The Midnight Gospel Episode 1 Review

Clancy, Little President, Charlotte and Peggy

Midnight Gospel

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Welcome to the official "The Midnight Gospel" Fan Site!  We will explore and discuss every episode of The Midnight Gospel and also talk about Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast and everything else related to Duncan Trussell.  

If you are a fan of The Midnight Gospel but are not real familiar with Duncan Trussell, you've come to the right spot!  We'll introduce you to Duncan and his amazing friends, who have recently taken the podcasting world by storm.  One of Duncan's best friends is Joe Rogan, who introduced most of us to Duncan Trussell, so we would be remiss if we didn't also discuss Joe and his take on things.  Thank you for visiting and we hope you take something away from our site that you can use to make your daily life better!  So enough with the introductions, let's get to the real reason we're all here, The Midnight Gospel!

 

If you are here and don't know what The Midnight Gospel is, don't worry!  We're going to start there; The Midnight Gospel is an animated, adult television series that was created by Pendelton Ward, of Adventure Time Fame and our favorite podcaster, Duncan Trussell.  You can find this amazing series, streaming on Netflix and it's actually the very first animated production from Pendelton Ward, exclusively for Netflix.  

 

The Midnight Gospel takes an actual podcast between Duncan Trussell and a wide variety of guests and turns them into an amazing adventure.  Duncan has described it many times as the idea coming from, "taking the dialogue from Indiana Jones and replacing it with podcast dialogue".  This is a great way of explaining what their vision was when creating this amazing show.  The show is set in a dimension known as the "Chromatic Ribbon", and our hero is a spacecaster named Clancy Gilroy.  Clancy owns a used unlicensed multiverse simulator, which is falling apart and failing due to years of neglect and Clancy being too busy to maintain or even pay attention to the state of the simulator.  Through this multiverse simulator, Clancy travels through infinite worlds who are about to experience their own apocalypse and Clancy wants to interview a few of these planets, residents, for his spacecast, (can I interview you for my spacecast?).  

The dialogue (interviews) are taken from earlier episodes of Duncan Trussell's podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour and features many special guests including Jason Louv, Drew Pinsky, Stephen Root, Phil Hendrie, Caitlin Doughty, Trudy Goodman, Michael Marconio, Maria Bamford, Deneen Fendig, David Nichtern, and the great Joey Diaz!

 

This is a quick look at what The Midnight Gospel is about and if you love the show as much as we do, we are truly HOPING we get more seasons!  I think with the timing of the release, combined with everyone being home already because of COVID 19, The Midnight Gospel was able to reach a much broader audience.  It seemed like just a few months ago, Duncan Trussell was just an obscure comic, who has his own podcast and appears on many other podcasts.  Now he's really becoming much more famous and we are so happy for him, if anyone deserves it, it's Duncan Trussell!  He's just an overall great human and this can be verified by any of his fans who have had the honor of meeting him in person after one of his Comedy shows or other events he regularly attends.  We love Duncan and hope Netflix signs him up for many more seasons of the greatest adult cartoon of my lifetime, The Midnight Gospel!

 

What is The Midnight Gospel

A look at Duncan Trussell and Pendelton Ward's Vision

Episode 1 is titled, "Taste of the King" and is directed, Pendelton Ward.  The dialogue from this episode is taken from Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast, Episode 147 with Drew Pinsky.  Dr. Drew and Duncan are really good friends and it didn't surprise me to see this is the episode he chose to kick the entire series off.  All of the episodes were released on Netflix on the same day, April 20, 2020, which has significance to all the Cannabis users as this was 4/20/2020. 

 

In episode 1 we are introduced to Clancy Gilroy and the dimension he lives in known as, "The Chromatic Ribbon".  We also find out how he acquired the dog that hangs out with him, Charlotte.  Clancy visits Earth 4-169 in this episode.  What he finds is that they are right in the middle of the global zombie apocalypse.  When Clancy visits other worlds, he takes on different "avatars".  In Episode 1, Clancy takes the form of a man with a beach body and runs into another sim, Glasses Man.  Clancy discovers Glasses Man is in fact, the president of the universe he is visiting.  They have a conversation in front of the White House, where a large group of anti-marijuana protestors is protesting and they appear to be not bothered at all by all of the zombies around them.  Seeing this, Clancy and Glasses man begin debating to the comment Glasses Man (Dr. Drew) made that he feels there are no such thing as 'good drugs' or 'bad drugs'.  They continue this conversation while both are making very good points and Dr. Drew believes drugs are just another chemical, not inherently good or bad and it is people's choices that are good or bad.  This leads them into a discussion on the pros and cons of psychedelics and the possible dangers of drug usage when people are not well educated.  An interesting topic they bring up is whether or not drugs can actually be beneficial for a person's individual personal spiritual growth or does it send them running in the opposite direction.  Towards the end of the episode, they help pregnant women give birth then every one of them is turned into zombies.  Once this happens they realize that being transformed into a zombie was actually a relief and much better than they thought it would be.  They really don't get to enjoy this new state as not long after being turned into zombies, they are hit with a cure and it brings them right back into life, which ironically means the zombies are after them and they can be killed again.  This is where Clancy returns back to his own dimension and brings a local dog named Charlotte back with him, just before the Earth he visited explodes.  

 

Episode 1 Characters

 

Season 1, Episode 1 The Midnight Gospel Premiere Recap: Taste of the King

The Midnight Gospel Episode 1 Takes a Look at Buddhism, drugs, and zombies

As many of us have seen, The Midnight Gospel is a very crazy psychedelic experience.  This series wasted no time and got us right into the action from the moment it starts.  We meet Clancy (Duncan Trussell), who is the main character but before we really learn anything about him, he enters into his Universe Simulator and heads into Earth 4-169.  He realizes quickly he has found a planet fighting a zombie horde called "Zombos".  Fans of Director and co-creator Pendelton Ward may recognize the zombie theme in the first episode because Pendelton also kicked off his other wildly popular animation, Adventure Time, with a zombie episode.  I think The Midnight Gospel lands a little more honest for Pendelton because he isn't bound by that "PG" rating he always had to contend with on Adventure Time even though it seemed to sometimes landed a little past that PG rating.  

As we move along in this episode, Clancy and Little President run across a group of marijuana protestors in front of the White House, and they are somehow tied to the Zombie apocalypse.  During this discussion, clancy has to fend off zombos and gets help from Little President.  They make their way to the simulated white house roof and proceed to have an in-depth discussion on the issues of marijuana versus opiates.  They go a little deeper and discuss ways to address the drug problem we are experiencing in today's world.  Clancy tells Little President that he's embarrassed to say but he almost overdosed on sleeping pills.

This is where they come to the conclusion that drugs aren't either good or bad, they are simply chemicals.  At the end of the day, it's humans that make these certain chemicals good or bad.  Their main example that they discuss at this time is valium.  Valium is known to have a different relationship to the body, depending on the particular person's circumstance.  

Now as they travel along deeper into this world, they get into an impromptu game of pool.  As they're playing Little President ends up initiating alpha protocol in order to address a surprise giant attack!  After some running around the escape and then they make a campfire.  Just as soon as you think they are good and will get to relax a little, MORE ZOMBOS!

 

Do You Even Know Joey Diaz?

Now we meet another of Duncan's best friends who will be voicing many characters but in this particular scene, he's providing the voice for Chuck Charles, Joey Diaz.  Chuck Charles is first seen on TV but later on, he ends up crashing through the wall of the shopping mall.  It doesn't take long with all of that racket, the zombos devour him quickly.  Inside the mall, a subplot develops that involve donuts, as several scientists in the mall ends up finding a cure for the zombos.  Meanwhile, Clancy and Little President made the decision to make their getaway in Chuck Charles' vehicle.  All during this scene, they are having a deep and very interesting discussion about Buddhist philosophy.  

 

One of my favorite lines in the entire series comes right after this.  Little President is talking to clancy about anger and likens anger to a "Sweet flower with bitter roots".  That really hit home with me, anger is a sweet flower with bitter roots.  Now they run into a pregnant lady who's name is Peggy (voiced by none other than Duncan Trussell Close friend and ex-girlfriend) Natasha Leggero and she ends up escaping with them.  During the escape, Little President gets hit by a Zombo, but they just ignore it as they continue their philosophical discussion.  s they continue escaping, they have to escape more monsters, some of whom are riding skateboards, and they move the discussion on to "meeting reality on reality's terms", awareness of awareness, and they use a hot air balloon as a metaphor for consciousness.  The agreement they come to after discussing this for a bit is that when you are the "thing" and the observer at the same time, it becomes obvious you are creating the illusion of self.  

 

They try to get a little deeper and into whether groups and identities are illusory, but as soon as they start they are interrupted by the scientist who is flinging their antidote harpoons.  Unfortunately, this prevents Clancy and Little President from reaching the hyper-serenity that appears to be emerging from the Zombo state.  

This is a lot to figure out but if you stayed with me this far, you have probably understood what The Midnight Gospel is all about.  These episodes feel like they are over way before they ever begin and I've watched the entire series 4 times so far and each time I find a little nugget that I had missed the other times. 

If you're a fan of Duncan Trussell, Joe Rogan JRE, Joey Diaz, or Podcast and animation in general, you are going to love The Midnight Gospel.  As the popularity is growing, we are keeping a listen and hoping to hear of a season 2,3,4, etc.... 

Duncan and Pendelton have created an amazing piece of art and hopefully, Netflix will sign them for many years so we can see some more adventures of Clancy!

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