Chapter Text
Pierce is stress testing the limits of The Vatican’s open mic night policy.
“I don’t get no respect,” he declares from the stage. “My fifth wife told me she wanted to have sex in the backseat of the shuttle. And she wanted me to fly it!”
Chang is the only one who laughs. Snorts, actually. “That happened to me last night!” he cackles from Jeff, Troy, and Abed’s table.
“Chang is married?” Shirley asks incredulously. The rest of the study group (minus Pierce, who is on stage, and plus Chang, who invited himself to take Pierce’s seat with the group) all shrug, equally perplexed by this revelation.
“You get it?” Pierce continues. “Because she wanted to have sex with some other guy. Very slutty. Good mom though.” He trails off for a moment, lost in nostalgia. “Anyway, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. I got a cousin who's gay. When I was a kid I'd tell everyone that on a family tree he's in the fruit section, you know?” He wheeze-laughs, on account of how hilarious he is. “ Fruit.”
Britta rolls her eyes. “He really likes gay jokes,” she mutters, just a little too loud. Their tables are only a few meters from the stage, well within earshot.
“What?”
“You tell great jokes,” she replies with forced, mechanical delivery. Jeff and the others give her a dirty look. “What? I’m being supportive.”
“There are limits,” Jeff says coldly.
“There’s a reason why I am the way I am,” Pierce continues, unconcerned with the interruptions or his lack of a comedic throughline. “My mother never breastfed me. She told me she just wanted to be friends. Can you imagine that? Getting friend-zoned by your mom?”
Troy frowns. “Does Pierce want to bang his mom?” he asks. Annie, Shirley, and Britta’s faces wrinkle in disgust. Abed just shrugs.
“I don't know, people say to me, ‘What do you like about a girl, a girl's legs? Are you a leg man, a boob man, or an ass man?’ I don't know what I am. I figure I must be an ass man, you know? Yeah, people always say to me, ‘You're an ass, man!’” Pierce proclaims, exaggerating the comma.
“We know,” Shirley grumbles.
“The problem is, sometimes you see a great ass, you follow it, it turns out to be a guy!”
“Tell me about it,” Chang chimes in, as though this is a common problem.
“Am I too fast for this whole table over here?” Pierce asks, pointing to Britta, Shirley, and Annie’s table. Out of a sense of chivalry, the men of the group agreed that the women of the group should not have to share a table with Lieutenant Chang, so the tables are divided by gender.
“There are only two tables,” Abed points out. The rest of The Vatican is deserted. Even Captain Pelton noped out.
“Where was I? I was on Risa, yes, I was on Risa,” Pierce decides. “This Orion girl saw me there. Orion girl saw me, she looked to me, she said, ‘You're cute.’ And then she told me Starfleet men are the best lovers. She did!” he insists. “She said Starfleet men and comedians are the best lovers. I walked away, I figured I was too good for her! Maybe she should be paying me!” He pauses, waiting for a laugh. Troy forces himself to laugh, unable to bear the awkward silence. Satisfied, Pierce continues his bit. “Lovely woman. Well, she told me she would rock my world. Then she told me what a ride would cost and I told her, ‘We live in two different worlds!’”
“This joke doesn’t really work in a post-scarcity economy,” Abed notes. The invention of holodecks and replicators all but eliminated the market for sex work.
“And for other reasons,” Britta adds.
“Anyone ever notice how…crap, I forgot the punchline.” Pierce frowns, having fumbled one of his best jokes. “Something about Jews in Space? Annie knows what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t,” Annie replies, shifting in her seat uncomfortably.
“Anyway,” Pierce continues, “I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous – everyone hasn't met me yet!”
“It’s true. I did say that,” Duncan chimes in from the bar. He only came in to grab a drink and possibly heckle. Unfortunately, heckling seems to be too easy for there to be any sport in it.
“I told my sixth wife I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me she was seeing a psychiatrist, two engineers, and a bartender.”
“Ha!” Chang barks. Wives. Can’t live with ‘em, on account of the restraining order. “So relatable!”
“I am single again. I know, big surprise, right?” Pierce muses in a jovial, self-deprecating way. “Although…I’m always on the lookout for the future ex-Mrs. Hawthorne. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned that in my wedding vows.”
Pierce steps back to take a seat on the stool behind him. He’s got a lot of ex-wife material to cover. Unfortunately, he misjudges the proximity of his butt to his seat and he slips off the edge, flailing helplessly as he falls. Lieutenant Vaughn opted to set up his band’s equipment on stage before their set to save time, which gives Pierce an entire drum kit to crash into. The cymbals crash into the floor, the toms bounce and roll away and Pierce manages to drive his fist through the snare as the artificial gravity pulls his ass to the ground.
Everyone except Abed breaks. Pierce’s entire act up until this point has been horribly dated, deeply unfunny, and absurdly offensive, and save for Chang, all of the laughter has been canned and performative. But Pierce pratfalling (or at least, they hope pratfalling) is pretty funny. Possibly only funny in contrast, but still funny enough to elicit a genuine laugh out of everyone. Except Abed, who is immune.
“Okay, that was pretty good,” Jeff admits, still chuckling.
“Ha!” Pierce crows triumphantly as he recovers. He might need a hip replacement, but it was worth it. “I win! I win, I win, I win! In your face!”
“What are you talking about?” Britta asks, confused why Pierce is acting like he won the lottery and why Shirely looks horrified.
“I bet Shirley that I could make all of you laugh, for real,” Pierce explains proudly. “Except Ay-bed, because Vulcan’s don’t laugh.”
“True,” Abed agrees.
“Which means I win!”
“What did you win?” Annie asks, concerned.
Pierce rubs his hands together in smug satisfaction. “Well, my first pitch was that if I won, Shirley would have to go on a date with me,” he begins.
“Which I did not agree to,” Shirley says firmly.
“And if I lost, I would never perform stand up at The Vatican again.”
“So, what did you win instead?” Troy asks.
Pierce flashes a wolfish grin. “I get my choice of slot for every open mic night at The Vatican until I die.”
“Shirley!” Britta whines.
“I didn’t think he would win!” Shirley protests.
Abed nods thoughtfully, admiring the setup and payoff. Pierce might be a genius. “The spaghetti at the wall approach was smart,” he says, reflecting. “Mel Brooks. Rodney Dangerfield. Deadpool. Tell one joke, one person might laugh. Tell enough jokes, and eventually everyone will. And if in doubt, physical comedy never gets old. Well done Pierce.”
“Thanks Ay-bed,” Pierce says. “So, who wants to help me tighten my ten? I’m open to making it twenty.”
Obviously, Jeff Winger is not going to subject himself to the comedic stylings of Pierce Hawthorne once a week until he dies (which could take anywhere between a week and a century), and no one else should have to either. “So…we’re done coming to open mic night, right?” he asks.
“Yes,” everyone than Chang and Pierce replies in unison.
“What is wrong with you people?” Chang scoffs. “This is the funniest thing I’ve seen since ‘Shuttle gets sucked into black hole!’”
Shirley’s expression darkens when she remembers that her attendance isn’t optional. “I can’t just leave,” she laments. “I work here.”
The others mutter regretful platitudes, but they don’t seem particularly eager to commit their Friday nights to Pierce for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, Britta comes to Shirley’s defense. “Okay, we can’t leave Shirley alone with Pierce and Chang, can we?”
Everyone hems and haws in an I know you’re right and I hate it way.
Jeff lets out a deep, beleaguered sigh. “Pierce,” he says slowly, resigned to his fate. “I believe you were telling us about your ex-wives.
Pierce beams. “Did I tell you about the one that stabbed me? Muffie. Third wife. She was my favorite.”