Reader’s Digest Condensed Television Shows: “CSI: Miami”

“MIRROR, MIRROR”

ACT ONE

FADE IN:

EXT. BEACH – MORNING

POLICE TAPE surrounds a small area on the beach. In the center is a dead body. The victim is disheveled, bearded, and appears homeless. The sand around him is blood-stained. LT. HORATIO CAINE and DET. FRANK TRIPP stand over DR. ALEXX WOODS who examines the corpse.

TRIPP
Looks like another indigent. I already called it in.

HORATIO
(to Alexx re: the body)
What’s he telling you?

ALEXX
(speaking to the body)
Why’d they do this to you? Why’d you bleed out? Somebody cut your jugular?
You sustain trauma to the head? Multiple blows? Your core temperature eighty-seven point two?

HORATIO
So he died….around midnight.

ALEXX
Irregular wound?

TRIPP
So, not a knife!

ALEXX
Organic matter under the nails and something that looks like …chalk… All for a couple of bucks?

Caine cocks his head and gazes off into the crashing surf.

HORATIO
We won’t know that ’til you get it to the lab, Alexx.

Caine puts on his sunglasses and looks sternly at no one in particular.

HORATIO
…but what we do know…is that for him… the buck…stopped here.

And, off a PUSH-IN to the body, we…

FADE OUT.

END OF ACT ONE.

ACT TWO

INT. CORONER’S OFFICE – AUTOPSY THEATRE – THE NEXT DAY

Alexx examines the victim. Horatio and MEGAN DONNER stand nearby.

HORATIO
What do we got, Alexx? I see red blue and flesh color…

ALEXX
Most of the organic material is the vic’s own DNA…

HORATIO
Which doesn’t lie…but what’s that blue matter?

MEGAN
Glass…from a bottle?

HORATIO
Exactly… but from where?

ALEXX
I’m thinkin’ a bar…

MEGAN
Because the red matter…

HORATIO
…is Maraschino cherry skin, ladies. We…just caught a break.

END OF ACT TWO

ACT THREE

EXT. OCEAN AVENUE – DAY

ESTABLISHING AERIAL SHOT: An array of dazzling pastel art deco hotels and mansions. We push in to the most enormous PALACE of them all, the lavish residence of Ignacio Villalobos.

INT. VILLABOLLOS MANSION – CONTINUOUS

Horatio and CALLEIGH DUQUESNE stand at one end of a seventy-foot bar stocked with every imaginable kind of liquor. IGNACIO VILLALOBOS sips an exotic drink and looks disinterestedly at the CSIs.

HORATIO
What nobody considers, Ignacio, is that DNA evidence is final — even when your DNA is identical…to someone else’s.

CUT TO: A FLASHBACK of a series of shots in the lab.

Megan sweating, determined, examines evidence through a microscope.

MACRO CLOSE-UP of a shimmering piece of blue crystal.

ON MARISOL DELKO comparing hairs on a giant projection screen.

ON TIM SPEEDLE removing test tubes from one of those machines that shakes things up.

MACRO CLOSE-UP of microscope slides of human tissue.

CLOSE-UP of Calleigh’s face.

CALLIEGH
Bingo!

INT. VILLALOBOS MANSION – DAY

CALLEIGH
What you didn’t realise is that monozygotic twins…

HORATIO
…have genetic markers that are distinctive and …

CALLEIGH
…in reaction to other materials…

HORATIO
…like blue Phoenician glass…

CALLIEGH
…and bar fixings, condiments, and the like…

EXT. VILLALOBOS MANSION – LATER
The perp is led in handcuffs to a waiting squad car.

ANGLE ON HORATIO

HORATIO
He killed his twin because he couldn’t handle his failure.

CALLIEGH
He couldn’t continue to live the lie about where he came from.

HORATIO
What he should have known, Calleigh, is that the only thing that never lies…is the evidence.

FADE OUT.

END OF EPISODE

Reader’s Digest Condensed Television Shows: Family Guy

The Old Yorker is pleased to announce a partnership with Reader’s Digest, the largest circulation magazine in the United States, to create abridged versions of popular television shows according to the same principles the Digest has used in editing its famous Condensed Books. Our shared goal is to preserve the integrity and tone of the work in question while respecting the valuable time of our readers who, now more than ever, must make difficult choices if they intend to stay abreast of popular culture.

For our first Condensed Television Show, we have chosen one that is both popular and readily condensed.

ACT ONE

FADE IN

EXT./ESTAB. GRIFFINS’ HOUSE – DAY

INT. GRIFFIN LIVING ROOM – CONTINUOUS

The family sits watching TV in the living room. Angle on TV.

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
We now return to “NBC Fucking Sucks,”
only on NBC.

A fat woman stands holding a tophat. She thrusts her hand inside the had and dramatically pulls nothing out.

FAT MAGICIAN
(A BEAT, THEN DEFLATED) We fucking suck.

INT. GRIFFIN’S LIVING ROOM – BACK TO SCENE

Angle back on the Family.

STEWIE
That was an ‘appointment television’ appointment
I could have missed.

PETER
Everything seems retarded on TV when you’ve seen
it a hundred times, right Retarded Sam Waterston?

A wobbly retarded-looking Sam Waterston claps his hands and chews on a sponge.

PETER
(TO CAMERA) Hee-hee-hee. Isn’t he adorable?

END ACT ONE

ACT TWO

INT. GRIFFIN GARAGE – NIGHT

Peter and Quagmire sit in front of Joe whose legs are in stirrups. A large box with hundreds of pieces spilling out reads “Home Prostate Surgery Kit.”

QUAGMIRE
This looked so much simpler on the infomercials.

PETER
It’s the low class Cockney accent. It soothes and
deceives. (COCKNEY) Clean out your colon, guv’nuh?”

QUAGMIRE
To me Cockney accents say “competence” and “medical
acumen.”

PETER
And riddance of frequent nighttime urination, which is what
we’re about here right? Let’s hope it doesn’t get messy,
like that “Borat” tribunal.

INT. INTERNATIONAL COURTROOM – DAY

Borat is on the witness stand.

BORAT
Character is completely original and brand new
for entertainment of peoples.

He is interrupted by Balki of “Perfect Strangers,” who rises from the prosecution desk.

BALKI
I am thinking that we have heard quite enough:
Small Eastern European country, weird customs,
exotic dress – is “just so ridickulus.” Borat is Balki!

Balki is interrupted by the dramatic entrance of Latka Gravas, from “Taxi.”

LATKA
Excuse me, trial is travesty of mockery of sham.
Borat is Balki is Latka! But only mine is funny ‘cuz
I’m dead. Thank you.

END ACT TWO

ACT THREE

EXT. GRIFFIN HOUSE – NIGHT

The whole family sits in the living room looking at television. Angle on screen.

INT. TV STUDIO – DAY (ON TV)

DR. PHIL SITS ACROSS FROM A YOUNG GIRL AND A COUPLE OF CREEPY LOOKING GUYS.

DR PHIL
On our next show, we track a family that was in
crisis when we first intervened. A year ago,
13-year-old Michelle was sleeping with older men
she met on My Space. Today, she’s put all that
behind her, and she meets them on Facebook!

INT. GRIFFIN’S LIVING ROOM – CONTINUOUS

STEWIE
Well, my takeaway from that is simply it’s so
eeeeeasy for girls to get laid! I mean any pig can hold
up a shiny hoof and get gang-banged till the cows come
home. (PAUSE) Meg.

BRIAN
Whoa, this is more awkward than when Rainn Wilson was
held accountable for his “fuck you” quirkiness.

EXT. OPEN SEAS – DAY

Rainn Wilson is stretched across an overturned rowboat.

RAINN WILSON
You cut off my hands and that’s one doodle
that can’t be undid, homeskillet.

A deranged child soldier cackles and chops off Wilson’s hands. We pull out to see the maniacal kids playing with many severed hands. Some are being made to give the finger, some are high fiving with them. Still more are putting on a very elaborate shadow puppet performance involving ships and aircraft and dragon creatures to the delight of others.

END ACT THREE