An unseen hand opens a notebook in which the words “I know what you did last spring break” are written on the first page. Drops of blood fall on the page, and a reverse shot indicates that Harrison is the notebook’s owner. He is sitting in Chem’s class, and he has a nose bleed. I don’t know about you all, but every time someone got a nosebleed at my high school, it was because they were on Accutane, the prescription acne medicine. When Accutane hit the market in 1984, there were all these people with bad skin whose faces cleared up all of a sudden but started having spontaneous nosebleeds in class. Unfortunately, there are no Accutane jokes during this episode, or any mention of such a phenomenon. Do the kids even take Accutane anymore? All of a sudden I’m starting to feel old, because I remember the days when dermatologists only prescribed tetracycline for acne and how exciting it was to have a brave new drug to try. Anyway, Sam enters the classroom. She’s finally found a nice simple hairstyle. It’s pulled back into a ponytail on the top of her head. From there it flares out in these spikes so she looks a bit like an onion, but still, it’s such an improvement. She takes a seat, giving Harrison a searching friendly look. Harrison gives her the stink-eye in return.
The bell rings. Chem enters the classroom and welcomes the kids back from spring break. “In my day,” says Chem, “we went with Frankie and Annette to Fort Lauderdale. Now your generation seems to go straight to promiscuity.” Funny she should mention Frankie, since Frankie Avalon was just a guest star on the Sabrina episode that just ended a moment ago. I wouldn’t normally mention it, but since last week there was a Popstars reference right as Face Time was having Eden’s Crush as guest stars, I’m getting the feeling that someone at the WB is encouraging synergy or shout-outs between the shows -- kind of how Tina Brown used to make all the stories in Vanity Fair refer to each other. She gives them a pop quiz “essay-style.” Everybody has to write down where they went for spring break and how many people they were intimate with so she can “judge” them all. Because, I guess, taking a non-prurient interest in the sex lives of minors placed in your care by the state is wacky and funny…and not a form of sexual harassment at all. Like a flock of sheep, the class actually writes down their answers. A look of fear passes over Mary Cherry’s face, and Nicole pauses for a moment to count her lovers on her fingers. Like, no one ever thought of lying? Although everyone else places their hands over their answers for privacy -- even the viewers can’t see them -- Harrison's answer is shown clearly. He was in Yemen and intimate with one person. Yemen? Harrison’s no longer a virgin? Where is this going? Furthermore, I keep waiting for someone like Lily to object to this invasion of privacy, but she doesn’t make a peep. What is with her? Last week she ignored the classist implications of the SAT by being unusually complicit toward a hierarchical system, and now this? I’m disappointed.
Later, at Harrison’s locker, Sam comes up behind him, saying, “Hello stranger.” She points out that they haven’t spoken for a month, and that she misses him. Harrison tells her to “make like an egg and scramble.” Whatever that means. I thought the proper saying was “make like an egg and beat it.” Or maybe that was the point of the joke? Sam tells him to stop being childish. They’ve been friends for years and they are going to have to “salvage” their relationship. Harrison tells her she’s on her own, and she should go be with her boyfriend George. Sam keeps trying to break through to him, but their conversation is interrupted by Chem and an officious-looking blonde woman in a suit. They are both wearing those aqua-colored face masks to prevent the spread of germs. Apparently, Harrison has picked up Rift Valley Fever in Yemen. Nosebleeds are the first symptom and Chem, upon seeing Harrison’s pop quiz in which he mentioned being in Yemen, notified the CDC, who sent the officious blonde woman. She introduces himself as Dr. Jeanne Salk. Hee hee, geddit? Jonas Salk created the polio vaccine? CDC? A little “Great Biologists of the Twentieth Century” humor? Anyway, they cuff Sam and Harrison and take them in to be quarantined. Harrison tries to explain that his nosebleeds were a result of dryness caused by the central air system at school. “He’s hallucinating,” says Chem to Dr. Salk. “Step two of the deadly fever,” says Dr. Salk, who orders a lockdown of Kennedy High to contain the disease. The thing that doesn’t make sense is that, if Chem and Dr. Salk are in contact with Sam and Harrison, shouldn’t they be quarantined too? I mean, obviously it’s airborne if they think Sam got it from just talking to Harrison. Not to mention the fact that those face masks do nada. Whatever. It’s Popular.
Credits. Again, Jamie Kennedy comes on to tell us that Face Time is brought to us by Dr. Pepper. And that Dr. Pepper makes the world taste better. But he says it with this ironic pseudo-seriousness, which I guess is supposed to be a secret signal to all of us that his heart isn’t really in shilling for a soft drink and he’s still that cool smirky guy we loved from the Scream movies. Nice try, Jamie.
Back in Harrison and Sam’s quarantined cell, Dr. Salk has brought them a parakeet. Apparently, if the bird dies in their presence within a day, it’s proof that they are infected with the virus. Harrison starts whining about having to share such close quarters with Sam, whom he hates. Sam reminds them that they are about to die, and that this isn’t fun for her either. Dr. Salk tells the “Honeymooners” to shut up and describes the slow painful death that’s heading their way, complete with nosebleeds and organ-liquefying fevers. I have to say that ever since I first laid eyes on Dr. Salk, I have been majorly crushing on her. She’s a small boned, slightly dyke-y but pretty blonde woman in her mid-thirties with just a touch of nerdiness -- just the sort of woman I know I’d totally go for if I were straight. Now that she’s giving major attitude to Sam and Harrison, the crush has become something more -- pure unadulterated love.
Chem’s class. Chem is giving her own lecture on Rift Valley Fever to her class, who have just been informed that they are also being quarantined until the CDC gives the “all clear.” She passes out thermometers and tells them to insert them into their rectums. Okay, that’s not funny; that’s just gross. And if I, the king of tasteless remarks, feel that something’s gone too far, that really says a lot. This time, for some reason, the class doesn’t just blindly follow her instructions like they did with the sex quiz. They put them in their mouths instead and wait for their temperatures to climb to organ-liquefying heights. Is anyone else grossed out, or at least bothered, by the notion that those thermometers were meant for another location? I distinctly remember reading somewhere that rectal thermometers don’t give accurate readings if you use them orally.
Mary Cherry’s cell phone rings. She takes her thermometer out of her ear and answers it. “Hello, Clarisse,” says the sinister-sounding caller. “Have the lambs stopped screaming?” “No,” says Mary Cherry politely. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number.” The caller goes on to tell Mary Cherry that he’s not calling for Clarisse but for her. And can I just ask, what is Popular’s obsession with Silence of the Lambs? He says that there’s something more dangerous going on at this school than an epidemic, because he knows what she did last spring break. “I went to Freaknik in Hot-lanta and I turned the mutha out. So?” says Mary Cherry, looking around the room anxiously. This is a total shout-out to Sars, who was telling me not too long ago that she takes a perverse delight in always referring to Atlanta as “Hot-lanta.” The caller insists that he knows that she made another pathetic stab at fame. “Does the name 'Booze Cock-A-Doodle-Doo-Monster' ring a bell?” asks the sinister caller. “Who is this?” shrieks Mary Cherry at the top of her lungs. “Leave…me…alone!” Meanwhile, Carmen and Lily watch Mary Cherry’s hysterics from their desk a row behind her and assume that some credit-card agency is after her. They go back to ignoring her distress -- as the rest of the class is doing. Lily slips out to use the bathroom (so that later, when Mary Cherry is stalked through the halls by a knife-wielding killer, we’ll suspect it’s her, even though we’ll be wrong…just like in those slasher flicks!). “You have no proof,” says Mary Cherry to the caller. Caller tells her to look under her desk. She does, and there she finds a photo of herself from a low-budget horror film she tried out for. Mary Cherry screams even louder and demands to know who this is. The caller tells her to turn around. There, sitting behind her in plain view in a “Scream” mask and what seems to be a Michael Jackson wig, is the sinister knife-wielding caller. She begs Chem, who is calmly grading papers through all of this, to excuse her so she can “run for [her] life!” Chem lets her go, but tells her to stay on school grounds because of the quarantine. Mary Cherry takes off and runs through the empty Kennedy Halls with the masked killer right behind her. As you can imagine, they cover just about every horror-genre cliché in Mary Cherry’s flight from the knife. She slips on a banana peel. She breaks into a fly-girl routine to avoid being stabbed. She screams in a far too photogenic fashion. Et cetera. Finally, she runs into Dr. Jeanne Salk, who tells her to stop running in the halls. Mary Cherry breathlessly explains that there’s a killer on the loose. Of course, the killer is nowhere to be found now that Dr. Salk is there. She accuses Mary Cherry of hallucinating due to the Rift Valley Fever. “I’ll have to run some tests,” says Dr. Salk. “What kind of tests?” asks Mary Cherry, on the verge of complete hysteria. Dr. Salk holds up a really really large syringe.
Lunch in the extras-filled cafeteria that’s actually more of a set than those pathetic backdrops from last week. Sugar Daddy and Josh wonder how Harrison is and why he went to a place like Yemen for spring break. “Who knows,” says Carmen. “But I hope he had a better spring break than we did.” April Tuna enters and confronts the table full of Browns and Blondes, demanding to know where they went for spring break since she, bitter April, wouldn’t know about such a luxury. Her hair has gotten a tiny bit longer since the "Coup" episode, but she’s got it pulled back, except for her bangs, which flip up, looking as though they’d been rolled up the night in a gigantic hair curler. It’s a truly ugly hairstyle that’s just perfect for April. At the mention of spring break, everyone looks really uncomfortable. Finally, Lily, who can’t stand keeping secrets, tells April Tuna via a flashback that they cancelled their trip to MTV’s Spring Break Blow Out because the airline they were booked on, Plummet Air, didn’t seem safe enough. Josh suggested that they split up and “get our Spring Break on individually” while their parents thought they were all in Cancun. Now that April knows their “secret,” Nicole wants to make sure they can trust her with that potentially damaging information. “Your secret’s safe with me,” says April. “Let’s just hope no one goes nuts from being in captivity and tries to kill someone!” Okay, that was the big secret? Whatever.
Later that evening, the girls get ready for bed in the Novak. “Y’all?” says Mary Cherry, wearing pajamas with diamond rings on them. “Someone’s gone nuts and tried ta kill me!” Lily, who wears a cheongsam and sweat pants to bed -- 'cause she’s all non-Western -- tells Mary Cherry that she just has an overactive imagination. Not only are they trying to kill her, insists Mary Cherry while putting lotion on her neck, but they know about their alternative spring break adventures. Brooke, wearing petal-pink pajamas, asks Mary Cherry how she knew the killer knew about their actual spring break destination. “He had proof of my silent shame,” says Mary Cherry. “Explain,” says Nicole. Mary Cherry recounts via flashback trying out for a horror flick called Booze Cock Monster, which is directed by Godfrey. So nice to have Godfrey back. He’s looking fine in his seedy director gear, too. On the set, which consists of a pink chaise and a really gay frilly lamp against a plywood interior, he explains to Mary Cherry, while stroking her knee, that the movie is an exploitation flick about a rooster that drinks radioactive absinthe and becomes a monster. “I’d do anything to be a scream queen…anything!” says Mary Cherry, removing her tomato red fun fur to reveal a lace bustier and groping him right back. But in this hilariously methodical way, like she doesn’t even know what she’s saying. Godfrey calls places. Mary Cherry reclines on a chaise and tries to scream like a “horny teen virgin” while a guy in a chicken costume sort of pecks at her. From behind the camera, Godfrey keeps yelling out, “Who’s your daddy!” Mary Cherry thinks she’s being fed a line so she starts screaming, “Who’s your daddy!” until Godfrey tells her to stop it. “Needless to say,” says Mary Cherry, back in the present, “I didn’t get the part I coveted.” Carmen, wearing Hello Kitty pajamas, accuses Mary Cherry of making it all up. Mary Cherry offers the picture as proof, but the other girls are still unconvinced. They all leave Mary Cherry alone in the Novak to go sleep on cots in the gym. Ominous music plays, and Mary Cherry announces gravely to herself in the mirror, “Somebody is going to die tonight.” And then, on a dime, she applies some lip gloss delicately to her lower lip.
Harrison and Sam. Yup, they’re still under quarantine and still fighting. Sam accuses Harrison of giving her the Rift Valley Fever on purpose. Harrison denies this, pointing to his Yemen trip as proof of his desire to get away from her. He also refers to it as a “Peace Corps trip.” Like, um, does the Peace Corps have “trips”? I thought you just joined it for a few years after you graduated from college, if you could make such a commitment. It’s foreign service like the army, not a resort you can check into for a couple of weeks. Anyway, Harrison taunts her with stories of hiking in the woods with a hot Yemenian chick. Sam wants to know if he lost “it.” Harrison tells her he didn’t. Oh, okay. Harrison is still a virgin. I really didn’t think that they'd actually have him lose it so casually after all the drawn-out attempts he’s made before, but I was worried there for a moment. Harrison explains that he couldn’t go all the way with the hot Yemenian, because she wasn’t Sam. Before they can fully absorb that moment together, they hear a thud. The parakeet has died. Sam panics and picks up the phone. Okay, speaking of phones, why hasn’t anyone called their parents at this point? I can’t believe the whole school -- well, just the Blondes and the Browns -- are being quarantined, and no parents seem to be terribly concerned and no one has thought to include a shot of someone’s mother trying to get a pan of brownies to their kid past the National Guards stationed out front or something. How cheap is this show’s budget? Or did they blow their wad on Ed McMahon’s cameo last week? ["And speaking of that, where'd the pajamas come from? Did their parents drop them off, or do all the kids just carry overnight bags? That's bugging me." -- Sars] Anyway, while Sam tries to call for help, we see a pair of anonymous hands in leather gloves cutting what I’d presume to be phone wires. Unable to make a call, Sam assumes that the lines are down to prevent them from alerting the media and starting a panic. The same unseen hands are seen brandishing a knife.
Boys' locker room. Through holes in the killer’s mask, we see Josh showering -- and doing a really excellent send-up of one of those shower scenes where the girl who’s about to get it keeps gratuitously lathering up her firm youthful parts, all the while assuming that her naked self is safe from harm. Josh lovingly lathers up his pecs and kisses his biceps. His cell phone rings. It’s the scary killer, letting him he knows what he did last spring break. “And you’re going to pay for what you did with your life!” says the scary killer, sneaking up behind him and getting ready to stick his knife into Josh. Before the knife comes down, though, Josh drops his soap, and the knife misses him while he bends over to pick it up. Heh heh, geddit? He dropped the soap? And no, we don’t actually get to see this. He’s in one of those M*A*S*H-style shower stalls that only show him from the torso up. Killer tells Josh to look in his locker. Josh dries off, puts a towel around his waist, and goes over to his locker. Scary music plays. There, he finds a picture of Lily and him sharing a candlelit dinner, which they are toasting with wine. Josh freaks out at this picture -- which seems perfectly innocent to me -- and demands to know who the caller is. The killer reveals himself and chases Josh through the halls, just like he did to Mary Cherry. Josh even trips on the same banana peel and does a fly-girl/martial-arts dance of his own. Finally, he runs into Lily and the killer disappears.
Back at the temporary dorms for the quarantined Kennedy students -- where we don’t see any Kennedy students besides the usual cast members -- Josh backs up Mary Cherry and tells everybody that indeed there is a psycho killer on the loose. Dr. Jeanne Salk enters and suggests that if they want to know who the killer is, they should examine the most likely suspects. thing you know, Chem, April Tuna, and Nicole are in an NYPD Blue-style line up. Mary Cherry asks each of them to step up one by one and “state your name and the probable reasons why you would want to kill us.” Chem steps up first. She tells the gang that she’d love to see them all dead, due to fact that she’s improved their lives and will never get a thank you, but she’s not the killer. April Tuna steps up and reminds them that they always pick on her for being weird, and she could very well be the psycho killer herself. Nicole is , and she starts threatening to kill them all with her bare hands for putting her in a line-up with a pair of losers like Chem and April Tuna. Mary Cherry pronounces Nicole the killer. Everyone concurs except Lily and Josh. When asked for an explanation…okay, I don’t even know if I can write this, it’s so stupid…Lily explains that they’re Nicole’s alibi. Nicole couldn’t have done it, because while the real killer was taking blackmail photos of Mary Cherry, Nicole was blackmailing her and Josh for drinking alcoholic beverages -- which could get him kicked off the football team…or something…and forcing them into this strange Indecent Proposal thing where she makes Josh kiss her in front of Lily. Don’t ask for any more details. I just can’t even go there. Now that the suspects have been narrowed down to two, Chem and April, Dr. Salk suggests to the gang that they lay a trap.
Back in Harrison and Sam’s ambivalent love shack/sickroom, Sam starts to lose it and tries to throw a chair through a window so she can break out. Harrison physically restrains her from doing so and Sam loses her resolve, commenting obliquely that there’s no point in escaping since there’s nothing waiting for her on the outside now that she and George broke up. “What happened?” asks Harrison. Now it’s time for Sam to have her own spring-break flashback. She was at George’s house for the week, and she recounts an incident where the family has dinner and George’s grandmother -- who is being perfectly sweet to Sam otherwise -- hasn’t been told that Sam’s his girlfriend. Sam freaks out that George is ashamed of her. George explains that one of his brothers “dated someone who wasn’t African-American.” Okay, George? You can say “white girl.” We can handle it. Anyway, his grandmother didn’t approve and pouted for weeks. George points out, rightfully, that his grandmother is old and that her generation has different ideas about interracial relationships. There’d be no point in upsetting her since she’ll never change. Plus, as he points out, if he was ashamed of her, then why did he invite her to spend the week at his house? Of course Sam makes it all about her and doesn’t consider for a second a) what kind of racism this woman might have dealt with in her past, which would have understandably given her cause to harbor a deep-seated mistrust of white people; b) the fact that the grandmother was being perfectly nice to Sam; or c) that George shouldn’t be held accountable for the attitudes of his relatives. Sam and George break up, and Sam spends the rest of the week at a hotel. Um, where does a high-school student with no after-school job get such an infusion of cash to just stay at a Beverly Hills hotel if she has a fight with her boyfriend?
Back in the present, Harrison comforts Sam and offers sympathy for the reverse racism she’d just endured -- whatever -- and they start to make out. Before things can get serious, George enters and catches them. “I was breaking in here and risking my life to get you some help, Sam,” says George. “Clearly you’re doing just fine.” Sam is so busted that she’s horrified to the point of speechlessness. George goes on to explain that he finally did tell his grandmother about her, and ironically, she approved. “I thought she didn’t like my brother’s girlfriend because she was white. Not true. She didn’t like her because of her character.” Sam tries to explain, but George tells her to “save it.” George exits, locking the door he just opened behind him and trapping Sam back in that room with Harrison.
The Novak. Nicole and Brooke have put on filmy peignoir sets. Did the Red Cross just have those on hand, or did someone’s parent bring them? They put on make-up and discuss their plan to look “vulnerable and kill-worthy” so that the real killer will strike and be caught. They loll about on the Novak tuffet for a while before Brooke gets tired of the whole thing and decides to go study for her finals. She doesn’t believe there’s a killer, just someone playing a prank for attention. Nicole is having fun with the whole “vulnerable whore thing,” so she stays.
Back in Harrison and Sam’s Petri-Dish Of Lethal Bacteria, Sam is horrified by her behavior in front of George. Harrison points out to her that it’s not wrong because they belong together. Sam doesn’t agree, so Harrison goes crazy and puts a chair through the glass in the door. “You’re free,” says Harrison. “Go infect George like you’ve infected me with your indecision and your fear.” Oh God, did someone actually write that line with a straight face? Sam leaves the quarantine room. The killer watches her through his mask.
Lily, Carmen, and Mary Cherry enter the Novak, wondering what’s taking so long, as Nicole is still lying unmolested on the tuffet. “Wait,” says Carmen. “In horror films, don’t they always go for the virgins?” Actually, they don’t. It’s always the sexually active teens who get it first. Nevertheless, they decide to put Lily on the tuffet instead. For some reason, she takes Josh with her so they can make out -- thus ruining that whole “virgin” image that was supposed to attract the killer in the first place. After a while, the Novak door swings open, and we see a pair of fuzzy purple-slippered feet enter. A knife is raised. The gang sweeps in to to find April Tuna about to kill Josh and Lily. After an interrogation, they find out that the knife is rubber and April was just looking for some attention. “Wait,” says Lily. “So if April isn’t the killer, then…” Josh interrupts her. “Then the killer is roaming the halls!”
They cut to Chem, who is roaming the halls. Her cell phone rings. “Hello Clarisse,” says the killer, who appears right behind her.
They cut to a commercial and another segment of Face Time. James Van Der Beek is the guest and is taking questions from the audience. Unfortunately, I’m not in the studio audience, or I’d be asking about those rumors and him and the Flash getting it on. But he does tell the studio audience that the person he’d most like to meet, living or dead, would be Paul Newman -- interesting -- and that deep inside, Dawson is still in love with Joey.
“Who is this?” asks a world-weary Chem. “I know what you did last spring break,” says the scary killer. “Yeah,” says Chem. “I went to a cat show in Pomona and canned some okra. No big whoop. Now who is this?” Hee! The killer tells her to turn around. She does, and when she sees the big knife, she puts out her arms. “Please, take me now.” The killer tells her she’s supposed to run. “Consider it a mercy killing,” says Chem. “Just don’t make me go back to teaching those kids!” “Forget it,” says the killer, exiting. Chem calls him a big girl. Hee!
Elsewhere in the halls, Brooke comforts George over what he saw when he went in to rescue Sam. In doing so, she almost lets it slip that she has her own personal reasons to be upset about a Sam-and-Harrison coupling. “I know for a fact that Harrison isn’t sick or contagious,” she says knowingly.
Chem explains to Lily and Josh that she had an encounter with the killer. Just as she wraps up her story, a woman we’ve never seen before enters and introduces herself as Dr. Jeanne Salk from the CDC. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “But my travel agent screwed up my flight like you wouldn’t believe.” thing you know, the officious blonde woman who originally introduced herself to the kids as Dr. Jeanne Salk is behind a glass wall, being questioned. She confesses that her name is really Suzi Klein. “Never heard of her,” says Mary Cherry into the microphone. “Oh, but I think you have, Mary Cherry!” says Susie ominously. “I’m the travel agent you screwed over last week when you cancelled your trip to Cancun.” A flashback shows Suzi in her cheery travel-agent mode, working for an agency called “Perky Travel.” Awwww! She’s so cute when she’s being a super helpful perky travel agent! Anyway, just as she wins a free trip to Sandals for unloading a minimum number of Plummet Air flights on to her customers, Mary Cherry calls and cancels her trip, leaving her nine tickets short of Sandals eligibility. “Somebody is going to pay for what they just did to me…with their lives!” she shrieks, breaking a pencil in half with her hands. She goes on to explain that she stalked the Kennedy gang for a week in order to gather ammunition for revenge.
Harrison enters. Everyone freaks and puts their hands over their mouths to avoid getting germs. Chem introduces Harrison to the real Jeanne Salk as “Patient Zero.” Jeanne remarks that Harrison looks pretty healthy for someone allegedly suffering from the Rift Valley Fever, and takes him aside for an examination. While she does this, Chem goes to inform the authorities about Suzi Klein, and to call the Kennedy gang’s parents to alert them to what they were really up to over spring break. “No!!!!!” screams Mary Cherry. Suzi Klein hangs her head in shame.
The sun comes up, and Dr. Salk points out to Harrison in the examining room that that’s usually a sign in horror flicks that order has been restored. Thanks, Dr. Salk, but it’s not like I’ve never seen any of the Scream flicks before. She pronounces Harrison perfectly healthy. George, Sam, and Brooke enter the examining room and tell the doctor that Harrison knew all along he wasn’t infected. Harrison is forced to confess that he never went to Yemen. Instead, he was comforting Brooke when she caught Jamie cheating on her. They checked into a hotel room for the week and got it on. This means that Harrison isn’t a virgin anymore. Ew. “You lied to me!” says Sam. “Now I guess everybody’s gotten back at everybody else,” says George. “And now everybody’s heartbroken.” Brooke tells Sam that she’s sorry. Harrison tries to explain, but Sam cuts him off. “It’s my turn to say I never want to see you again,” says Sam, exiting. The parakeet comes back to life. “He woke up,” says Harrison. “I guess everybody did,” says Dr. Jeanne Salk. Whatever. Credits. Oh, cool -- week there’s going to be a cat fight between Sam and Brooke over Harrison. Except for the "cool" part.