When the three returned to the stage, without Beth, Cody noticed something unpleasant. "Uh, Harold?" Cody asked, looking to the box above the camera, which read ON AIR.
"What? Did you find Beth?" Harold asked.
"No," Cody responded, "But look!" He pointed to the box.
Harold screamed and then he said, "Oh, sorry about that. Hello and welcome back to the Nerd Quadrilateral Variety Show, where I assure you that everything is fine and nothing is ruined. Also, we don't have any danger of becoming a Nerd Triangle instead."
"Hey, Harold!" Noah shouted, "Sarcasm: You're doing it wrong."
"Gosh, Noah! I wasn't being sarcastic!" Harold shouted back.
"Oh, so you were lying to our audience? How professional," Noah remarked.
"He's sadly mistaken… I'm not lying or being sarcastic; everything I said was one hundred percent true!"
Noah was about to comment, but Harold covered his mouth and asked, "Isn't it about time for the next sketch?"
Cody whispered in his general direction, "No go! This skit prominently contains Beth!" During this exchange Noah escaped Harold's grasp
"Well, think of something!" Harold shouted. He turned to the audience and said, "I assure you: everything is fine. There is nothing to worry about."
"Except for the fact that Beth went missing!" Noah added. "And there is no way you guys couldn't tell that from watching the next sk—." Harold cut his sentence short by holding Noah's mouth again.
"Like I said, time for the next sketch!" Harold said uneasily, as the three of them walked offstage.
The curtain came up to reveal the guys sitting around a card table, playing poker.
"I bet a dollar," Harold said.
"I raise the bet to two dollars," Cody said.
"I raise the bet to twenty dollars," Noah said, making a really over-the-top bright-eyed grinning face.
"I fold," Harold said, putting his cards down.
"I do too," Cody said, doing the same thing with his.
Noah revealed his hand. "Haha! I won with a pair of twos! You guys just got played!"
"Hey, no fair!" Harold said, "I… knew you were bluffing. My hand was just terrible is all."
"Um, excuse me," Cody said, "I have to go to the restroom."
"What are you doing?" Noah whispered, "This wasn't in the script!"
"Improvising!" Cody responded, and then he walked offstage. A minute later he came back, wearing an outfit that looked like Beth's. In a ridiculous falsetto, he said, "Hey boys! Whatcha doing? Playing poker?"
"Yes, we're… playing… poker," Harold said, trying to stifle his laughter. "Want to… join?"
"Oh, yes!" Cody said in the ridiculous falsetto, "I've always been really good at poker." Then he looked helplessly at Noah and whispered, "Cover for me?"
"When you say it, it sounds like praise; when I say it, it's just bragging!" Noah responded in a hushed tone.
"Come on! Help a guy out here!" Cody whispered.
"Alright fine," Noah whispered. Then, in a normal tone he said, "I don't know, Beth. I'm a pretty convincing bluffer and you'll never know when I'm going to bluff."
"That's okay," Cody responded in the falsetto, "I'm good at poker!"
He sat down at the table with Noah and Harold, and then he said, "Aw, man!" in his falsetto.
"I bet thirty dollars," Harold said.
"I match your bet," Noah said.
"I bet five hundred dollars!" Cody shouted in a falsetto.
"But Cody, I mean, Beth! We don't even have that much to play with!" Harold responded.
"Well I do!" Cody said in his falsetto, taking out a large sack with a dollar sign written on it.
"Oh, crap," Harold said, "I guess I have to fold."
"I do too," Noah grumbled.
"Thank you!" Cody said in his falsetto and walked offstage.
He came back a minute later wearing his normal clothes. "Did I miss anything?"
"Nothing too terrible," Harold said, staring blankly at the audience. The curtain came down.
Harold said, "Okay, that skit took… twice as long as it was supposed to. So we're going to make up for it by trimming Noah's poetry and skipping straight to the next one."
"You got to do your solo show," Noah said.
"No, you interrupted it," Harold pointed out.
"Which you already punished me for!" Noah responded. "Remember the Studies Show skit?"
"Guys, fighting on camera is not adding anything to our already dwindling time," Cody said, "Just let Noah read his poem, okay? If you don't like it, you can heckle it."
"Alright," Harold grudgingly agreed.
Noah sat on a stool, holding a notebook. He read from it, "Oh, wouldn't you enjoy a game to play; in which the units die forever more? If it is what the makers well intend, it might make playing such a game a shock. But if you are a genius as I am, then possibly you'll see a challenge there. Keep everyone alive until the end, one slip up and you're toast so try as hard as humanly and worldly possible to make sure no one is a casualty…"
"This isn't a poem; it's just an advertisement for Fire Emblem!" Harold shouted.
"Hey, I never said its name; if anyone's advertising it, it's you! If you don't like me writing poems inspired by video games, you should at least let me heckle you for writing rap songs inspired by statistical concepts, which, by the way, are either extremely condescending or impossible to understand!"
"Please quit fighting," Cody said.
Suddenly, Noah's phone started to ring. He answered it, "Hello?" After a brief conversation, he turned to Harold and said, "Nintendo of America wants to sponsor us."
"Well, let's let them! Our current sponsors leave a lot to be desired…" Harold said. Among other things they contained: a drug store in Saskatchewan, an independent convenience store in Bridal Falls, and a random family restaurant in Anjou: all of which were shown throughout the entire country.
"Speaking of sponsors, it's time for another commercial break!" Cody announced.
"Okay, now we really need to go find Beth!" Harold shouted. Just at that moment, Beth arrived.
"Hey, guys!" she said grinning, "Do you need me?"
"Where were you during act two?" Harold scolded, "Our poker skit ran ridiculously long because Cody had to play for two!" Then he pointed to Cody and Noah, "And since these two lovebirds insisted on letting Noah read a glorified strategy game advertisement, we don't have time to do the Bird Call skit!"
"Oh, man," Beth said, "But that's my favorite one!"
"Well we could always cut out Beth's trick instead…" Noah suggested.
"You don't get a say in this!" Harold said, madly.
"If it wasn't for my poem we'd still have only sparse, isolated stores as sponsors!" Noah responded.
"Oy, vey," Cody shouted. "Why are you guys fighting so much? We're supposed to stick together!"
"You're right," Noah said, "I'm sorry."
"You should be!" Harold said indignantly.
"Harold…" Cody said impatiently.
"I'm sorry too," Harold said.
"Apology accepted," Noah responded, "Now, I think that it would be a great idea to roll Beth's trick over the end credits; after all, they're pretty boring right now."
"Yeah, a compromise!" Beth said, "That way, I can keep my trick and the Bird Calls skit! But at the same time, I risk fewer people seeing my trick because I went missing."
"I still think Noah's being unfair…" Harold grumbled.
"I don't," Noah retorted.
Cody screamed in annoyance and stormed off, saying, "I don't know what to do with you guys anymore!"
"Uh-oh," Beth said, "I guess we better go find Cody…"
Just at that moment, the commercial break was ending. Noah looked at the sign that said ON AIR in 15 seconds. "Perfect," he said sarcastically.
"This was all your fault!" Harold shouted.
"My fault? I remember apologizing first, actually accepting your apology, and shutting up! You know, something you simply cannot do! Forget it; I'm going to look for Cody. See how well you keep this show going by yourself!" As Noah stormed off, the commercial break finished ending, and Harold was left alone in the middle of the stage.