Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts

Student:Is this answer correct?

Professor Duncan:I don't know and I don't care. But you're getting an A anyway.

Student:Professor, isn't it unfair that everyone gets an A?

Professor Duncan:Well, if you have a problem with that, I could always just beat you.

Duncan:Just throw paper at him.

Student:Sitting. I'm sitting.

Duncan:Darrell, could you help me with this?

Troy:It's Troy, actually.

Abed:Let him call you Darrell. Duncan's about to give Darrell an A.

Jeff:To pathetic.

Chang:It's fine if it's my baby. Chang babies love alcohol and duck.

Chang:How do you know the baby isn't mine?

Shirley:Because when Chang's baby is born, the seas will turn to blood, the locusts will darken the sky, and a great wailing will echo across the land.

Britta:Women are so connected to their bodies, you know? It's like we're one with ourselves.

Annie:Britta, you have a booger.

Britta:That's part of me.

Duncan:Alright, everyone, settle down. This is a serious exam. Question one: 'This class is fake. Discuss.'

Duncan:In many cultures, the breaking of the glass represents the fragility of life and the solemnity of the marriage contract. Among Jewish traditions, this practice symbolizes the destruction of the Temple and—

Duncan:Why are you all looking at me like that? I'm simply explaining the anthropological significance of—oh. Oh no. This is a baby shower, isn't it?

Duncan:I'm a father figure to these students. My educational approach creates that dynamic.

Duncan:Though I suppose that makes me less like a father and more like the parents in 'Children of the Corn.'

Duncan:Well, as you can see, this is a comprehensive examination. We have the written portion here, the oral component, and of course, the interpretive clay sculpture section.

Duncan:It really separates the wheat from the chaff. The clay doesn't lie.

Reporter:Wow, this is real college.

Troy:So you got your Mexican food trucks, your Korean BBQ trucks, your Thai trucks...

Troy:You know, I love how we all come together through food. It doesn't matter what color you are.

Troy:I mean, not that there's anything wrong with color. Colors are great. All colors.

Troy:I'm not saying some colors are better than other colors. That would be racist.

Troy:I love every color equally. Even the colors that— you know what, I'm just gonna stop talking.

Shirley:One of them was so late, he came out with a driver's license!

Shirley:I'm joking.

Chang:Chang babies are parasitic creatures that eat their mothers from the inside out.

Britta:Big Antacid doesn't want you to know this, but antacids are a government conspiracy to keep your digestive system dependent on pharmaceutical companies.

Troy:Wait, are you trying to pull an Indecent Proposal on us?

Abed:He's offering money for something precious and intimate.

Pierce:What? No! It's just a handshake!

Troy:No.

Abed:...I don't know.

Shirley:The epidural is the only socially acceptable way for me to get high.

Britta:Some women have orgasms during natural birth.

Shirley:Britta! Oh my God, we are talking about my baby!

Jeff:Two one-eyed cats? That's depressing.

Britta:They're not depressing! Together they have perfect vision. It's actually beautiful.

Jeff:So you're gonna have the baby naturally? What, are you gonna squat in a field like a pioneer woman while your one-eyed cats half watch?

Britta:My cats aren't one-eyed.

Jeff:Not yet.

Shirley:Oh no, what if I give birth right here in the classroom?

Shirley:Star-Burns would be the first thing my baby sees. I can't let that happen!

Dean:I'll drive you to the hospital! My car's right outside. It's a 2004 Nissan Sentra.

Shirley:Dean, I'm in labor.

Dean:But it has a very fuel-efficient engine. And the interior is surprisingly spacious.

Shirley:Can somebody call Andre?

Chang:What? Andre gets a cute nickname and I don't?

Annie:We can never have a normal class experience. It's always something with this group. One time we had a paintball war, another time we turned a blanket fort into an actual situation, and don't even get me started on the time we investigated a conspiracy that turned out to be about nothing. A normal day of learning is like asking for world peace at Greendale.

Chang:This must be my baby. I was at the hospital that night.

Chang:Well, I was near a hospital. Okay, I was in a hospital parking lot.

Chang:Fine, I was at a Duane Reade across the street from a hospital.

Chang:Look, I was on a treadmill at a gym. And not just any gym—a gym that was in the same city as a hospital.

Chang:The treadmill was on the third floor. The one by the window. The one that's always broken but I fixed it myself with a screwdriver and some duct tape I found in the lost and found.

Chang:There are so many Changs in the world that I'm completely ungoogleable. You google 'Chang' and you get 47 million results. You google 'Kevin Durant' and you get Kevin Durant. You google me and you get a guy in Taiwan who sells DVDs out of his trunk.

Pierce:I'll give you a thousand dollars for that handshake.

Pierce:That's right. One thousand dollars. You know what that means? A thousand dollar handshake. You'll be shaking hands at a thousand dollars a pop. It'll be like... it'll be like the year 2000, but with money. Year 2-dollar sign-thousand.

Pierce:Betty Grable!

Jeff:That's not how this works, Pierce.

Pierce:You know what? Fine. You're a prostitute.

Troy:What?!

Pierce:Now do the handshake.

Troy:Who's Betty Grable?

Pierce:That's all I wanted.

Pierce:This is better than dog dollars.

Pierce:It was easy! I just walked in there and said, 'I want to buy your handshake.' They said, 'Okay.' I gave them money. Done.

Troy:You can't just buy a handshake, Pierce! That's not how it works!

Troy:A handshake is sacred. It's a bond between two people. It means something.

Troy:You just... you just destroyed something pure.

Abed:See, this is what happens. We create something pure, something real, and then the second it has any value, the machine moves in and commodifies it. Flattens it. Makes it safe for mass consumption.

Abed:The handshake was ours. It meant something. And now it's just another product placement opportunity, another demographic target.

Pierce:You two are like Rosemary's Baby, except the baby is stupid.

Troy:What does that even mean?

Pierce:It's a 1968 Roman Polanski film about a woman who believes her unborn child is the spawn of Satan. Mia Farrow gives a career-defining performance, and the cinematography perfectly captures the paranoia of—

Abed:Pierce, you just called us stupid.

Pierce:I know what I said. Now, as I was saying, the film's exploration of motherhood and isolation remains a masterpiece of psychological horror that modern filmmakers could only dream of replicating.

Troy:This is blood money. Pierce's blood money.

Troy:We had something special. A magic that can never be recaptured.

Jeff:You guys realize a baby was just born, right? That's the actual miracle happening here.

Jeff:Wait, where were you when this happened?

Abed:Off in the background. You know, like how you're not always the center of every story?

Dean Pelton:Look, what happened at the food festival was more of a... kerfuffle than a full-scale... you know.

Dean Pelton:The Korean War was a conflict between... well, it was about territory and ideology, but also—you know what, the real tragedy is that nobody talks about it. It's like the forgotten war. Unlike World War II, which everyone knows about, Korea just gets swept under the rug, kind of like how we sweep up the kimchi after these food fights...

Dean Pelton:And frankly, some of those Korean tactics were pretty brutal. I mean, not that I'm comparing them to anyone specific, but if you really think about it, the whole thing was a mess of—wait, is this being recorded?

Craig:Everything is recorded, Dean.

Dean Pelton:Oh God.

Abed:Shirley, I have some bad news.

Shirley:Oh no, what is it?

Abed:Just imagine I'm saying this with a lot of emotion, because I can't actually do that.

Chang:If this baby is mine, listen to me. You must paint the nursery walls with the tears of a weeping willow.

Chang:And the crib must face magnetic north, or the baby will be born with a crooked aura.

Chang:You cannot whistle on Tuesdays. Not even humming. Humming is a whistle's cousin.

Chang:Feed the baby only food that has been blessed by a man named Gerald. There are seventeen Geralds in the phone book. You'll know which one when you call.

Chang:And most importantly, on the baby's first birthday, you must release seven lottery-winning rabbits into the forest while chanting in Aramaic.

Shirley:I need someone to check my cervix dilation.

Britta:I'll do it! I'm really good at looking at things.

Britta:I've delivered babies before. Well, not delivered, but I was present for the conception of at least two of them.

Britta:Don't worry, I'm a pro. Just like my boy Rob Lowe, I'm here to help you with the... with the... glow? No, the flow! The birth flow, that rhymes with Rob Lowe.

Britta:I can check your dilation. I've done this before.

Abed:You just realized you've been pronouncing 'gif' wrong your whole life, didn't you?

Reporter:Are many babies born in classrooms?

Duncan:Well, more are conceived there.

Duncan:I mean, not— that's not what I meant. Though, statistically speaking, it's sort of true.

Annie:Okay, okay, I need to stay calm. I've delivered babies before. Well, I've read about delivering babies. Okay, I've seen pictures of babies being delivered.

Annie:I need to be confident, reassuring, medically trained, emotionally available, physically strong, and mentally prepared.

Annie:I need to know CPR, comfort techniques, pain management strategies, and emergency protocols.

Annie:I need to be like a doctor, a nurse, a midwife, a therapist, and... and my mom.

Chang:My grandfather, he was born during a flood. His mother gave birth in a tree.

Chang:My other grandfather, he was born during an earthquake. The midwife had to deliver him while hanging from a rope.

Chang:But my great-grandfather? He was born while his father was eating soup. And his father refused to put the soup down. So the midwife had to work around the soup bowl. He never even looked up from his meal.

Jeff:You care so much about people, you literally vomit empathy.

Jeff:Listen up everyone, we need to work together right now. This is about survival.

Britta:I know, Jeff. Being a mother is the ultimate survival instinct. We're all just trying to nurture and protect—

Jeff:Britta, what are you talking about? There's an active fire in the building!

Britta:Right, and mothers deal with fires all the time. Metaphorically speaking.

Jeff:This is literally not about motherhood at all.

Abed:It's like a bus. Once it starts moving, you just have to let it go where it needs to go. You can't steer a bus.

Annie:That's not comforting.

Abed:I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm trying to explain obstetrics.

Abed:The bus drives itself.

Annie:Okay, I'm going to need you to explain that metaphor, because the implications are getting increasingly uncomfortable.

Chang:You think that's bad? My children lived underground like mole people for years. They developed their own language, their own currency. When we finally dug them out, they didn't even remember what the sun was.

Britta:No, no, no. I can do this. This is it. This is what I'm meant to do. I'm a doula. I'm a birth coach. This is my calling.

Doctor:Ma'am, we're trained professionals—

Britta:Not as trained as I am in this moment. Step aside.

Britta:The baby's here! It's a beautiful baby girl, and she's... she's black.

Britta:Not that there's anything wrong with that! I mean, obviously not. That's great. She's perfect. I just wanted to point it out so nobody else had to, awkwardly, later.

Chang:Wait, wait, wait. So the baby's not mine?

Chang:Thank God. Do you know what this means? It means I don't have to pass on the Chang tail.

Chang:We've had tails for generations.

Troy:I missed this.

Abed:Me too.

Troy:Ready?

Abed:Always.

Chang:I'm prepared to make a formal statement. While I maintain that this baby is not biologically mine, I'm willing to concede this point in the interest of maintaining harmony within our study group. I think you'll all agree that this kind of magnanimity is the mark of a true leader.

Shirley:We could name him Ben, after you, Chang.

Chang:Ben Chang? That's perfect!

Shirley:Actually, his last name is Bennett.

Chang:Ben Bennett? Ben... Bennett?

Shirley:It has a nice alliteration.

Chang:...

Chang:Did you hear that? The baby said 'Chang!' The baby said my name!

Shirley:That's just baby noises, Chang.

Andre:Yeah man, it didn't say anything.

Chang:No no no, it was definitely 'Chang!' I heard it clear as day!

Shirley:Chang, please.

Andre:Let it go, buddy.

Jeff:We just watched a human being come into the world. And it was miraculous. But you know what the miracle really is? That any of us survive it. I mean, we start out as literally nothing—just some cells dividing in the dark. And then nine months later, we're forced through a biological meat grinder, covered in fluids we don't want to think about. And somehow, we make it. We survive. And then we spend the rest of our lives thinking we're special.

Jeff:Are we destined for greatness?

Britta:Of course we are. I mean, look at me. The way I just delivered that line? That's greatness.

Troy:Look at those tiny fingers. They're like little candy.

Troy:I kind of want to eat them.

Abed:That's lame.

Troy:I know.

Dean Pelton:Finally! Positive coverage! This is it! This is my moment!

Dean Pelton:I'm going to be remembered! I'm going to be a legend!

Dean Pelton:Greendale's greatest leader! The Dean of Dreams!

Troy:We know about your fake anthropology class, Duncan.

Abed:We have evidence. Photos. Emails. We're going to the Dean unless you cancel school tomorrow.

Troy:We've learned a lot at Greendale. Turns out blackmail is just applied networking.

Abed:Plus, we learned it from watching you.