Laws of Robotics and Party Rights

Dean Pelton:We need to get this school back in the black.

Chang:But Dean, I'm not a color. I'm a person.

Pierce:Black licorice? Disgusting. Black olives? No thank you. Blackmail? A crime. See, black means bad.

Pierce:Black death? Killed millions. Blackheart? A villain. Blacklist? You don't want to be on it.

Pierce:Black lung disease? Terrible. Black market? Illegal. And black belt? Well, that's just what I need to lose ten pounds.

Elroy:No. I'm not gonna be the guy who gives racial all-clear approval to everything you do. I'm a spaceman. I come from the future. I'm here to teach you about friendship and the cosmos.

Jeff:We don't think in racial terms here. We're a group that transcends race.

Troy:Yeah, we're colorblind.

Shirley:I'm glad you said that, because I was worried about being the only black person here.

Jeff:You're not. We have two Hispanics, an Asian, and a lesbian.

Britta:I'm not a lesbian, Jeff.

Jeff:Not yet.

Elroy:You know what? I'm starting to think this group might be a cult.

Elroy:First you're all standing around like a collective ray of light, and next thing I know, you're eating people.

Annie:Wow, Britta. A double negative. So that means it IS a rager. Congratulations on accidentally telling the truth.

Britta:We should celebrate being uptight. That would be a party!

Annie:So you're basically a couch sleeper.

Britta:Why does that sound like I'm a subcategory of human?

Annie:Because you are.

Annie:A coucher! You know, someone who coughs and coughs but won't go to a doctor. You just keep coughing on everyone like some kind of coucher!

Britta:I'm not going to follow some arbitrary rules just because they're written down. Rules are meant to be questioned!

Annie:Britta, it's about keeping the apartment clean and respecting everyone's space.

Britta:That's exactly what they want you to think. This is about control, man. I'm fighting for our freedom.

Jeff:You're fighting to leave your dishes in the sink.

Britta:It's a metaphor!

Annie:It's really not.

Annie:You're overthrowing if I say so!

Britta:That's literally the definition of authoritarianism.

Frankie Dart:Don't be alarmed.

Unknown character:Why would I be alarmed?

Frankie Dart:Well, it's a robot.

Unknown character:So? I'm not some luddite who gets scared of robots.

Frankie:Yeah, that was... that was really seamless.

Elroy:I'm not comfortable with this. We're giving robots to prisoners? That's how you get a robot uprising. I've seen enough movies to know how this ends.

Elroy:And before you say anything, yes, I know I'm the skeptical black guy. That's my thing. But I'm right about this one.

Dean Pelton:We have prisoners on campus for the work-study program, and I'm concerned about safety.

Chang:You're right to be concerned. What if they sexually assault someone?

Frankie:I'm worried about prisoner rape.

Abed:Well, if they're robots, they don't have the biological capacity for sexual assault. Their programming is strictly custodial.

Frankie:We need to be concerned about dangerous convicts in our community.

Jeff:What are you talking about? They're not dangerous, they're just like... regular people.

Frankie:Jeff, these are convicted felons we're discussing.

Jeff:Yeah, but if you think about it, they're basically just iPads with abandonment issues.

Chang:I'm moonwalking on my robot.

Jeff:Do it.

Dean:I walked right into that, didn't I?

Chang:Wait, I can see you, I can hear you, I can even feel the vibrations through my sensors, but... I can't smell anything.

Chang:What kind of half-baked telepresence technology doesn't include smell?

Jeff:Wait, so this Professor Emeritus thing doesn't come with a raise?

Dean Pelton:It's an honor, Jeff. A ceremonial recognition of your years of service.

Jeff:Right, but honor doesn't pay my mortgage. How much is the ceremony budget?

Dean Pelton:Approximately three thousand dollars.

Jeff:Perfect. I'll take it in cash.

Dean Pelton:We need to address the racial tension in our prison program before it becomes a real problem.

Dean Pelton:I've implemented a simple solution: I've adjusted all the monitors in the prison to black and white.

Dean Pelton:If they can't see race, they can't be racist.

Dean Pelton:At Greendale, we have a very strict anti-bullying policy. We believe that every student deserves to feel safe and respected on campus.

Dean Pelton:In fact, this policy is so important to me, I've made it my personal mission to ensure it's enforced... particularly when it comes to protecting myself from mean comments about my cardigan collection.

Jeff:Wait, so we're picking on prisoners? That's like one marginally skilled group bullying another.

Jeff:Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but I have to be honest with you - my law degree is from an online university that no longer exists, I've never actually passed the bar, and I'm pretty sure half the stuff I've told people about my legal experience was made up on the spot.

Jeff:You might learn one or two things in my class.

Jeff:And I mean exactly two things. Not the idiom. Literally two things. That's all you're getting.

Jeff:I'm a fraud. I never actually went to high school.

Willy:At least you went to college.

Jeff:I didn't go to college either. I forged my transcripts to get into this school.

Willy:So you're telling me you're a criminal, and I'm the one they kicked out?

Jeff:You know, Willy, when you really think about it, we're not that different. We both want respect, we both want to be seen as more than just our circumstances.

Willy:That's beautiful, man.

Jeff:Right? I mean, strip away the designer clothes, the law degree, the chiseled jawline—

Willy:And you're basically me.

Jeff:We're basically the same, except for the jumpsuit.

Willy:And the fact that I'm a figment of your imagination.

Jeff:I killed a man.

Jeff:But I'm not proud of it.

Jeff:See, the thing is, if you're going to kill a man, you gotta own it. You can't go around feeling guilty about your murders. That's not taking responsibility, that's just being a coward.

Willy:I have a philosophy about carrying murders. You only carry the murders you can handle.

Willy:Jeff, how many murders are you carrying?

Jeff:You know what? I can't even commit murder. It requires too much emotional investment. I'd have to care about someone enough to want them dead, and frankly, most people aren't worth the effort.

Jeff:So... that murder thing. Pretty crazy, right? I mean, obviously murder is bad. Very bad. The worst, really.

Jeff:Anyway! Did you know that the African elephant is the largest land mammal? Fascinating creatures. They can communicate over distances of up to six miles using infrasound. Nature is truly amazing!

Abed:I used to do this thing where I'd set up a joke in the pilot, then call it back later in the season. It was very meta.

Abed:But then I realized I was spending so much time setting up callbacks that I wasn't actually making jokes in the present moment.

Abed:So now I just make jokes. And if they happen to callback to something, great. If not, that's also great, because at least I'm not trapped in a narrative structure of my own design.

Abed:Pop back gags are a sitcom staple where a character reappears after being written out, usually with an explanation that subverts expectations. The meta-humor comes from acknowledging the trope itself.

Abed:But I've been doing this so much that I've stopped actually being meta and just... became the thing I was making fun of. Now I'm just mechanically aware of tropes instead of genuinely commenting on them.

Abed:Parties are just conventions for boring subjects. Like how action movies have explosions, parties have small talk. They're both just filler to distract you from the lack of real content.

Abed:We could fill the entire apartment with lizards. It would be like a low-budget Jurassic Park, except the dinosaurs are just regular lizards and instead of running from them, we're living with them.

Abed:Actually, that's not a bad pitch. 'Lizard House.' Coming this summer to a streaming service that desperately needs content.

Abed:Everyone in this apartment can be reduced to simple mathematical functions. Troy is a linear function—predictable, consistent. Shirley's a polynomial—complex, with multiple peaks and valleys. Annie's exponential—she grows exponentially with stress. Jeff is a constant—he never changes, he just stays cool. Britta's a logarithm—diminishing returns on every decision she makes. And I'm the function that describes all the other functions.

Jeff:Willy, you can't just use prison slang like that in everyday conversation.

Willy:What do you mean? 'Shank,' 'Lockdown,' 'Yard Time' — these are perfectly good words.

Jeff:Those are prison terms, Willy. You sound like you're hosting a game show.

Willy:For $200: A stabbing implement made from a toothbrush. What is a shank?

Jeff:See? That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Jeff:Whoa, whoa, whoa! Did you just try to push me down the stairs?

Jeff:I didn't attempt to murder anyone!

Dean Pelton:That's what someone who attempted murder would say.

Jeff:Okay, well I'm escalating this to a maximum effort murder attempt.

Jeff:Oy vey!

Abed:I'm making a documentary about a party. We're treating it like it's a serious historical event. There's a steadicam following everyone, we have interviews with guests about their motivations, we're analyzing the snack choices as cultural indicators.

Abed:Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Girl leaves boy for a astronaut.

Abed:No wait, scratch that last part. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. The end.

Abed:My film draws from Godard, Truffaut, and early Soderbergh. It's a meditation on alienation in the digital age, shot entirely in natural light with a handheld camera aesthetic.

Abed:But honestly, these modern mumblecore films are just bad acting hidden behind a veil of authenticity. They call it 'naturalistic' when really the actors just forgot their lines.

Britta:Fine, I guess I don't get a say in this apartment anyway. I'm just the permissive pothead with no backbone.

Britta:Fine! I'm a coucher. I couch.

Annie:You couch so hard.

Britta:I couch so hard.

Annie:You know what? I'm done. I'm done being the nice one. I'm done compromising. You want to see what happens when Annie Edison stops being nice? Because I can make things very difficult for all of you. Very difficult.

Frankie:What else did Willy do?

Abed:He used an iPad to hack into the Pentagon.

Frankie:Okay, that's bad.

Abed:Then he used an iPad to commit identity theft.

Frankie:That's worse.

Abed:Then he used an iPad to teach dolphins how to use iPads.

Willy:Well now, I didn't mean nothin' by it. Back where I come from, we just say things the way they are. If a fella's got a little extra melanin, that's just the good Lord's way of—

Jeff:Wait, why would a murderer kill a teacher? What, I'm not murder-worthy enough?

Britta:Jeff is such a raconteur.

Jeff:Actually, it's pronounced 'rock n tour.'

Jeff:I mean, who needs to know the technical legal definition of anything? I'm a lawyer and I teach at a community college, so clearly education isn't that important.

Jeff:I'm just a simple man from humble dirt origins. My father was dirt, my mother was dirt. I was born in a dirt hospital, delivered by a dirt doctor.

Garrett:Did anyone else notice Jeff suddenly became competent at something?

Jeff:I can't believe this. I fought so hard to get this program approved, and now it's completely backfiring on me.

Frankie:Well, you know what they say — you're being hoist by your own petard.

Jeff:What? I'm being hoisted by my own... petard? What is a petard?

Frankie:It's an explosive device from medieval times. The phrase means you're suffering from your own plan.

Jeff:So you're saying I'm literally being blown up by a medieval bomb that I created?

Frankie:No, it's just a metaphor.

Jeff:Because I'm pretty sure I would remember building a bomb.

Frankie:Wait, what do you mean 'hoist by your own petard'? That's not a real thing.

Frankie:A petard is obviously a medieval French nobleman who specialized in self-sabotage. So if you were 'hoisted by your own petard,' it meant that Petard showed up at your castle and made you look foolish through his elaborate pranks.

Frankie:The phrase fell out of use after Petard retired to the countryside and took up cheese-making instead.

Jeff:Wait, so you're telling me that's not what a petard is? Because I've been picturing this whole thing completely differently, and honestly, your version is way less fun.

Abed:No, no, no! You're not getting it. This is a party scene. People at parties don't just stand there reciting lines like robots.

Abed:You need to interact, to be present, to actually BE at a party. It's method acting, people!

Abed:Why is this so hard? I'm literally just asking you to do what you do every weekend.

Dean Pelton:I'm not going to bust you for having a party. I'm way too cool for that.

Dean Pelton:But I am going to ask you to keep it down because I have a very important breakfast meeting tomorrow morning, and I need my beauty sleep. Which, let's be honest, I need a lot of.

Dean Pelton:Everyone, I'd like you to meet our new party entertainment—prisoner robots!

Dean Pelton:They're programmed to simulate maximum security prison conditions, but don't worry—it's all in good fun!

Dean Pelton:Who wants to experience solitary confinement? It's like a spa day, but with more psychological trauma!

Abed:Okay, everyone, I need you to treat dancing as measurable effort. I want to see sweat. I want to see commitment. This isn't just moving your body to music—this is a cinematic experience.

Abed:Why are you all dancing like it's 1987? This party is supposed to be happening now.

Jeff:You think I'm not a real killer? I've killed plenty of people. I killed a guy in a parking lot once. Well, I didn't kill him, but I definitely contributed to his death.

Jeff:Willy, Willy, can you hear me? Willy?

Abed:I think you're losing him.

Jeff:No, no, no. Willy, stay with me. Don't go into the light!

Britta:Jeff, I think the WiFi just went out.

Jeff:Oh. Well, that explains the afterlife.

Jeff:Why don't you look up dignity?

Willy:I can't. My tablet's destroyed and I'm emotionally damaged.

Jeff:So you're living in an RV? Where do you... you know... go to the bathroom?

Britta:There's a toilet in the back.

Troy:But where does it go?

Abed:Into a tank underneath. You have to empty it manually.

Pierce:I have questions.

Jeff:Living in an RV? That's basically being homeless.

Homeless Person:Yeah, well at least I don't have to worry about my septic tank backing up into my shower.

Britta:He's got a point.

Britta:You know what? You're right, Annie. I'm sorry. From now on, I'm going to follow every single rule you make. No questions asked. I'll be the most obedient person in this study group.

Annie:Really?

Britta:Yes. In fact, I'm getting you a little bell so you can summon me whenever you need something. And I'll curtsy.

Jeff:I need to get on campus.

Abed:You're going to need a robot.

Jeff:What? Why would I need a robot?

Abed:Well, first you need wheels, then a motor, then a gyroscope for balance, then a solar panel for power, then a small nuclear reactor as a backup, then a quantum processor, then—

Jeff:Okay, stop. I'm just going to walk.

Abed:Your funeral.

Britta:Parties are just an excuse for people to stand around and pretend they're having fun while actually just checking their phones and wondering when they can leave without seeming rude.

Britta:It's a collective agreement to waste time together. We're all just hostages in a social contract we never agreed to.

Chang:What will happen to me?

Elroy:Something worse than death. Something so terrible, so incomprehensible, that your mind will reject it as impossible.

Warden:I now pronounce you husband and wife. And by the power vested in me by the state, I also pronounce you legally bound to perform labor without compensation, as permitted by the 13th Amendment.

Jeff:Okay, fine. I've stolen things. Small things. A pen from a hotel, some towels.

Jeff:But then it got worse. I took a road sign. Then copper wiring from a construction site.

Jeff:Last week I stole an entire air conditioning unit from the library loading dock.

Jeff:I don't even need an air conditioning unit. I just... I couldn't stop myself.

Jeff:I'm not like Willy. I manipulate people, sure, but I do it for me. I'm honest about my selfishness. That's the difference.

Jeff:Wait, so Willy's not actually a murderer? I've been feeling superior to him this whole time!

Jeff:That is so annoying!

Elroy:I don't see why we need to have a meeting about this. We're not robots.

Abed:Actually, I've been thinking about robot meetings a lot lately.

Elroy:Well, I've been thinking about RV harassment, and nobody wants to talk about that.

Chang:My robot is broken!

Frankie:What happened to it?

Chang:Well, actually... I'm just sharing it with the janitor.

Jeff:What is happening here?

Britta:My robot is attacking me!

Abed:That's not an attack. It's a malfunction in the programming.

Troy:Call the police!

Jeff:Troy, it's not assaulting her. Look—it's just malfunctioning.

Britta:Yes! Thank you, Jeff!

Abed:I vote yes on the robot purchase.

Robot:Thank you for your vote. I am now in control.

Abed:Oh no.