Previously on Road Rules...Witness the Mating Ritual of the Stupid, as Holly and James trade scar stories in an unintentional homage to Jaws and Lethal Weapon 3. "Scar stories are the best," shrieks Holly. Holly, in her initial interview, said that she'll "try anything twice." James, I'm sure, wonders if that includes him.
The Road Master lays out the thrust of the season in the show's new introduction. Cheesy music plays as we see quick clips from upcoming missions, and photos of the cast that look like a cross between actor head-shots and SNL cast photos from one of the really unfunny years.
The kids enter the Shasta as the Graphic of Bunim-Murray Desperation dubs this segment, "Frosty Face Off." The Road Master, or "Scary Man," as B/M secretly forces the kids to call him, makes one of his highly unwelcome appearances on the Shasta's TV. No shit, but the Road Master looks like he's aged quite a bit since last week. Maybe he's been reading all the smack talked about him in our forums. Poor guy. This poor man's Max Headroom tells us that "speed is a funny thing. Some people love it, some people tremble at the thought of it" -- a line, and line reading, that tells us that though he might have aged, he's still the same crappy Road Master we all know and dislike. We get shots of the cast laughing, presumably shot while someone was telling a joke or someone fell down or something, because the RM is certainly not amusing. RM does his little Breaking The Fourth Wall thing again by talking directly to the daredevil Holly. The director of the RM segment falls asleep as he forgets to rein the hammy actor in on the line, "Dear sweet Holly...have you ever broken your neck!" SAG promptly kicks the actor out of the union, so we can look forward to a new RM week. Holly, meanwhile, begins convulsing and falls to the floor in a fit of hysterics; it is now abundantly clear that Holly Loves Attention, even if it comes from Min Headroom. "Why is he picking on me?" she shrieks, looking around to make sure everyone is still watching her. As the kids read email, James makes strange excited cooing noises. Damn, he loves that iBook; I think B/M better make sure he doesn't try to make off with it at the end of the season. The email mentions something about snow and we cut to Holly once again reliving her two minutes of RM-bestowed fame. "Sweet Holly," she preens. One gets the sense that about two-hundred minutes of footage from that evening was left on the floor -- Holly saying, "Did you hear how the Road Master was talking to me? All to me. That was funny, huh? Oh my god I was soooooo embarrassed. And scared...Hey remember when the Road Master was talking to me? To me. Dear sweet Holly, he said. Remember that? Hey guys, remember that!"
As the kids drive, Msaada tells us that Laterrian is like a cousin to her, and that though he has "women issues," he's a good guy. Women issues? Sounds like he's menstruating. Laterrian asks Msaada to help him. Help him how? she wonders. "Don't let me slut." ("Slut," here, being a verb.) Msaada looks just as bored/creeped-out as I am. Me, Myself & Laterrian goes all floaty-head on us as he once again reiterates the whole metaphysical conundrum that is the Laterrian/T duality, which I don't feel like validating by repeating. Nice guy, sweet, playa, dog, whatever. That's Laterrian -- he's very complex. He thinks, however, that on this trip Laterrian is going to come out more, which is too bad, because T is a whole lot easier to type than Laterrian. But then again, T doesn't sound like "turtle," so Theo might be disappointed in that case. Whoever he is at this point -- Terrarium, whatever -- isn't getting the hint that his desperate flirting isn't working with Msaada, because she basically tells him to watch his own damn self. "Your 'inspiration' should be, like, try to avoid having your balls be on fire forever," she says. Planetarium then mumbles something about his penis falling off, but luckily they cut away very quickly.
Dateline: Utah Winter Sports Park. Sun Peak, Utah. Olympic skier Picabo Street greets the kids, asking them if they've ever seen snow before. Picabo is smiling, simply because she can now put "Mission Mayor" on her resumé. Well, that and the fact that she finds Holly so damned attractive. (Conjecture on my part, ski fans! Stop typing that hate mail. I'm just kidding. [Well...kinda.]) Picabo conveniently leaves off the "Mission" part of her title, just calling herself "your Mayor." I just hope there are term limits. We see a one-second montage of Picabo skiing as Theo yodels, "Picabo is cool." Theo, however, is just confused, having thought the producers were asking him about his favorite children's game. Picabo explains that the kids will be competing against a group of six other kids, chosen by MTV.COM. In a brief interview, Holly says --- oh fuck it, who cares what Holly says -- the point is that her ever-changing hair is very short suddenly. They shouldn't throw in interviews from such varied times in the season -- it's quite jarring and I'm already feeling a bit fragile after these first three minutes of the episode. Picabo lays out the rules, which basically say that they'll get six grand just for competing, and another six grand goes to the overall winner; the dot-com kids are therefore trying to take away their money. And as I listen, I have a suggestion to help Road Rules one-up Survivor: The losing team has to pick one of their members, and kill him. Tell me those ratings wouldn't shoot up.
We meet the "online" kids one-by-one, which pisses me off, because I'm still having a problem distinguishing between Kathryn and Holly. I can't take more names. But they bust them out anyway: Neel. Valerie. Eric. Shanta. Toby. And Kelli, who is "so glad [she's] here." The kids, being all from the East Coast, have bonded, though I am unclear why being from the same half of the country makes them suddenly so damn tight. The kids were picked from a photo and an essay, and in addition to being allowed to take part in the mission, they were for some reason punished by being forced to wear the Most Hideous Scarves in the World. As Peek-A-Boo prattles on about this first day being just a "fun day," the two teams size each other up. Interview Theo tells us that the dot-com kids "have this real stern look on their faces, like they're coming in here and kicking some butt." He goes on to say that they're trying to instill some sort of "dot-communism." At first I am massively shocked and impressed by this actually pretty funny line -- but then I wake up and realize that there is no way he came up with that on his own. Holly goes floaty-head on us, saying, "I don't know who they are, but they're going down." She proceeds to open her mouth into such a grotesque and massive cackle that the sheer force of it whips her floating head half-way off the screen, and causes her to slowly disappear, leaving only a shot of brewing storm-clouds. On the ski slopes, the two groups face off in a sort of joking manner. But, as things do when people like Holly and Laterrian are around, it soon gets ugly. The lovely Msaada (I swear I'm waiting for her to piss me off, but goddamn it if I don't genuinely like this girl) does a very funny bit where she pretends to charge the dot-communists, having Laterrian hold her back. Holly quickly ruins things as she brushes past the still-joking Msaada and grabs a bottle of water from Shanta, saying, "I would like my water back." As Shanta sorta goes after Holly, who claims that Shanta took her water in the first place, floaty Laterrian blathers, "Shanta is straaaaaaaaight ghetto." ("Ghetto," here, being an adjective.) While the definition of "ghetto" is a bit amorphous, I don't think Laterrian is correct. She seems vaguely tough, but she wears glasses and speaks rather softly. I picture her studying somewhere rather than throwing gang signs with Da Brat. Oh Jeez, then a floaty, shirtless, necklace-wearing Theo whistles through the gap in his front teeth, "We're here to dance with these bad boys. They better have their tap shoes because it's going to get nah-stah." I guess it's kind of funny, but I'm not prepared to accept two funny lines from Theo in such a short time-frame. Shanta sorta kinda threatens to throw Holly's water down the mountain, but she does it more for Laterrian, and the camera's, benefit; she is walking away as she says it. We then get a weird out-of-context close-up of Holly looking worried. And...we're fucking finally on break...
A Spy Groove ad I'm already sick of...Jesus, K-Mart is hawking clothing during Road Rules? That's pretty desperate on MTV's part...Arsenio pimping some collect number. Arsenio is kinda fey, don't you think? Street urchins eating Skittles in black and white...A very disturbing tampon ad...A very disturbing condom ad...A crazy disturbing ad for The Lyricist Lounge Show...And we're back...
Either a funky sound glitch, or just the usual crack B/M editing department, has the name Holly repeating over and over like the creepy neon moving walkway at O'Hare Airport. ("Keep walking. Keep walking. Walking walking walking...") The dot-com girls hate Holly already (Okay, they are at least perceptive) -- Shanta telling the camera that Holly is "a bitch." They cut back and forth between Holly and the still-babbling Shanta, and suddenly I'm feeling a little protective of Holly -- like, "we" can talk shit about Holly, but this new girl hasn't yet earned the right. Msaada heads up the ski lift with a young teacher. Charmingly, she's freaking out at the very feel of the snow, as, she reveals, she's never before seen snow. After initially wiping out, Msaada makes it down the hill. She is crying, saying, "I just went flying down the hill, and I didn't die!" Cute. Very cute. Nothing bad you can say about this girl, yet. This is getting way too cuddly. Someone better come along to annoy me pretty soon...Ah, hello Holly. Thank you. Floaty short-haired Holly says, "Kathryn and I are the only ones who've ever seen any snow--" (Now follow this logic:) "--so this mission is going to be pretty much on my shoulders to pull everybody through this." How did she go from "Kathryn and I," to "me"? My shoulders? Me me me? Poor me? And don't say she's the best skier, because even Picabo said that Kathryn was once on a ski team as well. Theo falls. Laterrian falls. "Will someone get this snow out of my ass?" he asks. Split-screen nonsense. Run Lola Run music again. Floaty James informs us of the four events: Bobsled. The Skeleton, which is luge, but face-down and face-first. Ski jump. And then the event worth three points, speed skating, in which all have to participate.
Picabo hands out sleds -- Holly getting the fastest one -- and begins to lead them through the Skeleton. She talks about the inevitable moment on the run where they'll want to stop: "Don't." A few of the kids make their practice runs, and B/M just goes fucking nuts with the production values. They must have had a bunch of Red Bull that morning, because suddenly there are like eight screens with cameras strapped to the sled showing us the track from participant levels and the House Music is pumping. Again, Holly Ruins Everything when her floaty head -- wait, now she has long crimpy hair!? Man B/M is playing fast and loose with the whole space/time continuum -- mistakenly reveals the depths of her egotism and insecurity. She says, "I've always been competitive in that winning was just a matter of having the other person go, 'Wow, you're really good at this.'" So, she is basically telling us that she does not care if she wins. No. Just as long as her opponent compliments her. It must suck to need that kind of constant validation from the world. (Okay, let's not psychoanalyze her too deeply or we'll just end up feeling sorry for her. I think we can all agree that it's much more fun to just let nature take its course and have her annoy the hell out of us.) Watching Holly take a trial run, Picabo gets a little Melissa Etheridge on us for a second: "She's holding real tight. She got that spear-like, just...that aerodynamic little body." Woah. Picabo wants Holly to come to her window. Meanwhile, the squealing bobsled-practicing dot-comers brag about their team, and how much more focused on winning they are. I can't disagree with that. However, with Laterrian and T, the RR'ers actually have seven people to the other team's six. An instructor leads the kids through the correct position for the ski jump, which actually looks genuinely scary. Theo says he's ready to jump, swears, and then hits James. Theo is seven.
The kids work a tiny little practice jump. Theo pumps his arms victoriously...after jumping four inches off the ground and then falling flat on his back. The supremely evil Bunim-Murray quickly ruins our fun when they show Theo make a relatively impressive jump, and stick the landing. But then His Redneckness yells, "How you like me now!" and I am happy again. As soon as we see all the other kids, including the dot-com kids, having a good time jumping, Holly notices the needle on the Holly Attention Meter is dangerously dipping into the red zone. A barrage of split-screen, floaty-headed, and fish-eye-lensed Hollys babbling about her knee hurting and the numerous injuries she's done to it over the years. So Holly then hits a two inch jump and lands it perfectly. Wait! She's not done. As she steadily slides to a stop, she falls to the snow about as convincingly as Shaq pretending he's been violently fouled by Spud Webb. Ooh, then she rolls over onto her side and lands, unmoving. I pray that no one takes notice, but naturally they do, and a whole crowd walks over to her. Two resort medics, Scott and Scooter (bullshit!), try to take a look at her knee. Tearfully, Holly growls, "Don't touch It! I know my knee! I just want people to stop trying to help!" and limps off. My guess is that the medics ruined everything for her. The kids would have all given her Amaya-sized heaps of loveandconcern had these two damned idiots with "real medical training who could easily spot hyperbole and bullshit" not come along. The dot-com kids promptly make fun of Holly, certain she's full of crap. It looks like even the ski instructor is joining in. I feel justified, thank you. For her part, Holly, sipping coffee inside as James looks on, dramatically boasts, "I decided to do the final jump, because I'm not a quitter and I wasn't going to let myself not do it, even though I knew that there was a possibility of hurting myself..." blah blah blah -- more self-aggrandizing crap about how if she has the best jump, she'll take one for the team and do the event, even at the risk of...Oh Shut Up! A dot-com kid, Eric maybe, fruits to the camera, "Holly should definitely be in this event because she's the weak link." Ooooooh. Face!
Sad Floaty-Head Short-Haired Holly time. She complains that people think she's stuck-up on first impression, just because she doesn't feel comfortable coming up and talking to them. Well sure, that…and the fact that you are very stuck-up. The fact that Shanta and Valerie don't like her "is just kind of typical. I just kinda have to say, the hell with them. And suck it up, and just kick butt on this mission, and see what they have to say when their noses are in the dirt." I look around for dirt but only see snow. Holly indicates that I know what the hell she's talking about. (Okay, fine…but technically…) This should be called The Maximum Grammatical Butchery Tour. I should just write some macros on my computer to automatically insert "like" and "kinda" and "dude" every third word. It's snowing wet snow and the kids are gathered. Picabo agrees very empathetically and flirtily with Holly that they need to decide who is doing what event. "Cuz you got the aerodynamics," says Picabo, mysteriously. Theo wants to jump because "that one takes the most fear out of me." What exactly does that mean? Just one more for the Theo Says Something That Sounds Like It Makes Sense But Doesn't Quite list. Holly attempts to manipulate everything by telling Theo he should bobsled instead, because they need the weight. When Theo says that Laterrian weighs more than he, Holly stammers…basically she wants to do the jump herself, but is too afraid to come right out and say it. I think it's even somewhat more complex: Holly just wants her way to be the way, even when the pure logic of Laterrian weighing more than Theo is put in front of her. Perhaps I'm thinking way too hard about all this. I'm going to go lie down…
Okay, I'm back. Msaada goes floaty-head and hypothesizes that the boys have a hard time taking directions from Holly. As Holly insists they have to decide now in order to fit in more practice time, Picabo stares at Holly dreamily and then writes her name in the snow. When Holly questions Theo's ability to actually land what might be a good ski jump otherwise, Theo adds just one more entry to the TSSTSLIMSBDQ list when he says, amusing James to no end, "Baby, I'm class-act, I can land it. That's what I do." Laterrian hangs his head in embarrassment. Holly tells Theo that "talk is cheap." I yell, "Holly is cheap!" but Theo opts out from making such an obvious joke. His brand of comedy is much more conceptual. But in the end, Laterrian and Theo ignore Holly, deciding that Theo will indeed do what his class-act self does: uh…land ski jumps, I guess.
After the mercifully long MTV commercial break (thank god for corporate greed taking precedence over content), we get another HoJo's commercial as the camera lovingly dwells on the sign for the motel up to which the kids pull. It should be called The Maximum Product Placement Tour. The dot-comers, or "kids," as our RR kids refer to them, get to stay in a fresh cabin on the HoJo lot as Holly and crew are stuck in regular rooms. A blonde who isn't Holly says something about not wanting responsibility for the dot-comers, and I wonder who the blonde is. Oh yeah, it's Kathryn. I forgot out her. Man, the Road Master is getting more screen time. Incidentally, it's pretty funny that the Road Rulers are calling the online winners "kids," since the two groups are the exact same age. Going to get food, the surprisingly-short Kathryn complains about the dot-comers saying stuff behind her back. James, gesturing towards Holly like Anthony Michael Hall gesturing towards Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, says that Kathryn herself does not always bring problems to people's faces. Kathryn replies, "Well, it's different if you have to live with them." While eating without Theo (man, Theo never gets to eat with the rest. I guess even in the snow he's out back swimming in the crick), Kathryn and Holly, the Two-Headed Blonde, talks about Shanta and them "kicking butt" tomorrow. Laterrian looks on especially leerily, and I am uncertain as to what B/M's point here is -- that Laterrian is black, as is Shanta, or Laterrian just doesn't like all the shit-talking. The point becomes clear, however, as Laterrian heads right over to the cabin to carouse with the enemy; the dot-com kids all crowd into a hot tub as T -- oh, he is clearly T tonight, people -- and Neel watch on. Poor Neel. His name all spelled crazy. Laterrian strangely watches as the dot-comers crowd onto a strange bed thing with sleep-shelves and all sorts of weirdness happening. Whatever it is, it doesn't look comfortable. T massage-rapes Valerie as floaty James reiterates the "not kosher dude"-ness of Laterrian trying to get some enemy tail. Laterrian leaves, announcing his room number. Naturally, Valerie slinks off to his room and the two end up sneaking out to the Shasta for some McNasty.
It's 5:30 AM on competition day, and there is a very strange and totally pointless thing with Neel and Eric talking about sleeping near each other, and Neel is uncomfortable and Eric is kinda fruity and the whole thing just makes me glad we have the six cast members we do, and not these Blandroids. Our kids also wake up and the cameraman makes a huge mistake by using a fish-eye lens on a babbling Theo, his now distorted pointy beaver nose and gap-teeth all scaring my cat and shit. All twelve competitors Get On The Bus. Laterrian eats a banana and flirts with the enemy girls, Shanta talking some shit I can't understand. It was apparently good, earning her a high-five from Valerie. Floaty James reminds us that winning is everything, as Laterrian tells Kathryn that he is girl-crazy. No! He then hits flirting rock-bottom when he asks for one of the dot-com girls' hideous stripey scarves of ugly -- and they play-tie him to the bus seat with them. Holly pukes. James sulks. And Theo stares on in dumb awe, having now collected two great flirting ideas from his cast members: swapping scar stories, and ugly scarf play. "I have to have attention from a girl," says Laterrian, thus being the second cast member this episode to admit that they are hugely vain and insecure. Two down, four to go.
At the lodge, Picabo shows the kids the medals and coins (a team will either get all or none). She then mechanically tosses off some old coaching advice, "Believe in yourselves. Lean into it like you want it. Get it." -- and I half expect her to lose it here. "Mommy I'm so tired, I don't even want to be on the ski team, I want to play with my friends!" Theo hypothesizes that there will be some drama on the mountain today, as the confusingly short-haired floaty Holly tells us that she's not even doing it for the money, but for herself -- and because she doesn't want the dot-comers to go home with her "glory." Glory? Woah, this is one messed-up chick, I think, as the beloved 'Created by Mary-Ellis Bunim / Jonathan Murray' credit signals the end of another meticulously-crafted half-hour of television.
up on Road Rules: Someone, Theo maybe, fails to land their ski jump. Holly throws her gloves at James petulantly as he tries to congratulate her after an apparently less-than-"Hollyish" performance on the Skeleton. Holly the Red-Nosed Whiner freaks out on a cameraman, telling him to "seriously" get away from her. "This could have been a lot of fun, but they ruined it," tears Holly, flapping her flappy-sleeves like a three-year-old. Awesome! Can I say now that I'm fucking psyched for week? Cool, because I am.
Over the credits, Laterrian eats yet another banana as Picabo tells him about an embarrassing moment. During the filming of some commercial she's in, she farted on set. Laterrian looks about as uncomfortable as I am while Picabo just babbles on and on. Finally, when Picabo says that it was embarrassing, he says, "It should be." Picabo cackles as we finally fade out for good.