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Analysis of Cork-Based Networking

Save Greendale Committee, please welcome our newest member, math teacher Ben Chang.

Okay, let's get serious.

I've compiled a short list of the most immediate Greendale emergencies.

Is deforestation on the list?

I, for one, am glad that this is happening.

What this school needs is a band of heroes, champions willing to rise up and "get all those potatoes out of the gym."

We're like House Vogadash in the HBO original series Bloodlines of Conquest.

BRITTA: Oh, yeah! Bloodlines of Conquest. That's my show right there.

That is a good show.

They really get the incest right.

What the hell is Bloodlines of Conquest?

It's a medieval fantasy series.

It's based on these great books that nobody seems to read.

It's great. It's got betrayal, boobs, espionage, dragons.

Oh, wait, dragons? Is that a spoiler?

I just started Season One.

I don't start watching shows until they're so popular that watching them is no longer a statement.

So because you're three seasons behind, we have to live in a fantasy world where there's no such thing as dragons?

Do we also have to pretend that Lord Stevarios is still alive?

Oops. (ALL GASP)

Oh! BRITTA: Thanks, Abed.

How about I buy all the Bloodlines of Conquest books, read ahead, and spoil the whole series for you?

That's insane. That's something an insane person would do.

ANNIE: Knuckleheads, focus.

Item one, the Greendale student census is out of date.

Britta, Abed, why don't you partner up on that one?

Give you a chance to squash this beef.

Next, the midterm dance is tonight.

Who wants to be on the decorating committee?

Mmm. (CLEARS THROAT)

Fine, I'll do it. I'll do it.

I will be on that committee. Me too.

Are you guys volunteering because you think I'll do all the work?

I wouldn't. No. Not at all.

I don't care enough to lie, so no.

I will reward that honesty by giving you something easy.

A bulletin board fell down in the cafeteria a couple months ago.

Think you can get it hung back up?

I'll give it a drive-by. Great.

We have now completed our first task,

"Have a productive meeting!" (GIGGLING)

For every task that we complete, a star goes on the task wall!

(BIRD TWEETS)

(ALL SCREAM)

♪ Give me some rope Tie me to dream

♪ Give me the hope to run out of steam

♪ Somebody said it can be here

♪ We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year

♪ I can't count the reasons I should stay

♪ One by one they all just fade away ♪

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Brince Ironstone's daughter is his mother!

Brince Ironstone's daughter is his mother!

Hi there.

What can I do for you?

Can you get me a drill, a couple of screws, and a bulletin board?

No, I cannot. Okay, I tried. Bye.

You wanna hang a bulletin board, you need to get a work order from the head janitor.

They get more powerful than you?

Hello, I'm taking the school census.

Please fill out this form, but don't talk to me. I can't hear.

Are you deaf? But you read lips?

Barbagarbagarba garbabarbabarba?

That was gibberish. You're good.

I wish I knew sign language.

Are you going to have another intense burst of compatibility with a girl we never see again?

I can't hear you.

The midterm dance will need a visual theme, like "let's blow off steam," and it's trains.

I have an idea.

Chang, your last idea was to murder.

Edison. The bulletin board's a no-go.

Really? So you did your best, and this task just...

Eludes you?

I have a lifetime of experience with red tape.

I know when to walk away.

Yeah, you do. Hey, Edison.

The system is lazy.

I have integrity, too much to deal with any of it.

I'll do it myself.

And I would love to watch you try.

Okay. I am on bulletin board duty.

You guys are in charge of the dance.

Oh, Professor Pushpin! (LAUGHING)

Jerry, Carlo, Crazy Schmidt. I'm Annie.

You learned our names. I did.

Crazy Schmidt, how are C.J.'s clarinet lessons going?

Whoa.

Well, she's having a little trouble with his left finger lifts, but she's getting there.

Annie, do you want that bulletin board hung up?

Let me put in a work order for you.

There you go.

That should happen in three to six business months.

(LAUGHING)

Any way we could bump that up a little, so it's somewhere above...

"Lower flag for Reagan's death?"

You gotta talk to a custodian for that, we're janitors.

There's a difference?

We were just starting to like you.

HICKEY: Had enough?

I'm just getting started.

What was your stumbling block, being nice?

Look, I admire your idealism, but my guess is that you will be crying uncle before that board ever goes up.

Game on, baby.

BRITTA: Come on, come on, come on.

What? God.

This isn't over!

Here we go. You wanted to get dirty. This is where it starts.

(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)

Deputy Custodian Lapari,

Annie Edison from the Save Greendale Committee.

How's your daughter's soccer...

I'm sorry, this is a closed function.

We do not discuss business at custodial mixers.

But your daughter, soccer.

Daughter, soccer. Yes, thanks for coming.

Hey, get a load of that wood burnt sign.

Did Mr. Whitney in Woodshop make that for you guys?

Yes, that is a Whitney original.

Oh! You know, I noticed that Whitney's bathroom has this amazing toilet.

Flushes like a DC-10 turbine.

Probably exceeds code, but what's wrong with a little friendship between departments?

Now how can our committee be your friend?

Bob?

(LAUGHING) Excuse me.

Chief Custodian Bob Waite, Buzz Hickey, Annie Edison.

Hickey and Edison, something in the job queue...

Bulletin board.

Yeah, we were hoping to get that up...

Let's take a walk.

That's quite a spread, Bob. I'm impressed.

Well, it's election time.

If I don't break out the fancy sausages, my ass goes in the grinder next January.

Keeping my people happy, it's an uphill battle.

For example, look at this.

A lot of the websites we try and visit get blocked by this weird filter thing.

Now let's say I wanted to move a work order for a bulletin board from the bottom of the queue to the top.

Now how can I do that when I'm dealing with this?

HICKEY: They want their porn unblocked.

Then they'll give you your board.

That's what that was? How did you know?

Did you investigate pornography when you were a cop?

Eh, something like that.

So he wants a bribe.

(LAUGHS) Welcome to the labyrinth, kid.

Only there ain't no puppets or bisexual rock stars down here.

And at the center of it all, if you're lucky, a piece of cork and a few pins.

So what, is it worth it?

Is that what a bulletin board is to you, Professor?

A piece of cork?

That's not what it is to people that lose their pets, people that need rides, people whose bad bands need bad bass players.

To them, every pushpin has the power to change the future.

So yes, Professor, it's worth it.

I know a lady in the I.T. department.

Okay, I'll put some food on the tables, we'll lower the lights, and that's a midterm dance.

I guess it could use a little something theme-wise.

I have an idea.

"Bear down for midterms."

What?

"Bear down for midterms."

You can't just repeat it. You need to explain yourself.

It's midterm time.

Mmm-hmm. People have to bear down, study hard, get to work.

It's "bear down for midterms."

Is there a dot I'm not connecting?

Uh-uh. It's a play on words.

"Bear down" is an expression.

I know the expression, Chang.

"Fly on the wall" is an expression, but if I want to pitch "fly on the wall for midterms," you might ask, "what do you mean?"

(SOBBING)

Chang? Are you crying?

I understand I've been crazy in the past, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating to be completely dismissed like this.

I don't know if you guys even see me as human anymore.

I don't know if it's like a joke to you.

Are all Asian men like a joke?

If it's like a racial thing. No.

No! No!

I've paid for my crimes.

Underneath all the craziness, I am still a human, and I...

I do want to make a difference and...

Can you respect that? Please?

Chang...

What can we do here?

Bear down for midterms.

Okay. Okay, well...

We'll... Put up some bear things?

We'll bear down. For midterms.

Okay.

You want me to lift web restrictions solely for custodial?

They need to have full access, so they can research, um...

Custodian stuff.

If the filter is mistakenly blocking a site, they just need to submit the URL, and I can...

Okay, what do you want? Excuse me?

Tell us what we can do for you so that you can do this for us.

Oh. Cool.

I... I didn't know it could work that way.

I guess I could use decent parking.

Right now they make me park in Annex B.

Like a... (SIGHS)

Lunch lady.

Our committee can talk to Parking.

But, Debra, let's be clear.

I want everything to get through that porn blocker.

What do you mean everything?

Everything!

Understood.

(LAUGHING) I'm very happy right now.

So just bears everywhere? CHANG: Yep.

And then we'll have some cakes, party hats, birthday stuff! (CHUCKLES)

This is coming together better than I thought.

I'm sorry, birthday stuff?

Yes, Duncan. Okay, I'm sorry.

Birthday stuff.

Well, I've been sad to see that bulletin board down in the cafeteria for so long.

I've always had a passion for bulletins.

If parking for the IT guy puts that board back where it belongs,

I won't stand in the way.

You know what you need, speaking as a fan of bulletins...

You need to have the Dean appoint someone to oversee them, to make sure bulletins stay organized and protected.

I'll do it. We could look into that.

Well, not to be that guy, but, uh...

You think you could look into that before I do this for you?

You want to control all the bulletin boards in the school. Why?

You might want to start talking turkey, Waldron, because the Macy's Parade is almost over, and Grandma's getting drunk.

Do you know where my department's power comes from, Miss Edison?

Parking spaces. Wrong.

There was plenty of space to park in dinosaur times, but not one single parking department.

My power comes from a scarcity of parking, just like your dad's comes from a lack of hugs.

And you know what takes my power away?

Carpools.

Carpools organized through ride shares.

Ride shares posted on bulletin boards, you son of a...

You can take the books off your head because we're done posturing.

You want me to talk turkey, well, gobble gobble.

I want ride shares gone.

Let's get out of here. All right.

What? I'll talk to the Dean.

I must say, I don't know what we did, but we sure did the hell out of it.

I guess the key to dance decoration is just pick an idea.

And then bear down. Right, buddy?

Here are your sodas.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, pretty great. Yeah. Bear down, baby.

Too soon, you guys. This is way too soon.

Too soon for wha... Too soon for this!

After this morning in Wisconsin?

Bear breaks loose at a kid's birthday party, mauls a whole bunch of people?

Why am I explaining this when this is obviously a ghoulish reference to it?

The news has been covering it all morning!

That's where I got the idea.

You know how sometimes you hear something and forget you heard it, but you think you came up with...

Oh, man. This is bad.

(SNAPS FINGERS) We're in crisis mode now.

We really messed up, you guys.

An office of bulletin board oversight.

Ah, what a novel idea.

I'm gonna fill out this form right away.

But first, a toast.

To hanging a bulletin board.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Uh, first time toasting? Get in here, buddy.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

I'm not saying that.

Ah, well, I hate to be that guy, but I'm not signing this form until professor Hickey says "Easy peasy, lemon squeezy."

Damn it, Annie. Don't do this.

Whatever you've got in your butt, can we get it out later?

When, after he signs it? After it's all too late?

Annie? You petty old man.

When we started this,

I thought you'd get a taste of the system and spit it out, not open a bottling plant.

You're just like all the people that...

What? The people that put you here?

The people in the big machine that made you fail?

You went from being a cop to teaching Criminology because of the system, right?

Unfortunately for Greendale, you have to prove it by getting nothing done.

Well, here's a bulletin for you...

"Annie Edison doesn't get nothing done."

Yow. And where should I put that bulletin, Edison, on a sham piece of cork controlled by a parking guy that lights his cigars on student ride shares?

(GASPS) My God, Annie.

What kind of labyrinth have you created?

Certainly not the magic kind with puppets and macho rock stars.

You whored yourself out, kid.

You wanted that board so bad that you made every board on campus worthless, and in doing so made the school just a shade dirtier.

I thought better of you, young lady.

Oh, man. This got Sorkin-y.

Yeah, well, I didn't think anything in particular of you, and now I see why!

Okay, I didn't follow most of that, but it feels like I ought to do this.

Hmm?

Oh, hey, Annie.

Um... What do you think?

"Fat dog for midterms"?

Yeah! Pretty cool.

I don't understand.

It's an expression. "Fat dog for midterm."

Like, don't sweat it, fat dog it.

Hang out, relax, like a fat dog. Bah!

You can look it up on Wikipedia.

There's an entry in there. Yep.

I never... Okay.

I just... I feel like I'm missing...

You know, Annie, um...

Sometimes it feels like you don't take us seriously.

Aw. Yeah, I guess we bring it on ourselves, but it's still pretty frustrating.

Annie, is this a race thing?

Race! No! God, no!

You guys! I accept that it's an expression, but I don't see the connection to...

You're overthinking, Annie. It's decorating.

Just pick an idea and bear down on it.

Um, really poor choice of words, Ben... Too soon.

But you guys are right.

I'm sorry. I've had a really hard day.

I need to just...

Fat dog this concept.

Fat dog! Fat dog it, baby!

♪ I'm a lover, not a fighter

♪ You know I keep it squeaky clean

♪ You can't wear that dress no tighter

♪ But you can get closer to me

♪ When I get up

♪ In the morning

♪ I got you inside my head

♪ We could get down

♪ If you wanna

♪ I want you inside my bed

♪ Don't get too close to me

♪ With your man ♪

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Abed, but to the spoiler goes the victory.

But I really liked her.

She probably likes you too, but she also likes cash.

I'm devastated.

Now I feel bad. But...

You learned a lesson, and I gave a differently abled person a job.

Oh, no, now I really feel bad. Wait, no. Come back!

Let's be fat dogs about this.

Hello.

What happened to you?

Nothing. You never called.

I'm sorry.

That was the year of the gas leak, but I won't use that as an excuse.

I can be inconsiderate and a lot of other things.

Me too.

I guess I could've put in some effort.

Would you like to go to lunch sometime?

No, I'd like to go to dinner. Now.

I can do that.

I started this coat check without permission anyway.

(MORE THAN THIS PLAYING)

♪ I could feel at the time

♪ There was no way of knowing

♪ Fallen leaves in the night

♪ Who can say where they're blowing

♪ As free as the wind

♪ Hopefully learning

♪ Why the sea on the tide

♪ Has no way of turning

♪ More than this

♪ You know there's nothing

♪ More than this ♪

(DRILLING)

(INHALES DEEPLY)

Whew.

PELTON: Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.

Excuse me!

(SIGHS)

(SCREAMING)

(ALL SHOUTING)

All right, all right! Enough!

(SIGHS) Let's go.

Thanks.

Thanks.

CHANG: Let's do it again!

♪ There's a brand-new dance

♪ Based on an old phrase

♪ It's called the fat dog, and it will amaze

♪ You've heard this expression your entire life

♪ It's not made up, it's not made up

♪ There's a brand-new dance based on an old phrase

♪ It's called the fat dog, and it will amaze

♪ You've heard this expression ♪

It's a bear dance!

(GROANS)

(DIAL TONE)

FEMALE AUTOMATED VOICE: You've reached Greendale faculty office supply.

For pencils, pens, and markers, press one.

For tape, glue, and adhesives, press two.

For staples, paper clips, and fasteners, press three.

Mmm. MALE AUTOMATED VOICE: For marigold, press four.

(BEEPING)

Marigold. For Obsidian, press one.

For Aqua Cerulean, press two.

For Arcadia, press three.

(BEEPING)

Enter activation code.

Confirmed. Arcadia initiated.

MAN: What's your clearance level?

Top.

You really want to activate this, sir?

Yeah. Oh! No. no!

Can you... (DEEP VOICE) Cancel it.

Wait, who are you? Who... Who is this?

It's not... I'm...

(PLANE FLYING OVERHEAD)

(SIGHS)

Right in front of you, stupid. Ah.

Did you get any of that?