Title: Gladlands
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Players: Ally Beardsley (they/them) as Quinn Wedbush (she/her); Zac Oyama (he/him) as Connor Kawasaki (he/him); Oscar Montoya (he/him) as Poppy Persona (she/her); Jacob Wysocki (he/him) as Kokomo (he/all); Vic Michaelis (they/she) as Hugi (All Pronouns), and Kimia Behpoornia (she/her) as Tess Tube5 (he/him).
Streaming Service: Dropout

If you missed them, catch up on the reviews for episodes one, two, three, and four!

Though Tess remains in danger, facing off with the horned-faced man, we return instead to Hugi and Connor. Quinn works, trying to get the laser book to play. Anxious energy fills the room as Quinn works. Burned out, Hugi dissociates, and Connor attempts to connect and comfort his friend.

Hugi deflects in a very poignant and honestly realistic portrayal, hyper-focusing on Connor’s mom being a condor and his father being a dirt bike rather than fully addressing how burnt out she feels.

In another almost too real callout, Brennan reveals that the History Heap’s scholars have debated on if ‘run time’ was a pre-apocalyptic deity. Not to say that archeologists often get things wrong, but if you read some articles from the 1800s and even through the 1950s, it’s pretty on point that there would be some assumptions made and projected onto the past. While it’d be easy to assume folks in a wasteland future would understand that the pre-disaster world was more technologically advanced, we’d be pretty silly not to take the bet that there’d be a group of people somewhere who were absolutely certain they knew more, knew better, and that history had a linear morality to its technological advancement. And if those people were in charge of cataloging history? Well, that explains an awful lot about the Heap.

Off with Poppy and Aunt Freaky, Kokomo enters, intervening to stand beside Poppy. She quickly attempts to dismiss him. Handing him a list of people who require touch therapy, Aunt Freaky assigns a rubric. However, with Kokomo at her side, Poppy speaks up, requesting a meeting with the council in hopes of changing the path of the Truthbrary. Aunt Freaky immediately goes on the defensive, shifting to aggressiveness when Poppy accidentally knocks over a skull (potentially Muni’s?) that Aunt Freaky keeps close.

Dismissed, Poppy heads out, stopping Kokomo from dragging Parcel for not defending their work and Poppy. The whole History Heap frays. Tension tightens, and the Bummerometer drops into the red as Good Goo drops. With the table in the red, individual Bummerometers come into play, nearly sending Poppy into the red and successfully sending Hugi all the way to the far red of the scale, which in turn drops the Good Goo down to 5 from 12.

Stressed, Kokomo cries, “We always said we’d be good friends!” However, as Connor, Quinn, and Hugi come across the distressed Kokomo and Poppy, they don’t get a chance to share what happened as a roar rings out, drawing us back to Tess and the now named beetle man – Breaker.

Breaker demands to know where Uncle Pus is, and Tess tries to charm him. Unfortunately, Breaker doesn’t find Tess particularly charming. He slams our beloved ripped bug man into the dirt. Connor races up, pulling Tess out of the line of fire while on the back of his dirt bike. Despite his previous failure, Tess tries to connect with him. Again, he fails. Worse, his call draws Ash’s response, sending Breaker after her. Connor takes to the sky. He leaps up, landing on Breaker’s back, managing to pin the beetle down and prevent him from going after Ash.

Hugi follows, using her fantastic charm, but she nearly fails until Poppy lends her aid. Dancing to draw Breaker’s attention, they assure him that they want to help. Slowly, the beetle calms. Connor reverses, freeing Breaker. Desperate to keep Ash save as she runs up, Quinn scoops and tosses the little bug girl inside her cage. Ash calls out, comforting Breaker who reveals that Uncle Pus abandoned him. Kokomo comforts him, drawing the sensitivity out of Breaker who used his anger to protect himself. Tess reveals that he once asked Uncle Pus if they’d be together forever, so he also feels empathy for Breaker’s pain.

Tess suddenly has a memory of being tiny with Breaker, hearing that Uncle Pus feared no one else would hatch without more bio-rich environments. The group also uncovers records Pus left behind, discovering Tess was Test Tube 5; Breaker was 3, and Ash was 1. 2 and 4 haven’t unfrozen at the last recording. Pus left them to try to hatch their siblings. Turns out, Pus went to the same downscrapper that may also host the Spear Shaker books.

Between Pus’s recordings and a Beach Boys’ album that Kokomo has kept, the group convinces the rest of the History Heap that the non-books contain information which can be played. Void, who was being dismissed for pursuing that belief, is forgiven. For this, they also invite Quinn to stay to help with further study, but she brushes them off, dodging the question.

In the midst of this success, Hugi ends up revealing what happened to Muni. Both her and her cousin trained to be doctors. Everyone loved Muni, and Muni was incredible; however, he died suddenly of an aneurysm. Muni’s death inspired Hugi to do the Carer Van, including the funeral rites and ceremonies. Hugi fears risking her life as the Gladlands need the chance to grief. Poppy tries to comfort, questioning when Hugi had a chance to do what would be good for her and not good for everyone else. Quinn offers to apprentice. She also suggests Hugi write instructions down.

Aunt Freaky demands her attendance; however, when Aunt Freaky suggests Void will be an apprentice as punishment, Hugi rejects this. Tess also rages for Hugi. In the midst of the tension, Hugi calls out Aunt Freaky kept Muni’s skull, confirming my theory and explaining Aunt Freaky’s defensiveness toward the skull. Confronted with this, Aunt Freaky breaks down. She weeps, mourning her son. Hugi admits keeping her distance was wrong as Aunt Freaky apologizes for being mean after Muni’s death. The two grieve together, hugging. They decide to do another, second funerary process for Muni as Aunt Freaky wasn’t present at the first.

Highlights

We got an explanation for Aunt Freaky coming from Odin’s wolf, Freki. There’s a second, Geri, so I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that name pop up. Roughly translated, Freki means greedy or avaricious with myth attributing a constant hunger to Freki. While not gluttonous in the traditional sense, Aunt Freaky’s hunger for knowledge and rabid appetite for absolutism may just be a twisted retelling of Odin’s wolves. Starting out with that fact, Brennan and Vic hit it out of the park in this episode. I wept outright at Muni’s memorial, listening to Hugi express how frustrated and angry she is that her cousin died, leaving her behind while Aunt Freaky struggles with how to come to terms with death being natural when she so desperately misses her son.

I feel a lot of people don’t realize that you can say, “This sucks,” at a funeral and sincerely mean the situation, but when faced with death, especially unexpected like Muni’s was, sometimes how horrible it is does become all you can feel. There is no need to beautify it. Sometimes, you need to just give yourself permission to be angry, to be frustrated, to mourn all that was stolen away.

Final Score (5 out of 5 Stars)

Grief and family bring incredible highs and lows in this week’s episode. The harshness of Aunt Freaky made sense when connected to her son’s death, but the suddenness and her missing the original funeral adds a pain to both her and Hugi’s histories which shows the tragedy of life and death. As Brennan recently said, to understand the lows, we need to see the highs and vice versa. To know why this was a breakthrough, we had to see both Aunt Freaky kind in the past and her cold cruelty in the present to fully appreciate the catharsis achieved with this second funeral. Of course, all this could be prepping for an absolute upheaval and bigger bad down the line, but the natural inclination toward accidental cruelty in the face of selfishness or the ease of apathy seems this season’s antagonist more than a BBEG.

All in all, the pacing was on point, and if you play the suggested sons in another window while watching, you’ll have a good cry yourself even about Kokomo’s longing for the beach and good vibrations amidst the constant struggle of the wastelands regardless of how glad the people try to be.

Let us know what you thought or the Beach Boy song you’d want to play first in comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Dimension 20

The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network

The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord. 

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