Previously on Road Rules: Floaty Kathryn helpfully reminds us that MTV.COM has brought in six contest winners with incorrectly spelled names (Neel, Kelli, Valeri, Shanta, Erik, and Toby) to "take [their] money" in an assortment of winter events. A bunch of kids fall on the slopes. Floaty Holly boasts, "This mission is going to be pretty much onnnnnnn my shoulders to pull everybody through this." Shanta calls Holly a bitch, as Kathryn shrugs her shoulders and clutches her water bottle like it's her dollie.
The Scroad Master does his little introduction, and *SPOILER*...doesn't show up at all this episode. Rock! Maybe the B/M-holes are getting the message that He Ruins Everything. Let's hope.
Over shots of the twelve kids milling about the ski resort, looking glum and depressed that their lives have come to this, James attempts to stir up some drama by babbling about the tension of competition, how you can feel it in the air, and how "some people are meant for it and some people aren't." Laterrian eats yet another banana. Dude, what do you think his potassium levels are? Can that be healthy? Theo, hypnotized by the shiny purty medals, yodels, "Dope," and holds up a hideous yellow-striped uni-tard that looks like it was designed by a very drunk Eddie Van Halen. Theo chaws, "I'm going to look bad-ass." Theo is a uni-tard. Floaty Holly tells us, "I don't want to watch them go home with my money. I don't want to watch them go home with my glory." As Holly says this, she shimmies her neck back and forth like Wilona telling Buffalo Butt to fix her door "or else," as J.J. looks up from his painting and laughs. The difference being that Holly is very, well, white, and thus it doesn't quite work for her, I'm sorry to say. (And incidentally, if winning this event equals "glory" to Holly, she is more fucked up than I could have ever imagined.) The three dot-com girls, still wearing their hideous Scarves of Ugly, tell the camera that there is tension, but no cat-scratching. "Who is the tension with?" a crew-woman audibly asks, breaking the rules. "Holly," reply the girls. And as Valeri with an "i" talks, Shanta leans in, interrupting Valeri, and says, "She's a bitch." The B/M producers hand Shanta a hundred bucks for stirring up shit, and she uses it to go buy a better scarf. Holly eats a plum (what's with these kids and fruit?) in the lodge as she leans in to tell Kathryn something; we get subtitles, like we're watching one of those Scottish films where Robert Carlyle is actually speaking English, but we still can't understand a fucking word he's saying. Anyway, the subtitles say, "Shanta comes in, walks up to me and goes, 'Bitch.'" Kathryn literally just turns around and walks away. Hee. Kathryn's like, "Hey, look at that shoe, Holly -- it seems to fit." Since Kathryn didn't squeal with outrage, Holly tells her not-so-secret admirer, Olympic skier and "Mission Mayor" Picabo Street, "She walks in and goes 'bitch' while no one else is around, so no one can catch it." Picabo takes Holly's head and places it between her breasts to comfort her, but of course they don't show it.
We then begin a little voice-over montage of Holly Praise as the producers rediscover the slo-mo button, choosing randomly to linger on a shot of Holly picking plum-meat from between her crazy teeth. Floaty Kathryn looms over the teeth-picking Holly and lies, "Holly has a lot of great things about her that I appreciate." She goes on to say that some people see other things about Holly that bother them, so they turn away, but "they're missing out." And this is very funny -- Kathryn pauses, looking down, unable to think of a single good thing about Holly, and continues, "They're missing out on those good things about Holly..." Like what, Kathryn? Kathryn? Kathryn disappears. Ha. The kids head to their first competition, the bobsled race. The producers must have run out of useable footage at this point, because they throw in a lame scene in which James pussies out on trying to scold Laterrian for getting all T on us, and pimping with the dot-com girls the night. What is really going on here is that B/M tried to make a big thing out of Laterrian's fraternizing with the dot-comers, but nothing ended up coming of it, so they paid James a few bucks to go confront Laterrian. All James does, however, is say a whole mess of "dude"s and then give up. Floaty Laterrian tells us that he can hang with the dot-communists, but "when it's time to compete, [he's] going to sack up, and [they]'re going to take this." What's he going to "sack up," a lunch? A nice bag of bananas for the road?
The producers give up and kick it into race mode, as some horrifyingly bad "announcer" starts doing play-by-play. Valeri and Shanta are up first, and Shanta mumbles something to Valeri containing the words, "kick they [sic] asses," but no matter how loud I turn up the TV, I can't make anything else out. Oh Jesus, the producers go buck-wild with the cheap Radio Shack effects, as weird shots and crazy angles try desperately to make the bobsled competition look exciting. "Valeri and Shanta are gaining speed," yells the announcer, as the quick cuts try to make it look like the bobsled isn't going two miles per hour. "Valeri and Shanta are whipping around the turn with major velocity." Ha. This is pathetic. You could hire Bob Costas himself, and he still couldn't make this sad display seem exciting. Valeri and Shanta finish with an "amazing" time of 38:11. What is "amazing" about that? Compared to what? Compared to, like, "five minutes," 38:11 is good? The big scoreboard reads, "Valerie" with an "e," and I wonder if maybe Valeri has a whole Laterrian/T duality that we just haven't been clued into yet. James babbles, "It's just half-time baby, it's just half-time." Don't call me "baby," James. As he's getting into his sled, Laterrian says, "I have to pee," causing a blonde coach to herself pee in her pants, she just finds Laterrian so gosh-darn funny. James and Laterrian take off and "easily maneuver through the first turn." C'mon now, is "maneuver" really the correct word for simply letting gravity take you down a hill?
At this point, B/M kinda gives up at trying to make things look exciting, having pretty much blown their wad of trickery during the girlie run, so James and Laterrian quickly cross the finish line with a time of 32:35. So, here's the deal: Maybe I'm missing something about the intricacies of the hallowed event that is the bobsled, but at this ass skill level, is it not obvious that the heavier the sled, the faster it will go down the hill? Couldn't, like, the corpse of Walter Matthau and a steel beam fucking fly down the track if you stuck them in a sled together? Therefore, why in God's name did the dot-com kids put two girls in the sled? Do they not have physics on the East Coast (where they are all from)? And why do we say, "Why in God's name?" His name is God -- isn't that therefore a bit redundant? And why haven't we had a commercial yet? And why did I just drink an entire pot of coffee? So many questions, so few answers...So, the Road Rules kids scream and jump around, with Holly yelling, "Fuck yeah!" James refers to Laterrian as "baby" (I thought I was "baby"!) and hugs him. Oh James, so fickle. Ooh, then James gets me all hot by saying, "It feels good. It feels really really good." Yeah, just breathe through it, baby. That's right.
So, Bad Announcer tells us that the competition is the ski-jump, as Theo jinxes himself by saying, "Go big, baby, or go home!" (So now I'm Theo's baby, too?) The dot-com kids pick Erik and Kelli, while our beloved kids pick Kathryn and Theo. (I'd just like to point out now that if there was any question that Msaada is being pushed into the background by B/M, there is no more: Msaada has literally not been on-screen this whole episode, as of yet. Punished for being likable and sane. It's B/M's world, we just make fun of it.) Theo and Kathryn pump themselves up and talk about how well they're going to do. "We're awesome," says Kathryn primly. She holds out her hand, but Theo leaves her hanging, disappearing out of frame. "You know what," she goes on, bitching to the two dot-comers. "It's all kind up here, it's down there where they're talking smack. And that's not...that's not polite." Hee. Kathryn is very hard to read. She's not getting much airtime, and when she does, she's difficult to pin down -- a characteristic I'm sure that B/M just hates; if they can't shove someone into a little "angry black man" or "drunk" or "slut" box very quickly, they have no use for them. Then again, it is pretty sad that Kathryn is our most complex cast member.
Okay, now I could be missing something here, but as the first guy gets ready to jump, they put up a graphic saying, "Eric." Did the graphic at the top of the show not say, "Erik"? And this is not the same as when the resort scoreboard misspelled "Valeri," although that is ultimately the producers' responsibility. Jesus. You know, I was at least slightly kidding in earlier recaps when I talked about B/M not giving a fuck about Road Rules, but no more. They don't even care enough to hire a fucking intern to at least make sure they spell peoples' names correctly. I've seen astrologers on cable access with more carefully-produced shows. Fine, so Erik/Eric lands his jump, at fourteen-and-a-half meters. Kelli also sticks her landing, at thirteen meters. D'oh! Kathryn stands at the top of the jump, squealing like she's in the first row at a Ricky Martin concert and he just craftily changed the "New York" lyric in Living La Vida Loca to her hometown. Okay, fine, maybe Kathryn isn't all that complex. Kathryn sticks her landing also, but only at eleven meters. "It's all up to Theo," says the announcer. Oooh, that's really not a sentence you want to hear when you're in competition. Maybe if you say, "It's all up to Theo...to make a really stupid comment here," or, "It's all up to Theo...to talk shit about other ethnic groups," you'd be okay, but not, "It's all up to Theo to jump at least sixteen-and-a-half meters and stick his landing." But I could be wrong, let's see...(OW! Those B/M bastards just sent me into an epileptic seizure with the jumpy cuts of Theo getting ready to go. Damn, it was like watching a Wang Chung video for a second there.) Yes, of course. Theo, who, remember, was bitching to Holly that he should be allowed to ski jump because he's all about sticking his landings and that's what he does -- well, Theo shanks the fuck out of his jump, lands on his ass, and takes out a few small pine trees. Ha. "That's all right. That's all right," lies Laterrian. "What happened?" asks Theo Bono, pulling a baby pine out of his ear. Um, let's see Theo...you landed on your ass, fucked up, and cost your team the round. Any other questions, Cooter? Floaty, stuffed-up Laterrian justifies, "Theo gave it all that he had." So basically, all that Theo has is the ability to fall on his ass? Maybe the huge gap between his teeth caused a wind drag as he jumped, pulling him off-balance and throwing him to the ground. The lame-nouncer helpfully tells us that the competition is now tied. Theo protests, "Still, dude, I had it in me, bro." Someone should count the number of "dude"s in an episode. I think that's James's contribution to the Shasta. Thank you, James...dick. James tells Theo, "Dude. It's all about smiles..." Um...Okay, James. Whatever you say, you tease.
The Skeleton (luge) is as Holly walks to the start, chewing gum like Gum Prohibition is about to start any day. Toby and Neel (Neel sucks. Why is this whole team spelled so crazy? Why?) are going for the dot-com-asses, while Holly and Msaada are up for the Kids in the Shasta. Holly is running in place, like somehow she has to warm up for a sled ride. It's a fucking sled ride! Just get on the sled, keep your body tight, and go. Incidentally, how is it all on Holly's shoulders, as she says, when she takes the lamest event for herself? She better win this, that's all I'm saying. Punk-ass bitch. Msaada's up first, as Picabo, watching, tells her creepily to "stay tight, girl." Msaada is "off to a vicious start," lames our announcer. Msaada gets a time of 45:01, which means absolutely nothing to me or to anyone else at this point. (The way the announcer says, "Mmmmmmmm-saada!" only adds to my list of reasons why I want to bitch-slap him back to covering high-school fencing matches. I'm actually guessing right now that if the Road Master and this announcer are not the same person, then they at least went to the same acting school.) Floaty Msaada thanks God for her run. But she doesn't thank God in an annoying way, just in a generally relieved sort of way. Floaty Holly takes over the float-space, and says with unbelievable fucking gall, "Our coaches are, like, completely counting on me." God, the ego of this girl. She makes Sting look like a shy, humble wallflower. "That's a lot of pressure," lies Holly; she fucking loves it. She needs it like she needs oxygen and water, and cock. And…commercial. Jesus, it's too early to drink. Damn.
Holly takes off, as Picabo sucks on a lollypop and cheers extra loud. "She's like a little dart, that's exactly what she's like," Picabo says. The announcer totally gives up and says, "Look at that determination on her face," as Holly -- a helmet covering her entire face -- whizzes by us at fifty miles per hour. Picabo totally loses her shit, yelling, "She is so smooth, dude!" (I don't even have to make the insinuation further here, folks. I'll just let Picabo do the talking.) So Holly finishes…with a time of 45:38! Okay, now I'm no Fermat, people, but I think 45:01 is better than 45:38. Maybe I'm wrong. "They're making us push off," complains Holly, making as little sense as she has to date. Hee. The Holly Meltdown begins. Yee-haw! Hm, what was all that about Holly having the entire competition on her shoulders? Msaada beat Holly. Holly is "so smooth, dude," and yet she lost. Holly has herself fooled, man. Well, Picabo too. And now Holly's blaming her ass time on the fact that they had to "push off"? Holly, Msaada has never seen snow and she beat you. Ha. As Toby does his run, James yells, "Don't hit any walls, buddy." "Shut up, you're on my team," says Holly, having to control everything. Up Holly's ass, as Toby beats her too, with a time of 45:23. So, the sadly named Neel gets a lackadaisical "do your thing" from Picabo, who is busy writing "Holly Street" over and over on a piece of paper. Neel "tears around those corners with authority" (the announcer's words, of course), and ends up with a time of 44:82. Holly, unable to take the fact that she came in dead last, tells James not to root for the other team. James, in turn, makes a convincing argument when he responds, "Ah dude, it doesn't matter, yo." Hm, I hadn't thought of that. That's an interesting point indeed. Walking to the lift for their second run (They get a second run?! Ah, crap), the three dot-com girls run by with their Scarves of Ugly, saying to Holly, "Good job." Ha. Holly looks like she's about to cry. She voice-overs that it's not about money for her; now it's about getting back at the girls.
Aw yeah, this is what we've been waiting for. The Holly Meltdown Crisis has officially been upgraded to DefCon Three, and as she rides the lift back up to the top, she whips around, and yell/cries at the in-her-face B/M cameraman, "You know, back up!" After a dramatic pause she whips back around and demands, "You just don't get it, do ya?" Yeah, how dare he do his job. Bastard. You know, Holly nearly had the emotional arc of that scene right, and her intention was strong, but she needs a new writer. I wouldn't give her an Oscar right yet, but maybe like a Blockbuster Award or something. God Save the Drama Queen. Amaya from Real World: Hawaii has officially been demoted to Drama Princess. (Incidentally, if you are on a TV show, don't yell at your cameraman. I guarantee you that unless Holly quickly apologizes behind the scenes, she's gonna get some fucked-up angles and bad lighting from now on.) We crank through the first three competitors on the second round: Theo goes first and earns a time of 43:78; Neel then busts out with a 44:89; Msaada gets a 44:47. Theo lifts Msaada up in the air as Holly gets ready for her run. She needs to break 44:00 to win. Rock! Holly takes off…and smashes into the wall. She continues her run, swearing. Everyone watches, knowing that Holly has fucked with the Karma Police a few too many times, and there is just no way her bitch-ass is going to win. And she doesn't, ending up with a 44:95. "Atta girl," says James. Holly throws her glove at him. "Or…not a girl." Holly petulantly slaps everyone away and runs off into the snow. "This could have been a lot of fun, but they ruined it!" brats Holly, certainly talking a lot for someone who wants to be left alone. I would love to see what would happen if they all really just let her be and headed back to the lodge. My guess is the tears would dry up faster than you could say, "Hey guys, where are you all going? Pay attention to me!" Holly goes on to cry about running into the wall with her shoulder. Slyly, B/M shows the "crash" in a split-screen so that, as Holly cries about her newest injury, you can see her barely scrape the wall. So, to recap…Holly came in dead last after both rounds. Holly, on whose shoulders this entire event rested. And this is because she had to "push off," and because the dot-com kids "ruined it." No, Holly, you ruined it, by sucking at the Skeleton. Valeri says something snotty about Holly's tears to the camera as the dot-com kids walk away, victorious. Man, they really are little shits, and despite everything, I hope the Road Rulers win. And they can, as the score is now two to one, and the speed skating relay is worth three points. Holly continues crying, and James tries to calm her down. Massive Attack starts playing as the dot-com kids laugh, and Holly is left alone with her tears. Luckily, the camera is still on her, so she still has reason to cry, "I should have won this shit." Yes Holly, maybe if you hadn't come in dead last both heats, you might have had a chance. What a luger…
We return from break as Pi-Confucius Street blathers to a still-upset Holly, "It's real. You're living right now…Channel it into your skating tonight. Skate like a bat out of hell and make it happen." Holly doesn't say a word, because maybe that way, Picabo will keep trying to make her feel better, and the cameras will keep rolling, and everything will be okay. It doesn't work, because Picabo moves on to congratulate the sandwich-eating dot-com kids on their two-to-one lead so far. However, because B/M are punk-ass deck-stacking bitches, the first three rounds don't make an ass-lint's worth of difference, because the "teamwork" event, speed skating, is worth three points. Picabo goes back into coach mode and mindlessly regurgitates the crap her trainers have told her for her whole life, that means nothing unless you are stoned or stupid: "Those of you who got negative spin on, turn it positive. It becomes mental at this point…Work out whatever you need to…" blah blah blah. Go fart on someone, Picabo. It apparently works on Holly, however, as the floaty version of herself -- which I have to say is a very scary version, all weird eye contact with the camera and a very stiff delivery -- says that she has to put the Skeleton behind her and "just do this and just win." Behind the floatiness of Holly, Kathryn comes up and hugs Holly. Holly tries to muster a few more tears in order to keep the attention going, while Picabo looks on, making a voodoo doll of Kathryn out of her sock.
A barrage of house music made on a Casio PX2 leads us into the skating rink, where all six members of each team will do a lap of speed skating -- the team who wins the relay will win the whole thing. Coaches offer the kids genius advice like, "If you fall, get back up," while they dress. Holly leads us through the rules of the relay, just in case we didn't get it the first six times. As the kids enter the skating rink and we finally see the "crowd," I imagine what happened a few minutes earlier:
B/M DIRECTOR: Shit. There are like fifty people in the stands.
B/M PA: I handed out flyers all over town. Everyone was at Mormon mass.
B/M DIRECTOR: Damn. Okay. Tell everyone to crowd into one section and into the first three rows. We'll just keep the camera tight any time we're on the crowd, and in editing throw huge fake crowd sounds over the whole thing.
B/M PA: This is going to suck, isn't it, sir?
B/M DIRECTOR: Yes it is, son. Yes it is.
Picabo introduces the twelve kids to the twelve audience members, as a crazy split-screen mirror-image gives me a headache that is only exacerbated by James once a-fucking-gain explaining the situation. Just as you cannot get blood from a stone, B/M, neither can you get drama from this moment. Let it go and show the fucking skating. Holly garbles to the cameraman (oh, she's not telling him to back off now, is she?) something that sounds like, "Balls to the wall. Speed. Let's go." Although it could easily be, "I like your balls, Stee. I'm a ho." I'll have to check the transcript. Then someone says to the camera, "Tonight it's us. It's blue ribbon time." I'll let you guess who that was. The awful announcer is back to describe the situation. One. More. Time. The skating begins, with Laterrian beginning the relay against Toby. Toby gets way ahead, while Laterrian skates like the Fonz in that episode at the roller rink. Kelli is , skating quite well, as Laterrian tags James. But wait. Laterrian does not just tag James, he lovingly cups his buttocks with both hands and pushes him off. Effective? Maybe. Smart? Possibly. Gay? Extremely. Kelli "whips" around the turn with "venomous" speed. Ha. With this, they don't even bother with the crazy angles to attempt to justify the hyperbole, because Kelli visibly skates at about two miles per hour. Shanta is for the dot-com kids, as James also fruitily cups Theo on the bottom, pushing him with a manly thrust. Theo passes Shanta (who's the "bitch" now?) and comes around to the starting line. Let's see how he hands off to Kathryn…Now that's interesting: Theo touches Kathryn on the hand. So, let me get this straight: The men all grab each others' asses, but Theo touches the girl on the hand. Interesting. I'm just saying…
Okay, at this point, I have to make something clear. You've seen speed skating on TV, right? The graceful lines. The head down, back flat, that arm swinging in front of the skaters…This is the opposite. The best analogy here is Bambi when he first goes out onto the ice. I don't know why B/M chose an event to finish this two-part episode of the Maximum Velocity Tour in which there is no Velocity. Speed skaters in the Special Olympics would fall down laughing if they saw these guys skating…then they might bang their helmeted heads into the wall, hug you, and demand a cookie, but they'd be laughing nonetheless. Anyway, Kathryn skates pretty well, with Valeri a few feet behind. Holly skates probably the best of everyone, as the dot-comers come out with Neel. (Incidentally, I'm glad Holly's extensive knee and shoulder injuries have been magically healed. Maybe Holly ran into Mr. Miyagi back in the dressing room…) Anyway, Neel. Oh, the minute I saw poor Neel with the cracked-out spelling, I knew he was trouble. Neel falls. Neel falls to the ice. He gets up and skates for a bit…and then falls again. Neel sucks. Neel is the worst skater in the history of ice. Neel tags Erik as Msaada makes her way fairly well around her final lap. And…Msaada crosses the finish line -- they win. She falls and does a back-spin on the ice as everyone screams. The dot-com kids take out a .45 and shoot the announcer for being so annoying, as the twenty people in the audience cheer and "raise the roof." (I'm pretty white, but didn't "raising the roof" go out about three years ago?)
So Laterrian is talking to the camera, explaining that they won the mission four-to-two and get all the money -- since we are fucking morons and apparently need everything explained to us eighteen times (we're not plotting parabolas here, we're watching the fucking Road Rules) -- and James comes and starts screaming/cheering at Laterrian, and Laterrian says, "Thank you, James," very dryly, and James keeps screaming, and Laterrian just stops talking and gives him this "um…James, I'm doing an interview here -- B/M asked me to explain things once again, and they will hurt me if I don't do this" look. It's actually quite funny. Kathryn, who has pretty blotchy skin when you get close to her, further clarifies this fucking metaphysical conundrum: "We won." Thank you Kathryn. Holly sits on the ice, cheering, as floaty Holly materializes. (Holly is actually, up close, kinda bizarre-looking. Pretty, but also sort of frightening. I'm trying to pin it down, but I think it has something to do with her teeth. I think she has the Scaryteeth. I'm not sure yet. But there is something sort of shifty about Holly. When she is still and serious in these serene floaty moments, she's a different person. Something wicked this way comes…) F.H. says, "I think we won because we won as a team, and we went in there, put everything else behind us, knowing that no one person was going to lose it. It was up to all of us to stay together." Down on the ice, Kathryn slips into a Holly hug, saying, "I can't believe we did that." She's referring to winning, but I like to think she's referring to something that happened between the two of them last night back at the lodge, when they'd both had a few too many and they were lonely and tense, and Picabo kept buying them shots and one thing lead to another…Just my interpretation, I could be wrong.
on Road Rules: The Shasta drives into New Orleans as a new Mission Mayor (Picabo was voted out of office, apparently. Or impeached, perhaps?) tells the kids that their mission is to "prank the Real World." That statement is incredibly philosophically complex, opening a cosmos of quandaries, and I'm about to bust out my Timothy Leary reader when I realize he's talking about the other B/M television show that is taking place down in New Orleans this season. Oh. That's not quite as interesting. But fun, perhaps. We see the kids brainstorming, and James saying something about throwing eggs at the Read World mansion. The boys climb over fences as Kathryn and Holly (avec les white girl afro puffs) peer around a fence, saying, "We look like stalkers." Real Worlder Matt, the hip-hop albino Super-Christian, says something to his Frankenstein-looking housemate. The dark-skinned spark plug of a cast member holds up her pager, saying, "Is this some Road Rules bullshit? 'Cuz I don't want to play," as the Matt-loving Mormon Julie falls to the pavement in hysterics, because they just don't get prankery like this back at BYU, and she's feeling all naughty.
Over the credits, the sore-loser dot-com fuckers (I really hated them and am very glad they are gone) announce that they've attached what looks to be a long piece of rubber to the axle of the Shasta, so that when our kids drive they'll hear a troubling thumping with each rotation of the wheels. This indeed happens, and the kids pull over. They see the rubber, but don't know what it is or what to do about it. Holly has the hood open and Theo, wearing a red duck-hunting hat with ear flaps, comes around and says, "You looking for some money?" Holly goes, "What?" "You drop some money down there?" "No." I have no fucking idea what Theo is talking about, and neither does Holly. I swear, Theo busts out the most surreal shit. He's like some hick Ionesco. Very strange, this boy. Then, as we fade to black, Theo again says, "What are you looking for? Money?" And Holly goes, "Dude! What's with you and money?" Holly takes nineteen steps backwards in this episode, and two steps forward with this last bit of schtick. Congratulations, Holly.