Sunrise. Santa Monica. Crane shot over the nice, pricey waterfront property and over into Venice and the Beach House of Banality. Jon jams alone in his room. Tami does a furious set of sit-ups in the hallway. Beth S. reads Variety. Some unidentifiable music jangles in the background as Beth simpers that she believes Tami is destined for great success. She says that if all of them "put [their] minds to it, one hundred percent," they'll "get what [they] want." She flips through the classifieds at the back of Variety -- most of which, by the way, read along the lines of "Non-Union actors needed for student film. Nudity required." Beth shoves her résumé into a manila envelope. Okay, so I just got laid off from my shitty-ass copywriting job, right, and how sad is it that at this moment, I identify with Beth? Please, just kill me right now. Beth reclines on a beach chair, and Jessica Wakefields that although she doesn't know exactly what she wants to do with her life, but that when she figures it out, she knows she'll succeed, because she always gets what she wants.
Tami's all over the Stair-Master as she voice-overs that she's about to start an extremely vigorous exercise program. Yes, that makes good sense to me; frankly, her body looks too perfect right now, and could be a bit more emaciated. Jon watches as Tami does stomach crunches (twisting to work her obliques, for those of you keeping score at home) and explains that she's really been "slacking" since she moved into the house. Watching her makes me hungry; I'm going to have me some Doritos. Crunchy, spicy Doritos -- perfect with lunch, or as a snack! Every bite is chock-full of awesome, mouth-watering flava! Now available in Extremely Cool Ranch! Get Dorito-ed today! When Tami leans back to rest after her set, Jon leans over and pokes at a rogue hair on her chin. Tami laughs about the funny things that hormones can do to a woman. She ought to invest in some Vaniqua. Vaniqua helps women remove unwanted facial hair! Now available in Extremely Strong, for Manly Women! Get Vaniqua-ed today!
Oh, God. Tami, Beth, and Jon loll around the girls' room. Tami looks at Beth very seriously and informs her that she believes if "you're excellent at your craft and true to your work, if you're good, they'll take you no matter what you look like." Did she just insult Beth's looks? I think she did. Rock on, Tami. Beth says that success in Hollywood is based partially on who you know, but mostly on how you look. As I believe I said a long time ago, Beth is doomed as an actress. Because success in this town -- really, like anywhere -- is based on three things:
- Who you know
- How you appear to others, be that in terms of physical attractiveness, or an attractive personality
- Talent
Wow, Beth is screwed.
In an interview, Jon explains that Beth isn't having very good luck with the acting thing, and that he thinks it's hurting her self-esteem.
Beth voice-overs that everyone in Los Angeles is "something else than what they're doing." For example, she says she enjoys production work, but she "likes acting, too." And it's true. Using myself as an example; I enjoy being unemployed, but I really like getting a paycheck, too.
Beth explains in a sit-down that she had to get head shots. She then explains the purpose of head shots in, like, a forty-five-minute monologue, which also touches on the futility of life and the transience of the human soul. Basically, you need head shots so that casting agents know what you look like.
Bunim/Murray go all Fashion Emergency on us, as Beth goes to get beautified for her photo shoot. Where's Leon Hall? Leon is like my older, supportive gay boyfriend, who goes shoe shopping with me and helps me clean out my closet and then takes me out for a drink at The Ivy, where we snicker about how awful Kate Hudson looked at the Oscars. Apparently, Leon wanted nothing to do with Beth, because she gets cut and colored all by her lonesome. I say a quick but fervent prayer to the Patron Saint of Aestheticians regarding Beth's unruly brows, but I am not heard.
Beth takes her entire wardrobe to the photo shoot, where a girl who looks just like Jennie Garth does her makeup and fluffs her bangs. Beth decides to wear a navy blue polka-dotted sleeveless top with a massive white collar, shorts, and pearls for the shoot. She looks like Ethel Kennedy on a bender. The photographer places her on a stool and starts murmuring lines he learned from watching Star 80 on USA: "Open up, baby, that's nice." We see a proof of one of the shots, and it's actually kind of cute; Beth is looking over her shoulder. Coyly, of course. But it's not awful. The photographer tells her that she can have the pictures Wednesday. Beth bats her lashes. The photographer tells her she's "a doll," and hugs her. Whatever.
Back at the "excellent at your craft" conversation (sidebar -- if you're one of those people who refer to your "craft" in everyday conversation, knock it off, like, right now), Beth rests her chin on her hands and demurely complains that there's a ton of pressure on women in Los Angeles (especially in the entertainment industry) to look perfect and polished, and, for once I agree with her. If you weigh more than 120 pounds in Los Angeles, you're a total freaking heifer. If your pants size is in the double digits, you're stoned in the streets, and Lara Flynn Boyle comes to your house and sticks her fingers down your throat three times a day until you get in line. The conversation drifts to plastic surgery, and Tami admits that she used to want to get liposuction. Beth and Jon just look at her like that's normal. People. Tami so does not need liposuction.
It's ironic; when I turned off the tape in the middle of this episode to go weigh myself, I saw that the Duchess of York was on Rosie, hawking Weight Watchers. I wonder if this is karma telling me to lay off the Doritos. ["Bwa! Sars and I were sort of watching that, too, whilst inhaling Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and drinking Coke. With no regrets." -- Wing Chun]
Tami and her band are at their own photo shoot. Yada yada, she thinks the group is really coming together, and admits that their success will probably have as much to do with the way they look as it will with the way they sound. Cue sexy photo-shoot montage. Yawn.
Beth and Jon go to pick up Beth's proofs. She's nervous about them coming out well because the entire photo shoot cost her $225. Jon is totally disgusted.
Beth, in a demure blue suit, tennis shoes and overly pink lipstick, pays her agent a visit. She's with Media Artist Group, of which I've never heard, but that means nothing since all I know about agents is what I read in Entertainment Weekly. Her agent is a really cheesy and gregarious guy who looks sort of like a taller, contacts-wearing Sammy Davis Jr. He ushers her into his office, where she meets a woman who seems to be another agent. Apparently, she has no name. Anyway, this woman is wearing a floppy white bow tie. The fashion police are about five minutes from staging a raid on this office. Bow Tie and Sammy spill the proofs on to the desk. "Oh, my God," Sammy says, in horror. They pore over the shots. "No. No. Not at all. Nooooo. Oh, that's not going to work. No. No. No, we're not going to push you in that market." Sammy gives Bow Tie a name -- Gloria -- but I prefer to address her sartorial mistakes. "The hair is...weird. She's not comfortable with the camera. Uh huh. Nuh uh. No." Beth looks rather upset, as Sammy peers at her and tells her that "what's keeping [her] from being accepted in this industry is the pictures." Beth purses her lips. I don't know for sure, but I don't think it's the pictures.
In an interview, Beth explains that she has to get all new head shots. If she doesn't have a head shot, she explains, she doesn't have anything. We get it, princess.
Tami's in the studio, laying down the tracks for "I'm a Slave (I'm a Slave, I'm a Slave/ To Your Lovin')." I can see her nipples through her white top. That's pretty much the most interesting part of this scene. Tami doesn't get along with her producer, with whom I am madly in love. He's this very beefy, very gay, black British guy, and he's wearing a brown leather vest with no shirt underneath. I wonder if he'd join Leon and me at The Ivy later? He tells Tami she's doing the song all wrong. Tami thinks he's a pretentious boss. She grouses in an interview that she can't work with him. Finally Beefy Bossypants turns the tables on the talentless and tells the group that he can't work with them. Naturally, we don't get to see any of that drama caught on camera, because that'd be all interesting.
AIDS/HIV clinic. Tami's getting tired of dealing with sick and dying people all the time. It's hard, she tells us, to know that a lot of the people she sees every day are not going to make it to the year.
Okay, because this is 1993, Bunim/Murray is sending a guy over to the beach house to give the roommates an "AIDS awareness class." It's amazing to me to think about how freaked out everyone was about AIDS in 1993 (with good reason), and about how much less press the disease gets now. The medical advances we're made in the interim have been pretty amazing, but there still isn't a cure, kids, so be safe out there.
The guy giving the seminar works with Tami. His name is Mike, and he's wearing a metallic pink condom as an earring, women's glasses, and a pearl necklace. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I think Leon might have a few choice words about the bushy Tom Selleck mustache. Jon is slightly shocked by the condom in the ear. He says that "obviously, this guy was making a statement." You think?
Mike teaches the roommates that you have to assume that everyone is HIV-positive. Because, potentially, he points out, everyone is. In his interview, Jon comments that everyone was very attentive, and they are. They're listening very seriously because Mike is rocking the house. He does the whole "put a condom on a phallic piece of fruit" routine, which is met with great outbursts of hilarity. In an interview, Banthony self-righteously comments that she hopes the other roommates will use the condoms. In his interview, Aaron wryly comments that he's not sure why Banthony got so excited about the condom exercise. "I don't know what her experience with fruits and vegetables was," he says. Back in the living room, Dom looks bored. If he had a dollar for the number of times he'd put a pink condom on a zucchini... In his interview, he shares that he always uses a condom. He then utters this sentence: "Eleven at night; you've got a woody the size of a station wagon; you're not even thinking straight." Thanks so much for that sterling mental image, Dom. "Just don't even think about sex without a condom," he finishes. Okay. Thanks for the public service announcement, Dom, but I already covered that a couple of paragraphs up.
Back in the living room, Mike blows on a dental dam. Then he starts telling the kids about when he found out he was HIV-positive, in 1984. He explains that, back in the day, all you did when you found that out was take vitamins and wait to die, because there was nothing to help -- not even AZT. Wow, Mike looks fantastic for someone who, in 1993, had already been living with the disease for nine years. Go, Mike, with your condom earrings. Jon muses that, in Kentucky, if you told someone you had AIDS, they'd shun you. "This is not a good thing," he comments. Sweet Jon, learning the ways of the world in the big city.
Tami tells us that more and more of her clients are dying, and that she can't take it anymore. We caught that snap twenty minutes ago, Tami. She tells Beth, in their bedroom, that she loathes the job now, when she used to love it. Beth says that she can't figure out what will make her happy. "I feel like I'm always being judged by everybody," Beth says. "That's 'cause you are," Tami and I say in unison. The girls are confused and unhappy with their jobs. At least you have jobs, beeyotches! Some of us over here have nothing! With the exception, of course, of my awesome gig here at Mighty Big TV. ["And don't forget it!" -- Wing Chun]
More bedroom talk from Tami and Beth. "These Are Days" tinkles predictably in the background. Tami tells the group that she made her "acting debut" in Boyz in the 'Hood, talking to Trey in the kitchen. I made my acting debut in a commercial for the Channel Four news, shilling for the weatherman Fritz Coleman. True story.
In an interview, Tami explains yet again that she has no idea what she wants to do with her life. We get it!
Neither does Beth. Okay!
Oh, sweet fancy Moses, Beth and her friend decide to put on a "showcase." They put an ad in Dramalogue and are looking through piles of head shots and résumés.
And then. Then. Beth holds auditions for said showcase in the living room of the beach house. The horror. The horror. Can't...find..the words.... A woman is singing. There's a monologue. There's really, really bad opera. The rest of the roommates look scared out of their minds. In an interview, Beth explains that they're not doing the play to make money; they're doing it as a showcase for casting directors and agents. Yeah, I'm sure the head agents at William Morris and ICM are going to run right down to see some half-assed showcase put on by freaking Beth. A woman sings her guts out. Aaron tries not to laugh.
Because Tami needs guidance, she goes to a psychic. The psychic -- who at least resembles what you'd get from Central Casting if you asked for a psychic -- tells Tami that she's going to be rich and famous and make lots and lots of money, and that she's at a turning point in her life, and that she's really satisfied with her job. Tami's all, no I am not. The psychic covers her gaffe and tells Tami that she's about to have a career change. Tami rolls her eyes. In an interview, she laughs and says that the psychic had no idea what she was talking about. "She was very insightful about someone. It just wasn't me," Tami laughs.
And so, instead, Tami decides -- on the strength of a low-budget late-night commercial -- to go to ITT Tech. I don't know if ITT Tech is, like, a chain of low-rent schools across the nation, but if it's not, let's just say that it's no MIT or Cal Tech. ["I think it is a chain. If not, to give you an idea, it's like DeVry." -- Wing Chun] It's like....it's not real impressive. Anyway, Tami turns out to be pretty good at soldering computer parts together, or something, and this thrills her, and she laughs and laughs, like a crazed lunatic and is very, very proud.
Dom is confused by what the hell Tami is doing at ITT Tech.
From her vantage point in the bathtub, Banthony spews some crap about Tami being at a crossroads in her life, or some shit.
In the confessional, Tami drunkenly explains that she's not happy with her body, or herself, and that she's just trying to make herself happy. That's all she wants, people! To be happy! Happy!
And that's when we go to the dentist's office. And that's where the dentist wires Tami's jaw shut. I don't even know what to say about that. Tami justifies this latest insanity by explaining that she has a tendency to eat too much, which I think is a lie, because, you know...look at her. We get a montage of Tami eating. Um, Tami? You have to eat in order to live. That's how the human body works. In her interview, Tami says that people tell her she's thin, but she's not happy with what she sees in the mirror. Yeah, it's called body dysmorphia, and it's because you're screwy upstairs, Tami, not fat. Damn. ["Call Courteney Cox; I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you all about it." -- Wing Chun]
The dentist wiring Tami's mouth shut, by the way, looks like he got his dental degree from a correspondence school in Grenada. It is so, so, so very wrong of him to wire her mouth shut. It's, like, against the dental equivalent of Hippocratic Oath! There is nothing wrong with the way Tami looks. And if there were, she ought to try diet and exercise first. This is so freaking drastic. Why haven't her roommates talked her out of this?
Oh, here we go. Beth says that Tami doesn't need to lose weight. Dom says he would never wire his jaw shut. "For her to wire her jaw shut is, is asinine," Aaron spits. It doesn't make sense to Banthony. Beth thinks Tami ought to take the sixty bucks she paid Doctor Demento, and go see a shrink to find out why she thinks she needs to lose weight, and once again, I'm so very frightened to find myself agreeing with Beth. Hold me.
Back at the house, Tami says that she wants a chicken taco from across the street, but it comes out like "Eyeeee wnnnnnnt a chckn tc frrrrmm acccrrrsss tttth strt." She grits that she's going to be talking like this for three weeks, so everyone better get used to it. Glen looks sad, and asks Tami what, exactly, is wrong with the way she looks. Tami's all, leave me alone.
Tami goes to work one morning, and grits between her wired-shut teeth that she's leaving her job forever. Her boss is like, what kind of notice are you giving me? Tami is all, none. Her boss is all, excuse me? Boss Lady manages to strong-arm Tami into giving three paltry days' notice, so they can get a temp. She offers to at least give Tami a cake if she'll stay until Thursday. Tami laughs, probably thinking about the fact that she can't eat the stupid cake, and agrees.
Tearfully, in the confessional, Tami reiterates that working with AIDS patients has taken too much out of her; she needs a break, and she hopes this doesn't mean that she's weak, or something. If she's not now, she will be after three weeks of not eating solid foods, yo.
week? More jaw-wired-shut fun!