- Bobby's Snacks
- Posts
- Bobby's Snacks Vol. 13: Tonight the Sky is Melancholy
Bobby's Snacks Vol. 13: Tonight the Sky is Melancholy
Bob Raymonda
April 14, 2024
Happy #AudioDramaSunday friends!
Right now, I’m sitting in a king-sized bed in a hotel upstate. Sam and I came up to visit friends and family, and while we’ve missed a lot of the people we originally planned to see, it’s been an extremely restful time regardless. Last week was my dad’s birthday, so I was stoked to get to spend the day yesterday relaxing and sharing Taskmaster with him, which we just knew he would love. We were going to get together with our sister and her kids today, but they caught a stomach bug at a birthday party yesterday, so it sounds like instead it’ll be more of the same. And while it maybe hasn’t been the visit we originally planned, getting this one on one time with my pop is rare these days, so I’m going to relish in it.
On Friday night, we were able to get together with some great folks at a fun bar called Harvey’s Garden for a night of catching up. It was fantastic getting to see Christie Donato, our co-creator on Windfall, along with Derek Emerson Powell (not pictured) and Krystal Osborne who play Tom and Clara on Forgive Me! respectively, as well as an unnamed inmate and Admiral Timms in Windfall! There was also an appearance by our friend Claudine and Aurelio, two of Adam’s closest friends he’s made since moving to the area. All in all, it’s been a fantastic weekend, and I’m glad we were able to carve it out:
Now let’s hop to it:
I mentioned this last week, but Sam and I got to see the penultimate performance of Night Vale’s most recent tour, The Attic. I’ve been a fan of this show since just before their first anniversary all the way back in 2013, and I’m happy to say that they’ve only continued to improve in the time since. The chemistry between Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, Jeffrey Cranor, Disparition, and Kate Jones is palpable and you could tell they were having an absolute blast. So glad we got to catch this!
Ouch. The deeper this story goes, the more that Ella Watts, Amber Devereaux, and their brilliant cast hurts me. We’re eking up to the end of the first season and I am not ready for this show to be out of my regular listening rotation. I’m going to need all of you to listen to the absolute hell out of this show so that they can get the necessary resources they need to continue it. Because wow, does this story deserve to keep going and going and going! The exploration of the Fae realm and the power imbalance that arrises from our heroes choosing to accept or reject their place in the story is absolute fire.
Speaking of endings I wasn’t ready for, the season finale of Truth & Claw dropped this week! And while I am still not okay with the fact that I’ll be living through a dearth of new Archibald Fleet and Clara Entwhistle stories for the forseeable future, I am so glad that I was able to catch up and be current for this wild ride. I felt a lot of parallels between the mysteries in both High Vaultage and this new season, in ways that were incredibly satisfying, and fun to try and catch as they happened. Three thousand cheers to Chris & Jen Sugden, they deserve all the flowers in the world (and a well deserved rest).
The newest episode of Chronicles was written and performed by Tavius Marshall, who eagle-eyed (eared?) Observer Pictures fans will remember as Malik on Margaritas & Donuts, Faith McQuinn’s brilliant rom-com from all the way back in 2021. I was so thrilled to hear that he’d be joining our roster for this miniseries, and even more stoked to actually hear what he’d come up with. The story of a man who didn’t (no, couldn’t) follow in the footsteps of his lauded doctor father in the midst of the Destroyer pandemic, who is reckoning with latent childhood trauma, and fearing what kind of father he himself will be? Beautiful stuff.
It’s sort of funny, getting to go back to the beginning of a series as long-running as We’re Alive. Witnessing the origins of the outbreak from a new vantage point, especially as they work through the end of their run with a story set years in the world’s future. It breaks my heart, honestly, listening to these adventure scouts discussing escaping Catalina and getting back to normalcy. A normalcy that quite literally does not, no, can not exist anymore. And won’t ever again. I love this cast and I love this crew and I love this show and I hope you’ll consider it. It’s worth a listen even if you haven’t been a fan of Wayland Productions for years!
On the continued topic of shows that are about to end, which I am also not ready for, we come to one of my all-time favorites. And by golly, is it still satisfying to see Moc Weepe’s sweeping, series-long ambitions come to fruition. He’s a wretched villain, in the most literal sense of the word, who needs to be connected to machines and hidden from the sun to be kept alive, and yet? He’s still the smarted person in just about every room he enters. And Kozma Laslo still isn’t ready to recognize that basic fact… much to her own dismay.
And in another, altogether different tale of zombie horror, I’ve finished Precious Cargo! Getting to witness the very first gasps of the apocalypse from 20,000 feet in the air was tense and stressful, but seeing the depths that survivors will go to continue the infection’s spread is just heart breaking. The sympathy that I felt for the inhabitants of the island where that plane lands at the end of the series knows no bounds. Can’t wait to start the next installment!
Whiskey’s getting real about the guilt she feels about killing Junior’s father. Sure, if she hadn’t done it, Harry and her would have been stuck in prison for the end of the world, rather than able to at least explore its vast emptiness… but then they also wouldn’t be pursued by the vengeful specter of his grieving son… Would it have been better if he’d successfully fought back? And Whiskey were taken out of the equation entirely? A futile mental exercise, at this point, but at least something to transmit over the airwaves in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, he won’t take out his revenge on Harry, a woman that Whiskey believes had nothing to do with his pain.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL, GIVE ME AWAY IS BACK FOR SEASON TWO!! This week saw the release of both a fun season-one recap that I helped produce, as well as the pulse-pounding season-two premiere. Things pick up immediately where they’ve left off, and both Morgan and Graham/Joshua are on a warpath of their own making. It was so satisfying to hear Brooke/Dierdre tell him that he could be off-leash in their negotiation with the government, and even more so when Morgan finally listened to Jamie and let her go back to Red Camp, where she belonged. Tune in next week for an interview with me, Mac Rogers, and Jordana Williams about Gideon Media making a serialized show for the first time in their storied audio drama career!
May 5 will see the return of Yhane Washington Smith’s brilliant historical fiction series, and I was able to get a sneak peek at the premiere. While it does follow up the harrowing events of the third season finale, it also takes us back to the beginning, before Stephanie St. Clair’s daughter was even born, or she became the gangster she was meant to be. It’s beautiful stuff and I absolutely cannot wait to hear the rest!
BONUS SNACK
Stephen Graham Jones’ slasher trilogy came to an insanely satisfying conclusion this week. Jade Daniels, an young Indigenous woman from the small town of Proofrock, Idaho has survived not one but two massacres in the last near-decade, and here she is, ready to survive a third. With a found family made up of other survivors, and a begrudging relationship with a wider town that still suspects this weird horror-obsessed kid was the true culprit all along, we get to witness a literal symphony of brutal killings and heartbreaking revelations. And without spoiling it anymore than that? I’ll say one thing, that made the whole thing that much more worth it: Christian Burial Ground. Utterly brilliant, subversive stuff, and I highly recommend you consider checking out the entire series!