Tape 40 opens with an image that’s equal parts slapstick and unsettling: Caleb, attempting what he calls “skywalking,” ties his shoelaces around his hands until he can’t breathe, only to be spun around, slapped on the backside, and sent rolling down a hill like a roly-poly bug. Inexplicably, Hat Guy leaves the room mid sentence to holler a bunch of cattle off the front lawn. From there, the conversation shifts to springtime, a subject taken with Bootstuck’s usual logic: last year it meant Caleb strapping springs to his shoes; this year it will mean scattering springs across the forest floor so that no matter where you step, “it’s always spring.”

The discussion meanders through maroon Pontiacs, pastel colors, and the persistent complaint that everyone in Bootstuck interrupts each other. Dave drifts in with thoughts on gas mileage, while a failed attempt to spell “psychiatrist” leads to the revelation that Bootstuck has no doctors for the mind—only one who deals with ingrown toenails. Mental health, it seems, is handled socially: if someone feels blue, Steven paints them red until they’re a different color and “all’s good.”

The tape ends with a plan for a “fashion show at lunch,” a recurring event that involves burlap sacks and questionable creativity. While most will opt for the simple hole-in-the-top approach, Dave apparently intends to fashion burlap chaps—an idea received with the confused question: “You can see your bones?”

Tape 40 is as fractured as it is vivid: a portrait of a town where footwear physics, psychiatry, and lunchtime couture share equal importance, and where coherence is always just out of reach.

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