#dirk gently's holistic detective agency season 2

[miryel89]

"I Know You're Scared, Okay?"

[whovianbuffalo]

Dirk getting shot in season 2 [GIF]

[clairebearsparkles]

This was suppose to be a tma au Web!Dirk Gently, but I think this looks amazing outside of that context.

[katestuliy]

love this freaky episode ✂

[geoz-n]

It took me over 10 rewatches but I just realized an electrical event starts both of the mysteries in each season of dghda.

[evilphrog]

How to make a show I will love:

1. Take a guy who has alienated everyone he cares about with his lies, who is afraid to even try putting things right so he just shovels more lies on top of them and acts cynical to everyone. He is convinced he can never be more than a total jerk and a failure.

2. Give him a huge falling out with his violence-loving sibling, who responds by joining a six-person team that fights against him. Both he and his sibling should blame him entirely for the falling out, but it should be obvious that some of the problem is his sibling’s refusal to accept any apologies. Oh, and give the sibling lightning powers.

3. Take another guy who was kidnapped by a shadowy government organization and brainwashed for most of his life. Make him radiate toxic optimism as a shield against the obvious guilt and trauma.

4. Force them together to solve mysteries involving time travel, much to the first guy’s annoyance and the second guy’s joy.

5. Make their best friend a woman who can kick anyone’s ass, but who is still allowed to be emotional. She starts the show wanting to be the perfect soldier, but ends up making her own path.

6. The titular character needs a narrative parallel in the form of a feral woman who has been raised entirely outside society. Her only real skillset is killing people, and she has negative social skills. Do not feminize her at all. She is going to be insane, violent, and dangerous. Her biggest dream is to find a new reality where she can just be a happy nobody.

7. Give her that dream, then make her watch it all fall to pieces. Have her blame herself for it, abandon that dream world, and return to the chaos.

8. The first season needs to be about free will vs. determinism, and taking control of your own narrative. The second guy should help the first guy find a way to atone for his past mistakes. It ends on a cliffhanger where the first guy does the hard work to be honest and vulnerable for the first time, but he ends up even worse off than before. He still chooses to commit to doing the right thing in spite of it all.

9. The second season starts with the first guy frantically searching for the second guy. When he finds him, the second guy is having a complete nervous breakdown because his toxic optimism has stopped being effective against the trauma and guilt. Now, the first guy has to turn the tables and be the one to help the second guy come to terms with his own past and take control of his own narrative.

10. Add a frat boy villain who represents the shadowy government organization. He has to be the dumbest human being alive, a total asshole, and have mental breakdowns every episode. He eventually betrays his older mentor for his own self-interest, and begrudgingly helps the protagonists defeat the shadowy government. He is still an asshole.

11. Throw in a lovable, hyperactive tech genius who is more interested in solving the puzzles than in the moral implications of his actions.

And boom! Instant classic.

[drumlincountry]

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (season 1) hates cops so much???!!!! There's about 6 cop characters and not a one of them does any damn thing useful or helpful! All they do is wave guns and ask people invasive judgemental questions, Like real cops do! - but in an American/British TV show! From 2016! The world is replete with riches and wonders 🥰

[urlocallesbiab]

a dghda s2/s3 theory: the universe meant for amanda to become an omniscient master of backstage knowledge, and friedkin took that place instead of her through a series of mistakes

(this post gets Very Long, but you can scroll right to the end for a TL;DR)

now, allow me to provide some context before i delve into an explanation

first, a precursory theory: if suzie boreton died like she was meant to, then lord triangle badevil would have became the mage's apprentice

in s2ep1 bart makes a choice not to kill suzie, even though she feels like she should; and then throughout the season the fact that suzie isn't meant to be a part of things is alluded to:

1) in the end of s2ep8 dirk gives his usual Case Solved speech where he explains how everything is connected, but he doesn't know how suzie boreton figures into things; she's not, technically, a part of his case

2) in s2ep10 todd asks her who is she and why is she there, and accuses her of being "some mom from montana", which further drives the point home

3) king francis has no knowledge of her either, even though he seems to be able to know relevant things that he could neither witness nor hear about (like farah and tina defeating the mage)

so, suzie's boreton entire character arc exists by mistake; and yet the prophecy (as foretold by wakti wapnasi, and as spoken by panto trost in s2ep3) makes a point about the great dark wizard finding his apprentice — that means that role was meant for someone.

lord triangle badevil is a mysterious figure who plays a significant role in the plot (his men kidnap farson and later amanda in s2ep4, he kills farson and thus causes a massive shoot-out in s2ep7, and he kills some people in his attempts to stop the prophecy in eps 9 and 10), and yet we know infuriatingly little about him, his goals and his views, like he was meant to be explored but got forgotten about.

he has markings on his face (pitch-black with negative-space geometrical figures) which are never discussed, but seem to be the same sort of marks that appear on arms of both the mage and suzie boreton from magic overuse, and that seems to suggest that he is, in some way, a magic user, or at least was exposed to magic somehow.

all things considered, i propose that lord triangle badevil, a mysterious actor of evil and supposedly a magic user, was meant to be the prophecied apprentice & the big bad, but got displaced by suzie, who wound up in the narrative by mistake.

next, an observation: wendimoor's magic, pararibulitis and backstage are closely linked

it's not much of a novel revelation, but i'm trying to be thorough, so here

— both amanda&todd and later friedkin could access backstage through the magical portals between earth and wendimoor

— most powerful beings of wendimoor (wakti wapnasi, the great witch; king francis) seem to be omniscient or close to, and omniscience is a backstage characterestic

(they both know things about earth they shouldn't be able to know, like wakti about amanda's name, or francis about farah&tina's win over the mage; and metaphysical things that are nigh impossible to be logically derived from facts, like holistics being the tools to fix the broken universe)

— pararibulitis expresses itself as tangible magic within wendimoor, and is tied to wielding the water/portals and to the visions

— visions are also a form of mystical knowledge, and thus could be sourced from backstage

(the exact reasons of how/why the connection between wendimoor and backstage could've happened have no bearing on this post, but so far my working theory is that the explosive creation of a whole new layer of reality pushed at the borders of the universe and stretched them/thinned them out, and that's why it's easier to slip from the material world of the universe to the immaterial not-world of the backstage when in wendimoor)

now, a couple of tidbits about amanda and the mandelbrot set:

— her name, amanda brotzman, is a pun on "mandelbrot set" (the showrunner talked about this somewhere; i don't know the source, i've learned about this somewhere in the ao3 comment section)

— mandelbrot set's visualisation is the shape that appears in people's eyes when they're backstage

— it's the same shape as on amanda's s2 jacket

— it's a recurring shape in her visions

(a tangent: now, i don't know much about mathematics so forgive me if i get the words wrong, but mandelbrot set's boundary is a fractal curve, meaning that if you zoom into the mandelbrot set's visualisation's border, you'll find more of the same shape, ad infinitum. this fun quality of the set has no bearing on this specific post and theories within it, but i think such a plot-important shape having this "as above, so below" flair to it could have meaning for the pontetial s3 plot)

— the prophecy mentions she-who-sees-all who was supposed to open a door into a dream, allowing through it dirk gently and the boy; that most probably references amanda, her visions and her ability to create portals through water

finally, the theory:

— amanda brotzman, mandelbrot set, visions, pararibulitis, wendimoor magic and backstage are all interconnected

— amanda was supposed to be she who sees all; backstage seems to have granted hugo friedkin omniscience

— stangely, amanda didn't see any higher meaning in the stars when she was there, and her eyes were the same color as todd's; when friedkin got there, his eyes were red, and he was enlightened

— there were a couple of things different about how amanda and hugo accessed backstage: amanda got there only mentally while her body was elsewhere, she was there together with todd, and she was alive; hugo's body fell through the portal, he was alone, and he was either dead or dying. any of those things, i think, could be what allowed him to connect to the backstage's knowledge. (my personal interpretation is that it's the part about dying, just to sprinkle more angst and terror into amanda's s3 conflict over it)

— hugo got into that predicament (alone, dying, pushed physically through a portal) because he was grievously wounded by lord badevil; if lord wasn't there, none of that would've happened. and as i have argued above, i believe that lord badevil wasn't supposed to be there! it's a chain reaction of displacement — suzie took lord badevil's place, he ended up killing hugo, and hugo took amanda's place

TL;DR: suzie boreton was never meant to survive bart, she displaced lord triangle badevil as the mage's apprentice, lord wound up on earth and killed hugo, hugo fell through the portal and became the master of the knowledge that amanda was supposed to be, displacing her.

we can suspect that the place was reserved for amanda because of the ties between pararibulitis, magic, her, mandelbrot set and backstage, and because she was canonically refered to as "she who sees all"

[creepyboyandhisforestfriends]

Honestly it's a crime we didn't get more of Dirk's giant pink fluffy coat era

[faintwhitenoise]

Alright? These kind of people need to be out in the world. And... please don't shock me. Please don't shock me.

[miryel89]

"Listen, this is just speculation, but I may be in actual Judeo-Christian Hell"

[jester-step]

was reading a research paper. saw the word “holistic” being used. immediately thought of dirk gently. blorbofication has begun ‼️

[queermarzipan]

SO ANGRY AT NETFLIX RIGHT NOW

[kittyspring-creates]

[224bbaker]

Hello detectives! 🔎

Do you love:

Mystery fiction, especially paired with a comedic tone, like Knives Out, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, or Only Murders in the Building?

Sherlock & Co, and want another, different take on the Holmes canon to add to your rotation of shows?

Irreverent historical comedies with surprising heart and messages about the people who often get left in the margins of history like Operation Mincemeat and Our Flag Means Death?

Re: Dracula, and other audio dramas that present unique takes on classic literature?

British audio comedy like Wooden Overcoats, Cabin Pressure, and Bleak Expectations?

The original ACD Sherlock Holmes stories but wish there was explicit, textual representation of gay, lesbian, and ace identities that are celebrated and centered within the actual text?

Adorable senior cat mascots?

May we present ourselves, Fawx & Stallion, a mystery-comedy podcast about the best detective team on Baker Street! (Not that one.) Our full first season is available now, and we are currently crowdfunding for Season 2! If a queer, Victorian mystery-comedy set in the world of Sherlock Holmes sounds like it might be up your alley, please consider giving us a listen, and if you're able, supporting our crowdfund so that our indie team can bring another mystery to life!

#ForAmbrosius

[holisticpippin]

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO DIRK GENTLY: ALL THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE REFERENCES I'VE NOTICED IN DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY (a.k.a. everything is connected)

(spoilers)

this took a good couple of hours and I tried to do this in order; buckle up!!

SEASON 1:

the posters on the windows as todd is walking by the convenience store place has a silhouette of a falling whale, what I assume is a reference to the infinite improbability drive whale, and an ad that says "zaphod," a reference to zaphod beeblebrox (s1e01 'horizons')

(also todd's stance here is so funny to me)

the rowdy 3, consisting of four (and later five) members, could be a reference to how the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is called a trilogy that happens to consist of 5 books ("there are four of them!" "I'm wildly aware")

one of the screens in the death maze has the number 42 on it (s1e04 'watkin')

SEASON 2:

there are 42 blackwing subjects

farah's awesome jacket with "D Adams" on it and the number 42 (multiple episodes)

the boretons' dog is named agrajag, which is the entity that arthur dent accidentally kills in every incarnation. unfortunately he dies here too (multiple episodes)

in the tree car, farah remarks that "the odometer's only on 42 miles" (s2e02 'fans of wet circles')

the book francis cardenas has by him as he's having the nightmare that says "PANIC!" on the cover (in what can only be large, unfriendly letters), with the subtitle "attack devil dolphins." (s2e07 'that is not miami')

the executioner guy in wendimoor calling dirk a "hoopy frood" as he helps him unload the scissor blade things (s2e08 'little guy, black hair')

the blackwing phone number on the business card, "555-424-2424" with a wild amount of 42s (s2e09 'trouble is bad')

dirk telling himself "don't panic" before jumping into the portal (s2e09 'trouble is bad')