Episode #45

“…this don’t mean that we’re back together.”

with guest blake howard

And just like that, here we are, at the end. One year. 45 episodes. A whole LOT of talking.

At the end of the Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice, Doc finds himself alone in his car, no Shasta Fay to be found, driving along PCH and lost in a fog of the kind of density that only comes with lungs full of THC and a heart full of sorrow. Doc’s been here before, and he’s wondering if there’s any more to be found on what Clancy Charlock once called “the boulevards of regret.”

In that ending, Pynchon wrote, “Maybe then it would stay this way for days, maybe he'd have to just keep driving, down past Long Beach, down through Orange County, and San Diego and across a border where nobody could tell anymore in the fog who was Mexican, who was Anglo, who was anybody. Then again, he might run out of gas before that happened, and have to leave the caravan, and pull over on the shoulder, and wait. For whatever would happen. For a forgotten joint to materialize in his pocket. For the CHP to come by and choose not to hassle him. For a restless blonde in a Stingray to stop and offer him a ride. For the fog to burn off, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead.”

Whew. Don’t say the guy can’t write a great bummer of an ending.

But as for us…what will we see tonight, on the show, as the fog clears one last time?