Episode Report Card Daniel: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Love conquers all
By Daniel | Season 8 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.11.2004
Cut to a pissed-off Peter jabbing his finger and yelling, supposedly at his dad, calling him a mean drunk and lousy and rotten and...I mean, I can't believe there are directors out there who think we still fall for this. Like is there any viewer who watched this and thought, "Holy shit! Peter's really tearing into Vic! Good for... Oh! That's not Vic! It's Martin! Peter's only practising!" Martin interrupts Peter's tirade to tell him he can't talk to his dad like that. Peter's all, that's how I feel, though. Martin's all, sure, but there's no way I could talk to my dad like that. Not that he'd hit me or anything. "My father's in the Marines. You can't talk to a Marine like that. Or a dad." I understand it's mentioned a lot that Martin's dad is in the Marines. I've heard it just the once, and I'm already annoyed. And being a Marine's son, Martin has to say something like a father/son relationship is all about honour and respect, so Peter should be honourable and respectful no matter how he feels. Peter clearly doesn't think this is the way to go, so Martin says maybe he should talk to someone else.
That someone else is, I don't know, Ashley? That is to say, Asslee? The one with the bangs. Give me a break, I'm new to this show, and it took me almost halfway through it to realize that most of the kids on this show aren't even real Camdens. Kind of like The Cosby Show during its later years, where pretty much every episode was half an hour of Bill dancing with Raven Symone, and you'd turn it on and you'd be like, "The hell? Where's Theo?" This is like that. Only instead of Bill Cosby bebopping and scatting and making shit up on the spot, the dialogue consists of Things Teenagers Never Would Actually Say, such as "Say what's in your heart, but use your head" and "I don't feel like censoring my feelings." Peter is getting nowhere with Asslee, and Ruthie materializes to offer her two cents, and I take back what I said about her looking like the Terminator. I mean, I'm not saying that the weird thing she does with her eyes doesn't make her look like she's moments away from ripping off a latex facemask to reveal a metallic endoskeleton underneath. That still holds. But with her long straight hair flowing over her shoulders? She's Ozzy Osbourne, I swear to god. Peter offers up that he wants someone who'll agree with him, and Asslee and Ruthie look at each other like this could only mean one person: Lucy. And why they exchanged looks like that is a mystery to me, because Lucy tells him the same thing every single person has told him thus far, with no end in sight: that he can't speak to his dad that way, and that he's got to find a nice way to say what a living hell Vic made things for his mom. So Peter says nuts to her too and this is why he asked Kevin to come along, because of the "sheltered life" the Camdens lead, you know, like Peter's fighting for his life every day on the mean streets of Glenoak, and when Kevin comes in to tell Peter he's almost ready to go, Lucy tries to get Kevin on board the whole "don't get angry with the mean drunk who broke up your family" train, but Kevin says he thinks Peter should say whatever he wants.