Transformative Taskmaster | Ep06 – That’s where the kiss happened

>> VO:
Hello and welcome to Transformative Taskmaster, the podcast by fans, for fans and about fans. This week, TK and Jackie are talking about canon and how it works within the show. They’ll be pondering questions like: why in one promo spot is there a room full of Alex clones? I’d also like to take a moment to apologize for this one being a bit rough. It’s one of the first episodes we recorded.

>> TK:
Hello and welcome, Jackie, to the Transformative Taskmaster podcast!

>> Jackie:
Hello, T.K., and thank you for having me!

>> TK:
So excited to have you here today, because today we are going to be talking about what canon means in the world of Taskmaster. Now, for those out there that don’t know what canon is – and this is a word that is spelled C.A.N.O.N, not C.A.N.N.O.N, which means something completely different…

>> Jackie:
Yes. To quote a bad Tumblr joke from about 13 years ago, canon with one N refers to fiction. Cannon with two Ns refers to guns, but both of them sink ships.

>> TK:
Yeah. Yeah, actually that’s true. So go ahead and define what canon means in terms of fandom spaces?

>> Jackie:
So in terms of fandom spaces, canon is basically anything that is part of the universe of that fandom. It’s whatever is considered part of the text that makes up that piece of work, piece of literature, movie, TV show, whatever the case may be. There are certain things that get complicated, though, with canon, which is what we’re going to talk about today in terms of Taskmaster as well as more broadly speaking. So some examples, from recent years, people might know about – Dumbledore being gay is a big one. That came from a tweet from J.K. Rowling where she said he’s gay. Never in the books, never in the movies. I think it’s in the prequel, the Fantastic Beasts movies. I don’t watch those, so I can’t really speak to that, but that raises a question. Is it actually canon if it didn’t happen within the text that she wrote, even if she was thinking it? Is that canon?

>> TK:
Yeah.

>> Jackie:
More complicated. You can get into things like Star Wars. After the original trilogy, there were a long list of books written in the Star Wars universe that were considered by many fans to be canon, or at least canon adjacent. And then when George Lucas did the prequel series and the sequel series, those became non-canon. And then you also have canon issues when it comes to things like pieces of literature or pieces of media in general that exist in different types of media. One of my favorite examples is Les Miserables, one of my favorite musicals. But it started as a novel. And that novel is markedly different than the musical. So you have people who might only engage with it in one of those two forms, and so have no idea that there are differences that exist between them, and very stark differences that exist between them. So canon is something that is important in fan spaces because it’s the shared language that we’re all using when we talk about the works of media that we’re engaging with. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all on the same page because of… complications, with canon.

>> TK:
One of my other fandoms, Phineas and Ferb, they are by Disney. And when Disney bought out the Star Wars or Lucasfilm franchise, they immediately jumped on it and made a Star Wars Phineas and Ferb movie – because they clearly loved Star Wars, and they were like: we finally get to do this officially. Like, this is amazing. And so in the first scroll screen or whatever it’s called, it’s like, you know, in a galaxy far away and they do the whole thing. And then at the very end of like the big long paragraph, it’s like: also none of this is canon, so don’t freak out. We’re just having fun! We know that we could make this canon if we wanted to, technically.

>> Jackie:
Like technically Princess Leia is a Disney princess now, in canon, kind of. And that actually brings up some adjacent terms that we should define for the listening audience, because they will almost certainly come up. And that’s going to be head canon and fanon. Head canon is, as you might guess, from the name, a canon that exists in your head. So it’s something that a fan fic writer or a fan artist has taken to be canon to them. It doesn’t exist in canon itself. But it’s something that they’ve accepted and they use frequently throughout their works. And then fanon is a head canon that is widely, if not universally, accepted by the fandom as being a running theme throughout all fan works. I would say for Taskmaster, there aren’t a whole lot of things I would consider fanon. Probably the biggest is the relationships between characters, especially like Alex hanging out with his friends, Greg hanging out with his friends. Probably Greg doesn’t hang out with Ed Gamble as much as you would think based on fanfic because they, you know, they don’t live down the street from each other. They’re probably not hanging out every weekend at the pub – could be! I don’t know. But that is sort of something that we’ve accepted just because we know these characters, and that makes it easier to exist in this world. And so that would be an example of the Taskmaster universe in fanon.

>> TK:
And going back to what you said, you brought up how Les Mis was a book and a musical, and those are two completely separate and very different things. And I feel like I also have an example of this. Similarly, in a musical, Beetlejuice the musical I’m obsessed with, can’t stand the original movie. To me they are so, so different from each other. And it just kind of goes to show that you can take the idea of the same characters and the same plot and all that kind of stuff, and transform it into something that is very different from the original subject matter more or less. And so what Taskmaster does is it really complicates the canon, because a lot of it is not consistent. A lot of it contradicts itself. And, specifically, we’re going to be talking about Greg and Alex’s relationship and what the canon is of that. Because we’ve got the off-camera, at the Taskmaster house, filming of interstitials or promos where it’s the Taskmaster and the assistant living together, and then we’ve got the…

>> Jackie:
In their lovely home together!

>> TK:
…their lovely home together. We’ve got the studio canon, which is how Greg introduces Alex at the start of every episode, how he talks to him, how he makes fun of him, and how he makes jokes about, you know, Alex will, in our lovely home together, be doing x, y, z. And then, of course, we have real life canon. Not sure if we can call it canon since it’s real life, but the real life canon of them going out and doing stuff – like the New York City premier trip where, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but where Greg will just say stuff like: oh, you’re not used to seeing (my dick) with trousers on, are you? Yeah, from that angle. Basically we have a bunch of different types of Taskmaster canon here.

>> Jackie:
Yeah. And I would go a little further and say that you can split the real life side of canon, quote unquote, into two, which is them existing not on Taskmaster, the TV show, in the real world, but still very much in character, or at least playing along with the joke. And then them existing in the real world, living their actual real lives, that we are not privy to. Nor should we be. And so that I tend to think of it as where the joke ends is where what we can consider canon to be ends, at least for our purposes and for our discussion. And even within these sort of concentric circles of canon that exist in the Taskmaster universe, it gets even more complicated from there, because you have adjacent things that have existed and that they’ve done, like the New York trip, that aren’t canon to a lot of people who are watching the show. There is no, at least that we know of, official recording of the New York Q&A. So a lot of the things that -TK and I were both there- so the things that we saw, and that we know and have sort of adopted into our understanding of canon, aren’t necessarily universally true. One of the big ones that isn’t universally true for most viewers, or for a lot of viewers at least, is going to be the ad breaks. Which seems like a very small, inconsequential thing. If you are watching Taskmaster post series 11, basically, on YouTube, you will not see Greg throwing to an ad during the video. They cut those out, probably for time, just for consistency, whatever the case may be. But there are little things that happen in those ad breaks. For a huge example, in series six, that’s where the kiss happened. It was in an ad break or coming back from an ad break. So if they cut that out, you would have people watching it, and they would have no idea that that even happened. And that would definitely impact how they view those two characters and their relationship in the show.

>> TK:
Yeah. Our group chat that we’re part of, we joke all the time about how if people are missing the ad breaks, they’re missing like 60% of the lore.

>> Jackie:
Absolutely, yes. Because it’s little stupid things, a lot of the time, I’d say 90% of the time. But that’s really what goes into building who these characters are and why we love them so much, because of all those little stupid jokes that they do with each other that get cut out from that. And then you also have bigger things. For example, the Taskmaster treasure hunt from the book Bring Me the Head of the Taskmaster. I think it’s that book. That is something that a lot of people did follow along, there were videos along the way. There were all kinds of things that happened along the way. But is that considered canon? It happened technically in the Taskmaster universe, but I would say I would be shocked if 5% of the entire viewing audience is aware of all of that, and was part of all of that. But that means that those people who did that have a completely different understanding of what was going on in canon to them. But there’s a lot there’s a lot! It’s fun. I’m excited to dig into it. Drill down into the narrative, as it were.

>> TK:
Where have we heard that before? I wonder? So let’s go through the different types of canon that we have, with Greg and Alex and the Taskmaster universe. So let’s start with what I feel is the most fantastical canon, which is what we’re going to call House canon. So in this case, House canon is going to be the prerecorded bits that they don’t really do much anymore. I think if I’m remembering correctly, somebody said after series 8 they didn’t really keep doing a lot of house canon.

>> Jackie:
Yeah. Series 8 or 9. It might have to do with the move to Channel 4. But possibly, Channel 4 might not have wanted Greg to actually drive out to the Taskmaster house and film these things, right? Who can say? Certainly not me.

>> TK:
Yeah. So house canon: This is going to include things like interstitials, so anything where Greg and Alex are at the Taskmaster house physically together, they shoot a couple seconds long scene of Greg throwing something at Alex or Greg slamming the door in Alex’s face, or Alex doing something for Greg. And then it’s also going to include promos. So any promos that they did where – and sometimes this doesn’t technically happen in the house, but it’s like one of Greg’s houses, more or less. And he’ll go through the corridors and he’ll open a door with a bunch of Alex clones in it and then slam the door and be like, nope, that’s not what I wanted to see right now. So that’s like a three second thing that never gets mentioned again, but yeah. So tell me about House canon, because that to me is like the most ridiculous thing. And Greg says a lot of ridiculous stuff about Alex in the studio. But to me, the house canon is the most ridiculous.

>> Jackie:
So the house canon builds off of some of the things that Greg has said in studio, which we will get to in a moment, but a lot of it has to do with this sort of pre-established – and as time goes on, the further we get from this actually being anything related to anything at this point – where Greg lives in the Taskmaster house, that’s his house. And Alex lives somewhere, in the caravan in some cases, in other cases, it’s implied he lives elsewhere. He does his little chores for Greg. He takes the dead skin off of his feet. He does all those little things that they have explicitly said that he does, as it were. So that’s where that lives. So the impetus behind all of this is that the contestants are coming to Greg’s house, Greg as Taskmaster, to do these tasks, for Greg. This is also -and this is sort of in between the two- it’s in studio, and then in house universe or House canon. But there’s also the idea there of Greg being the one who sets the tasks. And Alex’s job as the assistant is to carry out the tasks. That was leaned into really heavily in early seasons. They’ve again gone way off the reservation on that one. But that is sort of backed up then by the things that you see in those literal interstitials or in the throws to ad, where it’s very clear that Greg is in charge. Greg is ordering Alex to do all these things. Alex is so servile it’s vile, to again, quote Greg, and that’s really the relationship there. We don’t get a whole lot of sense beyond that from those little clips, other than clearly Greg is in charge. Alex is very little in all ways. And Greg doesn’t seem to like him all that much. Pretty much that’s the extent of it.

>> TK:
I definitely agree that the House canon is where Greg despises Alex the most.

>> Jackie:
Yes. Very clearly needs him to do these things, but very clearly does not want to be with him in that situation.

>> TK:
So let’s go now to studio canon. So studio canon we’re going to include basically everything that is said in the studio while they’re recording. Ad breaks, throws to Alex at the beginning of each episode. Random one-offs that Greg will say to a contestant about Alex and Greg living their life together. We’re very happy and in our lovely home together. And we are lovers.

>> Jackie:
Yep. Direct quotes, folks, all direct quotes!

>> TK:
So talk to me about studio canon for a bit.

>> Jackie:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually going to start by bringing up something that I want us to get into a little later, because I think it is an interesting position between canons. And that would be the outtakes. Because that all happens in the studio, but it also doesn’t get broadcast. And it’s in the outtakes where I think you see a little bit of them slipping between real life and the studio. So in the studio, the very first introduction of Alex Horne by Greg, he says: I am aided and fluffed by. Which listen, I’m certain, beyond any extent of my imagination that Greg did not mean it in a sexual way. However, this was series one, episode one. Like, come on, man, like where do the internet perverts get it from? So you have all of those little pieces, all of the little jokes that Greg makes at Alex’s expense, whether that’s in his introductions, all the things that Alex confides in him when drunk, which you would really think at this point that Alex would stop telling Greg things while he’s been drinking. One might think. And then all the little jokes that he makes along the way. I was just watching, I don’t remember what episode it was, but he makes a comment like: it’s a miracle that Alex even has kids. Yeah. And one of them, he actually just straight up is like: are you sure you have children? Little things like that where it’s bringing in and pulling from real life, but making it into a joke about both their characters and their relationship to each other.

>> TK:
I saw a Tumblr post the other day that really made me laugh. It was something like comedians will be talking about how there’s a ton of fanfiction about Greg and Alex, and they’re like, I know that Alex has three children, but I honestly just can’t imagine him having sex with anyone. And then the Taskmaster fan base, we’re like: skill issue.

>> Jackie:
Exactly. So that’s also where you start getting into a lot of the elements that did get picked up and run with by the fan writers, artist, etc.. Things like, when Greg told Alex that it was time for him to go to bed and Alex pulls out a dog bed and just gets into it, just curls up into it. That’s not normal behavior, quite frankly. Especially when it comes to a television show that is being broadcast on terrestrial – well, at that point it wasn’t terrestrial TV – but nonetheless. And I also think that it’s important to differentiate here, and this will get into what I was referring to with the outtakes a bit. Because obviously they’re in studio and they have their various studio roles that they’re doing both as characters and then as themselves. Greg is the Taskmaster, but he’s also the host of a television show, trying to make jokes and move it along. Alex is, of course, the creator and an executive producer of the television show, and is also then the little sad assistant. And so those things do come into play and do come into conflict, which makes things really interesting from a viewer’s perspective. Because it starts adding to who these characters are, they exist in both of these realms simultaneously. It’s very interesting and very fun. Once you sort of know those things, well, okay. Obviously Greg’s not making Alex do that because Alex – he would just say no if he didn’t want to, he can say no if he wants to, but he very clearly doesn’t want to say no. And so it brings in different levels that are really fun also to play with and to discuss as fans of the show.

>> TK:
Yeah. And I bet for them, switching between those different levels of canon is really fun. I can only imagine how fun that must be. You were telling me earlier about how Greg will say: he confided to me while drunk, seems like Alex gets drunk a lot and tells Greg all these things, seemingly. But on another level, if you think about House canon, I cannot imagine the Taskmaster allowing his assistant to drink ever, recreationally, you know?

>> Jackie:
So the only way would be like if it was, King and poison checker kind of situation. He’s taking a sip of Greg’s to make sure no one poisoned it. That would be the only way that I could imagine that. Because otherwise he’s there to serve. He’s not there to imbibe.

>> TK:
He’s not there to drink, eat, have fun, enjoy life, or deign to speak to the taskmaster.

>> Jackie:
Exactly. Only as ordered.

>> TK:
Yeah, exactly. Speak when spoken to type of deal.

>> Jackie:
Precisely. That’s also something that they’ve gotten away from is sort of that differentiation of their relationship over time, even just in those two canons, the studio canon and the house canon. Yeah, they definitely didn’t do a very good job of it. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. I mean that in a Alex and Greg are going to Alex and Greg kind of way. So even in the beginning when they were really leaning into this, Alex is his assistant and is doing all these things, there was never really that level of commitment from either of them. More from Alex than from Greg, but they’ve also really, really gotten away from it as time has gone on where it’s no longer, and I made reference to this earlier, it’s no longer Greg setting the tasks, quote unquote. And Alex just carrying them out. There is very clear understanding between them in the studio, that what happened previously in House canon isn’t necessarily real. So then you also have the situation where they acknowledge that multiple canons are existing within their own canon and inception.

>> TK:
And inception. And I think it does get more obvious as the series go by, because I feel like it’s not really explicitly stated that Alex is the one who’s the executive producer, and he’s the one that writes all the tasks until way later in just the overarching series. Because you don’t find that out unless you go looking for it, and then eventually you’re realizing that Alex is secretly in charge behind the scenes, and you’re like, oh, I need to rewatch all of this now with this new understanding of what Alex’s role is, because this is fascinating. But one of the key moments, I think, for me, was Sophie Duker’s series where it’s the bike task. Alex is running himself ragged on this bike while she’s trying to do the thing with the rubber ducks. And she is just like, Alex, you’re doing this to yourself! You wrote the task. You didn’t have to do this. And Alex stalwartly says: I do everything for him, which is so funny and so endearing because it’s…

>> Jackie:
Again, a totally normal thing to say about your co-host, obviously.

>> TK:
And I think Alex is the one that wants to keep this narrative going as long as he can, because probably in part because it was his original idea in the first place. And he just wants to have a consistent throughline or plot or whatever you want to call it. But I think a lot of people, contestants and even Greg, you know, as the series go by and now we’re on, we’re about to be on series 19 and may even be on it right now if, depending on when this episode comes out. But it’s seems like at this point, the only person that maintains this illusion of Greg is the Taskmaster, he’s in charge, I have to do what he tells them, or what he tells me, is Alex.

>> Jackie:
And that’s again circling back to sort of auxiliary cannons. We had Taskmasterclass come out. The first episode came out in June after series 17 finished airing, and then the second episode of that came out this past January. And a lot of had conversations about it because it felt… off. In terms of where things were at, on the show and then where things were at in that narrative that they were creating in the Taskmasterclass. And a lot of that has to do with that relationship canon, because Taskmasterclass really leaned into that assistant/master dynamic that they’ve gotten so far away from. It feels incongruous with where we’re at in the show and in canon, quote unquote, as a whole. So that’s another really interesting complication of canon. And of course, the other complication of that is that Taskmasterclass was not written by Alex. Alex and Greg have both said multiple times that they write their own material on the show. Greg writes his introductions, and Alex is often very proud of the ones that are particularly mean to Alex. And Alex writes his material as well. So when you have someone else coming in and writing their relationship for them, that brings another level to it. Is that the same type of canon, knowing that it’s not them writing about themselves and making fun of themselves, but it’s someone else stepping into that role.

>> TK:
And for those that don’t know what Taskmaster classes is, there’s no in-person Greg and Alex interactions. It’s just the voiceovers, and we don’t know whether they were in the same recording booth for it. We don’t know if they did it at separate times in seperate locations, etc.. So yeah, it does seem very stark and almost shocking in terms of you’re expecting something and then you get, I don’t know, it just it doesn’t quite feel like them, which does make sense because it was written by somebody else. But I keep thinking like, what if they had hired one of the fic writers?

>> Jackie:
It would have been amazing.

>> TK:
That would have been so funny. And yeah, it’s like, oh, this actually turned out really well. Yeah, maybe there’s something to this. But we do get a few, gold lines in the Taskmasterclass, series. The one that comes to my mind is when Greg is saying: Alex, I own you, I literally own you. And we’re like, yeah, this is more what we’re going for here.

>> Jackie:
We’re all going to be totally normal about that, don’t you worry.

>> TK:
Yeah. Completely normal. Ha ha ha.

>> Jackie:
Ha ha ha. Comedy.

>> TK:
So we’ve talked about the studio canon, so now let’s talk about quote unquote real life canon. These examples are going to be things like Greg’s current tour, in which he says that he wants to fuck Alex. And they’re going on Seth Meyers and printing out fanfic to read on American television and doing the New York City premiere where they come not as the Taskmaster and his assistant, but as Greg and Alex. And yet still somehow they managed…

>> Jackie:
Yeah. I’m also thinking of when Alex was on, it was either Sunday Brunch or Saturday Kitchen, or I’ve completely mixed up those names. But one of the two, there was a segment where it’s either the thing that you like to eat or the thing you don’t like to eat. And so they video called Greg and had him record a little thing where he got to flip a coin to decide what Alex got to eat. As a shocker, he flipped the coin off camera, and it happened to be the thing that Alex doesn’t enjoy.

>> TK:
What a bummer.

>> Jackie:
We are, all of us, so surprised by this. But none of that was in character. None of that was Alex as Little Alex Horne, Greg as Greg the Taskmaster. That was, in theory, them just as themselves and yet again, immediately falling into those same dynamics. And so this is also the part of canon that I think when you are discussing it, as in the fandom, it’s very pick and choose what you want to apply and what you want or what you don’t particularly care if it applies or not. Because there’s such a wealth of things that folks haven’t seen for any variety of reasons, because they don’t have access to it, or they don’t particularly care to obsessively watch every chat show appearance that those two have ever been on. Unlike some people. Not at all referring to myself. So I consider a lot of this part of canon to be more in the realm of lore, where it’s things that can add to what’s happening on screen, but aren’t necessary to the canon as a whole, if that makes sense.

>> TK:
Yeah, I definitely think that we are lucky enough to have in the Taskmaster fandom an overwhelming amount of just stuff, like they just give us stuff, you know a lot of content, like so much content, right? Where you were saying earlier how you kind of can pick and choose, you know, like if somebody just watches the show and that’s it, they’re missing the ad breaks. They’re missing the outtakes, they’re missing the promos, they’re missing the in-person events that they do. They’re missing all of the extra stuff on their YouTube channel, they’re missing so much stuff. So when you talk to someone that’s just been watching the show on YouTube and literally nothing else, and then you’re like, Greg and Alex, am I right? And they’re like, huh? And you’re like, how did you not see that? Because you’re not looking at all of the other stuff that they’re giving us, not to mention all of the fan works, which is a completely separate thing. We’re so saturated with content from them that you kind of do need to curate your own experience, I guess, in a way. Because you can be that person that tries to look at every single thing that they do and tie it all together in your head like a bulletin board of red strings and pins.

>> Jackie:
But you will drive yourself crazy doing that. Because in all of the canons, every single one of them, the one thing that is canon regardless is that Alex Horne lies – he’s a fucking liar. He does not tell the truth. He’s a lying liar who lies. Greg also lies. I don’t necessarily attribute that to purposeful malice as much as he has the memory of a goldfish, and that’s an insult to goldfish. He literally just does not remember what the truth is. So I think half of the time he’s doing it as a joke, and half the time he’s going along with it because he does not remember what actually happened. So you have things that get brought up where it’s like, in series seven, for instance, like the whole we’re not friends thing. That’s a moment where it’s like – real life contradicts that. Sort of, or does it, or does it not? You drive yourself nuts trying to figure these things out. And I say drive yourself nuts in a good way, because I love this. I really do. This is what I live for. In the trying times that we are in, it’s the little things like that that really get you through. It’s trying to suss out and interpret what is real, or at least what’s true, because truth and reality aren’t always necessarily the same. Versus what is just invention for the sake of invention.

>> TK:
Because it’s definitely interesting, because for me, watching that for the first time and even subsequent times when Greg is saying: you think we’re friends, do you? And is like, tell me one thing about me, and Alex just suddenly is very scared that he’s going to get something wrong. And he does. He gets everything wrong. And he’s like, oh my gosh, we’re not friends. What? This is the worst thing to ever happen to me ever. And Greg is just like, you know, he’s like doing it for the bit. He’s doing it for the laughs. But also like, what if it was actually a little bit true, that they didn’t really hang out that much until later, and he’s just bringing up this really deep intense topic of the concept of friendship and being like, we’re not frie- you haven’t even gotten to know me at all!

>> Jackie:
You don’t you don’t even know how many siblings I have. Which I highly doubt that at that point.

>> TK:
But still, it’s fascinating to think about what level of truth was in there.

>> Jackie:
Exactly, for both of them, because I think they weren’t even operating on the same level of truth between them, which is equally fascinating.

>> TK:
And very, very entertaining. So before we continue the conversation, we’re going to jump to the games section of the podcast. So we’re going to play fact or fanfic. And the way that this is going to work is I am going to read you three things. I haven’t really figured out what type of things they are, but it’s basically, Greg talking about Alex in some way or another. So at the end of it, really…

>> Jackie:
Clearly the answer is that fanfic writers, you need to write more Greg introductions and banter sections.

>> TK:
Yeah, I mean that that is what needs to happen. Honestly. Okay, so I honestly think you will ace this, but I don’t want to jinx you. So here we go.

>> Jackie:
I was gonna say, don’t say that. And if I don’t, you have to cut that out of the…

>> TK:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lewis, you’ve got our backs, right? Okay, so thing number one, and again, this is Greg talking to or about Alex. I think it’s to Alex. Okay, so number one. “Yeah. Yeah. We’ve all got our own systems, haven’t we? You’ve let your pubes get out of control.”

>> Jackie:
That I believe is canon. I believe he said that on the show.

>> TK:
Yeah. That’s fact. Excellent. Yeah. I feel like that’s a classic. That’s a classic one.

>> Jackie:
That is a classic one. Yeah.

>> TK:
Okay, number two. “When you can’t take a step anywhere in this house without feeling like I’m watching you, that’s for you, isn’t it? You like to imagine I’m watching you.”

>> Jackie:
Oh, interesting. The first part feels too poetic for something that Greg would say off the cuff, which makes me think that it’s fanfic. But I’m not confident on that.

>> TK:
It is fanfic! Yeah good job. This one is Professional Curiosity by yeats. Pretty good.

>> Jackie:
A fandom classic, if someone listening has not read it.

>> TK:
All right, last one. You get the trophy anyway since you’ve got two out of three. So no pressure. But last one: “Jesus Christ Alex, get behind Susan too. She won’t bite you. It is sometimes so hard to believe you’re heterosexual.

>> Jackie:
Oh, I think that is fanfic. And I think I know what fanfic it’s from. If it’s not from that, then it’s in canon but was quoted in that fanfic.

>> TK:
Oh, okay. Which fanfic do you think it’s from?

>> Jackie:
It’s the one where Alex says bisexual but bad at it, and I don’t remember the name of it, but I think that’s in the summary of it.

>> TK:
Ooh my gosh, that’s amazing. The title is Relevant by thingswithwings.

>> Jackie:
Yeah. And I’m 95% sure that is the summary of it, Greg saying that I can’t believe you’re heterosexual and Alex saying bisexual actually, but bad at it, or something along those lines.

>> TK:
Amazing.

>> Jackie:
Yeah. Well, thank you very much. I have a life, guys. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I promise I do.

>> TK:
All right. Well, good job, you get a little thing.

>> Jackie:
Gold star!

>> TK:
Little trophy. Okay, so we can keep talking about our cannon universe and Taskmaster here. So do you have anything that particularly stands out to you in terms of either just the wildest thing that canon has given us, or something that is so contradictory in the cannon that it’s just unbelievably ridiculous?

>> Jackie:
Oh, I mean, like most of the most ridiculous things have been mentioned, such as the “we are lovers” but, yeah. I think the one thing that I like to point to, which is, I believe it’s in an outtake, or is it actually in the show? Where he says: our lovely little home together, that the internet perverts write about? There’s very clearly bits that Greg has forgotten about, and he has forgotten that he himself has said, so to him, it’s very startling. Some of the things that we come up with because he doesn’t remember saying them or doing them. So that’s for me, probably the funniest thing. I think for me, what I find most interesting is, sort of the gray area between what exists in the various canons. That’s what I find most fascinating.

>> TK:
Podcast cat! Oh my gosh! You never come up here! Hi sweetie. You wanna say hi? She does a rubby. Aw, she so dumb. You wanna say hi?

>> Jackie:
This is what podcasts are made for. Just people getting distracted by pets. Truly.

>> TK:
That’s true. Ma’am.

>> Jackie:
Now that I’ve thoroughly lost track of what I was saying, I like to look at things that exist in the real life canon, for instance, and sort of bring those into how they would affect what we’ve seen on screen. And how those sort of work in context with each other. So whether that’s bits of lore that we discover, for instance, in a 2020 interview that they did ahead of series ten, Greg and Alex talk about how Greg writes on the cards and will show it to Alex, and it’ll be little bits and things. One of the things that he says will be like, oh, I think I made the wrong call on that or whatever. And then knowing that as part of the real life lore, how that then would play into what we actually see on scene, on screen, and their relationship with each other based on that happening, and how that exists on multiple levels to create the environment.

>> TK:
Yeah. I think you saying that reminds me of Alex’s iPad, because I think it’s series 17 that Greg, it’s an outtake, I think. And Alex is like…

>> Jackie:
Yes, it’s John Robbins.

>> TK:
Yeah. So I’ll get these scores tallied up in a second and yeah. And John is like…

>> Jackie:
Are you actually doing it on the iPad?

>> TK:
Yeah. And Greg is like, I’ll be honest with you…

>> Jackie:
Up until last series, I thought it was fake.

>> TK:
So funny, it’s like, what does Alex do on his iPad? What app does he use?

>> Jackie:
I think he has mentioned at some point that he will do other things on his iPad during the recording, not related to the show.

>> TK:
He’ll check footy scores and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Don’t bite me!

>> Jackie:
No one has confirmed one way or the other if he actually controls the VT from his iPad. I think that has to be a no, because it has to be. Mainly because in outtakes you can see him hit his iPad, and then nothing happens because they’re doing a pick up or whatever the case may be. So if he does control it, he doesn’t always control it.

>> TK:
And it’s funny because, have you seen Junior Taskmaster? So Mike Wozniak with the iPad and the outtakes that they have for that is so funny because he’s like, all right, and here we go. No. And… And he’s listening to his earpiece, and he’s like, and heeeeere, and here we go! Okay yeah, just had to fiddle with it a little bit. It’s like, what does this iPad do? And so I think it’s funny thinking about if Alex’s iPad actually does control stuff that goes up on the screen, but Mike’s does not, that’s hilarious. I fully believe 100% that Mike, his iPad has nothing to do with anything that comes up on the screen. But if somebody told me that Alex’s did, I would believe that. Just as much as I would believe if they told me that Alex’s did not. But are we ever going to get that answer? Who knows, maybe if we ever have Alex on… I will write this down for a potential… I’m gonna write this down, oh my gosh.

>> Jackie:
Must-ask question: What does the iPad do? We need to know.

>> TK:
Because people have asked him about it before and he has just straight up lied, which is, yeah, 100% because as we know…

>> Jackie:
He is a lying liar who lies.

>> TK:
Thank you. Yes, Alex, what does the iPad…

>> Jackie:
So really, if we have him on this pod and then like give him sodium pentothal so that he has to tell the truth… That would be really the only way we get an honest answer out of him.

>> TK:
Yeah. No, I know, I’m fully aware that if we get him on and I ask him this, he’s going to say something completely: it launches a rocket into space, like, okay.

>> Jackie:
It controls the blinds at Greg’s flat. Make sure that not too much sun is getting in while they’re in the studio.

>> TK:
Amazing, maybe I’ll ask him something like, not what does the iPad do? But, what app do you use to tally the scores?

>> Jackie:
Yes! And then he might tell a version of the truth.

>> TK:
Yeah, yeah. Wouldn’t it be cute if he made his own Taskmaster app? Like just for the show, just for tallying up the scores? Because I think he’s said once, and I don’t remember in what context this was or whether it was an outtake, but Greg gave somebody six points for some reason. It might have been like a bonus point or something. And Alex was really upset because he’s like, my scoring doesn’t go up to six, like gesturing to hi iPad. He’s like, I’m not prepared for this, I don’t know what to do. And I think Greg is like, just put five plus one. He’s like, I don’t like this.

>> Jackie:
That’s not how that works, but okay. That was I think fairly early on, which would make sense because I think he’s much more used to Greg’s variations in scoring now.

>> TK:
Yeah, I know that it’s something that he’s said in the past is something that makes him like, genuinely… not upset, but, like, he really doesn’t like it.

>> Jackie:
It really makes him cross, he really does not like that when Greg goes off script. When Greg first started giving out more than five total points for the team tasks, you could see the actual irritation on Alex’s face, like, oh, okay, I guess we’re because we’re doing that now. That’s fine. Doesn’t completely rearrange how I had things. No big deal. Yeah.

>> TK:
Yeah. Not to mention the amount of times that Greg has brought up, I know you won’t like me doing this, but here’s what I’m going to do with the scores. And he says that quite often, you know, oh no, you’re not going to be happy with this. But I’m going to give these two people three points and then these two people four points. And Alex was like, okay, you’re the Taskmaster. Not much I can do.

>> Jackie:
Yeah.

>> TK:
I’m thinking about Taskmaster New Zealand where Jeremy’s scoring just consistently never makes any kind of sense ever. And even in season one, very early on he gives a half point. And the half point just sticks with the person for the rest of the time. And I think if Greg had tried to do that, Alex would have been like, I will not. I’m putting… I literally never say no to you, but I am putting my foot down on this.

>> Jackie:
I’m saying no. Everything else he’s been asked to do, he’s like, fine. But that one thing he’d be like, nope, it’s not going to happen. Yeah, I will say this goes right back to our conversation about canon though, because speaking of New Zealand. Folks who’ve been to the New Zealand shows do say that there’s so much more that Jeremy talks about, including in some cases, explanation for his scoring that they cut out. Largely because I think there’s just a wealth of material, just given some of the crazy people they have had on the New Zealand seasons. But that’s another thing where it’s like, okay, well, our canon is that Jeremy Wells scores things completely arbitrarily, with very little resemblance to what was actually done in the task. The broader canon might be different.

>> TK:
Yeah. One of the recent official Taskmaster podcast episodes, Ed has been going through the New Zealand series, and he was talking about whoever he had on as a guest, was saying that in series, I think it might have been Matt Heath, because he and Jeremy had been working a lot together pretty closely. But whoever it was had said that in series one, Jeremy was like, the points don’t matter, I’ll just score it. And then didn’t realize how upset it would make a lot of people. And like the fans, contestants, so many of us are. Yeah. And so then from that point on, the guest said that Jeremy was like, okay, I’ll actually try to give reasoning for my scores from here on out because apparently this matters, you know? Which I think is completely opposite of what Greg does because as you said, Greg will write frequently on his cards like, I think I scored that wrong or I think I messed that up. But the thing is, you can’t mess it up because you’re the Taskmaster and whatever you say goes, goes.

>> Jackie:
That’s final.

>> TK:
That’s the rule. That’s the whole premise of the show. There are no wrong answers.

>> Jackie:
But the other premise of the show is that Greg really likes to be liked. So when he thinks that he’s not going to be liked for something…

>> TK:
Yeah, exactly. Answers that will make him feel bad about things. And then he’ll be like, well, I guess my life is over.

>> Jackie:
Yeah. Depending on what mood he’s in, because he could just as easily be like, well, fuck you guys. I don’t give a shit, right?

>> TK:
So are there any final parting words about the canon that you would like to mention before we head to our wrapping up section?

>> Jackie:
Not about canon per se. I just want to say I love the show. Obviously, if that hasn’t been abundantly clear from this conversation. But it does have to do with canon insofar as they’re not afraid to play with it and be weird with it. And I think that’s really a lesson for a lot of us, be weird with it. Play around with the things that you love, see what comes of it.

>> TK:
Just have fun with it.

>> Jackie:
We could all do with being a little more weird in our lives. And I think we should embrace that. Just like they do.

>> TK:
Yeah. We could use a lot more whimsy.

>> Jackie:
Yes we could.

>> TK:
All right, well, we are going to wrap up this episode of the podcast with, of course, any fan work recommendations that you have.

>> Jackie:
Sure, at the moment. And this will be completed long before this comes out, but I’m currently reading, by the lovely… I’m going to say her username wrong…

>> TK:
Illuminescence?

>> Jackie:
There we go, Illuminescence! The fantastic Manic Pixie Dream Guy, wherein Alex is a little pixie, a literal pixie.

>> TK:
It’s so good.

>> Jackie:
It’s so cute. I really relate to Greg in that a lot. So I’m eating it with a spoon, as I like to say.

>> TK:
It’s delicious, isn’t it?

>> Jackie:
It’s so good. It’s so delicious. Yeah, I have to-

>> TK:
I beta read for that. And I gotta say, it’s incredibly good.

>> Jackie:
I’m so excited for the rest of it. Yes. I have to rec the recently completed Heart in Your Hand by Elixir_if_I_wanna, because that’s that I beta read for, and it’s phenomenal. If you like angst, which I do, quelle surprise. So I’m going to strongly recommend that one. I’m going to strongly recommend one of what I would call my comfort fics that I love just rereading, which is MadameQuagmire’s the Library. Can’t go wrong with that one. That one’s so good. I’m forgetting every single fic that I have ever read prior to this moment, because that’s how my brain works. So I will just plug my own, I am one of the anonymous writers on AO3, the one who’s probably written the most. So if you search for anonymous, you’ll find things that I’ve written.

>> TK:
Yeah. And there we are. If you like angst.

>> Jackie:
If you like angst. Or quite frankly, there are some that are not angsty. I will plug one of my favorite fics by me, which is called An Assembly of Ducks, and it is basically an episode of Taskmaster with some twists. Obviously. There is zero angst in that one. Thank you.

>> TK:
You’re really good at the angst though. If I have to write angst, I try to channel you.

>> Jackie:
Oh, thank you.

>> TK:
All right, well, Jackie, thank you so much for coming onto the Transformative Taskmaster podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today.

>> Jackie:
It has been delightful chatting with you as well TK. Thank you for having me.

>> TK:
Yeah. We’ll see you online.

>> Jackie:
See you online, bye bye!

>> TK:
Bye!

>> VO:
And once again, that was TK and Jackie talking about the canon, lore, and other little bits that are woven into the show’s tapestry. As always, you can find all of the fan works mentioned this episode in the description, or on our website, tftaskmaster.uk. We’ve also got a Patreon where you can find outtakes, previews, and other little bits that don’t fit into the show. And next week, TK will be talking to Joe Auckland from The Horne Section! Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss it.