Podcast / Fat, French and Fabulous

"I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine."

— Opening Theme (Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford)

Fat, French and Fabulous is an informative comedy podcast that covers "histories and mysteries", including strange disappearances, petty feuds, and lesser known aspects of famous historical figures and eras. The show also has a healthy helping of grade-A Canadian content, thanks to the fact that both hosts (Jessica Pigeau and Janel Comeau) are Canadian graduate students.

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Fat, French and Fabulous provides examples of:

• Admiring the Abomination: Invoked during episode 12, on serial killers Burke and Hare, when Janel clarifies that she is not impressed by the number of victims they killed in the space of a year, merely surprised.
• Alliterative List: The title.
• Alliterative Title
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Janel.
  Janel: "Saw Phantom of the Opera for the first time on Broadway today and now I'm exclusively sexually attracted to deformed psychopaths who live underneath opera houses, so that's something."
• Ambiguous Gender: Jessica, despite having a typically feminine name and no apparent problem with feminine pronouns, makes frequent references to herself using ambiguous or explicitly masculine terms, creating a question mark around her gender that is never fully clarified.
  Jessica: "I've always identified as a bus."
  Janel: "I mean, that's less confusing than your current gender identity, to be honest. I would accept you identifying as public transit before I will accept you as a woman."
  Jessica: "That's fair."
• An Aesop: A running gag is various aesops both serious and not, including a combined moral lesson on washing your hands and donating your body to medical science.
• Art-Style Dissonance: The caricatures of the two hosts have a distinct, cutesy animesque art style that belies the dark, disturbing comedy of the podcast itself.
• Asbestos-Free Cereal: Fat, French and Fabulous, a non-GMO, gluten free Podcast!
• Ass Shove: Serial killer Allan Legere and a TV antenna he used to escape prison.
• Barefoot Loon: Jessica frequently walks around completely barefoot, no matter the weather.
• Big Fun
• Bilingual Bonus: The opening theme begins with a clip from the Canadian public access television show Téléfrançais which features a talking pineapple that lives in a dump.
  "Oui, c'est vrai! Je suis un ananas!"^Translation"Yes, it's true! I am a pineapple!"
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Among the many subtly odd foods Jessica eats, she apparently spent the entirety of the Phantom of Heilbronn episode doing shots of Compliments ketchup.
• Black Comedy Cannibalism: The entire episode on convict Alexander Pearce, but also notable in the case of the Papin sisters.
  "Technically, human is the only meat that can consent."
• Black Widow: The relative efficacy and efficiency of female serial killers, who are often motivated by economic gain and tend to target their husbands and dependent children, is a primary point of discussion in the Phantom of Heilbronn episode.
  "I am a strong independent woman with an unquenchable thirst for blood!"
• Brief Accent Imitation: the hosts spend large chunks of the episode on Ayn Rand speaking in mock Russian accents.
  "Hello grandchildren, fight for sustenance."
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A graduate student in forensic psychology and a translator with a master's degree have intellectual conversations about crime and culture involving a script that might have been researched while intoxicated/during a fugue state.
• Catchphrase several examples, including the usual signoff.
  • Janel: "We need to check on you more", "What a time to be alive", "toddler cock rings", and "Who hurt you?"
  • Jessica: "I stand by it: *horrifying/bizarre opinion*."
  • Both: "Don't eat lead."
• Cloudcuckoolander and Cloudcuckoolander's Minder
• Comedic Sociopathy:
  "You have probably seriously considered throwing a human child down a storm drain on numerous occasions."
• Conspiracy Theorist: Jessica has multiple theories about the disappearance of Maura Murray, including that she eloped with Bigfoot.
  "Wake up Sheeple! They've got three children!"
• Deadpan Snarker: Janel in particular is very deadpan.
  "I’m 90% sure I got into Columbia through a clerical error, and I’m just riding it to the top."
• Death as Comedy: The entire episode on Famous Last Words, which begins with the tale of James D. French, a convicted killer who said "How's this for a headline? 'French Fries,'" to journalists present shortly before his execution by electric chair.
• The Dreaded Pretend Tea-Party: A particularly odd example involving a disturbed solider having a pretend tea party with the bodies of the fallen.
• Emo Teen: Janel, once.
• Glorious Mother Russia: It just so happens that Ayn Rand, the pop philosopher, is also Russian.
  "Hello Grandchildren, fight for sustenance."
  • The soviet doctor who removed his own appendix in the Antartic earns a similar lampooning.
  "I practice this surgery on live bear. No anesthesia. They fight."
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": One of the explanations for the chosen pronunciation of "Pujol" in the episode on WWII spy Juan Pujol Garcia. Jessica uses the Catalan pronunciation of the name because Pujol was from Barcelona, but also because the standard international Spanish pronunciation is too close to "poo-hole".
• I'm a Humanitarian: Jessica has an unsettling obsession with cannibalism, even owning a cannibalism cookbook titled "To Serve Man" signed by Mads Mikkelsen, despite the fact that she is, apparently, a vegetarian.
• Interspecies Adoption: Jessica, possibly. Whether she was Raised by Wolves or by humans à la superman is ambiguous.
• It Amused Me: Janel's interpretation of WWII double agent Garbo's motivations in offering his services to both the Germans and the British.
  "Shits and giggles? Shits and gigs."
• It Was All A Dream: Janel fears that her entire life since middle school has been a dream after the Columbia Marching Band starts chanting lines from the horrifying public access television show commonly inflicted upon Canadian children, Téléfrançais.
• Large Ham: Jessica, in contrast to Janel's more deadpan style.
  "This year Canada was like: fuck you, our coins glow in the dark now."
  "THEY GLOW IN THE DARK!"
• Laugh Themselves Sick: Jessica has a literal asthma attack from laughing at the idea of serial killer Allan Legere fighting his way out of prison with a snapped off television antenna he hid up his anus.
• Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Statistics are fun when you don't use them properly.
  "Statistically, the average person has slightly less than two legs."
• Likes Older Women: Jessica seems to have a thing for much, much older women, especially Queen Elizabeth Windsor:
  "I will not apologize for appreciating the Queen’s body. She might be a far off, purely symbolic head of state to you, but to me she’s just Betty from the block."
• Literal-Minded: According to Jessica, the poor are not unlike horseshoe crabs and the purpose of a robust social social safety net is to flip them over and thereby put them back on their feet.
  Janel: "I'm going to block out some time and I'm going to tell you what idioms are."
• Merit Badges for Everything:
  "There are no merit badges for infanticide!"
  "Well maybe there should be! It's a skill!"
• Misplaced Accent: According to Jessica, everyone from New York has a Brooklyn accent and everyone living prior to 1950 sounds like Winston Churchill.
• Mistaken for Masturbating: On Han Van Meegeeren a notable 20th century art forger whose parents disapproved of his interest in art furiously painting alone in his room.
  "Han, what are you doing in there?"
  "I'm- I'm masturbating. Don't come in here!"
• Mood Whiplash: Not unsurprising, considering the subject matter. Explicitly discussed during episode 13 on the Phantom of Heilbronn after the topic segues directly from a discussion of pronunciation differences between English and German into the double shooting of two police officers.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Many of the episodes are Canadian-themed, but of particular note is episode 27, on the Great Maple Syrup Heist, a 2012 incident where 13.4 million dollars of syrup was stolen from a warehouse in Quebec. The episode also covers the 2017 theft of a giant commemorative Canadian coin the size of a bike tire made of solid gold and ends with a full symphony rendition of the Canadian national anthem in French in place of the usual outro.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Janel, professionally as a psychology student, personally as a True Crime podcaster, and romantically as a connoisseur of underweight social rejects in trench coats.
  Janel: "I am exclusively attracted to people on government watch lists."
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant:
  Jessica (In a high, childlike voice): "Murder! Murder! Murder!"
• Noodle Incident: During the Jonathan Luna episode, Jessica casually mentions recently having visited a sexshop and replies to Janel's shock simply with "I had my reasons". Keep in mind Jessica is asexual.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The greatest spy of WWII took animal husbandry at the Royal Poultry School in Spain.
  "Wait, that was not a joke. That was not your joke voice."
• Odd Couple: Doubles as Tomboy and Girly Girl.
• Police Are Useless: A common theme across true crime episodes, especially the Phantom of Heilbronn. They discuss both the general limitations and flaws in police procedure and forensics as well as inexperienced and under-resourced police departments that are ill-equipped to deal with major crimes.
• Pungeon Master: Jessica has a particular passion for punage.
  "The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers or FPAQ is Canada’s OPEC — our very own Maple Mafia... The province of Quebec is responsible for over 70 percent of the global supply and has a lot of power when it comes to the price of the original sticky-icky, and the Federation aggressively enforces the rules that protect its maple-opoly… and its maple-opsony."
• Psychic Powers: Jessica may or may not have psychic powers. In any case, she's oddly good at guessing highly specific information. "What? I was right? I was just being asinine."
• Sarcasm-Blind: Jessica has a theory that despite the fact that she is terrible at understanding sarcasm, that she might have picked up a “sarcastic accent” from being around her highly sarcastic family.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  "You're probably the only person I know who would use the phrase "provenance of their wares" in casual conversation."
  "Nevermind in the context of grave-robbing, at fucking all."
• Self-Surgery: An entire episode on it.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Phantom of Heilbronn. After a whole episode detailing a possible female serial killer connected to dozens of crimes all over Europe and a deep examination of female criminals and how this particular case flies in the face of most known data about them, it turns out that the "Phantom" was a random female worker at a medicals supplies plant whose DNA contaminated the cotton swabs used for testing in all of the Phantom's crimes. Jessica is left laughing hysterically while Janel calls this "the greatest true crime reveal ever".
• Snake Oil Salesman: William J. A. Bailey, a Harvard dropout who claimed to be a doctor and got rich selling quack radiation therapies, including the radioendocrinator, a dangerous radiation source worn directly against the body (specifically the abdomen or the scrotum) and supposedly treated the endocrine system. Bailey himself was a passionate user of the radioendocrinator and eventually died of bladder cancer.
• Sophisticated as Hell
• Sorry, I'm Gay: Janel claims that her strategy to avoid men's attention at the bar is to lie and say that she is a an escaped robotic superhuman crafted by the Ethiopian government, to which Jessica responds that her main strategy is looking like a lesbian.
• Speech Impediment: Jessica has both a stammer and a lisp.
• Stealth Pun: Jessica, who wears a dandy bow-tie and matching purple glasses in her caricature, is attracted to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a coordinated system of trains and buses.She's metrosexual.
• Surreal Theme Tune: A rocking dubstep opener with various absurd quotes from Canadian Media and Canadian Politics mixed in: a quote from the French-language television show Téléfrançais, former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Jessica may or may not have broken into a house after getting stranded on the side of the road. She may or may not have also accidentally let out the corgi.
• Think of the Censors!: After particularly horrifying/legally questionable jokes, Janel references the podcast's explicit rating and the possibility that it might just get bumped up.
• The Tyson Zone: The stories Jessica tells about her life are bizarre enough to make it hard to tell when she is or isn't joking.
• The Unapologetic: Jessica is never sorry for the horrifying things she says, or at least not as sorry as she probably should be. In fact, she usually responds to criticism with "You are welcome!"
• Unconventional Smoothie: Raspberries, spinach, and snake venom, based on the fact that it's safe to drink snake venom so long as it has no way of entering the blood stream, such as a stomach ulcer.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Roughly half of any given episode consists of Jessica saying horrifying things to get a rise out of Janel, who responds with disparaging remarks about the former's weirdness or how she should not be allowed to live unsupervised. They are still clearly good friends.
• Vulgar Humour:
  "We are dazzling satirists. Upon our wit we paint the world."
  "Ha ha, semen!"
• Worse with Context
  Jessica: "I'm more familiar with the sound a human being makes when the life is squeezed out of them, so let me make the dying sounds."
  Janel: "What the fuck?"

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