Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Daddy Dearest
By Heathen | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 04.27.2000
Say goodbye to Boy Meets World this Friday. I personally never said hello to the show, but I suppose it'll be bittersweet to watch Cory Savage disappear into oblivion just like his brother did after The Wonder Years.
Jabba oozes out of his stretch limo and pours himself into a rec-room armchair at the studio. He whips out eight silver folders, each one encasing a record contract. Someone, possibly Jacob, jokes that he never signs contracts. "Cool. No problem," Lou says. "We do it in blood, though." His feeble joke gets feigned laughter, so the editors scoot right to Ikaika's thoughts. If he makes it, he figures he'll make a decent amount of money from the deal so he can go home and marry Malia, and go back to school. "It's my new dream," he says. Lou then explains that each cast member must return with a signed contract. He wants contracts from all eight of them so that when the choice is made, they can quickly finalize five and shred three like the hopes and dreams of so many aspiring singers. Bryan Chan wigs out at the sheer commitment required. "You look at something like a contract, and you're like, 'Oh God, what am I getting into?' " Bryan says, adding that he has mixed emotions about it.
In the Man Van, Erik-Michael and Trevor pore over the contract, which promises a forty-thousand-dollar advance for the first O-Town album. Stupidly, it stipulates a one-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus for their seventh album. "Which we probably won't have," snickers Trevor, saving me the trouble. There's general excitement about the prospect of being flush with cash, and Trevor tells us through a confessional that "It's so amazing to open it up -- it's fifty pages thick, of just record contract." Bryan wants a lawyer to read it. Instead, the guys go to a restaurant, a great choice for a contract-reading room, and flip through the document a little more. A passing waitress dumps salsa on Bryan's, ruining it. "No matter," she says. "I've seen the show. You won't be needing that." At a payphone, a jubilant Ashley (we know he is happy because his cheeks are a shade rosier than usual) tells his mother he has the contract in hand, and that he's going to buy her a car as soon as possible. That's responsible money-management -- I can't wait for the tax man to quash those dreams, snatching a sizable chunk of the cash and taking the "win" out of "windfall."
The hot tub's bubblin' and Trevor's a-rubbin'...his ego. He's sitting in the outdoor spa with Jacob, luxuriating and singing bits of "All For Love" amid more contract chatter about their impending riches. Trevor laughs that everyone's going to fake-read it and then sign the thing anyway, so there's no point in consulting the parents. "I don't care what it says," grins Erik-Michael, who's ogling his half-naked, wet bandmates and wondering if he should go write a song about how tingly it makes him feel. Jacob laughs, and sounding a lot like Adam Sandler, he chortles, "I sign my life to you, Lou! Thank you!" Trevor just hopes everyone else clues him in if the contract's going to screw him over. "My dad's gonna be like, 'Fifty-thousand? That's all I gotta see. Trevor, sign the contract!' " he says, imitating his father. The group laughs appreciatively, newly secure in the knowledge that Trevor considers them smarter than an actual adult. Trev repeats how badly he yearns to be a member of O-Town. "If I've never been dedicated in my life, this is something I'll be dedicated to," he tells Jacob, as the bubbles churn. And as my stomach turns, Jacob tries to top that by waxing rhapsodic about his God-given gifts. I hope they're as drunk as they look. "I wanted a record contract by the time I was twenty-one. I'm nineteen, and I got one handed to me today. Thank you, God," Jacob says. Looking up from his workbench, where ABC inspired him to reenact David-vs-Goliath with figures from his Play-Doh Mop-Top Hair Shop toy set, God nods distractedly and doesn't tell Jacob that his gifts came from life's genetic lottery. Jacob mentions that it's a ten-year contract, and as North America picks its jaw off the floor, he admits it could be awesome or could screw them all for an entire decade. The cameraman backs away from Trevor and Jacob's splash-fest in the spa, weeping and realizing how ignorant the guys really are of Jabba and his cruel bounty-hunting ways. Han Solo? A top-notch third-tenor, or at least he was until he became a trendy carbonite wall decoration.