episode

	`Written by Eric Kentoff` When Joan of Arc learns that the boys' basketball team doesn't allow girls or animals to play, she disguises herself as the male "John Dark," and becomes the star player. Cleopatra falls for John, which makes team-captain Abe Lincoln jealous. And JFK can't figure out why he has funny feelings for a guy… even one as feminine as John. Meanwhile, Gandhi steals the mascot of Clone High's rival school, Genetically Engineered Superhuman High. (ESPN's Chris Berman and Dan Patrick guest star as themselves.)



	Eric Kentoff was the perfect dude to write this script. He’s a sports nut, having written for The Man Show, some gameshow called “Sports Geniuses” and -- I kid you not -– the Harlem Globetrotters. He’s also a bottomless chasm of knowledge on bad 1980s movies, which allowed him to recall specific scenes from classics such as “Wildcats,” “Just One of the Guys” and “Teenwolf” like he saw them. And, for his compact little body, he plays a mean game of basketball. When we used to work in the building where they shoot Scrubs, the Clone High gang thrice played hoops out back with the Scrubs cast, until we threw their ball into the river. The point is, Eric was destined to write this episode, and I think it shows.
	`THE GREATEST JOKE EVER WRITTEN`
	Sometimes, a fake moustache joke is just a fake moustache joke. There’s nothing wrong with that, because fake moustaches are inherently funny. For example, I once saw one of our writers, Judah, wear a fake moustache all night at a swanky Hollywood party, and it probably got him laid. But I’m getting off track. Let’s say you put a fake moustache on an animal, like a goat or a mule or a dolphin. Even funnier, right? Well, what if a person couldn’t tell the difference between that mustachioed goat and a human being? Hilarious. Well, in the first draft of the script for this episode, that’s what Eric wrote during the climactic scene in the gym. After Joan rips off her mustache revealing she’s a girl, Scudworth yells “Roger! You’re in!” Then we show a goat named Roger with a fake moustache, wearing a Clone High jersey. Good stuff.
	`But sometimes, it really pays off to be writing for a show that has a premise about clones of historical figures in high school. Because a really good joke like Roger the mustachioed goat, above, can be transformed into The Greatest Joke Ever Written when you add an historical figure to it. And that, America, is how we ended up with the following:`
	`SCUDWORTH: Henry the Eighth, you’re in!`
	`ANGLE ON HENRY THE EIGHTH, who is actually just a dolphin in a fake handlebar mustache. He rips off his mustache dramatically and makes a DOLPHIN NOISE. The crowd GASPS.SCUDWORTH: Damn it! Would everyone in a fake mustache please leave?Scudworth stands there watching a GUY in a fake moustache, a SWAN in a fake moustache, and GROUCHO MARX exit.`
	I remember being in the writers’ room when someone (I wish I remember who) came up with the idea of replacing Roger with a historical figure. We spent a good ten minutes trying to think of the perfect historical figure to use for the joke, finally deciding that Henry the Eighth is obscure enough that nobody really knows anything about him, but specific enough that everyone knows he’s a real historical figure. As a bonus, he’s probably not someone we would ever use in a later episode as a clone, so we didn’t have to worry about that.
	`Then, as the piece de resistance, we changed the goat to a dolphin to continue our streak of dolphins in every episode.`
	`Months later, in the storyboarding and Leica Reel editing stage, Phil and Chris added Groucho as one of the mustache-wearing people who exit. It was done almost as an afterthought. It just goes to show, a great premise can make a good joke hilarious, and even after that, it keeps on giving. That’s an awkwardly constructed sentence, but you get what I mean.`
	`SPORTSKISSTERS`
	Wasn’t it freakin’ great how we got Dan Patrick and Chris Berman to be in this episode? Possibly two of the greatest sportscasters working today, and they agreed to slum it on our little show. It still blows my mind. Anyway. In the script, after they talk about their microphones not being plugged in, Dan turns to Chris and says, “Wanna go make out?” to which Chris replies, “Why not.” Then, at the end of the episode, in a scene at the Homecoming dance that ended up being cut, we were supposed to see Dan and Chris enjoying a slow dance together. When recording the episode, Dan and Chris recorded their dialogue separately, and Chris Berman had some worries about “the gay stuff.” Ultimately, he agreed to do it if Patrick said it was okay. In the long run, it didn’t matter anyway because the joke was edited out for time reasons.
	`SHAQIN’ UP`
	At one point in the brainstorming process, while the writers were creating GESH (Genetically Engineered Superhuman High), they considered making all the basketball players clones of Shaquille O’Neil, the dominating center from the three-time world champion Los Angeles Lakers. The GESH team would consist of many Shaqs of various colors and sizes. We even considered asking Shaq to do their voices. Ultimately, though, it was decided that the rival team is called Genetically Engineered Superhuman High, not Clone High, so a team of clones didn’t make much sense unless you also explained somehow that the real Shaq was one of the genetically engineered superhumans from this school.
	`SWEET AND SOUR CHILD OF MINE`
	`You may recall in the episode where Colonel Principal briefly mentions winning Scudworth’s son, Brian, in last year’s bet. Scudworth asks how Brian is, and the Colonel takes a bite of soup and says “deeeelicious!” Well, in Eric’s first draft of the script, this little joke was much longer, and just as disturbilarious. Here it is in it’s complete, unabridged form:`
	`COLONEL PRINCIPAL: I reckon that means it’s time for our annual wager. What shall I win this year? I still have your first born child from last year’s bet.` `SCUDWORTH: You leave Brian out of this! I was thinking loser does the winner’s laundry.` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: Scabworth, you’ve got yourself a deal.` `SCUDWORTH: Fine. Now, I’d like to eat my lunch. So, if you don’t mind, amscray! (Scudworth starts eating some soup.)` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: Why, of course. Oh, is that the soup I sent you?` `SCUDWORTH: Yes, it is. It’s actually quite good.` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: I’m glad you like it... because it’s cream of Brian!` `SCUDWORTH: Nooooooo!` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: I’m just kiddin’. It’s really cream of brains... Brian’s brains!` `SCUDWORTH: Nooooooo!` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: Again, I’m just pulling your labcoat. It’s the brains of a cow named Brian.` `SCUDWORTH: Oh, thank God.` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: A cow named Brian who ate Brian’s brains!` `SCUDWORTH: Nooooooo!` `COLONEL PRINCIPAL: I do declare, Pudworth, you are as gullible as the day is long. Brian is safe and enjoying his life in public school.` `SCUDWORTH: Public school?!? Noooooooo!`


	`GESH AGAIN`
	`Instead of the regular old “Next time on a very special Clone High...” tag at the end of the episode, Eric pitched that we play the following song. Unfortunately, Chris and Phil are big fat party poopers with no sense of humor, so they denied Eric and the world the Geshy Song:`
	`Geshy comes running over a hill with a big smile on his face. His happy theme song, which sounds a lot like the song played for the Asian kid on the tricycle in Revenge of the Nerds plays.` `THEME SONG: GESHY, GESHY, GESHY COME OUT AND PLAY/ GESHY, GESHY, OH WHAT A HAPPY DAY/ WE LOVE THE WAY YOU MAKE US LAUGH/ PLEASE DO NOT MURDER OUR GIRAFFE.Geshy breaks the neck of a giraffe.` `THEME SONG: GESHY, GESHY, GESHY WE LOVE YOU SO/ GESHY, GESHY, WE’LL FOLLOW WHEREVER YOU GO/ YOU ARE OUR VERY SPECIAL FRIEND/ I BET THAT COUGAR MEETS WITH A BLOODY END.Geshy grabs the cougar by the tail, swallows him, and pulls out the skeleton.` `THEME SONG: GESHY, GESHY, IT SEEMS THAT YOU AREN’T SO NICE/ YOU’VE EATEN ALL THE ANIMALS DOWN TO THE POOR TIT MICE/ IT’S TURNED INTO A TRAGIC DAY/ MAYBE IT’S TIME YOU WENT AWAY.Geshy hits a TNT box, and a herd of sheep explode.` `THEME SONG: GESHY, GESHY, THIS TIME YOU WENT WAY TO FAR/THAT WAS OUR BEST PET JAGUAR/ GESHY, GESHY, WE HOPE YOU MEET A FIERY DEATH/ THAT WOULD BE GREAT PAYBACK FOR MY JAGUAR, BETH.`
	`ALTERNATE ENDING: THERE’S NO GOING HOMECOMING`
	In the episode, there are a number of little hints that this is not just a regular basketball game, but the homecoming game. (Abe says he’s going to ask Cleo to the Homecoming Prom, Cleo asks John Dark to the dance, etc.) Seems like an awful lot of setup for never actually getting to the dance, right? Right. That happened because the episode was running long, and we cut the dance scene from the end of the show. What happened in it is Joan wins both King and Queen. Get it? She’s a girl, and she dressed up as a guy. If that’s not humiliating enough, she then has to dance with herself while everyone stares at her to a sappy song (in the script it was Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen,” though we probably wouldn’t have gotten the rights to it.) You can watch a rough cut of this scene in the Leica Reel Outtakes section of this website, if you need closure.
	On a side note, notice how Abe says he’s going to ask Cleo to the Homecoming Prom. That’s a leftover bit from a recurring joke that Phil and Chris came up with, where Clone High -- being an exaggeration of typical high schools in teen dramas -- would have many proms throughout the year. Aside from the Homecoming Prom, there was going to be an Early Winter Prom, a Late Winter/Early Spring Prom, a Mid-Semester Prom, a Post-Prom Clean Up Prom, etc. In episode 8, when Joan has to live under the gym bleachers, there was once a joke where Scudworth says something like “You can stay there through the Under the Sea Prom, but not during the Under the Bleachers Prom.” In the end, all of the multiple-prom jokes were cut, except for Abe’s reference to the Homecoming Dance as a Homecoming Prom, which actually just confuses things.
	`HISTORICAL JOKE GRAVEYARD`
	`During the rally scene at the beginning of the episode, before Gandhi unfurled the banner, he was going to run and do a back-flip, yelling:`
	`GANDHI: Geronimoooo!` `Geronimo, a clone in Native American headdress, enters.` `GERONIMO: Yeah?`
	`That joke never made it past the first draft.`
	`When Abe takes a shot to impress Cleo right before the first commercial break, there used to be a really embarrassing historical joke that went like this:`
	`CLEO: Abe, make a shot for me, won’t you?` `ABE: You got it. I call this one “The Great Emasculator” because it emasculates the opponent.`
	`That joke was emancipated from the episode.`
	`When Joan is dressed up as a dude and forced into telling a sexual-conquest story in the weight room, there used to be this little ditty:`
	`JOHN/JOAN: Let’s see, once I met this girl in um... in Niagara Falls.` `JFK: Hey, Liberace’s got a girlfriend up there.` `LIBERACE: (NERVOUSLY) I doubt you know her. Continue with the story.`
	`I still think that one’s funny. I don’t know why it was cut.`
	`During the basketball game:`
	`Joan/John passes the ball to Abe who runs into a GESH player and is called for a foul.` `SCUDWORTH: Foul?! Ref, are you blind?!` `Referee Helen Keller, in dark glasses, comes over to Scudworth looking pissed.` `SCUDWORTH:Oh, Helen Keller, I didn’t realize--` `Helen Keller scribbles on a pad and shows it to Scudworth. It says, “Shame on you.” Scudworth bows his head in shame.`
	`We were all ashamed of that joke, so it was cut.`
	`Don’t forget to visit www.geocities.com/namethatcat!`
	`~Pun Dog`