Flash Ahhhh!: Episode Thirty-Three – Couples Counseling

by the According To Whim.com crew

(Part One by Nathan Stout)

[INT – JAIL – NIGHT]

NATHAN: Let’s get out of here.

CHRIS: Right.

DENTRE: Correct.

SHAG: Yes.

LARRY: OK.

STUBBY: Fine.

ANGELINA: Cool.

PAUL: Affirmative.

MIGUEL: Yep.

PROFESSOR: I’ll need help getting down the stairs.

(Everyone waits for Nathan’s lead, but he doesn’t move.)

CHRIS: What’s wrong.

NATHAN: I’ve lost all motivation.

DENTRE: You just need a push.

NATHAN: Not that kind of motivation.

CHRIS: Pick him up and put him on the Professor’s lap.

(The group assists in putting the immobile Nathan on the Professor’s lap. They move to a door and the Professor can’t go any further.)

PAUL: Allow me.

(Paul concentrates. The Professor’s wheelchair rises off the floor and floats carefully down to the ground.)

PROFESSOR: Thank you.

PAUL: You are welcome.

ANGELINA: Over there.

PROFESSOR: There is a backup on repairs at the motor pool, so we will have to use the damaged van.

(Everyone starts climbing into the van that has no roof from when Angelina saved Chris in a dramatic fashion.)

PROFESSOR: Driver…

DRIVER: Yes sir.

PROFESSOR: Take us to Nathan’s house.

DRIVER: Very well.

(The driver starts the van, and it starts off down the road. Since it is night, the cool air blows through the roofless van and everyone seems to be enjoying it.)

SHAG: Who’s hungry?

LARRY: I am.

DENTRE: You are a kid and kids are always hungry.

CHRIS: Meh.

ANGELINA: I guess I could toy with some food.

PROFESSOR: I don’t need the amount of calories you all do since I don’t use half of my body, but I could have something small.

PAUL: I’m hungry.

NATHAN: Eh…

DRIVER: I would like something.

PROFESSOR: No one asked you Driver.

DRIVER: My apologies.

ANGELINA: Here let me.

(Angelina pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabs some saliva off Nathan’s chin.)

NATHAN: Thanks…

PROFESSOR: Don’t worry about it son, everyone loses interest in projects at some point.

PAUL: Remember that project Chris was going to do where he was going to make a Net Runner card for every Magic the Gathering card that existed?

ANGELINA: Remember that script project called ten minutes in hell that you all were going to do?

SHAG: Remember Whimipedia?

DENTRE: Remember the consolidation of the Newsgroups?

PROFESSOR: What about all the books and scripts?

NATHAN: Why are you all being so nice, and how do you know these things? And why is Angelina giving me a blowjob?

CHRIS: Wake up.

NATHAN: No.

CHRIS: Wake up, we gotta go.

NATHAN: Huh? Wha?

[INT – JAIL – DAY]

(Nathan sits up and realizes it was all a dream and starts crying.)

CHRIS: Why are you crying?

NATHAN: Nothing…

(End of Part One)

(Part Two by Chris McGinty)

[INT – JAIL – DAY]

CHRIS: And why is Angelina giving me a blow job now? Oh, I see. We’re still in petty argument dream mode.

NATHAN: Yeah, the problem with writing Part One is you can never have the last word.

CHRIS: Listen, I think what we need is marital counseling.

NATHAN: Marital?

CHRIS: Yeah, cos creative partnerships are basically marriages without the sex.

(Chris and Nathan both look at Angelina’s bobbing head.)

CHRIS: You know what I mean.

NATHAN: So what do you suggest we do?

CHRIS: I think we should go see my alter ego, and counselor, Sigmund Floyd.

NATHAN: Alter ego? You mean…

CHRIS: Yep. He looks just like me, which makes it an easier role to cast.

[INT – SIGMUND FLOYD’S OFFICE – DAY]

(Chris and Nathan sit in two chairs across from a man who looks nothing like Chris, but instead looks an awful lot like Fraz…)

CHRIS: Unless of course they get Kelsey Grammar to play the role.

FLOYD: So why are we here today? I’m listening.

CHRIS: Well, it all started two weeks ago. Nathan’s writer alter ego (herein referred to as Nathan) told my writer alter ego (herein referred to as me) that his writing on the Saturday serial had become sloppy.

NATHAN: Well, to Nathan it seemed that me’s writing…

CHRIS: Ok, let me clarify. I will herein refer to Nathan’s writer alter ego as Nathan, and my writer alter ego as me. Nathan will refer to them as me and Chris, respectively.

FLOYD: What do I refer to them as?

CHRIS: Sam and Diane.

FLOYD: Shouldn’t I be played by John Cleese then?

CHRIS: Or by me. Since you’re my alter ego. That might me novel.

(It’s at that moment that Greenly Meadows and Lewis Cannon walk in. They are played by Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.)

GREENLY: Hi.

LEWIS: Hey.

FLOYD: Can I help you?

GREENLY: No, we just wanted to waste your time a little more.

(They leave.)

FLOYD: What were you saying Nathan? I’m listening.

(Nathan rolls his eyes.)

NATHAN: Well, to me it seemed like Chris’s writing had just become long passages of weird, rather than anything that was furthering the plot.

CHRIS: So I defended myself by showing how I was actually putting in a lot of work on the serial, and how my seeming passages of weird were actually furthering the plot.

NATHAN: At which time I got mad that he was furthering the plot.

CHRIS: Yeah.

NATHAN: Hey! That wasn’t nice. Write my line honestly, please. I got upset, because I thought that he already had the whole thing planned out and that I was just a tool to help him write.

CHRIS: So in retaliation to my presumed sloppy writing, he wrote two of the sloppiest parts of episodes in the entire history of the serial and blamed it at first on me using him as a tool and then on just losing motivation.

NATHAN: Well, we all lose motivation.

CHRIS: I know. You were really quick to point out a long list of projects that I’ve either gotten behind on or not followed through on, while ignoring the various projects that you’ve lost motivation on or that never even got started because they were my ideas and you either “had no interest in” or “didn’t understand.”

(The door opens. A woman, played by Jane Wiedlin, walks in. She is pushing a cart of laundry.)

JANE: Your laundry is done.

NATHAN: Wait, this laundry is still dirty.

JANE: Yes sir, but it has been aired out.

(Jane walks out the door. Chris and Nathan watch her leave, and then turn to each other.)

CHRIS: Dude, you totally just talked to Jane Wiedlin.

NATHAN: High five.

(They slap hands high above their heads. They start to cabbage patch and sing.)

CHRIS & NATHAN: Oooh you send me, you got me in the Rush Hour.

FLOYD: You’re paying me by the hour, guys. Can we focus?

(Chris and Nathan continue to sing.)

CHRIS & NATHAN: Oooh it’s so good. Baby when you access three additional cards. I can’t believe you got in without noisy icebreakers. It’s such a rush just runnin’ R&D. We’re jammin’ in the Rush Hour.

FLOYD: Fellas!

CHRIS & NATHAN: What!?

FLOYD: Thank you. You see. I don’t even get why you two are having marital… um, that is, creative… problems. You seem to be having fun even in the turmoil of your creative differences.

NATHAN: Well, that’s because at the core of everything, we’re great friends. That was the whole point of Season Two.

CHRIS: Which I’d like to point out was Nathan’s writing project, and I was just a tool.

FLOYD: Now Chris, let’s keep the criticism on high ground.

(Chris stands up on Sigmund Floyd’s desk, kicking over a picture of David Hyde Pierce in the process.)

CHRIS: And when you lost motivation on Season Two after the hard drive crashes, who was there giving you a pep talk to keep at it? Who said that he would happily re-shoot any scenes that were lost?

FLOYD: That’s not what I meant by high ground, Chris.

(Chris gets down from the desk, and sits back in his chair.)

NATHAN: Hey, get off my lap!

(His chair.)

CHRIS: Sorry. Listen, I completely get why Nathan got upset when he thought I had a grand plan for “Flash Ahhhh!” and that was ignoring his contribution. I tried to write a couple of fun bits both in the serial and out to try to get him to understand that that wasn’t the case. I’m not sure if we’re even at odds about that anymore. I know that I’ve explained the three act thing to him before. I explained it when I told him how I formatted the According To Whim novel, which is still pending completion. I loosely used it in the novel I did complete, but I doubt I discussed that with Nathan yet, because I’m still editing it so he can read it. I explained to Nathan how I was using the three act thing to clean up Miguel’s “Screenplay ’99.” It’s just a second nature to me to pay attention to the three act format in longer projects. It was part of my job as editor.

FLOYD: Very good, Chris. And you managed that without a lot of distracting nonsense going on around you.

CHRIS: Don’t patronize me, or I’ll make more happen. Listen, Nathan. I get that you weren’t 100% about this project to begin with, but we’ve done a good job with it so far. You’ve made some good suggestions for plot devices. We’ve made each other laugh. One day, when we’re a little better known, there will even be people who will read this, and thoroughly enjoy it.

(Stubby opens the door.)

STUBBY: They’ll Thorogood enjoy it.

(Stubby closes the door. Sigmund Floyd looks scornfully at Chris.)

CHRIS: Don’t look at me like that. I have no control over him.

NATHAN: I see what you mean, Chris. At least, I hope I do, so that we don’t have yet another episode like this. I think I’m motivated again, and ready to write the last 34 % of this story, and make it the best serial we’ve ever done. Which isn’t too hard since it’s the only one we’ve ever done.

CHRIS: You know. This is a dream sequence. We could totally kiss and it wouldn’t be gay. I mean by the reckoning of Sigmund Freud, it would just symbolize an attraction to our mothers.

NATHAN: Eh, we’d better not. What if this gets made into a movie one day? So what do we do now?

CHRIS: Well, I think we get back to the reality of the situation where we left off. We’re in jail with Miguel, Stubby, Shag, Dentre, and Reece (aka Larry). The door is down, and we don’t know what’s going on. Why did Quincy put Stubby in jail with us in the first place? Was he afraid he wasn’t really Stubby? Was he under orders from the professor? Is Stubby still a threat? Is Quincy still a threat? Are Quincy and Stubby still in cahoots? Can Larry and Dentre (who both seem to have an inkling of what the various villains are up to) shed some light as to what is actually going on? And I think we should segue into that with a “Pulp Fiction” reference.

NATHAN: Interesting point. Now let’s get into character.

[INT – DAY – JAIL]

SHAG: You guys have the trippiest dreams.

CHRIS: You think it’s trippy even when it’s real.

SHAG: Fair enough.

NATHAN: So, Larry.

CHRIS: Reece.

LARRY: Larry!

NATHAN: Do you know if Quincy is still in the building? Is he still a threat? And what about Stubby? Is he still a threat?

(They hear glass shatter. They look over to see that Stubby has broken the picture of David Hyde Pierce, and is holding Sigmund Floyd, who is still played by Kelsey Grammar and seems to have come back with them out of the dream state, by the throat with glass pressed against his carotid artery.)

NATHAN: Aside from that, I mean.

(End Episode Thirty-Three)

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