Episode Report Card Sara M: F | 4 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Dorothea Lange Spins In Her Grave
By Sara M | Season 9 | Episode 19 | Aired on 05.01.2005
Another kid steps forward. He's got two earrings, both of which could be sold for money for food. Also, he's like thirty-five. "Hey," he greets us. He says that he always has to make excuses for why he can't buy any food when his friends go out. "A teen's entire social life revolves around food," he says. "That blows, when you don't have any money for food." I don't know what he's complaining about; surely his senior citizen discount at Denny's makes his meals quite affordable.
Thus ends our "bizarre random characters talking to camera" moment. What have we learned? First of all, half of Glenoak is starving, so it would appear that RevCam's community service efforts totally suck. Hee hee hee! Second, people only want food because it will improve their social standing or get them good grades. Third, despite being well-groomed and owning expensive clothes, hair and skin products, and jewelry, people can still be so poor that they can't afford to eat for days at a time. Fourth, processed foods make you stupid. Fifth, one of Glenoak High's students is a midget (you can briefly see him behind the girl who dropped her books), which means a Very Special Episode about accepting people's height differences is probably coming up soon. Sixth, it's all poor people's fault that they're hungry, because they could easily get some miracle food stamps that would solve all their problems if they weren't so darn proud. I find it incredible that Brenda Hampton can take something like poverty and hunger and present it in such a way that the viewer is fairly forced to draw the conclusion that if poor people were just less lazy and had better spending priorities and got rid of that pesky pride that's keeping them from taking advantage of government assistance, they'd be just fine. Look, Brenda, we all know you have a strong social conscience and want to make your viewers aware of important issues, but we'd probably all be better off if you just donated some of your enormous executive producer paycheck to a food bank instead. You're not doing poor people any favors by portraying them as lazy, whiny little idiots who are so shallow that they'd rather spend their money on keeping their daughter popular than on food. I found this show so hilariously bad that I was going to give it an A+, but I had to give it an F because the message it sends is just so, so horrible. Growing up, one of my best friends was poor. He rarely got new clothes or new shoes, and classmates made fun of him. He didn't have cable TV or videogames or air conditioning. The walls of his house, which his mom had like three mortgages on, had holes in them. But he always, always, always had food. For my friend and people like him to be portrayed like this infuriates me. But this recap is not over yet, so I must calm down in order to finish it. I will do this by thinking of things that make me smile, like the Lost Boys running up and shipping all these assholes to the deserts of Sudan so they feel real hunger.
Ruthie walks pasts Zoe, then turns back and tells her that she didn't say anything to Martin. Zoe rolls her eyes. Ruthie walks away. Zoe spots Martin at his locker and walks over to him. He immediately says he has to go, but Zoe has something to say first. She understands why Martin dumped her, but he doesn't know "the truth" about her because she was "too ashamed" to tell it. She opens her mouth to speak. The camera zooms in on her. The scene slowly fades out as Zoe stands there, her mouth open, saying nothing.