Chapter Six

Props to the "Fan Mail" thread in the forum. It's the little things that make it all worthwhile.

Previously on Boston Public: Harry and Lauren aren't seeing anybody, and will set each other up, and it's a terrible idea to date at work; Harry takes a student to work at the morgue. Hey, both of those scenes really aired on the show! Imagine that.

The hallway. Steven and a teacher stride along, as the latter snarks, "I'm sick and tired of people looking at me sideways, like I'm some subpar teacher." Maybe you should stand in front of them, then. Ba dum bum. Steven says something reassuring, but apparently test scores are down and "that's all they care about, the test scores." The teacher needs new books, and has no faith that they'll arrive any time soon. "The fact is," says Tim, for that is the teacher's name, "Scott Guber doesn't care about math." Actually, Tim's voice sounds almost exactly like Scott "Anthony Heald" Guber's, doesn't it? Meanwhile, Tim has a heart attack in the stairwell. We see from his POV, and everything gets all slow-mohair, and Steven says, "Tiiimyooo okaaaay maannn?" and the math teacher crashes to the floor. Pandemonium. Fake CPR. Coach Kevin appears, looks at the man lying on the ground, motionless, with his eyes closed, and says, "Is he unconscious?" What a stupid question. But it sets up the powerful line that will take us into the opening credits: "He's dead." Gee, thanks, I didn't realize you had a degree in medicine. Care to call the time of death, Dr. Steven, or hazard a guess as to the cause? Perform an autopsy? I'm mean, seriously, even if there's no pulse, he's not "dead" yet, he fell down five seconds ago! Maybe Dr. Coach Kevin should give him a second opinion.

Opening credits. Feed smack to George Harrison. Force him to record music. Chain one thousand monkeys to the mixing board. Voila! "Music."

The hallway. The aftermath. Paramedics cart out the dead body of Tim The Math Teacher. "I'm alive!" he yells from beneath the sheet, but everyone ignores him because Dr. Steven pronounced him dead. Just kidding. Dr. Anthony Heald is saying, "He told me he passed a stress test three weeks ago." Dr. Coach Kevin says, "I heard a rumor that he and his wife separated." Dr. Steven says no, he just went to visit them, but Kevin insists it's true. As rumors always are. The Exposition Fairy pipes up on the Vice-Walkie-Talkie and tells Scott he's needed in the infirmary, and off he goes. Determined to ask an amazingly stupid question in every scene, Kevin says, "Steven, you okay?" No, dumbass, he just watched a man die. Steven says, "Yeah." Kevin ventures that Steven and Tim were "close" and Steven concurs, "We started together." If they were so close, one wonders, why didn't we see Tim anywhere in the first five episodes? Steven says, "He tried to talk me out of taking the principal job, said it would kill me." Oh, so now Tim's a doctor, too? No, wait, that was irony!

Close up of a bruise on some girl's ass. We're in the infirmary, and the school nurse is showing Anthony Heald a suspicious red mark on a student's hindquarters. Guber stares, thinking, "I wonder if Lauren Davis's tushy looks like that?" The girl asks if she can pull up her pants, and the nurse is all, "I just needed for the vice-principal to see it." Why? Have they cut some perverted deal? Isn't there a female administrator who could check out the evidence? Anyway, Anthony Heald is all, "Mrs. Walsh did this?" The girl says, "Yeah, it was one thing when it was a ruler, but she's got this paddle thing now. Can I go?" She probably needs to go buy some wrinkle cream, because this high-school girl is at least twenty-eight. Anthony Heald glowers, and turns his liquid metal hand into a paddle. The nurse tells Anthony Heald of another student in Mrs. Walsh's class who recently got an infection from a similar lesion. Ruh-roh, Mrs. Walsh.

Lauren's classroom. An ornery-looking student is saying, "Why are you settling on my ass?" I don't know if that's supposed to be clever, or if it's a coincidence, but in case it's the latter, here's a joke: transfer to Mrs. Walsh's class, kid, and learn what someone settling on your ass is really like. Zing! Anyway, Lauren is all, "I'm just asking if you did the assignment, Webster." Webster fires back, "Just like you axed yesterday, like you axed the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that." Axed? Oh, wow, that's even worse then the paddle, eh, Webster? Anyhow, Lauren says, "And did you do the assignments on these days?" Webster asserts that he does not respond well to harassment, and Lauren basically just tells him to shut up so she can get on with the class. "Bitch," he says, when she turns her back, and not too quietly if you know what I mean. She rounds on him, and he covers with intentional lameness by explaining that he was mad at himself and said, "Son of a bitch." Lauren, not fooled by his infantile shenanigans, makes him go stand in the corner. So apparently the theme of this episode is archaic punishments appropriate for children. Lauren turns her attention to a student named Susan (are they out of names already? Wasn't there already a Susan on this show?), only to note that her t-shirt bears the imperative: "Do Me."

Mrs. Walsh's classroom. A student is delivering an irreverent monologue about The Bard: "Look, I ain't sayin' he was a hoax. I'm just sayin' everyone thinks he's so trick 'cause he's dead." That's sort of what he says, though I'm not sure about the word "trick," but whatever. "I mean, Shakespeare," the kid goes on, "He probably changed his name, too. His real name was probably, like, Dwight Shwagg." Yeah, that was totally Shakespeare's real name. Also, why would anyone be snotty in a classroom where the teacher hits people with a paddle? Which I guess speaks to the efficacy of corporal punishment, or, in this case, its lack thereof. Meanwhile, Anthony Heald slips into the back of the room, just in time for the student to share his thoughts on Shakespeare's choice of subject matter, and his theory that the "to be or not to be" speech was all about Hamlet (or maybe Shakespeare, he's not clear) debating his own sexuality. Mrs. Walsh is all, "Oh, I just love a curious mind, Mr. Wilkins. But not when that curiosity is fueled by cynicism." Hey, how convenient, here comes the paddle.

Mr. Wilkins acts all cowed, like he couldn't see this coming ten miles away, and the teacher goes on, "Cynicism is like a cancer that rots the brain. It's like the media with all their negative blather, it's just saying, 'Notice me.'" Nice. A random nonsensical reference to the giant faceless "media" is always a good justification for hitting minors. Anyway, she makes Mr. Wilkins come to the front of the room, and smacks his ass really hard, twice. Everyone winces sympathetically. Where are we, Singapore? Ah ha ha ha ha!

Guber's office. Anthony Heald. Mrs. Walsh. She says, "I didn't even see you slip in, Scott." Yeah, no kidding, you Nazi. Anthony Heald says, "Marlene, I'm going to have to ask you to stop with the corporal punishment," and lists the casualties fallen at her hands. She blames it on getting used to the new paddle, but Vice-Stop-With-The-Corporal-Punishment stands firm. She tries to make some argument, based on technical legality and her years of experience, but it's bogus. Corporal punishment is only still allowed in some places only because no one's bothered to take the time to outlaw it, in turn because no one can imagine a public high-school teacher thinking they can get away with it. "You will not take your paddle to anyone, is that clear?" says Anthony Heald, and Mrs. Walsh seems miffed.

The hallway. Susan with the Do Me shirt protests, "It's freedom of speech!" Oh, so is everything at this stupid school. Dr. Steven says, "No it's not, it's sexual, it's vulgar, you will go home and change." Susan argues that some kid named Ronnie has a t-shirt that says "Sit On It." Steven says, "Ronnie is from 1974, and loves The Fonz." No, wait, he says, "Ronnie's shirt has enough ambiguity to pass muster, yours doesn't, go home and change it." Note that he said "change it" rather than "change into a different shirt." This will become important later, when she comes back in the same shirt. As they wander off down the hall, Lauren wonders how Susan's parents let her wear something like that, and Steven says, "They probably don't. She likely changes after leaving the house." The fiend! How diabolical! Lauren says, "Kids are growing up way too fast, I'm sorry." Steven agrees. Oh, give me a break. She wears a crass shirt and all of a sudden she's growing up too fast? If she were a grown-up, she'd know how to pick out an appropriate shirt. What she means is, "These kids are getting laid way more often than I am, and it bugs me."