Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Eat Them!
By Stee | Season 9 | Episode 12 | Aired on 09.03.2000
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 next 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 previous 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 next 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: "Next 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.