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Ye Olde Shakespeare Dinner Theatre
Season 1, Episode 8
Dan vs ye olde shakespeare
Air date March 5, 2011
Written by Dan Mandel, Chris Pearson
Directed by Bill Kopp
Episode guide
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"Ye Olde Shakespeare Dinner Theatre" is the eighth episode of the 1st season and the eighth episode overall.  

It originally aired on March 5, 2011. 

Overview[]

Tired of a theatre's awful acting, Dan tries to ruin the show by taking out each actor that plays in it.

Intro[]

Dan, Elise, and Chris are at the Dinner theater watching a particularly bad performance of Romeo and Juliet. Dan starts to complain about the quality of the performance and is quickly thrown out. While he is waiting for Chris and Elise, a police officer gives him a ticket for loitering. After the show, Elise questions why Dan did not just go home. Dan responds by complaining about the show once again. Elise reveals that Chris took her to the theater on their first date, which is why they are not also mad. As two of the actors leave the theatre, one of them takes a sip of his soda and tosses it in disgust because it is warm. The soda, of course, lands on Dan, which prompts him to take on the theatre.

Main Plot[]

The next day, Dan manages to sneak into the theatre. He finds a mask and puts it on, examining himself in the dressing room mirror. After a brief evil laugh, Dan decides he needs a cape, and takes one that is hanging on the wall. Dan overhears the owners talking about how there cannot be a show without actors, giving him his inspiration for revenge. He calls Chris and tells him about his plan in a Shakespearean manor, to which Chris asks "is that a poem?" Dan examines the stage and how he can possibly rig it to injure the actors. A group of actors find him and chase him away by throwing tomatoes at him.

Dan calls Chris and demands him to come to his house. The next day, the two meet at the theatre and Dan climbs on Chris's shoulders to crawl into a vent. Two of the actors find them and confront them. Chris offends one of the actors, Tye, who whips him across the face with his sword. Chris returns to his home with Dan, and after seeing Chris's face, Elise decides to take revenge into her own hands. She uses a grappling hook to sneak into the theatre via the roof, ties up the two chefs, and confronts Tye.

Elise exits the theatre and gives Dan a map of the vent system. Dan goes in and hides behind a curtain as two actors walk by. The actors talk about going golfing, but the one actor declines the offer because he cannot get his ears wet and decides to go to sleep on the couch. The other actor leaves his soda and Dan pours it into the sleeping employee's ear, sending him to the hospital.

Dan goes up to the costume room and finds new capes. As he is looking at the capes, he finds glue and a donkey mask. He stands above a doorway and while one of the actors is looking for a sword, Dan drops the mask, filled with glue, on the actor's head, effectively eliminating all but one actor. To Dan's annoyance, the performance still goes forward, with the last remaining actor intending to play every role himself.

Dan sends an invitation to Chris and Elise to see the opening of Hamlet at the theatre. Chris is shocked that it was postmarked and delivered by a mailman. They go that night to the opening, but Dan pulls Chris aside and tells him to start a fire outside the theatre to provide a distraction. Instead, Chris screams into the kitchen that he sees something that is huge and distracting. Dan sneaks into the kitchen and puts soap in the soup. The chefs return and do not bother to check the soup.

In the theatre room, the soup is served but the audience eats the soup until Dan screams that they are eating soup. He gets on stage and confronts the actor, claiming he (the actor) does not even know what he is saying and engages in a sword fight with him. Dan succeeds in starting a riot and the audience lights a fire, burning the theatre down.

Trivia[]

  • This is the longest title for an episode in the series.
  • Dan's disguise is very similar to Erik from The Phantom of the Opera.
  • Due to the Shakespearean theme of the episode, there are multiple parodies and references to some of Shakespeare's plays:
    • The three theater owners may be based on the three witches from Macbeth.
    • The scene where Dan pours soda into an actor's ear while he's asleep to injure him is a parody of Hamlet, where Hamlet stages a play that displays his idea of how his uncle murdered Hamlet's father by pouring poison into his ear while sleeping.
    • One of the chefs attempts to chant the "Double Double Toil and Trouble" speech from Macbeth while cooking soup.
    • The scene where Tye asks Chris if he bites his thumb at him (which Chris does) and starts to fight him is a reference to the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet, where the same situation sparks a riot between the Capulets and the Montagues.
    • When Dan is washing the tomatoes off his shirt he says the line “out damned stain out” this is a reference to Lady Macbeth’s quote from; Macbeth
    • The scene where one actor gets a mule's head mask glued to his head references the character Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  • Some of the dialogue is written in iambic pentameter.
  • Unlike other episodes where Elise sports her ninja attire for espionage, she instead wears an outfit that seems to be inspired by Westley's Dread Pirate Roberts' outfit from The Princess Bride.
  • At the scene where Chris and Elise play video games, you can hear Paul Pheonix from the video game "Tekken 2"

Errors[]

  • The scar on Chris's eye that he got from the fencing foil disappears during the overhead shot of him and Elise playing video games.
  • When Dan was washing his shirt, there was a tomato stain in the chest area. However, he was only hit in the face by tomatoes before running off.

Characters[]

  • Dan
  • Chris
  • Elise
  • Tye (debut)
  • Ye Olde Shakespeare Dinner Theatre Actors (debut)


Gallery[]

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