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Me now:

yeah okay, so I really want to talk about steven grisham.

I had actually made a post about this months ago (started after I finished the second king falls chronicles and finished during the hiatus). I bring this up specifically because the point that I’m trying to make is that something with grisham has been bothering me for a while, and episode 90 just supports my suspicions.

an important place to start here is on what the public perception of steven grisham is. those that like him think that he’s an all-american, hardworking politician who is looking out for every citizen of king falls and who won fairly in 2016. they are wrong. those that don’t like grisham think that he’s a power-hungry, borderline evil himinist who prefers to cater to the bigots in town to keep his positions of influence. I would argue that they are also (partially) wrong.

(I want to be clear here that in no way am I being apologetic towards any of his actions or him as a person. he’s a jerk with anger issues, and he clearly thinks that he’s a Special Boy™ who deserves the respect he’s gotten when in reality a big reason why he has the influence he does is that he tolerates and platforms homophobes, abusers, and racists. that being said, I think that his motivations have a little more nuance than that which we sometimes give him credit.)

the crux of the post that’s been sitting in my drafts for months is a statement that lily wright makes towards the end of the second king falls chronicles. one thing that lily is really, really good at doing is cutting through bullshit, and in this episode in doing so she makes a really crucial point that I really haven’t seen brought up anywhere else :

“hershel and ron, they fought the law, and the law won. but did they just get off lucky? I’ve seen men end up in body bags when challenging the reigning of authority. which means it’s not the loss of power that gives grisham and goons the shakes. it’s something else, something deeper. something darker”

and what about the bit where she talks to riley bevins? I know the scene is partially comedic but there’s a very, very interesting line in the interview that I think is overlooked:

“and what they don’t understand, what no one understands, is the town leaders? they protect us. […] what I think you want me to say, ms. wright, is that those three leave the door open to the unknown. that’s what you expect. but what if–what if they’re trying to keep the door closed?”

so what do these two quotes have in common?

well, in my opinion they both give really interesting, though indirect insight to grisham himself. riley really seems to believe what she’s saying, and lily makes a good point : why didn’t grisham just have ron killed die under mysterious circumstances? he certainly didn’t seem to have any qualms about letting gunderson get troy killed. and lily alludes to an answer about this. maybe power isn’t what grisham is after, not really.

maybe it’s control.

just bear with me on this angle with me for a second. grisham knows something. I’m relatively confident that he, harrison, and possibly other members of the himinists (past and present) know about the void, and how that whole deal got started in perdition woods. whether or not it’s actually what they’re doing, I think grisham, hfbiii, and even gunderson legitimately think that they’re some sort of last defense between king falls and the void, and in their eyes, maintaining the status quo is vital to this. after all, as far as we know harrison is directly responsible for this door being opened in the first place, and it seems like the shadowmaker has just been waiting to spread evil into the town. maybe he’s done it before in the past. maybe he takes advantage of political and social instability in the town, which is something that has definitely been a feature since the 2016 mayoral election.

I think that grisham especially views himself as some sort of pained hero making the “difficult decisions” to keep the forces of evil at bay. when he criticizes ron begley in the mayoral debate for being an “armchair politician”, I think that comes from the fact that grisham does (or thinks he does) a lot of behind-the-scenes work. this doesn’t excuse the fact that he was definitely responsible for fixing the 2016 election, but it suggests that power isn’t the reason why he wants to stay mayor. he, along with gunderson and hfbiii have maintained some sort of delicate balance in king falls, one that was disrupted the night tim jensen went missing. you know what else happened that night?

sammy stevens moved to town.

maybe another day I’ll make a post about how grisham and sammy are in many ways character foils, but the bottom line is that sammy isn’t particularly afraid of upsetting the social order if it means getting to the truth, nor does he believe in much of the paranormal stuff going on in king falls. worse, he encourages this behavior in ben, a lifelong resident of king falls who is at first apprehensive to go against someone he previously saw as a town hero but later becomes an even stronger advocate for the truth than sammy.

ben doesn’t get along with grisham, and a lot of that (rightfully) stems from his rather shady behavior surrounding the rainbow lights and emily and tim’s disappearance. but you know what’s always bothered me? the two attack ads grisham has run against sammy. grisham ran them them both after the election was considered to be settled law by most of the town. sure, maybe he was mad that sammy and ben sided with ron in the election, but the content of both ads was specifically targeted at sammy, at his character and credibility, which at this point has little to do with the election. to me this indicates that grisham had some sort of implicit understanding as to why sammy moved to king falls in the first place. ben may have been a good enough friend not to dig into sammy’s past, but grisham certainly knows how to use google and proabaly was able to connect a few more dots than the average person. I think the first attack ad was as much about eroding sammy’s credibility as it was about attempting to put a crack in ben’s trust in sammy. ben wants to defeat the void, he wants to get jack back, but the issue would never have been raised if it weren’t for sammy moving to king falls in the first place, and grisham knows this.

sammy’s very existence in the town threatens to completely upset the social (and supernatural?) order that grisham and co. have worked so hard to maintain. I think they understand implicitly that in trying to rescue jack (and mike, debbie, etc.) from the void there’s a risk of permanently keeping the door open between king falls and the shadows, and that’s one they’re not willing to take.

so grisham would rather try and shame sammy out of any credibility he has, try and imply that he and ben are wholly responsible for the uptick in activity surrounding perdition wood (as harrison did in episode 78). why has he reached out to sammy and ben again? I don’t know. maybe things have been pushed past some sort of critical point. he says that sammy and ben have something he needs, but if I’m being honest I don’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about.

this is from the kfam discord!

the only thing I would add is possibly more subjective, but from what we know about dwayne, his personality doesn’t super match up with the dark. dwayne libbydale is the only person that ben arnold knew in high school of whom he speaks positively. I know this isn’t super the point, but ben was bullied in high school, and that’s influenced the way he talks about both his childhood and the people he knew as a child. maggie masterson, doyle bevins, and pete meyers all went to high school with him, and he really dislikes all of them to varying degrees and for slightly different reasons, but the common denominator is that they were all kind of shitty to him. dwayne is the only peer of ben’s from his childhood with whom he doesn’t seem to dread talking (besides troy, but that’s a more complicated relationship), and I’ve got to take that to mean that he’s a nice, selfless guy (I mean farming is a pretty thankless job)

the dark on the other hand is kind of a jerk sometimes. he’s got a somewhat over-inflated sense of his own importance, is a little to happy to revel in the fame he’s generated for himself, and seems more than willing to give his moral, “I’m a guy who just took philosophy 101 and thinks I know everything there is to know about justice and ethics” take on a situation that frequently doesn’t require his opinion. even ben, who’s more tolerant of him because the dark is looking into the science institute, has a lot of eyeroll moments when the dark’s ego comes into play. 

I’m just saying there are some personality traits that don’t match up. if dwayne was the dark, whose attitude towards the efficacy of the police is skeptical at best (considering he likes to say things along the lines of “I’m doing your job for you” to troy), why would dwayne think to call then-sheriff gunderson the second he realized the ufos had destroyed a bunch of his crops? 

the dark actually is pete meyers but he’s working for hfbiii, mostly because hfbiii decided suddenly he wanted to eradicate petty crime from king falls

chickenfoot dickson is going to lead the zombie uprising that is definitely going to become an issue for king falls sometime in the near future

ben is actually scared of raccoons because he once tried to keep a feral one as a pet and it didn’t end well

the one is actually the weird food truck (not the lady that runs it, the truck itself)

the jack in the box jesus / burger king of kings is a red herring, distracting us from the actual Lord and Savior of fast food, White Castle Christ

the electrolocaust was actually a plot between hfbiii and the local apple store to sell more iphones

the real reason sammy won’t get back on twitter is because he can’t remember how to log back on and now he’s too embarrassed to ask

ben and sammy closer than ever, herschel and cecil being fuckin BROS, lily and sammy making up (if you can call it that?????), even with this episode when herschel told the boys their friendship was important and it’s important for them to remember that (paraphrasing, but that’s what he was saying).

both sammy and ben, throughout the entirety of this story, have never worked well when one was hiding something from the other or shouldering a burden entirely by themselves. having that whole ‘i must do this alone’ mentality is SUPER toxic and it’s how we get the sammy/void situation or ben’s deteriorating mental health over the emily abduction.

hell, it’s the entire town, not even just these two. the best moments, the ones of true heroism, have always been joint efforts. taking down the himinists w/ reagan, maggie and emily, all the times they’ve gone up against grisham or HFB3, even with dumb shit like fuckard. every episode this podcast shows that these people are better when they work together, when they let people help them.

so far we have three in-universe canon candidates for ‘the one’. ben (from mr x) sammy (from his dreams and the whole messy void thing) and emily (from her dreams).

all three of these people have never dealt well with dealing with things alone. as mentioned before, we saw it with how sammy dealt with the jack situation, how lost emily was after she returned and ben with fixing the emily abduction. it wasn’t until they got help, wasn’t until the reached out and CONNECTED that anything worked out (still pending on sammy and kinda on emily too, but they’re getting there)

anyway shitty essay over; in conclusion the whole ‘the one’ concept is flawed as fuck and i believe the writers/creators are pushing towards a high school musical we’re all in this together ending to this arc.