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Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather encounter their younger selves in honor of Gemini Man, which reunites three titans of 1990s cinema: Ang Lee, Will Smith, and Will Smith. They wonder how they could encounter their younger selves and how such an encounter might go. And Pete reveals a huge plot twist.
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Obviously, congratulations to Pete!
I have to laugh at the premise of the episode, because I was very recently wondering why the podcast had settled on talking about things you’ve actually seen. So, I’m here for this sort of thing, no matter what the nay-sayers might…nay-say, I guess.
Anyway, Edward Bellamy’s “Miss Ludington’s Sister” has an interesting angle on the Gemini Thing, which is very much a “concretize the metaphor” approach, where there’s extensive (so very extensive) talk about how our former selves are so different from us that they must be different souls and, well, dead. So, because our Oedipal hero has a huge crush on an old picture of his aged foster mother, he hires a medium to summon the dead young lady so he can marry her. Among several nested plot twists, I mean, but that’s the premise.
As for myself, I’ve been moving notes from computer to computer for around twenty years, now, so I regularly encounter my past self. And while it only took hearing the things I was saying coming out of the mouths of pretty terrible people to turn me around, but…let’s just say I don’t recommend going to any mediums to bring back the jackass I used to be. But, I guess that person got me to where I am now, so it could be worse.
Congrats! It feels silly thinking of this as a “big podcast moment”, but I guess it is that among other, much more important, things.
As to the topic, any reflection on past decisions is going to inevitably be filtered through our, ah, “locus of control”, to borrow a phrase that may or may not be pseudo-scientific.
Point being, survival forgives a lot.
I know that I think of the periods of my life during which I was primarily proactive in very different ways than the periods during which I was primarily reactive.
I don’t know whether caring for a child would be more proactive or reactive, but I do have my suspicions. Have fun!
Plot twist: As a triumphant Mark returns from the past, a wizened Mark, and battled hardened Pete Jr., from the future appear with a wikipedia article titled “The People’s Homosexual Caliphate of EuroAmerica”.