One of the most significant television decisions ever made was to put Richard Belzer’s character Det. John Munch in the show St. Elsewhere. I think I’ve talked about this before, but people seemed to love Richard Belzer, and so Detective Munch ends up being invited to appear or cameo on a lot of shows that, themselves, have characters that end up on other shows. If you ask some people, this puts these shows in the same universe.
Some of this is pretty tame and inconsequential, because what does it matter that Jess from New Girl bumps into Jake from Brooklyn 99? In the case of Munch, it is a big deal, maybe, because Munch was on the show Homicide: Life On The Street, which had characters who also appeared on the medical drama St. Elsewhere. That show made the big choice to reveal in the last episode that the entire series was all a dream had by an autistic patient named Tommy Westphall. This is where we get the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis.
If you are a certain kind of person, you could argue that Breaking Bad, Cheers, and The Wire are all happening in some kid’s mind. I don’t really believe that, and the creators would have probably gone about things differently if they did realize what they were inadvertently doing at the time. It’s a mostly harmless Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-type thought experiment for nerds who love to hear themselves talk.
Thankfully, I’m one of those nerds, and so I am going to connect two of my favorite pieces of art: The Fast and the Furious and Friday Night Lights. As you may be aware, Leslie Hanna and I are doing a podcast, and in that podcast she’s going to watch every movie in the franchise for the first time (you can watch the first episode here). This will include all the weird little interludes and side quests, such as Hobbs & Shaw.
Having watched the first film, I wanted to make sure that Leslie got a chance to absorb the weird choice to create what’s almost a silent film to bridge the first installment and 2 Fast 2 Furious. It’s called The Turbo Charged Prelude to 2 Fast 2 Furious, and it introduces a lot of strange possibilities and zero Preludes of any kind. You can see us talking about it here:
The first episode of The Fast and The Curious is now available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and other platforms. You can also listen to it below or use the RSS to hook into your favorite podcast app. Above is the YouTube video, and below is our embedded player:
We talk about everything, not just my silly theory, but here’s more info on why I see a potential universe implication.
Is This Lyla Garrity?
As we discuss, the whole reason for this short film–directed by the same guy who made the video for “The Real Slim Shady,” btw–was to explain why Dom was gone and Brian is suddenly hanging out in Miami. A lot of decisions were made after the original film, and we’ll litigate those on the next episode, but for now I want to talk about a specific choice for this little cinematic interstitial.
While running from the law, Brian happens to run into a young woman who, it seems, is also on a trip of her own. Unsurprisingly, these two very beautiful people end up at the exact same crappy motel. She’s a well-known actress at this point, thanks in part to her role as cheerleader Lyla Garrity in FNL. If it were just the inclusion, Kelly’s appearance here wouldn’t be a big deal.
There’s more, though. Without spoiling either the short or the TV show, I think it’s not giving away to say that Lyla often has a contentious relationship with her father, Buddy Garrity. It doesn’t spoil anything to point out that Buddy Garrity is also a GM franchisee in the fictional Central Texas town of Dillon, and I think it comes up in the pilot.
Here’s where it gets weird. There’s a map that they refer to during Brian’s journey to Miami, and it stops in Central Texas for this scene:
While there’s not an explicit geography set for the show (it’s filmed in the Austin suburb of Pflugerville), it’s generally understood to be in a semi-remote part of the state in the Hill Country that is far enough away from the big cities so as to not absorb much of their culture. It’s been proposed online that the town is near Seguin, which makes a lot of sense to someone who has lived in this part of the world.
Either way, if Lyla were to run away from her dad for a few days, it could very easily be in this direction. Also, she could have a nice car like the Mitsubishi she’s seen driving. If this were her senior year, it also wouldn’t be unreasonable for her to be open to helping out a random handsome gentleman on the run from the cops (we don’t see anything else happening, which makes this theory more comfortable).
The lack of dialogue makes this theory hard to disprove, as does the fact that she’s credited as simply “The Girl” and not given some kind of other name. Tthe Fast Saga has already played the game of crossing characters with ancillary products (Han/Better Luck Tomorrow), so this isn’t entirely out of line.
So, I can’t prove it’s Lyla, but I also don’t think you can prove it isn’t.
Or maybe I’m just grasping at straws here! What do you think?
Top photo: The Autopian
