Super Spy!

Mary Poppins is the old school demigod of nannies. We all know that Mary Poppins can do literally anything she wants at any time. She's Mary freaking Poppins. But can she? Or did she just have a bunch of gadgets and drugs? Everyone can clearly hear that we're going to be talking about Mary Poppins today. The 1964 classic is one of the most memorable childhood films for me. iconic music iconic characters i'll never forget all the dancing and adventures and the crazy story of like spy intrigue and betrayal and subterfuge and murder and oh wait you don't remember that story oh i think i watched a different mary poppins you see i have a theory that mary poppins and her friend bert they are secret agents on an insane mission to compromise one of the most powerful banks in the country of England. And they will accomplish this by infiltrating the Banks family, not the family of the bank, but Mr. and Mrs. Banks. They will infiltrate that family

and blackmail the father, Mr. Banks. I'm going to prove this theory piece by piece. I'm going to kind of take it in phases. First, proving that Mr. Banks was a good target and that Bert and mary could have been secret agents and then that mary and bert executed strategic actions to turn the kids against him and infiltrate his family and then that they blackmailed him basically to knowingly commit an unspeakable act of murder and compromise the bank by by killing the chairman all right you handle that i'll be handling the stuff that deals with drugs and monarch mind control and hypnotism well i believe that there will be plenty of that today was a powerful hypnotist and bert who was also a secret agent was was also her drug dealer awesome if you're just watching the movie normally what's the movie about there's these kids that everyone wrongfully seems to believe are troublemakers but are actually the most well-behaved kids in the world

No, they're the best kids ever. Oh my gosh, they never do anything wrong. They lose their nanny. A magical nanny shows up who is there to help the kids, but is actually there to kind of fix the family and help the dad. And she's kind of magical and all-knowing. And everything she does seems to have some sort of a plan, but it's kind of weird and different. And the family changes for the better by the end. And then she leaves. The family didn't even really need fixed. Like the family was doing fine. She kind of broke the family. and then fixed it everything was going great until mary poppins showed up all right but like i said that's not the story the actual story is that uh it's it's the story of a family that's infiltrated by spies who then use them to commit murder right off i want to just address the biggest problem which is was such a spy scheme even possible could could such a secret agent mission have

been carried out. So Mary Poppins was set in the year 1910. Now, I think it's really important that it was set that year because MI6, the British secret intelligence agency, was established in 1909, the year before. There's a good reason for that too. Gathering tensions around the world leading up to World War I were pressing on all Western powers. Espionage was running rampant in all developed governments in the world. Absolutely. In real life, there were real plots exactly like what I'm describing here. Actual spies were and still are infiltrating and hitting major financial institutions strategically to weaken their enemies or strengthen their allies. Now I want to talk about the target, Mr. Banks. Why was he the target? Well, he's high ranking enough in the bank that he can talk to the leaders, but he's not like one of the leaders, I guess. He's powerful and connected, but not at the top. He has room to

grow, which is exactly what you'd want. You'd want some avenue to be able to pressure him, whether it's fear of losing his job, fear of losing his kids, or a desire for more recognition or power. He has a wife who is an influential suffragette, which doesn't mean so much to us today, but at the time was a powerful domestic threat in Britain. Yeah, that's why they're arresting them. Yes. He can be easily influenced by his two children who he deeply loves but does not carefully watch over or connect with. We know that Mr. Banks makes a regular habit of bribing the policeman to look the other way when necessary. He mentions this when they're talking about hiring a new nanny and he says it's going to create a commotion. They're going to line up down the streets and then I'm going to have to bribe the policeman to look the other way for a few hours it's just a normal thing for him right he doesn't even think of it next question that i

want to answer is could mary poppins and bert have been secret agents is this even possible clearly yeah definitely first let's talk about bert he sure seems to know everything about everyone in town he's singing about it he's making poems about it he's suspiciously well connected and funded for what's basically like a transient hobo uh he's working new jobs every day right another important thing is that bert does in fact intimately know mary poppins somehow like they're like best friends and why he has no reason to know her he has no kids he's never needed a nanny it doesn't make any sense there's no reason that he would have ever interacted with this upper class nanny especially when no one else in town knows mary poppins everyone knows bert he's living there but like if bert knows her he must know her from somewhere else that's another question so is is mary poppins an international spy well we know that she flies in on an umbrella

no she probably like literally flew in on an airplane this is just the kids fanciful way of looking at things they're like oh she flew in she probably mentioned to the kids yeah i flew into town the other day. And they're like, oh, she flew in on her umbrella. I had thought you were going to go like James Bond. She has lots of gadgets kind of thing. She does have lots of gadgets. She has a flying umbrella. Well, I can't find any sort of historical precedent for that kind of gadget existing in 1910. But other gadgets did, which we might talk about. The whole plot of this movie and the book starts because they need a new nanny, right? Well, in the book, the old nanny katie nana she didn't quit she just disappeared one day oh no no one knows what happened to her oh gosh someone got rid of her yep they just say well and that's the the book starts out with everyone like in a fuss and they're not like wondering what happened to her

but they're all just saying well now that katie nana disappeared we need a new nanny so someone murdered katie nana bert bert did it and then i put money on bert well no he he clearly did it Because he was the one who found the kids in the park and brought them home. So he murdered Katie Nana. Going to the movie version, I did have a mini theory about Katie Nana that she was- Well, that's fine. In the movie, she didn't disappear. In the movie, she quit. So go ahead. I have a theory that Katie Nana was like a serial killer who was actively trying to murder these two kids or something. Oh, no. Because she is just a terrible nanny. These are the most well-behaved kids in the world. And she's like, I can't handle them. I lost them three times. Lady, if you lost them three times, that's on you. You're like trying to get them killed, man. And she's like just trying to say, I'm leaving. Calculate my wages.

I don't know where the children is. She's literally just trying to get her money and run. Because she thinks the children are dead. She's inept. Either inept or malicious. I don't know. When Mr. Banks comes home, Mrs. Banks says, Katie Nana has looked everywhere. But that is false. Katie-Nana never said that to Mrs. Banks. Mrs. Banks just made that up. Katie-Nana had looked nowhere. She was just leaving. She's like, I have no idea where the kids are and I'm out. No, and I thought the same thing when watching it. I was like, if I was Mr. Banks and came home, then Nana's like, I lost your kids. I'd be like, well, let's call the police and you're in big trouble. She's just like, yeah, your kids are gone. Now pay me.

One of the most important scenes for this theory now is how Mary Poppins got the job. We already set it up that she disposed of the previous nanny, possibly. But how did she manage to social engineer herself into getting the job? Because she needs to make sure that she is the only candidate and the only one who gets hired. And what do you know? All the other potential nannies are somehow removed from the equation. They get thrown away.

Once again, I thought maybe that was the kid's impression. Like they saw a line of people and then they looked back and there was no people. They're like, they must have blown away. And really, it was just secret agents came and told everyone to go home. I'm not sure. So to answer your perspective, maybe we're in someone's perspective and the information we're getting is not entirely accurate. This movie does start with Bert talking to us. Like he does a Blue's Clues and he's like, oh, hello there, you. It's you. Come with me. I'll show you the cherry tree light. So I don't know, maybe the whole story is him reporting to his superiors. Yeah, I don't know. Here's how it happened, and let me spice it up for you. I've got a story to tell. Mary Poppins goes in. She, you know, makes sure that Mr. Banks is the father of Jane and Michael. That's the first thing she asks. She wants to make sure because that's how she's going to target him.

She also has another important source of information. She immediately starts saying that she has a cheery disposition. She's never crossed. rosy cheeks, obviously. She plays games of all sorts. This is important because we know now that she fished the kid's job listing out of the trash and taped it back together. And she shows it to Mr. Banks. It was in the fireplace. Now, how in the world would she get that? We've got two agents who are casing this place. I am certain that she sent her chimney sweep down the chimney, Bert, and he found these pieces of paper in the fire. And he was like, whoa. They wouldn't notice that man climbing down the chimney. Now, he did it at night. If she's coming with a job listing, why not bring the one from the newspaper? If they were doing good research, they should have seen. Yeah, fair enough. But the thing is that she, at this point, is not trying to impress Mr. Banks.

She knows she's not going to get in through him. She's trying to impress the kids. She has to get in with them first. So she's got to immediately get in with the kids. And she does that by getting their job listing, which she knew was theirs because Burt was up at the chimney listening when they were singing the night before. There you go. It's totally true, though. She definitely needs to be focusing on the kids and what they want for this mission to be a success. So I totally buy that. Now, throughout the job interview, she is just playing mind games with Mr. Banks. He's like, I tore it up. I threw it in the fire. Every time he mentions this, she immediately gaslights, distracts. She's like, you are George Banks, are you not? And did you not advertise for a nanny? And then he asks about it again. She's like, I beg your pardon. Are you ill? She's gaslighting him. She's like, something's wrong with you.

I'm here for the job. Anytime he's trying to figure out. Let's talk about anything else. What's with this weird lady? And then she very expertly sets the tempo of the interview and places herself in a position of power. She says, on second thought, I believe a trial period would be wise. Basically, she's suggesting the idea of a trial period giving herself the job. This is putting her in a position of power where now he's fighting to keep her, not the other way around. She's like, I'm going to put you on a trial period, Mr. Banks. So she goes upstairs. She immediately hardcore drugs those kids and i can prove it so you don't need to prove it what's the name of the song a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down she goes upstairs and gives them drugs we may not see it that's because they're drugged and we're seeing this from their perspective in the book the very first thing she does is go upstairs and start giving them medicine

in the book it's not just michael and jane there's also two babies and she even gives the baby's medicine despite the kids like fearfully protesting they're like you can't mary poppins they're too young she gives it to him anyway she doesn't give a crap she's like take your medicine baby mary poppins brainwashing the children is integral to her plan she needs to gain complete control over them she needs them to trust her to love her unflinchingly even in strange and unexpected or dangerous situations, she needs them to also take actions that may hurt them. And she needs them to do this willingly. So she starts the process of conditioning them. Now, I believe when she first starts, she might have some sort of trick box, some sort of collapsible, you know, lamp and all the other stuff she pulls out of the box. She's trying to make herself seem weird and magical to them at first. She has these gadgets to make herself seem magical. She has the crazy magic bag.

She also has some magic measuring tape, which I guess it's kind of cool that a person's height also apparently indicates their major personality quirks. Yeah, it kind of sounds like phrenology, but... Yeah, but basically she uses the measuring tape to find out that Michael is extremely stubborn and suspicious, and Jane is rather inclined to giggle and doesn't put things away, but she herself is practically perfect in every way. She's like, see, look, this magical thing says that I'm great and that you should trust me. Like these are all the exact reason that you would not want to trust Mary Poppins at all. If anyone comes in and starts showing you magic, you know immediately that they are tricking you because magic is not real. Which is why, you know, her method, she knew her methods weren't going to work on Mr. Banks. No, this is how you would trick a kid. Work on some kids. At some point, she doses them with a spoonful of sugar and medicine while she's probably

singing that song. And then they immediately go on some kind of short drug trip. How do we know that? Well, she's teaching them to clean up. But do they clean up? Does this cleaning up go well at all? No, it just sort of happens. Well, also, it doesn't even end well. It ends with Jane literally catatonic, staring at her toy box while toy soldiers dance in front of her, just like, whoa. And freaking Michael is, like, having, like, some sort of fit in the, like, drawers or in the cabinet. He gets trapped in his own delusion. I think he just fell on the floor. Yeah, and it's just, like, having a fit. I think she doesn't know quite the dose to give them yet. As they do this, she sets up, like, when I snap, things get cleaned up. And one way that, a very common way to condition and train dogs is to respond to, like, a snap or a click. She's training them. Like, when she snaps, the job gets done.

They don't know how because they're completely dissociated when she snaps, right? They just do whatever she's commanded them to do whenever she snaps. And from their perspective, the job just got done. The toys clean themselves up. So we have to take into account that this movie was made in 1964. And so even though it takes place in 1910, it was made in 1964. And 1964 is when the whole country was into spy stories. The government was doing tons of weird, crazy experiments and cover-ups and things like that. Yes, the U.S. government, which, I mean, this movie was made in the U.S., even if it's, you know, British. So I'm just saying, like, my favorite subject, of course, is always Project MKUltra in the U.S., which is, you know, this project where the government was using different methods to try to essentially find a way to do mind control on people. And you say it was a project. Is this a conspiracy theory or, like, is this legitimate?

Well, there are a lot of aspects of it that are conspiracy theory, but it is a confirmed project that was declassified. Like, we know that it happened. But for the most part, we know that one of the things they did try to use to control people was LSD, and they did give it to people secretly. I believe that the project supposedly revolved around getting the subject to dissociate, and then once they have dissociated, you instill in them a separate personality that will perform whatever actions you want there are two projects one is mk ultra that's confirmed it happened there's another one that people like to reference called project monarch yeah that's unconfirmed and possibly didn't happen both of what's kind of generally said about these projects is that yeah you try to make a subject dissociate and you accomplish that in different ways they studied drugs they studied like supposedly we don't have confirmation of this but like maybe

physical abuse. Oh no, Mary Poppins, what do you do? Things like hypnotism create a dissociative state. And when they're in that dissociative state, you give them certain triggers and you can cause them to dissociate and then do what you ask. And then when they come back to their normal state, they won't really exactly remember what they did. And one of the symbols that is often associated with this is the mirror. And the phrase like through the looking glass can kind of means someone dissociating from reality. So the hint that we're given here is that Mary Poppins looks in a mirror and her mirror self does something completely different than her normal self. They're giving us a metal level hint. It's just being cheeky. Yeah. But they're giving us a hint that like, oh, there's two versions of Mary Poppins here. They're telling us this is what she's doing to the kids. She's causing them to dissociate. She's giving them triggers. Very first

thing she didn't even waste any time nope she's turning them into her mind control slaves now you might say this sounds far-fetched but i ask you what's more likely that she suddenly started singing and talking to birds and the house started moving around all on its own and the room started cleaning itself up or that while she was singing a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down she was giving them drugs also at the end of this scene she seems to be under some sort of time crunch like she examines michael and says let me look at you well you're not as well turned out as i'd like but still there's time there's time i'm like she's she's like okay you're not quite brainwashed yet you're having a fit on the floor over there screaming let me out but uh there's time i can get you ready well then she uh certainly doesn't let up because she immediately takes the kids to meet her partner bert and uh today he's a scriever which is a man

who uh leaves in indecipherable messages on the sidewalk for other agents to find and a hat that he primes with money that too so i just thought it's interesting that now his job is literally to write stuff on the sidewalk because a common tactic that secret agents will use is called leaving a dead drop. When you have already planned with another agent, hey, I'm going to leave something completely inconspicuous in this public location, you find it there. And it's typically a way to convey information between two agents. So we're going to go on another drug trip here pretty soon. Bert is trying to get them to go on the drug trip. Like he's kind of jumping the gun and Mary doesn't exactly seem happy with him. He looks around and he says to Mary, now is the time. No one is looking. So freaking suspicious. I agree. I think that Bert is kind of her drug dealer. I think he's the one who carries a lot of the drugs. That's the reason she goes to him next

because she used her store of drugs on them in the playroom. She used it all. I mean, that was a crazy trip.

Anyway, so he's got drugs, which he keeps mainly in a powder form, which might be in his chalk. Oh, chalk is a powder. And they don't start hallucinating until he leans them over it and draws a road right in front of them, you know, getting kind of some of the dust in the air. Then he tries to get them to dissociate, but the drugs aren't everything. He needs to know the key words. I believe the key words are just one, two, three, and they jump because that's what Mary Poppins said. But, you know, that's how a lot of, like, hypnotists work is they'll count down. They'll be like, when I count down and snap or something like that. And then when they do disappear, they disappear in a puff of smoke. It's not just smoke. It's dust. It's powder. And it's psychedelic. It's in, like, five different colors. And this movie, again, was made in the 60s. In the 60s. They know the symbolism of psychedelic dust.

He knows they're going to use the good stuff, and he seems to want his fix, too. Him and Mary certainly go on this drug trip with the kids. No, without the kids. Right, yes, by themselves. We're riding on turtles. And here's another good symbol, as people will remember from our classic, amazing Anastasia episode, which you should go listen to. sense. It's such a good episode. The butterfly is a symbol of monarch mind control. And when they get into this hallucination, Bert and Mary are surrounded by like a flock of butterflies. And it's a jolly holiday. And what is a holiday? What? It's leaving the normal world and going on a trip, a drug trip. So I believe that everything here is designed to teach the kids that Mary poppins is great they're just going around to different places in the town while they're really high they're going to a cafe they go to a horse race the whole time bird is just talking about how

great mary is he's like mary's so great oh you kids are gonna love her she's so wonderful tip of the top cream of the crop completely tweaked out babbling incoherently about how wonderful she is immediately afterward they just start speaking nonsense they're going crazy they go nuts so i do want to talk a little bit about supercalifragilisticexpialidocious there are actually other versions of that song songwriters named gloria parker and alan holmes they're also known as patricia smith and don fenton they wrote another song called super califragilisticexpialidocious a decade and a half before mary poppins ever came out seems like they wrote this song and they even sued disney and said hey you completely ripped off our song they sued the uh the sherman brothers so there's a couple of versions of the song that uh gloria parker and alan holmes wrote and i've listened to them and uh disney definitely ripped them off

oh yeah no they screwed them have a really really similar pacing and tune and words to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as saying in mary poppins yeah you think it's the same word essentially if you're listening look up uh super it's also called the super song by gloria parker and alan holmes and uh just listen to it there's there's i've found two different versions and one of them has really really similar pacing and the other one has very similar words and did disney win that lawsuit oh yeah disney totally won of course so the house of mouse always wins when the movie came out they originally were just like we wrote that song and we made up everything all by ourselves we made up supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but then disney got sued and they completely changed their story and they're like everyone knows that word it's been around for years since way before we were born it's like a super common word that everyone uses and has

always used and that's how they won the lawsuit the judge was like well they proved it it's a common word and it was common because of the song by gloria parker and alan holmes and i'm certain that the sherman brothers heard that song growing up and that's how they learned the word and then they just ripped it off yeah i'm certain that the reason they won was just because disney had more money there you go so what ends this drug trip is rain we see the chalk melting away the drugs are going away and also the probably the cold water is kind of snapping them out of it and then the adventure's over and they go home immediately the cut from that scene with them waking up to the next scene is michael screaming no no i won't take your nasty medicine and they're in the playroom and she's trying to give them medicine michael's getting fed up he doesn't want more medicine he's like stop it i've had enough well why would he be saying we don't want

your nasty medicine if at on some level he subconsciously knew she'd already given it to them at some point and then she says people who get their feet wet must learn to take their medicine she's saying that she's trying to keep them high and the drugs they got from bert have worn off because of the rain confirming exactly what i just said the rain foiled her drug trip and she's like you gotta take more medicine or maybe she's just saying if you don't take your medicine you'll get sick well well how do you think that the medicine changes color it's because they're on drugs and then she takes some too and she's like rum punch the kids say we couldn't possibly sleep because so many lovely things happened today. And I think this is kind of why she's giving them the present because they're probably still like a little crazy from the other drugs she gave them. We don't know exactly what hallucinations

Mary Poppins experienced during that scene. But what we saw was what the kids were seeing because they describe all the things they did to Mary Poppins. And she seems to act surprised as though she does not remember those things because they were, of course, having their own hallucinations, which might not have been the same as her. But they shared them between each other. yeah mr banks begins to suspect that something is wrong at breakfast he is really upset and out of sorts well everyone else in the house is kind of ambling around in a daze singing and bringing each other flowers and doing crazy stuff mr banks even says it outright he says there is something extremely odd about the behavior of this household since that woman arrived and i want you to know that I've noticed it. And he's not wrong. I don't know if Mary Poppins is drugging everyone in the house. Mr. Banks is unaffected because he spends most of the day out of the house. We know

that he goes to work early in the morning. He comes home at 6. At 6.01, he has his sherry. At 6.02, he has his pipe. At 6.03, he pats his kids on the head and sends them to bed, which seems kind of early. He doesn't even get to see them. He literally just pats them on the head and sends of the bed so in this scene mr banks says that they need the piano tuned and mary poppins uses this as the perfect cover to go and procure the murder weapon which she's going to need also as she leaves the house she does kind of report to admiral boom he inquires what kind of fine adventure are we out upon today and then he gives her directions to proceed at flank speed so maybe he's like her case officer he's checking in on her i don't know but he also he also does ask if she's off to fight the hottentots um which i think is like a racist term for africans i don't know yeah so anyway um wow so then andrew the dog comes up and uh mary poppins puts on a

great show of the children into thinking a dog is talking to her yeah it's obviously not and michael even picks up on it he calls her out he's like i don't think that dog said anything and mary is like you know best as usual she's annoyed at him and she's like yeah yeah i know but yeah basically she pretends that this dog has told her that uncle albert is on the ceiling laughing so they go there instead they're not getting any ordinary drug from uncle albert this is a special kind of drug and a different kind of drug than anything they've used before and this drug is not to be used on the kids so in the book he's flying because if he laughs on his birthday he gets filled with laughing gas that makes him fly that's how he describes it that's why she's here she needs to procure some laughing gas oxide i don't think it's nitrous oxide because nitrous oxide isn't lethal enough but whatever it is is clearly a hallucinogenic poison that makes you

feel like you're flying and then kills you and clearly uncle albert has sampled his own product and is high off his gourd so they need to stop him from uh dying bert knows this and he warns mary before going in he says you don't want to take the kids in when they all go in and bert floats up albert says how nice i was hoping you'd turn up i mean turn up or turnt is slang become inebriated by some sort of substance it means you're having fun because you're intoxicated basically i don't think people said turnt in the 60s i'll probably cut this it doesn't matter but i just think it's weird how disney used the voice of the mad hatter for uncle albert and then had him have a mad tea party. It's true. I mean, I thought that was cool. It's fun that they did that. That's who he is. That's his character. This scene is important because Mary Poppins has now procured the murder weapon. She is now ready to proceed with her plan.

She has the laughing gas. Now we're on to setting up the murder. George Banks comes home and finds his kids blathering like idiots about a man with a wooden leg named Smith. George Banks confronts Mary Poppins. He says, I'm disturbed to hear my children talking about consorting with racehorses fox hunting which actually he doesn't mind because you know it's tradition yeah it's tradition but tea parties killing an innocent fox all the other stuff is bad and he's clearly getting worried about his kids drug trips as he should but mary poppins is sly and she turns the conversation towards banks occupation she says that the children need to learn about the life he leads she twists the entire thing into an outing at the bank for the kids and this is how she's going to set up the murder. And the kids immediately understand what she's doing. They call her out. They're like, however, did you manage it?

You must have put the idea in his head somehow. And she denies it profusely. She's like, what an imputinent thing to say, me putting ideas in people's heads, really? Right. And then she teaches them about the bird woman. And now she's going to hypnotize them. And remember, a hypnotist usually uses an item of sorts. It can be like a lit candle, a swinging pendulum, something that twinkles or swirls. In this case, she's using a snow globe and we know they're being hypnotized because as she's saying all this to them, they're falling asleep. Hypno meaning sleep. You know, usually that's kind of what you're getting a person to do is sort of go into a sleep-like state. I believe she is implanting in their heads a trigger. When they hear someone say, feed the birds, tuppence a bag, they're going to want to go to that person. Like it's going to seem like something they have to do. Right. They're going to be desperate for it.

Yes, I agree. We have the same interpretation of this scene. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, if you don't think that this is possible, you can like go to a hypnotist show or watch one on YouTube. If someone is willing and trusting of the person doing the hypnotizing, you can implant an idea in their head that something is desperately important, that like they need to shout a certain phrase or do a certain thing if they hear a trigger. So this is where it all comes together. This is where Mary Poppins and Bert pull off the most complicated part of their plan. Mr. Dawes comes in, the elder Mr. Dawes, and Mr. Banks introduces him. He says, that's the chairman of the bank, the elder Mr. Dawes, a giant in the world of finance. The actor who's playing Mr. Dawes right now is Dick Van Dyke. And I gotta say, in HD, you can so clearly see not only the gobs and gobs of makeup everyone has on, but also the extremely not good prosthetics that Dick Van Dyke is wearing.

You can clearly see the seam and the bald cap and where the wig sits on his head. Right here, he reveals the purpose of Mary Poppins' entire mission. He says, well stands the banks of England, England stands. When fall the banks of England, England falls. Yeah. What they do here is they very expertly cause a bank run. The bank run is, it's just like the cherry on top. What they're trying to accomplish here is a bank run, and I believe that, yeah, they do want to destabilize England. But more importantly, they want to get Mr. Banks fired so that he will do exactly what they say and murder the chairman.

Now they have to cover their tracks. The kids run out of there, and I got to say, Mr. Banks is a little irresponsible to just kind of like stay at the bank while his kids like run down dingy back alleys and get accosted by crazy strangers that come with me my dears granny will hide you i gotta say as a kid just the cinematography of the scene and how it's lit i thought this scene was terrifying and lasted for a lot longer yeah me too it lasts like two seconds i thought they were lost for a long time with old ladies following them well and then Bert's pretty scary too. So he shows up and he is filthy. He's covered in soot. He sarcastically consoles the kids. Like he's not being sincere right now. He says, well, the one my heart goes out for is your father. There he is in the cold, heartless bank every day, hemmed in by mounds of cold, heartless money. He's saying this. He's mad about their dad.

He's like, yeah, poor Mr. Bank surrounded by money. He's got it so bad. I didn't exactly take that to be sarcasm, but I can see where you're coming from. So he takes the kids home. And I think that Mrs. Banks is very irresponsible here as well because she tries to pawn her kids off on everyone else. Hey, stranger, random chimney sweep. We brought them home. Can you take care of my kids? Let me talk about them getting sucked up the chimney. So Bert is cleaning the chimneys and suddenly Michael gets sucked up and Jane gets sucked up. Mary Poppins' response to this is, Bert, I will thank you to stop putting ideas in their heads. I think basically she's saying, you're just the drug dealer. It's my job to get them high and put ideas into their heads. She's mad that he was like dosing them with this whatever chimney dust that has hallucinogenic properties and getting them high without her permission.

Fair enough. Otherwise, I don't know how to explain this next scene because it's kind of a trip. So I don't have basically anything to say about it. Nothing to say. It's just a totally gratuitous drug trip. They go wandering around along the rooftops. She turns the smoke into a staircase. They climb up on top of a church, go wandering around. But then all of the other secret agents in town show up because they're suddenly surrounded by all of Bert's pals. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Uh-huh. and admiral boom thinks they're all hot and tots because they're basically covered in blackface and he decides to murder them because he's like black people i'll shoot them but yeah admiral boom's a bad guy we don't like admiral boom don't be like still alive in mary poppins returns i know i think that whoever uh re-watched mary poppins when writing mary poppins returns didn't know what hot and tod so then the agents all ransack the bank household he comes home to a

house full of secret agents and says would you so kindly explain all this i think that they're flexing i think they're saying we have the power we have your children we can take them at any time michael even tries to leave dressed up as a sweep mr banks is like explain all this what's going on And Mary Poppins is like, first of all, I'd like to make one thing quite clear. I never explain anything. And basically she's saying, I'm not going to explain my mission to you. Just do what you're told or things will be bad for you and your kids. This is the coup de grace. This is when they lay everything on the table. This is when they blackmail Mr. Banks and give him the murder weapon and give him his task. He gets a phone call. He has now lost his job and he's desperate. and he is ripe for recruitment by any sort of secret government agency that would want to recruit a spy or an agent or an operative. So Mr. Banks, he sort of blames Mary Poppins for this,

and he's right. No matter how you look at it, he's right. He says, it's all that Mary Poppins from the moment she stepped into this house, things began to happen to me. And Bert starts to defend her. And as Mr. Banks laments the fact that his life's ambition is now basically gone down the drain and his entire life is in chaos. Bert smiles triumphantly, which I thought was kind of interesting. Like Mr. Banks is like in the deepest sorrow and Bert like looks at the camera and is like, yes. I did notice that he has this very, because he's kind of singing random lines here. He gets a very smug look on his face when he sings the line, spoonful of sugar to Mr. Banks. It has a different meaning though. He's telling Mr. Banks what to do. He's like, you need to deliver a spoonful of sugar to the chairman now so bert ingeniously how did he expect mr banks to get this coded message it's pretty clear there's no doubt what they want him to do

bert ingeniously recruits mr banks at this point banks is all like you know what she did i realize it now she tricked me into taking jane and michael to the bank that's how all this trouble started Now Bert needs to go into social engineering mode. He needs to bolster Mr. Banks' confidence, but also make that confidence dependent on him and Mary Poppins. He says, She tricked you into taking the children on an outing? Outrageous! A man with all the important things you do. Shameful! You're a man of high position. He's not. He just got fired. Esteemed by your peers. And when your little tykes are crying, you haven't time to dry their tears. This is a threat. And I think Mr. Banks understands it because he looks extremely fearful at this point. He looks at the camera with wide eyes. He says, and to see them grateful faces smiling up at you because their dad always knows just what to do. He's social engineering Mr. Banks saying you're going to lose your kids if you don't do just what we tell you now.

He keeps telling him to give that spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. And then Mary Poppins sends the kids down, all sad-faced and puppy-dog eyes, to give their dad the tuppence. This is the murder weapon. These are false coins that have been loaded with the deadly laughing gas that she procured from Uncle Albert. Yeah, that's all I could come up with too. And you might say that's kind of crazy. Well, no one's ever made anything like that before. Yes, they have. There have been plenty of actual spy gadgets like that. For the past over 100 years, government agencies have been making umbrellas that shoot poison darts, ice cubes laced with, I don't know, polonium, lots of crazy ways to deliver deadly poisons to people in ways that are completely undetectable. And it's not such a far-fetched claim that they might load some false coins with poison gas because who's going to inspect a coin?

No one's going to expect a coin to be a murder weapon. And if you, like, coat something with, like, say, some sort of nerve toxin, just touching it with your hand could cause you to, you know, get really sick and maybe even die, depending on what it is. So, yeah, she has the kids deliver the murder weapon to him, which I think is clearly a threat. She's like, they'll do everything I say and you know what I'll do to them if you don't do what I want. I feel like they could have made this a little more clear. That's clearly what's happening. so we've now reached the point where the murder is going to take place mr banks heads over to the bank he's doubting himself he's not sure what he's gonna do but then they bring him into that evil red room and he is fired and gets his cashiering by younger mr dawes and cashiering is basically when they uh dishonor you by you know tearing up your your flower and punching a

hole in your hat or wait is that a real thing that they did that's a real thing um because i I always thought that was just to be funny. It is to be funny, but also it's a real thing that was sometimes done in, like, the British army, for example, if someone was, like, court-martialed and left in disgrace. And it's at that point that Mr. Banks makes his decision. All of a sudden, he's like, you know what? I'm doing this. He pulls the tuppence from his pocket and immediately gets affected by the poison inside of them. He bursts out laughing and saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and telling jokes about wooden legs named Smith. The instant he touches those coins, he's immediately going crazy and loopy. And then he thrusts the deadly weapon into the hand of the old man and races from the room as fast as he can singing a spoonful of sugar. He is out of there. And they are right to be afraid.

Like the younger Mr. Dawes is like, don't strike my father. He wants to. He's like, I'm going to kill your dad. That's what he's trying to do. So the elder Mr. Dawes, he ponders the joke about the wooden leg named Smith. And as he does this, he's handling the tuppens. He's turning them around in his hand and rubbing them all over. And then he starts to laugh. And then he floats into the air. And then he dies laughing. So he gets affected by the hallucinogenic properties of these drug-loaded coins. And, you know, he's a frail old man. So I'm sure a pretty small dose could kill him. and uh two of the greatest secret agents who have ever lived have now pulled off an untraceable murder it could only ever come back to hurt banks they're completely in the clear the aftermath of this mary poppins is packing up she's gonna get out of there she doesn't need to stay around everything's done now everyone thinks mr banks is missing like they called the police but he was in

the cellar making kites he's i think not doing too well and is kind of just trying to salvage his relationship with his kids now. While they're flying kites, they run into the entire senior staff of the bank who are also flying kites. I think it's interesting that they're doing that when Bert has suddenly become a kite salesman. And younger Mr. Dawes congratulates Mr. Banks and informs him that my father died laughing, but there's nothing to worry about. I've never seen him happier. And also you're a new partner. Probably Mary and Bert leveraged the death of his father as a threat and told him to rehire banks because why else would he it doesn't make any sense he seems so happy my father died laughing when moments ago he was like do not strike my father he's he's very protective of him he's scared he knows they'll get him next so i don't know and now bert and mary poppins have successfully recruited mr banks and inserted him

as the senior staff, a partner of this bank. Their plot could not have gone off better. They did an amazing job. And then Mary's parrot umbrella starts talking to her. This is a call from her operator, from her case manager, checking in on her. And he's like, yep, time for you to be off. And then he starts bad mouthing the kids. The case manager is not very professional. No. He's like, they think more of their father than they do of you. And she's like, that's as it should be and he's like don't you care so he's basically checking in to see if she has been emotionally affected by this job and she gives the the right response which is practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking practically perfect people is code for secret agents yeah secret agents she's like i am not getting sentimental i'm coming back and we're gonna do more jobs a great professionalism they're just keeping up their code because they

know that this radio could be intercepted, this radio signal. Oh yeah, definitely. They're just being careful. So yeah, as the credits roll past, we see that Mr. Dawes Sr. was played by Navkid Cade, which then de-scrambles itself to spell Dick Van Dyke. So what do you think? Were Bert and Mary Poppins actually secret agents on a crazy mission to assassinate the chairman and basically blackmail mr banks to do it no i mean yes yes yeah they were totally obviously not we just twisted this whole movie around we've proved that they definitely could be the secret agents were doing this kind of thing at that time and we both pointed out some very good evidence for a lot of things. You know, we supported this extremely unbelievable theory, I think very well, considering how crazy it is. I fully believe this theory 100%. I was just for some reason, I was laying in bed thinking about Mary Poppins. And then it just hit me. And I was

like, Oh, my gosh, they were trying to assassinate the chairman. They were secret agents. i can't count the number of times that's happened i'm just staying up late thinking about mary poppins and then it clicks that's the life i live i don't know that's what i that's why we do this podcast whoa dude so we proved it mary poppins and bert were secret agents they were taken down the british financial system yeah all right if you was just drugging those kids to no end she was she was horrible she's a psychopath if you like this theory you know let us know we're on twitter what's wrong with you if you did like this theory do rate this podcast yeah yeah because that'll help other people if you like the show it really helps people to find us if you give us a good rating and also you can find us on twitter at popcorn isn't real music for this episode was provided by christine and remember the popcorn isn't real

Mouk, pouk, pouk, pouk, pouk, pouk, pouk.