Starring Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster as those married mediums Frank and Sadie Doyle. Also starring Hal Lublin, Samm Levine, and James Urbaniak. Recorded September 10, 2011.

Acker:

I feel like we rarely team up James Urbaniak and Samm Levine but when we do, it’s a win. Fact: They are both from New Jersey.

See you if you spot Paul‘s ad-lib. Here’s a hint – if you can recognize Craig Cackowski’s laugh, it will give you a clue.
As much as I love the silly horse-names as pronounced by Paget‘s Sadie, I prefer the way she pronounces “horse” even more.

The character of Dave Henderson, the werewolf detective comes from our notion of THE WORST PITCH EVER. If we ever got into a pitch meeting where nothing went right and we needed to abort, we had a pitch all worked out for the most terrible show imaginable: Werewolf Cops. It was our pitching safeword. We knew the show contained one cop cradling another while the ambulance came to treat the officer down’s gaping bite-wounds. (sidenote: has there been a cop named Officer Downs in something?) We also knew the non-werewolf cop would tell the chief off with “He may be a werewolf, but he’s still MY PARTNER!”
We have never had to pitch it. [I regret every meeting where we don’t get to pitch Werewolf Cops. –BB]

When we first wrote Henderson into the show, I was on a Damon Runyon kick. I was reading and loving his short stories and wanted to write like him. Since Frank and Sadie are borrowed from Hammett, the notion of some Hammett-y characters talking to a Runyon-y guy appealed to my mash-up loving brains. So no contractions and only present tense for Detective Dave. Except for sometimes, when we messed up.

I also like the thought that this episode elicits that in a zombie apocalypse, you can survive if you can push hard enough to knock a zombie over.