Previously on Road Rules: On the PukeBoat, the kids use their oh-so-sharp geography skillz to piece together that they're heading to South Africa. They hug and cheer, and secretly wonder what part of Africa is South Africa in. Shasta. Driving. Kathryn tells James, "Dude, you have a silver spoon up your ass." James, in turn, disses her sorority-girl status. Then, in scenes never "previously" shown, we see Holly and Laterrian silently arguing as James floats that the boys and the girls always argue and make totally opposite decisions on things they want to agree about -- like exactly who has which utensils lodged in their rectum. And...intro. Thirty-four (I'm not kidding) shots of the Shasta. Theme music that by now makes me Pavlovianly itch. Kids' headshots. Road Master voice-over. Nothing's fucking "different." Missions. Points. Handsome reward. Welcome. Someone kill me in my sleep.
Let me take this moment to alert you to a small item in The Hollywood Reporter: MTV has renewed Road Rules through 2002. You have been warned.
Brady Bunch split-screen shots of the Shasta in Miami. Graphic of Stupid reads: "No One Ever Asks." No one ever asks, "Hey, when is Road Rules on? I love that show." Instead they ask, "That shit hasn't be cancelled yet?" James is in the Shasta playing on the iBook, entering his and Theo's names into the Love Calculator...fingers crossed. James babbles to Msaada about them all needing to come to grips with the fact that everyone isn't perfect. Her reaction shot is in slo-mo and I suddenly realize why they do this: Because they only have one cameraman in the Shasta and they usually only shoot the speaker, they need to make the one second of reaction they do get last longer. Either that or the B/M editors are so fucking bored that they've been reduced to this in an effort to entertain themselves. James and Msaada talk, apropos of nothing, about people not thinking before they speak. Suddenly they're arguing. Holly is watching from the perch above like that little cat with the patch over his eye on The Muppet Show. (Actually, Holly kind of does look like a Muppet...Well, that's one puppet I wouldn't mind putting my hand inside. Okay, people, I'm sorry for that. It won't happen again.) Kathryn is eating Fruit Loops. So during the big argument, Kathryn's Fruit Loops serve as a continuity gage...and there is none. Her cereal goes up and down and suddenly there's milk and then no milk and the spoon's there and then it's gone. B/M forgot about the dreaded Fruit Loop continuity problem. They teach about it in film school -- not that B/M ever went...obviously. James yells that Msaada never opens up and Msaada replies, "Nobody ever asks me anything!" once again rendering the Graphic of Stupid technically incorrect. James cops out and tells Msaada that, when told a story, she should "feel an obligation" to relate one back. Msaada says, "I'm just a listener, that's what I am. I'm a listener. I learn more by listening than I do by opening my mouth and speaking." Man, I wish Theo were hearing this. He's probably in the passenger seat with his head stuck out the window, his tongue flappin'. (You know, incidentally, I wish that one time when James is sleeping on top of the Shasta in the morning, they would take off with him still up top. That's just a little minor fantasy -- we'll continue the recap now.)
James shakes his head as Msaada talks, and then he floats, "I see Msaada kind of as, like, a critic. Where she's sitting in this director's chair and it's like James, The Movie." Wait, is she a critic or a director? And anyway, James The fucking Movie? The only way I'd ever see James The Movie is if it was playing at the $2.95 discount theatre and I could go with a bunch of friends and sneak in beer and throw stuff at the screen like we did last week for Center Stage. Jesus, can you imagine what the "dude" count would be for James The Movie? And you know the movie would have to be set at a Dude Ranch! (Boo. Hiss. I know. I know.) Msaada then floats that she feel "ambiguous" about James -- that he has a big heart, but he can also be a big jerk. Establishing shot of a hotel.
Okay. Now this moment -- a shot they breeze over in one second and never refer back to -- is perhaps the most significant moment in the season so far. Not the Laterrian/Kathryn T.G.I.Friday's bathroom hanky-panky, not Theo's mom bungee jumping, not Holly yelling at the cameraman. No. Here it is. James and Theo wake up shirtless in the same, small bed! The editors quickly go to other shots of the kids packing their shit and heading to the airport, but it happened. Yeah, I know B/M probably only gave them two beds and there were already two people in the other one -- Laterrian and T. -- but they could have done a whole mess of different things: slept on the floor; slept in the Shasta; or at least they could have put a shirt on. If I'm spending the night in the same bed with another guy, you bet your ass I'm wearing sweats. (Remember how Rudy on Survivor was worried about his friends back home seeing the show and making fun of him for being friends with a "queer"? Imagine James' friends seeing James sharing a bed with a Theo? It's going to be a rough fall semester at that frat house, boy.) So it's still dark out and the kids are at the Miami Airport checking in their bags as Theo, his voice still gravelly from his night of vigorous lovemaking, voice-overs how he can't believe he's going to South Africa. Yeah, you can ignore the issue all you want, Theo. We're not buying it.
Plane. The kids fly. James sleeps, Theo having worn him out. Laterrian wears a "MILK" t-shirt, not having gotten that, for the joke to work, it has to be worn by a woman. Like wearing that "I'm With Stupid" shirt when you're alone. Awwwww. Holly is asleep, clutching a big green stuffed dinosaur or alligator. How did this girl go from yelling at everyone and crying and throwing tantrums, to being sweet Holly-ho-ho, a little sad and maybe left-out and clutching a stuffed animal? I haven't seen this big a character transformation since they suddenly switched "Becky"s on us on Rosanne.
Mandatory shot of airplane flying through sky to denote passage of space and time. Shot of South Africa from above. Shots of smiling Africans on random streets. Theo tells the camera that he thinks they're in South Africa, "but [he's] pretty sure it's not Tokyo." Ah...I see what he's getting at -- because there are black people everywhere! Good joke, Theo. Tight and well thought out as usual. Msaada shakes Laterrian in happiness and disbelief that they're in Africa. The kids walk through the airport as Holly goes floaty. "We finally made it after all day on the plane, and, um, James and Theo have disappeared...we don't know where they are." We see the four other kids waiting outside the airport at a picnic table. Incidentally, during her float, Holly was again showing unmistakable symptoms of the dreaded Red Cheek Star of Death disease. I thought she was cured. So sad. (Do you think they'll ever fucking explain the stars? Or is it going to be like in Clean Slate, where Dana Carvey had a Band-Aid on his neck the entire film, but it was never once referred to or explained. Actually, I think comparing Road Rules to Clean Slate is unfair...to the makers of Clean Slate, that is.) The Graphic of Stupid reads: "James And Theo Gone Ninety Minutes." So we get a Missing Idiots Meter? Cool. Kathryn complains about their being gone and how she hates waiting around, especially in South Africa, because she really wants to be "at the beach." Yeah, forget experiencing another culture or learning what life is like on an entirely different continent -- let's go get a tan! "Let me show you Americans the strides we've made as a people since the end of Apartheid." "Um...yeah, thanks Kunta Kinte, but where can I buy some Coppertone?"
So we cut to The Flying Pheasant, the best airport bar in all of South Africa, where Theo and James are drinking beer. Theo is wearing a big '50s style woman's headband for some reason. Probably to keep what few brain cells he has from trying to escape. They talk drunkenly about "busting [each other's] chops"...obviously trying hard to avoid the whole dreaded, "What did last night mean?" conversation.
Back to the Picnic Table of Wait as the kids debate paging the two, and Kathryn cracks up all of Johannesburg by referring to Theo and James as "Dumb and Dumber." Kathryn floats, bitching, during which those wacky B/M fuckers put the camera on the luggage carousel because they can't afford a dolly and they want a "cool" shot. Now the Missing Idiots Meter reads, "James and Theo Gone Ninety Minutes" and I have to wonder why B/M doesn't just fucking tell the kids where to find James and Theo. I understand the whole Not Getting Involved thing, but on a nature show, the cameraman would interfere if the host was about to be swallowed by a python, wouldn't he? Hey, maybe they would have been told had Holly not yelled at the cameraman those first weeks. I told you it was a bad idea, Ho-Ho.
Back to the bar, where James talks about how he's had seven or eight beers now (yup, a frat boy for sure), but he can still make, "like," moral decisions like, "Don't kill this person." I like to pretend that James is telling Theo that last night, though he was drunk, he knew what he was doing and would do it again. The smiley look on Theo's face plays in with my little game.
Back at the Picnic Table of Wait, where we are told it has now been two hours. "Incon-[beep]ing-siderate," declares Laterrian, who has been rolling the same golf ball back and forth for two hours now. More bitching. No action. Suddenly, we hear, "Go dude, go. Push, dude!" and I immediately think B/M is playing us the audio from James and Theo's hotel room the night. But the truth is (almost) funnier as we see James pushing Theo on a baggage cart, amidst a bunch of pixelated travelers. "Do you guys have anything to say to us?" asks Kathryn, very diplomatically and very passive-aggressively. James replies, "It was not two hours, dude!" in fourteen different variations, simply by moving the "dude" around in the sentence. Laterrian totally punks out by jokingly making Theo and James carry him as punishment, and laughing the whole time. Kathryn continues to rail on them. I would have left Theo and James there hours ago and been at the hotel teaching Holly the African words, like "foto," that I learned when I read Roots years ago.
The James/Kathryn argument continues as a wobbly drunk James says, "Dude, I'm not trying to put it on you, dude!" again reusing a line from his and Theo's hotel jaunt the night before. The kids all get in a short bus, which Msaada drives; the steering wheel is on the right, which is not important but, given how tired I am, I'm proud I noticed. Msaada floats that they're extra pissed that the boys have not even apologized, and behind her, the B/M editing crew I swore I was done harassing last week uses a reverse shot of the stupid baggage carousel dolly. Good work, boys. Keep it up. Theo apologizes. Kathryn tells them again that they'll ditch them time. Holly hugs her stuffed green thing. Kat keeps talking and James yells that he heard. Holly interjects and James totally loses his shit. "Don't talk, Holly, please God! I'm going to bite this whole thing off [referring to the phallic end of his water bottle -- and yes again, reusing a line from the night] if you talk to me about common courtesy again, dude." James goes on to say that Holly acts like a total bitch whenever she meets anyone new. "You treat them, pretty much, like dog poo." Everyone laughs and Holly goes all Heathers on us, not denying what she's all but admitted in the past. "Oh, whatever. We're talking about a group of six people who have to work together...". Okay, I'm getting a bit of insight here. James is psycho. His face as he threatened to Ozzy Osbourne the head off his Evian said it all. Psycho. Drunken frat boy with serious women issues, most likely latent-homosexual tendencies, and major anger-management problems. Holly, however, is the bitch we got to know and hate in the early episodes. B/M has, for whatever reason, simply decided to make her more likable. Probably because she is a fox and they thought they could pull an Eric Nies and possibly get more mileage out of her than any other cast member. James laughs. Holly doesn't. Theo asks Msaada to "lighten this bastard up," referring, I skillfully deduce, to the short bus. She takes off. Soon, though, the boys are busting her chops about a red dashboard light, and generally teasing her because she's driving for the first time on the left side of the road and it is difficult and they're drunk and they think they can fuck with Msaada. Oh, how wrong they are...
Msaada whips around and in a dead-on Pesci snaps at James, "You shut the [f-word] up, you." Even my cat applauds, before going back to eating plastic out of the garbage can. All we hear in response is "[beep beep]" as the camera whips around to show the rest of the kids, shocked and nervously laughing like, "Whoa. Msaada gets mad?" Holly's stuffed alligator quietly asks to be let out of the short bus, because the tension is too much. James unwisely keeps lip-flapping as Msaada mentions the two-hour wait. Then she says, "Shut up. I don't want to hear anybody's mouth." James yells that Msaada never apologizes for anything as Holly tries to get James to chill. Msaada again says, "Shut up" and adds that she doesn't apologize because she doesn't fuck up. Then James says, "Yeah, you sure don't, dude, because you don't do anything at all, Msaada. It must be nice to be a [beep] piece of tofu, dude." Whoa. Pulled out the Tofu card. That's deep shit. The blondes continue to try to keep the peace. Kathryn advises Msaada to pull the short bus over if she's going to continue arguing with James. Msaada says evilly, "No. I'm going to kill all of us. I don't care." Smirk, morphing into psycho smile. And...scene! Whoa. Okay. That was the best scene so far in Road Rules season nine. Even my plants spread their leaves and spell, "Go Msaada." (Now, if only she would go through with it and Toonces the short bus into the Atlantic, I'd be a happy man.)
This is the first commercial? Shit. Ooh, can I tell you how happy it makes me that the Backstreet Boys have been reduced to hawking for Burger King? So recently they were on top. I used to feel sorry for 'N Sync. Now I can just hate them outright. I guess I'll feel sorry for, like, Boyzone instead. Or Hootie.
Back to the short bus, where we see a replay of part of the (mmmm) yelling. Msaada then floats that she's upset that they're not able to "make this thing work." James then floats, "I can't stand these chicks." Ha. You can pretty much count on that feeling being mutual, James. "No one understands me, but Theo." Kathryn floats that the six have split down gender lines and that it's frustrating for her. The funny thing is, she floats over a nonsense shot of a huge, ultra-phallic canon on the side of a hill. Okay, B/M editors finding yet another way to entertain themselves. This one I approve of. Split-screen driving-through-Africa montage, the perfect lines of which are ruined by the intrusive "Three days until the Video Music Awards!" banner. The kids park the short bus by the water and get hotel keys from an old white woman who looks like a prune. She asks the kids how they'll be dividing the rooms and they pointedly respond that it will be along gender lines.
New Graphic of Stupid reads, "Seceding From The Union," and I wonder how many of the six know what "seceding" even means. The kids "whoa" over their new digs and then the boys all sit around and discuss Theo being the male "ambassador," and that it is his responsibility to tell the girls that they're - yes -- doing what the Graphic of Stupid just told us. James yells, "Dude, I am the union, dude. If anything, those are those [beep] bloody rebels up there, dude." If you take out the "dudes" and the profanity, that could have been a quote from some Civil War figure. "Four score, dude, and like, fucking seven years ago, dude." The boys are hitting news lows of stupid, as we speak. Go investigate Africa, idiots.
Speaking of which, Holly is talking on a green payphone (everything's green with her this episode) to someone about Laterrian being just as pissed at the boys' lateness and then quickly being "all on their side." Scaryteeth. Scaryteeth. "It's like, you two-faced little bitch." Ha!
Quick shot of said bitch as the boys wonder whether they should hang out solo or with the girls. To that, James suggests that he'd rather grab a steak knife and drive it into his own esophagus (I spelled it right on the first try!). But then he doesn't. What's with all these empty promises this episode? Shit. James rubs his penis for about ten seconds while staring at Theo, before going crazy-eyed and drunkenly saying, "Just a thought, dude."
Cut to the girls eating (Holly has short hair, now, so obviously we're getting some continuity tomfoolery again) and discussing the fact that the boys want to hold their half of the group money from now on. Holly suggests that it's because their buddies watching back home will make fun of them for letting the "females [be] in control of the bank." My guess is, it's because they're afraid you're going to spend it all on the food you're constantly gnawing on, Holly. Jesus. The boys talk about how close they all were before, but now there is a "San Andreas fault" between the boys and girls in the group. "Berlin Wall" adds Laterrian. Um, isn't the Berlin Wall gone? Let me just check my old issue of Highlights for Kids and make sure. Yup. Bad analogy, L.T.
Dusk shots of Africa. Night shots. "Clue time," as the blue light spins in one of the hotel rooms and the kids crowd around the computer. But it's a different laptop! What happened to the iBook? Oh, man. Did they leave it in the Shasta back home? Yo, where's that fucker parked? I could use me an iBook. It wouldn't even take me that long to delete all of James' rugby porn. "Blood. Oozing, red blood," scenery-chews the Bloat Master as the kids laugh derisively. "Feeling faint? Tomorrow you won't just be seeing blood, you'll be swimming in it! Check that email!" "Ew," says Holly, referring to the Road Master's acting, rather than the "blood" stuff. "Nighty-night!" lip-syncs James. They bitch about having to be up at 7 AM as Msaada floats that she hopes they're able to put their "differences aside and make sure that things happen."
Morning. Short bus. Driving montage. They arrive at the South African White Shark Research Institute. They are greeted by new Mission Mayor Craig, whose lines are subtitled his accent is so thick. When he tells them that they'll be dealing with "Great Whites," James interrupts and mock-laughs, "What did he say? Great Whites!" James totally does this only for Laterrian's and Theo's benefit. He is so in love with those two it's sad. Craig makes some joke about sharks loving to eat Americans and I get mad because I know Craig is just teasing me -- crafty South Africans. You can't trust them...like that Dave Matthews. So the Graphic of Stupid informs us that this is a "Job," not a mission, like the Extreme Babysitting thing. They will "Crew A Shark Expedition" and help tag the animals. James again repeats his "Great Whites?!" line, but everyone outside already heard it, and even Theo is not impressed by James' boisterousness/mock fear covering real fear covering a quickly escalating homosexual panic. Craig then shows a slide show, which gives him points for coolest mayor because no one else employed A/V in their reign. All Heel Cancer Boy did was lie for them, and Picabo just hit on Holly. Craig talks about bait and cages and teamwork, and James voice-overs that in light of the "blow-up," the notion of them having real teamwork is remote. Craig talks about the fact that all accidents in this job would be bad, so they should avoid accidents at all costs. "Having an arm pulled off or something like that...can cause problems." Sure. Msaada wouldn't be able to drive the short bus. Laterrian couldn't work out or "keep [his] head bald." James would have a harder time slipping a mickey in someone's drink at a frat party. Kathryn couldn't quickly undo someone's pants in the stall at T.G.I.Friday's. Holly could eat only half the food in the same amount of time. And Theo would...Theo would be just about the same, only he'd mostly stop forgetting which wrist he put his watch on that morning. Someone leads them though the cage, showing where the sharks might put their noses in to investigate. "You can touch their nose but, obviously, watch the teeth." Genius advice. James floats that he's scared, as the kids go into "Phase One" of their mission: "Making Chum." Theo says, "Y'all, I already made two chums, Laterrian and James." No, not really, but I'm sure he thought that. Instead, he leads us through chopping up the fish in the bucket and adding the blood and everything chum-making-related.
Now in the boat, the kids head out to find a good shark spot. No one pukes this time, which is a good thing. They stop and lower a bait cage as Theo puts chum into the water to attract the sharks. "I'm the little chuma-boy," puns Theo, making me seriously want to stick the antenna of my cell phone through my eye. They wait and some other dude, Fake Craig, says that seagulls leaving the water is the signal that a shark is near. So the birds fly off, of course, and the shark emerges, grabbing the bait and getting close to the boat. Everyone yells and screams and acts just like the people you know are about to die in the Jaws films. So "Phase Three" (what the hell was Phase Two?) is "Cage Observation," but I think they mean shark observation from a cage, because just observing a cage would be pretty dull. Laterrian floats and narrates something we see -- a dead seal floating by and the shark going fucking nuts, ripping it apart. "I can not picture that shark doing that to me," floats Laterrian, now getting in the cage with Theo. Um, I can. Very anti-climactically, the two are underwater in the cage (that's three shows in which you've been able to use the watercam, B/M. How fiscally intelligent of you!) and the shark stares at them and they yell through their breathing apparatus and the shark swims off. Commercial.
When, during an M&M commercial, I find myself yelling at Puddy for calling the M&M "stupid" -- it's not his fault that he has until now been referred to as "Plain" -- I realize it's time to take a nap.
We come back as Laterrian and Theo get out of the cage with a Great White right nearby. In the boat Theo says, "It's larger than the sea itself." James blushes. The two blondes get in the cage, but emerge safely. Kathryn is not eaten -- at least not in this episode. B/M then sticks Msaada and James in the cage together, and the shark bites at the cage but can't get to them. "Thank God for [beep] U.S. metal," says James, forgetting that they're in fucking Africa, not America. "Phase Four" is "Tagging The Shark." They'll set bait, wait for the shark to grab it, and pull the shark to the side of the boat to quickly tag it. Yeah, sure they will. These kids couldn't tag a sleeping puppy. We see a brief clip of Laterrian pulling on the rope as the shark fights, but it disappears, and Dying Red Cheek Star Holly floats that the shark bit through the rope and got the bait and won't be coming back. Eternally Stuffed-Up Laterrian goes floaty and snots that they were there to help and not just have to fun and they messed up. Craig assures them that it happens and it's not their fault. James voice-overs that they had fun anyway, and back at the shark lodge, Craig gives them money and thanks them. Theo hands Msaada the money, saying, "Mmmm, bank account."
Happy music. Smiles. Short-bus driving. We see the girls and boys walking separately down the street as Msaada voice-overs that the boys are off "doing their thing" while the girls are going into town to get some food and "have a little girls' barbecue." The two groups meet up and Kathryn says, "You guys are welcome to join us." But the boys have big plans to go drink beers by the "rocks" and so they part ways yet again. Happily alone in Boyland once more, Laterrian asks, "Did they spend lodging money on the coal and that stuff? And the groceries? That's what I want to know." No one bites on Laterrian's effort to stir shit up, and now at the rocks, Theo says that, at some point, they are going to have to deal with the "whatever you call it between the ranks." However, he goes on to say, "Either we deal with it or we don't." So in essence he says nothing, which is one of Theo's main talents. Okay -- his only talent.
"You Suck" reads the Graphic of Stupid, as it's now dark and the boys come back to the hotel from their little boy beer bash. They all pile onto a balcony and the observant will quickly note that this is the same fucking balcony from five or so episodes ago when the kids had the big end of The Breakfast Club fight/truth session over Laterrian and Kathryn's restaurant-bathroom ho-down. As Holly tells Laterrian what they've been cooking, Msaada turns to him and says, "I just want to tell you this to your face right now. You suck. You gotta back us up." Laterrian is speechless. He's turning out to be pretty spineless in this episode. Kathryn, shoving a marshmallow into her mouth, also jumps on L.T.'s case as he denies that he's siding with the boys. James and Theo arrive back on the balcony (from where, hmmm?) as Laterrian pussies, "Yelling at them for being late was going to solve nothing." James says it no longer matters and Holly bitches, "You side with each other no matter what." James says that the girls do the same thing, but Holly disagrees. Suddenly, James kicks it up a notch and drunken-red-faced-frat-boy yells, "Listen, I think that you guys are managing the money wrong!" He goes on to say that he wants the money right now. "From neck-to-nuts, I want these things [sic] split in half." Holly claims she had money left over from the pay period as Kathryn totally shuts up James' Bergie-swilling ass with, "Yeah, you guys drink a lot of [beep] beer." "Oh God, dude," whines Theo as Laterrian sniffles and looks disappointed in just about everything. James red-faces, "I don't trust you guys as far as I can look at you!" Holly stares at him, wondering both why he doesn't trust her and how he can butcher a common English saying so horribly. James then busts out with Laterrian's question (which he earlier dismissed) about whether or not the girls bought their BBQ stuff with the lodging money. Msaada, wearing what looks even more like a life jacket than Marty McFly's vest, says, "I would never let anybody [beep] with the money, James. I take that personally." We get bad edit #937 as James is now standing and continuing his Msaada "tofu" rant from the short bus. "It's never about you, Msaada. You never discuss yourself, okay. You never discuss yourself -- one. Two: You always judge everyone else." James' extensive List of Things Wrong With Msaada fizzles out at two. Msaada now: "Knowing the difference between right and wrong, and judging people, are two different things." Ha! James shrugs and comes up with a rebuttal I'd expect to see on Growing Pains, "If you want the last word, go ahead. If you want it, go ahead...Take the last word, I'll stand here." Floored, I proceed to get drunk to see if his James' Logic might make sense to the similarly sloshed, but it doesn't. I still want to hit James with a bat, only now I also want to bust out my phone book and call old girlfriends in the middle of the night.
James yells again, saying, "None of us are [beep] friends here! None of us should be here with each other." Theo whispers, "We should." Msaada asks, "Why is that?" In a quick shot we see that Holly and Theo have now fled upstairs and are looking down on the stupidity from the balcony above. Man, Theo being able to look down on someone. That's pretty scary, dude. Msaada says that it is because everyone is judging each other. James gets tripped up and regains his drunken momentum. "I would never be [beep] friends with Holly!" Holly cries a river. Msaada brings up the two-hour wait again and the short-bus-driving teasing and says that she's not used to being criticized. James lamely argues that he comes from a background where everyone teases each other. "I'm a smart-ass," James says. "I hang around with smart-asses." He goes on, saying that if someone doesn't have a thick enough skin to deal with it, "then don't be around [me]." Msaada gives him the crazy stink-eye and says, "I have to be around you." "Oh yeah," thinks James. Msaada goes on a tear, talking about the non-apology and saying the fact that a drunk like James would call her "tofu" really hurts. She asks, "When have I ever done anything wrong to you?" "You don't do anything," James frats. B/M "sad" music plays obnoxiously while Msaada starts to lose it a little, crying as she says, "You don't know what makes me happy. If I'm interested in you, I'm going to ask you questions about you because I'm concerned and because I want to get to know you. And that's how I take it. If people are interested in me, I'm here, and I am not going to just put myself out there without any investment. And that's who I am." See. Not only does she pretty much shut James up with her logic and smarts and honesty, she does so in complete, grammatically sound sentences! Unlike the hellish "dude"-fest that is transcribing Theo and James' blabberings. Msaada really cries as she lets me down, adding that she sees James as someone "who [has] the potential to be someone who is, like, really cool." No he doesn't! He has the potential to throw a few more keggers, play a few more rugby matches, and then spend the sixty years talking about those keggers and rugby matches. Msaada finishes her tearful talk with, "And I mean, this is me. This is who I am." Okay. James starts smiling and being all "sensitive" and finally, only after she fucking cries, he apologizes for yesterday. "I was drunk, and I made some sarcastic remarks." Oh, please. And Msaada seems to be buying this shit. I'm just going to assume that they edited out about a half hour of shit to get her to this dry-eyed, smiling place as she listens to him, because as it stands, the only way to explain this is...(gulp)...that she has a crush on James, and that's something to horrible to consider. Yeah, I'll just blame it on B/M. Why stop now? So James then floats, "She sees that kinda deeper side of me that I really didn't think that most people see on this trip." Yes James, what you have is a "kinda" deeper side. Perfectly put. So everyone is happy and James and Msaada hug and I hate this fucking Perfect Strangers-ending shit. I want fighting. I want tension. I want the episode to end with Msaada just starting to veer the short bus toward the guardrail. I don't want Balki and Cousin Larry hugging. Man, take that shit back to Mypos. More hugging and happy Road Rule-rs as James blah-overs, "We didn't choose each other but in some ways we're unexplainably linked by an amazing experience in our lives. And no one can ever take that away." Yes, but we'd all like to, James.
Ominous music. Shots of tricked-out Africans. Road Master going for the "intense" thing: "on Road Rules..." Blair Witch writing says, "Blood." Bowl of blood. "Ritual." James having makeup put on him. "Sacrifice." Oh my God, they're going to kill James! Kick-ass. "Worship." Um, now Theo and Laterrian play in a river. That's not so scary anymore. Ooh, but maybe they're washing James' blood off them! "The Unknown. It will change you." Kathryn. Msaada. Laterrian. James. James. Msaada. Makeup. Someone pulling out a knife. Male voice screaming something unintelligible. Awesome. James, we hardly knew ye. Thank God.
Credits. Kids on the short bus. Theo in back with two bottles, fixing to pee, as the short bus rolls down the freeway. Everyone puts up with this shit. I refuse to spend the time to transcribe most of this scrambled, inane dialogue verbatim. This is Theo's third episode about urination. He also loves to talk about poo and vomit. Theo is six. "Cool. Go," says James. Laterrian, inches away from Theo's exposed and peeing cock, just laughs like it's the funniest thing on MTV since Singled Out. Holly hugs her alligator. "Aly Gator," I bet it's named. I bet you. Kathryn wants someone to get her out of there. More gross pee talk. "Dude, you're going to pee Indian style, man. Seriously." Theo shouts, "Dude! You just lost our Indian viewers," actually making me laugh a little. Yes Theo, since you already got rid of the black and Asian ones in the Casting Special and first episode respectively. "Hold on, dude," yodels Theo. "We got activity." Not on your EKG we don't.
You know, at least Road Rules has given me something...besides this headache. From now on whenever someone pisses me off, I'm just going to yell, à la Msaada à la Pesci, "Shut the fuck up, you." And then if that person says, "Hey, that's from Road Rules!" I can hug them like a lost brother and we can laugh and cry and sing Billy Joel songs, bonded by the knowledge that we went through the same horror and came through it okay, like two 'Nam vets meeting at the Wall in D.C. Hell, maybe we should build a monument where us dead-eyed former B/M viewers can drag ourselves -- a big bronze Shasta, maybe, where we can sit and contemplate the ruin our lives have become, and ask ourselves, was it all worth it? And carved on the back of the bronze Shasta, maybe into the license plate, will be the simple answer: "No."