Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Urine The Money
By Stee | Season 9 | Episode 11 | Aired on 08.27.2000
Clichéd shots of South Florida. Palm trees. Long bridges. Salsa music plays, "setting the tone." Msaada drives. More tourist crap. More. Even more. I go eat two-year-old chocolate chips to try to stay awake. It doesn't work. I take a nap. Good nap. I'm back. Cuba banners held by crazy exiles. Fish stores. Hurricane monuments. "Southern Most [sic] Point in Continental United States." Salsa music. Pancho Sanchez rolling over in his grave. Oh, he's not dead yet? Well, then just shifting a little in his hammock. The kids arrive at a harbor where they meet Mehgan, the new Mission Mayor. She egomaniacally introduces herself as holding the United States Free-Diving Record, "at one-hundred-sixty-five" feet. No "Nice to meet you"? "How was your drive?" Just list the credentials. Man, she is very proud of her obscure little accomplishment, isn't she? I mean, it's not like Heel Cancer Boy was all, "Hi, I'm your new Mayor and I survived heel cancer. What have you done with your lives?" So ExpositionMsaada talks to the camera, saying that they'll be free-diving today, "which is basically holding our breath until we turn blue." So Mehgan wins awards for being able to hold her breath for a long time. I've seen girls hold their breaths for a long time, and I never gave them an award. (Hoo-wah! Try the veal, sir, it's wonderful tonight.) James talks to the camera (B/M getting tired of the "floaties"?) about how he's going to just dive until his head bursts like a watermelon...which is not a very good analogy because watermelons don't just burst on their own. They need a catalyst...like Gallagher. Oh man, suddenly I smell a skunk very strongly, wafting through my window. That happens a lot in my neighborhood. Or maybe it's just the death-stink of bad television emanating from the Quasar. Theo does a direct-to-camera that he's not much of a "water-diver," but he'll do his best. I'm about to make a joke about what other kind of "diver" he is, but then realize that he might have been making a sexual joke and quickly get creeped out and hit Play again. Pleased-With-Herself Mehgan (why can't she just spell her name normally, for Christ's sakes) talks about how the high winds makes for less-than-ideal conditions but, oh well. Laterrian also talks to the camera about how he doesn't like water and just learned to tread it the other day. Theo jowls, "Laterrian's fear of water is just that he can't swim." Yeah, other than that, he loves it. Give him a bottle of Evian and he'll fuck shit up. Mehgan talks to the group (Holly goes Scaryteeth. Theo scowls.) about "shallow water black-out" which can occur during the ascent (Theo madly flips through the dictionary for "ascent"). She helpfully explains that it's caused by "a total lack of oxygen" and causes the brain to shut the body down. I'm current suffering from "shallow television black-out." Theo continues that he hopes nobody drowns. Me too...well, at least I hope most of the cast doesn't drown. I'd be willing to spare a few for the sake of a little drama.
Out on the water. Big boat. Holly sunbathes. Kathryn shares that they all have colds and that Mehgan told them it will therefore be pretty painful for them in the water. The kids in pain? Cool. Msaada almost falls as the fast-moving boat hits a wave. The kids cheer. Theo chaws, "Don't it get busy like this and crazy like this in South Central?" Msaada tries to think of a proper response, but there is none. She says it is "like a friggin' roller coaster," and I wonder if she means the boat ride, or having to put up with Theo on a daily basis. The boat stops and everyone immediately gets seasick. Laterrian floats that seasickness is one of the "worst feelings you could ever have." I'm getting seasick just watching the shots from the boat. Up and down and up and...holy shit! Kathryn throws up over the side. Nasty. Man, B/M, that was -- Whoa! Theo throws up over the side. Again! And again! Huge streams of puke flying through the wind. "You all right, Theo?" someone asks. "Yeah, dude." Hee. "It's just tough when your breakfast comes up through your nose." And I don't mean to be graphic here, but in that case it looks like Theo just had a whole lot of Tang for breakfast. (And I don't mean the kind of "tang" Laterrian got in the T.G.I.Friday's restroom a few weeks ago.) If Fat Calvin were still the mayor, he'd make Theo repaint the side of the boat. So MayorMehgan talks about "listening" to your body during the dive, and that it'll tell you when you've gone far enough. She adds warnings about your inner ear and the importance of "equalizing," and the diving mask suctioning to your face. "It's called a mask squeeze, and you don't want to do that to any kind of extreme, because it's like you're getting two hickeys over your eyes." She adds that you can also get black eyes and/or burst blood vessels. Okay, this mission doesn't sound like very much fun at all. But then again, I don't have to do it. I just have to sit here and watch them do it. However, I think my mission is a bit more perilous. My mission is to stay awake. Oh, I'm failing...There I go...Laterrian has his head down and is looking very sick. Maybe he should read some Whitman to Mehgan -- try to equalize the Laterrian/T duality. So as Mehgan gets in the water to help with the dives, Laterrian floats. "Water and I, we don't get along, you know. We're at constant war." He climbs into the water and furiously paddles for the boogie board Mehgan is holding for him. Poor guy. He floats again (ha! "floats"), "I'm contemplating whether or not, uh, to swim ever again." He's so serious, too. Hee. James officially ties with Theo ("It's just like rugby, dude.") for worst pep talk of all time as he shouts from the boat, "Think of the Titanic. You're just going down, deep." That's real helpful advice. That's like telling someone learning to fly a plane, "Just think about TWA flight 800. Except...not for the exploding into bits over the Long Island Sound part." Laterrian sits on a little open-bottom raft, while B/M craftily replays MayorMcMehgan's warning about shallow water black-out. B/M's Synchronized Swimming watercam pays off once more as we shoot up at Laterrian swimming straight down, flanked by a few helpers -- one hopes, to avoid one of those nasty Road Ruler deaths that tend to just ruin a season. And...commercial. And...nap time!
So after the commercials, which include my favorite "Sixty-six, please!" Holly ad, a disgusting Slim Jim spot, and some Sprite dude scratching on two Victrolas, Laterrian dives. James yells, "He's going diggity-deep." Uh, actually no diggity: He resurfaces after going fifteen feet. Fifteen whole feet. Wait. Didn't MayorMehgan go one-hundred-sixty-five feet? Hee. She's down shootin' craps with flounders and sea anemones and Laterrian's getting the bends at the bottom of a swimming pool. James claps as Laterrian babbles to Mehgan. James, cheering, for some reason calls Laterrian "Big baby." I hope Laterrian punches James. So now B/M tries to save precious screen minutes by going all Timecode on us and showing Kathryn and Msaada's non-simultaneous dives, simultaneously via split-screen nonsense. They both talk but I can't understand either of them. Then they dive. Kick kick kick. Rise. Kathryn makes eighteen feet; Msaada, seventeen. I thought Kathryn was good at "going down." Maybe she needed some duct tape. Holly and James are split-screen next. "Dude, I...I can feel it, dude. I can feel it. I think I can hit that bottom, dude." That was James, in case you couldn't guess. To her credit, Ho-Ho has yet to fall victim to Dude Fever. Holly dives but goes AquaScaryteeth when her ears hurt and she comes up after sixteen feet. James makes twenty-nine, which I'm just guessing, dude, isn't, dude, actually the "bottom" of the, like, ocean. James massages Theo on the boat as Theo voice-overs, "James' passion for sports is showing me that I got nothing to be afraid of. Like, I can push myself so hard. I look up to James. He's my paht-na. And I want to show him that I can just go for it all." Yo, that has to be the least "dud