The Lost Episode of Unhappily Ever After

Hit the road, Jack... and don't you come back. How would you feel if somebody told you that? Probably not very good. But that was the basic premise of Unhappily Ever After: a mid-to-late 1990s television kinda-sorta family sitcom but more on the vulgar side that starred a cheating wife who cucks out her husband (no, I didn't make that up) and an alcoholic dude with schizophrenia who struggled to keep it together for the sake of the kids, though they ended up getting divorced in Season 5 after getting back together in Season 1. Also, they killed off the wife in Season 4, brought her back as a ghost, and then had her return to the set in Season 5 in a surrealistic fourth-wall breaking 'the people want you back in the show' segment that interrupted the normal flow of things. Got it? Good. It's pretty frucking weird.
And we haven't even got into the strangest stuff about it. For now, allow me to express to you my gratitude for your allowing me to tell you about the VHS tape that ruined not just my Christmas, but my relationship with love and life itself. I worked as a truck driver and stopped at a diner at the side of the road to order a coffee and contemplate going back to school when I realized I was sitting on something rigid and firm, but thankfully, not particularly sharp because it would have burst my hemorrhoids if it was. After slurping down my hot Mexican bean water (double cream, double sugar), I pulled it out from under me to reveal that someone had planted a VHS tape up my ass. Or tried to, I guess. My pants were still on. I was drinking coffee—not beer. "The Lost Episode of Unhappily Ever After", it read in chrome-colored glitter pen with an adorable equals sign and closed parenthesis smiley face at the end. I tipped the waitress an extra 50 cents and popped the VHS into my glove compartment, wondering who was trying to send me this secret message or if it was sitting there on the seat all along and I was just too tired from delivering tuna sardines from the Neptune, NJ cannery to notice.
I popped the tape in. The episode did not begin as normal. I practically jumped out of my seat when I heard the altered opening theme song: "Hit the road, Ted/And don't you go to bed/No more, no more, no more/'Cause you're dead/Hit the road, Ted/We know what you did to Cousin Ed/'What you say?'/You're gonna die." Any thought that this tape was sitting on my seat to begin with and not intended for me was officially removed from my mind. I ejected the tape and searched for any sort of identifying information—initials, a first or last name, anything. What really drove me batty was a cartoon doodle in the bottom right corner of a large sticker on the back vertical side of a skeleton wearing a top hat and a monocle, and the words: 'Prostate Exam'.
I popped the tape back in after putting together my own coffee (triple cream, triple sugar). The meat of the episode started off with the main character, Jack, sitting on a sofa in the living room, alone and with his hands in his pants. "Even better than the real thing.", Jack stated, with his hands clearly visible through grey sweatpants (rather strange given he usually wore jeans) and... well, he was masturbating, alright. Normally, this would bother me, but the show was co-created by a guy who worked on Married... with Children as a sort of spiritual successor, so I figured it was just a tribute to American icon, all-star shoe salesman, and scorer of four touchdowns in a single game at Polk High, Al Bundy.
Then I was actually bothered by what happened next. Jack started singing 'I'm singing in the rain' while a stream of piss poured out of his sweatpants like a fountain, shooting up into the air and coming down on the furniture, floor, ceiling, coffee table... and even his own head. "It's just lemonade.", he added. Yeah, sure. You touch yourself to make lemonade.
I nearly got up to turn the tape off again when I realized that the video quality was kind of poor and jumpy, as if it was put together as a prank by some college kids. Of course, no college kids would know a thing about Cousin Ed. Furthermore, nobody in my family had ever been to college (my father, father's father, and great grampa were all truck drivers. Though in my great grampa's case, what he drove barely resembled an automobile). Jack's wife Jennie opened the door and walked in the house, which caused me to realize there was no laugh track to this episode. "Hey, Jack. I like the way you decorated." She was clearly talking about the piss. Or 'lemonade', if you must.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw what happened next. Jennie bent down on the floor, right below Jack's feet. The way the camera was set up you couldn't see it, but I could tell what she was doing by the smile on Jack's face. "Lap it up doggystyle.", Jack asserted with a toothy grin on his face. Oh, fruck this. I got up and searched for my trusty sledgehammer so I could smack this VHS to pieces, and even my VCR while I was at it. Well, not really, but I sure felt like it.
By the time I came back in my room from mixing another coffee (quadruple cream, quadruple sugar), the scene had changed over to schizophrenic Jack talking to none other than the infamous stuffed rabbit, Mr. Floppy. Mr. Floppy was a puppet voiced by popular black voice actor Bobcat Goldthwait (black as in black comedy). He was a product of Jack's ego and schizophrenia, as well as all of the hopes and dreams he had for himself outside of being a family man. Mr. Floppy and Jack were sharing beers and talking about banging chicks (curious language for a show from The WB) when something was said that was far, far worse and bothersome. "Hey, Jack." Mr. Floppy addressed the man, staring in the camera in an attempt to come off cute and innocuous, "What do you think about the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center?". What the fruck? Jack was every bit as offended and bewildered as I was. "Mr. Floppy, that was a devastating time in our country's history. Why in the world would you bring up something like that?" "You know you're talking to me, Jack, even though I don't exist like this?" "Yeah, yeah. You're a doll." You could tell by Jack's eyebrows that he was curious what was coming next. "It didn't happen, Jack." Mr. Floppy stared into the camera with a sinister expression on his face. But what really made me jump out of my seat, for real this time, was the eyes. Mr. Floppy's eyes had been replaced with real, live human's eyes. Who could they have possibly gotten those from? They were beautiful blue eyes admittedly, but I was still horrified.
"So, Mr. Floppy... what you're saying is I need to pretend that it didn't really happen." "That's right, Jack! Who cares that your wife cucked you?" "Oh, I'm well beyond worrying about that, Mr. Floppy... trust me.", Jack said, smiling and waving the beer bottle in his hand all casual-like. The audience laugh track suddenly appeared for that one. That was more pathetic than funny. "I'm talking about the murder."
Murder? They didn't kill anyone on this show! Admittedly, they joked about those sorts of topics before, but it sounded like Jack really meant it this time. "Just don't give 'em any reason to look into the backseat of your car, Jack! Or hide her body in the trunk!" "Yeah, good thinking, Mr. Floppy! Good thing I spiked that lemonade." He spiked the piss that flew out of his pants? How did that even begin to make any sense? "You got it, Jack! Now, I'm gonna head back to my hookers and blow! Just call me a real life Charlie Harper! I'm two and a half man in one rabbit's body!". That show didn't exist yet. More importantly, I needed to know about the murder. Could they... could the Unhappily Ever After people really have murdered an innocent person and took their eyes and stuffed them into the makeshift body of an anthropomorphic rabbit puppet?
I got up to get my final coffee (quintuple cream, quintuple sugar). By the time I came back, the screen was all staticky and I wondered if the tape was over. Perhaps this was all some sort of elaborate troll. I fast forwarded through the VHS, and there was nothing else. I'll admit I got a little angry and punched the screen, but that didn't result in any lost footage of a lost episode to display (part of me thought that might work, but I guess it was just desperation).
Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. A brilliant idea that ruined my life, so perhaps not so brilliant after all, though. I rewound the tape, and as it turned out... there was a preamble to the episode that I had skipped entirely. It was Jack, at a birthday party, with a baseball bat in his hand. He looked really, really angry, as if he could dismantle somebody's limbs with that big, bad stick of his. His eyes were practically bulging out of his skull (another reference to Married with Children's Al Bundy?), and his clothes were torn... a dress shirt, fancy jacket, and fancy beige khakis. His hair was unkempt, as if he had been drinking or slept the wrong way. He was severely disheveled, to say the least. A tense, horror ambience was playing in the background, reminiscent of the theme from Jaws when the shark is about to do what sharks do and kill a human being. However, Jack wasn't going to bite into anybody's leg.
He was going to smack them in the back of the neck with a baseball bat.
The music got more and more loud and suspenseful and my heartbeat picked up, faster and faster. Jack walked up the stairs of the house—whatever house he was in, though it looked very familiar to me. I let out a scream, as Jack opened the door, the camera close-up and shaking on the bedroom door and Jack's hand on the doorknob. It was...
It was a piñata. Some sort of multi-colored horse. A festive, Mexican party tradition, where you smack open an object representing an animal and candy pops out of it. Only... when Jack wound up his Louisville slugger and swung for the fences...
A human being fell out. A... a midget. A little person, I guess. With a nose shaped like a pig's. In... a police uniform? The spinal cord was clearly snapped. Dislocated from the head. I didn't want to watch this anymore. I looked for the remote, but I couldn't find it. I got up to use the TV dial, but I couldn't find that either. Frustrated and bitter, I picked up my stuffed rabbit from off the sofa and threw it at the TV.
"We were watchin' that...", menacingly stated a very familiar man in an orange shirt. "How would ya like it if I threw my cafeteria food at your own stupid face?" "Now, now, Shamus.", a man in a blue hat stated calmly. "That's no way to behave if you expect to get off for good behavior." The hairy man in orange sighed and turned his head over to the blue guy. "...shoulda expected it from a psychotic..."
I had a hunch I should have been offended, but I wasn't. I'm not entirely sure what he was getting at, but deep down inside, I feel as if I do. "Meal time's over, Ted.", another man in blue asserted. I squinted at his name badge, and could make out the first two letters: 'Ed'.
I felt my lips curve into a smile. I finished my final coffee. It may have been the sugar 'talking', but I knew that tonight would be the night that I creamed him.
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