Dumb...Huh? Episode 4 - Tealy and the Crew
The production meeting for episode four had lasted twenty-five minutes, which was twenty-four minutes longer than any previous production meeting because Beric had insisted on one after the CleaningBot incident, citing "structural surprises" as a concern he wanted to get ahead of.
DumbDird had presented the updates on a piece of paper that said, in its entirety:
"DURR UPDATES: 1. TADA EMOJI NEXT TO THE THUMBS UP 2. VR HEADSET (PEPPA PIG) 3. CONTESTANS"
Beric had looked at this document for a while.
"The VR headset," he said.
"DURR, YEAH—"
"Playing Peppa Pig."
"DURR, YEAH, WHILE YOU FLY—"
"So if you lose," Beric said carefully, "you are catapulted into a thumbs up balloon and a tada emoji balloon, while watching Peppa Pig in VR."
"DURR, YES, BERIC, IT'S IMMERSIVE—"
Beric nodded slowly with the expression of a man updating a risk assessment in real time.
"I'm setting up four cameras this time," he said.
The new balloon arrangement had been installed by DumbDird at 7 AM the day of filming.
The 🎉 balloon was slightly larger than the 👍 balloon, which Beric had noted was an interesting compositional choice and DumbDird had confirmed was not a choice, he had just bought the wrong size. It floated next to its companion above the catapult launch arc with the cheerful energy of something that did not know it was about to repeatedly make contact with people at speed.
The VR headset sat on a small table next to the catapult, already loaded with Peppa Pig, which DumbDird had confirmed was fully queued and ready and would start playing the moment it was strapped on.
"Which episode," Greeny asked, examining the headset with the evaluating look he gave all technology.
"Durr, the one where Peppa jumps in muddy puddles," DumbDird said.
"That's most of them."
"Durr, yeah, it's a good one."
The new constestans — yes, constestans, Tealy had checked the call sheet DumbDird had printed, it said constestans, it had always been constestans, this was apparently the word now — had assembled backstage with varying degrees of comprehension about what was happening.
The Groomba had arrived first, which was less of an arrival and more of an already-being-there situation, because Greeny had brought it and Greeny was always early. The Groomba was Greeny's own project, a Roomba-adjacent device that differed from a Roomba in several ways that Greeny could explain at length and which Tealy had stopped listening to around the third technical specification. It was slightly larger than a standard Roomba. It had more sensors. It had Greeny's conversational AI installed, version two, updated following the CleaningBot incident to include what Greeny described as "better social calibration" and "more appropriate response timing."
Tealy looked at it.
It looked back, insofar as a disc-shaped floor robot could look at anything.
"Hello," said the Groomba, in a voice that was noticeably less annoying than the CleaningBot's. "I have already mapped this room. The floor is adequately clean but the corners are suboptimal."
"Durr, great," said DumbDird.
"I am also ready to play your game," said the Groomba.
"Durr, great—"
"The corners are still suboptimal though," said the Groomba.
"DURR, AFTER THE SHOW—"
"They will still be suboptimal after the show," said the Groomba, with the patient certainty of something that had already accepted this and was simply noting it for the record.
Greeny watched this exchange with quiet scientific interest and wrote something down.
The paper towel roll had been placed on a stool backstage by DumbDird at some point during setup.
Nobody asked. Nobody was going to ask. It was a standard paper towel roll, full, upright on the stool, participating in the pre-show atmosphere with the passive dignity of an object that had no opinions about any of this because it was a paper towel roll.
Tealy looked at it for a moment.
"DumbDird," he said.
"Durr, yeah Tally?"
"Why."
"Durr," DumbDird said, with the tone of someone explaining something obvious, "it's a wild card, Tally."
Tealy looked at the paper towel roll.
The paper towel roll did not react.
"It can't say Dumb," Tealy said.
"Durr, we'll see."
"It's a paper towel roll."
"Durr, Tally, the CleaningBot couldn't say Dumb on time either and look what happened."
This was, infuriatingly, a coherent point.
And then there was Berrick.
Tealy's cousin.
Tealy had known Berrick was coming because DumbDird had mentioned it, and knowing had not prepared him, because knowing about Berrick and being in the same room as Berrick were two experiences that shared almost no overlap.
Berrick arrived twenty minutes late, which was early for Berrick, through the wrong door, which was on-brand for Berrick, already talking, which was constant for Berrick.
"—and THEN I said to him, I said, listen, I said, listen, that's not how any of this works, I said, because what you've got to understand, what you've GOT to understand is that the situation, the entire situation, is fundamentally—" Berrick stopped, looked around the room, appeared to notice for the first time that he had arrived somewhere. "Oh. Hey Tealy."
"Hey Berrick," said Tealy.
"Is this the catapult show?"
"Yes."
"SICK," said Berrick, at a volume that suggested the word had been stored under pressure. He looked at the catapult. Looked at the balloons. Looked at the VR headset. Looked back at Tealy with the eyes of someone whose internal monologue ran at approximately three times normal speed and occasionally lapped itself. "Is the Peppa Pig in the headset? DumbDird said Peppa Pig. I watched Peppa Pig for six hours last Tuesday. Not because I had to. I just— I got into it. I got really into it. Peppa's got a point, Tealy. Peppa's got a whole— she's onto something. The muddy puddles thing is a philosophy. It's an entire—"
"Berrick," said Tealy.
"Yeah?"
"Stand over there."
Berrick went and stood over there, still talking, pivoting seamlessly to a new topic that appeared to be about a specific intersection he had walked through that morning that had inspired strong feelings.
DumbDird watched him with pure delight.
"Durr, I like him," DumbDird said.
"I know," said Tealy. "That's the problem."
Round One: The Groomba.
The Groomba rolled to the podium platform — Beric had made the platform adjustable this time, accounting for the CleaningBot precedent — and settled into position with a small self-orienting beep.
"I am ready," said the Groomba. "Also the left corner near the entrance is collecting dust at an above-average rate. I mention this for awareness."
"Durr, noted," said DumbDird.
"Thank you. I am ready."
DumbDird faced the Groomba.
The silence began.
Three seconds.
"Huh?" said DumbDird.
"Dumb," said the Groomba.
On time. Correct. Not ten seconds late. Not early. The timing was, by any reasonable standard, good.
The room looked at Greeny.
Greeny allowed himself a small, controlled nod. Version two. Better social calibration. More appropriate response timing. Working as intended.
The taco arrived. The Groomba looked at it with its sensors.
"I cannot eat this," said the Groomba.
"Durr, that's okay—"
"I will clean up after whoever does eat it," said the Groomba.
"Durr, great—"
"The corner," said the Groomba.
"DURR, AFTER THE SHOW—"
The Groomba beeped once and rolled back to its position with the dignified energy of an entity that had won the round and also had opinions about the corners that were not going away.
Greeny wrote something down.
Round Two: The Paper Towel Roll.
DumbDird carried the paper towel roll to the podium himself and stood it upright on the surface with gentle ceremony.
It stood there.
DumbDird faced it.
The silence began.
Camera one was on DumbDird. Camera two was on the paper towel roll. Camera three was on the catapult. Camera four, a Beric addition for this episode, was a wide shot covering the entire stage, and it caught something that the other cameras missed, which was the collective expression of every person in the room watching DumbDird stare at a paper towel roll in complete seriousness.
"Huh?" said DumbDird.
The paper towel roll said nothing, because it was a paper towel roll.
The silence continued.
DumbDird waited the customary amount of time with the customary amount of patience.
Then the VR headset was strapped to the paper towel roll.
This required improvisation on DumbDird's part, as the headset was designed for a head and the paper towel roll was a cylinder with no head, and the resulting configuration involved the headset sitting on top of the roll at a slight angle, technically playing Peppa Pig to no one, which was either sad or funny depending on how you were processing the afternoon.
The catapult launched.
The paper towel roll hit the thumbs up balloon. Hit the tada balloon. The 🎉 spun. The VR headset, which had not been strapped on so much as balanced, separated from the paper towel roll at the moment of balloon contact and continued on a slightly different trajectory, and the paper towel roll and the VR headset cleared the back wall in tandem but separately, like a pair of things that had briefly known each other.
From beyond the wall, the sound of Peppa Pig's voice, tinny and distant, played for approximately three seconds before stopping.
The room was silent.
"Durr," said DumbDird, looking at the wall.
"Yeah," said Tealy.
"Durr, the headset's okay, Beric made it—"
"I reinforced the casing, yeah," said Beric, who had anticipated exactly this.
The Groomba beeped.
"There are now paper towel sheets in the corner," it said. "This is making the corner situation significantly worse."
Round Three: Berrick.
Berrick had been talking continuously since his arrival, a background hum of observation and association that the room had collectively adapted to the way you adapt to a sound you can't turn off. He walked to the podium still mid-sentence.
"—because the thing about timing, the THING about timing, is that it's all about the gap, it's always about the gap, the gap between the thing and the other thing, that's where everything lives, that's where—"
He reached the podium and stopped.
Looked at DumbDird.
DumbDird looked back.
Something happened in Berrick's eyes that suggested he had, possibly for the first time since arriving, achieved a single point of focus.
The silence began.
"Huh?" said DumbDird.
"DUMB!" said Berrick, with the full force of a person who had been monologuing about timing and gaps for forty-five minutes and had arrived at the podium in precisely the right state of mind to understand, on an instinctive level, what was being asked of him.
It was perfectly timed. It was, if anything, enthusiastically perfectly timed, the word DUMB delivered with the energy of someone releasing something.
The taco arrived.
Berrick caught it, looked at it, and immediately began talking about tacos.
"—because the thing about tacos, and I've been saying this, I've been saying this for YEARS, is that the structural integrity is—"
"Durr, nice job Berrick," said DumbDird.
"—fundamentally compromised by the shell geometry, like you've got this— oh, thanks DumbDird, you too, but you've got this SHELL and the shell is—"
Tealy watched his cousin walk back to the sideline still talking and felt the complicated emotion of someone who understood, against their will, exactly how Berrick had gotten that right.
Round Four: Tealy.
Tealy had been in the previous two episodes. He had a taco. He had his dignity, mostly. He was going to get this right again, go home, and eat something that wasn't a Banana Nacho gummy for once.
He walked to the podium.
He waited.
"Huh?" said DumbDird.
"Dumb," said Tealy.
Taco. Caught. Done.
He turned to walk back.
"DURR, TWO FOR TWO, TALLY—"
"Yeah," said Tealy, without turning around.
Behind him, Berrick had resumed the structural integrity monologue and was now applying it to the VR headset, which he had apparently been thinking about the entire time.
The Groomba beeped.
"The corner," it said.
"I KNOW," said DumbDird.
The episode ran fifty-eight minutes.
Beric had given the paper towel roll its own slow motion sequence. The separation from the VR headset at balloon impact was, in slow motion, genuinely beautiful in the way that completely unplanned things sometimes are. The headset arced one way. The paper towel roll arced another. The Peppa Pig audio had been cleaned up in post and you could hear it clearly for the full three seconds before it cut out.
Beric had also, in what Tealy considered the editorial decision of the season, included a two-second cutaway during Berrick's podium round to the Groomba in the background, slowly rotating to face the corner, then rotating back.
The post-credits scene was the Groomba cleaning the corners in silence, alone on the empty set, the balloons still floating above the catapult, completely unbothered, methodical, finally doing what it had come here to do.
Tealy sent one message to the group chat after watching the cut.
"The Groomba post-credits is genuinely good"
Dird reacted with 👍
DumbDird sent two ads for Dumb...Huh? and a photo of the tada balloon.
Blara posted cheese.
Greeny replied: "The Groomba has been informed. It said, and I quote, 'the corners are still suboptimal.'"
Berrick sent a voice message that was four minutes and thirty seconds long.
Nobody listened to it.
Dird reacted to it with 👍
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