Three weeks earlier.
Huh?
Sometimes a movie or show begins on a random scene with no context...
encouraging you to wonder, "Whoa. How'd this scenario come to be?"
Then it cuts to black and a title comes up saying "three weeks earlier"?
Uh-huh.
Here we are, sitting in silence, crammed into an RV...
winding through the roads of Colorado...
with a 19-foot fiberglass hand tied to the roof.
If there was a time to cut to "three weeks earlier," it would be now.
You know what I mean?
Elroy, you got any booze?
Don't go through my stuff.
This isn't a bus. You're standing in my living room, kitchen and bedroom.
Ooh. I never thought about that. And your backyard is 24,900 miles long.
Because it's the circumference of the Earth.
Because you have no home.
Anyone need water? What should we talk about?
To make it intriguing, someone should be injured...
in a way that makes you wonder. Like if Britta had a black eye.
Dean, can I speak to you privately?
I'm pretty sure the answer is no.
I'm coming up.
You know, when I agreed to haul this thing for you and the school...
you didn't say anything about six people back there.
Man, I wonder what they're talking about?
God, who knows. They're sealed off behind this sound-proof vinyl.
I will drive my house off a cliff!
Elroy, we're not here to snoop or judge you.
You're not the first person to have dirty dishes, CD-ROM porn...
and framed photos of yourself with two biracial teenagers in a park.
It's not that.
All this weight.
I may have...
miscalculated the mileage.
Darn it. I want to hijack this RV...
but I'm foiled by its impenetrable post-2001 security measures.
You keep driving and nobody else needs to know about this. Understand?
The last thing we need is a panic.
What's going on? Are we out of gas?
Yes! It's on empty! It's on empty!
Never seen anything like it. The needle is invisible.
- Oh, my God - There's no needle! It's gone!
It's underneath the plastic or maybe the engine tried to use it as fuel.
- Stop yelling! - Well, stop being out of gas.
- You're freaking me out. - You should freak out.
I have been driving for 25 years and I have never seen so little gas in my life.
- Ah! - Stop, stop!
I'm yelling even louder so you have to stop!
We're not in control of the gas, okay?
We have to focus on what we can control.
Is everyone's phone charged?
- Yes. Charge your phones. - Good idea. Smart thinking.
- Okay. - Okay.
See? We turned panic into preparedness.
Now, if we do run out of gas, guess who's got fully charged phones?
Well-charged. - Full battery.
For the love of God, stop charging your phones!
Excuse me a moment.
- What happened? - I'm not telling you!
- Fair enough. We're all gonna die. - Ah!
Ripped By mstoll
All in favor?
And that solves the matter of the giant hand.
- If there's no other business... - Yes.
I'd like to establish this as the opening for a flashback.
No. Meeting adjourned.
Oh. We're not doing "three weeks earlier" thing.
Abed, insert dialogue here about you dropping the fourth-wall shtick.
- Nice. - Careful you don't flood it.
That's the fifth time you've reminded me.
Sorry, it doesn't apply to our situation.
I'm going to check the battery.
Can you send someone or not?
- Can you please hold? - No, I can't hold.
Darn it.
When they put you on hold, you hang up and you call right back.
- Frankie taught me that. - Hi, it's me.
Yeah, the one you put on hold. See where that got you?
- Can you send someone? - Please hold.
Don't you dare.
When they put you on hold, hang up and call right back.
I can play this game all day. I told you we need roadside service...
- Can you please hold? - Oh, you can't be serious.
Well, hello. Guess who?
I got nothing but fingers and time, pal. Roadside service, Moffit Pass.
Well, you could have told me that an hour ago.
Your RV is full of crazy ladies. Goodbye.
Have any of you heard of Armed Forces Day?
Apparently it's today and it's really boning us.
Yeah, here it is.
Armed Forces Day, huh.
Why would they put it in May?
It's just sitting there in Memorial Day's shadow like a military Hanukkah.
Fitting that both war holidays have to fight each other over the same month.
Notable that the one we remember is the one with the theme of memory.
Way to make this about justifying your sensibility.
Well, apparently, Armed Forces Day is...
the big one for tow truck drivers.
There are three within 200 miles of this spot and they're all in the same parade.
Maybe it'll come by this way...
if we offer them instruments?
- Nobody reroutes parades. - They rerouted Kennedy's parade.
So call the CIA, tell them we want to assassinate the president.
We'll be home for Wheel of Fortune.
Who are we kidding? That'll never work.
We got Britta'd. Yes, I use it too.
I don't want anybody here blaming themselves for this.
I want everyone blaming Frankie.
- What? Me? That's stupid. - She's the reason we are here.
This is what happens when you make decisions outside the moment.
Whatever moment you were in the day you bought a gigantic hand...
I am proud to remain outside until I die.
You will, baby. And this is where logic gets you.
Stuck in a rocky mountain pass at sundown, gradually freezing to death.
And forced to decide, in the backs of our heads...
just in case, who we'd eat first. Annie, right?
- What? - Not a judgment. It's biology.
- What? - Craig.
The hand currently crushing our lives is not about being in the moment.
You bought something we can't return with money we don't have.
No one knows why. Your latest idea is to put it on the quad...
with a plaque that says, "Give a hand to your brain."
"Give your brain a hand." You're making it sound stupid on purpose.
It's over, Craig. You are lucky to have Frankie.
You're lucky she was able to find some weirdo... Excuse me.
Bigger weirdo on eBay willing to pay cash for it.
This is a lot of narrative pipe. Maybe we didn't need a flashback.
Abed, is this a show? I thought you said you knew it wasn't a TV show.
Season two, you mean? Don't know. I can change my mind.
Can I ask that it not be a show about you saying it's a show? Because dumb.
- You're dumb. - Go in the back.
Go. Sit by yourself.
- What are you doing? - Jeff, what is wrong with you?
I'm sick of it. It's a show.
It's not a show. It's your show. My show. A good show. A bad show. I am sick of it.
I don't want to hear the word "show" again.
Show, show, show. Is it a show? Show, show, show.
So now it's a show about this?
You're right. That's worse. Abed, come back.
- Abed, come back. - I'm not sorry.
- It's not good to be back. - What the hell was that?
The battery is dead.
- Flooded? - Winger, so help me God...
The RV has two batteries, a primary and a...
Secondary.
We overloaded the electrical system and killed the engine battery.
Now the secondary the battery has three or four hours of...
Charge. Juice charge.
And we have a choice to make. And Jeff can explain that choice.
Oh, it's your RV.
This was my show. You didn't care.
Abed, we're all on your side.
So if you're also on your side, it's petty.
We could wait for a couple hours and hope the engine battery resets itself.
If it doesn't, we're spending the night here.
At least we have the secondary battery to keep us warm.
No. We're not spending the night here. What's the second option?
Which I am nicknaming, "lil course of action."
I rewire the secondary battery to the engine and hope it can start it.
If it doesn't, we're spending a very cold night with two dead batteries.
Okay, let's switch the batteries. Good democracy.
Are we sure the secondary battery won't die too?
Ha.
- It's a possibility. - It exists.
But I'm pretty confident because the secondary battery only powers the cabin.
And we've kept the lights off.
And it goes without saying that we've all learned to stop charging our phones.
Why are you looking at each other like that?
And where are each of your phones now?
You know, I'm starting to suspect the unthinkable.
Namely that in spite of all we've experienced...
there's a cartoonish, vampiric orgy of personal devices somewhere in the RV...
sucking away our remaining battery.
I draw limited comfort from the fact that nobody's running to unplug anything.
But you know what...
say nothing.
I'll just...
turn the light switch to the "on" position.
There is a bright side to this.
Most conventional weapons don't require electricity.
Are you going to eat me first?
Hear those crickets?
This would be a challenging place to practice your stand-up act.
So I rented Hotel Rwanda the other night. Let me just say:
Not a date movie.
What would Arnold Schwarzenegger sound like if he was bit by Dracula?
All in favor?
That solves the matter of the giant hand. If there's no other business...
I'd like to re-state the importance of telling this story with flashbacks.
What do you mean by re-state?
Oh, my God. I fell for it. Meeting adjourned.
Why do we call them "elbows"? Why not "arm knees"?
Man, I am dying up here. Heh, heh, heh.
I'm scaling the blanket rations inversely to the wattage of each person's phone.
That way, the person who killed us the most...
will die the soonest, which feels fair.
Right, Britta?
I can't go all night being this angry.
Heart attacks run in my family...
and you people aren't worth it!
- I'm sorry. - It's okay.
I caused the situation by not topping off the tank.
And that vinyl accordion partition is a totem of distrust.
I'm sorry for that too.
Elroy, that's big of you.
For our part, we're sorry that charging our perfectly-normal cell phones...
destroyed your weirdly-fragile RV.
Okay, I'm sorry about that apology.
I'll try to be a better house guest.
Sorry I was unavailable. I was trying to cut to three weeks earlier.
- It really feels like we needed that. - I have to apologize as well.
Perhaps you recall when it seemed as though we drove through a skunk patch.
- You were getting high. - Smoking pot.
- Getting stoned. - Oh, okay.
I remember thinking, "I really pulled that one off."
Because you were high.
You also thought that we were speeding...
because you "kept seeing the same bird."
Unh!
All in favor?
That solves the matter of the giant hand. If there's no other business...
Let me explain the need for flashback here. Don't interrupt.
One quick thing, then you can talk about flashbacks.
Meeting adjourned.
Abed, when they cut to three weeks earlier on TV...
they're not traveling in time, dip-ass. - Jeff.
Okay, my apology now.
I've had some time to think about it.
I'm sorry for not asking people what they wanted before buying snacks for the trip.
- Wow, really? - That's great.
What? Think about it. It's the worst thing I've done on this trip.
- I've been nailing it. - She has.
You have.
I haven't been.
I shouldn't be yelling at the dean in front of any of you. It's unprofessional.
Oh, you're all right, Frankie. We got no complaints.
I forgive all of you. Heh, heh, heh.
What?
That solves the giant hand. If there's no other business...
In a normal road-trip story, the first act would end with us deciding to go.
Second act would be the trip ending with disaster.
The third act would be us returning.
Problem is, we decided to take this trip weeks from now.
The story starts with us already on the road.
So the end of act one will have to be the disaster.
So something worse has to happen in act two.
Unless we decide now that act one is a flashback...
so the beginning of the story is now instead of then.
You forgive us?
Absolutely.
You turd.
- I beg your pardon? - Guys.
You have no sense of accountability. You're a child.
If I'm a child, you're a child abuser. No. Not cool, Annie.
You never said, "Leave my hand where it is. I like it there. I demand it stay."
Because everyone complained about it.
Where's that commitment when we're admitting we did stuff wrong?
Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm a bad dean. Okay?
That's what you always do. Not a real apology.
- Jeff? - Shut up. Go flashback and cut to stuff.
Say you're sorry for buying a giant hand...
and letting it sit around until we dealt with it. Say it without crying.
No. I'm an adult. And you can't make me not cry.
You're all a bunch of bullies, and I will say I'm sorry however I want.
And by the way, I'm not sorry!
It's my giant hand and I love it!
We're not selling it!
This is like crate-training a puppy.
Suppress every instinct to let him sleep in bed with us.
Cold.
I mean in the RV. I don't care how we treat the dean tonight.
Abed, don't go after...
Did they send you out here to be mean to me too?
- No. - Good.
Because I can't cry anymore unless someone brings me a Pedialyte.
Here.
Pretty comforting, huh?
We could have put it outside the art department.
Or biology. Or woodworking if we removed one of the fingers.
You don't belong up here. It's not right.
You get it, don't you, Abed? You know what's important about the hand.
No. I know what's important about story. We're overdue for a disaster.
Great.
Figures. The one person on my side is the one playing people chess.
- Don't move. Don't move. - What the hell are we supposed to do?
- Flashback with me. - What?
Trust me. I set a flashback three weeks earlier. It's how this begins.
Close your eyes and concentrate.
That solves the matter of the giant hand. If there's no other business...
- There's business. - There's business.
When we tie the hand to the roof, we'd like you to use extra thick straps.
- Extra thick. - Extra thick straps.
- Reinforced. - All right. Meeting adjourned. Ah!
- There, that should do it. - What should do it?
- We ensured the straps were extra thick. - No, it didn't happen!
It didn't?
What?
Did something just fall off the roof?
That's a really stupid question, Annie.
Obviously something fell off the roof. The question is what?
Abed, where's the dean?
Oh, damn. Come on.
Okay, one, two, three.
Carefully. Carefully.
How do you lift a giant hand off a person haphazardly?
- You know what, Annie... - No!
- Dean, hang on. - Dean, we're so sorry. We love you.
- Screw you! - What?
- Hey, that's my house. - We are not sorry. We hate you!
- Are we gonna freeze to death? - I call the hand.
The fiberglass will preserve body heat.
What's wrong with me that that's hot?
Dean, these temperatures are lowering our immune systems...
in a world that's swarming with weird people's unvaccinated toddlers.
Deal with it.
I'll go to the other side to see if he's locked that door too.
It probably undercuts my goals to announce them out loud.
But I'm a verbal thinker. I'm not even sure I have an idea until I say it.
They should make hiking boots with a compass in the toe.
Go.
Dean? We're sorry and we love you?
Nice uncontrollable question mark, Britta.
You can't even fake it?
Dean, we're sorry and we love you.
Super realistic, Annie.
You're a real sociopath.
I saw all your true colors when the chips were down.
Abed's the only human among you, and I think we all know how ironic that is.
- No offense, Abed. - None possible.
Abed.
You bonded with him. Talk to him.
You're alone in the end zone. This ball is yours or nobody's.
I appreciate your appeal to my well-known passion...
for athletics and sarcasm.
We didn't bond, I almost killed him.
My obsession with contrived flashback technique...
kept me from being invested in any of this story.
What was it even?
Bunch of people in an RV? I had to Christopher Nolan it?
Well, there you go.
Now you can forget all about...
stupid "three weeks earlier" flashbacks and be a hero.
By joining us here, in the moment.
And talking to the Dean like a human.
- That's my arc. - That's your arc.
Okay. Here we go.
- If there's no other business... - I'd like to propose a use of flashback.
- No, Abed. Don't do it. - Thanks, Abed.
Stop! Get your head out of your ass.
I can't. I'm over-saturated with the gimmick. Don't know what's real.
- You have to be lying. You enjoy this. - Stop it. What has gotten into you?
Why are you shocked that he's alienated?
You get him to do something normal without abuse.
Abed, listen.
This is a flashback, remember?
The real story is happening in the future.
You actually flashed back to now to help us.
Okay, that was pretty good.
So sad what happened here, all those centons ago.
So sad. So preventable.
Space Elder Abed...
can you reach back with your mind and save our species?
I can.
I'm Space Elder Britta.
What are you guys talking about?
I'm here now, child. All will be made right.
- Dean. - Abed.
I have discovered the meaning of the giant hand.
A hand has two functions, to grip and to release.
But without both of these powers, it is useless.
Like newborn infants, we grab what comes near us...
hoping to control it, taste it...
jam it into another child's eye.
But the time we spend in control of our world...
is the time we spend letting go of others.
Ideas, stories, pride...
girls in soft sweaters, video games, buttered noodles...
Grip one for too long and you lose so much that you've never held.
This giant hand was sent to all of us as an invitation...
to increase our mastery over the power to hold on.
And let go.
Sorry.
- Dean. - Heh, heh, heh.
- Dummy. - I kind of hate you.
The doors were locked on that side too.
Took you long enough.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't poop.
Could you lie, then?
Sure I can.
Sure I can. Heh, heh, heh.
I slapped you, man.
Where were you?
The reason why I'm covered in feathers is because...
Hi, this is Blake, the gentlemen to whom you are selling the giant hand.
I am calling to confirm that you have the correct address.
We live at the end of a long driveway...
which often gets confused with a road.
Anyway, it's been many hours since our scheduled appointment time.
Again, it's Blake with a "B."
The purchaser of the giant hand.
Bye.
- They're not coming? - I don't know, Karen. I left a message.
- What are you gonna do with...? - With the giant watch?
I don't know. I don't plan for failure.
Have you tried planning for success?
Does everything you do to this family have...?
No, finish your thought.
Finish your thought.
Does everything have to do with me purchasing...
over-sized items on the Internet?
But that's not what this is about, is it? It's not about a giant hand or watch...
- Please don't. - It's about a normal-sized son...
who disappeared.
And it's all my fault...
because I gave him a giant kite! Argh!
Yes! How could you not make that connection?
Why do you continue to buy giant-sized versions of everyday objects...
when they are the reason our son is dead?
Disappeared! Disappeared!
They never found his body on the ground which proves he's still up there waiting.
He's waiting for a better daddy...
with a bigger hand.
Oh.
Really?
So then why the watch?
I thought it would look really cool.
I'm gonna walk the dog...
and eventually leave you.
I'll put the watch in the garage.
And probably stop showering.
Ripped By mstoll