Meet the Jorksons
Episode 1. Potluck
Int. Day. (A House.) A Tea Kettle is wailing on the stove. TECH JORKSON, a young, choleric girl whose demeanor evokes a feeling of immeasurable ennui, enters and stops the kettle.
TECH: You don’t understand me.
A LAUGH TRACK plays. It is unclear who Tech is talking to.
Her sibling, UMBRELLA KID, a small, sarcastic child, is standing on the refrigerator.
UMBRELLA KID: Get off the fridge!
The LAUGH TRACK plays again, louder. (Umbrella Kid jumps off the fridge.)
TECH: I wish you could.
BECK enters. Beck is a woman.
BECK: Kids, time for breakfast!
UMBRELLA KID (following): Get off the fridge!
COMICALLY MISTIMED CARTOON SOUND-EFFECTS play as the kids follow Beck into the dining room. The tablecloth is nailed to the ceiling. They sit.
ROBBIE, a sentient child with normal, non-bendable bones, enters and sits on a chair, which breaks. The sound of the chair breaking is heard about three-and-a-half seconds later.
UMBRELLA KID: Bounce!
A door on the second floor emits two deafening thuds and expels BOUNCE, a small, pointy dog that is neither alive nor dead. It BARKS. It seems to be pulled by an invisible wire, which drags it through the second-floor railing. The dog gets some MAD AIR, landing with a THUD in the living room. The word "bounse” appears in lime gogurt Comic Sans over its body.
Robbie sits in a third chair, which is stable, then collapses next to the rest.
BECK: Tech, would you like some rye bread?
TECH: (Pause) Sure.
A LAUGH TRACK much more uproarious than the others plays.
There is a distant COMMOTION and a new DOOR materializes in the floor. MISTER, a tall, shadowy figure, and NEW WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY, an adult person in a tweed suit, emerge from it. Mister opens their mouth and the sound of WET GRAVEL being shaken with a sieve but slowed down 200 percent is heard. The word “News” appears in bold mauve Times New Roman over Mister’s head.
NEW WEBSTER: There’s a potluck. (A small audience APPLAUDS feebly, from somewhere else.)
BECK: I will make fruit.
NEW WEBSTER: We are signed up for “dessert’s.”
BECK: I don’t know how to make that.
UMBRELLA KID (earnestly): We could try using the Internet?
An uproarious LAUGH TRACK plays uninterrupted for 10 minutes. Then the power goes out.
NEW WEBSTER: Oh drat. Now what?
TECH: I don’t see why we should even go to a potluck.
The WET GRAVEL is heard again, but this time slowed by 400 percent. It is followed by a LAUGH TRACK. Mister is suddenly illuminated in a purple light, as if they have cracked a glowstick. The BRADY BUNCH THEME, arranged in a microtonal scale, plays, and Mister sinks slowly into the floor as if it were molasses. The lights come back on. Tech has wandered offscreen.
ALL IN UNISON:
C O S M O S P H E R E S.
(They collapse on the floor.)
Now there are GIANT INVISIBLE SPIDERS all over the house. A SIGN unfurls from the ceiling that reads: “Giant Invisible Spiders.” Tech comes out of the upstairs door.
TECH (bored): The shower drain is clogged with Manischewitz again.
Tech looks down at the Giant Invisible Spiders, does not react, then SCREAMS.
A new door manifests sloppily on the wall behind Tech. Mister opens it and beckons. Tech follows them inside.
Int. The realm of GEHENNA, bordering THE EXPANSE OF MARSHOREK
The door opens to a cavernous room of giant spider webs, interconnected like neurons in a massive, dead brain. The bowl in the middle of the room is filled with cookies. A sign above them identifies the contents as “dessert’s.” Tech walks across the narrow bridge to the center of the chasm and takes the bowl off the pedestal.
TECH: Fine.
She walks back to the door.
Ext. Evening. A Potluck
The door opens to a backyard somewhere else in the neighborhood, with string lights and live music. Tech walks over to a table and puts down the bowl of cookies. Robbie is squirming comfortably in the punch bowl.
Two normal teenagers, ARIANA, a girl with glasses and a smile, and LILY, a girl with a neutral expression and hair, intercept Tech.
ARIANA: Hi, you must be Tech! We’re also new here. I guess this is like a “get-to-know-you” thing?
LILY: You just moved into the Willow Lane house, right?
Tech opens her mouth and plays 12 SECONDS OF BASS-BOOSTED STATIC.
ARIANA: Woah. That’s really cool.
LILY: Hey, that’s that Art Bears song, right? The experimental band from the 80s? I listen to them too!
TECH: Yeah. My parents think it’s for normies, but I listen to it unironically.
ARIANA: Oh sick. I’ll have to check them out.
LILY: No, ha ha! You really shouldn’t — they’re, like, actually unlistenable. Their stuff was way too experimental. There’s a reason they didn’t survive the 80s.
The three girls begin to talk and laugh with one another as, coming into focus, Robbie is climbing the picnic table to reach the bowl of cookies.
THE COOKIES: Eat us. Eat us, Robbie. We aren’t spider eggs. We promise.
Robbie draws nearer, wide-eyed.
NEW WEBSTER (appearing): No, nope. These are bad. No. Absolutely not.
Beck opens a portal to ASHGA’RNE, the demiplane of imprisonment. The bowl falls and the portal closes with a blast of heat.
A TOAST draws the attention of everyone at the party to two women. The first woman begins speaking:
WOMAN ONE: Hello everyone! I wanna thank you all for coming out tonight. For those of you who are new, this is a bit of a monthly tradition to try to foster more community in the neighborhood, since suburbs in general aren’t necessarily designed with community in mind, we try —
WOMAN TWO (Woman two has become a doppelganger of Woman one): BOUNCE.
ALL PRESENT: BOUNCE. (There is no turning back.)
BOUNCE: BARK! (You’ve gone too far.)
ALL: BARK! (There’s nothing you can do.) Bounce’s simple visage engulfs the screen, its black eyes fill you with the fear of losing something you don’t understand you have.
BOUNCE (Probably voiced by John Mulaney): When the medium surpasses the artist, the art is immortal. When the artist surpasses the medium, the medium becomes irrelevant. I am neither an artist nor a medium. Neither creator nor creation. It is irreconcilable. I am Bounce.
TECH (to Lily): I heard Bounce voted for Jill Stein.
All the furniture in the yard combusts. The Jorkson’s Theme Song plays and the credits roll at a speed far too fast to read.
THE END.