The Fake News Dies.

This is a story about a flawed man, born of privilege, who only lived for himself. It tells of the last day of his newscast; of how his enemies plotted against him until the final battle, and of how his partner LeAnn abandoned him just when he thought he had it all figured out. It ends with a podcast. It begins in the wreckage of KCOM Studios on the night of Deathember 13th, 2021. In Somewhere West of New York City, the faithful still tune in at six o’clock, waiting for the newscast to start… but it never will. The Fakist died two years ago.

The Fakist: One Last Day, a new documentary, starting tonight on WAFM-TV 3.

That’s it. I killed it. The Fakist is finally dead.

I’ve lived with this world since 2016, when I wrote the first draft of a pilot script for an animated series about a news team that “made up the news.” I wanted to iterate and diversify my storytelling skills, and the three “news story” sketches I built into each episode let me try a million different genres, tones, and approaches for the first time. Telling the story of the “fake news team” between the sketches helped me build my serialized storytelling skills.

Due to my personal bandwidth limits at the time, the animated series became a podcast. We’ve done 39 episodes as of today if you count the spin-off The Fakist Headlines. At every stage, I’ve tried to “punch above my weight class” on this project. I never let myself get comfortable.  I refined the format in Season 1, brought in outside writers and tied episodes together thematically in Season 2, and told a new kind of story entirely in Season 3. Since I’ve tried so many things for the first time on The Fakist, I’m aware that my execution hasn’t always been the best. What do you expect? It’s my first time! It doesn’t help that every time I find a solid format, I toss it aside for something new to keep myself growing.

This season is, for the most part, the show I should have made from the start. It’s always more ambitious than it should be, which is par for the course with this project. The “Rashomon-style” narrative structure was a challenge. I have a timeline I made in Photoshop that tracks all the characters throughout the “One Last Day.” We ended up with nine short stories about people who got what they wanted, then realized it wasn’t what they needed. It feels very different than previous seasons, in a good way. Each episode stands on its own as a genre sample, a character piece, or a weird experimental story. I’m proud of all of them in different ways.

I’m more proud of Rebecca Johnson, who plays LeAnn Snyder. Rebecca’s a podcaster, but she’s also a great actress and a giving collaborator. We built her character together, using bits of Rebecca’s own biography to flesh it out. She’s also the only actor I’ve recorded nearly every episode with live. I’m going to miss our goof-off sessions a lot.

I’d say more about the story of this episode, but it’s the finale so I don’t want to spoil anything. I’ll leave you with a few teases.

• Fans of my old podcasts should listen to the last few minutes for a fun little easter egg from me and Anne Marie.
• There’s been a lot of death and destruction this season. I try to make up for it with a scene I call “the round of happy endings.” I hope you love it.
• All the meta weirdness of including myself as a character in the story gets explored in this episode.
• The Glomer trilogy concludes.

Back in 2017, I was two years in on a dream job that eventually became my worst nightmare… Mid-30s, hunched over a computer, writing code. When I started The Fakist, it was a distraction from all that. As the show grew in listeners, contributors, and page length, I hung my hopes on it. The show never got all that big, but we came close a couple of times. It’s far from a hit, but producing The Fakist taught me a lot about myself and why I do what I do. It forced me to iterate and diversify my storytelling skills. Most importantly, it gave me the courage to finally live my Hollywood Life and try to make something like The Fakist, but for real.

The Fakist is dead! If you need me, I’ll be curled up in a corner, mumbling messages from Somewhere West of New York City. The show might be dead, but it’s going to take a while for me to get my mind off it.