Episode Report Card Shack: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jock Trap
By Shack | Season 4 | Episode 26 | Aired on 07.23.1998
And so we are introduced to Cradle Bay, the Clark family's new hometown. As they're driving off, some ferryman tells them that they'll enjoy living in Cradle Bay and that they'll never want to leave. Well, that's a huge red flag right there. Normal people would be all, "The mayor's an idiot and gave the city garbage contract to his brother-in-law and now we have to pay twice as much for pick-up as we used to. And I don't know where the hell my property taxes are going but they sure aren't being used to pay for decent teachers around here. It rains all the time, the cold hurts my joints, and I'm thinking of moving to Palm Beach. And if those hippie whale-watchers throw their trash on my lawn one more time, I swear I'm going to open fire." Everybody bitches about his or her hometown. It's normal behavior. The Clarks move into their new home. Papa Clark finds Steve sitting in his room and asks him if he's nervous about the first day of school. Because somebody who looks like James Marsden would have so much trouble fitting in. Dad leaves, and Steve looks at a picture of himself and Ethan Embry, both of them smiling and covered with mud. I've seen videos with that theme, too. Don't judge me; love me. We cut to a freaky montage of images featuring Ethan acting like a lunatic. He's talking about snakes in the garden and spiders in the bed and sticking his face in the camera lens and looking about for some French dressing to give the scenery some flavor. It turns out to be a dream of Steve's. He wakes up gasping for air with tears in his eyes. It's time for Steve's first day of school. Boring stock establishment shots of kids and buses and cliques, oh my. Cut to an English class, where a scary, shiny, pointy boy named Trent is reading Dickens aloud to the other students. Seriously, Trent looks like somebody decided to make a ventriloquist's dummy that looked like Noah Wyle. The teacher is similarly creepy. I think they deliberately chose actors who look like they could be robots for this movie. The teacher takes the opportunity to introduce Steve, and condescendingly asks him if they read Dickens in Chicago. Because, you know, there's no culture in Chicago or anything. The lecture is interrupted by the late arrival of Dickie Atkinson, a scowling teen clad in denim and leather so you know he's a rebel. He and the teacher bicker; there's an exchange of automotive-part terminology to establish that Dickie is a gearhead, a grease monkey, or as the school's guidance department might describe him, "a student on the vocational arts track." Some of the students laugh at the bickering. Dickie asks Trent what's so funny. Trent says he was just thinking how ignorance kills. Dickie doesn't understand what Trent means, which causes Trent to riposte, "Exactly." Except that Trent's comment about ignorance killing makes no sense anyway, so his insult is idiotic. Perhaps it's foreshadowing, but there's not so much as a peep from Mark Snow and his collection of disturbing etudes, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think. Anyway, Dickie jumps up and attempts to physically assault Trent. Some students separate the boys, and the teacher sends Dickie to the principal's office. Steve, meanwhile, looks around the classroom and ends up drawing the eye of Stoner Boy from way back in the opening scene. Stoner Boy is wearing a hooded sweater and secretly listening to music rather than paying attention in class.Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20Next