1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,000 Have you ever danced with the panda in the pale moonlight? 2 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,000 This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. 3 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:09,000 You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com. 4 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000 Welcome to Red Panda Report Number 16. 5 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:18,000 This time I'm going to be talking about The Sweet Tooth, which originally aired November 18, 2006. 6 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:22,000 And this is the copy for it. 7 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:26,000 Cynthia Muldoon, daughter of one of the city's finest families, has disappeared. 8 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:32,000 Has she been kidnapped, as her family fears, or run off with some young man, as the police suspect? 9 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:39,000 And what, if anything, does this have to do with a chocolate shop that Kit Baxter seems preoccupied with? 10 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:45,000 If the Red Panda is to find the answers, first they'll have to pull The Sweet Tooth. 11 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:50,000 I assume that Greg Taylor is the one writing all this copy? 12 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,000 He does a fabulous job. 13 00:00:52,000 --> 00:01:01,000 Like, if you don't know, Greg Taylor performs the voice of the Red Panda, as well as Captain Sabian over on Blackjack Justice. 14 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:04,000 And he does a phenomenal job in both roles. 15 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:11,000 Red Panda is interesting because he has a range and a depth that, I don't know, you wouldn't necessarily expect, 16 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,000 especially when you hear an interview with Greg Taylor using his civilian voice. 17 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:18,000 It's not at all what you would expect. 18 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:22,000 So kudos to him for such a great performance in doing the voice of the Red Panda. 19 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:27,000 Not to say that the others who do voices on the show aren't also doing really great work, 20 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:31,000 but I particularly love his voice, which we get to hear so much. 21 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:39,000 And I'm astonished that the man can not only perform so well, but that he can also write so well, 22 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:44,000 and that he can write old-fashioned, punchy, pulpy copies so well. 23 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:50,000 I don't know, I don't think any of the Shadow episodes I listened to at all were, 24 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:56,000 none of them were able to, or none of them included in them any of this kind of copy. 25 00:01:56,000 --> 00:02:01,000 They had the Blue Kohl copy, and gosh, there was one other one at least. 26 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:07,000 But yeah, most of it was Blue Kohl, call your local Blue Kohl dealer and find him in the white pages. 27 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:10,000 Yellow pages for people, white pages for businesses. 28 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:12,000 Anyway, doesn't matter. That's a tangent. 29 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:15,000 But yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and talk about this episode. 30 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:23,000 And I have to say, this is an interesting episode for me because it does not concern super heroics like one might expect. 31 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:29,000 Instead, well, I mean, it does concern super heroics because, you know, the Red Panda is a superhero. 32 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:37,000 But what I mean, what I'm really trying to say is that it isn't a wild, outlandish, colorful, 33 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:44,000 yes, colorful, even though this is all audio, colorful super villain like the Mad Monkey or Professor Zombie. 34 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:49,000 Instead, we get this more subdued, creepy villain of the week. 35 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:52,000 And I don't remember her name, but it doesn't matter. 36 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:58,000 That's not a black mark against the show at all. 37 00:02:58,000 --> 00:03:00,000 It's just it doesn't really matter. 38 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:06,000 And I've been saying this recently, and I used to be much more of the opinion that everything matters to the absolute detail. 39 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:08,000 But it's what it does to you. It's what it makes you feel. 40 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:13,000 I think that matters more than anything else, especially with a show like this or with a story like this. 41 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:19,000 And I don't know if that's because this is lowbrow art and it's not as great as it could be. 42 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:24,000 You have to forgive me. I just finished Little Women, listening to the book Little Women. 43 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:32,000 And in it, there's a distinction between the sensation stories and more refined, good, wholesome fiction. 44 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,000 And I guess you could call red panda sensation stories, but it's not. 45 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:40,000 It's a nice subdued form of sensationalism, I think. 46 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:49,000 But anyway, and I'm not taking a firm moral stance against sensation stories other than to say that I don't anticipate me using lurid things in my books. 47 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:55,000 And I think Taylor does a really good job of keeping things fairly chased in these red panda stories. 48 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:57,000 Yes, they're on the radio. So what could you see? 49 00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:05,000 Nothing, but you could hear plenty and you don't really get a chance to because he finds his perfect balance of making it edgy and dark where it needs to be. 50 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:13,000 But also pulling some punches and keeping things softer for an American like me who doesn't like certain things creeping into his fiction. 51 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:15,000 And especially fiction that can be enjoyed for children. 52 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,000 And I think something like the shadow should be able to be enjoyed for children. 53 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:26,000 And no, that was not a slip of the tongue. I did say the shadow when I'm talking about the red panda, because, of course, the red panda is very much inspired by the shadow. 54 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:31,000 Speaking of which, I felt like the villain this week was very. 55 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:37,000 Oh, it's like the nickels or the coins or whatever it is like nickels under the bridge or so. 56 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:44,000 Oh, yeah. So earlier on, there were a few episodes that I didn't criticize as being rip offs of shadow episodes. 57 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:48,000 But I said, this is very much inspired by the shadow. 58 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:52,000 And I can tell because I just listened to this episode not too long ago of the shadow. 59 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:56,000 And that's fine. I'm OK with that. 60 00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:00,000 But and actually what I'm talking about here is something beyond that. 61 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:06,000 It's something better than that. It's the fact that Taylor was so. 62 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:20,000 Craftful, craftful, artful, artful in his holding the spirit of the shadow, the way the shadows heroes were written out of them that he in fact, it's almost like he trans. 63 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:35,000 How do you say that? Trans. I trans migrated the spirit of a particular creepy episode of the shadow that had to do with people in a bad area and holes in the wall where people were held victims. 64 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,000 I need to know what they were victims for. Were they searching for it? 65 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:44,000 Doesn't matter. But what I'm saying is it basically Taylor ripped the soul out of that thing and he shoved it into the soul of this episode. 66 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:47,000 And I think that's pretty cool. And of course, that's like a very sensational way to say that. 67 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:51,000 But I just mean that he very well captured the essence of the shadow. 68 00:05:51,000 --> 00:06:00,000 And it felt like a quiet subdued shadow episode where you have a villain monologuing about their mad plan that they have. 69 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:04,000 And the hero is calling them out on that plan and basically defeats them. 70 00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:06,000 I mean, of course, with his powers, but mostly it's talking. 71 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:15,000 It's the power of him staying calm and observing things and making statements about the foe, the villain, the evil doer, the ne'er do well. 72 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:28,000 And that's enough to like lull them into a place where then they either their madness folds in on themselves and they destroy themselves or they're distracted just long enough for something to happen and for there to be a reversal of fortune. 73 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:33,000 So that was really cool. So I really like how the spirit was captured there. 74 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:48,000 And the. I definitely want to stop talking about that because I think it's that enough. But what I do want to talk about more is the mysteries of this world of the red panda. 75 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:57,000 So the whole red panda universe or world has interesting. Powers and secrets that it hides. 76 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:06,000 We have Professor Zombie who somehow is able to make zombies through the use of chemical means. But I think she also says she can combine it with voodoo as well, which is super interesting. 77 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:15,000 And then we have this lady who makes a reference to alchemy and she has a machine that these young women are hooked up to, which, by the way, spoilers for the episode. 78 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:29,000 And I know that's not very shame on you. You should have. But what happens is this Chuck Chuckletier, this woman masquerading as a chocolatier ends up setting up a chocolate shop in different places. 79 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:43,000 And she stores women into the chocolate shop. And then she sits them or arranges them so that they can have their life or siphoned off by a machine, which has been able to extend her life indefinitely. 80 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:53,000 And she has for at least 100 years, if not 200 years. And Kit kind of falls into this trap and Red Panda rescues her from it, as well as saving this old dude girl who was talked about in the copy. 81 00:07:53,000 --> 00:08:02,000 So that's pretty interesting. And yeah, it was just it was like a again, it was like a weird kind of more subdued episode, but it was really entertaining. 82 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:10,000 And there was some interesting you could call it fluff, but I would call it texturing characters. There was talk about like social dynamics. 83 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:24,000 There was talk about like socioeconomic disparity and like class warfare and the war of the sexes and like Red Panda not knowing anything about women, which is referred to, you know, that's what that's about. 84 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:34,000 The kind of war of the sexes type thing going on. And like even Kit talking about the fact that she, you know, knows diaries and knows, you know, souped up engines on cars because she's just that kind of girl. 85 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:40,000 And it's really interesting because like it gets to be very playful. Nothing feels romantic between them as of yet. 86 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:50,000 But there's like that nice banter and flirtation between them. And it's more like this, I don't know, Senpai, won't you notice me? No, it's gotten past that stage. 87 00:08:50,000 --> 00:09:00,000 I think that's not what's presenting at the moment. It's more like Kit doesn't want to be like taken for granted or like pitied or looked down upon. 88 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:08,000 She's a tough kid, I would venture to say. You know, she's grown up on the streets in the poorer areas of Toronto. 89 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:14,000 And, you know, that shows for sure. And she's kind of got a chip on her shoulder about it. 90 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:21,000 And she doesn't want to be like looked down upon or condescended to. And she feels like that might be what Red Panda is going to do. 91 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:33,000 And she feels like the police only care about this Muldoon girl because she's from one of the city's wealthiest families as opposed to the other girls who've been taken captive. 92 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:46,000 And there's nothing really to counter that except for what happens in the end, which is that a fund gets set up by Mr. Muldoon to help disadvantaged girls, basically, which is very cool and very sweet. 93 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:58,000 And like, I don't know, there's something like I don't know how Taylor did this. Again, I said his vocal performance is great, but also like the way he crafts the writing, like the first very first episode of Red Panda Report or where I talked about Red Panda Adventures, 94 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:08,000 I complained about kind of the hokeyness of ending on a joke. And I think the Carrot Cake one was like two or three episodes later or like one or two episodes later, I think. 95 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:22,000 And like that was kind of hokey, but it felt a little more fun. And I don't know if it just like kind of took him time to find his feet like in the format of writing these episodes, because like Red Panda was charming as all get out in this episode. 96 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:28,000 And like the little squabbling between him and Kit, like it felt really good. It felt like genuine to their characters. 97 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:45,000 But it also felt like it gave them an opportunity to grow and to like impress each other and to make an impact on each other and like see little bits of development for them going through because this isn't, you know, Red Panda is special because the characters do grow and they do change throughout, even as they stay the same. 98 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:53,000 And that's really wonderful. And it's one of the things I appreciate about it so much. And that's why I've, you know, I'm like my third listen of Red Panda Adventures. 99 00:10:53,000 --> 00:11:05,000 So, yeah, that being said, this was a good episode. And again, it's funny because it's like it's not really a memorable one. Like I do it. It does stick in my mind. 100 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:15,000 But like when I see the name, the Sweet Tooth Lighter, oh, that episode, that's kind of weird, kind of funky. And like it never like it went a totally different direction than I expected it to go. 101 00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:27,000 And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just and again, I've been praising it for the last little while. So I'm definitely not. It's not demerit. It's just interesting because I wouldn't have gone there necessarily. 102 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:36,000 Let me see. I kind of wanted to reference something that I have been planning to write, but I don't think I'm going to do that. Let's not belabor things here. 103 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:50,000 Other than the fact that I really like this like a battle of hypnosis. And I think early in season one, like there were a few battles of hypnosis. And this is the first I believe this is the first battle of hypnosis in season two. 104 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:56,000 This is 13, 14, 15. This is the fourth episode of season two because each season is 12 episodes, I believe. 105 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:06,000 And I like that this lady was using some strange form of hypnosis with, you know, plant materials or synthetic. I only get synthetic drugs. 106 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:17,000 I think it was natural materials that she was using for her hypnotic. I don't know, drugging of Kit and other girls. 107 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:26,000 And I like that Red Panda was able to recognize that based on her behavior. But then he also has like the chemistry background to know how to break hypnotic agents. 108 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:34,000 I don't mean hypnotic agents like him. I mean, you know, substances that are hypnotic that lead people to be open to being hypnotized and suggested to. 109 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:42,000 And I think that's pretty cool that he's you can see he's like, you know, like a Batman. He's got all this background and more like the shadow. 110 00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:48,000 Like, there's a really cool scene in the shadow book, which I think you've described before, which I found out about. 111 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:53,000 I oh yeah, I mentioned before I stumbled on a razor fist was talking about. 112 00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:56,000 I stumbled across that and it was a really neat scene that he described. 113 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:00,000 And then I listened to the book that that was in and I thought, wow, that's really cool. 114 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:03,000 It's really neat what the shadow guy does and who he is. 115 00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:11,000 And it's nice that the Red Panda is an iteration of the shadow to like capture those things, those parts of the essence of the shadow 116 00:13:11,000 --> 00:13:18,000 and bring them to a new audience at a new time with like classic style and quality. 117 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:25,000 So anyway, I did want to keep things a little bit shorter and I am going a little bit longer than I wanted to. 118 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:28,000 So I should really pull back and stop myself. 119 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:38,000 So yeah, this was a really good episode. I had a very different energy from the last episode when darkness falls, which had a little kid and an old lady. 120 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:42,000 That's very funny. But yeah, what else? What else? What else? 121 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:48,000 So to say, I'm not sure what else to say. I really enjoyed this episode. It's a good one. 122 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:58,000 It's solidly creepy. Oh, so there's a lot of not comedic tone changes, but there's just like a lot of variety or diversity in the tones that you get here, 123 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:06,000 because at some point, while this mad woman is talking about her plan and what she's been willing to do and how many more lives she's willing to take, 124 00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:15,000 she is a mass murderer. I expected her to have like super strength or superpowers of some sort based like on the potency of the life force she had, you know, 125 00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:20,000 pulled from these other women, these women and many others. And she didn't. 126 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:26,000 And at some point, Kit gets out of her stupor. She's like she's a little messed up. We learn later. 127 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:31,000 She's a little messed up from being on these hypnotic drugs, but she's mostly in her right mind. 128 00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:37,000 This is very in keeping with who Kit Baxter is as somebody who's listened to all of her story so far. 129 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:43,000 And she asks Red Panda to throw her crowbar and she wails on this old woman. 130 00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:51,000 She hits her like three or four times and it is insane. It's insane. I can't believe he kept that. 131 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:54,000 I can't believe he wrote that. I can't believe he wrote it. I can't believe he kept it. 132 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:56,000 I would think he would have toned that down a little bit. 133 00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:02,000 But then I think it kind of is the blow on it is softened a little bit because Red Panda at some point later calls out 134 00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:06,000 and says like, oh, you did meet an old woman with a crowbar. So I think you need to be, you know, 135 00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:11,000 here in the layer recovering while I'm out on patrol. And that was again, that was like that's super charming. 136 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:16,000 And that weird like they have a very weird relationship like. Yeah, I won't say anything. 137 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:23,000 They have a very interesting relationship and they're a couple of interesting characters who are very, very, I'm very fond of them. 138 00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:27,000 Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next Red Panda adventure. I hope you are too. 139 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:31,000 Join me in the future. 140 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:36,000 I hope you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me. 141 00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:42,000 Like and share to help me reach more people like you and go to MJMunoz.com to find your next favorite thing. 142 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:48,000 And don't forget to let your voice be heard. Stories are always better when you're part of the conversation. 143 00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:52,000 Until next time, be well. This is MJ signing out. 144 00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:56,000 This has been a story over everything production.