Pressure

Props to Sars, for pestering me to knock this, my last MSCL recap, off during the March repeats of Boston Public. Here it is, okay, Mussolini? Get off my back. I have a life, damn you. ["Not my problem, stugots." -- Sars]

Go. Now. Go.

We open on Jordan Catalano's shiny red car, which is screeching haphazardly around a parking lot. To let us know that it is Angela careening around like a drunken maniac, they added some dialogue in post-production: "What are you doing?" "I'm sorry!" "Slow down! Slow down!" And Angela does slow down, a lot, when the car rams into a pile of garbage, and then backs into a wall. Angela says, "Well, you shouldn't have let me! I told you I couldn't drive! It's only, like, my second time" And Jordan shuts her up by diving in for a smooch. Awww. Enjoy this moment, folks. This is the peak of cuteness in Jordan and Angela's relationship, and it's all downhill from here. Anyway, they shmeck, and then she finishes her sentence: "behind the wheel. I'm really sorry, I couldn't find the brake." Hm. I wonder if that's going to turn out to be a powerful metaphor for something else later in this episode? Perhaps. On an unrelated topic, however, Jordan remarks, "How long are we gonna keep doing this?" Angela looks at him, and her eyes look really beautiful, and she says, "I don't know. I meanwhat do you mean?" But we know what he means. He's talking about sex. And it's about time, right, since they've been officially together for, like, a whole week at this point, right? Or, as Jordan puts it, "You know what I mean." Angela's all, "Well, yeah. But what do you want me to do? I mean, I know what you want me to do, butdo you ever get, like, obsessed with the rearview mirror? Like, while you're driving?" This may seem like a non-sequitur, but it's actually a carefully crafted metaphor, by means of which we learn that Angela wants to return to childhood, where sex is not an issue, and is thus obsessed, as it were, with the, shall we say, "rearview mirror" of her life. No, wait, it's a non-sequitur. Jordan ignores it. "Look. Can't we just?" "Just what? Do it? Right here? In a parking lot?" Jordan, unfamiliar with the concept of the Venn Diagram, says, "We're not in a parking lot. We're in a car." Then, gentleman that he is, he asks, "Why? Where do you want to do it?" Angela's all, "Oh, I don't know. How about in my room tonight, after my parents fall asleep. We'll have to be really quiet." But my transcription can't capture the adorable, giggly, whisper-thing Claire Danes does with that line, so you must watch the episode for yourself. "You actually just expect me to, like, choose a place?" Jordan, whose eyes also look pretty beautiful, says, "Well, yeah." Angela escapes the car at this point: "I better go to Geometry." There is enormous sadness and regret, though, in the admission that she'd rather go to Geometry than ball Jordan, because she's used to the former, and just not ready for the latter.

In that hallway, by the lockers, Rayanne "Three Sisters" Graff and Ricky "No One Should HateWho They Are" Vasquez are dishing about some girl's jewelry. "Who are we trashing?" asks an appearing Chase, regret, used lips, and all. "Cynthia Hargrove's nose stud," says Rayanne. "It's too small. It's like a semi-precious pin." Ricky decides it's time to open mouth and insert foot, and says to Angela, "She is so sleazy. You are such an improvement." Angela, a tad slow on the uptake, is like, "What do you mean? You mean Jordan went out with Cynthia Hargrove?" Rayanne rips the knob off the tactometer, and is all, "I don't know about 'went out.' I don't know how many outside locations they actually went to." Angela makes the leap of logic, "But she's someone Jordan used toum" Rayanne: "Yes. Jordan used to 'um' her." Rickie tries to defend his mistake by blaming it on Angela's ignorance: "You must have known that. I knew that." Angela bumbles around about how she must have blocked it out, and it doesn't bother her, it's just that she didn't know, but now she does, and then she saunters off self-consciously, trying to salvage a little dignity. Rayanne's all, "They obviously haven't um-ed yet."

Slow mohair. Angela walks down the hall, looking at her fellow students, her teachers, in groups, and pairs, men and women, while AVO delivers a great speech, one of the all time best, a speech so good that it was ripped off wholesale by Felicity: "I couldn't stop thinking about it. The, like, fact of it. People had sex. That they justhad it. That sex was this thing people had. Like a rash, or a Rottweiler. Everything started to seem, like, pornographic, or something. Like, Ms. Krzyzanowski has sex. So does Mr. Katimski. They both have sex. They could have sex together, like, right now. I am, like, the sickest person." Kind of, except she's wrong about one thing: Mr. Katimski is not about to have sex with Ms. Kriz-whatever, or any other Ms. Which only, in the end, improved the speech.

At Chase Place, Danielle is setting the table, Graham is on the phone ("We're looking forward to itsee ya Friday"), and Patty is sneezing. "Mom," says Danielle, "if you got a flu shot then why are you sick?" Patty insists that she's not sick, and that sometimes the flu shot just makes you a little sick. Anyway, Graham gets off the phone with, as it turns out, the loud annoying woman from his cooking class, Hallie Lowenthal, which explains why Graham was so happy and flirty on the phone -- he likes Hallie quite a bit more than he likes his wife. Anyway, Danielle asks who she is, and Patty answers, "Someone from your father's cooking class, who we've invited to dinner. With her fianc. What's her fianc's name again?" Brad, it turns out. "That is such a perfect fianc name." And that's a good thing, too, because he's never going to get more than that, given that Hallie wants to steal Graham away from Patty, but I digress. Patty calls Angela, who answers from somewhere else in the house that she's not hungry. Danielle says something about not wanting a flu shot, but Patty is too busy running down her other daughter: "I know exactly what's gonna happen. At ten o'clock at night, she's gonna be picking around in that refrigerator, like Princess Di, asking you to make her something." Angela says, "I heard that! And I won't be hungry later!" Danielle keeps blathering on about her flu shot, while Patty start to get worried about Jordan: "We said we wanted to meet him, if they're going out. Doesn't he drive her home sometimes? We don't even know what kind of a driver he is. Not to mention" Graham, with a glance at Danielle, "Not to mention what else we can't mention." Patty says, "They have a car. The car has doors, seats. They may as well have their own apartment." Yes, and what if Angela forgets to look in the rearview mirror of childhood, or fasten her seatbelt of contraception, or explore other parts of the car-as-sex metaphor that pervades this episode? What then, I ask you? Anyway, Patty goes on, as usual: "We have to meet him. We have to be firm and consistent." Then Danielle asks about the flu shot again, and Patty and Graham give her opposite answers at the same time -- get it, because that's not firm or consistent. Ha ha. Not. Danielle's all, "When you said what else they could be doing, did you mean, like, foreplay?" Cough cough. Mumble.

Later that night, presumably ten o'clock, Angela is making herself a sandwich in the kitchen. She inspects the lunch meat. That's not a double entendre; she really is inspecting lunch meat. Speaking of lunch meat, a strange shadowy figure that we do not doubt for a second is Jordan knocks on the window, and then circles around to the back door. Angela peeks through the window-shade, and the music changes from Trepidatious-Snuffy-Walden to Happy-Snuffy-Walden. Angela looks nervously back over her shoulder, and then opens the door for her boyfriend. "Hey." "Hey." AVO: "It's a dream. I'm having a dream. I've had this dream. Onlywithout the cold cuts." Jordan's all, "Wow. Food." He goes to eat the lunch meat. Again, really. Angela's all, "What are you doing here? It's late. My parents are right upstairs." Jordan is mystified until Angela points out that her parents live here. Jordan, who is a better observer than we realized, says, "I thought you said you wanted to do it in your room while your parents were asleep." Angela points out that she was joking, evinced by the aforementioned giggle-whisper thing she did when she said it, and tells him he has to go. Jordan says okay, and starts to kiss her. During which time, it seems, Jordan formulates his strategy for getting into Angela's pants. "So you know that empty house on Cloverdale?" But there's no time for him to flesh out, as it were, his plan, because a noise in the house indicates approaching parental units. When the noise does not repeat, he continues, more quietly: "Tino found a way to get in. So people have been going there. You know, to have a place. To go. So you want to? Friday night?" She looks at least exasperated at his persistence, and tries to deflect him by appealing to his respect for the law. "You mean, breaking and entering?" Jordan retorts with double entendre that has to be accidental, because he's not that clever: "Justentering." Then he proves that he was not being clever by adding, "So that we canbe somewhere." Angela says, "Awkward pause." Then Patty yells, "Angela?" Alarmed, Angela yells, "Mom?" Jordan eats lunch meat.

Angela sprints to the bottom of the steps to intercept Patty before she can get near the kitchen. Patty, thinking she's all smart, says, "Didn't I predict this? Didn't I predict that this would happen? Didn't I tell you that you'd be hungry later?" Angela's all, "Oh. Yeah. Right." She's so flushed and nervous, though, that it's amazing Patty doesn't get any more suspicious; I guess she's too self-satisfied at having caught Angela eating cold cuts. "Now, I'm not trying to interfere, but I think it's important that we all eat dinner together. As a family." Angela agrees. "Finish whatever you're nibbling on in there, and don't leave a mess for me to clean up." Meanwhile, the thing Angela's been nibbling on wanders out of the kitchen and into the entrance hall, peering at Angela and Patty from out of view. Just in time, Patty remarks, "Oh, also, remember what we talked about tonight, about meeting your friend Jordan." Jordan is illiterate, but not deaf, and perks up at the mention of his name. Angela's mortified. "Sweety, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. You like this Jordan. I have no problem with that. We just wanna meet him!" Patty hugs her humiliated daughter and goes upstairs. Angela heads back over to Jordan, who gets all smug: "So, you like me?" Angela tells him to shut up, but in a nice way. "Your mother says you like me." She tells to shut up again, and shoves him, but in a nice way. "Friday night?" he says, staying on course. "Right. The house." She says this with a kind of weary wisdom, like she knows he won't be swayed, and she knows she won't give in, and she knows that'll be the end of them. "There are, like, eight bedrooms," he says, like they're buying the house and this is a selling point. "That many," she says, unimpressed. If he notices her evident annoyance, he pretends not to, and smooches her farewell. They kiss well together, by the way. Jordan leaves. Angela sighs, contentedly, and then looks apprehensive. Which will happen again, in reverse order, if she ever actuallyums.

Commercial. I would just like to say, having watched the Oscars last night, that Kenny Lonergan was robbed blind in the Best Original Screenplay category. The script for Almost Famous, which was totally fine, and even cool at times, is nevertheless unfit to mop up the cigarette ash that Mr. Lonergan generated while writing You Can Count On Me. And that's just the way it is.

On the Chase's front porch, which is a refreshingly underused location, Angela spots Sharon "Tiny Dan" Cherski returning a chafing dish. "I'm returning your mom's chafing dish," says Sharon, "and you're supposed to tell her thanks, from my mom." How neighborly. Angela reveals that her mom is going to pick her up any minute to get a flu shot, and Sharon winces and says she hates shots, and dude, how many sex metaphors does one episode need? Soon, Angela will drive Jordan's car into a tunnel towards an oncoming train while eating a hot dog and getting a flu shot through a donut. What, that's not the version you've seen? Sars must have given me the director's cut. Anyway, before Sharon leaves, Angela says, "So you and Kyle broke up. Was there, like, as reason?" Sharon ponders for a moment before replying, "I guess I would have to sayit was my beliefs. I didn't think I should have to give up my beliefs even for Kyle." Angela smiles with relief and gratitude, deluded for the moment into thinking she's not setting herself up to be called "abnormal" later in this episode, while AVO sighs, "So, Sharon had beliefs. Sharon had decided to stay a virgin." Angela now wants strategy tips: "So how did you, likeyou just, like, told him? That you didn't wanna, like, you knowhave sex with him? No matter how much he was, like, expecting it?" Sharon is perplexed: "Oh, no. No, no, we had sex. I just had a belief that he was being a butthead, which was true." Angela does a classic double take, and is all, "You had, like, intercourse?" Sharon's all, "Like, constantly." Man, who remembers that moment? The moment you found out one or more good friends of yours, all of whom you assumed were still virgins like you, had been having mad crazy sex all the time for months? With your mom? Who remembers that? I guess just me.

At the hospital, Danielle has just had her flu shot, and Patty is ushering Angela in for her turn. Danielle tells her it doesn't even hurt that much, but then, what's a flu shot needle compared to Jordan Catalano's love-syringe-stick-shift-car-needle? Right? Anyway, Angela's doctor is like, "Something is very wrong. You seem to have become fifteen years old." Angela laughs politely. Then she tries to find a way to ask a question while crawling down into her own torso and eating her organs: "Dr. Skolnik. If I had a questiona medical question, for a research project for school? It's a question aboutpercentages? Of what's normal. You know, in terms of what people actually do. I mean, people my age. I just need to see some statistics." Dr. Skolnik, despite the fact that Angela has been so vague that she could be asking about anything, has been around a while, and knows what's what. "Angela," she says, "I think I know what you're asking me. And as someone who's known you for several years now, I'm always here, if you need to talk. But as your doctorI urge you, pleaseAngelause a condom and a sponge." This is not what Angela wanted to hear. She wants her doctor to forbid sex, so she can use that as her last line of defense against the encroaching Catalassanova. But no such luck. She's on her own.