Tear Along the Dotted Line (2021) s01e01 Episode Script

1
A NETFLIX SERIES
IT'S POINTLESS
TO BE ALIVE ON THE OUTSIDE
IF YOU'RE DEAD ON THE INSIDE
-[electronic music plays]
-[high-pitched buzzing]
[exhaust roars]
[high-pitched buzzing]
LAST STOP
REBIBBIA PRISON
[voice over PA] The next station
is Ponte Mammolo.
COLOSSEUM
[man] The first time I saw Alice
was in the summer of 2001.
I didn't know fuck all about anything.
I was 17,
finishing my last year of school,
just as AS Roma won the championship.
[cheering]
What's wrong with ya? Don't like football?
What? So this isn't the release party
for the Evangelion boxset?
[man] I should say that at the time,
I'd just got back
from the G8 Summit in Genoa
where we'd been beaten up,
shot in the face,
battered in our sleep,
and tortured for three days.
[screaming]
I only got slapped
a couple of times by a forest ranger,
as if I was Yogi Bear, which doesn't
really make me sound like a real survivor.
So I'll take on the collective pain,
which is obviously more dignified.
I'm trying to say we were caught up
in a whirlwind of emotions
we didn't understand.
One minute, Manu Chao was saying
the secret to feeling good
was smoking 300 joints a day,
the next, Tiziano Ferro was telling you
to throw yourself off the bridge.
I won't make it alone! ♪
Forgiveness! If what is done is done
Then I'm asking… ♪
[man] Mao Tse Tung said,
"Everything under heaven
is in utter chaos."
"The situation is excellent."
I'm not 100% sure,
but if he was referring to hormonal chaos,
I was doing particularly well!
[band sings "Libero" by the Klaxons]
[man] To illustrate, I remember
at the end of that momentous summer
I was at a gig with my friend Sarah,
who said to me…
"Zero, this is Alice.
She's a friend of mine."
"You talk to her for a bit
while I go get beers."
[revelatory music plays]
[robotic] Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Alice.
She didn't sound like a robot.
I haven't spoken to her for ages
and can't do a good impression of her.
She may as well have been,
'cause you couldn't hear shit in there.
Exactly three seconds had passed
since we were introduced,
and I was already in love.
I'm not afraid of using that word.
I was so in love,
I thought, "You know what?"
"I'm not gonna say a damn thing to her,
otherwise, I'll turn as red as a lobster
and she'll think I'm a loser."
"So instead, I have to pretend to be
mysterious, like I don't give a shit."
After all,
my emotional development was influenced
by a huge piece of graffiti
in my neighbourhood
that was the perfect combination
of traditional working class homophobia
and the mysterious heterophobia
no one had ever really seen,
but which left me feeling pretty confused.
[band plays] I feel I ended up
In a world never seen or understood ♪
I was free… ♪
[cheering in crowd]
Free ♪
Free ♪
[man] We crossed paths
other times that month,
and spoke a total of 15 words
to each other,
usually different variations of…
-Fancy a ciggie?
-No, sorry. I don't smoke.
And, "Wanna smoke?"
"No, I don't smoke, remember?
I haven't changed. Nice to meet you."
There were things that made me think
my feelings were reciprocated.
[cockerel crowing]
-[gentle music plays]
-[typing]
[man] To give you an example,
although we barely spoke in person,
we'd message each other all night on MSN,
which was like an ancient forefather
to WhatsApp
that allowed even sociopaths
to find a mate
while still allowing us some space
to interpret real life events.
-[computer pings]
-Oh, that's great! She added you.
Dude, she wants to bang you!
Hmm, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure.
[man] We'd talk
about really private things,
as if we'd known each other ages.
If you're blushing behind a screen,
no one can tell,
so I almost seemed chilled,
laughing, great at one-liners.
Why are you playing it so cool, Zero?
Why play it so cool
when in real life, every time you say hi,
you sweat like a pig
and look at your shoes
as if you had your lines
written on your laces?
That virtual relationship
was a regular intimate part of our day.
Alice was the only person who knew
I wanted to have a career as a cartoonist.
She even asked me to write a story
for the kids in her after-school club.
PRINCE TRIP-YOU-UP
So, it was about this boy
who was terrified
of walking down the street
because there was a bully
who was known as the Prince Trip-you-up.
In the end, his mum reassures him
by saying that when they grow up,
bullies stay idiots.
And he, on the other hand,
would become a great scientist.
The boy did grow up
to become a great scientist,
but the bully also grew up
and became known as the Blade King,
because he stabbed people.
And so, the scientist continued
to live in fear of him. The end.
[robotic] Come on, Zero.
How could I read this to children?
The first part is nice, but there needs
to be a bit of hope at the end.
We need hope.
Fine, we had
different approaches pedagogically,
but I think we definitely had chemistry,
that never really went anywhere
because it was always
like walking a tightrope.
Basically, I was
under a lawyer's jurisdiction.
Zero, you have to work
well within the shadows of the law.
You need to use words
that are ambiguous enough
so someone can tell you're interested,
but, at the same time,
if that interest isn't reciprocated,
you can deny it.
For example, if I was to say,
"I'd love to hang out with you."
If you wanted to understand
what I really meant, you would.
But if you say,
"Sorry, I have a boyfriend,"
I can simply say,
"Whoa, I wasn't asking you out."
"All I said was,
'I'd love to hang out, not go out.'"
Potentially, all it means is I could
bump into you one day in the doctor's
and think to myself,
"I could've ended up
next to some old codger spitting."
"Luckily, it's Alice."
"That's great. I'm happy to see her."
Do you get it? Now, say I say to you,
"Would you like to go out with me?"
And you answered, "Look,
you're nice and all, but no."
Well, that would be absolute,
total nuclear annihilation.
It's like the Japanese emperor
surrendering after atomic bombs
and the people telling him in disbelief,
"What the hell do you think you're doing?
You can't surrender now!"
"You're the bloody emperor!"
"This isn't a game! It's not World Darts
at the lakeside country club!"
"We've lost the war, you know!
You have to kill yourself."
"Hack your guts in front of everyone,
like Mishima, you piece of shit!"
There, you see? Mmm.
We couldn't take the gamble.
It was a matter of survival.
But I was so sure
she felt the same about me.
But think, you tell her how you feel,
she feels the same, yeah?
If you're that explicit,
you'll be stuck with her forever.
That's how it goes. Whoever makes
the first move signs a blank cheque.
You said we should go out.
Now you don't want to, after three months?
A date is a blood oath!
I even brought samples
so we can pick out wallpaper.
I think turquoise for the nursery.
What do you think, sweetie?
[Zero] So that was that,
the relationship remained as it was,
writing to each other
but never actually speaking.
We sowed a lot of seeds,
but never reaped the fruits.
[sad piano music plays]
If this thing is meant to happen, Zero,
then it will, you know?
This crazy rushing around
to make things happen,
it's all because of capitalism.
In fact, that's the real reason
we have cocaine, to keep up.
[Zero] So we went slow, because we thought
that's the way life worked.
That we just had
to tear along the dotted line very slowly,
following that dotted line to our destiny
and everything would happen
as it was supposed to.
Because we were only 17
and we had all the time in the world.
[melancholic Italian music plays]
Like Achilles and the tortoise.
Well, Achilles and the tortoise
never got together in the end, you know?
He hooked up with Marika from Soho.
The tortoise got together
with a tortoise from Hyde Park.
That's a true story, I think.
[Zero] I wonder if they ever regretted it,
those two imbeciles.
[melancholic Italian music continues]
[Zero] All that turmoil, inner torment
seems so long ago now,
especially as the most intense experience
I've had in recent months
has been choosing what to watch on TV
when I get a free evening.
I was searching for a film,
a series, something on Netflix.
It felt like I'd seen it all before,
but that's impossible.
You've got 800 million films.
I can't have watched all of 'em.
So I spent the evening
scrolling through the titles,
thinking, "It's not possible
that all these films are shit."
You can't say all these films are shit.
They won't give you more work.
Do you really think
the stuff you make is any better?
Don't be arrogant!
If this turns out to be shit,
we're all fucked, even me.
I know my armadillo friend is right,
it's not all shit,
just I've already seen all the good stuff.
There are things I'd been meaning to see.
Everyone was talking
about them months ago,
I wanted to keep up.
But now no one cares about them,
they came out six months ago.
So now I don't even care.
I feel like I'm Leonardo da Vinci
going to NASA and saying…
Look, I think I found a way
to make it possible
for machines to fly in the sky!
[Zero] And they'd rightly say…
That's great,
but we're trying to figure out
how to build a launch pad on the moon
and use gravity
to send the shuttle to Mars.
Do you understand? And you're standing
here with your little sketch on parchment.
Why don't you go play
with my kid and his kite?
Then at six, we'll send the nurse
to give you your meds.
[Zero] There are some things
I'm saving for when I feel happy.
Like the second season of Sense8.
I've been saving it for 14 years.
I don't want to waste it
on an evening when I'm fed up
and apathetic like today.
I want to really enjoy it, keep it
or when I'm in a really good place,
[dramatic music plays]
[machine whirring, beeping]
[man over PA] Dr. Thomas is not available.
[sombre music plays]
Grandpa, Grandpa!
Was there ever a night in your life
when you were really, truly happy?
[Grandpa grumbles]
[machine beeps solidly]
[Zero] I was so hell bent
on finding something,
I spent two hours
obsessively scrolling titles,
getting more and more frustrated.
Because damn it to hell,
I'll find something decent
even if I have
to scour 1950s Polish sci-fi,
that's not been dubbed!
In the end, it got to 4:00 a.m.
and I went to sleep extremely frustrated,
having not watched anything at all.
I heard the armadillo saying…
Face it, if you can't find
a single film out of 8,000,
maybe you're the problem.
[Zero] I thought about it and realised
it's true, that I'm the issue,
and nothing external will fill
what's missing on the inside.
[gentle music plays]
But also, I just wanted to watch TV,
not have a therapy session,
for God's sake.
[gentle music continues]
I wasn't thinking about that this morning,
I had other shit to deal with.
No, you can't come looking like that.
Why? It's just a tracksuit.
The fact there are still places you can't
go to in a tracksuit seems ridiculous.
[ballroom music plays]
You should be able to wear a tracksuit
even at the opera.
They get it in Naples,
they're ahead of the game.
Even officials wear tracksuits.
They might change into a smart tracksuit
for formal occasions.
[reverential music plays]
Just go to the toilet and get changed.
[Zero] The toilets?
I wonder what women's toilets are like,
I bet they're so lovely.
The kind of place
where everyone cooperates
and is thoughtful
of the next person in line.
[high-pitched] Welcome, stranger.
I put the seat down
in anticipation of your arrival.
Oh, thank you, sister!
[normal voice] I've never been in,
but I imagine that's what it's like
if you can get changed there,
because the men's are not like that.
The men's toilets
are like the Vietnam war,
You go in and the stink of piss
clings to the inside of your nostrils.
A man comes out, and his eyes say to you
with no mercy or sense of brotherhood…
"I did what I had to do.
I just want to get home alive."
"This is your mess to deal with."
You go in,
and there's piss up to your knees
because in the men's bathroom,
the toilet isn't for pissing in.
The toilet is just there to remind you
that this room is the toilet.
[buzzing]
Then you piss next to it,
behind it, around it,
anything goes
within the confines of that room.
You can't even look at it.
Don't just take my word for it,
even Nietzsche said so.
If you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss will gaze back into you.
[Zero] And the abyss, to be specific,
is a huge turd roughly the size
of a baboon's arse.
[screeching]
So, my good friend,
think I can take my trousers off in there?
That means taking my shoes off as well.
And then what? Just stand in my socks
and walk in all the piss? Come on!
That's not an option.
Surely even you can see that?
[gulps] This is truly incredible.
Now what is incredible?
That men have managed to dominate
for hundreds of years
despite constantly whining
like they're the victims.
Oh, come on, now.
Let me remind you
that we have to sit down.
The toilets are Pluto's bacterial step.
So in order not to touch it,
we have developed thigh muscles
that could crack a coconut.
But sometimes, that's not enough.
We have to grip the walls like Spider-Man.
Also, the doors in public bathrooms
are always broken.
For you, if someone walks in
and you're pissing,
you're standing with your back to them.
For us, we're clinging on
for our dear lives,
facing forward, eyes bulging,
and frozen like a deer in headlights!
This is why we go in pairs!
Just to get into the toilets,
there's a four-year waiting list,
like a cystoscopy appointment!
Meanwhile, you saunter in,
piss where you please and leave!
[mockingly] But the poor little prince
can smell some urine, poor boy!
[Zero] I'd have liked to respond,
but now I feel deprived
of my God-given right to complain.
As if I'd been robbed
of a fundamental element
of the holy
self-pitying male constitution.
[demonic laughter]
This makes me resentful,
but at the same time,
a victim of this violation,
so at least I can complain about it,
I'm still in my comfort zone.
Anyway, in the end,
I had to go and get changed.
I tried to balance by keeping my feet
on top of my shoes, on one leg.
A flamingo-like stance
which inevitably failed to work,
so I dropped my trousers
right in the piss.
So now I'm convinced
that I'll die of Ebola.
Which, frankly, would be better
than the day I'm about to face.
[daunting music plays]
[car alarm beeps]
[soft rock music plays]