Resident Evil The Umbrella Conspiracy – Part 3

Synopsis

In this episode, Phil and Kevin question the nature of Chris’s relationship with Rebecca, and certify Wesker as the worst boss ever. This episode covers chapters 9-11.

Video Version

Automated Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is generated by an automated service. We will be going back and correcting them/cleaning them up as time allows. For now though, please forgive any oddities you find below and enjoy!

Kevin Erhard 0:00
Those that’s just a giant ape and a giant, the iguana type lizard.

Phil 0:08
It’s a giant ape versus a giant metaphor for nuclear war in Japan.

Kevin Erhard 0:14
And that’s just a tale as old style as all this time. You’re listening to pixel it because the only thing better than playing a video game is reading about one. On today’s episode, we delve further into the world of SD Perry’s Resident Evil The Umbrella Conspiracy. As a content WARNING This episode will contain spoilers as well as discussion of gore and course language. And now on with the show. We’re back. It’s Episode 3333. And we’re we’re trucking on through Resident Evil, The Umbrella Conspiracy. And for those of you who have been listening and following along in the last episode, we got up through chapter eight, in which the big twist in the reveal was made that Captain Wesker is in fact, a bad guy. Dun dun dun Baba ba and this was it. Who would who would have thunk it? This actually was not revealed in the original game. This was not revealed until the basically the end of the game

Phil 1:21
in which Wow,

Kevin Erhard 1:23
yeah, yeah, it’s it’s you don’t like Wesker basically just disappears. And then you see him again. At the end. He’s like, haha, I’ve been behind it all along, or something along those lines. I can’t. I can’t remember specifically. And I probably changed between the original game and the remake, because I haven’t. I honestly, I haven’t played the remake recently. And I can’t remember what the differences are, if any, if with how Wesker is treated between the two of them. But anyway, chapter eight westers a bad guy? Oh, no. And we’re starting up with chapter nine. And nine. Yeah. And

Phil 2:01
brings us back to that that cradle to the grave puzzle. Yes. You know, which I which I believe was the first puzzle that brought us here, basically.

Kevin Erhard 2:10
And it’s a very distinctive room. If you played the game, it’s you shaped room. There’s there’s portraits all over the place. And Jill is walking around trying to solve it. There’s there’s a pro attack crows hack. tacroz not just regular hungry, hungry.

Phil 2:27
zombot crows, some crows? Are the crows zombies?

Kevin Erhard 2:31
Are they just crows and thus assholes?

Phil 2:34
You know, that’s a great, you know, that’s a really good point. If they were if they were cats, we’d be asking the same question. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 2:41
I mean, they’re just like the dogs like you have to you have to assign them the status of being evil zombie dogs, because you just be like, Oh, well, if they’re regular dogs, I

Phil 2:51
mean, you know, with a dog that has no skin that’s coming at you. You know, you’re like, hey, something’s up. Yeah, something’s wrong with this Good boy. Crow or a cat attack. Sure. You’re like, well, that’s a grower.

Kevin Erhard 3:06
That is that is a crow or cat. And you know what, even if the dog has been ravaged by the T virus, still Good boy.

Phil 3:13
Good boy, girl. They’re all good boys.

Kevin Erhard 3:19
Jill tries to she just like flips a switch. And that was, that was really not a good idea. I guess she she figures out that the bar the ledge that the crows are standing on is electrified and if you flip the wrong switch, it sends little shocky into the cruises. footsies. And they need vengeance and they need they need vengeance because Chris crows are smart birds, you know, they’re up there. And they will figure out that oh, well, she clearly did something because she flipped a switch. And now my feet hurt right?

Phil 3:52
Now my feet hurt. It’s time for vengeance.

Kevin Erhard 3:55
It’s time for vengeance.

Phil 3:57
And that’s just a regular crow. So we don’t even know if this is if this is some sort of mutant Zam crow. Yeah, so that little section ends with her dealing with that, and we get a little smash cut

Kevin Erhard 4:07
over to Chris and Rebecca.

Phil 4:11
They’re making their way out of the file room together. This

Kevin Erhard 4:14
time, Rebecca shows off in her little biology knowledge and just starts talking about all these papers. They got to do with virology. And

Phil 4:22
she gives us a little bit of an exposition dump.

Kevin Erhard 4:25
There’s actually a really nice bit of information in this Expo dump. At one point Chris asked her Is there any way to tell if we could be infected and reko responds not without more information, all that is pretty old. 10 years plus, there’s nothing specific about application, though an airborne with that kind of speed and toxicity. If it was still viable. All Raccoon City would probably be infected by now. I can’t be positive, but I doubt it’s still contagious, which actually is a nice it’s a nice line because when you Play the Resident Evil games and you have Zan bows that are constantly gnawing on you. But your character never becomes a zombie. It suddenly makes sense because it doesn’t matter. These zombies are just zombies. There’s not like they’re contagious zombies at this point,

Phil 5:16
it’s like any other any other any other zombie franchise. Bite is the kiss of death. That’s exactly in vampires, too. There are some words just just getting bit by vampires enough to become the vampire. And she’s kind of throwing it out there. It’s like, Oh, yeah, you remember all those times you got chewed on by zombies. When you’re playing this game? Here’s what here’s,

Kevin Erhard 5:35
here’s why nothing happened. It’s because it’s it. You’re past the viral infection stage, which makes sense that is a thing with viruses. There’s a part at which you’re just ill a note but can no longer like spread the virus. That’s that’s just how viruses work. Now, I’m not gonna say that’s just how viruses work. Please write in if that’s not how viruses work, because I’m not an expert on

Phil 5:58
viruses. Please send your complaints to that’s not how viruses work@gmail.com. We’ll be checking that on a near yearly basis. Yes. Every please. Only when I’ve been drinking. And we do get we get another wonderful moment in a segment I like to call. It’s getting awkward between Chris and nearly jailbait McGee over here. Oh, yes. that’s a that’s a that is absolutely the name of this segment. And I’m sure I’m going to remember that go

Kevin Erhard 6:29
ahead. I think I think I have that highlighted. The part. Yeah.

Phil 6:35
I would love to Yeah. So they’re, they’re basically they’re getting their way down the hallway. He tells her he’s needs her to watch his back. And the quote here is that yes, sir, she said quietly, and Chris grinned in spite of the situation. Technically, he was her superior. Still, it was weird to have it pointed out. Is it is it weird because you wish that she was calling you daddy instead of S.T.A.R.S.? Or?

Kevin Erhard 7:03
I like

Phil 7:05
that’s the impression that I’m getting I’m

Kevin Erhard 7:07
really glad that you pointed this out because I had the same exact read on that paragraph.

Phil 7:14
Good. Okay, good. That’s just me. I’m glad. I’m really glad.

Kevin Erhard 7:19
And Chris great. spite of the situation, like why is he grinning?

Phil 7:26
Why is that? Why is this weird? Chris?

Kevin Erhard 7:28
Chris, why are you making? We’re making weird Chris. She’s 18 you’re 20 something you’re probably too old for her.

Phil 7:37
The only only people allowed to go after 18 year olds or 19 year olds and 17 year olds. And that’s it. That’s it. My God, man. There’s zombies aside, quit your grid and grab your living. We don’t have time for this crap.

Zombies Resident Evil zombie we

Kevin Erhard 7:57
got we got Resident Evil zombies. And there’s other monsters, Chris? Yeah, spoiler warning. There’s other monsters. I’m pretty sure there’s a snake wandering around the building. And meanwhile, you’re more concerned with the snake in your pants a Oh,

Phil 8:13
I think we all saw that coming. I think Yeah. You know what? That was a that was a beach ball. That was a beach ball right across on play. What choice Did you really have Kevin? I’m not mad at you.

Kevin Erhard 8:23
We have more hallway and corridor walking and talking. Yeah, so many.

Phil 8:29
It’s like an episode of The West Wing in here.

Kevin Erhard 8:32
It’s bass. It’s Resident Evil. Resident Evil by Aaron Sorkin.

Phil 8:40
Oh, dear God, someone make that fan fiction happen?

Kevin Erhard 8:45
Oh, just walking and talking down hallways, zombie hallways, but hallways.

Phil 8:50
Yeah. And every now and then it’s just, you know, interrupted by zombie slamming their way through the windows and Buddha would have to be a West Wing

Kevin Erhard 8:58
like West Wing Resident Evil crossover, because I really would love to see President Jeb Bartlett would handle the zombie outbreak in Raccoon City.

Phil 9:11
He would I can tell you what he would do in a vague, broad sense of the term, he would he would handle the situation in a way that liberals would absolutely adore in a world that does not nor cannot exist. I save as a man who’s pretty far left.

Kevin Erhard 9:30
Liberals, liberals love it that the republican Speaker of the House would get would stand up and give him give him a standing ovation. Jeff Daniels would walk in and start talking about how we used to be great and we can be again and now we’re we are then Welcome to the newsroom, Raccoon City,

Phil 9:53
and that zombies name was Albert Einstein.

We are inspiring some fanfiction here and I think that means we’re doing good work

Kevin Erhard 10:07
if it worked for that, that Twilight fan fiction that that became 50 Shades of Grey. It can work for the Resident Evil West Wing fans and all of us Chris watts is one zombie eating another zombie which is actually not something that happens. I’ve no I’ve never really seen zombies show interest in one another. Another another nice lurid description of it moaned again a wet Flemmi sound and brought a handful of slushy gray matter to its eager lips. Honestly, I would get I would get that tattooed across my back if I could.

Phil 10:42
I mean, yeah, that’s we’ve got some really solid grotesque curries you know, written here. It’s, it’s, it’s such a funny situation to be here where there are so many moments in this where you’re like, Why are Why is this book? Why is this a book and then something like that happens? You go Oh, okay. Yeah, that was pretty cool.

Kevin Erhard 11:07
I think Edgar Allan Poe would like that. scription Oh, he would have loved it. I just am just, I just don’t like Chris’s point of view chapters. Especially when Rebecca is around and I think we can, we can all agree to just pretend that they’d never happened.

Phil 11:22
Be gross with someone your own age, man. That’s my advice to all men. Be gross. Be gross up pretty gross. If you

Kevin Erhard 11:27
want to be gross or someone your own age, and only if that person wants to be gross with you.

Phil 11:35
Exactly. consensual, consensual, grossest, consensual grossness. Love it. That’s our first t shirt.

Kevin Erhard 11:44
So we get another scene change. So that’s three scene changes in the chapter and we’re jumping over to Barry now Barry is he is killing, killing ghouls and taking names. suddenly someone shows up somebody who had already made his plans known in the previous chapter. And oh no, it’s Captain Wesker.

Phil 12:05
Cue the saxophone solo from Who could it be now? Who woulda thunk it

Kevin Erhard 12:11
whiskers hear you the sax it’s just one long sax solo when he comes on.

Phil 12:16
Speaking of the saxophone, which we can all agree is the easiest of instrument. He’s so skeezy here. Yeah. Like, weirdly skeezy he got his I’m expecting to ask Barry what color his underwear is, you know, Doc

Kevin Erhard 12:35
is a character just, it just keeps going down.

Phil 12:40
Yeah, it’s getting worse. Like he’s already the bad guy.

Kevin Erhard 12:44
Every single second of his of him in this book. He somehow becomes a worse person

Phil 12:52
for different reasons, for different reasons. He just like this one. He’s like the before. We hate him because he’s threatening Barry’s family. He’s the bad guy. Fine. Here. He just feels scummy. And something really just about the way he like he’s grinning at Barry. Really, really pointedly and and then he tells me he says something about like, you know, sorry about that. I had some business to attend to, you know, call and nature, girl and nature.

Kevin Erhard 13:25
He’s basically lumbergh from office space, hidden this. He basically comes out of the elevator just like has a cup of coffee. He doesn’t actually have a cup of coffee. I just imagine him having having gotten coffee somewhere in this building. And he comes out of the elevator and he just goes to bury me like, hey, Barry, what’s happening? Listen, I’m gonna need you have to work on this weekend.

Phil 13:56
absolute worst. It’s just so weird. And it’s just an any and he basically tells very, he just he basically just lets him in on it all. He’s like, Hey, you know? A PS. I’m the bad guy here. And you’re going to help me because if you don’t, I’m going to kill your whole family. Well, we’ve got a team waiting outside your family’s house. Ready to kill them? The moment I send in the signal. Yeah. And Barry as we’ve established, he’s the family man, the old one, the 38 year old man who’s just two weeks away from retirement. He’s, he’s old and he’s been married for for 20 years. Yeah. But just longer than any person has ever been married before. His kid. his oldest kid is heading off to college next week. And then he can’t take that chance man. He doesn’t believe Wesker necessarily, but what choice?

Kevin Erhard 14:54
What choice does he got? I like the fact that he lies about having to go attend to You know call of nature. And then like two seconds he just Let’s bury in on the plan. Like,

Phil 15:05
what was even the point,

Kevin Erhard 15:07
the point of telling of like lying to bury about having to go take a dump.

Phil 15:11
I would love it if like, his he’s like halfway through that lame excuse and he goes, You know what? Fuck it actually, I’m gonna kill your family if you don’t help me. I’m sorry. I can’t even say that out loud. Like, I felt so stupid

Kevin Erhard 15:26
is so dumb. No knock Now

Phil 15:29
that doesn’t mean I’m not looking for a job. Have you seen

Kevin Erhard 15:32
Have you seen one that isn’t like dirty and scuzzy cuz I gotta take a poop.

Phil 15:39
And just filled with crazy poop eating zombies. I don’t know if that’s a thing.

Kevin Erhard 15:45
I don’t want to know a thing.

Phil 15:47
I just need to pay man like and I’m a gentleman. I can’t do it out in the open. I just it feels wrong. Anyway, gonna probably kill your family. If you don’t do what I tell you to do.

Kevin Erhard 15:57
Yeah, he basically becomes the big bad villain. The cool thing is, though, in this moment is we get a scene that we didn’t we didn’t get in the games, because honestly, we don’t we don’t find about the twist about Wesker until later. And then we also don’t find out that Wesker had blackmail berry until like later. It’s it’s just it’s a straight up twist. And it’s becoming more clear to me that this book was written. It’s for people who played the games, right? Clearly, right? Because if you’ve played the first Resident Evil game, you know, Wesker is the villain, you know, Barry was being blackmailed. So instead of like, trying to set it up as a twist, St. Perry just wrote it as Alright, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna write it in here, this, we’re gonna see this scene, and we’re gonna, and we’re gonna use this moment to have full on character development. Really make Wesker a villain instead of in the games, where he’s like, oh, he just is suddenly he’s like, Oh, I guess he’s the bad guy.

Phil 17:01
Which is, which is frankly, again, another good way of adapting it to a novel because the twist is not going to be nearly as interesting in the grand scheme of things as actual Honest to God, character development, even if that character development just involves, I’m the bad guy. I had to take a piss. It’s still still better still better than, you know. I was dead the whole time. kind of shit. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 17:27
you. If you’ve seen the Resident Evil movie a long time ago,

Phil 17:32
I remember it had basically nothing to do is with 00 to

Kevin Erhard 17:38
do with the games like nothing. I remember

Phil 17:41
it was like, I think we were an hour and 10 minutes into the movie, before we saw zombies.

Kevin Erhard 17:47
Something like that.

Phil 17:49
And I think that movies only an hour and 21 minutes long.

Kevin Erhard 17:52
There’s like, no, there’s like a moment in which there’s like this character. There’s this character that’s that’s with the main character the entire time this guy and he has amnesia, and then it heading into the final act. There’s like this gas that he gets sprayed with that causes him to remember everything. And the moment is basically he doesn’t say this, but it’s it’s he basically says, Oh, yeah, I’m the bad guy. Upon remembering everything, he’s actually the

Phil 18:31
just, hey, Aqua lung starts playing over the speakers way too loud.

Kevin Erhard 18:39
And so like this, kind of precludes that this this is like, okay, we’re gonna we’re gonna set up rescuer as a villain. The only thing that I had issue I had with whiskers little schpeel with Barry is when he tells Mary, of course, you tell them, you’ve seen me that can complicate matters. If I run into trouble say get shot in the back. Well, you know, said let’s keep this to ourselves. I don’t get why if he wants Barry to lie for him, right? And work for him. Why not keep it just a little bit simpler? And say and say and tell Barry? Like, hey, you run into Chris or Jill, you know, and so you’d like tell them that you saw me but you can’t tell them anything about this. Now Barry has to have like two layers of lie. He’s like, first of all right? I’m not working for Wesker. And second, no, I don’t know where he is.

Phil 19:32
Right? Right. That just anyone. Anyone who has ever had to fib on any occasion knows that the easiest thing is just to change the one detail. Keep lots

Kevin Erhard 19:44
of truth in there. Otherwise, Barry doesn’t seem like a guy who’s really able to to deal with multiple lies at once.

Phil 19:52
No, absolutely not. I’m not sure that he even knows how many bullets are in his gun at any given time. I think I think whiskers best bet is to be like, yeah, you can tell him you saw me just don’t mention the whole boom, boom on your kids thing. Yeah. That sounds more like he’s gonna poop on them, which might be more of a threat. I don’t know

Kevin Erhard 20:12
that. That wouldn’t be not good.

Phil 20:15
I’m not great at taking hostages so it’s not on your resume. It’s not on your resume of skills is taking hostages is No One No One on LinkedIn has sponsored me as that being one of my my expert skills.

Kevin Erhard 20:30
No, I’m gonna go ahead and do that. I think I think that might be okay. Cool. I think you’re good. Your current employer will appreciate that.

Phil 20:38
It’s a very least a conversation starter.

Kevin Erhard 20:40
And that’s always valued says down here. You’re. You’re an expert at taking hostages. Yeah. Now, I’m not gonna ask you to explain that. But what I will ask you to do is just put your hands on the desk, and wait here while security comes to escort you out the bill.

Phil 20:58
Listen here, I’ll explain it real. It’s very simple. Okay. You can’t tell anyone that I have been endorsed as a hostage taker. And furthermore, if anyone asks you about it, you never saw me. You’ve never been to North Dakota. And even if you did know me, my name was Glen yoshinkan. The entire time. Can you remember all that?

Kevin Erhard 21:24
Barry Barry. Barry. Are you paying attention?

Phil 21:27
Barry Barry yoshinkan say it back Barry.

Kevin Erhard 21:35
Chapter and this chapter ends with Barry clenching his giant fists. Knuckles whitening? Oh, yeah. And promised himself that Wesker would pay for what he was doing.

Phil 21:45
Oh, that’s sweet ven with interest. Yeah, with interest. Vengeance dye name is Barry. Barry Yoshi Barry yoshinkan

Kevin Erhard 21:57
the third eldest that of the West Chester Yoshi ringtones.

Phil 22:03
The wet Yeah, yeah. Straight out of Philly baby straight.

Kevin Erhard 22:12
The Fresh Prince of Washington, West Philadelphia born and raised. Raising, raising Yoshis was how he spent most of his days most of his days, on the

Phil 22:23
other days, shooting zombies shoot zombies. Alright, Chapter 10.

Kevin Erhard 22:36
That was a brisk chapter I think we got flew through that chapter faster than I feel good about picking up picking your geo slides right into the right into the thing. And I like that we and we just kind of skip her like solving the puzzle.

Phil 22:56
Like she basically does two puzzles off camera.

Kevin Erhard 22:59
It’s like, really, we’re just gonna skip that, you know? Yeah. They it’s kind

Phil 23:03
of like St. Perry is kind of like going, you all know how this goes. Anyway, she puts it in the thing. And

Kevin Erhard 23:11
yeah, there’s only so many ways you can write a somebody’s solving a Resident Evil puzzle, especially when it involves just like trial and error for like, five minutes of flipping switch sin rotating something.

Phil 23:25
Right? Like if she was playing I one of one of the questions I plan on asking Miss Perry is if she was basically given a script of how these went, or if they gave her a copy of the game, and they’re like, hey, play the game, take some meds. And yeah, take some notes. Because at this point, it feels like this is the moment where she like puts down the controller. She’s like, oh, for fucks sake, like Okay, I see what I’m getting into here. How the hell am I gonna deal with this? At the end, but it does lead However, if you want to talk about moments that everyone in this game franchise loves, it leads to one of those classic wonderful toe curling moments. The discovery of the shotgun. Yes, just Ah, ah, it’s always so good to pump action which

Kevin Erhard 24:16
gun was mounted on dual hooks? And I feel like that’s that that happens so often where it’s like it’s mounted on it’s mounted on a wall and you’re like, Oh, yeah, I know. I got to do but Jill doesn’t know what she has to do.

Phil 24:29
She’s got no idea but she’s about to find out she’s

Kevin Erhard 24:32
about to find out hoard. Don’t tell anybody I said it sound

Phil 24:37
it makes when you take the you take the shotgun off the wall, it goes whore or just like that. It’s like

Kevin Erhard 24:42
it’s actually a voice clip of Andy Sandberg saying that.

Phil 24:48
Right, right. Yeah, and the moments of because the moment for those of you who don’t realize what is absolutely about to happen here,

Kevin Erhard 24:58
she’s setting off a trap. She sit in the office that’s just a gold trap.

Phil 25:03
I have to get a shotgun in this game. I

Kevin Erhard 25:05
have a lot of logistical questions about this track. And like I These are questions I did not have when I played the game because it was like this is a game and that was a thing. And that was a harrowing experience. Now when I read it in a book, I’m like, This is absurd.

This is this is the most absurd trap like just from us from an architectural point of view. I’m not exactly sure how this this works.

Phil 25:39
Let’s just imagining What’s the name of the guy who made the

Kevin Erhard 25:42
the mantra says it’s the guy who owned it. The guy who owned it was Spencer, the guy who built it was Trevor George, those like George Trevor something

Phil 25:53
like that. I just imagine him like looking like he’s got the plans and the guy who’s building it is like, sir, I just had a quick question in this room. It just says Indiana Jones ceiling and I’m not clear what that supposed to mean. And he just gets he just goes i think you know what I’m talking about. Are you a professional architect or not?

Kevin Erhard 26:19
And he’s like, yes. Okay, but at least which Indiana Jones and then there’s a long pause and he goes Temple of Doom. And you’re like okay, I can work okay.

Phil 26:29
And the first time they went in and like just not enough bugs then the second time they tried it out too many it’s it’s standard trial and error. We’ve all been there it’s okay. You just give your contractors a break. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 26:45
it’s cool. Yeah, and we’re all gonna be alright except for the contractors that get caught in the trap those absolute are not going to be alright. But anyway for those of you who are absolutely not don’t know what the trap is. If If you are if you are listening to us, apropos of nothing have never heard of Resident Evil and you just start turned on a random podcast Well, I don’t know what to tell you. But here I’m going to explain the trap. There is a shotgun mounted on the wall. Jill picks it up off the hooks there’s a click she leaves the room that the shotgun is in and she goes there’s there’s like two rooms off of this hallway. She leaves the room that the shotgun was in goes back into the room that and then the next door would take her into the hallway and then whoops all the doors lock in the room and the ceiling is starting to slide down with the intention of crushing her well the ceiling the ceiling has no intention that person who designed it does but you know you you get what I make I blame the ceiling and the ceiling ceilings just do do i mean does

Phil 27:55
ceiling falling ceilings don’t kill people. People with floor falling ceilings killed the person who put that falling ceiling in there it they’re the one to blame. Absolutely. So she’s absolutely I don’t want I don’t want to get Congress in on this. I think we all know

Kevin Erhard 28:12
how this second amendment right includes my right to have falling ceilings in my house. It’s my property, my property and my property is allowed to murder

Phil 28:26
somebody somebody listening to this getting really dewy eyed being like, god damn right.

Kevin Erhard 28:31
Damn right. Clarence Thomas. Probably

Phil 28:34
Yeah, probably. Clarence, thanks for listening. Make sure to make sure to leave a five star review there big guy. So we love you. And I think and by the way, her reaction to the ceiling caving in on her basically is to say Holy shit, bad thing bad thing. which is which is which is clearly the author’s opportunity here to you know, add a little bit of levity. Yeah, it’s you know, in the face of danger, but I I went too far in my brain with it. I just kept hearing like Jerry Lewis, you know, bad thing like just just nutty professor. That’s all like, I love it. Yeah, that’s that’s it, like, fly even. Where’s that mod?

Kevin Erhard 29:35
That mod? And said, Jerry? Yeah. Jerry Lewis or or, or, or professor Frank from the Simpsons. Who is Jerry just a Jerry Lewis character but yeah, I think yeah, I think Frank would be a nice a nice touch. So yeah, the holy shit bad thing. bad thing panic rising. So she tries to get out by shooting the door and as the wood splinters away Just reveals that there’s just a metre metal plate with a gigantic deadbolt through the door, there’s like there’s really not much that she can do nothing with, you know, she’s all over 110 pounds. And, you know, she can’t just keep firing bullets at it. That’s not really gonna do much. And then suddenly a very xx mokena

Phil 30:25
Thank God, thank God by the way,

Kevin Erhard 30:28
thank god Barry arrives on the scene and saves her by throwing his big 38 year old girliness at the door until it breaks open. And he pulls her out of the room and the ceiling comes down. It’s actually a nice little description of the door just to in your mind’s eye because the door opens in words the door getting caught by the ceiling on the way down and being and being crushed. That’s good, right? Yeah, yeah. No, it’s it’s really well evocative, very evocative. And then this is where this is the problem I ultimately had is now there’s just like a ceiling in the doorframe, there’s just ceiling now. There’s nothing left. How is this house holding up that ceiling?

Phil 31:15
Well, you know, Kevin, they’re not all load bearing ceilings. That’s the thing. Yeah.

Kevin Erhard 31:22
That’s that’s the thing. Sure.

Phil 31:24
I think the part of this that I question is when Barry you know, opens up the door, grabs her out of there and looks her in the eye and says who’s the master of unlocking now? I question that decision that was a bit of writing that I wasn’t so sure on, but you know,

Kevin Erhard 31:48
you got to do what you gotta do. You gotta get dramatic man. Very 90s dig it. And then and then he puts on his sunglasses and in the background you hear

Unknown Speaker 31:58
Yeah.

Phil 32:01
Yeah, this Babak which you which is this is where they got the

Kevin Erhard 32:06
idea for that Bob O’Reilly starts playing and you know

Phil 32:10
yeah they just smart and they both just start air guitar hang out for like three solid chapters. Yeah, it

Kevin Erhard 32:18
was three elaborate, elaborate piping them air guitar and from from as the chord changes everything, and this is an error guitar. Not nobody here is hearing anything.

Phil 32:30
No, they’re not even here. They’re not even make a point. They make a point in the in the chapters to say that they’re not like, like making mouth noises to imitate the whole thing here. And while this is all silent, listening, but the shuffling of their feet and the rustle of their hands moving up and down. And the moan of some zombies off in the distance is it’s a dual portrait of two stars agents who have lost their minds. It’s really eerie. I liked it. I thought it was avant garde but good.

Kevin Erhard 33:00
We’re back with Chris and Rebecca.

Phil 33:03
Yeah, yeah. That they they make their way into the piano bar room.

Kevin Erhard 33:06
Yes. And this is where Chris is going to leave her and then Chris has a thought this is wrong. Oh, wrong. Joseph can probably Billy Who the fuck is Billy I forgot who Billy was. Was Billy the guy that forgot Billy Billy the guy in the beginning who died right away.

Phil 33:25
Billy was the old on he was the guy who that really? That really well written a billy but William William William. Billy. Billy. Billy Boy

Kevin Erhard 33:40
got to like the episode. The first podcasts or something of us talking about.

Phil 33:47
Please, please do that. Yes. Or if not just put like footage not found.

Kevin Erhard 33:57
Yes, that guy Billy.

Phil 34:00
Billy. Just the way, the way. Forget

Kevin Erhard 34:02
Billy who could forget Billy the way. The name Billy is just thrown in. It’s just like,

Phil 34:07
just yeah. He wants to go.

Kevin Erhard 34:10
Remember. Remember, there was a guy named Billy. Oh, wait is Billy his friend?

Phil 34:18
Was he the one that Oh, yeah. The guy called him. Yeah, but

Kevin Erhard 34:22
do we know that Willie is Fred?

Phil 34:25
Maybe? Maybe.

Kevin Erhard 34:27
Did we miss something? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Phil 34:30
I don’t know. Uh, Billy. Oh, Billy. You know, Billy. Well, we’re

Kevin Erhard 34:36
assuming Chris. Oh, yeah.

Phil 34:38
It was okay. Yes. It was Billy Billy was the one. Billy is the one that tried to contact him who wanted to like, right, warn him about everything that’s going on. Got it. So yeah, yeah, we’re good.

Kevin Erhard 34:52
We’re good. We’re back on the same page. Now. Billy is very professional, super professional. Billy is the one who tried to contact them. But right now Chris is kind of listing them along long other people who are definitely dead. So

Phil 35:07
definitely he just kind of got thick just does like, well Billy is dead. I think we can all

Kevin Erhard 35:15
we can all accept and agree that my best childhood friend Billy is 100% or a dead dead ski.

Phil 35:21
So, yeah, so he’s, he’s, uh, he’s been he’s considering all of his friends who are dead. Yes. And he finds himself a headless Bravo team member. Is this now? Is this the same headless one from before? Or did I miss something?

Kevin Erhard 35:37
I believe it’s still Kenneth. We also are with Rebecca too. Yes. As she starts just playing the piano

Phil 35:45
seems like a lost opportunity for some Boogie Woogie soundtrack additions here. I just imagined, like, if this was a film, like they cut back and she’s like halfway through chopsticks. Yeah. Like, very slowly. She does actually. This does lead to one of the better translated puzzles in the book, which is the the sheet music puzzle. And I’ve got to ask, because as I’ve pointed out before, I have never played this game all the way through. Is this in the game it is.

Kevin Erhard 36:18
So what happens is, this is a great puzzle. It is a great puzzle. You find the sheet music as Chris, and you go in, you find the piano room, and you just you tell me like, you try to play it as Chris and Chris doesn’t play the piano. So it sounds like garbage. And then Rebecca enters the room. And she’s like, holy shit, that was terrible.

Phil 36:46
And Rebecca, not only am I a biology, Jane, yes.

Kevin Erhard 36:50
So Rebecca then sits down and starts practicing it. You leave Rebecca there to practice and then I think in the game, you have to advance the plot a little bit. Before you can, by the time you get back, Rebecca has it ready to go and then she plays Moonlight Sonata. And it opens a secret passage in the room.

Phil 37:12
Yes. Which which does happen in this chapter. It’s just that she finds the sheet music where she gets her list out.

Kevin Erhard 37:20
Yeah, she has a little bit more agency in this version. It’s not like in the game. It’s like it’s all driven by Chris’s actions in this it’s like, she finds the music, she decides to play the music. And it she’s the one that kind of finds the the emblem,

Phil 37:36
right and and at this point, she recognizes this gold plate is emblem and realizes that it matches another one that’s over the dining room fireplace and decides to go on her own to switch them out because she’s a cop. Dammit, like she asked this guy’s gonna do it moment. Yeah, and I won’t lie to you. I’m just gonna read out my note here. At this point, I’ve entirely lost track of puzzle pieces. I don’t know where we are.

Kevin Erhard 38:07
Yeah, no, I’m, I’m I’m trusting the book to keep track of it for me. Yeah,

Phil 38:12
yeah, exactly. Thank God

Kevin Erhard 38:14
that the book I wanted to make. To mention, they actually I forgot to point out that Kristen, Rebecca. Here, I will read this little passage, they hurried around the end of the long table pass the elaborately decorated fireplace stopping in front of the shattered pile, Chris nudge the great pieces with the tip of his boot, from the angles and shapes that appeared to have been a statue of some kind. So this is actually another puzzle that they that St. Perry just like kind of throws in there that it’s been solved by somebody else at some other time. And we don’t need to talk about it. So there’s a there’s a in the dining room. There’s a statue in the dining room of the second floor of the dining room that you can push over the ledge, and the statue will fall hit the ground and shatter. And there’s something embedded into the statue. I forget exactly, specifically what it is. But it’s like a piece to another puzzle that gets solved. And I thought this was kind of smart to be like yeah, we don’t need to like it’s it’s almost just like an Easter egg of like, yeah, somebody did it. Somebody did a statue of an Easter. Yeah, somebody did the statue thing.

Phil 39:29
Right. Oh, cool. statue.

Kevin Erhard 39:31
Yeah, statue. Yeah, I get people. That’s people who played the game. Yes. The people who played the game are like Yeah, yeah, I did that.

So we jump over to chapter 11. And Barry and Joe are doing the puzzle stuff. And then Barry decides to say the famous line

Phil 39:56
that will the one that I even know about. Lucky for you

Kevin Erhard 39:59
another A couple of seconds and you would have been a Jill sandwich

Phil 40:03
isn’t Jill’s? It’s not Jill sandwich in the game. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 40:06
he says that in the game.

Phil 40:08
It is a Jill says

Kevin Erhard 40:09
like, Oh, I saved you from becoming a Jill sandwich.

Phil 40:13
And and I’ll tell you what, and I’ll tell you what, what’s the reason that he’s making this god awful joke. He’s hiding something. Yeah. And Joe recognizes that she’s cheap. Which you know what? Good save. I know. I said, I know I said the previous episode. That the one of the big mistakes that people who adapt stuff like this is they try to come up with an explanation for every little thing, right? This one I accept fully. I award full points. This is it’s like, oh, he’s making a stupid joke, because he’s hiding something from her. That way. I know

Kevin Erhard 40:44
what honestly. 10 points to Gryffindor

Phil 40:47
10 points. 10

Kevin Erhard 40:48
points. All 10 points. We’re not, we’re not going to get into you know what? I I’ll be honest, I don’t even like Harry Potter that much. But I just, I just made the reference because it felt right. It just sometimes it feels good. Both Phil and I have a strong dislike for JK Rowling on her. Yes. Because of her stance on on trans people and trans rights or human rights. And I figured this would be a good time to say it you because I just made that damn right. There’s always a good time just did a Harry Potter reference. And then I immediately felt

Phil 41:24
it left us unclean it Oh,

Kevin Erhard 41:28
yeah. I gotta go wash my hands. Yeah, I understand. I’m back from washing my hands.

Phil 41:35
Just like that. Just like that. The miracle of editing miracle of editing. It took him four and a half hours. It was a row and he didn’t turn his mic off. There was a lot of grunting

Kevin Erhard 41:44
I feel Yeah, I mean, I had to stop and take a pee break. In between lathering springs.

Phil 41:54
It’s an action word that pumps me laughter that’s that’s just lather and lather. Hey, be honest. It’s

Kevin Erhard 42:01
a real bummer, man.

Phil 42:04
Total bummer.

Kevin Erhard 42:09
Jill is really certain that Barry is hiding something. But Barry is just like, Oh, no, no, I’m just worried about Chris You know? And then Jill kinda like, you know, she beats herself up thinking bad about Barry by saying paranoid much is Barry Burton, you’re talking about the backbone of raccoon stars. Not to mention the man who just saved your life. What could he possibly be hiding? newsflash jail. It’s quite a lot.

Phil 42:37
Yeah. Now and of course the irony is that Jill still hiding the little computer that the suppose Trent, if you will I’m wildly gesticulating quotation marks here. trend rents gave her so what are you hiding? Jill? What are you hiding?

Kevin Erhard 42:57
I think she mentioned that in the next paragraph. Oh, sure. But she doesn’t she just she doesn’t. I don’t think she feels as bad about that as she is suspicious of Barry because she’s a thief. And once a thief always a thief and for our

Phil 43:14
for any of our listeners who don’t know. thieves steal things they do. So you can imagine

Kevin Erhard 43:23
Jill Ben says to herself that’s a keep rationalizing. Next thing you’ll be suspecting of Captain Wesker of planning this whole thing. And

Unknown Speaker 43:32
wink wink.

Kevin Erhard 43:34
She looks at the camera. She winks

Phil 43:37
and credit she does her Jim halpert face em

Kevin Erhard 43:40
Halbert face it cuts to Dwight saying false. Yeah, and, and that’s the end of the chapter. It continues on. Office music plays and it ends with the current that doozy asam theme song director,

Phil 44:04
office music plays and it ends with a really unsatisfying final season itself. So Jill and Barry split up again. Because they’re starts to find more of the puzzle pieces that I’ve lost track of.

Kevin Erhard 44:21
There’s like 15 or four. I don’t know

Phil 44:25
something it doesn’t.

Kevin Erhard 44:26
It’s a lot. It doesn’t matter because this is not the only puzzle piece. There’s like, there’s there’s the four puzzle pieces, and then there’s the crests. And then there’s the keys. And then there’s the like, I don’t like it doesn’t matter. There’s there’s there are so many there are puzzles within puzzles. And the book will tell me when we’re good.

Phil 44:50
Yeah. And you know what? Thanks book. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for being there being there.

Kevin Erhard 44:56
Thanks for being a the immutable written word right?

Phil 45:01
I know it’s real because I can read I can read x.

Kevin Erhard 45:06
So Forrest is dead. Just add another name to that list Chris.

Phil 45:11
Or I’m sure we’ve got a good paragraph of backstory to read up on

Kevin Erhard 45:16
his laughing Southern girl boy with his ratty clothes and easy grin was no more

Phil 45:23
I’m gonna miss him so we’re gonna miss him

Kevin Erhard 45:25
we’re gonna you know miss him. It’s a shame. You know what forests favorite restaurant was a what was his lady and sons down Savannah,

Phil 45:34
ah, where you can get the most authentic Southern style comfort food. This side of them is like, just so real. I didn’t work there. For six months.

Kevin Erhard 45:47
You didn’t you never worked there.

Phil 45:49
I can’t tell you what it’s like in there. Or how the food tastes are how people would stop me and asked me if I could interrupt Miss Deane from working the kitchen to come out and take a picture because they believed that in order to stock a southern buffet on a Sunday in March that Paula Dean was back there with the deep fat fryer. No none of those things happened to me. Good. Good fried chicken the

Kevin Erhard 46:27
forest really like that lady and sons fried chicken.

Phil 46:30
Who does?

Kevin Erhard 46:32
I gotta say I only I only ate there once. And I honestly felt like somebody had shot me in the neck with a bear tranquilizer for the rest of the day.

Phil 46:44
As a man as a man who has joyfully and purposefully enjoyed bear tranquilizers, it’s very similar not all that dissimilar

Kevin Erhard 46:59
the Park Service would like to know your location

Phil 47:09
while they they do that’s just because I keep stealing their bear tracks.

Kevin Erhard 47:15
Forest bear was dead the good old Southern boy good old Southern boy Dean afficionado.

Phil 47:20
Don’t ask him about his opinions on the words that she uses. But yeah,

Kevin Erhard 47:24
still good. Still good. First is like a there’s there’s a bunch of differences in like a crisp playthrough in a Gil playthrough there’s like you experience things differently. If I recall correctly in Chris’s play through forest doesn’t actually have anything on him or he just has like a clip. And then in Jill’s playthrough you actually get a machine gun off of his body. That’s long. That’s one of the things that I vaguely recall, I’m probably wrong, and will get many many angry emails to know this is actually what forest had@gmail.com Please, please send them there. And I will

Phil 48:03
and if that kicks back, make sure to send an email to none of this matters@aol.net really want to know

Kevin Erhard 48:14
that that will forward on to my other email address of the sign is going to explode in 5 billion years. Why? Oh, why do we care about anything@yahoo.com?

Phil 48:30
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good email real real estate. You got their expression pick that one up. You don’t have to do a serial number anything now now? Pretty good.

Kevin Erhard 48:41
So anyway, forest was killed by the crows crows that we’ve already we’ve kind of already talked about. You got worked over we got work over. It sounded like crows, an entire flock or a murder actually pack a dog’s Kindle of kittens. I didn’t know that. That was a group of kittens. It’s

Phil 49:02
full of kitten. I

Kevin Erhard 49:02
thought it was a litter.

Phil 49:05
I thought that was what it was.

Kevin Erhard 49:06
I thought I thought both like puppies and kittens were letters. A Kindle.

Phil 49:13
They buy a Kindle of kittens. A Kindle of kittens. That’s what it’s called. A Kindle. Sure.

Kevin Erhard 49:27
Why don’t you ask Jonesy.

Phil 49:29
You’d think you would know but that that little bastard has no interest in his own history. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 49:35
he knows nothing while he’s probably can’t even tell you who Rum Tum tugger is probably just under your desk chewing on a cable at some at this point.

Phil 49:42
That is definitely I’m amazed that more of my cables aren’t completely shut the ship. So yeah,

Kevin Erhard 49:49
so yeah, then he makes the connection Murder of Crows because he’s super clever. He realizes that the birds are bad and he should feel bad. He runs away. like a like a good old stars boy he runs away always run from crows like always you that is the first thing they teach you in Star Trek and and actually I’ll public service announcement birds will fuck you up

Phil 50:15
absolutely well that’s not even a Jesus actually

Kevin Erhard 50:18
this is actually me taking my joking face off and putting on my serious face Allah Mr. Rogers I’ve put on the card again of seriousness

Phil 50:28
plus two

Kevin Erhard 50:31
I was gonna say it’s a plus one but but plus yes it’s a

Phil 50:35
it’s a good

Kevin Erhard 50:36
it’s good cardigan is that it’s definitely a plus two cardigan of seriousness Let’s

Phil 50:40
do it again give yourself some credit here

Kevin Erhard 50:42
plus two he’s he’s throwing it on and Mr. Rogers is here to tell you right away from birds don’t fuck with the birds don’t don’t fuck with

Phil 50:52
it takes no time for oh look at those birds to turn to Oh sweet Jesus. Look at those birds in the way where we were literally my fiance and I were hanging out one day. We looked outside and there were a couple of birds on a tree. We liked birds we like bird watching. And so she goes oh look at those birds and then about four other birds join them like within five seconds of her saying that her tone just went to oh geez.

Kevin Erhard 51:19
Look at those birds

Phil 51:20
fast. Oh no run from birds. That’s our second t shirt. I like this.

Kevin Erhard 51:26
This fourth wall line here where Chris says thinks to himself This wasn’t some kind of game where he could push a reset button if he missed a trick. People were dying his friends were dying as like I get it Yeah, nice. Nice pray there wasn’t an auto safe. He’s stumbling around and Rebecca Rebecca startled he looks down to see the young stars member at the base of wide steps grinning up at him they they meet up and Rebecca kind of like breaks down what what happened? She She found the silver key. All is good. And here we go. We have a nice actually tie into Resident Evil to where Yes, yes, Chris thought about lying, but saw that she wasn’t going to buy it and realized suddenly what it was about her that made him feel so protective. That made him want to shield her from the sad and sickening truth, Claire. That was it. Rebecca reminded him of his little sister from her tomboy sarcasm and quick wit to the way she wore her hair.

Phil 52:32
So So you’re telling me Chris that your feeling of brotherly concern?

Kevin Erhard 52:37
Okay. I believe I believe man,

Phil 52:41
I believe 100%

Kevin Erhard 52:50
and we’re just gonna box that up and we’re gonna move on Chris. Because Yeah,

Phil 52:54
we’re just gonna put that we’re gonna take all that and put that right here on a side of the room where you can’t trip over it.

Kevin Erhard 53:01
We’re gonna move on we’re gonna move on Chris. Let’s uh Rebecca know that forest and Kenneth are quite dead. That’s that’s the end of that. We don’t we have a scene change. And I referenced this in Episode Two of the show. This is the this is the moment where we’re Wesker is like full mask off bad guy.

Phil 53:21
Prime Prime Evil here this is we started out with like, Koi sleaziness. Then it got into standard on threatening to kill your family 90s bad guy territory. And here. We get into Yeah, this is

Kevin Erhard 53:41
just gross. We get Wesker admitting that he pushed the statue off the balcony. Instead of searching around for things, and I believe Here we go. him and he had the good fortune to run into Ellen Smith while he’d been in the library. Oops, scratch that. It’s Dr. Alan Smith. Thank you very much. And we get an entire backstory for Wesker. About how so

Phil 54:11
much so much, by the way. So much like Stephen King levels of like, Where did that come from? I don’t know where

Kevin Erhard 54:20
can you tell me a little bit about Dr. Alan Smith.

Phil 54:23
Okay, so Dr. Alan Smith, was scientist he’d been working with throws this and he’d asked her out a bunch of times. And she’d always said no, and given them that kind of cold ice queen. treatment. And, and, and that. And he asked her on a date. She says no. And now in the present day, he gets to killer because she’s a zombie. And he takes no small amount of pleasure in it. Just in case you needed to hate the guy more.

Kevin Erhard 54:57
But if she hadn’t been so damned, good luck. He never would have bothered in the first place. But my how your beauty has faded Dr. Ellen Wesker closed his eyes, smiling, reliving the experience.

Phil 55:16
It’s it’s to cartoonishly evil, but also very real at the same time, we’ve all met that guy who would be like, oh, booking beard shrug, which turned to zombie I excused shooter and literally

Kevin Erhard 55:30
what he said Wesker didn’t like to think of himself as a shallow man. But pulling the trigger on that high writing bitch had been wonderfully No, deeply gratifying. He is like, he is a patron saint of fucking in sells at this point. Oh, yeah. Yes. And this is also something that doesn’t really aged well, right. Because now we’re 20 years later, 23 years after this book is published, right. And we’ve had literal, we’ve we’ve had literal instances of in cells perpetrating violence against women. Because Because of bullshit like this, and obviously I’m not Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that. It’s it’s the it’s not it’s not the media. It’s not the portrayal and media that has caused the violence. It’s just this No, no, this portrayal and media, which at the time felt so cartoonishly villainous, has suddenly become something that is almost too scarily real. In 2021.

Phil 56:41
Yeah, my guess is that when faced with, you know, having an opportunity to make this character, just ugly and gross in a way that everyone can appreciate, and, and no one’s getting, it doesn’t have to be all that realistic, and that sort of thing in 1996. You know, St. Perry wrote this ad, and, you know, this was like, Oh, yeah, this this guy’s gross. This is awful, never never imagining how close to home, this kind of shit would come, you know, nearly 30 years later, like, how could she know? Like, that’s absolutely, it’s so it does hit close

Kevin Erhard 57:21
to home in a really, really horrible way. But it does a great job of really making Wesker the absolute piece of shit that we want him to be, or we need him to be to kind of buy into the story. And then there’s, the rest of his chapter is more or less, more exposition dump, as to like, you know, some of the science, some of the puzzle solving, etc, etc.

Phil 57:50
And it comes to a close with him finding a puzzle piece to the labs, which pisses him off because he is assumed that the labs wouldn’t be

Kevin Erhard 58:02
locked. And so he realizes that this whole thing is gonna be a lot harder than because originally I was designing the piece means the labs are locked as well. So it’s just like an extra layer of bullshit that he has to go through.

Phil 58:15
Right. Right. What do I got to kill five more of my access? goddamnit dammit. This is the worst. Oh, what a lousy Tuesday This is turning

Kevin Erhard 58:26
out to be and we’ll leave it there for now. We made it through another I’d say about 20% of the book. And we’re coming in on the homestretch here. Yeah, we

Phil 58:36
got some big nasties coming our way which is kind of a prerequisite for Resident Evil anything.

Kevin Erhard 58:41
I kind of appreciate that. It’s like, sure. There’s zombies and monsters, but then like, a solid 50% of the monsters are just oversized diversions. of regular animals.

Phil 58:54
Absolutely. And you know what, it works fine. Just fine. We’re we’re once works just

Kevin Erhard 59:00
where it’s 2021. We’ve jet King Kong Vs. Godzilla, which is has just been released into theaters again. And I mean, those are that’s just a giant ape, and a giant, the iguana type lizard.

Phil 59:19
It’s a giant ape versus a giant metaphor for nuclear war in Japan. And that’s just a tails old style

Kevin Erhard 59:27
as old as time. So if it’s good enough for for our Chi Jews, it’s good enough for Resident Evil.

Phil 59:34
Damn right. Like, it’s so aggressive there.

Kevin Erhard 59:40
Anyway, I’m Kevin. That’s been Phil. We’ll see you next time. Thank you, guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai