God Awful Movies - 465: The Animated Book of Mormon, Ep 1 and 2

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

This week, Marsh begins his education into America's worst attempt at literature with an atheist review of the first two episodes of the animated Book of Mormon. --- Check out more from Marsh on Be Reasonable and Skeptics with a K If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful Check out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus. Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/?fref=ts

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or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. As we have mentioned on the show before, we write a little header of each scene, and we all put our jokes in, right? And we'll usually write the first sentence of a scene or a piece of writing, right?

If it's like 44-80. A little dialogue or something. Marsh, who got to the notes first this week, decided to introduce the scene with the heading, breathless recriminations. I need a fucking dictionary to get into my notes for this podcast. That is an excellent description of how this scene started. God awful movie. Welcome back to the GAMCast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Cinema unless we decide to do two of them. I'm your host No Illusions, Heath's off this week.

I wonder why, but sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend Eli Bosnik. Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir? More men movie month, baby. I got a tray of funeral potatoes. My penis is inside someone and I promise not to move. Let's do this. So, yeah, it's a bit of a weird mid month start. It's just like, hey, we're going to we're like going to be in Salt Lake City.

How could I just sync it up with the live show? And also joining us, of course, is perennial guest, masochist, co-host of Skeptics with a K and COVID doer, Michael Marshall Marsh. Welcome back. Oh, hey guys. Lovely to be here. I know nothing about Mormons, so my penis isn't anywhere and I have no potatoes anywhere near me. I didn't get the memo about needing potatoes, but I'll see if I can sort that out in the break. I hope your penis is somewhere. What do we say about phasing your penis out of its existence when you're on the show, Marsh? Every time.

So tell us Marsh, what will we be breaking down today? First. Oh, so we watched Nephi and the Brass Plates. It's the first episode in the animated Book of Mormon series about the time that Nephi and the Brass Plates. It's the first episode in the animated Book of Mormon series about the time that Nephi and his surprisingly diverse family fled Jerusalem so quickly that they forgot to pack something that belonged to somebody else. Yes, yes. And Eli, how bad was this movie?

Well, if you love Disney classics like The Prince of Egypt, but your holy book is as well written in comparison to the Bible and you would like the two animated films to match in quality, you will love this movie. It's Richard Rich throwing one to the church folks at home, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, yeah, so, no, to be clear, this is a 24 minute video. So we're going to be doing two episodes on this week's show and we're going to actually get like a separate little intro for the next one later. So speaking simply of the Nephi and the Brass Plates one,

is there anything you guys want to nominate that for being the best at being the worst at? Yeah. Yeah. I want to go best worst disguise. Yeah. There is a moment in this children's film where someone needs to pretend to be someone else. So the method he does that is to kill that person. And then the next time that we see them, it definitely looks like he's wearing the guy's face. Sure does.

It turns out he's not wearing the guy's face, but it could not look more like he was wearing the guy's face if they'd done that on purpose. It took me so long to realize that it wasn't that. Yeah, and let's be clear that the reason that it looks like that is because the animation is fucking terrible in this. It's so bad. If we were doing a best worst for both episodes, it's best worst. We don't need that many frames.

This thing is, it's like they got a buy one, get one free deal on frame. Oh, and everybody's face when they turn just changes shape. Like they're thinking about anamorphing, but change their fucking mind. Nobody looks through. A guy looking left, a guy looking right. You can't tell it's the same dude except for the clothes. It's so fucking bad. There's a moment where this camel's walking and the frame rate is so low that it's difficult to tell which direction they're moving in because it's sort of flickering back and forth.

Right. It looks like one of those things where there's like, if you see them going forward, you're right brained. If you see them going backwards, you're left brained. Yeah. It's one of those things. Yeah. All right. So I was going to go with best worst plan. Now this is straight out of the Book of Mormon, but Nefi at at one point like his brother fails at something He's like I got a plan and it's the worst possible Imaginable plan we'll get there

Yeah And I'm gonna go with best-worst lesson learned now those of you who listen to scathing atheist and followed along with us on Mormon peace theater back when we were reading the Book of Mormon were as atheist and followed along with us on Mormon peace theater back when we were reading the Book of Mormon were as surprised as I was at the I'm going to say in defacto ability of Nephi's brothers to keep beating him up after an angel tells them that he is the chosen one of God. That is reflected in the animated film as well. Yep. Yep. Sure is. All right. Well, there's a lot of to pass coming on the other side of this break. So we're going to keep it brief. And when we come back, we'll dive into all

the detention flip book animation that is Nephi and the brass plates. Guys, guys, amazing news. What is it? Yeah. You're more excited than that time you accidentally took a sip of caffeinated cola. Oh wow, first of all Steve, that was the worst day of my life and I'd appreciate you not bringing it up. But secondly, we got approved to make the animated Book of Mormon, guys! We're gonna make our very own Disney movie! Wow, Disney's making it!

What? No, but a guy who worked for Disney is making it. What? No, but a guy who worked for Disney is making it. So that's pretty much the same thing. Obviously. That's identical. So I guess the only real question is, you know, which story should we tell? Right, yeah, because we want something kid-friendly. So not too violent.

Right, and you know, there are parts of Mormon history that are... Well, they're true. They not too violent. Right. And you know there are parts of Mormon history that are, well they're true, they're just confusing. Yeah. So we should probably not go to those right away. And of course it is the 80s so we should probably stay away from anything about black people who we acknowledge have souls about 10 years ago. Sure, sure. Modern times. Yeah, so what we're gonna need from the Book of Mormon is a story that isn't racist, sexist, or ahistorical. Exactly! Yeah, we'll just do... We'll do one of those. You guys just want to go in chronological order instead. Yeah, that's probably best.

Sorry, did you say 10 years ago we said that? 10 years ago. Yes, 10. It's not been that long. It's not great. And we're back for the breakdown and we're going to open up on Jerusalem circa 600 BCE. Hell yeah. The narrator goes, my name is Nephi.

I wrote my notes, he read at gunpoint, Jesus Christ. Yeah, they might've gotten Richard Rich for the animation, but they did not get the voice talent. Ah. I think even the animation, that's phoning it in, because throughout this, it's the first time I noticed that the animator really does struggle with where fingernails go.

Yep. At some point, it's like an inch away from the end of the finger. As he adds somewhere in the finger reaches. Yeah, second knuckler. So yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So we open on Lehi and he sure is worried about Jerusalem's future.

He's like, God, what are you going to do to Jerusalem? He like a fire tornado hallucination appears to him and burns Jerusalem. He's like, I'm burning my fucking downs when I'm getting into it. Yeah, just silently. Which is a bit of a weird thing to just silently do the threat. This fire whirlwind god is either only communicating in mime, or it's the equivalent of just cocking the, like doing the gun thing with your hand and pointing at someone. Right, yes.

Or the thumb across the throat thing. So, okay. So, yeah. So, Lehi goes in to warn all the wicked Jerusalemites, and they don't want to hear any of his repent bullshit. Right? And to be fair to him, he has a master crowd of 14 people and a horse, which is not that bad.

I've given talks to smaller audiences than that. I with the full team without the holes but the full team yeah if you had a horse in there it would have been it for a weird skeptics in the pub yeah and I was gonna say with a horse there then you have an audience that's been on the same amount of ivermectin as some of your audiences works out for everybody I do like I don't know why they kept this in the first heckle after he's like talking is, throw him off! Which I thought was pretty fucking funny. Who were they heckling that to? He stood by himself on a large podium. Who were they heckling that to?

You throw him off, man. Come on. So he's going to fucking do it. I really wanted the horse to heckle next as well. I really wanted the horse to be like, yeah! Take his apples! So and also this is where we first start the tradition in this film of lazy animators drawing tiny crowds. Oh yeah. Because it's supposed to be a bunch of people but like Marsh is being very generous at 14 and then when they actually start heckling we just zoom in on two or three of them once they have

to actually do shit right.? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, when you were a kid and you would draw yourself in front of like a big audience or in a stadium full of admiring fans, maybe that's just me. Yeah, you would start drawing the faces in to your big stadium and or theater. And then by the end, you would just draw a bunch of circles and be like, oh, there's people. Oh, wait until we get the city in the second one. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah.

So, okay. So that night, Lehigh gets a dream message from God as well. Put a pin in that. We're going to have a whole fucking video about that in a minute. Right. I really wanted the dream message to also be from like a silent fire tornado and he's having like interpret what it's doing now. I don't get it.

Four words. First two words, three syllables. Yeah, tapping it through. So, yeah. But so we always see as him waking up and going, wow, that was an awesome looking dream vision. Thanks, Scott. They don't even show us the dream. I was so angry that they didn't show us the dream. Later, now that I know, we will see the dream and I'm angry that they did show us the dream. So, yeah. They're in the sweets by the moment. Yes, no pleasing a motherfucker when your source material is the Book of Mormon. Right.

Yeah. So, but Lehi wakes, goes and wakes Nephi up. Now, Nephi is dressed in a headband and wrist cuffs and like a Tarzan onesie. He's dressed like an extra in the He-Man cartoon. Yeah, he's dressed like Kevin Sorbos Hercules the entire time. In his sleep. In his sleep, yeah. He wakes up with his wrist cuffs and his headband on. Which would be less weird if everyone else in the movie wasn't dressed entirely differently.

Right. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, but Dad tells Nephi, hey, we all have to leave town tonight or the townspeople will kill me. I just heard from God's Firenado. Right? So, then we cut to Nephi's evil brothers desperately loading the camel and complaining about how they have to do all this work.

And I wasn't totally clear who was part of the family here, because these are a very diverse looking bunch of people. There's not a lot of commonality amongst them. They don't look like either the father or the mother. So all I can assume is that like essentially Lehigh sold his odds pretty broadly back in the day. And this is kind of the after that, but we don't know that yet. So I've just got Guy being a whine little shit I didn't know was his brother.

Yeah. So, but that's what you have to understand Marsh. Who is that? What does he have to understand? Noah? Is that those two brothers are the source of all of the darker skinned races in the world. And Nehi is, Nefi rather, and his other brother are the source of the light skinned races. Does the animator understand that?

Because in the crowd we saw before, there were several people of much darker skin than those guys. You're right. So okay, so then we cut to the mom and the little sister. Enjoy the little sister for this scene. We will never see, no sorry, she's in the next scene and then she disappears from the universe. Yes, because this is where they're like leaving in the middle of the night,

like the von Trapp family, because I really wanted them to like push the camel to the edge of the town. But they get stopped by the bodies when they try to stop the camel's engine. Right, right. Yeah. So but as they're leaving, Mom looks at her ostentatious jewel encrusted golden cup and thinks, that's the simple things I'll miss once we're gone. She gives a goodbye hug to her jeweled cup and I wrote in my notes, oh, she really is

Jewish. Also, this is where I noticed for the first time that the closed captioning on this video has a scripture option. Fuck yeah, it does. Yeah, if you click on scripture, it'll tell you in the closed captions where in the Book of Mormon we are minute to minute in the video so you can follow along. Oh, and I just realized, because I saw that option, I turned that option on, I thought, well, this is fucking stupid.

And I turned it back on to like regular subtitles. But I also noticed there was a Spanish scripture option and I didn't think to click it. But like knowing that it's just where you are in the book, how is the Spanish going to be different? Because it's just the name, which is like Nephi. So they're not going to translate the text. Exactly. They live in Huelva.

They use the same numerals as us. Just me doing the senior pet's voice. Occasionally some of them got like an upside down exclamation mark to begin with. Yeah. Alright. So okay. So then we set out on our camel train.

Yeah. And they're an eight camel family. You know, someone's doing well for themselves though. Yeah. They're a jewel-encrusted cup kind of family. Yeah. And they gave these camels, I'm going to say, a quarter of the frames they know my god quote unquote Animated it it looks like a child without manual dexterity playing with a flipbook

It reminds me animation wise of like video games in the 80s right where they're like, okay, you got three fucking frames What are you gonna do with them? Yes Yeah, so yeah, so they're they're walking along on their camels. The bad brothers, Layman and Lemuel, sure do hate dad and his stupid holy visions. Oh, sorry. We also get the daughter complaining though. Are we there yet? Daughter moment too.

Yeah. Told you she'd be back. I wasn't sure because I've not read the book at the moment. I was thinking, are they going to like camel all the way to Utah? Is that what they're planning to do? It's not. But for a moment I thought it was. No Marsh.

They take submarines. No, they don't take. Other people took submarines earlier. They're going to build a boat by looking at what other boats look like really really hard It is stupider than what I thought Motherfucker was tight like a dish like I'm too like unto a dish. Yeah, I don't want to piss off the Latter-day Lesbians again So alright Nefai's little brother is a total ass kiss We learned that on this trip Nefaifi's little brother is a total ass-kiss. We learned that on this trip. Nefi

and his little brother, they trust dad in his visions, but Lemuel and Lehmann don't. And after we establish this, we get this just insanely long, nauseous pan of the desert. Twenty seconds. I rewound and check. They end the scene with a 20 second pan over a still of the day. It's not even animated desert. There's nothing moving. It's still. This is a 24 minute movie.

So that pan is like more than 1% of the runtime. It's amazing how much they had to pad time in their animation to get to 24 minutes. So okay. So then we cut to some morning or another on the trip. They've set up their tent, right? Right. And so, I had a good look at this tent set up. For one thing, they stake the tent into a solid rock down the right hand side. There's a rocky outcrop. That's tricky.

And they put wooden stakes in. That must have taken them so fucking long. Yeah. Outside of the tent is a small fire pit made out of stone blocks that they must have brought with them on the camels, I guess. Yep. There's one dedicated camel for the fire pit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's only three camels visible. So I don't know if they killed and ate five of the camels at this point. And make it.

And one of the camels is very clearly eating the tent. Which I can only assume is like a protest at the fact that they've been saddled overnight while tied up. It's just, I'm going to eat this fucking tent. I've got nothing else I can eat. Yeah. So fucking dumb. Yeah, but this is where Lehi remembers that they actually should have grabbed the brass

plates before they left Jerusalem. They need those because otherwise when they get to the promised land, they won't have a Bible. I guess the brass plates have the Bible inscribed on them. Right. They didn't think to transfer that onto a parchment so it'd be like a bit easier to move around and stuff? Sure didn't. Although they don't have to worry about moving stuff around because the tent they're in, and this was blowing my fucking mind, this tent is so fucking lavish. They left on eight camels. This tent has two or three different rugs on the floor and hung

on the walls. They've got cushions. They've got an entire treasure chest in the tent. This is like when Nicola packs for a trip. You didn't see our room at the pajama party, but there was a treasure chest. I saw a Nicholas chest. Yeah, there was a treasure chest. I thought the rugs on the walls were weird, but now I get it. Now I do get it. Yeah. And I love this because, so whenever I read the rugs on the walls were weird, but now I get it. Now I do get it. Yeah. Yeah. And I love this because so whenever I read the Book of Mormon, right, it's always, who is Joseph Smith griping with that he is secretly encoding it into the Book of Mormon? And this scene is a great example of that because the brothers, of course, don't want to go back

because it's dangerous and Nephi will and Nephi sort of turns to camera and does a like, whatever God wants us to do, we will never be harmed doing. Also, stop arguing with Joseph and stop letting your fucking wife look at the pages, Martin. Also, like, just because the listeners need to get a sense of how bad the dialogue is in this, I actually transcribed that bit that you just did Eli, word for word from the film and it goes, I'll go and do the thing which the Lord has commanded for I know the Lord gives no commandments to the children of men without preparing a way for us to do what he commands. Oh my God!

Think of the synonym, Jesus Christ, give me one synonym. God is asking me to look in a thesaurus. Yeah. So, but, and then, and they're like the brass plates, it'll be impossible to get the house. Laban has them and they're like, layman and they're like, no, Laban, that's a different character and they're like, Lehi is like, no, Laban. He's like, Limhi is like, that's a different guy. Leah Honi is like, no, those are things. Anything. Yeah. Yeah, right. So, but no, but they have to go back and get the brass plates

from Laban. And of course, Laman and Lemuel hate their dad and think that's a stupid idea. Yeah. Oh God. And this is where we see, they're starting the journey back and the camels look so annoyed that they have to go back. It looks like they're sort of five minutes into the car journey and then someone realizes they've left their sunglasses at home and it's like, no, it's fine. It's only five minutes. We can turn back around. It's not a problem. We can go back and get them. It's that for brass plates and camels.

It's different for blue eyed people, Marcia. It's different. And I loved that they kept the black stone thing from the Book of Mormon because it's just such a useless thing for the plot of the book and they kept it in the animated movie. Yeah. Well, right. So they got to get 24 minutes somehow. So they're all drawing lots to see who's going to go and get the brass plates from Laban.

But right before they draw lots, they'll have this conversation where Laban and Lemuel are like, well, I'm not fucking going. And Nephi is like, well, I'd be happy to go because obviously God will make it easy for us to do since he asked us to. I'm like, then why the fuck are you drawing lots? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, but they draw lots. Laban gets the black stone. And of course, as we know in the Book of Mormon, black is bad. So he has to do it. Foreshadowing.

Yeah. Right. Literally shadowing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And Nephi is like, hey, you know, I'll go. If you don't want to go, I'll go. And he's like, I'll be damned if you're going to let them let you go and get all the glory and everything. I'll go and do it. Oh, God, it's so ridiculous.

Wynie Layman is annoyed both at having to go and at the prospect of not being able to go. It's just everything is pissing him off. Yeah. Just standing at the door, you're opening a screen door for him. Do you want to go in or out? In or out? Interrupting Marsh's record. Yeah, right. Yeah, listen to the patron extra

So we cut the layman trying to sweet talk laban out of the plates, right? He's like, hey, why don't you give me the brass plays? We cut the laban and he's just this, you know, the the the 80s cartoon debaucherous guy, except instead of a like a giant turkey leg, he's eating an apple the whole time. An apple? Yeah. I mean, it's an apple the size of his head, but still. Because they've done it as like this like ostentatious over the top kind of like wealth.

He's so rich, he's got literally strings of gems just draped off every surface. Like the lights have got gems draped off them. That's quite confusing because he's also got like a bowl of fruit in front of him and it makes it look like the grapes are all sore gems. It's that confusing. He's got a treasure chest in the room just open with everything pouring out, but to make him look extra greedy, he's eating an apple. Which is not what you dissociate with greed. All loud and gross. Yeah. Yeah.

I want to talk about the failure to animate this apple. Right? Because it starts strong. It really looks like an apple and then he takes a bite and it turns into ball with a white circle in it for the rest of the scene. Well, as I'm looking at it, I'm like, well, you know, wouldn't that normally be something like a big turkey leg or something like that? And I guarantee that the animator was like, I don't know how to draw a turkey leg. I can't. It seems really complicated. There's a bone and meat and I just.

I was surprised that no one in the scene kept putting it. I'm sorry. Is your apple phasing in and out of existence? It seems like it might be. Also the fucking facial expressions that everybody's doing here, it felt like this animator wanted to make sure that he had a short reel that had all the facial expressions in it. Right.

So fucking weird. But ultimately, though, Laban says, no, I'm not giving you the brass plate. There's a great moment where Layman's like, so let me borrow the plates of brass. He's like, why'd you say borrow all weird like that? Why would you just say it normally? You said it weird. Yeah. But he says no.

He's like, you can't go. So, Layman goes back and he tells everybody about his failure. Yes. They have another sad meeting at the rocks. And the animation is so bad that rather than sitting on a rock, it just looks like one of them is squatting in front of the rock like he's about to do his shit in front of the rock. Right. Yeah. But Lemuel's like, well, if Lay's about to do his shit in front of the rock. Yeah.

But Lemuel's like, well, if a layman can't do it, nobody can. We should give up. And Nephi's like, I'll do it. So then we cut to them at their house. They're gathering up all of the riches that they left behind when they moved in the middle of the night. They've got so much gold. There's so much stuff in this house.

How rich were these fuckers the entire time? And to begin with, I didn't recognize that it was their house. I wasn't paying full attention when they were in their house earlier. It looked like they just... Oh, so you just had them robbing some motherfuckers. They just looted some words. Well, we can't get the brass plates, but let's just loot these fuckers on the way out. Yeah. So yeah, but at one point Lemuel picks up that jewel encrusted cup from earlier, mom's favorite jewel encrusted cup, and he's like, oh, I'm not giving them this. And he's like, no, you give them

everything. Because apparently they're gathering up all the gold so that they can buy the brass plates from Laban. Right? So, and this is where we're getting into my best worst. This is Nephi's plan. So they gather everything up in four giant bags of gold. They go to take it to Laban and Laban's like, no, this isn't enough. Well also like, to be fair, he's not exactly lacking in the stuff made from gold department. Everything in this room is made of gold. His wooden table is somehow made of gold. That's how much gold this guy has.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And he's like, well, also, like, I was... You guys left town because I was going to kill you and now you've just brought me all of your riches. Like, I'm just going to keep them. And they're like, but this was a bad plan. So, he's like, he calls for the guards. They all grab their gold and run and he yells, guards, guards. Right? Like you do. And then we don't see any guards and my theory was like no it's just leipn's crazy he has no guards he's just everybody somehow like he yells that sometimes my theory was that the animators were like look we're

not going to do a whole bunch of fucking guards okay take forever you get two guards you're allowed two guards in this film and they're all they're also like they're all carrying a bag of gold the size of themselves. Yes. As they run away. Well, you know, it's an important part of this cartoon to establish that someone very much could run with a bag full of gold. Yes, right. Gold weighs nothing in the Mormon verse. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, then we get this chase scene and I love this fucking... So they split up, right? Like, Nephi's like, I'll take the cowardly brother with me.

You two go to the city gate and make sure they keep it open until we get there. Oh, and I love the splitting up. I love splitting up because they're like, we'd better split up. But first let's stand here in the middle of the town square while we bottom out the admin on who goes with who to work. Right. stand here in the middle of the town square while we bottom out the admin on who goes with who to work. Right. So, yeah, so they get they will they can't have these characters running and talking

at the same time. The animators only do so much here. So they go to run. We follow Nephi and Lemuel. Nephi drops his gold, right? His bag of gold. And he's like, Lemuel, drop your gold. You'll never get away while carrying so much heavy stuff.

And I'm like, he's he's after your gold. Laban is. Yeah. If you just left the gold, he wouldn't chase you. No, he would not. Yeah, absolutely. So this is so fucking dumb. But Lemuel would be damned. He's not going to drop his gold. He doesn't want to be poor. Right.

But as they're running away, one of the guards throws a knife and it kind of tears open Lemuel's bag and he starts dribbling out gold like a trail of breadcrumbs. Yes, and Lemuel goes, I think I'm getting stronger. I wrote my notes. Why would that be your guess? It's a very small moment, but the first time we see the guards, the first thing we see is their shadow appearing. But the shadow is way too long and thin. And

I really wanted them, like when they finally get there, to be like a massively tall, really thin guard. Slender Man is one of the Jerusalem guards. All of the guards stood on top of each other's shoulders in one guard's uniform like they're trying to get into a cinema. So then we cut to the other brothers, Layman and Sam, and they've made it to the world's squeakiest city gate, right? With a wooden wheel.

Do wooden wheels squeak particularly? That's more metal on metal kind of noise. Now I want to point out this is not in the Book of Mormons. So I don't know what they thought this... Did they think this was comedy because the guard at with the wooden wheel is operating the gate kind of like a Zelda game right where you're stepping on a switch and the thing happens stepping off the switch and it stops the big line which and they're happy to go and so they're basically

feeding gold into him like some kind of weird meter yes right like a like a vending machine he They hand him this gold dish and they're like, hey, keep the gate open. He's like, this has bought you one minute. One minute. And so now every minute they have to give him another gold item out

of their bag to keep the gate open. Yeah, it's one large golden plate per minute, which I think is still cheaper than New York parking rates, but still. 100%. Yeah, but they don't just give him the whole bag.

They keep going like, oh shit, he's lowering the gate again. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Here's one more thing. Yeah, right. And we get to them like out of gold, which means they've handed over everything they own. A bag full.

For one minute at the time. That means this chase has been going on for like 35, 40 minutes for the other two brothers to get to where the first two brothers already are. How long is this chase? Yeah. We see Nephi and Lemuel climbing over a wall at one point. Climbing over a building. That cannot possibly be the optimal escape route through a city to scale a building.

Yeah, right. This isn't fucking Assassin's Creed, y'all. But then they slip out of the gate. There's a great moment where Nephi's running at and he turns back and he goes, Lemuel, hurry. And I'm like, he's hurrying, dude. He's just not as fast as you. Stop being an asshole. Yeah, he is hurrying. There is a moment, father, where they run out of all their gold and then the gate guy's like, you've got no gold now. And there is a moment where the brother realizes

he's out of gold and he looks like he's trying to work out how he could pay for one more minute. And I thought he's seen the Fyre Festival documentary as me. That's what he's seen. Alright, well I'll tell you what. This is a random spot to take a break, but we're trying to fit two videos into our three segment format, damn it. So we're going to take a break. And when we come back, there'll be even more bullshit about...

Nefy and the Brass Plates. I've had it with your lies, Nephi! Take that! UGH! Laman, do not strike your brother, for God has chosen him to lead your people. An angel? Yes. Release your brother and heed my words.

Wow. I'm sorry, Nephi. No problem, layman. Now, let's make it to the city and fetch Father's plates. Are you trying to kill us, you fool? Take that! Ugh! Ah!

Ugh! Dude, what the fuck are you doing? Sorry, sorry. I just... I got carried away again. Okay. To be very clear, you've seen an angel. Right? Just come down to Earth and tell you not to kill your brother. You got it? Got it. Got it. No killing my brother.

Yah! Ugh! Wait, wait, wait! Sorry! He was... That was too for flinching. Just cut it out. OK, or I'm turning you black. Sorry, you'll you'll do what? Not now.

You fine. OK. And we're back for more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action with Nephi and his brothers, regrouping in a pile of rocks. Well, layman rightly points out what an incredibly shitty best worst fucking plan Nephi actually had. Hey, hey, hey. And if I can part the curtain slightly before we get into this scene, no illusions.

I love our friend Michael Marshall and I am honored that he joins us as often as he has, but he does a terrible job of getting us into our notes. So as we have mentioned on the show before, we write a little header of each scene, and then we all put our jokes in, right? And we'll usually write the first sentence of a scene or a piece of writing, right? If it's like 44, a little dialogue or something. Marsh, who got to the notes first this this week decided to introduce this scene with the heading Breathless recriminations. I need a fucking dictionary

That is an excellent description of what how this scene stuff because they're like they're really panting out of breath and they're pissy Oh my god. No, wait until he's just trying open scenes with, and it came to pass. I'm like, I have no fucking idea where you are. You could be anywhere in this video. This is Mormonism, dude. I mean, you did pass over a previous one, which I labeled establishing shot of somewhere we haven't seen before, question mark, disestablishing shot. Yeah. Right.

So, okay. But yeah. But so let's consider how bad Nephi's plan really was, right? Because they started out without the brass plates. Now they have no brass plates. They've lost three quarters of their wealth, right? The only one who got their money out was was Laban and the city guards are out there trying to kill them. Yeah, Nephi's totally fucked this. He absolutely deserves everything he gets here. Yeah.

Right. And the funny thing is, like I don't I don't know I find myself psychoanalyzing Joseph Smith a lot whenever we read or talk about womanism and there's something very Joseph Smith Ian about Nefi being the oppressed protagonist who can't stop fucking up and pissing off all the law enforcement around him. And getting beat up all the time, right? Because like, Nephi gets beat up more than John Wick, right? In the scene over the course of this fucking book. Yeah, right. So, but he's like, he's got this terrible fucking plan.

And Layman is like, you fucking idiot. Now we've lost all our money. You threw a fourth of it away. He dribbled a fourth of it out behind him like fucking gunpowder in Yosemite's Sam's pants or some shit. And this asshole bought us 13 minutes of open gate with a quarter of our family's wealth.

Nobody got anything out but me. He starts hitting Nephi and I'm like, yeah, right? Like I'm team layman. When he picks up the stick and starts trying to beat him to death, I'm like, oh yeah, that's a little much. But Nephi probably does deserve to get the shit kicked out of him a little. I mean, they really do beat the shit out of him with that. Also, it just occurred to me, why didn't they wait with the gate guy and just pay him when they needed the gate to

be opened again? It just occurred to me. It seems like a great idea. Stand with him and then hand him a golden plate. We really only need one minute. It depends on which minute. Yeah. I bet one during this meeting is like, fuck, that's what we should have done. Oh my God. That's why they're so breathless. You're a criminatory. So yeah, so they're beating this shit out of Nephi and all of a sudden this angel appears out of nowhere And he goes you gotta stop beating him up actually he's in charge now, and he's just doing his best here, okay? Yes The angel is being played by Kenny Rogers as well

Back to the praise because I do like to compliment sandwich Marsh you fucking nailed it this angel looks Exactly like Kenny Rogers. 100%. And even sounds like him. The guy doing the voice clearly is going for Kenny Rogers. Yeah. So the angel's like, stop beating him up. And then he waves his hand and he makes all of his bruises, quote unquote, go away. Yeah. They rub out all the cross hatching on his arms. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And then the angel disappears. He's like's like alright, Nephi's in charge now. Bye and then and Lemuel is like, I don't know about that pale glowing I stopped hitting you with a stick because we had company, but I'm not just gonna let you be in charge Yeah, layman's like I don't know about all I'll play along for now, but the angel tells him go back to Jerusalem. God will I don't remember the exact phrasing, but God will like deliver laban to you or whatever. Yes.

Yeah. So they get back to the Jerusalem gate. Layman and Lemuel are like, we're not going in. Fuck it. This technically counts. We are over the city line. We did what the angels wanted. The Heathen rite school of following God's commandments.

Right, right. Let's wait for God to deliver him like the angels said. Think you'll find I am in the township of Jerusalem right now? So, yeah, so Laman's like, I've gone far enough. Nephi's like, I'll go. Sam's like, I'm an Asciss. I'll go with you. He's like, no, I want to do this alone. Yeah, because he said like, oh, you know, I've gone far enough. Nephi's like, I'll go. Sam's like, I'm an ass kiss. I'll go with you. He's like, no, I want to do this alone.

Yeah, because he said like, oh, you know, the Lord will protect me. And I really want to like walk into Jerusalem and then immediately get killed. Like one step into Jerusalem, bang, instant death. Yeah. So, right. But so then we cut to Levin. Levin is very drunk. He's drunkenly walking out of a bar now.

He's drinking out of that cup. He stole the cup, I guess, that the mom liked so much. He's full on Marsh on the last night of QED right now. He's drinking his favorite magenta colored wine. It's definitely magenta colored. At one point it's like dribbling from his mouth like he just went down on Grimmers. That's how magenta this stuff is. So yeah, so he's he's wandering around expositing, you know, he's like, I'm drunk and I am sure helpless right now. I won the movie.

He appears to have made up a thievery based drinking song about the evening's events, which can I say impressive. Yeah, right. Right. You still got it. So yeah, but so he passes out in the street. And then we cut to Nephi, sneaking in past the sleeping gate guard. He comes across Laban, you know, drunk and passed out in a ditch somewhere.

And the Kenny Rogers angel appears and says, Just murder him. Yeah! Murder him. Just grab his sword and chop his fucking head off. It is the cartoon Angel on the shoulder moment except there is no devil because the angels like fucking kill that guy And I wrote like oh is this gonna be like a lesson that angel Kenny Rogers is teaching Yeah, you know, it's like he didn't expect him to kill him

It's like is the lesson gonna be you're gonna know when to slay him know when to save him You got to know when to slay him, know when to save him? You got to know when to leave him. Know when to leave him. Oh, phenomenal. I'm so sad Anna's on vacation. We could have had that at the commercial break. You guys got to tell me this shit ahead of time. But again, you want to psychoanalyze Joseph Smith.

How about this shit, right? Because he comes across the guy passed out and the angels like grab his sword and kill him. And, and Nephi's like, are you sure that because that's like so cowardly and, and grossly inappropriate for the crime of refusing to sell us his shit. Yes, you don't get because the angel makes out like he's like Nephi is in the right here, but no, you don't get to kill a guy because he won't give you the thing that you want that belongs to him. That's not allowed. Right. Well, and he's like, Nephi's like, are you sure? And the angels like, but no, you don't get to kill a guy because he won't give you the thing that you want that belongs to him. That's not allowed. Right. Well, and he's like, and Deepa's like, are you sure? And the angel's like, it's going

to be way easier to steal his shit if he's dead, man. Duh. He has got a point there. He has got a point. No, that is true. But they're trying to make out that, like, this is the trolley problems. Oh, it's better to kill one man so that, like, loads of others may live. But the trolley problem is somewhat undermined by us seeing Laban passing out in these weird, embarrassing, poor ways. Completely helpless. That undermines the whole thing a bit. Yeah. He's not the trolley. He's the guy laying on the fucking track here. Yeah.

Well, and then also, let me give you the exact fucking line, right? Because again, it's straight from the Book of Mormon. He says, quote, it's better for one man to perish than to let a whole nation dwindle and perish because of unbelief. And I'm like, how bad is it that the thing that bothers me most is the double use of the word perish there. Right? I'm just happy there wasn't a treble use. That's the normal style of this book.

Yeah, yeah. And no, and it came to pass. Rule of th Yeah, yeah. And it came to pass. Rule of threes, yeah. So yeah, so, but Nephi kills the unconscious man in cold blood in the children's cartoon. Yeah, for children. And that's that. He might as well turn to camera all covered in blood and be like, eh, ain't I a stinker? Right, right.

So, and then we cut to a dude that we've never met. This is Zoram, the treasurer, I guess, Laban's treasurer. The slave he steals. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He's got like a giant golden box and he's just talking to himself, this guy we don't know about how heavy this golden box is and how much he likes it. That's all the context we're given here.

I thought these were the brass plates. They're not the brass plates. They look identical to the brass plates, but like this leaves us nothing to work with here. I thought these were the brass plates. They're not the brass plates. They look identical to the brass plates, but like this is, this leaves us nothing to work with here. Yeah. Can I say something from my heart? Zoram is the only character in this movie who is wearing a yarmulke. We're in Jerusalem, so presumably a lot of people would be wearing a yarmulke. Do you think?

But the only character they've chosen to wear yarmulke is the one whose job it is, is to count the gold Yeah, wow feels a little on the literal nose Yeah, he is quite like wisecracking as well He's got like a wisecracking kind of Hollywood Jew kind of thing going on as well my Hollywood Jewish character Yep, it was silence me like I've just said to me I'm actually canceling you on Twitter as we speak right now. I can't imagine a wisecracking Jew.

I don't even know what that would look like. What? What? Nothing wise about my cracking. You know this most of all. But then, so there's a knock on this guy's door. Zoram goes check it out. And it's Nephi, but he's dressed in Laban's clothes.

And I wrote in my notes, and wearing the juggernaut's mask. A perfect metaphor, no? That is exactly what he is wearing. Which at least it's that and not fucking Laban's face, which is why I thought initially he's cut off his face but couldn't get the mouth right and just left the mouth off. Have you tried taping another man's lips to your lips? Because it is how I've tried it and it is difficult. No it is tricky because

they don't move right. So if it's not Laban's face this guy is in brown face or at least three quarters of him is in brown face and a quarter is still just him. Right he's just in a cowl of brown face it's so fucking weird and the guys like oh it's it's it must be laban because is wearing laban's cloak It's a bugs bunny level fucking disguise of stupidity or whatever He comes in and he's like and he starts doing his laban voice, right? He's like I do man the brass He sounds like a little kid trying to sound like an adult on the phone, right? Yeah, I demand the brass plates

But that's not how laban talks. No, it isn't. He didn't have a particularly deep voice, but this guy's doing fucking Christian Bale's Batman or something. And this is where we discover that the juggernaut mask that he's wearing was supposed to just be shadow from the cloak over his face. But these animators are so fucking bad that it looks like a juggernaut mask. Well, you know what had to happen, right? They must have tried to brown out his face in shadow, and they were like, oh guys, we're actually kind of going to need that look for a couple of people later. But the thing is, I've put the picture in the notes here, the brown of the shadow is

lighter than the brown of the cloak. So that somehow the shadow is lighter than the thing that's obscuring it. Yes. Other than as crazy. It's very confusing, yeah. So, yeah, so, but we get that, he's like, I wore the brass plates and Zoram's like, well, you're wearing the correct cloak, so you must be entitled to all these treasures. Let me grab those for you.

It feels like a lazy RPG. You know one of those RPGs where you just have to be holding the one object to walk through the right door? It feels like that, the religious text. And then he gets the breastplate and he's like, Zoram, come with me. And we have no fucking idea why. We will never have any fucking idea why. But they leave the city together.

They do. And also just a very small thing on the brass plates. Did we all notice that the brass plates were ring bound? Oh, yeah. So they took it. They had like a little ring binder for them. So Marsh, this is the deep lore so I can understand why you wouldn't understand it. Part of the purpose of this cartoon is to model what will eventually be the golden plates of Nephi the thing that

Joseph Smith absolutely had in his hat But wasn't allowed to show anybody except for those five guys except for one of them who later said that he didn't get to see it You know the golden plates. So what they're trying to do with this brass plate scene is like Acclimate us to the idea that plates might look like that. Yes. Yeah like, acclimate us to the idea that plates might look like that? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so they leave the city and the brothers see him coming and he's like, oh, look at the cloak that can only be Laban run.

Right? And he's like, no, guys, I'm not. It's not Laban. I'm Nephi. And then Zoram, who's going with him, he's like, oh, fuck. Are you wearing his face like a juggernaut cowl? Right? And so Zoram tries to run up. Oh, fuck. Are you wearing his face like a juggernaut cowl? Right. And so Zoram tries to run up.

Nephi tackles the shit out of him. It's so funny. It's real good. And all the brothers gather around and they're like, murder him. Why don't you kill him? Why don't you just kill him? That'd be the easiest thing to do would be to murder him. And Nephi says, Hey, why don't you come with us, Zoram, and be our servant instead of Laban's? And he's like, that's a great idea. I'll do that of my own

free will. Yeah. Instead of being a servant, how about you come with us? All you need to do is pledge your loyalty to us. That kind of sounds like still a servant. So funny. Yeah. Because again, this happens in the book of Nephi, right? And the choice is either die or continue being not a slave, but you'll hang out with us. Work for us for free. Yeah, right. Good thing he didn't have any like family or friends in town that he didn't want to immediately leave for all time, huh? Yeah, because like in Jerusalem, he's not a slave anymore.

You've killed his owner, his master. I presume if he's Lab not a slave anymore. You've killed his master. If he's laban slave, laban's dead. So this guy could just go and be free, I guess. He's got access to all the gold. You would think. So, okay. But then we cut back to mom and dad at camp. They see the sons returning. There's much rejoicing. The narrator cuts in to say, and then dad taught us all the stuff that was in the brass plates, which is why we'll know that later. And also, I wrote this story down. Yes. And this is where he writes down the thing into the gold plates, which one feels

like you're kind of one-upping God by making your plates gold and his plates brass. Oh, interesting. But also it's just super funny because I had forgotten about the weird double plates confusion that's in the book of Nephi and it makes it even dumber to watch it in cartoon form where it's like, oh, okay, we're learning out of the brass plates. I guess I'll write my story, which includes those plates into the gold plates. That is so fucking dumb. And he's just writing on the gold with like an old, like he's using it like a pen. You can't, like I've never tried carving on gold, but I imagine it's not as simple as

I just pick up a pen like implement and just start like doing calligraphy. Yeah. Guys, I just had a huge realization. Nephi is the story of a guy who inscribed a book of brass plates into a book of gold plates. Is the book of Nephi the first house of leaves? No. So then we get our credits, right?

And there's a song about how fun it is to be a narc. Tell God what he wants to hear. Do exactly as you're told, even if an angel tells you to kill a guy. Listen to Kenny Rogers when he tells you to kill a sleeping man. To be fair, I love that song. Yeah, it's a good one. All right. So that's going to do it for Nephi and the Brass Plays, but that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to watch an entire other video. So tell us Marsh, what else will we be breaking down today? So we also watched the animated Book of Mormon colon The Tree of Life, which is episode,

I want to say 11 some asterisk, it's hard to tell, of the series. If this is episode 11, I don't know what happened in the intervening nine, but the plot has become that time Dad had a dream about a magic handrail, and that's what we're going to watch. Right. Which, if I recall correctly, he dreams during that last video. Right. That makes sense. They're swooshing their doodly-doos hard here that last video. Mm-hmm. Right. That makes sense.

They're swooshing their doodly-doos hard here in the animated book of Mormon. Let me tell you. Right away. And Eli, how bad was this swoosh doodly-doo? Well, if you love my rule about not telling people you're not fucking about your dreams, but you wish it had a bit of lemonparty.com flavor, you will love this movie. All right, so is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at?

Yeah. Can I go best, worst, failure to realize an innuendo? Because all the way through the 22-ish minutes of this, there was a lot of talk about holding onto rods, putting your hand on the rod, don't take your hand off the rod. Grab my rod! Really work that rod with the hand. Don't forget to do the little ball thing at the end of the rod. Make sure you pay plenty of attention to that as well. It's a very rod based episode.

Did they not know that that's also in the indoor? We've had a little fun with that one in the past. I'm going to go with the best worst squinting the near. Yeah, there's definitely a good one. I will point it out when it comes. And Mike's just a little one, but it bothered me so much watching it in animated form. Best worst except this guy. This guy doesn't get punished for some reason in the metaphor. Why would Aaron not get punished? It makes no fucking sense. Yes, thank you. So, okay.

So we're going to open this one up on a big title card that tells us we're going to be watching an animated version of a fake dream that a fictional person recounted in a record that doesn't exist. So, strap the fuck in for this. We're swooshing all the doodly-doos this week everybody. Yeah, and there's something about this because it opens with like a title card, which kind So strap the bucket for this. We're swishing all the doodly-doos this week everybody. Yeah, and there's something about this because it opens with like a title card, which kind of is like a disclaimer.

And it says, we've created this animated story of his dream without giving an interpretation of certain symbols. What are the... I have not read the book at the moment. What are they missing out? Is this like with the Disney bit where they put up a screen to warn about all of the racism, but like the opposite of that, where they warn you that some of this wasn't racist. Right.

They're warning us about the unsubtleness of the metaphor. Yes. And I love that they're like, you'll have to read the Book of Mormon if you want to know what it means. And it's like really the most obvious metaphor ever, which you're going to further animate at the end because you don't trust us to get it. Yeah. Right.

Right. You'll have to read it. And I'm like, look, if reading the Book of Mormon makes your thing make more sense, you have fucked up in ways that we have never even dreamed up. Right? Yeah. Da Vinci Code ain't got nothing on the animated Book of Mormon. Right. So we get our opening line, the voiceover comes over and says, behold, I have dreamed a dream. And I'm like, yeah, it's the kind of writing that we expect out of Joseph Smith. Yeah. I wrote in my notes. No, I have a dream this movie He says he dreamed that he came across this tree and it had on it the White-est fruit that you'd ever seen it was it was a fucking mayonnaise sandwich with bad rhythm complaining about affirmative action levels

Hey guys, I'm about to animate the fruit for our thing that represents salvation. Should I make it look exactly like a ball sack? Yes, like a ball sack and an ass at the same time. 100% a ball sack. Okay, I'll just make... Ass ball sack. I'll make a series of ball sacks hanging off a tree and everyone will rub their face against them in this children's cartoon.

Yes, a lot of ball sacks and then those people take nibbles. And they rub their face and they just pop one in the mouth. Yeah, just take a nice big lick out of them. Yeah. Well, and also he goes, it's the whitest thing that's ever been whited. And it's like, it's not as white as his beard. Like on screen we're looking at it and we're like, well, it's kind of like a mother of pearls. Yeah, it's like an off white. Yeah. we're looking at it and we're like, well, it's kind of like, like a mother of Pearl. Yeah, it's like an off white. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, but he saw this white, white fruit and so he ate it because why the fuck not eat a random fruit that you've never seen before? What could go wrong? And he immediately knew that it was the greatest of God's gifts. And I'm like, you have not used anal beads. I think so. But anyway, so he's like, I love the fruit so much I wanted to give it to my kids. So he looks around and he sees his non shitty sons, Nephi and Sam, with their mom, with Soraya. Right? Right.

And how, I wasn't clear how long it's meant to have elapsed since the first episode. You've now told me this happens during the first episode, but it's a dream. He's dreaming his wife to be super older than she actually is. Yep. Because she's not this old in the actual episode. So that's a weird element of a dream. He's dreaming his wife to be super older than she actually is. Yep. Because she's not this old in the actual episode. So that's a weird element of your dream. I'm just dreaming about what my wife will look like in a few decades time and what one of my sons would look like a bit fatter.

Like if it was just a bit fatter? With a mustache. Yeah. With a mustache. Well, so yeah, we should point out that all of the characters in this, more or less, look similar to the last video, but not the same, especially Nephi. Nephi looks way the fuck different in this one than he did in the last one, right? The only one that really looks exactly the same is Laban. So,

but yeah, but this is where we introduce Marsha's best words. This is where he says he yells that he calls out to Nephi and to Sam and to Saraiya. He's like, you must follow my rod. Oh my God. There's no way they didn't know. It's so long, he might as well be like, aren't you going to make a joke? Huh? Make a joke in school and the substitute or the teacher was like, do you want to make that joke again?

Because they thought you were going to get shy, but you're me and or Noah. So you just made it louder. That's what this movie is doing is like, go ahead and make a dick joke. And I'm like, I will for a living. Thank you. When I wrap my rod. That's how I learned about the callback. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, but so we pan over this, like this perilous walkway to this tree

and there's a handrail all the way across it. Right. That's the rod. You've got to follow the rod. But they seem confused as to where to go. They're like, oh, what do I do? Oh, a whole ... But why would you be confused? There is literally only one path across this ravine and it has a handrail and it leads to the only thing you can see. Why would this be a difficult path to find and follow? No shit. Right. So they start, like, I love Nephi, I was like, I'll lead, mother, follow

me. And I'm like, oh yes, ladies last. Very chivalrous of you. And then Lehi looks over, he sees his shitty sons. He sees Laban and Lemuel and he tells them, hey, come eat the fruit. Follow the, grab my rod and come follow the fruit. But Layman is like, fuck his rod. I bet we can find a better way to get there. Oh yeah. Layman has absolutely no interest in holding his father's rod, which is a large departure from how gay-corded this character has been in the first episode. They've really taken a step away from that stereotype.

Yeah. I wrote in my notes, let's all grab dad's rod. No, Noah's kids did that one. So yeah, but they're going to go off and find an easier way. in my notes. Let's all grab dad's rod. No, Noah's kids did that one. So yeah, but they're going to go off and find an easier way. Lehi is yelling, begging them to hold on to his rod, but they go off to turn Native American and evil, apparently. But they think they can find an easier way across the ravine than the only visible path, which has an actual handrail attached to it.

It's so easy. What are they expected to find? Yeah. But now Lee Hi-C is a bunch of people following the rod, but also a lot of people don't follow the rod. Yeah. I would say numberless concourses of people. Numberless concourses of people.

Some people want to walk into the fog to circus music, apparently. Yes. Right. Well, and this is where we meet Jezebel and we get my best worst, right? Because so there's this chick and she's with her boyfriend and she's like, oh, you know, I don't think I want to follow the rod. And somebody comes up, he's like, hey, you know, there's a great big party over at the not rod over here. And in the background, we hear this. Yeah, I love it so much. And every time for like the rest of the video, anytime anybody mentions the party, we'll get that little jazz.

We will get that lick. It's amazing. It's, it's totally sweet. I thought, spoiler alert, the party is not going to end well. And I wanted so badly for there to just be one last sad. We don't get it. We don't get it everybody. I don't want to get your hopes up. So she leaves it or the boyfriend turns it goes, but Jezebel wait and we're like, Oh, okay. I guess I know where we're going here. That's right. Everybody. The Book of Mormon was too subtle for these cartoonists. They thought they needed to add a little, yes, little hint here and there for us so we could really get this complex metaphor.

Yeah, and we've got to introduce another group of characters. This family here, there's a mom and her mom and her two sons, Abel and Aaron. They are also following the Rod. Oh, did we get Abel? I knew there was Aaron. I didn't get Abel from it. I wasn't paying that much attention at this point. Yeah, well, he'd done enough L names. He had moved on to A names at this point, apparently. Yeah. So but Abel, the youngest son, is scared, but he holds the rod. But Aaron is a teenager and call. He doesn't need a whole lot. Yeah. And now, to be fair, this is the most realistic thing in the Book of Mormon,

is a teenager just very obviously doing the unsafe thing because their mom is asking them like nicely not to yeah, yeah, right, right But then oh, we also cut to the stupid smart people Right. Yeah, we got a camp I was so hoping they would keep this part because it says so much about you when you need to distinguish that Smart people are gonna say my thing is bullshit, but they're just wrong Distinguish that smart people are gonna say my thing is bullshit, but they're just wrong jealous of my smart Yeah, the smart anyone who likes to learn is therefore evil is literally what they say Yes, right because the two guys there's there's two guys and one guy says like well, should we follow the rod?

The other guy goes no, we are learned men. We should strike out and find new knowledge and it's never in the obvious place Yes, yes they they wander off. And speaking of wandering a drift from Lehigh's Rod, I feel like we need to do that for a minute as well. But we'll be back in a minute with even more of the Tree of Life. My sons, my sons come to me. Yes, father. What is it? Yes. Tell us, father.

I have had a prophetic dream. Oh, what did you dream, Father? I dreamed that I stood beneath a great tree and on the branches was the purest, whitest fruit that I ever saw. Do you think the fruit stood for salvation, Father? I... Well, yes.

Yes, I do. Go on, Father. Well, I... Well, yes. Yes, I do. Go on, Father. Well, I mean, Nephi's kind of ruined it now, I think. Oh, I'm so sorry, Father. Yeah, go on, Father. Tell us anyway. All right. The ending's spoiled, but fine. Anyway, I saw you and your brothers and encouraged you to come eat of the fruit.

And I told you to follow the way of the iron rod. The iron rod of scripture? Seriously Nephi, what the fuck is this, mad libs? Go on Father! But no, he keeps ruining my thing, I feel like I'm being heckled. Please Father, I won't interrupt again. Fine. Alright, okay. So anyway, some followed the rod't interrupt again. Fine. Alright, okay.

So anyway, some followed the rod, but others did not. Those who did not follow the rod fell and died. Like Bruce Willis at the beginning of Sixth Sense. Alright, that's it. I'm the fuck out of here. Oh, Father, no. I'm sorry. No. This is why everybody's trying to kill you, Nephi.

It's this. He's got a point. I know. And we're back for still more of this shit. We're going to rejoin the action with Nephi, Sam, and Sarai making all the way to the root of Lehi's Rod. OK, guys, I just realized we are making a podcast about a movie, about a story, about a dream, inside a book. Are we the first House of Lee?

Much better. Also, I have to point this out like, what the hell ever happened to the daughter? Yeah. Right? You remember the daughter, there was a daughter and now we don't talk about the daughter anymore. I don't... Well, because I thought this was so much later't talk about the daughter anymore. I don't… Well, because I thought this was so much later because this was like episode 11, I didn't realize it was happening at the same time.

I assumed something happened to the daughter and we don't talk about it anymore in those nine episodes. Yeah, right. When Lemuel or Samuel got fat, something else all happened to the daughter. But no, if this was his dream. Oh my god, that means the dad is just dreaming about a world in which he doesn't have a daughter and that's his paradise? I guess, yeah. Exactly. And he's like, hey guys, I'm glad you made it all the way to the end of the rod. Check out my white ass fruit. Right? So everybody, it was a white

ass fruit actually is probably the better. So everybody eats some testicle fruit and enjoys it quite a bit. And way too, like Nefai eats that fruit way too sensually. Like, Nephi is tracing the alphabet on that fruit. But then, it came to pass, and we haven't mentioned this yet, but the words, it came to pass, have already appeared like four fucking times in this part of the video. Yes. Marcia's annotating our notes at this point with, it came to pass number four.

Yes. Yeah. And then I wrote, fuck me, a mid-scene, it came to pass. I'm going to have to stop labeling these with, it came to pass number four. Yes. Yeah. And then I wrote, fuck me, a mid scene, it came to pass. I'm going to have to stop labeling these transitions with it came to pass. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So, but then it came to pass that there arose a great mist of darkness. But they were already in a mist. Yes. It said, there arose a great mist of darkness, yay, even an exceeding great mist. But wasn't

the whole point that it was already misty. This is a mist on a mist. That's why you needed the rod. You don't put a mist on a mist. But how could they see the new mist with all the old mist getting in the way of it? Yeah, exactly. And I wrote a bunch of notes while I was watching this movie, like, it's so funny that the animators made Lehigh's dream even dumber and even more complicated. No, this is accurate to the Book of Mormon. I was misremembering how stupid this metaphor was. Yep.

So, we cut back to the learned guys from earlier and they're lost and they sure do regret not following Lehi's Rod now. We're done with those characters. Yeah. And at some point someone suggested to Joseph Smith, well, okay, what about all the people who seem like they're having a really good time not listening to a very obvious con man from upstate New York, which means it's time to introduce the giant city, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Just just then, Lehigh notices a gargantuan iridescent city, a fucking what? A large parking lot away from the tree that he's been standing under this whole time.

How did he not spot this massive building behind the tree earlier? There's a great, exceedingly great mist of darkness actually, Marge. Well that's true, but I feel like the building was an easy thing for people in the mist to spot than the tree. Sure. Because the thing is, this is a mist. It's not a fog. It's just a mist.

Like a fog, yeah, you're going to lose your way in a fog. But a mist? Right. I think you can navigate in a mist relatively fine. Yeah, honestly. Yeah. You're British, Marce. It's like how elves have dark vision.

Yeah, right. So yeah, but so I love too, because the actual line in the scripture here is the you know, there was a great building, whatever, whatever. And then the line is and it was full of people. But the animators were like, fuck you, it was full of people. You will see stationary little circles with little lines under them in the background full of people. Now wait a second guys.

It's a tall and spacious building full of people who are laughing at Mormonism in a fog that no one can penetrate. I think the tall and spacious building might be QED. Have we considered? That makes sense. Have we considered? Let's figure out how fast the fucking elevators are here. Yeah.

That makes sense though because all the people here look like they are drawn by LS Lowry, who was from Manchester. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, it's a great moment where we zoom in on the full of people. We get another one of these like lazy ass attempts at a crowd. There's like six or seven people at a time and only one of them moves at a time. Like one of them will move the arm and then this one over here will smile. And then this one over here will laugh.

It's fucking awful. Yeah. Also, it's just a tiny detail, but I have to point it out. There's one of the people leaving the rod to go to the large and spacious building is a wife and she turns to her husband and she says, I've missed out on too much. His answer is, no, you haven't. Yeah. what? Religious patriarchy in a nutshell everybody.

I'm unhappy. No, you're not. She's looking at this party, you know, she's looking at the party and she realizes she's missed out on all the drinking, laughing and fucking. Like she is about two steps away from joining the Patreon for this show. That's how bright she is to Durning. Yeah, well, yeah, that's exactly it. We're the people in the iridescent, because they even say, and all the people in the iridescent tower pointed at a laughed at all the people

following the rod and eating the fruit. And you can bet they're going to feel bad about that by the end of this story. Right? So, everyone's running away from the rod. They all are going to the big party instead, where presumably they become a stationary painting. Right? Yes. We get a little, a teen peer pressure scene here, where the boyfriend of one of the girlfriends is like, come on babe, let's just try the tip of the great space.

Yeah, right, right. There's also, there's a couple who are like weighing up whether they should go to the party, in the same sense of like, they're a couple who both want to go to an orgy, but neither wants to seem to the other one like they're too into the idea. Right. I can't relate to that statement. There's also there's the cut to the fucking party. And there's a moment where this we see this one woman and she's just throwing money off

of a of a balcony or whatever. And there's like a fucking hyena laughing below it or something. Very confusing. Yeah. But then we cut back to Lim High. So Lim High was Jezebel's boyfriend who watched her go to the party. And so now he's watching her just falling out of her clothes talking to some other dude

and he's getting really jealous, but he keeps following the rod anyway. Right? He does. He eventually makes it to the tree. getting really jealous, but he keeps following the rod anyway. Right? He does. He eventually makes it to the tree. He wants to go to the fucking wine and hyena party over the tower, but he makes it all the way to the tree and they give him a bite of the fruit and he very clearly is like, well, I mean, it's fine.

He just drops it on the ground. Like it can't have been that amazing if he just drops it on the ground. Because he drops it on the ground and he's like, well, I'm going to go fuck my girlfriend. Jesus, this is not that good. And then he punches Nephi on the way out, which I fucking loved. It's worth getting to the end of the road just so you can punch Nephi. See, now that's a fruit I'm going to travel for. Come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come,

come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, come, further from the rod. Now we should point out because like we saw this entire rod at the very beginning when Nephi first saw it, he was like, and Lehi was saying, hey, follow the rod. We panned all the way up, but it's 150 meters or so. Yes. Yeah. Right. It's like, I have no idea why it's taking people so long.

Well, sometimes it takes, when you're working the rod, sometimes it does take a while. It depends on what's going on with Lehi at the time. Well, especially if that rod's 150 meters long. It's been worked by a lot of people. He just needs a moment. No that's true. In a moment. Yeah.

Maybe if Jezebel was still there. Also this is where there's like wind and stuff. And so people start being blown off the rod by the wind. Is that what if the wind blows people away from the rod? That's not on them. You can't blame people for weather. You can't do that. Well, yeah, because it wasn't windy when Nephi got up.

This isn't fair. Yeah. So, but then we find that we see Limhi, the Jezebel's boyfriend fall into this ravine and then a great shit river explodes around them. Yeah. Who put the filthy, they call it like the filthy water fountain. It's not a water fountain. It's a fucking waterfall. But who put that right next to the tree of life in

the first place? That's a bad place for your shit river to be. Well, I mean, I'm wondering if, because like everybody up there has nothing to eat, but fruit, maybe that's the source of the shit river, right? That's what it honestly, you feed me nothing but pears that represent white patriarchy for a day and you are getting a shit river. Oh yes. You're getting one. Yeah. I mean represent white patriarchy for a day, and you are getting a shit river. You're getting one. Yeah. I mean, feed you anything for a day, we get the shit river.

Well, that's true. That's also true. That's fair. Shit river. It's fair. So, but Aaron falls into the shit river too, the teenage boy. There's a weird moment where some character we haven't met falls, but his buddy catches him and they have this tearful, I can't pull you up, I'm so sorry moment, but we've never

met these characters and it goes on for so long. And we don't care about them. And it's not in the book. Like none of this weird drama is in the book. So I don't know why the animators were like, we need a cliffhanger moment. I guess. Yeah. Although seeing all these people complaining about the river full of shit did make me feel nostalgic for Britain. It made me feel like, oh, it's not now. There it is, yes. I thought it was going to make you nostalgic for Paris, but you know. But Aaron, we follow him along. He finds like a, I don't know, a fucking corn kernel in the shit river or whatever. He climbs up and another guy tries to climb up and push him

off, but he fights it and presumably murders the guy. I think he kills this guy. Yep. Which is wild because there's plenty of room on that rock for two people. This is like a Titanic door situation. You can just be both of you. Yeah, I was going to say Rose just comes and clings to the other end. They both have to get off now. But that's the thing though. It's not even a matter of the door of the Titanic, unless of course there was just another

boat just on the other side of the door, right? Because he climbs up and then he just steps over onto a big, large area where he's got room to lay down. And he's so fucking dumb. But now he's going to climb. He's going to try to climb back up. But he can't make it. He's like cry apologizing to God for letting go of the rod now.

And can I say, what is this part of the metaphor? What is the rock in the middle of the Dukey River in the metaphor? Is it the refractory period after you jerk off? You feel bad? Yeah, but Aaron realizes he can't climb up by himself. He just can't make it. So he gives he's going to give up. He lets go. go and just then Nephi catches him and we pan up and there's this whole fucking bucket brigade of people like going all the way back to the rod down the ravine holding onto each other's hands like

remember the barrel of monkeys? Yes. It's like that. Exactly yeah and that is not in the Book of Mormon by the way. No, it's so stupid. In case you're wondering the one part where someone who makes a mistake still is redeemable, that's not from the Book of Mormon by the way. No, it's so stupid. In case you're wondering, the one part where someone who makes a mistake still is redeemable, that's not from the Book of Mormon. That's from the bullshit Richard Rich wanted to put in there. No, that kid died in the shit river in the fucking book. Exactly. There are ten people who formed a human chain to rescue this one guy, presumably letting like a dozen other people fall off the rod and die in the process just for this one guy.

Not worth it. Obviously. Just for this one guy. Not worth it. Yep. Game theory. Clearly. Yeah, but Mom sure is relieved to see him. And then we cut back over to the party, right? Everybody's still laughing at Lehigh.

Even Lehman and Lemuel are over there at the Hyena party now, and Lehigh is very sad about that. But just then, there's a great earthquake and the city is falling apart. Now, that's right. Great and spacious building. Yeah. Motherfuckers. Now, as you can imagine, the animators of this film really went all out for the city. There's like nine animation. There's like nine frames of animation from this city falling apart. It's so cheap and shitty. We see Jezebel, I guess, get what's coming to her.

Yeah. Right? And this movie's disgusting estimation. Yeah, the guy she's with like abandons her immediately and then gets instantly smooshed. Like debris smoosh immediately. The second he lets go of Jezebel. Yeah, right. The couple who just got to the orgy, they get instant smoosh before any action happens.

I feel bad for those guys. They just aren't there. So unfair. Yeah, but so she gets crushed to death too. So do Layman and Lemuel. They get caught in the collapse as well. Yeah. And we check back with the good fruit-eating people and they're like, hmm.

Bummer. Yeah. Fucking bummer. There's one guy in the rod and he's like, ah beans. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. Nephyser's walking back he's like well now we're gonna have to clean up all that shit. Come on guys. Right? That's it. That's the whole fuck of his brothers just died. Yeah. And then a fucking child starts singing in case this was too pleasant. Well, you know what?

They were like, guys, guys, look, I love the Book of Mormon as much as the rest of you, but this dream, it's so complicated and the metaphor is so hard. Why don't we play one of our nonsensical Mormon hymns and turn the tree into the literal clouds of heaven, you know, as a little hint for the folks at home. Well, it's so funny because we back away from the tree. And of course, your first thought is upon seeing this tree is like, wow, only like 11 people made it. So like everyone else died. Yeah, it's worth watching hundreds of people die because a dozen or so people got a magic

peach that time. Yeah. Right, right. But what I would imagine is that this is actually supposed to be a big crowd, but the lazy ass animators are like, 11 fucking people. They get it. They get it. A bunch of people live. Right? But they back away from that and yes, it all turns into clouds in case the fucking heaven

analogy wasn't obvious enough for us. Alright, well I think everybody needs a minute to recover from that big reveal, so we're going to wrap up the video there. Marsh, thanks as always. Always a pleasure. And while that does it for our review of the first two episodes of the animated Book of Mormon, that's not going to do it for this episode just yet because we still need to earn a paycheck again next week.

So Eli, tell us what's on deck. Well, Noah, we'll be continuing with Mormon Movie Month, of course. We're going to move forward a bit in history to the life of Joseph Smith. Now, thanks to Mormon Movie Month, we've heard retellings of this con man's story more times than I'd care to remember. But next week, we'll be spending time on a part of the prophet's life that we have barely grazed. His mid jailbreak death.

Oh, really? Will he use his magic powers and get shot anyways? Next week for out of liberty. Well, not all the way out, but yeah. All right. So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 465 to a merciful close. Once again, a huge thanks to Marsh for all his help today. Be sure to check the show notes for links to more stuff from him and perhaps even a huge thanks to all the Patreon donors that help make the show go. If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks, you can make a per episode donation to patreon.com slash god awful and thereby earn early access to an every version of every episode. You can also help a ton by leaving a five star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media

platforms. And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows, The Scatagallia, Citationated, DND Minus and The Skeptocrat available wherever podcasts live. If you have questions, comments or cinematic suggestions, you can email god awfulmoviesatgmail.com. Jane Roberson takes care of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by Ryze, a lot of people drafts on Mars, all the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used with permission. Thanks again for giving us a check on your life this week. For HeathenRite and Neelite Buzzing, I'm Nollitions. I promise to work harder and earn another check next week. Until then, we'll leave you with the Breakfast Club clothes.

Now that he's told them about his dream, everyone had to fuck Lehi. Which I think is actually canonically how Mormonism worked. Eventually, the animators did remember the scientist guy and the little sister. Those brothers turn black as punishment in a future episode of The Animated Book of Mormon. And I can't wait. Morgan's band Moody Boys came out with a new single called Don Quixote bought the wind farm. It's really good you should check it out. It's good you should check it out. So we watched. Your cat hated that joke, Mark.

Can you hear that? Can you hear? Yes. Oh, yes. Jesus Christ. The brass band that she's playing in, in the background. Yeah, I noticed that. I was hoping it wasn't getting picked up because I didn't want to turn around and shout, would

you shut up, Mildred? She's speaking slightly louder than you are. Mildred, what is going on? Are we done here? So that's the noise she makes when she's bringing me her toy mouse. I may need to go and acknowledge the toy mouse, otherwise that may not stop. Just give me one second. I get it. Acknowledge the toy mouse.

Mildred, what's going on? You're here now. Okay, did you bring Mousey? You did bring Mousey. Okay, well well done you. Okay, can we record now? Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, no worries.

I'll give you the question again. You did bring me in. Okay, well well done you. Okay, can we record now? Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, no worries. I'll give you the question again. Yeah, 100% keep all this. Oh, absolutely. At least give me this as a Patreon extra. Oh god, yeah. It's always easy. It's so easy because then I start going by when I hear you guys' four on a slight delay. It's so hard to keep my. Yeah.

Counting to five is trickier than it seems. Oh, to like nail the timing. Yeah, it's really difficult. No, I think just the counting part. Morgan Morgan has a degree in that he knows. Right. That's right. And it's like, I'm doing like what you do as a percussionist. Morgan achieved a lifelong first for me this week which is that

someone sent me music their band wrote and it wasn't awful. Yes, yes, I've honestly been singing that to myself all god damn. Never in my entire life has someone sent me a piece of music and been like my band wrote this and I haven't been like great so I have to come up with 27 topics of conversation to distract this person with so they don't ever say how'd you like it? Yeah, exactly. It's okay. So our friendship's over now then we can't talk ever again. Eli died since. All right, here we go.

Guys, it's in my lifetime. It was like 78. 1978. Yeah, I was alive when that happened. Yeah. And to be clear, they let people into the church before they acknowledged they have souls. The reason they weren't allowed to hold parsonship is they were like, but you don't have souls. So. So why would they be in the church? Why would they join the church? Great question, Marge. It's like how women are in the church now. Yes.

So. Alright. Or black people are in the Mormon church now, honestly. Mildred, quiet. Just pack it in. Because Nicola's out for the night. Is Mildred Mormon? Is that what it is? Maybe she's a fan of my content. Oh my god, what if she's Mormon?

You never know if you're getting a Mormon cat. Unusual in the UK. My dog is Muslim. I've never seen her drink beer. She's not allowed like caffeine stuff. Although she does sniff around when I'm drinking a cup of coffee, but she never drinks any of it. So I think that's the kind of the Mormon temptation thing going on. Right.

Right. Can I tell you guys what I'm most excited for the Salt Lake City show? What's that? They, so Utah has a chain of drink restaurants that aren't, like they make special non caffeinated beverages, but they're just beverage restaurants. And they're as common as Starbucks in Utah and everyone drinks it. I mean they seem fucking awesome. I'm super excited. Oh right on. Nice. Also they have the world's largest board game cafe. Yep. I'm going. Oh really? Yep. I'll go with that. I'll go with that.

Go when they're hard. Alright. Interstitial 2. I'm going Wednesday. Oh I won't go with that. Fun fact, Lucinda comes in yesterday and she goes, hey, it turns out that we have stars. And I'm like, really? She's like, for the last two years. I'm like, really? Give me some rocket money. And hop. Hop da!

Not even close. I know Marsh, I am aware. Hey guys, what are you doing? Trying to jump through these hoops that my wireless company gave me. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Yeah, but when I make it through all of them, I get a free cell phone. Wow, really? Uh, no. I pay for it. But I can put it on my bill.

And that, like, that lowers the costs of it? No, no. But you could, I can put it on my bill. And that like that lowers the costs of it? No, no. But you I pay for it there. Right. Well, you know, if you want to save money on your cell service, why not try Mint Mobile? What's Mint Mobile? I love a great deal as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to jump through hoops just to save a few bucks. It has to be easy. No BS. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for $15 a month with the purchase of a three month plan,

I called on it. Turns out it really is easy to get wireless for $15 a month. The longest part of the process was the time I spent on hold waiting to break up with my old provider. I don't know, Noel. Will I still get the same speeds? And do I have to change my phone? Sure will, Marsh. And not at all, Eli. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to MintMobile.com slash cam. That's MintMobile.com slash cam. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at MintMobile.com slash cam.

$45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first 3 month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan and additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. All right, Noah. Thanks. Side note. What's with the big red marks on your chest and stomach? Oh yeah. On the first run, we tried fiery hoops. I see.

Did not go well. I believe you. Okay. What about Ballman? Yeah, no, we can keep that. Keep it? Really? Hey guys, whatcha doin'? Oh, hey Eli.

Marcia's just helping me clean up my subscriptions. Being a sports fan can get awfully expensive. Yeah, there's apps for watching games, premium channels, it can all really add up. I bet, but guys, you don't have to do that stuff one by one. Why don't you just get Rocket Money? What's Rocket Money? Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money,

I have full control over my subscriptions and a clear view of my expenses. I can see all of my subscriptions in one place. And if I see something I don't want, Rocket Money can help me cancel it with a few taps. I love how the dashboard shows me this month's spending compared to last month, so I can clearly see my spending habits. Plus, they'll help me create a custom budget

and keep my spending on track. Wow, Eli, that sounds great. It is, Marsh. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you, by up to 20%. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill, and Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20 percent. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll deal with customer service for you. Rocket Money has over five million users and has saved a total of five hundred million dollars in canceled subscriptions,

saving members up to seven hundred and forty dollars a year when using all of the app's features. Amazing. Where do I sign up? Stop wasting money on things you don't use cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocket money comm slash awful movies That's rocket money comm slash awful movies rocket money comm slash awful movies. All right, Eli. Thanks So you subscribe to ball man, too? Yeah the soccer channel. No, mine. Yep. Yes. The soccer channel. Right. The proceeding podcast was a production of Puzzle and Thunderstorm LLC copyright twenty twenty four. All rights reserved.