Witness… The Collateral Damage

As this series has progressed, I’ve often found myself split on the opening monologues that, erm, open every episode. They started off, of course, as a tribute to the patron saint of this podcast, Rod Serling, and his introductions to most Twilight Zone eps. And since I wasn’t impeded by any runtime nor commercial sponsorship, I could let those go on for as long as I wanted them to… with the caveat that I didn’t want to prolong the meat of the episode by boring the listeners with my non-stand up stand up routines. And that’s where a lot of the split came: how self-indulgent was I being, exactly? Especially, as the series progressed, the openings continued to grow longer and longer. Not only that, but the question arose: was I cheapening the stories by essentially spelling out what they were about instead of doing the writer thing and allowing the subtext to do its job?

“The Hibernation is Over” is the most extreme example of this. It was the last episode written for the season, as well as the last recorded. A couple of other ideas were originally going to take its place, but the combination of writer’s block and genuine excitement over this new idea pushed “Hibernation” up to the forefront.

As I’m sure you can imagine, it was written during some contentious times. I have always been what I consider to be an apathetic Democrat, but even that apathy wouldn’t stop me from leaning left, but maybe not as far left as I would prefer to be. So there’s the apathy, and then the overall frustration and cynicism with politics, and I think all that has rendered me into what I fear is a constant observer who prefers the back seat instead of the driver’s. As I’ve mentioned before, though, I choose to use my writing and art in general to express the opinions I hold, though even here, I acknowledge that they probably result in little change (and not just because Witness if You Will… isn’t far-reaching in the slightest).

In any case, 2024 fucking sucked, and sitting in the back seat essentially watching democracy crumble in slow motion was proving to be lame, to put it mildly, so all that rage was channeled into the concept of two leviathans crushing We the People beneath their power-thirsty feet. It’s a no-win situation and it sucks.

Now, would this allegory have been obvious without me basically spelling it out in the opening monologue? Who’s to say? And we’ll never know. But if I have to make a defense (and I really don’t have to because, fuck, can’t I just let art speak for itself even if I have explained it all away?), I’d say that the monologue somewhat enhances the satire I’m going for. If you go into the story without knowing from the get-go that Magnus and Johanna Monsterson represent the right and the left sides, respectively, of the political spectrum, I’m sure you’d pick up on that representation, and that no matter which end of that spectrum you fall onto, we can probably all agree that those in charge are kind of fucking everything up (one side worse than the other, but hey, I’m biased). However, a lot of the Monsterson’s argument could also just be seen as petty grievances being upgraded from molehill to mountain, nary a satirical element seen to the naked eye, which, I would hope, would be just as entertaining.

By listening while aware, however, my hope is that you can catch not just the encompassment of politics being volatile, but also the various hot button topics those petty grievances and the overall marital strife are supposed to be. I’ll sort of learn my lesson and not explain each and every one heard in the episode, and you probably caught on to what they are anyway, but maybe it’s like They Live and the opening is Rowdy Roddy Piper’s cool sunglasses that show him what’s really going on.

Or it’s just shitty writing. Oh well!

This episode probably had the fastest turn around from recording to premiere. The first session took place remotely on May 4, 2025, with Vero Spielt Zooming in from her native Austria. Vero is the fifth of my iO cohort to appear this season and is truly one of the warmest people I’ve ever met. She can also play grounded one minute, and then seamlessly jump into goblin mode the next. In fact, she alongside Katie & Sarah from “The Weekend Cleaner,” and improv idol Anděl Sudik (who was our teacher during Week 3 of the Summer Intensive) did a set at a Jam at the Annoyance Theatre as the Goblin Goils, which, needless to say, was an absolute delight. Vero was also the fourth member of my D&D party with Katie and Max.

The Goblin Goils, 2023.

From left to right: Andêl Sudik, Vero Spielt, Sarah Joy Shockey, and Katie Terres.

The original plan thereafter was to do the normal recording-in-person thing, but alas, schedules with the rest of the cast did not line up. Once again, it was flashback city with an episode of all Zoom-directed performances. That’s not a complaint; it’s just the truth. Session 2 took place on July 10, 2025 with Kathy Groat and Brendan Hunt (no, not that one), who really needed to do theirs together as the episode essentially lived or died by their chemistry.

Clockwise from left: Brendan Hunt as Magnus, my little Zoom avatar, Kathy Groat as Johanna.

I wish I had a screenshot that was more fun, but this was the one I chose and then I deleted the video file, so tsk tsk me.

Session 3 went down eleven days later on the 21st with musical improv extraordinaire Jed Levine, whom I met a year ago when I was tapped to play drums for an improvised rock opera at All Out Comedy in Oakland. Jed, like Vero, is warm and welcoming, so it felt rather apropos to cast the two of them against type as the curmudgeony Entwistle and the cold and calculated Ludwick. Even though they didn’t record together, I think their vocals line up together very nicely.

Once all the performances were locked in, it became a sprint to the finish line in order to get the episode ready in time for its premiere date fewer than three months later. Similar to “The Intrepid Reporter” from S2, this episode was going to involve a lot of intricate SFX work, with destruction and mayhem happening in the background as the two Scalysaruses had their little tiff. While the amount of sound effects did not surpass some other episodes, the placement of them, as well as their dynamics, needed careful precision. Truth be told, I wish I had another month to work on it, and in fact, as I am writing this, it’s four days before the episode is scheduled to drop and it’s not locked yet! Hell, I just ADDED a new detail thirty minutes ago! But it’s close, and if you’re reading this, it means I was satisfied enough to let it out of the can. And, truth be told again, it’s slowly becoming one of my favorites 🤷‍♂️.

One last thing I want to bring up, returning to the allegorical nature of the episode: at the time of this writing, it is one day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I was not familiar with Kirk’s work at all and had frankly first heard of him maybe a month before. Despite my ignorance, my initial response was to, of course, be against whatever he had to say, whether or not I was listening. But even so, no matter how misaligned he and I may have been, he was still a young father who was brutally and needlessly murdered. That sucks, plain and simple, and this level of political violence that has become more and more rampant also sucks. Both can suck at the same time, unmeasured, no competition between the two.

. . .

That’s what I wrote the day directly after. Now, I’m writing this four days since the event, during which time I’ve seen more of the impact and societal consequences, and lo and behold, the mess is even messier. Personally, I’m torn. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but while he was alive, Charlie Kirk was not a good person. He did a lot more harm than good. Yes, he had a family, but would have batted an eye if someone on the Left had taken the bullet rather than him? I have no clue, and I honestly hate delving into hypotheticals and whataboutism like this because it gets us nowhere and only serves to further and even heighten the conflict. Like I said above, it’s a no-win situation.

There are better, smarter people than me that can offer words of actual wisdom, but in my need to make an even feeble attempt, here’s what I’ve landed on: we don’t have to mourn the man, but we can mourn the action. We can mourn the fact that this type of violence is on its way to becoming commonplace. We can mourn that the response seems to be only flared temperatures, further division, and no progress toward anything meaningful. We can mourn the loss of unity, which at worst may be dead and at best is in a coma.

Maybe it’s because I’m a child of divorce that I’m conditioned to view things like this, but it sometimes truly feels like being in the middle of arguing parents. Even as a child, without even knowing the name for it, I could feel the trauma growing within me every time I saw my parents’ bedroom door close and had to listen to their muffled spats. This is not a perfect parallel because I loved both my parents and I’m utterly disgusted by the Right, but even if you lean to one side, even if that side is victorious, no one benefits. That victory can be hollow. It’s like the ending to The Mist (spoiler alert): the danger may be over, but you still shot your friends and family in the face.

It’s difficult for me not to be cynical. And I don’t want to be here preaching empathy— yes, it’s useful and helpful in other situations, but there’s so much nuance here that empathy simply isn’t enough, especially if it involves casting aside someone’s politics, even for a brief moment. I am of a mind that he sucked, his death was abhorrent, and the response is more of the same bullshit that caused me to become cynical in the first place. I may just be one dummy from the bubble of Northern California, but I still recognize that when violent rhetoric leads to literal, physical violence, and what follows is a blame game that leaves us in the same spot of mud we’ve been stuck in for what feels like forever, something is terribly, terribly wrong, and I just want to go into a hibernation of my own.

Basically, I wish we could all just calm down, take a breath, and if we’re able, have a cookie or something. We can all agree on cookies, right? Gluten-ful or Gluten-free? Dairy, no dairy, fucking almond milk, anything! Whatever cookie you want, just… Just strive for a cookie world. Please.

(Oh, shit, I just remembered I forgot to mention in the opening Cookie Monster is called a monster but not considered “the enemy.” Mea culpa, Cookie.)

—Andy