The Pitch (Dumb...Huh?) - Tealy and the Crew

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Nobody knew where DumbDird had gotten hundreds of dollars.

Tealy had asked once and DumbDird had said "Durr, Dumb Snacks" which was technically a plausible answer given that Dumb Snacks was somehow a thriving commercial enterprise, and Tealy had decided to accept it and move on with his life.

The trip had been announced in the group chat at 6 AM on a Saturday with the message:

"DURR GOING TO NETFLIX HQ BRB"

Followed immediately by a photo of DumbDird at what appeared to be a bus station, wearing the sequined game show jacket from Dumb...Huh?, holding a laptop that was almost certainly the same one from his pants, and smiling with the luminous confidence of someone who had never once considered that this might not work.

Dird had read the message, typed a response, deleted it, and put his phone away.

Blara had sent a thumbs up emoji solely because it required the least effort.

Beric had asked which bus route he was taking, for reasons that were unclear but probably logistical.

Tealy had stared at the photo for a full minute and then gone back to sleep, because there was nothing to be done and he needed the rest.

DumbDird had walked into Netflix headquarters.

The specifics of how he had gotten past the front desk were not fully known. When asked later, DumbDird said "Durr, I just went in" which explained nothing and yet somehow felt complete. The current working theory was that the sequined jacket had conveyed enough ambiguous authority that someone had simply let him through, which said something about either DumbDird or Netflix or both.

He had found a room with people in it.

He had opened the laptop.

He had played Dumb...Huh? in its entirety, all nineteen minutes including the three minutes of camera adjustment at the beginning, to what turned out to be a small group of Netflix employees who had been trying to have a meeting about something completely unrelated.

They had watched it.

DumbDird relayed the story to the full group upon his return, still in the sequined jacket, somehow no worse for wear, eating a gas station sandwich he had acquired at some point during the journey.

"Durr," he said, "they laughed."

The room was quiet.

"They laughed," Tealy repeated.

"DURR, YEAH. AT THE CATAPULT PART. AND THE UltraDumbDird part. Durr, and when Beric went really far."

Beric nodded with quiet dignity. His contribution to the laugh track, even in absentia, had been acknowledged.

"Durr, and then—" DumbDird paused for effect, which he had never done before and which caused everyone to lean in slightly against their will— "Durr, they said."

He took a bite of the gas station sandwich.

Chewed.

"DURR, THEY SAID IT COULD BE ON NETFLIX."

The silence that followed was a different kind of silence than before. It was the silence of multiple people's brains attempting to process something that technically made sense but felt structurally impossible.

"It could be on Netflix," Dird said slowly.

"DURR, YEAH."

"Dumb...Huh?"

"DURR, YEAH—"

"The show that has—" Dird paused, checked his phone— "currently forty-two views—"

"DURR, FORTY TWO, WE'RE GROWING—"

"Could be on Netflix."

"DURR, YES, BUT—" DumbDird held up a finger— "Durr, they said it needs way better editing."

Another silence.

"The editing," Tealy said.

"Durr, yeah."

"You mean the editing where the first three minutes is you adjusting the camera."

"Durr, yeah, they mentioned that specifically."

"And the part where the camera falls over sideways for a minute and a half and nobody fixed it."

"Durr, yeah."

"And the part where you accidentally filmed the floor for the entirety of Dird's round."

Dird's head turned sharply. "You filmed the FLOOR for my round."

"Durr, the camera slipped—"

"I caught the taco PERFECTLY—"

"Durr, I know, it was a great catch, Dird, I saw it live—"

"THERE'S NO FOOTAGE—"

"DURR, I REMEMBER IT—"

"THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING—"

The editing issue was, upon reflection, substantial.

Beric pulled up the video on his phone and they went through it with the grim focus of a medical examination. The findings were extensive. The camera had been at the wrong angle for approximately sixty percent of the runtime. There were three separate moments where DumbDird had walked directly in front of the lens. The catapult, the show's single greatest asset, had been partially obscured by what appeared to be a folding chair that nobody had moved. The title card at the beginning was a JPEG of the handwritten sign from the set, photographed slightly crookedly, with a finger visible in the corner.

The finger was unidentified. Nobody claimed it.

"Right," said Beric, setting his phone down with the composure of a man who had just diagnosed a serious but treatable condition. "I can fix this."

Everyone looked at him.

"I do tech," he said simply. "Editing's tech. Give me the raw footage."

DumbDird's eyes went wide. "DURR, YOU'LL DO IT?!"

"I want to see the catapult footage properly framed," Beric said, and this was clearly the primary motivation, and nobody questioned it because it was a completely valid reason.

Dird, who had been sitting with his arms folded and his expression unreadable for the past several minutes, spoke.

"If this ends up on Netflix," he said carefully, "I want it on record that my taco catch was exceptional and the lack of footage is a documentary failure of significant magnitude."

"Durr, noted—"

"I want a re-shoot of that round."

"DURR, WE CAN DO THAT—"

"With the camera in the correct position."

"DURR, YES—"

"And I want," Dird said, with the quiet gravity of a man negotiating something important, "a second taco. For damages."

DumbDird considered this for approximately zero seconds.

"DURR, DONE."

Dird unfolded his arms. Matter settled.

Tealy sat back and looked at the ceiling.

Dumb...Huh? Edited. Reshot. Potentially on Netflix. Born from a YouTube video with forty-two views, one comment written over four days with assistance from an angry old man and a traffic cone, applied to Netflix in an email that had listed said traffic cone as a member of the fanbase, pitched in person by a man in a sequined jacket who had simply walked into the building and played the whole thing including the camera adjustment section.

And it had worked. Partially. Conditionally. But it had worked.

"DumbDird," Tealy said.

"Durr, yeah Tally?"

Tealy looked at him.

"How did you get in."

DumbDird smiled the smile of a man with no enemies and no doubts.

"Durr," he said, "I just went in, Tally."

Tealy nodded slowly.

That was going to have to be enough.

Outside, Beric was already asking about the raw footage files. Dird was eating his second taco preemptively. Blara had found the snack table that had allegedly not existed at the original filming and was making up for lost time.

Episode two, Tealy realized, was actually going to happen.

With a bigger catapult.

He was, he noticed, forty percent looking forward to it.

He was taking that to his grave.

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