The One You've Been Waiting For

The boys think they're so smart. But, sadly for them, Tami has been watching them this entire time on the monitor in the upstairs hallway. As she and Irene go all Big Brother on their housemates, Aaron comments that he really doesn't want Tami to "go all Norman Bates" on him when she finds out they've pulled the old switcheroo. At this point, Tami uses the house's intercom to tell the boys that she's been "watching [their] asses on the monitor." The boys bust a gut laughing, but Tami is not amused. She comes barreling into the kitchen, smacking the poor defenseless guy holding the boom mike out of the way with one hand, and -- I have freeze frame on my VCR -- screwing up the entire B/M fourth wall by positioning herself in front of three -- count 'em! -- cameramen. While the cameramen scramble to get out of the shot, Tami tells the boys that she doesn't appreciate their plotting behind her back. She points threateningly at David, who swears that none of it was his idea. He, Aaron and Dom try to blame the entire scheme on Jon, but Tami is not that naïve. She stomps back to her room. I notice she's put in very small hoop earrings, which must be her pajama ear wear. The boys titter behind her back. Aaron does some kind of bizarre hip-hop homeboy-as-interpreted-by-Lamda-Chi finger-pointing dance.

In an interview, David tells us that "Dominique" told him to go upstairs and apologize.

And so it begins. We're going to take this step by step, okay? And I don't mean that in a Suzanne Somers/Patrick Duffy Wacky But Heartwarming Blended Family Sitcom kind of way.

David enters the girl's bedroom. From outside the curtain, we hear Tami squeal, "Stop!" and Beth giggling. Tami's tone of voice: Amused. It's totally dark in the girls' room. We heard David say, "I was just looking."

In an interview, Jon tells us that Tami implied that she was naked under her bedclothes.

Suddenly, the lights are on in the girls' room. Everyone is in there except "Dominique," who is in his/her bed. Tami is lying in her bed covered with a purple blanket. Aaron sits on Irene's bed. Irene is under the covers. Her hair, like Audrey II in the last bits of Little Shop of Horrors, rapidly grows over Aaron's body, trapping him on her bed, and attempting to cut off his blood and air supply. Beth, in her pajamas and a baseball cap -- God, she looks like an idiot (more than usual, I mean) -- lolls on Tami's bed. David perches on the edge of Tami's bed. Jon playfully attempts to remove Tami's blanket. She squeals and tells him not to. Someone -- Aaron, I think -- tells him to cut it out, because she's naked under there. David then gets in on the action, pulling on the edge of the blanket. Tami screams at David and Jon not to pull her blanket off. She squeals. Beth, furious that no one is paying attention to her, dives on top of Tami, ostensibly to protect her. Tami's tone: Mostly amused, vaguely irritated. The phone rings; it's for Tami. She groans, not believing that she now has to get up. Because, you know, she's naked. Even though, clearly, you can see that she's at least wearing her bra. ["What the hell kind of freak sleeps in her bra? Honestly." -- Wing Chun] David goes around Beth to try to pull Tami's blanket off from the head of the bed, as opposed to from the foot, and Beth smacks him on the arm. She and Tami are both smiling, widely. Aaron just stays on Irene's bed, idly grinning and brushing his teeth. I'll bet Irene is wondering where her gun is. Tami stands up to get the phone, wrapping the blankets around her. Aaron, saying, "Dude, you're naked," lunges between Tami and David, in what I think was an attempt to prevent David from getting another go at the blanket, but it's hard to tell.

Swaddled in her coverlet, Tami waddles down the hall to get her phone call. David kind of follows her.

In an interview, Jon says he can't really remember everything, but he knows "it started out as a joke."

In the hallway, David has caught up with Tami, who is now, somehow, lying on the floor, still wrapped in her blanket. Maybe she tripped. David attempts, again, to pull the blanket off Tami, and ends up somehow dragging her back down the hall towards the girls' room. She's squealing and laughing and holding on to the blanket. Beth comes running out of the girls' room to rescue Tami, and somehow manages both to trip over Tami, and simultaneously push the blanket almost totally off Tami's body. How helpful, Beth. Not. David starts dragging Tami and the blanket -- and, now, Beth, on top of Tami -- toward the other bedroom. Tami and Beth are both screaming. Not "oh, God, help me!" screaming, but very girly, squeal-y screaming. They do not sound scared. They sound like two girls in the midst of a pillow fight.

Tami stomps into the boys' rooms, followed by her little puppy dog, Beth (Tami is like Lila Fowler to Beth's Jessica Wakefield) and throws an entire bottle of mouthwash on David's unmade bed. Oh, burn. Not. She tosses some rubber boots into the toilet. Wow, that's destructive! Those rain boots will never withstand the water in the toilet bowl! Beth stomps around after Tami, cheering her reign of non-destruction. She makes sure the rain boots are well inserted into the toilet bowl. She has, at some point, lost her stupid baseball cap.

Tami finds David hiding in his closet. That's mature. She says, "Don't do that to me," and kicks and punches him. Really hard, it looks like.

In an interview, Irene says that first it sounded like they were messing around, then it sounded serious, and then it sounded like they were messing around. She muses that she didn't know if she ought to "step in" or not. Because, you know, she's The Law. Twenty-four hours a day.

Because this is a war fought with toiletries, David goes into the bathroom and arms himself with what looks like a tube of Caress Bodywash (the classic scent). Tami is standing in the hallway holding a can of aerosol hairspray. David runs at her in an attempt to get into her room, ostensibly to avenge the death of his bedsheets, but she tries to block the door. He kinds of knocks her against the wall, but she grabs his arm as he heads for the girls' room. In the background, Beth squeals, "Stop it!" and "You're not going to come in here!" and "No!" She pushes David back into the hallway (I think; Jon's big ass makes a better door than a window, and he was blocking the camera). David tells Tami -- rather menacingly, actually -- that she had "better not put shit in [his] bed." I guess he doesn't realize that the Scope will make his bedsheets minty fresh! Tami grabs his arm again and this time flings him against the wall and back towards his own room. Fight! Fight! Fight! Beth keeps caterwauling, and David and Tami exchange words. I'd tell you what they were, but I can't hear them over Beth the Banshee, and 75% of their sentences are completely bleeped out. Also, for some reason, my closed captioning is not working. As David stumbles back to his own room, Tami yells what sounds like "We're going to head up this, motherfucker!" Does that make sense? Maybe that's 1993 slang and I was too busy graduating from high school to be in the loop. Beth stands right behind Tami -- she's put her cap back on -- and nods her head. In the background, Irene hollers that David is not allowed in their room. Dom kind of wanders into the hallway, and wanders back out again, looking as though he's just woken up. Tami shakes the hair spray menacingly.

Aaron is still brushing his teeth.

And commercial, finally. Know how much time that entire incident took, from opening credits to commercial? Six minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

Know how much time the commercials took? Five minutes and thirty seconds. I read almost the first three chapters of Sweet Valley High 16: U.G.L.Y (You Ain't Got No Alibi) in that time!

Back in the hallway, Tami tells David she's "on guard." With her hairspray. Behind Tami, Beth nods furiously some more. David wearily tells the girls to go to sleep. And then Beth springs into action. She darts out from behind Tami and yells that she can't believe that David thought "what he did was nothing." Tami glares.

In an interview, David explains that the situation kept escalating because Beth kept instigating. "She kept pumping more hot air into the balloon," he says. Beth is full of hot air. I'd especially like to point out that in just the last recap, Beth basically did to Dom what David did to Tami. While Dom was intoxicated, no less.

David tells Beth and Tami that they were "laughing and giggling" while the entire thing was going down. They deny it, even though it's right there on tape. Tami yells that David's little joke wasn't funny, and that maybe he "can take off his pants, but [she's] not like that," and that David "totally disrespected [sic]" her. She storms off to her room. Beth, because she has to have the (lame) last word, tells David he doesn't have any respect for himself. She toddles after Tami. David follows them, saying, "Here you go, here you go" and drops his pants. Full Monty, y'all. Tami calls him a child. From within the girls' room, Irene threatens to call the police. I thought Irene was the police. A lightbulb goes on over Beth's head and she tells Tami that Tami ought to file charges against David. Jon informs David that Tami's filing charges. David comes out of his room at this, amazed. "She should!" Beth yells. "She was in her bra and underwear." Yes, embarrassing your roommate is a crime in Los Angeles. Oh, wait, no, it's not. David honestly looks shell-shocked and says that he was joking. "Oh my God," Beth yells at the top of her lungs. And because I can't say it enough: Dear Beth, I hate you. Love, Jessica. PS -- Shut up. Tami tells David his joke was not amusing. She begins to lunge at him with the Hairspray of Death, but thinks better of it and wanders back to her own room.

From his bed, Dom yells that there is to be no violence in his room. He tells David that he doesn't know what happened, but that Tami is filing charges. David says that all he did was pull the cover off of her. Tami hears this and takes her ass and her hairspray into Dom's room, telling David that she told him to stop, and he wouldn't. She gets in his face and says that David wouldn't stop laughing, because he thought it was funny. She shakes the hairspray and yells...wait for it... "It wasn't not funny!" Hee hee. to David, Aaron is trying very hard not to laugh. David asks Tami, calmly, if they can talk, and asks her not to hit him. Tami says that if she hits him, she's "gonna hurt him." David tells her, again, not to hit him. She tells him that if she hits him, she's going to break his jaw, and she gets all in his face again. "Don't underestimate my fucking ass!" she yells. David tells her, quietly, to stop. "Give up the glove, I'm waiting!" Tami says. Again, does that make sense? I'm confused. Is that some kind of Michael Jackson reference? Aaron shakes his head and tells everyone to chill. Dom asks them to take it outside. Tami stalks back to her room again.

Beth follows her, saying very, very loudly that she "would press charges in an instant." David tells her to go ahead and press charges and she turns on him with this brilliant comeback: "Oh, yeah?!"

In Dom's room, Jon blames all this violence on "the rap music." Hee hee.

Tami comes back out of her room, this time merely to give David a dirty look. He says he'll leave the house -- that evening, not forever. Beth screams that she hopes he does, because she'll feel much safer! Dude, Beth, SHUT UP.

In the confessional, Beth pats herself on the back self-righteously for being the only person who stuck up for Tami.

On the phone, Tami explains the situation to...someone. She says she "didn't find the humor" in the joke.

David finds his rain boots in the toilet and laughs because, you know, it's not like water is going to hurt them.

In the pool room, the boys discuss the fact that both Tami and Beth were laughing hysterically throughout the entire incident. David swears that he was joking, but the rest of the rest of boys don't want to get involved. Dom comments that at least they "learned a new boundary tonight." The rest of the boys laugh ruefully, as Tami stalks in and says she's glad they all think what happened was funny. Dom says they weren't even laughing "about that!" In an interview, Jon says that Tami overreacted in getting angry with Aaron and Dom, because they really had nothing to do with it. Aaron shakes his head. "If I wanted to witness some kind of sexual assault scandal, I would have just stayed in the frat house," he seems to be thinking. Dom tells Tami, rather reasonably, that she ought to leave him and Aaron out of this, because it's her battle with David. Tami, ever the martyr, tells Dom that just because no one came to her aid "when [David] was stripping the covers off of her," that doesn't mean any of them should worry about it. She dramatically sweeps back upstairs.

In an interview, Dom says very solemnly that if he had been lying in his bed trying to sleep, when something serious was going on, and he had ignored it, he wouldn't be able to live with himself.

In an interview, Jon sighs that he wishes he had stepped in and done something.

Back in the hallway, Beth and David are arguing again. He says they were just playing. Beth says, "That's what a rapist says too, 'You wanted it, baby.'" David, flabbergasted, says he didn't try to rape Tami. Beth spits that "no means no, okay? No means no." Thanks for the PSA, Beth. David reiterates that he was just playing and that by no means was he going to rape anyone. Beth says that Tami was in her bra and underwear. David says that she wears the same amount of clothing on the beach every day! Beth tells David that Tami is crying, and very upset. David points out, again, that both Tami and Beth were laughing throughout the entire "ordeal."

In an interview, David says that Beth really freaked him out when she mentioned rape, because that's not a word to be thrown around lightly.

In the girls' room, Beth sneers that in this case, "No meant yes." God, Beth, lay off the Lifetime, Television for Women. Equating this incident with rape is such a huge insult to women who have actually been sexually assaulted that I can't even...I'm speechless, basically. David was out of line, things got out of hand, it was stupid. But it was so not anything even approximating rape that I don't know what to say.

Tami puts on her leather jacket and screws in some larger earrings and takes her boom box and leaves the house.

David puts on his jacket and leaves the house. He mournfully strolls along the beach. In an interview, he says he left the house that evening because Beth made him feel uncomfortable staying there.

Beth makes the rape equation again, this time to Jon. Jon tries to side-step the entire rape comparison, and basically tells her that it's over, so they have to fix the damage and not focus on who did what to whom. Beth says vehemently that she hopes David is "punished. In some way, shape or form. That he is punished!"

How interesting that MTV chose to run a date-rape PSA during this second batch of commercials.

Tami comes back to the house. Irene and Beth both pledge to support her, because, as Irene says, "what David did was wrong."

Everyone in the house is on pins and needles, wondering how to resolve the David/Tami issue. Irene snips that she felt unsafe with David in the house. ["Dude, she's the one with the gun!" -- Wing Chun]

Dom, Aaron and Jon meet with Irene, Tami and Beth to discuss what to do with David. They do this while David is in the house, which I think is a little déclassé. Dom expresses discomfort at the fact that David is right upstairs. The girls tell the boys, basically, that they don't feel safe with David in the house. All three of the boys, separately, apologize for not stepping into the situation, and state that if they knew it was as serious as it obviously actually was, they would have done so. And they feel bad about it. Apologies are accepted. Tami is wearing a backwards Newsies cap and huge hoop earrings, an ensemble which I think lacks the proper gravitas for the situation.

David in a interview makes a very good analogy, comparing Tami to "the girl at the party who gets thrown into the swimming pool. She's embarrassed, so she acts mad." He then comments that none of this would have escalated to the level it eventually reached if Beth had kept her damn pie hole shut for once in her meddling life.

In the confessional, Beth says they were both screaming "no!" Blah blah blah Beth. Save it for your audition for The Young and The Restless.