Original artwork, not a still
I thought we'd be dead by step two, so this is going great.
— Over the Hedge • 2006
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The speaker expected to be dead by the second step, so surviving longer already counts as progress. That extremely low benchmark gives the optimistic conclusion its comic force. A situation can be going badly and still look excellent beside the disaster someone had anticipated.
Context reviewed
