It's 1997, and poor Bunim and poor Murray have thrown their hands up. Cognizant of the fact that the end of this season is but an episode away and realistic about the budget money required for the rights to Hanson's Big Single in the face of an audience which now consists only of the cast members and the people who hated them in high school, the music coordinator resorts to a wacky opening which features the dulcet tones of...a cappella? Sweet Jesus. If I wanted to appreciate a cappella in a socially acceptable environment for the rest of my life, I would have just stayed in college or applied for a job on the set of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I didn't. And I didn't. Now where's the new Sugar Ray? The soundtrack voices sing a jubilant song I'll imagine is called "La La La" (for these are the only words), which accompanies a street scene of Boston in the sunny, sunny spring. A montage of clocks and the sudden, deafening sound effect of a ticking clock (wait...what are they trying to tell me, here?) cuts us to the interior of the firehouse, where Jason reads the producer's cue cards (I mean, "decides as an organic result of his deep, deep stores of conversational panache") and asks Genesis, "If you weren't involved with this, would you be doing what you're doing at the Center? Working with those kids?" Jason also uses this question to irreparably alienate MTV's sponsorship with the good people from Macintosh Apples Inc., as he smackily talks with his mouth full of big, nasty bites of his apple, because, clearly, Jason was raised by wolves. Vegetarian wolves. Genesis takes a moment to reflect on his question (I don't really remember what it was, either...I think I transcribed it somewhere miles above), finally lying in response, "I don't know." Right. Minus the "I," the "don't," and the silent first and last letters of "know." Or perhaps they cut out the rest of her reply, which sounds in its entirety, "I don't know...why anyone would voluntarily help people unless their philanthropy could be readily viewed on basic cable." So, no. Jason volleys back, "[Smack smack nosh nosh nosh chew smacky smack] It feels like we've been babysitting for the last four months [noshy noshy smack smack smack]. It feels like that's all we've done." I would stop short of giving yourself that much credit, Granny Smith. In fact, they've done crap for those kids, and they're starting to sense it. Flecks of undigested fruit sail from Jason's lips and land on the floor in front of him, creating an ad hoc Rorschach drawing depicting "carefully orchestrated late-season remorse." And they both tasted of the forbidden fruit. And they were both ashamed. As well they should be. Yuck.
Meanwhile, across town at the same time and talking about exactly the same thing (!), Elka and Sean sit at one of those outdoor cafés Boston is so famous for (during that endless Boston summer known endearingly to its inhabitants as "one Tuesday in July"). Elka tells Sean, "I've never been so angry in my entire life. I'm angry at nobody but myself. That is the scary part." Yow! That is scary. I was hiccupping. But now I'm not anymore. That's how scary it was.
Back in the firehouse, Genesis muses on, "I wonder if everybody else feels the same. I wonder if they can all look back at this after-school program and say, 'Man, I sucked.'" I can help out with that, if you need me. Somehow, when it comes to you people, those words pretty much come tripping off my lips without too much of a problem. Jason knows thine own self: "We're the biggest bunch of whiners I ever met in my life [smackity smack smack gurgle]." Gosh, you people have learned so much about yourselves. Thank you, Real World! This has been another inspiring segment of "Seven to Grow On."
And back to Sean and Elka having exactly the same conversation but with fewer smackily-chewed apples (though more contrived facial piercings -- sorry, Elka...I thought I'd get used to it. It's just that I never did), Sean retreading, "From day one, our focus was not on the Center. It was on our house and the situation and the people living there. And that sort of attitude carries through our whole time at the Center until there's six weeks [sic] left and we start to realize we were brought here to do a certain job and we haven't done it." Sean then rewrites that little speech on a napkin, correcting the run-ons and other grammatical inconsistencies, tucks it under his pillow, and wakes up the morning to find a crisp new dollar bill compliments of the Exposition Fairy. I mean, c'mon. Chances are if we're on board for Episode 22, we already knew some of that information. Elka responds, "But that's not me. I don't not finish what I start." You don't not finish what you start? I don't not uncare. Meanwhile, Jason hops the first international flight to the Plot Arc De Triomphe, expositioning, "I think the only person who can honestly say that they [sic] put everything they've [sic] got into this is Kameelah." I'm almost positive that statement was meant as a compliment, but there's this part of me that just knows Kameelah would hear it, phrased in the plural as it was, and rail, "So you're calling me 'they' because I represent all black people to you?" before hauling off and whaling Sean right across the face, for some reason.
Over at the Center for Center Center (CCC), Kameelah suddenly does everything in a way I don't think she ever did until Jason told us she did everything and the producers culled together six months of Kameelah painting one room and made Jason's statement so. To the flat-out annoying soundtrack strains of Madonna-four-husbands- nine-kids-and-fifty- chapters-of-the- Kabbalah-ago technopop, Kameelah, Genesis, and Elka cart cans of hideous orange paint into the CCC as Kameelah voices over, "I cannot do the big room by myself, so I commissioned Genesis and Elka to help me with it." Anyway, "commissioned" means "paid," not whatever you think it means. Cue a wacky Facts of Life opening-credits montage of them painting (except in this painting extravaganza, no one appears to be having any fun, and the prospects of them throwing paint at each other in a playful manner are kind of nil, and the theme song to this somber affair would instead begin "You take the bad, you take the bad") a big room bright orange. It will be a memorial to their time at the CCC. Because turning it into one of the background sets on The Price is Right ensures that the fragility of the human cornea will prevent anyone from going in there ever, ever again. Roy G. Biv wept. Seriously, it's that orange. Elka tells us, "These are our last two weeks together. The least we can do is appreciate each other." Oh, if only the four weeks since she had coffee with Sean in the last scene could always pass this quickly. Cut to a shot of Genesis, Elka, and Kameelah painting and appreciating each other.
Packing montage! Go go go! Let me help you with that. I'll call you a cab to the airport and then sit on the curb, tapping my foot impatiently. Will that help move things along? The Squiggly Hip Font Of Character Introduction lets us know that Jason is on the phone with "Timber, Jason's Wronged, Perpetual Cuckold...er, girlfriend." Jason tells her, "I always get the urge to throw everything away when I'm leaving to go somewhere else." Oh, you latter-day Beat poet, you. Don't ditch your copy of On the Road, I beg of you, or your totally uncontrived sense of wanderlust might escape you on that wild spiritual journey known as "the flight from Boston back to your parents' house in suburban Boulder." Float above treetops. Contemplate jazz. Asshole. But Jason recants these hippie ways, continuing, "I keep everything. I keep matchbooks. I keep all your little notes you've written me. I've got every one of them." Timber -- so fragile, so on TV -- meekly begs, "Well, don't throw those away." But Jason yanks the jerk cord with the extent of his might, retorting, "Some of 'em need to be thrown away, because I read them and they piss me off." Augh. And while you're purging, you lanky bastard, throw that tank top out or give it to someone who'd actually be able to fill out those shoulders. Like Montana.
Elka enters Kameelah's bedroom holding a "small token" of her product-placed "esteem" behind her back. She then hands Kameelah a copy of the Spice Girls' "Wannabe," "because I know how much you love that song." This cannot be unironic love. But karaoke fun ensues as Elka reminds us that things used to be testy between them, but now, they're "cool." While dancing around the living room to the Spice Girls. I know. It was 1997. But the word "cool" is still suing for defamation of character.
But not all is right, and even Mel C. cannot quell the inner demons of some. Elka introduces the thread, letting us know, "Montana, in subtle little ways, is trying to convince me of Kameelah's shortcomings." Cut to Montana's and Elka's bedroom, where Montana lies on her bed, aging so rapidly before the cameras that she becomes old enough to be her own grandmother before the scene has finished airing. In hushed tones, she warns Elka, "She does whatever she pleases, does whatever she wants to you." Elka whispers back, "She has not done anything to me that has been cruel or unkind or made any comments to me or about me that I know of. She has been relatively nice to me." Go, Elka, standing up to Big Red in this way. I know this fracture of housemate relationships should be a little more spine-tingling with the end-of-season pathos, but when it comes to Elka's dealings with Montana, I'll forgo "spine-tingling" and just settle for plain ol' "spine." Montana continues that Kameelah matters way too much to Elka, affirming, "She holds all of the control in your relationship with her. If she decides to hate you tomorrow, you're done with. If she decides to be nice to you, you're cool." Which is completely unlike Montana except for the part where it's exactly like Montana. The word "cool" is all, "I think we've seen enough here," and runs out the door before Elka starts doing karaoke to Hanson. Montana confessionalizes, "At least I know who my enemies are," before moping to Elka, "No offense against you, but I'm sick of living with nineteen-year-olds." Reminders of your own mortality can be rough, Montana-thuselah. That's why I don't have any pets.
But lo, the planted story lines continue. We're in some kind of rec room at the CCC (I guess that orange room we usually film in has been deemed "just a bit too fucking orange" and booted from the production slate), where "Anthony, Director, After-School Program" (thanks, Squiggly Hip Font!) informs Elka, "I'm gonna ask you to get together a group of kids and actually put together a play." Elka looks at him with that curious mix of "that sure sounds a whole lot like doin' stuff" and the even more unfortunate "now where on Earth am I gonna find a group of kids to...oh, right" before following up, "You want it to be, like, a production?" Anthony responds, "Up on the stage," before indicating a stage that has mysteriously appeared like so many brand-new plot lines. They're putting on a play for "Family Night." Elka tells us in a confessional, "I want to go out with a bang. I want to do something for those kids before I leave Boston." Dude. Just leave Boston.
But lo, the planted story lines continue. This one, by comparison, is totally freakin' awesome, though. Back in the firehouse, Kameelah sits down on a chair in the living room and asks Montana, "Please have a seat." Montana, immediately on the defensive, protects the inside corner with the brush back, "For...?" Kameelah collapses under the weight of the world and throws herself down, continuing, "You can stay standing. I don't care." Montana stays standing. Kameelah continues, "Just letting you know that I was sitting here and I heard you and Sean in your confessional. You guys were talking really loud." Cut to a grainy black-and-white shot of Montana sitting in the chair and Sean sitting almost between her legs (ew! And also, the position of who is in the chair and who is between the legs changes numerous times in what was intended to be depicted as a linear exchange, by the way...and "ew" again, while we're talking) like it's something just dug out of Al Capone's vault. Montana tells the camera (oddly, not speaking that much more loudly than usual) that she's always at least given credit to Kameelah for being mature for her age, "but she's not mature for her age." Sean affirms that she's just a pesky nineteen-year-old trying to run everyone's life. I affirm that the confessional door could be insulated a little better, or that a PA could pass an afternoon in Harvard Square buying a freaking fan or something. This busting open of the fourth wall is a little too little too late. I'm just saying. Kameelah would appreciate it "if [Montana] would leave [Kameelah's] name out of [her] mouth." Montana says that she has a right to say whatever she wants, and stoically answers, "That's what you'd like to have happen. Yes. I understand that." A grunge-y rock song tells us that "nothing hurts like your mouth." Sound the subtlety alarm, soundtrack coordinator. I just don't follow.
Jason wants very badly for us to know, "I have a true passion for reading and a true passion for journalling." Oh, hello, repeated use of the words "to journal" in the verb form. He's so, like, part of that community. During a montage of Jason leaving the firehouse and entering the CCC, he continues, "Something in the last week has changed for me." With his journalling. Has he decided to join Diaryland? Decided to add a forum? You are the only writer on the planet, Jason, and we must know what your nimble mind has in store for us. Explaining his game plan to a confused Kameelah in the non-orange computer room at the CCC, he promises, "(a) I'm gonna buy the kids journals. (b) I'm gonna buy them a book. Each." Kameelah tries to clarify who is getting the journals and who is getting the books and where's her damn comp pass to Journalcon if he wants her so badly. No news comes her way, and she sulks off alone to wish her "Please Love Me Jason" thread hadn't just been shut down. Journallers. They never write you back.
Montana's feeling the do-gooder spirit raging inside her as well. Walking in the front door of a hastily constructed L.A. soundstage marked, "Contrived Altruism, Part the Ten Billionth," she voice-overs, "Women at the shelter were saying, 'We have job interviews to go to, and we really need to be looking good. We really need to get our hair cut.'" And who knows more about looking good than Montana? Everybody! But for now, she's our expert in the field. Montana walks into a Boston façade called, "City Salon," explaining further, "I know some hairdressers. I know some people." Inside City Salon, The Squiggly Hip Font Of Character Introduction introduces us to "Jeffrey, Stylist," the sassiest man of sassy sassiness; he's wearing a ribbed tank top (take lessons on the muscle mass required for that outfit, Journal Joe), a crew cut, a chunky silver necklace, and a barely-contained grimace that all but screams, "I passed out at a rave in Soho four years ago and I woke up here." This man so out-sasses Boston. Well, Donny Osmond, the Amish, and mint-flavored dental floss out-sass Boston, but I digress. Jeffrey Stylist listens intently to Montana's sob story: "These are women who are really dedicated to getting jobs and everything like that...and they need haircuts." So that's all it takes, huh? This must be why I still work at home. And everything like that. In voice-over, Montana espouses the manifold brilliance of a certain Episode 19 I might shamelessly link to here, in which she reminisces on happier times: "I remember in Philadelphia, somebody had said that most people would volunteer if they asked." This was right before the IV drip of sauvignon met her bloodstream in a dark alley I like to call "her heart" and she found herself in the situation of asking total strangers to give haircuts to women who need jobs with Bunim-Murray instead of a sassy strawberry rinse to begin with. The good and great Jeffrey Stylist volunteers, and just because he was asked! On television. Music television. With free advertising for the fake salon. His meal ticket out of this Twilight Zone town. Yes. Yes, he'll do it. You're damn right he will. Sassy!
Now this is just becoming evil in its blatant need to generate feel-good redemptive plots. We're back at the CCC, in the pantry (sightings of the once-ubiquitous main room since the feel-good orange repainting: 0), where Poor, Poor Anthony, flanked by Sean, tells a helpless-looking kid, "I need someone to go with Sean and learn how to fly this model airplane that I bought. Okay? I need you to learn with Sean and then come back and teach us to fly the plane." The future of the human race seems to depend on this activity's being executed correctly. The clock in the back of the pantry changes six times like when Homer Simpson gives testimony refuting charges of sexual harassment. Mercifully, Anthony says practically nothing about Sean's "sweet, sweet can." ["Dramatization! May not have happened!" -- Wing Chun]
Later, Anthony announces to the children that "Wednesday will be the volunteers' last day here," and an elegant cut shows the kids' "awwwwwws" of sadness from the time Anthony announced that they were going to be the subjects of really dangerous medical experiments or something. Because this news can't be making them that sad, really. Poor, Poor Anthony asks who is going to miss the volunteers. Hands are raised. Poor, Poor Anthony asks who is really going to miss them. Each kid listlessly raises two hands. Kameelah notes, "I'm kinda nervous about saying goodbye to the kids, because I think they mean more to me than I probably mean to them." Honey, the chief export of Madagascar means more to these kids than you do. Kameelah also fears, "They're gonna move on with their lives, whereas the volunteers are really gonna hold on to their memories." The casting department for the Challenge will be very happy to hear that.
Oooh! The Sundays sing "Summertime"! I adore this song. And this album. And 1997. And nothing else about this scene. We're back to domestic strife in the firehouse, where Genesis tells Elka, "I think Montana is your friend, but sometimes I wonder if she sincerely cares about you." Elka thinks Montana has changed (women say the fortieth birthday bridges that kind of threshold, but I wouldn't know anything about that) and not for the better, and Genesis posits, "I'm anxious to see what she has said about me." Elka conspiratorially asks, "You wanna know?" Kameelah, CGIed into the room to up the dramatic tension, cracks up. But then the conversation becomes -- no, really -- about something Montana told Elka that Kameelah said to Genesis that Montana overheard. What's the story, morning glory? What's the word, hummingbird? Tell me quick about Hugo and...zzzzzzz. Right. Basically, Kameelah told Genesis that Elka was "a drama queen from Brownsville" and "she's so far up Montana's butt it's messing up her digestive system." Ugh. Mental image of an Innerspace close-up on the secret goings-on of Montana's digestive system. In a confessional, Kameelah cops to the "Montana's butt" comment (stop it stop it stop it), but refutes the veracity of the "drama queen from Brownsville" comment. Montana enters the house just then, and we cut to her saying, "That was a long time ago. I honestly don't remember." Kameelah tells her that she's a liar. And we're back in the bedroom, where Elka tells Montana that she wasn't accusing her of lying, but that she wants to get to the truth in case it's Kameelah who is lying. Montana tells her that she hopes she's satisfied. Elka is offended and finds Montana's behavior "petty." They lie in silence as sad songs say so much.
Wrapping up the "at least we don't hate them, like, a little," story arc, Syrus coaches basketball, Jason teaches kids how to journal, Elka rehearses the play, and kids recognize the power of teamwork, literacy, and culture, vowing never to take drugs, ever! Elka practices the curtain calls and sets the kids free for a break of wholesome Nutri-Grain-oriented snack foods and no drugs. But one girl, who we readily recognize as Jessica, the lesbian-hating JTT-lovin' Wayward Child Gone Wrong from Episode 10, reappears in the action with all the subtlety of the German soldier without the helmet crashing the final battle sequence in Saving Private Ryan, asserting, "No! We want to stay here!" Lesbians everywhere rub their hands together forebodingly, conniving, "Now, she is ours."
Genesis terminates a phone call with "Tammy," and we cut to her sitting outside with Kameelah, explaining to us, "The only feeling I have right now is total fear." She continues by saying that she doesn't take well to change, and we find her sitting on the stoop with Kameelah, crying that she feels like her life is coming to an end: "I'm losing my roommates, my cat, my house, my kids. And I'm going home to no job, no apartment, no car, no job, no girlfriend." She got no future, and there she are. Kameelah spouts back something about God not giving her more than she can handle, mixing that in with some inspirational "now is your time to shine." God says it's time to shine? Give me the name of this religion that mixes one part deity with one part Care Bears lunchbox, and I just might find some fervor myself. Kameelah cries too, as Ben Folds's only known and only bad song, "Brick," kicks it instrumentally on the soundtrack. Ben, too, begins to cry. He wishes everyone knew "Sports and Wine" instead.
Back at the CCC, the music television network has seen to it that Family Night legitimize the release forms these negligent parents have signed to allow their children to appear on this show. Poor, Poor Anthony shows Elka the stage set-up for the show, and Elka admits to feeling a little stressed out. As she tries to rehearse the curtain calls that went so perfectly just that afternoon (Elka even yells, "We haven't done the bow yet!" But they have. They have!), she becomes frustrated and pulls the diva bitch routine, walking out and leaving the kids totally unsupervised. Anthony comes down to be the only caretaking professional on the planet, smoothing things over and promising the kids ice cream. This is all they wanted. Suddenly, it's time for City Mouse and Country Mouse: A True Story. I love plays with colons. And true stories about mice who hate the big city and the lesbians who routinely populate them. A quick montage of the show that night cuts to Elka telling us, "They finally got it together, and I was very proud of...myself." D'oh! Selfless remorse so close and so far. Jason introduces a girl named "Lisa," who reads a story the entirety of which appears to be, "Once upon a time." Whatever. That story has so been done. Your journal sucks and your referral log features only you and your mama. Anthony tells the crowd that the volunteers started off "rocky," but now he's sad to see them go. Parents clap. Roommates gleam. Haircuts fail to transpire. Orange.