Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Wild Wild Mess
By Amorgan | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 12.01.1999
Okay, here we go. This episode opens with the usual establishing shot of Kennedy High, but this time there’s a difference. Something about it looks more realistic, more true-to-life. Is it the angry picketers marching and chanting in front of the school? Maybe. Is it the unruly skateboarder, cruising through the crowd and making annoyed people shout at him? Maybe. Oh, I know what it is! It’s the piles and piles of garbage all over the place! Drifts of litter - food wrappers, receipts, plastic bags - make their way from one corner of the parking lot to the next; see, the angry picketers are the school janitors on strike. Inside the school, the Kim Novak Ladies’ Lounge now looks like every other high-school bathroom in America (and perhaps the world): filthy. No paper towels in the paper-towel dispenser, eh, Sam? Get used to it. As Sam is forced to wipe her hands on her pants, she hears Brooke’s unmistakable voice come from one of the stalls: "Damn!" That’s right - Sam and Brooke are still the only two people in the entire world who use this bathroom. I guess some things never change. Something clatters to the floor, and I wonder, is Brooke really going to use a tampon after she’s dropped it, and are they going to show that on prime time? But it’s not a tampon at all. It’s a pregnancy test. Ho hum. I can see this is going to be one of those episodes. (At this point I break for the 7-11, because they’re having a special on sixers of Lone Star tallboys. Only $3.99. What a deal, huh?) Sam ducks inside a stall just as Brooke comes out of hers. Phew. Close call got my heart pounding. Just kidding. Brooke chucks her PG test into the trash and leaves; Sam, of course, dives for the can as soon as the coast is clear, thus proving once again that she is the nosiest, lamest child on television. Oh, I hope she doesn’t trust this secret to one close confidante who will then accidentally broadcast the news to the entire school, thus perpetuating the rift between the Browns and the Blondes.
Commercials. Make. Me. Cranky.
When we come back from the commercial break, some woman is standing in front of some classroom full of the usual crowd, blathering about the guest principal program, saying, "It’s quite an honor," blah blah blah et cetera. I can’t listen, though, because I’m entranced by Mary Cherry. She’s wearing rubber gloves, and spraying some kind of cleaning product onto her desk. Teacher: "Mary Cherry, what are you doing?" MC: "Disinfecting mah personal space!" The sloganeering of the picketers drifts through the open window, so the teacher closes the windows. More about the principal-for-a-day program. Guest principal, principal-for-a-day, whatever. Tomato, Clamato. Anyway. It seems the students get to elect someone to be principal for a day. But the nice mystery teacher can’t get through her explanation, because now Smug Bitch is Lysol-ing her own desk. Teacher: "Miss Bitch, what did I tell you about the Lysol?" SB: "I’m sorry, but I’m not going to catch mad cow disease from a desk." Um, no you’re not. You catch mad cow disease from eating beef. Just ask Little Big Head, she’ll tell you all about it. Vegetarians, when they come of age, receive a handbook of all meat-related diseases, and have to recite the names and characteristics of said maladies in front of a crowd of their friends and family. It’s true. I threw a big party for mine, and had a friend’s band play. The teacher accuses SB of scabbing (that’s "strike-breaking" for you non-labor-issue-oriented people), and the students get a little lecture about labor relations. Then Carmen complains that they couldn’t possibly host a guest principal in a school that looks like Johnny Depp’s hotel room. Um, what? How would you know what Johnny Depp’s hotel room looks like, Carmen? Do teenagers still care about Johnny Depp? He’s getting kinda old for the under-twenty crowd, I thought. Oh, whatever, whatever, whatever. Blah blah blah, big lecture about how messy life is, and how our ability to deal with filth is an accurate indicator of our moral character. Wow. Way to perpetuate the romantic stereotype of the blue-collar worker, while . . . wait. Sorry, I was channeling Little Big Head for a second. Forgive me. The bell rings, and Brooke runs up to the teacher and says that she might be out tomorrow, so could she take a make-up test on Monday. Yep. That’s all fine and dandy with Teach, but it spells trouble to Sam. Sam asks Brooke if she’s okay, and Brooke basically tells her to fuck right off. Yay, Brooke!
Back in the filthy Kim Novak Lounge, Brooke and Smug Bitch go through SB’s day-planner to try and figure out how late Brooke’s period is. First of all, why does SB have Brooke’s, um, schedule in her day-planner? Second of all, hasn’t Brooke figured out by now that stress + eating disorder = never getting your period? So then SB declares that she hasn’t had a date in seventeen days. Right. Um, from what I’ve seen, Smug Bitch has never had a date. Maybe by "date" she really means "supervised mating in a controlled environment to perpetuate the species of super-beings that Bio is cooking up in the basement." Maybe. Smug Bitch tells Brooke not to go into Drama Overdrive, not to tell Josh about this, and to chill because "the river can’t run through it if you’re stressing." Oh, man. I don’t know whether to laugh or cringe, so I grimly open the first beer instead.