onward, there's this whole thing with him. And is her name, Angela? Yes. With this woman who wants to practice having a baby, and then he winds up raising the baby with her while he's trying to help other people rehearse.

And it just keeps going. She's come out and done videos, interviews, and stuff, and seems to be a real person. That's the thing. And that's what really threw me is I didn't look up anything about this show until we finished it. And then I was looking, and I saw our former colleague, Gita Jackson, Jackson wrote an article about her for vice, among many other people writing about who these people are, whether they're real. And they are all at least real people, which honestly surprised me. I was convinced that everyone was just totally fake and that the whole thing was fake.

Because there's so many perfect moments, like her mentioning apocalyptic. She's such a maniac. Yeah. And like, oh, and that numerologist guy she's dating. There are so many people who feel like characters and not like people. There's a separate Gita article with that guy and his quotes are incredible, honest. Oh my God. Robin, he is amazing.

He was upset by how he was edited. Which I, iconic, honestly. 10 out of 10 for that guy. That secret. It's just this, it really has the feeling of, speaking of curb your enthusiasm, of one of those shows where someone starts with someone who seems chill and normal. And then over the course of an evening, it just like continually spirals into like. And I think you should leave sketch or something where you're just like, what is happening right now?

And like people are revealing themselves in ways that you couldn't possibly. I totally see Tim Robinson being like, oh, numbers over there. Oh, 66 over there. Right. Right. And then he's like smoking weed and he's driving and he's like, I'm fine to drive. It's no problem. And he doesn't have a license plate.

Their mattresses, mattresses all over his bedroom. Doesn't he say what he's like, you don't have a license plate in your car? He's like, you don't need a license plate. Yeah, you don't need a license plate to drive? Why do you think you need a license plate? So I guess my big takeaway at the end is that I can't figure out where I stand on the show and that's what I find so cool about it. And so... Well, what do you think about the kids, though?

Do you... Because I feel like I... That's where I think the kids are acting. And that's why I wasn't really that disturbed by the children part of that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think they're children and actors because they are children and actors. But I just mean, I think the kid wasn't really calling Nathan Fielder daddy. I just didn't think that was real.

Well, so... Okay, so that's the thing. Like, that's kind of where I'm going, is that I never come down in one place. And that's because I thought it was all actors. Then I learned that they're real people. But then I realized that... it doesn't matter because how is it any more real that Angela acts that way or that that kid acts than like the way a real person on The Bachelor acts or a real person on Survivor or

some other reality show? Like everybody becomes some character version of themselves on one of these shows. And that's maybe one of the, you know, it's not an explicit point, but it's a point that the show kind of makes. Anyways, that was kind of where I wound up is that I kept thinking that I knew, okay, it is real. And I'm like, but it's not real. But it is.

And I think that's the magic of the show is. it's just forever in the in-between. Yeah, I liked it, though. I liked it. We hate watch The Bachelor in our house and The Bachelorette. We couldn't finish this current season because it's too terrible. And that happens from time to time. We check in.

We're like, are we still having fun or do we need to stop? I think that's a good way to engage with reality TV. And the rehearsal feels like it's really made for people who live in that zone. And the way that we talk about The Bachelor when we watch it is, like, Dina will often just refer to people as characters. rather than people. Because they're not. They are. They are in the sense that they're edited to be a certain way.

And the rehearsal is very much about that too. And I liked that aspect of it is just the way that you can either rehearse so much with someone that it no longer matters what really happened. Like a lot of times on The Bachelor, they'll show them in like an approximation of the classroom where like the cute kindergarten teacher works, but it's actually a set. And they just never tell you that. You know what I mean? Like that happens all the time on reality shows.

And the rehearsal just mocks that by being like, okay, we're going to create a version of the apartment you live in and a version of the bar. And we're just going to quickly knock out the scene that way. And it doesn't, it tells a story and the story is the part that ends up mattering to you more than what is real and what is not real. Right. And it kind of, I mean, it's both that the editing presents people as being different versions of themselves, but they themselves also present different versions of themselves. And then, I mean, it does make me think about how we all. present different versions of ourselves all the time. And it really does scale all the way out to that, which sounds silly, you know, and whatever kind of stonery when you put it that way. But it's true. But I liked that part of it. I liked it,

though. It's part of why I was kind of sad that the last three episodes just got really weird. And like, in a way I didn't think that was that fun because I was so into the episode about the guy who like goes to find the treasure with the old man actor. And then at the end, he's crying. And I don't think any of that was real. But I thought it was such a good story. that like he bailed. But the fact that he bailed, though. Oh, he was casually anti-simmitted. Just dropping the J-bombs all over the place.

Well, but Jason, that was more realistic to how he would talk to his brother. And he specified that. So I don't really know why you're taking a shoe with it. But it felt like he, I mean, it was just a scenario where I was like, this is just them telling a story. And the best way to end that story is to have him bail on the show,

if that makes sense. And it's like, it's a good episode of television, but I don't think anybody in it was real. And that's fine. I mean, it's fun that it leaves you wondering. It's fun that it leaves you with this debate over like, who's real, who is and doesn't matter. Like, are there ethical borders being broken? It would be unethical if it weren't real, or if it were or whatever, but who cares?

I think the best encapsulation of the entire series is like at the end when the production assistant is talking to who was it like the mom? One of the moms. It was just like, oh yeah, that guy's. weird. And you're not sure if it's like an actual production assistant, someone being told to say that, like an actor being pretending to be a production assistant. Like the fact that you're just left with that question, I think is really what the series is all about. Don't they recreate that too? When Nathan Fielder's like, I want to pretend to be the mom at the very end and the production assistant comes up to him and is like pointing at the footage of the fake Nathan Fielder being like, isn't he kind of weird? I was just like, I can't with this show anymore. That was around where I was. was like, I'm good on this. And then the ending, the ending where he's like, no, I'm your dad. Yeah, he was like, I'm your dad. Crazy.

Yeah, I kind of hope he doesn't make any more of this specific show, but I'll watch whatever he does. He is. It got renewed for a second. Oh, it did. Yeah. Well, then I'm sure it'll just be completely different. It'll just be something different.

I think it'll be completely new. Yeah, it'll be the same concept of like recreating people's lives, but just totally different themes and people and characters and stories and stuff. Yeah. And as season one showed that premise can mean anything. Yeah, that's true. It will just mean anything. The one, actually, if there was one thing that I found lacking in the show is that I wanted more of like the one-offs, like the first one.

Me too. I would have liked it if that actually had been a straight up reality show, but also still had the joke of Nathan Fields were repeatedly refracting the reflection of whatever was happening over and over. I liked that. I did enjoy, though, that he, like, took the bar with him out to Oregon because he had bought this bar and he had. to keep using it. So they keep doing scenes in that bar. I did like that that could be. Incredible. Also, Alligator lunch. By the way, I used to go there during college. They actually... It's like a real place? Yeah, and they give you pizza like while you drink, which is like an unusual thing. Because a lot of times bars just don't serve food. And we always, we always love that place. It's, it's on 14th Street.

I don't know if it's funny. All the bars in Oregon serve food. It's like a thing. It's like a thing. It's like a lot. So they all have food. It's nice. Well, nowadays. I mean, back when when I was in college, it wasn't quite like it was a little more separated from what I remember. like a lot of bars just enough food. Also, I think the pizza was free with drinks, and that was something special. Oh, I see. And that's what's unusual about it. If I remember quickly, I haven't been there since 2006, probably, but yeah. Well, now there's one out in Oregon, too. Now there is.

A slightly different name. A slightly different name and a different sign. Oh, my God. Okay, well, we've gone long. We can talk about this show forever. It's really good. I really liked it. So that's the rehearsal.

It's on HBO. And that's our show. We did it. We made an episode of Triple Click. Look at us. Or were we just, paid actors hired to create an episode of the booklakes. It's true.

When I rehearsed this earlier with the actors who looked just like you, it went a little bit differently, but I was kind of ready. Yeah, I feel like the way the other actors said bye wasn't quite right, though. So I'm going to nail it when we get to that in a second. Yeah, the guy I hired to play Jason did a pretty good NFL story, though. Yeah. We went through a lot of versions. Maybe you can just slot that in instead of whatever Jason.

Yeah, I buy it. All right. Well, I will see the two of you next week. See ya next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ.

Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpods and email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org.

Comedy and culture. Artist owned, audience supported.