Episode Report Card Al Lowe: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Rich Dad, Poor Dad
By Al Lowe | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 05.04.2010
Amber is at the country club, eating nuts out of the bar snack bin when Steve shows up and joins her. "Did you talk to Haddie?" he asks. She tells him it's none of his biz. Steve gives her the sad face. He wasn't pressuring Haddie, he says. "I just wanted it to be... special." For some reason, Amber does not kick him in the shins. She says it just wasn't the right time for Haddie. "So, are you feeling more heartbroken," Amber asks. "Or, are you feeling rejected?" Steve says both, that the feelings are inseparable. No, Amber says. Heartbroken means you're sad you can't be with the person anymore; rejected is more like you're taking it personally and you're mad. "Wow," Steve says. "Where did all this wisdom come from?" Amber makes her eyes wide. "From Fresno, of course," she says. Steve: "The wisdom capitol of the world?" Amber: "Ah, yes, you've heard of it." Haa! But, wait a second, wait a second. Don't flirt with the guy your cousin just dumped for pressuring her into sex! Siiiiiigh. Amber! Don't do it. But, y'all, she's doing it. Or, actually, she's not really flirting, she's just generally being awesome and Steve finds it attractive. She says her wisdom also comes from her mom, who is a little crazy, and her dad not being around too much. "I guess you just have to figure stuff out for yourself when you're raised like that, you know?" she says, shrugging. Steve is impressed. She asks him what his parents are like. He says they're pretty normal, pointing out his dad who is walking by the window as they speak. "Actually, this last year," he says, "my dad got diagnosed with MS." Amber is surprised, and so is Steve. He has never told anyone that. She says she read that people with MS can benefit from horseback riding. Steve smiles, saying well, he doesn't think his dad will be doing any riding anytime soon, but thanks. "It was worth a shot," Amber says, laughing. (It's true, though, and how cool is that? You know what else is awesome? This thing about Parkinson's and bicycles. I love stuff like that.) "So," Steve asks, now that they are friends, "can you maybe pass a message on to Haddie for me?" Amber smirks. "No, dude," she says, "you gotta deal with your own stuff." With that, she pats his shoulder, tells him he's okay, and leaves him smiling.At the shoe warehouse, Sarah has come to tell Adam about her pawn shop discoveries. She breaks it to him about the Reggie Jackson baseball being included in the pawned stuff. As she picks out boxes of shoes off the shelves, Adam says he didn't know about the pawning, but he did know that their dad has been in financial trouble. He tells her about the real estate investment. Sarah is shocked. Adam says he made Zeek promise to tell Camille, but they realize now that that hasn't happened. Sarah asks how bad Adam thinks it is. "It's bad enough for him to sell the Reggie Jackson ball," he says, "which I wanted to be mine, eventually." That really is bad, but Sarah points out that the situation is not really about his baseball heirlooms. She wants to know what they're supposed to do about Camille. "You should tell her," she decides. "Because you're the oldest. Ooo, is that a hiking boot?"
It's soccer practice time, again, and Sydney is eight minutes late to practice. "Your player forgot her lucky barrette and we had to go back and get it," Joel says. He notices Jabbar on the field. "Oh, I didn't tell you?" Julia says, casually. "Cros begged me to let him play." Across the field, Crosby tells Jasmine to "wave to the freak" when they see Julia maniacally begin her self-esteem building techniques. "You're the freak," Jasmine says, citing his brainwashing of Jabbar back into his bed the night before. Crosby: "I merely made a suggestion. It wasn't an ideal situation." Jasmine says she, too, has a suggestion: "No more fooling around. Period." Crosby is upset. "So, that's what you think we've been doing," he says. "Fooling around." Jasmine asks him what he would call it. He doesn't have an answer.
Steve has returned to Amber's domain at the club. He sits on the empty patio and tells her that his dad was into the whole horseback riding thing after all. They share a laugh about this, and Steve gets serious. "I've been thinking about this whole thing with Haddie," he says. "I was a real jerk." Amber is intrigued and asks how. "I felt like I kept making appointments with her to lose my virginity," Steve says. Amber is surprised to hear he is a virgin. Steve is embarrassed. "Can you drown me now?" he asks, pointing to the club fountain. "Yeah," she says. "We have a strict No Virgins policy." Ugh, you two! Stop hitting it off! He says that he realizes now that Haddie wasn't feeling the moment when he pushed her to have sex, and he's not surprised. "I wasn't feeling 'in the moment,'" he says. "Why would she?" Amber says, jokingly, that she thought guys could just feel it whenever they wanted. "What I'm feeling now," he says, all serious and nervous, "isn't what I was feeling with her." Amber immediately gets it. "Gotta go," she says, quietly, and walks away.
There's a Braverman sibling meeting going on at Julia's about the situation with their dad. They decide to have dinner with their parents, just the six of them, at HQ the next night. "Makes me uncomfortable," Crosby admits, "but I will be there." They are all anxious about the whole thing.
Total athletic domination is going on out on the soccer field. Jabbar is a hero of the sport, raging up and down the field scoring goal after goal against Raquel's team. It delights me to no end that Raquel's team's jerseys are tie-dyed. Julia celebrates more than anyone after each goal. "So I want them to win," she says when Joel looks at her sternly for being happy. "I'm a horrible person. Losing sucks, is that what you want to hear?" Y'all, I get Joel's issues with her competitiveness, but dudes, Joel needs to pull out the stick, you know? His frowny judgment over everything she does gets on my nerves.
The sibs are in Adam's car getting ready to pounce on their parents. Adam has prepared index cards, which is hilarious, but Crosby is not wanting to play along. "This sounds like something Dr. Phil wrote," he complains from the backseat, reading a clichéd statement of support, aloud. Adam says, fine, that they should just all follow his lead when he brings up the economy at dinner. "Before we take off," Crosby says, seeing his moment, "why do you guys always get to sit up front?" Julia points out that Crosby is, in fact, taller than Adam and Sarah. "You've always been taller than us; we've always been older than you," Sarah says. "The one thing we get is to sit up in the front." But, she says, tonight she's going to let Crosby sit up front, and jumps out. Adam yells at them to get back in the car, and insists that they be united on the parental front. "Fine," Crosby says, looking at his card again. "But I'm not saying 'unconditionally.'"