Something's different about this episode. For one thing, it opens with an exterior shot -- and not one of those one-time-only expository shots either. This one features a car on a road and everything. Furthermore, the truce struck between Lily and Mary Cherry during the last episode has not been swept under the rug as these things so often are. Lily is driving her to school along with Carmen, Brooke, and Sam because Mary Cherry crashed her car into Bijan of Beverly Hills -- as if Mary Cherry wasn't already the love of my life or anything. Someone has farted. Brooke blames Mary Cherry. Mary Cherry blames Carmen -- you know, all that air she consumes along with those Pringles. And speaking of Carmen, how fat can she actually be if there's room in the backseat of this compact sedan for her, Mary Cherry, and Brooke with space left over for their demonstrative hand gestures? I think my sister and I might have sat together comfortably in the back of one of these things fifteen years ago when we both weighed a grand total of 160 lbs.
Sam -- apropos of nothing -- makes a speech about how great her life is because she's got a boyfriend and Harrison is in full recovery. No one asked you, Sam. Lily -- apropos of nothing other than the fact that Sam felt like sharing -- gives herself a high five for driving an electric car which doesn't pollute the environment -- not that any explanation is given as to how she can afford to buy a used moped, let alone a brand-new car. Carmen makes a crack about Mary Cherry polluting the environment with her own personal methane. Everyone laughs and accuses each other of cutting the cheese until "Rapper's Delight" comes on the radio and they all start singing along. I daresay they are giving us some major group chemistry, the likes of which we haven't seen since the end of Caged. When it comes to Popular, I am made of stone, but even I have to admit that they are all being so damn cute right now.
So then it's no surprise that the mirthful moment is interrupted by tragedy. They drive past a totaled car that has plowed into a tree. Is that a shout-out to Jason Priestley or Matthew Perry? Or are they being really old-school and making a Kelsey Grammer reference? The girls stop and watch the EMTs drag a covered dead body from the wreckage. The camera sweeps over the license plate number of the car. It's a vanity plate that says "Tuna 69." "I regret that I never got a chance to say goodbye to April Tuna," says Sam, as it starts to rain and the girls collapse into tears. Sam? April's friggin' twin sister died last season and you never said a word about that, so please shut your trap.
Credits.
Kennedy Hallway. Harrison and Josh discuss the death of April Tuna. "I'm never speeding again," says Josh, running his fingers through his newly mulletastic Simon Le Bon-esque hairdo. Harrison is all, "Are you growing a mullet?" Josh is all, "No way, man!" Harrison continues to muse over how fleeting life can be. Josh is not paying attention. He's still ruminating over the mullet comment. I'm not paying attention either because Harrison has been contemplating life's fleeting-ness in every goddamn episode since last November. Not that I know why, since I have no memory of what life-altering experience Harrison just went through or who this Clarence person is that they're not talking about. Harrison, who is obsessed with the details of April's fatal accident, tells Josh that Sam told him that when April Tuna was pulled from the wreckage, she was wearing capped sleeves.
Josh, in another scene in another part of the hallway, obviously misheard Harrison, because he tells Emory Dick that April was "de-cap-itated." Emory is all, "Oh my God," and then asks Josh if he's growing a mullet. Josh denies it. "I can't believe that the fire pie is gone," says Emory Dick. "And missing a head -- like a Pez dispenser at a garage sale." Hee! "I don't know which I'm more upset over. Your mullet or April's demise. Both are sad but true." Mary Cherry walks by. Upon hearing Emory Dick say the word true, she hightails it to the Novak to tell Brooke and Sam that Spandau Ballet's "True" was playing in April Tuna's car when the car hit the tree. Hello? Was that a shout-out to my favorite cheesy eighties pop hit? Sam and Brooke are horrified by this touching detail. "We were there and we didn't even notice that?" says Sam. "This just proves that we need Friday off!" says Mary Cherry, grinning mischievously into the camera.
Another scene, another part of the hallway. "So what you're saying," says Chem to Mary Cherry, "is that you want me to lie about the death of a student we all sadly overlooked, be in denial about my true lack of feelings and pretend we can't function so we can all get Friday off?" "Um…yeah," says Mary Cherry. "I'm on it," says Chem. Hee!
They take their plan to Vice Principal Calvin Krupps, who muses over the meaning of "True" by Spandau Ballet, and reminisces about slow-dancing to it at frat parties. Meanwhile Mary Cherry and Chem show off their "real" tears and angle for Friday off. "We're overwhelmed!" says Mary Cherry. "Well, then there's only one thing to do," says Calvin as violins shimmy in the background ominously. "Call in a grief counselor."
Chem's classroom. "Grieve!" shrieks the new grief counselor, as everyone jumps in their seats. The grief counselor, whose name is Calamity Jones, is played by none other than Conchata Ferrell. Conchata rocks! She's a total HITG who is always playing the fat gruff nurse, the fat gruff social worker, or that fat -door neighbor you don't try to fuck with. How could I have not seen a guest appearance by Conchata Ferrell coming from eighteen miles away? Brilliant! She starts taunting everyone into shedding some tears. Chem interrupts her and asks her to take her "dog and pony show" to The Learning Annex. Calamity gives Chem her credentials, which include getting Andrew Ridgeley over the break-up of Wham!. Mary Cherry asks if they can have the day off. Calamity gives her an armband. Then she advises Josh to work through his grief by starting an eighties-style tribute band that covers artists like Winger or White Snake. Josh asks her why she'd suggest such a thing. "Because you've got a mullet!" she snaps. The class laughs and Lily, whose Holly Golightly blond streaks are slowly taking over her whole head, looks truly horrified.
Calamity tells them that their laughter indicates that they haven't dealt adequately with the death of April Tuna and are still in the first stage of grief, otherwise known as denial. She also makes some veiled remark about no one in the room being responsible for April's death. This makes Mary Cherry, Carmen, and Brooke give each other knowing looks filled with remorse. She explains her stages of grief: denial, anger, acceptance, and healing. In other words, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's steps, but with "healing" substituted for "bargaining" and "depression." She announces that she'll be posting a sign-up sheet outside of her office for those Kennedy students who are still haunted by April Tuna's death. "Let the grieving begin!" shrieks Calamity.
At this point, the episode is divided into sections named after each one of Conchata's stages of grief. Each section is announced by the lettering on the t-shirt of a fat girl with bad skin who appears in the scene. No, I'm not making this up in a fever dream. And, unlike Carmen, this is an honest-to-goodness big girl. But she's a human placard. Whatever. She walks away from the camera to reveal Nicole standing at the cafeteria register, trying to pay for her lunch. The lunch lady, who looks like Michelle Pfeiffer playing the frumpy waitress in Frankie and Johnny, asks for Nicole's free lunch card. Her face is totally luminous and she's got great bone structure, but you can tell she's a lunch lady because of all those wispy strands of hair peeking out from under her hairnet. Nicole explains that she's not eating breakfast and stares at the suspiciously camera-friendly lunch lady's heart-shaped brooch. Photogenic lunch lady tells her to move along if she's not buying anything. Nicole grabs a tray of Drake's Cakes and introduces herself. Lunch lady introduces herself as Mary Lou Parker. "I'm adopted," says Nicole. "My real mother's name was Shaggy Louise Grout. She's dead. And this makes me sad because more than anything else in the world I wanted to meet her." Please tell me this is a cruel joke that Nicole is perpetrating on the lunch lady. I don't think I can handle another Nicole-as-feeling-human-being-episode. Mary Lou charges her $57.50 for the Drake's Cakes. Nicole hands her a wad of large bills and tells her to keep the change. She walks away, throws out the Drake's Cakes, and pulls an identical heart-shaped broach out of her pocket. She stares at it, bites her moist lips mournfully, and stares at Mary Lou. Okay, does Nicole think this is her birth mother, or is she trying to pick her up?
Novak. Nicole stands at the mirror, reapplying lipstick. Sam enters and tries to engage Nicole in a round of mutual insults, but Nicole isn't rising to the occasion. When Sam asks her to explain her sudden lack of bile, Nicole explains that she's preoccupied with her real mother. "I hear she's dead," says Sam. "I'm sorry." "I think the news of her death has been greatly exaggerated," says Nicole, quoting Mark Twain and hitting us with the episode title in one fell swoop.
Hallway. The camera sweeps past Calamity's sign-up sheet, which says "Good Grief!" at the top of it, and lands on Lily and Josh, who are having a heated discussion about Josh's haircut. "Face the music, Billy Ray Cyrus," says Lily. "You have a mullet!" Josh denies this and stomps off. Then there's this parody of an eighties hair-band anthem playing in the background called, "It's My Hair!" Hee! I cannot tell you how much more tolerable I find Lily when she's acting like a normal bitchy teenage girl and not doing her pious teen schtick.
Back in the Novak, Sam is doing a web search on her Powerbook for Nicole. Apparently, Sam is so smart that she's the only Kennedy student who knows how to surf the internet. In return, Nicole has promised to deliver April Tuna's eulogy at her memorial. While Sam waits for some information to "download," she tells Nicole that she's in denial. Nicole points out that there was no death certificate filed in Fontana for her mother, and explains that the heart-shaped brooch that the lunch lady wears is identical to the one pinned her diaper when she was abandoned in the Fontana greasy spoon. "I think she's wearing the mate as a signal. She's identifying herself and waiting for me to make the first move." Okay, did it occur to the writers to plant the story about the brooch in a episode during one of those discussions between Nicole and her mother so it didn't seem so abruptly tacked on? Now that the information has "downloaded," Sam concludes that there is no death certificate for a Shaggy Louise Grout in the entire state of California, and "it is possible" that she changed her name to Mary Lou Parker. What kind of a website tells you that it's "possible" that someone changed their name? Either they do or they don't, right? The fuck? Unfortunately, there is no Mary Lou Parker listed anywhere, so they can't check any further. "But I know she's my mother," whines Nicole.
And, hey, while we're delivering unlikely online scenarios, here's another. Somehow, three emails that Harrison sent while he was in the hospital ended up in Sam's inbox. One is for Sam. One is for his mother. The third is for Nicole. Don't ask. The one to Sam is a love letter that he wrote thinking he was going to die. Harrison thought he was going to die? When was this? I have no recollection of that plot line. None whatsoever. Leukemia? What's that? The lights dim as Sam reads the email and Spandau Ballet's "True" comes over the soundtrack. "I wish I could hold you when life is hard and no one seems to understand," says Harrison over the Spandau Ballet tune -- which I guess is a shout-out to my favorite nineties pop song, PM Dawn's "You Send Me," which features rapping against a Spandau Ballet sample. "I love you. I love you," he continues. "I don't want to go to my grave without telling you how I feel. I love you, Sam. I know this much is true." There's more, but I'm trying to keep my dinner down. Sam is devastated. "Okay," says Nicole. "What did he say about me?" I love Nicole!
After the commercial break, Nicole is in the hallway, blown away by the email that Harrison didn't send. Sam enters and tries to comfort Nicole, because apparently the email to her was pretty nasty -- obviously it was written before Nicole donated her bone marrow to save Harrison's life. Nicole is upset and tries to brush Sam off. "How does it feel to never lose, Sam? To always come out on top?" says Nicole bitterly, bringing it all back to Sam. As if Sam ever needs help bringing it all back to her. "I am not happy about what he said about me," says Sam, bringing it even further back to her. She vows to talk to him. As if Nicole cares about any of this? Why approach her to tell her this? Nicole vows to have a talk with him, too. She stomps off. Fat-girl-with-bad-skin placard walks by with a t-shirt that says, "Anger."
Brooke, Mary, Cherry and Carmen are all sitting in Calamity's Grief Office, tapping their heels against the ground nervously. "It's okay to feel nervous, ladies. It's very difficult to talk about grief," says Calamity. "I mean, it's not like you actually killed April Tuna, yourselves, right?" The girls share yet another guilty three-way look. "Um," says Carmen. We were sort of thinking that we actually did." "Girls, " says Calamity. "The police report clearly said that April Tuna didn't purposefully drive her car into a tree. She swerved to avoid hitting a road squirrel." The girls insist that they did have a hand in April's death. "We heard her last words," says Brooke. "And they were?" asks Calamity.
April Tuna is all of a sudden seen in flashback, wearing an Olivia-Newton-John-circa-1984 headband, metallic cropped jeans, and a black sweatshirt with Flashdance-style shredding and "Private Dancer" written on it in gold applique. She does an earnest, if not polished, interpretation of the hit song "Rumpshaker" -- a.k.a. "I like big butts and I cannot lie!" -- for the Glamazons in an effort to get them to hire her as Glamazon's official choreographer. Hey, it can't be much worse than that tightly edited pom-pom shaking they tried to pass off as superior dance movement last season. And how awesome is it that crazy over-sexed April Tuna is back? Woo hoo! But the Glamazons don't share my enthusiasm and take a chilly pass on April's proposal. Oh, and by Glamazons, I mean, Brooke, Carmen, and Mary Cherry. I guess Poppy Fresh and Adam skipped practice again! Anyway, this public humiliation causes April to gaze wistfully out the window. The scene fades back to the present as Brooke is testifying to how relieved she feels now that she's gotten that off her chest. "Visualizing that horrible scene," says Mary Cherry, making patterns in front of her face with her nails, "has made me realize that April was an irritatin' person with no value!" Carmen chastises Mary Cherry for her insensitivity, but does agree that their story proves that they really weren't at fault. Unfortunately, Calamity isn't having any. She sobs fitfully at her desk over their story. "Your horrible elitist behavior!" whines an uncharacteristically infantile Calamity. "Oh, I'm angry with you girls, very angry!" She condemns them and expresses great outrage over them thinking that Calamity would just blindly absolve them all from stepping all over dead April Tuna. "I'm just gonna assume that this means that we don't get Friday off," says Mary Cherry. Calamity collapses into more tears. Hee!
Kennedy cafeteria. thing you know Brooke, Carmen, and Mary Cherry are doing grief homework ordained by Calamity. This involves sitting at lunch with Emory Dick and being nice to him. "That way, if he crashes his car while driving home from school today," Brooke explains to Lily, "his last memory will be a happy one." Lily gets this grief-stricken expression on her face that I didn't really notice as being out of the ordinary, but Brooke does and calls her on it. Lily explains that watching how nice they're being to Emory reminds her of how bad she feels about what she and Josh did to April. "I am so angry with myself," says Lily.
Elsewhere in the cafeteria, Sam and Harrison. Whatever. She brings up the email. Whatever. He pretends he was joking. Whatever. Finally, he breaks down and admits to writing her something he never meant to send, cleaning it out of his email account one day and hitting send by accident. He still is in love with her, he tells her, and Sam gets all angry at him and reminds him she's with George. Big whatever. "You've just ruined a wonderful friendship!" says Sam before she stomps off. Is it purely an effect of her eye make-up, or does Carly Pope have a lazy eye?
Calamity's office. Lily and Josh sit before Calamity, who is focused on a bottle of prescription medication in front of her. "Thank you for interrupting your lunch to see us," says Lily. Am I paranoid, or does it in fact seem like, every time the need to eat is mentioned, it's a "fat" cast member at the center of it all? Lily tells Calamity about how she and Josh feel horrible about April's death, since they'd turned her down for "love plus one." Like, who the hell refers to three-ways as "love plus one" besides Haircut One Hundred? But then I guess that's the point, since this episode is so preoccupied with the eighties.
A flashback reveals April Tuna approaching Lily and Josh at lunch and asking them if she could join them in a menage. And she's so cute and nasty about it! "April," says Lily, a picture of piousness. "That's inappropriate!" "Does she use five-syllable words like that in bed?" says April to Josh. "What's New Pussycat" by Tom Jones plays in the background as a montage sequence rolls of April stalking Lily and Josh like a wildcat. She keeps joining them uninvited at lunch and being inappropriately seductive. Hey, what ever happened to booty camp, Lily? Shouldn't you be putting an end to sexual harassment?
Back in reality, Lily expresses deep regret that she didn't see the longing for human companionship underneath the inappropriate displays of sexuality, and used April's weirdness as an excuse not to get close. She decides right then and there to set up cans in the cafeteria accepting donations for the April Tuna Scholarship. People who feel bad about ignoring her when she was alive can atone financially. Whatever. Josh disagrees with Lily's plan: "People like April are freaks and there's no way you can protect them from the real world." Lily blames his insensitivity on his new mullet, since "it is after all the hairstyle of the Cro-Magnon man!" Josh is all, "Lay off the mullet," as Lily exits to go raise some consciousness. Calamity sits at her desk, doing something that could easily be seen as either laughing or crying while she arranges her pills on her desk to spell "T-U-N-A." Why doesn't this woman have her own series?
Kennedy hallway. Nicole approaches Harrison at the water fountain, lets him have it for dissing her in an email, and threatens to expose his ill will to the school when she delivers April Tuna's eulogy. Harrison tries to reason with her, but it is no use. Nicole is on the warpath. Okay, what's with the warning? Didn't Nicole advise Emory Dick's little sisters to "surprise the enemy" as advocated by Sun Tzu? Or is this just the set up for a change of heart? Gosh, I can't imagine that happening.
The Kennedy cafeteria. Hey, just thought I'd point out that we're almost halfway through this episode and there's been no sign of Mike and Jane. Nicole, pumped up from threatening Harrison, approaches Mary Lou/Ex-Shaggy in the lunch line. She confronts her again over her identity. "I am onto you, Shaggy Louise!" says Nicole. Mary Lou/Shaggy just laughs maniacally. Nicole stomps off angrily, but not before slapping her heart brooch down on the counter.
The Palace kitchen. Refrigerator-cam. Fat-girl placard announces step three: acceptance, and takes two grapefruits out of the fridge and closes the door. Hey, I thought these were Kennedy students! What are they doing in the Palace kitchen helping themselves to breast-like food? Sam and Brooke open the refrigerator door, and Sam moans about Harrison's crush on her. Brooke tells Sam that good friends make the best boyfriends. Based on what in your experience, Brooke? Okay, I take back what I said about food only being the domain of the fat ones, and they've left Carmen alone all episode, but I've still got my suspicions.
Josh and Emory stand in front of the April Tuna shrine that's been set up in the Kennedy hallway, complete with candles and bonsai trees. Emory, after making small talk with Josh about never really getting to know April, asks Josh about all the heat he's been taking for having a mullet. Josh tells Emory that he's been embracing his mullet-tude lately by admiring the looks of John Stamos in the late-eighties sitcom "Full House." Emory takes off his hat and reveals an even longer mullet. As he shakes it out, "It's My Hair" plays some more. Emory goes on to suggest to Josh that they support each other's commitment to the mullet lifestyle. Josh strokes Emory's 'do, and they go off to do some sort of bonding ritual or whatever it is the kids call it these days.
As Josh and Emory leave, Harrison and Nicole run into each other, and Nicole warns Harrison again. Gee, I think she's really going to do it. She's, like, mentioned it twice and everything. "Soon the whole school will know who you are, Harrison," says Nicole. "A big fat evil creep." Harrison runs off with his tail between his legs. Nicole stops in front of April's memorial, sees the pictures of April in stand-up frames, and has herself a moment.
thing you know, Emory and Josh have formed a secret society called "The Kennedy Mullets." They call their first meeting to order. "Richard Marx rocks," they all chant in unison. Chem is among them. She's got a permed mullet, also known as a "Tony Geary." Josh speaks to the group. His mullet has burst forth even further. He proposes that they go to April Tuna's memorial together as an act of mullet visibility. The Mullets are behind Josh. They march into the memorial service with, you guessed it, "It's My Hair" playing in the background. Like, is there a chapel in Kennedy high? Doesn't that violate a church-and-state thing? The Glamazons are already seated. Harrison and Sam enter together "accidentally," or "contrivedly," depending on how you look at it. Awkwardness abounds. Sam is wearing Angelina Jolie's Morticia Addams dress from last year's Oscars and just as much eyeliner. Her hair looks like a nice big thatch of black shag carpeting. I mean, it's just so appropriate to be uncharacteristically goth for a real-life funeral. Harrison, who is wearing a black long-sleeved t-shirt with a skull and crossbones emblazoned on his chest, presses her again for a relationship. Sam is all, "I have to theenk about it."
Emory Dick speaks. He recalls his fondest memory of April. A flashback shows April approaching Emory Dick in the hall and inviting him to meet her in the janitor's closet for some "froo-tage." Emory is paralyzed, not knowing what "froo-tage" is exactly. "Hey Dick," says April, on yet another day, waiting for a response. "Did you happen to see the front page of the I'm Horny News? It says, I'm gonna get me some froo-tage this afternoon! Be there!" Emory expresses regret at never going to meet April and getting some froo-tage. Mary Cherry winks conspiratorially at him while Chem licks her lips. He wishes April Godspeed.
Nicole takes the podium, wearing a necklace with a pendant that reads "Bitch" in gold lettering. She reads Harrison's blistering email to everyone, but doesn't identify him by name, "because what this person wrote is true." Nicole then proceeds to bare her soul to Kennedy about coming from a dysfunctional family, and how that makes her a bitch. Oh yeah, and she also just has to let it slip that she's adopted. "The turning point for me," she says, "was seeing April Tuna's shrine. I realized staring at it that if I died as angry as I am now that nobody would even care." Lots of reaction shots of Kennedy students looking touched. Ew!!!!!
"Hey!" bellows a voice from the back of the room. "What is going on here?" It turns out to be April Tuna -- very much alive. Emory Dick faints.
Fat-girl placard reads, "Step four: Healing." Lily stands at her locker. Josh approaches her and greets her. Without looking at him, Lily is all, "Hi, Rick James!" and starts to rant a little more about the sexist behavior of those who have mullets. Jeez, Lily, tolerance much? Then she turns to look at him and realizes that he's cut the back of his hair for her (so now he's got the exact same haircut he had last season), AND he's gotten the Mullet Club to donate $500 to the Tuna Scholarship Fund. Lily is ecstatic. They start doing it right then and there. But Lilly pulls away momentarily. "The Mullets didn't get this money through strong-arm hooligan mullet tactics, did they?" They cut to a flashback of the Mullets chasing Mary Cherry down the hall and thrusting a collection can in her face. Josh is all, "Naaaaah."
So then there's this really icky scene in the cafeteria between Harrison and Nicole. They make up -- like I cared about their fight to begin with -- and Harrison thanks her for not outing him as the letter writer. Nicole is all, whatever. Harrison gives Nicole this piece of jewelry with a horse on it that's either a pin or a ring. They don't really make it too clear. Harrison bought two of them at a garage sale, and now that they both own one, they're connected. Nicole is charmed by this for some reason. Will someone please take that chip out of her head? She wishes him luck with Sam, and he leaves.
Mary Lou sits down in his place and nervously offers Nicole a cigarette and gives her back her heart-shaped brooch. Whaddya know? Mary Lou is Nicole's mother. Didn't see that coming a mile away or anything.
Elsewhere, April and Emory emerge blissfully from a froo-tage session in the janitor's closet. She's got a Billie Jean King mullet now, and is wearing this nasty velour warm-up suit featuring huge patches of pastel colorblocks. Emory can't stop marveling over the froo-tage. "Lucky for you," says April. "The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated." That episode title again. Emory asks her who they pulled from the wreckage of her car, since it wasn't April. "According to the police," says April, demonically explaining who stole her car, "she was a drug addict named Nelly Gustave. And I say, rot in hell, Nelly Gustave." Whoa! I must be pretty nelly if the writing staff of Popular has deemed me nelly. You'd think I wore Mary Janes and a tiara everyday to get that sort of reputation. Walked around in caftans all day, perhaps.
Emory asks April to the Junior Prom. April happily accepts. They make out. Lily interrupts them to tell her about the $500 scholarship fund. The Glamazons interrupt Lily to tell April that she's the new choreographer for the Glamazons. They jump to the future to show the Glamazons getting down to "Rumpshaker." Oh my God, they're actually dancing like people who have rhythm! What is it about this episode? It's so unusually good!
Oh yeah, and in the hallway, Sam tells Harrison she's going to stick with George. Because I guess he was just so vital to her this week that he wasn't even in this episode. But that doesn't prevent Sam from letting Harrison spill his guts about how in love he is with her, and how much she meant to him while he was thinking he was going to die. Harrison is so hurt, he doesn't even want to be friends anymore. "True" by Spandau Ballet plays as the camera zooms in on Sam's crying face. Yeah, play that song!