Hello and welcome to my live tweet of @ThisAmerLife's episode "129 Cars"! This episode (aired 12/2013) follows a car dealership sales team as they try to hit their monthly sales goal (...129 cars).

We arrive at the dealership w/ 12 days left in the month.

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This is one of my fave episodes of TAL (probably top 10), and it's a favorite of the TAL team, too. They re-aired it (and others) last year for their 25th anniversary.

It likely goes without saying, but this thread is full of spoilers!

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If you want to follow along, hit play!

3/ https://www.thisamericanlife.org/513/129-cars 

Let's put this episode in the XY format: this is a story about X & it's interesting bc Y.

This is a story about a car dealership's attempt to hit their sales goal & it's interesting bc ppl generally understand car salespeople to be the enemy, but they're not!

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More on the XY format from @jccabel: http://jessicaabel.com/XY-story-formula) @jccabel

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Note: a lot of listeners will have experience buying a car (being the customer). That's the implied perspective. But a lot of listeners won't be familiar! So the episode has to fill in the necessary information.
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This implied customer perspective is also the perspective that found them this story.

Act 1: The story of how the salespeople at this very dealership sold TAL producer Robyn Semien a car she didn't want for more money than she wanted to pay...and convinced her to love it.
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Act 2: Who's who and how the place works. (I'd call this act "everyone lies to everyone").

There are lots of conflicts in this episode. The Big Conflict is salespeople v. the sales goal: They have to sell 129 cars in the month of October to get a bonus from the manufacturer.
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But there are smaller conflicts, too:

Salesperson v manager
Salesperson v customer
Salesperson v salesperson

These conflicts all live w/in & contribute to the Big Conflict, & they are what sustains the tension for a whole 73 minutes.
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Let's put the story in the XYZ format: X wants Y but Z.

The salespeople [X] want to sell 129 cars [Y] but people aren't buying [Z].

(You could set that Z up a few ways, & there are other XYZs for the smaller conflicts).

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This episode feels exceptionally place-based. One way they do that is by using lots of scene ambi.

Here's an example w some nice cross fades:
MUSIC + SCENE
[scene out]
MUSIC
[narration in]
MUSIC + NARR
[scene in]
MUSIC + NARR + SCENE
[music out]
NARR + SCENE
[narr out]
SCENE
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In case you weren't sure what to take away from this act, let's sum it up:

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Read this in @iraglass's voice & then play the tape:

There are ten acts in this episode. TEN. A @ThisAmerLife normal episode has just three. That's SEVEN more acts than you'd hear on a typical week. Why? Well, one reason is the way they reported it.

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I think of this reporting approach like man-on-man defense in basketball. Each reporter follows one person around. The alternative would be zone defense, w/ each "guarding"/reporting on a place or part of the process.
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Bc we're playing man-on-man defense, we get a lot of portraits of individuals. Each act is like a mini vignette. There's still the Big Conflict (will they sell 129 cars?) but w/in there's each individual's conflict (will this person sell this car?).
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But the conflicts aren't all car-based. Jason (Act 4) is the best salesman. But being the best causes problems. Ex: his job is in conflict with his relationship. And the stakes are high. So many of his colleagues' relationships have fallen apart bc of the job.
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One of my fave moments is when Sean Cole points at the notes a subject is making and says "What's this number here?" He barely asks a question, but the guy says the number AND why it's worth writing down.
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In this section, @ittycity makes a list of 3 characteristics that make Jason successful.

The third is "ABC. Always Be Calling your girlfriend to say, baby, I just have a couple more things to take care of and then I'll be home." Love this call back to ABC: Always Be Closing.
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PS You know what I'm using right now? The episode transcript!

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I like that they come back to Freddie for an update on the progress toward the goal (129 cars). Here we are in Act 5: 30 mins/10 days in.
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So many of the things that make this episode great are totally outside of the reporters' hands (unless they were sabotaging the sales team...). Two people sell the same car! Who could have predicted it? Surely this doesn't happen every month??
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Have you ever bought a car?
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Another moment I like: one giggle from a Geico salesperson, on the phone.
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Time check: We’re halfway through the episode & we’re on the last day of the month.

We arrived with 12 days left in the month. It took us 1/2 the ep to cover 11 days, & then we spend ~30 mins on the last day. Time is stretchy.
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But the second half isn't totally different. The midroll comes 40 mins in (40/73) and the second half begins the same as the first, with Freddie's ominous laugh.
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Anyway, let's talk stakes. Every conflict needs stakes. Each sale has the same stakes as the Big Conflict ($$ from the dealer). In some other places, the stakes are implied (ex: Jason's gf might leave him). Other times, it's literally "this is what's at stake."
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Another way they raise the tension (or, let's say, illusion of stakes) is by making it harder to achieve the goal. In this case it's Halloween! Who buys a car on Halloween??
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Listening to Sarah Koenig's scene & pretending it's an episode of @serial.
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More added tension: Hurricane Sandy disrupted the market: "Tens of thousands of ppl lost their cars all at once. & they got new ones all at once. So now, a year later, tens of thousands of ppl are out of the used car market who normally would be buying and selling right now."
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More stakes: We know Joe's year-end bonus is at stake, but now we're getting to know Joe and his family, so we really *care* if he gets that year-end bonus. What will happen to his six kids? He's already smoking 40 cigarettes a day. Will this kill Joe?!!
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More stakes: It seems they're losing money on just about every sale. The stakes for hitting their goal get higher each time. It's like they're pushing in more chips each time.
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Speaking of chips: The actual chips are an important character in this episode. They're counted, they're traded...and more to come ;)
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And now we get to Manny! This scene has a great character, plus it gives us another small escape from the dealership. For one, we have non-dealership tape, from YouTube.
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Also, there's research built into this section: @BriHReed reads the book Manny is obsessed with. I say "built in" because there's research in other parts, but it's just presented as fact. Here, Brian Reed says he goes to the store & buys the book. It's happening in the tape.
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There's a moment of Harry Potter-ish music in this section. Weird.
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At this point, we've been in the dealership a looong time. Most TAL episodes don't stay in the same story for this long, let alone the same location. So this digression (to YouTube) keeps it interesting.
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Legit my fave sentence in this episode might be: "So how does Manny use this to sell Dodge Chargers?"

I love that it's not just "cars" or "sedans." It's a specific make (or model? I don't know car words.) that's never mentioned anywhere else in the episode.
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Anyway, other ways they keep the ep interesting: changing focus and zoom. We bounce between the dealership, sales peoples' personal lives, & external issues (like Hurricane Sandy). We bounce from character to character. We meet someone's niece. This propels us forward.
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Another call back I love:

At the beginning of the episode they put balloons all over the place to try to sell cars. Now, they've hit their goal and Freddie says: "There's no hurrah. There's no balloons falling from the ceiling."
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Also: the wife

We know how the job has stressed peoples' relationships, and then Freddie's wife texts: "She says to me, what time are you getting home? I said, what time do I usually get home at the end of the month? Whenever I get home. What, do you want a time card?"
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And the plot twist: The chips strike again! I'm sure the episode would be great without this (it had to be—they had no way of knowing it would happen...unless sabotage...) but the twist is so satisfying. It destabilizes it all at the last moment.
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So now we have a kind of coda, in which Bob T, the worst salesman, sells one more car at the very end of the night. Their 130th car.

....BUT NO, IT'S ACTUALLY THEIR 129TH! They did the same plot twist TWICE! Literally how??
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And that's the end! Thank you for listening with me! If you have a request for my next live-listening session, I'm all ears (pun intended).

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