The 2/3 Mark of the season! Wow, time has just FLOWN by, in-show and in-life! This ep is a real story turning point. Having Codex juggle the Fawkes storyline AND Cheesybeards was a fun challenge this year. Spacing out the story beats so they were clear and concise was tough, but finally in this episode we get the moment where her little deception blows up in her face, and Tink LOVES it. It’s SO her. 🙂
There are some great emotional beats from the actors in this episode. I love Zaboo’s turn about not being happy about Fawkes and Codex’s relationship status, therefore he’s ecstatic about himself?! Huh? I just think that’s such a Zaboo beat of strange emotion. And Vork running in with those green bean cans was sheer genius acting. He’s so tired and exasperated. Jeff really nailed it with the whole Avinashi storyline, it’s a lot to bounce back and forth between appreciation and adoration, so funny from the straight-laced Vork.
The face mask matching my Jinx shirt was a total coincidence, but when I saw it I was like, yeah, let’s go with it, I like seafoam blue, haha. And the wilted flowers in Fawkes’ hand are still really funny to me because they were literally stolen from someone’s yard in the neighborhood. That’s how The Guild rolls!
Favorite line from the ep: “Stop Trolling me in real life!”
The Cheesybeards location has been SO FUN to shoot in. It almost feels like a sitcom to me style-wise, which is so fun to inject into the show. Not sure if you’ve stumbled upon it yet unless you’re a hardcore fan, but we have a cool little ARG going on for the location at cheesybeards.info, including a Yelp review page that they kindly helped us set up! Thanks to @egspoony and @briankameoka for overseeing all the elements.
Episode 9 is, I believe, director @seanbecker’s favorite episode, not the least reason is the Bladezz commercial. Oh boy. I remember in the script, all I had as a description was:
“Worst Commercial EVER. Bladezz as a pirate. Terrible lighting and camerawork, just awful in every way. Ends with “Taste My Pirate Paddy.”
I think that Sean handily succeeded in crafting something along those lines. Like, a LOT! My particular favorite part of the commercial is the callback to “Tennis Bladezz” from Season 1. If you check out episode 9 and freeze where Codex busts out the Finn Smulders pics, then you’ll see a totally tacky headshot of Bladezz in the tennis outfit. Did a lot of people notice that? Also, I was REALLY sick that day, so I didn’t really see what was going on as far as footage, so when it was cut together, the whole thing was completely new to me, so that was a rare moment when I was out of the loop and got to watch something from a VIEWER POV. So fun 🙂
My favorite ACTING moment in the episode is between Ollie and Bladezz when he says, “Can’t carve out anything if it’s his dominant hand. Eh?” OMG. When we rehearsed that, the way Vince delivered that line with his elbow jab…it was sheer glee and magic, and I cracked up EVERY TIME! The great thing is the way Frank responds as Ollie: He LOVES it despite being SO INSENSITIVE AND AWFUL! And thus, that whole relationship is defined in one tiny moment.
As a treat, below is an extended cut of the commercial, with a DENA cameo! Hope you enjoy!