This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Welcome to Red Panda Report.
Buckle up for two-fisted pulp action as I talk about the terrific two-spin of Toronto.
So Red Panda Adventures, Episode 29 might be... I feel stupid saying this now. Might be one of my favorites.
We have Red Panda and Flying Squirrel. Well, let me read you the copy first, and then we'll go from there.
When a string of petty extortionists hits our heroes too close to home, it's a sure bet that fists are gonna fly.
But these little fish think themselves safe from both the police and the city's masked heroes, and they just might be right.
Is an alliance with the underworld the answer? Who will win the day? The Red Panda's army of agents or the Callaghan Mob?
Okay, so this episode originally aired November 17, 2007, written and directed by Greg Taylor, the writer of the copy there that I just read for you.
This is Episode 29 of Red Panda Adventures. Overall, it's Season 3, Episode 5.
And I'm gonna go ahead and start not pulling my punches, doing the opposite. I'm gonna stop being so coy about things.
And I'm gonna say this episode kind of feels like, in retrospect, definitely in retrospect, and maybe even at the time, it feels a little bit like Red Panda flirting with Flying Squirrel.
Because she's... found out that her mom is injured, and found out that the whole town is being shaken down.
And she explains to Red Panda that she wanted to become the Flying Squirrel, among other things, well, chiefly for the reason that she wanted to have the power and the ability and the skill and everything
to take care of the little people in her town, in her little city, her little area of the city.
And I think that's really cool. It's a really interesting motivation. It adds texture to her motivation. It makes it more than one-dimensional, which it kind of was before.
Well, yeah, early on, we got hints as to why she was interested in all this. And you can guess if you're older than a kid.
But she explains that it's for helping to take care of these people in her area, the world she grew up in, as she calls it.
And that's a lot of fun. And then we learn that Red Panda...
ends up roping in 65 of his agents into this adventure, where they're pretending to be the Callahan Mob, and they're basically doing a thing that, because these criminals are so small, small time,
they're not tied into the criminal infrastructure. They're just doing things on their own. And while the police know that the Callahan Mob isn't a real thing,
it's the Red Panda's agents doing the stuff. So the copy is a little deceitful, but I mean, the Red Panda's army of agents is the Callahan Mob. That's the thing.
But it's in their capacity as this mob that they save the day. Anyway, the police know it's not true. The papers know it's not true.
The... Oh, that's funny. There's a thing about the media being corrupt and in a poor state, and that's a lot of fun, even though I'm sure Taylor didn't mean it the way I'm taking it and interpreting it.
But it's whatever. Oh, and, you know, these guys are kind of beyond the grasp of Red Panda and Flying Squirrel because they're too small.
They're so small time that they need to believe... Well, and it won't help if they destroy the gang because they won't always be there.
So the gang will come back in. But if they believe that there's a bigger criminal organization, that's the scheme that they're running here. They will stay away from them. Interesting.
Yeah, this episode aired in 2007, November, a couple years into the show Burn Notice, which was on USA? Is that an actual TV channel? It was a TV channel.
Anyway, a couple seasons into that, maybe the third season or so, they ended up doing something like this where the main character in that pretended to be a crazy criminal to run another crazy criminal out of town.
Could that have been the first season? I don't remember. Anyway, it was earlier on in the show. One of my favorite episodes.
Maybe that's why I got it mixed up and said this is one of my favorite episodes because that show sees Michael Weston acting crazy, doing much crazy stuff in this area of Miami to run off this terrible lady.
Cuban mobster lady wants to take over this area. Anyway, but so maybe that got mixed up in my mind. That's something I've watched multiple times as well as listened to or abandoned multiple times.
But besides that, like it was it's a cool idea. It's a fun plot. It's we didn't like it to see all the inner workings, but we get to hear news reports of things that the Callahan mob was doing, like all these fake fake news reports and fake police blotter type stuff going on because Chief O'Malley is on it with them.
This episode takes place after the book Android Assassins, which I believe Taylor is currently releasing Android Assassins on the website right now.
Yeah, he's in the chapter 15 of the Android Assassins, which features the clockwork man mentioned in this episode. And you should definitely check that out. It's a really fun book. It was it might have been the first book of his I'd listened to.
And it was it was great. It's a lot of fun. So yeah, as of October 12, he's 15 chapters in and I think it's like a 30 or some 30 some chapter book. So really good stuff. And you should definitely check it out. It's its own independent adventure.
And he does. Taylor reads himself. So he's the voice for rip and obviously in for flying squirrel. And his flying squirrel voice is very cute. It's a lot of fun. Anyway,
So yeah, this references that book. And I think that was really cool. It was a great little nod and you get to see that they become closer with Chief O'Malley through the adventure in that book.
And it's nice that it's referenced here. And again, I talked about this last time and I'll just be real brief about it. One of my favorite things about Red Panda Adventure is being this thing done by the single creator is that
Taylor had a really good grasp or has a really good grasp of telling an overarching story and planning out empty spaces in it or planning up the timeline so that he can play with things just so.
And I absolutely love how he wove into I don't even know when he wrote these books like was the book an actual thing or did he have an idea for it? He said, Oh, this will be it. And then as years went on, he said, Okay, fine. I'm going to write this book and put it out to the Red Panda to the Panda Patrol and see if they eat it up.
And yeah, I don't know if that was his plan or what. And I didn't get into Red Panda until it had been airing for maybe four years or so. So I don't I wasn't following closely enough to really know when he was releasing the books. And if I click on that information, I don't know what I will find.
I don't have to take a lot of time to really dig into all of this to see exactly when everything got released.
Actually, it might not be that bad.
Okay, I'll tell you. Actually, this is really simple. Oh, so it wasn't till way later. Okay, wow. The Crime Cabal was the first Red Panda Adventure novel.
Tales of the Red Panda is what he called it, which I love how he frames everything in different as Red Panda Adventures you're listening to, you can read Tales of the Red Panda, The Crime Cabal, which came out in 2009.
So this radio drama that we were talking about right now came out in 2007.
Then in 2009, again, he made The Mind Master, which is book two in Tales of the Red Panda. And in 2010, he published The Android Assassins, which is incredible.
And yeah, that's Tales of the Red Panda number three. So he referenced this all the way back in 2007. This wasn't published till November 17, 2007.
So over almost exactly three years later, it was out. I don't know how far in advance he was writing the scripts before he recorded the episodes.
But that's pretty impressive. And wow, yeah, we didn't get to find out about that till later. I wouldn't have found out about Red Panda until at least 2010. So that's incredible.
Anyway, just like a very, he's a very smart man. He's a very good writer, very good at planning things out. And it's really, really fantastic.
You should definitely check out all of his books because they're all really good. I think I've listened to Crime Cabal, Mind Master, Android Assassins, the Blackjack Justice book I also listened to, which Blackjack Justice is fantastic.
I haven't read or listened to the book Finn's Golem, but he did do a radio drama adaptation of Finn's Golem, which was pretty good. You can get Finn's Golem on Amazon actually. So that's pretty cool.
You can get it in paperback or hardcover or digital, that's what I meant. And then the other books are Pyramid of Peril, so that's the fourth Red Panda book. And yeah, that's about it.
So anyway, definitely check out those books because they're really fantastic. And what else? I don't know. I really like this episode. It was a lot of fun.
I pretty much said everything I want to say about it. And I love how it connects into the books, which is, again, an impressive feat, like I said.
And you should definitely check out the books if you're enjoying the Red Panda series so far because the books are as good or better than the radio dramas.
And they're available in audiobook format for the most part, all read by Taylor. Most of them are actually available for free, although I suggest that you do buy them.
I believe you can still get them on Audible, if not somewhere else. And yeah, just look around, you will definitely be rewarded.
So that's all I have to say. If you have any thoughts you want to share, I'd love to hear them. And that's it.
Check out Keruv, Midnight Angel, my pulp-inspired short story that I tell, very much inspired by Red Panda, The Shadow, things like that.
I hope you enjoyed that. Like, share, and subscribe. I invite you to comment, ask questions, and share your thoughts with me.
It's always more fun when you're part of the conversation. Until next time, be well and hold high the lamp of justice.
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