[Loree and Chris are back to their usual spots on the couch. Loree seems extremely happy, while Chris is in a bit of a funk.]
Loree: Welcome back to “We’re Richter, Too!” Our latest show has proved to be one of our most popular ever! Thank you all for your continued support.
Chris: Susan and I’ll get you back for that. Someday, somehow, you’ll pay for our public humiliation.
Loree: Does this mean you two are a couple now?
Chris: No.
Loree: Aww. You two are so kyoot together! And besides, with our increased popularity, some of us have gotten parts in other pieces of fiction.
Chris: Well, whoop de doo for you and Dave.
Loree: Somebody had to be first. It was natural for me to be the pioneer.
Chris: And Dave?
Loree: Actually, I don’t know why Dave was chosen. Enough about this, let’s get on with today’s show.
Chris: *sigh* All right. Fortunately, today’s episode is less about embarrassing ourselves than it is about embarrassing our third floor neighbors.
Loree: It’s time for another storyline from a second story perspective. Today is “Beach Blanket Bungle” or, as we have called it, “Life’s a Beach.”
Chris: Roll ‘em.
[Screen flickers and the movie starts. Darryl is walking down the hall, carrying his clipboard. Mikey can be heard running around screaming upstairs. A door flies open and textbook is flung out slamming into the other wall. Elsa storms out and begins stomping on it.]
Elsa: I hate this stupid language!! Hate it! Hate it! Hate it!
Darryl: I take it your studying isn’t going well?
Elsa: Nein! [curses in German] I’m even starting to dream in it.
[Elsa soon calms down, picks up her book and goes back into her room. Darryl continues on his way. Doby runs up behind him and starts shaking him franticly.]
Doby: Have you seen my textbooks, Darryl? I need them!
Darryl: Sorry.
Doby: I could only find half of one! Have you seen my notes anywhere?
Darryl: You have notes?
Doby: Do you know what any of my classes are?
Darryl: If I remember correctly, you’re a communications major. Does that help?
Doby: I’m gonna fail!! AAAAHHH!!
[Doby dashes off down the hallway, screaming.]
Darryl: It’s always hectic before finals.
[Susan staggers by, seemingly unaware of his presence. Darryl stops to stare at her.]
Susan: [singing] …The hip bone’s connected to the…back bone. The back bone’s connected to the…collar bone. The collar bone’s connected to the…head bone. And that’s the way it goes…
[She walks off. Darryl enters the lounge. Leon, Chris, and Dave are in there. Leon and Chris are sobbing.]
[Dave is fiddling around with a circuit board and adjusting the components.]
Dave: Cold…cold…cold…*zzzztt* LIVE!
[A spark jumps between his ears. Darryl turns to Chris, who is surrounded by ball and stick models and sheets of notes.]
Chris: *sob* I can’t tell one polypeptide from another! They all look alike. They all look alike! I can’t even sequence them properly. Wa haha.
[Chris blows his nose in his notes.]
Chris: Aw nuts. I needed those.
[Loree barges into the room and storms up to Darryl, notepad and pencil in hand.]
Loree: And what are your personal feelings on this matter?!
Darryl: What matter?
Loree: Are you blind? Don’t you care about your school at all?!!
Darryl: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
[Scribbles furiously on pad.]
Loree: AH HA! RA denies everything! Cover up suspected! People demand investigation! Yes! Excellent!
[Loree dashes out of the room and slams the door behind her. Darryl shakes his head and leaves the lounge. He enters the kitchenette. Fred, Jennifer, Jim, and Chris Edwards are in there. They have two coffee makers steadily bubbling in the middle of the table. Fred is absentmindedly eating one of his textbooks.]
Jim: Why are you eating your textbook?
Fred: You are what you eat, man. I’m learning through ingestion. Tastes good, too.
Darryl: Is it just me, or has everyone around here gone insane?
Jen: And I suppose you are completely and totally prepared for your finals?
Darryl: Yes, actually. I just put the last touches on my final project. Want to see it? I’m pretty proud of it.
Jen: Sure, I could use an excuse for a break.
[Jen, Edwards, and Jim follow Darryl into his room. Sitting on his desk is a large model of a bridge.]
Darryl: What do you think? Something isn’t it?
Jen: It’s a bridge.
Ed: No offense, but what’s so special about it?
Darryl: [smiling] Philistines! This is the bridge to end all bridges. I’ve carefully designed it so that it can last over 150 years. An entire convoy of armored trucks filled with gold, protected by tanks, can safely go over it in the middle of a typhoon and an earthquake at 7.6 on the Richter scale. It could last forever!
Tony: [up above] CINDY IN A BATHING SUIT!
[The shout echoes through the second floor and all is silent. Above Darryl’s desk, a textbook precariously balanced on a shelf wobbles and falls off. It smashes into the model and causes it to topple over and fall to the floor. Darryl gets on his knees and picks up some of the pieces, staring at them in disbelief.]
Jen: Apparently, it can’t survive Tony Durham.
[Darryl tilts his head back and lets loose a long, mournful howl. Cut back to the lounge. Leon and Dave are wincing at Darryl’s wails of agony.]
Chris: That just gave me a great idea!
Chris: No, Tony’s shout about Cindy.
Dave: She really isn’t your type, and besides, she and Tony have eyes only for each other.
Chris: Not that! I mean, Cindy’s a chem. major. Maybe I can borrow her organic chemistry notes, seeing as how I just destroyed some of mine.
Chris: No, those were my p-chem notes.
Dave: Sorry about that, I didn’t think it would spark like that.
Chris: Cindy is one of those unbearably nice and understanding persons; of course she’ll lend me her notes.
Dave: If Dani doesn’t kill you first.
Chris: If I can handle a squirrel sociopath, I can handle a murderous mouse.
[Chris gets up and leaves. Leon and Dave wait, perking their ears up so they can be sure to hear Chris’ screams of pain. Nothing happens. After a minute, Chris reenters the room unscathed.]
Dave: Did you get your notes?
Chris: No one was home.
Dave: All that effort for nothing?
Chris: [smiling] No, I mean there was no one on the third floor at all. They’re all gone. All of them. Every last miserable one of them.
Chris: I think you’re right. Dave, get the others. We’re going to see how the other half lives.
[Shortly thereafter, most of Richter-2 is in the hallway of the third floor.]
Jen: What a dump.
Chris: You get used to it.
Elsa: Vhy don’t they lock their doors?
Loree: They locked the main doors when they left. No one lives here but them, remember?
[Darryl walks over to Dani’s room and stands in front of it.]
Darryl: I guess I can’t stop you all, but I want to say a few things. First, don’t do anything that’ll get us in trouble. No vandalism, no theft. Leave everything as close to its current condition as you can.
[There are a few “aww”s from the crowd.]
Darryl: This is to be a no-impact, self-guided tour into the lives of our third floor counterparts. Okay, I’m done my schpiel. Now you can go and indulge your voyeuristic urges.
[Cut to Cindy and Lisa’s room. Elsa and Loree walk in on Chris who is browsing through Lisa’s bookshelf.]
Chris: Lisa’s tastes haven’t changed since I was last here. She’s so cute and happy. Why couldn’t it be me she was infatuated with instead of that stupid kangaroo?
Elsa: I don’t know vhat you see in her besides a pretty face. She’s a bimbo. Just standing in here makes me feel air headed.
[Chris just sighs and leaves the room. Loree and Elsa look around.]
Loree: Pretty different from your room.
Elsa: I’ve gotten too used to Susan. All this happy stuff strikes me as being sickening. Posters of guys and stuffed animals are a big change from Susan’s med charts and specimen jars. As vell as my pictures from home.
Loree: Cindy doesn’t seem to have any on her walls.
Elsa: Of course
not. Who vould
miss
Loree: It’s pathetic. They have lived right next door to each for years and have never gone out. Evolution is going faster than their relationship.
[Cut back out to the hallway. Chris is arguing with Darryl.]
Chris: C’mon. Let me go in. I won’t touch anything.
Darryl: No. Dani’s room is off limits. I cannot allow people going through a fellow RA’s stuff. Not only that, but she’d probably track down me and whack me if any of her stuff is messed up.
Chris: Precisely! Don’t you want to know what makes that little shrew tick? She’s the biggest mystery on the floor. How can you pass up an opportunity like this? There must be some clue why she is the way she is in there.
Darryl: No.
Chris: The repair budget will be in there. Don’t you want to make a little adjustment to fix up our floor?
[Darryl pauses to consider this a moment.]
Darryl: Tempting, but the answer is still no.
Chris: Nuts.
[Chris walks off.
Darryl watches him. When Chris
enters another room, Darryl quietly slips into Dani’s
room. Cut to inside Mikey
and Scott’s room.
Jen: He’s not gay. Even if he was, what could you could you possibly find that’ll prove it?
Jen: They say “Scott Sorrel” on the address.
[
Susan: What are you two up to?
Jen:
Susan: He’s not gay!
Susan: He can’t be gay! He’s far too cute and cuddly. It looks like he was made be hugged and snuggled by me. He’s the most wonderful person in the dorm!
[Leon and Jen stare at each other.]
Jen: You know, I almost agree with you.
Susan: Hmmpf!
[Susan storms out into the hallway. Jim and Edwards are standing outside Biff’s door.]
Susan: I feel like hurting someone. Where’s Chris?
Jim: 303.
Susan: Thank you.
[She walks down the hallway to Tony’s room. Edwards knocks on Biff’s door.]
Ed: You all right in there, Doby?
Doby: *belch* Fine.
Jim: Are you done with Biff’s booze stash yet?
Doby: Gimme a few more minutes.
Ed: We aren’t going in that hell hole after you, so make sure you can get out yourself.
Doby: Sure, sure.
[Cut to inside 303. Dave is cleaning up a puddle on the floor. He is soaking wet. Chris is snooping through Kevin’s computer.]
Chris: This is disgusting!
Dave: What? He have a big porn collection or something?
Chris: No, it’s just that not a single piece of software on this thing has been paid for. And there’s 400 megs of mp3s. I hate software and music piracy. I’m extremely tempted to just reformat the whole thing and destroy his CD-R collection.
Dave: Find anything else interesting?
Chris: Just some of Kevin’s drawings of scantily clad women. Tony and Brad don’t have anything interesting.
Dave: Thought there’d be more than this.
[Chris puts on Kevin’s leather jacket. It’s a tight fit, but it works.]
Chris: Don’t know why these clowns star in a web comic. I could do just as good a job as Kevin, I bet.
[Susan enters.]
Susan: So you think you can do Kevin’s job, Chris?
Chris: Yeah.
[Susan puts on one of Brad’s plaid shirts over her clothes, swipes Chris’ ballcap, and puts it on her head. She starts talking in a poor Southern accent.]
Susan: Well, what a co incidence, cuz Ah think Ah makes a good Brad, mahself.
Chris: You may be right. Just like Brad, you are continuously belligerent, violent, temperamental, and you both are training to make money off of other people’s tragedies. Not to mention painful to the eyes.
[Susan leaps at Chris, who dodges out of the way and dashes out the door. Susan chases after him and Dave follows. Loree and Elsa watch them go by in the hallway. They’re wearing bits of Lisa’s and Cindy’s clothes, respectively.]
Loree: See? I told we could adequately replace the third floor. If we can act like them enough, maybe Vince will get mixed up and put us in the comic.
Elsa: That’s a dumb idea.
Loree: Like you have a better one? Now go act awkward around Dave and say trite things while I go find a Mikey substitute. I hope it’s Darryl.
[
[Loree covers her eyes and shakes
her head as
Loree: Of course it has to be
Elsa: Now go and snuggle your ersatz-Mikey.
[Jen walks up. She’s still wearing Scott’s sunglasses.]
Jen: [to Loree] Hi there, sweet thang. You’re looking mighty fine in that outfit.
Loree: [with renewed enthusiasm] Watch
out,
[Loree does a credible Lisa pounce and topples Leon, who had just managed to stand himself up. She squeezes the ferret tightly.]
Elsa: Ahem… “Oh my.”
Jen: What does that cracker have that I don’t have?
Elsa: Do you really have to ask?
[Cut to Susan, who is still chasing Chris around the floor. Darryl steps out of Dani’s room with a stack of paperwork under his arm. Chris and Susan are heading straight towards him. Darryl reflexively holds up his clipboard to protect himself. Chris doesn’t see the danger because he was too busy looking behind himself. He turns forward just in time to see the clipboard make contact with his snout. Susan smashes into him from behind. Loree rushes up to the fracas.]
Loree: [joyous] Wonderful! You just whacked them with your clipboard! We’re a shoe in now!
Darryl: Oops. I’m really sorry about that, Chris.
Susan and Chris: Ow.
[Chris takes his hat back from Susan and shoves her off from on top of him. He gets up and dusts himself off.]
Chris: You think that if we act just like them we’ll be put in the comic?
Loree: Maybe.
[Chris removes the jacket.]
Chris: There is no way I’m going to be seen as a substitute Kevin Nekohashi. The guy’s a jerk.
[Susan gets up and takes off her plaid shirt.]
Susan: And there is no way you can get me to be room mates with Chris. No matter how much I’m allowed to hurt him.
Chris: [hastily] Right!
Darryl: I can’t be Dani. I’m big, male, and I don’t like hurting people.
Loree: What? You think we’ll ever see the light of day if we don’t do something? We have to give the people what they want. They want them. They don’t want us.
[Jen and Leon walk up.]
Loree: [to Jen] Let me guess. You don’t want to be Scott, either.
Jen: Only because he always fails when trying to pick up women.
[
Jen: Well, you are mildly annoying at times. You always get up early and exercise. You seem to believe that you know how everyone else should live. Was there anything I forgot?... Oh yes. That’s right. Calvin Grant.
[
Jen: Normally, I’d be offended by that outburst. But I enjoyed that way too much.
Loree: I guess we’re going to have to be ourselves, huh?
Chris: Yup.
Darryl: All right, everybody back down stairs, fun’s over.
[Everyone walks down the stairs as Darryl counts them.]
Darryl: Hey, where are Dave and Doby?
Jim: Dave’s resetting the booby trap in Kevin’s room and Doby’s probably passed out in Biff’s room.
[The loud screech of an SUV suddenly coming to a stop near the dorm can be heard. Darryl winces.]
Darryl: Great. Just great. Guess I have to save Doby from Biff and/or Dani’s Clipboard of Indiscriminate Justice?
Jim: Yep. I’m not going into Biff’s room.
[Jim goes down the stairs. Darryl shakes his head and runs to Biff’s room. He throws open the door and a visible cloud of putridness wafts out.]
Darryl: Ew no! That’s nasty!
[He sucks in a big breath and heads in. A moment later he walks back out, Doby on his shoulders. Various bits of filthy laundry are sticking to them. Darryl tries to kick some off, but decides Biff wouldn’t care about missing clothes anyways.]
Darryl: Dave! We have to leave! They’re back!
[The lights on the elevator flicker to emphasize his words. Dave finishes working on the trap and sprints for the stairs. They get in just in time. The elevator opens and the normal occupants of the third floor spill out in their normal chaotic fashion.]
Kevin: Yuck! Why’d you have to leave your door open, Biff? This place is going to reek for weeks.
Biff: I don’t smell nuthin’.
Mikey: Yes! I can finally get back to studying.
Scott: *sob*
Kevin: So after all that chaos at the beach, which one of us is still dry?
Brad: We both are you fool.
[Cut to Loree sitting in her room. She is holding an umbrella which is deflecting the water dripping from the ceiling.]
Loree: I should have spat in that bucket.
Kevin: [from above] NOOOO!
Jen: Too late for regrets now. Hey aren’t those Lisa’s clothes?
Loree: Oops. Knew I forgot something. Oh well. She won’t mind. She’s probably one of those girls that lend their clothes to anyone.
Jen: You do look real cute in it.
[Cut to Darryl’s room. Darryl is methodically super-gluing his bridge back together. Doby stumbles in.]
Doby: Thanks, man. I owe you big time for that. Dani would’ve killed after Biff was finished.
Darryl: Don’t thank me. You would’ve done the same for me.
Doby: Er, uh, yeah…maybe. Need any help with that?
Darryl: I’m fine. It wasn’t as badly damaged as I thought. There, I’m done. Now I can relax.
[Darryl turns and walks out the door. Well, he tried to anyway. His hand is stuck to the bridge, which in turn is stuck to his desk.]
Darryl: This is never going to end, is it?
[Fade to black. Back in the lounge.]
Loree: Aww, poor Darryl. He tries so hard. If any of you viewers are college students you should take the next available opportunity to thank your RA. Without Darryl, I don’t think I could stand this place.
Chris: Who cares? I’ve just got word that Elsa and I are going to be in a fanfic. Woohoo!
[He gets up and does a little happy dance.]
Loree: Does this mean you’re no longer mad at me for last week?
Chris: Not totally, and Susan is still hopping mad. But now there’s no chance of us interfering in each other’s schemes to get back at you.
Loree: Nothing I can’t handle. That’s the show for today. Tune in next week for the next episode of “We’re Richter, Too!” Remember, this show, and others like it, are made possible only by University funding and the loyal support of-
Chris: -viewers like you!
[Fade to black.]