“B-12″: Memorable lines
As a follow-up to yesterday’s recap, here are some memorable lines from “B-12.” Did I miss your favorites? Share them in the comments.
Danny: Let me explain something. The green room’s where second cousins go, agents and the girls with the band. VIPs go in the NBS box, and when Hanks and Springsteen come by, they can watch the show in Matt’s office, or down on the floor with me. Reporters who write dumb stories about friends of mine watch the show at the In-N-Out Burger down the street. And that is you, sister.
Martha: What a bummer for you I’ve got a press pass.
Martha: I was going to watch the show with the writers this week. Where are they?
Danny: At the In-N-Out Burger down the street.
Matt: The San Gabriel Mountains have fallen into Beverly Hills.
Danny: And the prayers of a grateful nation are answered.
Simon: Listen, it’s on the news. The guy killed his family and then himself.
Harriet: No!
Simon: Yeah, he did it in the wrong order.
Danny: Is he funny?
Matt: I think so.
Danny: Because I remember him being very serious.
Matt: Serious about comedy!
Matt: He just did an experimental thing at a little theater in Pasadena. It was a translation of Look Back in Anger.
Danny: Look Back in Anger was written in English.
Matt: Yeah. He translated it into Dutch.
Danny: Why?
Matt: I don’t know, just as an exercise.
Danny: And it was funny?
Matt: Well, I didn’t see it, but I’ll bet it was.
Danny: Yeah, ’cause Look Back in Anger is irresistibly funny to begin with, and I would think the comic rat-a-tat-tat of Osborne’s play must soar even higher in Dutch.
Matt: Yeah.
Danny: In Pasadena.
Nurse: This thing’s gonna kill us all.
Danny: Thanks, sunshine.
Nurse: And could these lights possibly be any hotter?
Danny: No, this is as hot as they get.
Harriet: Not to be insensitive, but you fainted in drag. We’re probably not going to let you forget that soon.
Harriet: I got into the Falstaff Society.
Matt: Hey, great! Are you the first woman?
Harriet: I’m the eleventh woman.
Matt: Cool.
Harriet: I am the first woman from the Great Lakes region.
Matt: You’re quite a pioneer.
Harriet: I am.
Danny: Thanks for helping us out.
Andy: I don’t think I’ll be able to do that, but whatever.
Danny: That’s the spirit.
Jack: I do think you’re going to get fired.
Jordan: On what grounds?
Jack: On the grounds that there’s a growing public perception that you’re a twit.
Jordan: I believe that perception exists only inside this building, and possibly only inside this office.
Jack: It exists inside Newsweek too, J-Mac. Did you read it?
Jordan: Yes.
Jack: The way you sit in a chair in a meeting is “kittenish.” You toss your hair back, you speak in a wispy voice, “girlish.”
Jordan: I was surprised by how many times the woman’s editor let her get away with “-ish.”
Jack: But you know what she’s saying.
Jordan: That the cheerleaders didn’t want to sit next to her at lunch in high school? I’m a network executive, not Paris Hilton. What does it matter?
Jack: You are.
Jordan: What?
Jack: Paris Hilton. You got made into Paris Hilton. The press decided they needed a new one, and you’re good casting.
Andy: I’m on page two, and I don’t know what the sketch is about.
Darius: Once we state the premise, is the rest of it funny?
Andy: You don’t wanna use me as a test for that.
Darius: Why not?
Andy: I don’t find anything funny.
Suzanne: Is there a way you’d like me to dress?
Matt: Sure, but I have to wake up for school now.
Matt: Tell Karen to draw you $200 from petty cash and buy some nice work clothes.
Suzanne: Two hundred dollars?
Matt: It’s on us.
Suzanne: Am I working for Matt in 1963?
Andy: [to Matt] Lesson one is they gotta live and die on Friday night. They gotta feel like success in a three-minute sketch is the same thing as love, and they gotta fear failure like it’s grim death. They gotta be every bit as damaged as you are.
Danny: That’s a lot to shoot for, Andy.
Andy: Give their sketch a shot in the dress tonight. Let them hear what 300 people not laughing sounds like.
Danny: You’re ushering in the end of the world.
Martha: I don’t think I am.
Danny: You’ve torn its ticket, handed it a program. You’re showing the end of the world to its seat.
Danny: Why are budgets and grosses printed in your paper like they’re sports scores?
Danny: You sourced an anonymous Web post to support your point? Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York freaking Times? “At first, I wasn’t sure, but now that I see Dilbert27 agrees with her …” Are you kidding me?
Martha: Your fly’s open … made you look.
Jordan: You know how you win at three-card monty?
Reporter: How?
Jordan: Get someone to play.
Jordan: The Pew Research Center says the two most reviled professions in America are, in this order, lawyers and doctors. Hasn’t stopped shows about lawyers and doctors.
Reporter: I’m sure you weren’t happy to learn that your ex-husband is publishing a book. He makes claims in it about your lifestyle when you two were together. Do you wanna respond to that?
Jordan: Only to say that we had a lifestyle and we were together, and I regret both of those things very deeply.
Reporter: Some people wonder if you’re aware of the serious jeopardy you’re in.
Jordan: Yeah?
Reporter: Yes.
Jordan: What people would that be?
Reporter: You mean specifically.
Jordan: Yes.
Shelley: Why don’t we move on to the next question.
Jordan: I want to stay with this one.
Reporter: There is talk among people in the industry. It has been reported –
Jordan: The talk among people in the industry — and that was absolutely penetrating specificity — hasn’t been reported, it’s been created, the way it just was a moment ago. Stories need conflict, that’s understandable. Except reporters aren’t supposed to be storytellers. Stop trying to entertain me.
Reporter: You don’t like the press.
Shelley: I think that was ten questions.
Jordan: By “the press,” you’re talking about a lot of people. Let me be specific: I don’t like you. I don’t think you’ve spoken to a single person who’s unhappy with my job performance. I think you’re “reporting” on what you and the guy in the cubicle next to you were talking about at lunch. And that makes you a hairdresser and a cockfight promoter.
Andy: Yeah, that’s what tanking is like.
Lucy: That was unbearable.
Andy: Wasn’t it though.
Lucy: Was that really only three-and-a-half minutes?
Andy: No. It ran short ’cause no one had to hold for laughs. It wasn’t wasted time, though, ’cause you gave people a chance to think about their lives, and where they parked their cars.
Andy: Here’s what you wanna do.
Lucy: What?
Andy: Drink.
Darius: Hey, you can stand there or you can help us, but either way … you know?
Andy: You really laid me low with that one.
Lucy: What if we just simplified the whole thing?
Darius: That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Andy: I’d just sit in the dark and weep.
Matt: They look like they’ve got something you can only catch in Africa.
Martha: It’s called a man-on-the-street interview.
Danny: I never knew why I was supposed to care about the man on the street, either, but at least he looked like the man on the street. We saw him. He was the regional distributor for a soft-drink company. He was catching his train. I don’t know whether Dilbert27 is ten years old or a Labrador retriever.
Martha: Hey, if a dog types, I’m quoting him.
Jack: And you feel reporters are a bunch of hairdressers.
Jordan: Not all reporters. I made it very clear I was talking about him.
Jack: Much better.
Danny: This thing’s on a couple of websites now, reactions posted, almost twenty of them so far, and they’re incredibly supportive. I wrote one of them down.
Jordan: Who’s it from?
Danny: It doesn’t matter.
Jordan: Who’s it from?
Danny: A guy named Dilbert27, but I think he’s right on the money.
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