Purgatory, Missouri – Season One, EP 2: Tony
Purgatory, Missouri – Season One, EP 2: Tony
Alright you creepers…I’m back, as promised, ready to talk more about this here new podcast from the wonderfully twisted mind of Stuart Pearson, known as Purgatory, Missouri. If you haven’t read my thoughts on the debut episode, you should really catch up by clicking here – but if you’re not listening to this podcast for yourself yet, then for real…WTF is wrong with you! Be ashamed. Be very ashamed!
Okay maybe that’s a bit harsh, but you get the point. This series has been immediately shaping up to be super cool with its haunting vibes and mysterious storylines, and as anyone reading my notes on episode one would be able to tell ya, I’ve clearly become an instant fan. I had the feeling I would be, for the record – there’s just something about this Stuart Pearson guy I tell ya…whether it’s the music he makes, or the communication I’ve had with him behind the scenes, or remarkable stories like he’s crafting here in Purgatory, Missouri, or the interview I was lucky enough to snag with him last year…I’m tellin’ ya, Pearson is an incredibly gifted, highly creative, visionary individual, and he always creates wildly compelling stuff.
Do yourself a favor, and start listening to this show…especially if you dig things on the eerie side of life (and/or death). As always, I’d like to remind you all that I’m horrendously bad at keeping my big yap shut…there will be spoilers of some kind in here, I’m certain of it. I recommend clicking play on Episode 2 of Purgatory, Missouri, BEFORE you read my rantings (and/or ravings) here, so that I don’t taint your theories. Because lord knows I wouldn’t truly be able to accurately predict what is really goin’ on here.
A new episode, and a new character to be introduced to – Tony. He’s on the phone to start this episode up, and he sounds rightly pissed off…downright incensed if you ask me. I don’t wanna say we’re playing into stereotypes here, but Tony is gonna sound exactly how ALL of the Tonys in your head sound, and he’s probably just as nice in that regard as well. He’s doing his best to get his wife Marie back, and having to go through her friend Leslie to get to her. Much like the last time we started up a Purgatory, Missouri episode, the insanity and chaos cuts to the quick immediately…and before you even reach the first break with Pearson’s music, you’re fully immersed in this show all over again. How could you not be? Honestly, that’s a legitimate question. Purgatory, Missouri is proving to have it all…mystery, drama, suspense, thrills, chills…annnd I’m starting to sound like the Crypt Keeper in trying to describe this…
Soon enough, Tony has discovered the (presumably) same phone booth that our friend Theresa from episode one ended up standing beside. He picks it up, and hears a message from the emergency broadcast system…which is…an interesting tidbit that feels like we should keep on file in the notes of our mind as we continue to listen. If you recall some of the theories I was working with in my last review, it seems like we could have a similar situation here…we heard a gunshot early on in this episode, but do we really know who it was that died? Purgatory, Missouri, could still very much be the island of lost souls of sorts…and maybe, just maybe, it was Tony that got a permanent dose of cold leadicillin. It’s not long after his first phone call experience that he runs into his first lunatic Pinbot that is frantically trying to understand how and why they got there, and of course, as is the case with all Pinbots, Tony learns they can’t really be reached. Living in a mental purgatory and caged by madness, these Pinbots run around on endless loops of insanity that is solely focused on what caused their apparent demise, yet the connection to the event itself seems entirely lost on them…like they know what happened, but they don’t understand the chain of events or the decisions they made that led them to their newfound fate.
“Come find me Tony,” is what he hears whispering to him on the wisps of the fog in his brain as he tries in vain to search for Marie…and if there’s anything that we learned for sure in listening to episode one, it’s that we should really keep questioning how sane we think Tony really is. He might already be further gone than we realize…as in, just because we’re meeting him for the first time as listeners, doesn’t necessarily mean he hasn’t been in Purgatory, Missouri, for a hot minute or two. I really liked this haunting element of the voices surrounding him though…we can’t really tell if they’re just what he hears in his head, or if it’s actually this twisted circus of zombie-like people that’s taunting him out loud. In any event, it’s not just Marie’s voice that he’s hearing…there are others…and they’re not so friendly.
The phone booth reappears, in a new location, and is just as enticing to Tony’s curiosity once again. As he grabs the receiver once again, it’s that familiar emergency broadcast warning we’ve heard before. You see? I might never know what the heck is goin’ on, but I know a clue when I hear one. There’s something goin’ on there…and you’ll once again hear Marie’s voice drifting in on the icy wind around him, potentially spelling out what really happened to her…so make sure to pay attention to that too.
More crucially, we run into Blanca once again…you know…the seemingly conscious individual that we were introduced to in the first episode? She’s baaaaaaaack. And she’s still with it somehow. We don’t know why just yet, but so far as we can tell, Purgatory, Missouri, has yet to fully sink its hooks into her psyche. Does that mean she’s a part of this place and its illusory characters? Is she the one that really knows what is going on here? Is Blanca in fact, the puppet master pulling the strings in behind the scenes and the only person that knows how everyone really ends up here, but is playing coy about it and refusing to share all the information she has? Don’t get me wrong, she’s plenty talkative and seems very willing to relate her experiences & share her own theories – but how do we KNOW that she can be trusted? Can we completely rule it out that she’s not far more knowledgeable about what’s going on? I’ll say this…from my perspective…it sounds like we’ve got no real choice but to kind of ride along with Blanca as our tour guide to get through Purgatory, Missouri…I feel like she’s the ultimate source for any clues we might be fortunate enough to stumble onto…like she’s dropping us tiny breadcrumbs of truth.
And just as WE think we might be possibly grasping some kind of KERNEL of what could be true, you’ll hear Pearson’s music come on for another break in the story, as he sings “you’ll never really know” in what plays like a real-time taunt for how twisted around he’s likely got just about everyone listening. Cute. Real cute Stuart. Sassy…I like it. The man’s got attitude…and knows so much more than we do.
We follow a similar process with Blanca doing her best to get Tony to recall the final moments before he arrived in Purgatory, Missouri. Honestly, she’s freakin’ fantastic. She’s got a wild sense of humor, and you really get the sense that she’s stable enough to have seen just about everything that this bizarre realm has to offer. Blanca makes a reference to some dude named Carlo…and much the same as how Theresa didn’t know she was Theresa in the previous episode, the lines begin to blur here in episode two, when it comes to Tony. Blanca simply starts referring to him AS Carlo…so we have to at least ask ourselves if she could be right about that, given that she seems to be the only one that has any kind of a grip on what it’s like to be stuck in Purgatory, Missouri. Was Tony ever Tony? Or is Carlo projecting to himself, some kind of James Gandolfini-esque version of Tony Soprano, to be his own persona now? I ask all these things rhetorically of course, because I ain’t expecting to find any damn answers here. Blanca’s more aggressive with Tony than she was with Theresa, but he’s kinda earned it by being a bit of a dick. She’s actively looking forward to this guy turn on into a Pinbot, which is deliciously sarcastic and evil. “Jeez, you’re a trunk full of chuckles lady,” says Tony/Carlo…he ain’t wrong, but again, he deserves the treatment he’s getting. Blanca outright continues to mock him openly to his face…and then I feel like we get one of the biggest insights into this whole story as she starts hauling out a set of intricate personal details that she couldn’t have possibly known…unless she knows more than she’s been lettin’ on, right? Blanca’s becoming the true key to our figuring out what’s happening in Purgatory, Missouri.
I love that, again, similar to episode one, you’ll find that the whole circus of freaks around the featured character is equally alive and potentially dangerous. Much like Theresa experienced, Tony starts talking to the park itself, and hears voices responding to him directly from the loudspeakers & such…and perhaps that’s the cue we should take in knowing that our main character is about to lose their mind once & for all? Tony heads into the hall of mirrors, and it’s just as terrifying as you could likely imagine. Not only do you get the sound of circus music decomposing all around you as your soundtrack, but Tony soon discovers that the hall of mirrors is going to show him clips of his own damn life and all the things that were awful about it. I don’t know about y’all, but I’d take a hard pass on going into a place like this, and I’ve been a fairly good person most of my life! Who wants to see all their mistakes and missteps up close and personal all over again? No thanks! That’s horrifying. But the metaphor that’s going on here, is spectacular, vivid, and incredibly well thought-out. It’s been said that the only way out is through by folks with far superior intellects than my own…but I have the feeling that this isn’t the case when it comes to the hall of mirrors, and that instead of a way out, it’s going to be what locks Tony in forever.
Blanca and Tony end up tussling hard, and distorting reality altogether. It ends up ripping the very fabric of time around them in this carnival, and even the voices will change as you exit out the other side of it all. Obviously, this is a MAJOR clue in terms of figuring things out in the long run…but I’ll be damned if I can make some kind of sense out of it…yet. All I can really tell you right now, is that the experience of what we go through at the end of episode two, is very reminiscent of how Theresa and the story of what was happening to Belinda during episode one, seemed to have some kind of parallel. It’s like…if you’ve ever held your ear up to some radio static as the station fades out of signal strength, and starts to cross its stream with another, so that you end up hearing other voices, mixed messages & different programs altogether…that’s kind of what it’s like to listen to Purgatory, Missouri when it goes into this multi-level/dimensional gear. We end up questioning which side of the glass we’re on with each episode in a way…and I’m digging that. It’s like Pearson is putting us into our own hall of mirrors too while we listen.
It’s all gotta mean something…but I don’t know exactly what…not yet anyway. Gimme a couple weeks to digest this all, and I’ll be back to talk about episode three soon enough. As we continue to dig six feet deep with these characters of Purgatory, Missouri, eventually we gotta strike some answers in the murk and the mire somewhere, right? I hope so. I’m starting to feel anxious…like I’m frantically searching for something that can never actually be known…and that by the end of listening to this show, I might very well end up running around like a crazy Pinbot myself, never knowing what’s real or what isn’t anymore.
Listen to Purgatory, Missouri, directly from Stuart Pearson’s website at: https://www.stuartpearsonmusic.com/purgatory-missouri-episodes
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