Gang of Four, the Fourth and Final Season
Episode 4.01: Surprise Surprise
As Nana’s birthday approaches, Taylor seeks out a replacement gift when he learns that both he and Jason have gotten her copies of her favorite novel, Wuthering Heights. Meanwhile, Alice gets into a fight with her older sister Martha after Martha tells her she isn’t responsible enough to keep a pet.
Episode 4.02: Slow Wets
Jason gets a job to buy a motorcycle but finds that working as a stunt clown’s executive assistant may be nothing more than a fool’s errand. Meanwhile, Alice adopts a pet turtle and realizes that taking care of it is a lot harder than she expected. She learns a valuable lesson about responsibility.
Episode 4.03: Sir Ed
To prepare for a big test on Spanish colonial trade, the gang turns to the class’s resident historian, Nerdy Ed, to give them a tutorial. As things turn out, they end up teaching him a valuable lesson about confidence.
Episode 4.04: Loophole-de-Loop
Nana, Taylor, Jason, and Alice spend a Saturday afternoon at Enchanted Kingdom. Nana convinces the typically bold Jason to get over his fear of rollercoasters. Meanwhile, Taylor and Alice find out they have more in common than they thought at an exhibit on famous animal vocalists in music history.
Episode 4.05: Pass or Not Fail
On the day of the big test, the gang realize they’ve forgotten everything from their tutorial and scramble to help each other pass the exam. Taylor devises a tune to remember the answers but feels shot down when Jason suggests they should cheat instead.
Episode 4.06: Lunch Hour
During an extended break in the cafeteria, the gang realize that Nerdy Ed wasn’t in school on the day of the test. Taylor, Jason, and Alice come up with their own fantastical theories of what might have happened to him, from aliens to buried treasure. Nana, on the other hand, is worried that they may have hurt his feelings at the tutorial. Can somebody say, “Whoops!”
Episode 4.07: Family Matters
Jason’s quirky Tito Vince arrives from the province and is an instant hit with Jason’s friends when he agrees to buy them vodka cola for a house party. But when he asks Tito Vince to stay, Jason realizes just how much his parents have tried to keep their distance from him.
Episode 4.08: In Your Shoes
Nana bumps into Nerdy Ed and discovers that he’s filed a leave of absence from school. When Nerdy Ed tells her their tutorial session made him feel uncomfortable about his looks and his voice, Nana learns a valuable lesson about perspective.
Episode 4.09: Afternoon Delight
Taylor brings his friends over to his family’s summer house in Tagaytay. The only catch is that Taylor’s parents soon arrive to spice up their marriage and they don’t know that anyone else is in the house.
Episode 4.10: One More for the Road
Nana finds out Nerdy Ed is also in Tagaytay and tries to include him in the gang’s downhill BMX activities. Despite their best efforts, Nerdy Ed decides to stick it out on his own. He parts ways with the group before they head back to Manila.
Episode 4.11: So Long, Farewell
The group finds out that Nerdy Ed was killed in a tragic bus accident on the way home from Tagaytay. Nana is disappointed to learn that none of her friends want to attend his wake. Alice reluctantly agrees to join her at the last minute and relearns a valuable lesson about responsibility.
Episode 4.12: Ladies and Gentlemen… The Beat-less!
Taylor succeeds in convincing two of his Chemistry classmates to start a rock band. But when he catches his new bandmates trashing his idea to only play covers of the Beatles’ rooftop concert set for their debut performance, he becomes insecure. Chemistry is going to be the least of his problems!
Episode 4.13: Fretty Eddie
Nana visits Nerdy Ed’s parents, who explain that he had become increasingly antsy in the weeks leading up to his withdrawal from school, locking himself in his room and rambling in a foreign language. They give Nana an old Spanish book he purchased before he died. Later, Nana visits the proprietor of the Cubao antiques shop Nerdy Ed used to frequent to determine the volume’s contents.
Episode 4.14: The Basque Book of the Dead
In the early seventeenth century, Spanish witches fleeing the Inquisition turn over volumes of their knowledge to a sympathetic friar bound for the eastern colonies. The volumes are hidden in the walls of a church, only for one of them to survive after a destructive earthquake collapses the building. Scavengers peddle the volume to a wealthy trader who settles in Manila, and the book remains in his family’s possession for many generations. By the end of the millennium, the trader’s descendants are forced to sell their most valuable belongings after the Asian Financial Crisis. Hence, the book is sold at auction to an antiques collector, who then keeps the volume until the early twenty-first century, when it is sold to one Nathaniel Ferdinand Cruz, better known to his peers as Nerdy Ed. Three weeks after he dies, Nerdy Ed’s body is reported missing from its grave.
Episode 4.15: Three’s Company
Jason and Tito Vince go on a trip to Batangas, where Jason’s uncle teaches him how to smoke. Jason becomes disillusioned with his fun uncle when a woman who isn’t Tito Vince’s wife spends a lot of time with them and shows a particular interest…in Jason.
Episode 4.16: To Dream the Impossible Dream
Taylor auditions for a summer concert but overhears one of the judges saying he has no talent. Wondering if it is time to give up his dreams, he consults Alice and Jason for advice. Neither of them has anything particularly encouraging to say.
Episode 4.17: Black and White and Red All Over
As summer begins, Nana gets the feeling that somebody is watching her. Peering out her window, she notices that the unit across from hers is never unlit. She takes on a seasonal job at her aunt’s printing press, and for several days Nana is able to dispel her paranoia. But when an anguished man crashes through the doors of the office and makes his way towards Nana, she pushes him over into an industrial printing machine, which crushes him instantly. Somewhere behind her, people are laughing. Nana resigns from her job and re-enters therapy, where she tells her therapist she is haunted more by the death of Nerdy Ed than the death of the man at her office. Does that make her a bad person? she wonders. Ed was her friend, the therapist says. But what did this man want from her? Why was he so intent on reaching her? Nana looks into the identity of the man and learns that he had died of a heart attack an hour before arriving at Nana’s office. More importantly, she learns that he lived in her apartment complex, occupying the unit right across from hers. Bummer!
Episode 4.18: The Filler Episode
Alice is surprised to find a nest of eggs in her turtle’s habitat. At Martha’s behest, Alice rushes to improve the nest’s condition and learns a heartbreaking but valuable lesson about responsibility along the way.
Episode 4.19: Practical Magic
Nana can’t shake off her paranoia. She is compelled to open Nerdy Ed’s antique Spanish book, convinced that she will understand its meaning, even though she’s never taken a single Spanish class in her life. Her instinct is correct. The letters fly off the page and dance into an arrangement she can read at once. Nana hatches a plan to enact her first spell.
Episode 4.20: A Very Special Episode
Distraught by her failure to provide a suitable nest for her turtle’s eggs, Alice is shocked to find that the eggs have all hatched. However, Janice, her pet turtle, is now missing, along with her hatchlings. When Alice tracks them down, she learns a valuable lesson about necromancy.
Episode 4.21: A Veeeeeeeery Special Episode
Desperate for validation, Taylor calls Nana to find out how she’s doing. At once, he notices how panicked she sounds. Nana insists that someone is following her but won’t tell him who. Taylor immediately goes to see her but is met by an agitated Nana, who tells him that he shouldn’t have come. A disappointed Taylor goes back home and begins to sense that someone is following him too. Setting a trap for his stalker, he discovers that it is none other than Nerdy Ed, who teaches him a valuable lesson about coronary disorders.
Episode 4.22: A Very Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery Special Episode
Jason has a strange dream about riding a rollercoaster with his quirky Tito Vince’s new girlfriend. He wakes from the dream, only to find her body floating above his. When he reaches out for her, she dissolves and melts onto him. He wakes from that dream to find that his bed is now adrift at sea, surrounded by sharks. The waters are misty. The sharks aren’t real but animatronic. They circle the bed mechanically, their painted fins cutting gracefully through the otherwise still water. Still, that is, until they plunge. When Jason fends off one of the sharks by leaping over it, the bed is swallowed by a whale. He wakes from that dream, only to find himself in the body of a turtle—specifically one of Alice’s new turtles. When he traverses the ruins of her home, crawling over bodies strewn across carpets and stairways, he comes across what he thinks is a distraught Alice, hunched over one such body, her older sister Martha. Except Alice isn’t Alice anymore. Mashed viscera hang off the edges of her teeth. The studio audience laughs. Jason asks them to stop. They don’t. He doesn’t wake up from this one.
Episode 4.23: Ed Follows
In a moment of clarity, Nana returns to the grave of Nerdy Ed, only to find him waiting for her there. When she realizes that the book took control of her, she tells Nerdy Ed that she put the people who mattered most in her life in danger. But Nerdy Ed disagrees. He tells her he only opened the book because he thought he could use his own friends, a Gang of Four of his own. That is, after all, what he really learned from Nana and her gang. He learned that he was better than a guest star, better than a one-episode appearance who disappears forever. And anyway isn’t that the whole point of this show? To learn? Otherwise, why set it in a school? Why make it about four goofy kids who are the best of friends, four stubborn teens who just never seem to learn? Because if they did—if they finally learned their lesson—it would mean the show had to end. Someone claps to that. Nana turns to look for what she thinks is lightning, rumbling in some distant cloud. But all the night can conjure are stars in an unblemished sky. Is that why people watch you? Nerdy Ed asks. Do they see themselves as an Alice, a Taylor, a Jason, or a Nana? To feel like they’re part of the gang? He shakes his head. The applause cracks through Nana’s ears. She looks again and finds only trees and gravestones for miles and miles. The truth is, Ed tells her, they’re all just like the kid on the fringes. Why else would they make him that very same kid, if not to be the one who learns? The one who breaks the pattern? He wanted his gang to have people like himself, people nobody ever thinks about. Who in Ed’s world could fit that description? Then it occurred to him: He was looking for the dead. On shows like this, no one ever thinks about the dead. Nana has no idea what he’s talking about, tells him life is not a show. She tells him this as she glimpses out from the corner of her eye and finally sees who’s been watching her—not a single person, but a whole crowd, seated on bleachers, applauding, beaming huge smiles because they’re so happy to see her. A pale Taylor, eyes sunken, runs out from behind a tree and beams right back at them, waving for love from every part of the crowd. Bloody Alice follows next, and perched in her ragged red claws is Jason, now tiny and green, screaming in a language no human can understand. Show’s over, Ed declares. Nana appeals to him to stop waking the dead. But it’s too late, she realizes, as a hand lifts up to her ankle. The hand pulls. Nana screams. Hijinks ensue.
J. Marcelo Borromeo (@miostark) is a Filipino writer with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He likes writing spooky and weird, and his work has appeared in The Bureau Dispatch, Catapult, and Joyland Magazine. He has received support from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He attended the latter as a Tennessee Williams Scholar. He lives in his hometown of Cebu, where he is working on his first novel.