Inside Out: The Sitcom (Season 1)

The Mind Reader

Description: Reporters from Anger's newspaper want to get an exclusive inside scoop on the emotions and their day-to-day, but obviously there's the intent as well to find some sort of dirt to publish. They make their fatal mistake, though, telling the emotions in advance, not realizing Anger quickly figures out their scheme.

Episode Inspiration: "Fan Magazine Interview"

"I've got it! I've got the perfect idea for a story!" Janice nearly tripped and fell on her face, eager to tell her idea.

Her head editor, Paul, simply looked in confusion. As far as he knew, The Mind Reader mostly focused on Riley's immediate life, but then again, that was mostly for major headlines. More than half the paper actually consisted of events going on inside her head, especially as the older Riley got, the more everyone, even the emotions all the way up at Headquarters, had realized that a crap ton of stuff could go down without Riley even realizing it. So yes, he was gonna need more specifics on "perfect idea for a story."

Janice seemed to understand as well and sat down to present her thoughts. "Okay, you know how we've been searching for the perfect source for a juicy story?"

Oh, Paul knew.

"Well, have I got a source for you," she slid over an old editorial they'd done several months ago, the headline for that story reading "Emotions Returned Home! Mind Shares Details of Joy and Sadness When MIA." It had been about three weeks after that whole incident before someone had realized that the yellow and blue gals running around Riley's mind for nearly three days had actually been Joy and Sadness themselves, which of course meant that The Mind Reader had all but interviewed the girls on the whole event.

He looked up, still lost, though.

"The emotions," Janice stressed, pointing at the word. "Think about it. They're like the celebrities of Riley's mind; of course readers will want to know just how 'perfect' their lives are. There's five of them and they're all so different from each other; surely something juicy can come out of that."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know. Secret romance, underlying tension, anything! We'll get the truth on what's going on up there in Headquarters."

Paul thought it over for a moment. It would bring up reader counts if they could get some interesting dirt on the emotions. Even the smallest drama, they could turn it up into the biggest scandal of Riley's head (a backup in case the emotions were actually kinda boring and didn't have a huge scandal going on in Headquarters). Definitely a paper for the history books if they could pull it off.

The only trick was surprising the emotions with it without making them go completely unprepared...

"Yup, someone did something," Sadness said as they stared at Joy, completely lost in her own world thanks to her headphones. "Who said something wrong?"

"It was most likely Anger," Disgust shrugged.

"Honestly, it really was most likely me," Anger nodded in agreement.

"Okay, what did you do then?"

"That's the problem, I don't know what it could've been. That's still not being specific enough."

Silence filled the air for a moment.

"Or maybe she's just having one of those mornings," Sadness pointed out, and honestly, they could see the point. Every once in a while Joy would become moody in the morning like this, often for no apparent reason at all. They had noticed though, it was becoming more frequent the older Riley got, which made them kinda worried for whenever the strange era Mom and Dad called "adolescence" began.