Fade up on a computer monitor. A young man walks into view, and starts to strip. Pull back to Ted, who's watching at his desk while talking to Emmett and Mike on conference-phone. The screen splits in three to show Ted at work, Emmett arranging a window display, and Mike walking through The Big Q Mart, where he's a manager. They discuss Brian's new status as a father. Mike says the baby has Brian's nose, and Lindsay's eyes. Ted says that if the kid has Mel's dick, they're in big trouble. Yeah, but it's not her dick you should worry about, it's her balls. And my theory is that somehow, she got Michael's. Maybe Brian gave them to her as a peace offering at some point? That plan backfired brilliantly.
A really cute guy stops Michael and asks him where the jockey shorts are. He's so cute, in fact, that he gets like three "damns!" from me, and then another when I rewind so I can take a second look at him. Yeah, I'm in between boyfriends. Why do you ask? Emmett asks Ted if he's looking at cyberporn again. Ted's boss walks in and asks for some file or another. A picture of Michael looking all cute and happy is hidden under the file. So, Ted's crushing on Mikey, huh? Emmett tells Ted that he needs to be careful before his boss catches him surfing "cumquick.com" again. Heh. Ted points out that his boss is both blind and stupid, and it'll never happen. The boys hang up, and Michael voice-overs that Ted's life is like that story by Plato about those prisoners whose only external stimulus was the shadows thrown on the wall, and after a while, they started to believe that the shadows were real and had a life of their own. Like them, Ted's beginning to believe that the perfection found in cyberporn is reality, so he's stopped dealing with reality. Uh, yeah, whatever, Comic-Book Boy.
This next scene is basically why this show doesn't suck. Michael walks across one of the store aisles, and two men pass him carrying baskets, with their arms around each other's waists. On the other side of the aisle, his co-worker, an overweight frowsy blonde, whom Emmett will later refer to as "Fat Marly," giggles, swings her wrist down, and mouths the word "fags." Michael laughs with her, and then hears something hitting the floor. He turns to see the couple's baskets on the ground, and they're gone. Because they SAW YOU, you wuss. It's a choice, Michael. You don't have to humor ignorance just because it's on the path of least resistance. GET. YOUR. BALLS. BACK. FROM. MELANIE. The woman has to sleep sometime. Drug her if you have to.
