A snowless (holy continuity editing, Batman!) montage of the usual Boston street scenes gives way to Elka inside of the firehouse, tidying up her room and telling us, "My dad and my brother are coming to visit me this weekend. They're just going to spend some time with me, check out my living quarters, and meet my roommates." And thus all dramatic action for the half-hour (if by "half-hour," you mean "eighteen minutes of montage-filled, faux-ska-drenched, so-glad-I-decided-to-do-this-rather-than-Twin-Peaks-today minutes") has now been set inexorably in motion. The time has come in the Repressed Catholic Girl Story Arc for the visit from Creepy Controlling Father, who will ride into town on the lofty breeze of his decisive moral convictions to try and reassert the precepts of Basic Good in the Universe to his increasingly wayward daughter. It would have benefited Julie from New Orleans greatly to have checked this tape out of the expansive Bunim-Murray viewing library, lest she think her visit with her father had any real chance of going well. Then again, this tape must have gone missing from the B-M archives some time ago, seeing as the producers crafted that exact same story arc at the exact same point in the New Orleans season as they did back in Boston. And there's no way they would have done that on purpose more than once.
Elka continues from room to architecturally confusing room, cleaning like a madwoman and clearly bearing in mind that essential first commandment of Captain Catholicism's Holy House Visiting Dictum, "Thou Shalt Not Leave Dainty Pier One Throw Pillows on God's Holy Product-Placed Rugs." She notes a cheesy-as-all-get-out wall hanging depicting two Xena-like naked tree-dwelling women, one with wings and a tail smooching a leggy (and similarly naked) blond. She observes that it "has to go." Word. I wasn't, in fact, aware that "right-wing conservatism" had become synonymous with "all things tastefully decorated throughout the universe," but if my further research on the matter proves this hypothesis to be true, I'll see all you good country folk on Sunday morning. And at least we know why there wasn't any snow in the opening montage for the first time in fifteen episodes: it's difficult to maintain cold weather patterns when Elka and her morally wayward roommates are already in the process of burning in Hell.
On her way to Emotional Manipulation International Airport, Elka voice-overs, "I feel good when I talk to my father and I sense that he understands me. And I don't think he understands me just yet, so I still have a lot of talking to do with him." Eh? Was that a palindrome? The stock footage plane whose last mistake was depositing Timber on New England soil in last week's episode now delivers unto Boston Elka's father and "Brian," who The Squiggly Hip Font of Character Introduction helpfully alerts us is "Elka's brother." Elka hugs her dad and then turns around to spot Brother Brian. She hugs him noncommittally and asks how their flight was, and he stares in terror at her and chokes out, "I am now on television, and believe I have just soiled myself." Actually, he just says, "it was a little rough." He seems a little nervous.
A camera follows behind the cab at O.J.-chase-speed, and since there was no microphone in the car, we are treated to a conversation that I'm sure took place at a completely different time, in which Elka informs Captain Catholicism that she wants to get her eyebrow pierced: "Either that or my nose." He offers a demoralizing "no" in the vicinity of eight times, ambiguously telling her, "You can pierce the back of your head, underneath the hair there, somewhere." And for someone with such entrenched religious convictions, that suggestion sounds more than a little on the "satanic ritual" side of the ol' Great Piercing Spectrum, wouldn't you say? And say, Dad, where was your heaven-sent fashion consultant when you reached into your closet that morning in Brownsville and thought, "Daddy's gonna be on the TV. Daddy's gotta look good. So for Daddy, it's gotta be the patterned sweater vest."
Inside the firehouse, Elka introduces Captain Catholicism to Sean and Jason, Sean guessing that he has come to Boston make sure "your little girl is all right?" Ew, Sean. I'm sorry, did you just say "little girl"? No, seriously, I'm asking. Seeing as this entire conversation is practically inaudible, drowned out as it is by the loud oinking of entitled chauvinist piggishness. Looks like someone else needs to be fitted for The Sweater Vest of the Patriarchy right away. Captain Catholicism launches into a frightfully disjointed speech about a conversation he had with Elka's "coach," in which he worried that people were going to "change her mind about things." Said "coach" replied, it seems, "I had your daughter in my office for two hours one day trying to change her mind. She didn't change mine, but I didn't change hers." What? Coach? Is she taking religious instruction from an early-'90s Craig T. Nelson? Change her mind? What's going on? I honestly have no idea.
Clear enough that Captain Catholicism isn't the Captain of "The Good Ship Coherent Discourse," Sean sets about steering the conversation into less muddied waters by asking, "What do you think about Walter?" Captain Catholicism confirms, "Oh, you mean 'UK Walter?'" Oh, man. Kick-ass, MBTV-worthy nickname right there. And way to inadvertently up his band's cool Euro cachet, Grandpa, like how cool bands used to throw "UK" into an album title to make themselves look both hip and continental at the same time like "UK Squeeze" or "The Charlatans UK." Suddenly, I think Walter's band kicks ass. Captain Catholicism tells Sean that he's never met Walter, but he's heard Elka on the phone calls "which I pay for." Okay, Captain, we get it. Elka voice-overs, "My dad just thinks that Walter is this guy that I met in Europe. I don't think he really knew just how serious the relationship is." He and Sean share another chuckle about the simple helplessness of ladies. Jesus. Oh, sorry. Over in Elka's room, Captain Catholicism notes the mess, which Elka blames on Montana, and he then notes the from-the-heart keepsake of the poster of Walter's band hanging over Elka's bed. "Is that Walter in the middle?" he asks, and we cut to a scary minor chord and a close up shot on the black-and-white poster of a Michael-Hutchence's-pissed-off-older-brother staring back at Captain Catholicism and fairly speaking the words, "The things I would do to your daughter if I didn't exist in two dimensions and sixteen shades of gray." Captain Catholicism stares back in great concern, nervously patting the front pocket of his Sensible Black Slacks to feel the "Do Not Duplicate" warning etched across the key to Elka's chastity belt, tucked firmly away in Daddy's pocket, where no others can find it.
The Hip Squiggly Font of Character Introduction helpfully points out "Doug," Kameelah's maybe-boyfriend. The two maybe-lovebirds are leaving the firehouse for Framingham Mall, and...oh, fun, a mall. You know where I also see the mall sometimes? Yes, that's right, in my own mundane everyday existence. So nice work, B-M, trying to spice up this torpid season in any way you possibly can, but anyone who has ever been shopping before knows that you can pile on all the quick-cut driving shots and raucous booming bass beat of the soundtrack you want, but once you're inside the mall it's housewares, electronics, and Gary Larson page-a-day flip calendars inside the Molly's Hallmark for as far as the eye can see. Hey, Kameelah? Hook up with a housemate or get tossed off the show, because a half-hour of comparison chopping for the latest advent in "Chia" technology ain't getting you an engraved invite to the reunion special. I'm just sayin'.
Oh, great. Home Depot. Does the fun ever start? All the better to smash the casting director of this season upside the head with a particularly jagged two-by-four. Only we're not supposed to know it's Home Depot, because the letters are all blurred out on the storefront. Sorry, Home Depot, but you gotta cough up the dough if you want your name on MTV. Kameelah explains her reason for the trip to Doug in the car: "I don't want to get anything, but I want to check out the prices. I want to try and see if my boss at the community service center will let me repaint and redo the community service center." Quick flirting ensues in the parking lot of Orange-Awninged Ambiguous Home Improvement as Kameelah voice-overs in some of the blanks: "Doug really means a lot to me, which is scary. It's been a long time since I felt like this."
A Goo Goo Dolls montage away, Kameelah is explaining her plan to revitalize the CCC to Poor, Poor Anthony and another CCC employee whose name, we learn, is "David." Kameelah explains, "I went with my friend to Home Depot" (doesn't she mean Ambiguous Orange...oh, never mind), "and we picked out, like, paint." Poor, Poor Anthony is excited that someone actually wants to do something at the CCC besides ignore the kids (Syrus) and perform a house to house check of their vulnerable single mothers to see if any of them will, er, "sign his permission slip for a field trip to Syrus Spa" (again, Syrus) and he gives her carte blanche to do whatever she wants and promises not to get in her way. Ooooh. Painting. Someone at B-M headquarters has been breathing in the chips from this paint again. How else to account for this plot arc making it onto my television screen? There is no other way. There is no other explanation. There is no step three.
Blues Traveler's kick-ass "But Anyway" scores the soundtrack its necessary frat-boy-rock cachet this week (talk about a band that jumped the shark in one fell swoop, plummeting from "Phish Cult Cred Band" to "Spin Doctors Sell-Out Nightmare" with the simple screaming of the career-destroying snippet, "Hey baby let's keep in touch/HEY BABY LET'S KEEP IN TOUCH") as Kameelah paints the CCC.
More continuity desperation somehow touches the lives of real people living linear lives, as it is suddenly night and Elka and Kameelah are at a too-dark-to-make-fun-of club with Doug. While Doug spends his time on the dance floor, Kameelah is suddenly furious with him, explaining to Elka, "He doesn't know that I know that after I said bye to him last night, he was kickin' it with this other girl." I don't know how she knows that or why we haven't heard a darn thing about it before now, but Kameelah continues on that she gave him ample opportunity to come clean with her, but that he continued to lie about his whereabouts. In a voice-over, she calls herself "a really big fool," and we're back in the firehouse with Kameelah loudly eating cereal and chewing right into the phone (seriously, who's committing the greater crime here? I would so much rather have someone cheat on me than get all smacky with cereal into the phone. Gross, gross, and, oh yeah, gross) and accusing, "You really expect me to believe that you guys were kickin' it together all this time and nothing physical happened? You really expect me to believe that?" Doug admits that while there were no tawdry doings between himself and Other Girl, there was "wrestling" and some other physical contact. Kameelah tells Doug, "You know, I'm sitting her eating cereal, waiting for you to tell me the truth." Dude, he knows you're eating cereal. He knows, your neighbors know, Ma Bell knows, the inhabitants of the Third World village now buried under the ash and lava of a volcano once thought dormant until brought back to life by the seismic waves brought about by egregious smacky chewing halfway around the world know. Those poor natives. Doug sighs deep at the third degree, and Kameelah embarks on an ironic lesson in phone etiquette, demanding he not "breathe hard in the phone." She thinks he's lying: "I'm saying that you totally disgust me right now, that's what I'm saying. Talk to you later, Doug." She hangs up on him. Cue No Doubt's "Don't Speak." Yeah, Kameelah. Don't. Upstairs, Kameelah tells Jason that she can't believe she let someone in to her life and he trashed it, and Jason makes it All About Him with the as-always-hypocritical, "It's just awful getting cheated on." Yes, Jason, you would know. And so would your girlfriend. Don't tell me, 'cause it hurts.
I stifle any number of "where hick tourists go to die" jokes about Captain Catholicism taking his family to the Hard Rock Café for lunch on their last day in Boston. Because the best scenes of familial high drama are so often captured in between shots of plastic checkered tablecloths and Debbie Gibson's denim jacket from the "Electric Youth" video. Brother Brian acts the part of really self-conscious social facilitator for the first time since he soiled himself deplaning back in Act I, asking Elka how she gets along with individual members of the house. "What about Syrus?" She responds that they all bonded big time in Puerto Rico (and clearly "Bonded Roommates = Boring Season," reads Equation #1 on the Real World scientific reference tables), and she has comes to believe, "I like him, she's a really nice person." Wait, she? Well, we leapt ahead, didn't we? She's talking about Genesis. I continue to be...actually, I don't continue to be anything, seeing as the basic premise of that which is "continuity" has been irrevocably removed from the English language forever. It's chaos here people, purple monkey dishwasher. Anyway, this is what she puts forth on Genesis: "I want to let her know that I'm accepting of her lifestyle, y'know, I accept who she is. They go to gay clubs all the time. They dance, they have a good time, whatever. And I want to show her that I understand, that if it makes her happy for me to accompany her..." The Captain takes the bait, turning on that comment like Luis Sojo on a ninth inning Leiter change-up and asks, "What happens if you like it?" If she likes what? Dancing? Lesbianism? Doesn't he know that it's not a choice, but rather a contagious and incurable disease? Dude, check your AMA medical book. Just make sure the publication of said book predates 1973, or your empirical research will be all for naught. Captain Catholicism narrows his eyes even further, weighing in on what he would do in the same position: "If I were in your place, I wouldn't go." Because you so have a passel of twentysomething lesbians banging down your door every Friday, begging you to accompany them to the Leather Fetish Ball at the Clit Club. I'm just sayin', you don't. But the Captain believes that going to "one of these places" would send a message to the people (yes, but are they even people?) around her, "you are perceived by other people who are there as having the same interests." Elka listens quietly, but voice-overs that she's old enough to make her own decisions. The Captain tells her that decisions -- wrong decisions --such as this one, are "a reflection of your character." She asks if he's trying to give her a guilt trip. He says no. He's wrong. Hey, look. Iggy Pop's guitar pick.
Church. Many the "Property of MTV" camera inside of said church. First off, this is a pathetic sacrilege. Second, we get it. He's religious. We, um, get it. Elka voice-overs, "I think that my dad's a little worried and nervous and maybe even sad that I'm kind of growing up. My mother is gone, and I'm gone now. And I think it's hard for him to deal with that." Wait, why are they in church? Oh, no, I forgot that I get it. Thanks.
morning. Elka hugs Captain Catholicism and they part. Aqua sweater redux. Cut to her on the phone with Walter the Poster Boy For...well, Posters. She tells him that the visit was relatively uneventful (except for the "relatively" part), but that Dad was fretting about Walter's visit to Boston. Apparently there had been an off-camera argument, even less riveting than the footage we watched, about the Captain's discomfort with Walter and Elka sharing a bed when UK Walter comes to visit.
Upstairs, Elka continues to fret about the "control" Captain Catholicism has over her to Montana (oh, hi), Genesis, and Kameelah, grousing, "I don't know one dad that's been, like, really keen on listening to his daughter talk about her relationship with her boyfriend." Well, Julie's dad, maybe. But he likes hearing about it for a completely different set of reasons not protected under any number of federal laws, I'm guessing. Kameelah doesn't understand the correlation between Walter's visit and Elka's father, and when Elka explains again (listen up, Kameelah) that the Captain doesn't want his daughter and her poster sleeping in a bed together, Montana proposes that Walter sleep on the fold-out couch, which Elka thinks is crazy. Kameelah makes it All About Her in beginning her made-for-TV retort, "No disrespect to your father, but I've never had a father, so I really don't care," before telling her that she needs to make up her own damn mind. "Sleep to Dream" wails. Kick it, Fiona. Shut up, everyone else.
Kameelah the Judge, Jury and Executioner stares down Doug the Judged, Juried and Executed on a couch in Ambiguous Couch Room #583 of the firehouse. "You're gonna do what you're gonna do," she tells him. "You had a life in Boston before I even got here." She continues on that she can't abide by his total shadiness, and he tells her that he has been faithful even though he realizes that when she leaves Boston the relationship is over. She confessionalizes that "he doesn't mean to be shady on purpose," which is clearly enough of a make-up rationalization, seeing as the funk-soul soundtrack kicks up as Sean impedes grossly on other people's sexual prospects for a change and tells us, "Kameelah said they were going to hang out in the bedroom for a while and just chit-chat." Sean, dude, newsflash: Kameelah would never say "chit-chat." Ever. Cut to a shot of Kameelah and Doug disappearing behind the curtain and into her bedroom, and Sean pushes it officially too far in telling us, "After about ten minutes, some strange sounds started coming from the bedroom." Elka and Sean sit in the living room and exchange furtive none-of-our-business glances. This may be because it is none of their business.
More at the CCC. Hard-edged guitar music wails because that's the sure-fire way to make a children's recreation center wild enough for MTV. Except, not. Elka, wearing a black-knit cap and a giant baggy t-shirt reading "flunky" in spray-painted iron-on letters (what of your precious aqua sweater now, Mushmouth?), shares with most of the housemates, "Well, I know that they did have sex the other night." Cut to Elka and Kameelah in a back room of the CCC, Kameelah raising her voice, "Whatever, Elka, but you don't know what happened. We did not have sexual intercourse." Elka blames Sean for starting the rumors, and we cut to Kameelah walking away from Sean and yelling, "I'm not talking about it here, Sean."
Much, much, much more "talking about it here" ensues. Elka sits with Montana to dozens and dozens of screaming children -- no clever editing needed to accentuate the housemates' insane retardedness in working with kids -- and saying, no really, "She just feels bad because she doesn't want her mother to know she's having sex. I hear moaning and groaning, bumping and grinding, and that's not supposed to be sex?" ['You heard bumping? Like, into walls?" -- Wing Chun] The kids play and frolic in the looming shadow of such depravity. MTV corrupts the life of another youth, quite literally in this case.
Fight. FIGHT!!! Finally. Elka and Sean are SCREAMING the word "sex" over and over and over in the computer room of the CCC, and Kameelah yells, "I will knock you out!" Elka leaves. That Dave guy from the scene with Elka and Anthony throws them all out of the center, and Kameelah rants further about it to Sean on the street. And then we're back at the CCC (who's that bald guy with the...oh, hi, Syrus. Where you been for the last, like, all season?), Poor Poor Anthony demanding answers. Elka tries to depict herself as the good guy, telling Anthony that she was the one to walk away when Kameelah yelled at her across the room. That Dave Guy counters that there was a lot of talk about sex as well (there was), and Anthony tells them that there can be no more "melodramatic outbursts." ["Cut to a black screen. Just kidding. That would be funny, though." -- Wing Chun] Anthony then takes Elka and Sean into his office and tells them that he was "going to suspend" them, and Sean looks almost hopeful about it because it would be just like getting a snow day. Because there is nothing at risk getting a suspension. Except looking stupid on national television. Luckily for Sean, this knotty plot point in already out of the way. Kameelah is warned similarly, but with the value added bonus of Anthony telling her that she does a great, great job at the center. Blah. Paintcakes.
And finally, some cycle-completing filler addendum stuff of Elka cutting the cord entirely. Elka, Genesis and a bunch of their random media-whore friends walk down a darkened Boston street singing "A-piercing we will go." Elka's confessional promising "No matter what happens, I am always going to respect him, and I am always going to honor him" is juxtaposed against shots and shots and shots of the assemblage entering some kind of Piece-a-teria, with its many needles and leather items and other body mutilating paraphernalia of a godless nature. Clever. Even cleverer is the soundtrack's need to pierce the concept of subtlety of a non-WE-GET-IT variety, as "I've Got You Under My Skin" rings proud. Elka gets her eyebrow pierced. It looks really good. "My father is gonna freak." Under my skin. Got it.