The Hookup is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Blumhouse Television and Amber twenty. Listener discretion is totally advised.
Love the Lutch concierge. Yeah, the ice machine on the sixth floor. Can you send someone?
Oh I love you too, Princess.
Yeah, yeah, I'm coming home real soon. No, No, of course, Mommy and I still love each other. Mommy's just a little upset at Daddy right now because.
Oh, she told you that. Well, that's not completely true. It's nope, no, Princess, it's pronounced autoerotic asphyxiation.
October six, twenty twenty three, perhaps better known as the night Santy disappeared, and exactly one year ago today, Well, well, Santy must have been referring to my unblemished maidenhood, or, as of that very moment, a recent lack thereof, I mean, at least as far as he knew. Truth was, when Santy and I were on hiatus a couple weeks prior, I had sex with someone else, Wade, which not great, I know, but the whole thing was incited by Santy's
refusal to be exclusive with me. So it's not like I did anything wrong, right, It's just now that Santy and I were back together, and this time exclusively. I wasn't gonna let Wade ruin.
It anyone home.
Oh sorry, what'd you say?
I asked? If you feel any different?
I always feel different.
I'm gonna grab eyes for the champagne. Why don't you get showered here, Sticky, it's your stick.
I would very shortly come to regret that my last words to Santy were it's your stick. A lot of regrets stemmed from that moment, actually see as traumatic missing persons events tend to do. That night at the Ludlow Lodge set off a chain reaction of bad shit, the first Domino and a Rube Goldberg of self sabotage and shame. This entire hunt for Santy has been one depraved act
after another. No lie nor betrayal is off limits. So I wonder sometimes if that night had played out differently, and I was there to help Santy when whatever happened happened, would I still have become this person I'm ashamed of? I used to think not right up until earlier today, when Wade mentioned something that I'm shocked and embarrassed, I didn't already know it was the whole crab mentality thing, the idea that crabs sabotage each other escaping from a bucket.
You know, if I can't be happy, no one can. Wade was right by the way I exercised crab mentality on the regular, And then that reminds me of something else, something that I declare with great woe is the final arthropodic wisdom. I have to impart. Everyone eventually becomes a crab. Uh huh, you should panic.
The term carsonization was coined in the early twentieth century to describe the natural tendency for sea specimens to evolve into crabs. Indeed, biologists have traced the origin of many existing crab species back to entirely different crustaceans, begging the question why to crabs hold the key to some evolutionary advantage?
Full disclosure. I was like ten when I saw that nature special so grain of salt.
Damien, your parents both love you, and you weren't the cause of their divorce at all.
But I'm pretty sure I'm remember incorrectly. Anyway. The point is, my crab mentality was not born from what happened to Satya that night, but rather it was the evolutionary role. I was born to play the role. We're all born to play. See. We can try to be other things, detectives, were wolves, lovers, but it will always come to an end,
because everything comes to an end. And when it does, when that post coital glow has faded, and that lingering popper's head rush becomes a headache, you can finally see things for how they are. It isn't love, it isn't purpose, it's not even truth.
It's just.
A hookup. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad.
Right.
Yeah, ah, yes, the hookup brewery.
What are you all doing?
He's getting away, I said, fatties him. The hookup. Water flooding. The factory has risen almost to my neck, and I can't see a ton except Santy. A sheet of metal drifts between us, resetting my view.
Not Sandy Mittello, David, It's okay. I've got you up here. Wait, help us up.
Take my hand.
I'll hoist you guys over the railing Miteo, come on, thanks shit Sandy.
Nope, not Santy Wade.
This is Matteo.
Hold agg sit.
You look just like Sandy.
Yeah, I've heard Pa, Teo and Wade in the same room. It's not something I ever expected or wanted.
What's going on? Where are we.
A bridged version? This is where they manufacture the hookup. Someone knocked over the popper brewing tanks which are flooding the facility.
Here Masca.
Oh and remember Elias fum werewolf. He is the mastermind behind this all. Also like a werewolf. I use the metal notification sound to shake you all from the hive minds influence. Excuse me, the polycules influence Minni Gerkin, Charcuterie whore for twenty.
Why are you liking them? That's right?
Something about the metal alert tone disrupts the polycules neural link.
Dimo help me.
It's PM Peter.
Look on the opposite ledge and he's with the guy from the campus Chipotle too.
The Chipotle guy is gay.
I knew it.
Wait, are you good to round up the rest of the goons and them out through the labyrinths?
Copy that what I'm not leaving.
Mateo, do do not do the.
I'm sorry, but this lucid moment you're having it's fleeting, remember right.
It's safer for everyone if we're not here. When we revert unless unless unless you make.
It so, we don't.
I crane my neck upwards to the catwalk, following Matteo's gaze. A Lie is still strapped into the hook.
Up neural gateway.
The neural gateway device, it's what allows Alias.
To control us. Mateo, come on, we have to move.
And Matteo, I meant what I said before.
I am gonna find a way.
To reverse this. I know you believe you will.
I didn't want to hurt Matteo's feelings, but destroying the Hive mind control console was kind of a given, Elias. You can't get unstrapped without your polycule man servants.
Kind of a design thought.
Don't you think?
What did you do to them? Why won't they listen to me?
You don't know all this how the Metal Alert temporarily frees the goons from your influence. It doesn't turn them gay again, but it makes them autonomous briefly, Metal the dating app. You're not really behind this? Are you not alone?
Anyway?
I'm not telling you shit?
Hurst right?
Right?
So then if something were to happen to your entire supply of the hookup, that'd be fine for you. There's no one you say answer to the only reason I ask is I've been doing a lot of Popper's research lately, understandably, and I've learned that the primary components alkol nitrate is extremely flammable. So if I were to just, for example, drop this lighter down into that flooding popper water.
God do that? You have no idea what they'll do to you.
Oh you think you've seen horrors here in your.
Little town, Well use flash boyo, Ludlow Hills.
Is only the trial run.
I didn't exceeded expectations.
Who is they? Do you mean the ashcroft In lit Foundation?
Miasthma, my asthma, That's what they're really called.
Ashcroft In That is a shell up front to gain access to.
Students like me, students to oversee the BATA rollout of the hook.
Up students like you and Santy.
You like a dog with a bow, and boyo, Santi, there's Santy that maybe Santi shouldn't have asked so many questions.
Oh you beat me up a you like they are gonna turn your insides into your outside.
Okay, this has been fir.
No, no no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Damen Damien, Damien I will fucking flatten you.
You're cute when you're flustered. WHOA wasn't fully expecting that to work?
No, No, this isn't harrow is supposed to be.
This isn't what I meant about that pathetic. This is the man behind the curtain, the guy who killed Santy to win the miasma grant, the dude who have distributed conversion mind controlled drugs throughout Ludlow Hills. He looks so a not small enough. You know, earlier, when I was buying this bottle of the hookup, I had to purchase another item to get the bottle free, so I grabbed the nearest thing, which just happened to be this red silicone ball gag. Yeah, get wait for me, get away from me.
Better wrap this up anyway. I'm glad I got the larger size gag.
I doubt the smaller one would completely block air flor to your metas.
Alright, and that's my cue.
But but what happens when a crab does escape? This whole tired metaphor rests on the status quo of no crab ever letting another out. But if somehow one of them does get to freedom, well then what does he scutter away and leave the crabs and the bucket to their miserable cycle of fate. No, he doesn't, come on, don't need you choking on your own tongue.
What's going on?
I'm getting us out of here before the building collapses.
You might be a murderer, Elias, but I am not.
I'm so confused. Whoa, whoa? But oh my head, I'm I always wondered what the cup felt like?
And what's the verdict?
I'm not worth to come down.
Maybe everyone does eventually become a crab, but that doesn't mean we stay crabs forever.
Now.
I think the Nature Special left that part out for some people. Maybe this hardened crab mentality is the end of evolutionary road. But I'm not some people, and I'm not done evolving. With all this behind me, I might become a prawn or a krill, or heck, maybe in a top.
What are we doing, Damien.
End of the line. I wasn't about to let you burn in there, but you're still gonna answer for all this. So shame though, shower time in prison is going to be so much less enjoyable.
Now, Damien.
I'm sorry, Please come back.
Demian.
Okay, maybe I'll always have a little crab in me when you boil it down. There are really only two types of people. There's the ones who unpack their clothes into the hotel room drawers when they arrive, and there's the ones who live out of a suitcase. I'd always been the latter, mostly because the shit I've gone through has been well a lot to unpack. But in the spirit of what doctor Wiley calls healthy coping strategies, and with a full two weeks of process, I think it's
finally time to unpack. Last year, Elias and Santi became unwitting pawns and a conversion popper scheme run by the elusive Miasma Corporation, although it may be more accurate to call Elias a witting pawn. Ensuring he'd received the research grant. After graduation, Elias killed his only competitor, Santy. That feels really extreme, but I guess when you factor in Elias's other quirks.
I didn't agree to.
Make the hookup because I hate being gay.
I did it to be the only.
Gay what it makes a little more sense. Santy stood between Elias and his ambition on the topic of elias. I don't totally know the latest there. Last I heard he's being charged for something arson adjacent, but any evidence of the hookup was destroyed in the fire or removed from it. Ah, here's a detail I may want to iron out before I tuck it away. Santi specifically, where is he? Where is his body? Some detective work hunt.
And yes, I know the elephant in the room is my asthma Core, the mysterious organization behind the Ashcroft Inlet Foundation and by extension, the hook on them. Unsurprisingly, there's nothing about them online, and I'm working on digging deeper, but really it's not a top priority right now. I just can't keep putting myself in danger, not for Santy, not for anyone. I used to think he needed me, that I was Santy's only chance of rescue, but that
was never the case. I mean, without this mystery to consume me, all I'd be left with this past year was the remaining men in my life, which is a historically grim demographic. I mean, even now, take Mateo, even though he's been hive, mind free and completely autonomous since I incinerated the link up device, sexuality didn't revert back Like all the other former goons, Mateo is still straight. Also, like the other former goons, Mateo doesn't talk to me much.
I did see him yesterday at the library. I would have said hi.
Except.
Intermediate Marine Science, Advanced Seismic Oceanography, seaweed and other aquatic jump scares.
No. I'm serious, Mateo.
I didn't know when you asked me to hang if it was just like a study aid or.
A day daid. Matteo was with a girl my freshman year Ra Actually Meg.
Honestly I wasn't sure either. But something about you, Meg, You're an enigma, like.
The thing you used to clean out your butt.
Do you hear something?
P and Peter finished his semester at Crestwick and returned to Cape Town. Shockingly, he doesn't keep in touch. Prize be to good getting me out of that Hellescype Town. One former hookup goon doesn't hate me at.
Least save me in Come in, come in, Hey, thanks for meeting me here.
I appreciate it.
Not at all.
I love the Ludlow Lodge, great memories here fire. If anything, bell Boy has been quite apologetic. I keep telling him it's fine.
He wasn't himself which is why I feel like this could be like a great opportunity to start fresh, you know, new sexuality, new me, and soon new apartment.
Ah, hence the boxes. Yeah, I'm donating most of it.
So if you want anything from the gay stuff pile, feel free.
Okay, I'll bite come again the gay stuff pile.
Well yeah, I mean, since the hookup turn me straight, I don't have any use for my gay shit.
Have a look if you want mmm.
Mmmm mm hm oh yeah I should.
That's gay. Hey I remember these you're tossing your medieval weapons boxer briefs.
Yeah, pretty kay right.
Besides, they're not even mine. Some dude left them here after we screwed a while back.
Jesus you kept them.
They've got battle access Bro.
Really though, I've started to think bell Boy only apologizes so much and hopes it'll reciprocate and apologize for stabbing him with a starfish, which I won't.
I just like really value the value of an apology, you know. I mean, I'm falling down these sorry so you can heal apologies, help us heal, Bro.
The thing is I kind of have been healing. I mean it could be thanks to Bell Boy's apologies, but I think it's more likely something else, Doctor Wiley. I haven't been honest. Oh yes, the truth is that guy Santi I told you about.
We didn't break up like I said, he went missing.
Yes, I know, hhmm, Damien, it's a small town. Of course, I knew about the Crestwick student named Santi who went missing exactly when you said your Saunty broke up with you.
So all this time you were just, oh my god.
Do you want to try this again from the.
Top, And so I did. I finally told doctor Wiley everything, and this time just the facts. The villagers gathered in the town square, drenched in the blood of their massacred chickens werewolf. The town crier screams. That's kind of been the motif of the month. Truth. Like I said earlier, this entire half baked investigation has really just been a series of lies and deceptions. Every step I've taken and every man I've touched has been a means to an end,
simply an undercover's mission to gather intel. Until now, See, there is this one guy who makes opening up and being honest feel really doable, and despite my crippling fears, the real Damien Hurst hasn't deterred him yet. So who is this mystery? Gentleman I've been seeing?
Why are you going through my drawers?
Wait?
Honestly, the drawers are an accidental prop I was using in a mental metaphor to work through my thoughts.
You should have just said you're sniffing my underwear. It would have been less weird. Although if I were a big shot Veronica Martian tier detective like you, babe, I'd probably have a lot to work through too.
Not even what do you mean? Well, I didn't really solve anything, did I? I mean we only found the brewery because of the ads Metal was sending me. I never figured out why the metal alert sound temporarily disrupts the polycule's influence. Honestly, what part of this did I solve? What if I'm just not a good detective at my core? Maybe I'm just not cut out to be an investigative journalist.
I always thought it was obvious you're Scooby. You don't have to set the traps or make the plans. You just have to derail them until you, in some roundabout way, arrive at the right conclusion.
I'm on the fence about that comment.
Hey, since you seem to know your way around my dresser, can you grab me a pair of boxers? We're gonna be late for the game.
I'll bet you head the Crustaceans lose again.
I planned on getting head from you tonight either way, but sure deal, bib Oh, and will you click on the electric kettle too, it's gonna be a rama night. Careful you don't trip on the cord.
I know my credibility takes a hit when I end up dating guys that I previously declared the Antichrist. But maybe I misjudge waited first, or maybe my initial assessment was correct and I've since gotten worse and met him at his level. Either way, I think he makes me happy.
These underwear which ones? Oh, medieval castles get your voice? If you like the medieval theme, there should be a pair with knights in there too. There used to be a third pair in the set.
With medieval weapons print.
Yeah. I think I left them at a guy's place.
Though, if Wade and bell Boy were at any point hooking up, then isn't it possible it was Wade who left the medieval weapons boxer briefs at bell Boy's place? And even though bell Boy had an alibi at the time of the disappearance, an accomplice could still have used his motel employee perks to pull off the murder. Perks like precise knowledge of the building CCTV dead zones, dang
you good. Perks like access to the normally locked dumb waiter, which, if we trust the vision MATEO pulled from the polycule, we know Santi's body was at some point stored inside. May perks like keys to our Oh it was you, Wade, you killed Santy.
I deny it, but I don't want to keep lying to you. Hey, hey, you're okay.
Don't touch me.
How did you know?
Are you working for my asthma?
No? I really don't know anything about them.
Oh really, I'm supposed to believe you just killed Santy in a crime of passion.
I liked Santi, I really really liked him, and I knew that he didn't feel the same. I used to wonder if maybe he was just the type of person who didn't show his feelings until he met you, and then I saw in his eyes, just from the few times he mentioned Damien Hurst, that he really really liked you. Granted, I also got that message when he broke things off with me.
So a few days later you followed him to the Ludlow Lodge to kill him.
No, I was already there that night with Bell Boy. He had access to vacant rooms, so sometimes he'd DM me and I'd come over.
Of course he would.
I didn't want you to ever know this, s Damien. It was before I really knew you and fell in love.
Just just tell me what happened that night.
On top of Santhi's rejection, I was licking my wounds from being outed only days earlier. So when I got the booty called to meet bell Boy at Ludlow Lodge, it came as a much needed distraction. But as luck would have it.
I'm gonna grab ice for the champagne. Why don't you get showered? You're sticky.
You gotta be fucking joking. Wait, what are you doing here? Hi, Santiago, Nice to see you too. Are you drunk?
Wow?
You should be in a detective story. You're blocking the ice machine. Ice ice for champagne?
Right?
Did you? And Damien? Finally, what do you want?
Wade?
What do I want? A goddamn second of your time? Is that okay? Like I was saying. I don't know if he's told you, but Damien's not as unsullied as he was was. I would know because I was there. You might even say I was there first. Yeah, your precious SANTHI drew first blood. Get off me. What the fuck you need to cool down something?
You slammed Santy's face into the ice machine? What the fuck? Wade?
I just wanted him to snap out of it and stop hitting me. I didn't think anything bad would happen to him, that it's just ice. Hey, Santi, you're awake.
Shit.
I opened the ice hatch to get a better look, but.
There was no ice. The machine was broken that night, So when you shoved Santy and the ice machine to cool down and knocked him out, he wasn't resting on a pile of ice.
The ice had melted. He was face down in a puddle of water. Sonny, Sandy, Sonny. When I realized what I'd done, I called the nearest person I could think for.
Help, bell Boy, And knowing I'd come looking for Santy soon, you must have figured you didn't have enough time to come up with a permanent body disposal plan. But with bell Boy's key ring you could quickly access the derelict dumbwaiter for a temporary storage. How did you convince balboy to help you cover up a murder?
I'm not proud of it, but I took advantage of his panic.
Fuck Belboy, your fingerprints are everywhere.
You're gonna get the electricure so hard if anyone finds out about this wow arming.
Then, after stuffing Santy's body in the chute, bell Boy loft it back up into its rusted, seemingly untouched position.
Since the Ludlow County PD couldn't find any signs of fel play, I had no trouble coming back the next day to retrieve the body. Ah, but you still can't figure out where I ultimately disposed of him. After that. You're gonna kick yourself for not getting this one. I didn't.
I didn't dispose of Santi's body. When I came back the next day, I noticed the ice machine was back up and running, and I used a similar one of those big industrial types before at a bust Boy gig, so I knew exactly how deceptively deep the ice beacing goes.
You mean Santy is still there? No, No, there's no way. I mean they would have discovered his body during the renovation.
I was worried about that too, but thanks to cheap landlords, the ice machines remained untouched. You can see for yourself. Just not right now.
Let me out of here.
Can't help.
What the fuck, Wade?
Sit? I'm sorry, I don't know what to do. Fuck, I've told you so much.
What are you doing?
He's on top of me now, like straddling me?
What is he?
Sorry? I know what to do is to you, Wade?
Now wait stop, I can't breathe.
The only way to kill the Mukade without summoning the Horde is to boil it alive. I can't keep stomping on my problems. Got to boil the centipede once and for all.
The tea kettle cord. This hurts me more than it hurts you.
No, Wade, it doesn't.
But it's about to go. Have a fucking face.
Get off me. Hey, Siri, call Santi.
Santi's phone.
Yeah.
I thought you were crazy going on about this popper's conversion conspiracy shit, but I also realized that you wouldn't stop searching for Sandi until you got an answer.
So you took advantage of Elias's unrelated crimes and pentned Santi's murder on him too.
I wasn't really gonna let you die, Damien, and I'm not.
Gonna stop looking for the truth until I find you. Well, I found the truth, or more accurately, I guess the truth found me. Like I said, it was hardly my deductive prowess that busted this case open. And yet as I process all this, underscored by the soothing drone of Wade trying to reattach his face, I'm suddenly not so bothered by my gum shoe shortcomings. I mean, so what if I missed some red flag. That's what dating is. I can't beat myself up for every clue I overlooked
or every hypothesis I misjudged. I have other people to beat up for that. Now. Yeah, I might not be the best detective in Ludlow Hills, but I'm alright with that, because sometimes to solve a mystery, gotta let things slip through the cracks.
Calculating joke score.
Written and directed by Noah Feinberg, That's Me. Sound design and score by Jeremiah Zimmerman, Starring Noah Feinberg as Damien Ray Santiago as Santy and A Matteo, Nico Greatham as Wade, Augustus Prue as Elias, Scott Evans as Big Tuck, Jeffrey Self as bell Boy, Tina Majorino as Doctor, y, Obia Bailey as p and Peter, Gabrielle Ruiz as Joma, Sadie
Dickinson as Meg. Additional voices by Megan Taylor, Harvey, Susan C. Bennett, Verona, blue Mark Bramhall, Brian Daniel Porter, Chris Dickey, Aaron Cocher, Christopher Corbyn, Kiff Vandenhuable and Rhys Griffin. Opening theme by Alex Yoder, Casting director Sonny Bowling and Meg Mormon. Executive producers from iHeart, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. Executive producers from Blumbhouse Chris Sticky and Noah Feinberg. That's Me Executive
producers from Mber twenty David Thwaites and Jimmy Jellen. Supervising producer Rachel Foley, editor Noah Feinberg.
That's Me, Everyone, Please stand back.
Major Fire at Chock Full of Nets, Adult Neutie, corner of Locus and ripton repeat. Major Fire Fire appears to have originated in the basement approaching Central Chain are now, how.
Is this place? Keep your guard up, Jesus, what happened here? You guys? Smell that?
Yeah, it's like something I kill.
What is that?
Guys?
Guys, you're okay.