From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, known for wildlife films in remote and exotic locations, charters Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his new project. However, he cannot secure an actress for a female role he has been reluctant to disclose. Searching in the streets of New York City, he finds Ann Darrow and promises her the adventure of a lifetime. The crew boards the Venture and sets off, during which the ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll, falls in love with Ann. Denham reveals to the crew that their destination is, in fact, Skull Island, an uncharted territory of which he has come to knowledge from a Norwegian ship captain who saved some natives of the island from a canoe, although they died before reaching land. He alludes to a monstrous creature named Kong, rumored to dwell on the island. The crew arrives and anchor offshore. They encounter a native village, separated from the rest of the island by an ancient stone wall with an enormous wooden gate. They witness a group of natives preparing to presumably sacrifice a young woman termed the "bride of Kong" by confining her on the other side of the wall. The intruders are spotted, and the native chief stops the ceremony. When he sees Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal women for the "golden woman." They rebuff him and return to the Venture. That night, the natives kidnap Ann from the ship and take her through the wall gate and to an altar, where she is offered to King Kong, an enormous gorilla-like creature. Kong carries a terrified Ann into the wilderness as Denham, Jack, and some volunteers enter the jungle in hopes of rescuing her. They are ambushed by another giant creature, a Stegosaurus (on Skull Island, dinosaurs still exist), which they manage to defeat. After facing a carnivorous Brontosaurus and Kong himself, Jack and Denham are the only survivors. A Tyrannosaurus rex attacks Ann and Kong, but Kong kills it in the battle. Meanwhile, Jack continues to follow them, while Denham returns to the village for more men. Upon arriving in Kong's lair, Ann is menaced by a snake-like Elasmosaurus, which Kong also kills. While Kong is distracted killing a Pteranodon that tried to fly away with Ann, Jack reaches her, and they climb down a vine dangling from a cliff ledge. When Kong notices and starts pulling them back up, the two fall unharmed. They run through the jungle and back to the village, where Denham, Englehorn, and the surviving crewmen are waiting. Kong, following, breaks open the gate despite the huge beam closing it and both the crew and the natives trying to push it close, and relentlessly rampages through the village. Onshore, Denham, now determined to bring Kong back alive, knocks him unconscious with a gas bomb. Shackled in chains, Kong is taken to New York City and presented to a Broadway theatre audience as "King Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World." Ann and Jack are brought on stage to join him, surrounded by a group of press photographers. Kong, believing that the ensuing flash photography is an attack, breaks loose. The audience flees in horror. Ann is whisked away to a hotel room on a high floor, but Kong, scaling the building, soon finds her. His hand smashes through the hotel room window, shoves Jack aside, and abducts Ann again. Kong rampages through the city as Ann screams in his grip. He wrecks a crowded elevated train and then climbs the Empire State Building. At its top, he is attacked by four airplanes. Kong destroys one, but finally succumbs to their gunfire. He gazes at Ann one last time before falling to his death. Jack takes an elevator to the top of the building and reunites with Ann. Denham arrives and pushes through a crowd surrounding Kong's corpse in the street. When a policeman remarks that the planes got him, Denham tells him, "No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast". ===== The game is set in Angel Land, which is a fantasy world with a Greek mythology theme. The backstory of Kid Icarus is described in the instruction booklet: before the events of the game, Earth was ruled by Palutena: Goddess of Light and Medusa: Goddess of Darkness. Palutena bestowed the people with light to make them happy. Medusa hated the humans, dried up their crop, and turned them to stone. Enraged by this, Palutena transformed Medusa into a monster and banished her to the Underworld. Out of revenge, Medusa conspired with the monsters of the Underworld to take over Palutena's residence the Palace in the Sky. She launched a surprise attack, and stole the three sacred treasures — the Mirror Shield, the Light Arrows and the Wings of Pegasus — which deprived Palutena's army of its power. After her soldiers had been turned to stone by Medusa, Palutena was defeated in battle and imprisoned deep inside the Palace in the Sky. With her last power, she sent a bow and arrow to the young angel Pit. He escapes from his prison in the Underworld and sets out to save Palutena and Angel Land. Throughout the course of the story, Pit retrieves the three sacred treasures from the fortress gatekeepers at their respective fortresses in the Underworld, the Overworld, and the Skyworld. Afterward, he equips himself with the treasures and storms the sky temple where he defeats Medusa and rescues Palutena. The game has five different endings; depending on the player's performance, Palutena may present Pit with headgear or transform him into a full-grown angel. In the Japanese version, the best ending from the English version does not exist, and instead another bad ending is present. ===== Icehenge is set at three distinct time periods, and told from the perspective of three different characters. The first narrative is the diary of an engineer caught up in a Martian political revolution in 2248. Effectively kidnapped aboard a mutinous Martian spaceship, she provides assistance to the revolutionaries in their quest for interstellar travel, but ultimately chooses not to travel with them but to return to the doomed revolution on Mars. The second narrative is told from the perspective of an archaeologist three centuries later. He is involved in a project investigating the failed revolution, and during this finds the engineer's diary buried near the remains of a ruined city. At the same time, a mysterious monument is found at the north pole of Pluto, tying up with a passing mention in the engineer's diary. In the final narrative, the great-grandson of the archaeologist visits the monument on Pluto, a scaled-up version of Stonehenge carved in ice. He is investigating the possibility that both the diary and the monument were planted by a reclusive and wealthy businesswoman who lives in the orbit of Saturn. ===== Brian Cohen is born in a stable next door to the one in which Jesus is born, which initially confuses the three wise men who come to praise the future King of the Jews. Brian later grows up into an idealistic young man who resents the continuing Roman occupation of Judea. While listening to Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, Brian becomes infatuated with an attractive young rebel, Judith. His desire for her and hatred of the Romans inspire him to join the "People's Front of Judea" (PFJ), one of many fractious and bickering independence movements which spend more time fighting each other than the Romans. Brian participates in an abortive attempt by the PFJ to kidnap the wife of Roman governor Pontius Pilate but is captured by the palace guards. Escaping when the guards suffer paroxysms of laughter over Pilate's speech impediment, Brian winds up trying to blend in among prophets preaching in a busy plaza. He stops his sermon mid-sentence when some Roman soldiers depart, leaving his small but intrigued audience demanding to know more. Brian grows frantic when people start following him and declare him to be the messiah. After spending a night in bed with Judith, Brian discovers an enormous crowd assembled outside his mother's house. Her attempts at dispersing the crowd are rebuffed, so she consents to Brian addressing them. He urges them to think for themselves, but they parrot his words as doctrine. The PFJ seeks to exploit Brian's celebrity status by having him minister to a thronging crowd of followers demanding miracle cures. Brian sneaks out the back, only to be captured by the Romans and is sentenced to crucifixion. In celebration of Passover, a crowd has assembled outside the palace of Pilate, who offers to pardon a prisoner of their choice. The crowd shouts out names containing the letter "r", mocking Pilate's rhotacistic speech impediment. Eventually, Judith appears in the crowd and calls for the release of Brian, which the crowd echoes, and Pilate agrees to "welease Bwian". His order is eventually relayed to the guards, but in a scene that parodies the climax of the film Spartacus, various crucified people all claim to be "Brian" so they can be free and the wrong man is released. Other opportunities for a reprieve for Brian are denied as the PFJ and then Judith praise his martyrdom, while his mother expresses regret for having raised him. Hope is renewed when a crack suicide squad from the "Judean People's Front" charges and prompts the Roman soldiers to flee; however, the squad commits mass suicide as a form of political protest. Condemned to a slow and painful death, Brian finds his spirits lifted by his fellow sufferers, who cheerfully sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." ===== A man (Davos Hanich) is a prisoner in the aftermath of World War III in post-apocalyptic Paris, where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present". They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. The scientists eventually settle upon the protagonist; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory from his pre- war childhood of a woman (Hélène Châtelain) he had seen on the observation platform ("the jetty") at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. He did not understand exactly what happened, but knew he had seen a man die. After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society. Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the jetty at the airport, and it occurs to him that the child version of himself is probably also there at the same time. He is more concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her. However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his jailers who has followed him and realizes the agent is about to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the incident he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death. ===== In this story, an artist, named Niggle, lives in a society that does not value art. Working only to please himself, he paints a canvas of a great Tree with a forest in the distance. He invests each and every leaf of his tree with obsessive attention to detail, making every leaf uniquely beautiful. Niggle ends up discarding all his other artworks, or tacks them onto the main canvas, which becomes a single vast embodiment of his vision. However, there are many mundane chores and duties that prevent Niggle from giving his work the attention it deserves, so it remains incomplete and is not fully realised. At the back of his head, Niggle knows that he has a great trip looming, and he must pack and prepare his bags. Also, Niggle's next door neighbour, a gardener named Parish, frequently drops by asking for various forms of help. Parish is lame and has a sick wife and genuinely needs help. Niggle, having a good heart, takes time out to help—but he is also reluctant because he would rather work on his painting. Niggle has other pressing work duties as well that require his attention. Then Niggle himself catches a chill doing errands for Parish in the rain. Eventually, Niggle is forced to take his trip, and cannot get out of it. He has not prepared, and as a result ends up in a kind of institution, in which he must perform menial labour each day. Back at the home to which he cannot return, Niggle's painting is abandoned, used to patch a damaged roof, and all but destroyed (except for the one perfect leaf of the story's title, which is placed in the local museum). In time, Niggle is paroled from the institution, and he is sent to a place "for a little gentle treatment". He discovers that this new place is the country of the Tree and Forest of his great painting. This place is the true realisation of his vision, not the flawed and incomplete version in his painting. Niggle is reunited with his old neighbour, Parish, who now proves his worth as a gardener, and together they make the Tree and Forest even more beautiful. Finally, Niggle journeys farther and deeper into the Forest, and beyond into the great Mountains that he only faintly glimpsed in his painting. Long after both Niggle and Parish have taken their journeys, the lovely place that they created together becomes a destination for many travelers to visit before their final voyage into the Mountains, and it earns the name "Niggle's Parish". ===== Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches for the first time ===== Charlie is a young Italian-American man in Little Italy, New York City. He is hampered by his feeling of responsibility towards his reckless younger friend Johnny Boy, a small-time gambler, hoodlum, and ne'er-do-well who refuses to work and owes money to many loan sharks. Charlie works for his uncle Giovanni, a powerful mafioso, loan shark, and political fixer, mostly collecting debts. He is also having a secret affair with Johnny Boy's cousin Teresa, who has epilepsy and is ostracized because of her condition—especially by Charlie's uncle. Charlie's uncle also wants Charlie not to be such close friends with Johnny, saying "Honorable men go with honorable men." Charlie is torn between his devout Catholicism and his illicit work for his mafioso uncle. Johnny becomes increasingly self-destructive and disrespectful of his creditors. Failing to receive redemption in the Church, Charlie seeks it through sacrificing himself on Johnny's behalf. At a bar, Michael, a small-time loan shark, comes looking for Johnny to pay up. To his surprise, Johnny insults him. Michael lunges at Johnny, who pulls a gun. After a tense standoff, Michael walks away, and Charlie convinces Johnny that they should leave town for a brief period. Teresa insists on coming with them. Charlie borrows a car and they drive off, leaving the neighborhood without incident. A car that has been following them suddenly pulls up, Michael at the wheel and his henchman, Jimmy Shorts, in the backseat. Jimmy fires several shots at Charlie's car, hitting Johnny in the neck and Charlie in the hand, causing Charlie to crash the car into a fire hydrant. Johnny is seen in an alleyway staggering toward a white light which is revealed to be a police car. Charlie gets out of the crashed vehicle and kneels in the spurting water from the hydrant, dazed and bleeding. Paramedics take Teresa and Charlie away. Johnny's fate remains unknown. ===== The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project. The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters—Daniel (the narrator), Susan, Todd, Bug, Michael, and Abe—are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind. The second movement of the novel begins when the characters are offered jobs in Silicon Valley working on a project for Michael, who has by then left Redmond. All of the housemates—some immediately, some after thought—decide to move to the Valley. The characters' lives change drastically once they leave the limited sphere of the Microsoft campus and enter the world of "One-Point-Oh". They begin to work on a project called "Oop!" (a reference to object-oriented programming). Oop! is a Lego-like design program, allowing dynamic creation of many objects, bearing a resemblance to 2009's Minecraft (Coupland appears on the rear cover of the novel's hardcover editions photographed in Denmark's Legoland Billund, holding a Lego 777.). One of the undercurrents of the plot is Daniel and his family's relationship to Jed, Daniel's younger brother who died in a boating accident while they were children. ===== ===== Terry Jones (behind counter), Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and the Vikings in the Monty Python sketch "Spam" Spam sketch at Monty Python Live (Mostly) in 2014 The three-and-a-half-minute sketch is set in the fictional Green Midget Cafe in Bromley. An argument develops between the waitress, who recites a menu in which nearly every dish contains Spam, and Mrs. Bun, who does not like Spam. She asks for a dish without Spam, much to the amazement of her Spam-loving husband. The waitress responds to this request with disgust. Mr. Bun offers to take her Spam instead, and asks for a dish containing a lot of Spam and baked beans. The waitress says the beans are not available; when Mr. Bun asks for a substitution of Spam, the waitress begins reading out the new dish's name. At several points, a group of Vikings in the restaurant interrupt conversations by loudly singing about Spam. The irate waitress orders them to shut up, but they resume singing more loudly. A Hungarian tourist comes to the counter, trying to order by using a wholly inaccurate Hungarian/English phrasebook (a reference to a previous sketch). He is rapidly escorted away by a police constable. The sketch abruptly cuts to a historian in a television studio talking about the origin of the Vikings in the café. As he goes on, he begins to increasingly insert the word "Spam" into every sentence, and the backdrop is raised to reveal the restaurant set behind. The historian joins the Vikings in their song, and Mr. and Mrs. Bun are lifted by wires out of the scene while the singing continues. In the original televised performance, the closing credits begin to scroll with the singing still audible in the background. ===== Mr. Praline (Cleese) enters the pet shop to register a complaint about the dead Norwegian Blue parrot (parrots are not endemic to Norway) just as the shopkeeper (Palin) is preparing to close the establishment for lunch. Despite being told that the bird is deceased and that it had been nailed to its perch, the proprietor insists that it is "pining for the fjords" or simply "stunned".All the Words: Volume One. pp. 104–106. As the exasperated Praline attempts to wake up the parrot, the shopkeeper tries to make the bird move by hitting the cage, and Praline erupts into a rage after banging "Polly Parrot" on the counter. After listing several euphemisms for death ("is no more", "has ceased to be", "bereft of life, it rests in peace", and "this is an ex-parrot") he is told to go to the pet shop run by the shopkeeper's brother in Bolton for a refund. That proves difficult, as the proprietor of that store (who is really the shopkeeper, save for a fake moustache) claims this is Ipswich, whereas the railway station attendant (Terry Jones) claims he is actually in Bolton after all. Confronting the shopkeeper's "brother" for lying, the shopkeeper claims he was playing a prank on Praline by sending him to Ipswich, which was a palindrome for Bolton; Praline points out that the shopkeeper was wrong because a palindrome for Bolton would have been "Notlob". Just as Praline has decided that "this is getting too silly", Graham Chapman's no-nonsense Colonel bursts in and orders the sketch stopped. ===== This is a recurring sketch always predicated on an unrelated sketch in which one character mentions that they "didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition!", often in irritation at being questioned by another. The first appearance of the Spanish Inquisition occurs in a drawing room set in "Jarrow, 1912," with a title card featuring a modern British urban area with a nuclear power plant. A mill worker (Graham Chapman) enters the room and tells a woman sitting on a couch knitting (Carol Cleveland) that "one of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treadle". When she says that he doesn't know what he's talking about, the mill worker gets defensive and says, "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!" Then the Inquisition—consisting of Cardinal Ximénez (Michael Palin) and his assistants, Cardinal Biggles (Terry Jones) (who resembles his namesake Biggles wearing a leather aviator's helmet and goggles) and Cardinal Fang (Terry Gilliam)—burst into the room to the sound of a jarring musical sting. Ximénez shouts, with a particular and high-pitched emphasis on the first word: "NO-body expects the Spanish Inquisition!" After entering, Ximénez begins listing their weapons ("fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, nice red uniforms"), but interrupts himself as he keeps forgetting to mention additional weapons and has to begin his list over again. After several attempts, Ximénez states that he will come in again, and herds the Inquisition back off the set. The straight man mill worker repeats the cue line, the Inquisition bursts back in (complete with jarring chord), and the introduction is tried anew. But Ximénez fails again and tries to get Cardinal Biggles to do the introduction, but Biggles is also unsuccessful. Ximénez decides to forget the introduction and has Cardinal Fang read out charges of heresy against the woman. The woman pleads innocent, and the cardinals respond with laughter (as an on-screen caption reads "DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER") and threats (as the on-screen caption changes to "DIABOLICAL ACTING"). Ximénez intends to torture the woman with "the rack", but Cardinal Biggles instead produces a dish-drying rack. This rack is tied to the woman as Biggles pretends to turn a lever, but it has no effect whatsoever. As they work, the mill worker answers the door to find a BBC employee (John Cleese) requesting him to open a door for a gag on "the neighboring sketch", leading into the "Jokes and Novelties Salesman" segment. The Inquisition returns in a later sketch as an older woman (Marjorie Wilde) shares photographs from a scrapbook with another woman (Cleveland), who rips them up as they are handed to her. When the older woman presents a photo of the Spanish Inquisition hiding behind the coal shed, the other woman says, "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!" The three cardinals then reappear and take the older woman away to a dungeon. Biggles tries to torture the woman by poking her repeatedly with soft cushions. When this fails, Ximénez orders Fang to get "the comfy chair", which is brought out and the woman placed in it. Ximénez states that she must stay in the chair "until lunch time with only a cup of coffee at 11", and begins to shout at her to confess—only to have Biggles break down and confess. This frustrates Ximénez, but he cannot complain about it since he is distracted by a cartoon character from the next scene. At the end of the show, in the "Court Charades" sketch, a judge (Jones) who is also a defendant in an obscenity trial at the Old Bailey is casually sentenced by another judge (Chapman) to be burned at the stake. The convicted judge responds, "Blimey, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!" The whole court rises and looks expectantly at the witness entrance door. As the closing credits of the episode begin, the Inquisitors race out of a house and hop on a double-decker bus to the Old Bailey, all to the tune of "Devil's Galop". As the Inquisitors ride in the bus, they comment worriedly that they are running out of credits (which are seen on screen) and are panicked that the sketch will soon end. The bus reaches the courthouse and the cardinals charge up the steps of the Old Bailey. They finally burst into the courtroom, only for Ximénez to shout, "NO-body expects the Span—oh, bugger.", as the words "THE END" appear on-screen. In the Monty Python Live (Mostly) stage show the sketch ends when Ximénez orders Biggles to "torture" the victim (who is sitting in the comfy chair) by giving her a glass of cold milk from the fridge. When Biggles opens the door, the Man in the Fridge (Eric Idle) emerges and begins singing the "Galaxy Song" to the victim, while the Inquisition exit through the fridge. ===== In AD 932, King Arthur and his squire, Patsy, travel Britain searching for men to join the Knights of the Round Table. Along the way, Arthur debates whether swallows could carry coconuts, recounts receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, defeats the Black Knight and observes an impromptu witch trial. He recruits Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Galahad the Pure and Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir- Lancelot, along with their squires and Robin's minstrels. Arthur leads the knights to Camelot, but after a musical number decides not to go there, deeming it "a silly place". As they turn away, God appears and orders Arthur to find the Holy Grail. Arthur and his knights arrive at a castle occupied by French soldiers, who claim to have the Grail and taunt the Englishmen, driving them back with a barrage of barnyard animals. Bedevere concocts a plan to sneak in using a Trojan Rabbit, but no one hides inside it, and the Englishmen are forced to flee when the rabbit is flung back at them. Arthur decides the knights should go their separate ways to search for the Grail. A modern-day historian filming a documentary on the Arthurian legends is killed by a knight on horseback, triggering a police investigation. On the knights' travels, Arthur and Bedevere are given directions by an old man and attempt to satisfy the strange requests of the dreaded Knights Who Say "Ni!". Sir Robin avoids a fight with a Three-Headed Knight by running away while the heads are arguing. Sir Galahad is led by a grail-shaped beacon to Castle Anthrax, which is full of young women, but is unwillingly "rescued" by Lancelot. Lancelot receives an arrow-shot note from Swamp Castle. Believing the note is from a lady forced to marry against her will, he storms the castle and slaughters several members of the wedding party, only to discover the note was from an effeminate prince. Arthur and his knights regroup and are joined by three new knights, as well as Brother Maynard and his monk brethren. They meet Tim the Enchanter, who directs them to a cave where the location of the Grail is said to be written. The entrance to the cave is guarded by the Rabbit of Caerbannog. Underestimating its power, the knights attack the Rabbit, which easily kills Sirs Bors, Gawain and Ector. Arthur uses the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch", provided by Brother Maynard, to destroy the creature. Inside the cave, they find an inscription from Joseph of Arimathea, directing them to Castle Aarrgh. An animated cave monster devours Brother Maynard, but Arthur and the knights escape after the animator dies of a heart attack. The knights approach the Bridge of Death, where the bridge-keeper challenges them to answer three questions to pass, or else be cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Lancelot easily answers the questions and crosses. Robin is defeated by an unexpectedly difficult question, and Galahad fails an easy one; both are flung into the gorge. When the bridge-keeper attempts a difficult question about swallows on Arthur, he turns the question on the bridge-keeper, who cannot answer and is thrown into the gorge. Arthur and Bedevere cannot find Lancelot, unaware that he has been arrested by police investigating the historian's death. Arthur and Bedevere reach Castle Aarrgh, but find it occupied by the French soldiers. After being repelled by showers of manure, they summon an army of knights and prepare to assault the castle. As the army charges, police arrive, arrest Arthur and Bedevere, and break the camera, ending the film. ===== In 1982, a very young Grace Hart (Bullock) steps into a playground fight to beat up a bully who is threatening a boy she likes. However, the boy feels humiliated at being rescued "by a girl", and rejects her rudely, whereupon she punches him in the nose and leaves to sulk alone. Years later, Gracie is now a tough Special Agent for the FBI. During a sting operation against Russian mobsters, she disobeys her superior's (Hudson) orders in order to save a mob boss who appears to be choking, which causes one of the other agents to be shot. She is demoted to a desk job as punishment. Soon after, the agency is alerted, via a letter from the notorious domestic terrorist known only as "The Citizen", to a bomb threat at the upcoming 75th annual Miss United States beauty pageant in San Antonio, Texas. Gracie's partner Eric Matthews (Bratt) is put in charge, and he relies on Gracie's suggestions, but he takes credit for them himself. One of Gracie's ideas is to plant an agent undercover at the event. When all possible candidates are deemed unfit, Eric then suggests that Gracie take on that role, replacing Miss New Jersey, who was to be disqualified. Beauty pageant coach Victor Melling (Caine) teaches Gracie how to dress, walk, and behave like a contestant. Though initially appalled, she comes to appreciate Victor's thoroughness. Gracie enters the pageant as "Gracie Lou Freebush", representing New Jersey, and becomes friends with Cheryl Frasier (Burns), who is Miss Rhode Island. As the competition begins, Gracie impresses the judges during the talent competition with her glass harp skills and self-defense techniques. Several suspects are identified, including the current competition director and former pageant winner Kathy Morningside (Bergen), her assistant Frank Tobin (Monroe), the veteran MC Stan Fields (Shatner), and Cheryl, who has a history of being a radical animal rights activist. Gracie accompanies Cheryl and other contestants as they spend a night partying, where Gracie tries to dig into Cheryl's past, but inadvertently learns from the others that Kathy's past as a pageant contestant is suspect, including the fact that she won after the leading contestant suddenly came down with food poisoning. Gracie comes to believe Kathy is a "Citizen" copycat. When Gracie reports this to Eric and the team, she learns that "The Citizen" has been arrested on an unrelated charge, and because there is no further threat, their supervisor has pulled the mission. Gracie insists that she suspects something is wrong, and Eric returns to Texas to help her continue the investigation against orders. In the final round, Gracie is stunned when she is named first runner-up. Cheryl is named Miss United States, but as she goes to accept the tiara, Gracie realizes that Frank, who is actually Kathy's son, impersonated "The Citizen" to make the pageant bomb threat. She throws the tiara up at the stage scenery, where it explodes. As Kathy and Frank are arrested, Gracie determines that the two wanted to kill the pageant winner on stage as revenge for Kathy's termination from the Miss United States organization. As the event closes down and Gracie and Eric prepare to return to headquarters with a newfound interest in each other, the other contestants name Gracie "Miss Congeniality". =====