Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design

Jeff Winger:Cancel my appointments.

Secretary:You don't have any appointments.

Jeff Winger:Then cancel my wishful thinking.

Jeff:So what's the assignment exactly?

Professor:A diorama depicting an environmental issue. For Green Week.

Abed:I'm making a diorama of a diorama. It's a meta-commentary on how we artificially construct miniature worlds to understand larger concepts, when in reality we're all just living in our own subjective dioramas of existence.

Jeff:That's... that's not an environmental issue.

Abed:The environment of ideas, Jeff.

Britta:A blanket fort? That sounds amazing!

Shirley:Yeah, the guys built it in the study room. You should come check it out.

Britta:Wait, grown men in a blanket fort? I'm getting an uncomfortable mental image of them in tiny underwear.

Shirley:Oh my God, why would you say that?

Dean Pelton:Wait, you're telling me the professor's name is Professor Professorson?

Jeff Winger:Yes.

Dean Pelton:That's the most redundant name I've ever heard.

Jeff:The name is Dutch. It means professor.

Dean:Poppycock.

Dean:Professor I.P. Freely?

Jeff:It's a real name.

Dean Pelton:I have to audit the entire system. Do you know how much work that is?

Dean Pelton:I went to Princeton for writing, you know. I was going to be the next great American novelist. Now I'm here auditing a system because someone can't follow simple guidelines.

Dean:I'm going to follow you to prove the professor exists. It's like Midnight in Paris, except it's daytime in Greendale, and instead of a romantic fantasy, I'm pursuing a man I barely know through the hallways.

Jeff:Dean, that's not how charades works.

Dean:I'm not playing charades, Jeff. I'm living it.

Troy:Wait, why can't I fit through here?

Abed:We built it to our exact specifications.

Troy:Yeah, but we were sitting down when we measured.

Abed:We're not going to fit in here standing up.

Troy:So we have to crawl everywhere inside our own fort?

Abed:I mean, that's what forts are for.

Troy:Dude, this fort is epic!

Abed:We should add a soundtrack.

Troy:Boots-n-cats-n-boots!

Abed:Skee-skee-skee-pap-pap-pap!

Troy:Boop-boop-chicka-chicka!

Abed:Whirrrr-ksssshhhhh-boom!

Troy:We're gonna make this fort bigger and more manly!

Abed:How do we make a fort more manly?

Troy:Bigger pillows, more snacks, and we only watch action movies.

Abed:That's just a college dorm.

Troy:Psh-ka-ka-boom-boots-n-cats-n-boots!

Jeff:The professor's not here. This is... this is part of the lesson, isn't it? A lesson about absence. About the void. We're supposed to sit here and contemplate what it means when someone doesn't show up. It's brilliant, really. Very meta. Very current.

Annie:Jeff, that's the most convoluted thing I've ever heard. You know what? You're actually really good at making stuff up when you need to get out of something.

Fake Professor:Yes, my real name is Professor Professorson. My father was Professor Professorson Sr., and his father before him was also Professor Professorson. We come from a long line of Professorsons. In fact, my great-grandfather, Professor Professorson the Third, died at the Battle of Professorson's Ridge in 1863.

Dean Pelton:I don't know the night school professors. They're like characters on a TV show that nobody watches.

Fake Professor:I'll see you next week, Jeff.

Fake Professor:Unless the universe implodes. Or I do. Spiritually.

Dean Pelton:I need to get back to chapter one of my book.

Dean Pelton:It's called 'The Couch Quest'.

Jeff:I'm going to read this book cover to cover. Every single word.

Jeff:Because that's what you do when someone believes in you.

Annie:Aren't you curious about the mysterious professor?

Jeff:Not really. I assume it's someone who wants to sleep with me and is using mystery as a sexy device.

Annie:No! No, Jeff, I can't just blow off the mystery! What if there's a clue we missed? What if the answer is hidden in plain sight? What if—

Annie:You know what? Fine. FINE. I'll blow it off. I'll just sit here and do nothing while potentially the most important mystery of our entire study group goes completely and totally unsolved!

Annie:And nobody will ever know what happened, and I'll just have to live with that, with this gnawing, aching, unbearable sense of incompleteness for the rest of my LIFE!

Annie:Blarghhh! Screwdiddlyewenschmidt! Zaparoo! Thix-a-ma-jig bazoingy-boingenstein!

Pavel:Can I come inside the blanket fort?

Abed:Вы должны принести три одеяла и чашку молока.

Troy:What did he say?

Abed:He must bring three blankets and a cup of milk to join us in the fort of destiny.

Troy:Blorgsnaxian florflux minxilod?

Abed:Yortsnax plimlox dorthavian.

Troy:Snorflelix? Blorglaxian!

Abed:Exactly. Vortaxian minnelop.

Pavel:I have seventeen blankets and thirty-two pillows. Some are for sleeping, some are for emotional support, and three of them I've named after my childhood pets.

Annie:Have you ever considered taking a night class?

Jeff:Night school? So it's like regular school, but at night?

Annie:Yes...

Jeff:So everything's the same, just darker and more depressing?

Jeff:You can't just Nancy Drew around here. This isn't some mystery game.

Annie:Why not? Nancy Drew solved mysteries all the time.

Jeff:Yeah, well, don't Nancy Drew this up. Screw Nancy Drew.

Annie:This conspiracy goes all the way to the top!

Jeff:Annie, it's Greendale. The top is a guy named Craig who microwaves fish in the break room.

Jeff:That's it? That's the explosion? I've seen more impressive fireworks at a Bar Mitzvah.

Pierce:I got all these materials from my family's storage unit. Well, technically from my family's storage unit.

Abed:If we keep adding to the fort, at what point does it stop being the same fort and become a different fort?

Troy:That's the Ship of Theseus, dude.

Abed:Exactly.

Annie:Oh my God, look at this course: 'History of Something.'

Jeff:That's literally the laziest course title I've ever seen.

Annie:I know! I mean, at least commit to a subject.

Jeff:Advanced Theories of Pillow Talk.

Jeff:Post-Modern Finger Painting.

Jeff:The Politics of Skin Care.

Jeff:Learning!

Annie:What kind of math do you teach?

Fake Professor:Just 'Math' - no specificity at all.

Fake Professor:I teach... mathematics. Advanced mathematics.

Fake Professor:Geometry. And also... numbers.

Fake Professor:Look, it's all about the... angles. And quantities.

Fake Professor:Plus signs. Minus signs. The horizontal kind of eight.

Fake Professor:Math.

Jeff:Okay, he went this way!

Annie:No, I think he went left!

Troy:Guys, I can't see anything!

Abed:This is just like the hedge maze scene in The Shining.

Jeff:Abed, not helping!

Troy:Ow!

Annie:Sorry! Is that you?

Jeff:We're going in circles!

Abed:All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Jeff:Okay, we have a constitution, three branches of government, and a supreme court.

Annie:We also have a bicameral legislature and a system of checks and balances.

Troy:This is the most fun I've ever had.

Abed:And here we have our civil rights museum.

Abed:It's a blanket fort.

Troy:Leonard! You can't just show up whenever you want!

Abed:We need to establish a formal enforcement system for your farting problem.

Leonard:What? That's ridiculous!

Troy:Leonard, you cleared out the blanket fort last week. We found a Hazmat suit in here.

Abed:We've been running through this blanket fort for twenty minutes. How big is this thing?

Abed:Wait, is that... a little Chinatown section? And over there, Little Italy?

Abed:This blanket fort has ethnic districts now.

Abed:Wait, we need permits for this.

Jeff:Permits? We're in a blanket fort.

Abed:Exactly. It's a formal parade. There are regulations.

Britta:That's the most Abed thing I've ever heard.

Annie:Wait, I think I see him! No, that's just someone playing the zitherboard.

Fake Professor/Garrity:Night school doesn't exist. It's a myth. A phantom. A specter that haunts the halls of institutional learning like a wraith wrapped in bureaucratic fog.

Fake Professor/Garrity:It is the great white whale of academia, forever swimming in the depths of our collective delusion, rising only in the fevered dreams of those desperate enough to believe in its ephemeral existence.

Fake Professor/Garrity:Night school is a siren song, a mirage shimmering on the horizon of hope, beckoning the weary and the lost toward salvation that will never come.

Fake Professor/Garrity:And that's when I realized I had to keep adding more fake classes to cover up the first fake class. And then more fake classes to cover those fake classes. It just kept spiraling and spiraling until I was teaching thirty-seven completely made-up courses including Advanced Synchronized Swimming, Theoretical Basket Weaving, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... or as I like to call it, 'ek setera ek setera'.

Jeff:It's 'Aesthebeethia'... no wait, 'Esthethia'... I don't know, man. Whatever. It's a made-up word anyway.

Fake Professor/Garrity:I can't believe I taught a fake class. I feel terrible about this.

Fake Professor/Garrity:What if one of my students goes on to teach other students my fake information? Then those students teach others?

Fake Professor/Garrity:Pretty soon, everyone thinks dinosaurs never existed!

Fake Professor/Garrity:And then someone says, 'Well, if dinosaurs didn't exist, then Jack the Ripper probably didn't either.'

Fake Professor/Garrity:And suddenly there's a copycat killer on the loose because people don't think Jack the Ripper was real!

Professor Sean Garrity:Yes, well, I was supposed to be teaching Introduction to Drama this semester, but the department got budget cuts, so they asked me to direct the school musical instead. I said no. They said yes. I said no again. They said, 'Professor Garrity, we're begging you.' So I said yes. Turns out 'yes' is a binding contract.

Jeff Winger:So the Dean and I have this arrangement where he pays me in increasingly bizarre acting assignments.

Dean Pelton:Last week I had him dress as a sexy pilgrim for the Thanksgiving commercial.

Jeff Winger:This week he wants me to play a sentient mop in the maintenance department training video.

Dean Pelton:Next week, I'm thinking... a dance number. As a lunch lady. But make it edgy.

Garrity:We're doing Macbeth.

Jeff:Oh wow, a shakespeare adaptation. What a fresh take.

Jeff:I'm going to teach the Dean a lesson. And by lesson, I mean I'm going to do something completely selfish that I'll later justify as character growth, then forget about it by next week.

Annie:You know, Greendale taught me that violence is never the answer.

Annie:*shoots* But sometimes you just gotta make an exception.

Jeff:So you lied, manipulated, and endangered everyone's lives to teach me about friendship?

Annie:Yes!

Jeff:Well, congratulations. You taught me that friendship is a lie built on manipulation and poor life choices.

Jeff:The point is, we need to treat people with respect. All people. Regardless of who they are or what they've done.

Annie:You're right. You're absolutely right.

Annie:I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Annie:I can't believe Jeff rejected me! After everything I've done for him!

Annie:I'm gonna dude, I'm gonna... I'm gonna walk this way!

Dean Pelton:I have no principles, Jeff. I just wanted to be included.

Jeff:Wait, so you're telling me you've been working with all of us? That's not a team strategy, that's just hedging your bets. You're like a casino that hired every blackjack player in Nevada because you couldn't decide which one was lucky.

Dean Pelton:You know what my real problem is? It's not the budget cuts, it's not the administrative burden, it's not even trying to keep this college afloat while everyone around me is completely insane.

Dean Pelton:My real struggle... is finishing my time travel book. I've been working on it for seven years and I can't figure out how to resolve the paradox in the third act.

Security Guard:Made-up statistic about fake gun incidents

Dean Pelton:You know, I've been through a lot today. But I realize now that just like I always say at the time desk: 'It's not about what you're wearing, it's about the man wearing it.' And right now, I'm wearing a cardigan.

Jeff:Wow, Annie, you're a natural liar. You should be proud.

Abed:Hey, don't encourage her. Besides, Cougar Town is a perfectly legitimate show.

Abed:Look, the newspaper covered our blanket fort.

Troy:We're famous!

Pavel:This is great for mainstream success.

Abed:We need formal protocols now.

Troy:Protocol Omega has been initiated. Blanket fort residents are turning to lawlessness.

Troy:We could build a blanket fort.

Abed:I was just about to say that.

Troy:Great minds think alike!

Abed:Or we're just predictable.

Troy:So there I was, in the year 2150, and the space station was about to explode.

Abed:And I said, 'We need to reroute the quantum stabilizers through the auxiliary power grid!'

Troy:But wait, there's a twist — the captain was actually a clone the whole time.

Abed:And his evil twin showed up with a lightsaber made of pure energy.

Troy:So I yelled, 'Not today, villain!' and jumped into the reactor core.

Abed:And as the explosion happened in slow motion, a single tear rolled down my face.

Troy:The station exploded. Everyone died. Roll credits.

Abed:Roll credits.

Troy:And then the hero rode off into the sunset, finally at peace.

Abed:Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.