The Only One—Match Game ‘76 (Transcript)

Will Riley 

We get ready to match the stars. Gary Burghoff, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Madlyn Rhue, Richard Dawson, Donnelly Rhodes, as we play the star studded big money Match Game 76 and now here’s the star of Match Game 76 and so began yet another episode of Match Game, more or less like any other episode of Match Game, already baking under the studio lights a pre danger Bay. Donnelly Rhodes adjusted his collar as host. Gene Rayburn walked on stage for a customary preamble. The Match Game set was muggy even before the studio lights went on, the heat, I imagine, did not do anything for his nerves. The remedy for regulars on the show, of course, was booze. The custom was one big drink before the show and a few sips from a drink under the desk between breaks. Charles Nelson Reilly was already sweating, as it is, under a toupee or a big hat, so he always insisted on a gin and tonic under his desk, which he claimed was actually more hydrating than water. But Dawn, he was just raw dogging the experience, so to speak, Rose had been pretty fortunate to get seat number six. He was on Match Game to promote goldenrod, a drama based around professional rodeo athletes, where he played the role of Keno McLaughlin. He was acting alongside the old dramatic standby Donald Pleasance, found my true

 

Speaker 1 

vocation. Result. Why? Rodeo promoted? Yes, you give her back rodeo promoting,

 

Will Riley 

as well as a then unknown bit player by the name of Hagen Beggs, after saying this and that about the upcoming episode of mash with Gary Berghoff, Ray burns started the show in earnest. Now, all right, Janie, you know the rules. You fill in the blank and you see, if you can get as many matches as you can with our panel of assorted wackos over here, I’d like you to make a selection after I push my magic button here, if I can just get this to work. Okay, Bing, there we go, A or B. You want to go with B? Okay, well, here it is. Let me just open this up now. Did you hear about Dean Martin’s new ice cream parlor? They had to close it down because instead of having ice cream in the freezer, he was blanking in it. Everyone grabbed their marker and started scribbling an answer on the card, as usual. Brett Somers said she didn’t hear the question and that she didn’t understand it, using levity to stall for time so others could answer. They couldn’t stretch the time that the episode took. Rhodes didn’t need it. He wrote his answer down right away. All right. Janie Dean Martin was blanking in the freezer, drinking, drinking. Good answer, a good answer back. And that’s certainly what came to my mind. All right. Gary Berghof, what do you got a gambling huh? Well, well, it is Las Vegas that makes sense. Brett. Brett Somers, you put down crying? Well, I don’t think Dean Martin is that much of a sad drunk. Charles. There we go. Drinking, yes, Madeleine, gambling, gambling. Do you people know who Dean Martin is? He’s a famous singer, you know? Okay, drinking, you’re on point. All right. Don, what was Dean Martin doing in the freezer? Don Rhodes turned his card around. Well, I put down making Whoopee. The audience liked that one quite a bit a pat joke for Match Game, of course, but he delivered it quite well. Donnelly Rhodes was grinning from ear to ear. Alright? Janie, that’s two matches for you. Barry, it’s your turn, so you’ve got a left to you now. Here it is. Dumb. Dora was so dumb. How dumb was she? She was so dumb. She thought the Super Bowl was the bowl Superman used for blank. Okay, Barry, dumb. Dora thought that the Super Bowl was Superman’s bowl for what? Soup? Soup? Good answer. Good answer, let’s check the panel. Cereal, no, no. Soup, dog food. That’s an interesting one. Brett soup. Okay, we’re getting there a toilet bowl. Richard, I wasn’t expecting you to have such a dirty mind, Don What did you put down? Well, I put down making whoopee a nervous titter from the audience. No, no, that’s not it. Rayburn remarked quickly, moving to break Rhodes’ smile never left his face, not. Even mid break, when everyone was getting up, walking around or grabbing a sip or two of something, he just sat there, smiling, looking off into space. Rayburn was giving him a funny look, but Rhodes never noticed, how are you doing? Don he asked, I’m fine. I’m just thrilled to be here. He responded, I don’t know if you notice, but you, uh, you sort of used the same answer twice there. Oh, did I Yeah, no, I’m sorry. That’s, that’s my mistake. I couldn’t help it. You know, it’s a funny line. It’s a good old standby. Then he went back to looking at the wall. Okay, round two, I’ll just get more cards for you here, another press of my magic button. Come on. Bing, good, good. All right. Jamie, A or B, A again, a again. All right. Now, let’s give it a look. All right, okay, the owner of the sporting goods store said that new sales girl is just too skinny today, a customer came in and started using her as a blame

 

Will Riley 

so Janie, all those customers were using That poor girl as a what a baseball bat. Good, good. Let’s check it out. Golf Club, ski another golf club, coat rack, baseball bat. There we go. Now, Don give us your answer. He flipped his card around. I put down, making Whoopee. Dead silence. No making whoopee doesn’t work here. Well, Jamie, you’ve got three. Barry, I think you can still get a shot here. Folks, stay tuned as we do a little bit of business with America. Rayburn, cut to commercial. Three minutes early. Okay, John, that’s repeat answer number three, and it doesn’t even make syntactical sense. Used her as a making Whoopie. What’s going on here? Rhodes was still smiling. I just think that it’s a funny joke. So you think that repeating the same line over and over again is a funny joke? Repeating what? No. So far, making whoopee has been the best and funniest response to each of these questions. I thought that there was something wrong with the order of the questions. You know, why do these people keep asking me things where making whoopee is the funniest possible answer every single time, look, Don, look, I know this is how things go down. Don, I’m not a child. Match Game is the show where everybody is boozed up. Gong Show is the one where everybody’s on coke I don’t know what to tell you. Don there isn’t a shrooms game show yet. Are you good to go on? The show is suffering. I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Making whoopee is a good line. You see how everyone reacted the first time? No, no, it’ll come back around, trust me. I swear. You just got to keep doing it. I mean, there, there’s a low right now, but trust me, around the fourth, maybe the fifth time that I say, making Whoopie, they’ll be all over it. I’ll get them back. Persistence pays, no, absolutely not, not even as a bit, you’re cheating the contestants. If you keep doing this, Don Well, yeah, well, I suppose I’ll do my best. Gene, I have a movie I have to sell, after all, before we go back on the air, though. Can you tell me? Gene, what is Whoopie? Why is it so funny when people make it? I don’t quite get that, but the show was already back on the air. Okay? Barry, this one’s for all the marbles. Howard Cosell was so rich. How rich was he? He was so rich that he didn’t compete in a soap box derby. When he was six years old, he competed in a blanking derby. Oh, oh God. He saw Don rose his face and the smile he had, and he knew, he just knew, Rolls Royce, a palanquin sports car. You know, folks, we’re having some technical difficulties. We have to take a break here. I put down making Whoopee. No, no, you didn’t put that down. No. He didn’t have a making whoopee derby. We’re going on break that’s making whoopee number four. Don, and you said it in the context of a six year old. What is going on? You just told everybody watching NBC that Howard Cosell competed in some kind of a sex race. I blanked. I couldn’t think of anything better. Sorry, I’ll do something better next time it’s a half hour show. Don, we’re already on to the survey round. Well, sure, but I mean, I’m still on for another whole week. Yeah, yeah, I know you’re here for another whole week. Back from break, the survey round started. The contestant had to pick one of the top three answers from an audience survey. Okay? Jamie, fill in. Phrase blank salad. Now you can ask three of our panelists for their guesses. Who do you want? Richard fruit salad. Okay, good. Brett summers, Caesar salad. Donnelly Rhodes, I mean, making whoopee salad? No, no, that’s not it. Jenny just picked Caesar salad. That’s the top one. You can cheat this time. Let’s just get this over with. Yeah, yeah, that’s the number one answer. You won $500 whatever. Look let’s just move along and give this over with final match, match with one of these celebrities, and we’ll multiply it by like a 10 bucks or something, not it’s you’ll get $5,000 okay, pick your celebrity, Jamie. But Janie stopped for a second. She thought it over, looked at gene and said, I’m gonna go with Dawn. The realization crept on gene rayburn’s face, okay, Don you write down your answer? You good, okay, the phrase is blank sandwich. A brief pause making whoopee sandwich. Gene Rayburn didn’t even need to check what the answer would be. He just congratulated Janie and gave her 5019 76, Arad and so for every single question for every episode for an entire week. The only response ever elicited from Don Lee Rhodes was making Whoopie. It was the single highest rated week in the program’s entire history. Goldenrod, the movie that Don Rhodes showed up on Match Game to advertise in the first place, was a smashing success. Its director, Harvey Hart would then go on to win the 1976 Canadian Film Award for Best Director. Go ahead, look up the movie Goldenrod on Wikipedia. What I’m telling you is true.

 

 

Danger. Danger. Danger hasn’t come home yet Danger, danger just never gonna

 

 

say danger, it’s

 

 

she could be a danger to herself And dad be a danger to us.

 

Will Riley 

Danger $699 600 $199 $699 $699 $699 Hey everybody. Welcome to infinite danger again. This is Will quick update on the current Brink championships. There’s a little bit of a mess going on right now. Fan Favorite GX scurvy has made his way to the brink Grand Finals, but he’s under review. Suffice to say, he’s filled his opponent’s booth with like an aerosolized LSD, they found out, and the officials are not quite sure what to do with him, because there’s not actually anything in the rule book saying that you can’t do that. It’s show time. But obviously some sort of unfair advantage is going on here, basically a team handicap phase, dysentery. It sounds like dysentery, but it’s spelled differently. Actually, he spent the entire time in his booth on comms just screaming that the earth is nothing but a bullet train made out of holographic mirrors with tracks that Lucifer had pointed directly at the sun. And naturally, his performance as a brink player was deeply impaired, leading to his team taking a three to two loss after a lengthy tie breaker. The General excuse right now is that the whole Championship took place in Neom, and the risk of getting mauled by a tiger is still there. So, you know, tensions are high. People are acting irrationally. But I mean, really, you need to get over it. The world just keeps turning anti mauling jackets are freely available in Neom. And really, we’re this many months deep into the tiger and bear and lion situation, and you still haven’t got some basic hunting rifle training in at that point, you’re just like asking to be mauled, if you ask me. I mean, the whole Neom zoo escaped wild cat situation is generally mitigated now by the fact that they’ve spread out so wide. I mean, they’ve more or less got wild cats in all of the Middle East. Now and now, they’ve gone as far as their way as mainland Greece. Authorities knew the loose Tigers had cut a very bloody path as far as Turkey, you know, gaining influence and support from other dangerous beasts along the way. But they’re still uncertain how they made their way across the water to mainland Greece. They figure they might. Have hitched a ride on some of the sharks that had also escaped from the neon Zoo. Danger Bay episode 13, titled The only one production code, 1007, before I go into the customary cast and crew section of this episode, I’d like to do a quick recap. I’ve been falling behind and listing all of the genres the danger Bay show has chosen to be so far because at some point I just stopped. The show has been a cop show, a Western, a mystery, a medical drama, a family moral fable, a lifetime drama, a spy thriller. And since I stopped listing all of these genres, more recently, we had a corporate thriller, with the hot cargo episode, a romance with grace under pressure. And I figure we can say that the previous Ross Hagan episode has elements of like a heist film. Now I list all of these genres because in its attempt to emulate and replace every TV show on the face of the earth. So far, the biggest swing danger Bay has made was leaving the dramatic genres and becoming a sitcom with vets holiday the farm episode. So what if I told you that danger Bay is about to swing even harder by leaving the realm of fiction almost entirely in essence, this episode of danger Bay, the only one is a biopic of sorts. I vacillate on qualifying it this way, because grant and the gang are all here and they’re fictional, but their role is to stand around and witness real events while the show cuts to documentary footage for the record. I say biopic. I don’t say biopic. People started saying biopic, and they never asked for my permission to do so. So I still say biopic. I do it the correct way. This concept here of showing how the fictional institutional figures would react to real events basically means that danger Bay invented the concept of the newsroom 30 years early. That’s why the danger Bay lawyer successfully sued Aaron Sorkin, and once again, Chris Crabb has got his power of attorney when Aaron Sorkin dies, he’s getting buried in a pyramid too, just like Nick Cage is. That’s Chris Krabs doing as well. Gilbert Chilton returns to direct this episode, and we’re all familiar with old Gil quite a bit by now. So just a quick sampler, instead of anything in depth, Gilbert Chilton directed episodes of a TV show called 100 deeds for Eddie McDowell, a show starring Seth Green and also Joe Piscopo for a time, and its title sort of buries the lead. The 100 deeds are the good things Eddie McDowell must do in order to lift the curse of a homeless drifter that has turned him into a talking dog. Can you believe this? That freak turned me into a dog. I usually don’t like the way TV people talk about this hyper optimized approach to titling shows, but man, 100 deeds for Eddie McDowell is definitely a ratings killer, even just calling it cursed dog would be better. Eddie, you’re failed as a human, but turn me into a dog man, you’d figure Seth Green and Joe Piscopo agents would have better judgment. They’re usually so on the ball. And how about this other show that Gilbert Chilton directed for? He directed episodes of mysterious ways. How does one explain the plot of mysterious ways? You know, the X Files, Mulder and Scully dynamic, you know, one believer and one skeptic working together. What if you transplanted that same dynamic into another show? But instead of, you know, aliens and conspiracies, the show was turning its eye on miracles, not anything particular, just miracles in general. It’s a non denominational show. It’s really the sentence, I’m not religious. I’m just really spiritual and turning it into a television room

 

 

you investigate. What did

 

 

you call it miraculous?

 

Will Riley 

Like, let me paint you a mental picture here. Every episode’s opening theme has a bunch of words written in the papyrus font, just fading in and out and panning across the screen, miracle, rational, spiritual, science, coincidence, destiny, and then throw in some Sanskrit and Chinese characters around the corners, just for good measure. I don’t want to come off as some kind of misogynist, but the fact that the most astrology ass show ever made was a standby on the W channel in this country was not a surprise to me. The show was also redundant, because Canada already had a TV show where a detective used the power of astrology to catch killers. These blood splatters tell me the killer is a Pisces check all the art museums. We gotta be quick people. He’s going to have an unexpected encounter with an old acquaintance any moment, and it’s the perfect time for him to make bold decisions. And that show was great, way better than all of this wishy washy coincidence or destiny nonsense. Best part of the show was the title. Horace cop with the cop in all caps, of course. Now that’s a title, no 100 deeds for Eddie McDowell. Shit here. He turned me into a dog. The writing for this episode also belongs to a person who’s a familiar face by now, one John T Dugan of PUREX summer special fame, the well still hasn’t run dry for me on John Dugan, but I mean, where do I go now? Let’s see. Well, he wrote a pre airplane, Peter graves vehicle called court martial, basically jag before Jag. He wrote an episode of a one season program about a police chopper crew. He wrote seven episodes of kung fu. That’s as many episodes as danger. But actually, Oh, how about this? He wrote two episodes for the show called Columbo. Have you heard of this one?

 

Will Riley 

You know, it’s almost sort of unfair. John du goods name was already secure in the annals of televisual history, even if he wasn’t involved with danger Bay. The first episode he wrote that I’ll mention is the most crucial game, because I like that episode a lot. Actually. It’s about a guy managing a sports team, and he kills the irresponsible owner with an ice block while he’s swimming in a heated pool, so the weapon just sort of melts into the rest of the water before you even take any other factor into account. That’s already a really strong premise for a murder Colombo has to solve. To me, it’s made all the better by the fact that since the killer needs to actually transport an ice block across Los Angeles, he has to steal an ice cream truck and put on a 1970s ice cream man outfit like bow tie and all wild committing murder. One of the big reasons that I like the most crucial game is that the killer is played by Robert Culp, and Robert Culp is just such a good Colombo villain in so many different episodes you see, and

 

Speaker 2 

if the ring was on the right hand, then the cruise will be on the right cheek,

 

Speaker 3 

but it was on the left cheek, so the murderer was left handed. Stalker like this. That’s provided. Of course, all these speculations are valid.

 

Speaker 2 

You know, I got a feeling that when we find our friend, it’s gonna turn out that he has a terrible temper.

 

Will Riley 

Maybe you’re right. This is a hot take, but I may even like him more than Donald pleasant. Sometimes I think it’s really great that back in the day, you could just have the same actor play the killer in the same show over and over and over again. Robert Culp was already the bad guy in the early fan favorite death lens a hand. So what do they do? They literally just put a fake mustache on him and go, you’re a new man, Bob. Now get out there. The only modern analog for this that I can think of is a you know how in CSI, there was that episode with Justin Bieber, and he dies in a hail of bullets, and it became a great big meme. What most people don’t know is that Justin Bieber has played a different villain in like 10 different CSI episodes. The thing is that nobody really recognizes that, because every episode he’s been in has ended with him dying, getting riddled with bullets, like every single time. I don’t really know what’s going on there. I mean, Justin Bieber has played a whole bunch of people in that show. He’s been a gang member, like a white collar criminal. He’s been the owner of a chain of teppanyaki stores, and yet, every single episode he just gets shot like 20 times. It’s odd. The second episode that Dugan penned for Columbo was less than stellar. In my mind. It’s the aptly titled dead weight. It’s about a well respected Navy veteran, Dugan, it seems, can’t get away from the sea no matter what show he’s writing. Basically, the premise is that this Navy vet has been doing corrupt business deals with the Navy ever since he left the service, and he has to kill a business partner to cover his tracks. Now the idea is that the killer’s house faces the sea. A passer by in a sailboat catches a glimpse of the murder from like, a few 100 meters away, and so doesn’t get a good enough look. And there’s like 70% of this episode of this person going, Oh, maybe I did see him doing the killing. Maybe I didn’t like over and over and over until the killer makes her change her mind by romancing and seducing her, despite him being 60 and her being 30, just like with his danger Bay episode where the two romantic leads were past middle age, John Dugan seems to have a thematic preoccupation with old Men who can get it. But at least when he was writing the danger Bay episode, he himself was retirement age, there’s no reasonable explanation for why he did this in a Columbo episode. So this episode has poorly aged in that respect, but also in the motive for the killing in the first place, the idea that a. Private company would conspire with the military to deliberately overcharge the government is seen as such an earth shattering scandal that someone would commit murder to conceal it. And well, that’s sort of quaint by modern standards. You don’t understand Lieutenant I had to kill him. If Americans can’t trust the military industrial complex, who can they trust? If people discover that a private company got a contract with the military and then did something untoward, they’d start jumping out their windows. They wouldn’t know who to believe anymore. Bill buck is a named actor in this episode. He’ll play a recurring character in danger Bay called Roger Gaylord, a man named Buck playing a man named gay Lord, I’ll let you do your Nelson months laughs at this moment and then move on. I’m currently debating over how much to say about him here today, because he has only two or three lines in this episode. He’ll be more of a character later, but he and his career is basically a skeleton key for this show and for this podcast. So for now, I’ll just dwell on the fact that he was in a CBC TV movie called The Witch of Westminster crossing, which is now considered lost media. I can’t even really get a plot synopsis. I assume there’s a place called Westminster crossing, and there’s some kind of a witch there. Why this movie, if it’s lost media? Well, because Bill Buck was being directed by danger Bay. Stand by Michael Berry, acting alongside Hagen Beggs, as well as Don McKay, who you don’t know that. You know because he was the crusty boiler chief in the last episode that old tea kettle was gonna pop that’s what happened, as well as an actor who played the referee in the tennis episode. You see what I mean when I say Bill buck is a skeleton key for danger Bay, with Bill Buck’s inclusion, which of Westminster crossing makes up a cast where there are more future danger Bay alums than there are not. It may as well be where Michael Barry networked with all these people and brought them onto the show, and yet it just doesn’t exist anywhere. Despite contributing to danger Bay, a TV franchise so massive that its web ring of GeoCities fan sites exceed the viewing numbers of Facebook in its entirety, the only two people that danger Bay hasn’t touched somehow are the two leads, of which at Westminster crossing Miss money, Penny herself, Lois Maxwell and a very, very young version of delta b C’s own Michael J Fox, who was already all mcflyed up by the time danger Bay was coming out, he may be the face of An entire era of American film, but Michael J Fox is yet another in the cadre of people kicking themselves, going, Ah, if I was born just five years later, I could have been making danger Bay money. But, yeah, we don’t actually have any usable copies or footage of this star studded program. And by star studded, of course, I mean Bill buck, but there are a few people who are still fighting the good fight. I will now read an abridged version of the change.org petition I found regarding witch of Westminster crossing. Which of Westminster crossing was lost due to poor treatment and was squirreled away by higher ups who believed the film to be a failure, though it certainly was not. The loss of this film disrespects both Lois Maxwell and Michael J Fox simultaneously. It is stored in their archives warehouse, unsafely susceptible to wildfires, earthquakes, and any and all tape destroying instances, this piece of media could be lost permanently if action is not taken soon. Every day, media destroying events happen, and we can only do so much to save this beautiful piece of history. If the movie is permanently lost, there will be nothing left to do for it, and we will have officially left Michael J Fox, Lois, Maxwell, Reg Romero, Hagen, Beggs and 10s of talented newer actors behind no matter how undeserving they are of this betrayal. Each of the actors qualified to play in this film were hand picked by CBC directors, and they have all been disrespected and nearly spat on by the loss of their early legacies. This is all seeming very intentional on their behalf, and it is appalling. Normally, I’m all for the preservation of media and making sure it’s available to the greatest number of people, but if lost media can produce beautiful pros like this, I think that the CBC should get to burn a random videotape every once in a while. You know, just for fun, you.

 

 

Music.

 

Will Riley 

So as I said before, this episode is a recreation of real events at the Vancouver Aquarium, and a lot of this has to do with taking care of the belugas. The main beluga in question in this episode is kavna, a real long time resident of the aquarium who at this point had only been newly captured. We see her slowly floating around her tank as grant, basically standing in for the whole Vancouver Aquarium. In this app, makes a star Trekky Mission Log as he makes an astonishing discovery.

 

Speaker 4 

May 15, 2pm something is wrong with kavna, our beautiful beluga whale. All the weight gain is in one place. Why didn’t I think of that before Cav nine is expected? Hallelujah.

 

Will Riley 

Hey. Now, obviously this info is being given in a very condensed way, but grant, figuring out kavna is pregnant in this sort of simplistic manner really does make him seem dumb as hell, like you’d figure the aquarium would have seen some other sign of pregnancy before an obvious, visible baby bump throughout this episode. I will probably drop the sound bite. You know, we don’t know that much about whales, a whole bunch. But keep in mind, it basically applies throughout the entire episode, which you wouldn’t expect to happen in, essentially the most educational episode of this entire season. Every scene in this app has some sort of variation on how little information anyone actually has on belugas, but this seems to just be how the aquarium works. At this time, I direct your attention back to how the Vancouver Aquarium didn’t realize that one of their new orcas was a male until a patron noticed its sex organs. A patron, mind you, none of the biologists at the aquarium. This also isn’t the first time we’ve touched on the aquarium being blindsided by one of its whales being pregnant. I won’t get too deep into it again, but biosa, the Orca from a previous episode, was also with calf before she was captured, just like with Kavana the beluga here, almost as if being pregnant makes a whale way easier a target for capture. But, I mean, I’m no marine biologist. As for Kavanagh, the beluga herself, there’s some background info. She is a celebrity in her own right. Kavana is actually the inspiration for Raffi s children’s song Baby beluga, which was written in 1980 in my opinion, that’s raffy’s Peak, basically back when he had integrity, well before he made banana phone and just became a total sellout star fucker. Type another historical note here, since this is a recreation of real events. The fact that Kavana is pregnant and newly introduced to the aquarium tells us that this episode takes place in 1977 this is reflected in how the camera cuts from Kavanagh to grant the documentary footage of the pregnant Kavana they’re using is slightly grainier than the rest of the show because it’s real. Paul Saltzman was a documentarian, after all, he had the footage in a closet somewhere. The fact it’s 1977 however, is never properly reflected in the script, which makes it seem quite unrealistic. Nobody ever says the word stagflation, even once. This episode takes place in 1977 despite the fact that nobody goes. Did you hear this Fleetwood Mac rumors album? It’s pretty good. Those two must really love each other. It takes place in 1977 despite the fact nobody goes. You heard this song southern nights? I think it’s pretty good. Mind if I play it five times more in a row in this taxi cab. It takes place in 1977 despite the fact there are no new characters raving about the brand new cinematic sensation, remaking the entire film industry, Smokey and the Bandit. Of course, it takes place in 1977 despite the fact there are no Anglo Canadians. Going well now that the Blue Jays have finally been founded, Canada finally has a baseball team. Well, I mean, I know there are other teams, like, there’s the expo that that’s technically Canadian, but, I mean, it’s nice that there’s, you know, a Canadian team for, like, real Canadians. It takes place in 1977 despite the fact that nobody ever actually says, Hey, did you hear that Deng Xiaoping is back in power. The Gang of Four there. They’re all arrested now it takes place in 1977 despite the fact that nobody ever mentions Hey, did you know that Suleiman demiral of Turkey has formed another three party coalition? Anyhow, we haven’t even got past the cold open yet. So I. On the other side of the theme song, Grant is on Roberts Island talking with his kids about the news over breakfast.

 

Speaker 5 

I think Captain having a calf is sensational. Yeah, it’s sensational for

 

 

us and for science.

 

Will Riley 

They keep moving stuff around the kitchen and cleaning up, but everyone’s ignoring that. There’s half a bagel in the toaster just sitting there. Nobody’s taking it. Everyone’s ignoring it. And it’s just really annoying to me, and you guys are getting entirely too efficient. Come on, kids, it’s 1977 in British Columbia. Do you know how hard it is to get a real bagel in these parts at this point, it’s all just slices of Wonder Bread with holes cut through the middle. There’s also a new wrinkle in the decor of the Roberts house. It makes sense that an aquarium employee would have photos of orcas around, but having a magnified portrait of one with a big oval vignette around his face makes it seem like a step too far. It makes this Orca, whoever he is, look like. It’s the dignified great grandfather of the family with a historical portrait from you know, the old country your great grandpappy, Ignatius J flipher, he came to this land with nothing but a fist full of herring and a dream. Do you know how hard it is to get through Ellis Island as a marine mammal? You’d think as an island it would be aquatically accessible, but no. A lot of this scene between grant and the kids is really just reciting scientific data. In fact, Grant goes as far as citing his sources to the kids. Well,

 

Speaker 4 

studies of the Hudson Bay belugas indicate that the gestation period is between 12 and 15 months, with the peak calving period occurring in about mid July.

 

Speaker 5 

So that means cabinet conceived in the wild long before she

 

 

got here. You get an arithmetic

 

Will Riley 

from a narrative perspective. Though, what’s happening here is Grant is answering very reasonable questions from Joan and Nicole, presenting what is more or less a list of excuses or a rationale for why the aquarium keeps on being surprised by quite basic info about their own whales. This will be a recurring theme in this episode.

 

Speaker 5 

Why not just give cat that test to see if she’s expecting? Yeah, that would settle the argument, wouldn’t it? It

 

Speaker 4 

would, but if it exposed her to a lot of unnecessary stress, we’d have to take her out of the pool and handle her a lot. So we’re just gonna wait and see just baby to nature, huh? That’s always the best way. Jonah,

 

Will Riley 

oh, actually, we know so little about all these whales that we have on 24/7 surveillance because we care too much about nature. You know, we don’t know that much about whales. Also, you may remember this show’s already had several story beats elsewhere that make a point about how frequently the aquarium tests whale blood. Am I gonna

 

 

make you late for opening curtain with this blood sample,

 

 

you take BIOSIS blood to a human hospital? Oh, sure. Whales

 

 

are people too.

 

Will Riley 

They’re mammals like remember the Colter counter? It’s a machine for testing blood. It’ll make analyzing the many, many tests they do on these animals every day, that much more efficient.

 

Speaker 4 

Baby to nature, huh? That’s always the best way. Jonah,

 

Will Riley 

given the mostly non fictional nature of this episode. Analyzing this is very difficult. Episode by episode, the aquarium has been depicted as either an efficient machine of scientific discovery or an underfunded institution with a hands off approach, and now that we have to contend with a real pregnancy and a real beluga, I’m quite uncertain which of these aquariums we’ve seen is the real one. I mean, I know the Aquarium’s very good at stopping Soviet fish crimes. There’s no question there. I mean, that’s what it exists to do. But whether it’s the right place for a beluga to give birth is totally obfuscated by contradictions between each episode. Grant tells Nicole that Kavanagh’s baby being born will be a historic first, but doesn’t necessarily say what for simply requiring the audience to put two and two together with the fact that he says a word of

 

Speaker 4 

caution, don’t get too emotionally involved. The odds are about 100 to one that the beluga baby won’t live more than a few days. I know we gotta face reality now,

 

Will Riley 

usually I try to do plot points as they come, because this podcast has enough diversions without me leaping back and forth in the timeline. Danger Bay is just that rich and layered of a text. But here, the script of this episode itself is just leaping ahead and directly spoiling itself. And really the show has to. The Vancouver Aquarium has to because it needs to tell its audience, okay, I don’t want you to think for a second that anything that’s about to happen in this app is anything but routine. Don’t get too worked up about it. GRANT decides to be the nice dad, and he lets the kids call off the school boat to let them spend more time with the pregnant beluga for the day, leaving the house with half a bagel still in that fucking toaster. Come on, eat that bagel that’s food waste, and having spent all that time establishing himself as a marine life expert, Grant quickly undercuts all of that by just putting all the dirty. Breakfast plates in front of danger the otter and going, okay, here you go. Girl, eat up. Bye, danger. The narration of the next scene gives us a little bit more real historical background. June 3, 11am

 

Speaker 4 

kapna shares her pool with Lugosi, a handsome 14 foot male, and with senac, a typical juvenile beluga, acrobatic, skittish, always looking for fun and games.

 

Will Riley 

Senak, the child. Beluga, was captured alongside kavna, even though it was a child. This gives us a glimpse into a difference in the naming conventions of different aquarium eras. In 1977 they’re calling their whales stuff that seems sort of mystical or exotic, or at least an accurate reflection of where they caught the animal, you know, kavna Sana biosa in 1967 meanwhile, they’re just going, Hey folks, check it out. We’ve got two belugas, one’s named Bella and the others named Lugosi, the name beluga was pretty close, so he named both of them after a morphine addicted vampire Smile for the camera. You two

 

 

a once in a lifetime happening

 

 

successful birth and survival would be an aquarium breakthrough,

 

 

a scientific milestone. Of course,

 

 

science research needs funding. Hagan

 

Will Riley 

Biggs gets to be the boss in this next scene, he’s sitting at the head of a big boardroom desk, and he’s surrounded by people like Roger Gaylord, Bill Bucha character, as well as Marta, the German orca trainer, who very famously, is not Don Davis. She is sporting a brand new mullet, one that’s got a little party in the front as well. Because, I mean, we know Marta like she’s a real party animal. Yeah, great.

 

 

I’m anxious to see if she finds anything.

 

Will Riley 

Everybody’s proposing strategies to ensure as safe a berth as possible. For Grant’s part, his main strategy involves keeping the lying media out of the way.

 

Speaker 4 

Roger, get right on it. Alert the media. Right. Dr Dunbar, press, radio, television, the news services. Now, just a minute. Now, hold the presses. We have to create a natural, stable environment for her and leave her alone. No stress

 

Speaker 3 

grant. I wasn’t planning a three ring circus. He

 

Will Riley 

really doesn’t like having the news people around. Once again, the aquarium really is a law enforcement entity. But of course, on top of all of this, the show takes pains to remind us, the

 

Speaker 4 

chances for a successful delivery and survival are extremely doubtful. There are no presidents. Only one beluga has ever been born alive in captivity, but he only lived for what was it? Just eight minutes.

 

Speaker 3 

All right, I’ll go along with this if you think it’s necessary, it is.

 

Will Riley 

Again, don’t get too excited here. If something goes wrong, it’s not our fault, at least it’s not specifically our fault. And then a weird back and forth that I don’t really get across the desk from Grant is an embodied stereotype of a nerdy scientist, pencil pusher. He’s got glasses, a receding hairline, he’s wearing a lab coat in a non lab setting, and he gets in a minor spat with Grant over what kind of research and data collection is allowable. I’d like to

 

 

record their sounds for study and analysis.

 

Speaker 4 

What’s that going to take? Well, I’ll have to install special sound monitoring equipment and underwater microphones, and I’ll install surface lights over the pool. Well, surface lights are a strange new element. It might disturb the normal environment that could result in a premature delivery. Come on, Grant. Now

 

Will Riley 

take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt, because I am not a marine biologist, but I was voted the most intelligent podcaster of the brink community three years in a row. So I think I have the right to say something on the matter, it has been established that grant wants a natural birth for Kavanaugh, okay, you have the self awareness that what an aquarium does may be invasive to the beluga. Well, we

 

Speaker 4 

won’t have anything to research if we lose the baby, and no documentation if it lives.

 

Speaker 6 

Gentlemen, please, I propose a compromise. Marta,

 

Will Riley 

she simply can’t hold back her emotions about this beluga. Keep it together, woman, you’re too emotional. Great. The debate is presented as ending in a middle path approach, but it all just leaps over the fact of the matter. Grant, the moral center of the show is pushing for the crucial nature of a natural birth, but is eliding that inside any aquarium, a natural birth simply isn’t possible. She’s

 

Speaker 4 

going to give birth with no midwives, just the way she would have to in the wild, but

 

Will Riley 

she’s not in the wild. Kavna and her prenatal calf are living in a big laboratory every day of their lives. They are specimens in a big test tube, a big petri dish, whatever you like, no matter how much of the staff of the aquarium deeply love her all Grant’s protests in favor of a hands off birth served to do is a refuse to call a spade a spade here and B Block research that would probably result in a less insane infant mortality rate for captive belugas in the long run. Yeah. We

 

Speaker 4 

don’t know that much about whales. Can you imagine a baby four to six feet long, between 100 and 150 pounds? Now there’s

 

 

a strain,

 

Will Riley 

because there was some nebulous middle path approach agreed upon in the previous scene. This next scene is the episode getting to have its cake and eat it too, after talking about the importance of a natural birth for cavna, nonetheless, we get to have a big science montage. Dr Donna is sending beakers of tank water through all sorts of analysis. I

 

Speaker 6 

want the pool water monitored three times a day now, instead of just once,

 

Will Riley 

Grant is listening to whale’s song on some big real to reals with some wonderful, chunky headphones. The switching between 1977 documentary footage and 1984 actor footage is more obvious here, because whenever kavna the beluga swims past any of the actors in the window, she obviously isn’t impressively massive. Do

 

Speaker 6 

you know she’s eating up to 30 pounds of food a day? Well,

 

Speaker 4 

there’s plenty of time to get her old slim figure back after the baby’s born.

 

 

That’s what they all say.

 

Will Riley 

This leads into an educational walk in talk through the back room of the aquarium with some very utilitarian hallways with some very wet looking concrete floors grant passes by a big door marked marine mammal food room and starts hitting buttons on a punch clock like marine mammal food room is a very Soviet approach to ichthyology. Let’s say I’m just gonna leave this next conversation relatively untouched.

 

Speaker 4 

One baby beluga born at the New York Aquarium doesn’t represent a mass of scientific data. What does Steinmetz want? The same as all the others information? Trouble is nobody knows much about the birth of a beluga. How are you coming with your research into the literature? I’ve exhausted it from what Tom Gibbs in New York tells me, they don’t even know why their baby died. So all we really have to go on is that when Cavanaugh starts to give birth, there’ll be an extreme flexing of the abdomen. The birth itself will take 20 minutes to two hours, and the baby will come into the world, tail first, at least the New York baby did, and

 

Speaker 6 

our research says dolphins typically give birth boots first. That’s any help. That’s

 

Will Riley 

about it. Now I left that conversation untouched, because I think it actually exhausts everything anyone knew about belugas in 1977 at least, everything expressible in layman’s terms. And even here, yet again, they’re re establishing just how slim the chances of this baby beluga living are. There is

 

Speaker 6 

one more thing, of course, yeah, chances for success are about nil. It’s always the first time I

 

 

tell camera. Then after

 

Will Riley 

this, there is a stretch in the episode where, well, not much happens. June

 

 

27 10pm we are waiting and watching.

 

Will Riley 

This happens a lot. A lot of the episodes where nothing happens is where I am the most long winded. There’s a false alarm for the birth. At one point she’s flexing. This could be it, sorry, false alarm. At least it’s a change. There’s some more archival footage of pregnant kavna with some narration that’s really got its Star Trek influences on its sleeve here July

 

Speaker 4 

13, 9am another day of waiting, another day of watching for signs of the blessed event. There’s

 

Will Riley 

enough conscious padding for time in this episode that there’s a scene without any music or narration that is just grant Roberts driving the Jeep into the aquarium parking lot, parking the Jeep, getting out of the Jeep, and walking into the building, just the whole process. Don Rhodes himself clearly understands that this is filler, because he’s doing his best to be interesting, to salvage it. He’s whistling the whole time and does a behind the back throw with his keys. Now remember that this is Vancouver in the 80s. Science here had barely gone beyond the four humors when Don Rhodes does a neat trick with his keys, he was bearing the risk of being called a warlock. Desperate grasping for filler is nothing new in the history of Canadian television, you may remember the famous miscommunication between coroner gas and CTV broadcasting, where the creators of coroner gas created a 23 episode season produced on a 24 episode contract. So the crew just hastily arranged an episode where Brent butt unfolded and refolded the same paper clip for a half hour without any music or dialog. It has since been universally recognized as the funniest episode of coroner gas ever. And then finally, the moment of truth arrives, Donna.

 

Speaker 4 

She’s expelling her amniotic fluid. It’s starting. I can’t believe

 

Will Riley 

1. From here, most of the footage in the scene is just pure archival. Documentary film. The fictional characters are off screen providing narration, but most of what we’re seeing is slightly dark, slightly blurry footage of a real beluga birth. Look at that.

 

 

History is being made here at our aquarium,

 

Will Riley 

and they’re using it because it’s basically the best footage anyone had of the real thing. Even in 1984 there’s all this cutting between real archival footage and fictional character conversations, continuing, the narration just gets more and more layered as the fictional tries to merge with the real here, all culminating in, well, I guess we’ll call it the money shot. The camera slowly zooms in to just under cabinets, tail fin and, well, take a good look. Kids, that’s a real cetacean. Vulva there. Yeah. This is a remarkable

 

Speaker 3 

opportunity. Kids, none of us have ever seen a whale bird. Check

 

Will Riley 

it out. It’s getting big. It’s opening up. And hey, now there’s even a head sticking out of it. Now, I think I see something danger based. Season One is classified as suitable for a general audience. But part of that is because, well, if you choose to do a big zoom in on some sexual organs, the rating boards can’t really count it if they’re non humanoid. I mean, that is why in the 1980s the Alvin and the Chipmunks, adaptation of Realm of the Senses was rated TV wide with chipmunks. You can get away with anything. I mean, the musical numbers weren’t even that good. But here’s the rub, when we look at a zoom in of, you know, the hind quarters. Let’s say of Kavanaugh, a head is sticking out. And as far as anybody knows, a head sticking out first is bad. It’s supposed to be the tail first. She

 

 

is going to deliver a head first birth.

 

Speaker 6 

The worst possible thing that could happen. Head first deliveries result in still born young, his

 

 

head south is so small

 

 

and so still. Please

 

Will Riley 

be all right. There is a very real chance for everybody that this baby is going to be a stillborn. That’s a very bleak thing to contemplate, but it’s also a very good cliffhanger to put a commercial break on. So that’s what they did here.

 

Speaker 4 

Look blank. Baby is delivered up to its petrol fins limp, just hanging there half more.

 

 

God smiled. Let it be Now,

 

Will Riley 

whether this baby is a stillborn or not, nobody is going to be able to find out until the actual birth is complete, which is a very long process for a beluga. This gives us more time for characters to stand around waiting, biting their nails. They cut to the clock. They cut to archival footage of kavna, cut to one of the Roberts looking worried, cut back to the clock again, this observation room all these characters are in gets used a lot, and so whoever lit this room went really, really overboard. The whole place is backlit pink, but every actor’s got a big blue light in their faces, so it looks like they’re staring into a big water tank that’s not actually there. Plus there’s a third relatively neutral light for definition, so you can see every gorgeous crease of grant Robert’s forehead. All of this neon esque lighting pointed towards these very scared looking faces makes the Vancouver Aquarium look like it is something out of a jollo film, and it worked because this episode of danger Bay famously inspired the film The killer whale killer which ultimately is a very poor localization of the original Italian title, dove sono leorca, Signore obison di masa crare, una biologist con ilseno Grande. It was Mario bavas, most political work, after all of this stress and nail biting, though, finally, good developments, the baby beluga starts moving and in a big cloud of underwater blood. Finally, he fully emerges and begins swimming around to rapturous cheers, my God, it’s alive.

 

 

Our baby will took his first breath at 9:50pm

 

Will Riley 

so you know, turns out, all the educational stuff we shared in the walk and talk just a few minutes ago and. Now in question by the show, there’s no flexing of

 

 

the abdomen that New York told us

 

 

to expect. I guess we’re the experts. Now,

 

Will Riley 

most of the info they told the audience has just been overturned here. It seems all the marine biologists don’t even know yet. If coming out head first or tail first is the good one, there’ll

 

Speaker 4 

be an extreme flexing of the abdomen. The birth itself will take 20 minutes to two hours, and the baby will come into the world tail first, at least the New York baby. Did you know

 

Will Riley 

we don’t know that much about whales, even today, most of the biological descriptions of belugas just say, well, belugas are typically born tail first. But there’s still not a lot of certainty, if being born head first is inherently bad, you know, we don’t know that much about Wales for danger Bay’s part, of course, in later years, it’s made its own answers to these questions. Belugas that are born head first, of course, have telekinesis and are usually able to commune with Gods tail first. Belugas have a brain stem that is naturally adaptable to neural implants and even in some cases, bioelectric weaponry. You know, we don’t know there’s much grant. Roberts finally gets to sit down with his kids after a long, stressful, terrifying day of staring at a beluga vulva

 

Speaker 5 

being here when the baby was born. It what? Well, it’s hard to describe. I almost cried. I know I felt it too, like I was somehow part of

 

Will Riley 

1. Now, obviously, in 1984 we would think of this as like some sort of nice emotional scene. But of course, the real viewer understands now that this was very clear foreshadowing for the fact that all whales have telepathy here, Grant standing in as a personification of the whole aquarium. He gives the baby beluga its name. I’ve

 

Speaker 4 

been thinking about that, tuak. It’s an Inuit word. It means the only one, hey, that’s the name of the show.

 

Will Riley 

Of course, in reality, new whales mean big bucks for any aquarium, lots of new tourism and new merchandising. So you don’t really leave the responsibility of naming to one curator, you know, you leave it to a committee. You know, the same marketing geniuses who gave us Lugosi.

 

Speaker 5 

Dad, I read that mother’s milk is the best thing for a baby. Oh, you bet it is. Guess that’s why we’re so healthy, huh, dad,

 

Speaker 4 

yeah, it’s got a secret ingredient, yeah,

 

Will Riley 

an exceptionally greater ratio of protein and milk fat, double the protein of cow’s milk and quintuple the milk fat, respectively, which compensates for a belugas greater size and relatively longer teething rate, which in turn love. Well, I suppose love works too. That’s acceptable. That’s a valid answer. But I mean, you’re not really educating anybody if you say that the captive birth of a baby beluga is obviously very big news in Marine Biological circles, but the next scene is an outdoor press conference with 100 reporters, I have a feeling that this is the real Vancouver Aquarium doing some big wish casting here like they probably got questions from AP and Reuters and now they’re deciding, well, let’s just have John Dugan write it so that there’s one reporter in this shot for every person that ran with the Reuters story. I mean, White House press briefings have fewer reporters than this beluga birth, and they are all in a mad frenzy to see the baby. We all got to see the baby. We cannot allow you in at this time. However, the aquarium has complete film coverage of the birth of the beluga baby. Prints are being made ready for release to television. Take some pictures. I have press releases here for you all, and you’re in luck. Here comes Dr Dunbar, director of the aquarium. Doctor, Dr Dunbar, can you confirm the baby is cute as a button? Sir, sir. Dr Dunbar, do you have any comment on the beluga cast relative childish whimsy and joie de vivre? Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, can you assign this joie de vivre a number between one and 100 Doctor, Doctor, the B roll and narration about how everybody simply loves tuak keeps going. The show keeps cutting between more archive footage and posters at the aquarium saying it’s a boy. There’s a mural with a beluga sticking its head out of a baby carriage, and then outside of the aquarium, someone walking around in a terrifying beluga mascot costume, dancing around and hugging kids, making me instinctively go Get that thing away from those children. This walk around mascot has got a big sash around its shoulders saying bebop, beluga comma, Vancouver Aquarium. And you know when you have to put a name? Tag and institutional accreditation onto your mascot. That’s how you know it’s a marketing powerhouse. That’s the sure sign you’ve got the mind share. You know, move over cheeton. It’s mostly bebop belugas head that is freaking me out here. It’s like a giant white thumb with eyeballs attached black, lifeless, unblinking eyes. Bebop here is designed to always be smiling, which on a beluga means he’s got his big lipped mouth permanently open, just wide enough to stick a child’s head in it. The mouth has to be open, though, because that’s where the human inside this beluga suit needs to look through, which creates this scenario. Imagine you are five years old. Your parents have taken you to an aquarium to make you learn about nature, and some pale white freak, beluga homunculus dashes up to grab you. It puts you tightly in its arm, and as you stare into this monster’s cavernous Maw, two human eyes are staring back at you. Viva beluga is one of the lower rung mascots in Canada, at least according to the official rankers of such things. Mascotmetrics.com be bot. Beluga gets a 4.3 on 10 on the joyful enthusiasm score. He gets a 2.5 out of 10 in comic mischief, 3.1 for hug ability. He gets saved a little, though, by a 6.3 on marketable plushy conversion metrics, because he is a beluga at the end of the day, but he gets a 2.0 on fan appeal to round the final score for bebop beluga down to 3.6 out of 10. But, I mean, let’s be honest, all fan appeal stands for is reviewer tilt. It really is absurd that all these walk around mascot review sites try to create this veneer of objectivity, especially since user reviews for be bot beluga tell a very different story. There are much more split users for mascot metrics, say, of be bot beluga, things like be bot beluga would be gentle and debonair in real life, he would take you to a fancy restaurant for your first date. Imagine falling and being caught by bebop beluga in his muscular arms, feeling his warm breath from his blow hole. One of the user reviews is simply nutritional info about beluga milk that was pretty informative. That’s how I knew it had five times the milk fat of cows in the first place. The music in this scene is pretty schmaltzy. It sounds like the theme to endless love, but the needle is stuck on the vinyl record play our

 

Speaker 4 

beluga Mother and Child seem to have captured the minds and the hearts and the imaginations of everyone everywhere. It was the happiest and the most crowded of times the weeks that followed were like one wrong celebration.

 

Will Riley 

So yeah, everything is great. Everything is coming up roses. I’m so glad that absolutely nothing bad is going to happen. Yesterday

 

Speaker 3 

was the highest attendance in the history of the aquarium. He’s eating well,

 

Speaker 4 

he’s putting on weight with the major hurdles overcome. I think the kid’s gonna make it. In short,

 

 

everything’s coming

 

Will Riley 

up roses. Me and my friends are always having conversations and spontaneously saying, everything is great and nothing bad is going to happen, with an ominous sort of optimism, everything’s

 

 

coming up roses.

 

 

Let’s go

 

Will Riley 

now the series of downers that happen in the next few minutes of this episode are ultimately the point this episode exists in the first place, yet they still go through them real fast.

 

Speaker 6 

Just started to show a snaking and a curving of the spine. Tuak is

 

Will Riley 

sick, but nobody knows how he got infected, but they can figure out the symptoms. In fact, they spend a lot of time factually reporting said symptoms. It’s been laying

 

Speaker 6 

on the bottom of the pool like he is now and then for no Pearl trees, and he comes up to the surface and just floats there.

 

Will Riley 

This has already been an episode comparatively high in scientific explanations, but here the episode takes a turn, and they’re just summarizing medical records from 1977

 

Speaker 6 

with a heavy listing to the side and breathing very rapidly. Case

 

Will Riley 

in point, as you would expect, Grant is burning the candle at both ends to make sure that two act survives. He is practicing what he preached in the tennis episode. Not only does the guppies before yuppies rule apply here, but so does fish before family evidently, Joan

 

Speaker 6 

and Nicole called again. They want to know if you’re gonna be home for dinner tonight. Oh, could you

 

Speaker 4 

do me a favor? Donna call him. Tell him I’m sorry. I just can’t make it.

 

 

They’ve been missing you a lot. Grant, I know

 

Will Riley 

this leads to a really great performance on Don roses part where Grant’s looking for solution. From other doctors

 

 

I’ve been using tetracycline Tom, it isn’t doing the job. Could you suggest something else I’ve asked everywhere you’re my last hope. I guess I’m just grasping at straws, huh? Okay, thanks Tom.

 

Will Riley 

You can see he’s just barely holding it together. He’s both exhausted and clearly trying to hold himself together. Emotionally, it’s a great bit of acting, but that’s because it is running counter to the fact of the matter that this is a scene where exposition is being shared over the phone by somebody we never hear, and Don Rhodes is trying to say the word tetracycline with Misty eyes.

 

Speaker 4 

I’ve been using tetracycline Tom and isn’t doing the job. All of

 

Will Riley 

the actors in this chunk of the episode are doing their very best emoting with the dialog they have been given, but the scripts shift to pure expository biological jargon has a clear distancing effect, and while I don’t think it’s intentional, I also don’t think it’s coincidental. In the first three quarters of this reenactment of real events, all the pluses for the aquarium were getting written in, and all the fictional characters acting as its avatars, were active decision makers. Grant Roberts got to name the damn baby in the first place. Well, Dad,

 

Speaker 4 

does your baby arrive today? Fantastic, mother. Hello, Kavana, are you delivering today? She’s

 

Will Riley 

not talking now. It’s time to write in the minuses and the dialog reduces these very same characters as just a passive choir, dismayed spectators, reciting factual matters. His

 

Speaker 4 

blood tests show that he has a bacterial infection that’s caused by a no Cardium worker, the heavy

 

Speaker 6 

listing to the side and breathing very rapidly just the

 

Speaker 4 

water intake jets to the pool and create less of a current for him to swim. We’ve used all the resources of modern medicine at signing down to go down to the underwater viewing room, take what is the greatest blood test. Antibiotics aren’t

 

Will Riley 

working. Anyhow, they eventually find the cause of two act sickness. Something has infected his food or an ingested bit of water or something, but he has a virus in his system. Where

 

Speaker 7 

did it come from? We don’t know. Water analysis shows

 

Will Riley 

it wasn’t in the pool. This seems like a pretty easy thing to happen at the Vancouver Aquarium. The water in a beluga tank is getting recirculated with new ocean water, but it’s always going to be a more concentrated environment than the ocean itself. Any virus that gets into the tank is going to be more likely to infect something among the possible vectors of contagion. I thought I should mention we could

 

Speaker 4 

have contracted it from something as far out as waste from birds that fly over the aquarium. We

 

 

just don’t know that. And

 

Will Riley 

I just want to say, remember a few episodes back when everyone was going look at this Seagull and orca cooperating Sadie, the

 

Speaker 5 

seagull. She just showed up here eight months ago. Came BeOS friend. She’s looking for food. When biosa gets some caught between her teeth, she just lets Sadie pick it out next to Richard and the other whales. Sadie is beosus best friend. Isn’t

 

Will Riley 

it a miracle? Wow. Nature really sure is something, huh? It’s Sure Great. These animals get to interact with each other like this in the aquarium, we

 

Speaker 4 

could have contracted it from something as far out as waste from birds that fly over the aquarium. We just don’t know that much about whales.

 

Will Riley 

I’m not going to say that this episode is foreclosing on the human factor in terms of what got two acts sick, but by focusing on all the careful procedures on the Aquarium’s part. When the episode is on the upswing, I

 

Speaker 6 

want the pool water monitored three times a day now, good. The last thing we want

 

 

now is any risk of infection and

 

Will Riley 

emphasizing media and public presence right before the downswing. We cannot allow you in at this

 

Speaker 3 

time. Yesterday was the highest attendance in the history of the aquarium, it’s

 

Will Riley 

clear that this human factor lies with the generalized media circus in the eyes of the show, but this falls apart. Obviously, they’re basically saying that the fault lies with the uninformed general public and the media which catches their attention, not the Vancouver Aquarium, whose job is simply to make these animals available to the uninformed general public and the media, which catches their attention. I

 

Speaker 4 

want to talk to you now. Now, George, I gotta call Tom Gibbs in New York and see if he has any suggestions. So

 

Will Riley 

all of this time, Grant Roberts apparently has not been going home. He is continuing to work himself to the bone, doing non specific things to save to act,

 

Speaker 3 

you’ve got to stop driving yourself and get some rest, or you’ll be on the sick list. Okay, George, two act, that’s sick. It’s the same for all of us, all of us at the aquarium, there’s a pall over the entire city.

 

Will Riley 

Hagan bags makes the very reasonable argument. That grant has an obligation to love and care for his children, but your

 

 

children need you now. Oh,

 

Speaker 4 

that you have responsibilities here too. Then it’s a question

 

Speaker 3 

of priorities. Who what means most to you? Tuak, your job, or your children.

 

Will Riley 

This is important work, but after all, Grant has an obligation to his social bonds and to being a loving family figure as well

 

 

go home grant.

 

Will Riley 

In the end, this is a very reasonable, rational suggestion to make anyway, the moment, Grant says that George has a point and he should spend more time with his family. Do you know what happens immediately

 

Speaker 4 

at 9:40pm on November the first, 111 days after his birth, we lost our little beluga baby.

 

Will Riley 

So with how much this was foreshadowed and how these events would have still been in the memory of the contemporary audience. This is, sadly, not a huge surprise. This is true to real events. This scene gives the death what gravity it can we see Michelle Chan is quite distraught about it, looking for a shoulder to cry on. There is a minute and a half with no dialog after the death is announced, which is an eternity by 22 minute program standards. But in that silence, when I contemplate this episode, where does my mind go? Well, how they chose to arrange things, kind of is a surprise. The scene about Grant needing to take a break and be a father. Could have been anywhere in the last eight minutes of this episode, but they decided to put it right next to two acts, death. We don’t even get to see grant hang out with his kids at all. He just says, you know, maybe I should ask my son how his day was. Boom, death. Immediately. Your children

 

Speaker 3 

need you now. We lost our little beluga baby. Even though

 

Will Riley 

this episode is loosely non fiction, the theme from The Contender the tennis episode steadfastly remains that seeking love and self actualization among humans leads inexorably to dead fish, and it’s not worth

 

Speaker 6 

1. Jonah and Nicole called again. They want to know if you’re gonna be home for dinner tonight. That’s where I went wrong. Your children need you now. That was my mistake.

 

Will Riley 

In all honesty, when I started off this podcast, I was not expecting the tennis episode to basically be the Keystone that all of the rest of danger Bay was built around. The camera is now outside of the Vancouver Aquarium, focusing on the big Salish orca fountain in the courtyard. The mourning period isn’t over by a long shot, but people are filing out of the aquarium. GRANT included sitting by the edge of the fountain silently, are Jonah and Nicole, who must have somehow sensed what happened already a barely lit grant walks up, hugs them both, sits them back down, and the Roberts family launches into the three or four lines that the rest of this whole episode was written to get us to come

 

 

on, sit down for a minute.

 

Speaker 5 

Dad. Would we have lost tuak If he had been free,

 

Speaker 4 

I think he would have gone even sooner in the wild, Nicole, we had all the tools to save him, and we couldn’t do it. I don’t think anybody could have

 

Speaker 5 

could he lived longer in captivity than any other baby beluga ever has,

 

Speaker 4 

and because he did, and because of what we learned, wherever and whenever the next baby beluga is born, his chances for survival will be much, much better. And I think tuac, as short as his life was, brought something very special into our lives, joy and lots of love and even a kind of inspiration. Oh,

 

Will Riley 

Jesus Christ. So you can see this episode is basically concluding on letting the Vancouver Aquarium get the final say on all of these events. It is basically PR. Now you may remember, I actually have some experience with PR. I was a rep for Ubisoft while they were developing OJ Simpson, the PlayStation VR experience. So let’s just go through these various statements and look for cracks. Shall

 

Speaker 4 

we? I think he would have gone even sooner in the wild. Nicole, I can’t

 

Will Riley 

argue from the standpoint of pure marine biology, but even I can see that this is just an unfalsifiable statement, one which doesn’t even hang within the framing of the episode we just watched. Repeating just how often belugas in captivity die instantly is like the main thing that they’ve done here. The chances for a successful

 

Speaker 4 

delivery are extremely doubtful. Yeah, our chances for success are about nil. We only lived for what was it? Just eight minutes. The odds are about 100 to one. There are no presidents. I think he would have gone even sooner in the wild Nicole, as

 

Will Riley 

far as having all of the. Tools to save two act.

 

Speaker 4 

We had all the tools to save him, and we couldn’t do it. I don’t think anybody could have well, most

 

Will Riley 

of the purpose of those tools is mitigating for two act, being born in an environment he is unsuited for in the first place, the aquarium is always going to have to work around this, talk around this even at their most competent and well intentioned, and nobody is ever at their most competent all the time. Remember, this is the same aquarium that didn’t realize kavna was pregnant in the first place, or even know the sex of their own orcas. You

 

Speaker 7 

know, we don’t know that much about will ease now,

 

Will Riley 

the fact that tuak lived longer than any other baby beluga in captivity, but

 

Speaker 5 

he gave longer in captivity than any other baby beluga ever has. That

 

Will Riley 

is actually true for the time tuak lived four months. To be precise, the average beluga is presumed to live anywhere from 35 to 50 years. The fact that beating the world record is treated as an important consolation. Really does seem profoundly Canadian to me. Only the country that proudly says it was founded on compromise and has a national seal saying three out of five ain’t bad in Latin only Canada could produce this sort of conclusion. But when a living being is concerned, I don’t know if that cuts the mustard. Call me an idealist, four months of life is a lot more than the previous record of eight minutes, but it is far less than 50 years and because

 

Speaker 4 

of what we learned, wherever and whenever the next baby beluga is born, his chances for survival will be much, much better as

 

Will Riley 

of 1984 when this was first aired, that data still had not really done what they’re promising. Here to clarify just how fucked infant mortality and aquariums remained for the species. The first beluga to be properly conceived and born in captivity and get something like a proper lifespan was in the Vancouver Aquarium kudos. Her name was Keela, and she was a nice feather in their cap. In 1995 after the events of this episode, there are still nearly two decades of unsuccessful captive births to go if you ask me, the aquarium was taken aback that Keela lived it all themselves because this belugas name is just an abbreviation of the Initiate word for beluga. No grandiose, the only one stuff here. I mean, like, imagine there’s a 15 year old human, you know, he’s running around, playing soccer, prepping for a social studies exam, and the mom and dad are just sitting there, still going, we’re not confident he’s gonna make it. We simply call him the boy for now. Secondly, even once we take out this future information that danger Bay writers couldn’t possibly know, this claim about collecting data falls apart within the very world of the show grant, you were one of the people who was pushing against this data in the first place you were the guy arguing against that nerd in the lab coat in the first place, might disturb

 

Speaker 4 

the normal environment that could result in a premature delivery. Well, we won’t have anything to research if we lose the baby

 

Will Riley 

and no documentation if it lives with all of these flagrant contradictions. At the core closing argument of this episode, it is only fitting that grant concludes to his kids. I

 

 

think the little fellow was a shining example

 

Speaker 4 

of how we can all survive against the most impossible odds

 

Will Riley 

in a story about a beluga that has very much not survived. Once again, I have no expertise here. I haven’t done a whole lot of research somebody with a biology PhD or a philosophy major with a thesis on animal ethics can walk in here and tell me everything I just said was bullshit. But from a pure media perspective, let’s imagine that everything that everyone said in this show was 100% true. Would the way it was presented here lead me to actually believe them. Well, no, the whole way through, you can tell the show is taking a really defensive stance that leaves you more skeptical at the end of it. I mean, like, imagine you watched this episode totally out of the know, and you thought tuak and everything else was wholly fictional, as I’m sure many actually did, you would still be perplexed, because a workman like straightforward screenplay would not have spent so much time making sure you knew that this fictional aquarium staff did absolutely nothing wrong. From a pure fictional perspective, human error leading to two acts death is exactly where the narratives gravitational pull would take you human error beyond grant saying, Yeah, you know, I probably should go play catch with my son, or at the very least the fact that a beluga probably shouldn’t be born in an aquarium, precisely because none of this happens, even approaching the episode with. Knowledge Base of zero. You figure that something is off. By the end, everything about this makes you more skeptical than when you started. I mean, really, the episode’s very existence creates skepticism. Why does the Vancouver Aquarium need a propaganda arm to address these things at all? It’s like every time the CBC or CTB asked the question, are Canadian grocery prices getting fixed? To answer that question, we’re going to talk to the Loblaws party apparatchik. He

 

 

was a winner. Wasn’t he

 

 

wasn’t my Bucha,

 

 

the only one.

 

Will Riley 

So after all of those words, France stands up. He gives his kids another big group hug and gets ready to bring them home. Surprisingly, for a show of this era, it is Jonah and not Nicole who is visibly crying and clutching on to his dad, but they finally managed to stand up and walk off screen in a big, zoomed out shot of the entire aquarium, and in comes the exciting theme song. We got action. We got adventure. I don’t really have much more to say about this episode. I really gave my concluding statements just now, but I will leave with this little snippet or this little factoid. At the start of talking about this episode, I mentioned that kavna was the inspiration for the children’s song by Raffi baby beluga. He saw kavna at the aquarium and came up with the premise for a song The aquarium is pretty proud of that, as you might assume, Raffy makes sure to mention them if some little kid ever asks him about his songs. That celebrity status for Kavanaugh probably influenced danger Bay to make this episode in the first place. But note that I said this song is inspired by her. It’s not based on her. The events of this episode take place in 1977 baby beluga gets written in 1980 and where that song diverges from Kavanagh’s reality are pretty important. First, as the title implies, this is a song about a baby beluga. Nobody ever mentions two act in this story. About this song an actual baby beluga, Kavanagh always takes his place. Secondly, there’s a repeated emphasis that this happy, healthy, energetic baby beluga is swimming freely in the sea. In the ocean, literally swim so wild, swim so free, heaven above and see below. Look, I don’t do analysis on children’s media, okay, I analyze danger Bay, but there’s a song tons of little kids learn before they can even read, and this is its background. I’m not going to make a YouTube video titled The Secret, dark undercurrent to baby beluga. I mean, if you do make that YouTube video, please credit me and give me a share of the profits. But baby beluga, it’s a happy, carefree song. I don’t think Raffy is some kind of cynic, Star fucker, though he may be, but in order to make that happy, kid friendly song, he had to look at that beluga with that history and realize, you know, what a real joyful thing to sing about would be, whatever the exact opposite of all of this is that’s something to chew on for a long time. I think there, at the very least, we can conclude that baby beluga is a better song than the musical number in serials the good whale, right? I mean, I don’t know anything about musical theater, but I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that That song was bad.

 

Will Riley 

So there you have it. That was the only one danger Bay’s odd sort of stab at presenting non fictional content with a fictional danger Bay themed rapper. It’s kind of odd. They never really invested that much into non fiction ever again. They did it, you know, here and there. The only other big non fiction episode was the one where they explained that everything that happened in july 2011 was totally an accident, and all the courts agreed it was an accident, so they weren’t liable. I started this episode mentioning the debacle that was the brink championship, but it would be unfair if I ended right there, because all of the other concurrent neon based gaming events have gone off without a hitch. The Saudi ownership of SNK meant that svdb climaxes re release got a lot of representation, and I’m happy about that that stands for SNK versus danger Bay, if you’re not in the now. I love that they managed to have a video game where you’ve got. All the classics. Terry Bogard, yor, Yagami, Darth, Vader of junior tennis, the open shirt, cop, all the stars are here, and they still manage to keep true to the source material. You can’t actually ko Jonah Roberts, you just have to get his life bar low enough for him to say you’ve sufficiently amused me, you have my permission to live. And of course, if you win around with him, his win pose is turning to the camera and staring directly at the player for 30 unbroken seconds. Is a great game. Svdb is great. In my opinion. It’s sort of crazy that SNK put Cristiano Ronaldo in that game too, because, like, it came out in 2003 Ronaldo was, like nine years old at the time. SNK just had a lot of foresight, I guess. But I mean, that’s not what you’re after when you’re listening to this podcast, you don’t want to hear me talk about video games. What you want is my reaction to the shocking reveal that occurred in the most recent episode of danger Bay. Nicole Roberts pulls a finger from her cybernetic hand jacking into the Vancouver Aquarium’s massive secret archives. Her gallium arsenide processors bring her directly inside the heart of the computer. Computer bring up archive TQ 86 She says her voice warped by the different velocity techno air has in her cyber lungs update with new data on the poacher cabal and their first attack on the Vancouver Aquarium. This data memory must be replayed to cross reference the computer responds, do you accept access to your personal cybernetic hard drives granted as Nicole accepts she is flung back as her computer brain replays a summary of her memories. NARRATION begins the poacher Cabal. 50 years ago, they still worked in secret as a single unit, not yet riven by factional conflict. People would see stories on salmon poaching, perhaps even the off season bagging of grouse, but the idea that a mother ship tying it all together, an al Qaeda of poaching Well, word of that only existed as a whisper, an old wives tale told around campfires to scare Young Park Rangers. The Cabal went by many names. Some knew it as the poacher secret government. Others knew it as le COVID yet, because it was based in Canada, but it was a very real organization. There was scarcely a hint that it existed at all until 1977 the first time they put the wrong clue in front of the wrong people, the Roberts family. It all began with a baby beluga named tuak, born in this very aquarium, most distressingly for the shadowy cabal members, he had been born head first. If tuac had been born flippers first, as usual, it would have been an easy assassination. All they would have needed was an electromagnetic pulse, since he came out head first, however, two Act was a harder target and a more dangerous one. Baby belugas could not control their supernatural gifts immediately. It needed to be learned. Evidence of beluga telepathy was already beginning to show. I know

 

 

I felt it too, like I was somehow hurt. But

 

Will Riley 

two act needed to be eliminated before he began communing with fifth dimensional beings out in the Oak. Not only did the Cabal need absolute secrecy, the poachers needed to make sure their relationship with the sturgeon deity was exclusive. The secret powers of cetaceans needed to be monopolized. There were many ways to assassinate a baby beluga and make it look like an accident. Neurotoxins in the water, elevated mercury in the mother’s fish. One could even bludgeon it with an ice block. It would melt in with the rest of the pool water and be undetectable. But none of it worked. They hadn’t predicted that all the staff at the Vancouver Aquarium would be just so good at their jobs.

 

Speaker 6 

I want the CO water monitor three times a day now, instead of just once,

 

Will Riley 

they had been a thorn in their side many times before, of course, but the Cabal was in absolute awe of how intelligent and professional they were and how they never made any mistakes ever and so they were forced to cross the line, the poacher secret government made the leap to bio terror in the shadowy labs built under port man bridge, a new strain of weaponized BKD was invented air dropped into the tank via an advanced drone shaped like a

 

Speaker 4 

seagull. You could have contracted it for something as far out as waste from birds that fly over

 

 

the aquarium. We just don’t know about

 

Will Riley 

that. Nobody could have known that BKD could be administered as a weapon at this point. So not even the Aquarium’s top experts could have predicted this. It wasn’t a no cardia organism at all. The Vancouver Aquarium was far too competent for that to ever happen. The. Plans benefits were two fold. Not only did two acts death keep the supernatural properties of Wales a secret and the poacher government along with it, it also made their mortal enemies, the Vancouver Aquarium, look bad, even if they obviously didn’t do anything wrong. But those drastic measures would start a ticking clock for when the Roberts inevitably discovered their evil plot and the arcane workings of the ocean, Nicole pauses the memory re upload. This is where I’d like to add new info into the archive. What is your input the computer asks? Nicole responds, the Aquarium’s hacking operation has made a brand new link in the chain. As we all know, when the poachers weaponized BKD, they employed black magic to do it, but the vials that were used to make it were all destroyed, so we never saw the sigils that got used today. However, we found a design document dated 1977 it was a vial made to hold dangerous bacteria, and sure enough, all along the side of it were sigils, but none of them were recognizable to us, until I realized they were all shapes and designs that came from the gigantic Nazca Lines. The computer clicks in words for a second as it processes the horrific implication the Nazca Lines, but Nicole, the Nazca Lines are a landmark in Yes, that’s right, they’re in Peru, the plan that killed two act the beautiful beluga baby. It has its origins in Peru. The poachers wouldn’t have been able to use this magic unless the Peruvian government had direct involvement in the assassination attempt. Wow. The AI assistant says I’m a computer so I’m totally objective and impartial. And I think somebody should really do something about the Peruvians. Honestly, most of this was just a recap episode. I can understand the argument that lots of people want to come in and watch from the middle of the show and just get a good catch up on what’s going on, but, but, I mean, honestly, you shouldn’t be watching danger Bay 2025 if you haven’t watched the other 40 years worth of content beforehand. I mean, what are we doing here? Some people on forums are just saying, like, it’s totally mind blowing that Peru was involved in killing two act. But I mean, really, I feel like it was sufficiently foreshadowed. The thing that’s really got me intrigued, though, is, as most danger Bay watchers will remember, American Samoa was also behind the killing of two act. That’s where I am interested. I want to see how the Peru American Samoa Alliance came to be. So that’s it from me for today. Thank you for listening to infinite danger yet again. Be sure to check me out on Twitter and blue sky I am chasm cave on both of them. If you’re ever in Vancouver, buy my tours on the questo app. And of course, be sure to check out the kitty sneezes. Patreon, we’ve got a lot of cool stuff posted up there for you guys. We’ve got a new guest article from documentarian Errol Morris about the thin blue line. It’s been titled Psych. That guy actually did it. I’ve been trolling the whole time. Lol. Thanks for tuning in. See you next time danger comes from below.

 

Matthew Keeley 

Infinite danger was written, recorded and produced by will Riley, in association with ks media LLC, the theme is derived from amore Grande, Amore profundo by il guardiano dalfaro. We can be contacted through Twitter or blue sky at K, A, S, M, K, A, V, E, or through kitty sneezes.com danger Bay was produced by danger Bay productions incorporated in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Telefilm Canada and the Disney Channel support infinite danger and other fine projects@patreon.kittynesneses.com

 

 

this has been a kitty sneezes production.

 

 

Danger Danger, danger. Danger hasn’t come home yet Danger, danger just never.

 

Speaker 8 

Gonna say, danger, I Oh, she could be a danger to herself. Dad be a danger to us. Danger. Danger.

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