A BIG DITTY

Hey, everybody, Alden Ford here, along with Shane.

Hey, and Seth.

Hello.

This week, we are hard at work on 510, which we're very excited about, and it's going to be a crazy, epic, monstrosity of an episode.

Because of that, we decided to take a little bit more time to sew it up nice and get all that Shane magic in.

I will say, 510 is the product of

six recording sessions and counting.

We can't wait for you to hear it.

So 510 will be coming out in two weeks.

Yep, but we didn't want to leave you hanging for that long without anything in the feed.

We thought we'd do something this week that people have been asking us to do since we started doing the show.

Two things, actually.

One is that we are going to release a completely uncut, unsound designed recording session of one of our recent episodes.

And we thought that there was no better episode to illustrate that than 507,

which is, of course, a little ditty about Jack and Cheyenne starring Chris Grace and Eric Kerson.

I love that that sounds like it's your pet name for it, not the episode title.

It's a little ditty about Jack.

Literal title of this episode.

And after that, the second thing we're going to do is dive deep, for lack of a better phrase, into kind of the process as improvisers and producers, editors, sound designers of how we make the show and some of the decisions and creative processes that we use to bring a show from start to finish.

I personally am very excited about this.

This is something that, like, fans have been asking for.

And just to be clear, for everyone out there, what you're going to be hearing is a tracking session.

This is going to be like what we do in the room.

And in fact, we

almost released a tracking session right before 501 came out, and it was aborted at the last minute because I think the cast is scared.

And I've been wanting to do it for a long time because I think it's interesting.

It's interesting theory.

Fans have said, like, will you release a recording, a raw recording?

And I've said, I don't think you want that.

Like, you know, the reason we edit them so much is that like,

we leave in the really good stuff.

We leave the good stuff and we take out the bad stuff but this one i remember texting you guys while i was editing it saying if we ever release a raw recording i think it should be this one partly just because it was so bonkers yeah and it ended up just because of the technical hurdles of having live accompaniment it ended up kind of by necessity being a little more linear uh than some of our other sessions where we were allowed to get kind of mired down in conversations about canon and how we were going to move the greater plot forward and stuff like that, which is not to say that those tracking sessions might not be interesting for some people to hear, but we felt like this recording session is a nice mix between something that stands on its own as something that you can still listen to and enjoy without editing, while also really illuminating

how much...

the sound design does to turn a really fun recording session into a killer episode.

Yeah.

So without further ado, let's jump in and enjoy, if you dare,

this unedited tracking session for 507.

Oh, and we'll pop back in with some present-day ads.

And stick around afterwards for some more BTS convo from us.

I am rolling.

Jeremy Bed recording.

Chris,

do you have any

scene setting?

Do you have a preference of sort of what the environment is that we're in?

No, I'm just picturing the same thing as the Dharmuk, which is like a desert, just like a weird rocky planet.

Rocky, yeah, perfect.

What does your character look like?

Or what do you want your character to look like?

Had like ridges on his head.

Ridges.

Classic tree.

We can build it as we.

Yeah, yeah, we don't know.

I'm very easy.

I don't.

I can roll with whatever.

Thank you.

All right.

All right.

Oh.

Okay.

Somewhat of a strange environment here.

My mission

to find and reach out to.

Chris, did you have a name for this race of people?

No, but can he be Cheyenne

son of Jack?

Yes, absolutely.

Already great.

Okay, my mission is to reach out to this planet's emissary,

Cheyenne, son of Jack.

Okay, well, should be easy enough.

Just gotta find them.

Um

okay, wow, gosh, these

bodies sweat so much.

This is the worst.

There's a man

no

over there.

There's a man

over

there.

Oh, oh, um,

excuse me.

Um, hello, yes, uh, I'm well, I'm not a man, it's sort of not worth getting into.

Um,

are you Cheyenne, son of Jack?

The chameleon skin of a man inside a machine,

or a machine inside a man.

yes, that's sort of accurate.

I am C53.

Where is that music coming from?

That is.

We greet you

to this third rock from the center of the universe.

I greet you back.

Should I be

is it better if I?

The crying of a bird.

Yes.

An insect on a leaf,

the setting of the three suns

in harmony.

We greet you.

I and I, in return, greet you.

I am C53.

The setting of the three suns.

Okay,

an insect on a leaf.

We greet you.

The setting of the sun.

Okay.

Wow.

I can understand what you're singing to me, but I feel like I'm missing something about these songs.

Let me try one more time.

I am C53.

I've been sent here by the coup.

Oh, my name is Cheyenne.

Cheyenne, Son of Jack.

My name is Cheyenne.

Fantastic.

Son of Jack, step back.

Boy, you're going to have a good time in this little town of mine.

The Wells Fargo trucks are coming.

That's awesome.

Can I hold for just a second?

Allie was here and she dropped.

Is she still here?

She wonder.

She may have heard the music and was like, I'm fucking out of here.

I'm texting her.

I'm letting her know what's happening.

That was so great, Chris.

Oh, man, this is going to be great.

Just I'm wondering, as great as Wells Fargo Wagon is, I think we should pick it up with something just off of that.

We don't have earth-isms.

Yeah,

Knowles Bargo or something like that.

Oh, sure, sure, sure.

My name is Cheyenne, son of Jack.

You better step back.

I said to everyone in the town, the Fells Wargo truck is a coming,

and I know he is up to something

Hi Allie.

Hey Allie

That was great.

Oh my god, I'm so sorry.

I'm here.

This is sounding great.

We miss you.

Yes.

We were just imagining what it would feel like to drop in in the middle of that.

See how I so skillfully picked a different music?

Yes.

Incredible, beautiful.

So enjoyable.

So just to catch you up really quick, we're going to double back and get the intro.

Yes, great.

But

the pitch as it stands now is that the intro will be that we get a call from Nermit that we have to go rescue C-53.

And none of us knew he was even gone.

But it turns out that he's been going on missions without us because he's the lead envoy.

Wow.

And he's down on this planet with Chris's character

who speaks only in

song.

Better him than me.

Yeah.

It will be the

same eventually, I think.

Jeremy, I think I'm going to try to be more enigmatic so you can make more assumptions about what I'm saying as opposed to me.

I feel it's less interesting if I'm just singing dialogue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think that makes good sense.

I mean, all the shit about the burning on the leaf and shit.

I love it, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That, I think, that stuff is amazing.

Again, Ali, we miss you.

It's really nice to be here with other people.

So next time.

Yeah.

Yeah, tell me what shrimp.

entrees did you order?

It was just shrimp.

It was just shrimp.

Just a pile of shrimp.

Just a big old bag of shrimp.

Raw.

Okay.

Also, hi, Eric.

Hi, Chris.

Hi, Ali.

How are you?

Both being here and doing this.

Thanks for having us.

Us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are we?

This is great.

Yeah.

Okay.

So are we able to go back into that scene?

Yeah.

Let's roll and rock.

Oh,

it's interesting.

I can understand the words you're saying, but the meaning is being lost.

Cheyenne, son of Jack, I am C-53.

I'm a lead envoy from the coup.

We're trying to reach out to your civilization, but they...

Why can't we understand you?

What happened to the 54th C?

Why do there have to only be

53 seas?

This rock has got water everywhere.

We've got oceans and rivers and lakes, but only 53 seas

seas

53 seas

is are did you write a song about my name?

Is that or is that what you call me on this planet?

A song is as good as a handshake where I come from

a little island off the 52nd parallel on this rock of mine.

We write a song as a handshake.

We don't shake hands.

You write a song.

We also don't have hands.

You couldn't shake it even if you wanted to, because you don't have hands.

I think I understand on some level.

I feel like that's a...

Yeah, that's good.

That's really funny.

That's really funny.

That's so silly.

Hey, it's us again.

We're back.

Hey, it's us in the present day, not in the recording session.

I know it's confusing when there's no sound design.

As you know, Mission to Zix is entirely unscripted, but one of the very few things we do script on the show is our advertisements.

But this week, since we're behind the scenes, we're not going to script anything, and we're going to do regular out-of-character ad reads.

Shane, now's your shot, man.

You get an ad read this week.

Well, congratulations.

It's not the ad reads that I've been looking forward to.

Oh,

okay.

It was revenge on YouTube.

Oh, no, what?

Why?

Or

the

whole Green Chef.

Green Chef.

Yes.

Listen, Shane, A, Green Chef is not a sponsor this week, so we're legally not allowed to mention their names.

That's actually not true.

But I will say

a company that

almost ended the show, if we're being honest.

Sorry, Shane, we are not ever giving you those sweet Green Chef codes.

But you know what they say?

If you give a man a easy to prepare with low waste, low prep meal plan, you feed him for a day.

But if you give a man extremely high quality XLR cables,

integrate that into his job as an audio engineer and make the money to feed himself for a lifetime.

Wait, do we have a brand new sponsor?

We do.

We have a brand new sponsor that I am excited about.

IO Audio Technologies that sent me a few XLR cables, also known as microphone cables.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we've recorded a few episodes with these new cables.

I'm using one right now.

And I'm not going to lie, the recording session right before that, there was some audio crackling.

I mean, that's actually true.

Yeah.

They came in and not a move too soon.

It's true.

Yeah.

There's also this other element to having a nice XLR cable that I didn't discover until IO Audio Technology sent me these great cables is that it's just nice to have like a thing that you use a lot that's just like a little bit better than everything else.

Do you know what I mean?

Like you get that feeling of like, ooh, this cable is not getting that like kink, you know, and nap in it.

It's got, it's, this one is like braided, but it's a kind of braid that feels like an extra good braided one too, on top of already being a high quality cable.

And when they sent me these cables, they wrote me a letter.

They said,

I'm sad that Mission Zix is ending this season, but I know that whatever you guys do next is going to be just as incredible, which means that they are real.

So that's so nice.

If you are thinking about buying an XLR cable, please go to IOAudio Tech.

That's the letter I, the letter O,

and then audiotech.com/slash Zix,

and buy some good cables.

It will make you feel better.

What a nice thing for a company that makes audio equipment who likes the show to sponsor the show.

That's so great.

Right.

And I think that they have some more ads coming up.

So

some Zix characters are about to be using these XLR cables.

That's what I have to say.

Exactly.

Thank you for supporting the show, IO Audio Tech.

Yeah.

But wait, what's that URL again?

It is a letter I, the letter O,

audiotech.com slash.

If you can't, Seth, if you can't spell audio,

you don't belong in audio tech, I think.

All right, nice knowing you guys.

And with that, let's dive back into this recording sesh, right where we left off.

I don't know why he doesn't have hands.

That they don't have handshakes.

Oh, wait, I found my hands.

If you don't have hands, who's playing the piano?

Oh, that's the secret.

It's coming.

It's coming.

Great.

Fuck it up.

You should actually investigate that at some point, Jeremy.

Okay, I will.

Yeah, yeah.

You guys want to do another one of those?

Yes, Eric?

Is this like even remotely what you envision happening?

Yes, this is exactly what we are doing.

Eric, this is so great.

It's better than perfect.

Should we do another one of these with you two, or should should we try to start folding in the crew?

Just because I feel like we're in a good zone, yeah, maybe we push forward with Chris and I and then do as many as you want.

You feel pretty in the zone with Jeremy, right?

Yeah,

I get it.

Nice.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

All right.

So

your

people use song to communicate.

Everything becomes a song.

Every word that we would have in our language is a song in yours.

I wrote

a song about you.

Now you do too.

Cheyenne, son of Jack.

C53 coming back to this planet after never been

fucked up.

Try it again.

Yeah, there we go.

C53 coming back to this planet after never having been here before.

Is that what you mean when you say everything's a song?

A song is a handshake?

I wrote a song about you.

Now you do that as well.

Yes, of course, Cheyenne, son of Jack.

He's like a child.

He writes songs like a child.

Well, I just don't know that I've done a lot of it before.

Like a child.

A little starling flying through my sky.

Sleep.

I'm actually a droid.

I don't really sleep, but

all of a sudden I'm so drowsy.

We both sleep as I cradle you

Shane of Jack.

I can't stay awake

The cat is in the silver spoon

And the cradle is the moon

Good luck putting this together.

You think this is the hardest episode we've ever read, Dennis?

Yes, no way, man.

Editing itself.

It's beautiful.

Yeah, we had a guest who played Twins once.

That was tough.

Yeah.

Dave Bloveband played Twins.

That was

this is great.

I um,

I, I think the thing that is is missing from this is

what C needs to do.

Like, I think if we have a high-stakes thing you're trying to get, then the obfuscation of the song, like, it gives you more reason to try to communicate with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was trying to think of something and I totally blanked.

No, no, no.

I mean, this is you're juggling eight different knives at once.

It could be a natural resource on this planet?

That's a popular one.

Yeah.

Oh, forget that then.

Artificial resource on this planet?

See, I have in mind that just so fast.

Oh, man.

This guy's not good.

The thing I thought about for my character was maybe there's a note that he can't hear that he used to be able to hear that he wants to be able to.

So maybe it's something related to that.

I don't know.

That's just my internal motivation.

That's funny.

I love that.

I don't know if there's something about harmony, like you needed to find the perfect harmony or someone to harmonize with.

I like that.

That's fun.

Yeah.

I mean, what if Chris's civilization has been destroyed and like harmony is the only, like, that's the thing he can't get anymore because he's the only voice.

Right.

Or maybe that's the way to like regenerate his society is with harmony.

Yeah, reproduce.

Like, he needs to, he just needs, if there's a harmony, he can reproduce and rebuild his society.

Oh, that's great.

So every time

every time there's a harmony, there's another, there's another one that just pops up.

Yeah, so there's like a twin of Chris, and then we have a bunch of Chris's and have have fun getting that.

It'll be fun to populate the world with more singers.

That could get away from us, maybe.

I don't think.

I don't know.

I can't see how that would.

Yeah, I think we're fine.

But I think it could also be if

as soon as we have one chord, it could be...

we see something reappear.

It doesn't need to be a person.

It could be...

Like grass or tree.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, or like a building.

Yeah.

And then one really weird-looking person.

Yeah.

It was a little flat.

Yeah, so

that's good.

I also think maybe

if we add that C-53 knows he's not, like, he can't contact the crew or the coup or whatever.

Maybe there's a little bit...

That raises the stakes for him to be like, I need help getting out of here.

I can just add some lines to that thing at the top where I'm sort of roaming around.

You know?

Yeah.

Right?

Where it's like,

oh, okay.

Koo wants to know why everyone on this planet mysteriously disappeared.

But I'm.

Oh, wow.

I can't even.

Can't contact Bargie or anybody.

There's some kind of interference now that I'm on the surface of this planet.

Looks like it's

up to me.

No pressure.

You know, just something like that.

Yeah, I think that's good.

Yeah, cool.

So should we...

Should we do one more

after C wakes up from his little nap?

Sure.

Yeah.

And I think if

maybe this one ends with some sort of harmony and we and a flower grows or something.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

I'm going to bring you some food.

Oh, sure, yeah.

Wow.

Still not used to sleeping.

Very weird.

Very Very uncomfortable to suddenly regain consciousness.

Oh, right.

Cheyenne, son of Jack.

It's not very musical.

Cheyenne, son of Jack.

Thank you for guarding me as I slept.

The smell of a bison

recently slaughtered.

Oh, that's very bloody.

Thank you, Cheyenne,

for this midday feast.

I thank you for it,

though I need it in the least.

I thank you for it.

I thank you for

it.

Oh my rod, the flowers are growing back all around us.

What is happening here?

Cheyenne, I must ask you:

where does this music come from?

I'm opening up my shirt

like quato.

The music is

sorry.

The music

comes from you

You are the music

The music man

That's what they could call you

if they wanted to give you a name

other than Cheyenne

A song

from my

heart

Literally

a song from my heart

A sentient face

instead of a heart That plays its own music

A song from my heart

A song from his heart

A song from his heart

trees and

why a little path leading who knows where

well Cheyenne, we simply must continue.

I feel like this is probably the part where like we arrive and we're like, the fuck is going on here?

That's really funny.

I love that

Nothing is funnier than musical improv it is the funniest

improv there is Can I can I just pick up a line it's like

I feel like when I was in a frame I would have had the range but

hey everybody it's time for one more ad

right let's do another one yeah this episode as with many episodes this season, is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy.

We've done a lot of ad reads for BetterHelp, and I think actually, not only is it great that they have entrusted us with a bunch of ad reads and helped the show get made and stay afloat, but also I think for a lot of us, the last couple of years have been

ridiculously stressful.

And I think that more and more people are deciding how important therapy is.

And BetterHelp is an easy, accessible, affordable way to get somebody to talk to,

a sounding board for what you're going through, a chance to unload, if you will.

I've been thinking about trying it out really with our Ziksoftware code.

But do you know, this is true.

A funny thing that I think about a lot for myself is like,

how do I set up my microphone situation?

Do you know what I mean?

Because it's going to be like.

You want it to sound too good.

Right.

Like microphone out of frame, but still sound good.

Because I do want that that wow factor of like.

I mean, I think the answer is clearly to have it out of frame until you're saying something really important, and then you bring it in.

Oh, it's up to you.

And then you

scoop it.

But then you talk really quietly.

I like that.

Well, it's funny you bring that up, Seth, because not only does BetterHelp offer, you know, voice chat, text chat, but they also have video chat.

So you can, you can play your power move by bringing your high-quality microphone into frame that any quality therapist will see right through.

And it's it's more affordable than in-person therapy.

So, you, uh, Seth, should see if it's for you or anyone listening to this, really.

Um, but is there a deal?

Uh, yeah, yeah, sure.

Mission to Zix listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash zix.

But how soon

in under 48?

How you can have your first session in under 48 hours at B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com/slash zix.

And truly, we're really grateful to BetterHelp for sponsoring so much of this season.

Yeah, I love that BetterHelp is a sponsor because I think that this is a very big picture behind the scenes thing, but like we try to have the show be positive and sweet at its core.

And it's nice to have a sponsor that is helping people feel better.

So yeah, it's nice to have them be a part of our show this season.

Oh, just on a story note, I also appreciate BetterHelp because it, like, writing BetterHelp ads for characters is such an opportunity to have them be self-aware yeah to have them be just talking about their emotions in a way that that is not so organic in an in a normal scene so that it's truly one of my one of my proudest ads this season is hark being like i think i'm to blame for all of that one's great yeah i love doing that one i think i've i've brought this up myself yeah he's just self-destructive i love that oh yeah yeah

uh that all of the lava pits he's been almost sinking into is like the product of like self-sabotage.

He's like subconscious, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's funny.

Betterhelp.com slash zix.

Well, without further ado, let's get back into this recording sesh.

That's funny.

Could we also get a pickup of like,

Chris, are you imagining that Eric is inside your chest playing a piano?

Yes.

Great.

Can we get that?

Can we get get that?

Can Eric office?

Can you just be the heart?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But I can't sing.

So we can't harmonize with each other or something.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's also something that you could ask me at some point.

Or yeah, maybe that like

just constitutes like masturbation.

Yeah, no, I just meant

Jeremy described CVIT3 describing what it looks like that there's like a, I'm imagining, yeah, like a

Krang or something, right?

Like should I have a Krang voice?

Hey ow!

Hey ow!

Hey guy!

Krang ow!

Oh, because you described it as a face, but it's but it's music.

It's piano noise.

So like, is there a oh, I just imagine it's a little guy, like, yeah, like it's a head with fingers as a little toy piano.

Like an owl,

I play the piano.

It's like, oh,

oh,

hey, what's wrong?

Wait, but what if your body, what if your body is actually a keyboard?

So you're just like playing.

I play that parasite.

Am I like a parasite or something?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Kill me.

Kill me, please.

Kill me.

That's, yeah, yeah.

Can we describe that, Jerry?

I mean, I think if he's playing himself on, like, playing a little keyboard on his body or something, that's really fun.

Do you want me to do this in song or can see?

No, I think it could sort of be to himself.

It's like, dear Rod.

Oh, my Rod.

He's got another entity fused to his chest

who also has a keyboard fused to him.

This got

very...

Jeremy, can you say it looks like a piano tie?

Yeah.

He's got another entity fused to his chest and he's playing what looks like a piano key necktie?

You got it!

Okay.

Glad you're on board.

You don't sing?

No, I don't sing.

I just play my, I play my piano key Thai, and the music comes out of it.

I'm fused.

Not at all.

That I can see.

That's great.

That's great.

Can you guys hear Nessie barking at all?

No.

No, but she's getting a little barky.

Okay.

Okay, great.

Great.

Is there anything in there you guys wanted to pick up or

do again, or should we move on?

Robbie.

Robert Doggy Jr.

Totally fine if you don't want to do this.

Should we get a retake of Jeremy's first song

when Cheyenne asks him to sing about him?

Because the game of that was kind of end up being that.

C553 just didn't really sing and he called him a child, which works, but I wonder if we want a version, if there's a little more meat to that song.

Yeah, sure.

Eric, do you remember that song?

Not even remotely.

I think it could be a new, it could be new.

It could be a new song.

Yeah, it could be new.

Okay, great.

If we want to just maybe take it from

Chris's line about ask demanding that he sing about him.

Yeah, we don't need to pick that up again, but we could just start from him.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm looking at a man,

He's got no hands.

He's looking at me like he wants me to sing him a song.

So I'm singing him a song.

I hope it won't be too long before this man says,

not a bad job on that song.

I was trying to sing the worst song I could think of.

That's really funny.

That was great.

That's great.

Thank you.

That's really funny.

Cool.

That feels good to me.

That terrible song feels good to me.

I guess we should maybe start folding in the crew.

Yeah.

Wince is just

chomping in the background.

You've got shrimp back here?

So

I do think

it's going to be such a shame not to have Nermit on this mission.

We need to figure out a way to get you down there.

I think it'll be funnier if he's never allowed to sing.

It's like so brutal.

Yeah, he can't.

No, but Nermit and Nermit.

He does need me.

You need me.

Nermit, the secret was harmony.

We had to do harmonies, though, down there.

What's that as well?

Nermit is also like, he has an alter ego, Bermud Nundaloy, who's a singer, but he's bad.

So he would want to do this so badly, but it is funny if he's denied.

I don't know.

Sorry, I just feel like the most comedic decision is for him to be able to do it.

I'm not the same thing at all.

He was like, he can't go.

But maybe it could be that he calls in and he so he can feel the pain in real time and doesn't, or even, or the third act is that we're like, Yeah, the mission's over, and you're like, But I'm still ready.

You're like, No, it's like, Yeah, we're kind of sort of done, we're kind of sung out, you know, we don't want to do it anymore.

Maybe we call in the middle of

singer again.

It's like, What's going on down there?

And we sing something, yeah, like you guys are singing, yeah.

Hold on, hold on, are you right there?

Exactly, exactly.

Like, he can be tortured in real time.

So, um,

the most pain inflicted is what we want,

Yeah,

sure.

So

great, quick act.

So yeah,

let's do the act one.

Hey,

hey, Dar,

Captain Dar, Papa?

Yeah, what is it?

I'm not the captain anymore, but I'll respond.

Oh, right, right.

You're not.

Yeah, because C-50...

Mr.

Robot Man is now lead envoy, but I still call you Captain.

Is that alright?

Or?

Yeah,

salt, salt, and an open wound, but fine.

Yeah, I mean, I just kind of wish things were kind of back I mean I guess everything's fine and we're sort of going on missions, but I miss Zix.

Am I crazy?

Yeah, AJ, we all miss Zix, but I think we sort of established we're lifetimes away from the Zick squadron.

I think we just got to make the best of what we've got, you know?

I'm having a great time.

Oh Bargie.

What?

Yeah.

Turns out I'm the only ship here who can talk, so people are very interested in talking to me.

I have seven interviewers lined up outside.

Oh, what?

Interviewers?

Yeah.

Lined up outside.

Yeah, the outside.

They're in their non-sentient ships.

Oh, yeah, I can see them outside the window.

Even the loudspeakers asking me very personal questions.

Very interesting.

Lots of lights going off for photography.

You guys are in the photos.

I didn't tell you.

But your image will be used.

Okay.

That's fine.

I guess.

I mean, I basically don't have an identity in this new galaxy, so.

Yeah, I thought that would be fun, too.

Yeah, I thought that would be fun to have blank slates and just be like, yeah, we can do whatever, you know?

Like.

Yeah, I thought it would be great to have blank slates, you know, being in this new world and to be like, I'll do whatever.

Is she talking to me or to the interviewer?

She's just saying what you just said.

Oh, wow.

I just miss Zix.

I don't know.

I mean, the missions here are fine, but everything's a little too clean and everything's a little too nice, you know?

Well, you know, AJ,

I get what you're saying.

Thank you, Captain.

Sorry, Envoy Dar.

Can you move the crew away from the window for these photos, please?

Do you want to say hi?

This shoot is about how the spaceship is alive, and if we see these ugly people in the window,

okay.

Yeah, I can just bounce them to another direction.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, perfect.

But Bargie, not me.

Surely not me.

They said the ugly.

Thank you.

No, no, no.

Oh, Don.

See, you're still by the window.

Beep, boop, beep, beep, boop, beep.

Wait, wait.

Where's...

Beep, boop, beep.

Where's Robot Man?

Yeah, see, are you going to get that?

Robot Man!

Yeah, Robot Man!

AJ, relax.

Relax.

He's...

Robot Man!

Hey, AJ, he doesn't need...

He's around here somewhere.

He'll answer if he's calling the call.

Yeah, where is he, though?

AJ, the shit.

Normally when we do these missions, he's...

Robot!

AJ, how does your

helmet speaker even get that loud?

How is that possible?

Sometimes when I have to do crowd control, I'm at its own crowd control setting.

Okay, okay.

Normally it's like, you know,

obey us.

Right.

Surrender your will to us.

Yeah.

Or no one gets heard.

It's going to go to voicemail if no one gets that.

I feel.

It's like.

Yeah, he's got the whole thing where he says nerve.

It's title.

And honestly, if I answered it, it just feels like I'm trying to reclaim something that I don't even know that I liked in the first place.

Is that all I have?

Robot Matt!

Can we hear Bargy's voicemail message?

Beep.

Hello.

Hi, yes, this is Bargy's voicemail, the Bajerian J-Harlo, Starship of the Stars.

I'm currently lost in space, so I cannot answer your phone call.

Jack, if this is you,

don't be a coward.

You know what you did.

Chris's character's name, Jack.

We should have a different name for son of Jack.

Wow.

Son of Jack.

Delone, if this is you,

don't be a coward.

Do something.

Okay?

All right.

Bargie out.

Oh, wow.

Hey, everyone.

It's Nermit.

Haven't.

I guess someone's always picked up the call.

Robot!

Didn't know.

You know,

Bargie, can you actually pick up the call?

I guess call me

back if you get this or Ella?

If you don't mind, I have to do my job now because I am a sentient spaceship.

Oh, thank you.

I don't need applause.

Thank you.

I know.

I know.

I am.

Hello.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm going to going back to my job.

Check one.

Hello.

They love me so much.

Oh, hey, Nerman.

Oh, hey.

Thank you, Bargie.

It's happy.

Hey, sorry, we didn't pick up the...

We thought C-53 was going to pick it up, so

he's not there.

Oh, is he back with you?

No, he's.

Well, that's kind of the thing is he's

on a mission.

What?

Wait, we're not on a mission.

What?

We're waiting for a mission.

Right.

I'll give you a mission momentarily, and that mission is related to the solo mission that C-53 went on.

What solo mission?

Wait!

What are you talking about?

Hold on.

What?

No, Dar, stop.

You're squeezing my arm hard.

There's just so much change, you know?

I just, I don't understand.

Yeah.

Where is C-53, Hermit?

Well, you're going to find out because your mission is going to be to rescue him.

But he, as lead envoy, he sometimes.

Hermit!

Yes.

Nermit, we're a crew.

We're a team.

What is going on?

If C-53 is in danger, it's probably because we weren't with him.

He might still be on the ship.

Robin!

AJ!

No, I can't.

My ears cannot handle any more of that.

How long has this been going on?

This particular mission?

Let's see.

He left.

No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

So many of these solo missions has C53 gone.

He just left.

Yeah, why did he just walk away?

He left the phone.

Mermit, get back on screen.

Get back on the screen.

Let her back.

Mermit, get back on screen and quit being a coward.

Okay.

So he has gone on six of these.

They've all gone well.

Six?

Yes, he's gone on six solo missions.

We haven't even gone on six team missions.

Oh, I figured we're kind of.

Is that too many?

No, no, no, no, it's too many.

I'm going to say it should be more.

Yeah.

That's way too many.

Yeah.

We've only been here for a couple weeks.

Well, he goes.

I mean,

you guys are.

When you guys are chilling out or whatever, he's lead envoy.

Lead envoy.

Lead envoy.

Chilling out?

Do you mean like when we're asleep?

Yeah.

Chilling.

Yeah, I mean,

we need our downtime.

I mean, you can't just always.

Nermit.

Yes.

C-53 is in trouble.

What is happen?

Where did he go?

We need to save him.

Okay, well, you're obsessed.

You guys are so obsessed with

going on missions.

He has a manager something with him when he does these missions?

He has any muscle?

Oh, that's a good question.

Does he get weapons?

Does he get weapons?

No.

He doesn't.

No, these are diplomatic missions.

Oh, these are based.

That's like not a mission then.

If there's not guns, it's not a mission.

What?

Nermit.

Yes.

Where is C53?

Okay, C53 has.

Chris, does this did you have a name, planet name?

Oh, no, just pick something.

What is the one in...

Should we play off the Star Trek one?

Is that a planet?

Oh, what is the name of that planet?

Oh, could actually the name of this planet just be the NBC ringtone?

Like, ping, bing, ping, ping.

I think that tips it.

I think that tips it.

Why don't you call it Miranda?

Miranda?

Love it.

I think we might have had Miranda.

The Planet Miranda.

But did you have one called Lynn Manuel Miranda?

Well,

if you wanted to do NBC, I think it's G-A-C or the notes, so it could be Planet GAC.

Planet Bing, Bing, Bing.

G-A-C?

I thought it was G-A C.

Planet GAC.

G-AC3.

I don't know.

Are there other

planet in the episode is L.G.

G-Zell?

What is it?

G-E CA?

El Adrell?

Oh, right, because it's the GE Corporation.

GEC?

Wow, really?

Was it always?

No,

it wasn't always opened by GE.

Sorry, it could be any series of chords.

I think GEC3 because Chris said that it's a third planet in the system.

Yeah, yeah.

Cool.

So C-53 was sent on a solo mission to GEC2, GEC3, or sorry, GEC3.

No, it was C-53.

Now you know that?

You just literally yelled, Robot Mint, don't do it.

GEC3, that barely sounds like a planet.

I mean, is there a civilization there?

Well, it's funny you should ask.

There was.

So the only one there now is Cheyenne, son of Jack, who C53 was sent to

make contact with to figure out

why everyone else is missing.

I mean, dar.

Cleck, you're asking all the wrong questions.

I want to know what makes C53 better

than all of us.

No, no, Dar, we're a team.

He has a cube with sentient.

Because he sweats now?

Is that because I don't think it's a deficit?

Nermit, I just want to recap.

Sure.

You sent

C53

on his own

to a planet

where the only thing we know about it is that people have disappeared from it.

Right.

Because

you think

he's better than us.

Well, sure, that's sort of beside the point.

Yeah, that's great.

And now you're surprised that he's gone and you want us to go help find him.

He was gone.

I'm calling to tell you he's gone.

Maybe you should just find another C-53 to go on a solo mission to save him.

There are none others.

We would have.

Dar.

We're not even your first choice for saving him.

Yeah, you had a

hypothetical.

You tried to send another team to save C-53?

I did.

see, now you're asking the right questions, Pleck.

Okay, a couple.

There were some them that were maybe going to go and they weren't available, but you guys are currently the number one choice.

Okay, all right, we're number one.

Let's do this.

If you guys are, okay, if you all are so obsessed with togetherness

and being together as a crew with C53, well, great.

Your mission is to rescue him.

Oh,

I don't like this.

I don't like this, Nermit.

We're going to go save him, but it's because we're his best friends and we're the best crew, not because it's our mission.

Hey, here's a question.

When we get down there, should we like call for him or something?

No, I think we could just look with our eyes first.

We don't need to see how that goes.

Does it say anything?

Nah.

We clearly don't need to scream anything.

All right.

All right.

Dermot, send us the coordinates, and then I want you to go sit in the corner of that big old office building and have a think about

being better.

How you treated us today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, here are the coordinates, and I'm going to sit in exactly the center of this giant office.

Okay.

No corners for this lyric.

Okay.

This feels like a good setup also for the fact that we don't invite Nermit to sing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think so like season one nermit.

It was.

Yeah, you're real.

Yeah, real.

I'm trying to like, yeah.

I like it, though.

Okay.

Great.

I think that's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

Surgical.

Thanks, guys, for indulging us on that.

Yeah.

It's all good.

Alright, so

now do we arrive on the scene or?

Sure.

This is GEC3?

I mean, there's nothing on this planet.

Yeah.

Do you want me to shout?

No.

Okay.

Can we just wait?

Just wait and see what happens.

I mean, who knows?

AG, for all we know, C-53 might be in trouble.

We might not want to give our position away.

Huh.

So this is where he goes to be alone.

I don't think so.

Dar,

I think C-53 might be in real trouble.

We need to help him.

Do you guys hear that?

It's kind of like a

blilting, kind of delicate melody.

I do.

A little kind of.

Is it coming from that little oasis over there?

I don't know.

In my training, we would call this a vamp.

But I'm not sure.

What training?

What training would you?

Well, in tactical footwork and

when I was in Clint Sink, we would call this a vamp.

Yeah.

When you were in the camp.

I served a tour of duty with Clint Sink.

Oh, okay, yeah.

I think that's just a regular tour.

I think you toured with them.

Yeah, we called it a tour of duty.

Are you both just going to talk over the vamp or what?

Well, that's what you do.

You talk over a vamp.

Yeah.

You sort of lay out what's going on.

Exactly.

It's like there's the oasis.

You should follow it.

Can you

pebbles

in the sun?

What's that?

Two pebbles

in the water.

The rings

echoing out

to the edge of the pond

by the two pebbles

bonded forever

and life

blooms all around them

Those two pebbles surrounded by green by life

A lush verdant wave of life

C53

oh that was

oh uh can we can we have that song end with you guys hitting a harmony note in one more time

and with that life again yeah

A lush wave of life.

Can we do one more run at that?

A lush verdant wave of love.

Whoa.

C53.

When you hit that last note, a palm tree just popped out of the ground.

Also, it was just artistry.

It was just very

brought us into the song.

I mean, I've never seen C-53 sing like that before.

Why are you hiding that from us?

Why are you hiding that from us?

It really hurts when you squeeze it that hard.

Ah!

Strangers at the barricade!

Strangers at

the barricade!

Oh no!

Strangers at the barricade!

Who are they?

Who are they?

Cheyenne,

be not afraid of these strangers at the barricade.

These are my friends,

and they have come to help you and I.

Listen, the alien doesn't have hands, so I feel like I could take him.

No,

I don't think it's that.

C-53.

Is everything okay?

What happened here?

Yes,

Envoy Dexter,

this is Cheyenne, son of Jack.

But maybe I should put it a little differently.

What?

Why would you just explain?

Wait, why

tell us two pebbles

soaking up the sun?

The sun.

Two pebbles,

laughing, having fun.

Papa, is this real?

Have you ever seen him do this before?

What?

They only want more,

but now there aren't two pebbles, cause here are four more.

Was this right first?

Yeah, it feels right.

Six pebbles in the sun,

and there'll be many more pebbles before we're done.

Wow,

and this pebble looks like

this pebble used to be in charge, but is no longer in charge.

Wow,

he mailed you, Dar.

I think it's just a little bit more.

And this pebble

is thinking of days gone by

when he used to

sing with other guys.

Maybe that's me, I think.

Are you guys gonna do one about me?

It's a pebble, or

there's also another pebble.

Oh, come on!

That looks like any old pebble.

What?

Sort of a generic-looking pebble.

Oh.

Oh, yeah, they're really nailing you.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And the fourth one would have to be Barchester.

Yeah, the fourth one, yeah.

and a giant pebble

way up in the sky what

bargie i'm patching you in are you hearing this what what is this sound i don't like it no bargie it's music it's it's music c53 has discovered a a a society that communicates solely through song Yeah, it's like, honestly, really well-choreographed dance.

Again, did you guys rehearse this?

Or did you all rehearse this before?

Or

Dar, I think it's something about the planet itself.

It just, I don't know, it feels right on this planet.

Oh, and.

Where's the music coming from?

Oh,

ow.

Ow.

All right.

Okay.

Let's.

Ow.

Okay, everyone.

Get it out.

All right.

It's fused.

It's fused.

Fused?

It's not how it's going to get.

It has keyboards fused on it.

And it's like a double fuse.

It's two fused.

And it looks like a cheesy necktie.

It looks like a necktie.

Hey.

Hey.

Come on.

Don't kick a fused thing while it's fused.

Don't kick a fused thing while it's fused.

That's what my mama said to me

when I was born.

Don't kick a fused thing.

Are you going to ignore that it was fused?

I am Cheyenne, son of Jack.

Sorry to interject.

Is Eric Jack?

Is it too much?

Sure.

That's very weird.

Maybe not.

Maybe we can reveal that later.

So maybe now the next thing is that

in order to

grow the planet, we need to participate, right?

Right, right.

The harmony is the way.

This is a great chance for a story song where we tell the history of the planet and let Chris and Eric kind of figure out like the history of this planet.

And if they are the two species that got fused or that's just normal.

I think we should do that.

Yeah.

I said before I don't.

I said before I don't sing, but can that be like edited out if that negates?

No, no, no.

I think if the key to growing the society back is harmony, you can talk, but you just don't.

You're like, no, I don't, I don't, not interested or something like that.

Like, it had to be someone to come in and sing with him to start everything back up again.

Yeah.

Or it could be like, I don't anymore.

Yeah.

Because of what happened.

Not after what happened.

After the inside.

Not after what happened.

Not after the inside.

Save it for the improv.

All right, guys.

Okay, great.

All right.

C53, this is amazing.

How did you...

I guess.

It's certainly an extremely unique planet.

I don't think I've ever encountered anything quite like it.

What happened here?

Did you find out what happened to all of the rest of the people on the planet?

I wish I could say that I did.

Why is he doing this?

But I think the past of this planet is still hid.

Hidden?

And only Cheyenne has the key

to relate the history to you and me.

Well,

if you want to hear the story about GEC

listen to a story told by me I'm gonna tell you a little bit of rap

and how rap works on this planet

yeah here's the history

you heard it never be a mystery what and here's one thing about rhyme

I like to do it all the time

okay it makes sense

What's your name?

It's the history rap.

It's the history rap.

Oh, so he can rap, but he can't.

Let me tell you something about the way that rap works on this planet.

You don't have to think it up.

You got to just plan it.

And the only way that things rhyme is you say the word rap at the end of every line, and that's what things mean when they rhyme.

Rap.

Rap.

A long time ago, there were millions of people on this planet.

Rap.

And you know, someone came and killed everyone except me, rap,

except for me and my dad, who's in my body now, rap rap.

That's right, and reveal plays piano on what was formerly a necktie.

I'm Jack.

That's the reveal.

That's Jack, what, Twist?

That's too close.

Wait,

too close.

No,

hey, what's your name, man?

I'm Jack.

Wait, you're Jack?

I'm Jack.

This is my son.

As in

father of, son of Jack?

She's son of Jack?

Yes.

Yes.

The reveal has been revealed.

I mean, and that's the history of rap.

And that's the history of rap.

That's...

Wait, that's a history of rap.

No, that's a history of rap.

I thought it was the history of the planet.

It's a history, rap.

Oh, it's a history of rap.

It's the history of rap.

It's the history of our planet, rap.

Okay, so history of

rap, rap.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I guess I just need to see the

album cover to really figure out.

I mean, everybody's saying it's great, but I'm not sure it is.

Like, I don't quite follow it.

Sorry, that doesn't matter.

We could do it again for you.

Do you want us to do the history of rap?

We can do it.

That was a Hamilton burn.

I don't know.

Never mind.

Great.

That was fun.

Yeah, Jack Cheyenne, Cheyenne, that's terrible what happened to your planet.

I'm so sorry.

But

things are growing back.

How are things growing back?

It's harmony.

Harmony's the end.

I can talk.

That's where we've.

Wait, harmony.

What do you mean?

that is unison.

That's unison.

Okay.

Oh, no, some of the trees are going back.

No, no, no.

No!

No, no.

Wait, harmony.

Yeah, I was trained in harmony.

You trained in harmony?

Yeah.

You took singing lessons.

No, I was trained in harmony.

I was trained in tactical footwork, harmony, and smoldering looks.

That's yeah, I don't know, but what do you think about this?

Oh, wow.

Was it real smolder?

Clint sink!

It's a new galaxy, you wouldn't have heard of a fight.

I wish you could have, though.

I wish you could have.

I mean,

I don't know.

I think that's

a good idea.

Sorry, I can note that, but like, AJ knows tactical footwork in harmony.

And smoldering looks like that.

But then when he does harmony, then something grows.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

What just grew?

Oh, an animal appeared.

Whoa, like a bush and an animal appeared just now.

This field is starting to grow.

Harmony grows things on this planet?

Yeah,

you can't destroy.

Wait, sorry, what?

Long time ago.

Oh, he's still singing, it's still song.

A god came down,

made us sing the same note,

no harmony,

unison,

murdered my family.

Oh, I think this actually happened, okay.

Except my father

was Who's the guy in the piano, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Ballad.

Oh, oh, you gotta say it with every genre.

Great.

Okay, yeah, good.

Okay.

Yep.

Sure.

Do we...

Is it okay to have God in this galaxy?

Or should we?

He said a god.

He was a god.

He was like a.

He was the guy that eats planets.

A galactus.

Galactus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That works.

Yeah.

I think it's okay.

What do you think?

I think it's okay.

Deity.

Do you want to pick it up with the deity?

We've got a whole thing about calling God Rod in our unit, but it is also the other galaxy.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, let's get it all with just with deity or something else.

Or powerful.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, whatever you want.

A long time ago,

there were millions of my family on GEC.

Yes, sir.

Or priest.

Then the powerful.

Did he say millions?

Yeah, yeah.

Came and made us sing the same note,

and we died without our harmony.

Ballad.

How did they make you sing the same note?

Like they controlled you or they asked you or

you're asking you're asking Cheyenne to relive a genocide on this planet for the sake of getting details.

That doesn't really

music.

Okay.

Well, yeah.

See, it was a simple answer.

You know, honestly, I just feel like everyone's been asking the wrong question.

Well, Dar, what question would you ask?

How they got fused together.

No, no, but ask it in their language.

I thought, wouldn't you ask also why C's on a mission?

Oh, yeah, no, you're right, actually.

That's much more accurate.

Sorry.

It's um, yeah, I have a question.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

You can wrap it.

It's for you, see.

Hmm.

Do you need help learning to sing?

What's wrong?

I can help you.

I can help you.

I can help you.

Hold on a second.

I have a question for Cheyenne, son of Jack, And Jack,

if Harmony,

father of Cheyenne, if Harmony

rebuilds your planet, why can't you just sing Harmony?

There's two of you.

I can't.

Always the same note.

We

can't

because of our genetics.

Oh, and the fact that we're fused, we can no longer

harm

different notes.

Oh, that's a shame.

And

because we were in unison,

the plants just went down.

We just killed them on land at all.

These crops immediately withered.

Dar,

do you want me to ask the question to C on your behalf?

Yeah, that would be incredibly helpful.

Actually, what is it?

What's the question?

Can I like feed it to you line by line?

Yeah, you can feed it to me line by line.

Well, I really want to ask C.

Oh, what I really want to know.

Oh, what I really want to know

is this.

Why'd you have to go?

What am I going to rhyme?

Oh, oh, got it.

Oh, why do you just have to go?

Why do you just have to go

and do it all alone?

How am I going to rhyme?

Oh, okay, got it.

And do it all

I kind of thought like

you were your home.

I was still kind of

like, yeah, sorry.

Okay, what was the next one?

I thought we were your home.

I thought that we were you.

Edgy's really making a meal of these runs.

Dar could just ask me the question.

I'm not, I don't need to sing to hear what Dar is saying.

He is

leader?

No, no.

AJ?

No.

Run.

No.

No.

Leader.

I got my finger up at everything.

Does that help?

Helps a lot, actually.

You hold one side of your helmet and you put your finger up and you're like,

look at all the flowers.

Burns!

What are the flowers?

Well, someone else has to be singing with them.

Yeah, I know.

Sorry.

The flowers start looking really weird, like they're exciting, but then they're like, oh, no.

Oh, no, God.

This is great, man.

That might be the first time that's been said of AJ.

Listen,

there's one thing I know about harmony.

Sure, two is good, but more is better.

We're gonna have to build a cord.

We're gonna have to build a cord.

I mean, I just

build a cord!

Okay, AJ.

I was gonna say, this actually, we did do this in the trailer of like, there's only one thing that we have to put on the show.

There's only one thing we have to do.

We could put on a show.

We could do it here.

We've got the costumes.

But we don't need costumes, AJ.

AJ, no, but what we need is a cord.

We do need a cord.

Cheyenne, son of Jack.

And, I mean, do I need to talk to Jack?

I'm a little nervous or already.

What?

Did you say my name?

No, Jack.

It's fine.

Don't worry.

You do need to sing to them, though.

We need to start.

I think.

Cheyenne.

Wait, hold on.

I need a.

Jack, can you give me a question?

Can I give you a question?

Just give me the music for a question to Cheyenne.

Cheyenne,

can we build a chord?

Would that help you?

If all the children children in the world

came together in a village

and held the hands of each other,

then we'd be holding the hands of each other, even though we don't have hands.

We'd grow and grow.

Yeah, AJ, their language is highly metaphorical.

Yeah, what the juck is he talking about?

Okay,

he's agreeing with you.

He's saying we should come together and and make a cord.

It would, you know, we'd be

joining

something.

Single hands.

Well, no, don't.

He doesn't have hands.

It's a metaphor.

Should we join hands, or is that sort of.

I don't know that that needs to be part of it.

It's too literal, right?

Okay.

Fair enough.

Also, my hands are kind of clammy.

So

that's going to happen.

That's going to happen.

Yeah, I hate it.

Why is this a feature?

It's not a feature, not a bug.

It's a bug.

Yeah, no kidding.

Anyway.

Because we got to build a cord.

All right.

Well, I can

I can lay down a foundation here.

You know,

start with something like,

look.

I think we need a Bargy line in there, too.

Yeah.

I'm still here.

Yeah.

Bargy.

Bargy, I'm patching you in.

You're missing.

I don't want you to miss this.

You mean you need a Bargie like, nah!

Yeah, okay.

It's working.

Look, a waterfall.

The mountain's flush with greenery.

We can do it.

We gotta keep going.

Need one

more.

Bargie.

Bargie, weren't you in a bunch of musicals at some point?

Musical hollows?

Yeah, it was a dark period of my life.

I don't want to talk about that.

I mean, to be honest, Bargie, you're always getting us to sing.

Yeah, Bargie, to be fair, you love it when we sing.

Bargie,

we need that voice.

We need that voice that's famous for what's a good name of a Bargie musical

The Barge and Away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We need the voice that was famous for The Barge and Away.

Bargie's going away.

Bodgie's going away.

She's never coming back.

She's going away.

Cause she's Bodgie.

The Santiago.

A classic.

Toot, toot, toot.

A toot, toot, toot.

Oh.

Yeah, the song was very short.

Wow, that was pretty good, Bargain.

That small ocean appeared when you...

Wow.

Look at that body of water.

Wait, so it's not when there's harmony necessarily?

I don't know.

It's sort of.

It is getting willing.

That's sort of.

Should we call out Dar was not in harmony, right?

Yeah.

Singing in harmony.

Is that true?

Right.

Dar, the only person who's not singing is,

you know.

Dar, listen, I know you're not captain anymore, but.

And they smashed their horn.

And you smashed your horn.

This is maybe a sea line.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Listen, Dar, I know you're not captain anymore.

and that I was sort of made leave envoy almost arbitrarily, but

you're still a member of this crew, and we need you

arbitrarily.

I mean, you know,

from the viewpoint of the them, I mean,

I don't know why they would pick me over anyone else.

I was in a toaster at the time.

Feels like there's a lot of motion.

You gotta let it out.

You don't think you're hot stuff.

Dar, I'm no better envoy than anyone else on this crew.

I just frequently, you know, don't need to sleep and eat as much.

And, you know, I have a lot of advantages as a, you know, tireless automaton.

Do you want to acknowledge that you needed rescuing at this particular moment?

Yeah, yeah.

I have a lot of advantages as a tireless automaton, but.

Dar, I still needed to be rescued.

If

the crew hadn't come here, if you hadn't come here,

I'd be alone

wondering when I could come home.

Why did I leave

when you are the ones I need?

Dar,

Pleck,

Neven AJ2

C-53 still needs

his crew

A collection of pebbles in the sun

And one pebble's clearly better than the other ones No, they're all just good pebbles

One pebble sent on its own because it's so much better than the other ones

Don't you see?

We're all just pebbles on the shore.

No need for one to be considered any more than the rest.

But the others were sent to make them feel better.

He's right.

He's got a point.

Yeah, he's got a point.

Okay.

I still need all of you.

I need all your help.

Dar,

all we need is one note from you.

Yeah, and

not only can we save C-53, we can build back this planet.

We can give Cheyenne and Jack their world back.

So will you do it?

And also, Bargie, will you also...

I know you did kind of just a little...

Yeah, a little ditty, but you gotta get in on this.

I need you to get on the chord.

Bargie,

I think...

This genre is called a

duet.

Oh, no.

I mean, no loud.

Okay, we thought it was going to be a chord, but it's a good one.

One, two, three, go.

Bargie.

Baji.

Da and Jargie.

Da and Baji.

Two.

Bargie.

Oh, that we got sat over, sorry.

We gotta get our bad.

Maybe we should just fill the chord?

Is that maybe?

Wait, wait, wait.

What shall I say?

Wait.

These two

are singing scripture.

I'm holding up a rock with those lyrics on it.

Bargie and Dari.

Shahan, where did you get that?

Bargie and Dar, it's on some sort of ancient scroll.

Or sorry, it's on some sort of ancient tablet.

This is

how we rebuild

singing a jaunty duet with not with a chord, Shahia

Chord is for tree, cord, animal, cord, grass,

but cord, no

people.

Duet for my

dead children.

Okay, okay, just point a clarification.

Do they come back or are they different people this time?

Come back.

Your children come back.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Wow, famously, the two horn dogs can raise the dead.

Yeah, well,

I think we've been, except for a misstep, I think we've been rehearsing for this all our lives.

Okay, baby, you go back.

This is the song that's going to bring all their people back.

Dark,

bodie,

bodgy, and

dark.

It did it

Father we have come back

We've missed you so much

And your granddaddy

Okay, even his own grandchildren are kind of grossed out by it.

This is the song of the children.

The song of the children.

Song of the children.

Song of the children.

Song of the children.

Daddy.

Daddy.

Kiss your zombie children.

We

are the children.

Daddy, I was in a void,

floating in an endless void.

I wondered, am I dead?

Are my siblings dead?

Is my daddy dead?

Is my creepy grandfather dead?

Same dead a lot.

But now we're back

on our planet.

And the answer to that question is really

and down.

Uncertain.

Uncertain.

But we're here.

And we have the memories

of the horrific things that happened to us when we were put away.

We'll never forget all those days.

All the memories will shape us for the rest of our

lives,

Mama.

Remember

midnight

not a song on the page

yeah it's pretty catchy

that's no that one really yeah all these kids they sounded happier than yeah all those kids singing about their trauma it's pretty good

yeah

wait something's happening to me oh no

Something's happening.

I'm transforming.

Boom!

Cheyenne!

Jack!

They're becoming weirder-looking!

Oh no!

Oh, I sort of thought they would separate and become their own people, but...

Yeah, now they're just kind of half in, half out.

Let's see if it works.

Is that what it was supposed to happen?

We enter final form

piano ball.

Piano ball.

Just a big ball of keys.

Wow, and it plays by rolling on the ground.

Yeah.

But there's also teeth, which makes it...

Yeah.

We have been stuck in a state of arrested development all these many years.

Our final form not allowed to us.

We would not choose

this form you have.

I wouldn't choose this form either, but I take your point.

So, piano ball is sort of ideal.

Is anybody else weirded out by the fact that it has teeth and like hair?

Yeah, yeah.

You have teeth and hair.

Yeah, but I'm not a piano ball.

And sustain pedal.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Go ahead.

Is that you want to touch the sustain pedal?

I mean, you can touch the sustained pedal.

Okay.

Can you guys sing a duet about being a piano ball?

Pretty good.

What walks in the morning with four legs?

What walks with two legs in the afternoon?

What begins

the end

and ends

the universe?

Piano.

They can hover over each other.

Whoa, so much stuff is growing right now.

Rolling around.

Rolling around.

Rolling in the deep.

Rolling in the deep.

Oh, yeah, they went in the water now.

And now there's fish coming out.

Thank you, 53rd C.

Thank you, Cheyenne, son of Jack.

And Jack, father of Cheyenne.

Do you have a new name now that you're a piano ball?

No.

We still have our

individual names.

Lose our identities, if anything.

Yeah, I don't know.

Culturally, it might be different.

Thank you all.

Perhaps one day

we see you

for a reprise.

Oh,

what's that?

It's when you sing the same song.

It's like the same song that you're going to be.

Like you do it again, but the context has changed, so you sort of get more out of it.

Should Nermit call, and they're like, no, no, it's over.

Or is it, should that be an act three?

Should we do one reprise?

Is there any sort of one of the songs that we did?

Do you remember getting those songs?

It could be funny if AJ's like, it's like

two pebbles.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, yeah, and then talk about how the two pebbles have become one pebble and now they're a piano.

Yeah, what if it's like, you know, it's something like two pebbles and now one pebble, and it's a gross piano.

Something like that.

Okay.

Great, great.

This is great, man.

That's a reprise.

Oh, yeah, okay.

Can we do one that's accompanied by Jack on that?

Well, maybe we can

do one.

Can we get the glue that leads into this?

I want to do it.

We should do it with Chris and

the two pebbles repeats.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like, you know, when they repeat the song, something like, you know, I don't know.

What do you think, Cheyenne?

Two pebbles.

That's it.

Yeah.

Two pebbles.

They become one

pebble.

Gross piano ball.

Perfect piano ball.

That's the history.

That's the history of rap.

That's the history of the history of rap.

It's too pebble.

That's the history of the history of rap.

But it's that one pebble.

Insects on a leaf.

Oh, that's the history of the light.

Strangers at the barricade.

That's the history of history.

Do not be afraid.

That's the history of rap.

That's the history of Rath.

Darge!

Right!

Yeah, and sometimes, which is crazy, they try to put some of that.

Darbarch, yeah, sometimes there's too many voices to be dark

to it.

This more

end of act one.

That's really funny.

That's amazing.

Great.

That's pretty good end of act two.

Yeah.

Cool.

That's really funny stuff.

I also like how,

as much as Star Trek is derided for always just being humanoids, every fifth episode there is like an insane thing where there's like

a sentient gas cloud.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, it's a crystal that lives.

It's like a sentient gas cloud that only knows the works of Shakespeare.

Convenient.

We should call that out in the outro.

I feel like we should pick up Plexigging.

Something.

Okay.

Yeah.

What else do we need to cover?

Like, what's another fun story beat to cover?

Is there anything we want to do again?

Or

any connective tissue?

Yeah.

Yeah, Chris, is there anything you want to

do?

No, I have no idea.

Well, we could have a new thing you wanted to do of turning into a giant

auto.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

That's sort of what my blog is about.

So if you just plug the blog in the middle of blogs.

Happy to.

Oh, my God.

We know what happened to the planet, but we don't know what happened to these two, right?

Do we want to talk about that?

At least give me a second.

I think, yeah, because I don't think we're why did they survive?

Yeah, well, also, we landed and we never said, like, we never like really cleared up, like, I'm sorry.

Who are you?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, and that's an old musical trope, right?

Of like, allow me to introduce myself.

You know, like, so maybe.

My name is Humpty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great song from Oklahoma.

My name is Humpty.

So, do you want to put something in sort of that would go after the rap to be like maybe, right?

Sure.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Maybe Pleck.

Pleck tends to ask the informational questions.

Yeah.

Well, then Pleck can sing it to us.

You need to sing it.

So,

so if your planet was destroyed, how did you survive?

Pleck, you can't just ask them the question.

That's not their language.

You've got to sing.

See?

It's easy.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

This is hard.

It is.

It's very, very hard.

Pleck needs to start at some point, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm getting to it.

Who, what, where?

Yep, yep, yep.

I guess I'm trying to think of what I even need to ask.

Your planet was destroyed.

But how?

Nope, we know how.

Sorry.

Ask about why they're all doing this together.

Really up tempo.

I was hoping for a languid sort of

yeah, just tell them, like, Papa, ask them, like, what their deal is, why they're so gross looking, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ask them, ask them how, like, father and son can be that close, you know?

Two

Two men on a planet

The only ones left alive

But how

how

did Cheyenne

and Jack survive

Eric can you go back to the uptempo?

Yeah, no go back to the last uptempo

Oh.

I got a hundred meat pies.

What?

I threw a lot of them in the oven.

99 meat pies, 98 meat pies into my hot oven.

But the last two meat pies on me plate,

they turned into one pie.

And I don't even know how to ask the question why.

Meat pies.

Oh, okay.

Uh no, I think I understand now.

Yeah, what did I miss?

What did I miss?

I felt like the uh

Papa, you don't understand what he said.

He explained why they're the fused together.

They they

I mean, you asked the question.

I don't know why.

Okay, let me try again.

Let me try again.

Here on GC3

GEC3 here on

sorry

Here on GC3

I can't believe my eyes

Can you explain to me

Did you guys used to be meat pies?

Cause I just I feel like I almost got what you were saying

But then I got confused

Please tell me how did Cheyenne and Jack get fused together

Oh, he's a dumb one.

Okay, I just

this one's a dumb one

I can tell

well, you're right on the money

He's not very smart, but he's got some heart and that's why we keep him around.

Yes, you're absolutely right!

Okay, AJ.

Papa's not very brave!

Okay, all right.

But we keep him around.

So he is pet.

No, not really.

I wouldn't say no.

That's not fair, but a little.

He does go on the rug sometimes.

No.

That happened once, and it was not.

An accident?

It wasn't.

He was scared.

He was scared.

The gravity was off.

I was very disoriented.

There were a lot of new people on the ship.

Oh,

hey, guys, we have reception again.

Herman.

Hey, hey, hey, crew.

Hey, hey, I was just wondering, did you find C53 of yours?

We did, actually.

We're on a planet where we have to sing everything.

It's really fun.

Excuse me.

We have to sing everything.

Everything we talk about everything we do.

We have to sing it.

See you later, Nermit.

Say that again.

Beep me down.

Beep me down.

It's going all right.

Bet Norman wishes he was a little nicer to us earlier.

Yeah.

Yes, Mr.

Robot Man,

there's a lot of friction because we were all pretty surprised that you did missions without us.

Oh, okay.

Oh, should I say that to our friends?

Sure.

Mr.

Robot Man, you're getting abandoned us!

AJ, AJ.

You can't sustain that.

No, no.

Oh,

this is great.

AJ,

I think that was my favorite one.

AJ, I never intended to,

you know,

act like I was going on missions without you.

Koo was just sending me places.

I was just trying to be helpful.

You didn't think to mention that you wanted us to come with you?

Didn't you want our support?

Well, you were all asleep.

You know, it's like I go into a low power state for a couple hours.

I'm fine.

AJ, where are your crew?

Don't you understand it, AJ?

I mean, C-53, where are your crew at?

Man, you get into a Tellurian body and all of a sudden everyone

looks the same.

Where AJ was singing on behalf of Dar fit in here.

Yeah, I think it does.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That could kind of be a good idea.

Can I just do a little pickup?

Because Nermit was yelling, Beam Me Down, which made no sense.

I do love AJ's scream song.

Oh, God.

It's perfect.

Yeah,

should we re-get Nermit calling in?

I feel like that should be Anna's song.

I feel like we should all be singing.

And you're like, what is happening?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we should start.

Him calling should start a song.

I was going to be explaining it to Chris.

And maybe Chris can talk to Nermit, and then we cut him out before he gets to.

Well, I was going to say, I think one of the things that I would like to get one more time is I feel like we didn't get a really nice moment of us making everything grow back.

So

what if we have a sort of discovery song where we're all harmonizing and things are appearing?

Like a sort of

victory song.

That's smart.

And then Nermit can interrupt that.

Or or maybe right when it's over, he calls it.

We're like, oh, yeah, we did it.

I just missed it.

No, I think if he hears us singing, he's like, let me take a few bars.

It's like, we got to go, Nermit.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, sorry.

So, what I know we're doing a lot of jumping around.

I can get us.

I think I can get us into this.

Okay, great, sure.

Let's see if

53 C

you

sing.

I sing.

We create.

But

this one also.

And this one.

And you.

He's pointing at all of us.

And he's pointing at Bargie.

You're saying we all need to sing.

The song brings us together.

Song brings us together.

We wave from side to side as the song brings us together.

So much has been wrong

So bad for so long

Apart

but together

Because the song brings us together

We wave from side to side

Cause the song brings us together

Oh wow look

Water springing forth from the ground.

Flowers and birds.

A whole city bursting from nothingness.

Cheyenne, you've got it.

Cheyenne, you've got it.

We'll keep following you.

The song will bring us together.

And the world will be good too.

Everyone.

Because the song brings us together.

Together.

The song brings us together.

The song brings us together.

It brings us all together.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

Hey, we get reception again.

Nermit, hey, what's up, man?

Oh, hey, hey, hey, Pleck.

Hey, crew.

I was just wondering, did you find C53?

Did you find it?

We did.

Oh, hey, Nerman, I'm here.

Hey, great.

Get this.

Thanks for sending that.

This is a planet where everyone just sings everything.

Say what?

Yeah, like we.

Okay, there's this guy, Cheyenne.

His dad is in his chest, and he's got a piano, and he plays, and we all sang.

And the more we sang,

the planet grew back.

It was a true testament to the power of the song.

The song brings us together.

The song brings us together.

The song brings brings us together!

Wait, wait, wait, can I?

Can we?

So let's back.

Can I call it a bunch of people?

Yeah, we're kind of time right now.

We'll take it from the top and try to get it.

I got my keyboard right here.

Yep, we'll call you back.

It's sort of hard to sync up if you're on the screen.

Okay, wait, I have an idea.

Let's go back to the next one.

No, wait, let's do the mission again, and I'll come back and do it.

Do the mission again.

We're not going to do it remotely.

It would be insane if we did this remotely.

C-53!

Let's do the mission again!

That's too loud.

I think that's too loud.

How loud it is.

That almost, yeah, that pretty much did it.

That's pretty much what I had in mind.

Yeah, great.

Great.

Do you need a connector now, though, to the duet?

If we just rebuilt the city, but we still need to put the people back into it.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's a good idea.

Wow.

Yes,

I can get us in there.

Cheyenne,

GEC3 is beautiful.

I had no idea.

But didn't you say there were millions of you?

Harmony for

buildings for grass for satellite dish.

Harmony not for people.

What brings back people?

Two become one.

You talking about making out or

Pleck, How would have you seen how this planet works?

Does that make any sense?

Oh, I don't know.

Can you say, are you talking about lovering?

Yeah, are you talking about like lovering or something?

Pleck.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm out of my depth.

I'm pretty sure it's musical.

Okay.

All right.

He's talking about a duet.

Oh.

A duet.

Between who?

That should cut in with what we have, right?

Yeah.

I think so.

Hope so.

Yeah, we can.

We'll be able to.

We'll massage it.

Massage it a bit.

Is there something?

I was going to say, it's on the tablet or the rock.

I was going to say, is there something where it's like

with Bargy and Dar.

Well, I was going to say, yeah, it could be like

the largest pebbles or something like that.

Because

Dar and Bargie are.

Oh, how about so?

You just, Winston, you just asked who, right?

Yeah, but who?

Like, a duet.

But

who?

Two pebble

largest pebble

and

formerly in charge pebble.

That can't be, but how

very specific.

That's really particular.

So that's party.

Is that the

and I guess oh, it's oh, it's you, Dar, because you were in charge and now you're not anymore.

Well,

you know,

yeah.

Oh, you get to sing

Fun

Great.

And then that cuts in with the jaunty, darn bargain song.

Yeah, that real jaunty, perfect, darn bargain song.

The hachi machi.

Hachi matchi.

Wow.

This is going to be a fun one.

Yeah.

Thank you guys so much.

This is going to be awesome.

This is so much fun.

Fans are going to go bonkers for this.

I'm so glad you guys, both of you guys could do it.

This is tremendous.

Yeah, thank you guys.

And Eric, Eric, thanks for doing it last minute.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Nice to see you.

Nice to see you, everyone.

I know.

Nice to see you.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

Well, there you have it, folks.

That was the recording of episode 507.

At least everything but act three, which we recorded later.

I really encourage you all to go back and re-listen to that episode, having heard not only the raw recording, but also particularly what Shane puts into it.

And I guess you maybe heard a couple things I cut out of it.

Yeah.

And then after you do that, I encourage you to then go back to this episode and listen to it again.

Listen to this and continue doing this.

I mean, I really do think that this certainly for two weeks until 510 comes out.

It should be that.

I think that hearing this episode before and after

being mixed really gave me such an appreciation for not only

what Shane does in general and what he did specifically in this episode, but also

what great guests we had, like how on point Eric and Chris were and how game everybody in the core cast was to do something that a lot of us didn't have a lot of experience with.

It was super fun.

This was a really good thing.

Ludicrous that this episode worked at all, let alone was like a

massive favorite of the audience.

So

if the last 100 minutes has not slaked your thirst for BTS content, strap in because we are going to chat a little bit now about how this episode came together as well as generally how we make the show.

And so let's get started with that.

And I think it'd be fun to talk about just how the episode concept came together, too, because

that was even before the recording started.

Yeah, and my memory is pretty last minute, right?

Yeah, for sure.

It was the day of the recording.

Yeah.

Do you happen to have Chris's original pitches?

Yes.

So before we record anything, we agree on a guest who we'd like to book, and then they agree they'd like to be on the show.

And we ask them.

Ideally?

Ideally, they say yes.

We hate to force people.

When it's not voluntary, you can always hear it.

And we ask the guests to pitch character ideas.

I feel like it keeps the show fresh for us where we're not trying to decide who anyone's playing, and they come in with ideas we would have never thought of.

So should I read Chris's pitches?

These were Chris's pitches that he sent.

Bob, a man that lives disjointed from time, able to move back and forth a la tenet, who isn't quite clear on how time travel rules work and maybe it's all bullshit, which is a great pitch.

But we all know who put the copybosh on that one.

Yeah, but

we all know which cast member said no more time travel bullshit.

No shimmy forwarded a copy of his rider.

Yeah, exactly.

Second pitch was Doxid, a nomad from a reverse universe that is trying to get as far away from the XXYZ quadrant as possible,

which is a great pitch, but also

because we were in this.

You're not in Star Trek yet.

It would have been

tough to pull off.

Oddlio, a member of an alien species who can speak English, but best expresses himself in sci-fi sound effects, like the equivalent of the Dharmak at Tanagra dude from Star Trek.

As you can see, that's the kernel of what we ended up choosing for him.

Although he did add this, which I think is very funny.

This will be a pain in the ass for your sound post-production guy, but could be fun essentially pimping him into sound designing this character.

That's very funny because

the amount of pain in Shane's ass from this episode...

knows no bounds, I think.

Yeah.

But so that was sort of part of the thing.

And then the final pitch was Cheyenne, a roving entertainer who likes to improvise songs and tries to get all of you to improvise songs with him with no apparent accompaniment and also freestyle rap.

And maybe his songs cause spell-like effects like a bard?

Question mark.

Also a great pitch.

We had been looking for a Dharmak episode for a really long time since we started season five.

And so we jumped on that.

And then, of course, because Chris has such great experience in improvised musicals, we decided to combine those last two pitches and ask him to do a character who only speaks in song, like the Dharmak dude.

The rest is history, I guess.

Well, not the rest, because

there was one big puzzle piece missing.

Yes, yes, accompaniment.

Yes.

One little insight into how the show is made.

I should let you speak to this, Shane, although I'm not sure you want to.

We are constantly doing music, and it is constantly a thorn in Shane's side because of...

No, it's not a thorn.

I exaggerate how much of a thorn it is in my side but it sucks well no it's fun but I just want you guys to you know

feel the respect the fact yeah feel the power of that trigger when you pull it yeah like right now I think it's worth saying like Shane doesn't like it

unfortunately we're not we're not

doing any we're not well luckily seth's um

you know pitch perfect and always perfect there's no reason to even add a component so just

so this is just going to be you don't even have to change this it's going to be beatboxing that matches that.

Just put that under, and then it's fine.

Yeah, I'm sure there'll be no tempo issues with that.

I'm editing this, so I'm never leaving that in.

So, the idea of doing a character that didn't have accompaniment, um, I think would be uh, would have been really tough.

It would have been uh, I mean, that would have been impossible for me, it would have been a deal breaker, right?

To have, yeah, to have to do all of the music would have been impossible, even like a little piece of music, like one that I was thinking about is the Be No and Bargy.

Um,

but not the theme song to their show, but the Be No of Something in the Stars with Bargie.

Like, that's a little song that I think plays for like 10 seconds.

And it's like, if you're going to write tens or like produce 10 seconds of a song, it's like almost the same amount of time as it takes to produce like three minutes of a song.

So it still took like an hour and a half, two, three hours just to do that kind of thing.

Part of that is on me because I,

you know, want it to sound good, you know?

Yeah.

But it takes time to do that.

Yeah.

So we're,

that is to say, we are, if you listen to the show, you know, we are constantly doing that all the time.

And so the idea of doing an entire episode of that was like, well, that'll take four months to mix.

We can't do that.

But

Jeremy, who is a seasoned musical improviser as well, he performs on a team called Rumple Teaser with Eric Gerson, who was our second guest.

And he was actually sort of a last-minute addition to the episode because we thought, well, if we're doing a musical episode, let's get somebody to improvise along with us.

And that way, you know, it takes some of the load off of Shane to, you know, figure out what key we're singing in and change the key signature.

as we go constantly because we're always drifting off of pitch and yada yada yada so um we called up eric who was down which was awesome And one of the really amazing things about this episode is that Eric and Chris had never worked together, as far as I know.

And Eric is just that fucking good that he was able to just jump in.

I mean, Eric is truly a genius.

It was really awesome.

And it was not planned that he would also play a character.

Yeah, he just jumped in.

He just jumped in as Jack.

At this point, when Eric had been confirmed, I was like, at this point, sure that this episode episode would not work in a million years because we're trying to do a musical episode.

And I think this is maybe the first time that we had any in-person recording for the season.

And it was Alden, Seth, and Winston at my apartment.

And then

Jeremy and LA over Zoom, Mujahon and Ali over Zoom, Chris over Zoom, and then...

Eric, who's meant to be accompanying all of us, is on his own Zoom feed.

So he's not in a room with any any of the performers.

And anyone who's attended a birthday party over Zoom knows that it's impossible to sync up.

Like the lag is,

I had thought it would just not be possible for him to accompany anybody, especially in a way where you would have to like essentially anticipate where you guys were going with your melodies and your rhythm and then play ahead of it.

Well, and the crazy thing, not only is there a leg, the leg is slightly different for all of us.

Yeah.

Like depending on the speed of your internet and the processor in your laptop, it could have been, you know, plus or minus a quarter second for each of us.

And it sounds great.

And he was so on top of it.

It was awesome.

And so, yeah, I mean, once we had Eric in place, foolishly,

I thought, oh, well, why don't we just make the, you know, if the music is coming out of the character, diegetically, like if the character is playing the piano in the scene, then Shane's completely off the hook.

There's no extra stuff to do.

He just puts that piano sound in the, you know, in the geography of the scene.

And then all the music stuff is taken care of because all of the music is created in the scene and we don't have to worry about anything else.

I'm a

goddamn moron.

So, Shane, what exactly was I wrong about?

Can you explain that?

No, you weren't wrong about it at all because it could have been that way.

Yeah.

When I got into it, like actually working on the episode, like I do all of these, what I call like zoomed-out passes where I just, you know, do the nuts and bolts things, fix up some dialogue, add some basic notes for myself while I'm trying to absorb where I feel like the episode wants to go, what the...

natural flow of it is, what the

how the sound component is going to

reinforce the storytelling right and what i got listening to it especially with just a piano in there i was like i feel like they're i mean the episode is doing a send-up of musicals like we hit every sort of like trope and to not for me not to

you know for lack of a better term, yes and that, that would be,

I would consider that a failure for me not to like reinforce what I felt like you all were doing in the moment, right?

So, like, when

my favorite moment, when Winston jumped in with, you're absolutely right, or whatever, I remember hearing that and being like, ooh, that like in the room while we were doing it, like, that needs to be something, but it's sort of like a Jenga thing.

It's like, if, if you pull that one out, it's like, that can't be the only bit, you know, and then just like what the big exciting moments snowballs.

It snowball, yeah, exactly.

yeah.

Yeah.

And to be clear, Alden, when I, when I was like

not agreeing with you, it wasn't that, I thought that concept you were pitching of just like, the music's there was wrong.

It was just like, I was like, no, I know that

Shane will not be able to control the shit.

And that's, it's easy to listen to the show and think, oh,

there's the improvised part, which is all the content, and then it's sound designed by someone who adds sound to everything, and that's the show.

And I would say that there were maybe that was sort of how we approached it very early on in the run of the show.

But as the show went on, Shane's sound design became

an equal cast member in the show.

And the reason I say that is because not only is there stuff that Shane does that we never talked about in the recording and never talk about until we hear him having inserted it.

And we're not allowed to talk about it.

And we're not allowed to talk about it.

We must must never speak we must never speak yeah i'm gonna be playing this part yeah but it's stuff that it's stuff that uh that elevates what we do to um not only like a funny thing or like a plot thing but a thing that has significance sonically which is like so great yeah i like to play with like the bigness and smallness of moments like how I can stage a particular either scene or even just an interaction to get the most out of it.

So, like 505, I think, was

in this season where I've done the most of that with James Urbaniac.

Where I want, because that episode takes place on a stage, I wanted to really play with blocking in that one.

So, like,

when

Pleck and AJ are improvising, sort of for the first time, like, instead of being with them up close in that moment, like, to be sitting in the back of the room with James Urbaniac's character

with LO Max in the house, just sipping his tea, watching and

critiquing.

And then the train is going by.

That's a perfect example because it's not just a geographic decision of like, where is the listener in this scene?

It's you saying, this is an episode about theater, so we're going to lean into what it sounds like to be sitting in a theater.

All of that is to say, I think that this sort of culminated in 507

because,

shane you were not content with leaving eric's brilliant piano accompaniment as just a another voice in the chorus you wanted to go further and not only make it sound more produced and more interesting but do it from a story perspective if you'll remember from the uh released version of 507, the moment that C-53 starts singing with Cheyenne is the moment that the full orchestration sort of comes in and really fills out and stops sounding just like a piano.

Yeah, so it took me a lot of time to figure out how I wanted to approach the music period because

we could have gone a more

Burmaful melodies direction.

For those of you who don't know, we've released an entire Bermint Nundaloy album.

And the way that we did that is Jeremy made some four and eight bar music loops that Seth improvised over

and then I took it and added new parts and redid the music I changed the tempo and some of these things so it was very much like I was the the

most apparent voice in the music and yeah when we were doing this episode I thought that that could have been an option but then realized that

that didn't feel like an appropriate thing to do for this episode because Eric is a guest and like his biggest role in this episode was the music and also played a character.

But I wanted to make sure that because he was a guest, that I treated all of his

contributions in the exact same way that I would treat any other guest, which would not be to manipulate in a way where the original intention is at all obscured or lost.

I wanted it to be reinforced.

The way that we did this in practice is that Eric, when he was recording, we asked him to also capture all the MIDI data coming out of his piano.

What you're hearing in this tracking session is just the audio, what we heard.

But what MIDI data is, is basically all the instructions that the keyboard is putting out.

So, like, when you play.

It's like sheet music, basically.

Sort of.

It's like computer sheet music.

But what that allows you to do in post-production is that with that MIDI data, I could make what he was playing sound like any instrument for which I had a virtual instrument for, right?

And what I would do is rather than me writing something on top of it, I want it to stay in Eric's voice.

So I took the MIDI track from his piano and copied it down to every layer.

And I would basically like mute

big chunks of the MIDI data under the violins, for instance, and just let

the

what Eric was playing on his keyboard, like just decide, okay, so the violins are only going to play this melody that's within this greater MIDI

data track.

And I did that for every instrument.

And I also had to choose what articulate what articulation every instrument would play.

An articulation would be like on a

on a cello, for instance, like bowing

a cello is an articulation and plucking a cello is like a different articulation.

So I'd also have to choose like what each instrument like how it was playing.

Oh my god.

And then it's whenever there's a rock band, that's when I'm just jumping in fully where I'm just adding something on top of it.

That's me playing because

that's that data wouldn't have existed in Eric's.

Like when there's electric guitar, electric guitar, drums, yes,

fireworks.

But everything else was

what Eric was playing on the keyboard.

So at any given moment, there are other instruments playing the same notes as his original piano, but depending on what moment, it could be like you've got to.

Yeah, so the basses would only be playing the left, like, you know, some of the left-hand stuff he was doing.

I mean,

that's a granular way of saying

that

Eric's music had the depth to it that you could fully orchestrate it with only his music and it still sounded great.

Yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about

one of my favorite things about the episode, which is like the philosophy of why you decided to orchestrate orchestrate that, as opposed to just let the piano be, you know, a character in the show.

Yeah.

Like we said earlier, our original idea for how to approach the sound design in this episode was to be to have like a more dieetic presentation of the music.

So as if we are hearing what's actually happening in quote-unquote reality of the scene.

Which is why we, you know, have a character, like, which is why early on we're like, where is that music coming from?

Exactly.

We wanted to present it as though the characters are all hearing the music the piano the same way that the listener was and um when we move towards this bigger more produced sound the music only not only becomes non-diegetic but the quality of everything the episode i felt like needed to become uh different more produced be more in like be more musical, right?

And the way that I started figuring out how to decide when it was going to go to those places where we went from real life reality diegetic we're hearing what's there to big over-the-top produced um rock opera was to sort of interpret when like real communication was happening between all the characters so basically

the moments that would be,

you know, creating whatever magic that's causing things to regrow and stuff, that that's how I decided when to go into the fully produced stuff

as a way to help the storytelling or reinforce the storytelling of like what is happening in this episode, what the big idea is of this episode of that like the music is causing things to change and grow.

Yeah, and I think the way you described it to me was

that's what the characters are hearing when they're really locked into this language that Jack and Cheyenne speak is that like that's the magic of this language is that it actually informs everything else.

It's not just improvising a song.

It actually has more meaning to it when they're when they're really in it, which I think is such a cool

thing.

And it makes you really appreciate it more.

Like there's so much more

going on in those.

those songs, like character-wise and plot-wise, when it switches over and it feels like, you know, they're really getting it.

And I love the dropouts when like Pleck and AJ are having asides and then it just

go back just to the little

plinky piano.

Yeah, and then it pops back into the full production.

Hopefully from what Shane is saying that when you go back and listen to 507 again, that'll sound completely different for you or you'll hear some of these moments differently.

And it's also okay if you don't notice these things because part of the work of like all this sound design and editing is that

is that like you you aren't distracted by the sort of unreality of it and like it it sounds smooth and and everything so um no pressure to focus on these things no i mean it's it's like curious you should be able to enjoy it if you're just listening to it you know out of your cell phone speaker just please do not do the 1.5x

that's just not right to listen to it fast that's yeah i wish they had a setting we could set where that it just like it just makes turns it into like a terrible tone Yeah.

I mean,

this episode or 507 itself would have just been the worst thing to listen to on 1.5.

At 1.5.

We have to track down those people.

2x, we're totally cool with.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to have a handle 2x.

Cool.

And even 2x.

It's double time.

Yeah.

I'm always impressed by the editing, though.

That's why, that's one of the reasons why I push myself is because I'm trying to jump over the bar that you two are setting with

the edits.

Even people who are very aware of how much work goes into the sound design, I think it's easy to ignore how much work goes into the edit, not only because a lot of people don't understand what the raw session sounded like, but also just, you know, editing at its best is completely invisible, I think, especially in an audio format.

Seth, how do you approach it?

Do you have anything?

Any thoughts about this episode specifically?

Sure.

I mean,

one of the reasons I thought that this episode would be a great one to release in the raw is that it for all of its musical insanity it was not a it was not that tough of an edit like Alden said it's pretty it's pretty linear whereas some recording sessions would just have long tangents that didn't go anywhere that ended up getting cut or like things are totally reordered and things like that.

This one was really

was really just like slimming down

and i i didn't realize until after this episode came out that i'm pretty sure we didn't cut a single song which is insane i like especially considering that song of the children was left on

you mean the best song in the episode yeah

um yeah that maybe could have gone that one was great i love that one actually but uh but yeah and and so maybe we didn't edit quite enough but at the same time i felt like this was one, you know, some of the edits are super, super challenging because

I have to change things structurally to make them work.

One of the things that I think, you know,

Seth and I have always talked about since we started doing the show

is

that we want to edit to make the show as good as it can be while still retaining all of the elements that make improv great.

Yeah.

And so

every episode from the very beginning, it's always been about if we take out everything about this recording session that is just not quite the pace or the energy or the plot or the character stuff that is right on point,

what does that leave us with?

And is that enough to make it, you know, can we get that same pace and that same ratio of jokes to story to character that you get from a written sitcom?

And so when we say the show is improvised, it's true.

The show is complete.

We don't, we never, except for commercials and the crawl, we never script anything.

Right.

But because of that, the editing process is that much more important because the editing process is what we use to take

an improvised recording session down to something that has the

feel of something that is scripted.

Right.

It's like, in a way, it's like a little bit like documentary editing in that like the recording sessions are kind of like collecting footage.

Right.

And then you have to be like, well, what did we get?

And in a typical,

just ratio-wise, in a typical recording,

I've figured out that like we use a third of what we record.

Wow.

If we recorded for 90 minutes, I will imagine like this is probably going to be 30 minutes cut.

And some of that is chit chat and not really improv.

And breaks too, yeah.

And some breaks, but a lot of it is shrimp.

It's just compression, so much shrimp.

It's really, it's really compression and just like optimizing what is the version of this that still feels completely natural and takes out, you know, everything that feels like a lull or that takes you out of the story.

Yeah.

And I think it also has informed how we perform as well, because it's not, we're no longer, when we record an episode, we're no longer treating it the way we'd treat a live performance, which is trying to maximize everything and really move everything ahead as quickly as possible.

Now, I think we play a little slower because we know we are going to be condensing it, and it allows us to kind of hit a lot more notes throughout each scene.

So, we're not just getting in, heightening everything, and getting out the way that I think we all were trained to do as improvisers.

And now it's something that I think we really improvise to the edit a lot more than I think we used to, for better and for worse.

I think it has made the show have a little more depth, but I think it's made the edit, you know, exponentially more

involved than it used to be.

Yeah, I mean, and that's, I mean, to be totally honest, one of the reasons we've stuck with the releasing every two weeks is that

the editing and the sound design have just gotten way, way more intense over time.

I think it's partly as like just the lore of the show.

Like in the beginning, anything any guest said could be true forever.

And that's still,

that still happens all the time where guests make up something that's, we've never heard before that's completely true.

But now that so much is established, the new episodes have to function in the universe of the 85 episodes that have come out before.

Speaking of, I often have to, I mean, for every episode, I have to go back to previous sessions to pull whether it's like, how did I do the culadas vocal effect or I need to get like the backgrounds from whatever.

And the other day I was back in 201 and I was like, whoa, I remember this being so tough, but like, it's like a 29-minute episode with like,

you know, 10 tracks or whatever.

And

compared to what we two locations.

Yeah, two locations exactly to what we do now, where it's just so much bigger and so much more complicated.

on every level.

And that's a perfect segue into talking about 510, which is going to be be out in two weeks and is going to be the perfect example of how much crazier this show has gotten since we started.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for listening to this.

I hope this has provided some insight into how we make the show and

I hope it

gives you a little special feeling in your tumb when you listen to future episodes and enjoy a little piece of editing or sound design by these two fine gentlemen here.

Yeah.

Sitting next to me on Zoom.

Don't forget to tell your friends to listen to Mission New Zealand.

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Oh, yeah, don't.

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This one's a dumb one.

I can tell.

Okay, all right.

So he is pet.

Oh, Papa.

No, not really.

I wouldn't say pet.