the soup debate: declining the needle

The direct callback to 072, and a single-entendre speaker refusing the reflex he's just been handed. Marathe names Steeply's habitual ironic needle — the groaned "herrrrrrrrrre we go" that greets any earnest statement — and pointedly declines to deploy it, even at the exact moment the debate hands him the opening. It's discipline as a register-stance: Marathe won't answer conviction with the sneer, because the sneer is the disease. That Steeply "enjoy[s] saying" it, and moments later can't resist a "guttural and U.S.A.-Cajun" parody of Marathe's accent, marks the reflex as involuntary on the American side and consciously resisted on the Québecer's — the register war reduced to who can and can't stop doing the voice.