Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sin... (1)
By Cate | Season 4 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.07.1999
Oh, hey, it's time for the Dopey and Chickenhead Show. Dopey gives one of the most annoying speeches I have ever heard, the whole point being that various members of his family are experiencing problems and that Dopey thinks he's important enough to make a difference in their lives. Whatever. I mean, really, could he be any dumber? When John comes in, Dopey tells him he may be moving back home again. John gets pissed because he can't carry the rent alone, and he stalks out. Dopey tells Chickenhead that if he moves back home, it's just to help out his parents. I say it's because he's too stupid to survive on his own. I suspect that's what Chickenhead's thinking also, but she's more polite than I am.
In front of the high school, Mary is telling a bunch of her teammates that the basketball league only requires team members to have a GPA of 2.0 to be eligible to play. Well, I guess that means Dopey won't be joining a basketball team any time soon. The other team members just stand around looking pleased but don't actually say anything; I assume it's so the producers won't have to pay them as much. Coach Cleary walks by them and Gale Weathers is trying to get him to make a statement. Wait, my mistake, it's just that newscaster nobody from before. She bears a slight resemblance to Kathie Lee Gifford and is unfortunate enough to play a part modeled almost exactly on Courtney Cox Arquette's in the Scream franchise. Except in Scream, Gale was pursuing a story which might actually interest more than two people. The poor man's Gale is named Carrie Chadwick, and she tries to suck up to the basketball team to get the inside non-story from them.
Back at the Compound, RevCam and SuperMom are leaving for the big basketball meeting. Amazingly, Lucy, Simon and Ruthie are not going with them. There is no point to this scene, and it has more armpit-"honking" than dialogue.
The meeting is about to start in the gym, and a whole bunch of students, who must have better things to do with their time, are standing at the door, trying to listen in. Oh, man, it's that Carrie Chadwick reporter character again. She offers Lucy's dweeby friend ten bucks for his spot at the front of the doorway. Wow, check out the corruption in the high-stakes world of local journalism! Carrie takes his place in the doorway and starts taking notes before Ms. Russell even introduces Coach Cleary. Coach starts nattering on about academics again, stressing what a loser he is because of all the time he spends monitoring the girls' grades. He's passed out the students' academic reports, and RevCam comments on Mary's slipping grades. Some parents rank on the coach for a bit, and Ms. Russell announces that she and the athletic director will stand by Coach Cleary's decision. Oh, no, it's time for RevCam's soliloquy. He praises Mary's determination to play basketball. Then he praises his and SuperMom's dedication to Mary's determination to play basketball. Then he does a 180 and starts humiliating Mary in front of all her peers and their parents by asking her about her grades and about whether Coach Cleary had warned the team about the consequences of slipping grades. Since everything having to do with basketball is so damn important on this show, I guess this is one of those decisions that has to be made by the man of the household, because without even consulting with SuperMom, RevCam announces that his family will abide by the lockout.