"I had a dream last night. I was skipping through a meadow holding a picnic basket and the basket was marked "options". And then I saw there was a hole in the basket . . ."

This quote means that Kugelman's fantansy of the greatness of his illusionary options for escape from mundane life, though they look as appealining as a lighthearted picnic in a meadow, are the same as nothingness--they don't exist because they fall through the hole of poor reasoning and fantasy escapism.

According to Woody Allen's reasoning as presented within "The Kugelman Episode," Kugelman does deserve his fate in the end. Allen demonstrates that fantasy escapism explodes and traps those involved in it. It trapped Persky in a heart attack and consuming fire and it trapped Kugelman in a remedail Spanish language textbook. Allen also demonstrates that escapism can have unpredictable consequences such as those that occur when Emma comes to New York and such as the incomprehensible alterations to reality and people's perception of reality that occur as seen in the college texts of Madame Bovary.