Previously on Road Rules...Laterrian idiotically asked Msaada not to "let [him] slut." Msaada told him that he's the only one who can stop that from happening. I don't remember this occurring (and I think I'd know), but Kathryn and Laterrian have lunch and Kathryn tells him that she's never cheated on a boyfriend but there is one part of her that goes crazy late at night. I won't ask exactly what "part" of her that is, though I hope we get a chance to see it. So does Laterrian. And...cue crappy opening sequence.
It's nighttime and the Shasta is parked in what looks to be the woods, until I see a Chevron sign in the background. The helpful B/M graphic dubs this segment "Fugitives of Love," and I briefly wonder if it's a sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber's horrible musical "Aspects of Love." I'll keep an eye out for Betty Buckley. Floaty Kathryn says, "It's very difficult for me to be away from Reed." Kathryn talks to Reed on the Shasta's speakerphone, and the lovers wax poetic which such tender endearments as "I miss you," and "I hope you're having a good time." Was ever a woman in this humor wooed? Floaty Msaada, hovering in front of Blair Witch Project woods clarifies, explaining that Reed is Kathryn's boyfriend (good, cuz I was totally lost) and that they are "talking about a future together." Floaty Kathryn takes over again, going on to say that she misses "the little things, that I can't see or hear over the phone. And I miss kisses, and hugs." Kathryn, sitting in the Shasta again, goes on to add, "I love you." To Reed, not to me. We agreed that it's a little early yet for us to be saying that kind of stuff to each other. And this is Wild Kathryn, who was talking about the duct tape and shit during the Casting Special? Man, the love in her voice when she talks to and about Reed. Awe-inspiring. I get wet just hearing her, and I'm a guy! Now it's daytime and Kathryn, wearing a very poor and ugly approximation of Holly's already very poor and ugly white girl afro puffs, drives the Shasta with Theo visible, sprawled out in back. Laterrian obviously called "shotgun" first, since that's what he's sitting, and he asks Kathryn, what sounds like, "You don't even consider that sex, even though I didn't orgasm?" He repeats the question but I still don't catch it for sure. Kathryn responds, "probably not." Laterrian bursts into laughter, hitting himself over the head with his Snapple bottle until he's bleeding. Floaty Kathryn explains that she and Laterrian flirt a lot but that they both know it's not going past "a certain line." Maybe some anal sex in the back of the Shasta, but that's it.
Now Laterrian busts out with a flirty line that I myself like to use a lot: "You kissed a black guy?" Either Kathryn is hard of hearing or ignoring him, because he has to ask her again. Kathryn says no but then not wanting to sound like a racist or a prude, says that she doesn't remember. "You would know," says Laterrian, momentarily forgetting about that ol' devil woman called Alcohol. Kathryn goes on to admit that she's only kissed about twenty guys in her life. "Damn, that's my weekly average," thinks Holly, listening in. Kathryn adds that she's "not the random type of girl." Theo, meanwhile, is the random type of guy -- ninety-five percent of what he says is totally random. Laterrian/T goes floaty now, saying that he finds Kathryn hot, "but," they are friends. "There's no hidden agenda," he adds, smiling as if to say, "Man, am I going to nail that little white girl." Is it just me or does Laterrian always sound like he has a cold? Someone get homeboy some Benadryl. A weird clipped-together sound montage/conversation between the two happens as we get boring split-screen shots of trains and pick-ups and other rural scenery. Laterrian doesn't want to step on Reed's toes, or anything. Kathryn, again, misses the "like, the little attention." "That's why I said you're not in love with him," opines the presumptuous (and horny) Laterrian. Man, Laterrian is trying hard. Poisoning the boyfriend in the girlfriend's eyes. Classic move. (Not that I've ever done such a thing. I've just heard about it...) Kathryn now: "I think that maybe our definitions are [sic] love, are very different." Floaty Laterrian says, "Kathryn is just, like, me, in a blonde-haired green-eyed white girl." I'm getting the feeling Laterrian would love to be in a blonde-haired green-eyed white girl.
Ah, gratuitous Howard Johnson's product placement number five(?), as the kids bed down for the night in luxury. Well, in the HoJo ghetto-ass version of luxury. In room four-twelve, the guys stand around the bathroom shirtless and giggling as Laterrian shaves with an electric razor. (Ladies: never trust a man who shaves with an electric razor.) Meanwhile, in four-fourteen, Kathryn calls the shirtless James and Laterrian on the phone. (Theo isn't shirtless, but he is shoeless. And clueless.) This sequence is all very pointless (the obligatory product placement is obviously the only point). So it's nighttime and the kids quickly head back to the Shasta because, as Kathryn informs James, there is a blue light going off inside the RV. Damn. You know for whom the blue light tolls. Yes. The Road Master. We are treated to three screens of the blue light strobing as the kids clamor inside for story time. "James," says the Bloated One. "Remember when you and your frat buddies stole that statue? How did it feel, to be hunted by the cops in the dead of night? Were you scared, or did it give you a little thrill?...Jim, better stay in line tomorrow, Jim." And yeah, we know how he ends each little mini-play: Check the email blah blah blah and then, "Nighty-night." MTV is so trying to push this little "Nighty-night" catch-phrase. Probably trying to build up interest around town for a feature film project. Maybe it could be like the Ernest series. The Road Master Goes to Camp. The Road Master Goes to the Army. First, though, I'd recommend, The Road Master Goes to Acting Class. Can you see it: kids all over the country saying "Nighty-night" like they once said, "Know-what-I-mean?" You can't? Oh good. Neither can I.
Anyway, so we get a bunch of bad sound edits and James, wearing his hat with the logo MTV insists on pixeling out, puts his head on the table as Theo yodels, "I think we are being in the circus, I really do." What? Where the hell did he get that? Statue. Stay in line. Hunted by the cops. From that he deduced "circus"? Theo is Ernest. Ernest Goes to Road Rules. Oh, and now Theo opens the iBook to read their directions. I can't believe they let him near that thing. Their mail tells them they're to go to City Hall in Toccoa, Georgia to meet "Butch." Check it: I would never go anywhere in Georgia to meet a guy named "Butch." Just a tip. Theo, naturally, mispronounces the name of the town while trying to make a joke as they keep featuring odd, out-of-place shots of Laterrian looking mildly wistful. Off they are to the KOA Kampground in the area. Too many "K's" in the deep South make me nervous. (I am reminded of the Dennis Miller line, "I just got back from a tour of the deep South. Personally, I find the people there anything but deep.")
It's still nighttime and a graphic alerts us that the sequence will be called "You Should Be With Me." Good. Great. Ah, so Laterrian is reading Kathryn his favorite poem, "A Woman Waits For Me," by Walt Whitman. Here's a conundrum: One would think with the poetry and all that he's Laterrian (not "T") here, but is he truly Laterrian since he is doing all this to impress and hopefully sleep with a girl? Think about it. Laterrian goes on to quickly quote the first couple lines he remembers. However, then he begins paraphrasing, "You should be with me for the sake, not only for the sake of you, or the sake of me, but also for the sake of others, because, you being with someone else is not...is not as good as you being with me. And I'm just like..." Wow. I really hope Laterrian was paraphrasing because otherwise...that's not a very good poem. Kathryn laughs as she floatily tells us, "L.T. is a very deep person." Ha. "Deep." I used to call things "deep" too, when I was twelve. I'm pretty sure I called Some Kind of Wonderful "deep." And "Live to Tell" by Madonna, too. Laterrian is deep, all right -- he's trying to get deep into your pants. Kathryn goes on to explain, "When he reads a poem he also, he doesn't just read the poem and say 'wow, great poem,' he thinks about it and applies it to his life." Oh My God! That's what you're supposed to do with poems? Thanks, Kathryn. Laterrian is deep. He thinks about what he reads. Co-oo-ol! Laterrian, obviously thinking he's near to closing the deal, reaches deep into his bag of cheese, saying that the only reason he gets sad is that he doesn't have anyone to quote Whitman too. Okay. I'm not above using a line on a woman, but...Jesus, man! I feel embarrassed and I'm not even the one who said it. Laterrian again: "You don't do that with random-ass girls you meet on the street." Oh, I do. Whenever I see a pretty girl I say, "Wassup, baby. O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night -- O moody, tearful night! You wanna go back to my place and knock boots?" They love that shit.
Anyway, so now we're in the Shasta as everyone prepares for bed. Because of the B/M editing magic, it appears now that the kids were kicked out of the HoJo. Laterrian and Kathryn lie in bed together, as "L.T." babbles about the woman to whom he'd read Whitman. He confusingly, and creepily, switches to using the second person for this hypothetical woman, saying, "I want to be there...I want you to touch me only." Kathryn looks equally baffled by Laterrian's confusing syntax...if not also by the fact that he's in her bed. Theo and the others stare back at them, confused. Floaty Theo with the Blue Star of Death on his cheek says that he wondered if there was some sort of "chemical equation" between Kathryn and Laterrian. "But it's just hide-and-go-seek. It's just hide-and-go-seek." What? What?! Man, I swear sometimes I'm tempted also to think that Theo is like Confucius. Like you ask him a question and he's all, "Green Butterfly can't lift mountain without heart of grass." And you don't get it at all and you go home, but then maybe two weeks later, suddenly you're all, "Heart of grass! I get it!" So, suddenly it's 6:30 AM and a group of cop cars fly down the Kampground road with sirens going and lights flashing. The annoying piano soundtrack from Eyes Wide Shut plays as a bunch of cops knock on the Shasta door and inform the sleeping kids that they have five minutes to get ready. For some reason James is sleeping on the roof. I don't know what to think about that. I wonder if Theo is up there with him. I hate B/M. Not only do they ignore Msaada, but they make her do their dirty work: They make her floaty self tells us exactly what we're seeing. What a waste of cute. So the rural deep South cops begin handcuffing everyone and throwing them into a paddy-wagon. (Laterrian is first, and he looks very upset and/or scared about the whole deal; I don't blame him.) Split-screen nonsense as Holly goes to the dark side and momentarily gets Scaryteeth on us. And as the cops helpfully close the Shasta door, we see that it's nearly light outside; when they started it was dark. Obviously, it took the kids more than five minutes to get ready. Meanwhile, it took B/M seven minutes to get to the first commercial. But we're thankfully here...
So the kids are led into the police station -- well, the James A. Neal Public Safety Training Facility, to be exact. Actually, I have to say that the cops seem to do a fairly good job taking this silly-ass endeavor seriously and scaring the kids as they photograph and fingerprint them. The kids are made to get into ugly orange prisoner jumpsuits and told to use the bathroom if they have to. Msaada is very concerned as they put restraints on her which, our cops say, are used in mental wards. Again, Floaty Msaada is abused by B/M as she must explain exactly what we see -- that they're led again into the paddy-wagon to be taken somewhere; they don't yet know where or what is going on. Msaada again describes the scene as they are let out on a high woodsy ridge. We meet the new Mission Mayor, Andy, who barely unseated the last Mayor, Heel Cancer Boy Sloan, in the most recent elections. Andy here is Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive as he explains that they are to be "hobbled." Right away I'm thinking Kathy Bates is going to swing at their legs with a Gallagher mallet, but instead they are zip-tied by the legs to someone else. James and Holly are tied together, Theo and Msaada, and, naturally, Laterrian and Kathryn. B/M, manipulative? Nah. (When Mayor Andy says Msaada's name, though, I swear he doesn't even try to say it right. He just kinda says, "Muh...ah...and Theo.")
The split screen crap is starting to burn my corneas and Msaada explains that each team will have to get from Point A to Point B. Theo then busts in with, "We're fugitives on the run from the lahw." Andy goes on to list rules, give them maps, and explain that they'll have two hours to get to a certain bell tower before the cops and dogs, leaving after a fifteen-minute head start by the kids, can catch them. There will also be a helicopter aiding with the pursuit. If one team makes it, the kids will get the six thousand dollars. If no one makes it, they get no money. Msaada and Theo tells us the exact same shit, Theo telling us, "If nobody makes it, no money, no nuskins [sic]." By the way he trails off, I think, here, rather than trying to be funny with the "nuskins," Theo was trying to say something else he thought might be funny, but his few synapses misfired and this is what came out. Everyone expresses concern about finishing the mission, and about being scared of the dogs. Theo sort of redeems himself, after Andy introduces the dogs, by saying, "The faster you run through the hills, the less you bleed in the dog's mouth." Everyone laughs, if only because they're surprised that for once he's at least making partial sense. It must be like living with a Tourette's sufferer. You never know what to totally ignore, and what to actually listen to. Split-screen mayhem. Really bad sound edits. Multiple shots of dogs. Andy tells the kids to check their watches, since they'll only have fifteen minutes to start out before the cops and dogs come after them...And they're off!
There are suddenly eleven screens open on the TV with shots of leaves and the orange-jumpsuited kids taking off and my nineteen-inch Quasar actually begs me to kick it off its stand. Holly quickly falls; James picks her up, mock-screaming at her. They're so not going to make it. Meanwhile, the cops confer as if it's a real manhunt, showing photos of the kids and describing how much of a head start they've gotten. Kathryn slides down a hill and holds her elbow, groaning dramatically. B/M plays fast and loose with time as within ten TV seconds, not fifteen minutes, the cops and dogs are after the kids. Holly and James fall and get stuck around a three-foot-high tree for an hour. James says "dude" a lot. Foiled by a shrub: If this were real they'd be shot and killed before ever escaping. Theo and Msaada walk, but B/M has no use for them if they're not making funny statements or explaining things to the audience, so we quickly cut away from them. Back to Kathryn and Laterrian as floaty K tells us, "The first thing we decide is that zip tie has to go." They cut the zip tie binding their legs together with a rock. Kathryn pisses B/M off by talking directly to the cameraman, whispering for him to be quiet about this seeming mission illegality. Meanwhile, Holly and James, having (I think) seen Kathryn and Laterrian, also lose their foot bindings. They run down a road. Back to Theo and Msaada. It's very strange and/or stupid as we see a shot of them...with someone in black not thirty feet behind them. Either it's a cop trying to let the mission last longer and merely tag them out later, or a B/M flunky fucking up. Either way it looks pretty stupid. Split-screen crazy montage of T & M falling and making their way through brambles and "harsh" terrain. At one point Msaada gets her dreads caught in a branch and Theo has to help pull her free. Then, displaying his patented cultural sensitivity and all-around people skills, he chaws to the now freed Msaada, "Dude, you look like Lenny Kravitz, yo." Holly and James, now having half shed their orange jumpsuits, stand in a bush, trying to figure out which direction they're supposed to go. I suppose they could just ask the camera crew standing right to them, but that would be against the rules. Instead of fighting or exhibiting any passion whatsoever, they just laugh at their obvious lost-ness. Boy, when you think back to Holly in the winter games mission compared to this, her claims of being very competitive and caring so much about winning are rendered totally bogus. She cares when she has an opportunity to shine individually, or when other people (the dot-com kids) are trying to steal her "glory." When it comes to helping the team, she couldn't care less.
The cops close in on a team as the helicopter leads them to the kids. I think using a helicopter is pretty unfair. If those cops can't catch a bunch of kids wearing orange jumpsuits, shackled, totally unfamiliar with the terrain, followed by fucking camera crews, and with predetermined destinations without a helicopter, they should think about hiring a new police force in the great city of Toccoa. Then again, I like how bumbling the cops seem, since nervous cops result in a greater chance of shots being fired in panic...and you know what chance that increases. (R.I.P.: Holly.) Theo and Msaada battle thorns as Holly and James get all Romancing the Stone on us and slide down a dirt hill. The cameraman then gets a great idea to recreate the POV for us by sliding his camera down a hill. I used to do that shit in seventh grade with my friend Devin's dad's video camera. It was good for two stoned kids entertaining themselves, but I'm not sure about primetime television. Theo and Msaada struggle with the map, as the cops continue to follow with dogs and donuts. I'm kidding about the donuts. James and Holly hide in some pine trees from the Blue Thunder above. Why hide when a fucking camera crew is standing there filming you? Oh right, I forgot: invisible camera crew. Msaada and Theo continue to have trouble reading the map and remembering what landmarks they've passed, as they seem more and more in trouble by the second. I think the fact that the other two teams long ago figured out to get rid of their leg shackles does not bode well for team Class and an Ass. Holly and James hide and then wade through a crick, only to emerge into a clearing full of cops. They scream. The cops yell for them not to run. Holly bolts. One of the cops panics and unloads his .45 into Holly's back. Holly flops to the ground, dead...Oh, sorry, I did I say that out loud? I mean, Holly and James comply and they are "apprehended." I offer one of the cops fifty bucks to release his German Shepherd"by mistake," but he says no. Damn. Msaada and Theo are nearby, with the "target" in sight, and they decide just to sprint for the tower. The cops close in as we fade to commercial. Ooh, but Bunim-Murray, I can't stand the suspense. Do they make it do they make it do they make it?
Yeah, we got an ad for The Lyricist Lounge Show! I told you you can't stop me!
So Theo and Msaada head down a hill, and are approached by a cop. They try to run back up the hill, but -- oh man, I don't even know what they're trying to accomplish. They're caught. Afterwards, Theo yodels with his usual swamp-philosopher flair, "We got nabbed. This has been a twisted game of Siamese hide-and-go-seek..." "Cat and Mouse," adds Msaada, as Theo continues his thought, "...from Hades." Theo and Msaada express their hope that the last team makes it as we then see the last team, Kathryn and Laterrian, the pressure on, the helicopters above...and love in the air. (At least this is what B/M wants us to think, so I'll run with it.) K & L, apparently also possessing an invisible camera crew, decide that they needed to be rid of the orange jumpsuits. "We gotta get these clothes off," says Kathryn. Laterrian looks up to God and whispers, "Yes!" So they begin ripping the suits off, not having much luck getting them off around the waist and arms shackles.
The cops, meanwhile, "don't see any tracks," and walk around looking genuinely confused. Oh Jesus, the B/M camera-dork does the stupid seventh-grade POV camera trick, but this time giving the dog's eye view. B/M tops the idiocy off with some "dog" sounds. Great. I'm watching my old stoned home videos again. At least those didn't have constant commercials for HoJo's. So now the kids stand by a mud cliff as Kathryn goes to town trying to rip Laterrian's suit off, while hers is still mostly on. Ha. Kathryn: part off, is still on. It's not like now that part of your black t-shirt is showing, you're suddenly invisible. Anyway, so Kathryn is now down on her knees almost with her hands by L.T.'s crotch, ripping away as they hear, "Don't Move! Walk towards the dog." Game over, man. They lie down on the ground, busted. We get a bunch of gratuitous shots of the helicopter, the cops, the dogs, the kids -- anything to keep this failed mission going. But B/M realizes they fucked up and it's over and who gives a shit because The Real World is just starting to heat up with the Valentine's episode and everyone wants to fuck each other and no one in the Shasta is really hot for each other yet, so they just give up and show the kids back in front of the cop station. Mayor Andy tells the assembled six that they gave them a "heck" of a chase. "Unfortunately, you know, y'all did your best, to do your best, and of course we had to do ours. I guess we can sing that old song, this time. 'I fought the law and the law won.' This time." Man, I think Andy is Theo's father! Floaty Holly breaks up the family reunion by appearing over a weird Less Than Zero Christmas-party-bank-of-TVs effect with the Blue Star Disease in full force on her cheek. "We all got caught...which sucks...It's the first time anybody's having to deal with not making the money." Man, Holly is really like Two-Face from the third Batman movie. She's really hot, then...whoa! Not so much. She looks good here, but when she talks to the camera she often looks like she's going to cry. Anyway, the kids sit around bitching about not winning and Laterrian and Theo have some incomprehensible dialogue about whether they should consider themselves, individually, as having lost one or six thousand dollars. Msaada drinks some water. Theo stares strangely at Laterrian.
So the kids park at another Toccoa-area RV park (I suspect there are quite a few) as the Graphic of Stupid dubs this segment (hopefully the last of the episode), "Get Some Butt." Crazy triple split-screen effect as Kathryn, Theo, and James do laundry. We start with a master shot of the three where the dialogue so obviously doesn't match the shot. Kathryn says that she'd like her boyfriend to come visit at some point, and Theo says, "You want to get some butt." Kathryn argues that, no, it's because he's just a very cool guy but again, Theo talks about getting "some butt." Kathryn then kicks Theo's bizarre but obviously flirting technique in the teeth when she says, "If I wanted some butt, I'd be after James." A weird silence fills the room as Theo stares blankly and James tries to keep the moment going, saying that it would be a bad idea (meaning: "do me now") and licking his lips like a white L.L. Cool J. Kathryn ruins it when she then asks James if he's hooked up with Holly. He says no and brings it back that he heard Kathryn had hooked up with Laterrian. James and Theo then do some bad approximation of a porno soundtrack which leads me to believe that neither of them have actually ever seen a porno. "If you guys are insinuating something, I'm sorry to disappoint you," says Kathryn. "I'm not disappointed," says Theo.
Floaty Kathryn talks about the moment they got caught by the cops when she was on her knees trying to rip Laterrian's pants off, and we see that shot once again. I really don't think B/M can manipulate anyone into thinking that Kathryn was actually giving Laterrian a blow job in the middle of the fugitive mission -- or even that it proves she wants to. B/M are really such a-holes. They really are. They're so grasping and trying to manufacture something. James says he has money on K & L hooking up by Week Seven -- which of course means nothing to us since B/M has obviously thrown episodes together with no regard for continuity. Kathryn denies the assumption: "L.T.'s good-looking, but he's not that good-looking." James and Theo stare at each other very gayly. "But you are, big boy," Theo thinks. Back at the Shasta, Kathryn talks on the speakerphone to Reed. Holly openly listens in as Kathryn tries to free herself from Reed just enough to feel allowed to break herself off a big chunk of Laterrian. "I just want you to have fun too...What I don't know, what I don't see won't hurt me...God, when else are you going to be single? Live it up while you can, that's what I'm saying." Ooh, harsh. Why not just ask for the freedom she wants? It's so manipulative and passive-aggressive this way.
"There's a lot of speculation," says the beginning of some crappy house music song as we see Laterrian whispering to Kathryn while Holly looks on, really bummed out that she's not the center of attention. Holly's also mad that Kathryn totally bit her white girl afro puffs style. Okay, now here's where B/M pushes me over the edge...We get a black screen and on it, small squares appear one by one, then disappear. Each square contains a floaty cast member talking about Kathryn and Laterrian. The squares are in certain positions so that it becomes clear that they're doing a Brady Bunch, which is bad on so many levels. The dialogue is meaningless drivel, adding up to the fact that no one knows for sure, or will say for sure, if K & L have or will get together. We get things like, "I don't know, I can only speculate" and "we're just friends" and "there's been some flirting on both of their parts" and "they seem to have, you know, like a very unique bond" and "he's not my type" and "I'm not a nosy person" and "I'm smell something burning, and it's definitely, things are heating up." (Theo got a hundred bucks from B/M for that last one.) We end with Laterrian and Kathryn's squares coming together and they both look sheepish. Okay, I learned three things from that sequence. One: Man, are the B/M editors bored. Two: The others are starting to get Msaada to say "dude" all the time, too. And three: Theo is Alice the maid. Hee.
", on Road Rules..." Floaty Kathryn, hovering over the kids having a nice dinner, says, "Laterrian is not going to get in my pants." Tiny floaty Laterrian says that Kathryn mistakes his being nice for flirting, but then floaty Theo tells us that at this dinner we're seeing, Kathryn and Laterrian at some point just disappear together. At a motel, Holly and Msaada bust into a room to announce, "Reed's here." James tells us that Laterrian and Kathryn are "two peas in a pod, dude: they both can't go a long time without sex." Laterrian, lying on a bed, hangs his head. Knowing the B/M powers of manipulation, who knows what the hell is really going on here...
Over the credits, the kids sit in the cop station holding cell during the fingerprinting, singing a fake spiritual. Theo tells God that they're going to need his help out in the wilderness, as they sing "oh my Lord, Lord Lord." Holly smiles with the Scaryteeth as a cop forcibly pulls James out of the cell. Hey Copper, while you're at it, can't you pull him right off the show? Think about it, please?