INTERLUDE ONE: Cathode

An old television blurs to life. It’s one of those old cathode ray boxes that are deeper than they are wide and could probably kill you if it fell on your head. The screen is covered in moving bars of static and the TV box is humming and the audio sounds deep-fried. It’s a television from an era where televisions were just real shit, is the point. Just a dogshit old teevee.

It’s playing a black and white program, one that is made incoherent by the visual noise. Something in the box is broken. But then the static clears and it’s showcasing a title screen, a set of black words in a fanciful font embossed over a grey background.

Just Another Day At The Agency

We cut to someone walking through a comedic series of doors and checkpoints, ones that get across a sense of overhyped and plentiful security in a way that makes it lighthearted and facetious. It’s exactly the opposite of an airport. A man in a shabby suit steps through into a 1950’s style hotel lobby, looking confused. He moves his head around in exaggerated motions and then pauses for a long moment as if waiting for a laugh track to kick in. It doesn’t. Not that he notices, of course. This is not performed in front of a live studio audience and this nameless buffoon has no idea that it will not be added in post.

He makes his way to the front desk and speaks to the receptionist, who looks very much like a receptionist. She motions at a sign that reads:

All Platonic Objects must be Declared and Kept At Reception for the Duration of your Visit

“Oh no,” the man says. “I’m here for the uh, the job interview?” He straightens his tie and looks hopeful. There’s another pause where the monochromatic couple stare at the camera, waiting for a laugh track that does not occur. Not sure why. It wasn’t even a joke.

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“You must be here to talk to Agent X,” the receptionist eventually says, slowly dialing an old rotary telephone. “Mr X? We’ve got an applicant here to see you. No, he still has all the relevant pieces.”

“Pieces?”

“Well, all your fingers are still on, aren’t they?,” she asks, covering the telephone’s mouthpiece with her hand.

“Golly! I didn’t know that was a requirement!”

There is another very distinct lack of a laugh track, though that does not stop our leading man from stopping until the laughter that isn’t there dies down. The scene cuts to the interview.

Our boy is talking to, one must presume, Agent X. It’s a very harsh cut and there’s no introductions. We are already mid-way through the interview.

“I have to say,” says our clown, “I wasn’t expecting you to all be named ‘Agent X’ and ‘Agent Y’. It’s all very, uh, that movie with Will Smith, isn’t it? Men in Black?”

This grotesque anachronism gives him another chance to wait a few extra seconds, anticipating the laugh track. Again, it is not there. And it’d be weird if it was because, again, it’s not funny. Nothing here is ever funny.

This show was never aired but if it did it would not be popular.

The screen falls into static for a second and then we are cut to Agent X’s face as he talks and tells our boy, our lad, our stupid moron actor, that they do not use codenames. It is just that true names are on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know!

Pause. Whoever was supposed to edit the laugh tracks into all these spaces surely deserves to be fired. This puts them above the show’s writer, who will get the firing squad instead.

Agent X asks the main character of the show why they want to join the Agency.

“Well, to be honest with you sir, I just want to know what’s real!”

Now the laugh track is here and it never stops. And the actors never start again, maintaining the pause with rictus grins. The camera slowly pulls away from the set as if on smooth tracks and it just keeps getting further away, revealing the set to be an ever-wider ever-larger warehouse of some sort. One that just keeps being revealed to be bigger and bigger and bigger until the set is just a speck of light in the darkness and the laugh track never ever stops.

Someone else turns the television off.