Stab Podcast: Is This The Best Ethan Ewing Has Ever Surfed?

We screened the SITD X season finale in a beachside suburb just outside Lisbon.

Every chair was taken and there was no standing room inside. Outside, a few handfuls freeloaded beers, caught up, and spat tales from a book of memoirs written in their own delusional minds.

Curiously, the people paying the least attention to Robert Kelly on screen were those who appeared to be roughly his age.

With the controversial result — announced on Stab’s social channels just a couple hours before the screening — not quite delivering the intended cliffhanger, we felt obliged to throw in a little extra treat. Twelve, actually.

The rickety sound of Ethan Ewing driving a rusty pickup through the dirt in West Sumbawa was enough to stop the audience mid-exit and turn them back toward the screen. As Johnny Marr’s tremolo guitar riff blasted through the speakers, the room filled up again.

Those first waves of Ethan Ewing’s SITD came like a revelation. How good is (his) surfing?

I swear I’m not making this up, but the shift in energy was palpable. The ultimate palate cleanser. Balance was restored, and for 3:46, everything felt right in this increasingly dystopian world. If there was one unifying thought in the room, it was to go surf good waves the next day.

Like Buck and Mickey, I’m fully swooning over EE’s surfing in the series, and a good chunk of this week’s podcast is spent celebrating it, along with the franchise’s 11th iteration.

Between philosophical detours on how boards look versus how they feel, and some subjective heat autopsies from Bells, trace amounts of Kelly Slater’s SITD still cling to the roof of our mouths. How’s that for not letting go?

In other news: Stab High is headed to Virginia Beach — a formative proving ground for the younger versions of our hosts. While their experiences are not addressed in detail, Premium members might just get the lore (perhaps in a hot tub with Buck) with every ticket purchased.