Transcript for Episode 33: The Gayest Saturday Morning Cartoon Ever
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Dungeons & Dragons episode “The Engagement.” If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here.The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.
Eric: Well, hello Sleeping Beauty. It's nice to know somebody kept warm last night.
Lorn: [yawns] Morning. Thanks for the loan of the cape, Fancy Pants.
Eric: Speaking of fancy, I'm simply dying to know the name of your tailor.
Lorn: Oh, yeah? Maybe he could sew your mouth shut—if you ever get your foot out of it.
Hank: Here we go again.
Presto: I don't believe last night. Six straight hours of putdowns. Those guys ought to take their act on the road.
Sheila: Hmph. You'd think they were identical twins.
Diana: You mean identical twits.
Uni: Eh?
Bobby: Yeah. That's all we need—two Erics!
Eric: Listen, Lorn, old buddy, I hate to tell you this, but if my parents even suspected I was like you, they'd disinherit both of us.
[theme music plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: And based on that teaser intro, you maybe don't recognize the TV show we're going to be talking about.
Glen: You're listening to the wrong podcast. Stop. Stop immediately.
Drew: No, it's the right podcast, it's just that we're doing something a little bit different this time in one of our bonus episuh—bonus eh—I can't say "bonus episodes" now.
Glen: Boner episodes.
Drew: Boner episodes. One of our boner episodes. It's because it's the most obscure thing we've probably talked about, like, given a whole episode to, which is the 1983 CBS Saturday-morning cartoon series Dungeons & Dragons, and in particular the episode "Odyssey of the 12th Talisman," which is—
Glen: Ooh.
Drew: —a very high-falutin name considering what actually transpires in this episode.
Glen: And also considering we've never heard of these talismans before.
Drew: That was one of the questions I was going to ask you if this was a throughline for the series. So no, it's just this episode.
Glen: I do not believe they've ever been mentioned before.
Drew: In any case, I'm calling it the "Gayest Saturday-Morning Cartoon Ever." That's what I'm calling the title, anyway.
Glen: Okay. Well, you've never seen the Rubik's Cube cartoon. I don't know if it's actually gay.
Drew: [laughs] I mean, if they gave a sexuality to a Rubik's Cube, I guess that's kind of gay.
Glen: I don't even know if they gave him a gender.
Drew: Well, if people see this title and they disagree, they can yell at us on Twitter, and then we can do another episode down the line. Before we get into this, I realize this is kind of a big ask because the episodes where people tend to not be familiar with the show we're talking about tend to not do quite as well.
Glen: Oh, well.
Drew: And also, this is a cartoon, not a sitcom. And also, it's a cartoon about Dungeons & Dragons. But I say if all these things are red flags for you, you might not enjoy this episode. Please just stick through it because there's a lot of meaty gayness to be discussed here, and I think it'll be an interesting episode, even if this is a show that you do not care about.
Glen: If all those things are red flags for you, you would not enjoy an afternoon with me.
Drew: [laughs] No. They really would not. Well, actually, that is the first question I was going to ask you. Glen, what is your history with this TV show?
Glen: I watched it growing up. I didn't actually play Dungeons & Dragons as a three- to five-year-old. I didn't play Dungeons & Dragons until much later in life. But I was obsessed with this show. There was an episode with a spider woman that terrified me. That is to say, it was a woman who turned into a giant spider. And just even the opening always had a very little corner of my brain of being kind of terrifying, and the show's premise of these not-quite teenagers who go on a rollercoaster and end up in this magical world where they're constantly in danger and being used by a creepy old man for unknown purposes.
Bobby: Hey, look! The Dungeons & Dragons ride!
[jovial music turns ominous]
Bobby: Wow, neat!
Eric: Give me a break.
Sheila: I don't like this!
Hank: Whoa! What's happening?
[characters exclaim]
Diana: Where are we?
Presto: Look out!
[dun-dun-dunnnn]
[Tiamat growls]
Glen: It was always very unsettling and very strange in terms of—well, I guess not strange at all. That was the premise of a lot of TV shows is—
Drew: Yeah. Land of the Lost.
Glen: Kids lost in a strange world, constantly in danger.
Drew: Captain N, Kid Video. Yeah. Actually, that is a common premise. It kind of has more stakes than other cartoons of the time. I kind of feel like—I mean, they have real weapons, and there is the sense that they are constantly in danger of dying.
Glen: Yeah. There's real weapons, real monsters. The bad guy is very bad and very scary, and—
Drew: Wears a nice skirt.
Glen: Yeah. I was going to mention how much Venger looks like a drag queen. And also, that dragon that they face in the intro—Tiamat—is an evil god. So they're facing off against gods.
Drew: Yeah. Tiamat's a weird—Tiamat is a character in Dungeons & Dragons, I presume?
Glen: Mm-hmm. Queen of the Dragons.
Drew: It's kind of a deep cut for a kids' cartoon if you didn't know—if you just thought that was the Tiamat from [inaudible 00:05:07] mythology. It's from an actual mythology.
Glen: Babylonian, probably. It's also just strange this show existed, given that the early-to-mid-80s was the height of the "satanic panic" around Dungeons & Dragons. Was this explicitly an effort to make the game seem safe? But I don't know, really, how it got by all the development execs when you'd turn to any Sunday newspaper and they're talking about how evil Dungeons & Dragons is.
Drew: And it's not a cutesy show, either. So if they were trying to show that it was harmless to kids, they could have made it a safer environment and not had them constantly in peril and swing weapons around. Also, we live in California, and it's 2019, and there is a wildfire very close to us. So if you hear helicopters going over, we're going to have to talk right through them because we don't have time to stop—and hopefully we don't burn to death.
Glen: Yeah. That's just going to be every podcast going forward is some sort of climate crisis making noise around us. Sorry.
Drew: [laughs] Just ignore the climate and think about cartoons for a second. So you didn't play D&D when you were a kid. When did you start playing Dungeons & Dragons?
Glen: There was a summer in high school where I hung out with the bad kids—quote/unquote—not my usual nerd friends. But we ended up playing Dungeons & Dragons that summer briefly, and then I didn't encounter it again until after college when I moved to Chicago when I hooked up with a guy and the next morning he said, "Hey. Would you want to come with me to my Dungeons & Dragons game?" And I said, "Oh, yes." So I observed the game. The session was amazing. I was a little bit lost, obviously, but then with was there when the party found their own skeletons in a desert in between time and shit like that.
Drew: Oh, no.
Glen: And it was very fascinating, and they had a player who sucked, whom they quickly got rid of, and I just replaced him.
Drew: So you've continued to play it into this phase of your adulthood that you're in right now. When you encounter someone that has basically no familiarity with it, how do you explain it to people?
Glen: It's an interactive/cooperative fantasy storytelling experience. If you try and couch it in terms that don't make it sound like a win/lose game, people are less put off by it—because a lot of times people view it like, "Oh, it's a Dungeon Master versus the players," which is not really how it is.
Drew: That makes sense. Maybe just in case anyone's still listening but still doesn't know, a Dungeon Master is the person who plans the adventure, plans the map that people are traveling through, plans the scenarios that they're going through and kind of flowcharts out everything that might happen and tries to make an exciting, enjoyable, engaging adventure for everyone. Right?
Glen: Yes. And obviously, there's various levels of effort that could be put into the prep from the Dungeon Master. They could just do a dungeon from a book—like do a couple hours of prep beforehand and then just go with the flow. And it's very much a long-standing joke that the Dungeon Master plans, and the players laugh because players are going to do whatever they want. They will not engage with the NPCs—that is to say the non-player characters—that you want them to engage with; they will instead harass some random cutesy person in a bar, and that will become the target of all their efforts. And I've also been very shocked and delighted by the rise of popularity of Dungeons & Dragons in the last few years. So I've had to explain what Dungeons & Dragons is much less than I used to. That combined with podcasts, actually, and a lot of people doing real-play podcasts—actual-play podcasts. You've maybe heard of The Adventure Zone—which is the McElroy brothers and their father playing Dungeons & Dragons, and now they've moved on to another role-playing system—versus something like Critical Role, which is probably the most popular Dungeons & Dragons podcast. It was a YouTube and Twitch show, still is, and then they released the episodes a week later on podcast. And they have quite the cult following, are basically celebrities, and they recently Kickstarted a $10 million animated show that they are working on.
Drew: Is this the one that Ashley Johnson is part of?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Okay. That's awesome. Ashley Johnson is Chrissy Seaver, the youngest of the Growing Pains kid, who is now the voice of the Cartoon Network series Infinity Train, the main character.
Glen: [Which is very good 00:09:31].
Drew: And apparently is involved in cool geek culture, so yes. Way to go, Chrissy Seaver. What pop culture depictions of Dungeons & Dragons do you think actually get it right?
Glen: I actually think the most recent season of Stranger Things when you had a zombie kid preparing an adventure and the players aren't engaging with it and him getting mad. It is probably the most accurate depiction.
Drew: Gay zombie kid—Will? Will's little brother?
Glen: No. He's Will. Isn't it? I don't know.
Drew: The one that was technically dead for the first season.
Glen: Yeah. I didn't enjoy, terribly, the G&G storyline in—
Drew: Gargoyles and—Gungeons? I can't even remember—Griffons & Gargoyles. That was the [game on] on the show.
Glen: The rule book was way too small. I didn't actually understand how the play mechanics worked, and it played into the "satanic panic" trope of the '80s, which is not helpful.
Drew: The Dungeons & Dragons version they play in that game is the only unrealistic thing about Riverdale, which is really too bad.
Glen: I don't think the podcast audience can see the look on your face.
Drew: I should also say that our former guest Matt Baum hosts another podcast called Queens of Adventure where he does Dungeons & Dragons with drag queens and occasionally does live shows of it. So go check out that show.
Glen: Yeah. Put it in the show notes.
Drew: Show notes [sighs]. So this version of the show I have no memory of because we didn't get CBS. It was a CBS Saturday-morning cartoon, which makes me realize there was a quarter of Saturday-morning cartoons I just never saw because we didn't get CBS. Wonder what else I missed out on. Ran for three seasons, technically, but it's only 27 episodes, which is an odd production order, I guess.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: The episode we're watching aired in the last season a few episodes before the final episode [on] September 28, 1985. I had just started preschool.
Glen: I mean, the show was strange in that it had—it gave you the illusion of it being serialized because they had a definitive goal of going home, but the episodes were very random and rarely played into each other.
Drew: This is the only episode of this TV show I've ever seen. So listeners, I'm only a little bit ahead of you, but Glen is here to explain stuff.
Glen: I mean, I've not really watched this TV show since it aired in the '80s, but go on.
Drew: But you have the DVD.
Glen: Yeah. I do have the DVD, and I watched the DVD.
Drew: This episode was written by Mark Shiney and Michael DePatie—I'm not sure how to pronounce that—and directed by John Gibbs. If you look at these guys' filmographies, they are our childhoods, basically. The writers weren't really writers. They were a sound editor and a dialog editor, respectively. Mark Shiney wrote for The Gary Coleman Show, The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Adventures, this, and Heathcliff.
Glen: Hmm.
Drew: But if you look at his music director credits, he has Pirates of Dark Water, Alf, My Little Pony, Real Ghostbusters, Transformers, G.I. Joe, The Glo Friends, and Muppet Babies in addition to a bunch of other stuff. Michael DePatie's is basically all those same things. I think they worked together a lot. This is the only time the wrote together, and it's the last thing they ever wrote—this one episode. And both of them, it's their only writing credit for this show. They just got this one episode randomly.
Glen: Are they gay?
Drew: I don't think so. I looked them up. They might actually both be deceased at this point, but there's basically no information about them. And if they're gay, there is no record of it online. Director John Gibbs, all the same stuff, and his cartoon animation experience goes back to the Pink Panther cartoons in 1965. Basically all he's ever done is cartoons.
Glen: Oh, wow.
Drew: The characters. We'll talk about the characters. We have a hero named Hank. He is a Ranger.
Glen: Very handsome.
Drew: Ranger like Aragorn?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Voiced by Willie Aames from Eight is Enough and Charles in Charge—he is He-Manish looking [or] Prince Adam looking—Diana the Acrobat. Are Acrobats a class?
Glen: Acrobat is not a class. It was probably Amazon or something like that, but they didn't want to say Amazon because she's—
Drew: Right. That's awkward. So yeah, she's the only person of color on this show, voiced by an actress who herself was black, so at least they did that much. And she kind of looks like a black Princess Diana if Princess Diana's costume was made out of fancy furs of the era.
Glen: I was confused by—her tiara did not match the other metal parts of her costume.
Drew: Yeah. I was, too. Apparently in the real world, she is an Olympic-level gymnast, so she was already that before they get on the rollercoaster that takes them into the Dungeons & Dragons world. That's a neat little tidbit.
Glen: Yeah. Why is she hanging out with these losers?
Drew: Why are any of these losers hanging out with each other? The only people who should be hanging out together are Hank and Sheila because it seems like they are—
Glen: Well, also Hank and his brother Bobby.
Drew: No. Bobby is Sheila's little brother.
Glen: Oh. Why does he look just like Hank?
Drew: Because they only have two styles—
Glen: [Twenty 00:14:09] colors.
Drew: Sheila is the Thief. She's not very important in this episode.
Glen: She has a great artifact, though.
Drew: Artifact?
Glen: Their magic items. She has an invisibility cloak.
Drew: Does she use it in this episode?
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay. She is voiced by an actress named Katie Leigh, who voiced Honker on Darkwing Duck. But also, scanning over her extensive list of cartoon voice things, she voiced a character named Sailor Iron Mouse on—[laughs]. Who the fuck is Sailor Iron Mouse?
Glen: So Drew, in the fifth season of Sailor Moon Stars—let's just save this for another podcast. But there are sailors from other solar systems in the world.
Drew: Okay. All right. I just know that they're generally named after celestial bodies, and I—
Glen: All right. Sometimes they're named after comets as well.
Drew: Is Iron Mouse a thing?
Glen: No.
Drew: All right. Okay. Whatever. Bobby is Sheila's little brother. He's a Barbarian. He doesn't really do much in this episode. They have the nerd whose name is Presto. Again, his name was Presto before they went into Dungeons & Dragons world. His real name is Albert. There's no explanation for why he was called Presto. He was just a guy with glasses until he became a wizard. All right.
Glen: I would believe that a nerd in the '80s was nicknamed Presto.
Drew: I mean—sure. I just—I don't know. He's voiced by Adam Rich who was also on Eight is Enough. And then unfortunately, there's Uni the Unicorn who doesn't exist in the pre-story. They meet him in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons.
Glen: Correct. They did not have unicorn in the real world—although it'd be funny if they had a unicorn stuffed animal they won at the carnival ride that was given sentience and life.
Drew: Yeah. That would be a great detail you would have written into this if you wrote this series, Glen.
Glen: As opposed to Dungeon Master giving them a kind of useless pet to have to worry about and take care of.
Drew: I hate him so much. He's so annoying. All he does—he does nothing other than parrot statements that other people make, but he squeals in agreement, and his voice is extremely annoying—
Glen: Oh. You're talking about Uni.
Drew: Uni. Yeah.
Glen: I thought you were talking about Dungeon Master.
Drew: No. Uni fucking sucks. Uni is voiced by Frank Welker who has done every animal voice you've ever heard on every cartoon ever, including Santa's Little Helper on The Simpsons. But he's essentially just doing his Slimer voice.
Bobby: Here she comes.
Sheila: This'll never work.
Uni: [squeals in agreement]
Bobby: I say we stop running and fight.
Uni: [squeals doubtfully]
Bobby: All right! Now that's what I call a weapon.
Uni: [squeals in excitement]
Drew: And it's so obtrusive. And sometimes he's not even in the shot, and he'll just be like, "Nyah!" You're just reminding the viewer that this annoying animal is there for literally no fucking reason. He almost dies twice in this episode, and both times I was like, "I really hope he dies." But he didn't. Shoot. Uni fucking sucks. I hate him so much [breathes deeply]. Sorry.
Glen: You can @ Drew on Twitter @KidIcarus222.
Drew: No. It's @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E.
Glen: Whatever.
Drew: And then finally—
Glen: Eric. The one we're going to be talking about his being gay.
Drew: [laughs] Eric. Eric sucks. He's a whiner. He is all about self-preservation. He cares often about himself. He's not a total jerk. He just—his instinct is to care about himself all the time. He's voiced by Ralph Malph himself—
Glen: Oh, my god!
Drew: Donny Most! It is interesting that he is a Cavalier. That is his class name in this little universe because his attitude is actually cavalier in the lower-C way, and I looked it up. The reason that exists is that the Cavaliers were a class of aristocratic warriors, and very quickly "aristocratic" came to be "Oh. They do not give a shit about the rest of us," and that's how "cavalier" ended up getting the negative adjective version that we have now.
Glen: We should also point out that we talked a little bit about Eric in our other bonus episode about '80s cartoons that made us gay.
Drew: Episode 22. It's an all-over-the-place thing, but at the end we talk about this, and our guest Ted Biaselli is actually the one who points out that if you think about Eric being a gay character, it makes sense that his special item is a shield, and we talked about how gay men often use their wit as a form of protection and a form of—
Glen: A defense mechanism.
Drew: —a defense mechanism. And the way Eric's special power works in this game, he literally can make a forcefield around himself using his shield power, and that's a great metaphor for how a lot of young gay men develop that wit but end up very isolated.
Glen: Oh, yes.
Drew: And even in the group, Eric is isolated. He's the one that everyone seems to dislike the most. So Eric sucks, and this is kind of an agreed upon thing, and I found a blog by Mark Evanier who developed the series for CBS and who now blogs rather prolifically, including a lot of cool progressive topics. He seems to know what's going on. He's for most of the right causes, and he has an entry specifically about Eric where—I'm actually going to read—
Glen: All of it!
Drew: It reads in part as this: "The kids were all heroic—all but a semi-heroic member of the troop named Eric. Eric was a whiner, a complainer, a guy who didn't like to go along with whatever the others wanted to do. Usually he would grudgingly agree to participate, and it would always turn out well, and Eric would be glad he joined in. He was the one thing I really didn't like about the show. So why, you may wonder, did I leave him in there? I had to. At the time, there were parent groups who had [according to Evanier] considerable influence over the development of cartoons, and the idea that these parent groups put in the brains of CBS executives is that there should be someone who was contrarian and didn't want to go with the group but who was always proven wrong, and the message was that it's better to go with the group," which Evanier says—he's like, "This is a crazy thing to do. We teach kids, 'If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge?'" In this case, they're kind of wanting Eric to jump off a bridge with everyone else even though he would see that's a bad thing. So he just never really liked him. He notes that The Get Along Gang was an entire show about this premise, about how what the group thinks is for the best.
Glen: "Go along to get along."
Drew: Yeah. I was like, "Oh. That's really true." He says, "We were forced to insert this [in quotes] "lesson" in Dungeons & Dragons, which is why Eric was always saying, 'I don't want to do that,' and paying for his social recalcitrance. I thought it was forced and repetitive, but I especially objected to the lesson. I don't believe you should always go along with the group." Crazy to get that little bit of information, like, "Oh. That's why the sucky character is in there," and I want to know how it might have affected other cartoons that had contrarian characters where you're always like, "Why are you hanging out with this person?" And maybe that was a similar thing.
Glen: Do you think that's why he gave off such strong young-gay energy? Because as young gay kids, we often don't want to do the activities that other young men our age want to do, be it sports or hitting small animals with rocks, or whatever.
Drew: Well, I would be inclined to say yes. I looked into Evanier, and although he's very progressive there is no indication that he might be gay himself, although he did have this blog entry where he said—he was talking about Ice Man coming out, and he said, "What I think would be interesting if they also decided the Human Torch was gay, the two of them could fall in love. And if the man made of fire were to have sex with the man made of ice, it could trigger an explosion of weather that would stop global warming. If Marvel ever uses this idea, I expect royalties."
Glen: Iceman does hook up with Pyro. Spoiler alert.
Drew: Oh. Is that recent?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Oh. Weird. Okay. I wanted to ask—obviously, he's down with the idea of gay people, so on Twitter I'm like, "Did you ever consider Eric to be a gay-coded character?" And his response was, "Nope. The thought never entered my mind."
Glen: Oh. You actually tweeted him?
Drew: Yeah. And so I followed up and was like, "Here's why: I have this podcast, and we're doing this episode this week," and he didn't—he's not chosen to respond. So maybe he just does not give a fuck, and he doesn't have to. But at least according to him, it never crossed his mind. I don't know. We can talk at the end about how much creators' intentions actually matter. I think what we're doing is called "reading against the grain." But not an invalid way to interpret a text.
Glen: So we should, I guess, talk about the episode.
Drew: Yeah. Let's talk about the episode. How does the episode begin, Glen?
Glen: All right. Well, overall this episode is about the gang running into a young man who has a powerful weapon at his disposal, and he briefly joins them, and he and Eric hit it off quite splendidly.
Drew: In a classic Sam-and-Diane fashion.
Glen: Yes, actually.
Drew: It's the "I love you/I hate you" thing where they spar. And if these were a male-female couple, anyone watching would be like, "Oh. They're supposed to fall in love." But it's not. It's two boys.
Glen: So the episode opens—
Drew: With a stampede. What the fuck are those things?
Glen: I don't know.
Drew: Ugh. I thought you'd be like, "Oh, it's a blah-blah-blah-blah."
Glen: It's a much furrier horse with a scarier face. If it's a classic D&D monster, I don't know it.
Drew: Well, that's why I thought you [inaudible 00:23:29].
Glen: I'll just leave.
Drew: They're trying to capture them for some reason, and Eric comes up with a plan and is like, "It's not going to work," but he manages to trick all these animals into running into a water trap, basically.
Glen: A trap of some sort—like a pit trap.
Drew: And they're like, "Oh, my god. It actually worked, stupid. You dumb homo. Your dumb homo plan finally worked."
Hank: I saw it, but I don't believe it.
Bobby: Yeah! It—it worked!
[monsters growl]
Hank: All right, Eric! Way to go!
Sheila: I'm sorry we ever doubted you.
Bobby: Yeah. Way to go, Eric!
Diana: You see? You see?
Uni: [makes annoying sounds of agreement]
Glen: I thought there was a second part of the plan, like they'd have Presto freeze the water, and I was like, "Oh. That's very cruel for a Saturday-morning cartoon." I don't know what the end goal of trapping these things was.
Drew: I assume just to let them drown, but then Eric goes to the edge of the pit and teases them with an apple or something, and—[helicopter distracts Drew].
Glen: Sorry.
Drew: —teases them with an apple or something, and they immediately jump out and attack the kids.
Glen: But Drew, what does Presto think the animals might want more? Bananas!
Drew: Oh. I didn't—
Glen: [sings] Reach-Around Corner!
Presto: Maybe they like bananas better! [screams]
Drew: And his new friend probably does like bananas better as we learn shortly. So the kids are running from them, and then it cuts to this character who—we don't know him yet. His name is Lorn, we find out very quickly. He is supposed to be pretty—he kind of has a Ryder Strong quality.
Glen: Oh, my god. They drew him so beautifully. He has eyelashes. He has very much '80s anime energy with his hair and his eyes.
Drew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. He looks like a Miyazaki character from the '80s. You can compare him to Hank. Hank looks like He-Man kind of. He's much shorter than Hank. He's not buff like Hank. He's just pretty.
Glen: Yeah. He's a pretty boy.
Drew: And he's wondering the countryside on his own, and he sees this pink and purple pendant, which he picks up.
Glen: With a star on it.
Drew: And he's like—it looks like something—
Glen: It's a Sailor Moon locket, basically.
Drew: Yeah. Right. And he's like, "Oh. I guess I'll wear this. It's just sitting here, and I have nothing better to do with my life."
Glen: The first thing he says is, "Oh. I'm so very alone," or something along those lines.
Drew: And hungry.
Glen: Yeah. "I'm alone and hungry."
Drew: And he goes to try to bargain with a local warlord to get loaves of bread in exchange for this worthless locket, and he wouldn't give him any. And as he's walking away, one of the loaves just [telekinesiseses] through the air to him, and he's like, "Oh. That was weird."
Glen: And while that's happening, the shadow of an old man—
Drew: A disgusting old man.
Glen: —is hovering behind him.
Drew: And the old man alerts the villagers to the fact that this person has wizarded a loaf of bread.
Glen: Yes. I don't know why.
Drew: And then you see him step out of the shadows, and he's like—
Gross Old Man: Stop him! That boy is an evil wizard!
Lorn: Huh? [screams] Wait!
Gross Old Man: You must destroy him before he returns to destroy you all!
Drew: Even though this old man looks like a wizard. So I don't really understand—
Glen: At first I thought he was part of the troop, and I was like, "Oh. That's not true."
Drew: No. If they hated wizards so much, you'd think they would have gotten rid of him to begin with.
Glen: He has a strong Gargamel aura about him.
Drew: Only he's dressed with no pants.
Glen: He's dressed like the warrior from Princess Moon [inaudible 00:27:00].
Drew: Did that character also not wear pants?
Glen: He may have had a tunic.
Drew: Okay. His outfit is very odd. It goes down to his feet behind but in front. It's a good three inches above his knees, and I'm like, "Wait. Does underwear even exist in this universe?" because it would be very difficult to contain oneself with such a short tunic.
Glen: I mean, I didn't not think about creepy old men coveting young gay men and their powers this entire episode.
Drew: Yeah. That occurred to me as well. So he's a combination of kind of inappropriately sexualized and hideous, which is a weird message. And the villagers ran—
Glen: They chase him away.
Drew: But he shoots a lightning bolt at them, and they're like, "Oh, no!" And then the wizard sics them on him, so he's running away with a pendant, and this group of identical-looking villagers—they're all drawn with the exact same shirt and pants and hair—are all chasing him. So the two groups are about to converge. Main troop and Lorn both fleeing from their respective threats.
Glen: Yeah. Eric and Lorn bump into each other in a classic meet-cute, and Lorn pushes Eric in a bush. But yeah, right from the get-go, they are catty with each other.
Drew: Essentially, Lorn saves everyone's life because his pendant shoots pink beams of energy—like, pink lightning bolts—and doesn't kill anything but scares away the villagers. Even though they already knew he could shoot pink lightning bolts—seeing it a second time scared them again—and then makes the horse monsters also run away. And then Eric calls him rude because he pushed him down. He is that self-centered. He is the Alexandra Cabot of this group.
Eric: That's what I call rude! Listen, Hot Shot. Next time be more careful who you're crashing into!
Sheila: Come on, Eric. He did save your life.
Eric: What? Oh. He did, didn't he? Thanks.
Lorn: Don't mention it.
Eric: Don't worry. I won't.
Glen: Their banter from the get-go is strange to me because Lorn is not from earth. He is from Dungeons & Dragons World. How does he understand sarcasm and all these weird jokes?
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: He shouldn't have the same speech patterns as Eric. Eric and Lorn are basically me at any party where I meet someone and I'm trying to flirt with them. That is my flirtatious energy is just making jokes—at their expense, my expense, whatever.
Drew: That sounds like you. I believe that.
Glen: Yeah. I'm single—as is Eric, who is also a child, but whatever.
Drew: How old are they supposed to be, do you think?
Glen: I want to say a hard 14 or 15.
Drew: Okay. Bobby's nine, and they're twice as tall as him. But I don't know how big kids are supposed to be, so whatever. So the gang rushes up to Eric and Lorn, and the first one to say anything is Bobby, and his line is—
Bobby: So, Eric. Who's your new friend?
Uni: [whines in support of Eric]
Glen: Wink, wink!
Drew: Which is—yeah. Again, in any other context, that would be what a little sibling would say to an older sibling who had a new love interest or something, and you can feel the quotation marks around "friend" in this context.
Glen: Yeah. I get what the intention is. Like, because Eric and Lorn are already fighting, Bobby is trying to say, "Oh. You guys clearly hate each other, so I'm going to call you friends," but it just has that strong younger sibling energy, like you were saying, of making fun of a crush.
Drew: Lorn introduces himself and says, "My name is Lorn," and Eric's response is, "Lorn? That's easy to remember. Rhymes with 'corn.'" I was like, "That's not helpful at all. That's not even really a double entendre. It's just a very strange thing for you to say." And they decide, "Well, let's camp for the night," which in this context is sleeping on the grass with nothing.
Glen: Yeah. They didn't cast alarm. They didn't set up watches. They did nothing that an adventuring party is supposed to be doing when they're camping in the woods.
Drew: That we saw—but also, I guess they didn't want to draw a tent? They were just like, "Put them on the grass." The only one who has any sort of comfort is Lorn who has somehow obtained Eric's shield, and he's using it as a pillow, which is a terrible idea, and he's also wrapped up in Eric's cape. And Eric's line is—he calls him "Sleeping Beauty."
Glen: Yep. And Lorn thanks Eric for lending him his cape. Obviously, what has happened is the talisman's magic to protect Lorn has stolen the cape and shield for his own comfort.
Drew: Oh, that makes sense. I was wondering because he—
Glen: Yeah. Lorn didn't take it. He actually thought that Eric tucked him in.
Drew: Oh. Okay. That makes more sense. Okay. Well, that's a handy little device, then.
Glen: But evil.
Drew: Alleged—we'll get to that later. It is allegedly evil but also maybe not? So they get at it again, and the rest of the group is like, "Ugh, they're going at it again. It was six straight hours of putdowns."
Glen: "These two catty queers—"
Drew: Six hours of putdowns. I was like, that's a lot.
Glen: A lot.
Drew: I would be like, "You guys should just shut the fuck up at some point."
Glen: Shut up and kiss.
Drew: Yeah. That'd be quieter.
Glen: Yeah. This episode should be called "Just Fuck Already."
Eric: Speaking of fancy, I'm simply dying to know the name of your tailor.
Lorn: Oh, yeah? Maybe he could sew your mouth shut—if you ever get your foot out of it.
Hank: Here we go again.
Presto: I don't believe last night. Six straight hours of putdowns. Those guys ought to take their act on the road.
Sheila: Hmph. You'd think they were identical twins.
Diana: You mean identical twits.
Uni: Eh?
Bobby: Yeah. That's all we need—two Erics!
Eric: Listen, Lorn, old buddy, I hate to tell you this, but if my parents even suspected I was like you, they'd disinherit both of us.
Drew: Okay. I understand he's saying—Lorn is objectionable, and if we were actually twins and we were the same, my parents would—
Glen: Disown both of us.
Drew: Yes. But the other reading of that is "If my parents thought I was like you—gay—they'd disinherit both of us because we're married, and—"
Glen: There's no other way. That is the reading of it is that "Yes, my parents would disown me because I'd be gay."
Drew: If they wanted a different reading of that, the writing didn't steer—I mean, we're gay so we're biased, I guess. But it's really hard to feel like we're being steered towards any other reading.
Glen: I think the explanation of most of these lines is that they're just not that great of jokes because it's a kids show, and sometimes kids just—kids aren't supposed to have the wittiest of dialogue, and these are the kinds of jokes that kids would say. They just say random shit that they think is funny. I used to think that "Christmas tree" was a swear word. I'd just go around saying, "Holy Christmas tree," and I thought it was hilarious. And so in this case, Eric is just like, "You're so bad," or he could be like, "You smell so bad that if I smelled like you my parents would kick us both out of the house." That's just sort of what he's getting at. But as gay men, it is very difficult to divorce that from the very obvious reading of "Oh. You're gay, and if my parents thought I was gay, they would just kick me out of the house."
Drew: And Lorn doesn't say that his parents are dead. He says that he doesn't have parents, and so you could even weasel in the idea that maybe that's why he has been wondering around on his own all this time—which also makes me wonder, "Wait. How the fuck were you surviving all this time if it's literally just you, you have no belongings, and you only found the magic necklace today? How are you not dead?" But whatever.
Glen: Doesn't Eric at some point also pat him down and criticize his fashion?
Drew: And they also touch each other a lot.
Glen: A lot.
Drew: Yeah. It's just very boggling how this was—yeah. Yeah, I'm just—yep [laughs]. And then we're about to go to commercial, but Presto says that "Something, something. Our mission this time is to get the Stone of Astra," and the camera zooms in on Lorn's pendant, so we are immediately told, "Well, it's right there. This is the thing they're going for." Then it fades to commercial, and I think that's what we're going to do, too.
Glen: But we're not going to fade, so we're just going to go to the commercial.
Drew: What if I just faded away—
Glen: That's fine.
Drew: —like, my earphones fell on the ground?
Glen: That's fine.
Drew: That would be fine?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: K.
Glen: Have un getting raptured.
Drew: [sighs]
Announcer: Dungeons & Dragons will return after these messages.
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes A Love Bizarre]
[an old "Milk does a body good" campaign commercial plays]
[Gayest Episode Ever promotes their Patreon]
Announcer: And now, back to Dungeons & Dragons.
Drew: And we're back.
Glen: Oh!
Drew: Hi. They're walking through the forest, Lorn is hungry, and Eric decides to capture what I would describe as a jackalope. It's a horned rabbit. Is that a Dungeons & Dragons thing?
Glen: I'm sure it's there. It's not an established Dungeons & Dragons thing.
Drew: All right.
Glen: Although there is a new familiar that you can get that's some sort of flying rabbit.
Drew: Do you remember the jackalope from America's Funniest People?
Glen: I do. Wasn't it America's Funniest Home Videos?
Drew: Maybe it was on both. I feel like when the second one started—because Dave Coulier was the voice of it. Do you remember Mr. Woodchuck from Full House?
Glen: I sure do.
Drew: The voice was exactly the same.
Glen: I know.
Drew: He does a bunch of voices, like—yeah. Do you know he also voiced Janice on Muppet Babies?
Glen: No.
Drew: Janice shows up in Muppet Babies, voiced by Dave Coulier, for no reason I can possibly explain to you.
Glen: I remember she showed up on Muppet Babies.
Drew: Also, you can see her eyes, which is—that's not what Janice—anyway, back to Dungeons & Dragons. In an attempt to get this meal for his new boyfriend, Eric looks into a bush, and all of a sudden the Dungeon Master is there. What the fuck is the Dungeon Master's role in the show, please?
Glen: He sends kids on quests and judges them [laughs]— when they are not doing great at it and helps them out just enough to make it still frustrating for them.
Drew: Like an actual Dungeon Master would, I guess?
Glen: Yeah. Kind of.
Drew: But what is his end goal? Is he trying to help them get home?
Glen: Yeah. He's trying to help—well, that's what he says.
Drew: Why doesn't he just help them home? Why isn't he like—
Glen: Well, like Glenda in Wizard of Oz—presumably, though, in this world, maybe he doesn't have the means or the power yet to cast a gate spell that would send them home.
Drew: Does he want them to kill Venger first?
Glen: I mean, it's a cartoon, so probably not kill—but maybe defeat, yes.
Drew: Did you know that Venger is his son?
Glen: Oh. No. Oh, maybe I did know that.
Drew: There's a never produced final episode of this show that reveals that Venger is Dungeon Master's son, and they fix him—they make him not evil anymore. And then they are forced to make the choice between going home or remaining in this world and taking care of the dragon, I guess? I don't know. He looks like Wallace Shawn—who was the teacher from Clueless.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: But a less attractive version of him.
Glen: I love that you immediately go to "teacher from Clueless" and not, say, neighbor from "The Phylicia Rashad Show."
Drew: He was on Cosby Show?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I don't remember that!
Glen: He played a neighbor who wrote Western novels. Yeah. There was this one season where he showed up a lot.
Drew: I guess he's also in Princess Bride.
Glen: Yes. "Inconceivable."
Drew: Yeah. Clueless is just my go-to thing. So they're interacting with the Dungeon Master, who kind of tells them that they've already found the thing they're looking for, but not that explicitly, I guess.
Glen: I thought it was very explicit, but I guess it went over everyone's head—because he's, like, fingering the medallion as he says this.
Drew: [scoffs] "Fingering."
Dungeon Master: Oh, my. Calm yourself, Cavalier. You have already fulfilled the first part of your mission.
Eric: Oh, yeah? Well, you can take your—we did?
Dungeon Master: Yes! But soon the Stone of Astra will have to be destroyed, and its chain of terror broken. Then, and only then, will one among you find home.
Uni: [questions Dungeon Master with obnoxious exclaiming]
Dungeon Master: I know of your despair, boy. But loneliness cannot be overcome by the use of this deadly and dangerous weapon. Your strength will be found in weakness.
Drew: Yeah. So this is going on, and then Evil Wizard No Pants is skulking in the background, and he starts—because he wants the medallion, he starts teleporting rocks at them.
Glen: First, Dungeon Master gives a dire warning.
Dungeon Master: Destroy the talisman.
Lorn: What?
Bobby: No way!
Uni: [agrees]
Eric: Forget it!
Sheila: We need it, Dungeon Master!
Diana: You got to be kidding!
Eric: Yeah! With Lorn's weapon, we're invincible!
Uni: [agrees with what seems to be a smart-alecky response to Dungeon Master]
Dungeon Master: On the contrary, Cavalier. The boy's weapon protects only him. All others who stay close to him are in terrible danger from evil ones who desire his weapon for themselves.
Eric: What are you talking about? Lorn's the best thing to come along since—since—since we got stuck in this stupid realm, and you know it.
Glen: Again, stretching—but Dungeon Master very much sounded like some sort of very religious father saying, "This selfish lifestyle of yours is just going to hurt those around you."
Drew: Oh. I like that.
Glen: Like, "You're enjoying yourself and having a good old time shooting pink laser beams, but think about the people who love you that are going to be hurt by your actions."
Drew: I thought that just referred to the fact that the weapon is kind of uncontrollable, and whenever he uses it, it knocks down trees and almost kills people, but I like your reading better. And so this happens. He's shooting pink laser beams. He can't control it.
Evil Wizard No Pants: Powers of the Twelve Evil Talismans, [aid me 00:44:56] now!
Eric: Yah! What the—
Uni: [screams]
Hank: Here come some more! Look out!
Lorn: Don't worry. I'll handle this!
[weapons pew-pew]
Hank: That thing's making it worse! Make it stop!
Sheila: [screams]
Uni: [exclaims]
Drew: A tree almost crushes Uni.
Glen: Who sees it coming and has plenty of time to run out of the way. He does not.
Drew: He's like [imitates Uni], and a barbarian kid somersaults him out of the way, which I was very disappointed that Uni does not die because even this far into the episode I hated him so much. And everyone is like, "Oh, you almost killed Uni!" I was like, "You're acting like it's a bad thing. Okay. Whatever." And the kids all agree that maybe this thing is not as hot as it's cracked up to be.
Glen: Everyone but Eric fluctuates very quickly. First they're like, "Oh, we love Lorn. Lorn is the best thing to happen to us," and then when the Dungeon Master is like, "Lorn's weapon is kind of evil and could kill you," they're like, "No! We love Lorn. Lorn! Everyone loves Lorn! Look at Lorn's weapon!" And then as soon as a tree almost crushes Uni, they're just like, "Ugh. Get rid of that fucking faggot Lorn."
Drew: They want him to get rid of the necklace, and he's like, "I'm not going to do it because I'm utterly without protection if I don't have this."
Glen: They wanted him to throw away the thing that made him most special.
Drew: So he would conform with the group.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Right. Eric does eventually go along with everyone, and they have a fight about who needs each other less, I guess.
Eric: Listen, kid. Dump the necklace, okay? Otherwise, if we need any help, we'll remember not to call you [scoffs].
Lorn: Oh, yeah? Well, if you need any help, I'll remember not to know you.
Eric: Hey! Suits me fine, kiddo. Why don't you just run along and try facing the realm on your own?
Lorn: I've been doing just that all my life, Eric, until I got this weapon. It's mine, and I'm keeping it. I don't have to run from anybody anymore, and I don't need anybody either—including you!
Eric: Is that so? Well, then get lost, pal, and take that lousy piece of costume jewelry with you! All right?
[ominous music plays]
Drew: And then immediately, Eric is like, "Oh. I was probably a little too hard on him."
Glen: No, the group tells Eric that he was too hard on his boyfriend.
Eric: Well, I guess I might as well go take a look, just in case the creep trips over a dragon or falls over his own feet or—
Bobby: I don't get it. Why is Eric going after him?
Uni: [grunts incredulously]
Sheila: Well, he wouldn't admit it in a million years, Bobby, but I think Eric's going after the first real friend he's found in a long, long time.
Uni: [exclaims and chuffs in recognition]
Drew: What he should have done is convince him to break the—be like, "Just stay with us. You don't need the necklace to protect yourself."
Glen: Right. I'm sure Dungeon Master has another magical item he could just give you. What do you think Lorn's Dungeon-Master-approved weapon would be?
Drew: A parasol that he can use to float and then fight with.
Glen: Ballet shoes.
Drew: [laughs] Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, we can't make fun of ballet—
Glen: I know. That's why I want Good Morning America to attack me on Twitter.
Drew: I mean, that'd be great for our numbers. Take that, Lara Spencer. So we cut to Lorn. It is night now, and he's walking through this desolate canyon. I don't know why that's the place he walked to first. It seems like a terrible—
Glen: It's Dungeons & Dragons world. Like, half of it is desolate canyons and ruins.
Drew: And he's about to climb up the wall, and then he has a hand on his shoulder, and it's Eric. They apologize, and they make up.
Eric: I'm sorry about—well, I mean—listen. If you want to come back with us, it's okay. Except—
Lorn: What?
Eric: Except for one minor problem.
Lorn: What's that?
Eric: I'm totally lost!
Lorn: Oh. That's great. Eric the Explorer, lost in the wilderness.
Eric: Oh, yeah? Well, if I wasn't so great at getting lost, I never would have found you, would I?
[characters laugh]
Glen: Get it?
Drew: I didn't even think about that. Yeah. I do get it. That's a good point.
Glen: Mm-hmm. Do you get it, listeners?
Drew: It's a good thing he found him because he was lost before him—they're still lost.
Glen: He was questioning where he was—
Drew: In life and also in the canyon.
Glen: And in sexuality.
Drew: And it's like, "Oh. I guess they're going to find their way out." No. They just climb out. The next scene is them huffing and puffing because they are both apparently too out of shape to scale a wall. Turns out, once they climb out of the canyon, that they're right above the village that Lorn was chased out of for stealing bread, and he's like, "Oh, Eric. Don't go to that village. There's something you should know about it," and Eric's like, "It's fine." But even though they presumably have to walk down the hill, and that would take at least 10 minutes, this conversation does not happen because very soon they're in the town, and it is presumed that they are both wizards, and the townspeople want to kill them.
Eric: Where's your warrant? I want to see my lawyer. I want to make a phone call!
Town Chief: The wizard has returned with one of his own kind!
Eric: Wizard? Are you nuts? I'm too smart to be a wizard, and he's too dumb. We just want directions!
Townspeople: Rabble, rabble, rabble!
Drew: And there's this really weird line reading—
Woman: Wait! Can't you see? They're only boys!
Drew: Like they're, "Nah. It's fine. You don't have to do it twice. That first—no. It's good. Just cut it in there."
Glen: [laughter] Yeah. I listened to her and I was like, "Did they just surprise the craft services lady and say, 'Here. Just read this"?
Drew: Yeah, just like, "Find a woman who's not the two that we have on the cast, I guess."
Glen: It kind of sounded like the furrowed co-worker from Muppets Take Manhattan when Kermit loses his memory and joins that advertising company.
Drew: Jill! Mm-hmm.
Glen: She sounds like Jill.
Drew: You can picture Jill in your head right now, right?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Have I ever shown you that she looks like Nasim Pedrad?
Glen: No, you have not shown me that [laughs].
Drew: Amnesiac Kermit's female frog co-worker looks weirdly a lot like Nasim Pedrad from Saturday Night Live and a bunch of other stuff. I'll put it all on the site. I find it very amusing that they look so similar [laughter]. Kermit in drag looks like Nasim Pedrad, who's a very pretty woman. Then Evil Wizard No Pants materializes as if to be like, "This is what a wizard actually looks like, stupid," like a big ball of light and makes a big show of it. Considering that the first two kids just walked there, I don't understand how they're like, "Oh. Clearly that's a wizard. These are just two punk kids because they just walked here. Let's fight him," but they don't do that. The wizard puts everyone but Lorn in force fields. Our heroes enter. He puts them in force fields, and he's like, "Give me the Star of Astra."
Glen: And everyone's like, "Oh! That's the Star of Astra."
Evil Wizard No Pants: The Talisman Boy—but I shall destroy them all. Give me the Stone of Astra!
Eric: The Stone of Astra? You mean Lorn had it all along? Don't give it to him, Lorn. Don't give it to him!
Drew: He said it in front of you, Eric! You were the one who was most invested in this whole situation. You should have known what—all right. I just don't understand how that happened. I thought—yeah. You're right. They were very explicit about this information, and somehow it was lost on the kids. I guess they're only 12 or 13 years old. Maybe they're just really stupid. Everyone's like, "Don't do it!" until the wizard starts to hurt everyone, and then Eric's like, "Do it," like, "I don't want to be pinched in this magical lasso anymore." Lorn does. He tosses it to Evil Wizard No Pants, and then it's intercepted—
Glen: I thought he was tossing it to Dungeon Master. I thought Dungeon Master was there and Lorn saw it. I thought that was a head fake on the director's part and the animators'. It's interesting that you thought he was just going to give it to Evil Wizard No Pants.
Drew: I thought he was, and I thought that was the lesson. So I'll go back and check the—
Glen: Check the tape!
Drew: Because maybe I watched it wrong. What I thought was happening is that he was like, "Yes. It is better to save my friends than hold onto this thing," and that was the lesson that had to be learned. And the moment he did that, Dungeon Master shows up and grabs the Princess Sparkle Necklace out of the air and is like, "You solved it." But apparently, that's not the case.
Glen: No. I mean, that's the same lesson I learned. I just thought that he learns it and then learns an even better lesson, like, that doesn't mean giving in to Evil Wizard No Pants; there is another option. It isn't just "Let my friends die or give this to evil. I could also give it to the power that I know and trust who had offered me a way out earlier."
Drew: Mm-hmm. Or he could have smashed it on a rock right there. That would have also maybe solved it. Evil Wizard No Pants is apparently named Korlok. We have not heard his name—
Glen: Dungeon Master knows exactly who he is, apparently.
Drew: There's, like, one minute remaining in this episode. He's like, "Oh. Ok. You do have a name. Great. You apparently have a rich history together."
Glen: I don't know this is such a feeble person. He has a lot of good spells. He can fucking teleport. He can teleport, he can cast Force Cage. He's got a lot going on.
Drew: And he needs this one more talisman—but it turns out he wants it to fight—Venger?
Glen: Well, he wants it to protect himself. He's like, "I'm sick of feeling powerless." It's like, "Dude. You're not powerless."
Drew: Yeah, "You're good." I guess the one way that the prophecy is made true is that this talisman allegedly summons evil. And it summons Venger, who shows up also in the last 30 seconds of this episode, and he's like, "I want it now, too."
[thunder crashes]
Venger: Fools such as you have no need of the Talisman, Korlok. Give it to me!
Presto: If Venger gets hold of that thing, we're in big trouble.
Dragon Master: No, Venger. The journey of the Twelfth Talisman has come to an end.
Venger: You try my patience too often, Dungeon Master. This will be the last time!
Hank: You heard what Dungeon Master said, Venger. Why don't you just forget about it?
Uni: [agrees]
Drew: And Evil Wizard No Pants throws stuff at him and brings the cliff down that he's standing on and kind of actually manages to take down the series Big Bad.
Glen: Yeah. Venger teleports away.
Drew: Venger has a nice skirt.
Glen: I love Venger's design. It's terrifying but simple. Even just that single off-center horn—it's all very scary.
Drew: Mm-hmm, but weirdly stylish in a way I wasn't expecting because I knew Venger was going to be a bad guy, so I was looking forward to seeing what he looked like. I was like, "Oh! Huh." He's not traditionally masculine. He's a stylish bad guy.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: So are we explaining the ending of this episode correctly? Dungeon Master gives it to Evil Wizard No Pants. He gives the talisman to him.
Glen: Yeah. But then Evil Wizard No Pants give it back or whatever—
Drew: Because he realizes that it's more power than he needs.
Glen: Yeah, that power just attracts evil. That's not what he wants.
Evil Wizard No Pants: That was the first victory of my sad life, Dungeon Master, and my last.
Dungeon Master: No, Korlok. You are wrong.
Drew: We're done. It's morning now, and having no other means of sustaining himself, Lorn is now hanging out with the apparently nomadic—
Glen: Janice—or Jill. Jill. He's hanging out with Jill.
Drew: Jill—the apparently nomadic village because they're packing up and leaving, and he's like, "I'm just going to go with them," and he rides off, and Eric admits that he's actually probably going to miss him.
[horses whinny]
Eric: Don't forget, make a hard right two lights past the supermarket!
Uni: Eh?
[characters laugh]
Eric: I hate to admit it, but I think I'm going to miss that wise guy.
Characters: What!?
Eric: Not a lot. Just a little.
Uni: [snorts doubtfully]
Drew: And then the last thing we see in the episode is Dungeon Master and Evil Wizard No Pants standing together. And in the final moments we see him, his body is flashing blue, and I'm like, "Wait. Is he going to change into a non-ugly version of himself because he made the right decision?" No! No explanation for why he's flashing blue. Was it an animation error?!
Glen: I think it was an animation error [laughs].
Drew: Oh. Do you really think that's what it was?
Glen: First of all, I don't remember this blue flashing. Maybe it was a Dailymotion thing.
Drew: It was on YouTube, actually. I watched this one on YouTube—[sighs]. It's weird that the episode ends with Korlok and Dungeon Master because they're not super integral to what's going on. It's supposed to be about Eric and Lorn, and I felt like they would have wanted to give a little bit more to this one extraneous relationship that Eric has ever [had 00:57:35].
Glen: It's hard not to read the relationship between Dungeon Master and Korlok as parallel to Lorn and Eric—like, these two queens; one of them has learned his lessons and is trying to get his old friend to give it up, like, "That life is behind you. You can still have a life, it's just not the one you envisioned." It's hard to not view this as two older gay men at the gay bar and that one of them is trying to tell his friend, "Let the young ones have their fun."
Drew: Right. "You can't keep partying like this, Terrance." Yeah [laughs]. Someone that doesn't agree with us who's a big fan of the show and has never thought of it will be like, "You guys are pulling way too much out of this."
Glen: We are.
Drew: We are, but also—the weird thing about these old cartoons is that sometimes they are so terse in the information they give because there's only so much you can fit in, and there's probably a lot of reasons for why these plots get run the way they do. But there's a lot of open-endedness that just kind of makes me want to read something in because the flip of this is a show like the new She-Ra where it is these old cartoons given all that subtext, more like, "We are actually going to flesh out all these things and try to answer the questions you have." If they did a remake of this, they would almost certainly make these characters an actual couple now because it really feels like the seeds of that are there [laughs]. But maybe we're just crazy.
Glen: I mean, it can be two things.
Drew: One other thing I want to talk about is I tried looking up discussions about this online. There's very little about it online. There is a posting of some of the clips on YouTube, and I think—
Glen: That's the thing I showed you.
Drew: The title of it's very close to what our podcast is called. And then I found a Tumblr that is actually a Tumblr that is ostensibly for shipping Eric and Presto.
Glen: Oh, yes.
Drew: But whoever writes it points out in this one thing—someone asks, "Wait. Who's Lorn?" This person answered and said, "The reason Lorn is interesting is that every other character is given a love interest for an episode where they meet someone who is well-suited for them and kind of a match for them, kind of a soulmate for them, except for Hank because Hank is shipped with Sheila"—and Eric is not. Eric is only ever given this one character. This is his version of it, and it's hard not seeing everyone else as at least having the potential for romance and why can't this one be that, too?
Glen: Yeah. Even the way the rest of the main cast explain what's going on with Eric and Lorn to Bobby, it's couched as how you would talk to a child about two people who were dating and had a fight.
Drew: Oh. That's a good point. I forgot about that. Yeah, that is an interesting thing where he's like, "I don't understand. He felt this way, and then he felt a different way. What is that?" That's kind of like, "You'll understand when you're older," I guess.
Glen: Yeah. Yes, we're reading way too much into it. But also, I feel like the show is giving us very little choice.
Drew: Right. And maybe that's why this is a rich medium for doing the exact kind of thing we're doing or why they had so much to work with in making that new She-Ra cartoon where they were like, "Well, what can we do with this?" So, yeah. If the guy who was the series creator for the show replies to me like, "Yeah. That wasn't there. What you're doing is above and beyond anything that we ever would have imagined for the series," I kind of want to be like, "Well, our opinion counts too, but also I'm aware that we might be projecting a lot." What do you think about that kind of stuff?
Glen: I've had to think about that kind of stuff a lot lately because I had a movie come out, and people read things into it that I didn't necessarily intend but doesn't mean they're not valid. Art is art, and once it is out in the world what people read from it is a part of it, and so I think discussions about artists' intentions are interesting and valid to a certain degree and are helpful in discussions in study of those sorts of things. That doesn't make the interpretation invalid just because that was not intended by the creator.
Drew: I guess—this is all true, and maybe it helps that we're couching it in terms of this is the way we're interpreting it, and we're biased. But it makes sense to us, so it probably makes sense to other people. Show those clips of them having their first meet-cute to anyone, they'd be like, "Oh, my god. That's remarkably gay." Even a non-gay person would be like, "That's kind of weird."
Glen: And also, like any cartoon from this time, I find it very hard to think that a creator is going to be so daring as to try and bury a gay romance in their children's cartoon. I just don't think any creator would have intentionally done that. And if they did intentionally do it, they may never say. But just because it wasn't intended doesn't mean that there wasn't something in the back of this creator's mind saying, "This character has a chip on his shoulder. He's very unlikable. Let's give him someone he really connects with and who's able to get to him in a way that his other friends can't, and they have this spark, and blah, blah, blah." All this stuff is just—you're just describing a romance. I guess it is possible that there are friendships that have that sort of magic to them as well, but that's—I don't know.
Drew: Why wasn't Lorn written as a female character?
Glen: Right.
Drew: Someone had to make the choice at some point, and it's not as if there are too many female characters on the show. There are actually relatively few female characters on the show compared to male characters. You'd think most people would be like, "Yeah. Let's get another girl in there just so there's a little bit more of a balance for one episode," but they didn't do that.
Glen: Why couldn't Jill the Breadmaker in that tribe have found the amulet and been run out of the village by her people? There are many ways that story could have gone for that side character that didn't have to be a lost, handsome, orphaned boy.
Drew: Yeah. It's boggling. We watched that documentary about [inaudible 01:03:41] recently. And the thing about that that's interesting is that for a long time the official line was, "We did it on accident," and then it turned out it was like, "Yeah. We didn't really do it on accident at all." But I guess it's completely possible that someone that's not anywhere near your mind you might do on accident because you wouldn't recognize the tropes of what you're doing. So maybe that's it. Glen, people want to tweet all their Dungeons & Dragons questions to you, what's the best way to reach you online?
Glen: On Twitter it's @IWriteWrongs—that's with a W, correct?
Drew: It is.
Glen: And on Instagram it's @BrosQuartz—B-R-O-S-Quartz. And yes, that is a Steven Universe reference. The Steven Universe movie is coming out—what is it? September 2nd?
Drew: Is it really? It's September? That near out?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. Good. I'm on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E—and this podcast is on Twitter, @GayestEpisode. You can follow this podcast on Facebook as well, and we're also anywhere you'd normally find a podcast. Please give us a rate and review. I'm going to skip it this time. Next time, we'll read one of the nice reviews that someone's given to us. We're a little bit overlong already. This podcast has a Patreon, as we mentioned in our ad break, and if you'd like to give us a little bit of money—you can give us $1 a month, if you so desire—the easiest way to do that is just to go to patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network. If you want to read about some of the other cool shows we're doing—and we have a new show that will be debuting in the not-too-distant future—you can learn about them at tablecakes.com. The logo for this podcast was designed by Rob Wilson. You can see more of his cool work at robwilsonwork.com. Glen, if there's any one other thing people should know about Dungeons & Dragons, what is it?
Glen: It's a great excuse to eat and drink with your friends outside of a bar.
Drew: We're actually recording this in the very spot where you used to do that because this used to be a garage.
Glen: Correct. It's haunted by the failures of my party's past.
Drew: Well, we all are.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. Okay.
Glen: Bye forever.
Drew: We'll be back with a bonus episode in two weeks, maybe—ish. So, bye forever.
["Lancelot" by Valerie Dore plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes podcast.