A little while back, I read a Bluesky post from Mac Rogers
- creator and main writer of Gideon Media's Give Me Away - in which
he noted the general lack of critical engagement with podcast fiction. This is
a state of affairs which leaves a lot of creators firing audio drama into the
void, their comments sections all but empty, save the occasional review bomb
casually tossed by some right winger dedicated to harming whatever art he’s
been told he shouldn’t like.
The post reminded me of an exchange I had with Jonny Sims back
in 2020, about the mammoth series of tweet threads I’d written on the Magnus
Archives, which – before I nuked my Twitter account - had covered every
episode of his show. While he didn't always agree with my takes (a remarkably
charitable framing of the situation, I'm sure), he thanked me for critically
engaging with his work as a piece of art, something which, at least at the
time, he felt hadn't been happening as much as he'd like.
So I thought, hey. I love Give Me Away, I have a
lot of respect for Mac as a writer and a general human being; maybe putting
together an essay or three on his (thus far) only multi-season podcast might
constitute a solid. It'd also give me a break from focussing on Star
Trek, which is probably an extremely good thing in itself.
First, a disclaimer. I am mutuals with both the
creator/writer and director of Give Me Away on Bluesky. It
would be presumptuous of me to call either Mac or Jordana even casual
acquaintances, never mind friends, but I don't want to suggest, even
implicitly, that I am coming to the show from a position of pure neutrality. Caveat
lector, innit.
First, a summary of the show’s setup. This will necessitate
some spoilers, of course, but I'll keep them low-level, since one aim of this
post is to persuade newcomers that the show is worth their time. Give Me
Away centres, at least initially, on a four-person family; Graham and
Morgan Shapiro, and their two now-grown kids, Talia, and Jamie. Graham and
Morgan's marriage is on the rocks, at least in part because Graham always seems
to be distracted by something Morgan can't understand, and Graham himself
doesn't seem able to articulate. Early in the first episode, two things
happen at approximately the same time: Morgan finally gets sick of Graham's
endless refusal to do anything about their growing estrangement, and an alien
spacecraft lands in the Nevada desert.
A spaceship that won't stop screaming.
