Roundball Rock Roundball Rock

Their love or the NBA is obvious and they make me laugh

Good show if you spent too many years on NBA twitter. But then bad when it dwells too much on that stuff. The guy who is actively trying to be a comedian in California is currently not funny in terms of riffing, at all. Sometimes anti-comedy stuff is just boring man. His songs are excellent though and he should lean into that. Joey, the “temporary cohost” is actually funny and carries the show for sure. It’s so niche I find it hard to recommend to people outside very specific friend circles. So basically fellas, my advice is to leave some group chats , but keep doing what you’re doing. Genuinely like both of you

A naked man emerges from the dark shores of Cauldron Lake, experiencing visions of a man violently screaming before he is found and has his heart cut out by a group of men wearing deer masks.

FBI Special Agent Saga Anderson and her partner Alex Casey are dispatched to the town of Bright Falls to investigate a series of ritualistic murders. They investigate the latest victim, the naked man, who is revealed as former FBI agent Robert Nightingale. It is believed he was murdered by a group calling themselves "The Cult of the Tree." In addition to Nightingale's corpse, Saga finds a mysterious manuscript page that seems to predict the future. While in the town, they encounter Sheriff Tim Breaker, who promises to assist their investigation, as well as waitress Rose Marigold, who recognises Saga and acts like Saga was a local of the area, despite this being her first visit to the town. Saga then performs an autopsy on Nightingale's corpse, but it suddenly reanimates and escapes the morgue after Breaker mysteriously vanishes.

As they pursue Nightingale to Cauldron Lake, Casey says he had investigated a murder cult in New York dedicated to bringing back the missing author Alan Wake by reenacting the murders described in his books, and that Nightingale came to Bright Falls to pursue Alan thirteen years prior. Saga encounters Nightingale, now converted into what the manuscript called a "Taken", and is forced to kill him. Saga then finds a very-shaken Alan Wake washed up on the shore of the lake and takes him into custody while also discovering evidence that an organization called the Federal Bureau of Controlhas a presence in Bright Falls. Saga and Casey take Alan back to the inn, where he recounts how he escaped from a dream-like dimension called the Dark Place.

While trapped in the Dark Place, Alan continually tried to find a way to escape. After appearing in a mysterious talk show called "In Between with Mr. Door," Alan found an angel-shaped lamp that, in combination with his writing ability, allowed him to manipulate the Dark Place to better navigate it.

Alan began navigating a dark, twisted version of New York City, following the trail of Alex Casey's investigation of the "Cult of the Word" led by Alan's evil doppelganger Mr. Scratch, who survived his erasure from existence, which brought him through the various scenes of the murders committed by the cult. Along the way, Alan also encountered Breaker, who was searching for the talk show host, Mr. Door, believing him to be responsible for trapping him in the Dark Place. Alan also occasionally made brief contact with Saga, the two of them trading vital information when they could. After believing he had killed Tom Zane, who had gone insane from his captivity inside the Dark Place, Alan was contacted by an alternative version of himself, explaining that his repeated attempts to escape the Dark Place are causing him to experience time loops.

Back in the present, Alan explains that he wrote a new novel, Return, that helped him escape the Dark Place. However, Scratch re-edited the manuscript into a horror story now taking effect in reality. Alan warns that Scratch is searching for the Clicker, which is the key he needs to free the malevolent Dark Presence completely, but also the key to permanently defeating it. When one of the manuscript pages mentioning the Cult of the Tree possesses the Clicker, Saga decides to follow its trail and realizes that Return has rewritten her past so that her daughter Logan drowned in an accident. Angered that Alan wrote her and Logan into his story, Saga recovers the Clicker, but before she can get it to Alan, agents from the FBC led by Agent Kiran Estevez arrive and apprehend him as well as the Cult leaders, revealed to be town entrepreneurs Ilmo and Jaakko Koskela.

With no other options, Saga tracks down Odin and Tor Anderson, who know more about the Clicker. As she communicates with them and rescues Tor from a Taken Cynthia Weaver, she learns that Odin and Tor are actually her grand-uncle and grandfather, respectively, and she inherited their seer abilities, allowing her to discern the changes to reality Return is causing. Odin and Tor also explain that the Clicker does not do anything by itself but instead dramatically enhances the creative power of the person using it, which is why it is important to Alan and Scratch. Saga then heads back to Bright Falls to get the Clicker to Alan but finds out that the Alan who escaped Cauldron Lake wasn't Alan, but Scratch. With his identity now exposed, Scratch kills Jaakko and escapes from captivity, attempting to take the Clicker from Saga. He is temporarily thwarted and banished, thanks to the FBC's light technology, leaving Saga wondering what to do next.

Ilmo reveals that he and Jakko formed the cult in order to scare townsfolk away from the dangers of the lake, while they perform their 'ritual killings' on whatever Taken emerges from it, such as Nightingale. Realizing that Alan is still trapped in the Dark Place, Saga enlists the help of Casey, Odin, Tor, and Estevez to carry out a ritual to summon him to the real world. Meanwhile, Alan continues to try and find a way out of the Dark Place, eventually making his way to his old apartment. There, he discovers his wife Alice had been tormented with visions of Scratch, eventually leading to her suicide. In anger, Alan kills who he believes is Scratch but is actually a version of himself attempting to fix Scratch's ending of Return, perpetuating the loop.