Transcript: 120: Good Omens Season 2 Episodes 3 & 4 (Sleight of Mouth)

Episode 120: Good Omens TV Show, Season 2, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Recap and discussion.

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Note: Transcripts are produced with Whisper AI and PyAnnote – we don’t have time to edit them extensively, so both wording and speaker labelling will be inaccurate in parts.

• Intro
• Previously on Good Omens
• Chapter 3 – I Know Where I’m Going (S2E3)
• Chapter 4 – The Hitchhiker (S2E4)
• Easter eggs and favourite moments

I’ve just started, because we’ve got so much honey, everybody Jack knows has bees.
What is your life?
I apologize if we get like background weather noises today, but I can’t do much about it
in this room because my house is made of windows.
If it sounds funny, I’ll just literally put proper background rain noise in, fuck it,
why not?
I just need to go stand under an awning and fall in love quickly and then we can get on.
Actual related news to what we podcast about, the Good Omens graphic novel Kickstarter went
live this week and broke lots of records and it’s fully funded and that’s exciting.
Have you gone on that?
Yeah, I got the early bird thing that’s just the graphic novel.
I might do some add-ons for some of the matchy stuff later, but I’m not thinking about it
rather than impulse doing it.
So I think just the graphic novel is like a 20 quid pledge and then it goes up quite
a lot.
I’m going to do a special number of the beast level that’s 666 pounds, which I’m obviously
not going to do.
What’s the artist?
Oh, Colleen Doran.
She does gorgeous artwork.
She’s done a few Neil Gaiman short stories before.
She did chivalry and I think she did snow glass apples, which is one of the fun fucked
up snow white ones he’s done.
That is familiar.
Yes.
Oh, lovely.
Look at all that.
Yes, lovely art.
I do think it’s kind of a weird choice to do this graphic novel on Kickstarter because
between Neil Gaiman and the Terry Pratchett estate, I can assume they’ve got access to
traditional publishing routes.
I wonder about that stuff sometimes as well, but I wonder.
It could just be like a community engagement thing, I suppose.
Yeah.
So I think the most sensible theory is just like it’s a community engagement and it means
they can do this specific run and that’ll be lovely.
And the Kickstarter pledges including bookshops being able to buy a certain amount of the
graphic novel and special bookshop pledges.
And then the wilder theories are that because Amazon Prime haven’t shown any interest in
doing Good Omens merch, this is the easiest way to do Good Omens merch.
And the completely batshit theory that I don’t think is actually accurate but would be very
fucking funny is that Neil Gaiman’s ex-wife did have a record for being one of the first
Kickstarters to reach a million dollars and so maybe he’s just trying to one-up his ex-wife
in some way.
I don’t think that’s actually it, but it would be incredibly funny if it was.
Which ex-wife?
Amanda Palmer.
Ah, yeah, that makes sense.
Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter for her Theatres Evil album was the first Kickstarter to reach
a million dollars.
Very good.
So yeah.
Is this just Neil Gaiman trying to one-up his ex-wife?
Probably not.
Okay, final.
Yeah.
He’s not here to argue with us.
Exactly.
Right.
Anyway, before I say some horrible thing that gets me sued, do you want to make a podcast?
Yeah, let’s make a podcast.

Intro

00:02:55

Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Fret, a podcast in which we’re usually reading
and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order but
have taken a break to talk about Good Omens Season 2.
I’m Joanna Hagan.
And I’m Francine Carrel.
And today we’re talking about Episodes 3 and 4 of Good Omens Season 2.
The middle third.
The middle bit.
No spoilers before we crack on.
We are trying to keep this a spoiler-free Good Omens podcast, so this episode will contain
no spoilers past Episode 4 of Good Omens Season 2.
There will be spoilers for Good Omens Season 1 and the book Good Omens.
This podcast will also contain no spoilers for the Discworld series, so if you’re just
joining us for Good Omens and want to try the Discworld after, you are saved.
Try the Discworld after, join us, not a cult.
Not a cult.
Also, brief content warning, this episode will probably contain some discussions of
suicide.
Yes.
Based on what happened in Good Omens.
Yes.
So I hope you listened to that spoiler warning before you got to that.
Follow-up.
I’ve got a couple of brief bits of follow-up.
What you got?
Thank you to the many people, Francine especially, who caught it as soon as we finished recording,
that have reminded me that Miranda Richardson did indeed appear in the fourth season of
Blackadder as the German nurse.
Yep.
Slash spy.
The Queenie has become the nurse here.
I also had a couple of different people point out actually, including friend of the Pod Marc Burrows is something we didn’t acknowledge, which is kind of a plot hole to say a record
shop is not successful in Soho in this current day and age because record shops are popular.
I did say that to Jack as we were watching, but I wasn’t sure if I was saying something
stupid because of the rent in Soho or I don’t know.
I don’t fucking know how London works.
I mean, I’m not being funny.
If our tiny little town can support a record shop that you need to be able to find, I think
quite a lot of places could support it, especially Soho.
Maybe she’s just real bad at her business.
McCarrion in Discord did make an interesting point, which is that the whole street feels
a bit un-Soho-like and that they were originally thrown because vinyl shops being unpopular
is not a thing.
Vinyl is a booming market right now.
Yeah.
Aziraphale’s presence in the area for a while kind of shaped the nature of the area, having
a genius loci effect and making it all slightly more old-fashioned.
I really like that idea.
Yeah.
I’m going with that as a theory.
Whether it ever becomes canon or not is canon to me.
I have a couple of small bits to follow up.
I was wondering if Shax was a real demon and I saw that it was, but also I found, well,
I think we probably talked about it when we talked about Fowls, however long ago that
was for the Ars Goetica, it’s a grimoire which lists all of the various demons and things.
Shax is in there as a Marquis of Hell.
Marquis?
Marquis?
Marquis?
Marquis.
A Marquis of Hell.
I’m never sure, do you know?
I’m not sure if it’s Marquis, Marquis or Marquis.
Yeah.
She’s one of those things.
Can discover hidden things if they’re not kept by evil spirits.
I don’t know if it was just a cool name.
I mean, discovering hidden things if they’re not kept by evil spirits and the whole Gabriel
situation, that’s interesting.
And has power over legions, but I’m not sure, probably lots of them do, so that was cool.
The other bit was I finally started looking at some of the X-Ray content, because I was
watching on my iPad instead of the telly, so I could actually fuck about with it.
The text messages thing I was saying last week was mentioned in one of the bonus content
bits on one of these episodes.
So Peter Anderson was given the challenge of finding three ways to show the text on
screen, because he was the one who did like the cool Sherlock ones.
Oh, cool.
So yeah, this was something particularly given to him.
So I liked that.
Excellent.
Right.
Francine, do you want to tell us what happened previously on Good Omens Season 2?

Previously on Good Omens

00:07:19

Previously on Good Omens:
A naked archangel shocks Soho and seriously unsettles retired supernatural ambassadors
Aziraphale and Crowley.
Gabriel’s memories are gone, but the angel is not forgotten.
The forces of heaven and hell are scouring the earth, and their suspicions, correctly,
land upon our favourite angel and demon, who try to subtly conceal their fugitive.
Half a miracle later, the angelic bookshop lights up like a distress flare.
To cover up their cover-up, Aziraphale tells the heavenly hordes he’s been meddling in
affairs of the human heart, and now he’ll have to make his awkward tenant and vaguely
hostile local coffee shop owner fall in love.
Luckily, Crowley has seen a few Richard Curtis films.
I’m just trying to picture Crowley going to like see a Richard Curtis film in the
cinema.
I guess maybe like as a study of- no, no, wait, he’d say it was like a study of how
to manipulate humans, but really.
He’s like quietly crying in that funeral scene in Forwardings in a funeral.
He still can’t hear stop all the clocks without tearing up.
There’s the thing about wearing those sunglasses all the time, we don’t know when he’s having
a little cry.
Yeah, good point.
I should wear sunglasses more.
No, it’s fine, I’m dead inside.
Right, so, episode three or four?
Uh, three and four.
Three or four, just pick one.
It’s fine, don’t worry.
We just didn’t do one today.
Don’t worry about it.
Um, big thoughts, overall thoughts.
What do you think?
I liked three, mum, four.
Yeah.
I expected us to be further along in the plot by now, I guess?
Yeah, yeah, I’m feeling that a bit.
I enjoyed them, I enjoyed watching them, but I’m kind of becoming aware there’s only six
episodes.
Yeah, we’ve only got like two episodes of plot left.
But no, I didn’t enjoy watching them, the kind of abundance of tiny little references
and aesthetic things and details.
I just love watching it just for that, to be honest.
I mean, I’m never going to complain about David Tennant in a wig.
Is he wearing a wig?
I’m pretty sure.
I feel like he dignantly said he wasn’t wearing a wig.
Oh wait, when he flashback, obviously he’s wearing wigs, but like his main hair, like
his main hair has died, but yeah, the flashbacks, those are wigs.
Yeah, that’s fair.
Yeah.
How about the mutton chops?
I found them a bit upsetting.
I was very into the mutton chops.
I support them.
I think we should bring the mutton chops back.
Gives me something to hold on to.
What?
Sorry.
Yeah.
The tone can only go up from here.
No, it can’t.
I’ve got to say episode four is so far my least favourite episode of the season overall.
Some of that is also me really hating spiders and magicians.
Some of it’s me really hating cringe content, so yeah, this may be personal preference.
It is personal preference.
But yeah, I agree with you on like the pacing thing and the plot thing.
We’re out of the mini-sodes now.
These are the last episodes to have the big extended flashbacks as far as I know.
Okay, interesting.
There aren’t mini-sodes in the other episodes, whether that means there’s still no flashbacks,
I don’t know.
But yeah, I’ll go into that a bit more later, but the pace is very weird, I feel.
But overall, enjoyed.
But overall, yeah, still having fun.

Chapter 3 – I Know Where I’m Going (S2E3)

00:10:22

Should we dive in then?
Yeah, episode three.
I Know Where I’m Going, featuring the Resurrectionists.
So I Know Where I’m Going, the title is a reference to like a Scottish rom-com, Scottish
British rom-com from like the 1940s, which I read about.
And there’s a lot of stuff, if you read like the x-ray thing, which I’m not going to list
every reference in the show that’s just listed in the x-ray thing, but there is a lot of
stuff in the episode that is referencing this film.
It actually sounds pretty good.
I’m going to see if I can find a copy.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, let’s not look.
I’m sure some of it might be on YouTube, even if it’s 1940, some of that stuff’s just
uploaded and no one goes to Fox, though.
Oh yeah, good point.
So that’s cool.
That’s an interesting bit.
So yeah, straight in scene one, Jim’s drinking a hot chocolate while he watches the busy
Soho street.
He’s got his mug labeled and his hot chocolate’s labeled.
Very cute.
That’s nice.
I do wonder a bit because like, so Crowley’s clearly like somewhat residing in his car
with all his plants are there.
He moves out of the car and into the coffee shop so that Aziraphale can, into the bookshop,
so just so that Aziraphale can use the car.
He’s obviously not like been staying at the bookshop.
Jim immediately has got his own bedroom.
There’s a weird dynamic there.
Yeah, Crowley, I think, would not enjoy living in the bookshop, so.
Absolutely.
But I want him to get his own place at some point.
Yeah, kind of weird that he’s not, I don’t know.
I just feel like a Bentley is not going to be a comfortable place to sleep for someone
as lanky as David Tennant.
Does he sleep?
Oh, yeah.
Good point.
Anyway.
Meanwhile, in the coffee shop, a customer critiques Nina’s love life.
This is Mrs. Sandwich in the credits.
Mild spoiler that I’ve seen from IMDB stuff that she’s going to be in next week’s episode
as well, which is, I think, why she’s named, played by Donna Preston, who I love.
What else have we seen Donna Preston in?
She was in Sandman.
She played Despair, looking very different.
And she’s been in lots of British stuff.
She’s been on The Match Report a bunch.
She’s been in an episode of Inside No. 9, but I think at this point every British, even
slightly funny actor, has been in Inside No. 9 at this point.
Eventually, they’re going to have to start reusing actors.
Yeah, absolutely.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out, like, the Inside No. 9 guys are doing some weird
magic plan where they’re getting the essence of all of the British comedians and they’re
going to, you know?
Yeah, probably.
There’s a plot there somewhere.
For context, actually, because we’re going to talk about them later, but Inside No. 9
is created by, like, Richard Smith and Steve Pemberton of The League of Gentlemen, who
are in episode four, along with Mark Gatiss, also, of The League of Gentlemen.
Yeah, what’s his name?
The actor’s name, sorry?
Steve Pemberton.
That’s Steve Pemberton, is it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, he’s the most chameleon actor I’ve ever seen, like, from episode to episode on
Inside No. 9.
Like, it always, always, even though I know they’re coming up, it takes me a second to
recognise it’s him.
He’s fantastic.
Yeah.
But yeah, if you’ve not seen the show, listen, it’s highly recognised.
It’s kind of, like, a bit Black Mirror-ish in that it’s, like, an anthology series with
a different story, but less, like, all tech, all scary, what if this happened and more
just, like, hey, look at fucked up shit.
It makes me physically uncomfortable to watch and I really enjoy it.
Yeah, it’s not bingeable.
No.
No.
Don’t try it.
Do not binge the show.
Anyway.
Anyway, but yeah.
But yeah, I love Donna Preston.
I just think she is stunning.
I thought it was very impressive in Stamman that as despair, they managed to make her
look not stunning because she’s got just, like, an incredibly charismatic face.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then a distracting police officer passes by.
I noticed we both made the same note, a real human person.
Regular.
Inspector Constable, regular human police officer.
In bright white.
It’s possible.
Yeah.
So she knocks on the door, Rosara Fell answers, it’s the police, and she wants to come and
do her in an unobtrusive monitoring inside where it’s warmer.
And I think we can all say at this point that we really love Muriel.
Very cute.
She’s adorable.
So yeah, so Crowley comes in and asks for a private word, Azura Fell gets the car keys,
doesn’t stay to listen to Crowley’s plan, but Muriel’s here to obviously check up on
whether Nina and Maggie are fallen in love.
I think we very clearly heard her say she was here to look at a cup of tea.
Or a cup of tea.
A cup of tea.
A cup of tea.
Which I thought was a nice little call back to the whole don’t eat or drink any human
stuff because corruption there, she’s staring at it like it’s on fire.
And actually that made me think, I don’t think we really talked about it because it’s just
such a trope we’re both soaked in with all the stuff we read.
The fairy food rules.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I made the exact same note.
Don’t eat anything of the wrong realm.
Because you might get kind of trapped there, which is what happened to Azura Fell.
He’s eaten of the human food and drink and now he loves humanity and wants to stay there.
Yeah.
But yeah, some other stuff I found about Muriel being there, I mean, I could only say cup
of tea that way now.
Yeah.
A cup of tea.
A cup of tea.
It’s like humanity.
She’s immediately really excited by Earth.
She thinks it’s really wonderful.
Like, she’s not very good at this.
No.
This pretending to be a regular human police officer, Inspector Constable.
Did Heaven intentionally send someone incompetent or, because she’s very low ranking as well,
like we’ve seen her in the previous episodes in the heavenly scenes that she is not like
up in the ranks there, or is Heaven just so disconnected from humanity that they, because
we saw that with like Gabriel the previous episode that he doesn’t seem to really care
about humans, previous season I mean, not previous episode.
So yeah, is Heaven just so disconnected and kind of arrogant that they don’t think they
need to send someone who might have a clue what’s going on, because they’re all kind
of like that and Michael wouldn’t do any better.
Might be a bit of both, in that there might be one of the angels is kind of masterminding
everything and the rest of them are too disconnected to notice that Muriel would do a bad job
or I would if it’s either or I would lean towards the latter though that they just don’t
realize.
Yeah.
Yeah.
From that scene, my favorite little framing, but by the way, they had Iserafell and Crowley
perched together on the on the armchair, or rather Iserafell sitting down and Crowley
perched and it’s just very nicely framed, it looked like one of the posters.
And the sort of both of them leaning in together to very gently rib Muriel.
Yeah.
Like you can tell they kind of feel sorry for her in a way.
Oh yeah, especially Iserafell.
Yeah.
Like a human police officer would usually accept a cup of tea, yes.
Then so shall I.
Oh yeah, so I’d die for her.
And then where do we go?
Oh yeah, so Crowley warns Muriel that it takes humans a few days to admit they’re in love
so they can give him, he and Iserafell some breathing room.
Muriel pops into the coffee shop to ask Nina about her love life.
And Nina is not amused.
No.
Get out.
I am wondering if we will see Nina smile again by the end of this season.
I think so.
I think it’ll be a moment.
And there’ll possibly be a moment.
And then Iserafell sets off for Edinburgh and we get the titles.
Did the Bentley always have bullet holes in the car window?
Yeah, I actually, I had this noted for Easter eggs later, but I think they did do it last
season, but this is one of the first times we’ve been able to see it clearly, which is
not real bullet holes.
There’s a line in the book, Good Omens, Crowley had bought pretzels exactly once in 1967 to
get the free bullet hole transfer stickers that were, I think it was like a James Bond
film thing.
And that’s why the Bentley has bullet holes.
Incredible.
Okay, so after the titles were into the mini-sode, The Resurrectionists, written by Cat Clarke,
who I think this is actually her first bit of TV writing.
She’s normally like a young adult author.
And I looked up some of her books, they look really good, so I’m going to check those out.
So yes, Iserafell is writing a diary entry.
And something I’d seen Neil Gaiman post about on, I think on Tumblr, is that he was asked
to come up with like a previous diary entry, so that they could have it in there and then
ended up not being in the shot at all.
But he shared it on Tumblr back on Valentine’s Day, which is really annoying.
I spent ages finding the Tumblr post and then I was looking for Trivia Romus and the Amazon
Prime X-ray thing in there.
It’s right there.
Yeah, but so the previous diary entry in Iserafell’s diary.
Madam, I said, I do believe you’ve entirely misunderstood me.
The Countess drew herself to a full height, which I would believe would have been about
five feet and seven inches, and stared at me, quite puzzled.
No, she said, I believe it is you who are mistaken, Mr. Fell, for never have I met a
man of any kind who could resist my blandishments.
And then, replacing her garments, which took much longer than shedding them, she added,
I do not know what manner of man you are, Mr. Fell.
I trust you will still help my brother with his little problem.
I’m still there for him, I assured her.
He is as good as freed from his Durrance file.
You are an angel, said the Countess.
And so we left the matter.
This morning, her brother rejoined her, released by me from debtor’s jail.
She was by all accounts delighted to see him.
Postscript.
It appears that she was not a Countess, he was not her brother, and they fled together
for France, leaving many debts behind them.
I told Crowley all about the matter over a glass of claret, but he did not appear to
be as surprised as I had expected.
Oh, I love that.
So, thank you.
Thank you, Neil Gaiman, for providing that to us.
The picture of Aziraphale’s kind of blank astonishment at a woman disrobing is wonderful.
I wish they had shot some of that.
I don’t want to see a woman disrobing, I just want to see Michael Sheen do the face.
So yeah, Aziraphale writes this diary entry, and we go to the Edinburgh Cemetery that Crowley
has invited him to because they found a statue of Gabriel.
Yes, one of the behind the scenes bits I haven’t looked at yet.
There’s a bit of a construction of that statue.
Yeah, I watched a little bit of it and it made me want to get really into sculpture,
which I’m not going to do because I know full well it would be a terrible idea.
But for a second, I thought, yeah, I could do that.
Our toxic trait.
My homosexual audacity.
So they get distracted by a grave robber.
This is Elizabeth, played by Abigail Lorry, who I don’t think I’ve seen much of things.
She’s done, they’ve used a lot of good Scottish actors in this, which means all of them above a
certain age have been in Taggart, which is sort of the Scottish equivalent of doing Hobie City in
England or possibly the Bill.
Even we know someone who’s been in Taggart.
We do.
Although he was sort of pretending to be Scottish.
So Elizabeth acquires her corpse and Aziraphale and Crowley decide to join as she drags her
corpse along and Aziraphale moralises.
Yeah, he is annoying in this.
He really is.
This is like stolen.
I guess he’s just learning because it’s yeah, he’s very irritating missionary.
He is.
And I having been to Catholic school, I’ve met some people like Aziraphale is in this.
And I’ve learned that kind of there’s no arguing with them.
No.
So yeah, it put my back up a little bit.
And Elizabeth stops to share her food with me.
We morag.
We morag.
Yay, lesbians.
Are they?
Yeah, they are intentionally meant to be a queer couple.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure because of like the kind of immediately looking like she got over it type
thing.
I read it as some kind of queer relationship immediately.
But that’s me always looking for the gay.
But no one has like tweeted and sort of said, yeah, lots of people have talked about other
things and kind of missed that super obvious queer couple I put in.
Which maybe could have made it more obvious.
Yes, we morag is much more concerned about immortal souls than Elizabeth is.
As this is played by Julie McClellan.
I’m just apologizing now if I get names wrong.
Yeah.
So this is the bit that kind of annoyed me with Aziraphale when he immediately kind of
like saw that we morag was concerned with immortal souls and like picked his character.
He’s like, yes, you’re the good one.
You’re the good poor.
Oh, and the idea of the good poor.
I love when Aziraphale suggesting other career opportunities to Elspeth and she’s doing that.
Oh, no, I don’t know where I put my loom.
It’s probably on your farm.
I can’t remember if I’ve noticed this somewhere, by the way, but the accents David Tennant does
in this in this extended flashback.
Yeah, one of the trivia bits was that Gaiman suggested that David Tennant do as many Scottish
accents as he could in the chapter because people might complain if he wasn’t allowed to
do his Scottish accent anywhere in the series.
Like, go nuts with it.
And yes, it was quite the journey.
I don’t know, like, regional Scottish accents as well as I know regional English accents,
obviously, but I could hear we were visiting many different places in Scotland.
My favorite being the sort of what I assume is very Edinburgh,
if Mary Poppins was Scottish, Scottish accent.
Yeah, it was McGonagall.
Yeah, bit McGonagall.
At one point, it was a bit Mrs. Doubtfire.
Please don’t tell us off if we got this wrong.
I don’t.
No, guys, we don’t.
We don’t know.
I expect an email detailing the Scottish accents with a graph.
But yeah, this whole bit is a nice.
Well, there’s all the mini so it seemed to be a nice opportunity to
work out some of the morality background.
Um, so we go into Aziraphale and Crowley following Elspeth and her pickled herring
to the surgeon’s place.
The shot of the two Aziraphale and Crowley with a woman and a
large barrel of pickled herring is like one of the early onset photos to be released.
So I think pickled herring itself has kind of become a meme within the fandom.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, I noticed it was in the intro, but I don’t think I’d seen that.
Yeah.
But I think the fandom just from context clues had all guessed that there was going
to be a dead body in the pickled herring then because it looks like body snatchers era.
I see.
I didn’t do a ton of research into body snatching for scientific purposes because
I feel like we’ve talked about that on the podcast before.
What I’ve reminded myself or remembered somebody told me I read about it.
I don’t remember since last week because the Burke and Herb weren’t
resurrectionists, were they?
They were just murderers.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretending to be resurrectionists.
Yeah, they were murdering people rather than just going and doing some honest grave robbing.
Yeah, because the rest was a bad name.
So yeah, so they’re following us along and they argue about morality and this stupid idea of
starting, you know, you need to start everyone off equal for that to work,
which is not the stupid idea, Azir Afal is being silly in this bit.
Saying that you get more opportunity to be good if you start poorer.
Yes, she got all the opportunities because she’s so poor.
But again, this argument kind of comes back down to the free will thing,
which again seems to be much more what Crowley chose when he sauntered vaguely downwards rather
than direct evil.
I imagine the fall is quite disappointing for those who are now kind of stuck in demonic
hierarchy and still don’t get a lot of free will.
Yeah, absolutely.
And Azir Afal is arguing that, you know, the free will is entirely what allows people to be good
and ignoring the fact that he’s almost like, he’s like, it’s something between like,
naive and just fully indoctrinated.
Like, heaven is good and the ineffable things I’ve been taught are good.
That’s clearly all there is.
Like we talked about with a lot of practice stuff.
If the person is starting from the certainty that they’re right,
then the logic from there is never going to work very well.
Yeah, that bit is very brachy.
And yeah, then back in the present, Azir Afal is driving the Bentley very happily
listening to his classical music.
Yeah, Crowley contacts through the radio, very annoyed at what Azir Afal has done to the car,
which including the cheerful horns while turning it yellow.
Yes.
Yes.
So I did, when I got to briefly meet Rob Wilkins, like last year, I think,
he mentioned he got to keep a lot of the cars and bikes from making good omens.
Yes.
So I did wonder for a second if the yellow car was just Rob can get a new car.
He did get to keep them, keep them, did he?
Because in the book, it says something like I’m currently in possession of them all.
And I was wondering if that meant like he was looking after them.
I know he is a huge like car and bike head.
So I think he has kept as many as he can.
Incredible.
But it’s not, it’s a reference.
Obviously, John Fennimore, like co-exec produced this season.
And one of the things John Fennimore is known for is his radio sitcom Cabin Pressure,
which is very funny.
And this whole bit of Cabin Pressure that gets shared around a lot.
And it’s sort of a famous, very funny bit about yellow cars.
So I think that was in there as like a Cabin Pressure reference.
Cool. Cool. Good.
Which if I can find the clip of the yellow car conversation,
I will link that in the show notes.
Excellent.
But yes, the Zerophil changes the car back.
Did you notice as he drives into the hills of Scotland, that amazing background?
Yeah, I love that.
That’s very, that was very last season of Good Omens.
Yeah.
Like just taking us into the surreal into it.
Yeah.
Yeah, so you’ve got like the Tartan Hills and the Loch Ness Monster.
Official Good Omens Tartan.
Yes. I didn’t know.
No, I didn’t know that was the thing.
Yeah, I’m going to have a look in the Tartan Registry
because I’ve got a lot of links and things now.
Yeah.
And then where do we go after that?
Oh, yeah, we go to Hell.
We’re going to Hell.
Wow, I haven’t had that song in a long time.
Yes, we’re going to Hell.
Tiger Lilies.
Very catchy.
Yeah, Beelzebub wants to know what’s happening with Gabriel.
Yep.
We meet Deewin Josh, played by Murray Hunter,
who again done lots of Scottish things, including Taggart.
And it was nice to have like a Scottish actor in this bit as well,
not just in the Scotland bits.
Yeah, absolutely.
That was a nice extra little detail.
Beelzebub’s having like a bit of an existential crisis
along with wanting to know what’s going on with Gabriel.
Yeah, they’re not feeling the evil as much as usual, I think.
They want to be told that they’re doing a good job.
Yeah.
And I kind of feel for them a little bit.
A little bit.
A little bit.
Obviously, they’re not like the most sympathetic character in the show.
No, for all the obvious reasons,
but also just because I hate the fucking noise of the flies.
Yeah, no, I respect that.
There is, speaking of, after that we go back to the bookshop
where Jim’s testing out gravity,
and there is still a fly buzzing about, which I have questions.
I’m going to get to those closer to the end.
This must be really fun for our listeners who are listening
and have seen all of it to just hear me wildly speculate.
Yeah, no, fuck it.
We don’t know.
We don’t know.
We’re trying our best not to watch ahead.
We don’t know.
We’re trying our best not to know.
We’ve been told our first episode was fairly prescient.
Oh, good, have we?
That’s nice.
I liked when Crowley was talking about gravity with Jim,
and I was just like,
do you know, I don’t remember.
It seemed like a good idea when we were all talking about it,
and he just kind of reminded that he came up
with a lot of the mechanics of the universe.
Yeah, Crowley helped him invent the universe.
Which, something I saw pointed out online I didn’t notice, actually,
in episode one went the crank that starts up.
That’s the Bentley starter crank.
Oh, cool.
That’s a fun little detail.
So yeah, Crowley explains his rain and awning plan to a,
not fully getting it, Jim, but he’s trying his best,
and says that we’re going to get a fa-voom, which, fa-voom.
He does seem to be using Jim as just like a sounding board.
Yeah, it’s the same way I, he’s using Jim as a rubber duck.
Yes, he is, yeah.
Yeah, as a coding duck.
So yeah, so back into the mini-sode,
and Elspeth arrives at Mr. Dalrymple’s with her corpse in Aziraphale and Crowley.
Yes, I love that name because that’s Kate Dalrymple.
As a really cool song I like.
Ah, cool.
It’s a good name.
Which I’m not going to try and sing because it’s far too fast for me,
but I’ll link it, I really enjoy it.
This is another, also trying to get all my notes written up for the plan before you see it,
so you can’t see me live misspelling things in real time.
Dalrymple was one of them.
Hitchhiker was another.
The double H feels weird when I do hitchhiker.
Yeah.
Yeah, so Dalrymple is played by Sean Biggastaff,
who’s name I’ve never giggled at in my life.
Listeners cannot see my eyebrows.
Some people watching might recognise Sean Biggastaff.
He was Oliver Wood in the Harry Potter films, captain of the Quidditch team.
Was he indeed, I say.
He’s also a voice to one of the Doctor Who big finish audio things,
which means he’s technically now shared three separate cinematic universes with David Tennant.
Superb.
Superb.
Looking around his house doctor surgery, both I guess,
I was a bit annoyed I couldn’t focus on some of the posters on the wall.
Like there was one that looked like a dissected mermaid or something.
I might go back and see if I can get a bit more info on that.
Gorgeous set dressing and set design on these, especially in these flashback episodes.
There’s so many things.
Like I’ll look into the x-ray stuff,
because they’re quite good at not giving the spoilers,
but I can’t Google as much as I’d want to right now.
Yeah, I think when we do the final episode,
we’ll probably end up doing a big round up.
Yeah.
Or even just a set for a half hour episode
where we just talk about everything we got wrong slash right slash weighted to Google.
So Aziraphale does a little miracle and renders the corpse unusable.
I put that delicately.
Same.
So Elspeth leaves, she’s very pissed off,
but Aziraphale and Crowley stay so that they can talk about Dalrymple and why he does what he does.
Aziraphale’s still struggling with the whiskey, I noticed.
Yeah, he’s not quite there yet.
So they learn the beneficial side of body snatching.
So I put it out Aziraphale is sort of naive about these ideas of good and evil,
which does mean he gets very persuaded into body snatching is good actually, like very quickly.
It does not take a lot to convince him.
No, no, it’s literally just pointing it out.
Yeah, he just needs shit explained to him.
Not that Dalrymple’s argument wasn’t a good argument, it was fairly obvious already.
Yes.
But yes, Aziraphale.
Even though he is indoctrinated, he’s no longer under the constant influence of heaven.
No.
For all that he talks about shades of grey in the next episode,
he does need things to be a bit black and white.
It’s almost like a comfort mechanism.
Yeah, as long as he explained to him why it’s good.
So he’d probably be quite easily manipulated in bad directions like that, I imagine.
Yeah.
After you pointed out the score last time we spoke,
I was enjoying it in this scene particularly because there were violins and then little
breaks for thunder every time death was mentioned, I noticed.
Yes.
Very good.
Very good.
I still want the horsemen to show up, just pop through.
Yeah.
Especially Brian Cox’s death.
And then we go back to the present day,
and Aziraphale makes it to Edinburgh and goes to the resurrectionist.
As an inkslinger.
As an inkslinger.
So yeah, having been really smug at Muriel about how sort of incompetently
she’s doing this regular human police office a bit, he’s not amazing as a reporter.
It’s definitely one of these…
Oh, you know that Tumblr thing a little while ago where they’re like,
if a vampire lived for 400 years, they’d just be mixing up all of their pop culture references
or whatever.
Yeah.
It’s a bit like that, isn’t it?
He’s got it down for maybe the 20s, 30s, 40s.
He’s got his little…
Oh, I know the press pass he’s got on his hat, which used to be a thing.
You’d put it in your hat to keep both your hands free basically.
And then the lanyards.
But it has a 66 on it.
And so did the resurrectionist has a 66 goat gate.
That was on the thing.
I don’t know if 66 is a thing.
I’m assuming it’s sort of because actually just putting 666 everywhere would be too obvious.
That’s what I thought.
I also looked into, you know, that whole thing that the letters are meant to correspond
in Latin, something like that, the numbers.
It would be FF.
That would be the only thing I could think that would be perfect,
but no, that doesn’t seem…
That’s tenuous.
Yeah, that does feel a bit tenuous.
I was getting a bit caught bored, so I put that idea away for a minute.
We’ll come back to that, though.
66 is repeating.
It is.
So yeah, the barman that Aziraphale speaks to is played by Alex Norton,
who’s another guy who’s been on Taggart.
I think we should mention as well, actually, I keep talking about Taggart,
because this is the Scottish episode, that Douglas MacKinnon,
who directed most of this season, did also direct the final episodes of Taggart.
What is Taggart, actually, for our listeners, who?
It’s a Scottish TV show.
It’s like murders and shit, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I’ve never actually watched it.
I’ve just heard a ton about it from that one dude I know who was in an episode.
I think he’s probably making more on residuals from that one episode
than a lot of people who’ve been on Netflix shows are making.
Because it does get repeated a lot.
Yeah, so he learns that the jukebox began changing its tune about a year ago.
Gabriel was spotted in the pub and he’s presumed a mason,
because there’s a masonic lodge next door.
So he’s clearly been interfering in Edinburgh for some time.
There’s a statue of him.
He’s like head of the masons or something.
Yeah, well, I think he’s only been seen in there once, though.
He’s only been seen in the pub once.
They’ve just assumed mason because he was with one of the masons, I’m guessing.
True, but I’m putting that together with the statue thing.
Yeah.
I think he’s been meddling in the affairs of humanity in Edinburgh rather than Scotland.
Rather than London.
In the book, there’s a bit where talking about Crowley and Aziraphale’s truce
is where we get the Milton Keynes joke.
So Aziraphale was able to freely develop Edinburgh
while Crowley developed somewhere nasty.
So that’s the angelic city.
Yeah, so there’s an Aziraphale link as well as a Gabriel link there.
I wonder if that’s going to come up in the show.
Yes, neither of them took responsibility for Milton Keynes.
What a place.
So yeah, so Gabriel was spotted in the pub with someone, but we don’t know who yet.
And yeah, Aziraphale grabs a pamphlet on the way out and we see both sides of the pub sign.
I think we see it going in as well, which is a very cool thing that it’s the Resurrectionist
on one side.
I think it’s meant to be like Jesus bringing Lazarus specifically back from the dead.
Yeah, it is, yeah.
Which is nice because I forgot to mention in the early Crowley and Aziraphale chat
when they’re in the bookshop, Crowley explains what Lazarai means
for those viewers who may not have got the joke in the last episode.
And yeah, then the other side we have, Dalrymple.
You can tell when something’s made for a wider audience
when there’s so many more explained jokes, I must say.
And repeated jokes, I’ll be a bitch about that later.
So back into the past.
And Aziraphale’s decided that body snatching is good actually and wants to give Elspeth a hand.
Reasoning his way into a new morality.
As you do.
So they go to the graveyard and we get these security devices that are around rich graves
to stop them from being robbed, which again points out another big inequality thing,
which is the rich can theoretically protect their bodies while the poor have to lump
whatever because they can’t afford grave guns after they’re dead.
Yeah, coincidentally, one of the facts on No Such Thing As A Fish this week was about
rich people getting around burial rules.
At one point in the 17th century, I think, you had to be buried in wool to protect the
wool industry and that was like a fine if you didn’t, but if you dogged somebody in,
you got half of the fine and so what rich people would do would just bury their loved
ones in whatever they wanted to, dob themselves in and then only pay half the fine.
Incredible.
Wow.
Anyway, yeah, so a grave gun, someone trips, there’s a gasp at a corpse and
Morag gets hit with a grave gun, which alerts the watch who cruelly sends down a hole.
A hell of a hole.
Quite literally a hell of a hole.
Bye bye.
I might have overdone it there.
Yeah.
They hide in a crypt, but Aziraphale can’t save Morag in time and she dies, which, yeah,
he’s talking about doing the miracle and then doesn’t get the chance to actually do the miracle.
Yeah, I had a moment where I was wondering whether Crowley had helped her go peacefully.
I think probably not.
I think you’re probably right that the point there was he was just talking about it so long,
he didn’t actually do any good.
Yeah.
Because he’s, he dithers.
Yeah, yeah.
I think because I was thinking maybe a bit Pratchett-y, just the idea of, yeah.
Helping someone.
If someone’s going to go helping them is the right thing to do, yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah.
I think it’s kind of a precursor to what we get later in the episode where Crowley needs to be the
one to talk else without hurting herself because Aziraphale’s not confident enough to do it.
Yeah, he’s just stuttering his way through.
Yeah.
Which compared to the newly very confident Aziraphale we’ve got in present-day Good Omens,
it’s an interesting contrast.
It is, yeah.
He’s done a lot of character development in only a couple of centuries.
Good effort.
But the moment after Morag dies where Elizabeth goes from sad to pragmatic and does that really
quick face switch, I thought that was fantastic acting.
It was, yeah.
It was, and obviously took Aziraphale back massively.
Yeah.
Because, again, as somebody who’s never, you do wonder what he’s been doing,
but as somebody who, I guess, has never had to do the whole,
all right, we’ve got to shove that emotion down for a minute and do something else.
Yeah.
Because he’s, you know, I mean, he’s privileged.
You know, he’s an angel.
He’s fairly privileged.
Yeah, I would say that is pretty up there.
Yeah.
And, yeah, he hasn’t had to, and he, to a certain extent,
has just never been in a position to experience these sorts of human emotions
because the only person around him he even slightly considers an equal is Crowley.
So, yeah, so they’re going to take Morag’s body to Dalrymple,
which they do, and Elizabeth sells wee Morag’s body, bless her, for some money for wine, apparently.
Yeah, I forgot to work out the exchange rate here,
but I feel like five pounds is more than some wine, but maybe not.
I did not look into that.
Well, I mean, she doesn’t spend all the money on wine.
No, that’s right.
She was saving some back, yeah, yeah, for some burial, yeah.
Yeah, she goes back to the crypt.
She steals the Lordenum.
She pulls herself Dibbler’s Lordenum.
Oh, I’m sorry.
You wanted to list all the things at the end.
It’s more natural sometimes.
Yes, the Lordenum does come from C.M.O.T. Dibbler,
and I don’t know about you, I did Leo pointing meme at the screen when that happened.
Drink me own poison, Dibbler.
So Aziraphale and Crowley arrive and she tells them that she’s going to drink the Lordenum
and ask them to use the rest of the money to bury her somewhere where
she’s not going to be dug back up.
Which is interesting, because it shows she believes in that more than we thought,
and considering her, you know, love has just been
Sold.
Sold.
I don’t even think she believes in it in an immortal soul sense,
especially because Aziraphale does say that’s not entirely how it works.
I think it’s more the dignity aspect of it.
She’s seen what happens to them.
Yeah, and I think maybe she just wants to be left in peace,
because it’s not going to benefit anyone she cares about to sell her body,
like they don’t need the money.
Yes, that’s true.
Whereas, you know, if she had died and Morag had lived,
she would have wanted her body sold so that Morag could be safe.
That makes sense.
So Crowley downs the Lordenum.
Yep, not a little bit.
That’s a bit, isn’t it?
Immediate action.
And in the process of being high, small, and gigantic.
Very Alice in Wonderlandy.
Very Alice in Wonderlandy.
I loved the high Crowley bit.
I thought it was fantastic.
I love especially the bit where he’s tiny.
No matter how much of a budget a show has,
British special effects will just always look a bit shit.
Like, I don’t think we can help it.
It didn’t look noticeably shit.
It just looked a bit silly.
Yeah, well it’s meant to.
And yeah, he starts singing Flower of Scotland,
which wasn’t composed until the 1960s,
so obviously Crowley invented Flower of Scotland.
I think that’s now canon.
Apparently that bit was improvised.
It was not scripted that he starts singing
Flower of Scotland over ten and just sort of did it.
Because of course.
We get a rapid fire accent to her in that bit as well.
So he convinces Elspeth to live a good life
in exchange for the contents of Aziraphale’s purse.
Yeah, and like a really good life too,
which is interesting because that didn’t seem necessary.
Yeah, like he insists she’s got to actually be properly,
morally good from now on.
And this is, as with Aziraphale not being able to help Morag in time,
he can’t convince Elspeth not to kill herself.
He gets stuck on this idea of poverty as a virtue
and can’t get past it.
So Crowley has to do it,
and partly because Crowley is frustrated
about how God apparently works and is like,
no, okay, fine, I’m right.
If you start off in poverty, it’s a lot harder to be good.
So here you go, prove me right by proving that
if you take a vast amount of money, you can be properly good.
Yep, and it’s just, I like that as a little kind of lesson bit,
is that, you know what, the best fucking way
to help someone who’s struggling and in poverty
and like thinking of killing themselves
because it’s so fucking hopeless that they’re in the situation
is to give them enough money to get out of that fucking situation.
Everyone’s like, oh, I need to, you know,
you can’t help some people.
Like you fucking can.
Fucking the studies, the statistics, everything shows it,
just giving people the means to get out of that situation
without all the fucking strings attached.
That is the…
It’s boots theory, not bootstraps.
Yep.
Thank you, Terry Pratchett for writing our economic theories for us.
Much easier than reading the Prophelons.
But yeah, so this good deed that Crowley has done
doesn’t go unpunished and he seems to disappear into hell.
And Aziraphale concludes his diary entry
and it’s the sort of end of the mini-soge with that.
And that was the last time I saw Crowley for quite some time.
Yeah.
So, this is the 1820s.
The flashback episode, the season one episode three,
the half hour cold open with all the flashbacks.
Crowley and Aziraphale have an argument about Crowley
wanting to get some holy water, which takes place in 1862.
So that quite some time is theoretically 40 odd years.
We don’t know if that conversation between Aziraphale and Crowley
is the first conversation they’ve had in quite some time.
It seemed like it might’ve been.
Yeah.
So, was Crowley in hell being punished all that time or just some of it?
I think at least the majority of it would be my guess.
I think a chunk of it.
Because he’s coming up and they’re not very friendly
in that first conversation.
About the holy water.
Yeah. And I wonder if Crowley is now motivated to acquire the holy water
because he’s just been punished in hell.
Yes.
And this is something I noticed with the next episode as well
and the flashback centers around hell kind of trying to catch Crowley and Aziraphale out.
This interest in what Crowley’s up to, to me, feels like it’s a bit of a retcon,
especially from the book where a lot of the vibe of the book is just,
and stuff Crowley says, even in this series of this show,
hell’s just not really interested as long as stuff’s happening.
He gets the commendation for the Spanish Inquisition
and then realizes he should probably go have a look at the Spanish Inquisition.
Hell interfering and punishing Crowley, I don’t know.
The vibe seems off for me.
Does that make sense?
It does. I guess it makes sense to make it chime with the plot point
of the miracle showing up as this flare kind of thing though.
Like there’s clearly some kind of good bad censor thing going on.
And they are, like we need some peril for present-day good omens to know that like
hell and heaven are willing to get punishy more than just having seen it in the last season.
Yeah. Also this particular graveyard does have some kind of resonance for the
unearthly powers because it’s got, it’s the one with Gabriel in it,
so maybe it’s just a bit more under surveillance than…
Yeah, quite possibly.
Also he just threw those two watchmen down there, so…
Oh, he did, yeah.
Yeah, he did.
He didn’t do any favors for himself there.
No, but yeah, I want to come back because something, I don’t know,
some timeline stuff just feels slightly off to me and the punishment stuff feels a bit off,
so I will come back to that when we talk about the next episode.
But before that, back in the present day, Aziraphale pays a visit to the Gabriel statue
and approaches some charming skinheads to borrow a mobile phone.
No regards.
Played by Douglas Russell and Mark McDonald.
Yes, no regards, which wasn’t that a thing in the book?
The Other Horseman of the Apocalypse,
which was the thing I was most disappointed got cut from the TV show.
I think so.
One of them had a no regards tattoo.
Yeah, probably.
I don’t love the Grindr joke.
No?
Ah, it’s just, I feel like it’s really old hat now to do the hair.
Look at this person who doesn’t look like a gay person have Grindr hair.
Is that the joke?
I thought the joke was just like he was admitting stuff he’d never usually admit
because he’d been hypnotized.
Yeah, I think it was a bit of that as well, but I still think it was also a bit of her.
This person’s got Grindr.
Okay.
I don’t know.
It bugged me.
Those jokes often do.
So yes, he calls Crowley, falls him in on the proper clue he’s found.
Proper clue, a real one?
A proper clue.
Which, during the phone call Crowley threatens to actually sell some of the books,
which is another thing that’s been kind of bugging me.
Like that joke is getting really dragged out now.
Like it was a throwaway joke in the book.
Like Aziraphale tries to avoid selling books and it was sort of a haha.
Those weird old bookshops, they are like that.
And they are, although I’ve been in some lovely ones,
the one in Stratford upon Avon where the nice man stopped reading the book he was
reading so that he could sell it to me.
It was a disquad book.
That was a particular highlight.
He was a very sweet man.
Then I realized it was near the end so I just came back after his lunch break to buy it.
Friendliness all around.
But yeah, in the show it’s like a joke that at least once an episode it feels dragged out.
It’s diminishing returns on that one.
So yeah, Crowley gets distracted because it’s the awning of a new age.
It’s time to do the thing.
Grown.
I did chuckle at that one.
Me too.
So Nina and Maggie are chatting because Maggie’s worried she’s somehow upset Nina.
Yeah.
I’m a bit confused with the level they’re meant to know each other.
Yeah.
With the whole like, oh, we’re meant to, oh, look, can we talk about the other night?
Whatever.
It all feels very like they’re all very personal.
And I know they spent that evening together,
but it doesn’t seem like they really talked about much during that.
And like, she knew her as a regular at a coffee shop,
but not like as a look, can we talk about the other night type thing?
You know?
Yeah.
We see Maggie introduce herself as Maggie and Nina respect them with, yeah, you’re skinny latte.
Yeah.
Again, I’m not invested in the two of them beyond, hopefully, helping out Aziraphale and Crowley.
But when the rain begins to pour under the awning, the score swells.
And the score is doing the Lord’s work there.
Because I only care about the romance between them in that moment
because of what David Arnold has done with some violins.
The man and his violins are very powerful.
But yes, before anyone can vervoom, the awning splits,
which is something that happened in originally Kurtis’ film.
I was going to say that seemed very, like Crowley was like, oh, gosh darn it, or something like that.
But I was like, that seems very romcom, actually.
It does feel very romcom.
And yeah, then Gabriel remembers a tempest coming.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to Google out.
Is that part of the Bible?
No, it’s not from the Bible.
I did look it up in various, what’s it?
There will come a tempest and darkness and great storms.
And the dead will leave their grave and walk the earth once more.
And there will be great lamentations every day.
It’s getting closer.
That quote, as it exists, as far as I could find, is not in the Bible.
But bits of it, great lamentations, dead leaving their grave.
It’s very revelations.
Yeah, that’s what I thought it probably was.
Yeah.
So it’s not a direct quote, but it’s there.
So yeah, ominous Gabriel moment before he goes back to gym
and is confused and doesn’t have a clue what’s going on again.
Yeah.
Why have I got this?
I’ve got faux nonchalant stroll by David Tennant, very limbs.
What was he being put off by?
Oh, this is, I think, when Shaxe turns up.
Oh, yes, that’s the same.
So Shaxe turns up and appears as various people
and pushes Crowley for Gabriel’s location.
She’s sure Gabriel’s in the bookshop, but she can’t come in,
which is a new thing being established, this bookshop threshold idea.
Yes.
We’ve not had that before, but apparently demons have got vampire rules in the bookshop
and can’t come in unless they’re invited.
I guess it makes sense.
It does, but so again, having not seen past episode four,
I was obviously thinking the fly is potentially some kind of Beelzebub type spy thing.
But if the fly is part of Beelzebub’s demonic aspect,
then it shouldn’t be able to get into the shop.
Right, but the fly thing.
As we find out next episode, they might not be the demon.
True.
Anyway, after briefly she checks in about the boiler,
she threatens to wage war on Aziraphale.
Do you know what, I was slightly worried about her there
because she was like, oh, I’ll find it.
But I don’t think, I think what Tenet was trying to tell,
Crowley was trying to tell her was about getting the pressure back up.
And that’s not something you’re like, oh, I’ll find this thing.
You need to look at the manual for that.
Yeah.
I hope she’s all right.
I don’t know if she’s all right, but you know, spoilers.
I do.
I think she’s my favorite character this season so far.
Crowley a close second and Jim a very close third.
Anyway, yeah, Crowley has a word with Jim slash Gabriel.
It gets quite threatening.
If anything ever happens to Aziraphale, because of you,
I’ll never mind, it’s probably too late.
It’s always too late.
Which probably the most invested I’ve been in
Crowley and Aziraphale’s present day relationship so far this season.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, because we haven’t seen them together as such.
They’ve been fighting and then they’ve gone off and separated for these Edinburgh trips.
But seeing Crowley, it’s reminiscent of the someone killed my best friend from season one.
Obviously not quite as big as dramatic and intense.
Nothing’s on fire in this scene.
But yeah, that has me reinvested in Aziraphale and Crowley.
And that’s that episode.
It is that episode.
Let’s get the next one up.
Shall we have a little break?
Yes.

Chapter 4 – The Hitchhiker (S2E4)

00:56:21

So onto episode four, The Hitchhiker, featuring Nazi zombie flesh eaters.
Hooray.
I’ve got to say, Nazi zombie flesh eaters,
which the minisode is written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman.
But it sounds like something Neil Gaiman would write in a collaboration with Terry Pratchett.
Oh, yeah.
I was thinking it just sounds like an incredible B-movie.
It does also sound like an incredible B-movie.
Just a bit of context, though, for the two guys that co-wrote this.
So Jeremy Dyson wrote a lot on League of Gentlemen.
Okay.
And this is obviously the episode where we get like a little League of Gentlemen cast reunion.
Andy Nyman has written on, among other things,
a lot of Derren Brown specials and things to do with magic.
So I’m assuming his writing on this had something to do with the magic aspects.
Quite possible.
Quite possible.
Nazis of magic, oh my.
Be prepared.
I will talk about the magic aspects.
Okay.
So we open on a Aziraphale driving back from Edinburgh, and it’s dark,
and at one point the fog’s going backwards.
He picks up a disturbing hitchhiker.
He does.
Who turns out to be-
The fog going backwards, by the way, because they let the car go backwards down a hill for a bit.
Yeah.
Cool.
So yeah, the hitchhiker turns out to be a disguised Shax,
who obviously wants to know where Gabriel is,
and tells the Aziraphale about the rumours around 80 to 90 years ago that he and Crowley are an item.
Yeah, the line, poor little Furfur.
I didn’t know that that demon was called Furfur somehow by this point,
and I could not work out what the fuck she was there.
I rewound it like three times, and I just put the captions on in the end.
I was like, what is she saying?
I did manage to twig that the demon we then meet is Furfur.
But it took me a second to work out that’s what she was talking about.
I paused the episode and was going to look stuff up,
and then I was like, wait, I’m going to see if the episode tells me.
But it took me a minute.
The music that Aziraphale puts on in the car before he picks up the hitchhiker
and he wants something with a bit of swing, but not bebop,
which is another one of those jokes that’s starting to feel dragged out of it.
But I feel like it’s meant to be in there because it was a joke from the book,
and that’s why some of those jokes are getting dragged out a little bit,
is because so it can keep referencing those nice little jokes that we liked
in the first season because they were jokes from the book.
Yeah, did we get bebop specifically or just the fact he doesn’t like modern music?
Yeah, it’s him referring to Crowley saying he won’t like the Velvet Underground,
and his response, oh, bebop.
Oh, right, yeah.
But yes, the piece of music is Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade,
which is a lovely piece of music that I love.
And I always forget that’s what it’s called when I want to find it,
because in my head it’s that nice romantic jazzy song
that plays in certain movies when people have a little dance on a balcony.
Well, maybe you’ll remember now.
I’ve got it written down now.
I still won’t remember.
But yeah, so this idea of Aziraphale and Crowley actually calling them an item,
which I think is the first time we sort of had that.
That’s a more solid relationship you turn than enemy who’s been around so long,
he’s become a frightened.
Yeah.
And yeah, Hal was definitely interested.
So yeah, after their conversation,
she is absolutely certain that Gabriel is in the bookshop.
Yep.
And then we get Aziraphale’s, that’s not a very good liar still.
No, bless him, he tries.
He does, he’s doing better than he did.
Duplicitousness does not come naturally to an angel,
unless he’s pretending to be a demon and hanging around in a bathtub.
Yes.
I asked Michael for a rubber duck.
Yeah, and then we get the title.
So I think this is the shortest cold open we’ve had so far.
Yeah, definitely.
And then we go into Nazi zombie flash eaters.
Yeah, back into the bomb to church.
So this is I think the longest, like the most of this episode is the minisode.
Yes.
Almost all of it takes place in 1941.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we see the end of, it’s the scene,
end of the scene that was in season one, episode three,
but with some added shots of the Nazis under the rubble.
Yeah, which gave it a very, I liked the kind of weirdly grim new light that gave it,
because those two are like quipping and having their little moment.
And it’s just little bits of the like corpse shots, like, oh,
obviously the Nazis and I’m glad that died.
But at the same time, it’s like those two having their little,
oh, you’re so nice to me moment with this like crushed person next to them.
Yeah, especially Aziraphale’s little fluttering eyelashes.
And yeah, we go down into hell where Shax is merrily stamping away and we meet Furfur.
We meet Furfur and his terrible hair.
And his terrible hair.
Played by Reese Shearsmith, who again,
part of the League of Gentlemen group and was Shakespeare in the previous season.
Yeah, that’s right.
So I love that they got him back again.
And we get Shax, specifically Shax in that outfit,
which seems to be her specific red satin one.
Yeah, it’s like an orange kind of, I think it’s like a,
it’s like a deep orange, like silk jupion with like a belted moment.
And yeah, I’m absolutely going to make this.
I’m really annoyed actually, because I had the perfect fabric for it,
but I used it on a different outfit last year.
So I’m going to have to get some more to make it.
If I ever see anything in that color, I’ll try and get it for you.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
But yeah, I love that outfit.
It was amazing. Interesting fringe.
I thought, pointy.
A choice was made, but I do, I like it.
Again, I’m really just enjoying Shax this season.
That’s one of my faves.
Oh yeah, she’s great.
It’s lovely to have her in such a polar opposite role from last season as well.
Yeah. The voice on the intercom in Hell as well,
that sort of sounds a bit Terry Pratchett-y.
They got Paul Kay to do it,
who is the guy who played Terry Pratchett in the documentary about his life.
Oh, Back in Black?
Oh yeah, no, it is Back in Black.
Yeah, amazing. Okay, cool.
He was also in season one of Good Omens
when they have the phone conversation with the press officer for the nuclear board
after the sherbet lemon thing happens.
Oh yeah, I knew that.
I couldn’t remember if we mentioned that in the podcast,
but I did rework, obviously, because we did an episode on it.
We reworked those series.
And I said to Jack, as that was happening, I was like,
that’s a very Terry Pratchett-y speech impediment.
And I know he worked for the nuclear press office.
That’s got to be on purpose.
Yeah, they did do that on purpose,
and they specifically got Paul Kay to do it,
and they’ve done it again here.
They’ve got Paul Kay to do it, which is such a sweet touch.
I love that.
It’s annoying because we know so much more about Terry Pratchett lore
since we did those first episodes.
It’s like, we must have missed out so many annoyingly obvious things.
I mean, I would love to go back and do a full Good Omens watch,
but we don’t have time this year.
No, we’ll do it one day, though.
Yeah, we will, maybe after season three,
which we will get on Amazon.
If you’re listening.
And yeah, the whole corporate hell aesthetic.
Oh, I love it, love it, love it.
This is what made me actually dive into the behind-the-scenes stuff
because I’ve been kind of putting it off
in case there were any accidental spoilers,
but I was like, oh, I need to see what those fucking,
like, the signs I can quite see said.
Yeah, and that was brilliant.
I love it.
What have I got?
Did I write down a bit about that specifically?
I think I did.
Oh, yeah, just the whole,
your mother won’t clean up after you.
You don’t have a mother.
And if you’ve got better customer service,
how about ripping your throat out with a stapler?
That kind of thing.
Apparently, Neil Gaiman made, like, too many posters.
They couldn’t film them all.
He just had so much fun writing all these horrible corporate posters.
And I love that.
You know how much I fucking love corporate nonsense.
Fuck yes.
So into this.
Yeah, I think there was one that was something like,
it has been zero days since someone said the road to hell
has paved with good intentions.
Oh, yeah.
Which is my second favorite road to hell
has paved with good intentions joke
because that was one of the funniest bits in Eric.
Yeah, and Shax has this conversation about the corporate ladder with Furfur.
They go and get their cuppers, which is, I don’t know,
looks like they’re doing lava shots.
Yeah, absolutely.
That was a nice bit of SFX as well.
They did some, like, I think they called it interactive lighting.
So the cup, as she took it away, could, like,
can, like, had the light in it.
And then they added the fire afterwards, obviously.
But because Neil Gaiman wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it yet.
He just knew it was some kind of fire thing,
like whether it was going to be lava or flames or, yeah.
I like that.
It was a cool moment.
It is.
But yeah, even the fact you managed to fuck up drinking a bit of fire,
like Furfur is clearly an unfortunate.
He is, poor thing.
But he’s one of those, he’s that annoying office dude
that isn’t unfortunate and doesn’t see it.
Yeah.
And enjoys any tiny little bit of power he can get.
Yeah.
And Shax is clearly all over that.
Yeah.
Hence the offering him help up the corporate ladder.
Yeah, the fact Furfur doesn’t even question that as, like,
why would you help me?
Yeah.
What I like as well is that Shax obviously doesn’t have, like,
an in-depth every step thought out plan.
She’s just assumed that Furfur is going to fuck up
because what happens with the switch with the evidence at the end?
Shax didn’t really do that.
That was Aziraphale doing a sleight of hand.
Yes.
So she was just like,
all I need to do is get him in front of the dark council
and he’ll cock up somehow.
Was that on purpose?
To make him cock up?
I think the idea was not that he would be successful.
So that she can slide into this role type thing.
Yeah, which obviously it’s taken her a minute to get there.
I wasn’t sure if that was like,
oh, actually now this is happening thing.
Because my thought was that if she helped him up the ladder,
she could use it.
But yeah, that doesn’t make any sense, actually.
It could be any number of things.
It could be.
Office politics are difficult.
They are.
I’m glad I don’t work in one.
Let’s have a nice cup of burning.
Shax’s teeth, by the way, I thought were an interesting, yeah.
Yeah.
Needle teeth are always scary.
Love needle teeth.
It’s the sharkness.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s not even shark because it’s deep undersea creature teeth.
That’s what that is.
Yeah, fucked up things.
Anyway, so after briefly seeing Crowley and Aziraphale
have a little drive through a blitzed out London to drop off some booze.
We go back to hell and the newly bombed Nazis arguing with fur fur
because they’re not very pleased about being dead
because there wasn’t supposed to be a bomb on the church that night.
No, it does seem like they made some kind of deal with the devil in the past,
doesn’t it?
They’re not surprised that this exists.
No, or I don’t know if they’ve just come to terms with it very quickly.
They don’t think they’ve gone to the wrong place.
They just think they shouldn’t have gone there yet.
Yes, yeah.
So the Nazis in question.
Mark Gatiss is playing Mr Harmony.
Steve Pemberton playing Mr Glowsier.
They’re both League of Gentlemen people.
And Mark Gatiss is also in Sherlock and all sorts.
He’s been in multiple.
Everyone’s in everything.
Everyone’s in.
Britain has like 10 actors.
Yeah.
We just kind of throw them on a ferris wheel and then pick one off as needed.
That’s true, that’s true.
And the woman Greta Kleinschmidt is played by Niamh Walsh,
which is another Sandman overlap.
She was in Sandman as well.
Everyone’s been in Sandman.
And yeah, so the bomb wasn’t used to drop in the church
and fur fur kind of realizes that Crowley and Mr Fell had something to do with this.
Yes.
Um, which again, the sort of fur fur like
taking any power I can can overly confident bit.
I love the moment where he licks the tip of his pen
and you see his like weird fucked up tongue thing.
It’s super gross, but it’s such like a natural movement alongside it.
It’s that.
Whoever did that made it really good.
Yeah.
Yeah, weird next to ordinary thing that’s always really fun.
So we get to the theater.
The whiskey bottle’s broken and Mrs Henderson’s not happy.
She is not.
Is this a real theater?
Yeah, so some context.
So first of all, Mrs Henderson played by Sean Phillips,
who is a very, very well established Welsh actress.
She’s been in lots of things.
She’s been around for years and years.
She’s probably most famous for I Claudius,
which was a huge BBC mini series.
And she was also in the eighties, June.
She was very good in that.
She was also married to Peter Rotul from Lawrence of Arabia.
The theater itself.
So the theater was originally set up as the windmill by Laura Henderson.
There was existed before that.
It was sort of a silent film place.
So Laura Henderson converted into the windmill theater.
It wasn’t very successful as a theater,
so it sort of reverted to a cinema for a bit until
Laura Henderson and hired Vivian Van Dam as the theater manager
who created the reviewed film, which was a sort of Ford film review.
That ran from the afternoon until late night, every day.
Slightly later, they started doing nude performances.
And this is really fun.
I just got this from the Wikipedia page.
I didn’t do a huge deep dive.
There was there was like a theater sensor at Lord Chamberlain at the time
and nude performances shouldn’t have been allowed.
They got away with it by doing the nude performances
with living statues, tableaux vivants.
Because if you couldn’t object to nude statues in an art gallery,
why would you object to nude statues in a theater?
Okay.
So they do these like fan dance things with fans concealing the dancer.
And then the moment the dance was unconcealed,
they would then be a living statue.
Like fucking grandmother’s footsteps type thing.
Amazing.
Fucking incredible loophole.
Later on, obviously some rules and things loosened a bit.
And their slogan famously became We Never Closed.
They stayed open throughout World War II.
They had like two underground theater levels
so they could even stay open during like bombing raids and stuff.
The nickname obviously was also jokingly,
they were referred to as We Never Closed
because they did nude performances.
And then post-war it briefly became the first place
that a lot of comedians got their big great.
Like just a couple of names, Spike Milligan, Bruce Forsythe, Peter Sellers.
Huh.
Yeah. And it still exists.
It’s been a cinema again since then.
It’s been a cabaret club.
It was a sort of nice table dance-y strip club more recently closed in 2017.
There was sort of a gas issue, fire issue that then led to,
it turned out they didn’t have all the right licenses
for the sort of performances that were being done.
But it’s recently reopened, I think,
or is reopening as like a cabaret dinner theater type place.
Okay.
So yeah, this is a very cool thing to have in there.
I’ll try and make a little stop next time we’re in London.
Yeah. And Ladies of Camelot is a thing that they did there.
That was one of the many sorts of performances they did.
So it’s all a real thing.
Nice. Very cool.
Anyway, yes, but Mrs. Edison is unhappy in Good Over Season 2.
It’s freezing cold and they’re lacking a magician.
So Aziraphale volunteers his press to digitation services.
He’s trying to do Crowley a favor.
That’s the idea there, isn’t it?
Yeah, he’s trying to help.
He’s just done exactly the opposite.
And then he gets caught up in the magic thing itself
rather than the favor he’s doing.
I thought it’s like miracles and bottles together or something,
but I guess that’s sin, isn’t it?
And they’re also, I think I’m getting the impression
they’re not meant to be doing miracles willy-nilly.
That’s true.
These things are being kept an eye on.
Anyway, so we go back to hell and Furfur offers to reincarnate
Nazis as zombies for 24 hours so they can collect proof
of this Aziraphale and Crowley relationship.
And if they succeed, they can continue to live on earth.
So they’re sort of saying couldn’t, you know,
Aziraphale and Crowley Milica all the way out of it
and Furfur is qualified as a miracle blocker.
Originally, when I first watched this episode,
because I’ve watched it a couple of times before recording,
the miracle blocker thing bugged me.
It felt very like too convenient.
Like just this is such,
we’ve never heard of any kind of miracle blocking thing
that can be done before.
And now suddenly there’s this very convenient thing
that creates another obstacle for Aziraphale and Crowley.
So miracle blocker, data sex machina,
or is this check off stamp card and this idea
of a miracle blocker is going to turn up again
in the next couple of episodes?
I think the latter.
And I also think it kind of fits with some of the new stuff
we’re learning like the,
I’ve got a license to be doing stuff from God type thing.
Just part of the like bureaucracy and admin type stuff.
I think, yeah, it didn’t bug me particularly.
Was this the bit, by the way,
that you had to close your eyes for?
Sorry.
Oh yeah, sorry.
I didn’t even put this in the-
Yeah, no, that’s it.
I didn’t see it in the plan.
I was like, yeah.
So at this point Joanna had to close her eyes
because there was a spider.
But basically part of the incentive
to make the Nazis go back up and be zombies is,
otherwise we’re going to make you be eaten by a spider
and shat out into flies.
And then the spider-
Over and over again, yeah.
So they’re like, okay, yeah, zombies, fine.
I’m not proud of how much I can’t look at a TV screen
while there’s a spider happening, but it’s just a thing.
Apparently they did put a lot of effort
into designing the spider’s anus though.
So really, yeah.
See, I wasn’t looking very closely.
So we go to the streets of London
as an old drunk is singing a song about a farting contest.
Yeah.
So the guy playing the trump is Benny Young,
who’s been all sorts of things.
I assumed originally that this song was written for the show
and maybe Neil Gaiman had a bit of fun
writing something like this.
In the Amazon Prime x-ray, it’s just credited to a non.
And I was just going to make a joke like,
no one writing for the show wanted to admit coming up with this.
Then I looked it up.
It sounds very much like an old English song.
It is a thing.
I found, I’ll link in the show notes,
the full lyrics to the song.
But the thing is, I can’t find a full origin for it.
All I really found of it was old websites listening to the lyrics.
And a lot of forum posts of other people saying like,
my granddad used to be able to sing this whole song every Christmas.
Has anyone got the lyrics to it?
It’s about a farting contest in Stockton on Tees or Burton on Tees.
Okay.
So yeah, I would assume it’s probably,
and I spent a bit of time Googling,
I would assume it’s probably like an old music hall number
that became just one of those songs
that everyone’s granddad knows the words to.
I assume they had luck before they credited it to a non, so.
Yeah. So yeah.
If anyone knows, if anyone’s got a granddad
who knows all the words to the farting contest song, do let us know.
But so new goal in life is to learn all the words to it
and sing it drunk at Christmas until my family fondly remembers me
as that mad aunt that knows all the words to the farting contest song.
Superb.
Yeah, so the zombies rise and eat the poor tramps’ brains.
Yeah, they didn’t seem too fussed about it.
No, tastes like chicken.
Yep, having evil Nazis do this bit saves a lot of,
oh, but can we give in to our hungers type stuff.
Yeah, we’ll be glad.
Like, yeah, sure, whatever.
Made it efficient.
So they find a spot at the Dirty Donkey
to spy on Aziraphale and Crowley in the bookshop.
Yes, back to that pub.
Back to that pub.
We thought we’d see it again.
So in the bookshop, Aziraphale and Crowley talk magic.
Aziraphale demonstrates some tricks.
Crowley demonstrates an incredible American accent.
I mean, fuck it.
Oh, I loved it.
I loved it so much.
Creepy fucking magic show.
Yes, yeah, so the zombies lip read some apparent nonsense from Aziraphale,
which is I think probably my favourite set up and payoff of a silly joke.
Yeah, that was nice.
And yeah, Crowley says they need to,
the magic tricks need to be bigger, so they go to the magic shop.
This is my least favourite scene in the episode.
Why?
I don’t want to be mean.
So they go, the magic stop specifically is William Goldstone’s magic shop.
The zombies follow.
The guy playing William Goldstone is Pete Furman,
who I don’t want to be mean about.
By all accounts, he’s absolutely lovely.
He’s a comedy magician.
He’s quite famous in the UK.
If there has been a TV show on UK telly that has needed magicians in some way,
Pete Furman has probably been on it.
I just find him incredibly fucking irritating.
Because I find magicians irritating in general,
and he has that particular comedy voice, comedy schtick that I find irksome.
It’s a bit of a Jack Whitehall vibe.
Not that I think he’s anything like Jack Whitehall,
but the same way I find Jack Whitehall’s face unfairly irritating.
You know you’re being unreasonable.
Yeah, I’m fully aware.
So he demonstrates specifically a rope trick,
and the fact that he’s done that trick I thought was kind of a weird choice.
Why?
So, I mean, I’ve seen that trick a lot.
It’s just really, really simple.
Yeah, that’s the point.
I know, but you’d think if you’re going to have this very talented,
like he is a very skilled magician, on,
you get him to do a slightly more sleight of hand cleverer trick.
Like still something that, like a less commonplace one.
I guess, but I guess the point was he was like trying to,
it was showing how bad Aziraphale was, not how good this guy was.
Yeah, true.
I just think it’s weird to, like I said, get such a professional magician and not have him,
like have him do the rope trick,
and then also maybe get him to do something else cool in the episode.
I guess.
Yeah, but yeah, so Aziraphale, this is the bullet catch.
What the fuck, kind of fucking, don’t sell it.
I feel at this point, it’s not a magic trick.
Okay, so again, I wanted to go into some further context with this, if that’s all right.
Sure.
First up, William Goldstone himself,
and we’re going to get another court board and string theory here within all my context.
William Goldstone himself was a well-known magician,
who also became a portrayer of like stuff for performing magic and everything.
Pavea.
Yes, he sold shit.
Born in 1877, died in 1948.
So he would have been 63 in 1941.
So either he’s a vampire or there’s a bit of an anachronism there.
I think that’s probably fine because of the context of the whole fucking episode, Joanna.
Yes, I know.
I’m building to something here.
My point is basically there’s multiple anachronisms in this episode.
The bullet catch thing, so Gladstone mentions he sold it to a Chinese fella who died.
Again, this is based on a real story.
This was Chung Ling Su, who died performing the bullet.
He was one of the most famous deaths,
and probably one of the earliest recorded deaths from a bullet catch gone wrong in 1918.
So a while again before this has taken place, which is getting a bit anachronistic.
Also, obviously, Chung Ling Su was not actually Chinese.
It was a guy called William Robinson doing very, very intensive yellow face.
Sure.
So only other friends and other magicians knew that he wasn’t Chinese.
The public, it came out after he died and the public was shocked.
Which when I read that, my brain immediately did that.
A white man?
No!
No!
The thing is, the trick itself goes back to at least the 18th century, possibly earlier.
It fell out of favor for quite a while after Chung Ling Su died, obviously,
and really wasn’t performed much at all,
like to the point where I think it would be weird that a shop would be selling it.
The method used, there’s lots of different ways of doing the trick,
but the method used in this, which is you use a stooge who is holding an actual loaded gun
and they’ve just got to try and miss you,
was really out of favor because that was the method that caused the most deaths.
And again, I feel like that’s not a magic trick in that case.
That’s just a stunt, right?
Well, the magic trick is producing the bullet in his teeth.
That’s the sleight of hand, or sleight of mouth, I suppose.
Sure.
That’s a horrible phrase that I’m never using again.
And the whole reason I started looking into the bullet catch thing is my awareness of the trick
comes from the movie The Prestige, which is one of my favorite movies.
I absolutely love it, highly recommend you watch that.
Which involves, the bullet catch in that goes wrong,
but the bullet catch in that is supposed to be anyone from the audience can be the one with the gun.
The idea is that the gun is not properly loaded.
It’s risky because it can go long if the person from the audience decides to be a dick and puts
a something else in the barrel of the gun, which is what happens.
Because the person from the audience is actually an enemy of the magician
performing the trick in a disguise.
Okay.
Again, it’s a great movie.
David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla.
That alone should make it worth watching.
So yeah, this method was really out of place.
It’s a weird choice and obviously they’ve done it this way
because then they can do this whole trust thing between Aziraphale and Crowley.
Yeah.
So is this twisting history in multiple ways to fit the plot?
Which again, the fact that they’ve got Andy Neiman writing on this,
who would have known a lot of this stuff because of what his experience is in writing.
So it’s not just like poorly researched,
it’s intentionally not being completely historically accurate or at least twisting it a little bit.
Or is, you know, there’s another anachronistic bit which is
for using a Polaroid camera which wouldn’t have been invented by this point.
Are these anachronisms intentional?
Is something weird going on?
Else weird going on with these extended flashbacks?
I think because this is something you know a lot about,
you’re focusing on this as a huge anachronism
where there are going to be hundreds of them throughout to make the plot run smoothly.
Yeah, totally.
I am overthinking this.
I’m fully aware.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have a cork-worn tons of red screen
on my webcam.
The Polaroid thing, I don’t know, he did say it was like state of the art,
so I think they were acknowledging the fact it was an anachronism
and that they got the tech before other people.
Yeah, maybe Hal invented the Polaroid camera.
Could be.
And I think, you know, I might be proven wrong.
I wouldn’t be that surprised if I was, but my gut instinct is that
they made it that way to make it run smoother.
It’s not so much of an anachronism that anybody apart from you would care.
True.
But I still think it’s weird.
Anyway.
Do you? Do you, though?
Like, take a step back for a second.
No, I think I’ve just overthought this.
I think I have overthought this.
But I’m still going to put a little pin
and maybe something weird’s going on with the flashbacks.
Might sign up.
Maybe.
Anyway, so Aziraphale begs for Crowley’s help to perform this bullet catch thing
and Crowley reluctantly agrees.
And the zombies struggle to call Furfur because they’re zombie-ing.
So they just eat.
Got a trick ring.
I thought that was quite funny.
I did like the trick ring bit.
And yeah, so they eat Goldstone.
Yep.
And little puppet falls to the ground with the brain coming out.
Yeah. So I wasn’t too sad about that.
Anyway, at the theatre, the amazing-
You sound kind.
I know. I’m horrible.
The amazing Mr. Fel makes his debut.
Oh, yes.
Notably, Crowley does not raise his hands when Fel asks for firearm handlers,
but he’s called up to help anyway.
Also, I love how quickly they got the posters up for Mr. Fel considering
he’d only volunteered to be the magician at the theatre,
presumably a few hours before.
Well, you know, they’ve got to be able to change stuff on late notice,
especially during World War II.
Yeah, you’ve got some decent artists there, haven’t you?
Yeah. You keep on trapped in the basement.
So the zombies call Furfur, who blocks miracles.
And the turnip trick then fails.
We’ve all been there.
We’ve all had a turnip trick fail on us, haven’t we?
Yeah.
Sorry, I know you hate this so much.
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I’m not watching it now.
It’s not like a phobia.
It’s just I can’t fucking like I will.
I have straight up stopped watching TV shows forever because of like a cringe moment.
Like, I can’t stand secondhand embarrassment stuff.
I really struggle with it.
So this whole episode made me far more anxious than any of the real like end of the world stuff did.
This is why I’ve fully given up on you ever watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
because there is too much of that in there for you.
Yep. I gave up halfway through an episode, having previously enjoyed the show.
So Crowley comes on stage for the billet catch
and somehow succeeds in not shooting Aziraphale in the face.
Well, then him.
Despite the miracles being blocked.
I love Aziraphale’s little magician mustache, by the way.
I said this back when we talked about Aziraphale’s little magician mustache in season one.
Yeah, it’s, yep.
Well, especially because if he really wanted to,
he could probably miracle up a quick mustache.
But now he draws a neat little mustache on.
He’s seen them on the posters, I suppose, hasn’t he?
It’s a deliberate aesthetic choice and I respect it.
My slight confusion is that, oh no,
because I guess they were expecting the miracle to work, weren’t they?
Because I was like, why didn’t they set up a safe zone?
Because the lady who ran the theater almost got shot.
But yes, I guess they were expecting not to have to worry about that.
Slash just not thinking about it too much.
And Furfur gets a photo.
Furfur gets a photo.
It does.
Triumphant transfer of a rifle.
Yeah.
And this is this big trust moment between Aziraphale and Crowley.
You know, Aziraphale literally trusts Crowley with a loaded rifle pointed at his face.
Oh, there’s a good twee pun somewhere about trust fall and fallen angels and, you know.
Yeah, let’s just take that one as read.
I forgot to mention, actually, I was busy going on about bullet catches back in the Magic Shop scene
that Aziraphale admits to keeping a derringer inside a hollowed out book just in case.
Yeah, that seems like that’s a that’s a Chekhov’s gun.
Yeah, that’s a literal Chekhov’s gun.
I really hope it’s in a Russian book.
Oh my god, it’s got to be, isn’t it?
Like it’s a copy of one of Chekhov’s plays.
Absolutely gonna be.
Okay, but if they shoehorn in a gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya reference within that,
I will forgive it.
Oh no, absolutely.
I mean, I’d forgive it anyway.
It’s a fun one.
I’m not coming in here looking to be grumpy.
I’m not coming in here looking to be grumpy.
It’s just unfortunately who I am as a person.
Aziraphale celebrates in his dressing room, which is a little moment I love when he’s
prassing about with the little feather scarf and things.
I’m a star.
I’m a star.
Furfur turns up and makes his accusations and
he’s quite pissed off that Crowley doesn’t recognize him.
I know that was…
That was secondhand embarrassment.
I do wonder for a second if Crowley genuinely doesn’t remember, which is more likely,
or if he’s trying to put Furfur on the back foot.
Yeah.
Because he’s too cool to remember, especially as this was pre-fall and he doesn’t really
want to remember his fall days.
Yeah.
And either way, I feel like obviously the relationship was pretty one-sided.
Very much so.
Which made me feel, again, sorry for Furfur and his sad little officey way.
Like the little clung on your back…
What was it?
He said clung on your back like a monkey, didn’t he?
Yeah.
And then obviously monkey on your back’s a phrase.
I thought that was a nice, clever bit of wordplay.
So he says he’s going to send a legion after Crowley the next day,
and Crowley’s playing it cool with his hat over his eyes.
And the Nazis learn that they’re permanently stuck as zombies.
Yes.
And then the arm falls off.
This is the last we see of the Nazis in this episode, so again,
we’re overusing the Chekhov thing.
Do you reckon the Nazis might come back in the next couple of episodes?
Oh, my sadness.
They’re zombies, yeah.
So I’m looking forward to seeing them again.
Yeah.
And yeah, so Furfur goes in front of the dark council to present his evidence
at Ask After Vacancies in Temptations,
and the picture’s been switched for the Ladies of Camelot flyer.
Oops.
And Furfur is going nowhere.
And Shax is looking very smug in the background.
So yeah, to come full circle on the Shax thing,
I think what I’m enjoying so much about the character
is it’s the most devilish demon we’ve had so far.
Yeah.
And in a competent way.
You know how I feel about competence.
Yeah.
Obviously, Crowley is very competent,
but also entirely on his own side and no one else is.
Yes.
But of the actual denizens representing Hell, wanting Hell to be successful,
I mean, Beelzebub, yes, but we haven’t seen Beelzebub active.
We’ve seen Beelzebub sitting on a chair and telling others what to do.
Yes.
But Haster and Liger had this kind of built-in bumbling incompetence to them,
like we see Furfur fuck up.
God, I’m glad I got that out in one go.
I know.
So yeah, there’s something really fun about Shax just being very evil and very good at it.
Yes, I’d be interested.
I’d like to find out how she fell.
Yes.
I’m really hoping as well that we get some kind of Shax and Michael scene.
Yes.
Just I want to see those two.
Yeah, they’re definitely the sort of equivalents.
Yes.
Yeah, not in the bureaucracy, but in the personality.
Yeah.
The same flavor of competent.
So yeah, my vibe with Shax is Shax could have been a horse person.
She also has a weird walk when she’s in Hell.
This very upright little creature determined.
Yeah, she plays like…
Excellent audio content.
Hell demonic versus human world demonic differently.
And I do like how she’s varying those characters.
Definitely.
Especially with the little spiky fringe.
I like the spiky fringe.
Good.
One of the singers I like at the moment, Sophia Isella, does that with her eyebrows,
which I find fun.
Oh, yeah.
So yeah, so we go to Crowley and Aziraphale having a drink together.
And Crowley asks how Aziraphale manages it and Aziraphale explains the trick.
And they talk about retiring the act and they talk about trust.
I mean, this is obviously supposed to be a pivotal scene for their relationship.
Nothing establishes trust like pointing a loaded rifle at your best friend’s face.
I’m not suggesting we do that.
Good.
Because both of us are very clumsy and have bad hand-eye coordination.
This is, yeah.
My thought really is that obviously it is trust and it’s nice, but whatever.
But I’m not sure…
I wouldn’t want that to be like a test of my trust as to whether I’m good at something.
Yeah.
I will do everything I can.
That doesn’t mean I’m only good at aiming a gun.
I would not want to be in this position.
Exactly.
Oh, fuck.
But like on the other hand, I can’t believe they haven’t got to anything like this by now.
I mean, by this point, they’ve known each other for like four, five thousand years.
They’ve had their deal going for a while.
It’s definitely like a rush at the end of the world, I guess.
Yeah, they’re getting closer to the end, but I don’t know how much they’re thinking about that.
Probably more because they are mid-blitz.
Yeah, it’s got to be at least back of the mind, doesn’t it?
Yeah.
And you know, as the world gets smaller, there’s going to be more times where they’re bumping into each other.
And as Aziraphale starts seeing things more in shades of grey over those centuries,
there’s going to be more times where he’s willing to work with instead of in parallel.
Yeah, and the shades of grey thing comes from Aziraphale making the point that Crowley would
have not stayed if he would have walked away and not helped if he was truly evil, which…
Yes.
And Crowley makes the point that it’s Aziraphale’s side who are the ones that see things in black
and white, which is true. And that was what I said near the beginning of the episode.
But yeah, so going kind of back to what I was saying in the overall thoughts thing
about wanting to get back to the present day and the pacing feeling weird.
Because the last three episodes have had these extended flashbacks that fit in
amongst the set of short flashbacks we had last season, I’m less invested in their present day
relationship because the show is keeping them odds and has kept them mostly separated.
But there’s not enough fun angst for the apart. This isn’t like the bandstand breakup, which was
a fun bit of angst in the last season. They’re just apart because they’re not communicating
very well and they sort of have slightly different aims. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s
a decent bit of angst, but it’s slightly more one sided. So Crowley is obviously extremely
worried about what’s going to happen to Aziraphale and Aziraphale is just being the kind of cock-eyed
optimist. Yeah. But yeah, I just I don’t feel as invested in it because the show’s not spent time
with it. The show’s been spending time in the past and I’m invested in their past relationship.
I thought I liked I liked this scene as they’re the kind of Aziraphale testing the waters.
He’s obviously saying it in this way that he thinks is quite coy and clever.
Yeah. Just the good thing you did kind of thing and I knew you’d come through and you trust me
and it’s all said in this very not very effectively coy way and Crowley is just not
giving it back. But he isn’t. Yeah, like he’s clearly not he’s not pushing back,
but he’s also not like joining in with the vibe. But I think yeah, it’s definitely it’s the start
of Aziraphale giving that kind of oh, we’re actually friends now vibe. Yeah. And Crowley,
I think, takes a lot as red. Yes, that’s true. And doesn’t feel the need to say it. Yeah. And
probably that makes sense because Aziraphale wears his heart on his sleeve a little bit more.
Crowley knows what Aziraphale it’s not hard to tell what Aziraphale’s thinking so he doesn’t
need to do the whole testing the waters. But they have a total wanker. They have different
love languages. Yes, we’re not doing that. So my love language is fire and brimstone and your
love language is tea and echoes cakes. I was thinking like some of the moments between them
that I really loved in the first season. And I think the one that we all felt a bit far out
about which is when Aziraphale is upset about the paint hitting his jacket and Crowley very
casually sort of blows it off. And Aziraphale is very blushy and thank you. Yes. And really gets
slammed off against a wall by David and not long after. But yes, compared to that this feels
Crowley just does the nice things and that’s his way of them being close friends. Whereas Aziraphale
does like to talk about it in his coy way. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think that’s definitely like
relatable with people as well, isn’t it? There are some people who are definitely just more like
I will never talk about this, but I will just do the good thing now. Yeah. But yeah, as much
as I’ve enjoyed these long flashbacks and stuff like compared to what I said at the beginning,
I’m missing that like sense of pace and urgency because the first season was very much like
X amount of days to the apocalypse. That’s it. There’s definitely that we’re going towards
something but we don’t know. Yeah, there’s no like what? Yeah, but we know the stakes are high. We
know the stakes are high, but they don’t seem to be anchored to anything. Yeah, which takes us
quite helpful, like neatly into the present day stuff that’s at the end of this episode.
So you have Shaq’s looking very purposeful and striding through hell and going to Beelzebub. So
they establish that neither of them know why Aziraphale went to Edinburgh.
Yes. Which means they don’t know about Gabriel having been in Edinburgh, I guess. Yes. Like the
show is taking the time to establish that they don’t know what the deal is with Edinburgh.
So keeping an eye on that. So yeah, Shaq’s wants to take a Legion to storm the bookshop.
We’re going to Helm’s Deep that fucker. We are. And Beelzebub commands it and really says like,
I want you leading that Legion, Shaq’s. Yes. Which considering the threshold issue,
again, is something else afoot. Yes. How clever is Beelzebub being?
Yeah. Are they just taking their out of the ball a bit?
Yeah, quite possibly. Let’s find out. Is Shaq’s a stage?
Yeah. Is Shaq’s seemingly too competent and Beelzebub doesn’t and is starting to view
Shaq’s competition and wants to take Shaq’s out of the way? Yeah. Because if you put Shaq’s
confidence next to Crowley’s ability to sort of do shit, if they team up properly.
If only he’d given him more help with the boiler. Exactly. So Aziraphale makes it home safely,
stops for a chat with Nina, who unfortunately gets another text from Lindsay.
Crowley puts his plants back, but doesn’t mention the Shaq’s thing.
Oh yeah. And this is, so this is again, this sense of urgency. Crowley and Aziraphale are focusing on
let’s get Maggie and Nina to fall in love so we can get Heaven and Hell off our backs about that
one really big miracle. And kind of ignoring the bigger like, what the fuck happened to Gabriel
and why does he think something awful is going to happen if he doesn’t have that thing that’s in
the box that we do not have? Did Aziraphale mention Shaq’s?
I don’t think Aziraphale mentions Shaq’s in the bar either. Neither of them. Yeah.
Yeah. So. Poor communication.
Makes us all look a bit silly. Oh, and the car is like following Aziraphale like a puppy.
Oh, he loves him. I love how much personality that is
present in just a car moving slowly. Yeah, yeah. It makes sense. Oh, I’m sure it missed you,
don’t worry. That’s very sweet. So yes, it’s Aziraphale’s turn to try and v-voom the couple.
And he says that the monthly meeting of the Wicber Street Shopkeepers Association will be
a night to remember. I’m quite looking forward to the
Shopkeepers Association Cotillion Ball, which I assume is happening next episode.
I cannot wait for the next episode. And I will be watching that tonight.
Same. I’ve just remembered,
we’re doing two fucking episodes. Does that mean I can’t watch the last one?
That is your choice. Okay. Are you going to try?
I’m going to try not to watch it for the sake of.
All right. But that’s why we’re, I mean,
we can record earlier next week so that you can watch the next one sooner.
Before we start planning next week, one last thing I want to say about this actually.
I mentioned last week that the closing titles music is doing this cool thing of these different
themed arrangements and incorporating every day as well as the Good Omens theme.
This episode is by far my favorite one. Oh.
Because he’s done like this jazzy swing, but not bebop thing.
And so he’s even changed the time signature of it.
Oh. And it works so well.
And it’s still got the every day incorporated into it. It’s really clever.
And it’s a nice lesson. So yeah, if you haven’t,
go back to episode four and listening to the closing titles music.
Episode three had bagpipes. Episode three did have bagpipes.
Well done. I noticed that one.

Easter eggs and favourite moments

01:39:54

So should we do some superlatives?
Yes. Favorite quotes.
Do you mind if I go first because yours leads me nicely into Easter eggs?
Sure, go for it. Excellent.
I mean, mine is vaffa-vooming was not the end result of that particular Tempest.
And again, David Tennant is doing the Lord’s work on line delivery.
Although honorable mention quickly does go to banana fish gorilla shoelace with a dash of nutmeg
because with a dash of nutmeg is an excellently funny thing for no reason.
It is. It is.
And yes, as you say, mine is somewhat of an Easter egg quote, which is when they’re talking
about the, you know, the good have the poor have more opportunities to be good.
Crowley goes, that’s lunatic.
And Aziraphale goes, no, that’s ineffable.
That is, that is from the book.
They actually have the conversation in the book in around 1020.
Okay.
It’s, it’s, it’s early in the book.
It’s as Crowley sort of thinking about Aziraphale as he’s off to drop the baby off to the nuns.
I got it.
Yeah.
And it gives us context and their little agreement and arguments they’ve had, including this one.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I’m surprised they didn’t manage to put it in the first series, but it was nice to see it here.
It was nice to see it here.
So any other Easter eggs you really liked?
I’ve just kind of put them in as we’ve, as we’ve got to them.
So you feel free to list the rest of them you hold back on.
I don’t know.
I don’t think I’ve spotted everything that was in there.
There’s probably a lot more, but the Bentley, we already mentioned the bullet holes.
The number play is curtain backwards.
Which is a reference to the suicidal leaves animated scene in Monty Python’s meaning of life.
We already talked about the Laudanum sold by C.M.O.T. Dibbler or drink my own poison Dibbler.
And in, as they enter, they’re going through the windmill theater and you see various
women in various states of undress getting ready.
There are some nuns playing table tennis.
Oh, cute.
Which is referenced from the book.
They talk about the chattering order of St. Beryl when they must talk all the time,
apart from on Tuesdays where they’re permitted to shut up for an afternoon and play table tennis.
Jesus, that’s a deep cut reference.
Very good.
I know.
Character does a face award.
So I’ve got, when Shax is in the car on the way back from Edinburgh and says,
you don’t seem as type at all to Aziraphale and Aziraphale’s tiny smug eyebrow raise.
Thank you.
We’ve gone for a subtle and then on the other side.
Yeah, my award goes to everything David Tennant does with his face while Crowley’s high.
And it is so many things.
So many things that he does with his face.
Finally, helicopter and loincloth watch.
I mean, we’re in the Blitz, so there are plenty of planes.
I feel like that can fulfill Helicopter for the week.
Loincloths, I’m going with the Ladies of Camelot costumes.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, because they’ve got clothes covering their loins and not much else.
They surely do.
Honorable mention to the fans at the Windmill Theatre.
And the women stood very still behind them.
What a fucking ridiculous loophole.
So much joy, so much joy.
Right, I think that’s everything we have time to say about episode three and four
of Good Omens season two.
I think that’s probably accurate.
We’ll be back next week to talk about just episode five,
because we’re giving episode five and six each their own episodes,
as I feel there’ll probably be plenty to talk about.
Yeah, I hope so.
Until then, thank you very much for listening to this episode of The True Share Make You Fret.
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Good job.
Now I can breathe again.
And until next time, dear listener.
To the world.
To the world.
I might, I might get a champagne flute and some,
and some bubbly for the final episode just to do the to the world, but.
Next, yeah, I’ll try and get something else in a Diet Coke can.