Previously: Heather met Larry Johnson. The girls got free tickets to Jamaica, and the boys got bubkes. Kevin and Becky had a fight over race relations.
Shots of rainy Manhattan streets. Cut to a jet zooming across endlessly blue skies. Julie, Heather and Becky are zonked out in the airplane's cabin. Camera close-ups on a chain of islands surrounded by hallucinogen-blue water.
The girls disembark and we get some establishing shots of Jamaica, including picturesque island streets, the airport, bus ride to the hotel.
Julie: The whole idea of Jamaica is that we basically came here looking for men.
Becky: Or boys. Or whatever you want to call them.
Julie: We wanted men.
Heather: The whole idea basically is that we were looking for guys.
Julie: We wanted men.
Julie cracks up. Cut to Heather and Becky, also laughing. "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg" starts playing.
Montage of beefy chests. Almost every specimen is singularly unappetizing, with all the sex appeal of moldering cottage cheese. Blech.
Cut to the hotel room. Heather immediately leaps on top of a double bed and starts jumping for all she's worth. She says, "What are we waiting for? Let's get going!" We see Heather, Becky and Julie frolicking on the beach.
Julie: Take away all the annoying everyday life-things and you see a whole different person, but then you start to miss them.
Becky: I can't imagine those four guys living together and talking to each other. I have no idea what they would talk about.
Back to the Loft of Doom, Andre is staring glumly at the very small TV. Norman's on his bed, "journaling." Andre's voice-over tells us about the project Norman made them undertake: He had Kevin write a poem about Jamaica. Kevin, in his interview, tells us how the boys in the apartment were jealous that the girls got to go to Jamaica. So Kevin wrote out some nonsense lyrics. Then Andre set it to music. Why, it's almost like watching the birth of the Rolling Stones, or something, except minus the talent or cultural implications. Kevin goes on to tell us how it was the deepest exchange he and Andre had had thus far. By the way, the song stinks. A total shitpot of a song.
Back to Heather, Julie and Becky lounging in the spa. Heather asks Becky what she thinks is going to happen with her and Kevin when she gets back. Becky shrugs and says that she's not mad at Kevin, since he has a right to hold whatever views he wants, but that she can't and won't deal with someone who can't have a debate or argument without getting extremely personal.
Cut to a little replay of the argument Kevin and Becky had the episode.
Back to the spa, where Becky says that she and Kevin are basically coming from the same place, but they just express it differently, and that Kevin flipped out when Becky asked him what the point of his little diatribe was, and that he had no right to call her what he did.
Cut back to Kevin calling Becky a racist.
Back to the spa. Becky says she's going to be civil to Kevin when they get back, but that she has no desire to hold conversations with him, especially if it ends up with him telling her that she's a slut and her mother's a whore and all that dumb junk.
Back to Gotham. Andre's staring mournfully out the loft window. It's either Andre or Jennifer Beals circa Flashdance wearing the infamous Adrian Lyne loose perm. Shots of Andre angrily whanging balls across the pool table, smoking, looking disaffected or just generally pissed off are intercut with shots of the girls having a really good time waterskiing, lounging, drinking, cutting it up on the beach. Ouch! That really does smart.
Back to Jamaica. Some shots of Julie lounging on a boat and random people cliff-diving. In an interview, Julie says that she doesn't imagine what a group of girls acts like or does when they go out looking for a guy.
Heather: Well, the nicest guy, the one on the boat [camera cuts to Heather, looking very cute with some chunky braids, talking to some Billy Dee Williams-esque smoothie on the boat] said that he hadn't worked since January. And he said it like the most normal thing, like, oh it's Tuesday, and I haven't worked since January. I could not believe he said that. And he didn't care!
So after two hours of conversation he was cut off. Heather snorts.
Heather, Julie, and Becky are sitting on lounge chairs. Julie asks why guys are so horny, and supposes that it's because they produce so much sperm. Becky says it's because everything they have is outside and visible, so every time they put their pants on and every move they make reminds them of sex. Becky wants to know how men can walk around and not laugh at themselves for having these absurd things in their pants. Part of me found this conversation sweet and endearing; the other part wanted to roll my eyes until they rattled like marbles in my skull. What are these girls, in the fourth grade? To quote Cameron Crowe's immortal script for Singles, "People need people, Steve. It has nothing to do with sex. Okay, maybe forty percent. Sixty percent. Forget it."
Kevin: I felt more comfortable asking Andre about his background, which is pretty interesting. I kept trying to put little pieces of information about myself in there, and I don't know if he wasn't interested or didn't notice, but he didn't respond, so I just kept asking questions about him. And that's just the way it went.
Sort of sounds like a bad date. Andre, who is being shot from overhead like some bad Warrant video, tells us that talking with Kevin is talking with someone in a complete state of denial. For example, Andre asked Kevin what happened with the fight between him and Becky, and Kevin said that there was no fight, and that he has no problem with Becky at all. Andre shakes his head disbelievingly and says, "What the fuck's up with that?"
Back to the islands. Shot of a couple of fishing boats. Becky and Heather are in their room, calling Andre and generally baiting him with how beautiful it is in Jamaica. Andre shows a great deal of forbearance by not hanging up on them and pouting. Becky says that she slept with twelve Rasta men. Kevin asks, "What took her so long?" There's some more chit-chat. Then Andre hangs up and says, "Use a rubber."
Julie: So last night we decided, that's it, we're going to MEET MEN. This is it.
Cut to a hilarious montage of shots of Becky surrounded by schlubby losers trying to hit on her. At one point this guy tries to be a big suave-o and take her hand and she forcibly yanks it away from him. There are no words to describe these guys except the words Monster Truck Rally.
Julie: So we decided we're just going to meet as many men as we can, hear as many crappy lines as possible, and at one point we're making bets like, "Oh, I bet I can get a guy to jump in the water before you can," and Becky was saying she could, and then I turn around and, whammo, first victim.
Some brutally unattractive guy who looks a bit like a fetus tells Julie that she's a really attractive girl. Julie bats her eyelashes (literally) and waves a hand and him and says with so much molasses in her voice it nearly makes me diabetic, "Oh, stop! You say that to everyone here." She's being such an enormous ham I expect Hormel to come by and put a quality stamp on her. Then old Fetus Face tells her that he went out with an Elle model once, so he should know.
This guy then tells her he's got his own business. Julie keeps saying, "Is that rahyt?" She keeps dancing with him. Heather then tells us that Julie finally leaves, and Fetus Face comes over to her and Becky and asks if she's coming back. Heather says, "And I told him, 'No, don't you get it?'"
Julie: He was gone hook, line and sinker. But he was giving me as many crap lines as I was giving him, and I thought we both knew that, but I guess I was wrong.
Montage of radio towers, CD players, radio station control panels. Some schlock DJ for FM 106.3 is interveiwing Reigndance, Andre's band.
Andre: The band's known each other since the third grade.
One of the long-hairs explains the song the DJ's about to play. Apparently they wrote it after the band's first visit to New York, and treated the city as a microcosm of what's wrong with the country. It's about, like, racism, and the song's called "Why Divide?" I have a song title for the band. It's called, "Why not give up?"
Andre's gig at the Roxy. He's singing the song we just hear the first few bars of last scene. He's cross-eyed from looking at the microphone. So, to put the song in perspective, it's not as bad as say, anything by Peaches and Herb, but not as good as anything by, say, the Captain and Tennille.
Andre: There's a lot of benefits to being in a band, be it the women, or getting your statement across to a broad spectrum of people.
Andre pauses, and then mouths at the camera, "The women."
shot, we see Andre and some goth-esque chick with long black hair and heavy bangs. Apparently he met Lisa at the bar across from the Roxy, and they had a good time. They chit-chat. Oh my God. This episode has been entirely Eric Nies-free!! And surprisingly, it's been almost watchable! Sorry. Anyway, they went to some bar on Bleecker Street with horrible drinks. Then Andre says something really confusing about being ready for steady relationships, and thank God because he can't lay all that responsibility and he can't handle the wandering eye thing. Huh? Shot of him and Lisa making out. There's so much hair that it looks like two Shar-peis mating.
Cut to a shot of a sunset. The UB40 remake of "The Way You Do the Things You Do" plays. Shot of Becky sitting on a crowded hillside talking to some meathead in a t-shirt.
Becky: We were supposed to get away from New York City and have a good time and get to meet the men we've wanted to meet. Unfortunately, there weren't any to choose from.
Julie: You'd think men wouldn't be such tards [both bas- and re-] when it comes to women and dumb lines. You think that when you feed them an equally retarded line they'd catch on, but instead they're like, "Oh, really? Great."
There follows a series of shots of Julie getting hit on by meatheads. Julie's face can either be incredibly pretty or very plain, depending on how she's photographed.
Shot of Becky and Heather surrounded by meatheads in a lagoon.
Heather: You want guys to be themselves, but instead they come up to you with a front and say and do stuff they normally wouldn't just to get your attention.
"Ladies First" plays. Shots of Becky by the bonfire on the beach. Becky says she met a guy at the bonfire and he asked her what she did. She told him he was an alligator wrestler. The guy asked what she did after she wrestled them. Straight-faced she says, "We skin them and eat them." Becky says, "We met some nice guys, but we were expecting a little more."
Back to New York. Heather's voice-over says, "We're going home with no guys, no phone numbers, no nothing. Well. The weather's nice and the food, too. But that's about it."
Shot of Air Jamaica plane taking off. Becky's voice-over says, "One thing that did happen in Jamaica --" but then there's a huge sound of screeching brakes.
The girls enter to a completely empty apartment. Becky says, "Thanks for the welcome home, guys." Heather flips through the message book and says disgustedly, "We didn't get no messages!" Her voice-over says that she expected a big cake and a banner, but instead they came home and got nothing. Umm, girls? You got sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica while the boys sat on their butts at home in rainy New York. I wouldn't expect a tap-dance and a brass band at your return.
As it turns out, Eric's home, and he does ask them lots of questions about the trip, most of which are concerned with the issue of whether they hooked up with anyone. Julie does a really funny hick accent and says, "I met one from Kansas, and he can lay marble like nobody's business!" Eric keeps pressing the issue and Julie cracks up. Becky looks uncomfortable.
Becky: Well, there is one thing that happened in Jamaica.
We flash back to the boat, where Becky's lying down with some doofus. A scrawl appears under him which says, "Bill: EX-Real World Director." Becky says that she and one of the directors got a little too close in Jamaica. Shots of Becky dancing and flirting with Bill. Becky says, "Unfortunately he can't be with us anymore because he was a little too into me."
Julie: Yuck. Norman came in and was the happiest I'd ever seen him. Ecstatic.
Norman: The mating season has arrived. The birds. The bees. And I got myself a date!
Norman, apparently, had the best date of his life with some guy named Charles, newly arrived from Los Angeles, who lives just around the corner. ["This would be Charles Perez, former Ricki Lake show producer, and host of a short-lived eponymous talk show of his own. Apparently he's straight now." -- Wing Chun] Becky and Julie look disgusted. I think they're pissed because Norman isn't jealous of their vacation. Becky tells Norman he's on Cloud Nine.
Norman says that the weekend was great, and now he's in a bit of a relationship. And that he's very happy. He looks ecstatic.
Uh-oh. The aftermath of the Kevin and Becky fight. Julie looks uncomfortable. Becky tells Kevin that things turning into a fight are fine, but not when it hits a certain level at which she can't say anything to him. Kevin apologizes for calling her a bitch, but not really. He says he knows that it's not the right thing for a man to call a woman that. Right. Whatever. Kevin still says he thinks they need to talk. Becky says that Kevin needs to understand that she wasn't insulting his life or where he was coming from, but was trying to communicate where she was coming from. She then says abruptly that she's starving, and asks whether Kevin wants to eat with her?
Becky thinks things are resolved, while Kevin doesn't, but he feels comfortable talking to her.
Norman enters the room with take-out. They all decide to go out to eat. The few minutes are taken up with total filler of Kevin, Norman and Heather having a water gun fight.
shot is of Becky, telling us how she sucked Bill, the ex-director, through the fourth wall, and now he's living in their realm. Shots of them at the Dew Drop Inn and Bill looking muy, muy uncomfortable as he looks at the cameramen and says, "I know you. And you, and you," and Becky tells him he has to ignore them and pretend that they're not there. Becky says she doesn't blame him for being uncomfortable.
episode: Sex and the Single Man. We deal with Norman and his relationship issues, and Julie digs into the homelessness issue with both hands. The latter is handed almost touchingly, except that Phil Collins rears his ugly head.