"Okay, cut!"
Alison finally lets out the laugh she's been holding in carefully, as Ken drops his exaggerated Chang-tongue.
The camera just hadto be on her for the last five minutes, and Ken just hadto be around.
Next to her, Joel, Danny and Gillian had been sniggering freely for about five minutes before Joe called for the shot to end.
She gasps for breath and doubles over.
Something about Chang-tongue just makes her laugh uncontrollably like a crazy hyena.
*
Annie finishes the impassioned speech she'd been making to Chang about friendship, jam, honesty and cats for the past five minutes, trying to convince him to let Britta, Abed, Jeff and her free after their so-called crime of talking too loudly outside his office.
Jeff flashes her a proud smile and she grins smugly as Chang retreats.
In the back of her mind, she thanks god that Chang's army of kids isn't in existence anymore, like the previous year.
*
Gillian reminds her about they're 'study' date for the next day (they're planning on meeting to learn season four's Halloween episode's script together) as she rushes out of the set, having just remembered that she needed to pick up her mom from the airport.
Alison sighs and heads wearily to her trailer, passing the set of the Dreamatorium, where Donald, Chevy and Yvette were wrapping up the shooting of one of the tags.
She watches a bit, and then slips into the trailer, collapsing onto a chair.
She's all for authenticity, but making her and Joel run roughly four miles on a treadmill is asking for way too much.
Joel, of course, being the freakish human sample of perfect fitness that he is, had gone about three miles without even looking a bit uncomfortable.
There's a knock on the door of the trailer, after which – speak of the devil – Joel sticks his head inside.
"Hey."
She answers weakly, trying to see if he's going to be even the slightest bit sympathetic.
But he is Joel McHale, so he isn't.
*
Jeff walks with her to the parking lot, going over her speech to Chang.
"It was peppered with just the right amount of bullshit to convince Chang." He concludes, just as they reach her car.
She grins up at him, and opens her mouth to inform the man that he'd just spent the past ten minutes straight praising someone else without even a subtle brag.
But as she does, she feels her chest constrict uncomfortably, just as her vision gets dark.
She notes dimly through her panic (is she having a heart attack?) that Jeff looks equally breathless and just as disturbed as she feels.
"Sarah told me to give you thi-" Joel's wife's book slips out of his hand as he coughs and suddenly starts taking quick, shallow breaths.
Alison jumps up in alarm, only to have the room spin before her eyes.
*
Somewhere, in a light room filled with writers, Andy Bobrow finishes his gag-script of Jeff, Annie, Joel and Alison switching places in the universe, reads it over and chuckles before wadding it up and throwing it into the bin.