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The Universe (Parts I, II & III)

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SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

Two turtlenecked astronomers try to explain the cosmos with hands, tubes and grocery bags, and one lecture drifts somewhere far creepier.

Community rating

– / 10

The premise

Here’s the bit.

In a three-part parody of solemn public-television science programs, Dr. Jimes Tooper (Eric Wareheim) and Dr. H. Donna Gust (Tim Heidecker) take turns addressing the camera against a field of stars. Gust maps the universe onto a human hand and warns against collapsing it into a tube, while Tooper compares space exploration to a first date and gushes that light-speed travel is too much fun for humans to grasp. In later installments Gust loses his train of thought, announces that there are now 90 planets and likens sister stars to a pair of eyeballs, and Tooper describes the goosebumps the cosmos gives him before recounting how a neighbor caught him hiding in the bushes at night, shining a flashlight into the man's son's bedroom, something he insists he does every night.

The funny people

Meet the cast. 2

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

The universe. What a concept.

When I was a child, there was thought to be nine planets, but there are now 90 planets.

Every star has a sister star, a little bit like two eyeballs.

Behind the scenes

The people who made it.

A little extra

Notes from the archive.

The three parts were spread through the season 4 episode "Universe" (February 22, 2009), between segments such as Gettin' It Dunn and Brule's Rules. The episode aired third in the season but is numbered fourth on Adult Swim's site.

ScriptEnglish · 28 turns

Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.

  1. 00:06

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    The universe. What a concept.

  2. 00:11

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    You know, the universe is a little bit like the human hand. For example, you have Grauman's Center right here, and then you have Undiscovered Worlds and Sector 8. And up here, it's the Tillman's Crest.

  3. 00:25

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    So you can kind of picture that it's a little bit like a leaf or a, or a, it's not a bowl.

  4. 00:32

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    The universe is beautiful. Something like a new woman that I was going to date. You're dark, and you're massive, and you have a black hole. And all of those elements I want to explore, just like you would explore on a new date.

  5. 00:47

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    You want to dive deep into them and feel around and just see what's going to come out of that.

  6. 00:53

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    The time it takes to get from one star to another star is, you need to travel at the speed of light.

  7. 00:59

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    And us humans can't even fathom the concept except at that kind of time, because it's really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really fun to think about taking a speed of light ride.

  8. 01:13

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    If you could put the universe into a tube, you'd end up with a very long tube, probably extending twice the size of the universe, because when you collapse the universe, it expands, and it would be, you wouldn't wanna put it into a tube.

  9. 01:31

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    Picture a hot dog bun and throw all the stars, the hundreds of stars that there are in the universe, into a bag, and put the universe into a bag. And you, all of a sudden, they become. um...

  10. 01:51

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    When I was a child, there was thought to be nine planets. But there are now 90 planets.

  11. 01:58

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    You know, the ultimate fate of the universe is so dark and mysterious that it generates butterflies in my stomach. And that goes to tickles in my spine. And that creates goose pimples.

  12. 02:08

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    And then that penetrates my mind. and then the whole Big Bang explosion. .

  13. 02:17

    Stars can be .

  14. 02:30

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    Stars can be fun. A lot of people say, Donna, you get so wrapped up in the physics of it, don't you have any fun?

  15. 02:36

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    I say, well, I go up and I look at the stars through my telescope and I see the little dipster or I see the big dipster.

  16. 02:41

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    Every star has a sister star, a little bit like two eyeballs.

  17. 02:45

    Dr. H. Donna Gust

    If you can imagine, if you could see the other side of my eyeball, you'd see a 360-degree eyeball.

  18. 02:52

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    Do you know that when you look at a planet and you see that light, that planet's not even there? That's just a light.

  19. 02:58

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    That's just your neighbor shining a flashlight right into your yard looking for coons.

  20. 03:04

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    And he says, what are you doing in my backyard with that flashlight?

  21. 03:09

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    And I told him, I'm shining in your window so I can teach your son about the universe.

  22. 03:14

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    He said, get out of my yard, and why are you communicating to my son?

  23. 03:17

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    Why are you in all black behind my bushes shining a light into my house?

  24. 03:20

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    And I said, I'm teaching your son about the universe.

  25. 03:22

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    I'm shining a light, shining a light right in there and exploring his room as he's looking out and exploring the universe.

  26. 03:30

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    I turn the light off and I see your son go to bed

  27. 03:32

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    and I turn the light back on and I do swirls on his wall like a comet's tail.

  28. 03:39

    Dr. Jimes Tooper

    I do this every night with your son.

The rabbit hole continues

One more couldn’t hurt.

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