Tear Along the Dotted Line (2021) s01e03 Episode Script

1
A NETFLIX SERIES
["Strappati Lungo i Bordi"
by Giancane plays]
[clock ticking]
[distant alarms blaring]
[distant horns honking]
[sighs]
[Zero] Mm-hmm-hmm.
For many years,
I earned money by tutoring.
A tutor is an absolutely fundamental
and essential figure
during the course of everyone's childhood.
Heir of, and possibly superior to,
the preceptor.
I was surrounded by many shining examples.
Sarah has wanted to be a teacher
her whole life
and has remained firmly attached
to that plan
throughout the historical evolution
of our feelings towards teachers.
-As kids, when she said…
-When I grow up, I wanna teach.
[Zero] We all said…
You filthy traitor, you wanna side
with the people
who take away our Game Boys?
Do you wanna know what they used to do
to snitches when my cousin was a lad?
Put them six feet under!
[thunder clapping]
At senior school,
when she would again say…
I wanna teach when I grow up.
…we said to her…
Why? Do you wanna end up
like Miss Di Paolo?
She just stares into the void
all day long.
At breaktime,
she goes to the toilets to cry.
[sobbing]
Look, she's full of anxiety medication.
You deserve to be happy, Sarah. You know?
Don't volunteer to be abused
by 100,000 young punks like the two of us.
Later on, when we were all older,
wiser, and more mature,
we could finally accept her dreams
with the serenity and detachment
that comes only with leaving school.
[rock music plays]
Therefore, our general guidance
settled on,
"You need to study like crazy.
Finding a job is hard."
"God knows why you wanna do it,
but fine, if you're happy."
So for her, tutoring was like
training towards her future.
Alice also tutored,
and she was another dazzling example
of dedication to the cause.
She was doing maths at uni
and had to support herself
because she was far from her hometown.
She did really well.
Lots of people wanted to hire her
for trigonometry and algebra,
because she had really big balls for it.
[the armadillo clears throat]
-She had really big balls, Zero?
-What? What's wrong? Is it sexist?
Well, I dunno. But she doesn't have
really big balls, does she?
Why get us in a whole heap of trouble
and make people angry?
Come on now. She has really big balls…
Okay, then. She was really confident
about all that stuff.
Anyway, they all had a lovely reason
to tutor kids,
so I was inspired
and decided to give it a go, too,
since I needed a job.
But eventually, I came to realise
that it was a fucking nightmare
Oh, every time I say this,
my armadillo-shaped conscience reminds me…
Working on a construction site
would be much worse, just saying.
I know it would be worse
at a construction site, thank you,
but there's always something worse.
When someone's child dies, you don't say…
But think of the poor Kennedy family.
They've lost so many!
GUESS WHOSE FUNERAL?
The fact is I had no specific skills.
I didn't wanna be a teacher.
I was studying fuck all.
I was just stuck there
for endless afternoons
in strangers' houses
doing their kids' homework,
whatever the subject was.
[reels clinking, coins clattering]
Fuck me, I was like
the discount version of a tutor.
Everything is reduced
because I don't really care about quality.
Discount tutor has no qualifications.
Results not guaranteed. Read small print.
Perhaps that's why I remember it
as hostile and underpaid.
[Western music plays]
There was Lizard Kid,
who understood fuck all,
and would look at me like he was thinking…
You're not really a teacher.
You're only cosplaying as a teacher.
I don't give a shit
about anything you say.
It's my mum who's paying.
That wasn't entirely true,
since his mother, that bitch Lizard Mum,
with her 600 square foot house
in uptown Rome
had deep pockets,
but short arms when it was time to pay me.
Well now, Zero, I owe you
for the last three lessons, I gather.
Twenty-nine euros and 79 cents.
[cash register dinging]
Do you have 25 cents change?
Uh, no. Sorry, I don't have any change.
I could give it to you next time.
No, it's okay. I'll pay you
the exact amount next Tuesday
otherwise it'll get confusing.
[Zero sighs]
That still wasn't the worst experience
because we were one-on-one,
so even if we were bored out of our minds,
at the very least,
all the homework got done.
[cheering]
The real hell was when I went to the home
of the two little Mouse girls.
They weren't sisters,
but their parents made them
study together to save money,
producing a fusion that was only possible
among girls of that age,
creating a two-headed 12-year-old monster.
[snarling]
Let me tell you,
working with two 12-year-old girls alone
is an overwhelming experience.
-They squeaked constantly.
-[giggling]
[Zero] I'd tell them to do their homework,
and they'd throw things so I'd lose it.
Fuck it all!
I've had it up to here with you two!
[giggling]
-He said "fuck!"
-[giggling]
[sighs]
By the end of the year,
I still hadn't managed
to get it into their heads
that the third person singular
in English ends with S.
Despite that
extremely frustrating experience
that made me overflow frustration,
every time that Secco said to me…
Why do you keep wasting your time
with these kids?
You should play poker online.
Secco has a terrible drawl,
so sometimes it's hard to understand.
To clarify, he said this,
"You should play poker online."
That's how he earned money.
Every time he said this,
it encouraged me to wax lyrical
with romantic pride in my job
and I'd tell him…
No, my good friend,
because even
in this exasperating situation,
I establish relationships
with these children,
something which you
and your cold-hearted game of chance
will never attain.
[racy music plays]
And you know what?
Maybe I'll never teach them
the third person singular in English,
but some of my values,
some of my personality will get through.
In the end, although I am older,
I'm not crusty old like their parents.
I'm more like a kind of older brother.
And once their walls slowly come down,
I can see a mixture of curiosity
and admiration in their eyes.
After all, the most fulfilling thing
you'll ever experience
isn't teaching kids grammatical rules
that they'll just forget
two days after the exam.
IF YOU LEAVE NOW,
YOUR PROGRESS WILL BE LOS
It's knowing
that somehow you've inspired them,
and that what you've given them
will stay with them forever.
Can you believe
I used to believe that crap?
I never heard from the Mouse girls
after they finished their exams,
but I did message one of their mothers.
"Hi there. Did the girls
get their results? How did they do?"
MOUSE MUM
HOW DO YOU KNOW MY DAUGHTER?
She never replied to me, and I felt
like one of the dead people in The Others.
Maybe I never taught those kids anything,
because in reality I was already dead
and they couldn't see me.
I was doing everything by myself.
Then I looked up the Lizard Kid
on Facebook, thinking…
"I gave him that La Haine DVD."
"I sowed good seeds.
Who knows what blossomed from there?"
But no, he'd become a Nazi.
[triumphant music plays]
That might've been the biggest
educational failure of my life so far.
But no, as much as it's okay
to be hard on yourself,
to be self-critical,
with the shitty parents he had
and the area he lived in,
it was objectively an unfair fight.
I thought I could go
a little easier on myself in this case.
-[pigeons cooing]
-[easy-listening music plays]
Would've been better
if you'd played poker online.
I don't know how to play!
I'd end up buried in debt
and they'd seize my granny's house.
It was either that
or accidentally turning a kid into a Nazi.
Life is full of difficult choices.
We all have to deal with our conscience.
The choice thing is cruel.
The further you go in life,
the fewer choices there are.
It's the same principle in that
the fewer avocados there are,
the more expensive they become.
Any decision you have to make
becomes more serious
as the years go on
because it might just be your last one.
The other day,
at a restaurant with Secco
and I couldn't decide if I wanted
my usual Margherita
or a pizza I'd never tried before
that sounded really good.
We'll call it "the whatever pizza."
I can't make up my mind,
so I ask Secco, "What are you getting?"
-And he replies…
-Dunno.
[Zero] Totally nonchalant,
as if it was an irrelevant question.
I envy him, because it's in Secco's nature
to be completely indifferent to the future
and the consequences of his choices.
Which gives him a clear conscience,
like an innocent baby
or certain breeds of dog
who end up falling
from the sixth floor chasing a ball.
-[barking]
-[splat]
Anyway, it feels like time is running out
and the fight between the Margherita
and the Whatever is making me go mad.
It was like being made to choose
whether to throw Mother or Father
from a tower.
This whole free will thing
seems exceptionally cruel.
I'd like a legal guardian to choose for me
who I can pin the blame on if needed.
But I need to hurry, 'cause I can tell
the waiter is already getting fidgety.
I look him in the eyes, and all I can see
is the pain of an evening
where 400 people before me
couldn't decide what to eat,
then ordered 40 different things
before sending them all back.
And I'm the umpteenth link
in this chain of grief,
and I just wanna tell him…
I know exactly how you feel.
You wait tables till 2:00 a.m.
When you get off,
your friends are all asleep
or getting laid.
All you can do
is find some cocaine downtown
to stay awake, and you snort it
with a co-worker you don't like,
but this is all life can offer
unless you just wanna work and sleep.
I completely understand,
but I can't make up my mind
even though I know
there are only two possible outcomes.
Scenario A, I order the Margherita,
Secco gets the Whatever
and lets me try it.
It's not good, it's better than good.
This is the pizza Jesus ordered
for the Last Supper.
But I only get one bite
because I didn't order it for myself.
I'm left thinking about
how I've wasted my life
living in fear of taking certain steps
and how I'd prefer to stay attached
to the routine of my muddy swamp,
destroying all of my relationships.
I leave the restaurant and feel like
drowning myself in the river.
Or scenario B,
I take a chance
and order the Whatever pizza.
It's shit. I knew it would be shit.
It's always the same.
I get bored
and I let the unknown seduce me.
But if people have been
eating Margheritas forever,
since Julius Caeser, and the Whatever
is only made in this seedy dive,
only after they changed management,
there's obviously a good reason for that!
So that's that. Without thinking about it,
I order the Margherita and tell Secco…
You get the Whatever
and let me try some, yeah?
Fuck you on about? I'm getting
the stuffed courgette flowers.
I'm so stupid for not considering
Secco's other characteristic,
his complete inability
to mediate or compromise.
Another thing he has in common
with those stupid dogs,
who ignore their biscuits
for a week and don't eat.
You think they're ill
so take them to see the vet.
Then as soon as you try
to give them wet food, they guzzle it.
Basically, they just wanna
eat the wet food
and couldn't care less
about making you happy
and accepting the biscuits.
So there was a third scenario
that I hadn't considered.
The one where I had the same old pizza,
just like every other time
I go out to eat.
There was no dramatic turn of events
and the world kept on turning
in the same frustratingly placid way
as it always has.
["Wait" by M83 plays]
No time ♪
[bus engine idling]
Everything is going according to plan,
except for the smell of piss,
I'm covered in grease, we burst a tyre,
the train leaves in 40 minutes,
we're outside Secco's
and he isn't coming out.
I keep pressing the buzzer.
I'm so pissed off
that he's not already out yet.
Twenty minutes ago
when we were sorting out the tyre,
I called to tell him,
"Come outside, idiot. We're waiting."
Even though it wasn't true,
I was lying through my teeth.
Because I knew
that he'd need two hours' notice.
But he can neutralise
all my Jedi mind tricks
because he has mastered
the dark arts of the Sith,
which makes him more powerful
than any force in the galaxy.
Or he simply doesn't give a shit
if people are waiting,
if they're in a hurry,
or if we miss the train.
It's fine. Chill out. We'll make it, Zero.
[Zero] When someone tells me to chill,
I go crazy. Now I'm stewing.
My skin is sizzling, and Sarah manages
to say the only thing
that could make it worse…
We're perfectly on time.
No, we're not. For me,
the concept of on time doesn't exist
'cause I don't function like other people.
I can see from her stare
that this conversation
is making me seem insane,
so I try to explain
that this is based on actual research,
and not my paranoid delirium.
Say I have to be at the airport at ten
and it takes an hour,
a normal person would leave at nine,
it takes an hour, they arrive at ten.
A more anxious person
might leave at, say, 8:30
in case something unforeseen happens.
Nine times out of ten, they wait
because usually nothing happens.
Otherwise, we wouldn't say "unforeseen."
We'd say "foreseen" without the "un."
But I have to leave at six at the latest,
four hours early,
so I'll definitely get there.
I won't have any problems,
and I'll get to the airport at 6:55,
three hours early.
I'll get pissed off thinking of everything
I could've done in those three hours.
Then I start adding up
all the minutes in my life I've wasted,
waiting because I was too early.
I figure out that in all that time,
I probably could've gotten
a degree in medicine
and specialised in midwifery,
and become a doctor who delivered
breech babies all over Europe.
Even though I truly don't care at all
about midwifery or breech babies,
but it would've been better than waiting
for the check-in desk to open
at the airport.
But the one time in my life I try
to go out like any normal person would,
at a normal time, with an hour
to travel a distance
that requires an hour to travel,
you can be sure as the rising sun
that a series of horrific,
biblical, cataclysmic events will occur,
causing me to miss the fucking flight.
[dramatic music plays]
It's the same for everything.
Planes, trains, weddings, funerals.
It's the law of physics.
So for me, there's no such thing
as being "on time."
I can see that Sarah isn't convinced,
but I'm on a roll now.
Secco isn't coming out
and I'm getting anxious.
So I tell the rest of the story,
which is that this phenomenon has a name.
The Curse of Carmen the Gypsy.
-Gypsy.
-[thunder claps]
This started in year one,
when I made a promise
to a girl called Carmen
who I really liked.
-[giggling]
-Don't worry.
We've got loads of time to finish
the slimer game before playtime ends.
And she trusted me,
because as a kid,
I was as reliable as a pheasant.
Who wouldn't trust a pheasant,
with that calm face
that you think would never peck you?
And it doesn't peck you,
but it's still a dork.
[bell rings]
So now, we're late back to class
and Miss Gianna shouts at us.
I can't remember what she said now.
What would someone say
to threaten a year one?
Maybe you'd say…
I'll paint an X outside your door
so Father Christmas knows
not to bring you presents
and King Herod will slay your firstborn.
[Zero] But I can remember
how Carmen looked me in the eyes
and said just one word to me, which was…
Limortaccitua!
[thunder clapping]
[Zero] I thought
it was just something random.
-But Corrado Persichetti told me…
-That was Carmen cursing you.
She's a gypsy. When she says,
"Limortaccitua," you're cursed forever.
My mum said so.
I didn't believe it at the time.
I didn't even know Carmen was a gypsy.
But ever since that fateful day
when Miss Gianna shouted
at Carmen the Gypsy because of me,
I always leave three hours early
or I won't make it.
And that's that, Sarah.
You can make of that what you will.
Right at the end
of this terrifying story of my damnation,
Secco appears, having realised he'd gone
too far, risking the whole mission.
-That's when he says…
-Shall we go get some ice cream?
[Zero] I don't strangle him,
'cause I've attained
such a high tolerance for him
the women from Handmaid's Tale
have nothing on me.
We can finally go.
I'm absolutely certain
we've missed the train by now.
So the entire way there, I say,
"Fine. This was bound to happen."
I repeat this 34 times.
It was bound to happen. It was bound
to happen. It was bound to happen.
Give it a rest!
We're on the fucking train.
How much longer
are you gonna carry on like this?
[Zero] Sarah's right. I can't believe it.
For the first time, I've defeated
the curse of Carmen the Gypsy.
It's moving. I feel like a hero.
I think perhaps
'cause there were three of us,
our energies pooled
to prevail against the dark forces.
Come on now. Corrado Persichetti
said Carmen could curse people
when he was seven.
At 15, he said she stole babies.
At 30, that she steals council houses
from real Italians
even though she's more Italian than you!
Maybe it's that Corrado Persichetti
just talks a lot of bullshit all the time?
[Zero] It could well be the case.
After all, the fact that our lives
were based on shaky assumptions
was something
we'd already begun to suspect.
[soft rock music plays]