There's an establishing shot of the Crawford Clown College library. Inside, a blonde girl is telling Matt he looks familiar. He tells her she looks familiar too. No shit! The blonde bears a striking resemblance to Chickenhead. I just wish there had been some kind of warning, because I suffer from PCSD (Post Chickenhead Stress Disorder), and the doctor told me that any more exposure to Chickenhead could be deadly. I guess seeing her doppelganger just gave me some nasty flu-like symptoms, though, which would account for the projectile vomiting. I don't know the blonde's name yet, so I'll just call her Chucklehead for now. Chucklehead recognizes Dopey and even knows that he belongs to clan Camden and that he used to date Heather, who is deaf. She purses her lips when she talks about Heather. There's an awkward silence until Dopey says, "So, um, do you wanna take a break and get a cup of..." except he forgets the rest of his line. There's another awkward silence until about four years later, when he remembers that the rest of the line is "coffee." Yay! Good work, Dopey! Chucklehead declines his invitation and then puts her headphones back on. Dopey's not sure what to do here, so he performs a watered-down version of the patented unfunny mugging and flailing-around routine he uses during every one of his "comic" scenes. Eventually the director wakes up and yells "cut." It was way overdue.
Over at the CamKitchen, Ruthie is trying to get the CamRents to let her have a slumber party with her two best friends: Rachel from her new school, and Sarah from her old one. Bet you can't guess where a plotline like that might be headed. Annie says she is too tired to supervise Ruthie's sleepover, but Lucy offers to perform that particular dirty work. The CamRents exchange jaunty, knowing looks as StuporMom says that Lucy doesn't know what she's getting into. Lucy claims it'll go fine, and she sashays off. You know, I almost have to admire the gutsiness of the writers when they treat their foreshadowing with such clumsiness and lack of imagination. It's like they know they're the most-watched show on the WB, so why bother putting any effort into it at all. Bravo, writers! The phone rings; it's Julie, Eric's sister. Damn, I can't believe they didn't warn me about that either. See, I suffer from JAS (Julie Aversion Syndrome), which gets triggered anytime I see Julie or anyone like her -- profusely self-righteous, whiny beyond all human comprehension, utterly humourless. It's a good thing Mr. Cate hid all the masonry we had lying around the apartment, because the main symptom of JAS is an overwhelming desire to toss a brick through one's television set. ["That sounds a lot like DAS (Dawson Aversion Syndrome)." -- Sars] Annie asks Julie what's up, pauses, and then uses that irritating expositionary device of repeating what Julie just said for the benefit of the viewers. Julie has promised Hank that she will help him move his office; hence, she needs a baby-sitter. Without even asking Julie, Annie hands the phone over to Mary, who's all excited about baby-sitting because she needs the cash. Julie says that recently Mary has been "a little unfocused and irresponsible," and that she doesn't want her baby-sitting Erica. Mary says, "Just give me a chance to prove I'm responsible, please?" That's all it takes for Julie to cave. Did she start drinking again? I can't imagine why else her judgment would be so bad, especially since Mary rudely hangs up on her as soon as she gives in. No "thanks," no "goodbye" -- nothing. Ugh. Mary goes on to hassle her parents because she thinks they've been gossiping with Julie over her, although they claim they haven't. Now it's RevCam's turn to hassle Mary about being broke. She rolls her eyes at him and leaves. I'm by no means an expert at parenting, but if your child disses you so badly and you don't do anything about it, that can't be good.
Simon's in his room, getting ready for school, while the ugliest, lamest music in the world plays in the background. Simon looks into a mirror and sprays something onto his hair. I hope it's not more Sun-In. There's a shot of Happy sitting on a chair behind him. When I pause the tape, it looks like she's sniffing Simon's butt. I'll bet someone put her there deliberately for that very reason. Simon continues to play with his hair for a while. He has way more styling products than any one person has a right to own. Unless you have some fetish that makes you enjoy watching clumsy attempts at hair-styling, or you're in love with the actor who plays Simon, this whole scene is an utter waste of film.
Frankie phones Mary to ask if she will baby-sit Mercy that day. Mary actually refuses, since she wants to prove herself responsible to Julie. And she refuses politely. Man, that is all so completely out of character.
Contrivance, here we come! Ruthie informs Lucy that she has invited her little friends over for the entire day, in addition to the sleepover. No one reprimands her or anything. Nope, it's just a chance to move the plot along by having Lucy merrily suggesting that the CamRents take the afternoon off while she baby-sits and takes care of the house. She seems awfully eager to prove she's responsible. There's no particular reason I can think of that would make her act that way. Oh well, motive, shmotive -- as long as they cobble together some kind of plot, it's good enough, I suppose.
Lucy, Annie, and Simon meet up in the hallway, and Simon asks them what they think of his hair. Honestly, Simon, I think it should match your eyebrows a little better, so you may want to lay off the Nice 'n Easy. Well, you did ask, didn't you? StuporMom tells him he looks "nice," but he would prefer to look like "a manlier Simon, a cooler Simon." That would be kinda hard, though, when his hairdo would not look out of place on a Spandau Ballet album cover. Lucy keeps any unkind remarks to herself, since she's trying to convince Simon to help her supervise Ruthie's Sleepover From Hell. Simon declines. Wouldn't you?
In what may be an effort to include the twins in the show more, SuperMom is soliciting their opinions on which shirts they want to wear. If you guessed that this scene is much too cutesy, you're bang on. RevCam walks in, and Annie throws one shirt and an empty hanger into the crib before rushing off to talk to Eric. I hope there's a production assistant nearby to remove that crap from the twins' crib before one of them strangles himself on a hanger or something, since Annie's too excited about getting away from the twins to care. She relays the exciting news to Eric, who says, "I love Lucy." Don't strain anything laughing, now, okay?
Aw, man! Why didn't anyone tell me Ed Begley was going to be on this episode? I could have planned ahead and not had to take the time out now to go to the drugstore and refill my EBRD (Ed Begley Revulsion Disease) medication. It keeps me from twitching uncontrollably and trying to rip out my eyeballs whenever he's onscreen. He's grilling Mary ad nauseam on safety issues. Julie adds that Mary is to have no visitors. After what feels like two million years or so, they finally depart.
At Dopey's Swingin' Bachelor Pad, Matt is telling John about how that blonde chick wouldn't go out with him. The writers must have used up all their "creativity" on the hilarious Hank and Julie subplot, because here they resort to a retread of the old Dopey Blames Everyone Else For His Problems shtick. That never gets old! Dopey just can't believe that anyone could resist his charms, so he tries to blame Chucklehead's refusal of a date on Heather, who, he claims, must be slagging him around campus. John points out that Heather is much too nice to do anything like that, and adds that this is part of a pattern for Dopey. He says, "You meet a girl, you ask her out, she says no, it drives you crazy." I'm seeing a pattern here too. Does John ever do anything other than analyze Matt's character and then offer up stupid "insights" that act as the basis for Matt's sub-plot of the week? Doesn't he have a life? I hope we don't discover that John has a secret room where he covers the walls with pictures of Dopey and fills notebook after notebook with observations about the Dopester. Oh, wait, never mind. It's RevCam who is the show's resident stalker. John says Matt's wearing the look he gets when he's about to do something stupid. Funny, I don't think he looks any different than usual.
Simon's talking to one of his friends on the phone. I think it's that guy he toilet-papered someone's house with, but I can't be sure. Simon's telling his friend about how he is a man, not a child. Considering his friend's voice probably changed about ten years ago, I think we can safely say that at least one of them is a man. Simon claims to be a man because his voice is deep and he thinks about girls all the time. You know, the writers have got to stop cribbing their dialogue from educational pamphlets with titles like "Puberty and You!" The friend suggests that Simon change his hair. That's not good enough; Simon wants to do something that will make people "think to themselves, 'Now, there's a man.'" Hmm, aside from walking around with his penis hanging out of his pants, I can't really think of anything. ["AUUGGHHH!" -- Sars]
Over at Hank and Julie's, there's a knock on the door. Fortunately, Mary happens to be walking right past the door at that very moment, so we don't need to waste any extra time waiting for her to answer it. And that's great, because the suspense was just killing us! Wow, it's Frankie. I don't know about you, but I sure didn't see that coming. Frankie talks Mary into letting her into the house, where she proceeds to beg Mary to baby-sit for her. I can't help but stare at all the reddish-purple eye shadow she's wearing, like right up to her eyebrow. It reminds me of when I was first learning to apply eye-shadow. Frankie says she needs Mary to baby-sit, because she suspects Johnny is cheating on her and she needs to do a little detective work. Personally, I think she should hire RevCam for that, given his expertise in stalking. Maybe she couldn't reach him, though, since he's out for the day. Mary reluctantly agrees. Frankie hands her the diaper bag, and for a second I expect her to say that Mercy is inside it. Turns out Frankie has left her in the car. Okay, that's pretty bad too. Frankie says Mary is "the best friend ever." Mary opines that she may in fact be the "stupidest." Shout-out!
The CamRents are spending their free Saturday discussing how great it is to have a free Saturday. Well, I don't think it's so great if that's how you spend it. Ah, wait, RevCam's day just took a turn for the better. He sees Johnny with a woman who is not Frankie. Johnny and Frankie are supposed to be in outpatient rehab today. Awright, it's stalker time! Annie looks annoyed, but she has to know by now how much Eric gets off on sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Johnny and his chick start making out. We cut to commercial right before RevCam starts drooling.
Good heavens, it's Ruthie and her stupid little friend Sarah. They're wearing boas and heels and having one of those fakey Kids Say The Darnedest Things kinds of conversations. I won't transcribe it, though. Let's face it -- if you're the type of person who really, truly enjoys the kind of stilted horror that results when adults try to script cutesy dialogue for kids, you've probably given up on the recap by now anyway and are madly drafting an e-mail to us about why you think God should hate everyone at MBTV. By the way, this is totally not the actress who played Sarah originally. She doesn't even look remotely like her. Anyway, Ruthie picks this moment to inform Sarah that Rachel will be joining them and that she wants them all to be friends. After some more non-cute-icisms about why Sarah likes adults better than kids, Rachel comes in. She's loaded down in makeup and jewelry and wearing some fugly sweater with feathers around the collar and cuffs. Egads! Why would the wardrobe people punish us like that? Is this someone's simplistic idea of how to make Rachel look like a princess? She's even brattier than Mary, and that's saying something. She gets totally possessive of Ruthie (though why anyone would want to do that is beyond me) and picks a fight with Sarah, which Lucy tries to break up by asking if anyone wants a cookie. No, thanks, but if you have a beer, I could really use one about now. No? Anything huffable? Oh no. Rachel's doing some little dance-like movements that are supposed to convey sassy attitude, but instead...well, let's just say that I think even Overactors' Anonymous would be embarrassed to have her as a member. She makes Ruthie and Sarah look like master thespians. After Sarah and Rachel stalk off in separate directions, Lucy tries to put a good spin on the situation. Ruthie makes the obligatory reference to the episode title, asking her if she's blind. No, but after witnessing Rachel's "acting," I sure am. Are you absolutely sure there's nothing for me to huff? You know, if you need me, I'll be out in the garage, feeling around for some spray paint and sculpting the head of Lionel Richie out of clay.
I'm glad I was able to schedule emergency eye surgery, or I would have missed Simon's attempt at looking manly. He's slicked back his hair and put on a black long-sleeved T-shirt and layered it with a grey shirt from which he's cut off the sleeves, except he hasn't even done that right. The sleeves are cut off about an inch below the shoulders. Maybe the episode title means that it's Simon who's blind. Oh, I'm so confused.
The phone rings and Mary answers. It's Hank, pretending to be a stranger and testing Mary's responses. She says, "They're not available. May I take a message?" First of all, who would call and ask for both Julie and Hank? Shyeah, that's realistic. And secondly, why do people tell kids and baby-sitters to say that adults are "not available"? Nobody talks like that. If I were a criminal, that would be my first tip-off that a kid was home alone. Can we hurry this scene along, please? I have to make it to the drugstore before all the good leftover Halloween candy is gone. Nothing else remarkable happens here, except that Frankie's daughter throws a bowl of cereal over Mary's head. I'm convinced the producers are pissed about her departure and are trying to make her look as ridiculous as possible. This is just another way to punish her.
The CamRents follow Frankie and his date into the pool hall. Eric's reprising his outfit from when he followed Lucy and Lance Bass last season. It's the sweatshirt hood-over-the-head look that makes him soooo inconspicuous in the pool hall. He says, "Look, I know you wanted to spend the day being free and having fun, but this is so much better!" At least that's what he's thinking. He claims he put his "reputation on the line to get Frankie and Johnny out of jail." And now he has to stalk them, I guess. Annie, exasperated by listening to Eric talk about the situation, tells him to just go over and talk to Johnny. Eric says, "That's not how I do it." Heh! That was pretty cool. I have to give the writers credit for being able to laugh at themselves. RevCam tells Annie that he doesn't want to ruin their Saturday, so they can leave if she wants. Annie knows how much RevCam's stalking hobby means to him, though, so she says they can stay. She tries to play it off as just her worry over Mary, but I think that's just to make RevCam feel better about his Obsessive Stalker Disorder. Isn't that romantic?
At Dopey's Swingin' Bachelor Pad, Dopey informs John that he wasn't able to talk to Heather. Yeah, that's because the producers are already paying for such luminaries as Ed Begley out of this week's guest-star budget. Dopey was able to talk the librarian into giving him not only the phone number but also the address of Chucklehead, whose real name turns out to be Kim. Okay, I know they've started acknowledging the whole stalker bit here, and that's cool, but really, I'm not sure they're understanding the significance of it all. There had better be some sort of major comeuppance for Matt at the end of this episode for going to such lengths to get a woman's phone number and address. Actually, "creepy" doesn't even begin to describe it. Especially when Dopey calls Kim and gets the brush-off and doesn't realize he should respect her wishes and leave her the fuck alone.
Annie calls Mary to see how things are going. Mary says everything is fine and that the "babies" are fine. Annie picks up on that but then totally seems to buy Mary's awkward, convoluted attempt to backpedal. Killer maternal instincts there, StuporMom. Mary's so frazzled by her slip-up that she's actually polite when she says goodbye to her mom. She talks to the babies some more, then reaches into Frankie's diaper bag and pulls out a beer. She stares at it, mystified, as if she's never seen beer before.
Oh yuck, it's Simon and his pathetic subplot. His eighty-year-old friend has come up with a cool thing for Simon to do to prove his manliness. I hope it involves diving headfirst off cliffs.
Mary's asking the babies for advice on whether or not she should drink the beer she found in the diaper bag. She tries to argue that if she doesn't drink it, she'll be wasting it, which "seems wrong." Gwen's already covered just about everything there is to say regarding Mary's ongoing non-story about substance abuse. All I can add is this. I was pretty damn geeky as a teenager, but even I was never pathetic enough to a) consider drinking while baby-sitting, and b) devote that much mental energy to figuring out whether or not to drink one beer. It's one beer, folks. Mary is eighteen years old. In Quebec she would be of legal drinking age. If the producers want to make a point here, the least they could do would be to choose a scenario that could potentially frighten someone other than Ned Flanders. They're so blasé about Eric's and Matt's stalking and then so freakin' uptight about one beer. Feh!
Back at the Stalker Corral, RevCam's finally had his fill of observing Johnny and his date. He makes his move and asks Johnny about the drug and alcohol rehab. I swear Johnny's even stupider than Mary, because he acts all tough and tells RevCam he doesn't need "that counseling crap." Come on, what person in his right mind would talk this way to the minister who bailed him out of jail the week before? I know -- maybe he drank a beer and that's why he's so psychotic. One beer does that to you, you know. Frankie chooses that moment to walk into the pool hall. Johnny tells his date to "beat it," which she does without making a scene. It's too late, though. Frankie has seen them together. She starts yelling at Johnny, and he yells back. They throw around accusations of ruined lives. It sure is great that they talk about their daughter that way, isn't it? Frankie calls Johnny "loser" a few times, which makes him particularly angry. Eventually he hauls off and slugs...RevCam, who, once again, has stuck his nose where it doesn't belong. At least Eric's cool enough not to call the cops.
I'll tell you what I really don't need to see in October: Christmas commercials.
Lucy and Ruthie have a heart-to-heart about the cursed sleepover while Lucy polishes the furniture in the living room. I assume she's already ironed the tea towels. Ruthie is upset that her stupid slumber party is going so badly. I don't know why she doesn't just send her friends home. Oh right, then we wouldn't have this stupid contrived plot to fill up time on the show.
Simon and his ancient friend are in a room decorated in what the producers probably think is Haute Drug Dealer fashion. A biker dude holds up a funky metal mirror in front of Simon and asks him what he thinks. Simon says he likes it. I know, I really like that mirror too. I wonder if they'll be auctioning it on eBay.
Dopey has the audacity to go to Kim's apartment. She has asked her brother to come over because she's scared of Matt. Dopey, who really can't take a hint, keeps saying he wants to talk to Kim. I'm not sure if the producers are trying to play him as the good guy or the bad guy here, especially when Kim's brother says, "What kind of guy harasses a blind woman?" Uh, dude, what kind of guy harasses any woman, period? Dopey expresses astonishment that Kim is blind, which leads her brother to explain that Kim has a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. I can't believe he goes on to tell Dopey, "Maybe you should talk to her." The hell? Are they implying that it's okay for Matt to have stalked her because he thought he was stalking a sighted woman? If I had a brother who decided it was okay for a stalker to talk to me, I'd drop-kick his ass across town. I guess Matt is one of those good Christian stalkers, though. That makes it all okay, because he just really, really wanted to talk to Kim. What right did she have to refuse him anyway? Jeez, what a bitch.
The scene cuts back and forth between RevCam talking to Johnny and Annie giving Frankie advice. Frankie is in denial about what a scumbag her husband is, and Annie tries to talk her into leaving him. Johnny proves what a loser moron he is by trying to justify his fits of anger. It's kind of a sad scene, and it's handled well. No, really!
I can almost say the same for the scene between Dopey and Kim. She treats us to a little PSA about this week's disease, retinitis pigmentosa. Kim's in the early stages of the disease, so she still can see things in bright light, which explains why she was able to recognize Dopey in the library. Because he had dated Heather, she thought that when he asked her for a date it was because he's into women with disabilities. That's what she says, anyway. I suspect her instincts just told her to avoid the creepy stalker-dude because there's something not right about him and he's not very bright either. It's cool that she has the guts to tell him she doesn't want to be his friend or study partner either. Hmm, Kim and Dopey have the same haircut. Maybe it was "2 For 1" night down at the local haircutting school. Kim doesn't have Dopey's strange triangular sideburns, though. Really, Dopey shouldn't have them either.
Hank and Julie are at some restaurant. Hank is talking to a telephone operator on his cell phone. We learn that their home phone is off the hook. They pretend not to be worried. Ten seconds later they get up and leave. With the comedic talents of these two, you can just imagine how funny this scene was.
Hey, speaking of crap, it's time for a showdown at the Hokey Corral. Sarah and the hideous troll known as Rachel are sitting at opposite ends of the dining room table. It looks like this is supposed to be a take-off on some boardroom drama, where Rachel is saying things like, "This house isn't big enough for the both of us." Both of them refuse to leave. I hope Rachel doesn't sprain any facial muscles with her overacting. Lucy comes in and displays some of her patented Camden charm to try to get the little morons to get along. Rachel says, "No offence, but if I wanted a Back to School [sic] Special lecture, I'd turn on my TV." That would have been such a good line if they'd got the name of the series right -- and if it had been delivered by anyone other than Rachel. Lucy flips out and begs the brats to leave. They agree. Is this episode almost over? Gwen and I are supposed to toilet-paper Aaron Spelling's mansion for Halloween, and at this rate we'll never get all 400 rooms done by morning.
Loser Johnny apologizes to Frankie for knocking her around and cheating on her and generally treating her like shit. Frankie says she realizes he's sorry and kisses him. She adds that unless they tell the CamRents "what they want to hear" they will never "get rid of them." That would be funny if the circumstances weren't so serious. They walk over to the CamRents, and Frankie gives them a song-and-dance about going into marriage counseling, blah blah. Frankie's a better actress than many on the show, so it's sort of funny that her speech comes off as sounding just as sincere as anything else we've ever heard on 7th Heaven. The CamRents are skeptical anyway. RevCam asks them not to contact Mary again, and Frankie agrees not to call Mary until she and Johnny are more on track. Does that mean they're not going to pick up Mercy? Frankie and Johnny turn to leave. Johnny starts to pick up his smokes from the table, but SuperMom sighs loudly, so he puts them back and gets the hell out of there. Annie comments that she doesn't know how Mary became friends with Frankie and Johnny since she has "absolutely nothing in common with them." RevCam gives her a snarky look, which causes her to doubt her own judgment and appeal to him for his opinion. Um, Annie? Yeah, you might want to think about whom you're approaching for advice. This is RevCam, remember? Creepy stalker extraordinaire? Yeah, that guy. I'm sure you can reason better on your own.
Simon enters the house and looks at himself in the glass of a kitchen cabinet. Lucy runs down the stairs and starts yelling at him for going out alone on a Saturday night. Now, that's just sad. Simon asks if she notices anything different about him. Lucy gasps and draws back as if he'd had a whole score of upside-down crosses tattooed on his head. Has he sprouted horns? No, he got his ear pierced. Lucy flips out in a completely annoying way. Get a fucking life. It's not like he had all the verses of the Satanic Bible branded onto his body. It's just an earring. Lucy runs off in a snit. Simon doesn't care; he's too busy talking to his reflection in the kitchen cabinet again: "Hi, I'm Simon, Simon Camden -- super-cool guy, Mr. Cool, yeah." Mr. Cate thinks he may be directing his comments to the knob on the kitchen cabinet, since that would be the perfect symbolism. I can't say I disagree. Lucy obviously feels the same way, too, because she comes back downstairs to smack Simon upside the head.
Oh look, it's two people I'd love to smack super-hard: Hank and Julie. They're nervously walking through their home. They get to the living room and see the two babies on the floor. Julie employs her worst acting ever to scream, "What is going on here?" Mary trots down the stairs to find Hank holding Erica and Julie holding Mercy. "You're home early," says Mary, inanely. Hank asks who the mystery baby belongs to. I'd like to apologize. I know before I said that Julie had employed the worst acting ever. But when I said that I hadn't seen her delivery of this line. Surely this is the worst acting ever, ever, in the history of the world. Julie holds up the beer bottle and super-dramatically intones, "More importantly, who does this belong to?" A commercial break allows the healing to begin.
After the break, Mary tries to rationalize her stupidity in not just throwing away that one lousy beer bottle. She tells Hank and Julie that "nothing happened" and that Mercy is just her friend's baby, but Julie has a conniption fit anyway. She asks, "Would that be your recently arrested, pot-smoking friend Frankie's baby?" Yes, Julie, that's right. And I've heard rumours that Mercy is already dealing downtown. She does it from her stroller. You know, you can't be too careful in letting your one-year-old hang out with other one-year-olds whose parents are users. They'll turn your kid into a crack baby faster than you can say, "Bite me, Jerry Falwell." It will take them months to undo the damage Mary inflicted upon their daughter by exposing her to Mercy's evil influence. Hank gets the funniest line of all when he says, "How stupid do you think we are?" Julie natters on about underage this and underage that, but she's not doing a whole lot to endear me to her. Mary begs them not to tell the CamRents, and on her way out she tells Hank and Julie that there's no charge for her baby-sitting services. Honestly, it's darn near impossible to find a sympathetic character within ten miles of the Camdens.
The CamRents come home to find Lucy studying at the kitchen table. Wow, just how big a freak is she anyway? She's cleaned, polished furniture, done laundry. She's about to tell them about Simon's earring when Ruthie interrupts to ask who beat up RevCam. Eric seems a little sensitive about that, and he points out that his black eye is just an accident. Simon comes down and shows off his earring. You would think he had just beheaded the entire Royal Family and eaten their livers. Lucy apologizes profusely, and more annoyingly than words can describe.
Dopey returns to his apartment and happily tells John that Kim is blind. He delivers that line as if it were the punch line to a joke. As to why this would be funny, your guess is as good as mine.
Hank and Julie get into bed and discuss Mary for a while. At least they're not procreating again.
The CamRents are also in bed. Simon is arguing with them, saying that he doesn't want to take his earring out. Eric and Annie are surprisingly rational, citing relatively normal reasons for their anger, like the fact that Simon got the earring without their permission. The big disappointment is that Ruthie feels the need to opine that Simon looks like a girl. An even bigger disappointment is that, while the CamRents always feel free to deliver an edifying lecture at the drop of a hat, here they remain silent. And by insisting that Simon remove his earring, you'd almost think they were condoning Ruthie's ignorant, reactionary view themselves. Maybe they're setting up a story arc where Simon announces he's gay but through the miracle of Eric's meddling, he's magically "cured" of his "ailment."
Against the CamRents' wishes, Mary is hanging out at Frankie and Johnny's trailer. She bitches a bit about how her parents don't trust her, but Frankie and Johnny don't care. They're just anxious to get to tonight's peer pressure part of the evening. Johnny pulls out the weed. Mary naively points out that they promised not to smoke anymore, and Frankie patronizingly says that they're planning to stop as soon as they finish their stash. She adds that they don't want to make Mary do anything she doesn't want to do. That aside, the whole scene has the same paranoid feeling as one of those Reefer Madness kind of propaganda movies. Frankie and Johnny are so nervous about smoking this weed that you'd think they were narcs. There's a close-up of Mary as she decides whether to partake of the demon weed. Oh brother.
week: It's hard to tell what actually happens in the episode, but the start of Sweeps Month means the promos get much more dramatic and overblown. I'll bet it's safe to say that Mary spirals further downward, though.