This episode begins with a great big shout-out to all those Popular viewers in their thirties. Brooke is snoozing in the middle of some unidentified classroom and dreams of being on The Dating Game. Was Brooke even alive when The Dating Game was still in reruns? Sugar Daddy is the emcee. Brooke is the Bachelorette that the Bachelors are competing for, and she’s dressed in Barbie pink and looking all "don’t you want to feed me?" cute. Bachelor #1 is a cocky blond guy we’ve never seen before named Stone Cold Surfer. As if Mr. and Mrs. Surfer actually stood in front of the incubator saying to each other, "He’s beautiful, darling, let’s call him Stone Cold!" Stone Cold looks like a blond Matt Lattanzi on steroids. And when I say Matt Lattanzi, I’m not talking about the heavy balding ex-Mr. Olivia Newton John. I’m talking about the sweet kid who starred in My Tutor in the days before he disappeared into matrimony with Aussie proto-Meg Ryan and inspired an entire chapter in You’ll Never Make Love In This Town Again. Brooke asks Stone Cold what he’d say if he ran a personal ad. Stone Cold tells Brooke that he doesn’t need a personal ad, but if he did it would say, "Available: One lean mean love machine. Invest in ceiling mirrors and high-wattage bulbs because you’re gonna wanna leave the lights on, baby!" He gives a high five to Bachelor #2, who is Josh, and the studio audience erupts into applause like they’re those guys in The Accused. Brooke questions Josh. She says that she loved "Shakey in Love," and it’s just so pert of her to have a pet name for Shakespeare and a shout out to Gwyneth so early on in the episode. Since she wants to date a "bard," she asks Josh to write her a poem on the spot. Josh’s poem goes, "Your lips are red/Your eyes are blue/All I want to do is look at you." "Well, what if my lips weren’t red and my eyes weren’t blue?" Brooke asks. Brooke, don’t go there. Discussions like those are never constructive. Josh’s revised poem is as follows: "Then I’d still love you and uh doo bee doo doo." He does that chuckle like he’s still keeping it cool in front of his buddies. And the audience moans because it’s so cornball. Bachelor #3 is Harrison, a.k.a. "Mr. Amorgan." Brooke asks him what would happen if their car had broken down on a cold snowy evening and they had to spend the night together in a roadside motel room with only one bed. The audience goes all horndog on Harrison until Harrison says that he’d want to stay up with her all night talking. The audience boos and Sugar Daddy throws his question cards up in the air in disgust, but Brooke is astonished at Harrison’s sensitivity. "Just talk?" she asks. The lights dim around Harrison and Brooke as Harrison explains further: "At night when the lights are out, people tell each other things they’d never tell each other during the day. I wanna hear about every thing -- about your childhood, your favorite color, what you want from a man -- what you want from life." Brooke looks like she’s a Barbie doll come to life because she experienced the true love of a mortal man in some weird piece of Young Adult Barbie fan-fic that I’m sure is out there somewhere. "Bachelor number three, what I want is a man like you," she says.
Back in the reality of Kennedy "Onassis" High, Brooke comes to at her desk, awakened by a note that has been thrown at her. The note is from Stone Cold Surfer, who is actually a student we’ve never seen before, telling her to "act fast" and ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance before some other lovely gets him. Oh great, it’s another one of those who is going with who plot lines they always put on the teen shows even though everyone knows that real teens today go to dances in large groups and never ask each other on dates. They haven’t for years. From what I’ve heard, nowadays, if you’re a teenage girl and you want a date, you just keep showing up at keg parties until the guy you like is too drunk to reject you. Brooke adds his note to a pile of notes, presumably from other "applicants," and does a wry smile towards him that says "no thank you," very sweetly. The whole class is watching a movie on how the male peacock shows off his plumage to attract female peacocks, which pretty much wraps up the theme of tonight’s episode in a nice little package. Brooke, in a thought voice-over, decides to stop being such a peacock and look for a relationship not based on physical attraction.
Josh, sitting between Brooke and Stone Cold, leans in to get Brooke’s attention and has a thought voice-over of his own in which he sizes up Stone Cold as competition. Josh worries that Stone Cold might get somewhere with Brooke because he’s so much hotter than the great and mighty Josh himself. Then he worries that he’s gay for thinking of Stone Cold as hot. Sam, sitting behind Josh, is thinking about asking Josh to the dance but wonders if Josh prefers large-breasted women. Sam, look at the chest of the woman Josh was just involved with and rethink that last hypothesis. Carmen is also in this class and she’s checking out Josh as well. She’s thinking that Josh might be tired of bumping into Brooke’s hipbone and might want some "cushion for his pushin’." What an alluring sentiment, Carmen; it’s a miracle you’re still single. Harrison reflects on the competition he faces for getting asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance by Brooke. Since the school has six hundred students, he concludes that with Josh and three openly gay male students out of the picture, his chances are one in 596. There are openly gay students at this school? Where? "I hate my body," thinks Harrison. "I hate my body," thinks Josh. "I hate my body," thinks Sam. "I hate my body," thinks Carmen. "I hate my body" thinks the whole class in unison.
Credits. C’mon guys, the budget can’t be that low. Hire an Avid editor already and get those parents out of the credits, or better yet, reshoot the whole sequence with Emory Dick, Bio and the Tunas. I mean, lord knows they’ve been spending plenty on advertising this past month. There are ads for Popular up all over bus shelters, pay phones, and subway-station billboards here in New York City. These ads feature Sam and Brooke made up and styled within an inch of their lives, perched on a really ultra-stylish chaise. Nicole is featured in the background, trying to look menacing but only succeeding in looking horrified at what that Costa Rican stylist just did to her in that South Beach studio, and a saw is poking up from below and cutting a hole in the floor right underneath Brooke and Sam. Could that be a hint of what Nicole might do to both of the McPherson/McQueen Palace Princesses later in the season?
Either the coach made Sugar Daddy his assistant when he kicked him off the team last week, or more likely they don’t have the funds to pay a union actor to play the wrestling coach, because Sugar Daddy is putting the wrestling team through a weigh-in. Josh and a dozen or so half-naked male extras are lined up in the locker room. When Josh gets on the scale, Sugar tells him he needs to lose six pounds. Just where are these six pounds that Josh needs to lose? Josh moans to Sugar Daddy about how out of shape he is and how much Brooke loved his "washboard abs." Josh, maybe you haven’t been paying attention lately, but your best friend Sugar a) has been recently labeled "disabled" by the wrestling coach due to his weight and is no longer able to wrestle and b) hasn’t had a girlfriend all season except for that microsecond when Mary Cherry and Nicole were fighting over him, so shut up. Anyway, instead of beating the crap out of Josh, Sugar Daddy tells him all about this new diet he’s on called "The Mummy Diet." It involves wrapping oneself in cellophane and Ace bandages and sweating the weight off. For some physics-defying reason, the water all ends up in a baggie positioned at one’s wrist under a shirt sleeve, which can be discreetly emptied by opening the baggie over a sink or toilet. And don’t even get me started on the whole fat-vs.-water-retention thing, and how basically if Josh wanted to lose water weight, he could simply take a diuretic, not to mention the fact that Josh is very skinny, or on the fact that, throughout this whole scene, Josh’s abs are never even shown, presumably because they are just fine.
Harrison is in another section of the locker room, wearing a towel and staring longingly at Josh in his towel. Emory Dick pops up behind him and lets him know that he knows that Harrison wants Josh, and it’s okay with him because it’s perfectly normal to question one’s sexuality in high school. I think this is teen-closet-case-speak for "I had a lovely time watching The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with you last week; how come you haven’t called me? I thought we were going steady. Are you dumping me for Josh?" Harrison tells Emory that he doesn’t wantJosh, he wants to be Josh. Meanwhile, as Harrison complains about how his body will never be like Josh's no matter how hard he works out, the camera doesn’t stray below his chest and doesn't show us just what is wrong with his body, which has always seemed just fine to me in clothes and quite possibly indistinguishable from Josh’s. Tactless Emory tells Harrison that not only is he a victim of a culture that worships at the feet of GQ beauty, he really does have a pitiful body. I guess that’s just teen-closet-case-speak for "get back here, you hag! Who do you think you are to be leaving me? You were nothing when I met you and you’ll be nothing if you leave me! Oh, what have I said? Come back, lover! I promise I’ll never say those things again and I’ll back that play you wrote."
Since Miss Ross was cast as the faculty member who replaced Gay Sidney Poitier (tm Amorgan) as director of the cheapest production of South Pacific ever, we have seen her organize the guest principal program, bitch out Mary Cherry and Nicole for "scabbing," sing "Dirty Ho" to Brooke in a fantasy sequence, and preside over the Emory Dick trial. What the hell does she actually teach? I’m not seeing an actual curriculum here. All right, I’m just going to call this class "Sassy Black Female Thought for White Teens" and think that maybe it fulfills a social studies distribution requirement or something. So today in S.B.F.T.f.W.T, Miss Ross is giving that old Women’s Studies lecture about how if a Barbie doll existed in real life, her waist would be eighteen inches and she’d fall down from the weight of her bazooms, and a real GI Joe doll would have the largest biceps known to man. She goes on to talk about the consequences of people comparing themselves to images like Barbie, which results in anorexia, bulimia, et cetera. For some strange reason, Brooke listens attentively like she has never heard of such a thing in her entire life. Meanwhile, Nicole, Mary Cherry, and Popita look at each other warmly as Miss Ross describes the horrifying symptoms of various eating disorders. Miss Ross goes on to equate eating disorders with being a victim of patriarchy. She concludes by urging everyone to "subvert patriarchy" by participating in the Sadie Hawkins dance because Sadie Hawkins was a "dog-faced" woman who didn’t wait to be asked to dances and as a result of her liberated behavior, she got a lot of dates and there was a dance named after her. "I love Sadie Hawkins. I named my pug Sadie Hawkins," says Miss Ross. The students are bursting with respect for their sassy black female teacher because she taps into their childhood fantasies of having Nell Carter or Whoopi Goldberg for a nanny. All of the Browns, some of the Blondes, and April Tuna nod their heads like what Miss Ross just said affected them. No one is sleeping. No one is thinking to themselves, gee, I can’t wait for lunch so I can go smoke a bone under the bleachers. They’re all going to take her advice. Yeah, find me a real public high school where the kids are this earnest. She leaves them with no homework, but a thought to ponder: "Why is it that only the beautiful are invited to the dance of life when we know that all God’s children gotta boogie?" Carmen gazes downward and arches an eyebrow as she draws inspiration from her teacher’s words. Shudder.
The cafeteria. Harrison sits down at a table with Sam, who’s got an Ewok ’do today. "Hear that?" asks Harrison. "That’s the sound of no one asking me to the Sadie Hawkins dance." He goes on to complain about his concave chest. Sam complains about her concave chest. He asks Sam for a girl’s perspective on his attractiveness. Sam tells him he has nice eyelashes. "Tuna alert," says Harrison. April Tuna appears. "Hello, Harrison John," she says in that way she has of addressing people by their first and last names. She proceeds to feverishly tell Harrison that, although he is not in her bondage fantasies like Stone Cold Surfer, she’d be willing to go to the dance with Harrison and let him be "the adequate setting for the fiery ruby that is April Tuna." Stone Cold is in my bondage fantasies too -- only mine aren’t sexual. I’d just like to tie him up and beat the crap out of him. Harrison is stunned (as am I) and before he can say anything, Sam tells April that she’s too late, because Harrison is her date. April Tuna stomps off, but not before she refers to him as a "Scrawny Beta Harrison John." Harrison moans about April dissing him. Sam reassures Harrison that they’ll have a good time at the dance and asks him if he ever gets tired of longing for the unattainable. "Like Brooke?" adds Sam. "Like Josh?" says Harrison. "No comment, I plead the fifth," says Sam, all journalism/legal-speak, and sucks on her drink box while she gives her Ewok ’do another shake.
Mary Cherry, Nicole, and Popita sit at a nearby table and split some minuscule portion of some food which looks like a green blintz or a raw won ton while they check out Stone Cold’s butt. Mary Cherry talks about the success of her latest diet and considers asking Stone Cold to the Sadie Hawkins dance if she can get skeletal thin. Popita, who gets more and more Latin with each and every episode, tells the group that Stone Cold is hers because he loves "caliente" girls and is always asking her to roll her "r"s for him. Nicole proclaims that she will have Stone Cold because "like fashion and anorexia, we go together." "Looks like we got ourselves a cat fight," says Mary Cherry. The girls propose a contest. Whoever loses the most weight by the time of the dance gets Stone Cold.
Josh runs into Brooke and does this bravado-hint thing about all the invitations he’s getting to the dance. Brooke isn’t taking the bait so Josh basically asks her if there’s any possibility of being asked. Brooke reminds Josh that they broke up and they can go to the dance with anyone they want, and she stomps off. Josh is heartbroken. He sits down and Carmen approaches him. She starts up an awkward conversation by complimenting his hair and then starts nervously ranting about today’s dessert, which is phallic-shaped brownies called Lincoln Logs. That’s right -- even when Carmen is asking a guy out, food is somehow involved. Then she drops "you have nice hair" as a frantic non-sequitur. Josh is distracted, and while walking off, he offers his dessert to Carmen, saying she can have it because he’s got to "lose a few." Ouch. "That went well," says Carmen to herself, full of deluded optimism.
Carmen approaches the Browns’ table and Lily bitches her out for trying to ask "that Ken doll" to the dance and lauds Sam for going with someone who is not a stud, i.e. Harrison. Harrison takes offense. "Don’t be upset, my little anti-bicep," says Lily. "You know you’re still my favorite activist in training." Because you know with Lily it’s all about activism. Don’t leave her alone in a room with Ruben Blades, Sting, Angela Davis, and a jar of Crisco, if you know what I mean. Harrison stomps off. Carmen picks up her Lincoln Log to eat it, but it falls apart before put it in her mouth. Uh-oh. Bad news ahead for Carmen. If she can’t get food into her mouth, something really tragic is going happen.
The Blondes enter the Novak and are enraptured to discover a talking scale who calls himself Mr. Calorie. Nicole gasps, "I know this company. It’s a diet plan aimed specifically at unhappy teenage girls. I saw it on a talk show called Disturbing Trends." "Answered prayers," moans Mary Cherry. Poppy picks up one of Mr Calorie’s Jenny Craig-like packaged meals, which consists of a celery stick, a bouillon cube, and a breath mint for dessert. "Girls," says Nicole. "Our contest begins right now. This is our Stone Cold battle headquarters."
Harvard Yard. I mean, the Kennedy parking lot. Brooke’s books fall to the ground. Harrison picks them up and comments about how much school work she’s carrying around. Ali McGraw, I mean, Brooke in a camel hair coat, explains that she’s doing an extra credit paper on Franny and Zooey. Ryan O’Neal, I mean, Harrison gives props to Brooke for liking Salinger but says he prefers Catcher in the Rye. Brooke pretends that she wants him to elaborate so Harrison talks about how he relates to Holden Caulfield because they’re both searching and tortured. "I think we all feel like Holden," says Brooke. Oh, shut up, both of you. If J.D. Salinger was so cool, how come he schtupped that talentless harpie, Joyce Maynard, author of Where Love Goes and second runner-up for Linda Blair’s part in The Exorcist? How "tortured and searching" is that? Basically, J.D. Salinger told the Tabitha Soren of the early seventies that she was brilliant and that they were soulmates in order to get her into bed. Makes you want to write poetry on your baseball glove so you’ll have something to read in the outfield, don’t it? ["And they didn’t even schtup -- little Joycey just went south of the border. Pathetic. And her memoir sucked." -- Sars] So then Harrison’s mother comes to pick him up and the camera never focuses on the car, because I guess Alley Mills wasn’t that that hard up for work that she’d agree to hang out on the set all day just so she could deliver a line like "get in the car, Harrison," or "sorry I’m late, nice to see you again Brooke." So just before Harrison gets into the car to the blur that is his mother, Brooke asks him to go the dance with her. Harrison gulps, says yes, gets into the car with his lesbian mom’s stunt double, and drives off. Wow, Brooke and Sam have the same date for the school dance. I smell a fight coming up. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.
Kennedy boy’s locker room/gay porn studios. Sugar Daddy is wrapping Josh in Ace bandages and explaining how to drain the water out of the baggies. By the way, did any of you know that there is actually a large community of people, mostly gay men, who are really into getting wrapped up in Ace bandages as a sexual thing? No, I’m not making this up. Josh and Sugar Daddy could get paid some serious money reenacting this scene live at certain circuit parties. "Sugar," says Josh. "Am I fat?" For some bizarre reason, Sugar doesn’t take out a pair of hot pokers and jam one into each of Josh’s eyeballs at the insensitivity of his remark, especially considering that ultimately Sugar never gets a date to the Sadie Hawkins dance. He actually goes on to encourage Josh to stick to this diet. Guys, hasn’t Martin Lawrence’s life-and-death struggle with dehydration this past summer taught you anything?
At Sam’s locker, Harrison tries to tell her that he’s going to the dance with Brooke. Before he can say anything, Sam tells Harrison all about the awesome dress that she bought yesterday which makes her look, according to her, like a cross between a New York Jennifer Love Hewitt and a hooker. Funny, I never really thought that New York Jennifer Love Hewitt was all that aesthetically distinct from a hooker in the first place. Sam runs off to class before Harrison can say a word. Emory comes up behind Harrison and asks him if he’s told her yet. Harrison lies to Emory and tells him that Sam’s fine with it. Emory exits and Harrison slams his head into a locker.
Okay, this scene is just bizarre, but just keep in mind that we gotta get Brooke and Sam to fight before the episode ends by whatever means necessary, so just play along at home. Lily is doing her usual cry for help through political activism. This week, she’s making everyone in the entire school stand in line to be weighed by her so then she can tell them if they weigh too little or not. This program is called "Be Something, Eat Something." What fool high-school administrator who has to approve these things thought that having the skinniest person in the entire school tell people that they don’t weigh enough would foster an awareness of eating disorders throughout the entire student body? Lily tells some girl to gain ten pounds. Someone should really tell Lily that sometimes people are naturally skinny and have as hard a time gaining weight as larger people like Carmen have losing it. Nicole, Mary Cherry, and Poppy cut the line and demand to be weighed. "I can’t resist a weigh-in," says Nicole. "Subtract at least a pound for the acrylic nails and the underwire -- that’s part of a bra." Hee! Lily tells Nicole that she’s too skinny, and of course, the Blondes disagree. Nicole tells Lily she shouldn’t talk and refers to her as "Busty Golightly." Anyway, I just can’t really explain this part, because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. For some reason, Nicole and Lily make a bet that if Lily goes to the dance with Emory Dick, thus proving her devotion to the anti-lookism cause, Nicole will change the Glamazon symbol that is on the back of their jackets from an anorexic girl to a more substantial woman. For some other reason, Nicole has to make over April Tuna as part of this bet, and yet, Nicole stands to gain nothing in this whole endeavor even if she wins. It’s basically a sorry excuse for the writers to get April Tuna made over and for Emory and Lily to go on a hilarious date. Lily asks Emory, who has been waiting in line to be weighed with a "turd poking through his underoos," to the dance, and Nicole and the Blondes grab April Tuna, who is also standing in line, and take her to the Novak to make her over. "Let the records show that this is a war between inner and outer beauty," proclaims Lily self-righteously, making me wish that Mary Cherry would get some cash from her mother and set up the Blondes to fight this "war" with semi-automatic weapons.
Carmen and Sam are hanging out in an empty classroom. Carmen tells Sam that, despite Lily’s disapproval, she rilly rilly wants to ask Josh to the dance. In a rare moment of concern for someone who is not a cheerleader and a rare example of continuity, she asks Sam if it’s okay since Sam and Josh had that whole "Bali Hai" thing earlier in the season. Sam gives Carmen her blessing since she still thinks she’s going with Harrison, and she coaches Carmen on what to say to Josh since the last time they got together, all she could talk about was food. Sam instructs Carmen to tell Josh that she likes him, but not for his "brawny shoulders and his tapered waist," but for the way he helped Ganine, the one-armed janitor, put up chairs so she could mop in junior high. "Good God, that’s hot," says Carmen.
The Kennedy weight room/gay porn studio soundstage. Josh empties more baggies of water into the water fountain. Josh, hasn’t Teen Singer/Actress/Covergirl spokesmodel Brandy’s recent hospitalization opened your eyes to the dangers of dehydration? Harrison asks Josh’s advice about working out. Josh tells Harrison that he’s hoping to get into shape fast so he can get a date for the dance. Harrison asks if he and Brooke are really over. Josh tells Harrison that "to quote Lenny K., it’s not over till it’s over." For a second, I think that Josh is quoting Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith’s guitarist, but then I realized that he’s actually quoting Tommy Hilfiger spokesmodel Lenny Kravitz. Eww. Emory comes into the weight room, tells Harrison that Lily asked him to the dance, and lets it slip that Harrison is going with Brooke to the dance while Josh and Sugar Daddy are spotting Harrison. Josh and Sugar tell Harrison that Brooke’s only going to the dance with him out of pity, and they leave him in a dangerous position on the weight bench trying to press a really heavy weight with no spotters.
Lily runs into Emory in the hall and they talk about their date. Emory asks Lily what she’s going to wear. "You’re not doing that East Village combat-boots-with-a-gown look, are you?" Lily replies in the negative. Emory starts making clothing suggestions, including a velveteen choker to take attention away from Lily’s big head. Yes, I believe that was a shout-out to Amorgan.
At Brooke’s locker, Harrison is still sweating from his workout. He asks Brooke if she’s just going out with him out of pity. Before Brooke can answer, Sam comes by and tells Harrison all about the "hot-tub limo" that Emory rented to take the four of them to the Sadie Hawkins dance. Oops, the jig is up. Sam is furious that Harrison never told her he was going with Brooke. Harrison protests that he never got a chance. Brooke wants to know who Harrison is taking to the dance. Josh appears and asks Sam to ask him to the dance in front of Brooke. Sam, using the very line she told Carmen to use about his brawny shoulders and his tapered waist, starts to ask him, and Josh cuts her off and says yes. Brooke is furious. Josh reminds her that since they’re not dating they can go with whomever they like. Brooke slams her locker shut and storms off.
In the palace bathroom, Brooke and Sam fight about Harrison and Josh. Ho hum. For some bizarre reason, the outcome of this fight is that Brooke and Harrison are going to the dance with Sam, Josh, Emory and Lily as a group. Whatever it takes to get Sam and Brooke together in that limo so they fight some more. This is such an example of how Popular is essentially a porno film, except instead of hardcore sex defining the plot structure of a porn film, a fight between Sam and Brooke is what defines the plot structure of an episode of Popular. It doesn’t matter how skimpy the premise is, as long as we see some girl-on-girl action. Oh, and I totally forgot -- they each made bitchy comments about each other’s breasts. If I weren’t yawning so much I would have made that "re-ow" sound.
In a hallway, Mary Cherry, Nicole, and Poppy approach Stone Cold in fashion slo-mo. April Tuna is behind them. The Blondes explain to Stone Cold about their bet. Stone Cold has the smuggest expression on his face. They tell him to show up at the dance and the winner will be his date. Lily and Carmen pass by, and Lily tells Carmen, loudly enough for the Blondes to hear her, that she was thinking of using Janet Reno as the new Glamazon logo if she wins the bet. Nicole gets all frantic and commands April Tuna and the Blondes to meet her after school in the Novak for a make-over.
In study hall, Carmen tells Lily that her plan is to go the dance stag. That way, she reasons, she’ll be "super in power and casual" and she’ll just ask Josh to dance. Bad idea, Carmen -- we’ve seen you dance. I never thought I’d say this, but maybe you should keep trying to discuss food with him. Lily tells Carmen that Sam already asked Josh to the dance and that he said yes. Carmen’s hopes are dashed.
Josh and Harrison pump iron together while they stare at each other all aggressively in the Kennedy Weight Room. No comment.
On a set of Kennedy stairs, where for some reason no students ever walk by to interrupt them, Carmen confronts Sam about her date with Josh. Sam explains to Carmen that it was Josh who made the first move even though technically she actually did the asking. She confesses that she couldn’t help herself, since going to the dance with Josh makes her feel pretty. At the mention of the word "pretty," which Carmen says with her in unison, both girls sit down on the stairs and contemplate the beauty madness that has infected both of them. What’s really visually striking about this scene is that Sam and Carmen look totally like twins in a Diane Arbus photograph, only Carmen is a couple of inches wider. "I’m tired of being the girl with the personality," says Carmen. Good news, Carmen! That whole fat-girl-with-the-personality myth is just one of those examples of stereotyping in which the minority or marginalized group is prejudged as having positive attributes that in reality not every single member of the race has. Asians possessing superior math skills is an example of this phenomenon. Black people being better dancers, gay men knowing how to set a dinner table with flair -- still more examples. Although these stereotypical attributes can have beneficial consequences for the minority group at times, these assumptions can be limiting. Carmen, you are a rare bird and a cultural rebel. You are a fat girl on TV with no "personality." Who ever thought we’d see the day? "I hate my thighs," says Carmen. "Me too," says Sam. "I hate my thighs." Then they name every part of their bodies that they hate. Most notable was Sam’s: "I hate my mouth." They end the conversation with tonight’s official refrain: "I hate my body."
In the Novak, Nicole, Mary Cherry, and Popita are making April Tuna over, but nothing’s working. "I gave her a blow out that would have straightened out the Pacific Coast highway and now look," says Nicole. "How scary," says Mary Cherry. "April Tuna is the black hole of beauty." Meanwhile, April Tuna has Bride of Frankenstein hair and a total shit-eating grin on her face about the fact that she has been dubbed "the ultimate makeover challenge" by Nicole.
A montage sequence unfolds as "I Wanna Be Adored" plays in the background. Harrison lifts weights that are too heavy for him. Josh empties more bags of liquid into a sink. Josh, didn’t you hear what happened to Whitney Houston? She was totally dehydrated and didn’t notice when one of Mariah Carey’s henchmen planted a bag of marijuana in her luggage. Nicole, Mary Cherry, and Poppy check out their reflections, each frustrated at how little weight she’s lost; Mary Cherry sucks in her cheeks. Sam purchases a bra that enlarges her bust when she pumps it up with a hand pump. All this subterfuge and excessive grooming in the name of a high-school dance: I can see the trouble coming from a mile away.
Emory Dick’s hot-tub limo en route to the dance. Brooke, Harrison, Josh, Sam, and Lily are in the hot-tub limo. Emory Dick is in the hot tub itself. Maybe that swirly that Josh and SD gave him last week made him afraid of all showers and he can’t pass up a hot tub without jumping in. Sam has the ugliest dress and hairstyle combo I have ever seen; she’s wearing a powder-blue bustier and she’s got these Pocahontas braids, and it looks like she’s playing Pirate Jenny in a Florham Park, New Jersey community production of Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. Lily moans about wanting to get her hands on an "invisible pill." Harrison gives Brooke a corsage, and Sam and Josh try to act like they’re really hot for each other. Sam’s breast pumps up too much accidentally and Sam is horrified and covers up her breasts with Josh's coat. Josh eventually becomes jealous of Brooke and Harrison and challenges Harrison to a fight. They stop the limo and Josh and Harrison step out to fight, but they don’t feel up to it; Josh is too dehydrated and Harrison is in too much pain from his workouts. They get back into the limo and lie to the girls. Josh tells them that they fought and Harrison won. Brooke tells Harrison that she hates violence. Oh, yeah, Brooke? You didn't seem to mind the thought of a swirly last week when you were defending Josh in the school trial. Josh gloats that he succeeded in driving a wedge between Brooke and Harrison.
Nicole, Mary Cherry, and Poppy exit their bathroom stalls in fashion slo-mo and weigh in with Mr. Calorie. Mr. Calorie says that the results are identical, a draw. "I shouldn'ta snuck that sip uh water last night. I'm such a pig," says Mary Cherry, To decide who gets Stone Cold, the girls split the last of Mary Cherry's nuclear-strength laxatives, known on the street as "Convulse," and agree to weigh in within an hour. Whoever loses the most weight by then wins Stone Cold's booty. They fetch April Tuna from the stalls and we see that the Blondes made April Tuna over to look like Babe Paley, the wife of CBS president Bill Paley, Truman Capote's best friend and the grande doyenne of New York society in the sixties. She wears a strapless periwinkle blue dress. She enters the dance and the boys whistle at her. "I feel pretty," she says over the Smash Mouth music that Sugar Daddy, the dateless DJ, is playing. "Pretty horny!" she adds.
Carmen enters the dance trying not to look too sweaty and desperate. Sam and Josh dance. "Are you okay?" asks Sam. "You feel kinda hot." Josh asks Sam if he thinks that Brooke and Harrison suspect the truth -- that they're together at the dance for revenge purposes. Sam barely hides her disappointment and says no, she thinks they fooled Brooke and Harrison. Her chest overinflates again, and Josh asks Sam if she ate something she was allergic to. Sam simpers her ass off the dance floor. Harrison and Brooke aren't dancing but sitting at a table because Harrison is in too much pain. Brooke is disappointed, and Harrison admits that he was trying to get into shape to impress her. Brooke sort of lets it slip that she's out with him because she wants to date someone who's not a stud. Harrison is pissed to realize that he is on a pity date after all. Brooke asks Harrison if he would still like her if she weren’t so pretty. Harrison doesn't answer. Her point made, Brooke goes off to get him some Advil and it looks like there's going to be no nookie for either of them tonight.
Nicole, Mary Cherry, and Poppy look for Lily to see if she's shown up with "The Little Dick." They see April Tuna dancing with Stone Cold with her new dress pulled down to her waist, exposing her Dr. Frank N. Furter bra. "Is Convulse also a hallucinogenic?" asks Poppy. They pull Tuna off the dance floor and tell her to get tidied up or they lose the bet. Tuna explains that her date, Stone Cold, didn't like her made over. He liked her as is. The girls are stunned to learn that April had Stone Cold as a date all along. Stone Cold explains that he likes April because April sees him for who he really is, not just a hot body. The Blondes' stomachs rumble, letting them know that the laxative has taken effect. They run to the Novak. Josh pants and gasps by a snack table. Carmen, who has been stalking him all evening, asks him to dance. He falls to the ground.
Back in the Emory Dick hot-tub limo, Emory is in his tux, combing his wet hair and fighting with Lily because he is offended that she only went to the dance with him to make a political statement. He gives her a corsage and walks off into the night.
The Blondes emerge from the stalls of the Novak exhausted and drained. "I feel like I just gave birth to every organ I have," says Mary Cherry. They realize that the contest wasn't such a good idea after all and decide to dismantle Mr. Calorie. Mary Cherry produces a sledgehammer from her purse: "Mr. Calorie, it's hammer time!"
Josh, Sam, Brooke, and Harrison sit with Principal Hall and Principal Hall's husband Olaf. No one is dancing. The evening is a bust. Principal Hall reflects on the evening’s disasters: "Sweat baggies, elephant laxatives, a Hindenburg lingerie disaster, lifting weights to the point of paralysis." She lectures the kids about how she learned to go beyond the superficial when she lost her slight four years ago due to diabetes and met Olaf in a support group for blind people. She brags some more about how Olaf loves her for herself and not because she looks like a woman in a magazine. Principal Hall, if you have it so figured out, how come you keep making stupid administrative decisions like having Nicole run the Homecoming Queen elections so she can fix them, or putting Sam and Brooke, who obviously need time away from each other, head to head while producing a television documentary or being opposing counsels in a school-wide trial? And furthermore, you better hope that you and your husband never get your sight back, or he'll discover that he's married to Madeleine Albright and you'll realize that your husband is Shaft, and you'll be single before you can say "it's not easy being green." The kids gaze at the Halls as they get up to dance. Josh asks Carmen to dance. She totally has a orgasm on the spot and they go out onto the dance floor. Nicole bargains with Lily, saying she’ll make the Glamazon icon a little heavier as a compromise. The episode ends with the two couples on the dance floor, the Halls and Josh and Carmen, slow-dancing to, predictably, "I Only Have Eyes For You."