[AYAOTD? Recap with Erin Callahan] S05E09 "The Tale of the Unexpected Visitor"

RECAP

The Midnight Society arrive to find Kiki asleep in the storyteller’s chair. Her aunt has been staying at her house and snores so loudly it keeps Kiki up all night. But that’s not as bad as the kind of visitor featured in Kiki’s story...

Jeff and Perch (lol wut?) want to start a band but have very different ideas about music. At least they can agree on pro-wrestling and decide to use Jeff’s dad’s basement computer lab and satellite system to get free access to a pay-per-view match. Jeff’s brother discovers them and demands a banana split to keep quiet. Even though Jeff tells him not to touch anything, Perch looks over some top-secret documents and starts inputting codes into the computer system. After typing some random coordinates, Perch sends a brief musical message off into space. To their surprise, the boys receive a message in return. The next evening, Jeff’s parents are headed out again and Jeff’s mom tells him to look for the family’s missing dog. Jeff tells his little brother to play tee-ball in the yard while he and Perch look for the dog. Soon, both the dog and Jeff’s brother are missing and Perch gets caught in a glowing spiderweb. Jeff finds a strange metal doorway in the woods and, inside, his dog, his brother, and Perch trapped in plastic tubes. He uses a musical tone to free them. Outside, they encounter two aliens, a mother and son. The mother apologizes and explains that the musical message they sent translates to “we are toys” and her son just wanted to play with them. Inspired by their close encounter, Jeff and Perch start writing music together.

Kiki asks every member of the Midnight Society if she can spend the night to avoid her aunt, but her only option is Stig. Womp womp.

REVIEW

T: Kiki’s sleeping at the fire before everyone gets there. So she showed up and started a fire and immediately passed out?

E: LOL. Never leave the fire burning while you’re asleep, kiddos. Smokey the Bear will eat you alive.

T: I like that at the mere mention of Kiki’s Aunt Stephanie, Sam already knows all about her. These two don’t just share sweaters, they also complain about their families together.

E: Again, their friendship is so funny/unlikely to me, and yet, I’m glad it’s a thing?

T: I always think that “Thirteenth Floor” is the only alien episode, but this is the third alien story (after “Closet Keepers” from last season). And all three of them are kind of goofy, but this is the most classically horror. Still, I’d love to have just one non-campy alien tale. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be one in the revival seasons.

E: I would totally be onboard with non-campy, genuinely terrifying aliens. I suppose “Closet Keepers” comes close but still has a fair amount of campiness.

T: This doesn’t feel like a Kiki episode. She has a pretty distinct voice, and these Bill and Ted rip-offs do not fit that. Also, this is the first Kiki story without any racial diversity. I’m not happy about that. I have to assume it’s because she’s so sleep deprived?

E: LOL. I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thought they were obvious Bill and Ted references. I also had the same “why is Kiki telling this one?” thought. This one is written by Alan Kingsberg, who also wrote “Prisoners Past” and three more upcoming episodes. Almost all of Kiki’s stories are written by different writers, so maybe once Alan came on as a writer they sort of “ran out” of classic Kiki episodes but gave her this one anyway? Either way, this seems like much more of a Stig story to me. I feel like Stig was really into Bill and Ted.

T: How many times in this series have we asked why are these two friends hanging out when they don’t get along? The Perch/Jeff dynamic is a great counter to that. They’re best friends with different music tastes. They actually like each other, but have sort of different personalities. You get a little bit of interpersonal conflict but they don’t fight. Nicely done Alan Kingsberg (“Prisoners Past” also had a great protag duo).

E: Great point! These two friends diverge when it comes to a specific thing, but otherwise seem to enjoy each other. And I love some of the endearing friend-quirks that are employed here, like Perch calling Jeff “Sherman” even though he hates it. A lot of Perch’s lines are pretty hilarious. “Un-pukin’-believable!”

T: But as a writing complaint, what is up with the Sherman and Peabody reference? Dad’s secret project is named Peabody. Mr. Peabody and Sherman are Rocky and Bullwinkle characters. Is Jeff his middle name and Sherman is his first? Is Sherman their last name? I think it’s one of those plot elements that are clear in the script, but somewhere in editing/filming one piece got lost.

E: LOL. Omg, I did not even catch that it was a reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle. Oof, that kind of sucks some of the cuteness out of it for me. Alas. Also, is Perch his real first name? Is he named after a fish?

T: I guess we’ll never know. It feels very first season in a good day, like having characters like Dayday or Weeds.

E: OMG, Dayday! Wow, forgot about that one.

T: There is a fun “kids alone at night in a big, isolated, dark house” vibe that’s cool.

E: Totally is! But the parents are so strange? Like, Jeff’s mom leaves to meet Jeff’s dad at a business banquet. But later it turns out Jeff’s dad is home and has only run off, leaving all the computers in the lab on, because he thinks he’s made a big discovery? So...did he just ditch his wife at the banquet? Also, what government agency, no matter how shady, lets one of its employees build a lab in his own basement and leave classified documents lying around? I just have so many questions.

T: It’s a cooky X-Files type government agency? I dunno, I got nothing. The alien’s glowing web and POV shots have a Predator feel. Then the doorway into a spaceship has a kind of TARDIS gimmick of being larger on the inside from Doctor Who.

E: I’m not even a Whovian, but that reference immediately came to mind while I was watching.

T: The messages getting closer is a nice effect. Any sort of a countdown clock in fiction amps up the tension. Same goes for tubes with “bad air.” Perch is so animated, so seeing him drained like that with Bobby and Montana barely conscious is effective.

E: Agreed! I also love that Jeff has to deal with failing boombox batteries. So realistic! So ’90s! Though I found myself wondering why he doesn’t bring the whole keyboard with him? I just have to assume it’s plugged in and, therefore, not transportable, but I think he has it in his lap in the final scene?

T: Yeah, probably a prop mistake since it should have a cord, but they snatched a battery-operated one.

E: Unfortunate.

T: Hey kids, if you want to avoid being trapped in glowing spiderwebs by aliens, all you have to do is never walk backwards! The alien design is great. It feels very sci-fi and otherworldly. Having the antagonist be an innocent child is also a fun sci-fi trope.

E: Love it! I think the first time I saw that trope was in Explorers, starring a very young Ethan Hawke. In that movie, a young teen and his friends have an encounter with two aliens who turn out to be teenagers who have taken their father’s “car” for a joyride, hoping to meet humans.

T: Nobody lets Kiki stay over at their house?! WTF? Is she an awful houseguest? Stig’s willing to let her, and we fade to black. I’d like to think she takes him up on his offer and they stay up all night watching pro wrestling and talking about girls.

E: OMG, yes! Someone please, for the love of god, write this fanfic.

QUEER OR NOT?

T: Did Kiki tell a story without any queer subtext? She must really be sleep deprived. It would be cool if Jeff and Perch were queer, but I don’t see anything that points in that direction. That said, taken out of context, the line, “You’re not going to tell Mom and Dad about Perch and me in the basement, are you?” could mean something completely different.

E: LOL. Oh man, wow. But yeah, didn’t pick up any queer vibes and also nothing particularly ripe for feminist analysis. I suppose Bill and Ted are an interesting example of alternative masculinity from the ’80s/’90s, but I don’t think much of that is explored in this episode, aside from Jeff’s one unfortunate line about his dad being an “egghead” and then Perch clearly not caring that Jeff thinks computers and science aren’t cool?

TRIVIA, USELESS TRIVIA

T: Jeff is played by Charlie Hoffmeier, who we saw as the good cousin, Dean, in “Water Demons.” That was pre-perm.

E: Did not even recognize him! That perm was transformative!

T: This episode reminds me of the classic Star Trek episode “The Squire of Gothos” in which the crew is played with by an all-powerful alien being until its parents show up and we get the same twist and resolution. Fun Star Trek fact, many fans consider the unidentified alien race to be Q, popularized in The Next Generation.

E: Fun! Gotta love Q.

T: In a fun reference to “Thirteenth Floor,” Jeff’s dad is played by Pierre Leblanc, who played robotic alien toy master Raymond.

MODERNIZE ’90s CANADIAN KIDS

T: Some people might think Kiki watched the ’90s Jodie Foster movie Contact and put her spin on it, but that movie came out a year after this aired. But it was based on Carl Sagan’s ’80s novel of the same name. It’s got a similar premise of contacting advanced alien life forms through satellites. That said, if I were retelling this specific story, I’d just flesh everything out. Why is Jeff called Sherman? Why doesn’t Perch know what his best friend’s dad does? The bones of the story still work.

E: If it worked in Explorers, it can work now, it just needs better world-building. And maybe some queerness and feminist themes. Let’s see girls onscreen interested in STEM, godammit!

T: Hear hear. Plus, Bill and Ted work great as women, as evidenced by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine in Bill and Ted Face the Music.

JUST GIVE IT A NUMERICAL RATING ALREADY

T: This episode is super goofy and there’s things that plain don’t make sense. Like how does Perch know playing a D sharp will free them? However, there’s something about the story that’s plain fun. I absolutely cannot justify my rating beyond a shrugging, “I like it.” 8 CAMPFIRES OUT OF 10.

E: Serious plot holes, weird references, and Jeff’s mom and “alien mom” are the only female characters. But the core concept of accidentally communicating with aliens using music--a universal language--is great. Also, Perch is pretty hilarious. I’m going with 7 CAMPFIRES OUT OF 10.