The Midnight Gospel Season 1, Episode 2 recap: Officers and Wolves

Episode 102 of Netflix’s The Midnight Gospel has death, clowns, and meat.

Previously on The Midnight Gospel, zombies, drugs, and Buddhism were all addressed in different ways. Episode 2 continues delving into unusual, semi-stable philosophical terrain, in a story involving a simulated clown universe. Given the nature of The Midnight Gospel, this episode will be difficult to summarize, but you may be able to follow along.

After speaking to the Pyromoth (Phil Hendrie), Clancy (Duncan Trussell) the adventurer investigates a simulated universe called Clown World. His own appearance becomes altered, thanks to being infected by an unverified emoji pack containing viruses. Basically, he melds with an unwanted popup, giving him a bird emoji’s head.

The real adventure begins when he sees some freshly born clown babies sing joyous songs. Initially, Clancy is mortified when some deer sogs come along to eat the clown babies. However, he gets “stacked” on some deer dogs — Annie (Anne Lamott) and Raghu (Raghu Markus) — and basically can see the world through their eyes.

The Midnight Gospel: The saga of the deer dogs

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Anne tells Clancy that her dad died of brain cancer and that her being around hospice caretakers made her overly familiar with death.

The Midnight Gospel provides plenty of bizarre sequences as she relates her life’s journey, including some “classic worm songs of the ’60s.” The viewer/listener is jolted back and forth between her discussing things like the books of Ram Dass and bizarre scenes.

Example: At one point a clown-suited character feeds its boogers to a weird spider clown in a jar. What is the symbolism there? Who knows? Perhaps it’s just something that happens. Similarly, Clancy at one point mentions that he has to use the bathroom but decides to hold it (as he’s awkwardly handcuffed to the dog deer), and it doesn’t seem to get mentioned again.

The meat paste revolution

Want more confusion and perplexity? Clancy and the deer dogs eventually get sliced up and turned into sentient meat paste, and they get wrapped up in some convoluted revolution against giant robot clown heads.

Rather than focus solely on this daunting simulated reality, Anne continues talking, largely unabated. She says she was afraid that quitting drinking would destroy her writing career — a common concern among creative people that their personal struggles are what make them interesting. Raghu begins discussing meditation and Christianity.

A few other strange, random things happen. We are briefly introduced to a character named “Bo-wah” (Christina Pazsitzky). Some random kid takes Raghu’s eyeball (though it eventually gets returned, through some semi-random occurrences). Shortly after they approach a meat fountain, The Midnight Gospel provides a pretty fascinating song, apparently titled “Death Makes a Meal of Us All” (with some lyrics clearly inspired by The Hearse Song).

Enter the fly

The main trio ends up evading a giant meat monster while comparing Jesus’s sacrifice to childbirth. In addition to all the robot clown heads and meat spectacles, Clancy, Annie, and Raghu get devoured by a giant fly, symbolizing the cycle of life and death. They are then regurgitated to feed some baby maggots.

While the episode is formulated around a peculiar madness, it at least has some traceable themes. Still, it’s a bit of a challenge to piece them into a coherent narrative. Long story short, it suggests that life in its manifold forms could not exist without feeding off of the dead.

To deny this as the nature of existence may be to deny one’s self. As morbid as it is, it is something that must be faced, as we should face our own mortality with at least some courage.

What are your thoughts on The Midnight Gospel? Let us know in the comments!