JEN, QUENTIN, STEPHANIE, and DAVID enter a conference room located deep inside the DC Beltway. DAVID sits in a chair. QUENTIN sits in a chair facing the opposite direction. STEPHANIE throws a chair through the window and sits on the table. JEN picks up a chair and duct tapes it to her back, then sits on STEPHANIE.
DAVID: All right, everyone. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this is the most important holiday party of our lifetime. Who’s in charge of the food?
STEPHANIE: Joe Biden is in charge of the food.
DAVID: Great. What food is he bringing?
JEN: He’s not bringing any food.
DAVID: What do you mean?
QUENTIN: He didn’t buy or make any food. He’s not bringing any food.
DAVID: Did all of you know he wasn’t bringing any food?
ALL: Yes.
DAVID: How long ago did you know he wasn’t going to bring the food?
QUENTIN: Since it became clear that he didn’t know what food was anymore.
STEPHANIE: Since he went on TV and showed everyone his grocery list, and it didn’t have any food on it.
JEN: Since I sent him out for Chex Mix, and he came back with a T-shirt from Eddie Money’s 1983 Where’s the Party? Tour.
DAVID: Did you tell someone else to bring the food?
QUENTIN: Yes, but only a few minutes ago.
JEN: If only we’d had more time, there could have been a contest to determine who would be the best person to bring the food.
DAVID: Weren’t you the ones saying all along that Joe Biden was definitely bringing the food?
STEPHANIE: Now is not the time for finger-pointing.
Vice President KAMALA HARRIS bursts into the conference room, holding an armload of groceries.
KAMALA: I love to cook!
DAVID: Great, what should we have her cook?
JEN: Unsalted crackers.
QUENTIN: Tap water.
STEPHANIE: A potato.
KAMALA: I’ll just reheat these leftovers from the last four years that no one likes.
KAMALA drops the grocery bags, which are empty. She leaps through the broken window, which is a lot easier and more available to her than exiting through the glass ceiling.
DAVID: Perfect. Let’s talk about the guest list. Who’s coming to this party?
JEN: I knocked on thousands of doors. Millions of doors. Front doors. Back doors. Screen doors. French doors. Weird side garage doors. Fans of the Doors. Doors are coming to this party, is what I’m saying.
DAVID: Who else?
STEPHANIE: Celebrities and nepo-Republicans.
QUENTIN: I invited the entire cast of SNL, which is an important cultural touchstone for Northeast Boomers and CNN’s home page.
DAVID: I just invited the faculty of Harvard.
QUENTIN: I just invited the DC press corps.
STEPHANIE: I just invited Bruce Springsteen.
JEN: According to people from the East Coast, he speaks to people from the Midwest.
DAVID: Did anyone invite someone not from New York or DC?
All hands go up.
DAVID: Or Hollywood?
All hands go down.
STEPHANIE: Uh oh, Donald Trump just said on Truth Social that he’s coming to the party, even though he thinks the party will suck and he hates parties.
QUENTIN: Last time he was at a party he clogged the toilet and ate a decorative soap.
DAVID: Last time he was at a party he dumped his colostomy bag on Lindsey Graham’s blazer and rode Marco Rubio like a horsey.
JEN: We must warn the guests about Trump by appealing to their institutional love of parties as a concept, not the fact that the last time Trump was at a party he dry-humped the Christmas tree and spent ninety minutes arguing with a ham.
STEPHANIE: When they shove the cat into the Instant Pot, we go high. We must invite him in.
QUENTIN: Yes, it is critical that we preserve one-sided decorum.
JEN: Agreed. I realize this is the person we’ve been calling a fascist and a threat to the rule of law for the past decade, but it is imperative that I am still welcome at all DC cocktail parties.
The holiday party happens, but not very many people show up.
JEN: That was a lousy holiday party, which I always knew it would be.
QUENTIN: The fundamentals doomed us from the start, which was obvious to all.
STEPHANIE: There is literally nothing that we could have done differently.
JEN: Getting 8 percent fewer guests than last time should be considered a success.
DAVID: Does anyone have any ideas for how to make the next party better?
All hands go up.
DAVID: Don’t say “TikTok Obama.”
All hands go down.
DAVID: What about a theme?
QUENTIN: Something vague but also complicated.
JEN: It’s better if we don’t have a theme at all, because someone somewhere might not like our theme.
STEPHANIE: Two words: “TikTok Obama.”
DAVID: Well, we have plenty of time to think about it.
DAVID pops a bottle of champagne and pours a toast for each of the Democrats.
DAVID: To us! Remember, the most important thing isn’t whether the holiday party was a success or failure but whether we all end up with high-paying jobs at national media outlets and increased speaker fees.
ALL: Cheers!
JEN pours champagne into her ear. DAVID dumps the glass down his pants. STEPHANIE smashes her glass and starts eating the champagne off the floor with a fork and knife. QUENTIN swallows the cork.
