Gold Watch

"Gold Watch" is the thirtieth episode of season 5 (and one hundred forty-sixth episode overall) of Regular Show. It will air on June 26, 2014.

Synopsis
Benson has to get to work on time so he can get a gold watch.

Plot
We open on a celebratory dinner at Wing Kingdom where an uncharacteristically giddy Benson is toasting his fellow colleagues. It's revealed that tomorrow marks the park manager’s one thousandth consecutive day at work, which Mr. Maellard will commemorate by bestowing him a gold watch. Thomas asks his boss how he managed to turn up to work on time all those days. A straight-faced Benson answers he only got this far in life by playing it safe, including setting three alarms for himself every night and making his breakfast toast and coffee the night before. Of course this meant having stale toast and coffee every morning, but Benson is convinced that all would be worth it to get his hands on that gold watch. Muscle Man civilly reminds Benson he still has to make it on time tomorrow for the thousand days to count but Benson is confident there’d be no problem, asking what could possibly go wrong between now and then. At this point, Mordecai and Rigby show up and introduce the gang to Tango and Stash, two friendly test pilots they just bumped into. Tango, who happens to be the one with the moustache, explains that he and his buddy are celebrating one thousand test missions. They invite Benson to join them. Encouraged by the prospect of more wings, Benson gladly accepts. Skips and Pops dutifully voice their concerns that another round of “winging” might be one too many for their friend, but Benson assures them he can handle it.

The next morning Benson wakes up alone in an ejected pilot seat in the middle of a barren wasteland with no recollection of how he got there. His digital watch reads 6:00; just three hours before work starts, and he’s wearing a military jumpsuit for some reason. Getting over his massive headache, the park manager tries to remember how he got into his current predicament. He recalls being introduced to the test pilots the night before and immediately assumes Mordecai and Rigby were somehow responsible. Having freed himself from the seat, Benson wonders around lost for a while before miraculously coming across a road and a payphone. He calls back to The Park where Pops picks up. After confirming his friend is alright, Pops worriedly reveals that neither he, nor Mordecai or Rigby came home last night and no one on their end knew what happened. Exasperated by the situation, Benson tells Pops that he’s stranded in the middle of the desert and asks if he could come pick him up, to which the lollieman, in all well-meaning seriousness asks “Where in the desert are you exactly?”. As Benson walks out to see if he could find an eye-catching cactus or something, he spots a police car driving towards him. Flagging down the vehicle, Benson asks the officer what road they were on. Instead of answering, the cop punches him in the face and arrests him on the spot. Pops is left hanging as his co-worker is sped away in the police car.

Benson is brought to the slammer where Mordecai and Rigby, along with Tango and Stash, are waiting. The group is relieved to see their companion is alright. Benson however is still livid about the whole being-stranded-in-the-desert fiasco and jumps Mordecai as soon as he’s thrown in, he demands to know what happened. An alarmed Mordecai promises to inform his boss if he’d kindly release his chokehold, which he does much to the blue jay's relief.

In a flashback, it turns out the group were getting along great last night. Having heard about the test pilot’s wild adventures, Benson expresses some regret that he’d never taken any risks during his time as park manager. Tango suggests breaking that mould by driving to the ceremony tomorrow in the Mach Infinity, a Thrust SSC inspired jet-propelled speed car he and Stash just test-drove. Despite being equally stoked at the prospect of witnessing such a car in action, Mordecai and Rigby warn Benson it might be dangerous. Fuelled on his latest round of wings, Benson throws caution to the wind and agrees to give the car a test spin. Cut to the middle of the desert where Benson is already geared up and strapped in the jet car. After Tango and Stash talk him through the basics, the first-time pilot takes off with explosive momentum, instantly accelerating to more than 700mph. Unprepared for the incredible speed, Benson freaks out and pulls the eject lever. This causes him to shoot out of the car mid-drive and slam his head against the detached canopy, which promptly knocks him out. Stash explains in the holding cell that he landed about a mile away while the car kept going until it reached the road. When they went out to look for him the officer from before arrested the whole group for speeding, despite both Tango and Stash carrying clearance cards.

Now up to speed, no pun intended, Benson tries to convince the officer to let them out early by saying he had to be somewhere at 9:00. But the officer simply mocks him, telling him he could leave at 9:01. All seemed hopeless when at that moment, Pops unexpectedly shows up at the door. A surprised Benson asks how he managed to find them and Pops recounts how he was able to deduce their exact location by identifying the mating call of a Chubby-Necked Chicken Vulture he heard over the phone. It was then just a matter of looking up the bird’s natural habitat on the computer, which he did with some help from Thomas after being scared away by a pop-up image, and here he was, ready to post bail in the form of lollipops for them. Unfortunately the power-hungry cop took the confectionary as a bribery attempt and has Pops thrown in with the others. Mordecai and Rigby angrily protest their friend's treatment, only to have the cop turn his pressurized water-hose on them. As the officer leaves to get a bigger hose, a soaked and fed-up Benson blames Mordecai and Rigby for his disastrous morning. Rigby objects, saying they had nothing to do with it. Tango and Stash back them up, reminding Benson that it was his own decisions that got him into this mess. Realising they were right, Benson acknowledges his lapse in judgment and formulates a plan with the others to break out of their holding cell.

When the cop returns he’s shocked to find all but one prisoner apparently missing. A dazed looking Pops claims that the group ganged up on him before making their escape. Incensed, the officer unlocks the cell door only to have Benson, Mordecai, Rigby and the test pilots, who were actually hiding baby-kolala style behind Pop’s head, jump out and tackle him to the floor. Having locked the cop in his own cell, the group escape to the compound’s car park. Benson checks his watch to discover they only had an hour left before his ceremony. Pops offers using Carmenita to get him there but Benson says they’ll never make it in time. Tango presents an alternative, waving Mach Infinity’s keys in the air. Determined to get the gold watch all costs, Benson stays behind to take the jet car while the others fly off on Carmenita. Meanwhile the cop frees himself from the cell by blasting the door open with a shot gun, which was questionably hidden inside the holding cell. He catches up to Benson just as the latter starts up the jet car’s engine. On its way, the rudder slices the cop’s thirty-year-old moustache clean off, much to his unbridled fury.

So Benson takes off on the open road with a blaring police car in hot pursuit. To his horror, the enraged officer opens fire. Benson increases speed, once again going well over 700mph. In response, the cop pushes his own engine to the limit. He almost catches up to the jet car, but the strain proves too much for his vehicle and it explodes in a devastating ball of fire.

Back in the Mach Infinity, Benson screams as he closes in on "infinite" speed. In the blink of an eye he is in front of Pop’s house, were it's strangely raining despite the weather being clear moments before. Benson checks his watch, which reads 8:59. Thinking that he’s made it, the relieved manager exits the vehicle to find the park workers along with Tango, Stash, Mr. Maellard and a bunch of random balding guys, all dressed in black, gathered in front of the house. When Benson asks a solemn Mordecai and Rigby how they got there before he did, he's met with the collective stunned gasps of his colleagues. An emotional Pops exclaims it was a miracle. It turns out that he’d been presumed dead after going missing for three months, and just walked in on his own memorial service! The strangers with the clipboards were there for his job. They even had a tomb stone with his name and unofficial catch phrase on it. Tango explains that Benson must have been going so fast that be travelled into the future by accident. Taking his mortality rather well, Benson asks Mr. Maellard if he could still have the gold watch, which his boss refuses since he's technically three months late. Not willing to accept this, Benson returns to the Mach Infinity to go back in time. Tango and Stash try to stop him, warning that putting the car in reverse could tear a hole in the space time continuum. Undeterred, Benson says he has to take that chance and activates the gears anyway.

The jet car shoots back leaving a flaming trail in its wake. It builds momentum until it reaches the ocean and vanishes in a bright flash. What follows is a cosmological light display as Mach Infinity reverses earth’s rotation by travelling backwards around its axis at super speed. This successfully reverses time, but the strain begins to tear the vehicle apart. At the last moment a terrified Benson pulls the eject lever and ends up crashing at nine on the dot in the middle of his gold watch ceremony. Mr. Maellard congratulates his battered employee, finally presenting him with the gold watch. As Benson admires his well-earned prize, Muscle Man offers another round of wings in celebration. Considering all that’s happened Benson politely refuses, but Mr. Maellard convinces him otherwise, saying it was just one wing.

One off-screen wing-binge later Benson wakes up from another blackout, stranded on a lifeboat this time in the middle of the ocean.

Trivia

 * The Wing Kingdom chicken wings seem to have an inhibition-reducing effect on Benson similar to that of alcohol consumption, this can also be observed in the episode "Dodge This,". Using wings to this effect is likely a way to get around the censorship of drugs and alcohol on children's programming, which is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission.

Characters

 * Benson
 * Mordecai
 * Rigby
 * Pops
 * Skips
 * Muscle Man
 * High-Five Ghost
 * Thomas
 * Tango
 * Stash
 * Mr. Maellard
 * Cop (antagonist)

Gallery
The gallery for Gold Watch can be found here.