Inside a flat-roofed medium-sized building known as Quick Fix’s House and Electricity Fixer-Uppers Inc., three men seem to be up to something with a light bulb in the back room.
Up on a ladder, a pale man removes a burned out light bulb from its socket. He scratches irritably at his black, sugar bowl haircut as he slides the dead bulb free. “Here, Larry. Take this light bulb and put it with the rest of the duds.”
Larry looks up. “Sure, Moe. But where are the rest of the duds?” He ducks as the bulb nearly gets tangled in his own curly hair.
Moe rolls his eyes, his irritation obviously not improved by the question. “Where do you think they are?”
“In the garbage?” Larry asks dumbly.
“No, in your stomach,” Moe replies, before kicking Larry in the stomach, causing him to groan and put his hands to his belly, “Of course they’re in the garbage, nitwit. Curly’s looking after it, isn’t he?” He gestures at the bin of light bulbs nearby where a bald man in overalls rummages through the pile.
The music blasting through Curly’s headphones can be heard even from all the way up the ladder.
Without warning, the two men hear a sound like glass shattering. They look over to see that for some reason, Curly is looking at a light bulb like he’s deeply inspecting it. Then he throws the light bulb away, making it smash against the wall.
“On second thought, give it back to me,” Moe orders Larry.
As ordered, Larry hands back the old light bulb to Moe.
Moe comes down from the ladder, and starts walking toward Curly, while Larry just stands by and watches.
While Moe stalks his way, Curly once again inspects another light bulb. Unsatisfied with this one, he throws the perfectly good light bulb away. Only this time, without a thought, the direction he throws it is at Moe. It hits Moe on the head, breaking into pieces, and making Moe get dazed for a moment. With a shake of his head, Moe clears himself from his daze before looking at Curly with a peeved expression and going towards him.
“Hey, Curly,” Moe says, coming up behind him and roughly tapping his shoulder.
But Curly doesn’t respond. He can’t hear him because of the music, and he’s so focused on his light bulb inspecting he doesn’t even know Moe is behind him.
Deciding he has had enough, Moe grabs Curly’s headphones from both sides, pulls them apart and lets them go! The smack on Curly’s head and ears is enough to gain his attention.
“Ow!” Curly takes off his headphones, turns around, and sees Moe behind him with an annoyed expression.
Moe pinches the tip of Curly’s ear with two fingers and lifts him to a fully upright position. “What are you doing?” Moe asks, still annoyed by what he just saw.
“I was just inspecting the light bulbs for dirty spots, Moe,” Curly explains.
“What for?”
“Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Give light and people will find the way’?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Well I figured, if I found a good clean light bulb, it could light the way better for us.”
“Oh,” Moe says. Then he narrows his eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. “Well, what’s the idea of throwing light bulbs away and breaking them?”
“They weren’t the right ones,” Curly says to him plainly.
“Tell me, have you ever felt a light bulb hit your head before?”
“No?”
“Well, you’re going to now,” Moe says before he smashes the old light bulb onto Curly’s bare head.
“OOH! OOH! OOH!”
“Now grab another light bulb and come put it up without breaking it,” Moe orders Curly.
“Hmmmm!” Curly scoffs.
Irritated by Moe, he waves his hand side-to-side in front of Moe’s face. Startled, Moe instinctively follows the gestures, his head bobbing the same directions. Curly wiggles his hand some more, fluttering it up, and swinging it down. Every movement causes Moe’s head to follow blindly until his eyes cross.
“Nyuck! Nyuck! Nyuck!” Satisfied, Curly chuckles in triumph.
But his triumph is short-lived when Moe uses two fingers to poke him in the eyes, causing him to yelp with pain.
“Come on,” Moe says before he grabs Curly by the ear again.
Moe returns to the ladder with Curly’s ear in tow, followed immediately by the rest of Curly. He lets go of Curly’s ear, and leans in close to his two comrades.
“Now listen you mugs, we were lucky to get this job without gettin’ fired afterwards, so no more of this nonsense,” Moe says to Larry and Curly.
“I’m still disgusted about how we got this job in the first place.” Larry says.
“Yeah. One small lie was what got us here in the first place, and it was your fault for making the lie. You told the guy we were great at repairing.” Curly points out to Moe.
“Well don’t look at me, you weren’t being much of a saint either. ‘Three of the best repairmen ever to do a repair’. I oughta bat your eyes out for saying that to the boss,” Moe reminds him.
Curly in turn gets irritated by Moe for reminding him of that.
“Don’t get excited Puddin’ head, you know he’s right,” Larry says to Curly’s face.
“And you,” Moe says, before grabbing Larry by the hair and hauling him away from Curly, “you had to make the lie bigger at the last minute.”
“Yay, well we really did fix that bell at the old church you know,” Larry says in self-defense.
“By causing it to fall on the head of a priest thinking it had a doughnut remover on it,” Moe reminds him.
Moe cuffs Larry on the back of the head, the slap making his curly hair bounce and causing him to rub where Moe hit him. When Curly sees this, he chuckles to himself. When Moe hears that irritating chuckle, he turns around to face Curly, and uses a balled up hand to thump that bald forehead.
“Listen. We have a job now right?” Moe asks them.
“Yeah,” Larry and Curly respond at the same time, both rubbing their newly sore spots.
"As repairmen, we can earn enough money to pay the landlady at our apartment, right?" Moe says to lift their spirits.
“Yep, and keep from having to sleep on the sidewalk,” Larry says in agreement.
“And have plenty of food and drinks to keep from turning to bones,” Curly also agrees.
“Right. So what do you say? You wanna be a repairman?” Moe asks Larry and Curly.
“Yeah!” Larry and Curly respond with high spirits.
“Then let's get the light bulb to light up. Come on.” Moe orders with sudden irritation again.
Moe slaps Curly’s head to get him to put the bulb back on. The slap is much to Curly’s annoyance, but it gets him to climb up the ladder to put up the new light bulb.
While the Stooges work on their light bulb problem in the back, a man in the front office searches through his mail for something.
Mr. Quick-Fix himself looks much like the image on his business cards: blue skin, bright red hair cut severely short, and snapping green eyes. He rummages through the pile of letters on his desk like he’s looking for something that will make his day. Money, most likely.
"Bills. Bills. Bills. Nothing but bills," he says in disdain, "People these days must be buying their own tools. How can a repairman earn some bucks when people don't send-"
He doesn’t finish his sentence, because he finally finds something he has been looking for: A $75 check from one of his customers.
"Yaahoooooo!!!!" he shouts happily.
He jumps up onto his table, and kisses his check like it is all that matters to him at the moment.
"Quick-Fix, you'll be the richest man in town one day," he brags to himself.
When he is done taking another few seconds just to admire what he has in his hands, he jumps off of his table, and opens a drawer to his desk, bringing out a small safe with a combination lock on it. Stealthily, he opens it up with his own personal code, and puts the check inside of it for safekeeping. After closing the safe, he sits back down on his chair, putting his feet on the table and crossing them over one another to indulge in his brief moment of triumph.
After Curly finishes climbing the ladder, he screws the new light bulb he found in the pile onto the socket without any hindrance or mishap. But when he finishes screwing it, he looks around where he’s standing and starts to remember one thing: he’s afraid of heights!
“NYAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!!” he screams, before the ladder goes down with him still atop it.
CRASH!
The commotion is enough to startle Mr. Quick-Fix. His chair rolls away from his desk, depositing him on the ground. The impact disturbs a glass of water he has on his desk, and it tips over to spill on his floor and drench a newly-imported rug.
When Quick-Fix sees the damage, his temper flares. He grinds his teeth, knowing exactly just who is responsible for the noise.
"Those air-headed idiots!" he shouts.
Jumping to his feet, he marches straight to the door that leads to the back room of his repair shop. He needs a word with three certain men that he hired not too long ago.
In the back, Moe and Larry of course see the whole thing and walk right over to Curly to pick him up by the arms. When they get him up, well, they give him quite a talking to.
“What’s the matter with you?! Why did you fall off like that?!” Moe asks angrily.
“I couldn’t help it, I’m afraid of heights!” Curly responds.
“Well, why didn’t you say so before climbing up?!” Larry asks.
“I forgot that I was!” Curly responds again.
“Oh, you did, eh?” Moe says to him.
Moe slaps Curly on the stomach, causing him to bend over so Moe can follow up with a knock on the head. Yelping, Curly shoots straight back up again and clutches his head.
While Curly rubs his head, Larry thumps him in the stomach just like Moe has done before, bending him over again.
“Hey, butt outta this.” Moe says to Larry, smacking him on the forehead.
“OOH!” Larry yells, “Hey, what’s the idea?!”
Curly gets himself straightened up, gives Moe an angry look, and belly bumps him. Spinning around, Curly smirks in satisfaction once Moe can’t see his face. But that turns out to be a bad idea when Moe bops the back of his head with his fist, making him stumble forward into Larry, where forehead meets forehead.
As the Stooges argue and yell at each other, Mr. Quick-Fix walks in and sees what his three new employees are doing. He frowns, and his mouth gets cross at what he’s seeing before him. He walks right over to them while they’re distracted, coming close behind their backs. He does the one thing he thought of to get the attention of his workers: bonk all their heads together with a mighty push.
“OOMPH!!!” the Stooges yell from the impact.
Rubbing their heads, they turn around to find their boss right behind them, with that angry expression of his, much to their nervousness.
“What’s going on here?!” Mr. Quick-Fix yells.
“We’re sorry, Boss.” Larry desperately tells him.
“We just had an accident during our practice.” Moe desperately tells his boss.
“Practice?!”
“Yay, we were just warming up for the job by fixing up a light bulb,” Curly quickly says before pointing at the light bulb, “See.”
Quick-Fix looks over at the light hanging on the ceiling, along with the pile of light bulbs on the ground and the fallen ladder.
“Well listen you nitwits! The noise you made in here caused water to spill on a $300 office rug of mine!” he shouts again.
Because of this, the Stooges talk all at once, apologizing to their boss for causing the accident in his office, until Mr. Quick-Fix screams, “Shut up!” It’s enough to quiet them.
“Now listen. Since your “practice” is over, clean up this mess you made and don’t make any more noise. If I hear another ruckus back here, I’ll pulverize you and throw you out into the street,” he tells them.
When he said the “pulverize” part, the Stooges put their hands to their throats in fright as if they can envision what he will do to them if they make another mistake.
“Not to worry, boss. We won’t disturb you again.” Moe assures.
“We’ll be as quiet as a mouse.” Larry says.
“Yay, a deaf and dumb mouse.” Curly adds.
After he says that, Curly laughs at his own joke. His wisecracking at a time like this irritates Moe. He holds out one of his hands, which he balls into a fist.
“See that?” he asks Curly.
“Yeah?”
Moe slaps the top of his fist, spinning his arm around, and bonking Curly on his head. It makes Curly grunt in pain.
“Like he said, we’ll be quiet,” Moe says to Quick-Fix. “Why not go into your office and relax?”
“Alright. But you’d better keep your word.” Quick-Fix warns.
After Quick-Fix gives his warning, he walks out of the room and back into his office, leaving the Stooges standing around for a moment.
“You heard him, we better be quiet.” Moe tells Larry & Curly.
“Yay, better to do that than anything else since practice is over.” Larry agrees.
“But what’ll we do?” Curly asks.
The three men think for a moment. They keep thinking, until finally, Larry comes up with something they could do.
“How about a game of cards?” he asks.
“Okay, that’s fine with me,” Moe replies.
“Me too,” Curly says.
Moe turns to face Curly to ask him one simple question:
“Have ya got your deck of cards?”
“Soitenly!” Curly answers.
Reaching into his pocket, Curly gets out a pack of cards so that they can play a card game. But being the goofy guy he is, he gets the cards out of their small box and makes a card fan like he’s showing off a card trick.
“Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.”
“Come on.” Moe orders.
Moe slaps Curly on his forehead, and makes him drop his cards on the ground. It annoys Curly a little, but he doesn’t think it is anything worth fighting back over.
The Stooges gather up the cards that fell down, and sit down to enjoy a nice game while they wait for an assignment to come to them.