The Merciful Wisdom of The Midnight Gospel
In episode seven of Comedian Duncan Trussell’s 2020 show, The Midnight Gospel, while walking through a mirror-laden hallway, the incarnation of death, mortician Caitlyn Doughty, provides Clancy Duncan with the task of forgiveness. The mirrors are filled with versions of Clancy that he has yet to face: Mutilated, shadow versions of him. “Forgive them?” Clancy asks. He sticks two thumbs up, acknowledging that these versions are ok, parts of him in one way or another.
Image Courtesy: Netflix
The Midnight Gospel: An introduction
There are experiences in life in which words are only weak attempts at explaining their impact. I feel this way about Duncan Trussell and Pendleton Ward’s show: The Midnight Gospel.
The show mashes Ward’s visuals – the creator of Adventure Time and one of the largest creative minds at Cartoon Network in the early 2000s – with Duncan Trussell’s conversations from his podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour.
The Midnight Gospel was many folks' introduction to Trussell’s outlook on philosophy, death, drugs, his relationship with the people around him, and the guests he chose to bring on his show. The show takes audio from the podcast and inserts the clips to be the dialogue of the guest characters in each episode.
The title, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, reads as a nod to what the Federal Communications Commission dubbed “family hour” on television channels in the 1970s. These programs arose after American TV was criticized for the amount of sex and violence present during primetime television. Trussell, though, did not shy away from speaking about drugs and death, amongst many other topics – much like pre-family hour TV.
Trussell’s unique and specialized curiosity to philosophy is one that encourages viewers to think similarly.
In TMG, Clancy ignores the real world around him, he lives in a messy mobile home and has outside conflicts with neighbors or his sister and opts for conversations about meaning and spiritual guidance.
He journeys through simulations, typically stumbling through the colorful mess of the worlds he sets foot on. He timidly asks the guests on the show if they’d like to contribute to his “spacecast.” He speaks to eight main guests during the show.
The collection of spiritual and philosophical questions and conversations are greatly balanced by the lack of ego that each guest holds regarding what they speak about. They simply want to share the knowledge they have gained through their lives and careers, paying little mind towards gaining something from their interactions and acting as comforting figures of wisdom. Each conversation flows organically in the show, even when in each world Clancy ventures to the literal apocalypse is occurring as the background of the conversation.
My deep-rooted love for this show stems from its absurd and colorful storytelling structure. All of the guests on the show take on radical appearances, such as novelist Anne Lammott and Raghu Markus’ appearance as “Deer Dogs” or Jason Louv’s appearance as a prisoner’s “Soul Bird” or even mortician Caitlin Doughty’s appearance as death herself… with an enlarged eyeball.
Image Courtesy: Netflix
Walking with ourselves, hand in hand
Clancy’s initial timid disposition is more than just part of his character, it’s a component of his earnest search for truth. He ventures to dying simulated worlds, hoping for answers of spiritual guidance and rejuvenation.
As a vessel for curiosity, Clancy travels through simulations speaking to psychedelia inspired characters. He pieces together the puzzle of reality as presented in the show.
Ep 1. Taste of The King: The first episode has one of the most memorable visual metaphors with the zombie apocalypse occurring while Clancy and Dr. Drew Pinsky, an addiction specialist, talk about how there are no “bad drugs” but really, bad contexts of the usage of drugs. “Besides, what's the point of running when it's love that you’re running from?” Clancy sings with the other zombies as he is bit by one and becomes one himself.
Ep 2. Officers and Wolves: In episode two of the show, Lamott, a novelist and follower of the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, speaks about her surrender to God while facing the death of loved ones. She says her surrender was bitter, but necessary to patch open wounds. In his podcast, this conversation took place two weeks after the death of Duncan’s father and took place at a Ram Dass retreat.
Ep. 3 Hunters Without a Home: One of the common themes between the guests is the concept of self forgiveness, of looking at the past to reflect on and appreciate acquired wisdom. In the third episode, Hunters Without a Home, Damien Echols, who was one of three teenagers falsely accused of a triple murder in the 90s, explains the impact being on death row had on the rest of his life. He and Clancy talk about how for him being in prison was one of the most important things to happen to him, an impactful pivot in his spiritual being and practices.
Image Courtesy: Netflix
Ep 5. Annihilation of Joy: Jason Louv, an author and Magick practitioner, examines the trial of being through the lens of a prisoner who dies over and over and over again. Louv explains the dharmic cycle, the bardo loop and the concepts of believing so thoroughly of our existence, that we strangle ourselves with false identity and reality.
Image Courtesy: Netflix
If one lets go of their preconceived idea of the self, they can free themselves from the prison of ego, at least that’s how TMG explains it as the prisoner finally is allowed once more to speak for themselves as it escapes prison.
“Freedom is what happens when you finally take off that prisoner disguise,” the prisoner sings as it joins the massive illuminated net of consciousness at the end of the episode.
Mouse of Silver
This episode deserves its own section – and if you plan on watching the show, I’d suggest you skip this part. I wouldn’t want to dilute the magic of experiencing it for yourself.
Episode 8. Mouse of Silver: In the eighth and final episode of the show, the curtain of Duncan and Clancy is fully pulled back, the guest is Duncan’s mother, Deneen Fendig, who is dying of cancer. The two share a conversation filled with tears and they bond over Duncan’s process of coping with his mother’s death. Duncan and his mother die and are reborn into different forms, assuring Duncan she is not gone, but as she puts it, “if you look at the world, you see things appearing and disappearing and humans are a part of the whole… we are part of the whole, and everything in the whole transforms all the time.”
Image Courtesy: Netflix
Duncan/Clancy: “There’s no way to stop the heartbreak, what do you do about that?”
Deneen Fendig: “You cry… you cry.”
The whole of TMG provides a nod of assurance to existential fear, that in the perspectives of the creators, the guests, and maybe even of myself, that a prisoner disguise prevents a soul from fully enjoying the colorful, psychedelic goop that is interpersonal relationships and our relationship with our personal universe.
The Midnight Gospel encourages us to surrender to what we are and face existential questions with at least a small kernel of presence and acceptance.
Strike Out,
Writer: Michael Angee
Editor: Olivia Hansen
Michael Angee is an Editorial Writer for Strike Magazine GNV. If he’s not occupied with writing for Strike or editing stories for The Alligator, you can find him overanalyzing music and annoying his friends with whatever piece of media he's made his personality at the moment. You can reach him on instagram @michael_angee or via email @michaelangee@ufl.edu.
