Kudos to the talented troupe of magic makers over at the George Lucas special effects house Industrial Light and Raging Boredom, who were obviously retained at some great cost by the increasingly apprehensive folks at BMP to, for once, impose a blue sky on the opening montage of a city that has lived its entire run of this season so far in the ominous shadow of slate gray desperation. And what a radically inventive montage it is: Generic skylines! Nondescript buildings! Uh, more nondescript buildings! Trains! Passing! Each other! A group of schoolchildren -- bundled to the gills in the latest in asbestos-lined, NASA-approved tundra-wear necessary for a stint any longer than the amount of time it takes for your average crusty New England curmudgeon to walk outside his rustic clapboard cabin and comment, "A-yuh, it's still cold" -- skate on an icy pond in an essential reminder that, a-yuh, it's still cold. In hopes that the montage will have so compromised our collective perception of what constitutes "visually interesting" (Didn't. Work.), we come to rest at a bleak-looking brick building which we learn is the "East Boston Social Centers." And then below it, vexingly, "Central Square Center." Three times. Center. We get it. All the while, Hanson's mildly disappointing "Mmm-Bop" follow-up ditty "Where's the Love" rages on as the soundtrack, an equally bleak reminder that the band's gold-card membership in the teen-pop milieu was as close to expiring as my dwindling patience with the seven tedious self-obsessives who lurk inside of this unadorned edifice a good twenty miles outside of center city Boston, no matter how many times the building's front tries to assert it as being in the "center." Poor Hanson. Middle of nowhere, indeed.
Someone's gonna end up in the major shithouse this week, because the happy images of the housemates dancing and playing merrily with the children is a contrived attempt to endear us to someone, anyone, in the hope that we will emotionally invest in their plight and actually take sides for once. Allow me to be the first to express my radical allegiance to any of them with an emotionally invested and staunchly loyal "feh." Anyway, we zero in on Syrus, having a time of it with the kids, and he VOs us right into a confessional with the resurgent "I'm a social butterfly. I'm gonna meet people no matter what. If I got both my feet chopped off and had one arm, I'm still gonna meet people." Yeah, a truckload of paramedics and the better part of the Boston Police Department wondering wildly, "Dude, where the HELL are your FEET? You say someone CHOPPED off your FEET? You must meet a lot of people! People who hate you." Cue montage of Tiny Tim meeting and greeting numerous women at the center, and we learn from a Genesis confessional back story that "there was a mother who has a crush on Syrus at the community center." Doesn't she mean the Center for Center Center? ["Is that like the Foundation Foundation [tm xixax] from ?" -- Sars] Cut back to said center, where Genesis and Syrus talk quietly about the single mother Syrus has been talking to, who Genesis agrees is "really cute," and Genesis makes it all about her in observing, "It kind of pissed me off that she'd want to date you instead of me," because we didn't know Genesis was a lesbian. We learn from that hip white scrawl that periodically appears on my television screen to introduce new characters that the cutie in question is named "Luetta." And ordinarily I would point out that she's cute, if by "cute" you mean "haggard," but she's a single mom so I'm cutting Luetta some major slack here. Because if there is one thing that poor used Luetta does not need in her life, it is the lecherous comings-on-to of a self-proclaimed "playa" who has already dated, slept with, and tossed away the collective lowest rung of Boston's fashion ladder and the TJ Maxx personal shoppers they rode in on. Save yourself, Luetta! Before you find yourself wearing cheesy costume jewelry and tapered jeans! Ruuuuuuun!
The Mother Load
But Luetta seems to be taking no real pains to run, and we learn from Elka that "the boy's mom just kind of went up to Syrus and started talking to him." Cue the only recorded shot of Luetta walking up to Syrus and talking to him. Syrus elaborates: "Half the parents there are single parents, I bet. They're looking for a guy!" He badly botches an economics metaphor by remarking that "it's simple supply and demand. The supply is there at the after-school program," and even more egregiously demolishes a baseball metaphor by adding, "whoever's in demand better step up to the plate. You pitch a curve, you just hope it fits." Curveball? Fits? Syrus, please step off baseball analogies if you're not going to at least kind of know where you're taking them. I'd even go so far as saying that in the World Series of stupid comments, you must be Mr. October. Ordinarily, I would say that. But you've frozen me here. Because you wouldn't get it. So I won't. Strike three, asshole. That's a baseball term. Except for the "asshole" part.
Over at the corner of River and Mt. Vernon, Syrus terminates a phone call to answer the front door. Cut to Luetta entering the house, frighteningly conscious of the cameras, and then to Syrus standing with Luetta and talking on the phone again. Then they leave, somehow walking right through the impermeable wall of self-righteous do-goodership the rest of the house has constructed in their honor. Let's watch while the reigning queen of the sovereign nation of self-righteousness puts way too fine a point on it for us. Hello, Kameelah: "I cannot believe that one of the mothers was in our house and is going out with Syrus." From somewhere afar, Elka deems the situation "sick." And not "sick" as a synonym for "rad" and "gnarly," either. And of course Kameelah speaks the truth. Until now: "I don't care what Syrus does." Yeah, you do. "I'm not his mother." No, of course you're not. If you were, in all probability you'd never have wanted to sleep with him. "I don't care if Syrus dates twenty single mothers at one time." Yes, as you exhibited with your trademark levels of patience and absence of this identical speech when he brought home his parade of fashion heretics earlier in the season. You do. Anyway, Kameelah does promise that she won't judge his actions, "as long as they don't go to the center, as long as we don't see those kids, and as long as those kids don't see Syrus with their mothers." Cut to a "don't walk" sign blinking the red hand that screams, "Stop! Stop! Stop!" Oh, man. Bunim and Murray crack into that chic metaphorical editing style known as "Traffic Light Symbolism." I bow at your altars, you magnificent bastards, you.
The mother is on a date with an employee of the center while the rest of the volunteers sit at home and bitch about the unprofessionalism of it all. Right now, at this very moment, where's the kid, exactly? Syrus and Luetta sit at a diner (Mr. Ladies Man knows all the hot spots. Actually, you've gotta give him credit for being the only member of the house who knows that other indoor venues besides the firehouse and the laundromat actually exist) and talk with their mouths a whole lotta full. Luetta garbles something wildly incomprehensible and Syrus volleys, "Are you that closed-minded?" Sigh. Speak up. Actually, just shut up. And for the love of all things holy in the universe, Luetta, you've gotta stop looking at the cameras. You're the focal point of the entire episode, and all of your scenes are nine seconds long. Leave those editors something to work with here. Meanwhile, over at the aforementioned laundromat (ridiculed to exhaustive finality a few episodes back), you can practically hear Elka's "you mean we have to talk about this again" plea to the producers before a shout of "And action!" and Elka's scene-starting, "I wonder what's gonna happen if Syrus keeps dating that girl." Kameelah frets the contingencies: "What if he disses her, or what if she gets pissed off, or what if she falls in love?" Elka is encouraged to bring up the name "Anthony" so that the short-attention-spanned audience remembers who he is when he makes his triumphant, finger-wagging, tut-tutting return later in the episode.
Syrus and Luetta are midway through the fiftieth grease-drenched, napkin-soaking foodstuff the couple has seen fit to tack onto their "Thank God Someone's Finally Causing A Little Controversy" free lunch tab, compliments of the fine (and relieved) folks at BMP. Syrus apologizes for the collective behavior of his roommates for not saying hi when Luetta entered the firehouse, adding, "I don't introduce people to them no more [sic] because I've got [sic] a couple of bad responses." And, back at the laundromat, I revel in the wild coincidence (and expensive editing equipment) of it all when Kameelah ponders, "I wonder what he says about us." Elka mistakenly proposes that he doesn't even bring them up, so great is his indifference with them, and Kameelah shuts it down in telling us, "Some things are so fundamental. You don't date people where you work." Ouch. Sorry, Sars. I know it hurts now, but our torrid affair must end and our love can no longer be. Because Kameelah deems it so, is why. ["Damn you, Kameelah -- DAAAAAAMN YOOOOUUUUUU! [Sob!]" -- Sars]