Episode Report Card Tumbleweed: D | 22 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT The Foul Nine Yards
By Tumbleweed | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 2000.02.13
It's anyone's guess why they used this title, which is also the title of an obscure science fictional yarn by Scott Bradfield. There's only one animal in the whole episode -- a carriage horse who shows no discernible Mr. Ed star appeal. It can only logically be understood as an MBTV reference, and an acknowledgment that the show's principals do in fact resemble ferrets, primates, and Abyssinian guinea pigs.
Previously: Belinda licks chocolate sauce off of Mikey's abs while straddling him in what looks to be a set of Superman Underoos. In medias res, Mikey goes to the kitchen and meets Belinda's spooky roommate, Lucy. Jill dickers with Anchormatt for Jack's affections. Jack tells Jill that Anchormatt makes her happy, and Jill says he'll make her happier. Judging from Jack's coiffure in this scene and later scenes, they clearly mean "nappy" and "nappier." Later Jill approaches Jack and announces, in a crescendo of adenoidal whimpering, that he's scared "for the rest of [his] life [he'll] be comparing every woman [he] meets to [her]." He challenges Jack to tell him she doesn't feel it too, and suddenly he's on her like bald on Bruce Willis. Anchormatt tells a stuttering, cowl-neck clad Jack that he has turned down the job in DC and wants her to move in with him. Elispa tells Jill not to give up and he takes this as a green light to commandeer a horse-drawn carriage and hit on Jack while she's out with Anchormatt. Both Jill and Anchormatt are all, "What do you say, Jack?" and she stands there looking like a big mouth on stilts as usual.
Fade in on a freeze frame of the final scene in last week's show: two bachelors and some teeth on a stick. Jill looks petulant and Anchormatt looks aggrieved. Jack gazes sorrowfully at Anchormatt and he says, "You know this makes no sense." "I know," she says, affecting a damsel-in-distress expression in yet another Señor Wences sock-hat. Anchormatt gets in a cab to clear the way for a Jack and Jill coupling, and thereby the precipitous end of this series. Jack grins goonishly at Jill and leaps onto the carriage. The horse adjusts its blinders so as not to witness to their amorous shenanigans.
The song budget for this show must have gone the way of the set budget, because the scene opens on the horse plodding down the only street in Jack 'n' Jill's neighborhood to the strains of a song they've used three times in as many episodes. You guessed it, it's "I've got the soul search hunger . . . You've got the deep heart desire, but we try to deny we were perfect from the start . . ." I'm as thumbs-up on Warner Brothers synergy as the next guy, but in this case, the next guy is Ted Kaczynski. Play this tune one more time, and I'll hurt someone. Badly. So the carriage moves slowly down the single Rockwellian street of No New York I've Ever Seen, pausing so Ick 'n' Ill can share a face-fondling French kiss which incurs the honking of irate motorists. They adjourn to a handy snow-capped grotto where a band of schoolchildren stop to hoot and gawk at their PG-13 antics. Ick cackles with her mouth agape, and Ill fears for his head.