Welcome to the recap of the second episode, in which Sam suffers from severe sinus congestion, and snits are had by all.
The first scene opens with Sam making a phone call from a pay phone at school. A caption floats prettily across the screen: "Thursday." One day (in TV time) has elapsed since last we saw our loving friends at Kennedy High. Sam is speaking pleadingly into the phone, "Are you there? If you’re there, pick up, okay?" After a minute or two of this, she hangs up, gives a loose approximation of looking worried, and flounces off down the hall.
Cut to a scary close-up of Freddie Gong saying almost gleefully, "I heard she dropped out because she couldn’t bear the sheer humiliation after the skank ho cheerleaders bagged her ass." Ew! Did he actually spray when he was talking? A random girl interjects that she heard that Josh and Brooke broke up because he tried out for the school musical. With a disdainful "this school is trippin’" (um, thanks for that, Walter Cronkite), she sweeps out of the scene, leaving Freddie alone with his shiny-ass forehead and excess of saliva.
Cut to Sam and Little Big Head walking down the hall. Sam is talking about how worried she is that Carmen isn’t responding to her (very annoying) phone messages. Little Big Head turns her sad clown eyes towards Sam and says, "Pain is pain, Sam, and there’s no worse feeling than being invisible." Sam rambles on about how guilty she feels about Carmen’s not making the team. She wonders aloud if things might have been different if she had put aside her journalistic objectivity and actually spoken up to Brooke on C’s behalf. Little Big Head says, "Yeah, well, I guess you’ll never know, will you?" Ouch! I didn’t know a person that small could look that smug. LBH snits off, leaving Sam standing in the middle of the hall with her mouth gaping like a dead fish. It is here that I notice that Sam is wearing enough lip gloss to patch a tire.
Cut to Brooke and Smug Bitch walking up the stairs. All the other students give them the royal stink-eye, and we overhear someone say "I can’t believe what they did to Carmen" as SB tries to engage Brooke in yet another inane conversation about fingernail polish. Brooke, to her credit, looks utterly uncomfortable, and has a hard time concentrating on her nitwit friend. Oh, yeah - as they walk, Smug Bitch keeps snapping at random passersby like an ill-tempered dog. After several unsuccessful attempts at engaging Brooke in manicure talk, SB decides that it’s time to stick her big ol’ nose into Brooke’s sex life again, with a very tactful (not), "So, was this fight pre- or post-sexual healing?" Brooke stammers that the fight occurred "post-sexual healing," and goes on to whine about how shocked she is that Josh tried out for the musical in secret. As if any inhabitant of this hellish world with half a whit of sense would broadcast the news that he was about to lay waste to the accepted social order. Smug Bitch declares that "he’s bringing our rep down," and advises Brooke to "withhold feminine favor" until he quits the musical. Brooke continues to look miserable, as well she should, since she and Josh are really more chaste than a pair of nuns on Sunday. SB spies a hapless fashion victim lounging by a locker and leaps on her like Gary Oldman on speed, shouting, "Listen up, mouth breather! You run and tell all your little Ross Dress For Less friends that acid wash isn’t coming back!" A significant percentage of my wardrobe is straight off the Ross Dress For Less bargain rack -- just another reason to hope that Smug Bitch gets kidnapped by the circus and forced to wear the Hooker Clown costume while stuffed into the trunk of the clown car. Brooke calls SB off of the mouth breather. SB snits off down the hall with a horrified Brooke in her wake. Why is anyone friends with this demented freak? Smug Bitch smoothes her pencil-drawn eyebrow and says, "What is up with people today?" Oh, I don’t know, SB; maybe they’ve all switched to decaf and realized what a total psycho you are. Brooke says that it’s because of Carmen, then says she’s canceling her party. Smug Bitch gets a disturbingly coy look on her face, and tells Brooke that having the party is the best way to smooth things over with Josh. Brooke, of course, buys this line of crapola hook, line, and sinker.
And cut to an ad for Glamour Shots - I mean, the credits. All the actors are dressed up in fashion clothes, with piles of makeup (yes, even the boys), and smiling like candidates for political office. There’s even one of those big fans going, blowing their hair around, plus a backdrop of shiny blue cloth that shimmers around in the hurricane fan. I could wax intellectual here and make a lot of statements about the postmodern nature of the credits sequence, the way that the show acknowledges its own artifice, the relationship between the viewer and the actor, etc. But I’d much rather eat another corn dog and try to figure out whether the show’s lip gloss budget is higher than my rent. I think that it is.
The shot is one of a blind woman walking down the hall. She stops, sniffs, and chuckles, "Ah. Good morning, Miss Frisch." As she walks away, Miss Frisch says admiringly, "Spooky!" You said it, sister!
Cut to a very creepily lit teacher’s lounge. Spooky is smoking a cigarette. The drag-king biology teacher says, "I thought you quit smoking, Principal." The spooky blind woman is the principal of the school? Well, if the Daredevil can fight crime using only his radar hearing and catlike reflexes, then I suppose this woman can handle a high school. The principal replies that there have already been two pregnancies and one knife confiscation, and it’s only four days into the semester. She then remarks that if "this keeps up, I’ll be on heroin." Um. Okay, maybe she is the principal of a school on another TV show, and she just wandered onto the set of Popular by mistake. The drama teacher swishes in and sings, "Good morning, ladies," casts a glance at the biology teacher, "and gentlemen." The bio teacher smiles, "You’re in a good mood, Vincent. Did they finally release Liza with a Zon DVD?" BWA HA HA HA! Mr. Vincent tells the bio teacher that even she can’t destroy his good mood, because he is anticipating a sold-out show for the upcoming student musical. "Remember last year when I did Brigadoon? The cast? Social zeros." A random teacher guesses that Mr. Vincent is so happy because he’s "nabbed" Josh for the lead of the musical. Mr. Grant, bless his heart, tears himself away from his donut to say that he doesn’t think it’s very "cool to be tearing a kid in two so you can win teacher of the year." Mr. Vincent purrs back at Mr. Grant, "Of the decade." Since when have teachers given a crap about how popular their students are? Last time I stuck my head into a teachers’ lounge, it was full of bitter, burnt-out husks mainlining coffee and cigarettes, talking about how to post their résumés on the Internet so they could get out of teaching for good. Anyway. In stomps the football coach, who plants a big ol’ tongue kiss on the drama teacher. Just kidding. Actually, he starts shouting about how the drama teacher has to give Josh back to the football team. (As if you couldn’t see that one coming from a mile away.) He makes a crack about Mr. Vincent finally "making up for a lifetime of being picked last for kickball," at which point Mr. V gets all mean and threatens to "come across the table" and kick the football coach’s ass. I love a good catfight. Unfortunately, the random teacher breaks in with a big speech about how the teachers need to set a good example for the students, yadda yadda yadda. The coach glances down at her and tells her that she’s a lot more fun when she drinks. Hee hee hee! That’s two really funny lines -- in one scene! If the writers don’t watch out, this show might actually start being funny with instead of just funny at. Mr. Grant asks them if they can’t work things out like adults, and the drama teacher asks him if he doesn’t have a highlighting appointment to go to. Mr. Grant looks very hurt and confused and stammers, "My hair is natural. I surf!" Wow! Okay - three funnies in a row. There’s no way they can keep this up. ("Unless, of course, they keep ripping off the teachers’ scenes wholesale from Parker Lewis Can’t Lose." -- Sars) The football coach makes a lame crack about seeing who will "score the final touchdown," and I relax. Coach marches off in a snit, slamming the door on the way out.
Cut to the boys’ locker room. Josh is staring into his locker with his back to the door. Sugar Daddy marches in wearing a bright yellow T-shirt that makes him look as big as a suburban dream home and demands, "Is it true that you tried out for the musical? Are you gay?" Well, hello to you too, Mr. Sensitivity! Of course, I’m wondering the same thing, but I wouldn’t just blurt it out like that. Josh says that no, he’s not, "But what if I was? What if I didn’t always make the easy choice? Would you still be my friend?" Sugar Daddy assures Josh that he would, and that he is "very down with the whole honesty thing." Um. What? Anyway. Josh says that he can do both the musical and the football team. Sugar gives a sarc-y response, and launches into a speech about how he is nothing without Josh, and how Josh is letting everyone down, especially him. Josh says that it’s just a stupid game. SD freaks right out at this one, so much so that he even forgets to use his dumb-ass ghetto speak for a good ten minutes. He tells Josh that if he (Josh) quits the team, nobody will like him (Sugar Daddy) anymore. Jeez! Insecure much? Josh reassures Sugar Daddy that everyone loves him. Sugar is practically crying at this point, "Everybody loves me because I’m with YOU," shoves Josh, then waddles off in a snit. Josh clutches a football in his hands, rolls his head around like Stevie Wonder in an attempt to display anguish and conflict, then throws a football at a locker.
Cut to biology class. The camera focuses on Carmen’s empty stool, then pans up to Sam and Brooke, both staring at the stool. Cut to Little Big Head, also staring at the stool. The bio teacher is in the middle of roll call, and calls Carmen’s name, like, twelve times. The camera cuts to the empty stool again. All right, already! We get it! The bio teacher continues with the roll call - apparently only members of the main cast get to have their names called aloud in class, because the teacher stops at the letter M, then tells them all to "get to cuttin’!" Cut to LBH staring at her frog. Carmen’s voice floats in like ObiWan Kenobi in Star Wars, with a quote from the last show about standing up for yourself and doing what’s right. The teacher notices LBH’s vacuous inactivity and orders her to get to work. LBH catches her snap and shouts in her shrill little voice, "NO! I don’t think it’s moral and it goes against what I believe in!" The teacher tells her that "every year I get that one Alicia Silverstone in my class, trying to rock the boat by being a horse’s patoot." Maybe I’m out of the loop, but I can’t remember a single instance where Alicia Silverstone ever did anything even remotely resembling rocking the boat. As far as I know, all she’s ever done is make bad movies. LBH flies into a temper and gives a rather stirring speech in which she asks the teacher if "Rosa Parks was a horse’s patoot," and then quotes Thoreau. I actually felt a little thrill at this speech, in spite of the fact that it was delivered by a girl who looks like one of the "Precious Moments" greeting card characters. The bio teacher has the grace to look slightly ashamed, then proceeds to front Little Big Head right down, telling her that she’ll have to get a job folding sweaters at Contempo Casuals to help raise the $25,000 that it would cost to get a computer lab with dissection software. She then tells LBH that she’ll get an F for every day that she doesn’t do the lab. Cut to Brooke staring morosely at the back of Josh’s head. The teacher snaps her fingers at Brooke and cracks, "You can daydream all you want, but that’s not going to make that new issue of Sassy flop on your doorstep any faster." Harrison cracks up at this. Brooke and Sam look at each other, then at Carmen’s empty chair again. I hope Carmen comes back to school soon, so I don’t have to keep watching these shots of a birch-veneer plywood stool.
Cut to the auditorium. Josh is in the middle of rehearsals when his dad busts in the door and marches down the aisle, shouting the whole time that there’s no way Josh is doing the musical and bellowing that he got called out of a meeting by an urgent phone call from Coach Peretti, Josh is humiliating him and his family, flap flap flap. Cut to Mr. Vincent looking completely stunned. I am stunned, too -- what idiot cuts short an "important" business meeting to go yell at his son in the middle of class? Isn’t that what family dinners are for? Cut back to Josh’s dad: "What do you think you’re doing here? Answer me!" Ohhh, this part makes me cringe. There are few things worse than having to answer what is essentially a rhetorical question, especially when you’re getting reamed by your dad. Ouch. Josh does his best and says that it’s what he wants to do. Of course his dad has the brilliant retort, "You’re only 16 years old! You don’t know what you want to do!" The camera cuts to Josh’s leading lady, who is looking really embarrassed. Dad orders Josh to apologize to the coach and to the team, and to go "suit up." Cut to Josh, who looks super pissed off. "Your brothers never put me through anything like this," says Dad, and he snits on out of the auditorium and back to his important business meeting. Okay - can you guess what’s coming ? Yep. Here it comes. Josh looks at his father’s retreating back and says softly, "It’s because I’m not my brothers, Dad."
Cut to Harrison and Sam in the video editing room. Harrison tells Sam that the Carmen interview is his favorite. Of course they have to play the entire thing, just so we don’t forget that Carmen has really been done wrong by everyone. Ugh. The camera cuts back and forth between Sam looking sad and the video of Carmen. Harrison sneaks out at some point, perhaps because he’s ashamed to participate in this heavy-handed maudlin crap, and at about the same time I notice that Sam NEVER CLOSES HER MOUTH. Ever. Cut to the video of Carmen looking all cute and optimistic about the cheerleading tryouts, then back to Sam’s bland, slack-jawed face. Back to Carmen, all emotion and good acting, then back to Sam, who, um, sucks. The camera gradually pulls closer until Carmen-on-video fills the whole screen while she tells the story about the cheerleader who smiled at her the whole time when she was a kid at the football game. Sam swallows. I guess that’s the best she can do for emotion. At least she closes her mouth for a minute. The scene closes with Sam looking heavily congested, I mean, very sad and guilty, staring at the Carmen video.
When we come back from a refreshing commercial break, Sam is still in the video editing room, but this time with Mr. Grant. He tells her that he loves the work she’s doing, especially the Carmen video. Enough with the Carmen stuff already! Sam grins, which almost makes me wish that she’d go back to being blank-faced, seeing as she’s got enough gums to donate half to charity and still have plenty left over. He also points out that he likes the Brooke interview, and thinks that there’s "a lot going on there." He busts her on her thinly veiled antagonism towards Brooke: "Is there some weirdness going on there?" Sam says no, she was just trying to be objective. Right. I forgot that "objective" and "snotty and mean" are really the same thing. Then Mr. Grant tells her that she hasn’t done enough interviews with the popular kids: "I think you’ll find that the popular kids have a different struggle." Sam gets all worked up and cries, "Yeah, because it’s easier!" See, life is SO unfair, and Sam is just sensitive enough to feel it more acutely than other kids. Not! Mr. Grant gives her a big lecture about journalistic objectivity (barf) and tells her that she can’t have that bias if she’s going to be a reporter. Then he asks her AGAIN if she’s going to Brooke’s party, because that’s the perfect place to "get what we need to fill in the potholes." Um, "we"? He gives her that smarmy Lowe smile and says, "This is our first collaboration. Very exciting, don’t you think? Good work." He walks out, and the scene closes with Sam, again, looking heavily congested. I mean, sad and guilty. Or conflicted. Or something.
The scene opens with the camera panning down a row of lockers, past a whole bunch of ordinary kids who all glare at Brooke as she walks by with her head down and her books hugged to her chest. Freddie Gong runs up to Brooke, knocks her books out of her hands, and sneers, "SATAN!" Freddie Gong freaks me out. He snits away before Brooke can say anything. Brooke bends down to pick up her books, and I feel really really bad for her. Apparently, Alanis Morissette does, too, because she flies in from New York to help Brooke pick them up. Oh, wait. That’s Sam, wearing all of her clean clothes at one time. Whatever. Brooke thanks Sam very sincerely for helping her, and makes a reference to the fact that she is having a hard time in biology, so much so that she might even get a B. (Since when did a B count as a bad grade in class as lame as high-school biology?) Sam, ever the social climber, offers to help her out sometime, like maybe Friday. Of course Brooke can’t study on Friday, since she’s having that enormous party that’s going to change the course of human history. After an awkward pause, she finally extends the much-coveted invitation to Sam, who plays it all cool like maybe she’ll come to the party and maybe she won’t. The camera cuts to Harrison, who has apparently witnessed the whole thing. It cuts again to Smug Bitch, who’s appeared out of nowhere to give Brooke the what-for for inviting Sam: "Did I just hear an invite? I think we’re at capacity." She snits away before Brooke can say anything, and the scene closes with Brooke standing in the hall looking like she’s just been hit on the head.
Cut to Smug Bitch sitting in study hall. Mary Cherry comes up holding a big silver book covered in white feather trim. "Nic, God bless your highlights, I was just wondering if you’d sign my Teen Ambition autograph book. Just slap your sloppy here between Tiffany-Amber Thiessen and Olympic gold medalist slash recovering alcoholic Oksana Baiul. Much like yourself, they are both overachievers I admire." Instead of running screaming from Mary Cherry in abject horror, Smug Bitch simply smiles sweetly and begins to pen herself into Mary Cherry’s Book of the Damned. As Smug Bitch is carelessly signing away her soul, Mary Cherry begins to ask her about that god-awful silver suit that SB bought at the mall in the last episode. She goes on to psychically predict what SB will be wearing to the party in practically pornographic tones. SB looks flattered at first, but the more Mary Cherry talks, the creepier she gets, until even Smug Bitch starts to feel uncomfortable. Wacky camera work ensues, giving the Smug Bitch a triple-take with sound effects. MC finally stops talking about SB’s party outfit and smiles her big scary Dallas smile, "Very Gwyneth!" (Phew. I was worried that they would forget the Paltrow reference this episode.) Then she scampers off to collect another unsuspecting soul in her big fuzzy book. SB looks after her suspiciously, but for some reason refrains from physically attacking her.
Cut to the school courtyard, where the camera pans across different groups of students. First the hacky-sack kids, then a gaggle of girls showing their Biore strips to one another (ew!), then our good friend Freddie Gong and the Acid-Wash Girl eating Oreos from the inside out with gluttonous abandon. Both of them have chocolate cookie smeared across their faces. Um, gross. Cut to Josh, also sitting in the courtyard, also eating cookies but looking all tidy and gorgeous instead. Cut to Brooke smiling at him in that weird watery way that she has. Oh, wait - Josh actually has cookie in the corners of his mouth, and they stay there for the whole scene. Great touch, very subtle. Brooke says, "What are you doing out here? This isn’t where we sit." Josh grimaces (or something) and says that he doesn’t exactly feel "embraced by the masses" since his decision to be in the musical. "But then," he says pointedly, "you know that." She sits down to him and pulls out an apple. "Is that all you’re eating?" he asks. She says yes, but then ignores the apple for the rest of the scene. She asks him about his dad yelling at him and asks if he’s okay, and he says, "Yes, no, maybe, I don’t know. Check one." Josh is really hung up on that "check a box" thing. He says that he expected his dad to be against him, but that he didn’t expect it from Brooke. Brooke starts to nibble a cracker, then thinks better of it and puts it down to the abandoned apple. Josh wonders aloud if she’s with him because he "happens to fit the quarterback uniform this year." Brooke seems genuinely hurt by this and cries, "That’s so unfair! You know how I feel about you!" He says that no, he doesn’t, and then they both face forward in glum silence. Yuck. This is way too much like a couple fight in real life for my taste. She asks him what he’s going to do, and he says bitterly that he’ll probably quit the musical: "The irony’s great, isn’t it? Dad wins, the guys win, you win." Heavy pause. "But then, you always do." He walks off, leaving her alone to stare the cracker and the apple and wonder what it is people do with things like that, anyway. This scene was almost entirely watchable and good until the very last shot where Brooke tearfully drops her head into her hands - in SLOW MOTION. I almost expected her to fall to her knees and yell, "Nooooooooo," while shaking her bony fists at the sky.
Cut to Sam and Harrison walking down the hall. Sam is frisking like a little dog, bouncing around and punching at Harrison’s shoulder. He is utterly unresponsive, perhaps hoping that if he ignores her she’ll close her mouth and go away. It doesn’t work. She keeps punching him, then says, "What’s up? You haven’t said two words to me all day." That’s because he’s about to kill you, Sam. He shrugs casually, then asks her if she’d like to grab a slice of pizza with him on Friday night. Her frisking falters, and she says, "Uh. . . I can’t . . . I’m gonna go check out Brooke’s party . . . we’ve become sort of friends in bio." Oh, man, she is SO LAME! Harrison nods bitterly, "That’s cool. Can I come?" and watches her as she squirms, "Uh -- I don’t think you can bring anybody. It sucks, it’s stupid, I know." No, Sam - you suck, and you’re stupid. She fidgets with her collar with her mouth gaping, in a stunningly poor attempt at looking uncomfortable. Harrison totally lays into her, calls her a sell-out and a hypocrite, and says he’s completely disappointed in her. She retorts, "Oh get over it, Harrison, I’m going for work." Right. And guys only read Playboy for the articles. Of course this only makes Harrison even more infuriated (have I mentioned yet that I love him?). He calls bullshit on her, saying that she’s only going because she thinks that if she goes she’ll be one of the "chosen ones, just a little bit closer to the flame that heats the school." SHE FINALLY CLOSED HER MOUTH! Yay for Harrison! I have to confess, though, that even though I love Harrison, I think that whole "flame that heats the school" thing is super weird. Harrison goes on to tell her that she’s been nuked from the list, and pulls out a guest list that he "hacked from Nicole’s laptop thirty minutes ago." Hacked from Nicole’s laptop? What? Pardon my tech-geek aside, but wouldn’t Nicole have to be logged onto a network for Harrison to hack into her machine? And wouldn’t Harrison have to have a computer handy, also on the same network? Oh, well. Maybe they have a computer science class together. Whatever. Sam, hearing that she’s been disinvited, gums, I mean, smiles in disbelief. Harrison continues to bag on her, telling her that she’s no different from anyone else who is dying to be unique, and that she never really stands up for her ideals. He tell her that she has no follow-through, and that she’s basically just a big ol’ stupid ho. Thank you, Harrison. He walks off in a snit, leaving Sam staring blankly into space with her flytrap a-hangin’. After a minute, she flounces off down the hall, followed by her bouncin’ and behavin’ hair.
Cut to Mr. Grant’s office. Sam bursts in all rosy-cheeked and wearing more lip gloss than one of Charlie’s Angels. Even I have to admit that she looks utterly beautiful here, in spite of her ropy-ass hair. She blurts out, "Mr. Grant, I’d like to know if you would please have dinner with me on Friday at seven o’clock." Mr. Grant just stares at her. "Um, to go over my questions for my interviews." More staring. "I need some focusing." Mr. Grant looks bemused by this and says, "No, Sam, I don’t think that’s appropriate. Maybe we can meet here after school tomorrow afternoon instead." Oh, wait, that’s not right. Instead, Mister I’m-Too-Stupid-To-Know-An-Impending-Sexual-Harassment-Hearing-When-I-See-One just smiles and says, "Why, sure, Sam, if that’s what you need." Maybe Chad should talk to his brother, Rob, about the consequences of inappropriate relations with minors.
Sam strides down the street, her hair flapping like a flag behind her. She marches right through the door of a place called Puncture. I guess she’s going to get that individuality-defining nose ring (snicker).
Brooke sits at the counter of a diner, playing with a half-eaten ice-cream sundae. She looks down the bar and notices Carmen sitting two seats away from her. In a very respectable move, she goes to sit beside her, and orders them both diet Cokes. Carmen glares daggers at Brooke, and refuses the diet Coke, saying, "You know, if you came here for sympathy about how you feel, then you came to the wrong place." Golly, she looks mean! She asks Brooke if she has any idea what Carmen would give to be her for one day, or even one hour. Then she tells this horribly sad story about how her mom weighs out her food, and her dad talks about her behind her back to her brothers, so she binge-eats M&Ms under the blankets at night just to get back at them. She’s totally crying, and I’m all choked up, too. The peculiar thing here is that Carmen is not really all that fat, as opposed to, say, Sugar Daddy, who probably spends all his spare time at the Golden Corral buffet. Brooke looks appropriately sympathetic to Carmen’s tale, and SHE tells a sad food story about how her mom ran off when she was nine, so she started dieting compulsively and her dad didn’t even notice anything was wrong until she broke a rib when she sneezed. The camera cuts to Carmen, who is looking slightly less rabid at this point, then back to Brooke, who says, "So, do you still want to be me?" Carmen’s face crumples, and she says, "I want to know why I didn’t make it. I was the best one." Brooke tells her that yeah, she was the best one, but she didn’t get picked because she is fat, adding "I didn’t make the rules." Carmen’s face is still all crumply, and the two of them sit side by side, staring ahead without saying anything.
Cut, thankfully, to Friday night. Smug Bitch is standing at the head of a huge line of people, wearing a headset and checking people off of a list. Who is she talking to on that headset? Is it even plugged in to anything? She turns away a well-dressed couple who are not on the list, and calls out, "! Name, please!" A saccharine voice pipes up, "Mary Cherry - plus one. Sugar Booger. You know Sugar Daddy, he’s in our bio class." The camera cuts to Mary Cherry, and she is wearing the exact same thing as Smug Bitch, right down to the toenail polish. Mary Cherry smiles evilly and manages to look much scarier than Smug Bitch, even though SB practices all the time. SB’s face falls (she really shows her age in this scene, she has got to be at least thirty) and she makes a snotty remark about how she must have missed the cloning chapter in biology. Sugar Daddy politely moves SB aside so that Mary Cherry can enter ahead of him, and as she passes SB, Mary Cherry gives her the wickedest smile in the entire world. SB crosses Mary Cherry’s name off the list real hard.
Cut to the inside of the house, which is just incredible. Camera pans down from above, then cuts to Mary Cherry rubbing her ass all over the Michelin Man’s crotch -- I mean, dancing with Sugar Daddy to a Fatboy Slim song. The camera pans sideways, past way too many candles for me to feel comfortable with at a teen party, to Brooke and the Smug Bitch sitting in the stairwell together. SB is bitching about Mary Cherry, who is now slow-dancing with SD. She rants for a long time until she notices that Brooke hasn’t said a word and is staring mournfully into space. SB demonstrates a rare streak of sympathy and says, "Don’t worry, Brookie, he’ll show up. And if he doesn’t, then he’s not worth it." Brooke blinks slowly and says, "The thing is, he is worth it." Brooke slumps against the wall, probably weak with hunger. SB stops being sympathetic and darts off to attack Mary Cherry. She shoves MC out of the way (wacky noises, like a bowling ball knocking over pins, here) and latches herself onto Sugar Daddy like a starfish onto a rock. As if that alone isn’t gross enough, Sugar Daddy doesn’t even seem perturbed by his date’s disappearance, and grabs right onto Smug Bitch with an expression of delight on his face.
Cut to a shot of a campfire on the beach. Carmen stares pensively into the fire, looking like she’s waiting for Kip Winger to start serenading her. LBH approaches, wearing the coolest Girl Scout T-shirt. She sits down and makes small talk about the beach and the planes flying overhead. Little Big Head tells Carmen that everyone missed her at school. Carmen cries some more and says that she doesn’t think she can go back. LBH says that Carmen inspired her to refuse to dissect her frog in biology class, and goes on to give another touching speech, in the most annoying voice possible, about how much of a hero Carmen is. Carmen just shakes her head and bawls like a baby. It’s amazing - why isn’t this show all about Carmen? She’s the only good actor in this whole ridiculous thing. The more Carmen shakes her head, the more LBH yells, until she is just shouting at the top of her lungs. The scene closes with Carmen finally just breaking down completely and holding onto the tiny Little Big Head for dear life while she sobs. Damn.
Cut to establishing shot of the restaurant. Inside, Mr. Grant is studying his menu. He is becoming more and more loathsome to me every time he comes onto the screen. Cut to Sam, twitching flirtatiously and breathing through her mouth. Her new piercing is painfully red and infected-looking. The camera cuts back and forth between the two of them while Sam’s voice-over says the most inane things in the entire world. Case in point: "I wonder if implants would hurt as much as my piercing? I’d keep my implants a secret and would wear baggy sweaters until he ripped my sweater off!" After what seems like an eternity, he interrupts this stream of nonsense by asking her what time the party starts, and what questions she has ready for her interviews. Sam twitches and stammers, and manages to ask him how he discovered the restaurant. Mr. Grant smiles smarmily, "I have a friend who works here." Then she asks him if he likes her piercing. Of course he doesn’t, you stupid twit! He tells her, gently, that he thinks she is trying too hard. (This from a man who pierced his ear after a Limp Bizkit concert?) Sam is crestfallen, and it only gets worse when the waitress arrives, and is clearly Mr. Grant’s girlfriend. He introduces them, and Heather, the girlfriend, immediately coos, "Sam! It’s nice to meet you! I have heard so much about you." Sam makes an unpleasant face at Heather, who then notices Sam’s nose: "Oh my God! Do you want some ice for that?" Sam makes a mondo snotto face and snaps, "Do you have any specials?" Heather says that the oysters are good, then turns to Mr. Grant and says that he’s going to need them later. Gross! They start to kiss and talk all gooey to each other, which is doubly gross, until they notice Sam staring at them like they just started picking each other’s scabs. Sam then drops her head into her hands -- IN SLOW MOTION! The anguish! The drama! Not! Seeing that Sam is freaking out, Heather excuses herself, and Mr. Grant starts apologizing for acting like the clueless oaf that he is. Sam says that she looks like a stupid Spice Girl in her dress, then blows her newly-pierced nose without a flinch or a blink. I am not proud of this or anything, but I have had my own nose pierced three times, and I can tell you right now that you don’t just go blowing your nose on the first day without some serious pain. ("I’ve only had mine pierced once, and if memory serves, you don’t go moving your face on the first day without some serious pain, much less honking away into a non-lotiony tissue, so ‘word’ on that." -- Sars) Mr. Grant assures her that she’s not stupid, and Sam wisely remarks that her friends will surely disagree. I know that if I was one of Sam’s friends, I would laugh at her for this one until we were both cold in the grave.
The scene opens with Josh walking pensively on the beach, alone with his thoughts. Alone, that is, until his pants start to ring. He checks the pants-phone, decides that he won’t answer it, and keeps walking with Courtney Love crooning sweetly in the background.
Brooke’s laundry room. A girl in a sassy black dress busts in and vomits right into the washing machine. My favorite part about this scene is the camera inside the washer, which catches the full splatter of puke. Ahhh -- there’s the high-school party scene that I remember. Sugar Daddy comes in and starts lecturing Vomit Girl about pacing herself, and he cleans her up very sweetly, dabbing at her face with a Kleenex with one hand and calling Josh again with the other. Cut to the beach, where Josh chooses to answer his pants this time. Josh asks how the party is going, and SD brags about how Mary Cherry and Nicole are fighting over him. Josh laughs and says, "I told you you were the life of the party!" Sugar Daddy apologizes to Josh for being a shit about the musical, then lays another co-dependent guilt line on him, telling him that he needs Josh there at the party. Josh, bless him, sticks to his pensive little guns and stays right there on the shore. Cut to Brooke standing in the doorway looking like a junkie on the jones: "When is he coming?" SD slings Vomit Girl over one shoulder so he can go call her a cab and tells Brooke, "He ain’t." He walks out, leaving Brooke in the doorway and looking like she might faint from malnourishment.
Cut to a coffee shop, where Carmen, Harrison, and LBH sit watching a homeless man meow like a cat. Carmen apologizes for scaring them all, and then Sam walks up and says, "I’m sorry, too." They all give her the super-cold shoulder for a long time while she tells them in about thirty different ways what a loser, liar, and hypocrite she is. The camera cuts from her, looking congested, to them, looking freezing cold, then back again throughout her self-abasing speech. After she has finally run out of I-suck things to say about herself, she turns to walk away. They relent and invite her to sit down and have some fries. Soon they are all laughing and all is well with the "misfits." Of course, after a few minutes of everything being fine, Little Big Head has to bust out with a big whiny speech about how Brooke won and they all lost. Sam the genius has a moment of insight and yells, "I just figured it out! Our group, their group -- we’re all the SAME!" NO. Say it isn’t so! I’m not buying it, no matter what that gaping fly-catcher says. LBH screeches that someone ought to confront Brooke McQueen, and Sam decides that she is just the pushy hypocrite to do it. The gang leaps up and dashes off to another fine moment of social awkwardness.
Cut to the party. Mary Cherry is yelling at Sugar Daddy. Sam marches right up to Brooke and pushes her. Brooke, understandably upset and confused, says, "Sam, what are you doing here? Is this about lab or something? Can’t it wait?" SB is right at her side like a pugnacious bulldog. Sam yells, "No. We’re talking about it, right now!" The DJ stops the record, the whole party watches. Sam demands to know why they weren’t invited to the party. Brooke calls her on her terrible manners and asks what right she has to ask these kinds of rude questions, at a party to which she clearly was only kind of invited. Sam makes a crack about Brooke being a princess, Brooke points out that Sam is an elitist snot just like everyone else. SB says that Brooke ought to smack Sam (I kind of agree with her). LBH calls SB a bitch, which provokes SB to lapse into Sugar Daddy’s weirdo ghetto-speak. They start to fly at each other when - SURPRISE - the parents finally come home. After a series of incredulous questions, the story comes out that Sam’s mom and Brooke’s dad met during a layover at the airport, his flight was canceled, he went on the cruise, and now they’re engaged. Um, what? The scene, and the show, closes with the camera cutting from one horrified face to another, except for my new boyfriend, Harrison, who looks just as pleased as punch.