- [Brennan] A list of the topics, themes,
and subject matter featured in this episode
has been included in the video description.
(radical action movie music)
(radical music continues)
(lasers zapping)
(synth music and explosions continue)
(radical music continues)
- Hello, one and all!
Welcome to another thrilling season of "Dimension 20"!
I'm your humble game master, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
With me, for the very first time...
Oh wait, I have to come up with the name
right now, on camera! - Uh-oh!
- This was the thing I forgot to do!
With our amazing action stars!
Say hi, amazing action stars. - Hi, amazing action stars!
- We might tail slate that at the end.
Folks, welcome to "Never Stop Blowing Up",
a high octane, nitrous-fueled romp
through a land of explosion, action,
and tons of freaking awesome stunts.
With me is Isabella Roland.
- [Ally] Woo!
- [Brennan] Alex Song-Xia. (players cheering)
For the very first time in the dome, Jacob Wysocki.
- Let's go! - [Brennan] Ify Nwadiwe.
(all cheering)
Ally Beardsley. - Thank you.
(all cheering)
- There's a line! - And Rekha Shankar.
- Oh shit! Wait, actually, that's...
Wait, actually? - Honestly?
- What is it called? The incubator?
- Yeah, the incubator.
- What's it called?
- Huge energy to come to the action season
with a cardigan that is just ever so,
"Ooh, look at my lovely cardigan!"
Folks, we're going to be playing, for the very first time,
a sort of homebrewed game system.
So we will not only be playing in "Never Stop Blowing Up",
but we will be playing the game Never Stop Blowing Up,
inspired by the amazing game
Kids On Bikes slash Kids On Brooms
from our friends at Hunters Entertainment.
If you haven't checked out Kids On Bikes,
by gum, you'd better do it!
This game is lovingly inspired by some of those mechanics,
with some alterations.
There are nine key abilities in this game.
We got Stunts, Brawl, Tough, Tech,
Weapons, Drive, Sneak, Wits, and Hot.
All the things you need. Ooh, look at those pecs go.
- I did think you were going to say tits.
- Wow, and tits! - And tits.
- The 10th, the umami skill.
- That's Ify's secret.
- Yeah, his nat 20 skill is tits, is T&A.
- Our friends will all be starting their skills
at d4s across the board,
and anytime they hit the highest value, their die blows up.
Never Stop Blowing Up.
That skill graduates and improves to the higher die type,
and that is not only something that happens immediately
and remains permanently, that you graduate your die type
when you hit the highest value and explode,
but also, you get to roll that new die in the moment
with another chance to explode.
You can have a chain of explosions
and get your skills really good.
Also, you will see these little platters for turbo tokens.
On failed checks, you will award yourself
a little turbo token, and you can spend them.
So whenever you spend a turbo token,
go ahead and place it in the platform in front of you.
That's where your spent ones go.
- Oh, I was wondering.
- And then the little mini-plate
is for the ones that you are collecting.
- It's our little bank. - It's your little bank.
So you got your little bank, and then you got your big store
for the ones you want to pick, and then when you spend them-
- So this piggy went to the bank,
and this piggy went to market.
- [Ally] Yeah, this is the market.
- Precisely.
- That actually does really help me remember.
- For your checks that you make, if you have time
and you are not under stress as you are making a check,
you can take half the value of your die,
and if it beats the difficulty, you move forward.
And again, you can spend those turbo tokens
to increase your roll.
If you do so, you can trigger an explosion,
which also triggers a graduation to that higher die type.
You can also, again, because this is all about team playing,
you can also spend your turbo tokens helping your friends.
It's just, you gotta spend twice as much
for the same oomph, all right? - [Ally] Interesting.
- So, with all of that being said,
I invite all of you to envision the arid landscape
of many realms that we have traveled to in this...
Already laughing.
Of all the many realms we have traveled to in this dome.
To castles tall and far off stars,
realms of spaceships and deep magic,
cosmic wonders unfolding.
We go to perhaps the most bizarre of all.
Lake Elsinore, California.
The year, 2024.
Behold now a land
of those big outdoor ice machines
that they have outside of gas stations, just really big.
I feel like it's always the first thing I see.
It's like, oh, look at that big ice maker.
Who is solving their ice problems
here at the Shell in this way?
You see- - It's for parties.
It's for chill kickbacks.
- It's for chill kickbacks in the Inland Empire.
We see a huge billboard
for a nearby BMX exhibition,
huge part of what's going on in Lake Elsinore.
We see that there is a big poster
on the outside of a building
for a new flavor of Monster energy drink,
and the air is arid,
dry, hot,
here in this spring day.
Dust kicks up on the wind
as yet another dawn has come
to the place where all of you congregate,
one of the last video rental stores
in the United States of America, Dave's Video World.
Now, I really thought these were all gone,
and it turns out there are over 600
operating video rental stores
still in the Lower 48,
and I think that's incredible.
- That is incredible.
- A highway.
An oil...
Pow! A highway.
A huge propane truck barreling down the highway,
its sleek, chrome-like exterior racing around the corners
of tight hairpin turns on the wall of a canyon.
On top of that moving truck,
we see two figures engaged in hand to hand combat,
trading blows back and forth.
One of them, a grim-set five o'clock shadow, deep-set eyes,
a raggedy leather jacket, reaching again and again
for a knife on a holster on the belt
to end the life of one Vic Ethanol.
Ify, can you describe Vic Ethanol for me?
- [Ify] Vic Ethanol is a bald, racially ambiguous,
extremely buff man in a white tank top.
Has a little bit of a gut, but he's got a build.
He's definitely hitting the bench press,
not skipping those days.
And some Levi 514s, nice, well-fit,
and some sneakers,
and he's just kind of engaged in hand to hand combat.
- The goon approaching you on the truck says,
"Time to go to bed, Ethanol. It's all gas future!"
And is going to take a swing at you. You duck to the side.
As you do so, you see, racing up behind you,
a team of bright, highly saturated, beautiful race cars
peeling up behind you, and you see, wingman,
your partner in crime, a brother to you,
Shaun Nitro rolls up and says,
"Look alive, Vic," and throws a enormous...
What kind of weapon would he throw to you?
- It's a giant wrench. - Throws a huge wrench.
You grab it. The goon lurches towards you.
What do you do?
- I'm going to go ahead and smack down with the wrench.
- Boom! (wrench clangs)
Takes one to the head, tumbles out,
falls over the edge of the cliff,
careens into certainly death, but we don't linger on that.
We don't linger on the human cost of these actions.
Instead, the goon simply tumbles away into the canyon,
never to be seen or thought about again.
- Seems like he forgot that without siblings, we're nothing.
- Without siblings, we're nothing.
And as we pan out to see Vic, victorious,
astride this truck racing through the canyon,
we pan out to see the dusty edges
of an old Toshiba television.
We pan out farther to see Wendell Morris
watching this movie onscreen in Dave's Video World.
Ify, can you describe your real character for us?
- Wendell is a very small, lanky kid, messy hair.
He wears oversized clothing.
He has the oversized, you know, uniform for the video store
and big baggy jeans and some Chucks on,
and he kind of lurches over, kind of smaller,
trying to keep himself small.
- Wendell, you look up and watch the end of this scene,
and as you do, you hear another sort of noise,
like engines, and you look out the front glass and see,
pulling donuts on their arrival out in the parking lot,
are your three brothers,
all on dirt bikes. (mimics engines revving)
- Guys, you're gonna get me in trouble with my boss again.
You can't do donuts in the parking lot.
- (mimics bell ringing) Your three brothers walk in,
all taking off their helmets, putting them under one hand.
"What?"
- You can't do donuts in the parking lot.
My boss told me to ask you all to stop.
It scares away the customers.
- The boss of your video store that's going out of business?
What's he gonna do, fire you from the job
you don't have anymore?
- Okay, well, every hour counts,
so if I get fired before we close,
that's money I don't make. - (scoffs) Whatever, Wendell.
You see one of them goes and starts rifling through
the king size Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
by the cash register, and another one says,
"You're not gonna stay for the whole shift, are you?
It's closing at the end of the week, right?"
- Yeah, but every hour counts.
I mean, look, you know, the H&R Block is closed.
There's not much work for us
here in the strip mall, so yeah.
- You look and see, it's a little L-shaped strip mall
that Dave's Video World is in.
You have a Walgreens on one corner,
and then there's a seed and feed pet food shop,
and the for rent, used to be an H&R Block
on the far end of the little strip mall.
You see one of them says, "Fine.
Look, Dad's microwaving a bunch of dinners, okay?
So I don't know what you're gonna eat,
but that's not gonna be good when it's cold."
- Yeah, thanks. I'll reheat it this time.
Or I'll pick something up.
- "Man, look, we all know why you're really working here."
Your brother Marcus looks around and says,
"Yeah, wait a minute, where's that...
There's a girl who works here who's in your class, right?"
(Ify stammering nervously)
- Yes! Yes, she's in my class!
But this is a good job, that's why.
- Yeah. Hey, you better make a move fast, man.
You're going to UC Irvine in the fall, right?
- I don't know if I'm going to UC Irvine.
- Yeah? - Yeah, you know?
I don't want to leave you all here in the desert
and go all the way down to Irvine.
Things are scary down there. The Spectrum.
All those Lee's Sandwiches. (Jacob laughs)
- Ricky looks at you and just says, "Man, look.
You do what you want, but at the end of the day,
you're wasting your time at a place like this.
This is a dead end.
You need to take your life seriously, man.
You need to get out on that BMX course, okay?"
- I can't BMX like y'all, you know?
Y'all are the motocross, BMX guys.
I'm the good at, you know, "DOTA." "DOTA 2", you know?
- Dodo? - "DOTA 2."
You know, "DOTA 2"? I watch anime.
- Your brothers silently look at each other
with a kind of solemnity usually reserved for a funeral
and move out from the store.
The little (mimics bell ringing) of the door.
One of them just looks back and says, "Look, man.
You can't spend your whole life playing dodo games.
It's time to grow up." (mimics engine revving)
And takes off on his dirt bike.
- It's "DOTA 2."
- We move from this place to a nearby store,
and I think we see a figure walking through the aisles
with a certain degree of stress and alert,
moving through the aisles of a store.
Alex, could you go ahead and describe your character for us?
- Oh, sure. This is Liv Skyler.
She's, you know, a classic girl next door type.
5'6", the perfect height for a woman.
I'm just kidding. Any height is great.
- Yeah, whatever you want to be is good.
- Whatever you want to be. - Whatever you want to be.
- Whatever you end up as. - Any height is great.
Yeah, and she's browsing through the aisles,
trying to look discreet.
- Your eyes catch on something that,
I don't even know if Liv really wants it,
but your eyes just catch on it
because it would be easy enough to take.
What do you think Liv is looking at in this moment?
- Liv is looking at
the nail polish section,
and she eyes the black nail polish.
- Whoa. - Mm, bad girl.
- She's Batgirl. - You see some-
- Meanwhile, she's dressed in mostly pink.
She has long hair. - Mm-hm.
- So this is different.
- You see that there is a nail polish up there at the front.
It's sort of set aside on its own.
It's not in the kind of rank and file,
but it sort of has a little display,
like maybe it's new or a little bit premium,
and you see it just says Midnight Secret.
- Liv keeps walking past,
and then without seeming like she's meant to at all,
she doubles back a little and just drops the nail polish
into her bag. (Rekha gasps)
- The nail polish goes in the bag, and you hear
a little thwap of it hitting some paper in your backpack,
something that you've been saving for a while
but have yet to find the opportunity to throw away.
As you go to seal up your backpack,
you can see that little bit of nail polish
resting against your acceptance letter to Stanford,
one that needed to be returned three days ago.
In this moment, what does Liv do?
- She's not going to think about that.
She walks on out of the store.
- As you get to the front, you hear a voice saying, "Liv!"
- Huh?
- And you turn, and you see Ms. Deloupoulos,
who is one of your high school English teachers
who turns to look at you and says, "Liv! Liv, hello!"
- Oh, Ms. D, hi.
- Hi, I just wanted to say
how excited I am for your speech.
Valedictorian! - Oh my gosh, yeah.
I'm, you know, trying to not to start
with a Webster's definition,
but it's hard to think of things.
- Webster's is trash.
- That's what you're always telling us in English class.
- It's a trash dictionary.
Nasty, nasty garbage. Yes, hate it.
- Don't like it at all.
- Ah, well, I just want to say, you know,
teaching English here in Lake Elsinore,
it's a calling,
and it's one that I feel a great deal of pride in,
and I know that it enriches the lives
of the students that come to pass,
and so I found myself very surprised
at how meaningful it was
when I finally had a student
that I thought was gonna get outta here, you know?
These kids, sweeties, they're not going anywhere.
They're not going anywhere, believe me. Believe me.
- Well, you never know, Ms. D.
- No, I know. - Okay.
- No. Hey.
- There's a lot- - I know.
- ...this town has to offer.
- How old, you...
You're 18, sorry.
- I just turned 18 last month.
- Yes, yes yes yes. Lovely.
Sorry, I was going to invite you to go out for a drink.
- Oh! - I'm gonna miss ya.
But you can't drink, you're 18.
- No, I couldn't.
- What are you gonna do in the big world?
- I don't know. Maybe I'll come back and teach English.
- You take it back. - Oh, well-
- Take it back.
- Ms. D, you're gripping my arm real hard.
Yeah, sure, I take it back. I take it back.
(Ally cackling)
- You see she- (Rekha growling)
- She goes, "Ah, sweet Liv.
You're gonna bury us all."
And she walks off into the rest of the-
- Into the ocean. - Into the ocean.
She walks into the Walgreens, she walks into the Walgreens.
- She dives straight into a whale's blowhole and disappears.
- You walk out, you're outside the Walgreens,
and there's Dave's Video World right there,
so you can walk right into work.
- Great, I take my vest out of my backpack,
make sure the stuff at the bottom stays at the bottom,
and head on into work. (Brennan mimics bell ringing)
- Wendell, you see Liv walk into work.
- Hello!
- Hey, Wendell. - How's it...
You know, beautiful, it's good, the day.
- Hey, have you...
- Uh-huh? - Have you seen Dave?
- No, I haven't seen Dave.
- Okay. - Have you seen...
- Oh, I should go clock in.
- Okay, yeah. Have a good one.
- Brutal. - Liv, as you're walking past,
we can see some little banners now
and some sort of halfhearted balloons,
balloons filled up with breath that are taped up high.
They're sort of sagging there, a little sadly,
for the going out of business party.
As you walk past, there's a screen, and there's a figure
looming in the shadows on the screen of the TV.
We see that there is a figure
that is bound and gagged to a chair,
but we don't stay on that figure.
We actually move in to see
the person looming in the shadows.
Can you physically describe the character
coming out of the shadows up on that screen?
- [Alex] Oh yeah, this is a boulder of a man,
upsetting to behold,
squeezed into a black suit,
white button-down shirt with a tie.
- [Brennan] We see this figure
begin to take the tape off of the mouth here,
and as it does, the figure looks up and says, "King!
I promise you, I didn't know!"
- Hey.
Use my full name.
(players snickering)
- Kingskin.
- Thank you.
- Listen, boss, I promise,
I thought he was going for the drugs,
so I tried to stop him.
I didn't know it was the freaking floppy-droppy disc
that had the information on it or nothing!
I swear to god, if I would've known, I would've stopped him,
but you gotta believe me. I'll make it all right with you.
I'll go back in. I'll find him, I'll find his family.
I'll get the information somehow. You can trust me!
- Do me a favor.
Step behind this door. (Rekha gasps)
- You see that another one of Kingskin's henchmen
comes out and cuts the ropes,
shoves the guy in the direction.
"What's behind the door?"
- Oh, nothing, I'm just gonna...
And then Kingskin slowly pushes the door
and crushes the henchman.
- It's just bricks back here. (screaming in agony)
(bones crunching against bricks)
In Dave's Video World, you just hear... (screaming faintly)
- Homie's getting squished? - He's getting squished.
- He got squished to death. - It's a door to a brick wall.
- "Grape Escape."
- That's a little PB&J sandwich. Squish!
- Liv, you walk into the back office.
We leave Kingskin behind.
You walk into the back office to clock in,
and we actually see someone else in the back office.
Rekha, would you introduce your character?
- Yes, this is Usha. She is 100 years old.
But, you know, the melanin, she doesn't look a day over 85.
She's old as can be.
She's never understood or used technology ever.
She's the bookkeeper of Dave's Video World.
She does everything with pen and paper, pencil and paper,
if she's feeling like she might make a mistake.
She's wearing an impossible number of cardigans
on top of vests on top of sweaters in layers,
with her work shirt on top of all of that.
She's got a big necklace.
She's perfumed with Tiger Balm ointment
and whatever Walgreens perfume they were selling.
She's always kind of squinting.
- She has cataracts. - [Brennan] Unbelievable.
Liv, you walk back and see Usha,
who's the bookkeeper and kind of general manager
of Dave's Video World back here, as you arrive to clock in.
- Oh, hi, Usha.
- Good morning!
- Fully three PM.
- I'm almost finished drawing all the invoices.
I make the tables myself with a pencil and a ruler.
- Oh, yeah, they're always so neat, Usha. I just...
If you could, next time, just...
I'd really appreciate direct deposit,
if we could ever manage that. - Oh.
I don't know how to do that. - Okay, no worries.
- You'd have to turn the...
Every single day, you know, the computer's messed up.
- I don't know if it is. - The computer's messed up.
I keep calling, and they don't know how to fix it.
I can't turn it on, so if I can't turn it on, I can't-
- Who are you calling? - Huh?
- Who are you calling?
- I'm trying to call everybody.
- Okay, yeah, no worries, I just thought I'd ask. Thank you.
- Absolutely, so I'll mail them to your house.
And if not, I'll drop them by, if they don't mail.
- That's okay, I'll just pick them up from here when I come.
- Hey, makes my job easier. Saves me a stamp.
- Yeah, that's true. Save you the stamp.
- Ah! She rubs your neck a little bit.
- That's nice. I do like that.
- [Brennan] Liv, as you head out,
you see that the phone of Dave's Video World rings.
(Rekha yelps)
The phone of Dave's Video World rings,
(mimics phone ringing) this old rotary phone.
Everything's either a little bit old and musty-
- These new phones are confusing to me.
- Do you pick it up? - Yeah.
- Picking it up, you hear, "Hi, Grandma."
- (gasps) Hi!
- Hey, it's Lisa. How are you doing?
- Oh my god, I'm good! Morning!
- I called the house phone and it was disconnected still?
- Oh my god, I keep calling people about that phone.
It doesn't work.
(players giggling)
- Okay, I just think you have to plug it in.
I just think you have to plug it in.
- Lisa, I'm plugging it into everything I can,
and I don't get a signal, okay?
- Now, what do you mean by that?
- I try to turn the phone on,
and I never get a signal out of it.
You see what I'm saying? - It doesn't make a noise
when you put it to your ear?
- No, it's not making anything.
- Okay. - You know?
And then I push all the buttons.
What if I have to call 911? I can't even do that.
I have to scream for them or something.
Good thing I have Life Alerts everywhere.
- Everywhere?
- I don't know where I'm gonna fall down!
- You see that your granddaughter says,
"All right, Grandma. I'm gonna...
Let me see if I can call and try to get someone out there,
but it would be, you know...
If you ever...
You know you'd always be welcome to move-"
- Oh, I'm fine, sweetheart.
That's so nice of you. I'm doing just fine.
It's just all these appliances, they're not working for me.
You know, I'm trying my best, but what I really need,
I need a full-time mechanic at my house.
- You see she says, "All right, Grandma.
I'll see about what we can do.
Love you. I'll talk to you soon."
- Okay, love you! Say hi to everybody!
Everybody you see, say hi.
- She hangs up.
We see behind you, in the back room,
we see a video playing.
A tall mainframe,
huge data servers everywhere,
in the middle of what feels like a frozen warehouse.
We see a console, 12 different monitors, multiple keyboards,
and we see someone seated at the console.
Rekha, who do we see?
- This is G13.
He is a hacker extraordinaire.
He's the guy you call
if you need to break into some computer system,
if you need to access someone else's computer.
He is gangly as all hell.
He's wearing a hoodie that's probably an extra extra small
and is still loose on him, just kind of a nasty gizmo guy,
and he's just clacking away, kind of like it's a symphony,
and he's spinning around unnecessarily in a chair,
wheeling from places that he could probably just reach.
He's just wheeling in a wheelie chair around.
Yeah, just looking really active
at his computer and his big database.
- G13, you hear in your headset that you've got here
that Tanner comes in over the line and goes,
"G13, the drill's coming up against the mainframe.
We're gonna need to hack the core."
- My god, already? So soon?
I haven't even gotten to the database yet!
He's pressing and typing all sorts of things,
and there's lights flashing.
All right, I'm in. The password was easy.
- Your computer says, "Database hacked. Well done, Mr. G13."
- Hold on a second. He's checking, stuff's scrolling.
This thing knows where we're at. It knows who I am.
- You see pixels form the shape of a B
in 8-bit illumination on the screen of your computer,
(tech beeps and zaps)
and you hear a voice say, "We've been expecting you, G13."
- Tanner, get out! Tanner, abort!
(Brennan screams)
- Tanner, come through! Tanner!
(huge explosion)
Fuck!
- Does Usha notice the sound of explosions on the TV?
- Barely.
She turns and she's so perplexed
by what the hacker was doing onscreen,
and then she unplugs the TV and the phone
'cause she thinks they need to save battery.
- Unbelievable. Awesome.
That rules.
- No wonder your phones don't work.
- Huh?
Yeah, we agree, they don't work!
- Liv, Usha, Wendell, you hear the familiar noise
of a extremely annoyingly loud engine
as a tiny little sports car rolls up into the parking lot
outside of Dave's Video World, and you see Dave,
the man himself.
Wildly weird-patterned shirt,
white snakeskin pants, black cowboy boots,
aging very self-consciously, a much older face
and then all the white dyed out of his hair
to the point where it's really obviously
poorly done Vantablack dye on his hair,
all light escapes it kind of thing.
Widow's peak, tied back, long ponytail.
Ponytail down to the butt. (Jacob groans)
All the way down.
- The hair gets stuck in his crack.
- Oh! You see... (mimics bell ringing)
And he just walks in and goes, "Late!"
and walks into the back of the store and goes, "Usha!"
- Oh, ponytail's coming in nicely.
- Don't...
It's been...
This is the length that my hair has been.
- Oh. Sometimes it's back, so I can't tell.
- It's always... (grunts)
- Sometimes your ponytail is more back, so I couldn't tell.
- Look, okay? - To no one in the room.
- You see he says, "Usha, do you have the books ready?
The IRS is coming in the morning."
- Yeah, I'm finishing the invoice tables right now.
- What do you mean invoice tables?
- I'm finishing making the tables for all the invoices.
- You're drawing a spreadsheet by hand?
- The copier isn't working,
so I couldn't copy any of the documents,
so I have to hand do it.
It's all making sense to me, Dave.
It's not making sense to you, so what can I do?
How do I help you? - Look, just...
Okay, I'm gonna...
You see that some of his hair dye
begins to just leak openly down his face as you see
that a pipe above him is just leaking onto his head.
- Uh-oh.
- What? What do you mean, uh-oh?
- The Walgreens' upstairs toilet
must be leaking. - [Brennan] God!
- Your mascara is dripping down-
- It's not mascara!
- The stuff you put in your hair isn't mascara?
It's dripping like it's mascara. What am I supposed to do?
- Usha. - Huh?
(players snickering)
- Listen, I try to be a pretty cool customer.
- Uh-huh.
- I try to keep it buttoned up.
I try to keep it tied down, okay?
- Uh-huh. - And you really,
I'll tell you what- - Huh?
- You may not be able to push buttons on that keyboard.
You push my buttons every day.
- Well, I didn't know you had buttons,
and I'll stop pushing them if you tell me where they are.
- Just, okay, can you call Russell?
- Yeah. - And just get him?
'Cause Russell, Russell will fix this, okay?
- Okay. - Russell fixes everything.
All right? - She picks up the phone.
No dial tone!
- Is there a dial tone? - No dial tone.
- No dial tone? He goes- - 'Cause I unplugged it.
- You see he goes, "Everything's fucking broken.
Okay, get one of the kids
to call Russell and get him in here."
- I can do it, Dave. Dave!
I'll call Russell.
- Aw, that's so nice. I touch your neck again.
- All right, Liv? - Oh, okay.
- Liv? - Sorry.
- Call Russell. - Uh-huh?
- And make sure that he's coming in.
Also, it's getting a little bit closer to four o'clock,
so I swear to god, if Dang is not here on time,
I don't give a shit if it's the last fucking week.
This kid is fucking fired, okay?
Goddammit, we need the fucking full inventory in.
Do we have any word on this outstanding...
There's a dude who owes us, like,
$1,400 in late fees, okay?
Give this guy a call.
And you see he hands you a card that says Barsimmeon Higgs,
and it looks like there's a title.
It's rented out by number, so you see the serial code
that the video store has for it,
and you see that he's rented this movie
thousands of times since the store opened in the early 90s.
And you do see that the outstanding late fees for it
are a considerable amount of money,
and for this guy who's liquidating, essentially,
he's like, "Just make sure this guy comes in.
Hell or high water, we need these late fees paid.
We need them paid today."
- Okay, I'll lay down the hammer.
(Jacob snorts)
- Usha, you're my rock, and I am counting on you. Okay?
Needs to tighten up around here! Goddammit!
- Yelling...
- Sorry, Usha.
You see Dave peels out and says, "Russell. You got it?"
- Yep, I'm calling his personal cell phone right now.
- You see he walks out and goes,
"What the fuck happened to the parking lot?
There's donuts in the parking lot!"
- Well, that's crazy.
Did anybody see anyone doing donuts in the parking lot?
I've been busy working, filing.
I've been, you know,
everything's in order and ready for your inventory.
All the inventory, I've been doing it. What happened?
- I'm gonna find Paula, and we're gonna look at the footage,
and if I see that any of your little BMX pals
have been here...
You know what happens when you do donuts in the parking lot?
You know what happens? - What happens?
- I drive my Stumatti, okay, over the donuts,
and that low-quality rubber gets pulled up into my wheels.
- Okay.
- And yeah, it's a luxury car brand!
- Got it.
- And you see he pulls out and leaves the store.
As he does so, Liv, you've got the phone in front of you.
- Okay, I'm dialing my phone,
(phone ringing) and it's ringing.
- We cut over to an area outside of Dave's Video World
where we see a little bit of a different slice
of Lake Elsinore in the Inland Empire.
Ally, Jacob, would you describe the living situation
of one Russell Feeld and his nephew, Andy "Dang" Litefoot?
- We are in, there's kind of patio furniture outside.
There's an overhang. There's AstroTurf.
It's really nice green grass,
stairs up to a double wide trailer where you go inside
and you're in this really nice living room,
kitchen island coming out to separate the two rooms,
pretty much just, like, massive TV.
It's sparsely decorated, but it is nice.
The AC's blasting. You have no idea how hot it is outside.
- There's a small tool shed in the back that has one window,
a twin size cot, and a ceiling fan,
and that's where Dang sleeps.
He is not allowed in the extra bedroom.
- Yeah. - That is for guests.
- That's actually for guests, yeah.
- Incredible.
Ally, go ahead and describe your character for us.
- Yeah, okay. I'm Russell Feeld.
He is, like, 48 years old.
He is in a really perfectly
worn-in tank top
that's almost becoming see-through.
It got snagged on something
so it almost makes it a little bit of a crop top,
and you just see his really hot hip bone
up over some Dickies with a belt and a bunch of keys on it.
He's just a fix-it person,
but he's been mostly working at Dave's Video.
He's shifted all of his weight kind of sassily on one hip,
and he's leaning on the kitchen counter,
and he's on his cell phone.
- Yeah, your phone rings and you pick it up and answer it.
- Liv, talk to me. - Oh, hi, Russell.
I didn't know if you had my number saved.
Remember how you gave it to me, because...
Well, anyway, hi. It's Liv from Dave's video store.
Is this Russell?
- Honey, you know it's- (Rekha gasps)
- Oh!
- What do you need? I'll be right there.
- Yeah, we got a big leak
coming out through a pipe in the ceiling.
- Which room?
- Kind of the main one and the back one.
- Okay, huh. Must be Walgreens toilets.
- Yeah. - Interesting.
Can you do me a favor, sweetheart?
- Oh! - Can you get back there,
and can you just feel the carpet?
Has it soaked the carpet?
- Okay, yeah. Let me go feel it.
- Good girl. (players snickering)
- Disgusting! (Ify laughing)
- Yeah, that's pretty soaked through.
- [Both] Oh my god!
- Oh my god. All right, I'll be right in.
Thanks, Liv. You're gonna bury us all.
- Pull it back.
- Yeah. - Pull it back.
- Yeah, you need to pull it back.
You go to, "Good girl," but then you also say
something really weird and old.
- We're finding it. We're finding it.
- We're finding it, we're finding it!
- We're finding it. - We're feeling it.
- Russell, as you're putting your phone away,
you see that there's a text message on your phone
that actually pops up here as well,
and it's from Noah.
- Oh.
- There's a little photo of it.
It looks like him in Amsterdam.
He's giving you a little peace sign.
You see the caption says, "Word tour begins, baby.
Always talked about this crazy town.
Wishing you the best. Next time, brother."
- Aw.
Aw, okay.
I think he kind of looks at it.
He zooms in, and it really does look like
there's a street sign in Dutch or something?
- Yeah. - And he's just like,
that bastard made it.
He hearts the photo. - Yeah.
- And he just writes back, that's incredible, man.
I'm so happy for you.
Keep sending pics, or something like that.
- As you send that to your pal,
you dip out from that into the rest of your text messages,
and based on what I know about Russell,
I think most of the numbers here aren't saved as contacts.
- No, it's just numbers. - It's just a lot of numbers.
Some of them are saying very flirtatious things.
Some of them are saying kind things about a job you did
and saying thanks for the help in the rec room or the den
or, you know, back in the garage.
It really means a lot. Happy to work with you again.
A lot of positive sentiments
from people that are not saved in your phone.
- Yeah, I think, yeah,
I feel like I meant to say more about this,
but Russell is smoking hot. - Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
- Russell has one gold tooth right here.
- Interesting first addition.
- No, but he's, like, Lake Elsinore hot.
- Yeah. - He's IE hot.
So I think, also, with stuff like weird good girl stuff,
no one's put him in his place for this.
He just says weird stuff, and people are kind of like,
"Crazy energy! We love it!"
Okay, so Noah was like his closest friend.
I think he's deeply gutted.
This is the only name that's popping up
in his whole contacts.
He needs to go out to the shed and grab some of his tools
for this job, but while he's walking out there,
he's opened up a dating app
and he's just kind of half paying attention,
scrolling through. - Absentmindedly.
As you walk out,
we leave your sparse but well-kept living place.
We see TBS on the TV in your room, playing something.
It has the little chyrons of other shows.
But we see a classic 90s movie on there.
There's a woman, having just disarmed a security system
in a royal museum, and you see that she's having
a tense interaction with someone else.
Go ahead and describe this character for me.
- [Ally] So, this is Jennifer Drips.
She is a cat burglar,
lone wolf,
full latex bodysuit,
incredibly capable, badass woman.
- You see across from Jennifer is Carter Haldwell,
the Shadow Falcon.
You see that this other gentleman thief
is looking at you and saying, "Jennifer.
Fancy meeting a girl like you in a place like this.
I always wondered what we might have done together,
but then again, as you always say, you work alone."
- That's true. I think you'd only slow me down, Carter.
- Hm. Then perhaps we'd better speed up.
(Brennan grunts) (gun fires)
- She slow-motion flips back,
one leg gloriously filling the screen,
the second one kicking the gun out of his hand,
twisting around until she's on the ground, reaches up,
grabs his security clearance stuff that he's stolen
out of his pocket, and lands and starts laughing.
- Unbelievable.
As we leave from there, from Jennifer's successful
grabbing of the security clearance,
we move out to the backyard of Russell's,
back in Lake Elsinore, as you approach the shed.
Where do we find Dang?
- Dang's right in front of a tape dubber.
He's listening to one tape
and he's dubbing one song on the next tape,
and he's just waiting for the song to finish
so he can stop the record on the dubbed tape.
- Dub moving through, final moment,
and right before that final moment, Russell gets to-
(Jacob mimics rock song) (Ally mimics door creaking)
- Hey!
Just gonna grab some tools and probably head into the shop.
Do you need a ride,
or are you just gonna get there yourself?
- I was gonna ask. Can I get a ride, man?
- Of course, of course. - Hell yeah, baby.
- I grab some stuff.
I'm like, would you mind helping me
carry out some of these buckets?
I'm gonna have to pull carpet up.
- Dang. - Yeah. Walgreens bathrooms.
- Leaking? - Yeah.
- No thanks! And he just kind of grabs it.
Grabs the buckets. He's not going to say no.
This guy is putting him up for free.
And he kind of walks out, and right before he leaves,
he pushes stop as the song stops.
- Bam!
You push stop there.
We see all kinds of cool musical equipment in here,
different tapes and decks, and I think we also see
a show poster with a number scrawled on it,
cool graphic, with the magazine cutout ransom letters
of Pirate Radio Bonanza, this time, Los Angeles, California,
for a date that has long since passed,
and you see just a phone number at the bottom
with the words, "Hit me up."
That show poster with that contact in Los Angeles,
do you think Dang...
Where does Dang keep that in the room?
- It's the one thing on a corkboard.
- Yeah, I love that.
A corkboard with a little thing of thumbtacks,
all this promise. - There's other stuff.
Show posters, or maybe a pin from a band or something,
or a butt flap, but none of that's hung up.
It's all just that one poster.
- Yeah, getting those buckets, getting the tools ready.
- What've you got going on here?
- Don't worry about that, man.
- Oh. - He just, like...
- I love- - A gift?
- Yeah. - A gift for someone?
- Yeah, man. It's...
Just doing a little early Christmas shopping.
- Oh, cool. That's awesome, man.
- You guys get in the car and head to work.
As you guys come through, you see there's
one or two other people that are in the spot.
You see someone being like,
"I can't believe you guys are closing down.
What the hell? That's crazy, I can't believe it.
Why are you guys shutting down?"
- Because you're the only one in here right now.
- Ah! - Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, well, I- - Using streamers, not us.
- Well, yeah. I don't rent from here.
I just love the vibe.
- Wait, so you're not gonna rent anything?
- No, man, I have a computer, yeah. No, I have a computer.
- So that's why we're closing, yeah.
- But actually, if you just rented what you wanted to see,
that actually would come out to be cheaper
than if you paid for all the streaming services.
- And also, some of the adult films we have here
are out of print, you can't even search 'em online.
You would only be able to...
You know, Olivia Lovely, she's retired,
and it's really hard to find original videos,
and we have, like, all of her stuff.
- I don't see how it could break bad
if all of our culture exists digitally,
and is stored by private corporations.
- We don't have "Breaking Bad". That's a little too new.
- Gotcha. - We didn't get that one.
- Yeah, no, I think it's gonna be fine.
I don't think there's any long-term ramifications
of having no sort of collective ownership
of actual, real, concrete media.
- What's your favorite movie?
- Favorite movie?
- Yeah, that you just love to pop on.
- "Tough Kill", man.
Best screenplay ever written. - You're right.
That actually is getting pulled from Netflix next week.
- What? - Yeah, yeah.
They're moving the "Tough Kill" series.
- "Ugh!
Can't do anything about that." You see the guy walks out-
- Guess I'll never see it again.
- The guy, you see he walks out of the store
just as Russell and Dang both walk in.
- Empty-handed again.
- Yeah, no, he said he likes the vibe of the place.
- Yeah, all right. - Yeah.
- Fuck that guy. Where's the leak?
- Oh, hi, Russell.
Sorry, I just popped a really big mint in. No reason.
Just wanted to be ready. The leak is this way.
- Okay, cool. - Ready for what?
- What's up, nerds? - Hey, what's up, Dang?
- Hey, sorry I'm on time. - Hey, Andrew.
- Can I describe what I look like, a little bit?
- [Brennan] Yeah, go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I feel like everybody's wearing a uniform here, right?
- Yeah. - There's a vest.
I'm wearing just a shirt that says, "Blast Radius,"
and on the back, it says, "Santa Ana, California."
- [Brennan] Hell yeah.
- And there's a little explosion. Check them out.
And instead of the uniform vest,
he has a jean jacket vest with a cheetah on the collar
and a bunch of band patches scattered around,
and his pants are more patches than they are pants.
- Yes.
- It's like what you were talking about.
Is the ship still a ship if you replace
all the parts of the ship? - Yeah, the Ship of Theseus.
All the planks coming off, and you replace them.
So this is more patch than pant.
- More patch than pant.
Yeah, and his hair, it was dyed and it was mohawk-y,
but now it's just grown out, fried.
The roots are his original color.
- I love it. You see Dave sort of stalking out of the back.
He goes, "On time for once?
Glad it happened in the last week."
- Say thank you, man.
- What? - Just say thank you.
- I shouldn't have to...
See, this is exactly the problem with your generation.
This is exactly the problem with your generation.
- Crazy, Dave. Okay. (players laughing)
Where's the leak, my man?
And I'm kind of massaging his shoulders while we talk.
- He leans- - You been working out?
- Some of his mascara gets on your face
as he just leans in and is like, (sighs)
"Thank god, man. Thank god you're here.
Look, I'll show you the leak." - Cool, yeah.
- You want to come take a look back here.
Dang, you want to post up?
- Hell yeah, man. Where at?
- You see he goes, "Dang? Andy, post up back in the...
You know where," and you see he points
to a little red-curtained area with all the adult films.
- My naughty little dreamland, baby.
- Dang, you go set up in there.
- Oh, and by the way, Dave? It's Dang.
- Yeah, okay.
And you see he takes off and he says, "Here's the leak here.
I gotta go find Paula, 'cause shit is afoot.
It's afoot!"
And you see he takes off out of the front door.
Dang, as you're sitting in the back,
the TV is playing what you can imagine,
which is a little bit,
you know, it's grating- - It's adult.
- Yeah. - It's adult.
- It's adult. It's playing some adult footage up on the TV.
But you have your little remote to change the channel
to something a little less grating,
as you're going to be here for a couple of hours.
- Snoozin'!
- You change over to one of the other feeds,
and you see a beautiful private casino
in the mountains of Luxembourg.
You see a well-appointed, fine bespoke suit-wearing count,
Count Otto von Shrike, staring across the table
at one Greg Stock of Santo Patron.
Go ahead and describe Greg Stock for us.
- [Jacob] Greg Stock is a neutral figure.
He's an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a department.
- Yes. - He looks like anybody,
and he looks like everybody.
- [Ally] Damn!
- Does that mean his hair is black or brown or blond?
He just looks like everybody.
- Unbelievable. - Blends in.
You'd never assume that he was anything cool.
But when he gets that suit off, he's cool.
He's really cool.
You see Count von Shrike stands across the table from you.
There are four empty seats at this hexagonal table.
Only two of you left, two enormous chip counts.
Behind you, an elegant woman in an evening gown.
Behind him, you see a massive, burly enforcer
wearing an Armani suit.
The croupier, the dealer, stands over at the side.
Each of you has your cards dealt,
and you see that von Shrike turns to you and says,
"You have had some small fortune
this evening, Mr. Stock.
And yet,
perhaps your luck has run out."
You see that the enforcer behind him
dumps a bag of diamonds onto the table.
The dealer scoops them into a little velvet-lined recession
and puts a handful of platinum poker chips on the table.
He says,
"This will represent some meaningful percentage
of the gross domestic product of my nation,
Bulvania.
All in, Mr. Stock."
- I'll give you one second to change your mind
and not embarrass yourself. (Brennan chuckles)
- But this would be against the rules of poker.
I think you will find my determination
is as hard as my man Manfred's diamond teeth.
The enforcer smiles for the first time,
revealing two rows of perfect diamond teeth.
- Quite nice. I'd hate to have lunch with you.
- [Brennan] You feel that-
- He's always making lunch dates.
- ...the woman in the evening gown presses
a snubnosed revolver into your back, and as she does-
- Excited to see me, love?
- Woo!
- It's Austin Powers!
- You see she looks down as you say that, leans down.
Two ruby red lips against your ear.
"All blanks. Unlike you, Mr. Stock."
- Oh my god!
- I just go... (purrs)
- Austin Powers! - And we move back
to see Dang sitting on a stool
in the corner of the porn section, watching this.
- This guy shoots huge loads, is what she's saying.
- You have a ton of sperm.
- Dude's kinda weird. - Click!
Dave walks down the sidewalk, past the feed and seed,
past the abandoned H&R Block, and arrives
at a small janitorial closet with a Master Lock over it
that says, "Janitorial/Security," and he goes... (knocks)
Inside of a tiny security office that also has a mop bucket,
smells wild, filled with tapes.
It smells like cleaning fluid, old rust,
papers, old tapes, it's just so packed in here.
The closet has enough room for one office chair,
and we see Paula Donvalson.
Izzy, go ahead and describe your character for us.
- Gosh, okay.
Paula is a 58-year-old
security guard, newly hired security guard.
She is a curvy woman,
buxom, and she's got
her security pants sort of belted tight around.
She's got thick, blunt, blonde bangs,
and heavily mascaraed eyes, and is applying
bright pink lip gloss really fast, and a ponytail.
- You hear bang, bang, bang on the door outside.
- Russell! - Hm? No, it's Dave.
Russell's fixing the pipe.
- Gosh. - Paula, is that you?
- Yeah.
- Were there kids doing donuts in the parking lot?
- I don't know, Dave.
- Well, can you open the door? Open the door!
- Hello? - You see he looks and goes,
"Can we review some of these tapes?
I want to get an angle on the parking lot,
'cause I think some of Wendell's friends or his brothers
or someone's been doing donuts in the parking lot."
- Well, you know I can't, Dave,
because Usha unplugged the cameras.
- Some of these cameras are on the roof!
How did she get up there?
- I don't know.
- You see he looks around.
He begins to sort of file through some of the tapes
and says, "Okay, well, this is one from the Walgreens.
Can we check the Walgreens?"
- I can't right now, Dave. - What's going on with you?
- I gotta, I need to...
It's my patrolling hour,
and I gotta get over to the store.
- He looks at an old Windows desktop IBM monitor
that has Facebook open on it, and you see he goes,
"Oh, you've been really busy?" - Yeah!
- What've you been doing on Facebook all day?
- None of your dang business, sir.
- "Okay, all right. I'll leave you to it.
If you can just review," he says,
"even just this most recent tape here,
that would be a huge help."
- Why don't you let go, Dave?
I let go, and I'm feeling amazing, all right?
Your shop's closing, honey.
Nobody needs this.
- Okay, you get paid by the businesses in the strip mall.
You do work for us.
You're not a cop. You're a security guard.
And you're not even really a security guard.
(Izzy stammering) (Brennan stammering mockingly)
"Check the tape, Paula!" And you see he-
- Can Russell walk up and knock on the door
and slam it, a little bit, body into Dave?
- As you do, bam, Dave gets it in the face. (yelps)
- Oh, Dave, I'm so sorry. - Russell!
- Hey, Paula. Do you have a carpet ripper in here?
- Whatever you need. What? - What?
- What'd you ask? You want to rip my carpet?
- A carpet- - Can I rip your pubes?
- Can I just go through the tools that you have in here?
- Yeah, Dave, actually, if you can't tell,
I'm really busy, and Russell needs me.
So if you're done talking down to me
while your hair drips onto your face-
- Russell's just going through the tools.
- Then I'm gonna get back to my job,
protecting the mall!
- You see he shakes his head, looks at the hair dye
on the door from where Russell hit it into him.
Goddammit! And walks out.
And you and Russell are left in here
as you're going through the tools.
- Russell. - You do have one. Thank god.
- Amazing. Rip it up, rip it up.
- Yeah. - I found some-
- I can't believe what that fucker was saying.
I walk up, I hear, we work for him?
That guy's SOL, all right?
We're gonna have jobs long before this, okay?
I already got hired at Walgreens.
- Yeah, you and me. - Yeah, that's right.
I kind of grab your hand. (Izzy moan laughs)
- You know, I found some used tools
on Facebook Marketplace for you, if you want.
- Oh, please. Text them to me.
- I could pick them up tomorrow for you.
- Oh, you don't have to do that.
I'll run by with the truck or something.
But thank you so much for keeping an eye out, sweetness.
- It's my favorite. - All right.
- What else have I got to do?
- God, it's hot in here. Do you want a fan or something?
I could try to find- - Yeah.
- Yeah? Okay, great. - Yeah.
I normally just put ice in my shoes.
- I've never tried that. That's awesome.
Yeah, okay. All right. - As Russell heads out,
Paula, you turn around to look at Facebook
for Facebook Marketplace, to get some tools for Russell.
Something new has come across your feed.
It looks like Don and the kids
and Don's new partner
have posted a picture from Cancun.
They're all at a water park together.
- Paula's, it's a desktop computer,
but she's going to slam it down like it's a laptop.
- Shattered glass, immediate hazard.
Enormously heavy, hard to do.
- What the hell? Are you okay?
- Then she's going to pick up a hot pink mace gun
that she bought herself, that she keeps on her hip.
- It just says Prepper.com on the side.
- She just holds it.
Let's go over to the store.
- As you go over to the store, you see,
walking up, is one of the managers from Walgreens
who just goes, "Hey, Paula.
Just wanted to drop this off for you for the day.
This was the morning shift."
And hands you a little cassette tape
of the footage from Walgreens that morning.
- Okay.
- Walking into the video store,
you open and see up on the wall, on one of the screens,
"Tough Kill" starts playing, with Detective Jack Manhattan.
Go ahead and describe Detective Jack Manhattan for us.
- [Izzy] Jack Manhattan is a funny-looking guy
in the hottest way. - [Brennan] Yes.
- [Izzy] He's also wearing a white tank top.
No shoes. Barefoot.
- [Brennan] Barefoot. - [Ally] What?
- And he always looks like...
- So he's kind of smizing. - Yeah.
- We see Jack Manhattan, haze and steam everywhere,
in a series of boiler rooms underneath the White House,
and you hear a voice say, "Ah, Detective Manhattan.
It seems you've foiled yet another one of my plans."
And you see Johan Schrader move out from the shadows
and go and swing a wild haymaker that connects.
"Yes, barefoot once again, Detective.
But if the shoe fits."
- Seems the shoes don't fit, Johan.
And you sound like you got egg all over your voice box.
- The only egg in this room is the one you're about to lay.
And you see he takes out-
- You callin' me a chicken, Johan?
(players shouting)
'Cause I'm actually the cock of the walk.
- (screams) And we pan out to see,
there's a gun duct taped to Jack Manhattan's back.
- Cock-a-doodle-doo, bitch.
- The famous catchphrase. - That won an Oscar.
- Won an Oscar. Cock-a-doodle-doo, bitch.
We cut into the store.
Paula, you enter the store with this little cassette tape.
- I think I'm watching that. God, that's fucking cool.
- Effing cool.
- And you guys enter the store.
As you do so, Paula, you see there's a little deck
to play the cassette tape on, if you want to review it.
- Wendell, I've got a tape here from Walgreens
that Dave wants me to look at.
- Okay, I don't know why- - It's of the parking lot.
- Why...
Yes?
- It's my duty to report
any illegal activity, soliciting, or maneuvers.
- Okay, well, you know, Dave...
Technically, Dave said watch out for BMXers.
My brothers are motocrossers, so if you did see that,
that's not what he's looking for,
so you probably don't need to tell him about what happened.
- I think you're technically right once again, there.
- In the middle of this, Liv comes bounding up,
and is like, oh, Paula!
My work bestie! Hi!
- Hi, sweetie! - How are you?
- I'm good, I'm good. Living my best life.
Living my hottest sexy single life.
- Oh my god, you're slaying.
- I'm slaying! (laughs) You and me, slaying.
- Wendell is going to tap Liv with a little sheet of paper.
- Oh!
- I saw that you had Russell's number for work stuff,
and I know we- - You have what?
- Oh, yeah. - I know we only have,
you know, one week left, but if something came up
within that week, now you have my phone number to call me.
- Oh! Oh, you wrote it down, like old-fashioned style.
- Yeah, just in case you wanted
to just throw it away or something.
- Russell is spider-ed out in the ground,
ass so high in the air. - Oh my god.
- Ripping the carpet out with this knife,
just so sweaty, but he's still able to look up and over
and make eye contact with Wendell and be like...
- Usha comes out and is blocking Paula's view of Russell.
Hey, Paula, you didn't respond.
My granddaughter's got a birthday party.
- What?
- Us ladies gotta stick together!
- What are you, what? - You didn't respond to my...
I left this Post-it note in your lunch cubby.
My granddaughter's having a birthday party.
- Rip it up. Rip it!
- Hey, your eyes are drifting again, Paula.
You should check out my optometrist.
- Tear it!
- Very good. - Grab it! Wow!
- We could get cataract surgery together, if you wanted.
- [Izzy] Wow! Wow!
- We could get the double special.
I have a Groupon, and they will do-
- Usha! - ...two sets of eyes for one.
- I'm so busy. (players laughing)
I'm so busy.
- You're sweating, Paula! Are you doing menopause?
- No! No!
- [Ally] Are you doing menopause?
- My menopause lasted- - I have...
I have such a powerful period.
(Ify laughing)
- Oh, it could be a flash period.
That's when your menopause hits hard.
- No! No, no, I'm just so, so fertile.
- I have some tissues in my backpack.
- That won't do it.
- Yeah, Liv, if she's having...
When we ladies have our flash periods, you need a big pad.
- This is eye-opening for me.
- As Liv opens her backpack, I think you notice, Paula,
and it might not be unusual to you,
but you do see a little Stanford letterhead
and a bottle of Midnight Secret nail polish.
- Stanford?
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, got in. - What is that?
And you know, you shouldn't...
If you're gonna put those on your downstairs,
you shouldn't just let them hang out.
- Wait, what?
- Your tissues that you were gonna use-
- They need to be sanitary.
- [Rekha] Because Paula's having a flash period.
- No, I'm having a youthful,
dainty, but powerful-
- I'm gonna go help Dang out. - I'm so sorry.
- Wendell, you actually see that sort of absentmindedly,
Usha is holding a little outstanding fees card,
if you're looking for a way to get out of this conversation.
- I'll look into this. Bye!
- And you see a little Barsimmeon Higgs with a phone number
and a huge amount of outstanding late fees,
as you walk back and join Dang in the adult section.
- Have you hard about this- (Jacob gasps)
Whoa! Whoa! - (yelps) Dang!
Sorry. Sorry, I didn't...
I thought I was alone.
Kind of gathers himself. He's sweaty.
- What the fuck?
- Sorry, Rashab was talking to me.
He says he has a message for everybody. What time is it?
- It's almost four.
- He says has a message for everybody around 4:20 PM.
- Okay, so that was-
- Sorry, I was being contacted.
- Okay.
- I thought I had a moment alone,
so I was talking to Rashab.
- Okay, 'cause, you know, you're behind the red curtain
and real sweaty, so I just wanted to touch base.
- Oh, dang. Yeah, no, I'm not jacking off, man.
Everything's above board.
I was just talking to the alien that talks to me.
- Okay, well, yeah. No, that's totally cool.
- Yeah. - Nothing weird about that.
But speaking of weird,
this Barsimmeon Higgs dude has, like, over $1,000-
- Barsimmeon Higgs? He sounds like an exotic fruit.
- Well, he's a guy who keeps
taking this one video out since
before I was even born, it seems like.
- What movie?
- I don't know, it's just the serial number.
- Dang, let me see?
Yeah, I don't know that. - Yeah.
- Dang, he owes a lot of...
- Yeah. (Jacob mimics paper rustling)
- Oh my god, what the hell?
- That's what I was saying. It's a lot.
Like, how do you even...
How do you even do that?
- Well, you just keep doing it.
You just go and you do it again,
and then you do it again. - Yeah.
- [Jacob] I mean, it's all right here, man.
It's on the ledger.
- How does Wendell look, by the way,
as you're looking at Dang,
as he's looking over all the fees,
how is Wendell looking at Dang's mention
of the alien entity that contacts him, Rashab?
- So, it is a face of, you know,
if you ever go back to visit family
and you have that one uncle who just goes off
about that one time in the woods with Sasquatch,
and you kind of don't want to make him feel weird,
so you just kind of nod and dissociate
until you feel like it's safe to return.
- Interesting.
- So you kind of just try to move past the Rashab.
He's well aware of Rashab.
He's heard many of Rashab's messages, and he knows at 4:20,
he's probably going to get another Rashab download.
- You could look up, on the...
If you wanted to go to the hassle of it,
you could look up what the serial code is.
You could look at the records and see what that movie is.
But out in front, Paula,
you see that the little cassette deck
is cleared for you to watch the parking lot footage.
- Do my due diligence. - You check out your screen.
You're looking at a smaller screen in front of you.
Whatever Liv and Usha are doing
as Russell continues to pull up the mildew carpet.
For Wendell and Dang, you do have a phone number
to contact Barsimmeon Higgs if you want to.
- Let's call this piece of fruit up, man.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll definitely do that.
And we'll make sure to be done before 4:20,
'cause we have to-
- I have no control, you know what I mean?
- Yeah. - When it's 4:20, it's time.
- Oh.
- No matter where I'm at, he's in.
He's in me, and I am him.
- Let's definitely make sure
we're not talking to a customer when that happens.
So he'll just dial up and put him on speaker.
- [Brennan] Ring, ring! Ring, ring!
- (whispered) A British phone.
- You hear,
"Hello.
Greetings.
Who, may I ask,
makes their call upon my telephone this fine afternoon?"
- This is Wendell from Dave's Video World.
I don't know if you heard,
but we're actually going to be shutting down soon,
so we're kind of closing all the books on our customers.
- What? - Yeah.
- What! - Yeah.
- No! - Yeah.
- That cannot be! - Oh, yeah.
Also, I just wanted to say, the amount of money
that you've spent, you could've just bought this movie.
It would've been, like, way cheaper.
But that's neither here nor there.
We're gonna probably sell it,
but we probably won't sell anything to you
until you pay off these late fees and stuff.
- Ah.
The time has come to pay the piper,
is what you mean to say.
- Yes. - Always comes due, the price.
To whom do I have the honor of speaking?
I cannot see your face,
but your voice is made quite clear by the device.
- Don't say your real name, man.
This guy sounds too dark and mystic.
- This is-
- Say you're Snake Legs, man! - He already said it.
- You already said your name. - Oh, you did?
- Yeah. - Never mind!
Then forget that!
- The name is Wendell Morris, but-
- Wendell Morris. - Yes, yes.
- Son of Charles.
Your father, I know well.
- How? How do you know my...
Do you hang out at the dirt park? The motocross park?
- Ah! - Are you with the X Games?
- Your father, a legend of the Extraordinary Games!
- I mean, if you told him that,
he'd be very happy, but yeah.
- Yes, and three fine sons.
- Four.
I'm the fourth son. There's four sons.
You said three fine sons.
Four fine sons. We're all great.
- Well, let us settle up the bill, you and I, Wendell.
How much do I owe you, in the ballpark, so to speak?
- Around $1,200.
- Ay yi yi!
- Ay caramba!
- Hummina, hummina, my dear Wendell! Awooga, yes yes!
Well, that's a fine stack of farthings, isn't it?
We'll have to go check the old doubloons chest.
Do you accept banker's notes at your emporium?
- Is that a check? - I don't know, man.
I've never heard of a banker's note.
- The video.
Do you require the return of the video, as well,
my good man?
- Yeah. Yes, yes.
We want the video and the late fees, please. Thank you.
- Ah, your lucre, you shall have.
And the video, I think, as well.
- Try and get him here around four o'clock.
- If you can come in by four, that would be great.
- Is there, then, some bacchanal that you have planned?
- We're gonna kind of have a party of sorts.
(Brennan chuckles) Since we're closing.
- A bottle of wine, then, is called for.
Well, Wendell,
know this.
The ending of an era is upon us.
But in each ending is a new beginning, concealed.
- I think you can probably hang up.
- Ta-ta for now, Wendell. - Okay, yeah.
See you when you get in here. Bye-bye!
- [Brennan] Goodbye. (phone clicks)
- Hey, was it just me, or did that guy
sound like he was getting eaten by a snake?
I was trying to figure out what it was.
- He kind of sounded like a wizard or something, yeah.
- Dang and Wendell,
you hang up the phone on Barsimmeon Higgs.
We cut back out to the small screen that Paula is using.
You're taking a look. This is from the Walgreens.
You are sort of drilling down on it, looking to see
if you can catch anyone doing donuts in the parking lot.
The shot catches a large mirror
in the Walgreens, one of those big rounded shield mirrors
they have near the entrance for going around a corner,
so you can see people coming.
And you look in that mirror.
You see Liv on tape. (Rekha gasps)
An open backpack.
The nail polish you saw in there earlier.
Takes it, drops it into the backpack,
seals it shut tight. - No, stop.
- Walks out, has a short conversation with a sad woman,
and then leaves. (players laughing)
Liv, I think you finish some business
and walk over to join Paula.
- Ooh, what a day. (Izzy screams)
Oh. Sorry, I was just coming-
- Can I try to shut it again?
- [Brennan] Yeah, destroy a TV. Huge hazard.
Russell, you hear glass break. - Whoa!
- Oh my god, the TV's broken. Everything's breaking.
- The TV is broken.
- See? - [Ally] Okay.
- Liv.
- Oh. Okay, well, we'll have to-
- I go to grab a broom and a vacuum.
- Man, Russ is just the best, isn't he?
- Yeah. Yeah, he's the best.
- I think I'm gonna take my 15 and head to the Walgreens.
- You're gonna go to Walgreens?
- Yeah, you need anything?
- You know what? I'll come with you.
- Oh. Okay, sure. - Yeah.
- Paula and Liv leave the store
and head over to the Walgreens.
- Could you grab me a Diet- - Yes!
- ...peach cream Dr. Pepper?
- Yes! - Ew.
- Sorry, I just got over here.
You're going to the Walgreens? Can I get a Calypso?
- It's too heavy. It's too heavy.
- Oh, okay.
- It's too heavy? The flow, the flow!
- Whatever you're about to say, it's too heavy.
- Are we doing orders?
- No. - Yeah!
- You doing orders? - Yeah, I got it.
- I would like a lot of medicines.
- Just an assortment, or?
- DayQuil, NyQuil, melatonin, vitamin C,
elderberry,
zinc for my hair,
biotin, vitamin B12-
- I gotta write these down. - No, Liv, stop it.
- Hold on, sorry. Why? - I would like scented soaps,
Dr. Teal's bath salts-
- Usha, I could take you over there later,
and I could carry some of this back for you, if you want.
- Okay, wow. I got a man!
- All right, Russell bends down to grab the dustpan,
and a thong sticks out over his work pants.
- Uh-oh!
Russell, your underwears are sticking out.
- Oh!
Oopsie-daisy.
Walks in, cleans up all the shattered glass
from the TV monitor.
- Liv and Paula walk out to go to the Walgreens,
and I think Wendell,
your little sort of attention-grabbing thing,
I think Russell, you notice Wendell
try to get Liv's attention.
- It's all right. - It's all good, you know?
I just really wanted a blue lemonade Calypso.
- Those are tasty. - Yeah, but-
- Hey, we should do a boys' trip over there.
Hey, we should do a boys' trip to Walgreens!
- You know I'm down for a boys' trip. Come on!
- All right, we'll do a boys' trip.
Let me clean up all this shattered glass
and try to figure how I'm going to replace this TV
without Dave realizing, and then we can go-
- I grab a broom and start helping you.
- Thanks so much. All right, all right.
- Usha's got the books, and she's like, you know what?
We'll take this off of the inventory,
so we don't even have it anymore.
This makes absolutely no accounting sense.
- Yeah, I think even I know that's there's no way-
- You're hearing, at least,
something criminal is happening in this moment, yeah.
- Take that off.
- I think Russell just loves his life low involvement,
and this does not even bother him.
He's just like, not my circus, not my monkeys.
Yeah, take that off the inventory. Sweeping this shit up.
- Over at the Walgreens, Liv and Paula walk in together.
- Paula is just going to grab Liv's arm and be like,
is everything okay at home? - Oh!
Yeah, no real complaints. How about for you, Paula?
Are you okay? - I can't even look at you.
Olivia! - Yeah?
- If you were breaking the law, would you tell me?
- Oh.
- Because you have to! Like, in a court!
- Okay, well, isn't it-
- As a sworn officer of the law!
- Oh, aren't you just a- - And my good girlfriend.
- Well, that's true.
- With a shared interest in men.
- We got good taste. (Ify snorts)
Yeah, I would tell you.
Anyways, I'm gonna peel off
to get the things that the boys wanted.
- Paula is weeping.
- [Brennan] Tears stain the pink lip gloss.
- All right.
Okay, you go do that.
- Okay, Liv goes to the different aisles.
- Yeah, you grab the drinks pretty quickly.
- Grab the drinks.
I spot a thermometer, and I slip it in my bag.
It doesn't really matter what the item is.
It's kind of just whatever strikes my fancy,
just to see if I can. - Do I see that?
- I'm going to say, let's make our first roll of the game.
- [Alex] Are we going to start rolling?
(players applauding)
- Give me a Wits roll, DC 4,
and we'll call this a difficulty of two.
- [Alex] Interesting.
- One. - Wow.
- [Brennan] You don't see it. - Rough.
- Okay. - [Rekha] That's rough.
- But you get a-
- But, go ahead and give yourself a turbo token,
the first turbo token. (Ally whistles)
Liv, you collect your things.
- It was an accident. She didn't mean to.
- But Paula, there was a period of time,
I think you didn't see it, so there's a period of time
where Liv is away from you and in a different aisle.
You guys head back to Dave's Video World as Dave comes in
and is like, "All right, let's get the party started.
It's 4:10 right now. Let's just try to-"
- Can I take my 15 in 10?
- Can you take your 15 in 10? - Yeah.
- Andy, we're right in the rush.
- Dang. - Yeah, dang is right.
We're right in the rush of it, yeah, absolutely.
- Listen, snake pants? Please.
Can I take my break in 10?
- Let me tell you- - Reptile legs.
- Let me tell you something, my man. Big man.
I'll tell you this right now.
These snake pants are gonna have your shit on 'em
when I put my foot so far up your ass
that I have to sell these back to the snakeskin dealer
I bought them from for $400!
- You spent $400 on pants?
- You're gonna get his poop on your pants?
- Yeah, 'cause my foot's gonna be so far up your ass-
- Yelling...
- I keep it-
- 100!
- I've been sabotaged by all of the fucking deadbeats
and losers at this fucking shop!
And I'll tell you something right now!
You hear... (mimics bell ringing)
A man that makes Usha look like a child,
(players laughing)
A fucking ghoul from the graveyard...
Everything about this man...
The man is balding, but has a crown of hair
that joins his eyebrows- - [Rekha] No!
- ...walks in.
Everything about this man lets you know
that he owns dozens of birds,
and he walks in and goes,
"I hope I have arrived in time to join the festivities."
- Hey, Dang? Is this that Rashab dude?
- Persimmon? - Ha ha!
Ah, a fan of dried fruit am I, though not yet a persimmon.
(Alex snickers)
Barsimmeon Higgs, my name. - Yeah.
- I have come- - Oh, oh.
- ...to settle the bill.
You see Dave goes, "Is this late fees guy?
Is this late fees guy?" - Yes, yes.
It's the late fees guy. I called him.
- I'll handle it.
- We called him. - We called him.
- It was a joint effort. - Usha's hot for Barsimmeon.
- You see that Dave walks into the back.
You see Barsimmeon looks and says, "Enchanté, mademoiselle."
- Oh my gosh! Spanish, hello!
- You see he goes,
"Forgive the old dusty bones of a vagabond like myself.
I have come to return a rented video tape."
(Izzy retches)
You see he reaches into pockets in slacks.
His hands go past his knees.
That's how deep his pockets are.
(Izzy retches and Rekha moans)
He pulls out, just a lot of sunflower seed shells come out,
as he pulls a VHS tape out of his front pocket and he says,
"The tape in question." - Nobody touch that!
Nobody touch that.
- Did you eat those seeds yourself?
- No. My birds gobbled them up.
Hungry little birds.
Their beaks are dry and hard.
- I think I'm holding hands with the girls.
We're squeezing each other's hands.
- I'm covering Liv's ears.
- Usha's husband died almost 80 years ago, 70 years ago,
when they were like 27.
She is so turned on by this man.
This is the first slightly older gentleman.
- I left Don for this. Oh my god, this is what's out there.
- Usha makes eyes at Paula.
He's mine!
(Izzy retches)
- You see Barsimmeon turns to look at you here.
By the way, as Liv comes back in,
I think Paula, being sort of disgusted by Barsimmeon,
he says, "First, we settle the bill."
And says, "Could you take me to your register?"
- (giggles) Wow, I don't know how to use the register,
but I'll enter everything in my books in the back room.
- Well,
then once more into the breach, dear friends.
- (giggles) Spanish!
- He walks back with you, and Paula,
in this moment of distraction
as Russell's holding people's hands,
you do see that Liv has set her backpack down.
(tense action music begins)
- I'm going to go in there.
- You look and see a thermometer
that you know was not paid for.
And Liv, I'll ask you to roll
a difficulty two Wits check for me.
- Okay, so that's a d4. - d4.
- Also, is it funny if there's just way more stuff
in the backpack that's just unexplained, but just there?
- Yeah, other things that have been shoplifted, you think?
- Yeah. - Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
- A two. - You see Paula
looking through your backpack in the corner.
- Oh, hi! Paula, hi!
I just like to carry things around.
Those are from home, so.
- They're from home. - Yeah, 'cause, you know,
that's where I spend time every day.
Anyways, I should give the boys their drinks, so.
- Do I see this? - You do see this.
- Liv, did you bring me that thermometer
that I was asking you to bring me from home?
'Cause, you know, I think I might be
getting sick eventually? (Rekha laughing)
- Oh. Yeah, Wendell, I did.
- Oh. Could I have it?
- Yeah, here you go.
- Thank you. It's for me.
- Okay, well- - They had it unopened.
- Likely story, okay?
How do you explain
a pair of size 14 slippers?
- Those are my dad's.
- With the tag on?
- He wanted me to return them.
- You hear a stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp,
as Barsimmeon takes a curlicued rubber stamp and inkwell
and puts it on what looks like a postal office banker's note
from a government you're not familiar with,
and he says, "Paid in full. 1,200 United States dollars."
- Wow, I've never seen a check like this before. Is it new?
- Far from it. It is as old as time. (chuckles)
- I like the sound of that. - Unlike you, young lady.
- Oh no!
- But, there is one thing I treasure above all else.
Kindness. (Rekha gasps)
So let's be kind, and rewind!
And you see he strolls out into the hall
and goes to the professional rewinder and says,
"May I help myself behind the counter to rewind my tape?
I neglected to do so in my manse."
- Dang just kind of does a big gesture. Get to work, baby.
- He takes it out, and he shows you a VHS copy of a tape
with the title
"Never Stop Blowing Up".
"Ah, in all of literature and fine arts,
works of culture,
artifacts of our species' understanding of life,
the nature of the cosmos..."
(mimics tape rewinding) You hear the rewinding starting.
He says, "The telling of stories
is our greatest achievement."
He pops it open and says- - (whispered) Spanish!
- "I've rented this thrilling tale
more times than I can count.
Have you ever seen it?
This little wonder of Daveed's Video World?
Hmm?"
- No. - Hate to say it, I mean,
you've kind of been hogging it.
- Yeah, no, you've never...
That's our only copy, and you've been-
- You must understand, my friend. I never grow tired of it.
I watch it again and again and again.
And yet I am left with a terrible question.
How will I rent it, if the Video World closes?
Going the way of the H&R Block before it?
- I hate to say it, maybe you could stream it, or...
(Brennan chortling darkly)
- No, no. No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Ms. Skyler.
There will be no streaming- - How do you know my name?
- I know everyone's name
who works at my favorite video rental store.
Here, I think it's time we watched the movie!
Puts it into the VHS. - What time is it?
- 4:19 clicks over to 4:20,
and as it does so, he says,
"Now, no talking during the movie,
and you've missed your last chance for popped corn!"
(Brennan mimicking rad rock music)
And all of you are frozen with light.
You feel the most powerful channeling you've ever felt.
As the title comes on, "Never Stop Blowing Up",
boom, you feel lights everywhere throughout!
All of you are flinging.
You see all this unwinding, wild visages,
falling through endless night skies,
and all of a sudden, boom!
Wendell, you are racing down the Los Angeles River
in a car going 180 miles per hour.
Outside the window, you see a guy who is on a motorcycle.
He's got a katana at the end of a 14-foot length of chain,
whipping it over his head. (cackling)
"Thrill-seeking, boy! Let's do it!"
Wham! And slices the side-view mirror off of your car.
- Whoa!
- I'm going to need a Drive check right now
to not wipe out and crash your car at 180.
Difficulty is eight.
- All right! - What's your Drive skill?
- Didn't we all start at- - d4.
- Yes. - Everything's a d4,
and you need to roll an eight on a d4.
- Okay, let's do it!
It's a three. - Failing by five-
- Don't you have something for driving, though?
- I lower the DC of a Drive check
by three to avoid pursuers.
- So what'd I say? I said eight?
- Yeah. - Goes to five,
which means you are not failing by five or more,
which would have been severe injury.
So you (mimics wheels screeching) skirt out and slide. Bam!
You hit a tail post, and as you do,
there's a flash of green, and suddenly you hit, bam!
Hit the car and it stops, and you are flying through.
You look at your forearms.
Thick, muscular forearms on the wheel of this car.
Go ahead and take a turbo token
as you fail that skill check.
Looking in the seat beside you,
you see a pack of dynamite.
- (panicked screaming) What is this?
- We cut to a nightclub. (pulsing dance music starts)
As you hear music thundering, Liv, someone approaches you.
You are surrounded by dangerous-looking gangsters,
beautiful, sinister women
cackling and drinking their martinis,
and a man approaches you and says,
"Boss, we found it.
You want it now or later?"
- Liv looks behind.
You're talking to me?
- (chuckles) "Yeah, I don't see nobody else here.
You're who I'm talking to. Boss is funny, right?"
You see everyone laughs. (frightened laughing)
- Oh, everyone is scared.
Sorry, what was your question?
- You want it now or later, boss?
- I guess now?
(Rekha gasps)
- Liv almost drops it.
- You are in an open nightclub, and kind of almost lost it,
holding a full bag of what looks like...
You see he goes, (chuckling)
"Little bit of snow for your ski trip.
That's cocaine!"
- Thank you for letting me know.
- Ha ha ha ha. You got it, Kingskin.
- I just open this now, or?
- Oh! Boss wants to start a party, woo!
And you see that a guy next to you goes, "Heh heh heh!
Thanks for the generosity, boss." Butterfly knife.
(Brennan mimics knife thudding rapidly)
In between his fingers, (grunts) stabs it through his hand,
and blood leaks over the table.
"Yeah, give li'l Johnny Knife a taste."
Pulls it out and slashes the bag open,
mixes the blood with the cocaine and does a bump.
We're going to move from there-
- Mortaring his nose shut.
- Dang, you are channeling electricity.
- R-A-S-H-A-B!
- Tight metal hallway.
You feel the weird silence of deep and intense pressure,
and the floor is not even.
You're in a fuselage, a metal hallway in something,
and you look, deep red light everywhere.
You feel like you're in a submarine.
As you're looking around,
you have a gorgeous suit on in this moment.
- The hell?
- There are two soldiers that walk around a corner.
You see one of them goes... (mumbling)
(yelps) Greg Stock!
Pulls a gun, and I'm going to need a Tough check from you.
(Jacob screams)
- Tough check.
- He's going to roll his attack. He has a d10 on weapons.
- Whoa. - (gasps) Explodes! Oh my god.
What'd we roll on our d4? - A four.
- A four! You explode!
Okay, this is our first explosion.
You move to a d6 in Tough. Go ahead and roll 6.
- Six! - Oh my god!
- Eight, right? - Roll a d8, yes.
- Is this an eight? - Yeah.
- [Brennan] That is an eight.
- Seven! - Oh my god.
- 17. - This guy exploded,
and gets, all told, a 13.
What did you roll?
You rolled a four, a six, and a seven.
- Yeah. - [Rekha] Holy shit!
- 17, and your Tough has graduated all the way,
you now roll a d8 in Tough as your skill total.
- Cool. - Incredible.
- So, Andy "Dang" Litefoot should be dead,
but you feel it, in this moment.
You've been waiting for this all your life,
and as the gun comes out, you hit something and go,
"Not like this. Not in this moment."
Describe for me the incredible success you achieve.
As this guy pulls the gun,
what does Greg Stock do in this moment.
- You see his pupil, and you see it get big,
and it zooms in, and you see neurons firing
in a brain that have never touched before.
And he grabs the gun, and he flips the mag out,
puts his own mag in, hollow-points.
Boom, boom, boom, boom!
- Both guards drop.
You have the mind and memory of Dang.
This is Andy Litefoot on this submarine,
but there is some part of Greg Stock's muscle memory
as you are within the world of "Never Stop Blowing Up".
- Thank you, Rashab, for this moment of power.
- Honestly, you could not be more convinced
that Rashab is real.
You've just exploded twice on your first roll of the game.
Rashab is real, and is the explanation
for whatever the fuck is happening.
- I've never felt your power before, Rashab,
and I welcome it.
- You hear, in your ear, saying,
"(indistinct), what in the devil are you talking about?
Keep your eye on the mission."
- Of course. Whatever you say, Rashab.
- You hear the voice in your ear say,
"Schematics, front left pocket of the rear guard."
You go through.
Deck of playing cards.
You pull it in, and as it does,
you hear a (beeping) as you retrieve your mission objective.
Paula, you are sprinting over the Los Angeles rooftops.
(Izzy screeching)
You see that ahead of you,
there is a guy with a duffel bag and a full ski mask
who is leaping from rooftop to rooftop,
these incredible leaps and jumps.
You come into this world mid-sprint. What do you do?
- How am I running so fast and hard?
- You yell out, "How am I running so fast and hard?"
Give me a Stunts check in this moment.
We'll call it difficulty five.
- Three. - Now, you do have
a turbo token from earlier, (Rekha gasps)
if you wanted to add one to that roll.
- And I would explode?
- And you would explode. - Okay, let's do that.
- Okay, you spend- (players cheering)
Put it in the pan up there, that is correct.
So that's a four. Go ahead and roll your d6.
- Four. - Nice.
- That is an eight, so you reach deep into yourself,
and whatever fate had in store for Paula Donvalson
is suddenly in the beating heart of Jack Manhattan,
and you feel your muscles tense.
You spring forward in between two 50-foot skyscrapers,
and bam, hit this parkour assassin
and tumble into the gravel as you push him into the ground.
(grunts) Scurries around.
He's going to take a swing. Give me a Tough check.
- That'll be a d4? - d4.
Only a difficulty 3 right now. - Okay.
- Four! Explodes!
Here we go.
- Three. - Seven.
You get cold-cocked across the face, boom!
And your jaw, you feel his hand break,
and your jaw is sturdy as a fucking rock.
- Oh my god. - Oh my gosh.
My arms are so hairy!
I just bleached them.
- This guy quickly scurries to his feet,
but you see he says, "Here, here!" and throws the bag.
As he throws the bag,
something skids across the ground in front of you.
An evidence pouch with bullet casings.
As that lands in front of you,
we cut to a room filled with servers,
huge stacks of cards, chips, mainframes,
and Usha, you are looking at a series of servers,
and you are holding in your hand the Shadow Falcon Protocol.
As you look at it, you hear (beeping) and you see-
- Hello?
- He says, "G13. What's up, you old snake?"
- Hey!
- This incel. Hey!
- He says, "We're in position. Upload the protocol."
- Okay.
Sorry, what?
She looks down. Oh my god, I'm skin and bones!
Disgusting! Okay, okay.
- G13, the protocol. Upload it.
- Who is this? Is this Lisa's husband?
- What?
- Can I talk to Lisa?
I just want to patch my granddaughter in.
- You look in a reflective surface
and see G13 staring back at you, speaking like Usha.
- Oh my god, I'm hideous!
Oh my god! Okay, okay! - G13, the protocol.
We only have a limited time in this position.
Give me a DC 10 Tech check.
- One.
- Go ahead and take a turbo token.
What does Usha do, as she cannot upload the Shadow protocol?
- This is huge!
And she sticks it into just a slot she sees,
which is just the space between two machines,
and maybe it starts sparking.
It's not a place you're supposed to-
- You put it into the fan vent.
- Yeah, exactly! And it shreds up.
- You hear, "G13! G13!
Oh no! (mimics gunfire) (screaming)
They're shooting at us! With guns!
Ah! I'm fucking dead! I'm fucking dead!"
- Did it work? Did it work?
- And we cut- - Real MacGruber.
- Did it work? - I'm fucking dead!
Did it work? - Did you get your download?
- And we cut to Russell.
You were looking at a screen
in Dave's Video World seconds before.
Now, you are in a crawlspace,
and you've been in tight spaces with repair before,
but you realize you're in a working air vent.
Air conditioning is moving over your back,
and you feel a gun attached to your inner thigh.
You are in a latex catsuit.
You hear some talking up ahead.
(latex squeaking)
- I'm not wearing my headlamp.
This is very dangerous. (latex squeaking)
- Oh my god.
- My body doesn't ache.
- Yeah, you move through.
Give me a difficulty three Stealth check.
- Okay.
One.
- [Brennan] Okay, you are moving forward, and you hear-
- I'm just kind of swishing back and forth,
and the latex is like... (mimics squeaking)
- Yeah, the latex is sort of squeaking,
and the thing that makes the final noise is,
something clatters out of your hand,
something you were watching before.
The security clearance you grabbed
from the man's belt in the museum.
- Ooh!
- Whoa.
- As that clatters in front of you,
you hear a noise in front of you say,
"Stop. You hear that noise?"
And then (mimics gunfire) you hear bodies hit the floor,
and you look through the air vent
and you see an enormous, musclebound figure,
rippling thighs, tris, pecs, abs.
He's got this multi-pocket utili-vest,
a huge AK-47 over the back.
This "Street Fighter"-looking insane person turns up,
just standing in a pool of blood
in this guard break room in this facility,
stares up and looks right through the vent,
making eye contact with you.
Smoking gun. (exhales sharply)
- Russell feels real bodily fear
in a way that he hasn't ever felt before.
Any part of his body could be attacked at any moment.
- Looks at you. "Well, well, well.
My advice to you,
Ms. Drips.
Never stop blowing up!"
Boom!
The wall explodes in flame.
You see a truck pulling it out. (mimics helicopter)
Helicopter noise, rope ladder.
This figure grabs it and says,
"Hope you enjoy the late fees."
- I try to chase!
- And he is off on the rope ladder, and that is all
for this episode of "Dimension 20: Never Stop Blowing Up".
Tune in next week.
- Paula, is this you? Why am I feeling a man's face?
- Wendell, it's me! (Ify yelps)
- I'm me. - Yeah.
- But you're you. - Yeah!
- Hey, we need some freaking rules around here.
- Come at me, bro! - Come at me, bro.
- Come at him, bro. - What?
- Oh, I'm just being funny today.
(players laughing)
- Walking into UCB like...
- You see a guy.
Laugh at the boss's joke! Pow!
- I want to find this chump! - It's personal.
Whenever you do this, you go wild. You're a loose cannon!
- I'm a loose cannon! I'm crazy!
I got a mind to shoot-
- Put your service weapon- - ...a car!
- Goddammit, don't shoot a car!
- The computer isn't working.
Something whirred up.
- Word up? - It whirred.
It whirred up.
Can I get a second one?
- G13, did you fuck us?
- Yelling!
- Are you in position?
- Just ping it. Can you ping it?
- You want me to ping it? - Just send me a ping.
- Ping? - And they're shaking hands.
- Go find me a whip.
And he runs towards the people.
- With the dynamite. (mimics engine revving)
You try that, and it goes... (beeping)
Opens. As it opens, you see that there are a number of-
(Rekha gasps)
- I sprint. I sprint. - You sprint, you sprint!
You sprint, you sprint, you sprint!
(Ify screaming)
- Yeah! That was cool.
- That was cool, man. I don't know what you want me to say.
(chill 1980s synth music)
(synth music continues)