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In 1938, the Nazis take out a bunch of Rosicrucians who are worried about a Nazi Antichrist baby with spooky white eyes and how the only thing that can defeat him is a bunch of magic clocks, and also a giant Thing they just kind of call a "thing" and that's it. The dead Rosicrucians are bummed to be dead, but really excited about this Thing and these, like, clocks.
Present-day Brooklyn, Jacinda from the Real World goes to a farmer's market and finds a clock. Is it just any ordinary clock? No, clearly it is a magic clock. The present-day Antichrist Nazis come to her shop of old worthless crap 'n clocks, stop being polite, and start getting real. It's stressful because there's a sound of a clock ticking. It ticks for thee, Jacinda.
Her hubby is Anthony Edwards, who runs a crackpot magazine full of fresh-faced young crackpots who believe things like, werewolves are real. It's one of those crackpot magazines that is so very successful their headquarters looks like they work for Google. "Have some more of this free fruit from the breakroom, and try to remember that werewolves are not real."
Post-abduction, all the youthful crackpots hug Goose and pretend to be sad, even though really they're super excited that something weird is happening. "Did your wife buy any magic Rosicrucian clocks at a farmer's market recently?" Now that you mention it, there's one of those right over here." The FBI is not impressed by their crackpot ways, which is weird because they are also crackpots: "This is footage of your wife being abducted by Nazis. This one dragging her by the hair is named White Vincent. I guess because of his whiteness." (Spoiler alert: That is kind of part of it.)
Goose does not trust the FBI because he is a modern skeptic and they sound like loony tunes, but one of them is a series regular so I say get used to it. "My wife is not a terrorist, she runs a clock shoppe!" is a thing Goose says, which is remarkable. The second they are gone, he activates her magic Jesus clock and it produces a magic clock diamond (Did you know every clock has a magic jewel inside? Just like cops' skulls!) which has a treasure map on it that leads to treasure, if by "treasure" you mean more magic clocks with more magic diamonds with more maps that lead to more clocks and then everything is just clocks.
Charles S. Dutton is a priest who is totally onboard from Moment One, and looks up the magic clock diamonds on his laptop and explains that the treasure maps are written in Satanese, the language of Satan. Then he explains Rosicrucians to the crackpots, who have never heard of Rosicrucians even though it is their job and even Fifty Cent knows about the Rosicrucians.
White Vincent calls Goose up and intimates that he is the Nazi Antichrist, but Goose does not believe him. "I'll 'do' you a 'solid,'" he says to White Vincent. "The FBI is onto you in a 'big' 'way,'" he says. "'No harm, no foul,'" he says. Finally White Vincent shoots a gun at Jacinda so Goose will stop saying things like this, and Goose agrees to bring him the magical clock that has a diamond inside it with a treasure map on it that is written in Satan language.
Charles S. Dutton calls bullshit on this trade, because he is in it to win it. The FBI lady tells Goose that he is irritating and an amateur, but that he is okay to be in charge of this counterterrorist operation that is years in the making. "I can't promise you that your wife will not die in the crossfire, but here's hopin'," the lady says. Goose finds no comfort in that. "The internet leaves a footprint," the FBI lady says, inscrutably.
The FBI pull a fast one on White Vincent, because neither Goose nor Jacinda are that important really, but he is too slippery for their ways. He is actually going to sneak up on Charles S. Dutton, and stab him all on the neck to get the diamond. Tick-tock, Roc! It's clock o'clock.
Goose yells at the FBI lady some more, they sure do have some tension. I guess it's because he likes to do things his own way. Then Goose abruptly gives up and assumes his wife is dead and decides to move on with his life, and the little crackpots literally say embarrassing shit like, "Screw logic!" and "Now it's all about believing! You've just gotta believe!" They actually say that, and it actually works. They convince him his wife is alive, and they decide to follow the treasure map. X marks Jacinda.
Goose hugs the crackpot babies goodbye and heads to "New Bartholomew," which is on a tundra or Canada or something. The FBI lady yells at him a lot and they discuss their mutual distrust and preference for doing things their own way, but then decide to work together because the lady was once a social worker whose husband was on an flight downed by White Vincent, I guess because there were clocks on it. Or Rosicrucians.
Back home, the baby crackpots learn Satanese and track down a clockmaker in Bavaria who is just the right age to be the kind of Rosicrucian who makes magic anti-Antichrist clocks, so they flirt with each other and then go to Bavaria even though they said they would hold down the fort at Goose's magazine just moments earlier.
White Vincent, an admitted crazy person, gets naked in Canada and talks to himself and shows us the whiteness of his Nazi-baby eyeballs. So I guess Goose is not the Nazi baby. One presumes then that Goose must be some new kind of a clock. (Spoiler alert: Kind of.) He and FBI Lady talk an Inuit into flying them to White Vincent's area of Canada, while the l'il crackpots bother the Bavarian about whether or not he ever made some kind of magical clock with a diamond in it.
Guess what, he did. Guess what, he is also a werewolf. Just kidding, that would be ridiculous. He's a Rosicrucian, though. A recalcitrant one, at first, but eventually it seems there are twelve clocks, leading to New Bartholomew, but if you think that's a place simply because there is a map showing its location, you're dumber than the crackpots.
New Bartholomew is actually a dude. One of twelve dudes who are the Twelve Apostles, it seems. Still walkin' around, bein' not mythology. While in Canada, Team Goose finds a Nazi sub containing some frozen dudes, the Old Bavarian explains that sometimes the Rosicrucians can just say fuck it and make up some new apostles that not even the Pope gets to know about, because it involves clocks. Twelve clocks that lead to twelve Apostles that lead to the thing under the cathedral that nobody knows what it is.
In the Nazi sub, Goose... Finds his own frozen body and figures out that he is one of the Apostles and that he was a Rosicrucian in 1938 who posed as a Nazi? This makes him barf, but it just made me laugh. More like New Barfolomew. Old Bavarian guy finishes up his weird rambling story that makes no sense by explaining that the end of the world, which didn't happen last time because of Goose, is probably going to happen this time because of Goose and also probably these clocks, and this is known as "Zero Hour."
So yeah. ABC's still just goin' for it. I give everything an A+ because I think letter grades are dumb, but man I would A+ the ass off of this show if there were any way of doing it more emphatically. That was some bonks bullshit right there and I am into it.
Week: I could say literally anything right now and you would believe me. Clocks will figure in, one imagines. But more than that, I cannot say.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!1938: GERMANY - SECRET ROSICRUCIAN CATHEDRAL SLASH CLOCK SHOP
Rosicrucian priests seem to just be regular priests that don't tell you they're secretly Rosicrucians. They sit in underground cathedral complexes, making clocks, just like Santa's elves but dressed like Gringotts goblins. Just clockmakin' and cockrockin', all around the clock. In little vests and Germanic eyeware. And saying meaningless shit, of course.
"Twelve! Twelve is the magic number. Twelve is divine. Twelve is both the beginning and the end of time."
(Not true. I realize this show hinges on pretending clocks are real things, so I guess you could say that about "twelve," but really that's only for some clocks, and in any case -- like most of this show -- it seems to conflate the map with the territory itself. Which is to say, much as a clock is not time itself, a "show about clever people solving important and interesting puzzles" has to actually contain those things, or it's just a show "about." These are not very convincing as people, they are not clever at all, and a puzzle isn't really a puzzle when the answer is "nonsense.")
Turns out the Nazis are up to something! Even in 1938, you could kinda tell. But no, it's not what you think, they're actually about bringing the Apocalypse to us in a way that can only be fought ... through clocks.
1938: GERMANY - SECRET NAZI ZOMBIE & BABY EMPORIUM
Sneaky Rosicrucian: "These Nazis, man, they are the worst."
Stealthy Rosicrucian: "I'm glad our Unnamed Friend figured that one out, or else."
Sneaky Rosicrucian: "Probably this is about the Apocalypse. That's probably the main issue with Nazi behavior, their weird quasimystical beliefs."
Stealthy Rosicrucian: "Well, we have those too. Or hey, what about this scary test-tube baby with white eyes. What does he look like to you, like a Bob? Or a Vincent? Or maybe a Goose. Do you like that? Do you like your little name, Vincent or Goose?"
Observant Nazi: "Hey, are those some Rosicrucians?"
Rosicrucians: "Guess we're not so stealthy. Pace, deutschebags!"
1938: GERMANY - ROSICRUCIAN CATHEDRAL, CLOCK SHOPPE & THING STORAGE
Obfuscating Rosicrucian: "Well, I guess the Nazis are happening. Time for that Thing underneath the cathedral."
Exposition Rosicrucian: "What Thing again? Tell me, but don't really tell me."
Obfuscating Rosicrucian: "You see, it is a Thing. And it is underneath the cathedral."
Undercover Rosicrucian: "The Nazis are coming, you'd better get that Thing. Also, don't look at my face. It is for a flashback later."
Rosicrucians: Haul the Thing out of the Place and put it on a Conveyance.
Nazis: Attack.
Everybody: Dead.
Dying Rosicrucian: "I hope the Thing will stop the Nazis in about eighty years, along with the Twelve."
Confused Rosicrucian: "The what?"
Unhelpful Rosicrucian: "Twelve? It's a number? But it's also a clock and also a place and also some guys."
PRESENT DAY: BROOKLYN - OR SO WE ARE TOLD
Jacinda: "I love just having fun days with you, Goose. We're so fancy-free and romantic, even though we are super old. Let's eat meat from a street vendor, buy a magic clock, and then..."
Goose: "I can't thank you enough for introducing me to the concept of street vendors, a thing of which I had never heard before you."
Jacinda: "Remember when we were in New Delhi? I bought a clock. It's my main thing."
Goose: "Being married to you is so great. If you were ever kidnapped by Nazis I would travel the world looking for magic clocks. All for you."
Jacinda: "Then I hope that doesn't happen, because it sounds like it would make for a shitty TV show. You go back to your print magazine that has made us fabulously wealthy, and I will buy some magic clocks at this flea market."
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Goose: "Skeptics! Tell me things we'll be skeptical about!"
Boy: "Werewolves?"
Goose: "I am skeptical about those!"
Girl: "What about... Werewolves?"
Goose: "We are past that now! More things to be skeptical about!"
Boy: "Arkansas? In Arkansas, perhaps we would have sex."
Girl: "Not even in Arkansas. PS, spoiler alert, we are going to fall in love."
Boy: "It's much easier when you don't have personalities of any kind."
Girl: "Is it? I'm skeptical."
Jacinda: "Goose! I am being abducted by Nazis!"
Goose: "Then hang up the phone and call the cops, idiot!"
Jacinda: "No, I want you to hear me getting abducted by these guys."
Goose: "Argh! I can hear that!"
MODERN SKEPTICAL POLICEPERSONS
NYPD: "Bitches with magical clocks get abducted by Nazis every day, sir. What makes you so damned special?"
Goose: "Literally nothing. Good day, sir."
Skeptics: "We can find her!"
Goose: "I'm skeptical about that."
Skeptics: "Did she take a train back to her clock shoppe?"
Goose, verbatim: "She hates taxis. She's always saying it's cheating."
Everybody: "Maybe it's best we don't find her, then."
Goose: "You're right. Let's go hang out at my house and see if we can find her from there, a place she is not and from which she was not abducted."
THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF MAGICAL CLOCK INVESTIGATION
Beck: "I am the FBI lady. I like to do things my own way."
Goose: "I am skeptical and also like to do things my own way."
Beck: "We are going to have such skeptical chemistry and a secret connection."
They show him a video of Jacinda getting dragged around by the hair, it's awesome.
Goose: "Wait, are those present-day Apocalypse Nazis? Are you guys really the FBI? I'm getting skeptical."
Beck: "As amazing as it sounds, yes. We think maybe your wife was abducted by a clock-obsessed anti-Rosicrucian Apocalypse Nazi terrorist named White Vincent."
Goose: "Skeptical. About all of those things."
Beck: "This is the part where I say the horrible trope about 'This is the part where I say I get it.' This is the part where I say 'I get it.' I get it. That was the part where I said 'I get it.' That was the part where I said the horrible trope about saying 'I get it.'"
White Vincent: "I will be comparing everything to movies in much the same vein, later. If I keep saying 'This is not like your American movies, this is not a cliché,' the hope is that you won't notice that everything that happens is like a cliché, but made somehow even stupider through 'creativity.'"
Millennial Skeptics: "Generation X is so fucking stupid. Who even worries about this?"
Beck: "Anyway that guy dragging her around by the hair is White Vincent. He was in the French Foreign Legion, and eventually became quote 'the highest-end mercenary in the world.'"
Goose: "That is so stupid."
Beck: "Yeah? Well, I think your wife is maybe a terrorist. Deal with that."
Goose: "Because she got kidnapped by a terrorist? Sure, that checks out."
Beck: "Sometimes we have to look beyond the evidence, and make up wild scenarios. Or I'm sorry, do you not run an improbably successful print magazine with exactly that premise?"
Goose, verbatim: "My wife is not a terrorist! She owns a clock shoppe!"
Beck: "Then why did she get kidnapped by the highest-end mercenary in the world?"
Goose: "This is the part where I talk about the trope of you acting like you 'get' me."
THE GOOSE BUREAU OF MAGICAL CLOCK INVESTIGATION
Skeptics: "Goose, why are you running around looking at clocks?"
Goose: "I'm looking for one magic clock! I know how to do clocks, because my wife was a clock shoppe owner. Rather than a terrorist."
Skeptics: "Quick, say all the clock words you know. They can be titles for hypothetically future episodes of this show that is going to be cancelled immediately for being retarded."
Goose: "Okay and after I do that... Oh look, a magic diamond inside this clock. Sometimes that happens."
Skeptics: "We're skeptical about that, but tell us more."
Goose: "And also, if you hold it up to this light projector, it makes maps."
Skeptic: "Like treasure maps?"
Goose: "No, you fucking idiot. Treasure maps make me so skeptical!"
Skeptic: "This is the part where I shout out The Goonies. Shout out to The Goonies! That was the part where I shouted out The Goonies. A movie that was made before I was born and has no relevance here."
Goose: "Cool let's talk about that for a really long time. I've heard that is a thing that people do. I heard this from a Quentin Tarantino movie."
Skeptics: "Also not, in all honestly, that relevant. You are really fucking old, huh?"
Goose: "You know who we need to talk to?"
Skeptics: "Probably the Priest. That character that didn't exist at all until just now."
Goose: "Yeah, I have a network of contacts among all the stupid shitty things we don't believe in and think are stupid, as our job. They love it when I come around and shit on all the things they care about."
FATHER CHARLES S. DUTTON, IN FACT
Fr. Roc: "Whoa, for a skeptical person you sure do have a magical diamond."
Goose: "I don't believe any of this! But tell me more."
Fr. Roc: "You know how certain priests speak certain dead versions of certain dead languages? And write on diamonds in those languages? And stow them in magic clocks? That's what you've got going on here."
Goose: "Please clarify."
Fr. Roc: "You're so skeptical! Okay, what this diamond tells me is that there are secret priests in the world that kept using a language for two thousand years, just to talk about this one specific thing with the clocks."
Skeptics: "Why would a mercenary want things to do with this? Is it treasure they are after?"
Fr. Roc, verbatim: "We're rewriting history books here, Hank."
Skeptics: "Hope you get your throat slit, saying shit like that. Why do we all talk like this?"
Fr. Roc: "This is the Rosicrucians. Just kidding, it isn't. Just kidding, it is."
Skeptics: "The who? We are not very good at our jobs."
Fr. Roc: "I guess we have time for me to explain that. A thing everybody knows already."
Goose: "So if they're this hidden Christian cabal that are obsessed with the Apocalypse, then ... what is this thing on this map? Is it a clock?"
Fr. Roc: "Well, it's a map, and that's a clearly marked location, so do you think it's a clock?"
Goose: "No, I think it's a place."
Fr. Roc: "Why on earth would you think that. God you are stupid."
Goose: "What is it?"
Fr. Roc: "It is so stupid you have to wait this whole episode to find out. Spoiler, it will make you barf. Literally you will vomit."
Goose: "I am already committed to spending most of this entire pilot episode looking 98% there already."
WHITE VINCENT'S HOUSE OF RUSSIO-GERMAN ROULETTE
Goose: "Hello? Is this my wife?"
White Vincent: "No, it is a weirdo."
"Do you know, Henry David Galliston, that you lived before? You're just a shadow of the past cast forward in time. Your name is no more 'Henry' than mine is... whatever they're calling me these days. Brother, if you knew the real truth, you'd lose your mind. As I've lost mine."
What White Vincent Is Literally Saying: Nonsense.
What I Think White Vincent Is Saying: "We are both Nazi babies."
What He Is Actually Saying: "I am the Nazi baby, and you are an Apostle of Christ who is possibly also a clone and may well be a Nazi baby on top of that. And a clock also. Can you deal with that? No? Then I am just going to be cryptic for a minute."
Goose, verbatim: "I'll do you a solid."
Goose, verbatim: "The FBI is onto you in a big way!"
Goose, verbatim: "No harm no foul!"
Jacinda: "Please don't shoot me in the head! I am just a clock shoppe owner!"
White Vincent: "[An impressively dense number of attempts to be clever and interesting, for how many seconds it takes for him to run through them.]"
He puts the gun to Jacinda's head and pulls the trigger, but she's cool. I guess [clocks clocks six-gun twelve joke].
White Vincent: "Come to Central Park and bring that dang clock. Your American movies and whatever."
Goose: "He just said something stupid about American movies and not getting the cops or FBI involved, and hung up. Presumably still with a gun to my wife's head."
Skeptic: "What should we all do? We're children and should be a major part of this."
Goose: "Well, first thing is we're going to get the FBI involved."
Priest: "I'm here in this scene for no reason. Why don't you give me the magical diamond, and that way you can give him the clock but not the diamond. Then when he checks for the diamond and immediately sees you fucked him over, you'll be standing mere feet when he brutally blows your wife's brains out and then shoots you in the face."
Goose: "Brilliant. I love it. You always know the best plan. For getting everybody murdered."
Beck: "Thanks for calling us. And for being so stupid as to think that we're just going to follow your lead here."
Goose: "I'm used to everybody doing what I say, and doing things my own way."
Beck: "This is the part where I say it's okay for you to withhold things from me as long as everything turns out okay in the end. 'It's okay for you to withhold things from me as long as everything turns out okay in the end.' That was the part where I said it was okay for you to withhold things from me as long as everything turns out okay in the end."
Goose: "God, that's fucking annoying.*"
Beck: "Is it? Or is it totally clever writing?"
Then comes 'the part' where they explain exactly what is going to go down, but how that's not really how it's going to go down, but then how it really is going to go down. But is that how it's going to go down? Who can say? Not the FBI. Not Goose. White Vincent though, I feel like probably he has this shit on lock. This is 'the part' where we find out.
*No, I am not exaggerating. They all -- Beck, Goose, WV -- literally only speak to each other in this Gen X code-speak about how the fact that they are total clichés is somehow okay only so long as they apply the cootie immunization procedure of pointing out how shitty and clichéd they are being. "I don't mean to sound like a dick, but [something only a dick would say]."
Or ooh, CORPORATE MAGAZINES STILL SUCK, remember that? I remember the day that issue of Rolling Stone came out and I saw that cover in my dad's mail and I thought, "I am never going to understand Generation X, and I am never going to be Generation X. But now I know I don't have to ever give a shit about it again."
And I didn't. That was also the week I turned gay, so. Big week.
Goose: "Okay Roc, here's that diamond that will most certainly get you, me and my wife killed. Don't lose it. Put in your breath mints, that's my first idea."
Fr. Roc: "I am skeptical. But not so much that my throat shouldn't suffer getting slashed."
OH MAN
I can't even do this part. It's this whole running around thing where Vincent keeps talking about "your American films" and whatever, and Goose walks to a place, and meanwhile the FBI have totally double-crossed him by actually doing their jobs, and it turns out White Vincent -- who is an idiot, just not quite the idiot everybody else on this show seems to be -- is one step ahead! He was not at "the drop"! Nor was he at the place they discovered in a sub-CBS quality sequence in which FBI lady enhances an image or hacks a firewall or whatever the fuck. At one point the FBI people yell at each other, "Smart but not genius. The internet leaves a footprint. We go after the router!"
White Vincent: "Oh man, did they go after the router? Fuck me."
Goose: "I don't know about all that, I just want to give you this magic clock."
White Vincent: "No deal! Also, there was never a deal and I'm not even there and I got that magical diamond and stabbed Roc and took Jacinda off the grid! Because I! Am! A wildcard!"
LATER
Goose: "That didn't go as planned!"
Fr. Roc: "I got my throat slashed, so. Yeah."
Goose: "Whatever, my wife!"
White Vincent: "And clocks!"
Goose retires, at the end of this fool's errand, to his little van with the baby skeptics. That is when shit gets real dire.
Goose: "I guess by doing everything I could to make sure my wife died worked."
Girl Skeptic: "Don't believe that. Don't believe what you just said."
Goose: "I mean, he said he would kill Jacinda if we did exactly what we did. And then we did. So doesn't it seem like probably he went ahead and did that?"
Boy Skeptic: "That's just logic! Screw logic! Let's be skeptical about logic!"
Goose: "I don't think that's a thing. This is the part where skeptic means we don't do that."
Girl Skeptic, fuckin' verbatim: "Now it's all about believing. You've just gotta believe."
Goose, even more horrifyingly: "After all this, she wants me to have faith."
This, if you were wondering, would be the moment that I turned on this show. Like a rabid animal, I said, "We have reached my personal line, and you have crossed it. You motherfuckers have crossed that line. Here and now."
Skeptics: "You've got two ways you can go. You can believe she's dead and quit, or you can believe she's alive and find her."
Goose: "No matter how much faith I have in this Schrödinger's Cat Wife you're imagining, I still don't see how either of those are actual options."
Boy Skeptic: "Think about it!"
Goose: "This should be good."
Boy Skeptic: "Remember that magic clock?"
And with that, Goose is back on board. Tears still drying on his cheeks, he goes from thinking his wife is dead to presuming she's alive, because sometimes you gotta believe and in those times, I guess, sometimes, it takes clocks.
Goose: "Sweet. Book me travel to New Bartholomew! Which is not a place!"
Girl Skeptic: "Three seats on the plane to somewhere!"
Goose: "No, just one. You guys have to stay here and run our risible magazine."
Skeptics: "Aw, but we're so skeptical!"
Goose: "From recent history it seems I'm going to be doing everything I can to get everybody involved in this whole situation brutally murdered. Wouldn't you rather die in our opulent magazine offices?"
Skeptics: "Yes, but spoiler alert no."
Girl Skeptic: "Hold still for about ten minutes while I exhaustively describe your entire travel itinerary in shocking detail."
AIRPORT
Beck: "Hey, why are you suddenly leaving the country in the middle of your terrorist wife's abduction by a terrorist? It looks fishy."
Goose: "What are you, the Federal Bureau of Investigations?"
Beck: "Well. Yes. But seriously why?"
Goose: "Because I like to do things my own way!"
Beck: "Guess what, so do I!"
They discuss this coincidence forever and ever.
Beck: "Real talk, though. I used to be a social worker but then my husband blew up."
Goose: "Why is that always how people join the FBI on TV? They're just like lunch ladies or social workers or random cops and then boom, I'm in the FBI. It seems like for such an important, cool deal that you would have like a career plan first."
Beck: "He was on a flight you may have heard of. It blew up. Guess who did it."
Goose: "I couldn't possibly. Wait, was it White Vincent?"
Beck: "Yeah. But my husband wasn't a Rosicrucian or a terrorist or a clock. So it's confusing."
Goose: "Maybe we can solve this mystery together."
Beck: "I already have a ticket. And look, a gun I can legally carry concealed."
Goose: "We do things our own way! Like find clocks!"
MØDƎЯN SKƎPTiȻ MAGAZINE
Boy Skeptic: "Man it sure has been a hectic five seconds since we last saw our boss."
Girl Skeptic: "I know, like I'm so ADD. I already wrote a tweet and looked at my Facebook. What else is there in this world."
Boy Skeptic: "Fancy a trip to Bavaria?"
Girl Skeptic: "As long as we don't have sex there. Just kidding, we are totally going to do it at some point."
Boy Skeptic: "This cardboard, by-the-book sexual tension between people who are even less interesting than Goose is really ... scintillating."
Girl Skeptic: "Hey, whatever keeps us from doing our hilariously unlikely jobs that wouldn't ever exist in the first place. Fuck off, magazine! Fuck off, America!"
Boy Skeptic: "I'm glad this magazine for crazy people makes so much money that we have the support staff and discretionary cash to jet off to Europe like this."
Girl Skeptic: "Have you even seen anybody else working here?"
Where they are going is Bavaria, and why they are going is to meet a man named Norbert Peter Steinke IV, the Uhrmacher. German for "that storm of clock-related Jesus words which whirls and revolves but never resolves." He is just old enough to have been the guy who wrote his name on the non-treasure treasure map on the magical diamond in the magic clock from the ultimately tragic flea market.
Boy Skeptic: "Good point. I'm skeptical. I can't wait to have sex with you in Bavaria!"
Girl Skeptic: "You know what women love? That shit right there. What you're doing right now."
CANADA OR THE ARCTIC CIRCLE OR WHATEVER
White Vincent, how are you feeling? Bonkers? I thought so. Why don't you just stomp around naked for a while and then scratch a spooky clock into the mirror and then talk crazy for awhile and then take out your fake color contacts to reveal your Nazi baby eyes.
"Clock goes round and round and round until one day... it doesn't. That day is tomorrow, dearie."
Chance would be a fine thing, White Vincent. But I really don't think this is a two-hour show. I don't really think it's a full-season show, due to being awful, but I really don't think the "clock" will stop going round any goddamn time soon.
White Vincent: "Draw me like one of your French girls in one of your American movies." Nobody: "There's nobody here, you are just a sociopath Nazi baby all grown up, wearing fake color contacts like a common street whore. Now put your contacts back in because you look like hell, and put some clothes on because same thing."SOME WACKY INUIT FELLA
Goose: "Hey, can you fly us to a place that is not a place and is on this map but doesn't exist and also nobody knows what it is or how to get there?"
Pilot: [So wacky, but so friendly. This is 'the part where the pilot is wacky, but friendly.']
Goose: "Great so yeah. Just take us wherever that... Hey do you remember a totally insane half-naked Apocalypse Nazi baby terrorist dragging a lady by the hair? Does that ring a bell?"
Beck: "Please answer honestly. I have a gun."
Pilot: "Uh yeah, obviously I would remember that. Get on the plane and stop being weird."
Goose: "Not a chance, bitch."
BAVARIA
Skeptics: "Are you Norbert Peter Steinke IV?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Which Norbert Peter Steinke IV?"
Skeptics: "The one that made clocks in the Thirties?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, that's me. You wouldn't believe how many different Norbert Peter Steinke IVs I get mail for. One of them has a deplorable credit rating, it has caused me no end of financial complications."
Skeptics: "Can we come barreling in there and almost certainly get you murdered?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "I'm gonna be honest, that doesn't sound like a fun time to me. You may have noticed that I am about a billion years old."
Skeptics: "But we found a magic clock! Like one of the ones you made secretly in the Thirties with a magical diamond in it with a map leading somewhere stupid that multiple people have already died regarding."
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "The shit you say! Well come right in, that sounds harmless."
CANADA?
Pilot: "You mean right here in the middle of nowhere?"
Goose: "Of course I do! I brought a windbreaker, we'll be fine."
Beck: "I am in the FBI so I'm good too."
Pilot: "Okay, then I'll just leave you. On a polar icecap with no landmarks or rational reason to be here."
Goose: "We'll just wander around like tiny ants in a vast and unforgiving wilderness while this super old dude tells a super long story in Germany that is so crazy and nonsensical it will become riveting as it goes on."
BAVARIA
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "To reiterate from a second ago, I made this clock. I put my Steinke on it, if you will, back when I was a hot young priest in spectacles and suspenders."
Skeptics: "So I guess you're a Rosicrucian? Like, they didn't outsource their clockmaking or anything?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "These are matters you don't want to be involved with. Trust me."
Skeptics: "Then why did you already start telling us this boring weird story?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Okay fine. The Nazis are looking for the clocks again."
Skeptics: "Wait, there's like multiple clocks? I hate TV shows like that. So listen, what is New Bartholomew, on that map? What's in that location?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "New Bartholomew isn't a place, you fucking idiot."
Skeptics: "Oh really? Because that's what maps are."
CANADA?
Beck: "This is the part where I point out this is stupid and now we are reaching the part where I say we're going to die."
Goose: "I guess my plan is now to wait for White Vincent to save us. He seems like a chill bro."
Beck: "Is it possible this whole thing makes no sense? Because it's looking mostly cobbled together from a random selection of illiterate comments on the Lost imdb page, from like 2010. PS, this is the part where I set you up to allay any criticism of the show by turning stupidity into a virtue."
Goose, verbatim: "According to him, it isn't supposed to make any sense."
Well. As long as you fucking say it, then I guess you are cootie-protected from all criticism.
BAVARIA
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "New Bartholomew is, and was, and kind of both, a man."
Skeptics: "Wait, the map leads to a man?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Is that not what I just said? In fact, is that not the only thing I have really said so far?"
Skeptics: "Okay, then who is he. And why he is a location who is a person? Make sure your answer is good and crazy."
"Twelve numbers on the clock. Twelve men to save the world. Twelve Apostles. The men Christ entrusted with the salvation of mankind."
A person who literally works at a magazine that is literally about skepticism then says: "Yeah, but that was two thousand years ago!"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "No it wasn't, retard. Pretending that the Bible is literally true demeans us all, atheists and people of faith alike. Just because it never happened doesn't mean it isn't real. But in any case, I'm talking about some other twelve apostles. Secret ones. You are not cool enough to know about them. Maybe the Shriners are, but not you."
Skeptics: "This is exactly the kind of shit we like, which is the opposite of who we are."
"In 1938, Europe was in flames. The very future of the world was in doubt. So the Church... did something that has never been done, in two thousand years! We appointed twelve New Apostles! New Luke, New Peter, New Bartholomew. And they were given a secret, one that not even the Pope knew. A secret that could bring about the end of the world."
Skeptics: "That is crazy as shit. Do go on."
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Then they all died. The end."
Skeptics: "Wait, what? You are old and weird!"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Or something. We don't know. They scattered all over the globe, so the Nazis wouldn't find them. And then we made these clocks."
Skeptics: "Did this really happen? Are you Catfishing us right now?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "I was in charge of New Bartholomew's clock. The skinny on him is, quote, he was a holy man, he was a noble man, he was a Nazi officer."
FLASHBACK! 1938!
New Bartholomew: "Hey guys, it's me. The Nazi undercover Rosicrucian that warned everybody at the cathedral they were about to die, about three seconds before they all died. Then I loaded up the Thing and took it Somewhere. Who knows where? Nobody but some clocks. What do I look like? It will blow your mind, kind of."
BAVARIA
Skeptic: "I can't help noticing you are super goddamn vague. Like instead of saying they all knew secrets and went secret places and did secret things with secret Things, what if you threw a noun in there somewhere?"
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "Only the Twelve knew. It had to do with the Thing, and there was a secret. A secret the Nazis shouldn't find out, because you just never know with Nazis."
"There were whispers [whisssperrrrrrs] that it was a secret the Nazis could never know, because the Nazis had figured out the first steps to eternal life. They had a way to render God irrelevant!"
Is it Russell Tovey's ass? I bet it's Russell Tovey's ass. Mission accomplished, gents.
CANADA
Goose finds a submarine or something buried in the tundra and they check it out and guess what? New Bartholomew's frozen corpse is chilling out in there. And also but guess what? New Bartholomew is Goose.
White Vincent: "Do you know, Henry David Galliston, that you lived before? That you're just a shadow of the past, cast forward in time?"
Goose: "No but does that have to do with I just found my dead frozen body?"
He barfs, or should I say, "this is the part where he barfs," and it's awesome. I don't know why I was so impressed with that, usually I hate vomit for any reason, but like, Now? Now is 'the part where you just can't handle it'?
BAVARIA
Norbert Peter Steinke IV: "The Nazis' reign ended, but the experiments didn't! And neither -- you know it! -- did the thing with those clocks. So now here's what you gotta do. You gotta find 'em. Gotta catch 'em all. Before the Nazis. Or else."
"A storm is coming. It will pit Science against Religion*, country against country. The whole world will be drawn up into this storm. It will be unholy, and like the world has never, ever seen before. And that storm is called...?"
*(Ugh, I just spewed New Barfolomew all over the tundra. Really? Will it really? Will it just "pit" them against each other? That sounds rough. But you know, if I don't have to look at Matthew Fox's stupid trashy woman-beating pointless shitty sinew of a face it'll be half as dumb, I guess. Half as dumb as Lost being, you know, still way too dumb to feel proud about, but at least this show has a shitload of magical clocks, which Lost had a lot of but not nearly this many from what I remember.)
Tsunami Tallullah? Tropical Storm Keanu? Hurricane Lady Miss Keir?
"NO! ZERO HOUR, DUH!"
And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then. God willing. Or I guess Russell Tovey's Ass willing.
WEEK
Goose deals with being a clone of a replacement of an Apostle. Beck watches him barf and wonders where she fucked up exactly in her life. Skeptic #1 believes some more things without a lick of proof, while Skeptic #2 does that but also pines for her and make a mixtape and pathetic but unrelenting sexual advances. Jacinda is secretly a ninja who can take care of herself, just kidding she fixes a clock. White Vincent and an assortment of random old dudes are like, "Have I told you a super weird story lately without a point or even an ending? This is 'the part' where I do that. Just like in your American movies."
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Deception, Zero Hour, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this fall on Tor.com.