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Inside the Episode
With Steve Hawk
Linc's Meltdown
A few comments on the scene in which Linc (Luke Perry), the founder and CEO of Stinkweed, spins out of control during a meeting with his lieutenants. When he says, "Fires," he's asking if the company faces any fresh crises that need addressing. The "e-commerce bitch-fest" refers to a problem that many manufacturers face these days: By selling direct to consumers through their own web sites, they risk alienating the storefront retailers through whom they built their businesses before the Internet existed. It's a particularly nettlesome problem for surf-related companies, who depend on specialty shops not only for sales, but also to maintain their "core" image among serious surfers. That's why "Wonder Boy" says Stinkweed is rolling out new P.O.P. ("point of purchase") incentives: to placate its brick-and-mortar retailers, and why he says, "A wise man [i.e. Linc] once told me, 'The core shops are Stinkweed's soul.'"
But all of that has become a bullshit capitalist game as far as Linc's concerned, because the SoCal surf tycoon has reached a tipping point. He knows something earthshaking is going on in Imperial Beach, and that it revolves around John Monad and the Yosts, but he can't figure out what to do about it. Here's what David Milch, the show's creator and head writer, had to say about this scene before it was shot: "Sometimes the way you force yourself to walk through a new door is to cut off your avenues of escape."
Which explains Linc's rant. Without even knowing why, he all but sets himself on fire. Here's the transcript of Linc's self-immolating tirade, and the exchange that leads up to it:
WONDER BOY: If this is a referendum on information technology, our target demographic's for it.
LINC: Oh, so that ship has sailed? The best we can do is hope to jump on board? Does that summarize your position?
WONDER BOY: [Mimicking Linc] If you're treading water you're getting ready to drown.
LINC: If I'm treading water, Fuck-face, I am not swimming toward a ship that has set sail and begging them to pull me into their dinghy. If I got a surfboard beside me, I'm getting on that fucker and I'm paddling out, turning around and flipping the bird to all the assholes on that ship. And maybe three percent of them weren't sure they wanted to be on that boat to begin with. And some of them, they're diving off. Now them... them I give 'em a big f**king smile, I ride up to them on my board and say, "Hey how would you like to buy one just like it, or my jockstrap, or my boardshorts, wetsuits, ski jackets, snowboards I always take with me when I'm surfing, I am such a tremendous boardshort-wetsuit-ski-jacket-snowboard ripper." What I'm not is a fucking asshole with allergies trapped on a boat or jerking off to the Internet like ninety-seven percent of my target demographic. And the upside for me is, I like being on the water.
Linc pulls down his pants.
LINC: So if you're not too salty from your salmon, maybe I could interest you in a little ham.
WONDER BOY: Give me a fucking break.
Two final things about that scene: Luke Perry earned many high-fives for nailing, repeatedly, the long speech he received just the night before. And Wonder Boy was deftly played by Zack Whedon, author of the season's tenth and final episode. (On a related note, the bicycle-rental dude who tosses Butchie the keys to the surf shop was played by Ted Mann, also a writer and producer on JFC.)
Copped, Didn't Use
One hopes that only a small percentage of JFC's viewers know from experience why Butchie's relatively pain-free escape from his heroin addiction might seem as miraculous as his father's levitation or his son's resurrection. My boss Milch stressed the paranormal nature of such a benign transition. "Believe me, whatever starts you being a junkie, what keeps you being a junkie is the fear of how sick you're going to be if you stop," Milch told us during a discussion of this episode. "That's the fundamental hold the disease has on you."
So when Butchie walks into his hotel room with a dime bag of heroin, then chooses not to shoot up, it's no wonder he starts crying. And as he reaches for Kai's hand, a silent question ensues: "What did I do to deserve such a blessing?"
Maybe it's not what he's done, but what he's about to do, which is to go track down Shaun at Bill's house and work at being a father to his son.
Back in the Water
The episode opens with Butchie airing things out in the surf to see if he's still got it. We're very lucky that Brian Van Holt (Butchie), Austin Nichols (John) and Greyson Fletcher (Shaun) know how to surf. If anyone's interested in learning more details on how the JFC water footage was captured, I recently narrated an on-line slide show on that subject for surfline.com that you can find here: http://www.surfline.com/surfnews/article_bamp.cfm?id=9609
Alternate Titles
Three alternate titles to the official one ("His Visit: Day Six"):
a. "The Halo Effect"
b. "A Possibly Fatal Tattoo"
c. "Make a Wish"
Steve Hawk is a writer and lifelong surfer from Southern California. He acts as a writer and surf consultant for John From Cincinnati. Bio
Discuss this episode in the John From Cincinnati Bulletin Board.
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"His Visit: Day Six"
