Brought to you by Wheyface Industries. The Good People
On December 25, 2007, Hollywood darling and wealthy salt heiress Julie Capsom disappeared without a trace, leaving her crashed car abandoned along a desolate stretch of California highway with an unidentified male torso in the trunk. Did her boyfriend kill her? Did she kill him? Did they run away together? Did aliens do it? Nobody knows, and the case has gone unsolved for more than a decade... until now. Bea Casely and Brenda Bentley are on the case—if they don't kill each other first, that is.
Arden is a fiction podcast structured and presented as a True Crime story, revolving around the fictional cold case disappearance of teenage starlet Julie Capsom and her boyfriend Ralph Montgomery. The podcast is hosted by reporter Bea Casely and unconventional private investigator Brenda Bentley, who spend as much of their time pursuing leads as they do engaged in a merry war of Belligerent Sexual Tension and ever-increasing absurdity. They're backed up by Bea's increasingly beleaguered producer Pamela Pink, Brenda's surprisingly competent assisnant Rosalind Ursula, and the show's mysterious and eccentric benefactor Andy Wheyface.
In 2020 a second season aired, dealing with a new case as well as the smash success of the first season in-universe and how it effects the cast's personal lives. Bea and Brenda reunite with the Arden team in the town of Elsinore, Montana on behalf of rancher Dana Hamill to investigate the death of her father. She's convinced it's foul play, but her mother and uncle-turned-stepfather are worried she's having a traumatic relapse and that the podcast is going to make things worse.
In 2021 an interquel was released following Julie Capsom during her stay in prison between seasons 1 and 2. A third season is due to release some time in 2022.
The podcast is also a modern re-imagining of (some of) the works of William Shakespeare; specifically, the main characters are themed after Much Ado About Nothing, the first season's case is inspired by Romeo and Juliet, and the second season is based on Hamlet. However, this in no way renders the story predictable.
Arden contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Of true crime podcasts.
- Agent Mulder / Agent Scully: Brenda is the Mulder to Bea's Scully. She's sincerely floated the possibility of aliens more than once.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: As to be expected from any adaptation of Benedick and Beatrice.
- Bitter Sweet Ending: Season One has this for both the mystery and the characters.
- In the case of Julie Capsom's disappearance, Julie and Ralph are both alive, having faked their deaths and are raising a daughter in Italy. However the podcasts thrusts them both into the spotlight and end up not only exposing them, but ruin their chance to make a break for it. The reveal causes them to lose some friends, but also reconnect with others. Julie being alive means Kale is released from prison, but her evidence of his sexual assault means he might be blacklisted after all.
- For Bea and Brenda, their friendship takes several blows when Brenda reveals she called the cops on Kale. Brenda's attempts to ease Julie's concerns lead to her having to return stateside and stand trial, potentially tearing her family apart. Then during the press about the podcast cracking the case, Brenda snaps and abandons Bea because she acts like the show was more important than the people involved. Ultimately the two reconcile, but Brenda still can't bring herself to see Bea in person.
- At the end of season 2, Dana murders Trudie, Clyde, and Sheriff Wonder by blowing up her house, and she is in a coma herself. The entire team is torn as to whether she used them and if they helped her plans come to fruition. Elsinore is a dying small town, but that may have been happening already anyways. Rosalind leaves the team because of the guilt, but is still trying new things and is friends with everyone. Pamela is offered the role of Wheyface Radio CEO, but doesn't know if she should take it or focus on starting a family with her husband. But in the end, Olivia can put Dana to rest and buys the ranch, and Bea and Brenda decide to go on a date together.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Rosalind is as off-kilter as Brenda if not moreso. She can easily track down obscure documents and set up meetings with Senators, but she also gets easily distracted and once learned to fly a plane on a whim. This is deconstructed in the season 2 episode "Pamela and Rosalind are Dead", where she explains that she had an unstable home life and undiagnosed Bipolar I. It meant she had plenty of manic episodes, and at the same time had to learn how to be good at a variety of jobs in order to survive.
- Cast Full of Gay: Most of the cast is either gay or bisexual. Season two introduces a trans character in Olivia, and also reveals that Rosalind is ace.
- Driven to Suicide: Olivia in her backstory after she was outed as trans to her father. Dana has suicidal ideation several times near the end of the second season, and it culminates in her trying to kill herself in an explosion while also killing Trudy and Clyde. Ironically, she ends up being the only survivor of the fire, albeit in a coma.
- The Ghost: Pamela's husband in season 2, who she refuses to name or be recorded in order to keep him out of Wheyface Industries' grasp.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
- Each episode in season 1 is named as "__ Did It", generally relating to the theory of the case being discussed in that episode. For example, Aliens Did It, Horses Did It, etc. The two exceptions are the trailer ("Who Did It?") and episode six ("Nobody Did Anything").
- Each episode in season 2 is either a Hamlet quote or a reference to one.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Did Brenda really see the Skunk Ape at the end of season 1? Was the grain bin from season 2 really haunted? Scientific explanations are offered for both situations, but never fully confirmed.
- MegaCorp: Wheyface Industries. Andy Wheyface regularly buys up smaller businesses and twists them to suit his desires, and the only thing stopping them from becoming too scary is that quite often Andy's desires are silly and (mostly) harmless. Not to mention the company is entirely unionized, possibly thanks to the podcast crew tricking Andy into thinking that was an industry standard.
- Season 2 introduces the Fortinbras Corporation, who are much more nefarious than Wheyface—namely their history with getting landowners saddled with conservatorships in order to unlawfully seize their land.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Bea has one near the end of season 1 when she realizes her pursuit of Julie could end up destroying the life she tried to build while escaping her family.
- It's implied that Julie's mother had one that lead to her death. She told Julie that being assaulted by the Hollywood elite was the price of being a woman in the industry, which jumpstarted Julie's attempts to get away from them and culminated in her faking her death. Later on, it's said that Mrs. Capsom never agreed with the ploy to hide supposed proof that Julie died from the public. In the end, it seems like she was so horrified by her choices that she could no longer continue.
- Julie and Ralph have a small one after explaining that the torso in the trunk was a homeless teen who died at the right time.
- Everyone has one at the end of season 2, with every character trying to figure out whether their actions or inactions over the course of the season were responsible for Dana killing her family.
- Room Full of Crazy: Bea ends up making one in episode 9, covering the break room with documents and pictures and connecting them with red yarn crisscrossing across everything.
- Running Gag: The Skunk Ape. It is what it sounds like.
- Show Within a Show: "Arden" the true crime podcast is the show inside of Arden the audio drama. Though it's a little complicated as the episodes we hear are supposed to be what's released to the public in-universe—including all of the behind-the-scenes making-of drama. This is justified by Andy hiding hidden microphones all over the place, and the editors adding in anything that sounds good, regardless of the subject's desires or sometimes even the legality of the situation.
- There's also Andy's pet project "Grunty McMurtree" about Irish hillbillies, the other podcast "Remembering Forgotten Memories of Hollywood", "Dog Cop" (which is discussed on RFMoH), and the Law & Order parody "Cops and Lawyers".
- Spared by the Adaptation: While Juliet and Romeo died by suicide, Julie and Ralph faked their deaths in order to start new lives for themselves.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Julie and Ralph. She was a growing Hollywood starlet, he was an average guy with a few bad decisions behind him. They fell for each other hard and fast according to onlookers, and as far as anyone can tell at the start of the series their story ended in tragedy.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As the production team starts getting closer to finding the truth about Julie, they start to realize that she's a human being and not just a piece of pop culture history—and wonder if they're doing the right thing by digging into it like it's their business at all.
- Half of season two is about the fallout of season one, including everyone in Elsinore being familiar with "Arden" and what happened after the end of season one. As such, many people are wary of Bea and Brenda being nothing more than gloryhounds trying to get another 15 Minutes of Fame by preying on Dana Hamill.
- In episode 5 of season two, Pamela walks out during a recording because she's still trying to produce a serious podcast and Bea and Brenda keep on joking and dragging their personal problems into things.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Near the end of the season, the podcasters find out Julie is alive, or at least was when Natalie last saw her. From then on they debate whether they should continue, since if they abandon the case where it stands, Kale goes to prison for murder and cannot harm any women again. On the other hand, if they find Julie they prove Kale is innocent but also solve a different decades-old case. It's exacerbated by the end, since revealing Julie to the world means she'd have to stand trial for all the illegal things she did in the name of protecting herself and Ralph from her family and the world at large.
- Uptown Girl: Julie is a wealthy heiress and Hollywood star, while Ralph is an ordinary college student from a much poorer neighborhood.
- Will They or Won't They?: Bea and Brenda, even moreso in the second season. They do.
