Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Mild, Mild West
By M. Giant | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.18.2007
The sun's getting low in the sky, and then at full dark (which comes quickly in the desert), the mess hall is full of chanting, impatient, hungry kids. Sophia apologizes for the delay, but the pasta's taking longer than she thought. Could be the altitude; I remember camping in the high desert one night and the water was boiling while it was still cool enough to stick your hand in it. Finally the pot gets delivered into the mess hall, and the kids dig into some basic pasta and red sauce. Which, clearly, a lot of the kids are only eating because they're starving. "I'm happy with what we've done," Sophia interviews, because the kids are after all eating food she made instead of eating her.
Outside, Taylor is having a tough time of it. While doing that short-breathed trying-not-to-cry thing, she explains to Laurel how hard it is to miss her bed, and not have a healthy meal, and dude, it's day one. Buck up. Laurel interviews that she thinks it's because Taylor's the youngest of the Council members. Laurel commiserates with her, Taylor interviews that she's going to leave if things don't get better, and Laurel tells Taylor that they'll focus on learning to cook tomorrow and it'll get better. "This is not a fun vacation for anyone," she interviews.
Back at dinner, Mike talks about the meeting that's coming up after dinner, which Jared is already begging off. "Today, I've been the worst day in three years," he says. Which makes me want to hear about what happened to Jared when he was eight. Perhaps that was the day he was cursed to remain the same age forever. Still, Jared's far from the only one who wants to go to sleep now; in fact the mess hall is clearing out fast. "I’m trying to be a leader here," Mike whine-terviews. After almost everyone's gone, Laurel and Taylor come and sit next to Mike, who's wiping away tears. "I think I'm just tired and I'm stressed," he tells his fellow Council members. "We weren't prepared for the scale of what we're doing here." Not prepared? Some Boy Scout. Laurel does that commiserating thing again about all eyes being on him, which doesn't seem to help him much at the moment. They all agree that tomorrow will be better, and then wonder where Anjay is. We then see that Anjay is, like almost everyone else in town, already asleep. He's still wearing his glasses. The remaining three Council members have a group hug. Mike interviews that they have to prove they can do it.
The sun rises on Day 2, and Sophia leads her kitchen crew in making pancakes, while other kids bring them stuff like eggs and goat milk from around the town. Good thing one of the girls has eighteen goats at home, and knows how to milk one. That would probably earn her immunity right there, if anyone ever got voted off this show. At the mess hall, the kids all love the pancakes. Or at least, the kids who get pancakes love them. For some reason, Jared is the last to arrive, and is disappointed to see that all the food has been eaten. Sophia scolds people for taking more than one pancake each, and things go downhill from there. People start arguing, yelling at each other in quick cuts, which is finally halted, movie-style, by Mike yelling "Hey!" from the front of the room. Everyone falls silent.
Yes, Mike has decided that now -- when everyone is pissed off, as well as either defensive or hungry (or, as is likely the case for the majority of them, defensive and still hungry) is the time for that meeting he wanted. Well, this should go well. The other Council members join him on the dais at the front of the room, and they try to run the meeting. But everyone's talking at once, which means nobody's getting heard. Michael points this out in an interview. Greg yells at Mike from the back to take control, and eventually gets up and joins them on the dais. Mike's ineffectually yelling at everyone to be quiet, so he's really not in a receptive mood when Greg advises, "You need to take control." "We are!" Mike angrily snaps into Greg's face. Mike interviews that Greg was trying to break him down, which I don't think is correct. Yes, tensions were high, and pretty much everyone could have handled themselves better, but I think Greg was trying to help until Mike blew up at him. There's a pretty tense confrontation, with Greg baring his braces at Mike and Mike not backing down until Greg shoves him back, causing him to stumble off the dais. Everyone's yelling at Mike to back down and listen to Greg, but Mike refuses. So Greg leaves the meeting. "Greg is not very nice," Jimmy interviews. "He thinks he's cool but he's not." Which is about the worst thing an eight-year-old can say about you, short of "butt-head," and Jimmy knows his parents are going to be watching, so he can't work too blue here. The meeting is still out of hand, until Michael steps up and takes control, and makes a big speech about how they all need to come together and listen to their leaders, because they're representing kids everywhere. Mike is wiping away tears again as Michael tells them all to get together. The rest of the kids start applauding and chanting Michael's name, and even he seems a bit overwhelmed by the general approval. Mike at least has the grace to give Michael credit in an interview for saving their lives. We don't see the rest of the meeting, or what gets accomplished, but it seems to involve a lot of kids raising their hands and talking one at a time. It's all moot anyway, because they're about to get some structure imposed on them whether they want it or not.