A Quick Aside
As we hurtle toward the grand finale of Mission to Zyxx, the seven creators sit down to answer listeners’ burning questions and talk about what the show has meant to us. Will we cry? Will you laugh when we cry? Will you cry WHILE you laugh at us crying? Only one way to find out, and that’s to hit that play button, baby.
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ALDEN: Hey everybody, it's Alden Ford and the rest of the cast of Mission to Zyxx.
EVERYONE: Hello!
ALDEN: We are here right in the homestretch, right between the last two episodes, and of course as you now know, 520 was not, in fact, the series finale of the show, but rather the first part of a two-part series finale. And 521 is on its way, and we cannot wait for you to hear it. We're having a lot of feelings about the end of the show, but we also have some really exciting news, and we want to share it with you. Shane, take it away!
SHANE: Yes, Shane here. Since 519, I've had, or how do you say it, I haven't had a baby, but a baby has come into my life and it is related to me.
EVERYONE: [laughs]
MOUJAN: I'm now a father?
SHANE: I'm now a father! Beautiful, beautiful words.
ALDEN: Oh man, perfect, just the most eloquent…
WINSTON: I'm stitching that on a pillow, a baby has come into my life and I'm related to it.
ALLIE: And again, this is how you can tell that we do not write this ahead of time, it is all improvised.
ALDEN: That's right.
SETH: Directly Bob Dylan lyrics?
ALDEN: A new Horsehat has entered the picture, and yes, it's caused a little bit of a slowdown as Shane has taken some very well-deserved paternity leave, but rest assured, we are working hard on 521 and it is a banger. I'm excited.
JEREMY: They're going to be playing this at the club years from now.
MOUJAN: Yeah, playing it specifically at the club.
SETH: We'll tell you what the club meets for.
ALLIE: [laughing] Seth…
ALDEN: Yeah, no, it's not a dance club, it's not the club you're thinking, it's a different.
SETH: In addition to that good news, we're here because we wanted to do something we had not done before in the history of the show.
ALDEN: Yeah, we've never done this before, an out-of-character mailbag episode!
SETH: That's right.
ALDEN: So before the show ends, we thought it might be fun for us to do a little discussion about the show, answering some of your questions.
WINSTON: Wait, we're doing this out of character?
ALDEN: And we're doing... Yeah, yeah.
JEREMY: Winston, I know it hurts to peel back the mask.
WINSTON: [upset] I didn't sign up for this. I didn't sign up for this, sorry.
SETH: It feels like you're playing a character who's kind of an asshole, actually, Winston.
ALDEN: But you know, people ask a lot of questions about the show, and I feel like this could be a nice little compendium before we say goodbye. A couple of stories about the last five years of our lives as improvisers and podcasters, and who knows? Maybe we'll learn something a little bit about ourselves.
MOUJAN: Also, to make it spicy, we're not going to hold back. We're going to say it all.
WINSTON: The gloves are off.
MOUJAN: We're going to be honest.
ALDEN: Moujan is going to throw all of us under the bus.
MOUJAN: [playfully angry] I've had things to say for years!
ALDEN: So normally when we do mailbags, Nermut reads the mail. And so I want to change that up and have Seth read the mail this time.
JEREMY: Yeah.
SETH: Oh, cool.
JEREMY: What a different feel.
SETH: What a different feeling.
WINSTON: So then we'll get in character, and we'll answer him and count-
ALDEN: No, Winston. It's never in character. Take your helmet off.
SETH: Yeah.
WINSTON: No! I won't!
SETH: Wow, he's just surrounded by crushed cans.
WINSTON: Never!
ALDEN: Okay, so we're here with Jeremy, Alden, Moujan, Seth, Shane, Allie, and AJ. Method.
SETH: Okay, let's see. Just like Nermut, I've lost the question I wanted to-
ALDEN: [laughing] Jesus Christ, Seth.
JEREMY: Seth, come on.
SETH: All right. So this had to be the first one. That's why I had to scroll for it. Just through a guess estimate.
WINSTON: A guesstimate?
JEREMY: No.
SETH: Just how much shrimp was consumed throughout the making of this?
MOUJAN: That's what you're starting with. Okay, now that's a good...
JEREMY: That's a solid Q.
ALDEN: This is like the kind of question you'd get when you were, you know, getting hired at Google or something. This is like a thought experiment.
ALLIE: Yes.
SETH: Well, I think we can figure this out.
ALLIE: Are we thinking pounds or pieces of?
SETH: A really good question. We should have the unit.
WINSTON: People should know that usually before COVID, we would all get together at Shane's apartment.
JEREMY: The famed Puppy Palace, mentioned in the credits.
WINSTON: And we would have food. And a lot of times that food would include a shrimp dish of some sort.
JEREMY: If we got sushi, there would be shrimp tempura.
ALDEN: And we’d get shrimp tacos a lot.
SETH: I think in L.A. we got shrimp tacos when we recorded.
MOUJAN: That character I play where I say I love shrimp, that ain't a lie. That's true.
ALDEN: Moujan, you say character, there's like four different characters with the same voice. It's been a while since we've visited Shrimp Island.
MOUJAN: I love shrimp! I’m a tiny criminal!
ALDEN: But there's Michelle. There's Michelle's enemy, Pyeerkin. Let's call it 60 episodes we recorded together. Throw in another 10 sessions for pickups, so 70. Let's say we ate shrimp at two thirds of those.
JEREMY: Yeah, so that’s, like, what, fifty-ish?
MOUJAN: Six hundred thousand tons.
ALDEN: I mean, we probably would get four to eight shrimp per session. So average of six. So what's six times 50?
JEREMY: That's 300 shrimp. I think that's probably a pretty safe guesstimate.
ALLIE: Yeah. All right, Google!
JEREMY: I'm sorry, guess estimate.
SHANE: Just to be clear, when you say session, you're not referring to a recording session. That's what we call it when we eat shrimp, a shrimp session.
JEREMY: A shrimp session.
ALDEN: We may or may not record an episode during that time.
MOUJAN: You know how some people have like dad bods, beach bods. For a moment, we all had shrimp bods.
WINSTON: We all had shrimp bods, yeah.
JEREMY: That question sounds like it's answered.
MOUJAN: Well done.
WINSTON AND ALDEN: [doing reverb] Answered… Answered….
ALLIE: Could there be a sound effect when we answer a question?
JEREMY: [deep] Sound effect.
WINSTON: Pretty good.
MOUJAN: Question number two.
SETH: Question number two. All right. Let's do a little bit of a lightning round here.
JEREMY: Okay.
WINSTON: Okay. What is your favorite… this is hard because it's visual. Sorry.
JEREMY: Seth, stretching the definition of lightning round.
SETH: Okay. This is a good one.
JEREMY: All right.
SETH: What is each of your favorite side characters that you have voiced?
JEREMY: Oh, now that's a Q. I think people would expect me to say the Juck My Nuts guy, but I greatly prefer the character who is sort of, he doesn't have a name, but he's just sort of baffled.
ALDEN: The tourist?
JEREMY: The tourist, yeah. Yeah. Where he's just like, hey, buddy, I didn't get involved.
ALDEN: Yeah, I do love that guy.
JEREMY: You're telling me to bring my own funkel cake? I love that guy. And I also love voicing Stephi, the assistant to Fondo Parquad. [stephi voice] No, boss! But it is very rough on my throat to do that voice for longer than a minute. And of course, Zima Master Kiarondo.
ALDEN: Oh, yeah.
ALLIE: Okay. Well, that doesn't sound like you answered which one character you like.
ALDEN: Triple. Triple answer!
MOUJAN: I think you're just listing all your characters.
JEREMY: That's a top three.
WINSTON: Ting, ting. Triple answer.
ALDEN: Lightning round. Yeah.
JEREMY: Well, sorry.
ALDEN: Winston?
WINSTON: Okay. I think an underrated one that I thought was really fun was Governor of Milch was really fun.
MOUJAN: Oh yeah.
SHANE: Yeah. I thought that was...
JEREMY: Oh, the HAND of the Governor.
WINSTON: Like, [hand of the governor of Milch voice] Oh, not cool… I thought that was..
SETH: Wait, give us more Hand of the Governor.
WINSTON: Well, it's very nice.
SHANE: Talk about how you were at a party.
WINSTON: Oh, I was at a party. Everyone there was cool. Ehhh… I don't know. I just think it was fun. It was a fun character.
ALDEN: I got to say, I am always impressed. I mean, I'm impressed by everybody's ability to do this. But Winston and Moujan are constantly throwing in just random characters, like just walk-on characters. And you guys are always able to continue coming up with just new... And it's great because if a character ends up coming back 20 times, it's worth it. It's like it holds up. But sometimes it's literally one line that we never hear again. And you guys are always so good at that.
MOUJAN: That's my favorite part of the show, I think, for me, is being able to play all those characters. Although, I would say my favorite one probably is just, I just fucking love Seesu. I think she's just a badass.
ALDEN: Seesu is a great character.
MOUJAN: And she just has her shit together.
SETH: But is she a side character at this point?
MOUJAN: Maybe.
ALLIE: Yes.
JEREMY: Now she is. She's in a whole other galaxy.
MOUJAN: Well, NOW she is.
SETH: Oh, yeah. She's... Wow.
ALDEN: Allie?
ALLIE: Oh, obviously, Annabelle.
ALDEN: Abigail.
ALLIE: Abigail, fuck!
WINSTON: I always say Annabelle, too.
MOUJAN: Yeah, Allie. Wait, you got to say who that is.
JEREMY: You got-
SHANE: I mean, but that is so Abigail to say that.
JEREMY: You might even say...
ALLIE: Abigail, you've done it again.
MOUJAN: And where did she appear again?
SETH: 301.
SHANE: Episode 301!
ALDEN: I will say, I think Abigail is our favorite character that I would guess almost not a single listener remembers. We talk about Abigail all the time. Seth, what about you?
SETH: Oh, I mean, I think Dinkle Wacompe is up there.
JEREMY: Dinkle Wacompe.
SETH: [Dinkle voice] Dinkle Wacompe. Tiny person, long microphone. And Hastooie Winko is pretty... [hastooie voice] Hastooie Winko, celebrity judge. Let's pump that justice!
JEREMY: I do love Hastooie Winko.
WINSTON: I feel like that's your id, Seth. I just feel like Hastooie Winko is just like…
SETH: I love playing that character because playing Nermut for so long, he's such the opposite of Nermut.
JEREMY: Yeah, Hastooie Winko is the anti-Nermut.
SETH: He's so confident and brash.
JEREMY: It's justice. Justice.
WINSTON: Coming in hot, coming in real.
MOUJAN: Alden?
ALDEN: I think my favorite side character... I mean, I'm really fond of Rangus.
SETH: Oh, yeah.
WINSTON: The wizard. Yeah, that was great.
ALDEN: Rangus the wizard.
SHANE: Rangus is great.
JEREMY: I just re-listened to 419 a month ago, and boy, is it funny. It's so good.
ALDEN: Such a good episode.
JEREMY: And Rangus is really funny.
SETH: He's such a jerk.
ALDEN: Well, Rangus also is the closest... Justin Tyler and I have been improvising together for a long time, and the Derf voice that he does, the sort of like, what are you doing!? When we improvise together, I would say two-thirds of our scenes are two Derfs just screaming at each other. So I think Rangus is the closest where I'm like, well, I don't know what's going on!
MOUJAN: You're Petra, though. Petra!
ALDEN: Petra is fun. Although I would say Petra, Squeegee, and Natalie are all characters that were more fun because you guys kept teeing me up.
JEREMY: Yeah. Petra, where are you?
ALDEN: [Petra voice] Larry!
WINSTON: I love characters like that. Those characters just basically kind of serve as punctuation.
ALDEN: Right. Exactly.
WINSTON: Sort of like dotted in, but they're so nice.
ALDEN: Punctuation character for you was that urchin bot in Chimnacia where you're like, process of elimination, that is!
JEREMY: Oh, ART Dodger.
ALDEN: Yeah, ART Dodger.
WINSTON: That's right.
JEREMY: Honestly, we all had good fun because I got to be C in the Tiny TM frame.
ALDEN: I think the only people that didn't have a good time in that episode were all of our British listeners.
EVERYONE: [laughs]
JEREMY: We're terrible at British accents!
ALDEN: Lightning round. That was our longest question.
MOUJAN: Yeah, that was very slow and horrific.
JEREMY: And the bolt has reached earth!
SETH: Next question. Oh I should be saying who these are from.
MOUJAN: Oh, wow.
ALDEN: You know, Seth, you have done so many of these in character.
SETH: Well, Nermut’s so bad at it that it's taken over my personality.
ALLIE: [doubtfully] NERMUT’S so bad at it.
JEREMY: Uh huh.
ALDEN: It's funny, Seth. That reminds me of two questions that were asked that I'd like to address very quickly right now. One is, which part of your characters reflect your own personality? And I think we can all say almost all of them for all of us.
JEREMY: I think there's a reason we all chose the characters we did.
SETH: Mine's definitely a reflection of my actual self. A striving, needy…
SHANE: Loving dad.
JEREMY: I will say the most frequently lobbied criticism at me as a human being is that I am a know-it-all. And not one of those criticisms has been unfounded.
ADDY: [barks]
SETH: Even Addy agrees.
JEREMY: Yeah, Addy's like, Jesus Christ.
SETH: Are you talking to Jeremy?
JEREMY: Woof.
ALDEN: Certainly, Jeremy, none of us could play C-53. I say that in the absolute most complimentary way. You nail that character.
MOUJAN: I'd say Bargie, especially... So when we started recording this show, I was going through some emotional turmoil.
JEREMY: Emotions. Powerful emotions.
MOUJAN: And I think in a good way, it helped kind of fuel Bargie's point of view and the things she was willing to talk about and the anger and the pain she had about people or the industry and stuff like that. And so Bargie was like a channel for me. It was like therapy for me in some way. Although definitely get real therapy too. But yeah, Bargie, there's a lot of me and Bargie.
ALDEN: Is there a lot of hacky sack guy in you, Shane?
SHANE: Oh, yeah, definitely. It's essentially just me pitched up to semitones.
ALDEN: Some casual listeners might not know how often you appear on the show.
SHANE: Yeah, I started doing it, I think, season three was the first time I actually got in there.
WINSTON: You're like, somebody's got to be funny on this motherfucking thing.
ALDEN: What's your favorite character you've injected into the show?
SHANE: More so than anybody I've voiced. I guess my answer to this question would be, I like to also sneak in my friends and family into background stuff.
CREW: What!?
SETH: How much money do we owe these people?
SHANE: You know, it'll just be like, since I'm always working on this show and it's always like a struggle to get it out. We'll have friends over sometimes, and I'm still in and out of my room working on it. So one time my friend Rachel was over and we were working on J.R.'s second K’Hekk episode. And I was like, oh, hey, do you want to do an impression of the computer voice from Alien and just do the countdown?
CREW: [agreeing noises]
SHANE: Because remember, there's a self-destruct countdown. I had my friend do that. Early on, there was a part where Pleck took a bunch of dust and then was trying to snap out of it. And my friend Daniel was over and I just recorded him like that, rubbing his face. I have little memories of like, oh, yeah. Or I had my mom and my sister have a conversation in the background of the Zima Prime episode as if they're like Zimas in the show.
SETH: That's awesome.
JEREMY: And your sister sang the pump up the Justice theme, did she not?
SHANE: She did. Yeah, she's a great singer.
JEREMY: I mean, that is one of my favorite Zyxx songs.
SHANE: Yeah, mine too.
SETH: I think the Justice would not have been pumped nearly half as much without her.
MOUJAN: I don't know. I don't think anyone asked this, but I think it's a cool thing that maybe some of our listeners know. But we like, we got Shane on accident. Right?
SHANE: Like, yeah. I mean, yes.
JEREMY: Origin story!
SHANE: Alden and I had like origins met vaguely before because our friend in common, Eric Brawn, who owns the studio where you all like had your first recording sessions and I was the engineer.
ALDEN: Yeah, whole first season..
JEREMY: Most of season one.
SHANE: Yeah. Yeah. I have a question for the crew.
ALLIE: What? No, I want to hear more about you all becoming friends!
SHANE: Well, this is part of it. This is in that zone. So yeah, when we started working together, it started becoming clear that I was like more than just mixing the first episode, but mixing more. There was this period from my point of view where I was like, all right, so am I in the show now? Am I like part of the crew? And I remember vividly like you all had a writers meeting at the studio before we were going to record.
SETH: Yeah. Well, writers meeting in quotes, since we never write anything, but like a story planning meeting.
JEREMY: Yeah.
SHANE: Yeah. And I was there to set up and I was like thinking, can I jump in with something? And the first thing I suggested was I remember we were probably halfway through season one. I remember Winston being like, all right, well, what do we got to do? Because we talked about we wanted to like eventually get to the rebellion. And then I suggested like, well, what if season one was just the Federated Alliance and then season two was rebels. And I remember being like, really like, “oh God, am I going outside?”
WINSTON: And we were like, silence!
SHANE: Yeah. Yeah. And then I wasn't allowed to speak for a few seasons. But yeah, like I was wondering from you guys' perspective, what were you guys talking about? Like, what's up with this dude? Like, do we just let him talk?
JEREMY: I think...
SETH: We actually are going to have that conversation now.
JEREMY: I think from very early on, I was like, oh, this guy's part of the show because he's adding stuff that we wouldn't think to add.
ALLIE: Yeah.
JEREMY: The second episode of the show, Shatana, and it's like the wedding. And there's one point where C claps for something and nobody else claps. And I was like, no one? Okay. But you added this metallic clanking of C's hands clapping.
SHANE: Oh yeah, yeah.
MOUJAN: Nice.
JEREMY: And it makes that moment like three times as funny.
SHANE: Oh, thanks.
JEREMY: And as soon as I heard that, was like, we got to keep this guy around because this is the jam.
ALDEN: Yeah.
SHANE: It started being really fun from my perspective when you all started using what you imagine the sound design to be like in the scenes. Anything to do with Bargie's like geography and anatomy was always really fun when you started really like playing with that. And then Winston's like helmet gag in the first Old Derf episode where the ‘stroid miners like only have an accent when the helmet's on.
JEREMY: Classic.
SHANE: I was like, oh, that's such a good.
WINSTON: Oh yeah, the ‘stroid miner actually might be my favorite minor character.
JEREMY: That's a fun one.
MOUJAN: [‘Stroid Miner voice] ‘Stroid miner.
SHANE: Yeah. But also your openness to even let somebody who is generally perceived as a purely technical role in our podcast space to be invited into the creative process, which I think is…
SETH: Well, you had one of the best ideas of the entire show. Second only to the creation of Beano by accident was Dame Wiggles, the time loop back to Dar in the creation of Two Dars.
ALDEN: That was Shane's pitch?
SETH: That was Shane's pitch.
ALLIE: I honestly feel like a lot of those are Shane's pitch.
MOUJAN: Yeah.
ALDEN: Most of them are.
SHANE: I mean, you guys are so cool to just like, because when I do a pitch like that, they're usually, you know, they're very complicated, like the idea itself. But you guys are always willing to actually unpack it and make it work.
ALDEN: Well, I want to say two things about that. One is that, you know, for those of you who aren't familiar with how we make the show, we do do a little bit of big picture planning. What Shane was saying about this season is going to be Federated Alliance, next season is going to be Rebellion. Those are the kinds of things we like to plan out because we want the overall arc of the show to be satisfying.
SETH: Right.
ALDEN: And we try to let those midseason episodes sort of put the balls up in the air and then we try to gather them all by the end of the season. But the other thing I want to say about Shane being a part of the team is that I think that Shane, Seth, Brendan, all of us as improvisers, there is an element that each of us have and a philosophy we have about the show of taking it as far as we can possibly go. And it's not just like being ambitious or being funny or like getting great guests or whatever. It's like, if we're going to edit the show, it's not just cutting out the stuff that's not the funniest stuff. It's about how can we edit it so it sounds tighter and faster and more dense than anything that we could script. And like, if we're going to sound design it, we want to sound design the shit out of it. How can we make it sound more lush and more involving and more engaging than anything that would be on TV?
WINSTON: If we're going to stay in character, are we all going to stay in character?
ALDEN: Exactly. But it's the same with the music. Brendan was saying like, he's like, I really heard that first episode and I really realized you guys were going for it. And Shane was like, when I heard the music that Brendan did, I realized the show was going for it. There's been kind of this feedback loop of each of us doing stuff that inspires the rest of us to up our game and to sort of go all the way. We all share the philosophy that anything worth doing is worth doing to the point of absurdity.
SHANE: I was gonna say it's not it's not just limited to the post-production either. It's in the production itself. Like a big example is how Allie, you know, went to extremes just to make the show happen when you moved to Europe.
ALDEN: Yeah.
MOUJAN: Yeah.
SHANE: There was a period-
ALLIE: A dark time in our timeline, yeah.
MOUJAN: The Europe age!
SHANE: All of season three-
SETH: Shane, we promised her we wouldn't talk about it.
ALLIE: [laughs]
JEREMY: Yeah. You were up at like two in the morning, right?
ALLIE: Yeah. I usually go to bed at like five.
SHANE: We would start recording at one a.m. your time.
ALLIE: Yeah. I used to make like a pot of coffee that I would just like leave on the desk while we were recording.
ALDEN: Yeah.
WINSTON: Can I… can I be really… edit this out? Because this is the nerdiest thing that we'll say on this sci-fi podcast.
ALDEN: None of this is going in. We actually haven't started.
WINSTON: I do feel like a lot of this is following like the principles that we all learned as improvisers of like, Yes Anding. Also just the idea of heightening. Right? Like if we're going to do it, let's keep doing it. Let's like build off of one another. And then it's been really interesting to see kind of those principles that, you know, take or leave improv. But the, the principles are are still so great and can power so much.
ALDEN: I think you're right, though, Winston, that like none of us went into this with an idea of what it was going to be. We all just wanted it to be good. And I think that sort of improv spirit of like, not going in with a written script or with a written plan allowed us to be like, well, what if we did do that?
SETH: All right.
JEREMY: So what are we at, three questions?
SETH: So next question, were there any important plot points that were improv that you were like, “I guess we're stuck with that?”
MOUJAN: I think this is…
WINSTON: The only one.
MOUJAN: We all have the same thought.
WINSTON: The bean.
JEREMY: Big, hot bean.
WINSTON: Yeah.
MOUJAN: Yeah.
ALLIE: Yeah.
ALDEN: Michael Kayne invented the concept of this ancient relic being a hot bean as sort of, I think, a personal fuck you to each and every one of us. But we really tried to lean into it. And we sort of asked ourselves, like, what would be the funniest way to deal with this? And obviously, the funniest way was to make that true, that it was both a hot bean and that it really was the most important thing that the Federated Alliance was trying to find. And I think that set the whole show into motion. Somebody asked, like, when did you realize that this show was something more than just a fuck around? And I think, I'm paraphrasing, but I think that was sort of the moment for me where I was like, oh, I knew the show was awesome and funny and special, but that was when I was like, oh, this has legs. Like, we could follow this. Like, how far can we follow this thread?
SETH: I love that it's like every episode, too, that there's just smaller things where it's like, that's true now for the rest of the show. And there's something, I won't spoil it, but there's something in 521, what will be our final episode, that's just like such a funny, stupid reveal that would have always been true earlier. And we're just discovering, I'll say it to all of you, that like [bleeped]
ALDEN: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Shane, did you want to talk about the dove?
MOUJAN: Dove?
SHANE: Oh, yes. Yes. When Two comes back and doesn't have his powers and he releases a dove on the ship, like, midway through the episode.
SETH: Yeah.
SHANE: I just kept the noise of the dove in the background in that episode, like, just nesting on top of a shelf or something. And since then, I've just put it in every episode-
MOUJAN: What? What?
JEREMY: Now there’s a dove that lives on the Bargarean Jade?
EVERYONE: [laughing]
ALDEN: Like an airport bird?
MOUJAN: Along with the stowaways.
SETH: Like a port authority.
ALDEN: Yeah, like a port authority pigeon.
WINSTON: I mean, that's in some ways that's like, it's not the only reason, but it is sort of like one of the reasons that we know that the show has to end. Because like, if you say that everything is real, like, it just kind of starts to, we were starting to feel, and this is not a negative, but it's like, we have spoken so many things into being, not bean, but being, that like, it's become really massive. And so it's hard to keep everything true and keep all the plates spinning. We could, but...
ALDEN: I think that's what's kept us honest, though. I think that's the thing that has kept us from bailing on a lot of our bigger plot points is that we're like, if what we've established is true, there's only so many times we can pull the rug. Like, we can only keep Pleck from his destiny for so long. This is a sci-fi franchise. Pleck has a destiny. We have to fulfill it on some level.
MOUJAN: Another character who kind of got a life of their own is Zalcatron, who was just a refrigerator and then became like the refrigerator around town. Who has been hooking up with everybody.
ALDEN: Truly just a hot take machine.
JEREMY: A total throwaway line that I did once and then became kind of a major character in season five.
SETH: Yeah. And ends up defeating Kor Bal-
EVERYONE: [shushing]
SETH: All right. This will be a…. true lightning round.
JEREMY: Every time you say it.
MOUJAN: He says that so slowly while he's scrolling.
ALDEN: Let's set the bar low and then we'll beat it.
SETH: Okay. Body swap episode! Who would you be desperate to play and what makes you love that character? I'll start. When I have thought about a body swap episode, I immediately wanted to play Bargie. I think because like Nermut and Bargie are so different and Bargie is such a chaos agent in group improv scenes. Sorry to interrupt is like Bargie's entrance line in maybe like 25 episodes. So that's who I would want to be in a body swap ep.
WINSTON: I would say Pleck because in most improv teams I've been on, I'm like a straight man character. Like, wait a minute! Kind of the audience surrogate. The person who's usually acting normal or real in the scene, grounded. It'd be interesting to get back into that because I haven't played that in a while.
JEREMY: I think it would be really fun to have a C… AJ? Like a CJ. Like a really smart death machine.
ALDEN: Or a really dumb robot.
JEREMY: Or a really dumb robot.
ALLIE: I think the simplest body swap that would have made sense for Dar is with Nermut and they would have just been like really into the reverse role play.
JEREMY: Yeah. I mean, that's comedy gold.
MOUJAN: I think a body swap that would have been fun to have done is Bargie as C-53 because if Bargie is an agent of chaos, it would just be fun to make all these facts, chaotic facts that you guys have to justify and accept in the world.
JEREMY: That is true. That would be fun.
ALDEN: I mean, the thing is, I just don't think I could ever play any of your characters the way that you guys do. You guys are such singular voices as those characters. I just don't think I could do it.
SHANE: I think you would actually be a great Kor Balevore.
ALDEN: Oh, wow.
SHANE: Because you have this side to your side characters where you have a lot of power, especially in doing voices that truly don't sound like Pleck, and you can change your energy so much that I feel like you could do a good version of an evil Kor Balevore.
ALDEN: I did like playing Kajj Iniquitous, which only appeared in some ads, but I really liked him. I do think I could channel my early season one and season two Pleck idiocy to do a body swap with AJ. I think I'd have fun playing AJ. The great thing about AJ, and I think the mark of a great character, and I feel this about everybody, but I think the mark of a great improv character is that the character always knows the answer to every question. Anything you pitch to a great character, you know already what the answer's going to be. And the improviser fills in the specifics. But we know AJ's point of view so strongly that we know what his point of view on anything could be. And it might be the opposite of what we think just because it's funny to do that, buI think AJ's point of view is so clear. I think that's such a treat to listen to. And it must be fun to play, Winston.
WINSTON: Yeah, I'd really like to be playing it right now, as opposed to being my fucking self.
ALDEN: Time and Relative Nerd in Space asks, what's a favorite episode to record and or listen back to?
ALLIE: Oh, wait. A favorite episode to record will always be, for me, the David Bluvband episode.
JEREMY: Oh, man, that one.
ALDEN: You loved that. I think you broke more in that episode than any other episode.
ALLIE: I break a lot, let's be honest.
ALDEN: I break more.
ALLIE: That's true. But that I, I have like such a vivid memory of recording that in Amsterdam at whatever time in the morning. And I was just like sobbing, crying at him playing the characters.
WINSTON: Petey and Dean.
SETH: St. Vernackian.
ALLIE: Yeah, because also it was like so unlike any of the episodes we had ever done.
JEREMY: Yeah, that one's so weird, but it's so fun.
ALLIE: It’s! So! Weird!
WINSTON: One of my favorite episodes was the Paul F. Tompkins episode. just because… just to record it just because he was so gracious. I don't know, I just had a lot of respect for for him to kind of just jump in. And I don't know, I found it kind of weirdly inspiring. I was like, I should do, you know, like, I should do the same thing. Just be game. And like, it was just inspiring to me.
ALDEN: Yeah, yeah.
SHANE: I remember having a lot of fun recording The New Norm, 202. For some reason, I can't, the studio wasn't available in my apartment we can record at. But at the last minute, I had a friend who has a loft in Bushwick that he had just.. he lives in, but mostly converted to like a recording studio.
ALLIE: Oh, I remember that because there was like a book of Tarot on the bookshelf. And that's I was like, ah, yes, Tarot Castebby.
ALDEN: Oh! I didn’t know that!
WINSTON: Almost like Allergy Eyedrops!
SETH: Really basement of the Alamo’ed it.
ALLIE: ALMOST like Allergy Eyedrops!
MOUJAN: That was right in front of me! On my desk.
ALDEN: Allergy Eyedrops… Moujan, don’t sell yourself short. That's an inspired… That is such a good character name.
MOUJAN: It's so hard for me to pick like a favorite episode because it's like we've had so many funny people on our show. Such funny guests. Sebastian Cannelli is amazing. Yoni was amazing. Tim Dunn is amazing. Anything Leslie was in is amazing, but all of them are amazing. But I think the most fun I ever have is always the live shows.
JEREMY: The live show are very fun.
MOUJAN: Because it's just, you know, even we never really know what we're gonna expect. And we just have the energy from the crowd. And it just, we're all kind of a little silly and weird.
ALLIE: Who did I spit water at during a live show?
SETH: Me.
ALLIE: Okay, yeah, that tracks.
MOUJAN: And it's just the energy that we feed off of it and during the show. Before COVID, before COVID.
ALLIE: Pre-COVID, very pre-COVID.
JEREMY: I think my favorites to record are always the like, 19s.
MOUJAN: Oh, yeah.
JEREMY: Where we get to do something a little weird. The Council of Seven episode, Tiny Toots Adventures, Pump up the Justice-
WINSTON: -Fellowship of the Legume-
JEREMY: Fellowship of the Legume. Those are so fun.
ALDEN: And Captain Cameron, which is also one of my faves…
JEREMY: That one was slightly less fun for me because I didn't get to play a new character?
SETH: Oh, yeah.
MOUJAN:Oh, right, right.
JEREMY: Just because like, it's so much fun to go from playing C to playing like Quariel or Parka and Anorak or Quaid Blizmo. Like those are such fun, like different characters.
SETH: Yeah.
JEREMY: And to just be like, we're gonna be in a totally different world for one episode. It's so funny because there's always some fan who's like, boo, hated that episode!
ALDEN: Yeah, yeah.
JEREMY: It's like, sorry, dude.
ALDEN: I think they've come around to the 19s. But I think for the first three seasons, people are like, what the fuck are you doing?
SETH: What is this?
ALDEN: Yeah, I think 419 may be my favorite Zyxx episode of all time.
JEREMY: 419 is so good.
WINSTON: Nothing I like more than like, nope, this one's for us. Like this one's for daddy!
ALDEN: The thing about 419 was that I think it actually works really well, not only as a standalone episode, but it also folds into the story so nicely.
JEREMY: Yeah.
ALDEN: I think it's so fun.
MOUJAN: Yeah.
SETH: One that I remember loving to record was the first Zach Cherry episode.
JEREMY: Oh man.
MOUJAN: Cherry!
ALLIE: Was that the one where we all sat around in a circle in a white void?
JEREMY: Yeah, yeah.
MOUJAN: Oh my gosh! Yeah!
SETH: Like our regular studio at that point wasn't available. So we were like downstairs in this photo, video studio, and we were all sitting on like tall bar stool height chairs in a circle, which was actually kind of great for like eye lines-
JEREMY: It sorta was terrific, yeah.
SETH: -and interacting and seeing each other. And also we had to like, we couldn't really like slump. So I think we were like a little more.
JEREMY: Yeah, you had to-
SETH: And it was just like one of the first episodes where I feel like the promise of the show was fully realized. Like it was a parody of sci-fi, but such an original character. And Zach is so funny in such a specific way. And like everyone was so funny.
WINSTON: I'll say there's like a few episodes that feel… I remember the most recent one, and this might surprise some of you, was the Dame Wiggles episode.
ALDEN: [smugly] Well, well, well!
JEREMY: WELLL WELLLL WELL!
ALLIE: That’s out of character, though.
MOUJAN: Oh, interesting, Mr. Timey Wimey!
SETH: I’ve got a couple of minutes of audio of you hating it in the moment.
WINSTON: I know I hated the concept, but I liked doing it. I felt like, there's that and like the Torto Trooper, like some of these episodes that felt the most like being in a group game where we just kept moving around and like playing and playing and playing. And it was like, you could feel like, you know, the snowball rolling down the hill and it getting bigger and bigger.
ALDEN: Yeah. The Dame Wiggles episode for me was the episode where I think more than maybe any episode we've ever recorded, we were like, fuck it. Let's just see where this goes! Like, there was no discussion about whether we were going to paint ourselves into a corner or whether we were going to contradict shit that had already been established. We just were fucking like, let's go back in time again and we'll fucking make all these time loops and stuff. And then Shane was like, what if the final travel is to go back and do something in our own timeline that changes everything?
WINSTON: Yeah.
ALDEN: I can't believe that that episode worked out. It was a miracle and it's so funny.
SETH: It wasn't even that long of a recording.
ALDEN: We barely edited it. It was insane.
SHANE: One of my favorite episodes to work on, do the sound design for that, if I had to pick like which one I would want to go back into just to not necessarily make it better, but just to be in that world again is the Trey-Sta’gramn episode.
JEREMY: Trey-Sta’gramn was very fun.
SHANE: That was so fun. And it also happened right before we made the switch to releasing every two weeks. And I still think like, damn, I wish I had two weeks for that one because it was so fun to do that cheesy music.
WINSTON: That was so funny.
ALDEN: [laughing] I can't believe you used to do this every week. I can't believe you used to do that.
MOUJAN: Oh my God, that's insane.
SHANE: I mean, like, especially those like early season four or late season three episodes.
JEREMY: Beasts! I don't know how you did that.
SHANE: It messed up my body.
WINSTON: Yeah.
ALDEN: Well, Seth has gone missing, so I'll ask another question.
JEREMY: Yeah, hit us, Alden.
ALDEN: Here's a good question from Tom Noble. In case you want to follow him on Twitter, it's @nomtoble. What will you miss most about portraying your main characters on a regular basis? Or put another way, what have you learned about yourself by portraying your main characters? This is a very thoughtful question.
WINSTON: Is it all right if I go first?
JEREMY: Yeah, sure.
MOUJAN: No.
WINSTON: I have enjoyed the joys of idiocy with AJ. I think I would never really play a character like him in an improv scene? I think on my team that I used to perform with on UCB, it was like, well, I'm not going to play the idiot character. I'm going to be like the put upon bank teller. You know what I mean?
JEREMY: Not while Dru Johnston's around!
WINSTON: Yeah, Dru will be the idiot, you know?
ALDEN: That's a good point.
WINSTON: He'll do it better than I will. But it's been really fun. And thank you guys for, I mean, letting me kind of join full time halfway through and also to kind of bring... Yeah, it's a character I wouldn't have normally pursued. And it's been like really fun and really pushed me as an improviser. And also like, oh, right, this is kind of a vibe that is like available to me that I don't normally tap into in my own comedy and my own thoughts.
ALDEN: Yeah.
WINSTON: That kind of bombastic idiocy. It's like, oh, that's really fun. And I'll miss that.
JEREMY: C-53 is like exactly the sort of character I love to play. But if you listen to C season one and C season five, like I'm so buttoned up in season one, which is like, that's the character. He's got the restraining bolt. And he's specifically there because Pleck especially has no idea what he's doing. Whereas in season five, I'm so much looser and I care so much less about so many things. And I think that for me has been like, I am sort of a know-it-all in real life, but my wife can also be a bit of a know-it-all. And unsurprisingly, that can cause problems sometimes? But we read like a book before we got married that had a really great chapter that we quote a lot, which is “you can be right, or you can be married.”
ALDEN: Grim!
JEREMY: And it's like, well, it's true! It's like the value of being right, you may have put on a pedestal your whole life, but does not lead to long-term satisfaction in a relationship. [laughs] So like, I sort of envision C-53 getting less precious about being correct as him sort of realizing he has value beyond like an informational node, you know?
ALDEN: That's cool. I like that.
SETH: That's awesome. I think one of the fun things about playing Nermut is when he's just like delusional to an extreme degree and keeps doubling down on something. Like I think the first example was when he was convinced he was getting the promotion in 118. And just like, I love the improv challenge of like any piece of information that comes at you, you can justify it as evidence of this thing that's not true. And I think the thing that's going on in like late season five of him being obsessed with the idea that he's gonna jam with other Nermut=
JEREMY: With other Nermut, yeah..
SETH: -is just so dumb. And so that's fun when Nermut is otherwise like a pretty cerebral, rational, we got to get the job done guy. But I like that he also can completely, he's just delusional.
WINSTON: He's like wildly self-destructive and irresponsible.
ALDEN: One of my absolute favorite dynamics on the show is that Nermut is the, like platonic bureaucrat and also is a weird bird. Like he is also completely at the mercy of his own weird bird instinct sometimes. Like where he has to nest and like he has to like scratch Gloyd T. Beam to death because they...
JEREMY: Oh, Gloyd T. Beam.
SETH: He's drawn to be inside the belly of a tornado.
ALDEN: Yeah. He has to be on a heat rock or else he'll like…
JEREMY: He has to eat some gurp.
ALDEN: Yeah. I just love it. It's such a dumb duality for him to have to navigate all the time that works every time.
MOUJAN: Well, what I love about the Bargarean Jade is she is a big character who just doesn't like give a juck, but at the same time is affected by everyone's feelings. But I think why I really enjoy playing her is that she's just truly a larger than life character. And I can just say it's just fun to cause chaos in scenes and to kind of... Because I trust everyone at Zyxx to take my like zaniness and to do something magical with it? So I'll just miss like you guys taking something from Bargie and making something out of that that's like even better. Beyond that, I think what I also love about playing Bargie and many of the other characters is that I am a petite person with this voice. And I feel sometimes people only think I can do petite things with this voice. And so it's been fun to surprise people.
ALDEN: Yeah. Even five years in, people are like, THAT’S what Bargie looks like? It's so good.
WINSTON: It's like, oh, yeah, we actually did have like a 75 year old actress play Bargie.
MOUJAN: What's been fun with this project, I think for all of us is that we've been able to create our own characters and show what we can do without, you know, and I think Bargie would say something like this as well, without the industry making us do something. We're just playing to the best of our ability and doing what we think is fun. And for me specifically, playing these big characters that other people wouldn't expect me to play is just so much fun because I can.
ALDEN: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
WINSTON: Allie?
ALLIE: Well, you know, Dar's not too different from who I am, I think, as a person. Certainly meaner in the first seasons, but then truly I just lost the thread and I was like, well, you know, I'll just improvise as myself, how I feel about things…
JEREMY: I think that happened with C as well. He just became more like me.
ALDEN: Yeah, I think we all did that a little bit.
ALLIE: Yeah.
SETH: Yeah.
WINSTON: Not me. I'm in character!
EVERYONE: [laughs]
ALDEN: Take the helmet… I mean, I think all of us have done that a little bit. You know, I think it's natural, but I also think like Pleck has gotten less dumb because Pleck has learned stuff and AJ's there to be the dumb one now. And I think Dar has gotten nicer because they love us now. One of the reasons we started making the show is that when you do live improv, you don't get to play the same character from episode to episode. You don't get to have a personality that maintains itself over multiple shows. There's something that's so comforting to me as an improviser and as an actor that is like the history of the character that I feel like I have created and that I can embody when I start recording. And there's something that's so great about being not only a community with you six, but also our listener community where I know that anything that I do, there's a context to it that listeners and you guys will all be like, well, this is coming from Pleck's history of being Pleck. That's a really cool thing that I enjoy.
MOUJAN: That's true. There aren't many improv groups out there that play the same characters for like five years.
ALLIE: Yeah.
SETH: Okay. So here's a question from a listener. What surprised you about how Mission to Zyxx has affected your life?
MOUJAN: Everyone named their baby Horsehat, which is strange.
ALDEN: Yeah. I named my child Horsehat. Winston?
WINSTON: Well, I was about to get really mushy. So I don't know if anybody wants to...
ALLIE: You can do it.
JEREMY: Mush it up, baby.
WINSTON: I have to grab something. I'll be right back in order to be real mushy.
JEREMY: Props.
ALLIE: We love props.
JEREMY: Speaking of props, within arm's reach, I have a plush cube that a fan made!
ALLIE: WHAT.
JEREMY: A official Ronka Cybernetics cube for C-53, which I just keep on my desk because I look over there and I'm like, oh there I am!
SETH: And there's the Shane puppet.
JEREMY: The Shane puppet.
WINSTON: When we started doing this, I feel like when we kind of selected everything, I'll be all happy to be like kind of on the periphery, like playing all the characters.
SETH: Right. When we all chose what characters we wanted to play, you decided initially to play only side characters.
WINSTON: Yeah. And I feel like the more I did it, I was like, I really want to... I felt like part of it was a little bit of a cop out. I mean, there's like a couple episodes I'm not even in, right? In the first season.
SHANE: Just one.
WINSTON: Just one? And so I feel like that was all me doing what I used to do a lot, which is kind of keep things at arm's length and like whatever. But the more I started doing this show and spending time with you guys and enjoying the show and building it, you know, I had been doing improv for a long time and trying to do television writing. And it's obviously a tough business. And I kind of stopped doing the television writing. And as you guys know, with this business, you're always kind of constantly like questioning, like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Is this satisfying? And I started thinking like, why do I really want to do this entertainment stuff? And I'm like, because I have so many entertainment properties that make me feel so good. And when I'm feeling bad, I will retreat into them. And so that's why I want to make stuff, you know? And so what Zyxx kind of became for me was that. Like, I started to realize, like, I can keep going after these other goals, but I'm already doing exactly what I want with this show. And I got this thank you card that somebody wrote after our last live show. This guy, Zachary Koziol, thank you, Zachary. He said, “The hours of humor you've provided helped my boring days at work speed by. As I work towards a brighter future, know that you've contributed in a significant way to my endurance. Couldn't have gotten this far without you.” And like, to me, I was that person in a desk doing a job I didn't want to do listening to stuff. And it just was like such a full circle moment for me. So like, this show has like filled so many gaps and provided me with a lot of perspective on my life and like what's important to me. And it's in really good ways taught me to stop reaching for like the brass ring or the next thing or the acclaim and just being like, no, do the thing that really satisfies you and lights you up. And that actually will give you the thing that you want.
ALDEN: I love that.
ALLIE: Winston, you totally reminded me to have like, we started meeting on Tuesdays, I think, because I had just quit my team at the UCB because it was making me so unhappy. I like, hated doing improv. And I remember it was like-
WINSTON: You didn't tell us that going in!
ALLIE: But I hated it. I hated being on a team at the theater because it was like mixups again. It was like, oh, yeah, we're mixing up the teams like we're cutting people. And it was so stressful because everyone I was on a team with was suddenly just like, we're all going to get cut or like like the whole thing about improv, like totally lost its flavor because it was just about like, oh, but I hope you get cut, but I don't get cut or, you know, all this stuff. And I just like I quit my team like three months before all this happened. And then I was like, I'm never going to do improv again. And then it was one of those really funny things where when you reached out to me to do this, we all agreed to meet on, I forget, It must've been like a Tuesday or Wednesday. It was either Herald Night or whenever I usually rehearsed with my team or something. And I was like, oh, I would have never been able to do this.
MOUJAN: Right.
ALLIE: Had I kept doing improv at the theater. Yeah. And then I got to do this with all of you. And then I also got to like rediscover improv in Amsterdam, too. And I was like, oh, I can love this. And it not it doesn't have to be about this weird contrived.
WINSTON: What I think I should be doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been like the most satisfying creative project I've done…. maybe ever?
ALLIE: Yeah. Yeah.
SHANE: Yeah. Same. I mean, the way you guys are talking about your relationship with the show is like very much mirrors what mine was. Coming into the show, I was at a period where I had been supporting myself through music for a number of years, which was something that I on the surface was like proud of? I was touring, but also just like working in a studio. And like, I just been at this point where I just was I just didn't like music anymore. Do you know what I mean? Where like when you get to that point where like, I just felt creatively drained. I didn't have good collaborations, good relationships anymore in that space. It just didn't give me any kind of buzz. So part of the reason why I offered to like, mix the first episode is I had just been in this thing where I was like, I just got to fucking do something just for fun. Do you know what I mean?
JEREMY: Yeah.
SHANE: And it, it was so rewarding. I remember like working on that first episode in that period. Like I remember going out to a show with some friends and my friends were like, Oh, what have you been up to? And I was like, Oh man, I feel like, I feel like Spider-Man. And I just discovered my powers. I was just like diarrhea of the mouth talking about like, it's so crazy. Like I can just make these sounds. And it's like, there's this whole new creative world that's opened up to me! It felt like I was on Molly or something. You know what I mean?
EVERYONE: [laughs]
SHANE: Like it just, it felt so good and so creatively rewarding. And I've always like maintained that relationship with the show where I just keep it small. Like I, I don't participate a lot in like the social media stuff. And that's not because of privacy. It's, it's about like, I want to keep it just like a purely creative endeavor because it's so rare to have a project where it is purely creative from your perspective and it works. Do you know what I mean? Like that never happens.
ALDEN: Yeah.
SHANE: I can't imagine anything like this coming around again, but one thing that I've learned from it, I've just recently been able to like do some music jobs again. And the fact that I've been like working so hard just on like making sounds for the last four years has really translated. Like now I've re-surprised myself working on music where I'm like, “Oh wow, I do everything totally different now.” And it's fun again. You know what I mean? So it's been a great sort of-
ALDEN: You're welcome.
EVERYONE: [laughs]
ALDEN: Happy to help. What was the question Seth?
SETH: What surprised you about how Mission to Zyxx has affected your life?
WINSTON: It's ruined it.
ALDEN: I was surprised at how much it fucking ruined it! I think we have made something that is about as good as I could hope to make pretty much anything. I think the thing that surprised me is I think we're ending the show and I, I think we have a body of work that we can all be really proud of. I didn't think we were going to do that because I didn't have faith in us. I'm just surprised.
ALLIE: Also, I feel like Zyxx is the first thing I ever worked on that was just like, let's do this cause it's fun and let's do it well. Whereas I feel like everything at that time also I was working on, I was like, okay, this is going to be an ingenious pilot that lands me a manager! It was like, uh, like all bad and all bad intention projects that failed rightfully.
ALDEN: Yeah.
WINSTON: Yeah. I've been there.
SETH: Yeah. I remember after one of the live shows, I think it was after our Littlefield live show. And I was talking to a fan. She was saying like, how, how do you think you can get the word out to more people? Like we, I love this show so much. I just don't understand like more people need to hear it. Like, and it has to become a TV show. And, and what do you, what are you hoping for it to be? And I just, I just said like, I'm standing in a room full of people who love this thing that we make after performing a sold out show that was really fun. I was like, we're doing it! I said like, I don't want anything else from this. This is the best. If it's something that got bigger, this would be the moment we'd look back on and be like, oh, that was great.
JEREMY: Glory days.
SETH: There’s nothing…
WINSTON: We're doing it. That to me is the key. Cause I was like trying to do this and this and this I'm like, I'm, we're doing it.
SETH: Yeah. To answer the question, I feel like the thing that has surprised me is that it's affected so many other people. I remember early on, like we heard from a fan who said, this was the first thing that made me laugh after my wife died. And it was just like, okay, this is truly reaching people. And it's still surprising to see tweets from people we'll never meet who are like, “Hey, love the show!”
MOUJAN: Yeah. And it's just so wonderful to see the reception from the people on Discord, the people on social media, the people that we meet all over the United States and in London. Like that's been so fun. That's been so crazy. That's been very crazy and wonderful. Yeah.
SETH: Yeah. Thanks for listening to the show, everyone.
WINSTON: Yeah.
ALDEN: Yeah. And to a lesser extent, this episode.
EVERYONE: [laughs]
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JEREMY: [robotic] Jeremy Bent is now recording.
ALLIE: Allie Kokesh is now recording.
WINSTON: Winston Noel is now recording.
MOUJAN: Moujan Zolfaghari is recording.
ALDEN: [singing] I am Alden Ford and I am now recording, ‘cording…
SETH: Hey everyone, it's Seth. Thanks so much for having me on.
WINSTON: Not that kind of podcast, Seth.
SETH: Just really glad we could make the old scheds line up and finally do this thing.