Episode Report Card M. Giant: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It's a Little Funny
By M. Giant | Season 3 | Episode 25 | Aired on 08.30.2004
Finally a straitlaced, vaguely nerdy kid -- your protagonist for the evening, ladies and gentlemen -- perches on the stool, pastes a big dumb grin on his face, and says in voice-over, "Matthew Kidman. I will always remember…" His smile fades, and we cut to the yearbook form, where he's trying to fill in his senior quote and coming up blank. He's going to be doing a lot of that, so you'd best get used to it. He sits in the lunchroom, looking around at everyone, thinking to himself, Quick, remember something! He flashes back to his acceptance to Georgetown; winning an award for "The Brightest Leader of Tomorrow," like, nice "award," screenwriters; lots of studying; drawing inspiration from a picture of JFK (the first one) on his wall; ogling chicks in the lunchroom; sneaking peeks at saucy magazines in his bedroom…
The school bell puts a stop to all this. Word, bell. Two montages in the first five minutes is kind of a lot. Matthew sits alone and mopes under a banner that reads "SPIRIT WEEK." Oh, the irony.
Now that the montages are over (for now), it's just about time for the film to get down to the serious business of stealing from other coming-of-age movies. We're at a pep rally in the school gym. Matthew, flanked by his two buddies, passes under a banner that reads "Senior Prom: Do You Have the Fever?" Matthew seriously repeats the question to the nerd on his right (named Klitz. Get it? His name is Klitz!), who doesn't have the fever. It's worth pointing out that Klitz's nerdy-ass haircut is almost the same one worn by Spawn in Season Three of 24. But back to the fever. Matthew doesn't know if he has it. The nerd on his left, Eli, has "just gotta fuck something." And now you know all you need to know about these three. By the way, Eli is being played by the kid who plays Adam Rove on Joan of Arcadia, which makes me sincerely hope that Deborah never sees this movie, or he'll be ruined for her forever. By the way, I really shouldn't count the nerd wingmen as stealing from Sixteen Candles because they end up serving a completely different (stolen) purpose here, but Eli looks so much like a young John Cusack here that I kind of can't help it. Even if I cared to.
The class president is busy whipping the student body into a Riefenstahlian frenzy by not really saying anything at all. It's very reminiscent of Joe's awful singing at graduation in Say Anything. He warns everyone that security's going to be tight, so they should do their drinking in advance. We'll see what he means by "tight security" later on. The principal -- a large, dour fellow from central casting in a suit that looks like a Sherman tank -- takes the microphone away from him and hands it off to the student council president, our own Matthew Kidman. Matt looks nervously at the crowd, which has undergone a major downward mood swing in the past five seconds and is now staring at him silently. I remember that I always resented it when they made the whole school assemble in the gym for some cheap exposition. In this case, it's about a boy genius in Cambodia named Samnang. Seems they've raised $25,000 to bring him to America and study at this school. Does that really cost $25,000? And do you suppose that something unplanned is going to happen to that $25,000? Nobody's thinking about that now, because the jocks are standing up and cheering mockingly. A video of Samnang appears on the giant video screen, and he gives a heavily accented greeting from a Cambodian village that's so poor they only have one camcorder. The crowd goes wild, one guy screaming that he wants to bang Samnang. Okay, heh. Matthew, to his credit, appears to recognize the mocking for what it is, but says nothing. Just call the Cambodian kid the Donger and get it over with.
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