The So-So Source: A Fill-In-the-Blanks Romp of Comedic Confusion

 In the Family Guy episode "The Splendid Source," Quagmire tells his buddies a dirty joke that makes Peter laugh until he craps his pants. Not just the first time. Every time. We don't actually hear what the joke is, just that the last words are "Your vagina's in the sink." But when the fun of making Peter poop himself starts to get old, the guys develop a new fixation - finding out where the joke came from. Well, Quagmire heard it from Bruce, who heard it from so and so, and so on and so forth, until Peter and his friends are on a cross-country trip to solve the mystery of WHERE this joke ORIGINATED. Yet the entire episode, we never hear any part of the joke other than "your vagina's in the sink."

What I thought at the time: I honestly didn't think there was a joke behind this episode. I thought it was a throwaway line the writers came up with that was sure to amuse the likes of Peter, who has a very weak grasp on the concept of anatomy.

Lois: You're so stupid you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.

* Cutaway to Peter staring in confusion at a hole in the ground *

Peter: Is that ... is that my ass?

But guess what, I was wrong. I was quite wrong. And, several years after first seeing this episode, I decided to sit down and do some quick sleuthing, and I found out two things very quickly:

1. In a deleted scene that you can see only on the DVD, you get to hear the entire joke. It's neither funny nor creative, geez, I probably could have come to that conclusion on my own. I'd kind of like to continue to believe that Peter and his buddies were chasing down the origin of some unparalleled comic gem that might even cause ME to lose my mind and my bowel control.

2. Family Guy didn't make this joke up. They got it from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

But, now I had looked behind the curtain, and I was hooked. More examples flew to my mind of ambiguous stories and jokes from the world of fiction that we only get a tiny taste of. We come in midway through the joke, or we never hear it finished. Today I'm going to sleuth and speculate my way through five examples that have given me pause over the years, and possibly find some splendid sources of my own. I shall order my examples from least to most mysterious.

5. SEINFELD - THE PACHYDERM

In this episode, we find out that Jerry and his friends have a funny story they love to tell, that they refer to the pachyderm story, always pronouncing it really obnoxiously like "pack-eeee-derm." We ultimately find out pretty much the whole story, but when I was very young and even rewatching it now, I'm kind of baffled by the whole pachyderm story. I felt like I was on the outside of something? Was I supposed to supposed to know what or who they were talking about? Was I supposed to think this was funny?

What I thought at the time: This is a more embarrassing one, but you have to keep in mind that I was very young when I started watching the Seinfeld reruns that came on after the Simpsons reruns. There were jokes I did get, much to my mother's dismay, like the infamous contest or the reason Elaine's boyfriend couldn't play the saxophone that one time. But there was plenty of humor that flew over my innocent head. Like the infamous "fake, fake, fake, fake" episode. And the pachyderm thing flew over my head. At first, I thought they were telling a story about an actual elephant. I mean, I was a kid, and there were plenty of jokes about animals in my joke books. Of course an elephant can't carry no pizzas! Then when I got a little bit older, I assumed "pachyderm" was a racist slur of some kind that I also didn't understand. I feel like ... I finally grasp it now ... kind of ... but that doesn't make up for the many years I felt I was on the outside of some kind of joke I didn't even know if I could ask my parents about.

What I think now: I'm ready, well, almost ready, to concede that I may have over thought this one. I wasn't supposed to know who this guy was, or why they called him "the Pachyderm." The Seinfeld wiki informed me he never appears on the show, and this is the only episode where he's even mentioned.

Still, what a misdirect! Why is this story so funny? Why is it, like my #2 in this list, THE story that's supposed to elicit both laughs and panty-droppings even if the context doesn't call for it? (I mean, Elaine's date immediately took ... IT ... out after she told him the pachyderm story.)

What the internet thinks: I'm not the only one who was tormented by the pachyderm story, but the most cromulent explanation I found on Reddit after looking at exactly 3 Reddit posts on this is that we aren't supposed to find the pachyderm story funny. It's a story about a shared experience between Jerry, Elaine, and whoever else was there. They laugh when they talk about it, and expect others to get it as well, when it's really a you-had-to-be-there moment. And I guess that's the joke. That it was an inside joke all along, and even Jerry and Elaine didn't really realize it, like when we sputter soda out of our nose when trying to tell a relative stranger about this funny thing our cat did and they just smile in uncomfortable politeness.

Though, it really did seem to work on Elaine's date...

4. THE SIMPSONS - BANNED ITCHY AND SCRATCHY EPISODE

Oh, the incredibly complex world of The Simpsons. The untold depths of mystery to probe. We'll never know what state they live in, we will never see Luann's "worthy of Webster's" drawing of dignity, we never hear the ending of any of Grandpa Simpson's stories, we never even figure out what gender the cat is supposed to be. Every episode arguably starts mid-joke, with Bart scrawling on the detention room chalkboard about some mischievous activity we don't get to actually see and must piece together based on what we're given. So, I have a lot of options.

I'm going to go with a scene from "Homer Goes to College." You might think I'm talking about the scene that starts midway through Homer filling out his college application and writing, "It was the most I've ever thrown up, and it changed my life forever." But, that's pretty self-explanatory. That's not where I'm going. I'm going here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAgimRF7SxA

In case you like reading stuff better than you like watching stuff, the setup is that Bart and Lisa are preparing to watch the episode of Itchy and Scratchy where Scratchy finally gets Itchy. The kids' hands are clasped as Bart utters that his entire life has led to witnessing this moment. But, they don't get to see it because Homer's nerdy college buddies unplug the TV to plug in their rock tumbler. When the TV gets plugged in again, the episode is over, showing just an explosion cloud with the words "The End," and Krusty is proclaiming they'll never be able to show this one again for a million trillion years.

What I thought at the time: Well, Scratchy blows up Itchy. Duh.

What I think now: There has to be something more to it than that. Why would a very-much-hyped episode of America's most popular show immediately be pulled from syndication and never even talked about again? My first thought is that it wasn't just Itchy that exploded in that forever-missing scene. This is the one where Scratchy finally "gets" Itchy. That could mean reaching some kind of understanding when their roles are reversed, that ends in some kind of double suicide that perhaps they had been planning since the beginning, possibly with tossing a middle finger to the powers that be that have been glorifying violence to sell toys for years. The Krusty employee who wrote this episode was fired (or worse) immediately, but not in enough time to prevent them from airing the episode. Hence Krusty's hurried attempt to laugh it off and assure the world it would never be seen again.

What the internet thinks: Believe it or not, there are other people on the internet that wonder what happened in this Itchy and Scratchy episode. I looked at a few Reddit comments and found some incredibly graphic musings as well as just quoting random other lines from the episode and perhaps the best of all, a comment saying that we never will find out, this episode is Marcellus Wallace's briefcase.

3. DUMB AND DUMBER - LLOYD'S SKI MASK JOKE

In the movie Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd has a fantasy montage about him wooing Mary Swanson and winning over her upper-class friends in a variety of ways. One of those ways is by delighting them with his sense of humor. We cut in on a scene where Lloyd is finishing up a joke: "So he says, do you love me? And she says, no, but that's a really nice ski mask!" Lloyd and all his new friends roar with laughter and slap their knees.

What I thought at the time: Well, I was in elementary school when I was first delighted by the adventures of Lloyd and Harry. I took the joke at face value (no pun intended). I thought the punch line was that this guy was so ugly that the woman thought he was wearing a ski mask but that was actually his face.

I also considered that it might be what mom and dad would call a "dirty joke" and that's why I might not get it but certainly could not ask mom and dad. I pondered ways someone's **** could possibly look like a ski mask. 

What I think now: Well, I thought neither of my simplistic juvenile ideas could possibly be right. There was a potential splendid source to find. So, I took to the internet. On first pass, people seemed to be divided into camps based on the Reddit thread topics: either "It's not a joke, he's just stupid" or "It's a rape joke."

Well ... I don't think they would cheat us badly enough for the first thing to be true. And ... a rape joke? That's really dark! Rape is not Lloyd and Harry's style. In Dumb and Dumber To, we find out that while both men think they may have gotten Fraida Felcher pregnant, even though neither of them had sex with her and they don't seem to know what sex is.

Harry: But I played with your boobies so much.

Fraida: You can't get pregnant from that.

Harry: You can't?

Lloyd: What about when I French tickled you?

Fraida: Putting a frilly glow in the dark condom on your finger is not the same as sex.

The truth was out there somewhere. Possibly between the couple more Google searches I could do before I give up on this and just move to the next one.

What the internet thinks: Well, I'm definitely not alone in having been curious about what this line was supposed to mean. It seems to remain an unanswered question for many.

Some people back the rape joke theory, even though that's the most tasteless and least funny theory, because just the fact that it is so unfunny and so tasteless IS the joke. That Lloyd would think this is an appropriate joke to tell at a classy party and it would make him their new darling. That actually does lend some cromulence to the rape joke theory.

Someone claimed to know the whole joke and answered the question for it in this thread: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.jim-carrey/c/EKXnyhv4NEE?pli=1 But in my mind this is pretty far-fetched. Also, the phrasing of the joke is just so odd, that that makes it even harder to believe. The fact that the guy would say, "Do you love me?" I mean, that doesn't ring true in any of these scenarios. In this one, even if he thought the woman was trying to slip her hands down his pants, wouldn't he say something more like, "See something you like?"

So, having not found an answer to this one that seems airtight, I have to accept that either this joke does not exist, or it does exist and is out there for the most diligent of detectives to eventually track down. That person won't be me. I have a life. That's not true. I don't have a life, but I AM lazy.

If you know the source of this joke, I apologize for wasting your time. Please leave the explanation in the comments. I'm just kidding. No one reads this blog.

2. BLACK MIRROR - THE MAN ON THE HORSE

"White Christmas" is the most iconic and masterful episode of Black Mirror. It redefined what the scope of the show would be and it's required viewing for ... me and my cats ... every December. It's three stories with the common thread of Matt, the soulless silver-tongue played by Jon Hamm, using cutting-edge technology and morally questionable methods to make money.

In the first segment, Matt is using an implant-type device to coach socially awkward men in real time as they try to pick up women. As his nervous customer manages to catch a girl's attention at a holiday party he crashes, Matt coaches him to go straight for the good material that they worked on, the funny stuff. Try "the horse story" on this girl.

The hapless man stumbles into asking the blonde, "So, did you see that guy on a horse?" When she doesn't know what he's talking about, he elaborates further, "Oh, yeah, 20 minutes ago, there was a guy riding a horse around outside. Shirtless. Oh, and the weird thing is, he had a bow and arrow. So the guy gets off his horse, see, and he's got a backpack..." and that's the last we hear.

What WAS this? Was it going to turn into a joke? Was it going to turn into a story? What is this tale of pachyderm-esque acclaim that Matt obviously believes in, because he even uses it himself. As he's leaving Greta's house in the second segment, he mentions apropos of nothing, "You know, while I was on my way over here, I saw this guy with no shirt, riding a horse down the street. Swear to God."

What I think I think: This is going to have to be somewhat different from the others, because my first try at an internet search didn't really bring up anything. A couple other people thrown by the horse story, but no answers offered.

The first time I watched the episode, I'm sure I thought we would hear the end of the horse story eventually, this being an anthology episode. And Black Mirror isn't the type of show to just let anything go. It's the show where you're constantly looking for Easter eggs. I mean, in "White Christmas" alone, there were references to 7 prior episodes, and they were still in season 2 at this point. Maybe Black Mirror will eventually circle back to this reference at some point! Maybe the series will end with us finally finding out the ending of the horse story.

Because, I must believe that there is a horse story. And Matt called it "the funny material." Where was this going? What was in the backpack? It might just be a story that the Black Mirror writers concocted, but there's got to be something there.

Here's one theory that I thought up. Jon Hamm's Matt is extremely condescending, and he's the only American character in the otherwise British episode. Americans do love to make fun of British people's senses of humor. Family Guy does pretty much constantly, with maybe my favorite example being Meg forced to watch every episode of Monty Python as a form of torture.

Voice on TV: And I have a pet hedgehog that I shall name Zippy, and we shall go walking together. And he shall go Zip! Zip!

Meg; This isn't fair! I'm a girl! I don't even like the GOOD Monty Python stuff!

So this is what could have happened: 

Matt: Alright, I've got a new British mark. I need to think up the funniest story in the world. But not funny to normal people. Funny to British people. I need a story so corking it will make them chuff themselves to bits dirtying their jumpers quite proper as they make a right mess out of the jammy dodgers they were fancying.

(Matt watches multiple episodes of Monty Python)

Matt: Ok, so what I need is a story that doesn't make a bit of sense and doesn't have a punch line but makes you feel like the world has just gone all silly buggers on your arse. I'll go to the local British pub to think on this. Oh, it looks like the nearest pub is the Man and Horse and Pecs and Bow and Arrows and Backpack.

And, after tossing back a few ales, Matt had his pick-up story.

1. MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE - BRACE YOURSELVES, I FIGURED THIS ONE OUT

If I figured this one out, then why did I make it the #1 most mysterious? Well, because halfway through writing this blog, the skies opened up and the answer revealed itself to me. We cannot predict nor plan for our moments of genius. And as of a couple hours ago, the item on this list that confused me the most is the one I have most definitively solved.

For those of you who haven't seen the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Living Will," here's a synopsis. Hal finds out he was given power of attorney for a neighbor he barely knows. The reason being, the neighbor wanted an impartial party, and considers everyone else in the neighborhood a friend. However, the lawyer didn't stop by to tell Hal that the neighbor passed away. He stopped by to tell him the neighbor is in a coma and Hal is charged with deciding whether or not to pull the plug.

Hal understandably cannot handle this pressure, and ultimately develops psychosomatic paralysis from the waist up. But in the episode's final scene, we cut to a scene of Hal and Lois in bed, Hal no longer paralyzed, as they recap what we didn't get to see.

Lois: I'm so proud of  you for making such a decision! And a surprising one! I thought your only options were life and death, I didn't realize there was a third one!

Hal: Well, most people just aren't willing to think outside the box. See, the answer was there the whole time. And once I found out he was a bird lover, the whole thing just fell into place.

Lois: And everything was at Radio Shack?

Hal: Everything except the hat.

Lois: Honey, your solution was so brilliant. Would you mind walking me through it one more time, step by step, to make sure I understand it?

Hal: Honey, the whole thing was so exhausting, I don't think I'll talk about it ever again. 

Lois: Okay, probably for the best.

This, of course, launched a multitude of online threads begging the question, what did Hal choose? With topics ranging from "Did he let the neighbor live" to "Did he turn his neighbor into a scarecrow" to "Stop overthinking this, stupid." But I ended up not having to read any of those, because I figured it out.

What I know: So, what many people overlook when attempting to solve this mystery is the fact that Hal clearly said he chose a third option that was not life nor was it death, that was not pulling the plug nor was it continuing to keep the body on life support. And it all fell into place once he realized his neighbor was a bird lover.

Now, if I learned anything from the movie Poor Things, it's that you can put anything's brain into anything. So, Hal managed to wrangle a down-on-its-luck bird. Possibly a turkey that isn't going to be pardoned on Thanksgiving, or an eagle tired of being associated with certain political agendas. So, he arranges to have the bird's brain transplanted into his neighbor's body. The body still lives, with no plug-pulling, but the brain is set free. It's possible the bird might freak out at some point and start pecking at the medical equipment, but that's now the medical staff's problem, not Hal's.

So why Radio Shack, you ask? Well, Hal had to find someone to come into the hospital with him and perform the surgery. And, as the Simpsons taught us in the episode where they were looking for Bart's deranged long-lost twin:

Homer: We'll search out any place a sick, twisted, solitary misfit might run to.

Lisa: I'll start with Radio Shack.

So, at Radio Shack, Hal finds not only the sicko to help him perform the operation, but whatever else you might use for this type of operation. Batteries? I dunno. I don't know what they have at Radio Shack, but I know they DON'T have hats. And you would need to get the neighbor a hat to hide the fact that you cut his skull open and shoved a bird brain in there. Hence. Hal and his accomplice needed one more stop to find a jaunty cap so that no one would be the wiser.

And there we have it. I may be the first person to solve this Malcolm mystery, other than whoever wrote Poor Things. And the world can sleep again.