Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT First Encounters Of The Close Kind
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.14.1999
Joey knocks on the door of Room 381 in a dorm, then lets herself in to find a guy sitting cross-legged on his desk and working on -- what else? -- an iBook. She tries to introduce herself; he shushes her. A.J. has a "GO REVS" sign hanging on the wall behind him, and why a guy who looks like a seventh-generation photocopy of Chris O'Donnell in Scent Of A Woman has the logo of one of New York City's most famous graffiti taggers on his wall escapes me. Anyhow. A way-too-long, not-at-all-funny-even-unintentionally exchange ensues regarding the respective genders of A.J. Moller (the guy on the desk) and "Potter comma Joseph" (Joey), during which many unnecessarily long words are employed and the aforementioned A.J. acts like a right prick, talking down to Joey, sneering the words "high school" about a dozen times, and stopping just short of singing "baby, baby, stick your head in gravy" to her. Joey announces that she won't stay with him. A.J. basically dares her to do just that, telling her in a voice dripping with disdain that if she can't handle the co-ed experience, "maybe [she] should be visiting women's colleges instead." ["Wendy Shalit pops up from behind his bookshelf and yells, 'Yeah! You shouldn't even be talking to this guy without a chaperone anyway!'" -- Wing Chun] Joey glares at him, sets her jaw, and throws her bag down. Way to take the bait, Joey. A.J. then kicks her out of his room so that he can finish writing a paper, using a borderline-offensive Native American accent to do so. Joey objects. A.J. makes yet another snippy comment about her age, follows it with a pretty funny line about "idiot Econ majors playing Nerf basketball" in the hall, and gets back to ignoring her. Joey gathers her bag and leaves, slamming the door behind her. Hey, Mr. Stupin? Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy called -- they want to know why their checks haven't arrived.
Andie comes upon Jack outside, looking at a book. When she inquires as to what he's reading, Jack stows the book behind his back and stammers that it's a "guidebook to Boston." Andie hopes he didn't plan to "going off in search of Thoreau's butt-print at Walden Pond." Whaaaat? Jack says no, he hadn't planned on doing that. Andie suggests that Jack go to an art museum, and finally she leaves Jack in peace. After she's gone, Jack takes the book out again. It's the Pink Pages.
Andie percolates over to the admissions office, which looks like a living room, and announces herself to the secretary. The secretary -- played by Marla Gibbs, whose residual checks from 227 must have run out or something -- tells Andie that her appointment isn't until March. Okay, sidebar. At Ivy League universities, an interview with an admissions officer has pretty much no influence at all over whether or not a student gets admitted. You'd think Andie would know that. You'd think she'd also know that the dean of admissions has better things to do in March of any given year than meet with a junior -- things like, say, admitting next year's freshman class, of which Andie has zero hope of ever becoming a member, because she falsified her answers on a standardized test. Nnnnnnnnext! Oh, wait, maybe she does have hope, because apparently Angry McPhee (tm Kisle) went to Harvard. Andie and Marla bond over their shared status as daddy's girls (don't ask), and Andie hopes she can get a quick meeting with the dean anyway. Marla shoots her down, saying that everyone else there has an appointment that day. I'd see Marla's point, but she's sitting in the most deserted admissions-office lobby in the history of higher education. Still, Andie looks crestfallen.