It had to happen eventually. That’s the line that’s been haunting me ever since I posted my award winning trilogy, The Trilogy: The World’s First Four Part Trilogy. I kept fighting the urge to exploit my past success, to phone it in for a day and write the fifth part of what is already one of the most successful four-part three-part sagas in all of history. But I can’t put it off any longer. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to return, to continue the journey. And why the hell not? Let’s see how many parts this trilogy is really made of.

Let me do a really quick recap for those who somehow missed out on parts one, two, three, and four. That’s it. That’s the recap. I made links to all of the other parts, so you can just click on them and read them. Linking is the toughest part of blogging. I naturally assume that eventually society is going to collapse and the servers that sustain our Internet will eventually stop running and that the only thing left of my writing will be the hard copies that I’ve instructed my readers to religiously print out and store away in case of said inevitable collapse. And these sacred texts will get passed down from generation to generation, and finally, somebody will be like, “I didn’t get this part. What was he talking about when he said that was the recap? And why are some of the words blue and bold?” because hyperlinks don’t show up on regular paper. And people might start to doubt me. So for any readers studying this text generations from now, I was just linking. The words showed up blue and you clicked on them and the earlier text I was referring to automatically popped up. But since you don’t have computers anymore, please see The Trilogy, parts one, two, and three, and four.

That was so funny right? The four part trilogy? And I ended it with this big joke that it was going to continue as a five-part trilogy. And then I was like, “just kidding. But am I? I am.” At least that’s what everyone thought. But I kept writing and the months piled up and one day I was so bankrupt for an idea of what to write about I thought, what the hell? And much like Rocky VI, there’s really nothing new being done. This is a huge victory lap. I’m literally taking a break between each paragraph and patting myself on the back, laughing lightly, murmuring stuff like, “You funny devil Rob.”

One of my readers sent me an email after part four, telling me that, “you didn’t do the first four-part trilogy. Indiana Jones did. Ha.” And I know I’ve put off the response for a while, but Indiana Jones? I’ve never seen any of his movies. They all seemed kind of boring. Even when I was a little kid and all of my friends would have sleepover parties and whoever’s parents were hosting rented a ton of movies and we’d stay up all night watching them, I’d always fall asleep as soon as I heard that boring Indiana Jones theme song start up. And then someone would wake up me up, “Rob, Indiana Jones is over. Wake up. We’re putting on Terminator.” I loved Terminator. “I’ll be back,” classic. And I’d be sitting there on the edge of my sleeping bag, totally gripped with suspense and terror, thinking to myself, why are all of my friends laughing? This is a crazy thriller. Why am I not getting any of the comedy? And it wasn’t until I went to the bathroom later that I realized that my friends weren’t laughing at the movie, they were laughing at me, because while I was lost in my Indiana Jones induced coma, everybody brought out some permanent markers and drew penises all over my face.

Terminator is another contender for almost four-part trilogy. Unfortunately, trilogies are all about hindsight, planning. You can’t just make a movie and say, “Well, if it’s successful, we’ll do a sequel. If the sequel is successful, we’ll do a third. And who cares if the third is successful? We’ll put them all in a box and sell them as a trilogy.” It doesn’t work that way. Why don’t you think anybody ever talks about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy? Because it doesn’t exist. There are two cool turtles movie and then a really weird one where everybody gets sent back to feudal Japan. Yeah I didn’t get it either. And it’s the same with Terminator, you could totally tell they were just following the money.

It’s even worse for Indiana Jones, because while I had absolutely no interest in the first three movies, they were out there. They existed. It was a trilogy. And then they ruined the whole triloginess of the first three by releasing that terrible fourth movie. Again, I never saw it, but I think at this point it’s a generally accepted fact that it was an insult to everything that Indy fans held dear.

Look at Star Wars. Did you ever notice me mentioning the second trilogy during my original trilogy posts? No. Because they pretty much sucked also. But Lucas had the foresight to guess that he’d probably lost his touch at storytelling and filmmaking, so he wisely separated the first trilogy from the second trilogy.

And this brings it all back to me. I’ve been planning this ever since I typed out the word “the” as in The Trilogy: Part One. I knew that it was going to be a five-part trilogy. Maybe I know that it’s going to be a twelve-part trilogy. All I know is, I’m calling it. It’s all been carefully set up. And just when you think I’m completely out of nonsense to write about, that’s when The Trilogy is going pop on your computer screen. That’s what trilogies are all about.