Director's Notes – Episode 86

(NOTE: As always, Director's Notes contain spoilers)

Molly Quinn has done several live shows with us. She's an absolute delight to tour with. I'm always telling people: work with Molly Quinn. She's great. I tell this to other writers, baristas, police officers, birds, anyone who'll listen.

Last year on our US tour, Molly joined us for a two-week stretch, but the character she plays in the podcast - Fey, the voice of the local numbers station WZZZ - didn't really fit at all into the story line of our touring script (The Investigators). So Joseph came up with the character of Melony Pennington, a super-genius computer programmer who created Fey.

We did about a dozen shows with Molly as Melony last spring, and it was great fun. We of course really enjoyed Melony as a character. And in our minds (and in the minds of whoever saw those dozen or so live performance), Melony was a familiar part of the Night Vale universe.

But we realized she hadn't appeared on the podcast yet. No one outside of those live audiences knew Molly was Melony, just that she was Fey from episode 42 "Numbers." So we wrote and recorded a part to tie into the trial of Hiram McDaniels, which is finally in this episode. 

I write all of this while we drive from St. Louis to Chicago as part of our current live show tour. (I'm not driving. Asst Tour Manager Angelique is. I'm in the back seat of our rented Chrysler Town & Country, which Cecil nicknamed "Vanna White.") Molly joined us last night in St. Louis to reprise her role of Melony, and we realized as Cecil was introducing her on stage that there were a bunch of question marks over audience heads. 

While Melony Pennington is super familiar to all of us, the good folks of St. Louis have almost no way of knowing her. They did know Molly though. The moment Molly started speaking, the question marks straightened into exclamation points. And now St. Louis knows. And now you know, too.

So enjoy the podcast debut of a character that has been around for over a year.

- Jeffrey Cranor
April 15, 2016