122: Good Omens Season 2 Episode 6 (Monkey's Paw)

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, are taking a break from reading and recapping every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order, and talking about Good Omens season 2! 

This week, Episode 6!

Emotions! Many of Them!

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Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi 

Things we blathered on about:

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret Discord 

"Do You Think A Depressed Person Could Make THIS?" - YouTube

Pleasure Beach by Helen Palmer - Prototype  

tumblr post with note about Pratchett wanting Every Day in Good Omens 

John Gibson | NEW CUMNOCK HERITAGE 

Go and see our friends at the Fringe!
The Magic of Terry Pratchett - Marc Burrows

Geburah - Andrew O’Neill

Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Transcript

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

JOANNA 0:00:00
It’ll be fine. We can’t start panicking yet. We haven’t got there yet. If you’re fringe adjacent, I meant to plug them last week, but go see Marc Burrow’s show, The Fringe, The Magic of Terry Pratchett and his non-discworld show, The Glom of Nit and go see Andrew O’Neill’s show, Gebra.

FRANCINE 0:00:17
Gebra. I’ve not tried to say that out loud. Google it. No, and I’m not gonna. Go see them. So yeah, it’s been a week of good omens, emotions. Yeah, we’ve had them. We’ve had them. We finally, so okay, so catch up listeners. We recorded the last episode and then the next day went and watched the final episode. What I shouldn’t have done was watch that episode before I edited the last episode because, but before I edited our last episode because I was going, oh, you innocent fools.

JOANNA 0:00:52
Yeah, it was very weird because I watched it and then I listened back to the one we did on episode

FRANCINE 0:00:59
five and I was just pointing and laughing at myself. I know, I know. I’m gonna have to have

JOANNA 0:01:03
a skim listen back through like all three of those episodes before we think about putting

FRANCINE 0:01:07
together a bonus thing full of our nonsense. I know, I was quite, I was quite happy that I managed to get one or two wild theories correct and I think you did as well, but on the whole,

JOANNA 0:01:16
I think we were fairly wrong. There is one wild theory of mine, not from the last episode, that I will bring up in this episode when we get there. Because it’s relevant, but we’re not there

FRANCINE 0:01:28
yet. We’re not there yet. We’re not. So yeah, in the meantime, anyway, to continue on the theme of heavy emotions, I’ve been watching, I’m very sorry to say fan edits of Good Omens on TikTok. Amazing. Yeah, it’s not been, it’s not been healthy, I would say. Once you watch one or two, then they just, they just feed them to you. And it’s real hard to, you know, to turn that off. Yeah. Are you gonna scroll past clips of David Tennant walking to good music or Michael Sheen looking good? Like Michael Sheen? Yeah.

JOANNA 0:02:03
Yeah. No, it’s not possible. We were talking about young Michael Sheen last week. And I think it was Stacey on Twitter reminded me of Michael Sheen in Underworld and I need to watch the Underworld

FRANCINE 0:02:14
movies again. Oh, I did see that. Yeah, I’m not into the long black hair thing. So no, that was very teenage me. Definitely not into to vampire look these days. But when I was kind of the combed hair and the clean shave and I was very into. Yeah, yeah. No, when I watch Underworld,

JOANNA 0:02:31
I become teenage me again. But my eyes are mostly for Kate Beckinsale. That’s fair. Because that crush has been running ever since my mum showed me the movie Serendipity starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack. One of my favourite rom coms of all time. Love that for you. But yeah, all the fan edits of David Tennant walking to music and also this episode of Good Omens made me realise that David Tennant is just so incredibly gender. Yeah, like, like I want that. I can’t have that. Not as in like, I want David Tennant. He’s very happily married and I’m very happy for him. I’m saying I want to be that. No, I want to be male. I just want to be whatever

FRANCINE 0:03:14
is happening there. Maybe it’s it maybe it’s been since 2019 that I have been unconsciously starting to dress a lot more like that. Yeah, I am making myself as tall and as dressed in

JOANNA 0:03:24
black as possible over the last few years. So the problem is, I just I can’t really do it in quite the same way. Like I can be described as a lot of things and have been. Lanky will never be one of them. I am I am of hearty peasant stock. I can haul a sack of potatoes like nobody’s business and in my life I’ve often had to. But I don’t think I’ll ever manage to be quite so limmy. No, I think I think you could get the strut. I think I could probably do the strut. You could

FRANCINE 0:03:54
pull off an Aziraphale look pretty well. Yeah, but it’s not quite me. It’s not quite you but it would

JOANNA 0:04:00
be an aesthetic version of that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think I just I feel a bit more I’m a more more disheveled when I’m presenting mask than Aziraphale’s. Yeah, that’s true.

FRANCINE 0:04:14
All right, well, we’ll work on it. I think I need to get some Chelsea boots. It’s good. I

JOANNA 0:04:20
didn’t wish I’d been eyeing up Doc Martin do some really nice like kind of Chelsea style boots. But it’s not even the price like I don’t mind paying the price for a good pair of boots like justifying but they’re not that good anymore and I don’t want to break them in. They’re not worth

FRANCINE 0:04:35
the entry point. I have been recommended a couple of decent brands that like still made here. Yeah. That are similar. It’s still quite expensive. As you said, like if they’re gonna last fucking 15

JOANNA 0:04:46
years, whatever. Yeah, like my tendency to buy cheap boots. We don’t need to explain the boots

FRANCINE 0:04:51
theory of economics on the podcast again. This is exactly why neither of us have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. Every time we try they snap. We’re like, oh no, we should have bought better boots. Oh my god, I think that’s what the ragged trousers slants for this. Absolutely. No, so I am

JOANNA 0:05:11
you know, when you start like working on a project and it like kind of overtakes your brain a little bit and you decide like you really need to you can’t stop thinking about it, you’re gonna have to do it. Because you’ve got really involved with this idea of construction and then you start like actually properly planning or doing whatever you need to do to do this project. And you realize that you’re fully at the end of it going to come out like Ben Wyatt presenting cones of Dunshire and as he starts explaining it going, this is nothing. Like I’m almost there. I’m not there yet. I’m

FRANCINE 0:05:38
still gonna have to make the fucker. You very kindly quoted that to me when I tried to do hand drawn animation during the lockdown, by the way. Yeah, cool back there. Yeah, what are you

JOANNA 0:05:46
trying to do? I think I specifically quoted Ben Wyatt’s attempts at stop motion animation when you started doing the hand drawn one. That’s right. No, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He said

FRANCINE 0:05:55
what did a press man make this and I was like, wow, fine. You’re not wrong. So I can’t argue.

JOANNA 0:06:02
I meant it lovingly. The hand drawn animation. What in the cones have you produced? I haven’t yet. I’m still at the maths point, which is why I was nearly late to start recording today.

FRANCINE 0:06:11
Because oh, yeah, you did say I might be late because I got carried away doing maths. I assumed

JOANNA 0:06:15
you were doing some obscure Easter egg calculation. No, no, I was at one point was under my dining table to make sure I got the measurements right, but my hands still a bit too dodgy to just flip it upside down to do the measurements. So I’m designing a board game tablecloth. Because, okay, so the two reasons one is playing board games like straight on my wooden dining table is kind of annoying like stuff slips about. If you have slightly too long or too short nails, then picking up cards off a wooden table is really difficult. And between my partner and I were at the other both ends of the spectrum now. Yeah. So when we’re playing ballgames at a friend’s house, he gets around that by he just has a piece of felt he puts down on the table, which does help except the fabric can move around and rock up and oh yeah, I hate absolutely hate the feeling of it.

FRANCINE 0:07:00
Very similar fabric tastes when it comes to touching.

JOANNA 0:07:03
Like when you accidentally touch a sponge wrong and yeah, right. Okay, it’s not just me. Okay, genuinely like sets my teeth on edge anyway. So my so part of my logic was that like sensible piece of fabric that will help with those issues. But also I had a look at some cool board game tables while I was at UK Games Expo and I can’t afford them. They’re super expensive. Yeah. Don’t get like they’re really nice. They’re worth the money, especially the ones that kind of everything falls away and it can also just be a nice table. Like if I had the money,

FRANCINE 0:07:32
I would get one. Yeah, yeah. They’re not overpriced. They’re just expensive. That’s

JOANNA 0:07:36
yeah, there’s a difference. But I want to see if I could incorporate some of their functionality into this board game tablecloth. So what it’s gonna be well, it’s gonna be like big rectangle of fabric, obviously, and nicely with backed and stuff. So it’s not like raw reged or whatever, like lined, but with magnets sewn into the corners, and then there’s a corresponding magnet that goes over the table. So the fabric like the cloth itself like stays stretched out and taught. I got the idea from a dressmaker I follow on TikTok who had like magnets sewn into the shoulder cape thing she wore and then she had like another magnet that would go under the strap

FRANCINE 0:08:09
of the top and it would hold it all in place. Oh, yeah, really cool. Okay. I can love that.

JOANNA 0:08:14
Yeah, and then it’s gonna have like some top stitching to mark out like each player’s like player space because a lot of the big ballgames we play like has like an individual player board and then there’ll be like a central bit marked out for like a board space. Okay. And then each player space is also going to have a flap that comes down that has pockets that can hold like cards and coins and stuff. It’s gonna have a little pocket thing. So you don’t have like stuff clustering up your play space. But yeah, so I’ve been trying to figure out the dimensions so that the corners of it can go with the magnets under the table because obviously the table has like those diagonal bits. Yes. And so I was trying to work out what the dimensions would be taking those out so the corners match up for the magnets and shit. And then I was trying to work out how big those playmats would need to be. So I was looking at like the size of standard playing cards and there’s all like poker size and tarot size, which are the two most common in board games. And

FRANCINE 0:09:06
have you considered laying some of this stuff out on the computer?

JOANNA 0:09:10
Yeah, I considered and then I couldn’t figure out what would be the best program to use. And I thought if I started trying to do that, I would go down that rabbit hole. But I’ve got a flap designed, but I need to come up with a better name for it than the flap. But yeah, so you see where

FRANCINE 0:09:24
I’m at? Like I’m in Cones of Dunshire right now. Yep. No, yep. You’re in. Can’t see the cloth for

JOANNA 0:09:31
the cones. Exactly. Love that idea, though. That’s a great idea. It might be. It might be. Okay. Yeah.

FRANCINE 0:09:39
Or I’m having a breakdown. Well, you might be but so am I. That’s fine.

JOANNA 0:09:43
Yay. Speaking of… You are coming down with me. Speaking of having breakdowns, do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, I do want to make a podcast. Oh, there was something I forgot to mention in the soft open. Oh, no. Just that the TERFs have been TERFing a lot recently and we haven’t done a fuck off in a while. So just a reminder, this is a trans friendly, trans inclusive podcast. So TERFs, no, go away. Fuck off. You’re not welcome. Depressing week, isn’t it?

Intro

Hello, and welcome to The True Show May Key Threat, a podcast in which we’re usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series one at a time in chronological order. But we’ve taken a break from that to talk about Good Omens Season Two. I’m Joanna Hagen. And I’m Francine Carroll. And it’s here. We’re finally here. We are talking about the finale,

FRANCINE 0:10:34
chapter six every day. It is getting closer, like like a roller coaster.

JOANNA 0:10:42
Note on spoilers before we crack on. We will be spoiling all of season two of Good Omens. Now that we’ve got to episode six, there will also be spoilers for the book Good Omens and season one of Good Omens. It would be very weird to be listening to this if you haven’t seen season one of Good Omens. Yes. However, while we are primarily a Discworld podcast, we will not be spoiling any major events in the Discworld series. And we’re saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd’s Crown till we get there. So if you’re just joining us for this and want to try the Discworld, you can safely come on the journey with us. In a creepy celestial lift.

FRANCINE 0:11:17
I think we should say at the top of the episode, if we don’t seem like we’re touching on enough unhinged theories, don’t worry, it’s because we’re doing another episode. Oh, yeah, there’s there’s one more coming. This is the recap episode. And then we’re doing like a full series recap with

JOANNA 0:11:32
lots of madness. So yeah, if you think we’ve got hinges, don’t worry. Yeah, don’t worry. It’s fine. Yeah, we’re still masking tape. Yeah. So follow up, I actually have a couple of missives from the round world. Oh, missives, eh? This absolutely delighted me. We got an email from Negev, who has recently started listening to our podcast from the beginning. So probably won’t hear this for a while. So hi from the past. And they said that they had a fun fact for us about something we’ve definitely forgotten by now. And I had in episode 18, sorcery part two, the obscure reference finial was about the fact that in the book, a drink called aurach gets served with coffee and we couldn’t find an equivalent drink. But we talked about like the Italian shot plus coffee thing. Aurach has an equivalent round world drink called Arak. It’s very common in Israel.

FRANCINE 0:12:27
Well, fuck, why couldn’t I find that? And in the rest of the Levant, it’s made partly with anise,

JOANNA 0:12:33
tastes very licoricey. You mentioned in the episode that no Mediterranean alcohols were worth drinking and you were right. I’m sorry. I think enough English people have been on holiday to Greece or had friends have that we’ve all somewhere in our history got like horrible

FRANCINE 0:12:47
ouzo flashbacks. I’m going to put it slightly more diplomatically. It’s not worth us trying to drink, certainly not worth me trying to drink, not worth the English trying to drink. And we’ve

JOANNA 0:12:56
got a quick book recommendation from Raoul who heard about this literary event and thought we would like it. A book called Pleasure Beach by Helen Palmer. It’s a queer love story and a tribute to James Joyce’s Ulysses set in Blackpool in 1999. And I’ve read a little bit about it and it’s immediately gone on my reading list. So thank you Raoul. I do also have a few messages from like

FRANCINE 0:13:20
the discord and things about good omensy stuff, but I’m saving those for next week. So I haven’t forgotten you listeners. It’s just that I want we’re doing lots of fan theories and stuff like

JOANNA 0:13:30
next week and it’s just going to be less messy. Yes. And listeners if you want to send us your thoughts, we’ll tell you how at the end but please do send us your thoughts and deranged theories and any deranged theories you had during season two. As quickly as possible because we are recording on Wednesday. You have two days after this comes out. Cool. Right. Let’s get into good omens episode six every day. Big thoughts, overall thoughts. How do you feel?

FRANCINE 0:13:55
Well, Joanne, I feel… Yeah, me too. Yeah, I knew it. I knew there was emotional devastation coming up. I was surprised at the form it took. So the spoiler did not ruin it for me.

JOANNA 0:14:10
Something both of us have avoided acknowledging on the podcast because we wanted to give it spoiler free but we haven’t remained totally unspoilered that people weren’t happy about the ending. Yes. As in emotionally devastated that they thought Neil Gaiman got it wrong.

FRANCINE 0:14:25
Yeah. And there are a few that did think that there’s always going to be that. But yeah, and we had also been spoiled on one of the big events at the ending. I don’t know I’m skirting around it now but I will. But even that I think was was not what I was expecting. I was not. I was I was sufficiently emotionally wrenched apart. So I think that’s as planned from Mr. Gaiman. Thank you ever so much. Thank you Neil Gaiman for your plunging your fist into my chest

JOANNA 0:14:53
and ripping out my heart and I didn’t know I still had one. It made me feel again. Yeah. Yeah,

FRANCINE 0:14:59
yeah. That’s cool to know. We really sound mentally unhealthy. Do you know what? I feel it a little and it’s partly this. Can you imagine if this shit had come out when we were teenagers? They didn’t make media this good. I swear to God. Okay, see for me they did. But that’s just because

JOANNA 0:15:17
I formed a really deep emotional connection with Buffy early on. Yeah, I guess. But like,

FRANCINE 0:15:24
this plus. Oh, yeah, the TikToks in the Tumblr and the oh, yeah, no, I mean, I can see why a bunch of

JOANNA 0:15:31
teenagers are fully losing their minds. Yeah, no. And this kind of just overt queerness wasn’t a thing on shows I watched when I was a teenager. There was queerness but not like this flavor. Or not just accepted as a part of a natural part of the show. Yeah, no, I mean, even I wasn’t even thinking like, could I cope with it when I was a teenager? I was thinking what if this had been like, did lockdown this this season of television came out like we would all be imagine this plus that horrible feeling of climbing the walls.

FRANCINE 0:16:05
I’d probably likes it. I mean, I’d have loved it. Lockdown was peak. I feel nothing for me for a little while. I guess this would have maybe snapped me out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I think I

Chapter 6: Everyday

JOANNA 0:16:16
think we should dive into the episode. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it. So every day, every day, we open with Shaxs and the demons snarling on the threshold of the bookshop. So Nina starts asking Aziraphale questions about what’s going on. And he does explain the ball and what he was trying to do and that he was trying to get them together. And says Jane Austen and when they question Jane Austen he’s like, Oh, yeah, you know, Clark and Will Diamond robbery. And it’s that fun thing where you know, someone learns a fact and then like, references it as if they knew it all along. Like, I felt very seen because I know I fucking knew that constantly and not in a like, Oh, I learned this fun fact. Like, yeah, of course, everyone knows Jane Austen did the diamond robbery.

FRANCINE 0:17:01
At least everybody who speaks Ficunda Crowley. I quite liked that he this had kind of snapped him out of it somewhere between, you know, the dancing and the this bit, he’s taking charge, he’s doing something. He’s clearly actually seeing the danger now. He’s kind of he’s not acknowledging that what he was doing with Nina and Maggie was stupid, but he’s just kind of explaining it to them like it didn’t really matter. And yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like he’s back in the room with us.

JOANNA 0:17:28
Yes, we’re past trying to cover up the miracle. Yeah. We’re facing the actual danger. And he’s getting these candles ready, which are battery operated. Yeah, I did see that. And he says they’re battery operated. Yeah. And that combined with you know, the fire extinguishers, he’s not having another fire in the bookshop, is he?

FRANCINE 0:17:49
He is not. I was wondering if he was the one who bought all of the fire extinguishers or whether it was Crowley considering who bought them, he’d run to that trauma.

JOANNA 0:17:57
But I think he probably bought the electric, the electric candles. And then Crowley was like, okay, you need actual fire safety as well. Let’s get one through every time he dropped by. Yeah,

FRANCINE 0:18:09
just just pick up one of these. Don’t worry about it. Just nice to have around. I think they look

JOANNA 0:18:14
nice. Brighten the place up. And yeah, Shax is getting threatening. Meanwhile, meanwhile, Crowley is infiltrating heaven like a bee. And he wants Muriel to take him to see some records.

FRANCINE 0:18:29
He’s infiltrating heaven like a murder hornet. Yes. In a beehive. In a beehive. So, A, Crowley’s outfit. Yeah. I mean, that is a choice was made there. It’s

JOANNA 0:18:45
the curly headband. I thought. Oh, God, it’s like the one of those zigzag ones that we used to use.

FRANCINE 0:18:54
It wasn’t quite that. It was like it was it’s the area you’re thinking of, but it wasn’t the one that hurt that much. But I bet it would have hurt you actually because you had curly hair.

JOANNA 0:19:03
Yeah. Yeah. Those things were those things were traumatizing. Like I think you see footballers using them sometimes. I said that in such a horrible tone of derision. I’m not judging anyone who uses a zigzag hairband. And he did have 90s David Beckham hair. He did. Yeah,

FRANCINE 0:19:18
that might have been it. Yeah. What do you think of the outfit overall?

JOANNA 0:19:22
I love it. I’ve been very much enjoying now that I’ve seen the finale. I’ve been back on Twitter a bit more. Obviously, I was staying off Twitter. There’s been a weird fan side tangent of okay, but what about Crowley’s feet slash shoes? Because there’s a line in the book about their snake skin boots or maybe their boots because obviously Crowley’s a little bit snaky. The fact that he’s in sandals here is like, oh, he’s chosen to have have feet and sandals for a

FRANCINE 0:19:46
bit. I did not notice his feet. I wasn’t like looking for it. But I saw that conversation

JOANNA 0:19:51
between my first and second watch. So obviously then I clocked it. Also the walk he does.

FRANCINE 0:19:56
Little goat walk there.

JOANNA 0:19:58
Little goat walk as we get this very wide frame shot.

FRANCINE 0:20:02
And also he’s gone for beige. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do white.

JOANNA 0:20:05
Yeah. But then Muriel was a bit of beige and stuff. I wonder if it’s also like a demon ranking thing. Because, you know, Muriel’s on the lower ranks and he’s trying to look someone who just kind of blends in like Michael and Uriel walk past and just don’t clock him at all.

FRANCINE 0:20:22
Oh, follow up I missed by the way. I kept getting Muriel’s pronouns wrong. They are they them. Yes. And I was saying she had quite a lot last week. Sorry.

JOANNA 0:20:28
I think we’ve also been pronouncing some of the angel names wrong.

FRANCINE 0:20:31
Oh, I don’t care about that. We tried. Bible can suck it.

JOANNA 0:20:38
There’s the episode title.

FRANCINE 0:20:40
Yeah, let’s open ourself up to a whole new audience that hates us. I love that for us. We’ve been so lucky so far. Anyway, he’s blending in well.

JOANNA 0:20:48
He is. He gets away with it. The thing is, right. So again, something I haven’t mentioned because we were staying so spoiler free, but obviously I’d read ahead in the episode descriptions. And there’s a line in the episode description for this episode about Crowley infiltrating heaven as a bee. So I had this wild bat shit idea that he would somehow discover that like Beelzebub was hiding in the fly and spying on the bookshop and that’s gives him the idea and he goes to heaven hiding in a bee because bees would hang out in heaven because obviously bees are cool and not like it’s cool to hang out in heaven. But like, if we’re going to call heaven the good guys, like

FRANCINE 0:21:26
the bees are the good guys. Yeah, for sure. They’re part of God’s plan. Yeah, yeah. Unlike wasps.

JOANNA 0:21:32
Unlike wasps, no. Wasps can fuck off and as can murder hornets.

FRANCINE 0:21:36
Yeah, but I’m glad I’m glad that wasn’t the case. That would have been an unnecessary distracting subplot, I feel, to turn him into a bee.

JOANNA 0:21:43
And we wouldn’t have had David Tennant in this outfit doing that walk, which would be a travesty. Bee, ha. Sorry. Anyway, back in the bookshop, Maggie stands up to the demons and Shax starts getting harsh. I love Maggie in this bit.

FRANCINE 0:21:59
I had brothers. Oh, shut up.

JOANNA 0:22:01
Okay, I don’t like the I had brothers, but specifically in response to the fun, like the tongue against the window is like, okay, now I can kind of get that.

FRANCINE 0:22:09
I know, I know. Now it’s that it’s like, I have a visceral reaction to that line. But watching it the second time I was like, ah, now you’re cool. All right.

JOANNA 0:22:16
It was because it was specifically about the funny faces. It didn’t bother me. It wasn’t there. Like, oh, of course I know how to fight. I have seven brothers. Yeah, that’s true. I fixed this motorbike left handed. Yeah, it wasn’t that.

FRANCINE 0:22:26
Yeah. Yes, of course, I know how to deal with disgusting little boys. I have brothers is sensible. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:22:32
And what if what are demons if not? I just I always this is a trope bit I love where the shy one stands up for themselves, especially when they’re standing up for themselves against someone being like, oh, you’re nobody. We got a little this is this was a more satisfying version of it than we had in season one where

FRANCINE 0:22:52
Pepper stands up to war who’s calling her a silly little girl. It’s just I don’t tolerate everyday sexism, which was cringe. Was cringe. I don’t know. Do you know what? I rewatched that and I didn’t mind it.

JOANNA 0:23:03
No, it still made me cringe.

FRANCINE 0:23:04
They’re cute.

JOANNA 0:23:06
It’s cute, but it still made me cringe.

FRANCINE 0:23:08
Yeah. I guess my cringe threshold’s gone up a little bit. Yeah, mine hasn’t. And not when it comes to children anyway, but also when when, you know,

JOANNA 0:23:17
the shy one standing up for themself and it comes with that, oh, you’re a nobody. And then the other ones like actually, no, I do like them, though. So they’re not nobody like they’ve got me. Yeah.

FRANCINE 0:23:25
Yeah, yeah. That is that is a favorite of mine. Nina’s just standing there with a smirk developing. Nina does do a good smirk.

JOANNA 0:23:36
And yeah, then Maggie gets a bit too brave and accidentally invites the demons in. Another favorite trope of mine. Yeah, I have seen at least three different vampire TV shows where someone, usually a teenage girl, has accidentally invited the vampires in by going, why don’t you come here and say that?

FRANCINE 0:23:58
I want to see it with a football hooligan crowd accidentally invite something in. Come on over if you think you’re old enough. That kind of thing.

JOANNA 0:24:05
Yeah, that would be more fun. Reverse the trope.

FRANCINE 0:24:08
Yeah. I like also that the Eric demon was pushed in first. And got blown up again. Poor Eric. Poor disposable Eric. But not when we expected.

JOANNA 0:24:18
And yeah, Aziraphale opens up the heavenly circle and we get the titles. Speaking of, by the way, I still haven’t like fully dived deep into all of the background and bonus content stuff that’s available on Amazon Prime because there’s so much. But I did watch Peter Anderson. It’s his studio who did the titles. There’s a whole thing of him going through and putting out all of the Easter eggs in the title sequence. And it’s really worth watching.

FRANCINE 0:24:43
Because I haven’t watched that one. I watched the making of.

JOANNA 0:24:46
Yeah, no, it’s watch the Easter eggs one. I because there’s loads of fun stuff I didn’t notice in there. I’m not going to sit and list all of it. That’d be really boring. And B, he’s just got a gorgeous accent. Quite nice to sit and listen to him narrate something for a couple of minutes.

FRANCINE 0:24:59
Yeah, nice. Can you remember one to tell me?

JOANNA 0:25:02
Oh, so in the Dirty Duck pub scene and like the I think it was the first, maybe the second episode, we see someone reading a newspaper that has a headline about a duck playing an accordion. And in the title sequence, there’s a little duck playing the accordion as they like walk down into the movie theater bit.

FRANCINE 0:25:18
Oh, cute. I like that. My one making of fact that goes along with that actually is all the little characters are made from Crowley or Aziraphale heads. Like they take their faces and manipulate them to look like various people or things. Yeah. Cool.

JOANNA 0:25:35
So that’s how we did that. Fun. Anyway, back in heaven. Crowley continues unnoticed even by Michael, as we said, Muriel’s got the Gabriel file, but it’s confidential. And luckily, Crowley wasn’t always a demon.

FRANCINE 0:25:50
He was a powerful one. And another hint is creating the universe wasn’t it?

JOANNA 0:25:55
Yeah, yeah. They say it’s got to be this rank or higher and he’s like,

FRANCINE 0:25:58
A throne, a dominion or above? That’s the one. And then I’ve got a note here saying look that up and I didn’t.

JOANNA 0:26:05
Cool. I think we don’t need to get into angelic hierarchy. We’ve already figured out they’ve mixed up principalities and archangels.

FRANCINE 0:26:13
Mm hmm.

JOANNA 0:26:14
Oh, but Muriel when Crowley calls their office lonely and they say, Yeah, it is. That’s why I was so excited to go to earth.

FRANCINE 0:26:22
I’m helping you aren’t I? I’m helping a demon. I’m in trouble.

JOANNA 0:26:26
It’s all so sweet. But also I was kind of thinking about the bigger picture of how many angels are actually low ranking and lonely like Muriel who would, given the chance to go to earth, leap at it to just not be lonely and see all these wonderful things and would not be happy if it went away.

FRANCINE 0:26:46
Yeah, absolutely. Just put a pin in that. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:26:50
Sorry, we were saving the derangement for the bonus episode. Anyway.

FRANCINE 0:26:52
I have a little bit derangement sprinkled in as a treat. I liked the boring beige cardboard folder with just like markered. Yep. Title on I thought that was a nice touch. A little bit of boring bureaucracy.

JOANNA 0:27:04
And just not as neat and shiny as a lot of the heavenly screens that are done around the edges. Yeah, they’ve got the smartphone things and yeah. So demons are burning as they try and cross the Aziraphale circle. That’ll happen. In Oh, yeah. And Nina sort of asking, Okay, well, so you had a plan. It’s like Aziraphale’s like, Yeah, this was my plan.

FRANCINE 0:27:24
Yeah, this is. I mean, it’s pretty good plan. But I was expecting Crowley to be there by now.

JOANNA 0:27:29
Yeah. But after I was smug he was about Yeah, I’ve got a plan. And then his whole plan is like, Okay, well, burning circle and then fingers crossed that

FRANCINE 0:27:40
will do it. This was the moment I realized one of my mad theories was not correct, which was that, Oh, yeah, no. Aziraphale clearly has a proper plan.

JOANNA 0:27:50
Aziraphale did not have a proper plan. I just kind of heard that in sort of Ron Howard narrating Arrested Development voice. In heaven, we get the screens coming down and Crowley watches the angels talking about Armageddon 2.0 and Gabriel say, Nah, that’s not.

FRANCINE 0:28:10
I kind of love the celestial teams meeting vibe. That was a Oh, yeah. Nice way of showing that. Nice way of showing that.

JOANNA 0:28:18
I feel like that was probably partially inspired by the fact that a lot of the writing process and shit would have happened during the first lockdown.

FRANCINE 0:28:26
Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, definitely.

JOANNA 0:28:28
I think if that hadn’t happened, that scene would have been written in person, potentially.

FRANCINE 0:28:36
Yeah, I mean, I feel like it was like, showing them when they had been in a room or something. I don’t know. But whatever. I liked I liked how it was shown.

JOANNA 0:28:46
So the fire extinguishers come out.

FRANCINE 0:28:48
Yep. The good ones, the foam ones.

JOANNA 0:28:50
The good ones. Demons keep invading the bookshop. In heaven, Sarakel interrupts Crowley and Muriel and offers to actually show them Gabriel’s trial. And obviously, Sarakel has clocked Crowley. And says, well, yeah, obviously, we used to work together. We designed a horsehead nebula together and Crowley’s just like, nah.

FRANCINE 0:29:10
Which continues the theme with Furfur. Do we think it’s a power play yet? Or do we think it’s just Crowley going, eh?

JOANNA 0:29:18
Either power play, he’s genuinely just really forgetful, or he is like burned all memories of his time as an angel out of his mind.

FRANCINE 0:29:27
Possible.

JOANNA 0:29:28
Because when he and Furfur knew each other, that was like pre the big war.

FRANCINE 0:29:32
Yeah. I forgot to say the whole bit about Crowley was saying like, it’s not possible for a for a demon to be in heaven. So people don’t see it. I thought it was quite Pratchettian. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Talking dog, right?

JOANNA 0:29:49
Yeah, the mind sliding off things, which we were sort of talking about. We’ve had lots of conversations since we talked about it last week of places that’s come from. There’s a bit of Doctor Who. There’s a bit of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There’s some stuff in Pratchett books. And I think Gaspode’s a good example of that.

FRANCINE 0:30:04
Yeah.

JOANNA 0:30:05
Just not perceiving the talking dog. Occasionally, did that dog just say woof?

FRANCINE 0:30:11
Yes.

JOANNA 0:30:12
Shax gets judgmental, calls Aziraphale Crowley’s emotional support angel.

FRANCINE 0:30:19
Very cute.

JOANNA 0:30:20
And then she starts asking him, oh, do you want a big meal?

FRANCINE 0:30:25
Yeah.

JOANNA 0:30:26
And this idea of the denizens of heaven and hell ingesting human stuff comes up a lot through the episode. But I do think it’s interesting that it’s not normal for demons either.

FRANCINE 0:30:38
Yes. Yeah. Good point, actually. Yeah. Because Crowley seemed to think it was so normal by the time we saw it in the Jobe bit.

JOANNA 0:30:44
Yeah. So Crowley’s gotten used to it, but that doesn’t mean it’s standard among demons. So that temptation of Aziraphale giving him the, what was it, the ox rib?

FRANCINE 0:30:54
That was a special temptation just for him.

JOANNA 0:30:57
That was a temptation towards humanity, not towards demonicness.

FRANCINE 0:31:00
Yes. Which kind of fits with the theme of the episode.

JOANNA 0:31:03
I mean, the first time Shax did that bit, it’s so proper chalkboard up, the going my spine went up the wrong way kind of feeling, just because it sounds so inherently fat shamey. And I know that’s not what it was meant to be.

FRANCINE 0:31:18
I’m just very sensitive to that. I’m sure it was meant to give him the same feeling in a different direction. Yeah. And sushi. Sushi particularly, I thought, because it’s like, and she’s been watching him.

JOANNA 0:31:33
Yeah. And also there’s something so specifically like fastidious about eating sushi.

FRANCINE 0:31:39
Yeah. It’s like, yeah, calling him a fucking liberal elite nonsense. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:31:45
And it’s something you have to think about and seek out and go through a whole process of eating.

FRANCINE 0:31:50
Yeah. But yeah, good old fashioned ox rib. I could go an ox rib. I’m surprised we’re not getting ox ribs right now. I wonder if just eat. No.

JOANNA 0:32:03
Anyway, Gabriel, we see Gabriel’s trial on trial for refusing to sanction the second end of the

FRANCINE 0:32:08
world. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m Which kind of begs the question, why the fuck is he, you know, all of the kind of choice of being a higher rank calling angel is clearly bullshit.

JOANNA 0:32:20
Oh, absolutely. You’ve still got to do what God wants passed down by the Metatron. And yeah, there’s a when I first watched this, it just really bugged me because it all seems so out of character for Gabriel. And of course, you get all the context for exactly why he’s acting, why he is within minutes. It’s very cleverly done because it sets up this mystery of why is Gabriel being like that, especially when he says he’s happy to be cast down to hell.

FRANCINE 0:32:46
That’s it. Yeah. My thought at the time, the first time I was watching it was like, maybe he needs his Hera Phelan Crowley for something. Maybe that was the point all along because, you know, I was half convinced he was lying.

JOANNA 0:32:57
Yeah. And I think I said I had some hints that maybe there was something between Gabriel and Beelzebub, but I didn’t think it was that I thought it was a working together thing or at least conspiring because we’d seen heaven conspiring through back channels, although it was it was Michael doing it.

FRANCINE 0:33:13
Yeah. Anyway, he got naked.

JOANNA 0:33:15
Yeah. So the Metatron tells him that actually he’s getting demoted. He’s not being cast down to hell. And I was delighted to see the Metatron here because I predicted last week that when Aziraphale got the circle out, we were going to see the Metatron.

FRANCINE 0:33:26
That was not a very stretching prediction, but yes.

JOANNA 0:33:31
I was right, but I was also wrong. We do see the Metatron, but just not in at any point in Aziraphale’s circle that he got out that the Metatron floated in last time.

FRANCINE 0:33:42
Yes. Not in a special Metatron circle.

JOANNA 0:33:44
Yes. We let him out of the circle. That was a bad idea. Anyway, yeah, the Metatron tells Gabriel that he’s going to be demoted and specifically we can’t have him fall to hell because there’s already been one high angel that falls to hell. And this is where we get the context for the one angel being cast down to hell.

FRANCINE 0:34:06
On to an accident, two is an institutional problem.

JOANNA 0:34:09
Two will seem like an institutional problem, which is a it’s the thing from last week, but also it’s like the importance of being earnest thing. To lose one parent is something to lose two looks like carelessness.

FRANCINE 0:34:19
Absolutely. I wasn’t sure, by the way, if they were to I seen this as part of the math theories, but I wasn’t sure if they were talking about Satan or about Crowley.

JOANNA 0:34:26
Oh, it’s Lucifer.

FRANCINE 0:34:28
Because they said Prince of Heaven, didn’t they?

JOANNA 0:34:30
Yeah, they said Prince of Heaven, which was Lucifer Morningstar before he was cast down and became Satan. I thought it was Lucifer straight away. I assume that was who they were talking about because they said Prince of Hell.

FRANCINE 0:34:40
Yeah, I didn’t until I saw somebody ask about it. And then I was like, oh, wait, do I know?

JOANNA 0:34:45
Yeah. Yeah. I saw someone ask about it after I’d seen the whole episode. But yeah, I never thought it was Crowley. But then I was raised with all that Christian stuff, you know, poured into me. But Neil Gaiman also confirmed that that was meant to reference Lucifer on Twitter, on Tumblr, which then turned into some world fan theorizing that Crowley is Lucifer. No, no, because we met Satan.

FRANCINE 0:35:10
Yeah. Next week. Next week.

JOANNA 0:35:12
Sorry. Voiced by Bendit Cumberbatch. Anyway. So yes, so Gabriel’s getting demoted and he’s going to have his memory removed. So he says he agrees, but he’s not allowed to keep his lovely tailored clothes. So first he needs to take his clothes off and clear out his desk and he gets a box for the task.

FRANCINE 0:35:29
Cardboard box straight from heaven.

JOANNA 0:35:31
There was a little detail in this as well. They say what rank they’re going to demote Gabriel to and then Muriel points out, you know, it’s one rank below her and Crowley gives her this sort

FRANCINE 0:35:40
of little encouraging punch on the shoulder. Yeah. Like, go on you. I didn’t know there was one below me.

JOANNA 0:35:46
It’s so sweet how Crowley has decided to support this one specific clerk angel.

FRANCINE 0:35:51
Yeah, absolutely. Very cute.

JOANNA 0:35:54
Gabriel and his weird attachment to his outfits is, it’s kind of his version of earthly attachment as well. Like Aziraphale, you know, has his food and his good wine and Gabriel’s got his suits.

FRANCINE 0:36:07
They are tailored. Tailored. Because that’s the thing that you need, apparently. Yeah. Was that Aziraphale in series one actually, wasn’t it? I could miracle the stain off, but I’d know.

JOANNA 0:36:18
Don’t remind me of the bit where Crowley casually blows the stain off and Aziraphale looks delighted.

FRANCINE 0:36:23
I can’t, I can’t do that right now. I know. Oh, by the way, what do we think? Do we know what those symbols are all over the celestial zoom meeting? Oh, I didn’t look that up. No, I meant to. I’ll try to do that for next week.

JOANNA 0:36:37
Anyway, meanwhile, demons.

FRANCINE 0:36:39
Meanwhile, demons.

JOANNA 0:36:40
Nina has resorted to throwing encyclopedias because it’s all online anyway.

FRANCINE 0:36:44
That’s true. Actually, I say that it’s not, it’s not true. There’s lots of crap I’ve got in that old set of encyclopedias that aren’t online, but I don’t, in times of peril, I would accept them being used as a weapon.

JOANNA 0:36:54
Yeah. Also, there’s lots of stuff in your set of encyclopedias that isn’t online, but isn’t that because they’re historical encyclopedias and a lot, some of it’s been proven wrong?

FRANCINE 0:37:02
Well, yes. Yeah. But it’s interesting to know what people believed. Oh yeah, true.

JOANNA 0:37:08
Back in heaven, after Gabriel’s trial, he’s doing something interesting with a box. He’s naked and he drops a matchbox. And then when the heavenly host attempt to erase his memory, they can’t find it or him. The message tells the rest of the angels, they’re just going to have to find him.

FRANCINE 0:37:25
Yes. Interesting point there. Pin in that.

JOANNA 0:37:28
I like, he says to them, don’t be so wet. He’s quite harsh. And it’s a nice reminder early on in the episode that as much as he is sort of plays a bit sort of genial uncle, the Metatron is very capable of not being nice.

FRANCINE 0:37:42
Yeah. And I feel like at this point is being devious. Yeah. I also like at this point, Michael was scrolling through what looked like a celestial smartphone, that kind of transparent glass thing, which I quite like. And I wondered if their technology evolved to shape with whatever humans had done. And so if we’d looked at them 30 years earlier, would she have been going through a file of facts made of glass?

JOANNA 0:38:04
Michael and the glass file of facts, the spin off we all need. No, I really love that as a mental image. Anyway, so the bookshop invasion eventually calls for desperate measures and Aziraphale gets his halo out.

FRANCINE 0:38:16
For the lads, for the lads.

JOANNA 0:38:17
Who are the heavenly music and wires that are singing as he’s doing this with the halo.

FRANCINE 0:38:26
There’s got a big reminder that he is a soldier. Yeah. Like that was his role, wasn’t it?

JOANNA 0:38:33
Yeah. And he was the guy with the big flaming sword.

FRANCINE 0:38:35
Yeah, he’s the only one with a sword. Lost it fairly early. Perhaps he wasn’t the best soldier in the world, but still. And he fought in the Great War or whatever that was at the beginning. I’ve forgotten it.

JOANNA 0:38:46
That was the one between heaven and hell where the demons were cast out, I think.

FRANCINE 0:38:50
Yeah, that sounds right.

JOANNA 0:38:51
Yeah. So there’s a heavenly explosion, Shax gets knocked out, demons are taken care of. And it is possible that at this point, Aziraphale has started a war.

FRANCINE 0:39:02
The line where he says that, I watched an interview with Michael Sheen, where he was like, I knew when I read that line, that that line was going to be in the trailer, which it was, of course. And because like, you get the idea, sometimes this is a trailer line. And I kept fucking it out of his head. I just because I knew it was going to be I just couldn’t say it couldn’t get it out. So it took him loads of takes to do that, apparently. Oh bless.

JOANNA 0:39:24
So alarms start going off in heaven. And it is time for Crowley and the Angels to take the lifts down.

FRANCINE 0:39:30
Which of course, listeners, usually you shouldn’t do if there are alarms going off. You should try and take the stairs. But I understand that electronics work a little differently. But we’re all for fire safety on the Truth Shall Make You Threat.

JOANNA 0:39:41
We do support fire safety in the Truth Shall Make You Threat. Make sure you have a large number of fire extinguishers.

FRANCINE 0:39:46
And an encyclopedia. And an encyclopedia.

JOANNA 0:39:49
Did you notice Crowley gets his own lift?

FRANCINE 0:39:52
No.

JOANNA 0:39:53
All the so like Michael, Uriel, Saracel and Muriel are all crammed into one. And then Crowley is very relaxed in the own and switches his outfit on his way down.

FRANCINE 0:40:04
Crowley. I assessed himself funny old world, isn’t it? Which I didn’t. I don’t know what that was in reference to exactly. But I enjoyed it. I think he was just in general.

JOANNA 0:40:17
If it was, you know, the alarms are gone off when he says that, isn’t it?

FRANCINE 0:40:21
Yeah, I think he’s probably guessed what Aziraphale’s done. Oh, maybe. Because he didn’t seem shocked, did he? He was more like, piss takey. Yeah. You did what?

JOANNA 0:40:32
And also this idea of, you know, he likes rescuing me. He does like rescuing Aziraphale. He’s probably mildly delighted that he gets to go and get Aziraphale out of trouble now.

FRANCINE 0:40:41
Of course. Anyway. Let’s enjoy these last moments.

JOANNA 0:40:47
Crowley and the angels make it back to the bookshop. And Aziraphale’s look of relief when Crowley turns up. And it’s very, oh, it’s all going to be all right now, isn’t it?

FRANCINE 0:40:57
Yes. Even though he’s already dealt with the danger, the relief comes when, yeah.

JOANNA 0:41:02
And yeah, Dagon, Beelzebub and Furfur turn up and they revive Shax. Crowley asks for Gabriel’s box and explains to the group that Gabriel is hidden under a too successful miracle. The box tells them to look in the fly and with Beelzebub’s help, Gabriel finally gets his memories back, which, ew, by the way.

FRANCINE 0:41:23
Oh, yeah, no, ew, definitely. Yeah, the fly going in the eye. I’m so bad with eye stuff. I know. I liked the happy Crowley with the, you blew up your halo. He was fully season one joyful there, I think. Almost Doctor Who joyful, I would say, David Tennant there. You blew up your halo.

JOANNA 0:41:44
It reminded me of season one when Aziraphale turns up still possessing Madam Tracy.

FRANCINE 0:41:52
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Suits you, Angel. I like the dress. Oh, and we got here confirmation that it was the two of them trying to perform the miracle

JOANNA 0:42:01
together.

FRANCINE 0:42:01
That is what flared massively. Yes. Also, I have one nearly made it to my favorite quote quote here, which is Michael going, the mortals here, somebody turned them into pillars of salt. Oh, I loved that line. I’ve got to write that down.

JOANNA 0:42:16
That was so, I know, I think that’s a couple of scenes after the flashback.

FRANCINE 0:42:21
Oh, I’ve got that written down here. Sorry.

JOANNA 0:42:22
Yeah, but no, that was a great line. So we go to the flashbacks. We see the Gabriel and Beelzebub story.

FRANCINE 0:42:29
Nice physical effects of Gabriel flying through space time.

JOANNA 0:42:34
Yes, enjoyed that. So season one gave us a half hour cold open that told us a lot of Crowley and Aziraphale’s love story. Somehow we get an adorable love story here in what, four scenes?

FRANCINE 0:42:45
Yeah.

JOANNA 0:42:46
One of which is from season one and we’ve seen already with a different actor.

FRANCINE 0:42:50
Yeah. Yeah, very truncated relationship arc, I suppose. Yeah, I totally buy it.

JOANNA 0:42:58
Yeah, so we start with the scene from the end of season one where Gabriel and Beelzebub are discussing getting their armies to stand down, which I’d forgotten about that Gabriel outfit, the coat with the scarf.

FRANCINE 0:43:10
Oh, yeah, that was cute. And the slightly spiked up hair.

JOANNA 0:43:13
So then we see Gabriel meet Beelzebub’s new face in a Russian cafe. And of course, they’re both, both sides are ready for the next Armageddon and they never

FRANCINE 0:43:21
need to speak again. Absolutely.

JOANNA 0:43:24
And then they meet up in American Varna and Gabriel pitches this idea of no Armageddon and each side keeping to their respective status quos.

FRANCINE 0:43:34
It’d be static and quoey. Yeah, I like that. And it has to be, well, Beelzebub has to explain what music is, which is… I love it so much.

JOANNA 0:43:45
It’s so sweet. So every day is playing and this is where we kind of know why it’s important. And Beelzebub says that they like the song and then has to explain how music works and Gabriel does that.

FRANCINE 0:43:58
Oh, and then I like it too. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:44:01
It’s just the innocence of it and their non-human understanding of it as an art form combined with how like slightly sinister the song actually is.

FRANCINE 0:44:11
Yeah, and how slightly sinister they are.

JOANNA 0:44:14
And something I was reading about, and I think it was via Neil Gaiman’s Tumblr, but I honestly

FRANCINE 0:44:17
can’t remember now.

JOANNA 0:44:18
If I can find the source, I’ll link it, is that Terry Pratchett talked about using the song back when they were talking about adapting Good Omens into a movie. Like he really liked the idea of that song as a sinister Armageddon thing.

FRANCINE 0:44:30
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. With like tiptoe through the tulips vibes, that kind of… Yeah. Every day. Oh, has someone done a cover yet?

JOANNA 0:44:39
Oh, someone must have done a creepy cover.

FRANCINE 0:44:41
Listen to some of the creepy covers. Creepy everyday cover.

JOANNA 0:44:46
So yeah, then we see Gabriel taking Beelzebub to see his statue, which is a nice payoff

FRANCINE 0:44:51
to the joke of…

JOANNA 0:44:53
I bet he comes to just stare at it for hours, Gabriel.

FRANCINE 0:44:55
I sometimes come here to just stare at it for hours. My note is gazing at his own statue, LMAO. Whomst among us would not? And also two goblets of liquor and a packet of crisps. The spin off everybody wants. I’d watch it.

JOANNA 0:45:15
So yeah, they go to the pub, Gabriel miracles the jukebox. And in return, Beelzebub gifts him with a fly that’s bigger on the inside.

FRANCINE 0:45:25
Lovely. You put here, choose your own awful ship name. Do you have a…

JOANNA 0:45:30
Just quickly, obviously, it would be silly if we didn’t say bigger on the inside.

FRANCINE 0:45:34
Just like the TARDIS. Anyway. Oh, sorry. Yes, of course. Yeah, I’m going to get that in.

JOANNA 0:45:38
Pick your awful ship name. Well, I mean, there’s a few options, isn’t there? There’s Gabe’s above Beelzeal, but I’m going with Gub.

FRANCINE 0:45:45
Oh, nice. I’ve written down Galzabub, but I think Gub sums it up better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:45:51
So we’re calling the ship Gub. It’s just so sweet that neither of them are really prepared for the idea of a gift. And they have gratitude, but they don’t know how to have gratitude. It’s so alien to them. And there’s something just…

FRANCINE 0:46:10
But it does come to them. Like, I’ve had a gift and now I feel like I should give a gift. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:46:18
And I’m delighted by this and I don’t know how to be sort of delighted by this, but I am. And I don’t know, just thinking about how Aziraphale and Crowley like had millennia and Gub managed to do all this in just a few years.

FRANCINE 0:46:32
Very annoying. Jesus, guys. Get it?

JOANNA 0:46:34
Get your shit together.

FRANCINE 0:46:35
Get your shit together, guys.

JOANNA 0:46:36
Put those ox ribs down.

FRANCINE 0:46:39
Put the ox ribs down. Go on a lovely date. They went on lots of lovely dates. It doesn’t fucking matter, does it? Yeah.

JOANNA 0:46:44
Fucking dining at the Ritz.

FRANCINE 0:46:46
Anyway. Anyway, they don’t eat. They don’t eat or drink. That’s worth noting. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:46:51
Again, like I said with the Shax thing, neither side is willing to eat or drink. And they don’t need, you know, we talked about this kind of idea of fae food rules. The eating and the drinking of the human food are somewhat tied, Aziraphale and Crowley, to humanity.

FRANCINE 0:47:05
Gabriel and Beelzebub or Gub did not need, I’m going to keep saying it,

JOANNA 0:47:10
did not need that tight humanity to fall in love with each other.

FRANCINE 0:47:14
No, but the lack of the, in fact, I would say the lack of the tight humanity was very helpful for them because they were able to just go, all right, let’s fuck off then. Yes. They were. But they’re wrenching whatever’s to their lives here or, you know, they weren’t fussed about what would happen to the world if they left or whatever. Like, okay, well, we’ve got each other now. Bye. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:47:36
Let’s maybe take the song with us.

FRANCINE 0:47:38
Twat.

JOANNA 0:47:41
So, yeah, so we go back to the bookshop and yeah, Gabriel is his old self and he’s reunited with Beelzebub. So yes, Michael notices the mortals. That’s when we get the pillar of soul joke.

FRANCINE 0:47:52
I must have added it in after I’d finished watching.

JOANNA 0:47:54
Um, Crowley escorts Maggie and Nina out and ask them to keep quiet. Nina’s running late and there is a queue at the coffee shop. And if I don’t know if you noticed, there’s Derek Jacoby’s in that queue.

FRANCINE 0:48:09
I did see him. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:48:12
I wonder if that’s going to be important. Why am I not, like, we know he’s there.

FRANCINE 0:48:15
Yeah, no, sure. Just in case anyone’s listening to us as they watch.

JOANNA 0:48:19
Um, sorry, I’ve jumped past it as well. But Beelzebub gets the great line that they found something that mattered more than choosing sides.

FRANCINE 0:48:27
And I ship gub. I do. Do you? Yeah. Then why do you give them such an awful syllable? Because it delights me. Oh, yeah, fair one, fair one. Yeah, Maggie, Maggie offers to help and Nina says yes, because they’ve grown as people. Yes, and Nina is able to accept help. Good on them.

JOANNA 0:48:54
On Crowley’s way back to the bookshop, he quickly resurrects Mr. Brown, which is nice, you know, that we’ve brought back our token heterosexual. We didn’t want him to be the only dead one. Don’t want to bury your straights.

FRANCINE 0:49:06
Only straight in the village. Yeah. Anyway, we go back to the bookshop.

JOANNA 0:49:11
Everyone’s arguing very loudly. Both sides want to punish Gabriel and Beelzebub. Furfur throws in the jobe protocol.

FRANCINE 0:49:20
Furfur is quite like, sweet in this bit, isn’t he? He’s like, oh, he’s a nice guy, this actually. Like he’s genuinely bringing up the bits of the bureaucracy of precedent that matter. He’s quite a good bureaucrat, is Furfur.

JOANNA 0:49:32
I’m a big fan of Furfur. I’ve noticed there is a side of the fandom that has decided to just deeply love Furfur,

FRANCINE 0:49:38
and I’m all for it. I can see how it happened.

JOANNA 0:49:42
So Aziraphale asks them what they would like.

FRANCINE 0:49:45
Well, first Aziraphale gets to do what we’ve all wanted to do in meetings where people talk over each other, which is to ring an obnoxiously loud bell. Yes. Go shut up! Or whatever he said, probably much nicer than that. And Crowley is looking in through the window at this point. Yeah. Smiling approvingly, like he did when he was taking the chandelier down. Oh, so much symbolic looking in through the window from Crowley.

JOANNA 0:50:06
Oh, he does like to look longingly through a window.

FRANCINE 0:50:12
Anyway. Anyway.

JOANNA 0:50:13
Um, all Gabriel wants is better clothes than Beelzebub.

FRANCINE 0:50:17
All Beelzebub wants is Gabriel.

JOANNA 0:50:19
And Crowley suggests Alpha Centauri, because I guess he’s not let that go.

FRANCINE 0:50:25
Nope. And he looks meaningfully at Aziraphale, who…

JOANNA 0:50:31
Because that’s where he wanted them to run away to last season.

FRANCINE 0:50:34
Yeah. Do you remember? Do you remember? Do you remember that? The father.

JOANNA 0:50:36
Oh, do you remember that fight they had in the bandstand?

FRANCINE 0:50:38
I do. Cool. The bandstand fight. Bandstand fight. And then the talking about Alpha Centauri outside the bookshop. Yeah. I’d go back and watch all that today.

JOANNA 0:50:48
And then somebody killed my best friend.

FRANCINE 0:50:50
Anyway. Oh my God. I didn’t watch that far because I was already suffering enough.

JOANNA 0:50:55
So Shax somehow gets promoted in this as well. And Crowley asks for his flat back. And there’s absolutely no acknowledgement from Aziraphale. So I guess Aziraphale is aware and is fine with the fact that Crowley’s been living in his car for a few years.

FRANCINE 0:51:11
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The… Wait, where are we?

JOANNA 0:51:19
Have they…

FRANCINE 0:51:20
Have those two faded away yet?

JOANNA 0:51:23
Before they fade away. There’s a few things that happen.

FRANCINE 0:51:26
Okay. Yeah, yeah. I no longer trust the order of my bullet points. Meaning that Shax is asking…

JOANNA 0:51:35
Saying, you know, oh, we’re going to send all of these legions and legions of hell out and Beelzebub says like, mate, you know we’re understaffed.

FRANCINE 0:51:43
Yeah.

JOANNA 0:51:44
Which is a nice follow up from the conversation we were having last week about why isn’t there a legion.

FRANCINE 0:51:49
Just understaffed. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:51:52
Hell’s not pulling the crowds in the way it used to.

FRANCINE 0:51:56
No, no. Well, they all got pissed off after the last failed Armageddon, I bet. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:52:00
I wonder if there’s actually quite a few free floating agents not willing to be legions.

FRANCINE 0:52:07
Could be. Anyway, yeah.

JOANNA 0:52:11
And then Gabriel and Beelzebub sing as they fade away, I guess, to Alpha Centauri.

FRANCINE 0:52:18
And Aziraphale gets a little moment of, my clue has been confirmed.

JOANNA 0:52:23
He’s very pleased to have his clue, isn’t he?

FRANCINE 0:52:26
And then he starts looking very wistfully at Crowley. He does.

JOANNA 0:52:29
They look so wistful. And Shax’s and Furfur have just a very cute little moment as well. They sort of go up and do a little fist bump thing. So I totally misread what I thought was probably going on between them after the Nazi flesh eaters.

FRANCINE 0:52:44
Yeah, no, I think just because their mannerisms are meant to be quite abrasive and unpleasant. Yeah. I guess like, that’s just how they get along.

JOANNA 0:52:54
I thought Shax’s was screwing Furfur over, but I guess actually they’re kind of

FRANCINE 0:52:59
digging each other like a… Not in cahoots, exactly. But yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re not not cahooting. You know, we can ship…

JOANNA 0:53:05
We can ship them as well if we want to ship them.

FRANCINE 0:53:07
Sure, go ahead. Why not? The world’s gone mad. Let’s ship Fax. Yeah, actually. Sure. Yeah. Better than Gub. Gub and Fax. Going on a double date. Gub and Fax, the real shit version of Shadowfax.

JOANNA 0:53:26
How do you feel about Gabriel now?

FRANCINE 0:53:28
I mean, I feel like I’m meant to feel differently about Gabriel after this four minutes of looking lovingly into a demon’s eyes. But I don’t because he’s, you know, he’s not a gem anymore. He’s got all his memories back. And he’s still the same prick that tried to kill Aziraphale and do the whole thing. I don’t see why they’re suddenly redeemed just because two terrible beings have fallen in love. I don’t know.

JOANNA 0:53:56
I kind of do feel differently because yes, he was the archangel fucking Gabriel. And yes, he was shut your stupid fucking face and die. And that’s still very present in my mind. But he has, although we only see four minutes of it, the idea is that he has changed.

FRANCINE 0:54:12
Only because he wants something else now. He only said no to Armageddon because he wanted to be cast down.

JOANNA 0:54:18
I don’t think it was he wanted to be cast down. He wanted to keep trying to keep status quo and he assumed he had more power than he did. And when he realized he didn’t, it’s like, okay, well, how’s not a bad option B?

FRANCINE 0:54:27
I guess. It was all for selfish reasons. Not because he loved the world. He was just happy to be, he just wanted Beelzebub. And that’s nice. And I’m glad they’re happy, I guess. But I don’t feel like why should we, why should we fucking like Gabriel more for it? Bad people fall in love. That’s fine.

JOANNA 0:54:43
I think I like him more for it because he’s still willing to step away from power. He is not trying to fight to remain archangel.

FRANCINE 0:54:52
I guess.

JOANNA 0:54:54
I think if he was in love with Beelzebub, but also still determined to be top of the pack,

FRANCINE 0:54:59
I would just like him more. I guess it just kind of feels a little bit like a, you know, ex fascist politician living out the rest of their life in Argentina. Yeah, no, I definitely, I see your point.

JOANNA 0:55:11
But for me, I don’t know.

FRANCINE 0:55:12
I was just crossing out everything else.

JOANNA 0:55:15
I think honestly, it’s mostly because Jon Hamm’s so fucking charming.

FRANCINE 0:55:20
Oh, obviously. Yeah, like that, that did it a lot. And I do like the battle of the islands, but yeah, whatever. I guess I hope they’re happy with that lovely couple of little planets now for Centauri.

JOANNA 0:55:32
So we go to the coffee shop and we see the Metatron order a coffee. It was a really entertaining little conversation of Nina threatening to mock his coffee order. Him ordering something I think quite sensible. I ate my glass with some almond syrup, sounds lovely. And they have a quick conversation about the name of the coffee shop, Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death. And does anyone ever ask for death? I know, obviously, the Give Me Blank or Give Me Death bit is it’s a, God, it was the American Revolution. I think it was on Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. But the does anyone ever ask for death felt a bit Suzy Yazzard, the Cake or Death bit.

FRANCINE 0:56:09
Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

JOANNA 0:56:10
Which gave me a nice excuse to go back and watch Cake or Death again.

FRANCINE 0:56:13
Okay.

JOANNA 0:56:15
Anyway, back in the bookshop, Michael’s threatening to get the Book of Life out. Give it a rest, Michael. And the Metatron enters the bookshop and proclaims Michael’s threats balderdash.

FRANCINE 0:56:28
Quite.

JOANNA 0:56:30
Curly’s the first one to recognize the Metatron.

FRANCINE 0:56:33
That was an interesting one. Finally, he recognizes somebody. Which made me think that’s something we should start like, yeah. I mean, it’s a real big face most of the time. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:56:43
And, you know, angels aren’t used to seeing it in human form. But I wonder if like, if it is a power play thing, and it’s just okay, there’s no point. There’s no point power playing with this one.

FRANCINE 0:56:52
And he sends all of the angels except for Muriel away. Yep.

JOANNA 0:56:57
Angels like, did we do anything wrong?

FRANCINE 0:57:00
No, but go. That remains to be seen. Off you drop.

JOANNA 0:57:04
And we get the conversation about the coffee itself and admits to ingesting things in his time, which is another interesting, maybe it’s not so black and white that ingesting ties you to humanity.

FRANCINE 0:57:14
Oh, yeah. I don’t know. I think that’s more about I’m religious. Hmm. I don’t know. I think that’s more about I’m relatable. You can trust me. Yeah. We don’t see him ingest anything.

JOANNA 0:57:27
Yeah, we don’t. There’s something about the way he’s talking in this as well. The exaggerated old hat speak he refers and hefty jigger of almond syrup.

FRANCINE 0:57:35
And yeah, boulder dash.

JOANNA 0:57:37
I love Derek Jacobi. He plays like kind villain so well.

FRANCINE 0:57:43
Yeah, yeah. And that’s it. That’s definitely coming across as kind villain, not kind.

JOANNA 0:57:49
Kind person.

FRANCINE 0:57:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am.

JOANNA 0:57:52
The one disappointment I have with this episode is that we well, the one disappointment I have with this episode, I am slightly sad we don’t get more between David Tennant and Derek Jacobi just because there’s a fun thing of them being on Doctor Who together as the Doctor and the Master as well.

FRANCINE 0:58:06
Yeah, there’s a simmering tension they’re clearly used to playing on. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:58:11
So he. So the Metatron asks. Um, Aziraphale’s come for a little chat in a stroll. And as they walk out the glare, he glares at Crowley. He’s got this kind, genial face on and then gives Crowley the death stare on his way out.

FRANCINE 0:58:29
It’s very interesting and eventually painful that Crowley was just like, yeah, no, go for your chat, whatever. Clearly thinking that Aziraphale’s past being chatted up by the Metatron.

JOANNA 0:58:38
Yeah, he’s like almost got too much faith in Aziraphale. Uh, whereas Aziraphale’s got too much faith.

FRANCINE 0:58:45
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:58:49
Also, the Metatron calls Muriel the dim one, which I thought was very mean.

FRANCINE 0:58:53
Yeah, unkind. Unnecessary.

JOANNA 0:58:57
So then Nina and Maggie pop out of the coffee shop and we see Crowley tidying up the bookshop and there was something really relatable about that, you know, when you’re kind of tidying up to occupy yourself because you’re waiting for something and there’s not enough to tidy. So he keeps like moving the chair back and forth.

FRANCINE 0:59:13
I know. And like the first bit of tidying he’s doing as well is very like, I know this space and kind of underlines the fact that they’ve been spending a lot of time in the bookshop together. Like it’s like, right, put that back over there and that goes there.

JOANNA 0:59:25
And the chair goes in the sun.

FRANCINE 0:59:26
Yeah.

JOANNA 0:59:29
And then he moves the chair and he moves it back and then he moves it out and he sprawls in it.

FRANCINE 0:59:33
Yeah.

JOANNA 0:59:34
Um, so Nina and Maggie come in and sit down with Crowley for a chat. And this is the scene where I take back everything I’ve said about Nina and Maggie throughout the season because I love this for them.

FRANCINE 0:59:44
Yeah. Little emotional intervention. Yeah.

JOANNA 0:59:47
This explanation of, hey, why were you interfering with us? Maybe sort your own life out instead.

FRANCINE 0:59:54
Now, Mr Crowley, have you ever heard of projection?

JOANNA 1:00:00
And the way their not relationship ends in the series, they’re not together, but there’s hope for it for the future. And I said like last episode, if it ended up any other way, but like

FRANCINE 1:00:07
than that, I think I would have been a little bit disappointed. Yeah, no, absolutely. Like it’s very like, no, I’ll be here. Yeah. And then, oh, and then fucking stop Angel. The way she casually calls Maggie Angel.

JOANNA 1:00:22
And it’s exactly the way that Crowley calls Aziraphale Angel. And there’s this really obvious parallel of. But for Nina and Maggie, it’s these people, okay, they haven’t got it worked out now, but they’re probably going to work it out. And then we hope that Aziraphale and Crowley are going to work it out. But no, Neil Gaiman wanted to rip out our hearts and shred them.

FRANCINE 1:00:42
We’ve had the otherworldly parallel. We’ve now got the very worldly parallel. And as usual, we’ve got our two in the middle. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:00:49
Straddling the, no, that was horrible. Sorry, shouldn’t use the word straddling. Not on this podcast. So you see Aziraphale reacting to an offer from the Metatron and going to tell Crowley the good news. And the Metatron spots Muriel reading her book.

FRANCINE 1:01:08
He says, yes, it’s a very good thing to do.

JOANNA 1:01:10
It’s so politely sinister.

FRANCINE 1:01:13
And Muriel’s very, oh, good. Like, they’re really not sure. Like, yeah, they were expecting to be yelled at all the time, I feel like, if they’re always dealing with Michael and the rest of them.

JOANNA 1:01:25
They just kind of start with this low level, I’m in trouble for something.

FRANCINE 1:01:28
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:01:30
Especially as I guess they’re also kind of worried that they’re still going to get in trouble for bringing Crowley up to heaven.

FRANCINE 1:01:35
And yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When you’ve just done something ridiculously bad like that, and then the Metatron comes over and goes, oh, we’re reading very well. And I’m like, okay, yeah, yeah, it is. I know, it’s good. It’s good. It’s good. They’re like people. They’re like portable people.

JOANNA 1:01:51
The book in question is The Crow Road by Iain Banks, which is the same one that was referenced earlier in the season. It’s kind of part of the recommended reading list, which is the idea of all those It’s books

FRANCINE 1:02:02
on the shelf. And is that because Ian Banks and Neil Gaiman are friends collecting? Or was there more of a relevance to the series?

JOANNA 1:02:08
I think it’s because like, Ian Banks and Neil Gaiman are friends and also Neil Gaiman genuinely thinks it’s a very good book.

FRANCINE 1:02:14
Okay.

JOANNA 1:02:14
Like, if you think about the set of books they’re recommending, obviously Good Omens is on that

FRANCINE 1:02:17
shelf.

JOANNA 1:02:17
And it’s also like The Great Gatsby.

FRANCINE 1:02:21
One of the Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice.

JOANNA 1:02:24
Great Expectations. No, Tale of Two Cities.

FRANCINE 1:02:26
It was the worst of times.

JOANNA 1:02:28
Um, someone on Twitter has done like an in-depth look at the shelf and what all the books are. And I think I’m just confirmed like it’s kind of a recommended reading list, not to understand the show, but just books we think you’ll like.

FRANCINE 1:02:40
Um, so yeah, so. So. So we go into the bookshop.

JOANNA 1:02:48
I’ve tried to, I’ve tried to break this up a bit so we can talk about a bit at a time. Crowley wants to say something to Aziraphale. But Aziraphale asked him to hold that thought.

FRANCINE 1:02:59
Yeah, which, oh my fucking god.

JOANNA 1:03:01
And Aziraphale’s changed his mind on the Metatron. The Metatron’s not as bad as he thought. And we, we see some flashes of this conversation that Aziraphale had with the Metatron. Like the upshot of it is that Aziraphale’s been offered Gabriel’s job, the High Archangel,

FRANCINE 1:03:17
whatever.

JOANNA 1:03:18
Um, but we don’t see the whole conversation.

FRANCINE 1:03:21
No. And I feel like the, the, during the flashbacks, the point where the, his emotion changes isn’t when he’s offered that job, but when he’s offered the chance to redeem Crowley. Yeah. And so he’s come with this extremely exciting gift for Crowley.

JOANNA 1:03:36
And he sure is an exciting gift.

FRANCINE 1:03:39
I just want to start this conversation off on a good foot with them. I’ve got to tell you this first. But that’s incredibly annoying, obviously, because Crowley’s just said like, I’m not gonna get this out if you don’t let me. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:03:50
And it’s so frustrating to watch. Because there’s this just incredible, like palpable tension of them both trying to say this thing. Also in the bits of Metatron conversation that we do be, do see, there’s this question of like, is Aziraphale a good candidate? Does he have the qualities that the Metatron says he has that we see him saying to Aziraphale outside the restaurant? He says, you know, you’re a leader, you’re honest, and you don’t just tell people what

FRANCINE 1:04:15
they want to hear.

JOANNA 1:04:17
That doesn’t 100% sound like Aziraphale to me.

FRANCINE 1:04:20
No, we’ve seen him do a bit of leadership. But he’s not a big take charge guy. No, and he’s lies.

JOANNA 1:04:26
He’s very willing to lie. We saw him lying in the joke bit. And he does, he’s happy to tell people what they want to hear. Think about things like putting a sister thingy to sleep and saying you have a lovely dream about whatever you like best.

FRANCINE 1:04:40
Mm. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Pretty much the opposite actually. And those opposite qualities are what the Metatron would want, I’m sure, in a, you know, a stooge that’s not going to go Gabriel. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:04:54
And yeah, so Aziraphale makes this offer to make Crowley an angel again. And Crowley’s not happy and they compare rejoining heaven to rejoining hell and Crowley is fucking incredulous about this.

FRANCINE 1:05:08
Just the shock. His glasses are off at this point. So you can see his full face doing all this stuff.

JOANNA 1:05:14
Dilated snake pupils, eyebrows akimbo. I’m allowed to say akimbo, right? If I can’t say straddling.

FRANCINE 1:05:21
Yeah, absolutely. Good. And yeah, just the, ugh. Just incredulity. Just fuck.

JOANNA 1:05:29
It is so hard to watch Aziraphale in this scene, especially when he says to, when he says, but you’re the bad guys, the way he includes Crowley in that and Crowley isn’t off hell, he’s just gone off and done his own thing.

FRANCINE 1:05:43
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:05:44
And worked with them because that was kind of his option, but has found this way to not even really do that.

FRANCINE 1:05:49
And it’s shocking. But then when you think about it, is it shocking? Because what Nina and Maggie have just said quite correctly is you guys don’t talk about this shit. Yeah. So why are we surprised that after six millennia of not addressing the elephant in the room properly, it’s still there?

JOANNA 1:06:04
And if we think right back to Job and the conversation they have at the end where Crowley tells Aziraphale that he hasn’t really fallen, they don’t take that conversation the step

FRANCINE 1:06:16
further.

JOANNA 1:06:17
And it’s really highlighted by the distance between them as they sit on that rock in that final shot of that minisode.

FRANCINE 1:06:23
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:06:24
Like, they’ve been dancing around this conversation.

FRANCINE 1:06:28
For a very long time. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:06:30
Buildad the Shuai was delivering babies. Sorry, I just wanted to remind us of something fun before we get to the next bit.

FRANCINE 1:06:36
Yeah. And so, yeah.

JOANNA 1:06:40
So Crowley says his piece, Crowley’s response, because Crowley cares about Earth as well as Aziraphale.

FRANCINE 1:06:48
Yeah. And Aziraphale cares about Earth.

JOANNA 1:06:51
He’s just not willing to look at this big picture that Crowley is looking at.

FRANCINE 1:06:56
Yeah. Not right now.

JOANNA 1:06:58
And I think this is partly why I find this really painful to watch is because, like, coming out of a religious space and having been around people who are so indoctrinated and Aziraphale is doing that. That I know it’s not perfect, but I can change it. It’s almost like watching someone go back to an abusive ex, which is exactly what Crowley is watching Aziraphale do.

FRANCINE 1:07:15
Yeah, no, that I would say is, yeah. Yeah. Exactly that. And he’s, yeah, he gets to, he’s trying to explain it’s us. We’ve been a group and we’ve not talked about it. And now it’s time to talk about it. And you can just see he can’t get the words out. And it’s never going to be enough because he has this one chance to explain it. And he knows he can’t because he’s got 6,000 years worth of talking to do in a minute. And Aziraphale’s already made his mind up on something. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:07:42
And he’s got to talk Aziraphale out of all of the millennia of indoctrination at the same time. And he’s desperately trying to convince him, you know, we’ve actually been in a relationship this whole time. Can we just acknowledge it?

FRANCINE 1:07:53
Can we just be us two? Yeah. And Aziraphale wants to bring him with him and just continue the status, almost dragging him up to heaven would be continuing the status quo more than having this conversation properly would. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:08:06
Like, to Aziraphale that’s safe.

FRANCINE 1:08:09
Yeah. He still wants heaven.

JOANNA 1:08:11
And then there’s this horrible moment where Crowley says, you can’t leave this bookshop.

FRANCINE 1:08:16
And he means me when he says bookshop. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:08:19
He’s saying you can’t leave me. And Aziraphale says nothing lasts forever.

FRANCINE 1:08:24
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:08:25
And that’s where I also start thinking, maybe Aziraphale’s not entirely himself in this moment.

FRANCINE 1:08:31
Yeah, I’m very torn on that question. But yeah. I don’t think it’s black and white.

JOANNA 1:08:37
I don’t think this is all Aziraphale being indoctrinated or maybe that’s wishful thinking.

FRANCINE 1:08:43
We’ve got this kind of, in season one, one of the arguments they have, it goes, you’re so clever. How can you be so stupid? And there’s obviously huge echoes this entire time to those scenes. But that one very strongly came back to me in this bit and just, and yeah, no, you’re right. Yeah, when he’s saying like, you can’t. Okay. I don’t know where to put some of these bits. I’ve just got a stream of emotions and bullet points here. So, okay. Okay. So you go.

JOANNA 1:09:12
Crowley starts to walk away from Aziraphale, but Aziraphale, you know, says that he still

FRANCINE 1:09:17
needs him.

JOANNA 1:09:18
And this is, we get with this absolutely heart-wrenching, bitter disappointment from Crowley.

FRANCINE 1:09:24
There’s no nightingales. Yeah. And he’s got his glasses back on now.

JOANNA 1:09:29
And he’s got his glasses back on. And the violins start doing some shit, don’t they?

FRANCINE 1:09:36
The violins, they’re violining.

JOANNA 1:09:39
The strings are swelling, as strings want to do. And Crowley goes in for the last ditch thing. And Crowley kisses Aziraphale.

FRANCINE 1:09:48
In a horrible, desperate, like, please feel something kiss. Yeah. The least romantic, but most emotional kiss. Yeah. All of the emotion is desperation and anger and the score suddenly does a thing. God, what? I don’t know. I don’t know enough music to describe that, but it did. The score scored.

JOANNA 1:10:14
If David Arnold doesn’t win some kind of award for this season, I’m gonna…

FRANCINE 1:10:18
Riot.

JOANNA 1:10:19
Write a strongly worded note.

FRANCINE 1:10:21
Okay, fine. With a torch and a pitchfork. There we go. Much better.

JOANNA 1:10:28
Is this, should we talk about the spoiler thing here?

FRANCINE 1:10:32
Yeah, sure.

JOANNA 1:10:32
Okay, so one thing we’ve also avoided mentioning is that there was, this kiss was spoiled accidentally, maybe, by Amazon Prime before the season even came out. It was a single, it was a screenshot of this kiss in a trailer that was meant to be like a Pride Month trailer, which meant because the way the trailer ran, it was this shot of them kissing with the word every over it and big letters. So the fandom’s been referring to the spoiler as every. And it was a very weird thing where I thought maybe some of the response, like, the fandom was really great about not sharing it and it got taken down by Amazon Prime within 24 hours because obviously it’s a huge spoiler. Um, Neil Gaiman was understandably now fucking furious, I think, is a direct quote from his Twitter, which I kind of thought was no reaction, but actually, um, I spoke to Marc Burrows about it briefly and he kind of gave me a bit more context of, yeah, it’s in the final episode. It’s the emotional culmination of the season. So, so I knew this was coming, which I didn’t mind because I had no idea, other than it was going to be a big climactic moment.

FRANCINE 1:11:38
I had no idea how we were going to get there.

JOANNA 1:11:40
Or I don’t think I could have imagined this. Um, and I think it’s amazing how impact, because loads of people will have been aware of this before they saw it. And I don’t think it takes anything away from the impact of it. I think it’s such a great moment.

FRANCINE 1:11:54
Yeah, absolutely. It was when I knew there was going to be a kiss and I knew there was going to be something that would tear my heart apart. And I assumed, as I think you probably did, that it would be a, the classic, um, the two characters finally get the romantic moment and then outside forces tear them apart. I guess they will entirely. Um, and before the next line, which is obviously when it all ends for everybody, we get Crowley, despite wearing his glasses, the eyebrows are the most plaintive thing I have ever seen. And the moment after that kiss, his last attempt to keep Aziraphale with him.

JOANNA 1:12:34
His pleading eyebrows and God, his fucking face.

FRANCINE 1:12:39
And then Aziraphale says, I forgive you. And I said, you prick, as I was watching it.

JOANNA 1:12:48
I said something else, but we agreed to keep one swear word off the podcast.

FRANCINE 1:12:52
And I don’t need to have to bleep anything. But yeah, no, it’s fine.

JOANNA 1:12:59
We’re fine.

FRANCINE 1:12:59
Everything’s fine.

JOANNA 1:13:00
It’s not fine. And he said it in such a horrible way.

FRANCINE 1:13:03
It was so patronising.

JOANNA 1:13:05
And he said it before. He said, may you be forgiven on the bandstand.

FRANCINE 1:13:09
And he said, I forgive you. And both of those times were just after Crowley’s asked him to run away with him. This is the third time Crowley has said, run away with me. And Aziraphale keeps saying no and then keeps forgiving him.

JOANNA 1:13:22
Because there’s still that bit of heaven in him that I want Crowley’s redemption. I can only imagine it in one very specific way.

FRANCINE 1:13:29
And it requires forgiveness.

JOANNA 1:13:32
And if no one else in heaven can forgive me, I’m not going to.

FRANCINE 1:13:34
If no one else in heaven can forgive him, then at least I can. Yeah. And he looks, Michael Sheen does the best conflicted face ever at this point. He’s furious. He’s furious because Crowley has broken the rules of their game. Their dance. And now it’s scary. And now it’s dangerous. And now you’ve ruined this game we’ve been playing for 6000 years and I’ve enjoyed it. And now we have to acknowledge it. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:14:01
And he’s furious. And then he touches his lips. And then he does this thing where he sort of chores himself up and smiles. And again, that’s where I’m feeling this. Maybe Aziraphale’s not… You know we were talking last week about the self-hypnosis thing?

FRANCINE 1:14:20
Yes. Yeah, it feels like it’s that. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:14:23
Except obviously, because we haven’t seen the full Metatron conversation, maybe the Metatron’s also done some fuckery.

FRANCINE 1:14:28
But I feel like… I feel like it would be more emotionally satisfying if Aziraphale was doing it to himself.

JOANNA 1:14:33
I agree. I agree.

FRANCINE 1:14:34
And that, yeah, again, we’ll talk about it more next week. But there are a lot of, you know, theories about why Aziraphale has done this out of character thing. And I just don’t think it’s out of character. And I think it’s more ballsy piece of writing if Aziraphale is genuinely just being an absolute dick at this point. Yeah. And, you know, I think it’s something he would do. It’s not… It’s not…

JOANNA 1:14:52
It’s not out of character because we’ve seen again and again his faith.

FRANCINE 1:14:56
His overwhelming faith and belief that heaven are the good guys has not been shaken.

JOANNA 1:15:01
Possibly because he was not the one who heard Gabriel say, shut your fucking stupid mouth and die. Yeah, possibly.

FRANCINE 1:15:08
Yeah. But he’s seen a lot of bad shit. He knows that God was… Yeah, he saw… No, he saw most of the Middle East drowned. Yeah. He was there at the flood. He knew that God had signed off on Crowley killing all the people. Signed off on Crowley killing all those poor little goats and the children. Children. And Crowley wouldn’t and didn’t. And I also…

JOANNA 1:15:37
So it’s, you know, biblical canon is that the Metatron is literally not just a presidential spokesman type representation. It is this angel is needed because if you had God’s voice, it would kill you.

FRANCINE 1:15:50
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:15:51
In Dogma, they do it very literally. Alanis Morissette speaks and people’s heads explode.

FRANCINE 1:15:57
Perfect casting for God, by the way. That is so, yeah. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:16:01
Not saying that I have a problem with Alanis Morissette’s voice is my very worn out copy of Jagged Little Pill kind of test too. So yeah, Crowley’s like just sure he’s effectively spoken to God. Even if he’s still got that like presidential spokesman idea, he’s gonna take Metatron’s word as the word of God.

FRANCINE 1:16:23
Oh, Aziraphale. Yeah, yeah.

JOANNA 1:16:25
Yeah. Sorry, Aziraphale, not Crowley.

FRANCINE 1:16:27
Yeah. And yeah, and I think Crowley isn’t or if he is, doesn’t care. He thinks God’s up to no good as well. And just, oh, it must be. It really must be just hurtful because Crowley, you know, Crowley’s aware that he’s fucked up as well because he’s gone along with this. He’s not. He’s known they’ve had this huge thing between them the whole time. Yeah. And he left. They went past the end of the world and then still didn’t do anything. When Crowley was in his rant, he goes, these last few years, we didn’t really, and he didn’t finish that. But I think it’s like we never really moved on or did anything differently after that ridiculous fucking thing. Oh, and he was so excited to go for a boozy breakfast with him.

JOANNA 1:17:09
He was so ready for that boozy breakfast at the Ritz. Like he wanted to go back to the status quo originally until Nina and Maggie suggested, you know, maybe have a fucking chat.

FRANCINE 1:17:17
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:17:19
Maybe they should have talked it over over champagne at the Ritz.

FRANCINE 1:17:25
Maybe they fucking should. Maybe they fucking should. And then, yeah, just don’t bother. God. And so, was it Ruffalo and the Metatron leave? They’re getting a lift. But before that, before that Joanna, come on. Because the Metatron goes, is there anything you want?

JOANNA 1:17:49
Oh, he returns to collect a Aziraphale.

FRANCINE 1:17:51
Yeah.

JOANNA 1:17:52
And says Muriel’s going to stay in charge of the shop.

FRANCINE 1:17:55
And and says, is there anything he wants? And Aziraphale looks around says no. And I mean, that’s, you know, two things there. No, because the one thing you want to take with Crowley. And no, because it’s all it’s all of it. How can you say I want all of it? I want this with me. And as he looked back, he hesitates for a second. And as he says, I think I the bit of the kiss score comes back just for one second. Yeah, it swells back up again. And then I think I and then no shakes himself out of it.

JOANNA 1:18:22
And he resets his face again. And he’s resetting his face into that smile that’s almost a grimace.

FRANCINE 1:18:29
And the bookshop looks so beautiful that morning is the thing. And the sunlight is shining through perfectly. And it’s this contrast between not just hell being awful, but heaven being awful and stark and boring and empty.

JOANNA 1:18:41
And the contrast of the gorgeousness of this bookshop that he built over the centuries

FRANCINE 1:18:46
and the scrolling letters. And it’s him. Yeah, he’s externalized his personality in this place. Yeah. Well, how can I take one part of that? I suppose he could have done something like taking the mug and that would have been pathetic. And so yeah, he was right not to take anything. But it’s so sad.

JOANNA 1:19:03
And it’s also like he is shaking off this life he built on earth to go and

FRANCINE 1:19:09
be a fucking archangel.

JOANNA 1:19:10
And he walks off and David Tennant’s leaning against his car. Oh, and Crowley’s watching and they get into the pub to get in the lift. And the Metatron casually mentions the second coming and believe me next week in the bonus

FRANCINE 1:19:23
episode, I’m going to get fucking biblical. Yes. The I feel at that point. I feel at that point. I feel at that point Aziraphale. His look back at Crowley look different from the other ones. And I wonder then if he realized he had fucked up. And at this point, there’s nothing you can do about it, but go along and try and make a difference. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I might just be reading what I want to read into it.

JOANNA 1:19:55
Also that. And yeah, and then Crowley gets in his car and a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

FRANCINE 1:20:02
Just for a second.

JOANNA 1:20:04
And it’s not just the song, it’s the Tori Amos version that played over the end of

FRANCINE 1:20:08
season one, which has lived on my wallowing playlist ever since. Oh, yeah, I have.

JOANNA 1:20:14
I have a deep emotional connection to that song. And we get this sad piano split screen over the final credits. Which I want to mention when we did our Good Omens season one, like recap episode and look to season two. I did say, I wonder if because they want to do a season three, we’re not going to get a happy, neatly tied up ending at the end of season two. And I think I actually said, I’m not sure that nightingales are going to be singing in Berkeley Square at the end of season two.

FRANCINE 1:20:47
And Neil Gaiman’s fucking little monkey paw. Oh, yeah, look what you did. Look what you did. I didn’t do this. This is Neil Gaiman. Okay, sure.

JOANNA 1:20:56
Sorry, I got really shouty there.

FRANCINE 1:20:58
Neil Gaiman’s little monkey paw. All right. Oh, I’m sorry. Let’s all hope Neil Gaiman never hears us.

JOANNA 1:21:05
I’m sorry, Neil Gaiman, we’re big fans. This was a very good episode of television, which is quite emotional.

FRANCINE 1:21:11
Jesus fucking Christ. It’s all just so tied together for them that it’s so, and Crowley’s driving away again in the same way that he drove away from the bookshop the first time with all the crying and the fire and the breakdown. But this time it’s just, you know, crying behind his sunglasses. You get the picture, but just much more given up face. Yeah. It’s like, now what?

JOANNA 1:21:39
Who’s he going to appreciate the world with?

FRANCINE 1:21:41
Yeah, the world’s not ending as it was in the first one. But he’s just left here now. Yeah. I don’t really know what to say.

Easter Eggs & Favourite Moments

JOANNA 1:21:51
We’re going from this into like our best bits from the episode, aren’t we?

FRANCINE 1:21:56
Yeah. Yeah, when we go into the whole recap, I think we can talk a bit more about just their general relationship as well, can’t we? Because we’ll look at the whole series. Yeah. As one. But yeah, just this. What do you think of Michael Sheen’s face?

JOANNA 1:22:11
Well, let’s, let’s do.

FRANCINE 1:22:12
Let’s go into the superlatives. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:22:16
So quotes.

FRANCINE 1:22:17
Oh, sorry. That’s right. We do quotes first. I was trying to segue for you.

JOANNA 1:22:21
Let’s go into the face thing, actually, because it’s very relevant to that final shot. I’m giving my character does a face award to actual multiple things, which I’ve talked about is Michael Sheen doing the thing where Aziraphale goes from like distraught to kind of determined to doing that mad, almost grimacing grin. And you see him do it in the lift in that final split screenshot over the credits. You see him do it one last time.

FRANCINE 1:22:44
Yeah. And it’s, it’s haunting. And I don’t know what it means.

JOANNA 1:22:48
And we can speculate about it next week, but. Oh, it’s good.

FRANCINE 1:22:54
It is. And it’s so, the fucking range on that man, just in this one character. Yeah. Having gone from just this, this devoted love of Crowley to, you know, the, the fear and

JOANNA 1:23:05
the conflict over heaven.

FRANCINE 1:23:06
And yes, as you say, this, this internal rewriting of his.

JOANNA 1:23:10
This possible self-hypnosis.

FRANCINE 1:23:12
Whatever is happening. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever’s going on in there. And oh, fuck. So what’s your character? Yeah, a bit more overt. Just, just Crowley’s absolute horror and shock as Aziraphale says, but heaven are the good guys. We’re the good ones. And Crowley’s just like, fucking what? Sorry, did the last few years not happen? Yeah. It’s an angry shock. Yeah.

JOANNA 1:23:39
Just like, are you fucking kidding me?

FRANCINE 1:23:41
We’ve had this. We’ve had this exact conversation. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve been through this. We’ve been through the end of the fucking world. Yeah. Not the good guys. Yeah. And just, yeah, just the, the real, the realization that Aziraphale hadn’t gotten over it as he just assumed he had. I think as well, as well as them not having the conversation, Crowley is kind of blinkered.

JOANNA 1:24:06
Crowley, just as Aziraphale, is just, is just, is just, is just, is just, is just, is just not willing to see how bad heaven was. Crowley wasn’t willing to look at how bad Aziraphale was. Not bad as in bad, bad as in how much he was still stuck to it.

FRANCINE 1:24:22
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the, the Gabriel trying to kill Aziraphale thing and how Crowley obviously feels about that. Yeah. But the, it’s also worth thinking about just that initial trauma that Crowley must have had. Now we, now we’ve seen him at the beginning of this and how different he was and just, he’s just fundamentally from almost the very beginning of time, a very different being. And they just don’t quite grasp that until this moment. And it’s, oh. It’s tough. So on that note, uh, quote, favorite quote from the episode. I think yours is just before mine. Yep. When heaven ends life on earth, it’ll be just as dead as if hell ended it. God, that was a good line. Yeah. And again, again, it’s Crowley with that face because we’ve talked about this. This is one that we have talked about. We went over this last time they tried to end the world. Remember the ending the world thing? Tch-tch-tch-tch. Bad thing. Because we like the world. Yeah. And yours? That’s the point. No Nightingales.

JOANNA 1:25:33
You idiot. We could have been us.

FRANCINE 1:25:38
He kisses it. It could have been us. God, it’s. I can’t just keep saying it’s gut-wrenching. It’s gut-wrenching.

JOANNA 1:25:47
We know it’s gut-wrenching. We haven’t even talked about the kiss really.

FRANCINE 1:25:50
In almost any other context, that kind of kiss would be, oh, I’m so sorry. That kind of kiss would be hard to watch in different ways. But with all of the background and all of the knowledge that fucking Michael Sheen, I’m sorry, Aziraphale’s constant like arguments with himself and just the desperation and just the.

JOANNA 1:26:16
It’s almost like a kiss of life moment.

FRANCINE 1:26:18
Yeah. And yeah, Aziraphale doesn’t like kiss him back, I suppose is the way to put it. But that’s not the kind of kiss where you could kiss him back.

JOANNA 1:26:26
It’s just kind of experiences it.

FRANCINE 1:26:28
Yes, it experiences it. That’s the word. Yeah. Fuck. Let’s go.

JOANNA 1:26:35
So let’s have a couple of slightly lighter moments before we come out of this episode,

FRANCINE 1:26:43
because this is not the note to end on.

JOANNA 1:26:45
I didn’t know a bunch of Easter eggs. This is not an Easter egg heavy episode, but there was one I spotted, which is when Crowley grabs Gabriel’s box and tips out what’s in it.

FRANCINE 1:26:56
Yes.

JOANNA 1:26:56
What’s in it is Shakespeare’s lost quartos.

FRANCINE 1:26:59
Can you tell me about those, Rana?

JOANNA 1:27:01
It’s a line in, actually, I meant to have this up, sorry. It is from book one of Good Omens. Sorry, book one of Good Omens, from the book Good Omens. And it’s talking about a particularly unlucky publishers that obtained one of the famed lost quartos, the three Shakespeare plays never reissued in folio, only their names have come down to us, the comedy of Robin Hood or the forest of Sherwood is the one that’s mentioned. And I think the other two names are mentioned in the book as well, but it’s on a different page.

FRANCINE 1:27:37
And I don’t want to spend ages scrolling.

JOANNA 1:27:40
But yes, those are the, that’s what’s in the box that Crowley tips out. That’s a really nice little detail.

FRANCINE 1:27:46
And what else is in the box? A letter from a John Gibson, who was a, as it says on the letter, a postmaster in America. In the 1800s, the date seemed a bit off, but he also had a fairly unfortunate and interesting life. I found a page on him, which I can link to, but in a kind of everyday, he was the son of Scottish immigrants over there. And also because of that, I then thought, I wonder if that’s got any link to the letter from America song by the Proclaimers that was playing before Gabriel switched it to everyday. Because that’s about Scottish immigrants to America. And this is about that. And it’s about the same timeframe they were singing about. And this is all about. So this is rabbit hole. I didn’t get to go very far down, but I’ll link to some information listeners. And if you don’t know already, then please feel free to follow the rabbit hole.

JOANNA 1:28:36
Amazing. So helicopter and loincloth watch.

FRANCINE 1:28:40
Oh, yeah, sure.

JOANNA 1:28:43
For helicopter, I’m going with all of our heart rates during the kiss. Slash our blood pressure during that entire conversation.

FRANCINE 1:28:50
Yes, it seems unlikely, but I’m pretty sure my heart was just spinning around as well like that. It didn’t feel healthy.

JOANNA 1:28:58
I was just amazed to discover I definitely still had one. And I’m doing this partly as a callback to the first episode because this should have been given

FRANCINE 1:29:06
the award at some point.

JOANNA 1:29:07
But Jim’s box is getting the loincloth.

FRANCINE 1:29:10
Did it not in the first episode?

JOANNA 1:29:12
No, it was the sheet he was wrapped in.

FRANCINE 1:29:15
Oh, yeah, because that was actual cloth.

JOANNA 1:29:18
See, I started realistic and Jim’s had a lot of loincloths this season, actually. I think he’s got the loincloth most episodes. Right. On Jon Hamm naked except for a cardboard box. I think that’s the best note we could possibly end on considering.

FRANCINE 1:29:37
Uh, yeah. Tune in next week.

JOANNA 1:29:41
So, yeah, we’re going to be giving you a bonus Good Omens wrap up episode. We are going to talk about all of the wild theories we had during the show. We’re going to talk about all the wild theories we’ve got going forward. Giving out some awards. Again, if you’ve got any thoughts and feelings about it, you can contact us about it. Remember, at the moment, season three is not confirmed. As well as rating reviewers and maybe telling people about us, make sure you’re talking about Good Omens, I guess.

FRANCINE 1:30:10
Talk about it, watch it again if you want to. Tell your friends to watch it. Say something nice to Neil Gaiman.

JOANNA 1:30:17
Yeah, go be nice to Neil Gaiman.

FRANCINE 1:30:18
He likes that.

JOANNA 1:30:20
Although it’s not up to him to renew it.

FRANCINE 1:30:21
But yeah. He made us a nice thing. Yes. Let’s not just yell at him about it.

JOANNA 1:30:28
The hashtags, I think, are renew Good Omens season two. Renew Good Omens, give me season three or give me death.

FRANCINE 1:30:35
Okay. Drama. I love it.

JOANNA 1:30:38
Well, I’m assuming it’s a reference to the coffee shop, but it confused me because I thought it was Nelflag means death thing for a second.

FRANCINE 1:30:43
Oh, sure. What can I say? I like my shows. Are we getting another one of those? I think soon. Anyway.

JOANNA 1:30:51
So yeah, send us your thoughts for the bonus episode. Rate and review us.

FRANCINE 1:30:54
Tell other people about us. Tell everyone about Good Omens and make sure they watch it.

JOANNA 1:30:58
You can, until we return, follow us on Instagram at thetreeshamakeyfrat. You can follow us on Twitter at Makeyfratpod. You can also do that on Blue Sky. You can go on Facebook at thetreeshamakeyfrat. Join our subreddit community r slash ttsmyf. Join our shiny new Discord.

FRANCINE 1:31:16
It’s fun over there.

JOANNA 1:31:17
The invite link will be in the show notes at the top of the list. You can, of course, email us your thoughts, queries, castle snacks, and heartbroken demons. Thetreeshamakeyfratpod at gmail.com. And if you want to support this financially and pay for our therapy, you can go to patreon.com forward slash thetreeshamakeyfrat.

FRANCINE 1:31:35
I am joking.

JOANNA 1:31:36
We don’t actually need therapy.

FRANCINE 1:31:40
Maybe. And until next time, dear listener.

JOANNA 1:31:45
To the world.

FRANCINE 1:31:46
To the world. Oh, that was a nice Aziraphale-Crowley moment as well there. Because you got the champagne, I’ve got the what looks like red wine. Diet Coke in a pink glass.

JOANNA 1:32:04
I don’t think we said a lot of bollocks that needs cutting out.

FRANCINE 1:32:06
Some dramatic pausing.

JOANNA 1:32:08
That might have been overly dramatic.

FRANCINE 1:32:10
Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Incoherent kiss squawking. No, that stays. Cool. Yeah, no. That’s the whole bit.

JOANNA 1:32:18
We can’t start cutting out the incoherent squawking now.

FRANCINE 1:32:20
We won’t have a podcast. The statistics show 60% of our content is incoherent squawking. The numbers don’t lie.