They did, but I’d think the same principle would apply.
Don’t Britta Abed.
Doesn’t he address that in the next sentence? She says something like “Roll a die?” and he says “Even more timelines.” I’m paraphrasing but I know it is something like that.
Abed’s point is that any time a decision is decided by random chance, alternate timelines are created.
Actually she says “rock, paper, scissors?” and Abed replies that it would create 9 timelines.
Heh–I didn’t catch that line. Excellent answer.
And those nine timelines would be made up of three groups of three nearly identical timelines. Although, I would think that with rock, paper, scissors they could avoid creating alternate timelines as long as they don’t let their strategies be affected by any outside influences.
I was disappointed that after Abed was cautious of creating timelines, the VCR game required them to roll dice.
I didn’t understand that. There are only six possible winning outcomes. You can’t include ties because you continue until someone wins. (For you nitpickers: yes, there are three possible ties so nine outcomes on the first throw. But what if you have more than one tie? What if you have 50? Or 5,000,000? That’s potentially an infinite number of outcomes. Abed would never allow that into consideration.)
The age factor with Annie’s brother was also weird. No way he could be 18. Do we even know anything about Annie’s parents or siblings outside of this episode? Same for Britta.
Overall, the episode was more proof that being clever is not the same as being funny.
We know they are Jewish and well off but have cut her off financially. That’s about it I think. I am pretty sure we didn’t even know she had a brother until this episode.
Perhaps the context of the dice rolling matters. When people do it to decide what to do in real life, then timelines are generated. But within the context a game, no timelines.
Except that the game in question was to decide who should move in with them. I guess since there was also skill involved, maybe that’s okay then? (I assume there was skill in knowing when to shout BANG?)
Since the dice are one step removed from the game, the dice were not generating timelines. I think the game itself would generate two timelines, though.
The “Pile of Bullets” game potentially generates at least three timelines. Annie wins. Abed wins. Or the one we saw with no resolution, where both failed their rolls at the end and someone walks out when they tried to replay the game.
However, because it is a skill game, not a random throw of the dice, we didn’t get the timelines motion graphic plus accompanying sound effect. Therefore, no timelines were generated during “Pile of Bullets”.
In the original die-rolling episode, lots of things are extremely timing-dependent, so arguably a game that allows iterative ties creates an unbounded number of timelines. So, all ties are equal, but 1 tie, 2 ties, 3 ties… and so on are each a separate timeline.
I realize that this is silly and pedantic, but it’s the sort of logic I’d expect Abed to follow.
I just saw the episode, but I wanted to mention that the Dean going dark in that opening scene rap and then looking horrified and saying “I have NO idea where that came from” and running away quickly had me in stitches! Man, that was hilarious!!
Exactly. But since Abed would realize that a potentially infinite number of ties can occur (or more precisely an undefined but extremely large finite number), the one thing he would never, ever do is give 3 as the number of ties that should be counted.
Yeah, that gag was amazing. Putting him in a giant (pun-based) candy bar costume…even better.