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[0:00] Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ariana Grande, hi. I'm Cynthia Erivo, and you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Visit bpm.fm, to discover more.

[0:12] Mike Abrams: Welcome to the wrong cat died the podcast breakdown of the cat's catastrophe. I'm your host, Mike Abrams, and today we're covering the rock star cat, the best cat, and the one who is responsible for turning millions of children into furries. Rum Tom Tugger to the intro music, there's a cat over here, there's a cat over there,

[0:32] Speaker 2: and the wrong one died, and the wrong one died.

[0:44] Mike Abrams: Music. Welcome to the wrong cat died, the podcast breakdown of the cat's catastrophe. Let's talk rum, tug Tugger. Like all these crazy cats, I'm probably gonna get tired of saying rum, tug Tugger. So from here on out, we're gonna call them tug. So who is tug? We get introduced to tug after Jenny, any dots, crazy cockroach tap dance. That still weirds me out. But rum tuck Tucker comes in with an extremely extravagant entrance. He's the rock star, and he is adored and loved by all of the lady kittens. He you could tell that every single one is obsessed with him and has given him the googly eyes and just really, really, really eyeing him down. But some of the older cats actually hate him, and you can see he's rubbing a few of them the wrong way. Mr. Mrs. In particular, looks at him, calls him a terrible bore midway through his song. But rum tuck Tucker is probably one of the best parts of this show. He's called a curious cat, and he comes in and just brings down the house with this rock star. His core lyric is for he will do as he do, and there's no doing anything about it, which is a boss lyric. Just imagine he's basically saying, I am who I am. Deal with it. So just look at a few examples from a song. He basically says, if I give you a house, he wants a flat. If you give you a mouse, he wants a rat, if you let a man, he wants to go out, and he keeps going and going and going where he basically says, whatever you're doing for me, I don't care. I want the opposite, because I am who I am. And this fits. It fits because he's a rock star, and you can tell he is the rock star to the core. And as a rock star, like the lead singer, he's the fan favorite. And what's the fan favorite do and do most there is a ton of sexual undertone with his song. He is hip thrusting, he's gyrating. He's on stage doing back and forth and back and forth. There's even one section where there's literally five kittens on the ground, and he goes back and forth singing his song and hip thrusting with his ass and his crotch back and forth, back and forth, right into their faces. I can only imagine how many cast members took an accidental crotch to the face during rehearsal. It was one of the funniest parts of this entire song. But as great as rum tuck Tucker is, it's not all perfect, because in 2014 Andrew Lloyd Webber made another writing mistake, and he decided that he thought rum tuck Tucker was stale, which is wrong and shocking, but decided to make him into a rapping streetcat, and shockingly, no one liked it, which it sounds as bad as it looked. But it was a terrible, terrible, terrible decision where they made him rap his song and turned him into this kind of tattooed up, dreadlock looking cat that just did not work. So they changed him right back for the New York run. It only lasted like a short, short period. But just the idea of changing him into a rapper is blasphemous beyond that. Air rum, tug Tugger is definitely one of the best parts of the show, he's probably the reason for furries everywhere. And there are a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton of comments of young men who said that they had incredibly uncomfortable sexual thoughts about a male cat and rum tuck Tucker is the reason why. If you don't know what a furry is, be careful googling it as much as I love drum tuck Tucker's character, it's probably worth noting that he was kind of a dick to Grizabella early in the play. He gives her the really, really standoffish feel, and doesn't do a great job of kind of like accepting her even remotely at all in the beginning. And since he's the rock star, he kind of feels like the leader, so everyone kind of follows suit. But as she sings memory, he kind of takes a turn and becomes almost adored, and gives her this, like, really, really amazing ovation. So this is kind of a confusing piece for him, because, as you know, like, I think rum tuck Tucker is going to be one of the best, but he definitely sides with Grizabella. Towards the end, there is one side pod to this, as we learn from Old Deuteronomy, there's a chance that Grizabella is his stepmom, so that could be part of the reason for the animosity up front. Either way, rum tug Tugger should be and is one of the best parts of this play, and Jason Derulo is about to absolutely crush this role in the movie. So how does rum tug Tugger song differ from the. All it doesn't it is 100% Word for word, the same. And so that begs the question, how do you think TS Eliot wrote this poem? I want you to just imagine something with me here. Just imagine TS Eliot sitting at his old wooden desk looking out at the countryside of Great Britain, quilt penned and ink in hand, going for he will do as he do as he hip thrust after each word, come on. I know you're piction, the same thing. All right, let's dig into some real and fictional characters for rum, tug, Tugger, plain and simple. Rum, tug, Tugger is a rock star, so if you take into consideration the slight bisexual undertone, you can relate him to almost every single 80s rock star. Guys like David Bowie, Prince, Mick, Jagger, Freddie Mercury, all come to mind. And I would love to have seen just any one of those guys perform this in the 80s. Can you imagine seeing David Bowie or Freddie Mercury going upstage and gyrating to rum tuck Tucker song? It would have been incredible. Let's look at some fictional characters, though. And so I want to stick with the rock star angle here. Star angle here. What about Aldus snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall getting to the Greek? Another kind of rock star does as he does, doesn't listen to anybody, does his own thing. Plus, can't you just imagine rum tuck Tucker singing a song called inside of you while thrusting his hips all over the beach? Definitely seems to make sense. There's another one that's not really reminds you of rum, tuck Tugger, but is actually playing rum tuck Tugger. There's an episode of modern family in season four, and cam is trying to save an old tree from getting cut down at their house. Early in the episode, it's revealed that he's in a local production of Cats, and at the end of the show, he runs straight from production to climbing the tree to prevent the fireman from cutting it down. Who's he dressed up as you bet it's rum, tuck Tugger. He ends up getting stuck in the tree, requiring the fireman to actually cut him down, which is just brilliant TV writing. So that's the only part that gives me a little unease, because there's no way rum tuck Tugger would ever get stuck. He's way too cool. Let's look at two more, but let's take a slightly different angle. What if, instead of a gritty rock star, we talked about some pretty boys. The first one that came to mind is from a cult classic movie Empire records. I hope you've seen it. If you haven't, it's great. You should definitely go see it. What about Rex Manning, which is the entire premise of the movie is Rex Manning day. He's crazy selfish and a major star. He comes off as a little bit standoffish and is going to do exactly what he wants. He pretty much is loved by every single one of the females, and even sleeps with one of the younger characters, and he is hated by all of the males. So it definitely has a little bit of rum tug Tugger feel to it, except everyone hated Rex Manning by the end of the show, and I still think everyone loves rum, tug Tugger. And last but not least, isn't rum tug Tugger, a little like Uncle Jesse from full house early in the show, he does exactly what he wants. Doesn't listen to anybody, does his own thing, all about his music. Does a lot of female hip dusting as well. But he has a turning point in season three where he tries to become Dr dare again and attempt this crazy motorcycle stunt. I don't know if you remember this episode ends up going but pulls out the last second and has a turn to become a better person, which kind of, again, feels a little bit like rum. Tug. Tugger starts off as this bad boy, but then really turns around and comes around to grizzabella just feels a lot of similarities to the musical plus Uncle Jesse writes a cat food jingle sometime in the middle of the run for a company called kitty crispies, and you bet your ass from tugs hugger seems like a kitty crispy eater. All right, the internet rumor mill, there are some wild theories in general. Tugs is fairly tame, especially for a character that I thought would be much, much Wilder, but there are a couple gems in here. So the first one we confirmed in episode one, which is that he is Old Deuteronomy son, and he's probably the brothers for a bunch of these cats. The second one is, I want to get the astrology out the way I have referenced that I know nothing about it. And after Episode Two and the cat times.com website, which completely freaked me out, I'm never researching cat astrology again. So rum tuck Tugger is a Libra. Do with that as you will. This is one that's a little interesting that I don't really know what to make of it, and I'm hoping that either the listeners or we'll be able to get some answers at some point to provide some clarity. But there's some speculation from both actors and fans that the 2016 New York revival, there was some kind of rocky relationship between rum tug Tugger and scrimble shanks. The notes basically say that every night they had a different relationship. Some days it was heated enemies, some days they were good friends, some days they were lovers. But there was nothing else past that. It's just that the two characters, and potentially the two actors, had this kind of weird, interesting relationship, both off and on stage. So I'm hoping to ask a few cast members if we can get in touch with them, and I want to know the details from behind the scenes. But as a listener, if you know more about this, please let us know. We'd love to hear some of the back stories on how this came, especially since it's recent with the most recent New York cast. Next rumor, and I love this rumor because. There's absolutely no way to verify it unless you happen to be in the one show the one time that this happened. But there's a rumor that rum tug Tugger saw as he was singing a song a lady in the first few rows dressed in a full cat's costume as rum tug Tugger, and since his character is supposed to have a ton of personality and the cats go into the crowd and yes, quick side note, if you don't know this and you go see the show, the cats go into the crowd and get right in your face. So if you are like me and you do not want to be part of the show, sit somewhere in the middle and stay far away from the aisles, because it is terrifying. But side note over rum tuck Tugger goes out into the crowd, makes this lady get up, takes her seat, keeps singing his song, and encourages her to go on stage. That's the rumor. I have no idea if it's true, but I love everything about it. So note to self, note to any listeners, if you don't want to go on stage, if you don't want to dance, don't dress up as a cat as you go to the show. Last rumor, and definitely the most salacious, there's rumor that Mr. Mistopolies and rum tug Tugger are actually a couple, and just like Brad and Jennifer and Bennifer, the fans have dubbed him tug stuff alies. I think that's how you pronounce it. It kind of makes sense, though. Mr. Misophyllies sings in rum, tug Tucker song, rum, tug Tugger sings in Mr. Mr. Lee song. They dance closely, they sit together. They're whispering each other's ears. They're hugging throughout the play. If you just watch just the two of them, it's either they're dating or it's an extremely awkward bromance. But it totally makes sense that these two guys could be dating. Favorite YouTube comment, there's nearly 3000 YouTube comments for this video, and only about 10% of them mentioned Jason Derulo, but you're gonna catch a theme here, and it's a theme that makes a ton of sense. So I Zodiac The first. I'm not a furry, I'm not a furry, I'm not a furry, I'm not a furry, I'm not a furry. Edit, yeah, I think I'm a furry. Now silent girl cats making people question their sexuality since 1981 organic water, let's face the facts. Rum, tug Tugger is not neutered. Sammy woods, I was already gay before watching this, but still made me 50% gayer. Sugar. M 18, I never realized just how damn horny all these cats were. And last but not least, Lord ravioli, which is a great name. Listen, I'm not saying that cats made me a furry but that's exactly what happened. So why does rum tuck Tucker deserve to die over grozel? Well, let's talk about it from the two angles. The first angle is from a competition standpoint, because, let's face it, I look at the show as America's Got Talent, the X Factor, the voice American Idol. That's essentially what it is with Old Deuteronomy being the judge. So from a purely competition standpoint, rum tuck Tucker sings two songs. All the rest of the cats sing one. So he gets more chances to allow the crowd than anybody else, and his number one song is by far one of the best parts of the show. I believe the correct term and your Broadway terminology, is that this was like a callback. I still don't really know how this works. I think it's audition. Then call back. Either way, he's getting two songs. Everyone else is getting one. Purely from the competition standpoint, he gets more of a chance. But from the other side, if this is also like those shows, if this was voted on by America, every single person attracted to men would be voting for him, which would give him which would give him millions and millions and millions of votes. He has the most personality of all these cats, and he brings out the entire sexual tension in this play. He's unapologetically himself, which is definitely endearing, and he lives the I am, who I am, motto, which is totally respectable and totally lovable, plus lots of rock stars tragically die young, so he's kind of right, in that right age range where he's at the peak and probably deserving of his next life. Quick counter argument as amazing as rum. Tuck Tucker is the rapping street cat. Horrible mistake for those two years. Was a disaster, and during those two years, Grizabella deserved to die 1,000% more than rum. Tug Tugger rapping version. So kind of hard to ignore that travesty for a couple years. So how do we rate rum tug Tugger on a scale of one to nine? Cat lives. I give rum tug Tugger 8.5 cats, one cat for every 10 crotch thrusts he does during the show. It'd be a perfect nine out of nine if it weren't for the rapping street cat debacle. Andrew Lloyd Webber, again, another mistake you made. Thanks for listening to episode three about rum. Tuck Tugger on the wrong cat died, a podcast breakdown of the cat's Tasha feed. To follow along, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify Stitcher, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, at the wrong cat died. Or check out our website, the wrong cat died.com. You.