Angst and anger. Fears and frustrations. Sex and, well, sex. Drugs and, oooh, is that vodka left over from the party we had last week? WHOO!
Welcome back to American High, people.
For those of you not in the know, American High originally ran on the Fox Network last summer. For. Four. Episodes. Bastards. Swooping in like Florence Nightingale on three hits of acid, PBS picked up the show and is now, as we speak, running with it.
We pick up where we left off. You know, following desperate and scared high-school students around a tony North Shore educational establishment while they try to figure out their futures (or lack thereof); watching them make out in basements and bedrooms and contemplate having sex but then remembering that there are, like, TEN CAMERAS on them; witnessing horrific and completely uncalled-for parental behavior that has, on occasion, forced me to pick up the Yellow Pages and let my fingers do the walking right over to the Child Welfare Department and drop a dime on one or two morons...you know, fun stuff like that.
And now, without further delay, I bring you American High...
We come upon guitar-strummin' Kaytee, doing her thang in the hallway again, with the googly-eyed Scott gazing at her dreamily. In a voice-over, Kaytee says, "Everyone's all, 'Oh, Kaytee, you're going to be famous,' 'cuz I write a lot of songs." She hits some power chords on her acoustic, and Scott dramatically places his hand over his heart and falls over to the side as if to say, "Kaytee...your music-lovin' ways pluck my heart-strings...please...please...allow me to lick your sternum." Dude. Get a ROOM. And then get some Astroglide and a Penthouse and STOP LOOKING AT HER LIKE THAT, MAN! It is OOKING ME OUT.
Thank God we move on to meet Pablo, a Dorothy-Hamill-bowl-cut-sporting young man who, for the entire summer, had difficulty finding out what "home" was. Hey. Pablo. It's that place where someone else pays your bills and does your laundry and makes sure you eat something other than Sugar Smacks for every meal. Then Pablo's hugging some smaller, chubbier version of him and saying how the only reason he ever came home was to tuck in his little sister. That's sweet and sad and all, but I'm too busy wondering whether he's trying to look like her or vice versa. Whatever, because all of a sudden, Kaytee's burgeoning breasts are being attacked by some invisible jacketed creature and --
Um. Hello? A damn Coke commercial? Before I can tell what someone's doing to Kaytee's burgeoning breasts? That hardly seems fair. And what the hell is PBS doing with commercials anyway? Even if they are relatively tasteful and nicely executed -- I thought being a PUBLIC BROADCASTING station meant they didn't HAVE to have commercials. Whatever. I'm going to get more ice for my drink...
When we return from commercial, we're greeted by those familiar white-on-black words, and I think it's Pablo who's giving us a little VO action as he tells someone that he doesn't have any money for some show he's going to see that night, and then some other voice (male? female? Annie Lennox during her "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" phase?) says something about turning tricks on the street, and then the screen fades up and Pablo's sitting on the trunk of some car with a girl that gives new meaning to the term "grrrrrl" and who apparently picked up where Tank Girl left off. They're chatting, and you'd think they were continuing on from the aforementioned VO conversation, but they're not, because Pablo says, "You know I'm gonna be grounded forever and ever and ever and ever and ever --" and that has nothing at all to do with the "tricks" conversation we were just privy to, unless, you know, he might be grounded for turning tricks, but I think it might be more likely that, you know, he might GO TO JAIL. "Oh, whadda you care?" says Lori Petty, Jr. "Like you ever listen to your mother?"
, we see Pablo clomping up the steps of a small clapboard house that we can only assume is his "home" (whatever that means, right, Pablo?). P's mom bemusedly chews him out about borrowing her car three hours ago, even though he said it would be an hour. "No, it was not three hours ago," Pablo argues softly. His mom just smiles at him and says, "Eh, you left before three?" Pablo, realizing that it's after six p.m. and that, since he's not Superman, he is unfortunately incapable of reversing the earth's axis, thereby turning back time and getting his ass out of a sling, quietly agrees with his mother: "Okay, it was three hours ago." Pablo's mom is not half as pissed off as I'd be if my slacker son had borrowed my damn car and returned it three hours late. But then, as Hank4 has observed, I should really never have children.
Pablo then tells his mother that he has to go. The hell? He just got back from having the car for two hours longer than he was even supposed to, and now he has to run off again? Where? Does he have a Future Stockbrokers of America meeting he has to attend? I don't think so. Mama Pablo wants to know when he'll be back. He appears to ponder this question. "I'll be back by, like, eleven?" "Eleven? ELEVEN! BWA HA HA HA HA! Oh, that's a good one, Pablo! That's really funny. You're not going ANYWHERE until you clean this entire house from top to bottom. And then, when you're done with that, I want you to change your sister and put her to bed. After that, I want you to SIT RIGHT HERE and finish all of your homework -- right in front of me, mister! -- and then bake me a turkey potpie. When these tasks are complete, if you're not completely SPENT, you may leave the premises. BUT NOT ONE SECOND BEFORE." Okay, so she really says, "Okay, Pablo. Eleven. Today. Not eleven tomorrow." How sad is that? I almost don't have the heart to type it. She has to delineate the difference between eleven o'clock TODAY and eleven o'clock TOMORROW? What, is she insane? Pablo quotes Casanova in a voice-over: "Casanova's last words were, 'I regret nothing.' I think the man's a liar." Oh, man, I'm gonna smack him. Hard. With a pointy stick.
Quick! Fast forward through the edgy credit sequence! HURRY!
Then we're flipping quickly through various kids (including Puck Lite and Allie) talking about how they love their friends, but sometimes their friends annoy them and how they sometimes need more and blah dee blah dee blah...Kaytee comes onscreen and says, "A lot of people don't like me." I feel you, girl. Kaytee then makes an ugly face and wiggles her hands and says in a silly voice, "I can't understand why." I feel you times two, girl. 'Cuz I thought a lot of people didn't like me in high school, and the only way I could deal with it was by making fun of myself and throwing myself into plays and writing. Damn. I hate it when I identify with these kids...Brad then comes on and spouts some Brad-isms, followed by a girl I've never seen before talking about how her friends are getting really old and she's tired of them.
And then we're on to Pablo's very first complete segment. He's in the drop-in center, talking to some woman with a circa-Camelot knavish haircut going on. She's concerned that, last year, Pablo was involved with drugs. P-man's all, "The way I got mixed up in that...it's, like, strange, really. A favor of a favor of a friend..." Um. What? How's that? Like, "Dude. Do me a favor. Take this bag of pot and, you know, smoke it." How is doing drugs a "favor" to anyone? (I mean, of course, besides yourself -- drugs, especially over-the-counter cold medications, rock. And don't send me any emails berating me for my endorsement of drugs of any kind -- I'm a thirty-two-year-old adult woman with a massive head cold right now, and I just might come over there and sneeze on you. However, the combination of Sudafed Severe Cold Formula and Robitussin PE is forcing me to remain seated for the time being. Lucky you.) Little Lord Fauntleroy goes on to say that this so-called "drug involvement" has also been mentioned this year, so she knows that it's not something that's going away. P-man agrees. LLF wants to know if this is something Pablo's going to work on. Yeah. He's going to work on it, all right. He's going to go right out and work on that bong he made out of an empty can of Jolt. Pablo says, "Everyone needs to work on...everything...and moderation is Bacchus' first rule." Yeah. I'm gonna smack him.
"Who am I?" Pablo asks himself on-camera. "Top ten words, straight from the head. Melodramatic. Pseudo-intellectual. Poetically inclined. Hooligan." Um. Can he count? Or did the producers just cut him off before he could finish? 'Cuz, no matter how you count 'em, that number of words still don't add up to ten. In a hallway somewhere, Lori Petty Jr. is hollering, "PABLO!!!" as P-man molests some blonde chick on the stairwell. In a voice-over, we learn that Pablo's known Petty (a.k.a. "Lisa") for about two years and that, even though on the outside she may seem hostile and harsh, once you get to know her, you learn that a lot of things affect her.