Episode Report Card Djb: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Real Slim Shady
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 07.10.2004
Claire "New Sensation" Fisher sits in an art class, staring at a photo of an enormous and furry cat and complaining, "I think it looks like something you'd see on a calendar, like, in some bargain bin somewhere, like three months after the new year." If that were actually the case, though, the cat in question would probably be enjoying a tray of lasagna and alerting us to its utter disdain of Mondays. Sitting next to her, Anita asks her sarcastically, "Can you be any more harsh?" because writing dialogue for teenagers is as easy as italicizing the sarcasm turnkey word in the sentence and then indicating in the stage directions, "Though she means exactly the opposite." Thank you for this script doctoring lesson, Alan Ball. Could you be any more talented? Claire and Anita engage in some brief sniping, and the teacher, who I don't think we've ever seen before ["We've sure as hell seen her putting some lotion in a basket in order not to get the hose again" -- Wing Chun], steps butchily forward and teaches, "I think the question is not so much, 'Is this piece good'? I would rather we ask, 'Is this piece successful'?" Claire Music Mans her way through her dialogue, announcing, "This is America. Successful equals good" in a broad cultural swipe so perfectly collegiate you have to give the writing credit whether it really was trying to be clever or not. Professor Butch Cassidy clarifies that she meant, "Successful in achieving its intentions," and I wonder if, after this correspondence course we're taking in Outspoken Lesbian Art Criticism at Apex Technical School, we get to keep the tool box. Butch Cassidy tells Anita that her piece should have some meaning to her or she wouldn't have brought it in. Claire sits with her arms folded looking self-satisfied, thus firmly entrenching the emerging subplot of Claire being someone who seeks to stand in critical appraisal of pussy. Oh! Rim shot! Sorry, Claire, but you and your Suvari-love pushed me to it, and I refuse to take responsibility.
Ruth "Never Tear Us Apart" Fisher stands as distrustingly as someone can stand while wearing a twee gardening hat, staring at a cardboard box sitting on the stoop. Inside the house, George "Devil Inside" Sibley unearths a large toy truck, the back of which is filled with human feces. Nate, who has no earthly reason to appear in this scene other than to let loose with one of those patented Laugh In zingers we've come to know the Nate Fisher character so well for, turns from the refrigerator and tells them, "Kinda gives no meaning to the term 'dump truck.'" If I had written that in a recap? Hate mail. Sent postal mail. With the words "You write for www.televisionwithoutSHITTY.com" carved in the side. ["I totally made that joke before Nate did, but I said it sarcastically, knowing it was bad, because it wasn't so long ago that I was a teenager myself." -- Wing Chun]