Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Too Good To Be True
By M. Giant | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.13.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Things have been going too well in Bonanza City, so the Pioneer Journal tells the Council to change up the Districts. Because they do everything the Journal tells them to, Zach takes Blaine into Yellow, Anjay takes Emilie for Blue, Guylan takes Nathan for Red, and Laurel takes -- no one. Everyone promptly freaks out, no one more so than Greg at the loss of his boyfriend. The Showdown is a race to haul a sled full of rocks through an obstacle course. The catch is that the teams have to haul a total of a ton of rocks in order to get the reward, so they each have to find a balance between pulling their weight (an average of 500 pounds per team), and getting there first. Blue comes in first, having pulled 480 pounds. Yellow finishes second, with 460. Green is third, and came through with 420. And Red only has 485, which means no reward. And Guylan pisses everyone off afterward by accusing them of worrying about their own status, and ends up regretting even being on the Council after Sophia humiliates him in front of the whole town. The Gold Star is looking like a tossup between hardworking Hunter and Yellow's new MVP, Blaine. There's a lot of bitching at the Town Hall meeting. Twelve-year-old Randi from the Yellow team decides to bail out despite a portentous rainstorm, and Blaine's emergence from Greg's shadow is made official when he wins the Gold Star. But the town is pissed off enough at the Council that Jonathan calls an election on the spot. The challengers? Blaine for Yellow, DK for Red, and Greg for Blue. And on the Green team, Laurel is challenged by...Michael. I know! But we'll have to wait until next week to see who wins, because this is to be continued. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Ain't no party like a Gold Star party. Last week's Gold Star winner, Kennedy, is hanging out in the street with a few other winners, all of whom just happen to also be on the Green team (Sophia, Michael, and Morgan). Laurel gloat-erviews about how many of her teammates are Gold Star winners, and we see them continuing to get more and more obnoxious (now along with fellow winner DK from the Red team). Non-winners Jared and Emilie (both from Red) watch from afar and give interviews about how unfair it all is that the older kids keep winning. Oh, and there's nine-year-old Mallory joining in, totally undercutting Emilie's point. Laurel says something about the "Gold District," and then the party breaks up before they get lynched.
Pioneer Journal time. It tells the Council that by now they've been living there long enough to know "who's strong" -- Blaine leads a water hauling mission -- "who's not" -- Taylor bails on carrying a water bucket, leaving younger and smaller Leila to do it alone -- "who works" -- Nathan compulsively cleans each candy jar in the store while Olivia mocks him -- "and who doesn't" -- Emilie snots at Sophia, "Not my job." So the Journal claims that the reason so many people left the original Bonanza was that some districts worked better than others. Whatever. I would think the Council must get tired of reading new reasons people left every time they come in here. Yet they don't even blink when they hear this newest reason: "Our four arbitrarily selected teams, who wore different colored bandanas and who switched jobs and salaries every three days, were kind of uneven." The Journal underlines the point -- literally, the words in the Journal are underlined: "Mix up your Districts." Zach is all for it, because it could make the town better, and besides, he's got a team full of losers. Guylan agrees. But Laurel is completely closed off to the idea, saying her District is too awesome to be split up. Anjay adds, "This is dynamite waiting to happen." Interesting that the two more experienced members of the Council are the ones not in favor.
Back from commercial, Emilie is strolling through the town when her teammate Markelle asks her for help getting water for laundry. Emilie doesn't even slow down as she refuses. "Not gonna," she snots. Markelle interviews that Emilie is lazy, and Emilie interviews that she hates the Red district. Whoa, where did that come from? Well, not from today, probably, because the Red team is the Cooks at the beginning of this episode.
The Council looks like it's decided to go ahead with the stupid, stupid swapping plan, and they go into the Saloon to work it out. Anjay has decided this represents a chance for him to prove himself to the town by picking the laziest person there and turning them around. Namely Emilie, who demonstrates her relevant quality in a clip in which someone (maybe DK) tells her to just drop some plates on the kitchen's dirt floor. She does, then flounces off saying, "You said to." Guylan decides that his team needs a bit more "brain power," so he wants Nathan. Clip of Nathan doing laundry while lecturing a bored Pharaoh on Bach and Beethoven. Ah, Bach. Zach trash-talks his own team as "a bunch of girls. Including Colton, Brett, and Pharaoh." He says he doesn't have any hard workers like Greg or Blaine. Greg interviews that he and Blaine are indeed the "heart of the Blue District." But Anjay is saying that when Greg and Blaine are together, "bad things happen." Laurel, who has been completely shut down throughout this discussion, says that she's not changing anyone. The other leaders object. "We don't want to have one perfect District and three lousy ones," Guylan protests. Presumably "perfect" is Bonanzan for "has lost more Showdowns than anyone."