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This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.

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Welcome to Red Panda Report. This is...

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I'm going to be talking about Red Panda Adventures Episode 18, Secret Origins,

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which originally aired December 16, 2006. And here is the copy for written by Greg Taylor,

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voice of the Red Panda and writer and director of these radio dramas.

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Because you asked for it, and we thought it sounded like fun,

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you followed their thrilling exploits for a season and a half of Red Panda Adventures.

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You've been very good. You've earned a little backstory.

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This week we flashback to some of the earliest days of a certain wealthy young gad about

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exploits as a masked man of mystery, and show you the very first meeting

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between the Red Panda and Kit Baxter, who later became the fearless flying female known as the Flying Squirrel.

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So, this was definitely a fun episode of Red Panda.

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It felt different. We didn't have all the natural banter between Kit and Red Panda,

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because, well, this is the first time they're meeting, and the episode starts off with

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something else entirely, because it has to. You can't have them together.

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So, what was very neat was that we have two people actually finding out throughout the course of the episode,

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one in the beginning, and one in, I would say, the middle, who Red Panda is.

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And the audience doesn't get to learn who he is. We don't learn his name at that point.

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But we do learn that he is a masked mystery man, that he has a secret identity,

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that he's hiding from people, and that it isn't perfect. Some people find out, including, actually, Kit herself.

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So, through the course of the episode, we have these fun encounters.

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Somebody who's running Red Panda's alter-egos businesses for his family,

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him being the last member of the family, inheritor of everything that the businesses have to offer,

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he is being taken care of by a money manager, because he has a reputation,

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kind of like a Bruce Wayne type of situation, that he's careless and doesn't want to be involved,

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and is too focused on flirting and dancing and being a fool and a waste role to really do anything of consequence.

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So, is that what I need? That might be what I need, yes.

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Anyway, so, he has that reputation. So, his business manager basically tells him,

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hey, we see this problem, and either you're the victim of the greatest crime in the history of financial stuff, or you're doing something

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that I can't tell what it is, but it's a very big deal, and it's being done with amazing sophistication.

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So, Red Panda wipes his memory and basically gets out of that situation,

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and kind of sets us up for what happens later, which is his driver, his corrupt, I guess, yeah, his corrupt driver,

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basically wants to blackmail Red Panda for money, because he's figured out his identity.

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And so, this guy is not a reliable guy. Red Panda's kind of in the jam.

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He ends up not being able to use the services of his current chauffeur, whose name I don't remember at this time.

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So, he ends up calling on a cab to help him, and that cab, excuse me, is driven by none other than the flying squirrel,

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or the soon to be the future flying squirrel, Kit Baxter.

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So, they have some interactions, and it's lots of fun, and it's interesting to hear kind of the origins of,

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you know, their little sayings and some of the playfulness in their relationship.

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It's interesting to hear that played out.

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And, excuse me, I don't know if my AI is going to be able to scrub out the sounds of paper tearing,

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but I'm sorting through some things as I'm doing this recording, because, well, that's what we call function stacking.

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Anyway, a bin. What would I do for a bin?

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So, anyway, that's a lot of fun. It's very interesting.

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I think Taylor did a really good job of what he wrote, Red Panda's saying, and the kind of interactions he had with characters,

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and even a little bit his tone. There was something stiff. There was something a little lifeless in him before Kit shows up,

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and then once she's there, he definitely changes his character, and he kind of brightens and opens up, and that's really cool.

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And it's not because I'm hoping for something romantic between them.

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It's just cool because we have this kind of before and after.

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We have, we're able to witness as the audience how these characters change each other and affect each other,

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and that makes their relationship more meaningful, and it makes their dynamic more exciting and more enjoyable and worthwhile.

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And for me, at least, it makes me thankful that Taylor decided to write these characters the way he did

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and have them have this fun relationship where they're bouncing ideas off of each other

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and having exciting conversations in between bouncing thugs off of the floor after slugging them.

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So, I think I'm going to have to pause here.

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One of the things I really appreciated about this episode that I almost forgot to mention because it was kind of in between everything else

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was Taylor's diving into the psychology of the criminals.

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I don't remember the guy's names. It doesn't really matter in the long run.

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But basically, we have these two criminals who were talking about their bank robbery,

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and there was a really interesting, a really neat little trick where you heard three gunshots.

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And the Mr. whatever the guy's name, the bank, the guy who read the bank was saying,

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what do you think that was? And Red Panda says, two somethings and a 45.

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I don't remember what the caliber of the other gun was.

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But one that's cool because it shows that Red Panda's been doing this long enough and trained with guns long enough

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that he knows the sounds of them even when he's not firing them or in the same room or he's slightly off guard

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because he's preoccupied doing something else, he knows them that well.

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And you need to know that kind of thing if you're dealing with that kind of thing.

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So that was a cool little bit of tradecraft on the part of Red Panda.

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And more importantly, and what I started talking about was the fact that he, Taylor, understands the psychology of these criminals well

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and talks about how bad it can be, frankly.

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And I think it's interesting that he does it with these literal partners in crime.

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That one of them just wants the money. He doesn't want an honest living, you could say.

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And he is only going to for the money he wants to lay low and not really cause a stir and whatever.

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And the other guy enjoys seeing fear in people's eyes. Fear, respect, whatever it is.

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He likes it. He likes threatening people. He likes that power he has over people and feeling like a big man because he's the one with the gun.

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And that's a more insidious...

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Like the one guy, he could be content maybe to go back to a normal life.

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He might continue to be pulled into a life of crime, petty, or escalating, I don't know, it depends on the situation.

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And he was willing to go out and kill the rat that was infiltrating or whatever when he sensed that somebody was there to stop him.

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So like, not a good guy, not a moral person.

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Obviously, he was a criminal, stealing from people, but he...

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Like out of desperation, that's the difference. Out of desperation to preserve his ill-gotten gains, he was willing to go ahead and threaten somebody or kill somebody.

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Versus the other guy, who perhaps is more of a coward overall. I don't know, it's a little unclear. He may or may not be.

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He's definitely a more sick individual. He likes the thrill of playing God and having people in his power and being able to abuse and hurt them and ultimately kill them if he got the chance.

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He seems like somebody who would eventually like to start killing people and just do it for the thrill. To me, that's how bad he felt.

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How malefic his will is and his mind and thoughts are. And that's not good.

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So it's interesting to me, and of course Taylor is the author so he can do it however he wants, that he set it up so that the guy who's just kind of desperate runs off and fights these guys.

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Well, he runs off to get Red Panda and then Red Panda gets him and then we get to hear a, I am the spirit of justice, you will deal with the wrath of the Red Panda! Towards the guy who's really evil.

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Or symbolizing evil or he's symptomatic of being corrupted by evil, however you want to place it. Anyway, I just thought that was really cool and it's neat because while the episode is kind of light and fluffy,

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there's the introductory banter between Red Panda and Kit and that's nice, but it's almost interesting because it's almost interesting beyond that because you get to see who they are as people through their little scenes that they have away from each other.

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And then you get to see who they are with each other. And that's really cool because like I said previously, the dynamic between them is wonderful and it sure is a lot of fun.

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But it's also really fun for me to see what are these core driving motivations. Like Kit is in love with Red Panda, at least from the papers.

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She's a fan of his, if not directly in love, like the guy talks about. Maybe she just loves what he represents. That's okay, that's an acceptable interpretation of things.

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And she not necessarily wants that for herself, but she is interested in danger and daring do. And she wants to do something that matters.

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She says that people are all talking about doing something in these hard times, but nobody's actually doing anything except for this guy. And when she sees a chance to be a part of that, she seizes it.

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And she tells Red Panda that she will quietly accept the chauffeur job and ask no questions because she just wants to be close and she wants to help the Red Panda help other people in whatever way she can.

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And now it will be by being a chauffeur. Eventually we know she becomes the fearless flying female.

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And also you get an understanding of Red Panda himself that he is interested in being this instrument of justice.

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That he wants to use his family's wealth for something more than attaining more wealth. And yeah, that it's like a fixation for him. And that's good stuff.

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We've gotten glimpses into the psychology, but seeing it played out in just the course of an episode where they're just on their adventures separately and then together is really interesting because I think it just gives an opportunity to get to know them a little bit better with everything that's come before.

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But also just standing alone, I think this would do a really good job of...like this could have been a first episode if you wanted it to be where it does a good job of introducing them, introducing the listeners to the two of them.

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And like I said, I think it was very effective. So that was a lot of fun. You may have noticed, or you may not have either way, that there was a blip. I missed a week.

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There are many, many, many, many, many technical difficulties. I believe my technical difficulties are over and we should be back to weekly Red Panda Report episodes. So look forward to that Panda Patrol!

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This is MJ signing out. This has been a Story Over Everything production.