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And now, for our final course, the denouement. But how will it end? In confession? In violence? In the cold precision of a sickly sweet poison pill, or the white hot bite of black widow? Perhaps. The only things guaranteed in this, our final curtain call, are the same things that are always guaranteed to grow from the soil of spilled blood: lawyers, guns, and money.

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We are:

Brennan Lee Mulligan

Erika Ishii

Aabria Iyengar

Lou Wilson

HINT! was designed and edited by Kate Sanders at Fortunate Horse

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Shannon, Melanie, and Amanda Freberg.

Transcript of this episode coming soon!

Our album art is by the great Corey Brickley

Our music appears courtesy of Artlist.io, Musopen.org, and Archive.org

Transcript coming soon!

Files

Comments

The Wizard Subjudice

I prefer my lawyers in a more neutral soil for that nice Plum shade

The Pompous Peasant

just deserts is teh perfect name four this last da doizy where brenan and lou gonna try to get teh murderer but its aBRIA thats in teh nasty with murder weapon whije erika is slowly creeping and teh whole time im going to touch lou very funny style. They are all sooooo good!

Pep

As someone from the Hershey area, I had to pause the episode when I realized what Lou was setting up

Zoop

This is exactly the corner of humor my father and I have overlap in. You captured the vibe so perfectly I now miss him which is crazy cuz I visited home two Days ago, but then again, I wouldn’t expect any less from the great power of wordplay so deeply dorky & simple it transmutates into a line worthy of an action/fantasy hero quip pre/post/mid fuckin up some poor scheming schmucks whole month (& face). Moreover, your use of “shall” instead of the poor man’s knock off, “Will” was definitely the right choice & absolutely necessary. 😤 TDLR: you made me chuckle out loud w/ the kind of pseudo-joke I make w/ my dad & I highly approve of your specific word choice— (un)necessarily substituting “Will” out for “Shall” never fails to amuse me.

Abigail M

This whole thing was an absolute joy to listen to!

Izer

45:00 "ALRIGHT WHERE'S BODDY WHERE'S HE HIDING?" 'He's hiding in the study, eh?'

Shannon Brooks

Sugarplum I’m so proud of you 🥹🥹🥹🥹

VforVenlee

I lost my MARBLES when plum started describing a quiet life before he ever said a town

Carl Shotwell

This series was really good! I loved listening to it!

Sir Tibbles

I had to hold myself back from screaming when Brennan mentioned the potential name of his son being Hunter. Perfect reference, no notes.

Erin

Bravo! This was so fun! I would die for little Pickle.

xatlern

Well now I'm just curious where everyone ends up when WWII starts up, especially with Claw in Paris 👀 although I guess if she's friends with Josephine Baker she might end up a resistance spy as well.

PriscillaG

Ahhh! This was so good and with a banger of a closing line! Hats off to Erika! I hope they are riding a tidal wave of awesome with this and a certain video game recently released 😊

TPK_light

The baked Alaska! 😂

Perrin Jasper

This was such a satisfying ending!!😭

Beanz

Ahhhhhh! Wait, so Claw and Cassidy weren't having an affair? I had so much monopoly money riding on that.

Jesús Blanco

Nah, Cassidy's a man of integrity and family, and Claw's tastes are too french to find him anything other than merely interesting.

1man2hands

Curious to see how a desert ties in.

Kelso31415926

Amazing! Outstanding ending! Bravo Zulu and I can't wait for more!

Skeletal Cleric

Brennan: Nothing will ever put us above the public suspicion of 1920's high society. Aabria: What about racism?

Devon

Such a good campaign - absolutely loved Claw’s self preservation instincts kicked in here in such an impersonal way. No vendetta or hatred just “I gotta get mine and get out of here, you all can and will fend for yourselves” I also love that Cassidy was willing to burn down his own home if needed. This was so fun WBN crew! Such levity amidst my relisten to the WWW (the gang is about to head into 12 brooks and this arc is just as interesting as it is sad)

Zephry Wright

Everyone: 🤬🏃🏿💃🏽🔫🤼🏽‍♂️👵🏼 Abria: 👩🏿‍🍳🔥 Everyone else: 😯

Sara Elizabeth Nesbit

Oh Sugar Plum ❤️ I was little sad that Mr Green was married. I think Miss White would be an excellent attorney's wife. ❤️❤️

Kate Olive Art

I love y’all, but I just gotta tell you. Attorneys aren’t allowed to write up (and notarize) wills that name them as the single beneficiary unless it’s immediate family. 😂 But hell yeah, go Mr. Green.

Fishes

"So he heads south, to Pennsylvania... in a little town... called Hershey." You can FEEL the commitment kick in partway through

Jazz

You can always bet on Brennan to figure out how to say fuck the cops at least once. ✊ Hilarious series, Erika is a genius and so is everyone at the table. What a fun little series.

Channing Kimble-Brown

This was incredible 😭 also I super thought that the desert was gonna come up somehow as a play on "just desserts" but after listening I think the title might actually just be a typo 😂 regardless, I absolutely loved this story and I'm so glad everything turned out ok ❤️❤️❤️

tifani

I actually did guess who the killer and accomplice were (but I guessed the killer would be the accomplice and the accomplice the killer) but I did NOT anticipate how they’d cover it up. Or that Erika would one up Brennan on the ridiculously punny baby names. Pickle is the kind of stupid shit you could get away with naming someone in the 1920’s.

Aberdeen B

I loved this whole story so much!! And the incredible stingers and wrap up at the end with the envelopes and the baked Alaska and Erika’s last line just put the most perfect, wonderful bow on top of this incredible gift

Obsequious Diphthong

There definitely seemed to be more desserts than deserts in that episode, though perhaps the Bodie mansion wound up a bit of a wasteland.

Channing Kimble-Brown

Omg I've been thinking about this all day trying to figure this out and I realized the meaning that I forgot about is the one that actually makes sense here, clever clever!

DaphneDawn

“Verb not a noun”

tifani

Aabriya thought they were heading there but Brennan killed that for the pun of it.

worldsbeyondnumber

Sort of. It works in three ways. One way is as you say it, “simply leaves”. This works for obvious reasons given the plot of the episode, but in the other two ways It’s a noun. The phrase “just deserts” is often misread and miswritten as “just desserts” because it uses an archaic etymological uncle of “desserts” that is pronounced the same but spelled with one s. “Desert” in this sense means “a deserved punishment”. In the title of this episode it serves in its literal sense but also as a reverse, homophonic pun with “desserts,” which feature prominently in the episode. Three ways. You’re welcome.

Nym

As someone who grew up going to Hershey park, goddammit Lou 😂

Channing Kimble-Brown

So I got the "deserts" thing being like, desertion and got the homophone referring to plum but I've never heard of the deserved punishment!! I guess this may be a fireside question but where did you learn about that? Was it previous linguistic knowledge or something discovered while producing these episodes?

Nym

And then: 💥 🪟 💨👨🏻‍✈️👵🏼👨🏾‍🌾💃🏽🏃🏻‍♂️‍➡️ 😮‍💨

Nym

Sorry to intrude but I love your handle 😂

Kat

I don't think I've ever been more satisfied with a "they all lived happily ever after" kind of ending. 💜

abardnamedkate

Aabria you freaking legend!!! This was a tidy little mystery Erika, Professor Plumb’s quietness and lack of scandal reveal + the fact that there were two shots fired (Ms. Peacock) lead me to believe they were the two most likely for the job. However, there were enough details sprinkled throughout to still have many of the other players continue to be viable suspects. As a fellow mystery lover, I think Agatha would have gotten a kick out of your mystery. 😁

Adarsh Nednur

This show absolutely fucking rules

Cullen Driscoll

Loved this series. I could watch Brennan play a 20s fixer for hours.

Chey

this was so fantastic!!!

Adarsh Nednur

Genuinely I think this says something very profound about intersectionality and intersecting circles of privilege and marginalization that I can't quite articulate but I'm gonna be thinking about it for a while

Chris Atienza

Gaahhhhh!!!! The stingers were simply amazing! And the Who, Where, and the How at the end were just so perfect! Y'all can't keep getting away with these phenomenal endings

worldsbeyondnumber

“Just deserts” is a common enough idiom that most people know what it means when they hear it. It only seems odd because we’re focusing our attention on how it contains an otherwise dead word. These are called fossil words, words that have fallen out of usage or whose pronunciation or spelling has changed EXCEPT that the old version remains preserved in an idiom. Like “eke” in “ekeing out a living” or “sleight” in “sleight of hand” or “wedlock” in “out of wedlock.” Where did I learn this? The streets.

Channing Kimble-Brown

You know what I'm dumb, I have only ever heard "just deserts" said out loud and assumed it was spelled dessert 😂 I think the title is the first time I've actually seen it written down so my mind read it as "just deserts" like the dry region and misunderstanding spun out from there, I thought when you said just deserts was referring to desertion you had made up the phrase as a pun 💀. Thank you for explaining!

Alisa Davies

Wow! What an absolute triumph!! So much nostalgia for a game I remember playing perhaps only twice between 7-9. I fell for the red herring, I was shook at the reveal! So masterfully brought together by everyone with the perfect amount of real drama and reference to the inspiration. Damn that was a hoot!!

Derek Davidson

This whole thing was so fucking good!!! Amazing, Erica! Great! Simply Great! The whole team of this podcast just keeps raising the bar and leaving me wanting more.

Carrie Mook Bridgman

Nah. She's too much of a free spirit to marry him. I was catching sparks and wondering about a romance until Brennan couldn't resist naming his three children.

K C

Mintgomery— I hope Izzy is naming the kids

Heydon Hensley

Ah, but how do you feel about Pickle?

K C

Valid and perfect

CarpeBootium

Masterfully done, Erika! Loved it!

Phoenix Vizva’i

SOLVED! 💖‼️ Lol great mystery 🥰 did anyone else spend the first half though thinking Miss Brown was secretly in the mansion, probably working with Mrs. White or Scarlett? 😅

Ammar Khalid

I’ll add my praises for the great mystery but also I need to say I’ve never wanted to throttle a man over a joke more than when Brennan said the next Green child was Hunter

Melissa Shilale

Your flowers, Erika, here are your flowers 🌹🌸💐🌺🌷🌻🥀🌼💮🪷🪻

Ky

Also did you catch that one of his children was named Mintgomery? 👀 Brennan's been dropping lots of little Easter eggs!

Beanz

That's hilarious