Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Take Seattle To The Zoo
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.16.2007
A Carrie Underwood-looking girl, a short girl, a skinny black girl, a hot blonde dude, a horsey blonde girl skipping around with a grinning black guy, and giant Anna. Wasn't this fun? There's a montage of losers singing the PCD song, and while I admit I normally enjoy the same-song montages because they're all in the same awful boat and it doesn't seem so mean somehow, and this includes Nick and David, this guy yelling "Not cool!" at Simon, a big guy not being funny and dancing like a fool, Darwin forgetting the words at some point, the Concealed Russian Lady being scary, the Taylor guy being all sex offender vibe guy some more, a Concealed Russian Fellow forgetting the words, Nick, more and more and more. LOOK. This is NOT A SONG. This is a Shania Twain song skeleton, gimmicky and stupid and picked clean of any melody and creativity. It is created to sell the disgusting PCD concept to little girls the same way this show is created to sell itself. It's not even a goddamned song. The growly barfing girl, like a hundred times, and Anastasia Krupnik, Nick looking insane, David being weird, Kenneth and JJ being weird, more Anastasia, more Barf Girl. Not even this is funny this year. What are we, collectively, doing?
Watching an actually mentally retarded man make a total ass of himself. Why, we've already named the winners, so obviously there's time for some filler, even though we still don't know who the people are. Meet Stephen Thoen (27, Who Cares), the mentally compromised person they call Big Red, who has the strength of an ape and a brutish brow and stupid red hair and stories like this: "When people wanna get my attention, they say, 'Hey Red.' People ask why they call me Red, I say 'I wonder why'?" I don't want to get into the amateur diagnosis game again this year, so I will use I statements. I have had many conversations with MHMR inpatients in my life, because I grew up feeling very guilty about the things that came easy to me, and I welcome opportunities to deal with things I don't want to deal with. And in these conversations that I have personally had, this would not be an atypical turn for the conversation to take. It is representative, in fact, of scores of conversations I have personally had in similar situations to what I have described above. "When people wanna get my attention, they say, 'Hey Red.' People ask why they call me Red, I say 'I wonder why'?" Now, whatever the details are here, I don't really care, because in addition to him having whatever issue it is that he is living and dealing with every day, for which I have the greatest sympathy, the fact is that he's also a pretty obviously unpleasant person, and I would not want to hang out with him no matter what. What does he like to do? Go to "karoke." He talks into the camera about how inspires him from past seasons: Nobody, because he's barely ever seen the show, because he hates the show. The people in the room start laughing and he gives everybody including you and me the scary "strength of an ape" eyes, and whatever. Ryan hates him even more than he hates everybody this episode, and refuses to go paddling around in the pool with him at all. He says there aren't that many redheads on TV in "this day and age," and Ryan's like, "True." Just totally checked out. "I look like Carrot Top, but you know something? Everybody says I'm way cooler than him." Again: I have had this conversation in my own personal life and it was with a mentally disabled person each time. This show is an asshole for a list of reasons.