Written by Erica Rivinoja

In the annual Clone High Film Festival, Abe Lincoln pours his heart into a movie about a football-playing giraffe, Cleopatra stars in an epic about her own perfect life, Joan of Arc directs an avant-garde film declaring her love for Abe, and Gandhi teams up with George Washington Carver for a hilarious mixed-race action comedy, Black and Tan. Plus, Principal Scudworth panics when his bosses come over for dinner, but the loyal Mr. B keeps his cool. Butler-wise.

THE GREATEST JOKE EVER WRITTEN
Friends, today I would like to talk about my friend Erica Rivinoja, who wrote this episode. I call her my “friend” though she never calls me or hangs out with me outside of work, or work-related social functions. So maybe “acquaintance” or “work buddy” would be a better word. Plus, she usually avoids eye contact when I run into her at parties. But I digress. Erica is great. Some people might call her “dry-witted” or “sardonic” or “wry” or “Sarah Silvermanesque.” But she is more than that. She is “Rivinojesque.”
One of the best things about Erica is that she prefers to come up with jokes while she is writing her scripts, outside of the writing room. Typically, for each episode, all the writers outline the episode together, then go scene by scene adding potential jokes, in a process called a “joke-pass.” Erica prefers to work without a joke-pass. This means, when we are shown the first draft of her scripts, they is filled with jokes that we haven’t seen before. I love this.
The Greatest Joke Ever Written that I want to talk about today is one of these jokes that Erica came up with outside of the writers’ room. This means I have no idea where it came from, or why it exists. It’s just a really funny joke. And it goes a little something like this:
When the Shadowy Figures tell Principal Scudworth that they need to meet with him to discuss work problems, Scudworth suggests they have dinner at the Olive Garden.
That’s it. The Olive Garden. Scudworth really likes the Olive Garden, and that makes me laugh. Now, of course, there is a second part to this joke, which if you’ve seen the episode you already know, but when Erica first turned in her script, the exchange went like this:
SHADOWY FIGURE: (MENACING) I think this is an issue we should talk about... in person.
SCUDWORTH: Oh, maybe we could have dinner. Perhaps the Olive Garden. It’s so authentic! All the waiters look like Tony Danza!
MR. BUTLERTRON: Some of them are Tony Danza.
The Tony Danza joke is pretty funny, but like a lot of things that are pretty funny, it got rewritten. In the next draft, the joke went like this:
SHADOWY FIGURE: (MENACING) I think this is an issue we should talk about... in person.
SCUDWORTH: (EXCITED) Maybe we could have dinner. Perhaps the Olive Garden. It’s like eating in the private kitchen of a racist Italian stereotype!
This joke got a huge laugh at the table read, which usually means it’s a keeper.
But there is a department at the studio called “E&O.” I don’t know what “E&O” stands for, but I do know what their job is. Their job is to tell us all the things that we can’t say for legal reasons. Usually, this means the death of a joke. But sometimes when Phil and Chris really like something that they aren’t allowed to do, they “deliberate” with E&O. By “deliberate” I mean “argue.” In this case, Phil and Chris learned that the reason we couldn’t say this joke is because we call the Olive Garden racist. This is probably a valid point. Phil and Chris suggested that we change the word “racist” to something more positive, and E&O agreed. The compromised scene now plays like this:
SHADOWY FIGURE: (MENACING) I think this is an issue we should talk about... in person.
SCUDWORTH: (EXCITED) Maybe we could have dinner. Perhaps the Olive Garden. It’s like eating in the private kitchen of a delightful Italian stereotype!
In the end, Everyone agreed that this is actually funnier than the previous version of the line. And everyone lived happily ever after. Except for the Olive Garden, probably, but who cares. Their breadsticks are too buttery and gross.

GLOSSARY: -WISE
If you’ve been paying attention, you probably know by now that we at Clone High really enjoy language, and the patterns in the way people talk. In this episode, Erica wrote a line where Cleo describes herself as “incredibly well-endowed, boob-wise.” Later, when Abe talks to Joan, he puts his hand on her chest and says she needs to open up what she has there, “heart-wise.” I don’t know why the use of “wise” is so funny. Maybe it’s because it’s usually used when the speaker doesn’t have a better word to express what they are trying to say. Maybe it’s just because it’s a weird thing that we all do. Whatever the case, since this episode, all of us in the Clone High office employ the gratuitous use of “wise” in our daily conversations. There was a point when it got out of hand, where you might catch someone ordering “a sandwich with extra meat, ham-wise,” or asking if you thought “the latest episode of Friends was any good, Aniston-wise.” There’s nothing like overusing a joke to kill it, so we’ve since taken it down a notch, wise-wise, but we still chuckle when we hear someone else using the sloppy term. And you should too.

DOUG HIS OWN GRAVE, OR, WELCOME MATT
In the teaser, the Narrator says “Hey, you miss an episode, it’s your funeral. I’m talking to you, Doug.” Then we cut to a guy sitting eating a sandwich. We chose the name “Doug” because that was our intern at the time. Doug was a dude from Dartmouth who was recommended by Phil and Chris’s old animation professor. He was way cooler than any of the writers. He wore sunglasses. He had a girlfriend with a hot New Zealand accent. He once drank an entire mini-bottle of Jim Beam right in the writers room. In short, he was way too cool to be our intern. After his semester as an intern ended, Doug went on to have a lucrative career in the banking world.
When it came time to shoot the video for this teaser, Doug was long gone, living halfway across the country. Therefore, the guy you see on your TV screen playing the part of Doug is actually our P.A., Matt. Matt is in L.A. trying to make it as an actor. Wasn’t he convincing as a Doug? If you are a casting director and would like to contact Matt for future acting possibilities, you can reach him at (310) 720-7801.

SO CLOSE, YET SO FART AWAY
Sometimes, it’s really, really fortunate that we have a woman in the writers’ room. At one point, the end of Act One was rewritten like this: after Joan and Abe shared a really poignant moment, Abe lifted up his leg and let out a huge fart. Then we cut to a card that read, “Clone High USA: For your Emmy consideration.” Erica was more than a little uneasy that we were doing such a blatant fart joke... especially in the episode that had her name on it. (This from the lady who wrote for South Park.) Still, all the guy writers couldn’t stop laughing like 12 year olds. Eventually, Phil and Chris decided that Erica was right and the scene was changed.

ALTERNATE ENDING: MORE HASSELHOFF THAN IT'S WORTH
In this episode, the obligatory extra ending that was eventually cut was a callback to a line that was also cut. After Joan shows her avant garde film proclaiming her love for Abe, nobody understands it... except for a German sitcom producer named Aaron Schpelling who thinks it’s brilliant. He offers Joan a sitcom deal. Then, after the scenes from next week’s episode, the Narrator says “Now stay tuned for Shnitzel Hausen!” We cut to Joan’s German sitcom, which went like this:
The screen is black and two lips appear.
DAVID HASSELHOFF: You won’t believe it! My boss is coming over for dinner!
APPLE PIE: But that’s the same night as the Celine Dion-a-thon!
A clock ticks. Two dolphins jump out of the water. They dissolve into tears, which are coming out of Hasselhoff’s eyes. SITCOM LAUGHTER. The piece of pie corrodes in time lapse. LOUDER SITCOM LAUGHTER.
A low note on a bag pipe alternates with someone COUGHING. David Hasselhoff slaps a watermelon. SITCOM LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE.
ANGLE ON TWO GERMANS watching this show on TV.
GERMAN 1: Do you think Joan will ever get together with Abe?
Hilarious.

HISTORICAL JOKE GRAVEYARD
Just one this week: During the opening scene, both Mr. Sheepman and Abe get pelted in the head by apples thrown by Cy Young.

Have your pets spayed or neutered,
~Pun Dog (insert hilarious picture of a dog here that changes every week)