Director's Notes – Episode 78

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

I watch a lot of cooking shows. As a child, I watched reruns of the Galloping Gourmet with my grandmother. My mother would sometimes watch Paul Prudhomme, and I would always stop down to watch with her. These days, my wife and I watch quite a bit of Chopped. (Alex Guarnaschelli is our favorite judge because we're not assholes.) I've noticed, though, that I rarely watch cooking shows alone. Food is only exciting when I'm with those I love.

In this episode, Earl Harlan is back on the air to help Night Vale with the perfect Thanksgiving meal - a time often associated with homecomings and family. Yet here is Earl struggling to deal with his son Roger, and Roger, in turn, struggling to deal with his father. Neither seemed to know how they got to this point in their lives, nor why their relationship began in media res. 

I love Earl as a character. He's smart and talented. He's likable, and in some ways both heroic and helpless. Wil's performance adds an extra layer of practicality to Earl, and for me, this is where he becomes fully human. The world, for him, is a how-to to be learned and mastered (as a chef, how to cook a turkey; or per his old job as scout leader, how to set up a tent or start a campfire). But there are no instructions for being a father or a family member. He can only try doing what he has seen elsewhere.

Football, to Earl, seems like the keystone of any good father/son relationship. Dad needs some way of connecting with his boy that involves toughness and competition, but here it falls flat as Earl doesn't seem to know much about football (or parenting) at all. 

Contrast this with Cecil. Earl and Cecil were close childhood friends who drifted apart. Cecil is unquestioning about this (unquestioning about a lot of things in Night Vale, really), but Earl is starting to understand he and Cecil experienced time quite differently than others. Earl was 19 for a long time and is now uncertain about how old he is and who this child is. Earl keeps trying to let Cecil know that something went wrong. Cecil, though, is just glad to have an old friend provide a popular segment on his radio show.

Earl approaches life like a problem to be solved, and right now he's stumped on what to do about Roger. Though while Cecil has neither solutions nor answers for Earl, he may be able to offer something Earl doesn't have in his life at all.

- Jeffrey Cranor
Nov 15, 2015