[AYAOTD? Recap with Erin Callahan] S05E03 "The Tale of Station 109.1"

RECAP

It’s Stig’s last chance to impress the Midnight Society, and though he may be a greasy dweeb, his storytelling skills are on point with this tale about a radio station for the “dimensionally challenged.”

Chris is obsessed with death and, much to the chagrin of his family, enjoys wondering aloud about being buried alive while at the dinner table and trapping bugs in jars to see how long they can stay alive. Chris’s brother, Jamie, thinks he’s ridiculous, and would rather spend his time working on old cars than trapping bugs in jars. He gets an idea to snap Chris out of his obsession by trapping him in a hearse that’s at the nearby mechanic’s shop for repairs. While trapped in the hearse, Chris hears a strange broadcast on station 109.1. Chris is fascinated by the station and, after doing some ’90s internet research, goes to the abandoned building that’s the station’s home. When Chris arrives, Roy the DJ mistakes him for the recently-dead Daniel James Carpenter and slaps a numbered bracelet on his wrist. Chris escapes the station and runs home, only to find that his brother can’t see or hear him. He realizes he’s temporarily a ghost and will be sent to the afterlife if his number is called. Back at the station, Chris sneaks into the DJ booth and changes the frequency so he can talk to his brother while Jamie is listening to his favorite radio show. Jamie hears the message and he and the ghost of Daniel James Carpenter head to the station. Roy refuses to believe he’s made a mistake and sends Chris to the afterlife anyway. Luckily, the afterlife rejects Chris because he’s not dead yet and he and Daniel are able to switch places.

The Midnight Society take a vote and allow Stig to join their ranks.

REVIEW

T: After telling a basically flawless story, Stig gets to prove himself again, so he bribes the Midnight Society with giant boomboxes! That’d make me vote for him.

E: In addition to boomboxes, this episode has so many fantastic ’90s elements -- radio programs, old-school internet, slap bracelets, flannel shirts. Am I missing anything?

T: Chris is the king of the emos!

E: Bam. Knew I was missing something.

T: He’s even got a ’90s boy-earring. Remember when it was cool for guys to have one earring in the left ear, but an earring in the right meant he was a gay? Flipping ’90s. I believe the saying was “Left is right, and right is wrong.” Or something like that. Fuck ’90s homophobia, not that this episode has anything to do with any of that. Oh memory lane.

E: Ugh, the ’90s -- how I loved and loathed thee. Remember when people used to say things like, “I don’t have a problem with gay people BUUUUUUT…” Like, hold on, slick, I think you actually DO have problem with gay people and your problem is, in fact, rooted in your own hangups and limited understanding of gender and sexuality. So stick that in your Trapper Keeper, you douchenozzle. Hoo boy, I don’t know what just came over me. Let’s talk about Ryan Gosling.

T: Ryan Gosling! And he’s making weird faces the whole time. He’d done a few episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club before this, so this was his first on-screen character work. I have to assume he had some theater experience and was learning the difference between stage and screen acting here.

E: His eyebrows are out of control. But he’s still charming and you can see him trying SO HARD in that one scene where he’s on the phone with his friend and Chris is in the background trying to get his attention but Ryan’s not supposed to be able to see or hear him. Ryan ALMOST pulls it off and it’s so damn cute.

T: Had Ryan Gosling not gone on to be an actor you like, and you watched this performance without any associations with his other roles, would you still feel the same about him in this episode?

E: Oh jeez — probably not! Star power in action, I guess.

T: Hangman is such a cute joke. The humor overall is really dark and fun throughout the episode.

E: Chris is basically a ’90s version of Harold from Harold and Maude, right? Except he doesn’t fall in love with an elderly woman at a funeral? Also, I love the brief line we get from Jamie about how Chris’s obsession with death started with a game of capture the flag in a graveyard. Is that a subtle “Old Man Corcoran” reference?

T: If only it had been flashlight tag. I never thought of that, but I like it. This is another weird one focusing on two characters who sort of have two different storylines like “Magician’s Assistant” or “Renegade Virus.” For a few reasons, I kind of think Jamie’s storyline was originally meant to take up more time, but it got shuffled around and re-edited.

E: Interesting. As much as I enjoy Ryan Gosling here, I definitely find Chris more compelling than Jamie.

T: I’m pretty sure this is the first time Ryan Gosling ate an apple. Jamie grabs one in the kitchen and the scene ends with him taking a big bite, then looking at it in utter surprise.

E: I had to go back and watch this again —LOL. Maybe he thought it was a prop apple and is surprised it’s real?

T: Then why would he bite into it? I can’t wrap my head around it.

T: How great is the vintage Radiospace website?

E: Love it! Remember when the interwebs was still finding its footing, like the first season or two of an epic TV series? Remember when the internet was mostly random search engines and unofficial fanpages for all the things? Do you think there was an unofficial Gilbert Gottfried fanpage?

T: No, because he would have made them all official. Wow, do I love Gilbert Gottfried in this. Roy works so well here. It’s so much better than Bobcat’s stunt casting. He actually tones it down to dial up the creepy when the one dude is sent to Hell. Very effective, shows nuance, range, and understanding of horror. Gottfried is actually a longtime horror fan and hosted horror movies on USA’s Up All Night throughout the ’90s.

E: His “radio host” voice is amazing. Perfect casting for a snarky bureaucrat who used to work for the DMV and now works for Death.

T: I love the reveal of Roy doing the creepy radio voice. It makes him feel even more present through the episode. Is this working on a similar vibe as “Phone Police?” The bureaucracy thing. One’s phones, this one’s radio frequencies.

E: We’re definitely seeing an absurd, supernatural bureaucracy here, but the radio station doesn’t regulate radio the way the phone police regulated the phone system. This bureaucracy is simply using radio as a means to move lost souls along to the other side.

T: Um, black hooded figures dragging people to Hell is creepy.

E: I literally said, “oh my god, dementors,” out loud.

T: Also like “Phone Police,” the family is affected when they return home. I love that Chris is relieved to see his brother and says, “Jamie! I’m still ticked off at you but I got to tell you something weird!” It’s such realistic tween dialogue.

E: It’s perfect!

T: Chris suddenly teleporting back to the waiting room is nice and creepy. Is the bracelet supposed to be evocative of a hospital bracelet? It’s one of those ’90s snap bracelets that were all the rage for five whole minutes.

E: First of all, it’s SLAP bracelet, not snap. And it’s definitely evocative of a hospital bracelet but with a cool ’90s tween twist, and adds to the feeling of Chris being trapped in a high-stakes bureaucratic nightmare. When Roy reveals that the phrase “your number is up” comes from the numbered bracelets -- damn. I love it. 

T: SLAP bracelet? I’ve always said SNAP. *google research time* Okay, both are right. Looks like SLAP is more common, but SNAP is a frequently used alternative. So there.

E: I’m gonna say snap only ever became a thing because so many people got it wrong.

T: The bracelet number system is a great countdown mechanic. The whole you die, then move on, doesn’t easily lend itself to a pressing timeframe, so that’s a nice turn of the screw. I can’t help but feel like Roy riffing on “What would I do, buy gum?” was Gilbert improvising.

E: You’re probably right -- definitely feels like a classic Gottfried line.

T: Ryan Gosling gets to say the famous, “Say what?!” Without Frank, I hope to hear it in stories now.

E: I didn’t catch that! What a cool little reference.

T: I don’t love that Chris gets spit back out of Hell. It means he was never really in danger. I mean, it’s nice to know that the afterlife is fool proof, but it retroactively removes all danger. Nobody had to do anything, and the same outcome would have occurred.

E: Fair point -- this sucks all the stakes out of the story at the last second and probably wasn’t necessary. But I guess there’s no better way to cure a kid’s obsession with death than to send him into the afterlife and have them kick him out.

T: Daniel Carpenter getting a good send off with Gilbert’s tone change is pretty sweet.

E: I felt weirdly relieved that not everyone leaving the station for the other side is going to straight to Hell. But also, did Daniel's ghost DRIVE himself and Jamie to the station?

T: Chris wears bright colors now! His morbid obsessions are cured! Oh well.

E: Oh, I have thoughts on this, but I’m saving them for the next section.

T: It’s time to vote on Stig again, and he’s in! I don’t like him, but he deserves his spot after two stellar stories.

E: Snaps for Stig. Let’s hope he can keep his douchenozzle-ry in check.

QUEER OR NOT?

T: I’m going to say not. There’s a campy fun, but nothing leaps out at me. Did you spot anything I missed, Erin?

E: As promised, I have thoughts. Chris isn’t explicitly queer, but his indoorsy, goth-leaning tendencies are adjacent to that. They’re the kind of behaviors that make shitty parents “worry” that their son is going to be queer, and I think that was doubly true in the ’90s. He reminds me of Tim from “Train Magic,” who uses model trains as a way to process his grief over his dad’s death, and gets shamed for it by his more outgoing--and more stereotypically masculine--older brother. In BOTH episodes, the protagonist moves on from his queer-adjacent tendencies to...play baseball. What. Tha. Fuck. I hate it. I don’t like that these protags are shamed for their harmless weirdness, and I don’t like that they are “cured” by sports. Like, if you want to show kids outgrowing obsessions that annoy their families, the least you could do is avoid having them outgrow those obsessions by engaging in an activity that reeks of stereotypical American boyhood. I love this episode, but this is the second time we’ve seen this trope on AYAOTD? I hope to god it’s the last time.

T: I agree, but I think whenever they talk about baseball, I’m just so relieved it’s not Jared obsessing over a dug-out that I gloss over other implications. I don’t read Chris as queer, but you know kids at his school called him all sorts of queer-related slurs.

E: Undoubtedly. And your Jared-dugout trauma is totally understandable.

TRIVIA, USELESS TRIVIA

T: Once upon a time, casting was so impressed with Ryan Gosling, they wanted him to join the Midnight Society. He chose the Mickey Mouse Club instead, but they eventually got him on the show in this episode. If you look at who joined the Midnight Society in the last two years, it was Tucker and Sam, which means he was originally asked to play Tucker. Can you even imagine that? I guess he’s skinny like Ross Hull, but Daniel DeSanto looks so much more like Ross.

E: Wow. Does that mean in some alternate universe Tucker is played by Ryan Gosling???

T: Absolutely. There’s a fun Mandela Effect. Given the way Gosling’s career was going, I doubt he would have stuck around as long as Daniel DeSanto did, and it would have been weird if Gary’s little brother left after a season or two. “Hey Gare, what happened to your little bro?” “His family moved away.” “What about you?” “I’m a grown-ass man now – I shave – I stayed behind.”

E: LOLOLOLOLOL.

T: Jamie says, “Hey Ron, what’s up, man?” on the phone. This is a nod to director Ron Oliver, who we all love, and who became such good friends with Ryan Gosling that Gosling was the best man at his wedding.

E: That might be the best factoid to ever make this section.

T: Daniel Carpenter is played by ghostly veteran of the series David Francis, who was Giles in “Hungry Hounds” and the titular Old Man Corcoran. In double trivia, a props master/set decorator who worked on several seasons of the series was named Daniel Carpentier, which I doubt is a coincidence.

MODERNIZE ’90s CANADIAN KIDS

T: People still die, so we’re not too outdated there. You’d have to change the radio to a livestream of some sort? Though people DO still listen to the radio. I’d basically keep everything the same, but remove the end where they remove the stakes.

E: People do still listen to the radio, though you could also attempt this story with a podcast? I don’t know. There’s something magical about watching the radio dial in the hearse slide its way up to a high frequency. Definitely adjust the ending to keep the stakes intact, and I also vote for using something other than baseball to show that Chris has decided to choose life. Maybe he starts admiring insects in the wild instead of trapping them in jars?

T: Or goes to a rave?

E: I can’t wait to see him nerding out over EDM at the breakfast table.

JUST GIVE IT A NUMERICAL RATING ALREADY

T: Stig did it again! You’ve got Gosling who’d go on to be an A-lister. You’ve got stunt casting with Gilbert Gottfried that really works. The humor’s good, the satire is fun, although I don’t like that there’s no real stakes. And the reason Chris is obsessed to the tenth degree with death is because he played capture the flag in a graveyard? Fittingly, I’m going to give Station 109.1 a solid 9.1 OUT OF 10 CAMPFIRES.

E: So many things I love here, though the baseball thing definitely sticks in my craw. I usually go for whole-number ratings, but I love your episode title reference here so I’ll second your 9.1 OUT OF TEN CAMPFIRES.