hi!! thank you guys for enjoying the video :)) when i was done editing this i noticed a few more things so i'm just gonna add them to this comment: - at 18:10, when pete and steph are repeating the "id have to let you go" lyric, it parallels to when they sing "i think you better go, you first!" in 'if i loved you'. towards the end of 'if i loved you' they're both arguing about who to leave the coffee shop/their friendship first, but in 'as cool as i think i am reprise' they're arguing over who should sacrifice themselves - at 19:04, when steph and pete sing "i never wanted you anyway", it's the final line in 'as cool as i think i am reprise', however it's the first line in 'if i loved you' again, thank you for watching the video!! if you want me to add commentary to other media lmk :)
something you missed: during just for once, at the high note (that lauren absolutely slayed like omg) the instrumental for “i’m not a loser” plays underneath! btw i love this and the previous video sm !!
Ziggy is also from first ep of nightmare time, mentioned as a non-binary hot person who has a past with Deb. Also the time that Grace says 'you payed the price now fuck off' this is the first itme she's ever cursed.
What I want to know is how Jon always looks so wildly different. He is so believably an older teen here, but in TGWDLM I 100% believed him as a 30 odd office worker. And in BF he gets even older for Gary and Wiggly.
One of the little things I like, as weird as it is, is that the ghost sex is purposefully played to sound as unsexy as possible as part of the joke. But to me it makes it sound like Max is almost as inexperienced as Grace. So now it's my headcanon that he just set up a bunch of rumors that he's great at sex to impress her (completely unaware that it'd be the opposite of impressive to her), and then just never picked up that she wasn't into it.
When the lords in Black say 'We've been watching you gracey' it gives me the impression that they have been preparing to corrupt someone who is already a religious zealot. Graces immediate reaction to her having sinful thoughts is to remove the people who 'forced her' to sin instead of taking responsibility (a running theme with her). I can see why the Lords in Black would accept her chastity instead of the death of a loved one. Not because its what she cherished most, but because it was her fully going to the darkside and the act was only going to empower her to continue to do more for them. It feels like they sort of intended to revive their power of the church of the starry children via grace.
It also occurs that whenever Grace (specifically) gets access to preternatural power, she immediately uses it to improve her own clout and authority, specifically with the aim of "cleaning up" her current environs. Compare her use of the Black Book here to her use of Lumber Axe's eponymous weapon in "Abstinence Camp" (Season 2 of Nightmare Time).
The line "you think the time that I was chaste was being waste on a holy mission" in Dirty Dudes Must Die makes me wonder if this plan has been in motion a lot longer than we realize. It reads to me as "you think I wasted time on being chaste for God?" Also, I haven't seen anyone talk about this but Grace had a dream about Max coming back and being angry the night he came back and killed Richie, almost like she saw it herself or had a vision of it. Add this to the fact that Blinky specifically calls out Grace makes me think they might have a connection of some sort, like how Tinky talks to Pete because he has a connection to the Spankofski's.
Linda counts as a representative for this theory as well considering she was sacrificed to Nibbly in “Honey Queen”, and became the leader of Wiggly’s cult in “Black Friday”. Not to mention Grace is one of the few people that gets to actually reference most of the weird shit that happens in Hatchetfield throughout “Nerdy Prudes Must Die”, like how people disappear all the time, and how she actually knows about the haunted house and the history of dark rituals, weird cults and sex magic tied to it. So maybe her family is so strongly religious because they had long lasting connections to the Lords In Black and were actively trying to fight them off. Who knows?
I find it interesting that as the musical progressed Grace goes from not swearing to using censorship swear words like heck then full on calling god a bitch and saying fuck off. It might be me over analyzing here but I see it as Grace slowly being corrupted both by her own terrible choices as a flawed human being and by the lords in black
@@madeniquevanwykwell funny thing is, they actually did do that. It’s very subtle, but you can actually see her amount of hair clips decreasing as the show goes on.
she refers to the nerds as the meek in the beginning, she points at ruth and is like “[max] strikes fear in the hearts of the meek” or smth along those lines
Grace, like many, is misinterpreting that section, I suspect. If I'm remembering the Beatitudes correctly, the point is that the meek, those who mourn, etc. are going to be handed their rewards by God in heaven or once the Second Coming, well, comes. Grace, as many a villain has done before her, is taking matters into her own hands, because waiting for God is never enough. Juicy.
@@Landis963Grace taking it into her own hands and turning to the LiB for that desired end of the world might have also been sparked by her entire “do something you son of a bitch!” freak out at God when being questioned. As far as she’s concerned God abandoned her (to the consequences of her own actions) and so if she wants to get anything done, up to and including the Second Coming that will bring forth paradise, she has to do it herself or turn to the LiB who actually did something to get her out of that bad situation (for a price).
I'm not sure if this actually a thing or just a coincidence or just something they added to be witty but, in The Summoning Wiggly says "Pay the price or fuck off" later Grace says "I paid the price now fuck off" The similar wording could be subtly hinting that Grace is already under the Lords of Black's influence.
also, in the old waylon place, she says that the people "hacked them all to bloody bits". later during the summoning, wiggly says that max is going to "tear you all to bloody bits". i dont think either of those pairs of lines is a coincidence personally but the "fuck off" definitely isn't -- it's one of three times she swears in the show and the only time she says fuck, they wouldn't have written that in unless it was a direct reference to what wiggly said imo
I do love that they acknowledge the Max is messing with them the whole time. He can disappear and reappear whenever and wherever he wants (for example with the cop car) yet he still chooses to chase the kids on foot to scare them and make them fight
It's also possible that he behaves differently when Grace is around, since he doesn't necessarily want to kill her. He blames Steph (and by extension, the nerds because she had been consorting with them leading up to the incident) for his death, yet Grace never received any of his anger for that.
@@nutelasaur9453Well, one could argue that because Max died a teen, his revenant form kept his teenage impulses and hormones, so he’s just kinda too horny for her to focus on how he wants her dead until like… after the sex. When he said “Don’t you want to CUDDLE?” It did sound pretty aggressive, so to me I feel like it could’ve been read as him, due to post-but clarity and achieving his goal of wanting to sleep with Grace, being ready to kill her now.
Little thing i noted. Max's last words to Pete before having sex with Grace? "I'll be right back." Something that, as Scream lovingly points out, is usually a death sentence in a slasher. (along with the "sin" of sex)
every time I hear "on the ground bitch, I'm a cop" I can't help but think of the "bam bam, we're the army, bam bam" and then "yeah prove it asshole, we're the army" edit: also, Max running after Grace is giving Jeff as Father running after Mother in Trail to Oregon
Small detail I noticed: When Ruth starts "Just for Once" she mimes holding a cup but then stops miming said cup without putting it down (if it were a prop it would have fallen to the ground), which is an easy "lack of stage experience" mistake to make, which the other "BBQ monolougest" don't make. Also, I saw somewhere pointed out that whenever the 5 Lords in Black are introduced (Janes a Car, Witch in the Web (dolls), Daddy, and Nerdy Prudes), they are always in the same order. The only exception to this is when Webby is describing them in Yellow Jacket. Finally, the Lords in Blacks human forms each fit their personalities as a stereotypical high schooler; Pokey is giving theatre kid energy, Nibbly's outfit is extremely preppy cus he's worshiped by the wealthy of Hatchetfield, Wiggly looks like he's the king of the school in a letterman jacket/cardigan, Blinky looks rave-like and laidback like someone who watches drama, games, and shows with the fur top being like an amusement park mascot suit, and Tinky is grungy like a "bastard" teen who hangs out in the alleyway behind the school. Also each of the Lords in Black have fur on their outfit, with Wigglys being his plush backpack, referring to how they all have plush toy versions of themselves!
Omg thank you got describing on how each lord and black is dressed because I realized they were all dressed like high school stereotypes but I couldn’t figure out blinky or tinky
Also a neat thing to point out: Wiggly, on top of his outfit, also is the only Lord in Black to have a representation of himself on his human form, because he’s got a Tickle-Me Wiggly strapped to his back.
Also worth noting is each of them has some accessory on them that ties into their domain. Pokey has the mask he used in Yellow Jacket, Blinky has a pair of sunglasses, Tinky has the Bastard's Box from Time Bastard, Nibbly carries a lollipop, probably a reference to the Honey Queen "the sweetest woman in hatchetfield" and Wiggly wears a crown, since he's the de facto leader of the lords
Me too. It kind of ruined the song for me on the first watch. I was like, “I get it, we're being dramatic teens here, but there was a third, just a moment ago. Why don't we ask Grace if she can fix her mess?”
Yeah same, The biggest reason why I didn't end up crying during the reprise was because I remembered the death copout in Black Friday and I knew Grace's arc hadn't been finished yet
this paired with the "we've been watching you gracey, someone's been naughty" makes me think the dark lords were already targetting her by the time that song happened. like, that dream max was actually the dark lords' using grace's wants to mess with her head and lead her to the house??
Another little detail too that I liked is when Grace does her spin and says "Now fuck off" when sending Max to the black and white it's the first time she swears with no shame truly showing she's crossed to the dark side ready to go after all the dirty pervs
I noticed something like that at 10:46 where Grace picks up and drinks a cup of coffee from the Beanies counter, even though she'd said in the scene before that her parents didn't let her drink coffee. She slowly starts breaking every rule except the swearing until that part at the very end-- it's a great downfall
I like to think that the riot at the Hatchetfield kennels that Dan Reynolds covered was due to the problematic puppy Steph was in a twitter fight about in the opening song.
I think Steph's father may have sacrificed her mother for whatever it is he did. Knowing his life it was probably for political success. And since he never takes responsibility for anything he probably also blames Steph for what he did.
I tend to think he sacrificed his wife as well, but I also think that to keep his power, he has agreed with the Lords in Black that they can use Hatchetfield and it's citizens as their playground. It is a stretch, but just a thought I have had for a bit (since NMT2).
@@beansforsalewahoo Agreed. I also, now this is really out there, think he may be the father of at least one of Linda Monroe's kids. She claimed that they were accidents and we are told that Gerald is not the father of all the kids. It would make sense in that they both could benefit for keeping such an affair quiet. He could gain from her financial background (to possibly help fund his political campaign) and she could benefit from his status (and possibly connections to the Lords in Black - explaining what Wilbur Cross meant by her being chosen as a prophet long before in Black Friday). It may be a stretch, but one I considered.
* Once again some (a lot of) things: * Ruth does the iconic "Lauren is depressed" loaf once they've found out about Richie's death * When Grace asks for hot water, Shapiro puts a lot of emphasis on "plenty of... _hot water_ for you, Grace" because she's busted Grace and another term for being in trouble is being in hot water * Max is constantly referred to as a "Literal Monster" in Act 2, a callback to his introductory song * This isn't a small detail but I find the mayor keeping hold of the decapitated head as he talks down Max so funny * "The school is a quarter-mile that way if we cut through Pinebrook" is the same route Paul and Bill take to Alice in TGWDLM * The names of the Lords In Black are invoked in the same order Nick showed off their dolls in The Witch In The Web * Part of Wiggle plays as the Lords In Black appear * Tinky says "Oh boy, a Spankoffski! I'm gonna have the whole set in my toybox!" because he was also responsible for Ted's incident in Time Bastard * Pokey says "Do it, or die!", a reference to Join Us And Die * Grace is actually the one that picks up the Black Book after the Lords In Black meeting so she can have it by the end of the musical * Steph puts her jacket back on when she has to kill Pete, because before when Pete changed his outfit she did too, and now she's trying to push back those feelings so she returns to her old outfit from before those feelings blossomed * Pete puts his bowtie back on when he and Steph get together cause he doesn't need to impress her anymore
That invocation is also identical to the one in Daddy: "We invoke the names Pokotho, Bliklotep, T'noy Karaxis, Nibblenephim, Wiggog Y'Wrath." Also, the musical cue you cite there (the 8-note motif after Wiggly's first line) corresponds to the lyric "We will build a portal for him" from _Black Friday,_ and also plays as the Lords in Black take Jagerman, thus fulfilling their end of the deal.
a small detail that i found very chilling was Grace's family dynamic. all of the scenes are very cute & wholesome until you notice that her dad gets called Mark by her mother, but Mark only ever calls his wife 'Mother'. i think it really sets up just how wildly differently she was raised & adds a different air of horror to this musical. EDIT: I've only just put together that Karen from Hatchet Town is Grace's mum. We learn her name from a one off line in a song that doesn't include any of her family. Even sadder & chilling
I never thought of it like that, it's like a 50s commercial where the mother only exists as the homemaker. Tbh I just thought it was strange that a man calls his wife "Mother" in the same way Sherman calls his actual mother
This made me realize that every time I watch one of the Chastity family scenes I’m losing it over how funny the father is as such an exaggerated caricature, and it makes us so that he really overshadows the mother, which I think is deliberate. He’s such an, albeit comedic, presence in the scene and then she’s just there because this kind of family dynamic has to have a wife and she’s filling that role. She’s just there to support him and Grace on both an in-world and a meta narrative level.
If Ruth relates a lot to her barbecue character a lot then let’s say she did used to dance tap. And we learned Pete also took tap as a kid and that’s probably where Pete and Ruth met and first became friends 😢
I love how Pete doesn’t feel Wiggly touching him, it’s just for Steph because then she has to be the one to explain to him that she loves him and that makes it all the juicier for the Lords
personally i like to think the lords in black are talking to everyone seperately but at the same. It makes it much funnier to think of Graces perspective too lmao
Fun fact! They said in the cast commentary that Jon explicitly did that with his hands because the Wiggly doll only has three little tentacle fingers on each hand, hence the wiggling little Spock hands
nick and matt (and jeff, with the parts that are the monologue ruth is reciting) really captured contemporary plays with “the barbecue monologues”. like, yes, give me four characters, give me four disconnected plotlines, teens playing middle-aged adults and doing the most absurd space work edit: something else!! solomon tells the kids not to try to reason with max then IMMEDIATELY BEGINS TRYING TO REASON WITH MAX (“i have connections, i have friends, i can buy you beer!”)
I love how right at the end Max is clearly being held by the arms by some kinda telekinesis, and he’s not able to break it to escape, but he does resist enough to pull his arms into Nighthawk wings - his willpower is stronger in regards to the team than his own self-preservation. Wild.
Honestly makes sense. He's fine with dying, since he already knows high school would be his peak. Self-preservation would mean the future, cheering for the nighthawks is still high school
Don’t know if anyone else has said it, but during the Summoning, the Lords in Black each have a seperate dance move that they pass on to another Lord in the shape of a Pentagram. The detail from Lauren in the choreography is sick as
12:58 Lets not forget that she also (almost) kills the guy she loves. Like, yes, the bullet was stopped, but she didn't know that that would happen. In her mind, pulling the trigger was killing Pete. They all went through so much, but Steph might have been through the worst of it, poor girl...
it hurts me so much too because i really liked her in abstinence camp, but steph became my absolute favorite character in this one, so every time i think about what she had to go through and how awful her dad is it PAINS ME DEEPLY.
Now that we have the full notes, I can say my piece. Grace Chasity is the best twist villain in recent Starkid, if not recent Theatre as a whole. From her brief inception as a mere name-drop in TGWDLM, to her premier in NMT, to now in NPMD, we always figured her out to be that stereotypical jesus-obsessed rule-abiding teacher's pet. And through and through, she was and still is. But her at the end just going fully power-driven and vindictive against the very things (dirty dudes) that took away what she cherished most. She feels robbed, and now wants compensation. And using the black book as the tool for her crusade, the black maraschino cherry on top of it all. It's amazing how Angela can really go between an annoying nerdy Bible prude, a sultry woo'd woman keeping a distance, and a manic gremlin of a young adult on an angsty sex-inspired rampage. She's incredibly talented, and has such unique and raw vocals, that especially shine in numbers like "Black Friday" and "Dirty Girl" _(ps the best song in Starkid history to date)_ . Anyway there's a Death Note musical that came out the same time as Hamilton and I only just found that out so that's my life right now
One thing I noticed about Wiggly's design; You're right his hand movements represent his tentacles, but not his mouth ones! The Wiggly doll has three tentacles on each hand (Which makes him unique, he's the only one with hands) and Jon only moves his middle three fingers as Wiggly.
The best part about Pete being the Low Blood Sugar Guy is that he used to wear suspenders and a bow tie like him, until Steph made a joke about it. Meaning TGWDLM takes place before the two of them get together.
Can we talk about how Steph might have been left with no living family?? Her mom is never mentioned, her dad and his assistant are dead, and we don't know of any other living relatives of her (I don't believe any were mentioned in Nightmare Time either) so she's pretty much just left alone. That's so freaking sad
OKAY HEAR ME OUT : In "The Best of You" there’s a line that says "Lights up on the town / Just as we start lying down forever" and I *-think-* _believe_ that it's a reference to the fact that things in Hatchetfield keep resetting and different tragedies and horrors happen all the time, just to be re-set like a stage to prepare for the new Nightmare. Like the final song in "Black Friday" where it's hinted that the town is not allowed to rest or die or have happy endings and things will just happen over and over again
Woah this makes sense! To add onto that thought, my mind also instantly flashed back to TGWDLM while reading your comment. The infected people shouted "lights off" after their first number didn't they? So the implication is that after the end of this story ("as the night falls on the town"), this version of Hatchetfield will continue to sing and be mangled until a bad end is forced to happen ("lights up" + how streetlights at night look like stage spotlights). Also the night falling implies that the Lords in Black are still taking over regardless of what happens.
if anyone noticed in as cool as I think I am (reprise) their both really crying you can see a tear rolling off Mariah's cheek and Joey is about to breakdown at the end of the song
@@trainman9024the beatboxing while running to catch the bullet was one of the biggest laughs of the whole show for me purely because it was so unexpected and needed after that extremely heavy scene
@@genericname2747 imagine if Blinky is wearing his own merchandise from his amusement park I mean, it would be in character for him to do that. OK for those who haven’t watched nightmare Time, Blinky runs his own amusement park but not for the entertainment of the people who go there, but for his entertainment. Basically, he manipulates people into killing each other for fun and he tried to trick Allison and her dad into killing each other, but it didn’t work and he got shot in the eye
i LOVE that Pete says “5 fucking years” when asking for his hot chocolate, since it’s literally been 5 years since The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals came out. ALSO when the Lords in Black show up Blinky, Tinky, and Nibbly greet one of the 3 separately from the group, because in different timelines (the other shorter shows) they had to deal with those certain Lords im pretty sure.
Gotta say, Ruth is one of Lauren's best characters. Right up there with Son and Linda Monroe. Add the fact she choreographed all this... my gurl is petite perfection.
In the Lords In Black scene, Nibbly says "Stephanie, yum yum", both a callback to what they say in Honey Queen when summoned, but also to the fact that the tastiest people for Nibbly are the ones who do the worst things to get ahead, and between the three, that would be Steph (Mostly cheating, but if her role in Abstinence Camp is anything to go on, she's done worse)
In a town that is not hatchetfield, I imagine a world where Grace and Max actually do end up dating, and he teaches her to loosen up while she teaches him... Most things. He needs a lot of teaching. He does not peak at high school, she stays nerdy but less of a prude.
Honestly I've been to afraid to admit that I kinda ship them Toxicly Like a really messed up enemies to lovers dynamic Or y'know, kinda wholesome like you described, it could go either way
No, but imagine this: Someone tells Grace to set up a tutoring service to put it as volunteering in her college applications. Then Max goes to her tutoring as a way to get closer to her. Then he goes to her house and sees The Healthy Family Dynamic he never had and suddenly he's there all the time, staying for dinner, helping the mom on the kitchen and/or talking to the dad about sports and receiving praise and encouragement from him cuz the dad recognizes his talent. They talk about calling his dad to ask if Max can stay a little late and Max tells them to not bother, and the family realizes how bad his home situation is and just basically adopt him. Grace takes him to church every chance she gets outside of school or football practice, so he doesn't need to be at home as much, and he obliges because he likes Grace and he doesn't want to be home anyways. Time passes blablabla he picks up his grades enough to earn a football scholarship to the same college Grace is accepted at. It would be really nice.
"The meek will inherit the earth"-vibes from Grace wanting the nerds to rule the word especially makes sense, since Grace already established the nerds as being "the meek" back when she was convincing the others to scare Max.
@@Volcanic_Activity Makes me love it even more that she points at Ruth when she establish the nerds as "the meek", since Lauren played Mary. And yes, Mary and Noah was so adorable
You could also take it as a very subtle, likely unintentional jab at many evangelicals irl who actually want the world to end so the rapture can occur.
20:00 the way you can see her (Grace) wince inwardly at saying that line. And at 13:00 the fact that she says “this book is crazy” because she’s been looking through it at the rituals: she doesn’t sound scared, she sounds excited. And at 16:29 you can see grace holding the book as she runs away because she’s the one who keeps it.
I think that what mayor Lauter sacrificed is related to the reason why he he is so jaded. I think that when he was younger, there was a similar situation to NPMD, and he had to sacrifice Stephanie’s mother to stop it. That would also explain where her mother is.
I think Richie has the worst death. Its mostly played off as a joke, but he actually had several lacerations to his head and body, as well as being drowned in the toilet, and drained of most of his blood. His murder also would've taken about an hour, considering the times inbetween the start and end of the football game.
Idk if anyone else has talked about this before but I really like how Grace’s hairstyle represents her sanity/stepping away from her pure starts. Her hair clips fall further out as the show continues, with them fully disappearing when she stops Max from killing Steph and Pete, then reappearing as a ruse to trick Jason at the end.
I’m so sad they edited out the lil hand hold between Steph and Ruth after Steph defended Ruth. It was truly a gorgeous moment, least there’s the digital ticket version to keep its memory alive 🥲
The costume choices also mean that TGWDLM Peter likely never got to know Steph the way NPMD Peter did. Like the outfit change is so important to his character development and the relationship development.
Mayor Lauter saying that a man in a gun is on the loose is a way to divert their attention away from steph, and her ending up having a gun in her possession is so ironic.
Oh oh oh realization 16:59 It makes extra sense for steph to think so materialistically because the way she was raised :( Her dad was not very affectionate with her, and he so obviously prioritized his status over anything else, and theres reason to believe that her relationship with pete, romantic or otherwise, is probably the first deep connection shes had with anyone in a long time, that is assuming if at all I love this musical Also idk if this is just how i saw it because i never see anyone else mentioning it but 21:08 as well as the little spin i saw the what she said and way she phrased it as a callback to what wiggly had said and how he said it. "Pay the price or fuck off" "I paid the price, now fuck off"
14:00 Pete says they can cut through Pinebrook to get to the school just like Paul says when him and Bill go to get Alice ( 1:04:00 if you wanna go back to TGWDLM and watch the scene )
Fun with subtitles: when Ruth complains during play practice, she says she loses her SPOT when people don't stick to the script, but the official closed captions say she loses her PLACE. Nice bit of meta :)
@@nyanninja2324 That coffee shop nerd from TGWDLM is supposed to be Pete Spankoffski - I'm pretty certain. (It says on their wikipedia that Pete was in TGWDLM.) Pete is Ted Spankoffski's younger brother. The guy who played that nerd is no longer with Starkid though, which is why it's now a different actor portraying him.
Another small detail that you missed during The Summoning (which is my personal favorite song from this play) is Tinky's comment about having "the whole [Spankoffski] set in my toybox" being a reference to the Nightmare Time episode "The Time Bastard" where he'd trapped Ted Spankoffski within the Bastard's Box.
Something I saw someone point out in the comments of NPMD is that during "darkness will save my soul", Grace very deliberately shows her back to the audience, where the straps on her dress look like angel wings, possibly because she still sees herself as righteous and pure
I get such a tiny moment of giddy happiness every time I hear the line "Wake me up when the mean girl is more than mean" just bc of how much I adore the Mean Girls musicals and references
a cool thing for me is taht before being killed Richie and Ruth try to reason with Max that they're not loser and should not be killed under the nerdy prudes must die idea, but earlier he said the that decides who is a loser or not so this ofc didn't work also this is more of a personal theory but when telling the lords in dark they would give them anything they sing something along the lines of "whatever we want we get, forever in our eternal debt" which leads me to believe that whoever gave their most precious thing would end up bad in the head anyways paying that forever debt
That second one I’m with you on. I think it’s easier to sort of poke holes at Grace giving up her most cherished thing bc it’s not a person like Pete and Stephs is? If that makes sense? Like we get this super sad song about how much they love each other and how it’s such a sacrifice and Grace giving her chastity away is played as comical so it’s easy to forget that silly as it might seem THATS HER MOST CHERISHED THING. I think it makes total sense that ANYONE giving that up regardless of it being a person or a concept or a thing would end up fucked in the head (which is like the lord in blacks reason to do it they’re agents of chaos). I also just think anyone who’s been taught to value their chastity/virginity/whatever above anything else (over her PARENTS?? Her friends??) is already pretty fucked up from religious trauma and that being the final straw for her to go absolutely apeshit makes total sense to me. Additionally I don’t think it’s a huge leap for her to then transfer all that religious devotion to the lords in black (I’ve seen conflicting theories ab whether she’s possessed by them or just batshit and I think either fits). She’s honestly such a good character but I think a lot of people are too busy just going “ok well she just overreacted this is all her fault and she’s crazy” lol
I like how everyone was standing at the very end with Grace in the middle and everyone in a V-formation around her. It reminded me of Let It Out, especially since those were both the songs that showed Paul and Grace being corrupted by the Lords in Black
that "no" from pete at 19:36 fucking killed me all the way dead my heart is broken and shattered. im suing joey richter for emotional damages /j also thank you for appreciating the "it fucking worked, i'm fucking here, he's fucking her" line its so clever it makes me laugh every time
Something i noticed and this might be a long stretch is that Graces dad also calls her mom Mother, and in Black Friday Lindas followers called her mother 🤔 😂
I think it’s a bit about how like super conservative men will call their husbands Mother and it’s weird and Freudian (best and example of this is M*ke P*nce)
I thought about that too! My theory was that Grace's parents were meant to act as tools, not people. In the little screen time we see Grace's parents, they only contribute to the plot by selling the Waylan place (which was to get Grace's act 2 storyline going) and helping to audience understand Grace better. They had no character arcs or development and exist completely around Grace, which is why the parents refer to each other as "Mother" and "Father" instead of their names. Hope this is understandable!
@@Plumgoblin Huh I always assumed that they were just doing the normal family thing of referring to themselves as such in front of their kid but a little more formal. Instead of "Mom" and "Dad", they use "Mother" and "Father" which just makes sense for them somehow
1) Stephanie yelling for her father as he gets killed even though he’s such a jerk to her because she’s just a teenager and he’s her fucking father 😭 2) She looks so excited to be able to solve everything by giving up her phone, like she took her father’s words to heart and really thinks it’s all her fault and now she can fix what she thinks she caused
Honestly, Steph and Pete singing goodbye is heartwrenching. I mean, she's singing lines from their duet because she's saying goodbye to him, and he's singing lines from his song because he's saying goodbye to his life. They're both mourning the loss of what they have, but only one of them thinks they get to say the final goodbye. They always say there's a peace in knowing you're dying for a reason. . . . OW
Something else not mentioned about "Hatchet Town" - not only do they mention a gun when there was none, they all assume a cannibal is behind the murders even though all of the bodies are still present. Also, the principal asks Ruth to fix the focus on a light center stage, and if you check the beginning of The Barbecue Monologues the center pool of light is cut off on the side (the shutters weren't fully retracted). That's what Ruth was about to fix. "If I Loved You" - It's fascinating Steph describes herself as a sapiosexual, because that means as the popular girl unassociated with nerds or geeks her dating/"dating" pool couldn't have satisfied her completely. For any and all experience she might have already, she's as vulnerable and inexperienced as Peter is in opening up to the other like this. At the end of the "finale", the understudies run out and join the final pose in the back. I wonder if they did that for every show or just these shots. I have a different thought about the back line at the end of "Dirty Dudes Must Die" that's brought on by the way the two cops are standing there. Well, first off, they're not nerds so they wouldn't be a part of any takeover of the world Grace might lead. But they're standing almost like they're hanging off hooks or are pinned up to a wall. Thinking back to "Nerdy Prudes Must Die," the back line wasn't just nerds but football players and cheerleaders, too, because they were all antagonized and victimized by Max. With how zealous Grace is and how strict her views on sex and relationships are, that back line in "DDMD" could be indicating how broad her category of "dirty" is and how many people will fall to her puritanical cleansing. "Darkness will spare my soul" might be an invocation against her power or the grip of the LiB on their souls upon their deaths.
Something that gets me is Max’s lines when he kills Ruth, he makes theatre references, but later he shows he still has his mindset. Meaning he knows theatre references, why could he know these? Because he is lonely he knows his friends don’t like him and the closest connection he has to others is when he bullies them. What other interests did he research in order to gain any connection? I think he also read the bible as a way to get closer to the religious students and find passages he could reference when he picks on them. This is all head cannon but it just makes me sad, had he not died i think he could have become friends with all of them.
I’m surprised you didn’t point out the tinky line where he says he’ll have another spankoffski in his toy box- I know it’s more of an obvious one but I thought it was such a fun nightmare time reference
One thing I realized about "Cool As I Think I Am Reprise": At one point in the song, Steph sings, "If I really really did love you, you'd have to say," and Pete responds with, "I know..." These lyrics are a reference to "Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back." In one scene, Han Solo is about to get cryo-frozen. Right before he gets frozen, Princess Leia, Han's love interest, says, "I love you" and Han says "I know" before he froze. So, the lyrics are a callback to when Ruth says, "She needs you, Pete. Like Princess Leia," in the library scene. Also, Pete's "death" is kind of like Han's "death" in a way. In "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi", Leia, in disguise, saves Han by unfreezing him. However, they get caught by Jabba the Hutt, a bad guy that was keeping frozen Han in his hangout. Going back to NPMD, before Pete gets shot by Steph, Max, the bad guy, stops the bullet before it hits Pete and they both get caught by him. In conclusion, the writers of this show need a fricking Tony!!
"Just For Once" really speaks to me as a moment of like... a nerdy kid relating to a fictional character with a very different life from them, and expressing themselves through that character. It reminds me of myself singing "I Miss The Mountains" from "Next To Normal" with all the passion of a manic-depressive middle aged mother that I'm not lmao bc it still speaks to my depressive feelings past puberty and kinda missing when I was more mentally unstable bc back then the highs were higher even if the lows were also lower Like... it's just feels like this being Ruth's song rather than something more direct and non-diagetic is with the purpose of showing that relationship we have with fiction, the way it gives us something to connect to when we don't feel like there is anyone else in real life to do that with. and I just rly appreciate that :3
It is really funny with each musical Jeff writes he gives himself progressively less stage time. TTO he’s literally the star, TGWDLM he’s got songs to himself for three different characters, BF we’re lucky he made a return as macnamara, and now in NPMD he’s in a hurry.
Keep in mind, for the hot chocolate scene, Peter used to always wear suspenders and a bow tie until Steph encouraged him to try something else. Otherwise he would be in the exact same outfit as tgwdlm
a little thing I noticed because I’m in my Star Wars era right now: 1st) Ruth refers to Steph as Pete’s ‘Leia’ when she calls him to Pasquali’s 2nd) in ‘Cool As I Think I Am’, the second verse is another Leia reference (“Princess Leia told me, I’d just as soon kiss a Wookiee”) 3rd) in the reprise Steph says “if I really did love you, you’d have to say” to which Pete responds “I know” which is how Han Solo responded to Leia’s love confession in the second Star Wars movie (whether Steph’s next line about Pete not being as cool as he thinks he is is related to him making a nerdy Star Wars reference or him quoting Popular Cool Guy Han Solo - or it could just be another callback to the original song) anyway I thought that was cute and I haven’t seen anyone else mention it 🥰
part 2 things that didn't make it into video that I thought might warrant a mention: Mayor turns all the townspeople against each other in the wake of heat on himself. There's tons of little musical references like these throughout the show, its nuts. I think the Mayor sacrificed Steph's mom. That's the implication I got at least. Early implication that Grace is gonna be tooooo into that book. The background of the school is filled with foreshadowing for the musical. And the tears start coming and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming (you brought it up but I'm bringing it up too XP) This time when Steph calls Peter a nerd, while he's a little annoyed he doesn't look hurt, because he knows it's not a sign of being used.
7:30 Honestly that might be what the entire song’s about. She’s singing about being middle-aged and nothing she says really feels ingenuine. As someone who has had horrible social anxiety since I was eleven, when you get to the point where you can barely do anything it really does feel like your life is over, you don’t feel like you’ll ever improve and you don’t feel like you’ll ever get to do the things you want to do. I couldn’t even hang out with my friends easily because most of the time we would see each other was at school which required leaving the house. Doing absolutely *nothing* for at least a year, especially if it lasts longer, just makes you depressed
Absolutely loved this. i think without rewatching the show through videos like this i wouldnt have noticed just how much they reuse lyrics when its relevant, freaking BEAUTIFUL
Since we're pointing out small details - 20:32 Grace: "So I don't really know how to- Oh, what is that? Max: "Hold on, hold on, it just takes me seconds" Grace: "Okay" Protection is important, kids, even when you're a murderhobo undead entity
12:49 I would point out that Lauter's in full-on "save my skin" mode. He'd do literally anything here, and luckily Max is too indiscriminately vengeful for him to get the chance to sell out his daughter. (Although he might harbor some hope that Steph can get the town out of this mess - even if he survived, we'd never know)
12:10 omfg i only just noticed bc they put both phrases together in text and idk if i've ever seen anyone point this out or if this was just so completely obvious that no one needed to point it out, but church of the starry children. the STARRY CHILDREN. the STAR KIDS, one might say my brain rn is the fucking "i've connected the dots" "you didn't connect shit"
9:20 - this part is almost a line-by-line recreation of the scene in tgwdlm 9:31 - "for what feels like five fucking years" because it's been about 5 years since tgwdlm was released and he STILL hadn't gotten that hot chocolate 11:58 - "you've created a literal monster" and the song that introduces max is called literal monster 13:14 - this ones probably a stretch but maybe its a reference to the "GET DOWN ON THE GROUND WE'RE THE ARMY BAM BAM" from tgwdlm 14:00 - cutting through pinebrooke (this one is so incredibly tiny but basically when bill is trying to get to alice they cut through pinebrooke because its safer)
my current little headcanon is that mayor lauter used the book to reset the world after pokey's domination in TGWDLM and as the price, he had to become the mayor and stay as it otherwise pokey would come back which is why he's so keen on keeping power (ex. calculating the margin error, caring so much abt his reputation because if he loses the power the town will go back into shambles). this would likely also explain why he didn't feel bad for ms. tessburger being sacrificed as it was for a greater good & why he never wants to touch the book again that could also account for the fact that the starlight theater disaster still happened BUT nobody was contaminated/put into the hive mind.
Another reference put in The Summoning is tinky's apparent obsession with the Spankofski bros, which somehow suggests that either time bastard happens in the same timeline, or the Lords in Black experiencie all universes as one
IIRC Nick said that Tinky traps Ted and he becomes the homeless man in every timeline because Ted traveled outside the space time continuum or something like that
Would be a neat meta-commentary if the Lords experience all the universes at once, much like the audience has seen myriad different universes play out already.
YOURE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE FALSETTOS THING! on first watch i was like "this sounds like it belongs is a Sondheim musical or something". I was getting major Sunday in the Park with George vibes though!
i noticed that jason is said to go to grace's church and is played by corey, who also played bill in TGWDLM who also went to church with grace chastity
Also it took another rewatch for me to realize this, but I always thought tinky said “Oooh spankoffski!” But it’s actually “A spankoffski!” Then goes on to talk about how he’ll have the whole collection. He literally is collecting every spankoffski, he already got to ted because they acknowledge the homeless guy, which if you’ve watched nightmare time, is actually Ted after dealing with tinky. Maybe that’s why the lords were so desperate for Peter. So they could all have another spankoffski.
I am genuinely impressed by the creative team and how they can find any tiny little lines, throwaway names/ jokes and turn them into integral plot lines in the Hatchetfield universe. Even in the music they recall any little bit and it makes it that more impactful + rewatchable
hi!! thank you guys for enjoying the video :))
when i was done editing this i noticed a few more things so i'm just gonna add them to this comment:
- at 18:10, when pete and steph are repeating the "id have to let you go" lyric, it parallels to when they sing "i think you better go, you first!" in 'if i loved you'. towards the end of 'if i loved you' they're both arguing about who to leave the coffee shop/their friendship first, but in 'as cool as i think i am reprise' they're arguing over who should sacrifice themselves
- at 19:04, when steph and pete sing "i never wanted you anyway", it's the final line in 'as cool as i think i am reprise', however it's the first line in 'if i loved you'
again, thank you for watching the video!! if you want me to add commentary to other media lmk :)
At 21:14, Grace says the same thing Wiggly said in the Summoning when Steph didn't want to kill Pete
something you missed: during just for once, at the high note (that lauren absolutely slayed like omg) the instrumental for “i’m not a loser” plays underneath! btw i love this and the previous video sm !!
Ziggy is also from first ep of nightmare time, mentioned as a non-binary hot person who has a past with Deb.
Also the time that Grace says 'you payed the price now fuck off' this is the first itme she's ever cursed.
Another thing during the speech of miss mulberry. The lighting is not centered because ruth died before she could do it.
@@Bluey-Leafeon No it isn't. Earlier Grace calls god a son of a bitch.
What I want to know is how Jon always looks so wildly different. He is so believably an older teen here, but in TGWDLM I 100% believed him as a 30 odd office worker. And in BF he gets even older for Gary and Wiggly.
And don't forget Honey Queen where he's Linda's dad who *has* to be in his sixties at the least!
Ever since npmd I’ve realized something, Jon looks like a 30 year old lesbian and a 15 year old boy at the same time.
He's a shapeshifter.
Outfit design!
Can we talk about his voice changes for each character too
One of the little things I like, as weird as it is, is that the ghost sex is purposefully played to sound as unsexy as possible as part of the joke. But to me it makes it sound like Max is almost as inexperienced as Grace.
So now it's my headcanon that he just set up a bunch of rumors that he's great at sex to impress her (completely unaware that it'd be the opposite of impressive to her), and then just never picked up that she wasn't into it.
I mean, if I was a boy and I got revived as a ghost seeking revenge, I would also wonder if my dick would still work the same
FINALLY SOMEONE POINTS THIS OUT
I love that-
Max was a nerdy prude the whole time
@@genericname2747 "he's just a nerd in disguise" -grace chasity
When the lords in Black say 'We've been watching you gracey' it gives me the impression that they have been preparing to corrupt someone who is already a religious zealot. Graces immediate reaction to her having sinful thoughts is to remove the people who 'forced her' to sin instead of taking responsibility (a running theme with her). I can see why the Lords in Black would accept her chastity instead of the death of a loved one. Not because its what she cherished most, but because it was her fully going to the darkside and the act was only going to empower her to continue to do more for them.
It feels like they sort of intended to revive their power of the church of the starry children via grace.
It also occurs that whenever Grace (specifically) gets access to preternatural power, she immediately uses it to improve her own clout and authority, specifically with the aim of "cleaning up" her current environs. Compare her use of the Black Book here to her use of Lumber Axe's eponymous weapon in "Abstinence Camp" (Season 2 of Nightmare Time).
I love this take
The line "you think the time that I was chaste was being waste on a holy mission" in Dirty Dudes Must Die makes me wonder if this plan has been in motion a lot longer than we realize. It reads to me as "you think I wasted time on being chaste for God?"
Also, I haven't seen anyone talk about this but Grace had a dream about Max coming back and being angry the night he came back and killed Richie, almost like she saw it herself or had a vision of it. Add this to the fact that Blinky specifically calls out Grace makes me think they might have a connection of some sort, like how Tinky talks to Pete because he has a connection to the Spankofski's.
@@maizen1335truly some sins of the father shit, each Lord of Black loves messing with “their” Hatchetfield family
Linda counts as a representative for this theory as well considering she was sacrificed to Nibbly in “Honey Queen”, and became the leader of Wiggly’s cult in “Black Friday”. Not to mention Grace is one of the few people that gets to actually reference most of the weird shit that happens in Hatchetfield throughout “Nerdy Prudes Must Die”, like how people disappear all the time, and how she actually knows about the haunted house and the history of dark rituals, weird cults and sex magic tied to it. So maybe her family is so strongly religious because they had long lasting connections to the Lords In Black and were actively trying to fight them off. Who knows?
I find it interesting that as the musical progressed Grace goes from not swearing to using censorship swear words like heck then full on calling god a bitch and saying fuck off. It might be me over analyzing here but I see it as Grace slowly being corrupted both by her own terrible choices as a flawed human being and by the lords in black
I mean......yeah. Agreed. They can't show character progression with changing clothes really so it's a good way to do it through vocabulary
@@madeniquevanwykwell funny thing is, they actually did do that. It’s very subtle, but you can actually see her amount of hair clips decreasing as the show goes on.
Grace wanting all the nerds to take over is very "The meek shall inherit the earth"
she refers to the nerds as the meek in the beginning, she points at ruth and is like “[max] strikes fear in the hearts of the meek” or smth along those lines
Grace, like many, is misinterpreting that section, I suspect. If I'm remembering the Beatitudes correctly, the point is that the meek, those who mourn, etc. are going to be handed their rewards by God in heaven or once the Second Coming, well, comes. Grace, as many a villain has done before her, is taking matters into her own hands, because waiting for God is never enough. Juicy.
@@Landis963Grace taking it into her own hands and turning to the LiB for that desired end of the world might have also been sparked by her entire “do something you son of a bitch!” freak out at God when being questioned. As far as she’s concerned God abandoned her (to the consequences of her own actions) and so if she wants to get anything done, up to and including the Second Coming that will bring forth paradise, she has to do it herself or turn to the LiB who actually did something to get her out of that bad situation (for a price).
I'm not sure if this actually a thing or just a coincidence or just something they added to be witty but, in The Summoning Wiggly says "Pay the price or fuck off" later Grace says "I paid the price now fuck off" The similar wording could be subtly hinting that Grace is already under the Lords of Black's influence.
Or she's just talking to them, actually. Reminding the Lords of the terms of the deal while banishing Max with style.
also, in the old waylon place, she says that the people "hacked them all to bloody bits". later during the summoning, wiggly says that max is going to "tear you all to bloody bits". i dont think either of those pairs of lines is a coincidence personally but the "fuck off" definitely isn't -- it's one of three times she swears in the show and the only time she says fuck, they wouldn't have written that in unless it was a direct reference to what wiggly said imo
I do love that they acknowledge the Max is messing with them the whole time. He can disappear and reappear whenever and wherever he wants (for example with the cop car) yet he still chooses to chase the kids on foot to scare them and make them fight
Makes sense. There's a whole song at the beginning about how he likes it when they run.
It's also possible that he behaves differently when Grace is around, since he doesn't necessarily want to kill her. He blames Steph (and by extension, the nerds because she had been consorting with them leading up to the incident) for his death, yet Grace never received any of his anger for that.
@@nutelasaur9453Well, one could argue that because Max died a teen, his revenant form kept his teenage impulses and hormones, so he’s just kinda too horny for her to focus on how he wants her dead until like… after the sex. When he said “Don’t you want to CUDDLE?” It did sound pretty aggressive, so to me I feel like it could’ve been read as him, due to post-but clarity and achieving his goal of wanting to sleep with Grace, being ready to kill her now.
@@raymondfisheriii791honestly the idea of Max going all full “praying mantis” on Grace is terrifying
Little thing i noted.
Max's last words to Pete before having sex with Grace?
"I'll be right back."
Something that, as Scream lovingly points out, is usually a death sentence in a slasher. (along with the "sin" of sex)
He really did predict his own demise by saying and doing the two things in horror movies that get you killed
every time I hear "on the ground bitch, I'm a cop" I can't help but think of the "bam bam, we're the army, bam bam" and then "yeah prove it asshole, we're the army"
edit: also, Max running after Grace is giving Jeff as Father running after Mother in Trail to Oregon
Small detail I noticed: When Ruth starts "Just for Once" she mimes holding a cup but then stops miming said cup without putting it down (if it were a prop it would have fallen to the ground), which is an easy "lack of stage experience" mistake to make, which the other "BBQ monolougest" don't make.
Also, I saw somewhere pointed out that whenever the 5 Lords in Black are introduced (Janes a Car, Witch in the Web (dolls), Daddy, and Nerdy Prudes), they are always in the same order. The only exception to this is when Webby is describing them in Yellow Jacket.
Finally, the Lords in Blacks human forms each fit their personalities as a stereotypical high schooler; Pokey is giving theatre kid energy, Nibbly's outfit is extremely preppy cus he's worshiped by the wealthy of Hatchetfield, Wiggly looks like he's the king of the school in a letterman jacket/cardigan, Blinky looks rave-like and laidback like someone who watches drama, games, and shows with the fur top being like an amusement park mascot suit, and Tinky is grungy like a "bastard" teen who hangs out in the alleyway behind the school.
Also each of the Lords in Black have fur on their outfit, with Wigglys being his plush backpack, referring to how they all have plush toy versions of themselves!
The "grill brush" also disappears/gets dropped at the end of the song
I love that so much
Omg thank you got describing on how each lord and black is dressed because I realized they were all dressed like high school stereotypes but I couldn’t figure out blinky or tinky
Also a neat thing to point out: Wiggly, on top of his outfit, also is the only Lord in Black to have a representation of himself on his human form, because he’s got a Tickle-Me Wiggly strapped to his back.
Also worth noting is each of them has some accessory on them that ties into their domain. Pokey has the mask he used in Yellow Jacket, Blinky has a pair of sunglasses, Tinky has the Bastard's Box from Time Bastard, Nibbly carries a lollipop, probably a reference to the Honey Queen "the sweetest woman in hatchetfield" and Wiggly wears a crown, since he's the de facto leader of the lords
Tbh when I was watching Pete and Steph be all sad bc one of them had to be sacrificed in my first watch, I was like, "WHAT ABOUT GRACE???"
Same! I told the person I was watching with that I thought Grace was going to give up her chastity but then Pete and Steph had their scene
Literally, I was like “NO WAY they’re are about to do this when Grace is RIGHT THERE.” Then once again Starkid made the logical choice.
Me too. It kind of ruined the song for me on the first watch. I was like, “I get it, we're being dramatic teens here, but there was a third, just a moment ago. Why don't we ask Grace if she can fix her mess?”
as soon as pete and steph went off on their own i knew it was gonna end up being grace
Yeah same, The biggest reason why I didn't end up crying during the reprise was because I remembered the death copout in Black Friday and I knew Grace's arc hadn't been finished yet
I love that in Grace's fantasy during Dirty Girl Max specifically sings "I am expecting you to betray me" and then she actually does
and he says he "wont rest until he tastes graces peach" and he dies after he does. I love the writing bro
this paired with the "we've been watching you gracey, someone's been naughty" makes me think the dark lords were already targetting her by the time that song happened. like, that dream max was actually the dark lords' using grace's wants to mess with her head and lead her to the house??
Only just noticed how at 7:45, as Ruth sings “Just for Once” the “If I can finally be cool” melody plays in the background I LOVE THIS SHOW
It's at 16:37 too when Steph is confessing to Pete!
Another little detail too that I liked is when Grace does her spin and says "Now fuck off" when sending Max to the black and white it's the first time she swears with no shame truly showing she's crossed to the dark side ready to go after all the dirty pervs
I noticed something like that at 10:46 where Grace picks up and drinks a cup of coffee from the Beanies counter, even though she'd said in the scene before that her parents didn't let her drink coffee. She slowly starts breaking every rule except the swearing until that part at the very end-- it's a great downfall
@@Moonstar79it was hot water not coffee
@@Evelyn-rb1zj I figured that out on rewatch :') would've been cool though lol
"Darkness with spare my soul" is deadass THE best harmony Starkids have ever done. I'm not joking
Yesss absolutely, that harmony scratches my brain it makes me so happy
Timestamp? I completely missed this😭
I wish there were more songs like this
@@doriekevanderbeek9168 Legit at the end of the video when Dirty Dudes Must Die aka Grace's villain arc, starts playing
Fr, NPMD music/harmonies go HARD and they sound so strong. If anyone says they were sick in this one (like they were in BF), I’d be shocked.
I like to think that the riot at the Hatchetfield kennels that Dan Reynolds covered was due to the problematic puppy Steph was in a twitter fight about in the opening song.
What if the problematic puppy is Ted and the riot was started by Melissa
I think Steph's father may have sacrificed her mother for whatever it is he did. Knowing his life it was probably for political success. And since he never takes responsibility for anything he probably also blames Steph for what he did.
which is extra fucked because that means that he genuinely loved her...
but still power was more important
I tend to think he sacrificed his wife as well, but I also think that to keep his power, he has agreed with the Lords in Black that they can use Hatchetfield and it's citizens as their playground. It is a stretch, but just a thought I have had for a bit (since NMT2).
Also Steph was probably an accident since she was his "October Surprise"
@@beansforsalewahoo Agreed. I also, now this is really out there, think he may be the father of at least one of Linda Monroe's kids. She claimed that they were accidents and we are told that Gerald is not the father of all the kids. It would make sense in that they both could benefit for keeping such an affair quiet. He could gain from her financial background (to possibly help fund his political campaign) and she could benefit from his status (and possibly connections to the Lords in Black - explaining what Wilbur Cross meant by her being chosen as a prophet long before in Black Friday). It may be a stretch, but one I considered.
But doesn't she call out "Mom I'm home!" When we first meet Ms. Tesburger?
* Once again some (a lot of) things:
* Ruth does the iconic "Lauren is depressed" loaf once they've found out about Richie's death
* When Grace asks for hot water, Shapiro puts a lot of emphasis on "plenty of... _hot water_ for you, Grace" because she's busted Grace and another term for being in trouble is being in hot water
* Max is constantly referred to as a "Literal Monster" in Act 2, a callback to his introductory song
* This isn't a small detail but I find the mayor keeping hold of the decapitated head as he talks down Max so funny
* "The school is a quarter-mile that way if we cut through Pinebrook" is the same route Paul and Bill take to Alice in TGWDLM
* The names of the Lords In Black are invoked in the same order Nick showed off their dolls in The Witch In The Web
* Part of Wiggle plays as the Lords In Black appear
* Tinky says "Oh boy, a Spankoffski! I'm gonna have the whole set in my toybox!" because he was also responsible for Ted's incident in Time Bastard
* Pokey says "Do it, or die!", a reference to Join Us And Die
* Grace is actually the one that picks up the Black Book after the Lords In Black meeting so she can have it by the end of the musical
* Steph puts her jacket back on when she has to kill Pete, because before when Pete changed his outfit she did too, and now she's trying to push back those feelings so she returns to her old outfit from before those feelings blossomed
* Pete puts his bowtie back on when he and Steph get together cause he doesn't need to impress her anymore
“Uuggh. Can’t we just be Deatheaters already?”
It sounds insignificant but *thank you* for mentioning the pinebrook detail! Genuinely thought everyone forgot about tgwdlm for a second!
Another Pete and Steph detail:
* The chord progression of the first part of the chorus of If I Loved You is the same as Take Me Back's in Black Friday
That invocation is also identical to the one in Daddy: "We invoke the names Pokotho, Bliklotep, T'noy Karaxis, Nibblenephim, Wiggog Y'Wrath." Also, the musical cue you cite there (the 8-note motif after Wiggly's first line) corresponds to the lyric "We will build a portal for him" from _Black Friday,_ and also plays as the Lords in Black take Jagerman, thus fulfilling their end of the deal.
I LOVE THE TINKY LINE I NEED MORE CONTENT ABOUT THE TIME BASTARD
a small detail that i found very chilling was Grace's family dynamic. all of the scenes are very cute & wholesome until you notice that her dad gets called Mark by her mother, but Mark only ever calls his wife 'Mother'. i think it really sets up just how wildly differently she was raised & adds a different air of horror to this musical.
EDIT: I've only just put together that Karen from Hatchet Town is Grace's mum. We learn her name from a one off line in a song that doesn't include any of her family. Even sadder & chilling
I never thought of it like that, it's like a 50s commercial where the mother only exists as the homemaker. Tbh I just thought it was strange that a man calls his wife "Mother" in the same way Sherman calls his actual mother
This made me realize that every time I watch one of the Chastity family scenes I’m losing it over how funny the father is as such an exaggerated caricature, and it makes us so that he really overshadows the mother, which I think is deliberate. He’s such an, albeit comedic, presence in the scene and then she’s just there because this kind of family dynamic has to have a wife and she’s filling that role. She’s just there to support him and Grace on both an in-world and a meta narrative level.
Yeah I kept thinking he was Grace's older brother but she called him her husband. I was so confused by why he called her mother as well.
If Ruth relates a lot to her barbecue character a lot then let’s say she did used to dance tap. And we learned Pete also took tap as a kid and that’s probably where Pete and Ruth met and first became friends 😢
I love how Pete doesn’t feel Wiggly touching him, it’s just for Steph because then she has to be the one to explain to him that she loves him and that makes it all the juicier for the Lords
personally i like to think the lords in black are talking to everyone seperately but at the same. It makes it much funnier to think of Graces perspective too lmao
Fun fact! They said in the cast commentary that Jon explicitly did that with his hands because the Wiggly doll only has three little tentacle fingers on each hand, hence the wiggling little Spock hands
nick and matt (and jeff, with the parts that are the monologue ruth is reciting) really captured contemporary plays with “the barbecue monologues”. like, yes, give me four characters, give me four disconnected plotlines, teens playing middle-aged adults and doing the most absurd space work
edit: something else!! solomon tells the kids not to try to reason with max then IMMEDIATELY BEGINS TRYING TO REASON WITH MAX (“i have connections, i have friends, i can buy you beer!”)
Maybe, MAYBE
He was buying them time to run from Max. MAYBE.
@@LunaWitcherArt i wanna believe he had a single good father moment so bad
@@he.said.teenjiejersame, its so hard to hate a character played by correy
AND when Steph tells Pete not to comfort Grace and then immediately does it herself. Weeping sobbing I am my fathers child etc
@@salamanderqueen4351 this is uniquely heartbreaking
Ruth's song also has the "I'm not a loser" riff while she's belting, her version of breaking the "rules" of her situation.
THANK YOU!!! I noticed that too!
That motif is played so much in the musical, its honestly impressive how often they can seamlessly stick it in a song
The last shot of Grace where she has dark circles around her eyes plus her teeth showing the corruption is already manifesting physically as well.
I love how right at the end Max is clearly being held by the arms by some kinda telekinesis, and he’s not able to break it to escape, but he does resist enough to pull his arms into Nighthawk wings - his willpower is stronger in regards to the team than his own self-preservation. Wild.
Honestly makes sense. He's fine with dying, since he already knows high school would be his peak. Self-preservation would mean the future, cheering for the nighthawks is still high school
Don’t know if anyone else has said it, but during the Summoning, the Lords in Black each have a seperate dance move that they pass on to another Lord in the shape of a Pentagram. The detail from Lauren in the choreography is sick as
12:58 Lets not forget that she also (almost) kills the guy she loves. Like, yes, the bullet was stopped, but she didn't know that that would happen. In her mind, pulling the trigger was killing Pete. They all went through so much, but Steph might have been through the worst of it, poor girl...
it hurts me so much too because i really liked her in abstinence camp, but steph became my absolute favorite character in this one, so every time i think about what she had to go through and how awful her dad is it PAINS ME DEEPLY.
Now that we have the full notes, I can say my piece.
Grace Chasity is the best twist villain in recent Starkid, if not recent Theatre as a whole. From her brief inception as a mere name-drop in TGWDLM, to her premier in NMT, to now in NPMD, we always figured her out to be that stereotypical jesus-obsessed rule-abiding teacher's pet. And through and through, she was and still is. But her at the end just going fully power-driven and vindictive against the very things (dirty dudes) that took away what she cherished most. She feels robbed, and now wants compensation. And using the black book as the tool for her crusade, the black maraschino cherry on top of it all.
It's amazing how Angela can really go between an annoying nerdy Bible prude, a sultry woo'd woman keeping a distance, and a manic gremlin of a young adult on an angsty sex-inspired rampage. She's incredibly talented, and has such unique and raw vocals, that especially shine in numbers like "Black Friday" and "Dirty Girl" _(ps the best song in Starkid history to date)_ .
Anyway there's a Death Note musical that came out the same time as Hamilton and I only just found that out so that's my life right now
One thing I noticed about Wiggly's design; You're right his hand movements represent his tentacles, but not his mouth ones! The Wiggly doll has three tentacles on each hand (Which makes him unique, he's the only one with hands) and Jon only moves his middle three fingers as Wiggly.
I now choose to believe wiggly is king of the LiB because he has hands
@@Lady_Of_The_Lake11 He's the only one who can hold things and therefore is the most powerful
@@strangeandinteresting He's the only one that can hold onto the power.
@@strangeandinteresting He's the only one that can hold onto the power.
@@tbcmallett Shit dude wait that makes sense-
The best part about Pete being the Low Blood Sugar Guy is that he used to wear suspenders and a bow tie like him, until Steph made a joke about it. Meaning TGWDLM takes place before the two of them get together.
But then at homecoming Pete has his bow tie again because he's not trying to impress Steph anymore
I think we can all agree that Brye ATE. The solo part in Hatchet Town gave me chills, just like Mariah's part in Not your Seed, so freakin good!
fucking transcendent!
Bryce really needs to get her own song in the next StarKid show to belt out. Or perhaps a duet with Mariah - a “belt off”
@@UranusHz420 add Jaime and Kim and I don't think I'd ever recover
Can we talk about how Steph might have been left with no living family?? Her mom is never mentioned, her dad and his assistant are dead, and we don't know of any other living relatives of her (I don't believe any were mentioned in Nightmare Time either) so she's pretty much just left alone. That's so freaking sad
She only has Pete now
OKAY HEAR ME OUT : In "The Best of You" there’s a line that says "Lights up on the town / Just as we start lying down forever" and I *-think-* _believe_ that it's a reference to the fact that things in Hatchetfield keep resetting and different tragedies and horrors happen all the time, just to be re-set like a stage to prepare for the new Nightmare. Like the final song in "Black Friday" where it's hinted that the town is not allowed to rest or die or have happy endings and things will just happen over and over again
Woah this makes sense! To add onto that thought, my mind also instantly flashed back to TGWDLM while reading your comment. The infected people shouted "lights off" after their first number didn't they? So the implication is that after the end of this story ("as the night falls on the town"), this version of Hatchetfield will continue to sing and be mangled until a bad end is forced to happen ("lights up" + how streetlights at night look like stage spotlights). Also the night falling implies that the Lords in Black are still taking over regardless of what happens.
@@lemonberry_soda You get it!!
if anyone noticed in as cool as I think I am (reprise) their both really crying you can see a tear rolling off Mariah's cheek and Joey is about to breakdown at the end of the song
also I love how right after the reprise they have a funny scene with max to cheer people up
@@trainman9024the beatboxing while running to catch the bullet was one of the biggest laughs of the whole show for me purely because it was so unexpected and needed after that extremely heavy scene
@@jimmy_the_squid9456 and the fact Starkid shits on hamilton so much its so funny to see multiple references throughout the show
Something I haven't seen other people notice is that when Peter sings "the football team can meet your needs," he swings a baseball bat.
I've been thinking about that since I first watched the musical lol
steph "the fuck is happening right now"= twisted jaffar "okay. Jesus christ, i dont know whats going on here"
I greatly appreciate that Wiggly has a Tickle-Me Wiggly strapped to his back as a human.
Gotta show off the merch
Yeah I just noticed that. It's in character tbh
@@genericname2747 imagine if Blinky is wearing his own merchandise from his amusement park I mean, it would be in character for him to do that. OK for those who haven’t watched nightmare Time, Blinky runs his own amusement park but not for the entertainment of the people who go there, but for his entertainment. Basically, he manipulates people into killing each other for fun and he tried to trick Allison and her dad into killing each other, but it didn’t work and he got shot in the eye
THE POINT ABOUT STEPH BEING THE ONLY ONE WITH A PREVIOUS REASON TO LIE???? GALAXY BRAINED
i LOVE that Pete says “5 fucking years” when asking for his hot chocolate, since it’s literally been 5 years since The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals came out.
ALSO when the Lords in Black show up Blinky, Tinky, and Nibbly greet one of the 3 separately from the group, because in different timelines (the other shorter shows) they had to deal with those certain Lords im pretty sure.
Gotta say, Ruth is one of Lauren's best characters. Right up there with Son and Linda Monroe.
Add the fact she choreographed all this... my gurl is petite perfection.
I could just be dumb but I still can't understand at all how Ruth died from a wedgie of all things.
@@dashysakusei4969In the show, it says that it was so hard that it split her body. So essentially, she was partially eviscerated.
Not me reading Lin Manuel Monroe😭😭😭
You forgot Draco Malfoy
In the Lords In Black scene, Nibbly says "Stephanie, yum yum", both a callback to what they say in Honey Queen when summoned, but also to the fact that the tastiest people for Nibbly are the ones who do the worst things to get ahead, and between the three, that would be Steph (Mostly cheating, but if her role in Abstinence Camp is anything to go on, she's done worse)
I have a headcanon that Nibbly says that because Steph ended up being Honey Queen in another reality
@AudiFrog ooh that's really cool actually
In a town that is not hatchetfield, I imagine a world where Grace and Max actually do end up dating, and he teaches her to loosen up while she teaches him... Most things. He needs a lot of teaching. He does not peak at high school, she stays nerdy but less of a prude.
Honestly I've been to afraid to admit that I kinda ship them
Toxicly
Like a really messed up enemies to lovers dynamic
Or y'know, kinda wholesome like you described, it could go either way
No, but imagine this:
Someone tells Grace to set up a tutoring service to put it as volunteering in her college applications. Then Max goes to her tutoring as a way to get closer to her. Then he goes to her house and sees The Healthy Family Dynamic he never had and suddenly he's there all the time, staying for dinner, helping the mom on the kitchen and/or talking to the dad about sports and receiving praise and encouragement from him cuz the dad recognizes his talent. They talk about calling his dad to ask if Max can stay a little late and Max tells them to not bother, and the family realizes how bad his home situation is and just basically adopt him. Grace takes him to church every chance she gets outside of school or football practice, so he doesn't need to be at home as much, and he obliges because he likes Grace and he doesn't want to be home anyways.
Time passes blablabla he picks up his grades enough to earn a football scholarship to the same college Grace is accepted at. It would be really nice.
@@LunaWitcherArtok but like why is this such a good idea tho!!! This would be so cute 😭😭😭😭
@@castlegarden2999 The beauty of a multiverse means you can have it both ways my friend
@@LunaWitcherArtthis made me sob knowing this will never be real
I NEVER NOTICED THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE REPRISE AND TAKE ME BACK. THE SCREAM I SCRUPMT AT THAT CUT OH MY GOD
ME NEITHER, THAT GOT ME GOOD
2:17 i love how curt’s cop is just the bad police from the lego movie skskskskskskskks
"The meek will inherit the earth"-vibes from Grace wanting the nerds to rule the word especially makes sense, since Grace already established the nerds as being "the meek" back when she was convincing the others to scare Max.
"Matthew 5:5!:
Mary and Noah where so cute 😢
@@Volcanic_Activity Makes me love it even more that she points at Ruth when she establish the nerds as "the meek", since Lauren played Mary. And yes, Mary and Noah was so adorable
You could also take it as a very subtle, likely unintentional jab at many evangelicals irl who actually want the world to end so the rapture can occur.
20:00 the way you can see her (Grace) wince inwardly at saying that line. And at 13:00 the fact that she says “this book is crazy” because she’s been looking through it at the rituals: she doesn’t sound scared, she sounds excited. And at 16:29 you can see grace holding the book as she runs away because she’s the one who keeps it.
I think that what mayor Lauter sacrificed is related to the reason why he he is so jaded. I think that when he was younger, there was a similar situation to NPMD, and he had to sacrifice Stephanie’s mother to stop it. That would also explain where her mother is.
I think Richie has the worst death. Its mostly played off as a joke, but he actually had several lacerations to his head and body, as well as being drowned in the toilet, and drained of most of his blood. His murder also would've taken about an hour, considering the times inbetween the start and end of the football game.
Idk if anyone else has talked about this before but I really like how Grace’s hairstyle represents her sanity/stepping away from her pure starts. Her hair clips fall further out as the show continues, with them fully disappearing when she stops Max from killing Steph and Pete, then reappearing as a ruse to trick Jason at the end.
I’m so sad they edited out the lil hand hold between Steph and Ruth after Steph defended Ruth. It was truly a gorgeous moment, least there’s the digital ticket version to keep its memory alive 🥲
Wait when in the musical?
@@sagegreeeeeeen just as Steph says ‘leave Ruth alone’ when Grace accuses Ruth of spilling all the cool beans after the interrogation scene :))
@@molliemaecrump4180 aw that’s adorable
I'd the digital ticket the digital download version on their website? Or is that the same as the pros hoot version on TH-cam?
@@bubblegum1366 it’s the one on the website in the bonus features so yeah it’s separate to the proshot version :))
Ever since I watched it I've been obsessed with Steph's "shUT thE fUCk UP Ruth 👹" it scratches my brain lol
“WHAT. THE F**K. IS HAPPENING”
The costume choices also mean that TGWDLM Peter likely never got to know Steph the way NPMD Peter did. Like the outfit change is so important to his character development and the relationship development.
Mayor Lauter saying that a man in a gun is on the loose is a way to divert their attention away from steph, and her ending up having a gun in her possession is so ironic.
Oh oh oh realization 16:59
It makes extra sense for steph to think so materialistically because the way she was raised :(
Her dad was not very affectionate with her, and he so obviously prioritized his status over anything else, and theres reason to believe that her relationship with pete, romantic or otherwise, is probably the first deep connection shes had with anyone in a long time, that is assuming if at all
I love this musical
Also idk if this is just how i saw it because i never see anyone else mentioning it but 21:08 as well as the little spin i saw the what she said and way she phrased it as a callback to what wiggly had said and how he said it.
"Pay the price or fuck off"
"I paid the price, now fuck off"
14:00 Pete says they can cut through Pinebrook to get to the school just like Paul says when him and Bill go to get Alice ( 1:04:00 if you wanna go back to TGWDLM and watch the scene )
Fun with subtitles: when Ruth complains during play practice, she says she loses her SPOT when people don't stick to the script, but the official closed captions say she loses her PLACE. Nice bit of meta :)
pete and the nerd are supposed to be the same character, but pete is dressed different because he met steph...
same characters, different universes - so they’re technically the same?
@@nyanninja2324 yes. But the hatchetfield multiverse is complex.
I mean, they were dressed the same in the beginning.
@@nyanninja2324 That coffee shop nerd from TGWDLM is supposed to be Pete Spankoffski - I'm pretty certain. (It says on their wikipedia that Pete was in TGWDLM.) Pete is Ted Spankoffski's younger brother. The guy who played that nerd is no longer with Starkid though, which is why it's now a different actor portraying him.
In “Abstinence Camp” yeah Peter is not only hot chocolate boy but Ted (from tgwdlm)’s little brother
Overall, Starkid has improved so much over the years. The singing and harmonies sounded so good.
They mixed in the cast recordings with the live audio and the audience reactions, I think it's the first time they've done something like this!
We all know max was kicking his feet and giggling when grace paralleled his song
Another small detail that you missed during The Summoning (which is my personal favorite song from this play) is Tinky's comment about having "the whole [Spankoffski] set in my toybox" being a reference to the Nightmare Time episode "The Time Bastard" where he'd trapped Ted Spankoffski within the Bastard's Box.
Something I saw someone point out in the comments of NPMD is that during "darkness will save my soul", Grace very deliberately shows her back to the audience, where the straps on her dress look like angel wings, possibly because she still sees herself as righteous and pure
I get such a tiny moment of giddy happiness every time I hear the line "Wake me up when the mean girl is more than mean" just bc of how much I adore the Mean Girls musicals and references
At 12:22 "Who or what did you sacrifice old man?" I headcanon that he sacrificed his wife and that's why she's never mentioned
a cool thing for me is taht before being killed Richie and Ruth try to reason with Max that they're not loser and should not be killed under the nerdy prudes must die idea, but earlier he said the that decides who is a loser or not so this ofc didn't work
also this is more of a personal theory but when telling the lords in dark they would give them anything they sing something along the lines of "whatever we want we get, forever in our eternal debt" which leads me to believe that whoever gave their most precious thing would end up bad in the head anyways paying that forever debt
That second one I’m with you on. I think it’s easier to sort of poke holes at Grace giving up her most cherished thing bc it’s not a person like Pete and Stephs is? If that makes sense? Like we get this super sad song about how much they love each other and how it’s such a sacrifice and Grace giving her chastity away is played as comical so it’s easy to forget that silly as it might seem THATS HER MOST CHERISHED THING. I think it makes total sense that ANYONE giving that up regardless of it being a person or a concept or a thing would end up fucked in the head (which is like the lord in blacks reason to do it they’re agents of chaos). I also just think anyone who’s been taught to value their chastity/virginity/whatever above anything else (over her PARENTS?? Her friends??) is already pretty fucked up from religious trauma and that being the final straw for her to go absolutely apeshit makes total sense to me. Additionally I don’t think it’s a huge leap for her to then transfer all that religious devotion to the lords in black (I’ve seen conflicting theories ab whether she’s possessed by them or just batshit and I think either fits). She’s honestly such a good character but I think a lot of people are too busy just going “ok well she just overreacted this is all her fault and she’s crazy” lol
I would like to think Grace out smarted a cop because she's entered her feral era
She stopped fearing authority and became only about self preservation
I like how everyone was standing at the very end with Grace in the middle and everyone in a V-formation around her. It reminded me of Let It Out, especially since those were both the songs that showed Paul and Grace being corrupted by the Lords in Black
that "no" from pete at 19:36 fucking killed me all the way dead my heart is broken and shattered. im suing joey richter for emotional damages /j
also thank you for appreciating the "it fucking worked, i'm fucking here, he's fucking her" line its so clever it makes me laugh every time
Something i noticed and this might be a long stretch is that Graces dad also calls her mom Mother, and in Black Friday Lindas followers called her mother 🤔 😂
I think it’s a bit about how like super conservative men will call their husbands Mother and it’s weird and Freudian (best and example of this is M*ke P*nce)
@@Plumgoblin Oh! Okay, thank you for telling me.
I thought about that too! My theory was that Grace's parents were meant to act as tools, not people. In the little screen time we see Grace's parents, they only contribute to the plot by selling the Waylan place (which was to get Grace's act 2 storyline going) and helping to audience understand Grace better. They had no character arcs or development and exist completely around Grace, which is why the parents refer to each other as "Mother" and "Father" instead of their names. Hope this is understandable!
@@Plumgoblin Huh I always assumed that they were just doing the normal family thing of referring to themselves as such in front of their kid but a little more formal. Instead of "Mom" and "Dad", they use "Mother" and "Father" which just makes sense for them somehow
Actually (father) calls her “Mother” but “Mother” calls her husband “Marc”
OOH MY GOD YOU BIG BRAINED I NEVER CONNECTED THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN npmd’s “I have to let you go” and black friday’s“I’ll never let you go” uwOOOOOh
1) Stephanie yelling for her father as he gets killed even though he’s such a jerk to her because she’s just a teenager and he’s her fucking father 😭
2) She looks so excited to be able to solve everything by giving up her phone, like she took her father’s words to heart and really thinks it’s all her fault and now she can fix what she thinks she caused
11:59
Dude Steph didn't even do anything, it was literally all Grace's plan 😭
And, therefore, it was up to Grace to fix it. Cut to the climax...
(Of the musical, what did you think I meant?)
I love how the mayor was just fear mongering and spreading mis information
Honestly, Steph and Pete singing goodbye is heartwrenching. I mean, she's singing lines from their duet because she's saying goodbye to him, and he's singing lines from his song because he's saying goodbye to his life. They're both mourning the loss of what they have, but only one of them thinks they get to say the final goodbye.
They always say there's a peace in knowing you're dying for a reason. . . .
OW
Something else not mentioned about "Hatchet Town" - not only do they mention a gun when there was none, they all assume a cannibal is behind the murders even though all of the bodies are still present.
Also, the principal asks Ruth to fix the focus on a light center stage, and if you check the beginning of The Barbecue Monologues the center pool of light is cut off on the side (the shutters weren't fully retracted). That's what Ruth was about to fix.
"If I Loved You" - It's fascinating Steph describes herself as a sapiosexual, because that means as the popular girl unassociated with nerds or geeks her dating/"dating" pool couldn't have satisfied her completely. For any and all experience she might have already, she's as vulnerable and inexperienced as Peter is in opening up to the other like this.
At the end of the "finale", the understudies run out and join the final pose in the back. I wonder if they did that for every show or just these shots.
I have a different thought about the back line at the end of "Dirty Dudes Must Die" that's brought on by the way the two cops are standing there. Well, first off, they're not nerds so they wouldn't be a part of any takeover of the world Grace might lead. But they're standing almost like they're hanging off hooks or are pinned up to a wall. Thinking back to "Nerdy Prudes Must Die," the back line wasn't just nerds but football players and cheerleaders, too, because they were all antagonized and victimized by Max. With how zealous Grace is and how strict her views on sex and relationships are, that back line in "DDMD" could be indicating how broad her category of "dirty" is and how many people will fall to her puritanical cleansing. "Darkness will spare my soul" might be an invocation against her power or the grip of the LiB on their souls upon their deaths.
I think the Hatchet Town thing is commentary on how rumors/hysteria spread in a small town
i think that mayor Lauter sacrificed his wife and regrets it
Something that gets me is Max’s lines when he kills Ruth, he makes theatre references, but later he shows he still has his mindset. Meaning he knows theatre references, why could he know these? Because he is lonely he knows his friends don’t like him and the closest connection he has to others is when he bullies them. What other interests did he research in order to gain any connection? I think he also read the bible as a way to get closer to the religious students and find passages he could reference when he picks on them.
This is all head cannon but it just makes me sad, had he not died i think he could have become friends with all of them.
I’m surprised you didn’t point out the tinky line where he says he’ll have another spankoffski in his toy box- I know it’s more of an obvious one but I thought it was such a fun nightmare time reference
That line had me so confused for a while bc NPMD was the first starkid musical I watched and then I watched time bastard and I was like ohhhhh
One thing I realized about "Cool As I Think I Am Reprise":
At one point in the song, Steph sings, "If I really really did love you, you'd have to say," and Pete responds with, "I know..."
These lyrics are a reference to "Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back." In one scene, Han Solo is about to get cryo-frozen. Right before he gets frozen, Princess Leia, Han's love interest, says, "I love you" and Han says "I know" before he froze. So, the lyrics are a callback to when Ruth says, "She needs you, Pete. Like Princess Leia," in the library scene.
Also, Pete's "death" is kind of like Han's "death" in a way. In "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi", Leia, in disguise, saves Han by unfreezing him. However, they get caught by Jabba the Hutt, a bad guy that was keeping frozen Han in his hangout. Going back to NPMD, before Pete gets shot by Steph, Max, the bad guy, stops the bullet before it hits Pete and they both get caught by him.
In conclusion, the writers of this show need a fricking Tony!!
"Just For Once" really speaks to me as a moment of like... a nerdy kid relating to a fictional character with a very different life from them, and expressing themselves through that character.
It reminds me of myself singing "I Miss The Mountains" from "Next To Normal" with all the passion of a manic-depressive middle aged mother that I'm not lmao bc it still speaks to my depressive feelings past puberty and kinda missing when I was more mentally unstable bc back then the highs were higher even if the lows were also lower
Like... it's just feels like this being Ruth's song rather than something more direct and non-diagetic is with the purpose of showing that relationship we have with fiction, the way it gives us something to connect to when we don't feel like there is anyone else in real life to do that with.
and I just rly appreciate that :3
It is really funny with each musical Jeff writes he gives himself progressively less stage time. TTO he’s literally the star, TGWDLM he’s got songs to himself for three different characters, BF we’re lucky he made a return as macnamara, and now in NPMD he’s in a hurry.
Keep in mind, for the hot chocolate scene, Peter used to always wear suspenders and a bow tie until Steph encouraged him to try something else. Otherwise he would be in the exact same outfit as tgwdlm
a little thing I noticed because I’m in my Star Wars era right now:
1st) Ruth refers to Steph as Pete’s ‘Leia’ when she calls him to Pasquali’s
2nd) in ‘Cool As I Think I Am’, the second verse is another Leia reference (“Princess Leia told me, I’d just as soon kiss a Wookiee”)
3rd) in the reprise Steph says “if I really did love you, you’d have to say” to which Pete responds “I know” which is how Han Solo responded to Leia’s love confession in the second Star Wars movie (whether Steph’s next line about Pete not being as cool as he thinks he is is related to him making a nerdy Star Wars reference or him quoting Popular Cool Guy Han Solo - or it could just be another callback to the original song)
anyway I thought that was cute and I haven’t seen anyone else mention it 🥰
11:59 He’s a _Literal Monster_
part 2 things that didn't make it into video that I thought might warrant a mention:
Mayor turns all the townspeople against each other in the wake of heat on himself.
There's tons of little musical references like these throughout the show, its nuts.
I think the Mayor sacrificed Steph's mom. That's the implication I got at least.
Early implication that Grace is gonna be tooooo into that book.
The background of the school is filled with foreshadowing for the musical.
And the tears start coming and they don't stop coming and they don't stop coming (you brought it up but I'm bringing it up too XP)
This time when Steph calls Peter a nerd, while he's a little annoyed he doesn't look hurt, because he knows it's not a sign of being used.
7:30
Honestly that might be what the entire song’s about. She’s singing about being middle-aged and nothing she says really feels ingenuine. As someone who has had horrible social anxiety since I was eleven, when you get to the point where you can barely do anything it really does feel like your life is over, you don’t feel like you’ll ever improve and you don’t feel like you’ll ever get to do the things you want to do. I couldn’t even hang out with my friends easily because most of the time we would see each other was at school which required leaving the house. Doing absolutely *nothing* for at least a year, especially if it lasts longer, just makes you depressed
Absolutely loved this. i think without rewatching the show through videos like this i wouldnt have noticed just how much they reuse lyrics when its relevant, freaking BEAUTIFUL
Since we're pointing out small details - 20:32
Grace: "So I don't really know how to- Oh, what is that?
Max: "Hold on, hold on, it just takes me seconds"
Grace: "Okay"
Protection is important, kids, even when you're a murderhobo undead entity
Max is smart(kinda)
He want to fvck Grace not get her pregnant!
12:49 I would point out that Lauter's in full-on "save my skin" mode. He'd do literally anything here, and luckily Max is too indiscriminately vengeful for him to get the chance to sell out his daughter. (Although he might harbor some hope that Steph can get the town out of this mess - even if he survived, we'd never know)
12:28 I have a personal headcanon with absolutely no basis in reality that the mayor sacrificed his love for Stephanie
12:10 omfg i only just noticed bc they put both phrases together in text and idk if i've ever seen anyone point this out or if this was just so completely obvious that no one needed to point it out, but
church of the starry children. the STARRY CHILDREN. the STAR KIDS, one might say
my brain rn is the fucking "i've connected the dots" "you didn't connect shit"
9:20 - this part is almost a line-by-line recreation of the scene in tgwdlm
9:31 - "for what feels like five fucking years" because it's been about 5 years since tgwdlm was released and he STILL hadn't gotten that hot chocolate
11:58 - "you've created a literal monster" and the song that introduces max is called literal monster
13:14 - this ones probably a stretch but maybe its a reference to the "GET DOWN ON THE GROUND WE'RE THE ARMY BAM BAM" from tgwdlm
14:00 - cutting through pinebrooke (this one is so incredibly tiny but basically when bill is trying to get to alice they cut through pinebrooke because its safer)
my current little headcanon is that mayor lauter used the book to reset the world after pokey's domination in TGWDLM and as the price, he had to become the mayor and stay as it otherwise pokey would come back which is why he's so keen on keeping power (ex. calculating the margin error, caring so much abt his reputation because if he loses the power the town will go back into shambles). this would likely also explain why he didn't feel bad for ms. tessburger being sacrificed as it was for a greater good & why he never wants to touch the book again
that could also account for the fact that the starlight theater disaster still happened BUT nobody was contaminated/put into the hive mind.
Another reference put in The Summoning is tinky's apparent obsession with the Spankofski bros, which somehow suggests that either time bastard happens in the same timeline, or the Lords in Black experiencie all universes as one
IIRC Nick said that Tinky traps Ted and he becomes the homeless man in every timeline because Ted traveled outside the space time continuum or something like that
Would be a neat meta-commentary if the Lords experience all the universes at once, much like the audience has seen myriad different universes play out already.
YOURE SO RIGHT ABOUT THE FALSETTOS THING! on first watch i was like "this sounds like it belongs is a Sondheim musical or something". I was getting major Sunday in the Park with George vibes though!
i noticed that jason is said to go to grace's church and is played by corey, who also played bill in TGWDLM who also went to church with grace chastity
Also it took another rewatch for me to realize this, but I always thought tinky said “Oooh spankoffski!” But it’s actually “A spankoffski!” Then goes on to talk about how he’ll have the whole collection. He literally is collecting every spankoffski, he already got to ted because they acknowledge the homeless guy, which if you’ve watched nightmare time, is actually Ted after dealing with tinky. Maybe that’s why the lords were so desperate for Peter. So they could all have another spankoffski.
Tbh as someone who was first scared joining theater club and only did lights and sound she is a mood at the Barbecue scene
I am genuinely impressed by the creative team and how they can find any tiny little lines, throwaway names/ jokes and turn them into integral plot lines in the Hatchetfield universe. Even in the music they recall any little bit and it makes it that more impactful + rewatchable