Previously on Fraternity Life, America found out what happens when a group of rushees want to pledge a fraternity run by a pathetic bunch of whiny fuck puppets. The answer? Not a whole hell of a lot. The fuck puppets had trouble coming down off of their high horses long enough to accept more than three or four of the rushees. Grant fully expected to receive a bid, convinced that he had wowed the brothers with his unique brand of cocky and arrogant charm. Alex's girlfriend has not only been labeled a bitch, but has quickly developed a reputation as a manipulative psychotic bitch by no less an expert than Earl.
This week, we're greeted by the prerequisite shots of Buffalo, New York. The home of the Buffalo Wing and bitterly cold and nasty winters. I had a chance to move to Buffalo once. Maybe it was Albany. It could have been Toronto. I really don't remember. Decades of hardcore glue-sniffing will do that to a guy, y'know? We see Alex and Grant going to a miniature golf course where the girl asks them what kind of balls they want. Alex hooks a thumb at Grant and says, "He wants blue balls," and then...wait a second. Holy shit. This is exactly same scene that was in last week's episode. The dialogue, the camera angles, the lame jokes...is this what we can expect of this freakin' show? To run the same scenes over and over again? ["Are you sure it's not just that these morons go miniature golfing a lot and always make the same weak-ass joke?" -- Wing Chun] Granted, I understand that we've got a bunch of dull frat boys who don't even know the meaning of the word "charisma," but the least they could do is show us some more local scenery or something to make this at least appear fresh.
We get some more scenery from Buffalo. You can never have enough of the local scenery in an MTV reality show. I'm feeling as peaceful and tranquil as a Mother's Day Card from Hallmark. We're magically transported to an emergency meeting concerning Pledge Bids. Colin is conducting the meeting while his ears are taking the night off. I'm not exactly sure what he's talking about. It's got something to do with fraternities, but it's Greek to me. Get it?! It's Greek to me?! Anyway, we're told that everyone voted on the pledges and then left. They all voted exactly the same, and they ended up with a pledge class of about three guys. So the standards to let a guy pledge have been dropped from 90% of the guys liking him to 80% of the guys liking him, thus changing the ratio of guys who are voted in. Colin explains that the brothers only had about ten days to get to know the rushees, and sometimes that's not enough time for everyone to meet the guy and form an opinion on him. Basically, they have to lower their standards of guys they want to call "brothers" for the four years in order to have a cast large enough to qualify for an MTV series. They vote on this lowering of their standards, and the brothers grudgingly agree, so it's accepted. I've had recent visits to the urinal that were more dramatic than this shit.
Oooooh, Niagara Falls! I've never been there, but it looks simply breathtaking and...crap. I can't lie. This whole local-scenery crap is boring as hell. I'm here to watch obnoxious frat boys vomit all over each other, not a freakin' waterfall. Eventually, we weave our way back to Sigma Chi Omega as the brothers prepare the bid offers. They've got little slips of paper that say, "With this flower, we the men of Sigma Chi Omega extend to you a bid offer for pledge ship. If you decide to accept this offer, cram the flower up your ass and show up at the house where you'll be forced to eat the crushed flowers out of each other's asses as part of your hazing." Yet, they're tying these slips to candles. Does anybody really want to be in a fraternity that can't tell the difference between a candle and a flower? And does anybody want to be in a fraternity that hands out flowers as an invitation to join them? I mean, other than Jarreau?
The brothers then go on their quest to hand out the candles. They show up at Earl's house wearing ties and baseball caps and present him with a bid. Earl is all calm like he expected it. Then again, he saw the losers he was competing against and could tell he'd be a shoo-in as long as he didn't drop acid and dry-hump the frat house furniture or anything stupid like that. The guy presenting the candle to Earl had to read his lines off an index card. He must be a liberal arts major. Matt's the to receive his bid. Then Mike. We then hear from Ron, who's an alumnus and looks to be in his mid-thirties, saying that Mike "seemed" like he wanted to pledge and that he "seemed" to be a decent guy, so Ron vouched for him. Does anyone else smell trouble here? And is anyone else wondering why a guy in his mid-thirties is still hanging around a frat house? I picture Ron living in a trailer with an obese wife who never changes out of her favorite muumuu, and a child who was born with its lungs outside its body, so that he finds sliding around in puddles of vomit at the frat house to be a Shangri-La compared to going home and kissing the cow and rocking Lung Boy to sleep each night. Alas, I digress. Mike bumps chests with a guy as a show of solidarity for his bid. Paul receives his bid, but we don't see his name on the screen. I'm not saying that's evidence of a complete lack of respect for the guy, but I think it's kinda shitty for MTV just to expect us to have everyone's names memorized by now. , Dan gets a bid, as does Steve. Both Ron T. and Ron M. get bids. One of the Ron Brothers was on the "dumper" when his bid came in. The other Ron was glad he got Ron out in time to receive his bid. I know what he means. I've heard the urban legends of guys who didn't get bids simply because they were preoccupied with passing the gooey chocolate log at the time, and had to live life in a Frat-less obscurity. The horror...the horror. Alex gets a bid. He says he's ecstatic, and hopes everything goes smoothly from now on. This poor kid's as brain-dead as Jack Nicholson at the end of Cuckoo's Nest.
Then we come to Grant, the drama queen from last week. Mike says that Grant will not be receiving a bid because he stepped on a lot of brothers' toes while rushing. Oh that's just great -- don't pledge the guy because he's clumsy. What a bunch of assholes. Jimmy says that Grant is cocky and insincere. Being cocky's fine as long as you're already a brother. But as a rushee, you're not allowed to show any semblance of personality other than homoerotic adoration toward each of the brothers. This should serve as an important message to you high-school boys at home who want to pledge a fraternity as soon as you get to college: don't waltz in there with your cockymeter cranked to 11. Grant says he feels pretty shitty about not receiving a bid, and thinks that if he had more than just a week and a half's worth of time, he would have stood a good chance to show each of them who he really was. Plus, he probably would have gotten to nail a couple of their mothers in the process.
Alex and Grant are talking outside. Alex isn't able to think straight because it's a bittersweet victory. He wanted in, but he wanted Grant to receive a bid, too. In addition, he wanted his girlfriend to understand his dilemma and still keep ponying up the sex, and a little world peace couldn't possibly hurt. Alex knows Lindsey won't be able to accept this wrinkle in their relationship, and he's not exactly sure that he wants to bid. Grant -- who would literally kill for a bid -- actually shows compassion as he tells Alex to do something for himself for a change: accept the bid, and not pay attention to what his psycho girlfriend says. Alex says he has to throw up, and he starts stumbling around in awkward circles. The cameras follow him into a campus bathroom where he's wiping his mouth and spitting into a drinking fountain after apparently vomiting in it. The guy put the "class" in "classy." He says he's nervous and upset because now he has to decide if this bid will be beneficial to his relationship with Lindsey. Alex, if you happen to be reading this without your girlfriend's permission, let me relate a quick story to you. When I was your age, I was going through the same problems. I had a manipulative girlfriend who didn't want me doing anything while I was in college, either. She basically controlled everything I did in my life. Here we are, twenty years later and guess what? I haven't heard from her once in those twenty years. Granted, that's probably because I had finally had enough of her shit and she's rotting in a shallow grave on the side of a dirt road somewhere in the middle of Kentucky, but that's beside the point. Do not let a woman run your life while you're still young and carefree. There's enough time for that when you're my age. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go give my wife a written detailed account of my time spent on the computer and assure her that I'm not spending all my time on www.nudecrackheadteens.com again.
I'm back. Alex is now on the phone to a friend and says he threw up "all over" a bathroom. If that were truly the case, wouldn't it have turned him inside out by now? Before he got the bid, he thought he wanted the bid. But now that he has the bid, he's not sure that he wants the bid. He says that we will all soon see if he shows up at the house to accept his bid or not. Golly, the tension's so thin you can cut it with a spork.
Even more scenery from beautiful downtown Buffalo, where men are men and whores are twenty bucks a pop. Alex and Matt are enjoying some delicious Buffalo pizza. Matt's telling Alex that his parents don't want him to pledge because they'd rather he got good grades instead of throwing kegs through plate-glass windows and killing innocent pedestrians or hanging out with guys who enjoy taking a dump in the reservoir tank of a toilet for kicks. Alex says that if he hadn't managed to get a bid, the decision to pledge would have been made for him. But since he received a bid, he was finally going to have to make the first decision of his life. Alex. Babe. Here's the telephone number of a friend of mine. She's a loan officer at a local bank. Give her a call, calmly explain your predicament to her in quiet hushed tones, and then see if maybe she can float you a loan so you can take a check by your local hospital and put a down payment on a fucking spine, you fragile piece of fossilized dog shit.
We make it to Pledge Bid Acceptance Night. Naturally, all the drama hinges on whether Alex will actually show up to accept his bid, thus hocking a loogie in the face of that demon seed of a girlfriend of his. We see that Jarreau has made it in a tight pink tank top and cute little barrettes in his hair. Maybe the frat needed someone to be in charge of festive decorations or something. Dan, the disheveled smack addict-looking mofo, is here. Is it just me, or does Dan look like a younger Keith Richards who's always on the verge of crocodile tears? Fine, it's just me. Mike, Matt, Earl, Paul, Tim, Steve, and the Ron Brothers have all shown up. Wait! There's Alex! The suspense is over: Alex will be pledging after all! Hallelujah! That just makes me want to crank up "God Bless America" and pump my fist in the air like a maniac. Man, I'll tell ya, I was a bit worried there for a minute. I mean, what kind of fraternity would this be without a pitiful little cranky bitch baby along for the ride? Steve was the only one not wearing a tie to the big night. Hey, don't put yourself out or anything, Stevie. It's only Bid Acceptance Night, the most important night of your life! Alex says that whether or not his relationship stays strong, he knows that he's trying to take control of the situation for once. You know, as long as Lindsey says it's okay. Matt strong-arms Colin into talking about his parents and their lack of approval of his joining a fraternity. Colin assures Matt that he will talk to his parents the day and convince them that Matt's doing the right thing. Paying large sums of money to a group of strangers to be your friends for four years: it's not only the right thing to do, but it's the goddamned American thing to do.
The guys are reminded that this is their last night of freedom, which must have been the title of a Bob Dylan album at one point or another. Starting the day, the pledges will be put through some rigorous training, and only the strong will survive. They're told to get into a single file line from the shortest to the tallest, and to enter the house, each with his right hand on the right shoulder of the guy in front of him. They all enter the house, but since they're about to undergo a secret ritual, the cameras are not allowed. Heaven forbid we actually see something that might possibly be considered "interesting" here. I have developed some theories on what might have happened once the cameras were shut off. However, most of them revolve around random variations of anal rape and nipple torture, so I'll let you guys just make up your own sick and depraved minds as to exactly what happened. Later on, we see the guys in a bar. They've found a group of sorority girls to dance and flirt with. Even Jarreau is getting down with the ladies, dancing around like J.Lo on amphetamines.
The first day of pledging begins. Everyone is supposed to be at the house at 7 AM, with many of the pledges having slept on the porch the night before to prove their undying loyalty to a bunch of slobs. Dan looks like he could definitely use a morning fix. As 7 AM rolls around, they notice that some of the guys haven't shown up yet. Mike the Brother says that this is the first time somebody has been late on the very first day. The pledges rally to call their missing brothers, and finally locate Steve at 8:24 AM. Because Steve was late, the pledges all have to clean the Fraternity House from top to bottom. Steve wins the coveted prize of "Most Likely To Be Yanking Nikes Out Of His Ass All Night Long." This is the same house we saw during "Meet The Greeks," which is filthier than Phyllis Diller's underwear. We watch the guys clean the house and see a mop bucket full of black water. Black. That's how filthy the floors are here. No wonder Matt's parents didn't want him living there: he could get scabies from the furniture. The Ron Brothers -- who have been missing in action all morning -- finally come strolling up just as the house-cleaning is finished. Earl says it's not fair. Damn. That boy should be in pre-law with those wack deduction skills.
We then see the guys all bonding at a football game. Ron, the thirty-eight-year-old alumnus who drifts from job to job, never staying anywhere long enough to matter and the father of the amazing Lung Boy, gets a phone call from Colin. One of the pledges is already in another frat! Ron can't believe such a thing could happen, but Colin's ears speak up and confirm the news. Ron's furious! Who knows what's going to happen now? Bloodshed? Gunfire? Crying jags? Oh. By the way, the pledge is Mike, the guy who'd take a monkey on a deserted island. So you have to ask yourself, is a dirty monkey fucker really worth losing sleep over? And the answer, at least in my mind, is a hearty "I dunno."
It's now move-in night. Earl says that his mom has always cooked and done his laundry for him, so this should be an experience. That's not really a problem. But if he needs an illustrated step-by-step diagram on how to wipe his ass, that's going to be a problem. We get our first glimpse of the pledge house, and it's okay. I think the guys got the shaft; the Real World people have always gotten much better houses. Hell, even the Tough Enough crew got classier digs. Earl's happy with it, as is Paul. I don't have to live there, so as long as these guys are happy, I'm happy. (I'm not really, but rather than arguing the point, I'll leave it be.) Dan signals his approval by passing out in a pool of detoxing vomit. All the pledges receive a key to the house except for Matt, who channels Herve Villechaize as he announces that he has decided he needs to "de-pledge de-pledge" because his parents have threatened to cut off funding if he goes into a fraternity. I guess that's the kind of thing you want to run by your parents before scootering off to college. "Mom, Dad...thanks for paying my tuition for the four years. Think you might be able to foot the bill for me to hang around this group of dorks for the four years, too?" Jake -- making his first and only appearance in this week's show -- says that he can thympathize becauthe it thhowth that he'th a thinthere perthon and he'th doing it for the right reasonth. Meanwhile, Daffy Duck places his duckbill in his hands and slowly shakes his head back and forth.
Alex is talking to the Princess of Darkness, Lindsey, on the phone. He's telling her there's no reason for her to be upset, and that he had to sleep on the porch of the frat house the first night because he had to be there at 7 AM to start kissing frat-boy ass. He admits that there's nothing he can do right now that would please her, and says that, for once, he's going to do something for himself. Wow. Sounds like the spine transplant may have been a success. We see a picture of Alex with his arms around Lindsey's waist during happier times when Alex wouldn't dare do anything that she didn't approve of first.
Ron's on the warpath, looking for Mike to "take care of the situation that he's created." After all, Ron vouched for him, and when you vouch for someone, you go out on a limb for him, and the last thing you need to hear is that you're pulling some guy in to be pledged who has already pledged elsewhere. This is the kinda shit that starts wars in Third World countries, fer chrissakes. The two of them go off to talk in the back yard. Apparently, Mike made it all the way to the ritualistic part of his pledging at his last fraternity and man, oh man, that's a big no-no. Once you've gone through a ritual at one frat, you can't do it in another. Unless you're some kind of masochist who gets off on that kinda stuff. Maybe Mike thought they'd let him have sex with a monkey. Who knows? Mike tries to apologize, but Ron tells him that he has no idea how Ron feels right now. They could have ended up friends, but not now, because Mike has made himself look like an idiot on national TV. Ron's older and tells Mike that this is the last time they will ever talk. All lines of communication end now. Sheesh. Sounds like somebody's been watching too much of The Sopranos lately. Ron's furious because he took Mike under his wing, and what Mike did to the fraternity was disrespectful. Ron tells the camera that if Mike ever sees Ron in public, he'd better walk the other way. Wouldn't it be funny if Mike someday gets to be a CEO of a company and Ron's looking to get a job because once again he's down on his white trash luck and Lung Boy needs diapers?
Now we're treated to autumn shots of Buffalo. Leaves turning brown. Wind rustling through trees. Sorority girls flashing the camera and screaming "Go Hogs!" for no apparent reason. Ron T., one of the infamous Ron Brothers, calls a meeting early in the morning. Everyone sleepily comes downstairs, where Ron announces that he's decided to de-pledge. He feels that he's only putting across a half-assed effort and if that's the case, he's not going to do it at all. Nobody seems to be that bent out of shape about it. I mean, Dan's standing there trembling and scratching his arms, but other than that, there's no reaction from anyone. Later that evening, Ron M. wants to call a meeting. Everyone stumbles back downstairs, where Ron M. de-pledges as well. The drama is sucked out of the scene as the brothers just stare at him. Nobody begs him to stay. Nobody begs him to leave. They just sit there like they're watching the Local on the 8's of The Weather Channel. Ron M. says that he's just not committed to the fraternity like he thought he'd be. Here's my take on the situation: the Ron Brothers saw the MTV cameras and thought this was their opportunity at the big time. Then when they were forced to shove the equivalent of a small petting zoo up their asses during the first hazing, they got a little shell-shocked from the experience and decided that television exposure wasn't worth wearing jockeys stuffed full of maxi pads to absorb the butt blood. With three people de-pledging in twenty-four hours and another one being regarded as a spy from another fraternity, Mike the brother deducts that these four guys were all pussies who didn't want to be in the frat in the first place. I'm thinking Mike's going to end up an alcoholic motivational speaker someday.
At the pledge house, the pledges are instructed not to touch a drop of alcohol until they're initiated, and that's if they're initiated. George the Pledgemaster says that it's his job to whip these kids into shape because he's the one giving out orders and telling them what to do. Paul admits that being a pledge is stressful -- even more so during their very first line-up. Brian (Brian?! Who the hell is this Brian guy?) says that this is how they get across what they want them to know about the fraternity. What? That they're a bunch of raging assholes who take the money from pledges' parents and then subject the pledges to unsafe and humiliating tasks all in the name of "building character"?! No thanks. If it makes me less of a man not to want to do that, let me remind you...in my college days, while frat boys slept with each other each night in their little clubhouses, I was sleeping with the sorority girls in my dorm room. Booyah, ya thimble-dicked freaks. The pledges are forced to do push-ups in the hallway, and then they get the heralded "on time" speech: "If you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. And if you're late, don't bother showing up." Alex isn't sure whether he needs to be afraid of George. Maybe he needs to call his girlfriend to find out how he should feel. George gives the guys their issues of importance: Grades are #1, Family is #2, the Fraternity is #3, God is #4, and Zesty Chex Party Mix is #5. He tells the pledges about the three-strike rule: screw up three times and you're out. Plus, all of the pledges have to go everywhere together. It's a good thing this house has a decent-sized bathroom that will hold all six of them at once. George thinks it's horrible that guys have de-pledged. That's never happened before. Alex doesn't want to de-pledge and doesn't think that he will, but that all depends on whether Lindsey pulls her claws out long enough to let him go through the pledge process. Meanwhile, George keeps pushing them to their physical limits as the episode ends.
week, Earl drives like a blind senior citizen and makes Alex hit his head on the dash while Steve decides he's going to do whatever he wants, which apparently ruffles a few feathers, because as any pledge in a fraternity house will tell you, independent thinking is verboten.