Article: The Midnight Gospel

By Sophie Minello

My recent infatuation with the show Adventure Time led me to take a look at Netflix’s new adult animation, The Midnight Gospel. The shows share a producer (Pendleton Ward) as well as some out-of-this-world, more than what meets the eye content. The Midnight Gospel originated from Duncan Trussell’s podcast, Duncan Trussell Family Hour, which began in 2012. It’s available to listen to on spotify, where it’s described as “a weekly salon-style supershow, where comedian Duncan Trussell and guests explore the outer reaches of the multiverse”. Notable musicians Johanna Warren and Father John Misty have made appearances on the show. Trussell is able to facilitate organic, deep, and insightful conversations that wander into philosophical realms. Pendleton Ward had been on Trussell’s podcast multiple times, and the two decided to collaborate to create an intense, gruesome, and colorful cartoon. 

The series of 8 episodes focuses around the main character Clancy, voiced and encapsulated by Trussell, who uses a computer simulator to be launched into different dying planets to interview people for his space podcast. The animation, by Titmouse Animation, is absolutely mindblowing. The colors and details and movements are so beautiful. The biggest difficulty I had with this show was the profound conversations happening which the most chaotic scenes played out. I want to focus on all of it, but oftentimes it feels very distracting. For this reason, the show demands your full attention. The first episode, “Taste of the King,” is of course centered around talk of marijuana and other drugs. In the midst of a zombie apocalypse, Clancy and the president of this world have a deep conversation about drugs. Not only does it contain very psychedelic and philosophical talk, there is also a fair amount of violence. Yeah, this show it’s for the faint of heart, but it might be worth it to stick it out. 

Holding Trussell’s normal podcast atmosphere, it’s taken to such a new level. Encapsulating different characters and creatures, the people talking with Clancy are indeed real people having real conversations with Trussell. His guests include very unique people with very unique stories. Trudy Goodman’s episode (“Blinded By My End”) focuses around forgiveness as she practices meditation and mindfulness. Damien Echols (“Hunters Without a Home”) is a man who was wrongly convicted of murder, sentenced to three life sentences, but his episode focuses on his magick practices and how his beliefs helped him cope.

In the 5th episode “Annihilation of Joy”, I came to appreciate the depth of the animation. It shows a soul prison where an inmate goes through a cycle of life and death until it comes to a point where his soul is back to the point it was when he was a baby. His soul is a new born baby and he is broken from the cycle of suffering. Simple moments in this show are so intense, like when Clancy is in a room full of mirrors of ‘evil’ looking versions of himself, and his co-star tells him they reflect pasts of himself that he’s ashamed of and trying to hide from himself. He has to forgive them. This clip took about 2 minutes, but its message is something that everyone should yield to. 

The topic of death is present throughout the whole series which leads to its epic final episode but we’ll talk about that later. Constantly, even Clancy is cycling through life and death, gathering visible shoes and internal experiences every time he enters a new body. But throughout this death, he is still learning and becoming more himself. He’s learning what he is and what he is not.

This birth of his final character is when Trussell’s mother appears on the show in the final 8th episode. The episode prior, Clancy has a chat with death, aka Caitlyn Doughty a “mortician, activist, and funeral industry rabble-rouser”. In this episode, Clancy stays to death “both of my parents are friends of yours, I guess you could say”. Then, he continues to chase a dancing pig around a hotel in search of a hose for a water slide. Despite this statement, the next episode features his real mother, from an episode they recorded in 2013, just weeks before she passed away. It’s an intense episode, bound to bring tears to the eyes of viewers, especially those who have lost loved ones. In the episode, Clancy starts out as a baby in the arms of his mother, laughing as he asks “What was it like having me as a son?” chuckling with her. As they walk around talking, Clancy’s character grows and his mother’s character ages, up until he helps her into a bed and she dies next to him. A moment later, Clancy’s character becomes pregnant and continues to give a loud, painful birth to his mother again. They continue their conversation from where they stopped, and now she holds his hand as he grows old. Trussell said that this reflected his feelings when he became a father. Despite not having his mother physically around, she was part of him and part of his child. Later, we learn that his mother was struggling with metastatic breast cancer. “The encounter with truth, which for me is you dying… it’s inexpressible… this is not a desirable feeling, but it’s a feeling that every single human being will experience, one way or the other”. His mother optimistically states that this feeling opens our hearts, even though it sometimes hurts. “Even the hurt transforms, because if you inquire into the hurt, you know what you’re experiencing is love, the real deal”. The raw emotion in this episode took me by surprise, but it feels essential. It’s a conversation that everyone can relate to, and learn from, and understand. It’s transformative. 

The Midnight Gospel is a show that holds conversations that helps you expand your mind to new perspectives, while pairing it with some incredible visuals, dark humor, and deep emotion. It’s definitely a show to give a try, and though everything won’t sit perfectly with you, it’s fun to dive into new worlds and new minds.