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I freakin’ love The Dark Crystal! Let’s watch it! Today, we’re at 53:40-55:00 on the Blu-ray. In one corner, Gelflings. In the other corner: Skeksis!

When we last left Jen and Kira, they had discovered the Wall of Destiny, and read that the crystal shard is needed to heal the Dark Crystal, and that a prophecy states this can only be done by Gelfling hand. They don’t get a chance to revel in this new knowledge, however, because the Skeksis’ Chamberlain has snuck up on them. He interrupts by saying, “Prophecy?” Kira immediately recognizes him as a Skeksis, and she reacts in fear, leading Jen away. This raises some questions, namely how does she know the Chamberlain is a Skeksis? Has she encountered Skeksis before, or does she only know about them from stories and whatnot? Or is she merely assuming this is a Skeksis? We don’t know.

The Chamberlain doesn’t attack, but instead tries to open a dialogue of sorts, saying, “Stay. Stay. Am friend.” He then says, “Prophecy cause all this trouble.” He admits that Skeksis killed all the Gelflings, but he calls this a “bad mistake,” and adds, “Skeksis fear Gelfling.” He further argues “Am friend,” reminding them that he saved them from the Garthim.

Kira encourages Jen not to listen, and says, “It’s a trick.” That raises some interesting points. We’ve seen how naïve Jen is to the world around him, but here Kira is cynical enough to know not to trust the Skeksis. At some point, somewhere, Gelflings must have learned not to trust whatever Skeksis tell them. It’s also worth noting that Fizzgig doesn’t like the Chamberlain at all, and constantly barks and growls at him throughout this whole scene.

The Chamberlain admits he is an outcast, and that if the Gelflings come with him to the castle he will be “outcast no more.” He repeats “Please,” several times in a whining, almost begging manner. “Show them you want peace,” he says to Jen. “Show them Gelflings will not harm us.” The music gets all weird here, and it seems Jen is starting to buy this. Kira steps between him and the Skeksis and he snaps out of whatever haze he’s in. The Skeksis continues “Please, please,” but Jen snaps “No!” at him, and he and Kira run off. The Chamerlain, apparently too large to pursue them through the opening the escaped through, stays behind. In one of my favorite shots in the whole movie, his gets angrier and growlier as he refrains, “Please! Wait! Please make peace!”

OK, what are to make of this exchange, and the fact that Jen seemed mesmerized for a second there by the Chamberlain? Also, why is the Chamberlain speaking in broken English in this scene when he doesn’t anywhere else in the film? The behind-the-scenes answer is that the original version of the film had the Skeksis speaking a fictional language throughout, and this would have been the first (only?) time one spoke in English. But, in terms of the story as we have it now, it’s interesting. In The Dark Crystal, there’s such a thing as soul-speaking. We see this in the movie whenever Kira communicates with animals, Disney princess-style. Turns out the Chamberlain has this ability as well, as we see him command a bunch of cute lil’ critters to do his bidding in the manga Legend of the Dark Crystal. A lot of fans believe that the Chamberlain is uses soul-speaking in this scene to mesmerize Jen, only for Kira to break the “spell.” It’s subtle, but you can kind of see it in the movie, especially the way the score makes itself known at that moment.

Hmmm… this is a short scene. How about we go over the voice actors?

Stephen Garlick as Jen. He had a number of TV roles in England in his childhood and teens, appearing in guest spots on The Tomorrow People, The New Adventures of Black Beauty, and even a 1983 Doctor Who serial, “Ibbotson.” It appears he left the acting game in the early ‘90s.

Lisa Maxwell as Kira. A child star in England, Maxwell has worked consistently in England, with a huge list of TV parts, including her own variety show, The Lisa Maxwell Show, in 1991. Last year, she joined the cast of the venerable English soap opera Eastenders.

Barry Dennen as the Chamberlain. Dennen has a long list of credits to his name, playing a number of character roles in everything from Jesus Christ Superstar to The Shining to Titanic. In the last 20 years or so, he’s worked mostly in voiceovers for animation and video games.

Billie Whitelaw as Aughra. The closest thing the movie has to stunt casting, Whitelaw was once a big name on radio and on Broadway. Her many film roles include Orson Welles’ Confidential Report, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, Richard Donner’s The Omen, and Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz.

Percy Edwards as Fizzgig. As a child, Edwards developed a talent for mimicking animal sounds, which he turned into a successful career in radio, TV, and film. He was the “voice” of the Orca in Orca, the reindeer in Santa Claus: The Movie, and even the alien in Ridley Scott’s Alien.

We’ll end it there for today.

Next: Land-stridin’.

****

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I freakin’ love The Dark Crystal! Let’s watch it! This post will be a long one, but wow is there a lot to talk about in this scene, 50:28-53:39 on the Blu-ray.

The previous scene ended at night, when, in a bout of frustration, Jen threw the crystal shard into the forest, rejecting his quest. It’s morning now, and – after a brief look at an anteater-like critter up in a tree – we get a quite romantic shot of Jen and Kira sleeping, with him in her arms. After seeing the Podling village, her home, destroyed, Kira has instead opted to stay with Jen. This says a lot about her, in that she’s devoting so much of herself to this stranger she just met. While Jen remains mostly unaware of his quest (still!) Kira somehow knows of his importance, or at least knows it’s important to stick by him.

In voiceover, Jen says he misses his master, the Mystics, and their valley. “I never loved them enough,” he says. That says a lot about his personality, and where he is mentally at this part of the story. He’s rejected his quest, but he’s still the good guy. So, we’re reminded of this by giving him regret, and showing his personal integrity, and that he has a big heart. This way, instead of us shaking our fists at him for being a quitter, we’re still on his side, because we see how troubled he is over all this.

Notice that while Jen and Kira are sleeping, Fizzgig is awake, doing the “watch dog” thing, in case there’s trouble. Jen and Kira wake at the same time (an after-effect of dream-fasting, perhaps?). Kira says they’re safe, but Jen, still wallowing in the dumps, says he doesn’t think anyplace is safe anymore.

Jen takes a look around, and finds that they’ve spent the night among a bunch of ruins, partially-fallen stone structures covered with vines and moss. Kira describes the ruins as “the houses of the old ones,” to which Jen follows up with, “our ancestors.” So, for as much as critics chide Jen for cluelessness, here he shows some knowledge of the world around him. We’re about to see him show a lot more. Kira finds the crystal shard where Jen threw it, in the center of a triangle-shaped stone. (Remember our Dark Crystal symbology: Triangles are a big deal because this world has three suns.) She picks it up, and it shows no signs of reacting to her at all.

Looking at a stone wall, Jen says he can feel something. He’s instantly taken with wonder at this place, while Kira shows some fear, saying bad things happened here once. It’s an interesting bit of role reversal, in that previous scenes had her jumping into action with him meekly following. Now he’s the one in the take-charge role and she’s the one urging caution. I don’t find this inconsistent, instead seeing this as the two of them being of one “type.” Jen reinforces this in his next line, in which he says he can tell this place was built by Gelflings. Kira reminds him that all the Gelflings are gone now, “killed by the Skeksis long ago,” she says.

They walk farther into the ruins and we get a better look at them. Hey, remember back when I insisted that fans don’t call the Skeksis’ castle a citadel? That’s because this place, according to the tie-in fiction, is named the Citadel. Also, it was clearly constructed out of carved rock. A lot of the architecture we’ve seen in the film was shaped out of living rock, with curved, natural angles. The Citadel, though, wasn’t shaped through magic or energy, but built with good ol’ engineering, including stonework and bricklaying. It’s ambiguous as to what level of technology the Gelflings achieved. The Legends of the Dark Crystal manga shows them living in tents and caves, but the Creation Myths graphic novels give us brief-yet-tantalizing glimpses of Gelfing boats and huge cities on the seacoast, but beyond that, we don’t really know how far their civilization really advanced. Of course, it’s perfectly plausible that different Gelfling clans achieved varying levels of sophistication, but we’re left only to speculate.

Kira then sees a large stone chair, is fascinated by it, and sits on it. We’re never actually told this, but most fans generally believe that this was once the throne of the Gelfling queen. The Gelfling queen is an enormous question mark in Dark Crystal history. We know there was a Gelfling queen, and that she once united all the Gelfling clans. Beyond that, nothing. Who was she? How did she unite everyone? Was this unification successful? None of this info has ever been revealed. Many others have speculated that this shot of Kira sitting in the throne means she’s a direct descendant of the Gelfling queen, but that’s mere speculation. For all we know, it’s just a chair.

Jan calls Kira over to him, saying he’s found something. He’s found a carving on the wall, with an image shaped like the shard. Kira asks what the funny marks are, and Jen replies that it is writing, which he defines as, “words that stay.” Jen’s Mystic master taught him how to read, an education never available to Kira. See, critics, Jen is not useless. Jen then reads the prophecy: “When single shines the triple sun… what was sundered and undone… shall be whole, the two made one… by Gelfling hand, or else by none.” That “or else by none” part is interesting, because it doesn’t state for sure that a Gelfling will save the world, just that it might happen. As Aughra said earlier in the film, the Great Conjunction could save the world or destroy it, despite Jen’s presence.

This carving is the Wall of Destiny, and it’s a big deal. Imagery on the wall more or less tells the backstory, split into two halves. On one side of it we can see the castle, and the Urskeks standing around the crystal. This is followed by an image of the Skeksis. On the other half, there are images of the Mystics, and of the three suns meeting in the sky. Above this timeline, there’s an image of a Gelfling playing music, and another Gelfling offering a plant to one with a crown (the queen, perhaps?). The other side shows a similar scene, with a Gelfling offering a bowl to a female Gelfling with angelic wings, for a sly bit of foreshadowing. These images of Gelflings handing items to one another is supposed to symbolic of their dream-fasting.

A lot of fantasy stories with prophecies will skip over where the prophecy came from, usually just saying it’s “ancient.” The Dark Crystal tie-in fiction, however, fills us in on where the Wall of Destiny came from. The story goes that the Gelfings wanted to know if there was any hope of living free from fear of the Skeksis, so they lit the “fires of prophecy.” (Big Gelfling spiritual bonfires are established as a “thing” in Creation Myths.) Afterwards, seven groups of seven Gelflings each took refuge on hilltops, staring at the stars for answers. The canon then merely states, “their dreams were made stone,” which is where the Wall of Destiny comes from. Furthermore, the canon says electron microscope analyses of the wall shows that these images were carved not with tools, but with a process involving intense localized heat. This, presumably, is from the raw energy generated by whatever magic and/or mental power it took for the seven groups of Gelflings to be able to peer into the future.

Wait, what was that about an electron microscope? This question brings us to the weirdest, head-scratchingiest part of the entire Dark Crystal mythos. The Dark Crystal is often lauded for being an immersive fantasy world with no human characters. Now’s the part where I blow your mind: There is a human character, from Earth, in the Dark Crystal canon. His name is J.J. Llewellyn. To figure out who this is, let’s take another look at the book The World of the Dark Crystal. It’s a cool art book with a lot of photos and drawings from the movie. They could have stopped there, but, no. Instead, the book is “written by” a fictional character, J.J. Llewellen, who, we’re told, has examined these artifacts from the world Thra (where The Dark Crystal takes place) and the “Book of Aughra,” which outlines the history of Thra, its creatures, and the events of the film. Half of World of the Dark Crystal is direct quotes from Aughra’s writings, and half is from this Llewellyn character, and his interpretation of Aughra’s words and the many symbols and images from the movie. Consider it Dark Crystal advanced reading.

OK, so that’s where Llewellyn comes from, but who is Llewellyn? The only biographical information we get from him is merely “Oxford, 1981.” (The movie came out in 1982, but the World book wasn’t published until 2004.) Within the story, we’re left to extrapolate that someone from Earth (astronauts, maybe?) found Thra, and returned with these artifacts, mostly from Jen and Kira’s era. Llewellyn was then brought in to do the anthropologist thing, and interpret the artifacts, which includes the Wall of Destiny, so that the rest of us on Earth can learn the story of the Dark Crystal. If this happened in ’81, then it gets super-meta, leading to the movie in ’82. I’m deep into speculation on all this. Could Llewellyn be a real person, someone who worked with Brian Froud on the book? It’s possible, but his name doesn’t appear in any of the book’s fine print, and repeated online searches for “J.J. Llewellyn, Oxford” just take me right back to the book.

Once again, I’m only speculating here. Llewellyn doesn’t actually say any of this. Here’s an excerpt:  “For some time it has been common knowledge in thaumato-linguistic circles and among others who care for such things that a chance discovery of eroded rock carving at an anonymous site had been followed by a quite remarkable production of objects, texts, and diagrams, a few associated with the original find but most created during periods of meditation on the context of the carving, using advanced techniques of hypno-activity that have been largely developed from the study of the initial products.” Now imagine 130 pages of sentences like that, and you begin to get the idea of what it’s like to dig through World of the Dark Crystal for info.

The big question is, does knowing any of this meta stuff add to our enjoyment of the movie? I guess all this was done to explain how we on Earth know the story of The Dark Crystal. Therefore it adds to immersive nature of the film, so we don’t question things like if this is some other world, how do we even know about it? Consider the Muppets: In four of the Muppet films – The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, A Muppet Christmas Carol, and Muppet Treasure Island – there’s a meta layer to the proceedings, so that it’s not just a movie about the Muppets. Instead, the Muppets are real-world performers, and we’re watching a movie starring the Muppets. Similarly, thanks to this Llewellyn guy, the movie The Dark Crystal is not just a weird fantasy movie, but an adaptation of the “Book of Aughra” and related artifacts brought to Earth from another world.

Enough. Time to leave Earth behind and get back to the action on another world, which is why we love The Dark Crystal. Kira puts two and two together, and realizes that the shard is a piece of the Dark Crystal. Jen realizes it too, and he and Kira agree that he has to heal the Dark Crystal.

Next: Hitting the road.

****

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I freakin’ love The Dark Crystal! Let’s watch it! Today, our hero Jen hits his lowest point, 49:02-50:27 on the Blu-ray.

There’s a very lengthy shot of Jen and Kira running from the Garthim’s attack on the Podling, the idea being to let the audience know they’re covering a lot of distance. Jen run-falls down a small slope, and Kira stops him, saying “They won’t find us here.” Jen is in the dumps, saying, “It’s all my fault.” Kira is more pragmatic, taking stock of their situation, explaining to herself (and the audience) that the Skeksis saved them from his own Garthim. She’s clearly befuddled as to why the Skeksis would do this.

Jen is too busy having a full-on pity party. You can actually see real tears on his face as he says, “First Aughra’s, now your village.” He picks up the crystal shard, says he wishes he’d never heard of it, and then, unthinkably, he throws it away. That’s right, he just chucks it off deeper into the woods. Why does he do this? Is it out of character? We have to remember that the audience still knows a lot more about what’s happening than Jen does. The audience has seen the Dark Crystal and gotten a sense of its power. Jen, however, only knows that there’s something called the Dark Crystal, but that’s it. All Jen knows is that he was tasked with finding this shard, and the shard merely led him twice into the destructive path of the Garthim. So, strictly from his point of view, the shard is not something that heals, but an object of destruction. When Jen throws the shard away, it could be considered quitting. However, it could also be considered a heroic act, in that he’s rejecting the violence and negativity he believes it brings, choosing instead to find a newer, hopefully better path.

Kira says “No!” but that ends her argument. Perhaps she might have further argued her case for keeping the shard, but then she notices Jen’s arm is injured. We can assume this happened when a Garthim briefly grabbed him in the previous scene. She conveniently grabs some moss from the ground in front of them, placing it on his wound and saying it’ll make him feel better. The tone softens, perhaps even a little romantic, as Kira assures Jen that this wasn’t his fault, and that “The Garthim have always come.”

Those five words certainly say a lot, don’t they? Let’s see if I’ve got the timeline straight. The Skeksis created the Garthim to gather up all the Gelflings, so the emperor could drink all the Gelfling essence. This was the Gelfling genocide, which happened sometime after the Legends of the Dark Crystal manga, but before the events of the film. With no more Gelflings, or so the Skeksis believe, the Garthim have taken to snatching up Podlings. So Garthim raiding parties are an established “thing” in this world, happening on a regular basis. Why, then, did the Podlings in the movie seem surprised by their attack, and apparently didn’t have any defenses? The World of the Dark Crystal book and other tie-in media describes the Podlings – and the Gelflings, to a lesser extent – as living day-to-day, unconcerned with the “bigger picture” of the world around them. Another question is, why hasn’t this village been raided before? Well, Kira is believed to be of the Vapran clan, who were experts in camouflage, so if this village is in or near the Vapran wood, it might be well hidden from prying Garthim eyes, and the Garthim only found it this time because the Crystal Bats led them there in search of the Gelflings.

The passage of time: The shot fades to an image of the Mystics continuing their long journey, silhouetted against a gorgeous cloudscape. Like before, this is here to provide the sense of time passing, and of the Mystics (and the plot) making some forward progress.

I’ll end things here for now, because there’s a lot to say about what’s coming up.

Next: History, prophecy, and would you believe there actually is a human character in The Dark Crystal?!?

****

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I freakin’ love The Dark Crystal! Let’s watch it! Today, we get some action and carnage, 47:11-49:01 on the Blu-ray.

The Podlings are in the midst of their big-time wild party, only to be interrupted when a big, black claw smashes through a wall. The Garthim are there, attacking. We get shots of them tearing up the walls, complete with debris falling all over their heads. Having the puppets interact with their environments like this continues to “sell” their existence in this world, so we don’t think of them as puppets but as big, scary bug monsters.

The Podlings scream with fear, and a lot of them are frozen in place, apparently too terrified to react. Fizzgig growls at a Garthim, and then quickly ducks out of the way before one of them smashes him with its claw. Kira is the only one who keeps her cool, finding Jen amid the chaos and telling him to come with her. One Podling decides to fight back, ineffectively bonking a Garthim on the back with her cane. In the manga Legend of the Dark Crystal, Gelflings Lahr and Neffi showed the world that the Garthim could be defeated in battle. It’s unknown whether their story survived and if the characters in the movie are aware of it, but this one Podling, at least, shows there’s some belief in fighting back.

As Jen and Kira try to flee, a Garthim grabs hold of Jen. Jen uses the crystal shard as a knife-like weapon, stabbing it. It hits the Garthim with a blue glow, hinting at whatever energy-based or perhaps magical qualities the shard contains. We then cut immediately to the Mystics, still in the midst of their long journey. Their heads all perk up, as they can somehow sense the shard has been used. What are we to make of this? That they are in tune enough with the crystal to know when it is being used? That this is the Dark Crystal’s way of calling to them, as it called to the Skeksis earlier? We’re not told – it’s up to the audience to interpret.  Then there’s more shots of the Garthim chasing around the Podlings, including one of the Garthim picking up a Podling. Then a shot of Jen and Kira outside, with her leading him away from the fight, Fizzgig right behind them.

Stuff of nightmares: Inside, the Garthim pick up more Podlings, stuffing them into big cages, their sad, frightened little faces pressed up against the bars.

The cages appear to be made out of bamboo, so bamboo exists on this world. What I want to know is, who built these cages? They don’t match the designs seen inside the Skeksis’ castle, and I doubt the Garthim made them, as they don’t appear to be craftsmen of any sort. If I may speculate, perhaps they were made by the non-essence Podling slaves the Skeksis keep in their castle, or perhaps the cages are the creations of Skekis who, in earlier years, traveled widely. These include SkekLach the Collector, from the manga, and SkekMal the Hunter or SkekCru the Mariner, whom we know only from the DarkCrystal.com website.

Oooh, man. Then there’s a shot of a child Podling, holding a doll, looking around in confusion as the Garthim rage all around her. When I saw The Dark Crystal on the big screen at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge a few years ago, folks in the audience lost their freakin’ minds with fear that something awful was about to happen to this little one. Fortunately, a grownup Podling – a parent, assumedly – takes the kid and escorts her away. In the next shot, we can see that the bamboo cages are affixed to the back of the Garthim, and are bent to a similar shape as the Garthims’ backs.

One Garthim stars right at the camera, giving us another good look at its purple crystal eyes, along with a sharp musical sting. The camera then cuts to Jen and Kira. This reestablishes to the audience that although the Garthim and snatching up Podlings, the Gelflings are the ones they’re really after.

We’re outside now, and three Garthim are looking around. One of them sees Jen and Kira and starts running at them. It looks like it’s all over, but no. The Chamberlain is there, dressed all in rags. He jumps out of nowhere – or, at least, from the right of the frame. We don’t know where he was hiding. He raises his hand, and the Garthim stop in their tracks. Jen insists he and Kira run, and they do. Fleeing into the woods, Jen asks “What was that creature?” and Kira answers, “Skeksis.” This raises the question of how she knows that. Has Kira encountered Skeksis in person before, or does she merely know about them from stories? The latter seems more likely, but there’s no way to know for sure.

The Garthim start to move forward again, but all the Chamberlain has to do raise his hand once more, and they back off, turning and walking away. This shows that, although banished, the Chamberlain can still command the Garthim, just by virtue of his being a Skeksis. Again, we think of the Chamberlain as whining and skeletal, but here we see him as the “man of action,” jumping into the fray and bossing around the monsters. The scene ends with him turning and looking back the way the Gelflings ran. He does his famous whimper again, reminding the audience that he’s “that guy,” still a part of the plot.

Next: The long dark night of the Gelfling soul.

****

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I freakin’ love The Dark Crystal! Let’s watch it! The movie gets to cut loose and have a little fun in these scenes, 44:24-47:10 on the Blu-ray.

We’ve seen the Podlings several times before now, as both the slaves of the Skeksis, and in Kira’s dream-fasting with Jen, but this is our first formal introduction to them. It’s night now, and Jen and Kira walk through some trees, and we get a look at the Podling village. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like they live inside hollowed out trees. The book World of the Dark Crystal tells us that they live inside giant seed pods, with which they have a symbiotic relationship. The book says the name Podling, however, is a shortened version of their name in their native language, which is “Apopiapoiopidiappididiapipob.” This obviously translates to “Master Gardeners Who Live in Bulging Plants.”

Kira provides the exposition, saying these are Podlings, and they adopted her and that they are her clan. This is the first mention of clans existing in this world, something the tie-in works have run with in a big way, establishing a variety of Gelfling clans. A bunch of Podlings pop up out of the bush and are happy to see Kira. They speak in their own language without subtitles. The translations are all on the website DarkCrystal.com. You can look it up if you want, but I’ll tell you right now they’re not saying anything all that interesting. Kira introduces Jen and they all walk off toward the village. There’s a quick shot of one of the Podlings petting Fizzgig. World of the Dark Crystal states that the Podlings were the ones who domesticated the Fizzgigs.

The music swells and, with that, we go right into the party. We’re indoors now, in a rustic, tavern-like setting, with Podlings everywhere. A Podling band rocks out with guitar and flute-like instruments. The camera pans across the room, where we see more Podlings sitting around tables, and others on alcoves looking down on them. Jen and Kira sit a table off to one side. To the right of the screen is a Podling clapping her hands in perfect time to the music, a nice little bit of puppetry. A Podling offers Jen a tray full of vegetables. He asks Kira how to say thank you. “Fala vam,” she says, and he repeats it to the Podling.

Jen has a plate in front of him with what looks like red and grey meatballs. I have no idea what this stuff is, but it’s the closest answer we’ve ever had as to what Gelflings eat. In this world, in which there are no boundaries between animal, vegetable, and mineral, and all things are alive, what to eat becomes a confusing conundrum. The graphic novel Creation Myths has a fleeting reference to Gelflings hunting and gathering, so maybe I’m just overthinking things.

The party continues on, with a lot of Muppet Show-style silliness. More and more Podlings offer Jen food. A wet Podling pokes his head out of a barrel, and of course the Podling drummer goes nuts pounding away on the drums. During his rockin’ drum solo, he even breaks the fourth wall, looking right at the camera and saying, “Yeah!” (I think he might be my favorite character.) Then there’s another pan across the room with all the Podlings dancing, including some impressive puppetry where we see their feet.

Look closely: In the background, there’s a Podling on his back, juggling a small barrel with his feet. This one’s obviously a dancer/stuntman and not a puppet.

Fun fact: Gates McFadden, better known as Dr. Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation was a choreographer on this film. (She really is the Dancing Doctor!) I’m assuming this scene is where such choreography was needed, but I’ve never been able to confirm that. In interviews, McFadden always says how proud she is of her choreography in the ballroom scene in Labyrinth, the musical numbers in The Muppets Take Manhattan, and in a lesser-known Henson-related film called Dream Child, but it seems she never talks about The Dark Crystal.

Jen goes over the exposition with Kira again. Remember, this stuff gets repeated throughout the movie because the early test audiences were confused. Jen says that when the three suns converge (“the Great Something-or-other” he calls it) something must be done with the shard, but that’s all Jen knows right now. An especially enthusiastic Podling interrupts and insists that Jen dance with her. This leads to a bit of slapstick as the Podling awkwardly swings Jen around on the dance floor.

More partying! The Podlings use their forks like drumsticks, pounding on a table in time with the music. More shots of the band, and of the drummer still wildly into it. Now loosened up, Jen gets into the spirit of things by playing along with his flute. Amid the band, there’s one Podling who’s just standing there not doing anything. I guess that’s their manager. Anyway, with all this partying, music, and levity, good vibes are in the air, and absolutely nothing bad could happen, right?

Next: Something very bad happens!

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.