“…After one more segment,” he sighed, sitting back down with a bowl of cold gravel.
“Gah! Sky demons!” Grug screamed, throwing a blanket over his own head.
“New rock!” Thunk cheered, hitting it with a club. It didn't break.
Grug froze. His stomach growled.
Eep’s eyes went wide. “They have an Eep who fights a giant pterodactyl every single episode!”
On day four, Grug finally spoke. “I have a new rule,” he said, ripping the glowing rock from the wall. “NO. MORE. TV.”
But on the glowing rock, the Croods were moving. They were singing a catchy, repetitive chant: “We’re the Croods! We hunt and we squawk! We’ll hit a thing with a rock and then we’ll ROCK-talk!”
Guy nervously tugged his collar. “It’s a ‘situation comedy,’” he said. “But it’s not real. It’s a… a rectangle of lies.”
He lifted it over his head to smash it. But just as he did, the TV flickered to a commercial: a bright, happy jingle for “Mammoth-Burger! You’ll have a KILLER meal!”
Instead, the flat rock flickered to life. A blinding square of light appeared, showing… themselves.
“I… I am not that stupid,” Grug whispered. Then the TV-Grug tried to eat his own foot because Gary dared him to. The laugh track (a recorded sabertooth cub’s cackle) played.
The thick, sticky silence of a prehistoric evening settled over the Croods’ cave. Inside, Grug was attempting a new form of entertainment: shadow puppets.
And so, the first family of the Stone Age discovered their favorite new pastime: watching themselves live a life far more interesting than their own. They became the first couch potatoes. And the last. Because tomorrow, that glowing rock was definitely going to be eaten by a giant sloth. Probably.
He lowered the TV.
