Previously, Chris took out his insecurity about this venture by tempting Bryan into falling off the wagon, but it turned out that Bryan was more interested in doing a big fucking cannonball off the wagon, or possibly a bellyflop. Now he is drunk at all times, disappointing management, trainers, and even Bryan Michael Cox, their producer. Katie booked their first gig, once again showing her craziness colors by making sure it's in three days, and the guys don't even have a name or a song. Just a big fat drunk lead singer in his fifties and a bunch of whining retards singing backup.
Now, there are two days left until their gig, the halftime show at a basketball game. Cox shows up so they can hear the demo. For the first time! Two days left! It's not only Katie and the guys who are merrily throwing themselves into the abyss here. I can't wait until week when they all have their vocal cords surgically removed in the dead of night and the show can be like, "Why do they call themselves singers? They don't even have vocal cords!" Chris points out the very valid point that they have never sung together, have never even tried harmonizing, and have yet to learn the song. Much of which I lay at the guys' door, because I realize they're on a stupid crazy production cycle, like all reality shows, but honestly: what do they do all day? I'm not a singer, but if I was in a house with guys whose money came from singing, I think it would be fun to at least try harmonizing with them at some point. Wait, I forgot they spend all their free time whispering behind Bryan's back and pretending not to imagine what Jeff Timmons looks like naked.
Cox tells them the song is both "fast" and "hot." That's good. Hopefully it's going to be chock-full of thinly veiled sexual innuendos and repetitive clichés. I was so afraid it was going to be a tepid waltz about blue-chip stocks and chastity! But this sounds much better. Rich likes the song -- frankly, I like the demo at least -- but cannot string three words together to tell you that in a way that makes sense. They bounce around and dance dorkishly and purse their lips in time to the song. Watching people listen to music is like watching them slowly strip off their skin and turn it inside out. Bryan shouts out random "Oh!"s and "Hey!"s along with the song, like if the Ying Yang twins were your dad. It's super sad. Cox explains that every song has a catch phrase that is repeated no less than 1116 times in the song, and that this one is "work it out" or "working it out" or something dumb like that.
Bryan "sings" along with the song and sounds like a dog being denied food after a week's starvation. Even Jeff loves the song, and Jeff hates everything. Bryan gets up and starts dancing around all gigantic and awkward, and the others begin to worry once more about Bryan and his mind. He drunkenly rambles and mumbles, causing Chris to -- you guessed it -- act all weird and judgmental and dramatic about it. He tells us that he's upset and being a downer because Bryan is still drunk. Not that they should get him some help or send him the fuck home to dry out, just that it's nice to have something to bitch and moan about. Rich is pretty sure that Bryan is going to end their lives. Like they have lives!
Chris takes Bryan out for another lecture and Bryan: swears he's not drinking, admits that he's drinking but not drunk, admits that he's drunk but not violent, admits that he's been steadily drunk for several days but is not going to do it again. What he's really saying is, "I am desperately out of my league. Take how out of your league you are, and times a hundred is how over my head I am right now." What Chris is hearing is, "Please lecture me some more to make yourself feel like you have the slightest bit of control over your own sad life." And of course, Chris obliges, lecturing Bryan at length about how...I don't even know. How drinking alone and being constantly drunk makes you an alcoholic. But he refuses to complete the thought about how, if Bryan is an alcoholic, he needs to go take care of that right now and not worry so much about this stupid show, this stupid fake band, or Chris's all-important codependence. He missed that part. Didn't "work it out." Sadly, Bryan's too drunk to even have this conversation anyway, so it's even more of a null sum. Chris sends Bryan upstairs to apologize to Jeff and Rich for being drunk. But like, when is he going to apologize for being such a douchey bellyacher? Or when is Rich going to apologize for being a retarded turnip? Or Jeff, for being distractingly fine?
Rich and Jeff hang out in the kitchen with Jeff's ridiculous body, because that's all he is, and they talk about the drinking. Thank God for Bryan Abrams's drinking problem, you know? Like if your house was on fire you could point at your sister and go, "Those shoes doesn't really go with that outfit." But the house is on fire! "But your shoes." The cat just ran through here on fire, lighting other parts of the house on fire. "But like, those shoes. It's just...do you have a different belt or something?" Now your face is on fire! "Yeah, but like, don't change the subject. I'm not trying to be mean."
Chris orders Bryan to apologize some more, and threatens to take the liquor out of the house. Boy, is Bryan not feeling that. Chris is like, "But I have to, so you won't drink it." Bryan starts crying about how he really wants to be taken seriously, and he's horribly afraid all the time. It's pretty moving even though I'm basically over him altogether. Chris says that he's more enthusiastic about this project because he can tell how into it Bryan is. I love Chris's self-obsession: "We know that you want it not because you said so, but because of how it affects me! Think about that for a second!" Just because Chris needs to feel even more in control and Dr. Phil about the whole thing, and because he's seen people do this on TV, he tells Bryan to go get a bottle of liquor and throw it in the lake. Thus proving absolutely nothing except that he has officially assumed responsibility for Bryan's life so he doesn't have to deal with his own. He even goes -- I'm not making this up -- "This hurts me more than it hurts you." Bryan weeps to us that Chris really cares about him, as people have done for their abusers since the beginning of time, and doggedly tosses the bottle in the lake. Along with his pride, manhood, and any sense of responsibility for himself or his own actions.
Now there's just one day left! All they did on Day Minus Two was listen to the song and perform intervention after intervention on Bryan! Because they were bored! Chris puts on his most toolish, absurd white bandanna to tell us in a serious tone that he has cured Bryan's alcoholism. Bryan tells us he's super excited about staying sober, and lies that he will never drink again. Chris tells us in this weird nostalgic mode about how Bryan's been working out and looks great. SINCE YESTERDAY! And then, the show goes along with this ridiculous timeline abuse, showing Bryan proudly running past a sad suburban SteinMart with Kristia. He tells us solemnly that he can't be both fat and call himself "some type of musician." Nobody's calling any of them that. Jeff tries to bring us back to the land of reality by mentioning that they haven't even done anything yet, and already one of them is falling down the unending rabbit hole of addiction. This whole thing reminds me of the Creed Behind The Music where they were like, "Eventually before a show we starting doing two, even sometimes three shots of Jägermeister. Isn't that so edgy and fucked up?"
"Stereotype" is a good name, Rich says, because it contains the word "stereo." They have a big list of awful names but the only ones I can see are: "Shure Shot," "Fish Bowl," and "Boyz II Men." Bryan cracks some weird drunk joke about how "Fish Bowl" makes him think of a bowl full of fish. Normally in a reality show you have to wait a week or two before the people start talking this crazy this much. Cox comes in with his stupid backpack, and Jeff assures us that the song is awesome. Also, he points out, it is easy. Because it's so stupid and repetitive, I wager. The four of them go separately into the booth and sing all whiny and boybandy and horrible. Rich raps. Jeff whines his part and apologizes for sucking. Everybody sings horribly. Cox says it's really just like riding a bike, but in this case, I don't know that they can even do that. Bryan sings awfully and everybody tells him how great it was. I'm not so sure that it's him they're trying to fool.
They head to a photo shoot -- they still don't have a name or a song, but they're doing a photo shoot, which is...very boyband, right there. Chris hates photo sessions; Bryan is sweating it because he's all fat; Jeff is being calm and professional and superior and hating this; Rich is bouncing around like a kid full of Pixy Sticks. He's wearing really cute plaid bondage pants. He dresses pretty well but I'm assuming he gets some help from an adult with that. Bryan hasn't done a photo shoot since before the internet so he's stressing out. Katie introduces them to their super weird photographer and even weirder stylist, who runs around screaming and laughing in this bizarre snorting asthmatic witchy way, which the boys try to imitate. She's unstoppably weird, just steamrolls over all of them. Even Bryan, sad-sacking around about how fat he is, does not stop her screeching madness.
The photographer weirdly asks them to have fun and relax. He has not met them or he would know that they can't do either of these things, or anything really. Chris gets homoerotic on Rich, which is kind of barfy, and then Rich gets homoerotic all by himself, which is nasty. Much talk is thrown around about how they're not boybanders, but keep striking boyband poses. Rich complains that stem cells make him look ugly and puffy like a stupid turnip. They don't explain the dead-eyed moronic lack of affect, though. He had that before. Jeff is totally freaked out by the European photog, who is like an ice-cream truck driver that just beat a molestation rap. He keeps screaming at them, begging them for "Superlook!" and to "Work it!" Jeff hilariously deadpans that he A) does not have a Superlook and B) "the other thing I don't do is work it." Chris gives Katie a tiny bit of approval for the awesome job she's doing, and the boys finally take a nice picture. Everybody likes the picture, everybody. It's nice. Bryan is shocked that they agreed on anything, ever.
Name conference. Katie says no to their huge list of strangely insecure name suggestions: "15 Minutes," "Plan B," "Last Call," "Unstable." She tries desperately to get them off this whole paradigm of being a media joke, which they are now doing to themselves. It's actually kind of amazing to see her working this one out, even though she doesn't really come up with any ways to fix it. She literally cannot get them on board with the idea that they are a new band, not a broken collection of bullshit dead-ends. It stops being about the band and the future, and keeps being about their horrible ridiculous pasts and self-loathing, and she's just like, "Hell do I say to that?" She can't get them to drop the idea that they suck, which means they will always suck no matter what she does. They narrow it down to something having to do with "mercury," "Sureshot," and the concept of being "VIP." And just like that, they pick Sureshot. The least interesting name I've ever heard. I've heard it like sixteen times and seen it written down several times and I have to keep checking to make sure that's really it. Sureshot.
So that's their name. Rich is like, "Yeah, it's not the flashiest name in the world." The end. Bryan again is amazed that they agreed on anything, which I get, except for how it's sucky and pointless and bland and lame, so of course they all loved it. He gives a short random speech of gibberish about how it's not that they are a sure shot so much as they are being put into the position of living up to being a sure shot, and that shooting for sure and Suri Cruise on a photo shoot is liminal to the shot you get when you have the influenza, a caesura of the immune system, that break in the line between past health and future unsure health or celebrity, but that they are not immune to the concept of fame and how it leaves traces upon their ability to shoot and that these signifiers lead inexorably forward to a position of unknown unsure surety and the meaningless grounding symbology of their past balanced against both the future that they envision and the non-future that they do not imagine, and that you can never be sure, but slightly sure is how sure they are of this shot, and how I guess you just have to take the shot, and also make sure. Or something. Maybe he's drinking again, I don't know.
They listen to the track. Jeff loves it; honestly, Rich sounds okay, all right? Chris worries about the show, which is tomorrow. He doesn't want to be booed in his hometown, although he most assuredly will be. Katie asks how they're doing, how they feel about the performance, and there's kind of an apocalypse glint in her eye. Bryan wonders what it will be like, then whines some more that it's scary. Rich says the timelines are impossible, which they are, but you need to quit giving us true facts from the mouth of the unreliable turnip. It doesn't make him look smarter, it makes what he's saying seem less true. Katie's like "Oooookay, let's go." Rich interviews that he's worried about knowing the lyrics, and also hearing himself over the boos. I'm worried that we're going to filler this episode out yet again and they won't even have this performance -- which they started talking about five minutes into the first episode -- for another week. You think postponing it again is going to make us more sympathetic? Um, no. That would require these boys be likeable in some fashion.
Jeff complains about the halftime show, causing a domino effect of complaining and whining and bitching; Jeff wants to shock your brain by going on the record about how he doesn't want to do it. Jeffy doesn't want to do something. Fabulous and surprising. Chris immediately takes on this idea like it's his own and tries to rabble-rouse everybody into being snotty with Katie. When she shows up, she just about laughs in their faces. Like you're seriously going to bring this up less than 24 hours before the awful idea is set to happen. Jeff points out once again that this is all a recipe for failure. Katie asks if they can honestly go on living if they cancel this late; Chris gets snotty with her about it in some vague fashion. Rich says he's just worried about morale, if it turns out they suck. But that's not morale, if the thing is true. Like, "If our lack of attention and effort causes us to fail, I'm afraid we'll look like losers to ourselves, and if there's anything we're invested in avoiding, it's that." I'm glad Heaven's Gate didn't get hold of stupid old Rich. He's a Kool-Aid drinker for sure.
Katie tells us that they could very well be wrong, and not get booed, but it's not like she can even imagine this possibility without cracking up. It's a tough challenge, but a great opportunity: "I'm not gonna throw them to the wolves, but if they don't do it, they pay." Valid. I tend to think that if you want something, you should maybe just go ahead and accomplish it. I don't get the confusion here. All of a sudden Chris pulls a 180 and stands behind Katie 100%, but then pulls another one and says that if they bomb, that's somehow Katie's fault. Everybody loves this idea, because again: that makes them accountable for nothing. Katie is perturbed. I would have walked out on them the first time Jeff bitched her out, but I don't know all of Katie's details.
Eight hours to go, before Katie somehow forces them to suck. Rich tells Jeff that if he thinks about anything, ever, he will have a panic attack, so instead he just performs strange rituals and goes blah blah blah. Jeff talks about how nervous he gets, but he's got no product in his hair and looks like a youth counselor and it's harder to listen to him when he looks like that. Rich practices rapping in his bedroom and talks stupidly about how fast they're working. Jeff practices the song; Rich steps up and takes his part, and of course forgets the words. Chris gets scared and Rich hits himself over and over. Katie looks fetching and laughs. Because what else can you do, at this point. Bryan dances dorkily and sings as Cox watches. It's...the word buffoon hangs in the air.
Katie tries to give them a straight-faced pep talk about how amazing they all look when they're performing together, how it's almost like it's their job. Bryan complains about himself yet some more; Chris interviews that it's a big opportunity and very scary; Jeff bitches about something. He's like, "Normally this process takes two, three, five years," and they're doing it in weeks. I think he's nervous because Katie skipped the boyband shipping-them-to-Germany-for-two-years plastic carton step. She tells them she is proud of them, and that's sweet, but more moving is how much that means to them. Boys are so fucked up. Jeff interviews that "Miss Katie" believes in them, and therefore he is putting his trust in "Miss Katie." They're the same fucking age.
Everybody stresses out at the sound check because basketball court acoustics are no good, and all the fans and setup guys and sports people stare at them like a freakshow, because what this is, is a freakshow, and everybody knows it. Rich fucks up the words again, and Katie smiles kindly and encouragingly at him. Chris gets angry and freaked, and Rich wigs out in the backstage area, and the music goes crazy wild about it like on The Apprentice, so you know we're deferring the only thing that's going to happen, ever for another week.
So week? What on earth do you think is going to happen? They're going to get booed. Obviously. It's going to be fucking awful, and they're going to blame poor doomed Katie. They will probably be chased through the streets of Orlando by wild dogs, framed for a couple of murders, steal a car and lead a high-speed chase to Disneyland, and hold the generation of Mickey Mouse Club kids hostage before being shot down in a hail of bullets. Chris will blame Bryan's alcoholism with his last breath. Bryan will climb to the top of a tower, swatting biplanes out of the sky, with Jeff in his arms. He'll eventually be talked down by Lance Bass, who will promise him they will be astronauts together, but he'll finally be shipped off to rehab in Oklahoma, where he belongs. Rich will be taken into custody, and he and Miss Katie will develop a pen-pal relationship while he's on the inside which will blossom into passion once she's sufficiently forgotten what he looks like. When he comes out in five to ten, they'll try to make it work, but eventually it'll fall apart. She'll shave her head and start attacking paparazzi with her umbrella, screaming, "Superlook! Make it work! Work it out! Sureshot! Sureshot! Sureshot!" And I'll get a tattoo of Chris Kirkpatrick's long-gone braids, and that tattoo will read, "Never Forget." MAN BAND!