Abby fantasises about becoming the Taskmaster
Abby walks into the study, stating that she has found some jeans. She has also found some softer fabric and some tape, which she appears to use to wrap the egg. When she is unable to rip the fabric, Paul asks if she would like some scissors, and then goes to fetch her a pair.
While Paul is out of the room, Abby reveals to the camera that she is actually wrapping up a table tennis ball, and that the egg itself is safely inside her pocket. When Paul returns to the study, she continues to wrap the table tennis ball with the jeans, and then ties the parcel up with green string.
The pair go outside to the catapult, and Paul fires the parcel across the lawn. When they then go to check on the egg, Paul unwraps the jeans to discover the table tennis ball within. Abby then retrieves the egg from her pocket and smiles, saying “It was a decoy!”. Paul responds with “Five seasons of Taskmaster. Never been so humiliated.” Abby then passes him her egg, noting that it is in pristine condition.
When Paul asks Abby “What’d the task say?”, Abby looks at the ground and begs “Don’t do this, please”. Paul slowly walks over to the catapult and says “This brings me no joy” as he gently places the egg on the catapult. Abby protests, telling Paul he doesn’t have to do it, before again bowing her head.
Before Paul launches the catapult, he insists that Abby watch. The egg is fired, and the pair then go to inspect it, with Paul stating that its shell is now like their trust: broken.
In the studio, Jeremy calls Paul “psychotic” for making Abby watch the destruction of her egg, and Paul just says that he was upset. Abby says that before she’d realised her error, she was on top of the world, thinking that she had tricked Paul. She admits that she’d imagined that Jeremy would have been really pleased with her, that everyone would have applauded and cheered her deception, and that Jeremy would even have offered to switch chairs with her, and made her the Taskmaster, in deference to her dominance. She ends by saying “and then we had to spoil it all and say something stupid like, ‘Let me catapult your egg’” (referencing the lyrics to the song Somethin stupid).
When Jeremy suggests to Abby that if she’d just wrapped her egg up in the fabric she’d used to protect the table tennis ball, she would have succeeded, Abby responds “Where is the showbiz? Where is the prestige?”.
When Jeremy states that Abby should probably get zero points, Abby agrees, but points out that even Judas had earned 30 pieces of silver. Jeremy decides to award her 1 point.
(Written by JoGo and proofread by Karl Craven)
(Illustrations collected by JoGo & Will G and adjusted by David Fuller)
