Previously on Get Real: another recap of the pilot. Parents aren't having sex. Kenny meets a blonde. Meghan isn't going to college.
As we fade into Meghan asleep on her bed, she tells us she's having a "kick-ass dream" where she's flying and telling her graduating class in true Say Anything style, "Go back." Essentially. But in a less entertaining way. Meanwhile Mitch and Mary are telling their therapist about their kids' problems. Cameron is in class. His teacher is lecturing to the class about death. Cameron opens his enormous mouth and eats an apple with an unnecessarily loud sound effect. The teacher asks Cameron to put the fruit away. He moves his greasy hair aside and begins eating a banana. "Why must you always question authority?" the teacher asks. "Why must authority always question me?" Cameron retorts, and the class gives him the obligatory guffaw. Cameron is sent to the Vice Principal's office "again." The parents continue talking to the therapist to say that Kenny is a hornball. The therapist asks Mitch when was the last time he laid his body on Mary's and let her "smell your smells." She tells them to do it all for the nookie.
The guidance counsellor is talking to Rolly-Eyed Meghan but we can see that he's reciting a speech "I'm not the mother from My So-Called Life but I'm almost" Mary wrote for him. Meghan asks the camera, "Mom, how could you?" And we go to a quick opening credit and our first commercial before we can see Meghan push her hair back and scowl.
I noticed last week how much Kenny looks like the Pepsi girl and I was going to make a joke about it. I found out that he's her brother. I'm good. I watch a Pepsi commercial and enjoy seeing his more talented sister pretend she's Barry White. I don't even like the Pepsi commercials. I don't like Pepsi. But I do like it when the younger sister in a thirty-second piece can show up the older brother in a fifty-five-minute piece.
Back in the "Real World," Mitch and Mary are in an elevator debating the sex therapist's advice. They go through their dayplanners to make sex plans. An elderly couple enters the elevator and listens. Mitch and Mary settle a time for "lunch." They leave and the old guy gets the cap: "Someone's going to the bone yard." I'm nauseous.
Meanwhile, "I can't believe I'm so aghast again" Meghan and Cameron are at the office. Meghan leaves angry. Cameron sees his friend Tennisha. She's in for "public display of independent thought." "Later?" she asks. "Sooner," he responds. He's so friggin' cool. At the same time Kenny is showing around the new girl. She's wearing a blue bra today. New girl's name is Rebecca Peabody, poor girl. victor interrupts to talk to Kenny and for some reason Kenny introduces him to us again. If you didn't know where this scene was going -- Kevin ditches Paul to spend time with Winnie.
Interesting note: Executive producer and director, Scott Winant is not listed in the opening credits. Guess it's not such "one big family" after all.
Meghan isn't jealous of other girls getting invited to Berkeley. Really. Honestly. She means it. Get off her damn back about it. She looks at us and says her new catch-phrase, "Whatever." She continues to smart-ass us until she goes to class. The Infinity song starts up as we are forced to watch Mitch and Mary have a quickie. Mary tries to get Mitch into some post-coital discussion, but the pager interrupts. He whispers something in her ear about whipped cream. As they run into the kitchen in their bathrobes, we see Cameron at the refrigerator eating the last of the whipped cream. The kitchen is full of family and friends. They all make sex jokes about Mitch and Mary getting it on. Kenny rats on Cameron getting busted at school. Grandma makes some sort of mention about a doctor's appointment and everyone ignores her as usual. Mitch goes to talk with Cameron as Meghan starts to lay into Mary for meddling in her college choices. Mary won't apologize. Neither will Cameron. Mr. Monkey Ears attempts some lame-ass parallel between his eating fruit in class and "What Adam did. Or was it Eve?" The size of his head alone is further proof of Darwinism. Meghan is so frustrated with the whole event that she goes out and gets her navel pierced. At this point you wonder why Meghan is never around any friends. Perhaps she eye-rolled them into comas. Fade to commercial as Meghan shouts in pain.
Kenny's sister is selling Pepsi by being Aretha Franklin.
Back to the Get Real gospel song as Kenny teaches Rebecca the cafeteria rules. Cameron skates by wearing his helmet. I giggle at how stupid that looks. Kenny is falling hard for Rebecca. Meanwhile Grandma is in the doctor's office thinking about her recently departed husband. She bails. Mitch comes home early with groceries. Cameron raids the bag and jokes that he's flattered, but he's "not really a Trojan man." He figures out the condoms are for Mitch and says the one funny line this episode: "Oh, Dad! Goin' for the two-peat!" Mitch wants to know why he has to have a meeting with the Vice Principal. Tennisha shows up and leaves with Cameron. Mitch calls Mary to announce that he has champagne. She's working and says she'll be home in a couple of hours. He brings up the whipped cream again and asks if he can go there. I don't think a school fundraiser is the place to watch Mitch and Mary use whips and chains, but you know, those kids are kinky.
Grandma is depressed in the park.
It is daylight. Kenny is stalking Rebecca by peeping in her window to watch her play cello. It is dark out. Meghan says she's at the library but we see her at a party. Of course, this is a TV party, so no one is smoking, everyone is wearing clothes from Wet Seal and all drinking is done out of red plastic cups. Meghan's hair is filled with butterfly clips. She meets a boy with glasses and a piece of hair on his face that inspired a discussion between my boyfriend and me as to whether it's referred to as a Soul Patch or a Flavor Saver. To the satisfaction of "I'm doing this to piss Mom off" Meghan, the new boy is twenty-three.
Back at the house of recent sex, Mitch is alone thinking about what it is to be a husband and a dad. Cameron is staring out his window. Kenny is staring into Rebecca's. Meghan is making out with Flavor Saver Boy. Fade to white.
Go Kenny's sister. Sell that soda. I see a conspiracy here.
Kenny dreams that he saves Rebecca's life at school by discovering her fainted body and announcing that her bra is too tight. She wakes up and kisses him. Since he was daydreaming, he didn't notice that victor has been trying to talk to him about his dad and that girl Amber he's been living with for a year. Although it's been a long time, victor is still upset about it. Rebecca interrupts their conversation with her red bra and her giant belly button. She asks Kenny to come to her house that weekend. Because this is the Real World we see Mitch and Mary show up at the school and give Kenny a hug. The hallway is really empty even though it's between classes. Kenny begins to whimper because boys are checking out his mom's ass. "A mom's ass shouldn't be scoped!" he whimpers, and I start to realize how much he sounds like Jim Breuer's Goat Boy. Because the Green kids are always in a thirty-foot radius of each other, Mitch and Mary discover Meghan's newly pierced (not red or swollen) navel ring. They are not pleased. They are mad that she was twenty minutes late for curfew the night before. They find out about Older Flavor Saver Boy and tell her not to go out with him. "You guys can't tell me what to do about everything," she brats out, and phones Soul Patch boy to make a date. Mitch and Mary meet the Vice Principal, whom they feel is too young, so they instantly assume they know more than she does. She announces she's suspending Cameron for three days for his repeated acting-out. She says she knows he's distracted and "embraces the extreme sport culture" as some sort of reason for his behavior. I guess it starts with the Surge and moves on to being a complete idiot and then it's straight to armed robbery. That's how you do the Dew. Mitch and Mary say they've never heard about Cameron behaving badly. VP tells them she's sent home notices before. Mitch and Mary decide they should talk to Cameron. Meanwhile at a locker thirteen feet away Kenny is staring at new girl Rebecca at her locker fifteen feet away and stresses about their potential upcoming date so much that his umbrella gets an erection and he withers into the locker.
Back at home, Mary confronts Grandma about skipping the doctor's appointment. More lamenting over "Dad," who doesn't warrant any other name in this show. Mary tells a story about how when she was a little girl and scared to go to school, Grandma sat outside the steps of the school all day in case she needed anything. Mary says she'll go to the doctor with Grandma. The phone rings and it's Mitch. He's at a motel room and wants Mary over pronto. More overlapping lovin' scenes. Afterwards, Mary asks through her rumpled hair if Mitch wants to spend some time together in the room. Mitch mumbles something about the "Phoenix deal." "I have to talk to him," Mary think-talks as she leaves the motel.
Meanwhile, using the "I haven't seen this since the 70s" split-screen style of television filming, Kenny continues Get Real's attempt to bash every other prime-time show by asking victor what the appeal of JAG is. victor interrupts with my most hated word in this show's vocabulary: "Dude...You're not listening. I really need to download." Rebecca beeps on call waiting so we can have a momentary triangle screen. Kenny hangs up on victor. Rebecca asks if Kenny's coming over this weekend. He's worried about not telling her right now or she may forget him "faster than 4 Non Blondes." I want to tell Kenny that I have to hear that song at least once a week still because it's made three comebacks in five years but I don't want to waste my time. Kenny's voice-over warbles as he freaks out about what to say. He chooses this: "I...uh...can't. I've got a barbecue." Lame. Not Kenny, the writing. Lame.
Meanwhile, Meghan and Mom argue about her curfew. "Brats Kick Ass" Meghan retorts with, "Someday you'll have to stop treating me like your own personal Mini-Me." How hip is this show, I ask you? Mary stares out the door as Meghan glares at her from inside Soul Patch Boy's car. "I know that look. It's the same look I used to give my mother." "I know that look," Grandma says over her shoulder right on cue. Ba-da-boom-cha! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. She'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Mitch offers whipped cream to Mary as Cameron practices his math skills by counting the number of times he can spit out his gum and catch it in his mouth. They ask Cameron why they never got any notes from his teacher. "She said take them home," his ears flap. "So I did." Mitch and Mary go into parental brain mode and say, "We just want to help." Cameron goes into bad teen brain mode and says they wouldn't understand. "We're worried about you," they say. This starts the water works for poor Cam. He gets all sniffly and weepy in a way that reminds me of when Soleil Moon-Frye had to cry in Punky Brewster. He's all blinking and sniffing and looking up in the air. He's worried too. "I'm gonna be a senior year and that means two things. It means that (a), I'm gonna have better parking and (2) I'm gonna be one year closer to the real world." He gets upset that he was too retarded to understand the PSATS and then in the midst of his emotional rant spits his gum in the air and catches it, shouting a heart-felt "Twenty-six!" I give my first belly laugh ever because I imagine this was the audition monologue every prospective Cam had to give for this show. He wraps up his rage with, "What if I'm stupid?" He says that this "isn't about 'we.' It's about me." He walks off pushing his greasy-ass hair.
Meghan is talking a mile a minute on her date, yet again explaining her entire family. The only new thing we learn here is Mitch's job. He's in real estate development. "I know, that's so 'rape the environment,'" Meghan snorts. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Soul Patch boy is too cool in his jazz coffee club setting to be frazzled by Meghan's mindless chatter and he uses words like "nanosecond" so we know he's probably been to college. He asks when Meghan has to be home. She says something really pithy like, "Oh. Whenever."
Mitch and Mary have a short discussion about whether they screwed Cameron up. Cameron is lying in the backyard still spitting and catching his gum. He's only on fifty-six. He's slow with math. Kenny joins him and tries to get advice about Rebecca. "You wanna know what I think?" Cam asks him. "I think I don't care." Cameron then goes into a big speech about how Mitch and Mary have given up on him. It's pretty obvious since Mitch and Mary gave Meghan their "M" name, but then just stopped with Cameron. He's upset that they didn't "freak" when they found out he was hiding notes. Meghan shows up late for curfew and joins them on the bench. She doesn't know if she really liked her date, or if she only liked it because it pissed of her parents. Cameron bitches that their parents care more about Meghan and Kenny than they do about him, and Kenny tries to stick up for Mitch and Mary, saying they're doing a pretty good job. Cameron and Meghan insult Kenny and call him a kid and he leaves. Meghan tells Cameron he doesn't respect anyone. She continues with this classic piece of dialogue: "And you know what the message is here, Cameron? You don't respect yourself and until you do, until you just get off your ass and stop...Gah! Stop jumping down people's throats because they love you...until then...you know you can have all the privacy you want." And with that, she leaves. Fade to white.
The commercial ends as we hear the Infinity music again and know that the Greens are getting it on. Mitch and Mary reach climax. We see half of Mary's boob as Mitch takes off for work. Kenny is upset about blowing off Rebecca as victor throws him into a staircase and asks why he keeps avoiding him. "Look, it's not intentional," Kenny says, "it's...circumstantial." "Circumstantial?" victor asks. "What is this, The Practice?"
If you're keeping score at home, that's eleven TV show references in one and a half hours.
victor is upset that his dad is going to marry Amber. He walks off slowly so we can see both Rebecca and victor stare at him as Kenny think-talks: "Two guys, a girl and a..."
Make that twelve.
"Infinity," declares Cameron's teacher. "What is infinity?" It's the song that plays whenever Mitch and Mary have sex. Score one for me. We begin a long music and quick video scene where Kenny watches Rebecca play orgasmic cello as Cameron decides whether or not to he's going to eat another apple in class. Somehow Rebecca has a drum machine playing with her cello. We see Rebecca's cleavage, Cameron's big ears, Rebecca's mounds on her chest, Cameron's enormous nostrils. The school bell rings ending the first Get Real video. Get your calls into TRL while you still can. Cameron puts the apple on the teacher's desk. He says he'll eat in math. Meghan gets accepted to Berkeley. Mary walks in and attempts to find out about Soul Patch Boy, who finally gets a name: Brian. They discuss Meghan's navel ring, which she says hurt "like a bitch." Mary shows her anger and frustration through her incredible neck cords as she reminds us once again that she was pregnant with Meghan at her age. That somehow calms Meghan down long enough to agree that she'll talk to Mary about Brian when she decides what she's going to do. Mary joins Mitch in the bedroom and he tries to get her drunk so he can get his freak on. Mary complains that sex isn't intimacy. The phone interrupts. The police have their son.
"What did Cameron do?" That's how we know it can't be Cameron. It's Kenny. He's been arrested for "being the stupidest kid in the world." This is a charge that should come with at least a six-month penalty, but instead the cops let him go straight home without any sort of ramifications. I guess it's because it made Mitch chuckle. Kenny got caught peeking into Rebecca's mom's room by mistake. Kenny really does do a good Goat Boy impression. Not as good as Eddie Vedder's in Last Kiss, but pretty decent nonetheless. Cameron has now made a full well-rounded character turnaround and has been studying with Tennisha all night. He tells Mitch that he did some shopping, and when Mitch opens the refrigerator he finds five cans of whipped cream. Meghan is home before curfew. Cameron is such a good kid that they wonder "where they went right." Grandma is on the phone. We learn that her name is Elizabeth, and she needs to call the doctor. The message says something important needs to be discussed. Since we just learned her name, it looks like they're killing off Grandma.
Kenny has a heart to heart with Mitch in which he tells this horny monologue about Rebecca with a cello playing in the background as Mitch thinks about how he loves Mary and realizes he's been a horny teenager lately. He goes back to the bedroom where he finds Mary asleep. I realize at this moment that the Get Real gospel theme is the beginning of Prince's Diamonds and Pearls. Kenny has an Ibook in tangerine. I'm pissed because I ordered one and they aren't available for another month. Spoiled TV brat. Airwalks and Ibooks. He calls victor to catch up. victor calls him "Bro," so we know all is well in guydom once again. Cameron is studying for his SATs. A sample question: "Which of the following expressions describe a mathematical average: mean, median, mode." I hate to break it to Cameron, but if he's studying from that book he's doomed to fail. Meghan is having another dream in which she's stuck in school and can't get out. But "it's a nightmare." Back at the bedroom Mitch think-realizes that cuddling and smelling and such is what real intimacy is. Mary smiles and think-talks "I knew he'd get there." "Life is good," Mitch thinks. Their telepathic discussions creep me out. "One Big Family" the gospel singers remind me, and I know this show has come to another happy wrapped-up ending. Oh, well, Grandma's dying, but who cares? Cute Cameron is learning to read.