Sunscreen

References

• Sunburn in Japanese
• Baz Luhrmann – Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen
• How To Terraform Venus (Quickly)
• Erin Brockovich
• The Simpsons
  • Who Shot Mr. Burns?
• The Simpsons Movie
• Lighthouse Keeper
• Gilligan’s Island
• Pickleball
• Late Capitalism
• Aldi
• Whole Foods
• Nestlé: Controversies and criticisms
• NO-AD Sunscreen
• Cheetos
• Takis
• Funyuns
• Oreo
• The Good Place
• Almost Plausible: BBQ Grill

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
Oh, is this going to end at the airport? Because it’s a rom-com.

[Emily]
No, it’s going to end at the party.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. I like the idea of him running through security naked. “Clearly I don’t have anything.”

[Shep]
Right. What are they wanding over?

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’re wanding over his genitals. Turns out he has a Prince Albert that we’ve never shown or talked about.

[Shep]
So he takes it out and puts it in the-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because we’ve never shown and talked about it. So it could have been there the whole time.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and joining me are my brilliant co-hosts Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
I grew up in Hawaii and definitely didn’t wear sunscreen as often as I should have, including on my 18th birthday, which was a day long party at the beach, which resulted in quite a bad sunburn. What is the worst sunburn that you guys have had?

[Shep]
Oh, my gosh. So, I used to be a teacher in Japan, and I didn’t realize that Sports Day was an entire outdoors day.

[Thomas]
It wasn’t like, “We’re doing some sports on this day.” It was Sports Day.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“We’re doing all the sports. One day.”

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
I would have to be outside for all of that, and I did not prepare, and I did not wear sunscreen, and I did not realize, because of my creamy Irish skin, I did not have the sun tolerance that my Japanese coworkers had. And I burned to a crisp because I was outside for 8 hours in the sun. It was so bad. I had to learn words for “sun cooked”, or whatever it is to say in Japanese for “I’ve burnt myself, but I’m still alive.” And they didn’t really have treatments for it because they don’t burn.

[Thomas]
Because what idiot does that.

[Shep]
Right. And that lasted. I stayed burned for a while.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, you could see the outline of my clothes on my skin.

[Emily]
Ooh. I, like you, did not wear sunscreen as I was supposed to. And I lived in Florida and Virginia.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, I got burned a lot. So my earliest memory is: I had a giant bubble on my shoulder.

[Shep]
Oof.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And I was like two. And we lived in western Washington at the time.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
So how I got this, I have no idea. But my sister was terrified it was going to pop in the middle of the night and drown her.

[Thomas]
She had the bottom bunk?

[Emily]
Because I was yeah, I was about two, so she was about five and she was just convinced I was going to drown her in the middle of the night. And I’d say the next worst one is when we moved to the Pacific Northwest from Florida. The sun is very different here I think, and I’m not a scientist, so this is very inaccurate, but I think that something about the humidity that helps filter the sun slightly because I burned more here than I ever did in Florida. My sister and I both got a really bad sunburn to the point we just neither one of us could move. And we were using old wives medicine to heal it and just soaking washcloths in vinegar and just laying it all over our body to help take the sting out because we were desperate.

[Thomas]
I think, Emily, where we are, the altitude plays a lot into it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. As a kid, I burned and peeled every summer, and that was just how we handled the sun. We lived in California.

[Thomas]
That’s a sacrificial layer of skin, right?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
That’s what it’s there for. Yeah.

[Shep]
There’s, like, a tan layer underneath your skin, so you burn off the top layer, and once it peels off, you have a tanned layer underneath that will last you the rest of the summer.

[Emily]
It’s like a snake shedding its skin.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
It’s just natural summer progression.

[Shep]
I just thought that’s how summers were for everyone. No, it turns out.

[Emily]
I don’t remember us religiously wearing sunscreen till the 90s.

[Shep]
I didn’t wear sunscreen till the song.

[Thomas]
Well, we all should have been using sunscreen more. And being a bald man, I definitely use it a lot more now than I used to and certainly lather my kid up. So, sunscreen, that’s our topic today. We’re getting into that warm summer weather where people might be spending more time out in the sun. We thought it was an appropriate topic. This one was a little tricky. I think we’re going to find something that we all had in common. It seems like there’s an obvious choice when it comes to story ideas about sunscreen. Shep, tell us what you came up with.

[Shep]
Okay. Obviously, my first pitch is about a manned space station.

[Thomas]
Naturally.

[Shep]
Naturally.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I don’t remember us religiously wearing sunscreen till the course-

[Shep]
So there was a Kurzgesagt video about terraforming Venus, and the first step is building a giant sun-screen covering Venus putting it in the shade so that its atmosphere cools down. And so here the pitch is that you have this manned space station that is this sun-screen. But then a tragedy on earth leaves the station’s inhabitants, possibly as the last humans in existence.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Shep]
My second pitch is someone on vacation has their sunscreen bottle, or maybe all of their luggage, whatever, swapped and discovers a secret message or a USB key or something in the replaced bottle and spy/mistaken identity hijinks ensue. And also, because it’s Spy-Thriller, the sunscreen makes you invisible

[Thomas]
Naturally.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
Naturally. My final pitch is a rom-com at a nudist beach where you have a sunscreen chemist perfecting their formulas and they meet a quirky beachgoer.

[Emily]
I’m sold.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like this idea a lot. That’s fun.

[Emily]
Naked rom-com. I’m down.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s the title. That’s all I have. Emily, what do you have?

[Emily]
I have sunscreen that turns you invisible in the sunlight, but if it washes off or you get water on it, obviously you’re visible again and you’re visible at night. That’s all I came up with for it.

[Shep]
I can see lots of things with that. You know, if it washes off easily in water, then, you know, pulling the fire alarm, that causes the sprinklers to come on, because that’s how Hollywood movies are.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s how they reveal that someone is there.

[Emily]
You could even make them like vampires. So not only can the vampires walk during the day with this magic sunscreen, but they are also invisible so they can like, stake out their victims and then you know-

[Thomas]
Honestly, invisible daytime vampires? Just kill yourself. Fuck it. Like, I don’t want to live in that world.

[Emily]
That’s it. That’s-

[Shep]
Your choice of words: “Stake out their victims.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Alright. So my next one is a drama about a sunscreen company putting toxic ingredients in their formula and making people really sick and it kills a kid and it could be a courtroom drama, Erin Brockovich type thing.

[Shep]
Erin Brockovich. Yep.

[Emily]
And then another one similar to yours Shep, which I thought this was my most original one and it wasn’t. A post-apocalyptic world on Earth where cities are protected by the sun’s harmful radiation with giant sun-screens. The sun-screens are starting to break down because of the sun’s radiation is naturally making them break down and we’re running out of the resources to keep up the maintenance of it. And it’s a race against time to save humanity.

[Shep]
Starring Mr. Burns.

[Emily]
Yeah, right. I know. I’m like, “How do I pitch this without it being the Simpsons movie?”

[Shep]
Simpsons did it.

[Emily]
Yeah, but it wasn’t about the sun.

[Shep]
No. There was an episode where Mr. Burns builds a machine to block the sun over all of Springfield.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, I forgot about that one.

[Shep]
That was the two-parter where, Who Shot Mr. Burns?

[Emily]
Yeah, I totally oh, my god. I forgot the Who Shot Mr. Burns episode.

[Shep]
It’s a classic!

[Emily]
I remember the drama behind it and the contests they had and the things. It was a lot.

[Shep]
It was a lot.

[Emily]
Oh, and my final one. A string of arsenic poisonings are hitting a small city. At first, there’s no discernible connections between the victims. Eventually, authorities realize that someone has been tampering with sunscreen around the city, but they don’t know where the contaminated bottles are or who’s done the contaminating.

[Thomas]
Will arsenic poison you through skin?

[Emily]
It can.

[Shep]
Don’t question it. Don’t think. It’s a movie.

[Thomas]
Just curious.

[Emily]
It can. But it does take a really long time.

[Thomas]
Well it’s a new experimental poison, then.

[Emily]
There you go. Your turn, Thomas.

[Thomas]
So we agree there are no new ideas. Right?

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
So I have a post apocalyptic story.

[Shep]
Oh!

[Thomas]
In the not-too-distant future, the sunlight is so intense, for science reasons, that you have to wear sunscreen all the time, and certain times of day you can’t even go outside. Our main character is a man who, as far as we know, is the last man on Earth. He’s making his way up north because he figures it might be safer. His logic is to move away from the equator. He’s looting, or maybe scavenging, however we want to phrase that as he goes. But on the map, he sees that pretty soon there’ll be a big push that he’ll have to make without any major cities. Now, he has plenty of food but not enough sunscreen, and everywhere he looks, he can’t find any. The weather unexpectedly turns, and he decides to push hard during a big thunderstorm. He gets stuck in the road because of a fallen tree, and while trying to clear the hazard, he slips and falls in the mud. He realizes he might be able to use the mud as a natural sunscreen and finishes the push up north, where he eventually finds a community of people living safely without having to wear any sunscreen at all. And then also sunscreen that makes you invisible, of course.

[Shep]
Of course!

[Thomas]
Anyway, which post apocalyptic physical sunscreen invisibility story do we want to choose?

[Emily]
Venus! I don’t know.

[Thomas]
I think that one is very cool. I like that one.

[Emily]
It’s really good one.

[Thomas]
Actually. What I really like about that one is, like, everyone on Earth is suddenly dead and you’ve got this outpost of people who are like, “Oh, shit.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“What do we do now?” Just because I like the idea of the Hollywood movie and it being a major, like, fear for people if they think about it too hard. Is it like a giant asteroid and it’s just another dinosaur apocalypse type event?

[Thomas]
I like the irony that the lack of sun is what kills the people on Earth.

[Shep]
The lack of sun?

[Thomas]
Yeah. The asteroid impacts, there is a giant dust cloud-

[Shep]
Ah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Which blocks out the sun permanently, or for hundreds of years.

[Shep]
Which again, is a type of sunscreen.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So what I imagine is that the people on Venus are somehow reliant on some resource from Earth because they haven’t managed to get their production of that set up yet on Venus or something along those lines.

[Shep]
Right. Well, they wouldn’t be on Venus itself. They’d be on the physical mirrors above Venus, blocking the sun.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because they’re just starting the process.

[Shep]
Or they’ve been there for years. I mean, it does take, like I said, a thousand years or something.

[Emily]
Yeah. That’s what I meant by just starting the process.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s only, like, 50 years in.

[Shep]
They’ve only been there for a hundred years.

[Emily]
And they cycle through. So, I mean, they they were expecting to go home. They’re like the light keepers of the old days.

[Thomas]
Whoever they just sent home is in big trouble.

[Shep]
No, their troubles are over.

[Emily]
They have shed the mortal coil and are in the sweet release of death.

[Thomas]
What I mean is that there’s probably a ship on its way back to Earth-

[Shep]
On its way.

[Emily]
Oh, they’re halfway-

[Thomas]
And it’s going to get to an Earth that is uninhabitable and they don’t have enough supplies to slingshot back to Venus.

[Emily]
They can’t turn around-

[Thomas]
You could have a parallel story where you’re following that crew and the people back on Venus.

[Emily]
And through the magic of movies, they can communicate with each other.

[Shep]
I mean, they would be able to communicate with each other. It would just be very delayed. What about other space stations orbiting Earth?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, there would be, wouldn’t there?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
There could be.

[Shep]
That could be a manned moon base.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, everybody on vacation on the moon.

[Shep]
(Laughs)

[Thomas]
“A hell of a light show. Don’t know what we’re gonna do now.”

[Shep]
It’s the old rich couple from-

[Emily]
Gilligan’s Island.

[Shep]
Gilligan’s Island, thank you.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So you like this one more than the nudist rom-com?

[Emily]
I do like the nudist rom-com.

[Thomas]
I do like them both.

[Shep]
And we can’t combine them because-

[Thomas]
I was just going to say, there’s a nudist beach on Venus.

[Emily]
I do like the idea of, like, just having normal PG-13 rom-com things going on, and they’re just completely naked the whole time. Just like, no sex at all. Maybe some kissing, but other than that, it’s just a- they’re just naked.

[Thomas]
At some point they have to talk about pickleball and look directly into the camera.

[Emily]
What’s the story with the naked rom-com? Is it-

[Thomas]
So he’s obviously like an uptight scientist.

[Shep]
Oh, see, I said- I had her as the scientist.

[Thomas]
Okay, well, whoever-

[Shep]
The uptight scientist.

[Thomas]
The scientist is uptight. That was what I was trying to say.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Whoever it is, the scientist is uptight and then the nudist is obviously-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Loosey goosey nudist.

[Shep]
Maybe that’s too tropey. I guess that’s kind of well-worn trail. I like it more if the nudist was like rejecting modern everything, clothes and everything that’s just modern.

[Emily]
No electronics. No-

[Shep]
They were also a scientist, like the researcher, but they gave all that up. No electronics, no modern anything. They don’t even wear clothes. They just live in this nudist colony.

[Emily]
Have a vegan fruitist diet.

[Shep]
Yep. No cooking.

[Emily]
I kind of like that because that’s way opposite from a scientist.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So is the prude, the prudish or clothed scientist, is the sunscreen researcher.

[Emily]
Yeah. And that would be great because he also rejects, like, chemicals.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right. So he has a natural sunscreen that he’s discovered that works for him.

[Shep]
It’s mud.

[Emily]
Yeah, that she’s like, okay. She finds out about it, and it’s kind of like, “Well, what are you using?” Because she wants really good, easily replenishable sunscreen ingredients.

[Shep]
More grown ingredients, fewer heavy metals.

[Emily]
Right. That would give her the impetus to go and seek him out and him to be like, “I’m not messing with your science shit.” That kind of thing.

[Shep]
Right. He’s turned his back on that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So what are we going with?

[Emily]
I like them both. And now I’m really invested in the naked, now I’m invested in the naked rom-com.

[Shep]
This is one with the least substance in the pitch itself which is a single sentence.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean what is the big conflict? That the scientist works for a big chemical company and are they under pressure to discover a better sunscreen? And so the Nudist shows them…

[Emily]
Well, they have a lawsuit because they killed some kids.

[Shep]
Right. Yep.

[Thomas]
“Our arsenic based sunscreen is not performing as well as we had hoped.”

[Shep]
“He didn’t die from skin cancer. The sunscreen worked.” But yeah, you could have that evil corporation. Whereas the scientist just wants to do the science and doesn’t maybe realize that if the corporation discovers this natural sunscreen they will patent it and prevent people from cultivating this plant.

[Thomas]
Right. So the scientist is very excited to like “Oh my gosh, look at this thing. We don’t need to manufacture all these harmful chemicals.”

[Shep]
Right. Whereas the Nudist who maybe has gone through this sort of thing in the past and that’s why they gave up technology. Like, “Look we’re in end stage capitalism.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“All corporations are evil, all modern life is evil. Leave it behind.”

[Thomas]
So is that like going to be the lowest low where the evil corporation does steal the, or they patent the formula and they start manufacturing, mass manufacturing it or they come and they start wiping out the rainforest where this plant grows.

[Emily]
I was thinking they come and start wiping out the indigenous plant.

[Shep]
So then what’s the happy resolution?

[Emily]
Anarchy.

[Thomas]
Stage a nude protest? There’s no news coverage of it though because everyone’s naked. So~.

[Shep]
Or the nudist had lied about what the formula was because they suspected that the corporation would do something like this, having been through this before. And so the scientist gleefully reports, “Okay, here’s what we have.” And the corporation comes in and takes everything and they realize, “Oh, my company is the bad guys.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But then it turned out not to help them at all because it was just nonsense.

[Emily]
Yeah, I could see that.

[Thomas]
It’s an invasive weed in that area-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh yeah.

[Thomas]
And so the nudist sees a way to like “Hmm, I can get someone else to pay to have all this weed removed.”

[Shep]
That’s pretty good.

[Emily]
Would that create a false conflict, too, between them where he’s like, “I can’t believe you told them about it. I told you what was going to happen.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And then when she finds out that he lied, she’s like, “Why would you lie to me? I thought we’d built trust.”

[Thomas]
“I trusted you with my most private parts.”

[Shep]
I like that it’s a false conflict. Like he knew it would be revealed. So he’s not upset that the corporation came in and did exactly what he expected.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And she only finds out that it was a lie when she wishes that she never told them about it and he’s like “Well good news.”

[Thomas]
So she’s got to get fired because it obviously doesn’t work.

[Shep]
Oh yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
And then she ends up homeless and living on the beach.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Good thing she’s at a nudist beach and doesn’t need to buy clothes.

[Thomas]
There’s got to be a scene where she’s trying to move into his place on the beach and she’s got like a big one of those racks of clothes that she’s bringing in and he just doesn’t have closets like “What are you doing?” And then yeah, that’s the end is them doing something with her clothes, donating them or tossing them out the window or-

[Emily]
They make little turtle sweaters.

[Thomas]
Turtle sweaters.

[Emily]
Well, now that I’ve said turtle sweaters, there has to be a turtle on the beach somewhere that they all know and love.

[Shep]
Right. That’s who the nudist talks to.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
When we need exposition and no other characters are around-

[Emily]
He talks to a sea turtle.

[Shep]
He talks to the turtle. Okay, so if we have the main character, who do we follow? We must follow the scientist.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think so.

[Emily]
I mean, we can switch between, right?

[Shep]
I mean, like I said, there would be scenes where you have the nudist talking to the turtle.

[Emily]
But yeah, we would mostly follow the scientist because that’s driving the story.

[Shep]
Right. So we see things from their perspective.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So we must establish them in the city high pressure job at the chemical factory, trying to nail down a new sunscreen, and they’re moving on to human trials. I don’t know.

[Emily]
So they get a nudist colony that’s just like, “Oh, we’re looking. We want to make sure we’re protecting our people.” And they volunteer for this trial.

[Shep]
Or they get paid for it. This is a way of making money.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Nudists make good trial subjects because more exposed skin.

[Emily]
Okay. So they sign up for this trial to get, you know, bring some income into the colony.

[Thomas]
So somebody from the company reaches out to the nudist colony because they have this great idea. Well, maybe it’s somebody from marketing comes up with the idea. “Imagine the headlines!” So they send the scientists down there who really doesn’t want to go down and measure skin stuff on naked people. And maybe they have this weird idea of what a nudist colony is actually like, right?

[Emily]
Yeah. They’re convinced it’s all sex and swingers and-

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. It’s like this lascivious thing. Right. This is a great opportunity to show the world, like, no.

[Emily]
Reiterate that that has nothing to do with it.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s not about that at all. And so yeah.

[Emily]
So she’s interviewing the people, asking about kind of their day to day what their current routine is.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. You’ve got to establish that baseline.

[Emily]
And then she spots- because she’s also going to create a control group. Right?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. That’s why you get the nudist in, because he’s not taking part in the study.

[Emily]
Right. So she’s talking to him, and he’s like, “I’m not doing this.” And she’s like,” oh, great, you could be my control.” And he’s like, “No, I’m not doing any of this.” And so she’s going to try and convince him, but then they talk about how others have burned, but he never does, and he’s got something weird that keeps him from doing that.

[Thomas]
What’s their meet-cute? This is terrible, but we’re talking about nudism/nudity and whatnot. Is their meet-cute that she drops something and he approaches while she’s bent over to pick it up? And so the first introduction to him she has is his cute meat?

[Shep]
Ugh.

[Thomas]
Or is that too in your face?

[Shep]
(Groans) Yes, too in the face. He can’t know that she’s the scientist at first because you want him to be friendly at first.

[Thomas]
Okay. Yeah.

[Shep]
And be, you know, maybe flirty or whatever until he discovers that she is working for the corporation.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So do they meet at the beach bar or one of the local grocery stores or something? Because there’s got to be like a normal village. Not- Like a normal village there too, right? The colony is just kind of incorporated in there.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Their first meeting is clothed. She doesn’t know he’s a nudist at first. He doesn’t know she’s a scientist, and she doesn’t know he’s a nudist.

[Shep]
Oh, then what is he doing there?

[Emily]
He is sending some sort of mail or wire to a family member. So that is the one piece of technology he might be willing to do. Because he doesn’t use cell phones or have a computer or something. So the only thing he’s willing to do is, like, mail a letter. So he’s in town to mail a letter.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And she’s there picking… hmm. Is she there picking up her equipment? Do they have a conversation? And then all her gear gets brought out, and he’s like, “Oh.”

[Shep]
Oh, no. I don’t think he knows at that meeting.

[Thomas]
Or does he leave from that meeting and then her equipment comes out, and he just misses that fact because he left.

[Shep]
I think they see each other on the beach, and that’s when they both discover who the other is.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. They have to leave the first meeting happy having met each other.

[Thomas]
For sure. At some point, he’s got to say, “I hope I see more of you.”

[Shep]
Or she could say that to him and then ironically, later…

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
Oh, and this is where you could establish that he doesn’t have a phone or anything because she wants to exchange contact information. And of course he doesn’t have a phone, so he doesn’t have a number that she can call.

[Thomas]
Does he operate a nudist B&B? And so he’s like, “Do you have a place to stay?”

[Emily]
No, because he’s a kind of a curmudgeon, like anti capitalist. Anti-

[Shep]
Well, because it’s a rom-com, he has to be secretly wealthy.

[Emily]
Of course.

[Shep]
Because that’s how these work.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
So he’s abandoned technology after he has made his millions of dollars.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s made his millions.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s why he was in town. He was wiring money to, like, his mom or some-

[Emily]
Like his nephew at college.

[Shep]
Whatever.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Someone somewhere.

[Thomas]
That’s good. So it actually doesn’t have to be a post office. It could be anywhere, there’s just, like, a Western Union office there.

[Emily and Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Maybe it’s the local hotel because it’s a big established business.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
That would make sense.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
And then yeah. That’s why she’s like, “No, I’m here on business.” So he has no idea she’s there for sciencey stuff.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And she assumes he’s a guest at the hotel, probably.

[Shep]
Yeah. It works out really well.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There’s a logical reason for them both to be there.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So then she goes to the colony. Do they just live integrated within the town, or do they just complete nudists all the time? So they have their own little subdivision.

[Shep]
I think they have a subdivision.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
A beachfront… What’s the word I’m looking for? Compound is a little strong of a word-

[Shep]
Right. It’s not a cult.

[Thomas]
But yeah, but along those lines.

[Emily]
Co-housing community.

[Shep]
Right! Yes.

[Emily]
They all drive around in golf carts.

[Shep]
Solar powered golf carts.

[Emily]
Yeah, of course.

[Thomas]
Without leather seats.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
You put a towel down.

[Emily]
But maybe he wants to encourage the rest to be even more natural. So he’s donated, like, a lot of solar paneling, but nobody knows where it’s coming from necessarily.

[Shep]
Oh, they know where it’s coming from, but they don’t tell her where it’s coming from.

[Emily]
Okay. Right.

[Shep]
They just say, “We had a donor that really set us up, and that’s why we can live independently and do all this stuff.” But the small amount of money from the study will help buying whatever small necessities they need from town.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Does he own the whole compound? Got to come up with a better word.

[Emily]
I like that he would have found it and just decided, “Yeah, this is it.” But when he finds it, they’re still reliant on some things that he’s like, “No, I can fix this problem.”

[Thomas]
Or it’s like, maybe like a co-op thing. Like, he bought the land initially, but as people have moved in, they’ve purchased portions of it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So he was able, with all of his wealth, to set it up, but he no longer owns the whole thing. It’s just a big co-op now.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because they would have some organic farming going on outside the walls.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And he would want to have, like, a large foresty area to forage in, and that’s where the invasive weed is growing.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Making it harder for him to forage. And maybe it’s starting to spread into the farming area and starting to cause problems, and his raw diet is being impacted by that. He’s having to maybe every once in a while go to the grocery store and supplement, which he doesn’t like doing.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Who knows where all that grocery store corporate stuff came from?

[Emily]
What kind of pesticides they have on them.

[Thomas]
Right. And it’s probably, like, one of those, it’s not like, a local mom and pop grocery store.

[Emily]
It’s an ALDI’s.

[Thomas]
Because it’s a resort town. So it’s some big brand name one.

[Emily]
It’s a Whole Foods. So they meet the second time while she’s interviewing everyone to find out what their skincare routine is now to determine who’s going to be-

[Shep]
Maybe she’s going from hut to hut.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And then she runs into his nakedness.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
It’s like, “Oh, oh!”

[Shep]
His Nakedness as a title.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
His Royal Nakedness.

[Emily]
His Royal Nakedness.

[Thomas]
So I can see why he would be unhappy with her being the scientist.

[Emily]
Right. So she starts out trying to have the nice polite conversation, because she’s like, “Oh, I know you. We had a connection.” And then he’s like, “Why are you here?”

[Thomas]
Oh, she thinks this will be easy.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Of course he’s going to sign up for my study. We had a little thing. This can be part of our thing.”

[Emily]
And then he’s like, “Oh, you’re that person,” and immediately puts up the wall and it’s like, “I’m not having anything to do with her.” And that angers her and makes her like-

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think that makes sense.

[Shep]
Right. She tries to justify what she’s doing to him. He’s having none of it. But for her, it’s her life’s work.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So for her it’s important, and for him, it’s important in the opposite direction.

[Emily]
Right. She’s like, “But I’m saving lives. And isn’t in the long run, isn’t that more important?”

[Shep]
Right. They’re both passionate about what they believe in and they believe in opposite things.

[Emily]
Right, yeah, because then later so he’s curt with her at this point, and she’s a little like, she’s taken aback and then insulted. And then later they meet at the hotel bar or something. For some reason… He’s angry, so he needs a drink.

[Shep]
Or the nudist bar.

[Emily]
So he goes to the hotel bar or the nudist bar. Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, because she’s there.

[Shep]
Because she’s hanging out at the nudist place and he comes in for drink and it turns into a fight because they can’t just back down and let the other be.

[Emily]
Yeah, exactly.

[Shep]
They believe they are right. And they want to convince the other person.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This is why they keep arguing.

[Emily]
And it starts with him mansplaining to her why she’s wrong about letting this massive corporation do these things and all the things she’s like, “But in the long run, the money helps save lives. Isn’t that more important?”

[Shep]
And if you really want to get political, you could have a lot of real life examples about awful things corporations have done in the name of profit that have killed people.

[Emily]
I like it.

[Shep]
This movie is going to be hard to get product sponsorship for.

[Emily]
Hundred percent.

[Shep]
Nothing from Nestle, I imagine.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I would say we could use NO-AD sunscreen, but it’s kind of their whole thing is no ads.

[Shep]
Haha.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I think maybe like, the next interaction they have is like, they’ve cooled down a bit, but they’re still, like, “Grrr,” at each other. So she’s there doing her job, and he comes up and is saying something about, like, “Oh, your study is not blind.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
“You’re putting sunscreen on everybody. And you just have a control group with no sunscreen, and you have a group of sunscreen where’s the group who’s getting just cream with no SPF in it?”

[Shep]
Right. “Your methodology is flawed.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. And she’s like, “You’re not a scientist.” He’s like-

[Thomas and Shep]
“Actually-“

[Thomas]
And so that’s how maybe it gets revealed that he does know what he’s talking about. He has multiple PhDs.

[Emily]
And while she’s slathering up some old lady, she could see him in the distance fishing or something. And so she’s like asking her questions because she’s still stewing, but also interested. So she’s asking the lady questions about “If he’s so anti all this stuff, how come he’s not red like a lobster or doesn’t have liver spots or whatever?” And the lady’s like, “Oh, yeah, he uses some kind of thing he finds in the forest. We don’t know about it. None of us have tried it.”

[Shep]
Looks like Thomas was gonna say something, so I’m holding back from saying something.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What I was going to say is that perhaps instead of coming to study a new product that they have manufactured, they’ve heard about this nudist colony that never gets sunburns. They have an incredible skin-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And they’re like, “What are they doing? What brand are they using? Because we got to study that. Why is it so good?” But then I feel like very quickly we get to the plant or whatever the solution is.

[Shep]
Well, if the only person that knows how to make it is the male love interest, then it’s her trying to convince him to tell her what it is.

[Emily and Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And she can’t convince him because he’s not going to be swayed by money.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s secretly wealthy.

[Emily]
And also money’s evil.

[Shep]
And the love of money is evil.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Money itself… That’s why he didn’t give everything to charity, like. (Unwillingness noises)

[Emily]
I mean, it has its uses.

[Shep]
It has its uses.

[Emily]
So then could she be like a dermatologist and he a chemist? I think then you get that idea of like, she’s helping people. She’s just a dermatologist for this big conglomerate, and he’s been a chemist for huge conglomerates, and he was the one coming up with the chemicals to make everything.

[Shep]
So I like the idea of her doing experiments while she’s there trying to discover what it is without the recipe.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Like, there was one person that had one bottle of it, and then she’s, like, trying to “Okay. It’s kind of this color. So what in the environment is kind of this color? There’s kind of a clayish thing. Maybe that’s one of the ingredients.” So she tries that on some people. This is where her methodology is flawed, because she doesn’t have a control group, because she doesn’t have a product that she’s trying to test yet.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
She’s trying to get the initial results. Like, “Does this work at all? Does this work at all? Does this work at all?”

[Emily]
And that’s why she’s a little blind in it, because she’s not a chemist. She just knows, like these ingredients are typically used in these things.

[Thomas]
Right. And so she’s, like, feeling like, “Oh, there’s, like, an oiliness to it, so it must have some kind of this product in it.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And she’s looking at the results and being like, “Wow, is there collagen somewhere in it? Because these people’s skin is amazing. And vitamin E. And it must have all these different things, like, where is he getting this?” And so as she learns more about him and his kind of hippy dippy ways of not just being a nudist, but being natural in all aspects of his life, and she realizes, “Oh, well, he’s not getting, like, chemicals. Like, where is this all coming from?” Does she start to try to follow him into the forest, but he-

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Absolutely.

[Shep]
Or she follows him into town thinking that he’ll go buy the ingredients.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, right.

[Emily]
Or he’s getting them shipped in from somewhere.

[Shep]
Or maybe he does get packages and it’s just, like, packages from his nephew from college.

[Thomas]
It’s like cookies from his mom.

[Shep]
Yeah. Something.

[Emily]
Yeah. I was thinking it’s like his favorite junk food that he just can’t give up. It’s the one thing, like but we don’t find that out till the end. It’s like Cheetos.

[Thomas]
Right. Whoever sponsors it, “These Takis are the best.”

[Shep]
Right. I don’t think that’s the end. I think it’s in the middle where he gets busted.

[Thomas]
“No one makes chips like Funyuns, I think.”

[Shep]
Right. You joke. I like Funyuns.

[Emily]
Gotta be Funyuns.

[Shep]
Funions are great.

[Emily]
I love Funyuns.

[Thomas]
All right, well, speaking of snacks, I feel like we should go grab some snacks and take a quick break. When we come back, the rest of our story about sunscreen.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Our nudist scientist has just gotten caught, or is about to get caught perhaps, eating snacks. Processed food, junk. “Hypocrite!”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Which is great because he can feel shame and not be able to retort properly after she bursts into his hut trying to catch him with the ingredients, and it turns out to be Oreos or whatever. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

[Thomas]
“This bright orange isn’t anywhere on the island.”

[Shep]
Right. So now he has to justify himself why he’s consuming these goods.

[Thomas]
Yeah, he’s kind of had this almost holier-than-thou stance the whole time-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so this softens that up and gives her an in.

[Shep]
Right. Yes. Right. Nobody’s perfect. He’s not perfect. She’s not perfect.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He tries to hold everyone to an impossibly high standard that he himself does not meet.

[Thomas]
So does she use that to her advantage, to spend more time with him or get closer to him, or- Because she knows he’s the key. Right?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Everybody on the island says we get it from him.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s why she wanted to get the recipe from him in the first place. But he’s not having any of it.

[Thomas]
Right. Because he knows what’s going to happen.

[Shep]
Right. So how does she use it to her advantage?

[Thomas]
Well, how does she eventually get what she thinks is the secret ingredient? Obviously he needs to tell her it’s this invasive weed that he wants gone.

[Emily]
Oh, maybe he figures that out when she’s following him into the forest. Like, not the first time, but she keeps doing it because she’s like, “This is the time.” Because the first time. He’s like-

[Shep]
I think that she gets caught following him the first time and so she has someone else follow him the subsequent time, but he knows it would be someone on her request that’s following him and spying on him. So that’s when he maybe talks to that person and says, “Okay, this is a secret, don’t tell anyone.”

[Thomas]
So is it some person who lives at the nudist colony and she’s sort of recruited them as a local gopher to help out with the with the project?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Sure, yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Maybe it’s like some young person who grew up there, and they they’re gonna go to the mainland to go to college. He has an interest in medicine.

[Shep]
They’re also science interested.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So this is, like, a great opportunity for him.

[Thomas]
“This is like an internship.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“You can put it on your resume.”

[Shep]
So how do we get these two together after this simultaneous betrayal? This is the part that I’m having trouble with.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, if we do this where each one sabotages the other, how do we couple them up afterward? Or is it not a rom-com and it’s just a movie?

[Emily]
I like it being rom-com.

[Shep]
I also like it being a rom-com.

[Thomas]
So the lowest low is they find out that they were-

[Emily]
Both betraying each other.

[Thomas]
She finds out that he played her, he finds out that she was just who he expected. “You ran back and told your bosses immediately.”

[Emily]
They have a big fight on the beach, screaming at each other about this because she’s angry when she finds out.

[Thomas]
Oh, she leaves and then she comes back to fight with him because she got fired. Because that fucking plant doesn’t do anything.

[Emily]
Yeah. “You knew this whole time that I that it wasn’t the right plant. You purposely misled me. You did this.” And he’s like, “Yeah. And you went and sold it to the corporation. And they came in and wiped the whole plant out in the whole area, just like I told you they would.”

[Shep]
Okay. How much time has passed? So she reports back to the corporation, “I found the ingredient. It’s this plant.”

[Emily]
Does she go back at that point?

[Shep]
No, she can’t go back because she thinks “I’ll have to do a study on it. I’m telling giving them a progress report. My study isn’t over, but I’m going to let them know, here’s what I found so far. If I get hit by a bus or whatever, they’ll know,” because she’s doing her job well, she’s a good scientist. And then while she’s still there, thinking she has time to investigate the plant, that’s when the corporation swoops in with a team of people and they just scour the forest and get all of that plant that they can, both to study it for themselves and to prevent anyone else from having what they think is this revolutionary compound.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And to start the mass marketing.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so she gets disillusioned a bit because the corporation does this. The corporation sort of betrays her at this point.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Maybe she talks to the guy, at this point. They go to the bar and she’s like, “I can’t believe that they did exactly what you said they were going to do. Maybe you were right. Maybe I’m in the wrong.” But then she gets fired because it’s discovered that it was all a lie. And it does nothing, and it has no properties. And the corporation spent millions of dollars to do a bunch of simultaneous studies on the compounds in this plant, and it was all wasted. And they blame it all on her, and they’re like they’re like, “Don’t even bother coming back. You’re fired.”

[Thomas]
How mad at her is he that she told the corporation, because he got what he wanted, right?

[Shep]
Not at all. He’s feeling guilty about it. He is sorry that he did this to her, but he’s not sorry that the corporation suffered.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He wanted the corporation to suffer more than he’d wanted her to not suffer for what she was doing.

[Thomas]
But is he feeling guilty when she’s fired or when she’s initially expressing… Because there’s sort of, like, two different moments.

[Shep]
Right. He knows when she is expressing regret that the corporation betrayed her, that the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet. So maybe you put that in the dialogue where he’s trying to comfort her and maybe saying, “Hey, maybe you should quit that job and get another line of work. There’s always openings here at the at the nudist colony.”

[Emily]
“We could use a good dermatologist.”

[Shep]
Right. “Lots of sun exposure. Just saying.”

[Thomas]
So I like that a lot that he’s like, “Maybe you should quit,” because yeah, you’re right. He knows.

[Shep]
Right. But he also doesn’t tell her that it’s coming.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So she’s still mad at him, both for lying to her indirectly through the guy that she had following him and for setting her up to take the fall.

[Thomas]
Yeah. She goes to the hut and is like, “Oh, my god, they fired me, blah, blah, blah, and how could you lie to me?” And he’s like, “I mean, I did say that you should quit.” And she has this moment of, like, realization that “That’s why you said that, you knew this would happen or that this could happen.”

[Shep]
Oh, no. She’s got to discover that he set her up before she confronts him, because she realizes he was telling her… She’s like, “Maybe I should have quit when he told me to quit.” And then she’s like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

[Emily]
“How did he know?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
That’s what she goes to his hut to demand how he knew, because she’s in denial at this point, because she’s back on friendly terms with him, and she doesn’t want to believe that he betrayed her or set her up, and he just admits it because he’s got nothing to hide. Because he doesn’t have anything to hide.

[Thomas]
Hey!

[Shep]
Hey! “And it’s like it’s kind of your fault for you chose to work for them, so everything in your life is a result of your choices.” So she storms off. She’s mad still. She doesn’t want to hear it. She really doesn’t want to hear it because she wants to be mad at him and make it all his fault. And have none of the blame herself.

[Emily]
Does she dig into him a little bit and make him feel bad not only about what happened to her, but about his situation of fleeing society, leaving his family behind, and choosing to separate himself, because even he lives further off from the rest of the compound even. He’s almost hermit-like.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And does she, like, talk about him putting up emotional walls? “And you may be physically naked, but your heart is-“

[Shep]
Right. Oh, his hut is on the top of this little hill, and she’s like, “You look down on everyone.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
So he gets the extra dig of her both feeling guilty about her work being ruined, and maybe now she’s not going to be able to get a job because now her reputation is sullied. And then also he’s feeling bad because she’s pointed out that he’s a hypocrite and looks down on everyone.

[Shep]
Yes. But he is a hypocrite, and he does look down on everyone.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, we establish multiple times that he holds everyone to impossibly high standards.

[Emily]
I know. But does he feel bad that she is calling him out on it specifically because it’s coming from her?

[Shep]
I don’t think that he should feel bad.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
I think that he should accept himself for the way that he is, flaws and all, even though he doesn’t accept other people for the same thing. And maybe that’s the endpoint or the character arc is that he accepts her and her flaws.

[Thomas]
So how do we get these two back together? What changes whose mind?

[Shep]
There’s got to be… okay. The corporation is setting her up to take the fall for everything, and he must know a way to get the evidence or whatever that the corporation was moving around behind her back, that she can then leak out to the public and exonerate herself and potentially get another job in the industry somewhere else. So she’s not blackballed for embezzling, whatever. And in fact, it was the corporation screwing her over, which is also counter to his interests. If he is interested in her and wants her to stay, now she has the freedom to go back to the mainland and get a job somewhere else. Yet another corporation, rather than staying and being the nudist colony doctor.

[Thomas]
So she gets fired. She can’t stay at the hotel anymore because the corporation was paying for that.

[Emily]
And, yeah.

[Thomas]
She has a return ticket, but it’s a week away, and she can’t get it changed for whatever reason. So she has to stay at his hut.

[Emily]
Has he sullied her reputation within the nudist community too? Are they now shunning her?

[Shep]
No, they like her. She’s been friendly with them.

[Emily]
That’s what I’m saying. So they’re on board with her still.

[Shep]
Right. They would welcome her to stay a week.

[Emily]
So they are welcoming her to stay with them.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So she’s, well, it’s a shitty situation. They’re more than willing to help her out.

[Thomas]
So she’s around still.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They’re going to see each other.

[Emily]
And then she gets time to relax finally.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
And she can decompress and spend her time talking to the Turtle and telling her side of things.

[Thomas]
Does she find, like, a secluded beach where she tries out some light nudity?

[Emily]
Yeah. I was thinking there should be, like, a scene of her taking off, like, her bikini top and just kind of like testing it out.

[Shep]
This is where she’s talking to the Turtle because the Turtle is nude all the time and it doesn’t bother him, so she could do it too.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s right.

[Thomas]
So she’s on the beach and she’s looking around. There’s nobody around. “Okay. I feel all right.” She kind of tentatively takes her top off, and it’s like, this is so weird. And she maybe hears a noise, and she’s like and turns around, and it’s the Turtle, like, crawling across the beach. And she’s like, “Oh, it’s you.”

[Emily]
And then she has, like, a big conversation with the turtle.

[Shep]
This might be dumb, but she’s like, “Oh, it’s you.” And then she talks to the Turtle for a while, but he’s there.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
He thinks she’s talking to him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He was over her other shoulder.

[Shep]
Just out of frame slightly. You know how movies are.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We’re like, “How did they not see that person?”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It doesn’t make any sense. Don’t think about it. So he says something after she has her monologue with the turtle, and then she replies, and there’s like, “What?”

[Thomas]
She’s sitting on a towel on the beach facing toward the ocean, and he’s sitting three or four feet behind her.

[Emily]
In a hammock in the tree.

[Thomas]
Oh, that would be funny. Yeah.

[Shep]
Especially if he’s there. Like, if you see him in frame, but it’s dark, so you don’t notice that he’s there.

[Thomas]
You don’t call attention.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. You see the turtle that’s in the sunlight first, and then she turns back, and then you see him like, take that straw hat off of his head when she starts talking, like, “What is going on?” And then listens to her monologue. So we, the audience, see him there the whole time.

[Thomas]
So then at some point, does she stand up or turn around or somehow he sees her topless, and she’s like, “Oh, my goodness.”

[Emily]
I like the idea of him interrupting or responding at the end of her monologue.

[Thomas]
She’s like, looking at the turtle, like, “What? Wait a minute.” Turns around. So is he like, really blasé? He’s like, couldn’t care less that she’s nude.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, “Oh, great. Good for you. Whatever.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He’s like, “That’s the point of this place.”

[Thomas]
Puts the hat back on his face, lays down again because he’s not trying to oggle her.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
He’s he doesn’t care.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And she storms off because she’s not alone anymore.

[Emily]
Well, because he knew she was there and didn’t make himself known.

[Thomas]
Rude.

[Shep]
But this was his spot. This was his private spot that he goes to. That’s why he has a hammock here.

[Emily]
But she didn’t know that.

[Shep]
It’s not his fault that she didn’t know his private spot. And she intruded into his private space and then got mad at him for her intrusion.

[Emily]
Yeah. This is the whole argument that they have.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So where do they have their reconciliation?

[Thomas]
So what are the changes they’re both making? She’s letting loose a little bit. She’s not being quite so uptight. And he is learning to accept her flaws.

[Shep]
Because she calls him out repeatedly for his hypocrisy, which he has shown repeatedly throughout the movie. She just hammers him with it until he finally realizes, “Maybe I should be as accepting with others as much as I am with myself. Which is a lot.”

[Thomas]
So does he come around to that revelation first, like his character concludes before hers, or do they happen at the same time?

[Emily]
Yeah. I think his has to conclude before hers.

[Thomas]
Because what I have in mind is that she shows up at his hut with a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or whatever the snack is.

[Shep]
Insert sponsor here.

[Thomas]
Like she brings more of the snack. Yeah, exactly. And that’s her way of apologizing.

[Shep]
Right. He’s like, “Did anyone see you?”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “Oh, you can’t just be flashing those around here.”

[Emily]
Why would she because I’m not going to risk my normal problem with men on this. Why is she going to apologize to him? Because she’s not going to apologize because she is firm in her belief that he was wrong to not make his presence known. So she’s not apologizing for invading his space.

[Thomas]
Well, and if it’s the ultimate end thing, like, it’s how are they reconciling?

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And I think you’re right. I think what she has to apologize for is-

[Emily]
Selling him out.

[Thomas]
Selling them out. Yeah.

[Emily]
Selling out the selling out the plant.

[Thomas]
And I think maybe the point that he makes is, “What if I had told you the real plant? What if you had found out what the real plant was?”

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
“It would be gone now.” Maybe a whole bunch of damage was done to the ecosystem because all these people were stomping through, just tearing out plants.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
I want to add something to their meet-cute at the beginning where they disagree on something and they agree to disagree on it because it’s something minor and it doesn’t matter. But then throughout the rest, they’re very firm in their beliefs, and each is trying to convince the other. And that final scene at the end, they’re like, “Agree to disagree.” They’re not going to see eye to eye, but they can still get along.

[Thomas]
So there’s like, cucumber water and regular water in the hotel lobby.

[Emily]
Could be some yeah.

[Thomas]
Or something simple like that, where she’s like, “Ah, refreshing cucumber water.”

[Emily]
And he’s like-

[Thomas]
And he’s like, “Just regular water.” Although he would probably drink his own water because who knows where that- It’s probably unfiltered water.

[Emily]
It hasn’t shifted down through the leaves of the trees-

[Thomas]
Right?

[Shep]
All right, so what are we missing? Are we missing anything?

[Thomas]
I mean, I just feel like the the resolution between them is pretty weak.

[Emily]
Is a little weak.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. Both of them need to have a big revelation in order to come back together. Maybe there has to be more than just a conversation with the turtle, like-

[Shep]
Right. They argue at that time because she’s mad at him for not making his presence known.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And he’s like, “But you intruded on my space.” But he also maybe apologizes for using her to get at the corporation. And maybe he’s like, “Well, that was not the coolest thing I could have done.”

[Emily]
Maybe they’re throwing her- Ooh ooh! The town’s throwing her a going away party because they all love her and adore her.

[Shep]
The nudist colony is.

[Emily]
Yeah. The nudist colony is throwing her a going away party because her flight takes off tomorrow.

[Shep]
Oh, is this going to end at the airport? Because it’s a rom-com.

[Emily]
No, it’s going to end at the party.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. I like the idea of him running through security naked. “Clearly I don’t have anything.”

[Shep]
Right. What are they wanding over?

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’re wanding over his genitals. Turns out he has a Prince Albert that we’ve never shown or talked about.

[Shep]
So he takes it out and puts it in the-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because we’ve never shown and talked about it. So it could have been there the whole time.

[Emily]
I was thinking at the party, she could be talking to one of her friends that she’s, you know, the family she’s been staying with or whatever, and they kind of talk about, “Yeah, he’s a curmudgeon. Yeah. He puts us to these high standards, but he does a lot of good for us. He blah, blah, blah,” showing that he’s kind of got a heart, and he does kind of accept them for who they are because he gave him the solar power, and he didn’t have to do that, and he came up with the sunscreen and shared it with everyone. He didn’t keep that to himself. So she’s seeing that he’s not not accepting of people, because he does he cares. Right? In some ways. So she’s feeling a little like, “Okay, maybe he’s not as big of a jackass as ever as I thought.” And then he sees her and-

[Thomas]
I mean, I think the nudism is like a phenomenally accepting trait. Right? Like, come, literally come as you are.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It doesn’t matter what your body looks like. You’re welcome here.

[Shep]
I think that if she found out about the solar panels and all that stuff that he’s doing earlier when she yells at him for living in the hut on top of the hill, that’s just another way that he looks down on everyone and feels that he’s superior.

[Emily]
I think originally that’s how she views it, and they do have that conversation. But at the party, I think maybe the people show her that “He’s not actually looking down on us.” I don’t-

[Shep]
Oh, she could argue with them about that same argument that she made to him, that he feels superior and whatever and looks down on. “And that’s why giving you the solar panels or whatever,” and they’re like, “What are you talking about? The solar panels are great, and they’re very useful and he didn’t have to do it.”

[Emily]
“It helped build our community and made us stronger.”

[Shep]
Yes. Right.

[Thomas]
“Yeah, we save tons of money every year.”

[Emily]
Yeah. So she softens on him at that moment.

[Shep]
What are the two ethical arguments that were on The Good Place, where it’s the motivations versus the consequences? Like, she’s judging him on the motivation.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Like, he’s giving the solar panel because he wants to feel superior, and they’re judging him on the consequences where the solar panels really improve their lives. So it’s a good thing. She’s like, “No, it’s a bad thing.” And they’re like, “We’re looking at it from two different angles.”

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Emily]
“The reasons he did it don’t matter. The fact that he did it and it strengthened our community is what’s important.”

[Shep]
That’s what’s important to the community that’s affected by it.

[Emily]
Yeah. And so she kind of can see that now.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then did he buy all that land to preserve it?

[Emily]
Sure.

[Thomas]
Maybe whatever research he was doing he realized was damaging this area, and so he buys it all up to protect it so that he can deny whatever company, won’t let them come in.

[Shep]
Well, see, now I want to throw in a scene earlier when he catches her following him into the woods where he finds a rare bird or something that he can point out to her. Like they have the very limited habitat and this is one of those few places where they can thrive. But then he also calls the corporation in, which damages the habitat where the birds live and that kind of like, “Wow, why would he do that?” I might be overthinking this.

[Thomas]
Maybe the-

[Emily]
It’s a migratory bird, and they’re watching it just as it’s leaving.

[Thomas]
There you go. Right.

[Emily]
So now’s the time for them to come in.

[Thomas]
It doesn’t live here. This is just a stop on its path.

[Emily]
Yeah. And these stops allow it to rest so that when it gets to the nesting grounds, it can propagate the species.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but the habitat is threatened by the invasive weed. Why doesn’t he just pay to have the weed removed? He has all this money.

[Shep]
Don’t overthink it. If you keep finding logical flaws… But yes, why would he just not pay to have it removed? That’s a very good question.

[Thomas]
Especially by people who would respect the rest of the ecosystem whilst doing it.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
I think you guys are overthinking it because it’s rom-com and it doesn’t matter.

[Thomas]
I think you’re probably right. So is that good then? They fall in love, like-

[Emily]
Yeah. So at the party- Because I want in an earlier scene when she’s digging at him about his hypocrisy, I want her to steal the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Not just, like she physically takes that bag that he just got that he hasn’t opened yet. Yeah. She takes it from him and is like, “This is your punishment,” and walks off.

[Thomas]
“Don’t open them. They’re the best when it’s fresh.”

[Emily]
At the party after she has that conversation and comes to the conclusion of maybe it is the results that are more important or the consequences are more important than the motivation. She goes back and gets the chips and goes and finds him. “I’m sorry. You curmudgeon old man.” And then he apologizes. Or maybe he apologizes to her first and then she goes and gets them.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
But that’s I think her peace token is then, because I like the idea of her giving him the chips back or giving him the snacks.

[Shep]
Is he at the party?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So she is also at the party,

[Emily]
The party’s for her. So she’s definitely there.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
I think he’s kind of loitering on the edge.

[Shep]
So she’s not going to find him at his hut, she’s finding him at the party.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think maybe the intention is originally to find him at the hut and then she runs into him at the party.

[Thomas]
If he’s going to apologize first, shouldn’t he come to the party? Because it’s his last chance.

[Emily]
That’s why she runs into him at the party.

[Shep]
Okay, here’s what I want her to do.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because he is secretly eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos or insert sponsor here and like hiding that part of himself, she offers him the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos at the party in public.

[Emily]
In front of everyone.

[Shep]
And everyone knows he’s not going to accept them because he doesn’t eat those things. And then he does and says “Delicious!” or whatever. Really sell the ad placement.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Hits the spot,” whatever.

[Thomas]
Whatever the line they tell us he has to say, that’s what he says.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“Grilled to perfection.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s him accepting this flaw in himself, that he wants to be separate from all these corporations, but also Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are delicious and he can’t help himself.

[Thomas]
Yeah,

[Shep]
So this is him coming out and exposing his true vulnerabilities to this community that he does distance himself from, not because he feels superior, but he feels inferior and doesn’t want them to know who he really is.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Emily]
It’s a great character arc.

[Thomas]
And then after he eats the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in front of everybody, everyone’s looking at him just like, aghast. And then he kind of notices everyone’s looking at him and he says, “I feel so exposed.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
While they’re all standing there naked together?

[Emily]
Completely naked. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Is she naked at this point? Is she ever naked?

[Emily]
I think maybe she’s topless. Like, she’s not that comfortable. She’s not going to go full-

[Shep]
You have her naked in the post credit scene.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or the end credit scene that the credits scroll over is them naked at the beach, whatever, with the turtle.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s the during the credits, there’s like pictures of them in the water with the turtle and-

[Shep]
Strategically placed.

[Thomas]
The turtle stealing their clothes. Or her clothes, I guess. He doesn’t-

[Shep]
Slowly crawling away on the beach, pulling her clothes with them, or the turtle wearing her bikini.

[Emily]
I like the turtle wearing her bikini.

[Thomas]
We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about sunscreen. Does it deserve a place in the sun, or should we stick it where the sun don’t shine?

[Emily]
Works so good, this one.

[Thomas]
Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Take a moment to subscribe to the show and make sure you enable automatic downloads in your podcatcher so you can be among the first to listen to each new episode. As sure as the sun comes up, Emily, Shep, and I will be back for another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]