Web Original / Welcome to Mountport

Not just your average mountain seaside town.

♫ Oh, the mountains over there next to the seeeeaaaa~ ♫

♫ How could that beeeee~ ♫

— Opening to Welcome to Mountport

Welcome to Mountport is a spinoff episode of Off Book: The Improvised Musical podcast featured on Game Changer, a Dropout gameshow hosted by Sam Reich.

The improv musical features the musical-comedy duo Jessica McKenna and Zach Reino and Zeke Nicholson as the special guest stars with Scott Passarella playing the piano.

Our story begins when Baseball-playing newcomer Alexa (McKenna) had recently moved to New England's strangest eastern seaboard, the geographically impossible mountain-seaside town of Mountport. Alexa wants to improve her pitching and catching skills in the town's stadium said to be the finest in order to make it big but unbeknownst to her, a certain businesswoman by the name of Tina Johnson (Nicholson) schemes to stop her. Together with Newsie (Reino) and The Narrator (Reich), Alexa must fulfill a prophecy as old as time and win the big game.

The episode "The Official Cast Recording" can be viewed on Dropout and for visual representation, there is an unofficial film created by CRTScream where he plays all the characters while lip-syncing to the original audio.

Contains the following tropes:

• Accidental Misnaming: Alexa calls Mountport "Mount Town" during her introductory song causing an outcry from nearby locals. Newsie states the townspeople will rag on you immediately if you get the name wrong.
• Ambiguous Situation: Timothy, a young boy, is no longer allowed to be outdoors, "on account of the crimes". Are these crimes that he committed, or is he not allowed out because there is a lot of crime in Mountport that could pose danger to him? We see a couple of other children outside, but they come off as a bit older than Timothy, and also have no adult presence in their lives to speak of.
• Artistic License – Geography: Invoked by The Narrator and lampshaded in the opening number, Mountport's biggest and most charming oddity is that it's situated in between a mountain range and the ocean as the name suggests which is geographically impossible in real life.
• Artistic License – Sports: Alexa has a dream of hitting a home run off her own pitch in a baseball game. Setting aside the impossibility of this (not that that's unprecedented in Mountport), that is not how baseball works. Anyone batting when Alexa was pitching would be playing for the opposing team.
• Brick Joke: Gladys/Ethel was accused of stealing the tuna in the opening as a passing remark. Later in the second act, it turns out that Tina committed the misdeed and blamed it on her. The two old ladies who started the rumor felt bad upon Newsies revealing the truth.
• Big Bad: Tina Johnson wants to eclipse the town in darkness using her shoddily constructed tower to defeat Alexa. In one song it's implied that everything bad that's happened in Mountport can be linked back to Tina.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Say what you want about Tina, she will be the first to admit she is mean.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Tina Johnson is a wealthy businesswoman who is self-admittedly destined to be mean and finds it to be fun. In fact, it's stated that Tina uses cheap construction Materials in the building of her Skyscraper out of pure spite of local building regulations.
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: Newsie is the local newsboy who distributes and announces the events happening around town and throughout the plot with his Catchphrase being "Extra! Extra!". He even sings it as the backing vocals to "What Money Can't Buy".
• Free-Range Children: None of the child characters have any guardian addressed in any way. Most of them don't even have where they live addressed beyond "in Mountport". (Bit Character Timothy evidently has a house that he is not allowed to leave, but that's the most we get.)
• The Ghost: Gladys/Ethel is only mentioned by the two old ladies when they suspected her of stealing all the tuna from the harbors but never appears in person.
• Green Aesop: Implied. Tina mentions that when she was young, the sky was blue, but is now green.
• Improv: The entire musical is this. The setting, scenarios and songs are given by the narrator via prompts in which three musical improv singers and an improv pianist must act, sing and have a backing track for.
• Insistent Terminology: In Mountport, you don't just say "Hi" to someone you've met before, you say "Hi-ho".
• Interactive Narrator: The host Sam Reich plays the narrator who gives prompts and song titles for the contestants to riff on and improvise musical numbers on the spot.
• Intergenerational Rivalry: Tina herself states that she's very old and destined to come into conflict with the ambiguous school-aged Alexa.
• Killed Offscreen: The train conductor introduced midway in the musical coincidentally died as confirmed by Newsie to allow Tina to have her dream job. Additionally, The narrator in CRTScream's film was off-handedly mentioned to have died from tripping over while walking to help with the disassembly of Tina's tower since he noticeably isn't present in the third act.
• Noodle Incident: Sometime before the story takes place, there was a rash of crimes that were evidently severe enough for at least one person to no longer be allowed on the street, but not severe enough to warrant being addressed beyond one townsperson demanding he gets back inside.
• The Scapegoat: Gladys/Ethel was one when Tina Johnson blamed the fish shortage she caused in the beginning on her. The two gossiping old ladies feel terrible about bad-mouthing her earlier and buy a fruit basket to make it up.
• Shout-Out:
  • Tina Johnson's scheme of blotting out the sun using her tower, is reminiscent of The Simpsons episode "Who shot Mr. Burns?" while her henchman is named Pinocchio.
  • Alexa is depicted in CRTScream's film dressed as Ash Ketchum.
• Sudden Name Change: The old lady who was accused of stealing fish from the beginning was initially Gladys but later changed to Ethel when mentioned again. The improv nature is a possible reason why the singers forgot in character since Timothy isn't called by name after his first appearance either.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Tina deliberately doesn't build her tower up to building regulations just to spite Mountport. However, said flimsy building materials become her literal downfall as the townspeople easily pull the tower apart with their bare hands and demolish it in a matter of minutes.
• Tomboy: Alexa is normally depicted wearing a baseball cap and uniform to match her spunky attitude and passion to be the greatest pitcher and hitter the world has ever saw.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The Big Bad of the musical who plans to eclipse Mountport with her tower is most fiendishly named... Tina... Johnson!
• Weaksauce Weakness: Alexa cannot play baseball if it's pitch-dark which is why Tina plans to build her skyscraper so high it will cast a perpetual shadow on the baseball field before her big game.
  Tina Johnson: Pop quiz: (a) Light, (b) Dark, (c) None of the above.
  Alexa: Well, I think (c) because I don't have enough context but if you're talking about baseball, of course (a). I can't play in the dark it's my one weakness!
• Villain Song: Tina gets the catchy and bombastic "I'm a professional" song about her past & the prophecy of the baseball-playing girl. Also "Ticket to Nowhere" can be seen as half of a villain song.