This Show is Awkward

Henrique Couto begins with freshly groomed dogs Henwolf and Chicano, whose enormous clean coats make them feel “reupholstered.” He and Michelle compare the smell of dogs, cats and cat saliva, remember bathing Henrique’s childhood cat and debate whether smelling a pet’s paw is affectionate or strange. Michelle also recalls April, the clever Samoyed her family eventually rehomed after realizing they were not the right match.
That pet conversation becomes an excuse for another surprise internet quiz, but Henrique has searched for something “sad.” The questions rapidly move from mood and sleep to hopelessness, self-loathing, death wishes and self-harm, making the quiz’s flippant framing uncomfortable even as the hosts use dark humor. Its cheerful result—that Michelle is not sad at all—exposes how little authority the test deserves. It is not a mental-health assessment, screening tool or substitute for professional care.
Michelle then gives a personal update about changing prescribed anxiety medication after three difficult weeks on the prior drug, including waking frightened and shaking. One week into the replacement, she thinks she may feel better but is uncertain how quickly it could work. The hosts discuss their experiences and informal reading without giving medical advice; no listener should start, stop or change medication based on this 2020 conversation.
A second quiz asks about friends, ideal homes, personal style, Disney characters and favorite birds before declaring Michelle part snake, mouse, bear and cat. A joke about snakes ends with the sad memory of accidentally hitting one with a lawnmower, completing the episode’s route from pleasant pet smells to grim quiz results. Contains depression, anxiety, self-loathing, suicidal ideation and self-harm questions, psychiatric medication and side effects, animal death, profanity, dark humor and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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This March 2020 recording opens with an addendum because the situation changed dramatically between taping and release. Ohio had closed bars and restaurant dining, several Pennsylvania counties had restricted businesses, and the hosts no longer felt their earlier jokes matched the seriousness of the moment. Henrique Couto and Michelle acknowledge that they are not doctors and that their rapidly aging conversation should not be used for current health, workplace or public-policy guidance.
Before those shutdowns, the friends were measuring risk through handwashing, awkwardly avoided handshakes and a Cleveland convention where Henrique expected to greet hundreds of people. They debate symptoms, transmission, hospital demand, family contact and whether large events will proceed. Many claims were incomplete or wrong even by later 2020 standards, so the description preserves the uncertainty rather than repeating percentages or recommendations as fact.
The discussion turns to toilet paper, sanitizer, ammunition and the psychology of panic buying. Henrique argues that people create the scarcity they fear when they buy extra because they expect everyone else to do the same; a routine warehouse-club cart can suddenly look like evidence of disaster. They also criticize sensational coverage, compare Ohio with coastal cities and reflect on the cancellations of South by Southwest and Coachella.
Michelle’s grocery-delivery work makes the risk personal. She moves among four supermarkets, struggles to find requested products and describes customers and employees coughing within inches of her. Severe anxiety convinces her she will become infected and unknowingly transmit illness while asymptomatic, while Henrique turns the fear into a deliberately false horror-movie joke about a virus traveling through the internet. Contains pandemic illness and death, obsolete or inaccurate medical speculation, anxiety, workplace exposure, firearms and ammunition discussion, profanity, dark humor and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Henrique Couto begins with a deliberately bad explanation of one-party and all-party recording-consent laws before discovering that Pennsylvania’s rules differ from Ohio’s. The joke gives way to the real question: after completing a long, emotionally draining job built from repeated twelve- and thirteen-hour days, how does anyone actually relax? The legal discussion is informal, incomplete and not advice about recording conversations in any jurisdiction.
Three days after the project ends, Henrique still cannot make himself watch Scarface, enjoy a bowl of popcorn or stop feeling guilty about time away from work. Even cabins, movies, video games and strict evening cutoffs can become assignments he might fail. He loves making films, podcasts and short work, but turning a hobby into a livelihood means creative escape has become another source of pressure, and he fears burnout because nobody else can catch the business if he collapses.
Michelle understands the cycle. Animation school once burned her out so thoroughly that she stopped drawing for roughly a decade, and her current relaxation still depends on scheduled television, manga and a firm cutoff from work. She also interrupts the conversation to stop Giggs from eating plastic tape, then reassures Henrique that honest frustration with a dream job is not ingratitude. Their exchange offers personal experience, not mental-health, employment or business guidance.
The friends move from work identity to adult impostor syndrome. Michelle worries that an ordinary-looking insurance card will derail someone else’s driving test and says a recent prescribed dosage increase has made her more nervous; Henrique admits that running every creative and financial part of a business still does not make him feel like an “adulty adult.” Hearing that Michelle’s parents also improvise their way through life is unexpectedly comforting. Contains depression, anxiety, burnout, psychiatric medication and dosage discussion, legal speculation, death jokes, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Michelle has just lent her Honda Fit to a young coworker for a driving test after helping her practice. The test does not end in a license, but Henrique Couto insists that offering a car and patient instruction is a generous act—especially when nobody in the learner’s family owns a vehicle. A mysterious YouTube video starts playing in the middle of the explanation, exposing the sort of real Michelle the show was supposedly created to reveal.
Both hosts remember learning to drive as an anxious ordeal. Henrique’s mother tried teaching him in an Ohio neighborhood before repeatedly shouting that he was too close to something, so a professional instructor with a second brake pedal took over. Michelle’s New Jersey process required instructor time, and her first road test ended during parallel parking. These stories describe procedures from many years ago and are not current licensing, driving or safety guidance.
Henrique waited until eighteen to avoid a driver-education course he disliked, then discovered that the green Volkswagen Beetle his mother had been driving was secretly his first car. He passed the road portion of his Ohio test but failed a cone-based maneuverability exercise, practiced repeatedly after hours and succeeded on the next attempt. Michelle later passed while crying from nerves, only for the examiner to think the fear was personal.
The friends compare Ohio maneuverability with East Coast parallel-parking tests, debate cones versus real cars and trace how different vehicle sizes change muscle memory. Henrique remembers people paying to use his small Beetle for their own tests, while Michelle describes regular city parking in a Honda Fit. The conversation ends with family reactions to strangers staring at their distinctive style and Michelle insisting that the podcast is being captured on “tape.” Contains driving-test anxiety, unsafe or obsolete test-taking claims, brief medication and painkiller discussion, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Henrique Couto finally has fiber internet fast enough to turn a twenty-hour media upload into roughly an hour, a major upgrade for delivering television and film files. The joy fades when canceling a bundled television trial appears to raise his quoted monthly price from eighty to one hundred dollars. He has the lower offer in writing and launches into a determined billing dispute with AT&T while admitting that he can outlast customer service because he works from home.
The disagreement lands in the middle of a burnout spiral. After reaching his limit around midday, Henrique works another twelve hours, finishes at one in the morning and declares the next day a personal day—during which he still works several times by accident. Pizza, Better Call Saul and a conversation with his mother help him realize that seven-hour weekend days were not actually time off. His remarks about pricing, contracts and tax deductions are personal recollection, not consumer, legal or financial advice.
Michelle questions whether making comics and music is truly fun when she feels compelled to keep doing it. That leads to her recent experience with two remote therapy appointments that offered familiar advice and did not feel like the right fit. She then met remotely with a medical professional, began a daily prescribed anxiety medication and, on day three, reports insomnia, an indescribably strange feeling and an unexpected thought that the nice weather might justify a walk.
Both hosts compare those early side effects with previous experiences using prescribed as-needed medication, difficulty obtaining a refill and fear of bothering clinicians. Henrique stresses that different therapeutic approaches can fit different people, while Michelle remains uncertain that anything will improve. This is a historical personal conversation, not diagnosis, medication guidance or a reason to start, stop, split or change any prescription. Contains anxiety, burnout, hopelessness, intrusive thoughts, psychiatric medication and side effects, alcohol and drug references, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Henrique Couto confesses that he cannot stop watching dark-web mystery-box videos. He knows the ominous backpacks, rusty knives, Dybbuk boxes and evidence of unseen crimes are almost certainly staged, yet one creator’s playful late-night scares remain charming while another channel becomes irresistible hate-watching. The boundary changes when supposedly real break-ins and requests for financial support turn a spooky performance into a possible scam.
The hosts move from YouTube to eBay, where haunted dolls and sealed Dybbuk boxes come with elaborate histories, warnings never to open them and policy disclaimers that paranormal results cannot be guaranteed. Henrique reads listings about a sick child, a Missouri barn full of spirits and an abandoned miniature-golf course; Michelle appreciates the micro-fiction until a seller claims to have trapped an innocent wandering spirit. They treat every supernatural claim as storytelling, not evidence.
Michelle then shares her own recent haunting. While rebooting a computer to stream Dorohedoro, she hears patterned movement and a bang upstairs in her empty attached house. Giggs hears it too, but Michelle steps outside, calls her mother and reluctantly asks police to search the rooms and the attic. Three officers find no intruder, leaving her embarrassed and still uncertain about the noise.
At bedtime, the mystery resolves: rebooting the computer restored its wireless printer connection, releasing a week-old print queue. The printer produced part of a recipe, ran out of paper and shook an uneven desk loudly enough to sound like footsteps. Henrique imagines a more cinematic message from beyond while both hosts admit that printers, car doors and falling garage props have frightened them before. Contains alleged child murder, burglary, stalking, demons and ghosts, police response, fear of an intruder, scams, profanity, dark humor and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Michelle has just completed a dermatology visit to have numerous moles and other skin features examined. Everything appears normal at that appointment, though the experience leaves her wondering how a person is supposed to interpret common visual warnings when her own moles already vary in size, shape and color. The hosts turn that uncertainty into jokes, but this personal account is not skin-cancer screening, diagnostic or follow-up guidance.
A detour into language learning reveals that Michelle can read hiragana and katakana while still searching for a resource that makes the wider Japanese writing system click. She explains how katakana helps her recognize borrowed words and manga sound effects, recalls slowly decoding “white stew” and describes understanding occasional simple anime dialogue. The hosts openly acknowledge that their improvised linguistic explanations may be wrong.
Henrique Couto then begins a supposedly elite psychological evaluation assembled from some of the worst quizzes he can find. Questions about imagination, visible abdominal muscles, living arrangements, beach confidence and which actor should play Michelle produce a “sexy score” of 54 out of 100. Henrique invents a Harvard–Yale–Gambia medical collaboration to give the nonsense borrowed authority.
The remaining quizzes declare that Michelle was God in a past life, will enter a relationship that never ends and is a risk-taking tomboy—even when her answers do not logically support any result. Typos, emojis, inadequate choices and abrupt endings become more revealing than the scores themselves. Contains skin-cancer concern and mole discussion, nudity and body-image questions, religion jokes, gender and relationship assumptions, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Henrique Couto keeps receiving suspicious final-expense calls whose agents insist that he is sixty years old. When he says he is thirty-three, one caller argues about his voice, hair and imaginary older wife before abruptly hanging up. Henrique and Michelle compare warranty, Social Security and survey calls, debate whether antagonizing scammers is worthwhile and remember a legitimate caller who laughed when Henrique pretended a voter-registration survey concerned boats.
The hosts also confront Henrique’s habit of using deliberately antisemitic statements to derail scripted calls. The material is presented as offensive provocation, not endorsement, and it leads into his angry refusal of a police-fundraiser recording. Memories of other unwanted calls, Wu-Tang Clan lyrics and the mechanics of human-controlled audio prompts blur prank, sales pitch and fraud; listeners should not treat the hosts’ assumptions as verified identification of any caller.
An apartment story turns more serious. A noise complaint reaches Henrique while he and a friend quietly eat Chinese food, and another neighbor begins banging walls until a normally friendly resident responds with threats and homophobic slurs. The confrontation stops, but the memory illustrates how quickly comic retaliation can become dangerous. Henrique then remembers meeting that resident’s Nation of Islam family and enjoying an easy conversation across religious differences.
That family asked for restaurant advice, which launches a passionate argument about Jersey pizza. The hosts compare East Coast slices, Ohio’s thin square-cut style, Chicago deep dish, Philadelphia disappointments and theories involving water, dough temperature and inherited technique. They close by considering a dumpster-pizza taste test and food left out overnight; none of that is food-safety guidance. Contains fraud and scam discussion, antisemitic and homophobic remarks in critical context, police, threats of violence, religion, unsafe food speculation, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Henrique Couto is preparing a last-minute talk about independent film distribution for a local organization that has rarely supported his work—and once called him Henry. Instead of settling the score, he plans to be the bigger person, fill thirty minutes with hard-won filmmaking experience and survive the question-and-answer session. The awkward invitation opens a candid conversation about ego, professional recognition and why public speaking can feel easier than ordinary socializing.
Michelle says performing music helped her discover that she enjoys speaking to a crowd, even though she is quiet and sometimes shy. She remembers an overlong classroom talk about punk, a disastrous high-school battle of the bands and the first house show she played as Everyone Except Me. Henrique and Michelle compare open mics, street performance, live shows and the strange relief that arrives once there is no time left to panic.
The harder part comes before and after the performance. Both hosts describe worrying about arrival times, late nights, small talk and whether other people think they are standoffish. Michelle recalls being singled out for acting awkward while touring, while Henrique remembers leaving early open mics to cry alone in his car during a period of depression. Their stories distinguish confidence onstage from the anxiety and loneliness that can return as soon as the set ends.
They close with a lighter confession about Michelle's Spotify habits: she mostly uses it for anime opening and ending themes, including music connected to Hunter x Hunter. The conversation also wanders through a fictional metal-band shirt, washboard accompaniment and Henrique's Miley Cyrus parody. Contains anxiety, depression, crying, social isolation, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Henrique Couto opens with a tiny act of rebellion: using a gas-station bathroom without buying anything. A failed search for colorful Crocs and Michelle's wind-damaged internet cables lead to cable-company stories, matzo ball soup and a critical discussion of the antisemitic blood-libel myth. The hosts ridicule that hateful fabrication; it is discussed as propaganda, not endorsed or treated as history instruction.
The conversation turns to one of Michelle's saddest days: grieving the death of her cat Pumpkin while trying not to cry through an eight-hour shift. She tells Pumpkin's story from his life as a healthy neighborhood feral in New Jersey through an animal-control ultimatum, a slow adjustment to indoor life and an unexpected bond with her. After moving with Michelle to West Philadelphia, the frightened cat gradually became comfortable enough to emerge around visitors.
Pumpkin had survived a serious unexplained illness, but years later he developed congestive heart failure with no warning his family recognized. He died at the veterinary hospital while treatment options were still being discussed, only months after a routine checkup. Michelle describes the shock, grief and guilt that followed, including a rescue organization's later suggestion that she should have noticed sooner. These are personal recollections about veterinary care, not medical advice.
Still reeling, Michelle tried to adopt again almost immediately. Several placements failed because the timing, temperament or behavior was wrong, but she eventually found Fizzgig—known as Gigs—a friendly cat missing much of her nose and part of her mouth. The hosts remember their first meeting, Gigs's direct affection and why they both feel drawn to animals who may be harder to place. Contains pet illness and death, grief, crying, euthanasia discussion, antisemitic propaganda discussed critically, profanity and repeated inserted social-casino advertisements.
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Email the hosts: [email protected]