"Previously on Fraternity Life..." we witness how the tension in the pledge house has been permanently set on "high," reliving the moments when Earl yelled at the other pledges for saying [bleep] while he was on the phone with his mother; Alex yelled at the pledges to get the [bleep] up and then ripped some sheets off a bed in the most sensitive hissyfit ever televised; the guys took out their frustrations by knocking each other loopy in the front yard. Steve and Paul both admit that there's a lot of tension among everyone, and that they're all reaching their boiling points. Which can mean only one thing: lotsa squabbling in tonight's episode! Grab your Cheetos, pop open a Pepsi product, and llllllet's get ready to rumbllllle!
The guys show up at the frat house for line-up, where George is looking especially Hitler-ish. He asks the pledges if they forgot their [bleep] tonight. I'm guessing they bleeped out "garlic bread" because none of them look to be carrying any garlic bread. George asks for a show of hands of anyone who didn't look their [bleep] over. Paul raises his hand, and George cruelly decides to start with him. George asks him what the preamble to the constitution is. Paul starts rambling off some [bleep] off the top of his head that sounds like it might be official, but it's apparently bull[bleep], because George says it sho' ain't the Constitution. Paul looks confused, and then realizes that he was reciting a love letter that he secretly wrote to himself the night before, and not the Constitution. George then turns to Alex and asks him if he knows the Constitution. Alex doesn't even try to fake it. "Sir, no sir," Alex replies, like the good little butt wrangler that he is. George says that memorizing the Constitution just might be something that the pledges should take the time to learn. I think he's being sarcastic. Tim stares at the camera and mumbles that there's a damned good chance none of them will make it into this fraternity, and will never experience the thrill of having a drunken Brad dry-hump their butts in a show of brotherly love on a crowded disco floor while singing "It's Raining Men" at the top of his lungs. Frustrated, George asks Earl to recite the Constitution. Earl needs a minute to swim through the massive amounts of stale vodka in his brain to retrieve the information. George greets this moment of clarity by jamming a finger into his own ear to try to reach his brain stem while he waits for The Pearl to drudge up some twisted fragments of the beloved Constitution. Earl starts babbling something, but it turns out that he's just reciting the ingredients of a Twinkie from memory. George gets frustrated and orders them all on the floor for push-ups. In the background, we hear Brad clap and squeal with joy. George tells the camera that, right now, this is the absolute worst pledge class they've ever had in the four year history of the fraternity. I hang my own head in shame for having to recap these pathetic shitwipes. George reiterates the mantra of Fraternity Life -- that there's a good chance none of these guys will ever make it into the fraternity. If I had $100,000 for every time I heard that phrase on this show, I'd be a freakin' multi-millionaire by now. Hell, I woulda made $200,000 in the first few minutes of this episode alone.
After they finish their push-ups, George tells them that they're all worthless scum and asks if they're aware that the alumni is coming to town this weekend. They're fully aware of that because, for the last several weeks, the brothers have been behaving as if Jesus and his disciples were stopping by for a Bible-signing. George informs the guys that the alumni are a lot meaner than he is. Then that one ass-chomper Mike the Puke says that a lot of the alumni have some pretty serious jobs, and that they're going to be hard to impress. Okay...I'm expecting a lot of guys in business suits with haircuts that have actually been combed showing up at the brothers' house. That's what I should be expecting...right? Yeah. And while I'm tossing out style tips, here's something else I'd like to touch on: the style of wearing baseball caps backwards. Guess what? This look is not going to help you in your quest to lose your virginity, Mikey. Without the hat, you already look like a half-baked pinhead who would break down in tears over the simplest of math problems...but wearing it backwards makes you look like a prime candidate for the Short Bus Hall of Fame. Lose the hat and wash your fucked-up greasy hair, you booger-eating cretin.
Over at the pledge house, Tim, Steve, and Paul are standing around the Beer Pong Table, mentally trying to will it to put itself together, to no avail. Mike the Puke says that the pledges were assigned to build a Beer Pong table, and that beer pong is a "very sophisticated game." Maybe in Ethiopia, you drooling simpleton. The "very sophisticated game" line makes me laugh so hard that I spill bong water all over myself, so now I smell like Woodstock while I watch this shit. Ain't life fucking grand? Apparently, the rules are as follows -- and please, for your own benefit, take notes: You throw a ping pong ball into a cup of beer. That's it. Yeah Mike. That's sophisticated, all right. Then again, we're talking about a guy who needs a set of blueprints to wipe his ass. Mike brags that he was part of the pledge class that built "the best beer pong table ever." This guy's eventually going to dislocate his elbow trying to pat himself on the back. Mike says it should take no longer than two days to build a beer pong table, while the graphic on the screen reminds us that the guys have now been working on this table for twenty-three days. Earl's playing PlayStation while the other guys stand around staring at the half-assed table like guys waiting their turn on a videotaped gang bang. Some brother named Brian says that the beer pong table won't get made until the pledges all come together as a group. Huh? Here's a news flash, Brian: it's a fucking table, dude. Hell, it's hardly even a table: it's a door on four legs with some badly painted Sigma Chi Omega letters on it. It's not world peace. It's not something people have to "come together" to build unless it takes more than one guy to hammer four nails into an old door. It doesn't teach the pledges anything other than that to be in a fraternity, you're going to have to swallow a lot of shit, but once you get accepted, you can turn around and give the pledge class a lot of shit to swallow. Basically, it teaches pledges the art of abusing people, which must fill their future wives with glee.
Meanwhile, the guys are having a very tepid argument over how to build the table, while Mike the Puke tells the camera that he feels like kicking their asses and telling them to leave the [bleeping] fraternity because they're slow workers. You know, it's a good thing nobody wanted to kick Thomas Edison's ass for being a slow worker, or else we wouldn't be able to watch this pathetic creature bitch about his soon-to-be buddies every week. Meanwhile, Jarreau says that nobody wants to work on the table, and that they either want to sleep or go out and party and have nothing to do with anything related to the fraternity. Gosh, Jarreau -- are you saying that the pledges would rather live life and think for themselves than do what a bunch of uptight assholes tell them to do? Then why the hell did any of you join a fraternity? Because I'll tell you, Pretty Boy...it doesn't get much better than this.
It's now Wednesday afternoon at 1:45 PM, and it's officially time to work on the Beer Pong table. The guys have ordered pizza, and rather than actually work on the table and accomplish the simple task laid before them, they've decided to take an extended PlayStation break. Jarreau catches Alex and Earl eating pizza and being zombiefied by the PlayStation, and is visibly disgusted. Mike the Puke comes through the back door. At first, I don't recognize him, since he's wearing his baseball cap correctly and doesn't look like a backwoods Forrest Gump wannabe. Alex dumps a fresh load in his boxers when he sees Mike. Mike asks what they've done today, and Earl boldly says that they haven't done jack[bleep]. He's apparently still drunk from the night before, because Mike's the guy who will demand a blowjob for smarting off to him like that. Earl offers The Puke a slice of pizza, hoping Mike will forget the whole thing. Mike declines and says that the pledges had better have the table done by Friday and had better not tell him that they didn't have enough time to finish it because that's [bleeping] bull[bleep]. Brian The Frat Brother tells the camera that this isn't rocket science; they're screwing four legs into a table top. Mike the Puke and Earl stare at the table as Mike informs the television viewing audience that the pledges don't work as a team, they all suck, and everything sucks. And he just can't believe they're about to induct these guys into his fraternity and take their parents' money.
At the Alumni Party, the pledges all have to wear these gaudy tuxedo t-shirts and serve the alumni beer and food. Paul -- wearing a bit too much eyeliner -- says that it's important to make a good first impression, and that he gave his ass not one but two douches for the occasion just in case the party turns ugly and they play "Drink Beer From Paul's Ass Crack" again. We see footage of the alumni in the basement, telling some women in attendance to take their tops off. Yeah. Fine upstanding young men, huh? I guess the "serious jobs" that Mike the Puke was saying the Alumni had amount to being bouncers in interstate strip clubs or something equally lucrative. Earl's disappointed that the pledges don't get to participate in the partying and are relegated to doing the dishes, among other chores. Jarreau spots something nasty in a cooking pot and says that he hopes all the guys have gotten their meningitis shots. Earl says he hasn't, but that he's had plenty of tequila shots. Tim -- wearing his hat backwards as well -- says that there's added pressure now that they have to impress the alumni as well as the brothers, and that it's like starting over from Day One again except that all of their sphincters are three inches wider now than they were back then. We finally get to see some of the alumni, and they all look like children. I was expecting business suits, briefcases, and cell phones. These guys look like Flounder with a job. Steve's walking around with his stupid stocking cap pulled down over his ears. Who deemed that look "cool"? Eminem? Jesus. Would somebody just please take Eminem out Tupac-style so that we can get rid of the stocking-cap-covering- 80%-of-the-head look? In my day, only the mentally handicapped kids wore their hats like that. As far as I know, they're the only ones who still do.
Earl and Alex decide to barricade themselves inside the house to finish the beer pong table at last. They stick a keg in front of the back door, close the curtains, and get down to business. Alex says that they're erecting the barricades because Mike the Puke is on his way over and they want to finish the table and not have his smarmy ass standing around telling them how much they all suck. In all fairness to Mike the Puke, the table does suck. I've never made a beer pong table myself. Hell, I'd never even heard of the unsanitary game until now. But I could have done a better job with a 2 x 4 and a sheet of rotted plywood. The guys hear a knock on the door and panic, but it's only Tim, Steve, and their respective goofy hats. Just as they come in, the doorbell starts ringing frantically. Steve's eyes grow wide and he goes running to hide like they're at some surprise party. The guys haul ass upstairs as whoever it is breaks in through the back door. Naturally, it's Mike the Puke, stopping by to raise everyone's self esteem with a rousing game of "You Suck, You Suck, And...Oh Yes: You Suck." Mike yells upstairs and asks why the table's not finished. Someone yells back, "We're, uhhh, having a serious talk right now." Tim explains to the camera that he thought if he told Mike the Puke that they were having a serious meeting, Mike would forgive the fact that the table wasn't yet finished and all would be forgiven and they'd spend the rest of the day singing Carpenters medleys. Tim says it had to have been obvious that they were trying to keep Mike from coming in, since the house was all barricaded and it looked as if they were preparing for World War III. Mike smarts off toward the camera, saying that the pledges keep making excuses for why it's not done and he knows they haven't done [bleeping] [bleep] except play [bleeping] PlayStation and [bleep]. We're finally treated to a visit from Brad, after a hiatus of several weeks, as he cockily says that the beer pong table has taken the pledges seventeen years to finish, and that, by now, it should be gold-plated with chrome cup holders. I'll bet every time he shows his face on this show, the amount of dick he gets in the bars just plummets. Tim says that the table won't be done today, tonight, or tomorrow, and that the alumni came at a really bad time. He excuses himself from the festivities to go jack off. Or study. Something.
The day, there's an alumni party at Brother Weaver's apartment. Don't ask me who Brother Weaver is. I have no clue. I could give a general answer and say "He's an insufferable prick" because that describes 99% of the brothers, so we'll go with that. The brothers and alumni are partying while the pledges sit at a card table and study for their pledge exam. Except Earl, who's passed out on the floor. to several bags of trash. I forgot what it's like to live like a college student, using the trash like beanbag chairs. Jarreau's worried, because the alumni are going to be running the line-up, and the pledges don't know their [bleep], and they really need to know their [bleep]. Tim and Alex are saying that it's difficult to study for their pledge exam while the brothers are partying [bleeping] three feet away from them. Tim asks why they're there and Alex says it's because they're [bleeping] pledges. Tim knows they're [bleeping] pledges but did they say that the [bleeping] pledges needed to be there? Alex is pretty sure that they did. George admits that part of the reason the [bleeping] pledges are there is because it's amusing to watch them get all stressed out trying to study for their exam when the brothers are being [bleeping] loud and obnoxious. Hardee har har. Tim is telling Alex and Jarreau that he's really getting stressed out because he needs to study, but the [bleeping] alumni are there and he wants to make a good impression on them, as we see Tim's "big brother" Aric explaining to the camera that Tim's stressed out because he's trying to study, but the alumni are there and he wants to make a good impression on them. Aric's nickname should be "Brokaw" because he's the king of breaking news. Aric adds that Tim will be okay, and that he's just feeling some extra pressure right now. Aric, by the way, is one scary-looking creature.
Steve sits down and says, "I don't know any of this [bleep]" as he picks up a paper and starts reading it. Jarreau starts to remind him that their exam is coming up, and that Steve doesn't know any of this pertinent information, and that if Steve doesn't know it, then he won't be getting into the fraternity. Steve says, "Bitch, don't [bleeping] tell me [bleep]. I [bleeping] know this [bleep], more than your [bleeping] ass knows [bleep]." Yet, he just admitted at the beginning of the paragraph that he didn't know any of this [bleep]. His stocking cap is obviously cutting off the circulation to his brain. Jarreau takes offense at the bleeping coming from Steve's mouth and gets a little testy with him, matching him [bleep] for [bleep]. Meanwhile, Tim's telling Alex not to talk to him. Alex asks why. Tim says, "Don't [bleeping] talk to me." Alex asks why again. This goes back and forth for a while like Abbott and Costello on crack. Tim admits in a poignant interview that he has a hard time memorizing things, like what exactly he might have told Nicole in the past that keeps her coming around like a poodle in heat. In a painful admission, he announces that he's not a test-taker, and suffers from text anxiety. Maybe a career in the wonderful world of ditch-digging would have been more appropriate for Timmy. Jarreau and Alex share several [bleeping] comments about Tim and Steve and their reluctance to learn anything about the fraternity in order to pass the upcoming exam. Seriously, Steve's on heroin. I'm not sure about Tim, but Steve's got that whole "nodding out in a dance club" look to him that only heroin users exhibit. I'd worry about the guy's health, but I'm more worried about the dog shit on the bottom of my shoe than I am about this guy. Finally, Mike the Puke decides to redeem himself, and tells the pledges that they can all go home to study for their exams. The pledges are ecstatic, and haul ass back to the pledge house to play some more PlayStation.
Earl tells the cameras that the brothers have all made a pact that they're going out to eat as a group, and that nobody will answer their phones because it's late and the only reason the phones would be ringing is if one of the brothers were drunk and hysterical in a dark alley with a beer bottle jammed up his ass, needing a ride to the emergency room. Sounds fair enough. Don't answer your cell phones. Alex's phone rings, and he picks it up in a heartbeat, earning several middle fingers jammed in his face. It's the mysterious Brother Weaver screaming something about a beer bottle, needing an x-ray immediately and begging for a ride. Earl and Jarreau tell Alex that he's a stupid [bleep]sucker. Alex says this is the third time Brother Weaver has called him tonight, and that if he didn't answer the phone, there was a good chance that none of them would make it into the fraternity. Earl screams, "You don't pick up the [bleeping] phone!" about three dozen times in a row. Earl seems to be the exact opposite of a "fun drunk." This leads to Earl and Alex screaming at each other with enough bleeping for them to send secret coded messages to space aliens to come bomb Earth and take out the frat boys first. Alex says that he didn't want to give Brother Weaver a ride, but now he has to. Earl says they can't all go out and eat as a group because Alex screwed it all up because he hates the other pledges and is a suck-ass little taxi service. Screaming ensues, but it's the same horseshit being screamed over and over again and does not bear repeating here. Earl suggests that maybe if he yells at Alex enough, Alex will stop being a [bleeping] idiot. Alex tells the camera that Earl has a tendency to get on people's nerves, especially Alex's. I mean, what the [bleep], he acts like such a [bleeping] bitch. He's right. Earl is a spoiled little Mama's boy who never got his ass whipped with a belt in the grocery store, and that's why he acts the way he does. If Earl had a male role model in the house growing up rather than a string of johns humpin' his mama and then stiffing her on the money they owed, maybe he'd be a bit more rational now. Jarreau wonders if Alex's head was firmly planted in his ass when the phone rang. And if not, could Jarreau maybe...you know...plant his face in Alex's ass for a while? Maybe? Please?!
The guys are getting ready for their big, super-duper special secret Sunday line-up, which will be administered by the alumni. They're a bit worried, because they don't know their stuff and are going to look ridiculous in front of the alumni. Tim says (with a serious lump in his throat) that it's the last place he wants to be, and that nobody knows anything, and that they haven't had time to prepare or study. They're about as far away from each other as they've ever been -- even further than when they first started. They do that stupid elephant walk into the house as Mike the Puke presides over them. Thankfully, the line-up won't be televised, because rituals will be performed. After all, there's only so much male-on-male sexual torture allowed on MTV, and the upcoming Madonna video has dibs on it.
Instead, we get a compilation of black and white footage of past line-ups at which the cameras were allowed. It's got this strange David Lynch-ian kind of feel to it as echoes have been added to the voices and George is wearing a black cloak, standing in a circle of fire and beating his teeny weenie with his gap-toothed smile peering through the darkness. Afterward, Tim says he thinks that the ritual opened all their eyes, and that it will, he hopes, see them come together as one. Oh. See, I thought the Golden Sword experiment would have accomplished that. Or the countless other times the brothers have tried to instill a sense of brotherhood into the guys and were met with blank stares, random nose-pickings, and some serious PlayStation withdrawals.
After the ritual, the pledges are all standing around the pledge house, because their asses are too blistered to sit down, when the doorbell rings. Steve the Alum has brought the alumni over so that the pledges can get to know them. Most of the alumni look like the guys you see toweling off your car at the end of the car wash downtown. They sure don't look like professionals. David Schwimmer is spotted in a hallway. Somebody has brought his midget girlfriend with him, and there's the usual "She's a great girlfriend because she's three foot high and I can rest my beer on her head while she blows me" jokes. The alumni obviously don't have the game that these pledges have. The pledges are bringing home dog-faced strippers while the alumni are bringing home midgets that look like the kid in Mask. Anyway, they all sit down together, and the alumni are cracking on George, saying that when he's sitting in fraternity meetings, he gets a blank stare on his face as if he could actually feel Brad's semen drooling out of his ass at that very moment. The pledges are enjoying this moment and are finding out that the alumni are cool; it's the brothers who are dicks. Tim says it was a wake-up call for everyone. Tim's had so many wake-up calls in this episode, you'd think he'd look more alert. Alas, he looks like he just rolled out of bed and hit a bong on his way out. Just like the end of every other episode of this show, they've gotten a wake-up call. But then, week, they're right back in their half-asleep mode, being a royal bunch of fuck-ups.
This motivating kick in the ass has allowed the pledges to come together and finish the beer pong table as a team. The heart is warmed as we see footage of the guys smiling and enjoying each other's company and finishing the beer pong table. Earl even says it will be the best beer pong table ever, which is meant to bring a proud tear to the eye of the viewers at home. You know -- the ones who haven't switched the channel by now. They all go out to dinner together, which Tim says they haven't done in [bleeping] forever. Steve drawls that dinner is a good time for everyone to talk and get to know each other. That Steve. He's one insightful sperm rag. Tim says that the beer pong table was a turning point for the pledges, as they started on the path of being brothers. Alex says what matters most is that they can come away from all this as friends. Awwww. I'm gagging on the bile that keeps rising in my throat from all the love that's in the air.
week, Earl goes on a rampage, destroying bedrooms and shit until someone breaks out an elephant tranquilizer gun and takes his ass OUT! Meanwhile, Steve has gotten on everyone's nerves, which is either due to his mischeivous nature of giving the other pledges Tabasco-douches while they're asleep, or his fanatical love for playing Wayne Newton records at full volume late at night. Either way, it looks like the other pledges have finally had enough of his shit. Here's to hoping they get a wake-up call and come together as a team to work their way through this tragedy.