The Black Tapes Podcast: Season 2 of The Black Tapes Podcast
August 16, 2016 10:39 AM - Subscribe

As Season 2 of The Black Tapes comes to a close as Alex, Strand, and even Nic learn that they've been part of the problem all along.

"You've always had the power, my dear. You've had it all along." – Glinda, the Good Witch

Not sure how I feel about this season. They seemed to start with a reset and refocus, but a hiatus from Feb-May killed momentum and it felt like they were playing catch-up for the back half of the season.
posted by robocop is bleeding (13 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
"The Black Tapes, Season 2."

"Season?"

"It's where a show is divided up into individual runs of episodes."

"Episodes?"

I really want to like the PNWS shows but the writing really degrades over time.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:05 PM on August 16, 2016


I dunno, I think Tanis has been getting gradually stronger. TBT... eh.
posted by Itaxpica at 9:04 PM on August 16, 2016


(Also: the end of the world was coming from inside the house!!!)
posted by Itaxpica at 9:04 PM on August 16, 2016


Ugh I really kept trying with this after the hiatus but when your whole podcast is people talking MAYBE HAVE THEM TALK LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO ugggggh
posted by litleozy at 2:05 PM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm just so grateful that the IP address wasn't 127.0.0.1.
posted by detachd at 6:46 PM on August 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


"If you build it, he will come"?
Really?

Totally kicked me out of what should have been a super creepy monologue.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:56 PM on August 20, 2016


Also, not being able to climb Mt. Ararat shouldn't be a problem for someone who can bilocate. But nobody ever mentioned that.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:57 PM on August 20, 2016


Yeah, but he still needs his orchestra. If an entire band could bilocate, then we'd be in serious trouble as those goddamn whimsical hipster marching bands would just start appearing all over the place. Plague and Madness, indeed.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:46 PM on August 22, 2016


when your whole podcast is people talking MAYBE HAVE THEM TALK LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO

...I have found my people. Thank you.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:10 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


My experience of the whole two seasons has been an arc that reached its high point somewhere around the end of season one. I found the writing and acting in the first three or four episodes of season one really off-putting and nearly gave up on the whole program. But, by the middle of the first season, either the acting improved or my expectations had changed and I really enjoyed the show. It still sounds like a radio play, which is a bit odd given the framing of the show as a real-world NPR-weekend-style radio show, but it's not a bad radio play.

Then, by the middle of the second season, I found it impossible to remember, or care about, the long series of names and briefly introduced plot elements that suddenly become important two months later. It's true I'm a lot worse at remembering personal names than most, so perhaps this isn't a big of a deal for most of the audience. But, I found that in order to really keep track of the last half of the season I would have had to keep notes. (Better yet, one of those walls full of words and strings that are used by detectives in movies and crazy people in movies imitating fictional detectives in movies.) I'm sure the story is easy to follow if you spend your days working on the show; but for someone who only thinks about the black tapes every other week and consumes tens of hours of media in between each one, it's a bit of a jumble.

Or, in short, I was delighted to discover an audio-equivalent of the early X-files. Then I was annoyed to discover an audio-equivalent of the late X-files.

But then, I hate serialization. Choosing to consume a serial work is like choosing to read a book while playing bumper cars admid a swarm of bees. The triumph you feel at just being able to follow the plot overwhelms your ability to criticize it or even remember whether or not it made any sense. I probably ought to skip a year and then listen to each season as a solid block.
posted by eotvos at 11:36 AM on August 27, 2016


At first I found it scary because I could still manage to suspend disbelief to enough of a degree to give me the chills, despite the sometimes terrible acting and so-so writing. For most of this season, though, I couldn't do that any longer -- the plot just became so incredibly far-fetched that I started to going into an "audio comic book" category in my brain and I just wanted to find out what happened.

Which is fine with me, in the long run. I still kept me entertained and I still chose to listen to it over my usual selection of podcasts until the very end. It scratched a very specific itch that not a lot of things manage to scratch and I had a lot of fun.
posted by treepour at 4:04 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not even going to dignify it with a new post - but it looks like they ended the series with a TOOOOOOOOOTAL cop-out of an ending.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 PM on November 7, 2017


Yes, EmpressCallipygos, that's exactly what happened. I was listening to it with my son, and he was sooo annoyed that after all that, that was how it ended. Eh, the show as a whole had some fun moments, but that was an ending that made you reassess what came before.
posted by umbú at 10:46 PM on January 19, 2018


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