Ooh, no "previously". Best to just let the whole nasty "Five Horrible Episodes in South Africa" thing fade into one of those vague bad memories you end up successfully suppressing, only to have it randomly enter your consciousness one day twenty years later when you're having a bad marriage full of petty fights, and you're stuck in a dead-end job where your "team" just can't seem to work together and secretly hate each other, and you just can't remember why it all went so bad. And then in a stunning moment of clarity you find that you can indeed actually pinpoint the exact moment your life derailed and you realize with horror that it was that night you somehow decided that instead of going out and seeing friends and maybe having a moment of actually human interaction, you found yourself sitting on thirty-dollar couch from the Salvation Army, eating a bag of French Onion Sun Chips, drinking a Grape Fanta, and watching Laterrian and Theo cavort in a waterfall. And then another realization comes to you -- that if you had just stopped watching after that episode, and gone out with friends or done something creative the week, things might have been salvaged. Indeed, there were probably a couple weeks in there where your life could have gone either way. However, on that one night, that fateful night back in October of 2000, when you didn't call the cute brunette in Marketing and instead watched the kids from Road Rules facing off in a challenge against Bunim-Murray's second worst idea ever, the group O-Town from their show Making The Band, the last nail was driven firmly into the coffin of your once promising life. And as you stand on the windowsill of your fifth-storey walk-up, the realization having come to you just that afternoon at the sports bar where you go each day after work to get a little buzz on between the hell that is your job and the hell that is your home, don't curse B/M. You said no to the friends. You turned the TV on. You grabbed those Sun Chips. Not them. Oh no, resist blaming B/M, for they did not make you watch. That mistake, was yours alone. (Besides, we all know what happened to B/M back in 2006, right? Ugly.)
Speaking of ugly, the Road Master rears his bloated head. He must not have had a bite to eat all day, because immediately he's chewing scenery like Paul Sorvino locked for a night inside the Olive Garden. The kids are in the Shasta. Quick shot of Holly rubbing her mouth and looking bored. "Road Master loves a challenge!" Don't worry. Your post-Road Rules career is going to be challenge enough, dude. "Tomorrow, I'm going to bounce you and bend you and break you!" Holly gets hot. "It's music to my ears...get it!?" he says. No. "Don't. Forget. The. Email. Nighty-night!" The Little Catchphrase that Couldn't. James goes to the iBook and closes the open browser on www.how-to-keep-your-secret-gay-southern-boyfriend-happy.com in order to check the email. He butchers a segment host from Entertainment Tonight's name as he reads that they are to meet one of Mary Hart's bitches at a dock in San Pedro, California. Aw, man. They're in my state! Shit. I mean, I've been aware of the many shitty people who reside in California -- like Charles Manson, and Suge Knight, and Mayim Bialik from Blossom (that bitch) -- but somehow they're not as distasteful to me as the notion of the Six of Suck being in my state. If they stay as long here as they did South Africa, I'm going to have to move to Idaho or something; I'm sure at least it's Bunim-Murray-free. Intro. Handsome reward. Aw man, I hate my life.
Shasta in California, at the Catalina Terminal. Split screen. That crack B/M editing squad still dazzling me with the graphic wizardry. Stop it now, B/M editing staff! You're going to make it impossible for me to be satisfied with any other show in the future. You've really raised the bar. (As in, raised The Bar to number one on my list of things to do Monday nights.) So Janet Karl (I just made up that name, but it sounds close -- ooh, no, the Graphic of Stupid comes just in time to let me know that it is actually "Jann Carl" and she's indeed the new Mission Mayor), recognizable from her job as part of the hard-hitting journalist team on Entertainment Tonight, knocks on the Shasta door and introduces herself to the kids. "So, you guys ready for the final Face-Off?" asks Jann, the extra "N" in her name obviously giving her extra spunk. The kids listlessly answer, "Yeah." Man, even the kids themselves hate the show. I wonder who wants it to be over sooner, Kathryn or me. That a good question. So anyway, Kathryn floats (I actually missed not having the floaties last week) that they walk into the terminal (we see this) and find a little boy band praying. They wonder if it's the Backstreet Boys. No. As Jann waves a fart away with a manila folder, she introduces the kids as "O-Town." We get a four-shot of all the kids from B/M's show Making the Band -- Ashley, Erik, Trevor, and Jacob. ["I guess this was in the post-Ikaika, pre-Dan era." -- Wing Chun] Oh lord, do they look stupid. We hear an O-Town song that goes, "Baby I would. Baby I will...mmmbaby, I'll do that gladly. All that you need..." Alright, yo, I'm no Phil Spector, but that's a fucking hit! Buy your B/M stock right now, because that shit's going through the roof! So Ashley lies the camera, telling us that they are all big Road Rules fans and grew up watching the show. Laterrian then, in split-screen with Ashley smiling, tells us that they saw the O-Town-ers and thought that they were pretty boys and that the Road Rulers will easily beat the band. Over what looks like a worse buffet than the one I used to have to eat every month at my Godmother's rest home when I was little, James asks Ashley what the "O" in their name stands for. Ashley, who hits puberty any day now, explains that it stands for Orlando, where they all live. I thought it stood for "Oh, Jesus, turn that shit off right now!" James, who has only a few years on the boys but looks about thirty here with his future doughy-ness starting to rear its head, goes on to ask them if they're the "Backstreet." Ashley explains that their pimp-daddy Svengali is the same lunatic who created the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync -- although he explains it a bit differently. James is smiling and obviously mocking the kids. Theo looks on, very interested in every word Ashley has to say.
JannTonight interrupts the kids (Jacob is awkwardly hugging some girl -- Holly is wearing a hat five feet across) and tells them that -- though she can't reveal exactly what the mission is -- it is "winner take all" and worth $12,000. The kids don't give a shit at this point, so B/M just inserts random shots of the kids reacting from earlier and/or later in the day, making it look as if they're all quite excited about the money. They all follow the anorexic Jann Carl outside and the O boyz explain that they needed six people to complete their team, so they brought in Shelli and Brooke, two friends. (Does the term, "Fruit Fly" mean anything to you? No? Okay, good. I don't want to get in trouble here.) Good thing they introduce these girls as they both seem to be brimming with personality -- (neither will really say a word for the entire episode.) Theo yodels, "I'm all about kicking some vocalist arse, here." The O-boys aren't yet used to his schtick so they think it's funny -- so young, so impressionable. Theo is standing on the railing of the boat and I can't help but think it would only take a small wave to knock him into the drink. Do they still make people walk the plank? Now's the time, kids. One of the O-Town boys -- the gay-looking one, (oh, that's not specific enough?) -- pipes up that our kids have the advantage because they've been working together already on missions for so long now. Little does he know the Road Rulers have coalesced into about a sharp a squad as the little white team the Harlem Globetrotters take around just to kick their asses. So we're on the boat going over to the mission and while our kids are no doubt giving each other the stink-eye and denying having had sex in restaurant bathrooms, the O-Town boys get into a huddle and babble about how they have to respect each other's opinions and how "being a band is gonna help [them] be a team." Oh man, those kids are going to make it! While 'N Sync is busy arguing over who gets to have the weird sideburns in the new video, these tykes still believe in the power of compromise and the integrity of their music -- oh man, are they headed for a big B/M-induced fall. We cut to Laterrian who is talking to Msaada. He's talking about the hypothetical of being offered a spot as the fifth O-Towner "even if [he] could sing." His answer is, "One-hundred percent, hell no." It's rather odd that B/M kept this O-Town dis in the episode, but then again we long ago established that these days they take about as much interest in the day-to-day creation of Road Rules as Bill Clinton does in his once beloved dog Buddy. (You know that, after that initial photo op, Buddy ended up on the menu of some Chinese restaurant in Georgetown.)
Graphic of Stupid. "Arriving Catalina Island." "The Music of My Earache." They get off the boat and spy two sailboats docked nearby. Theo jumps up and down, "Oh my God, look, dude, that's exactly what we're doing, dude. There's all of our stuff right there...Man, we're having, uh, like a catamaran race, yo." Do you think that, in the history of the English language, the sentence, "Man, we're having, uh, like a catamaran race, yo" as ever been spoken? I doubt it. Congratulations, Theo. You're a fucking linguistic Lewis and Clark. Shot of two l'il hot air balloons. Partridge Family bus driving up. Montage of the various kids on the bus. They follow Mayor Jann off the bus. She informs the kids that they're doing something called "Parabounce." She explains, using "he or she" over and over, that each of them will strap "herself" (stupid Jann Carl) into the balloon and jump off the cliff to the beach below. James goes floaty and explains that the kids have to parabounce one by one to the beach and then all run to their sailboat and start the catamaran, yo. Msaada floats, "please, let me do this" -- meaning "please B/M, give me at least a minute of screen time this episode and even though I know you hate me, can I do the fun balloon thing please please please." Laterrian floats, saying that losing to Tyson in a fight or Tiger Woods in a golf game would be one thing, "but losing to an eighteen-year-old boy-band member in a damn sailing competition...no. No. You have to be...you have to be joking." "You ready for the final face-off rules?" asks Jann Carl. She again gets about the same enthusiastic response as Gallagher does playing the King Solomon Home of the Aged in West L.A. She goes on to explain the bounce-then-sailboat-race once again, before Theo gets floaty on her ass. He asks, regarding the parabounce, "And what if we don't even go down at all? What if we just go off and disappear?" Jann reiterates the cash prize, and the kids are even less responsive than before. Jann Carl is fucking dying up there, yo. James jumps up and down, pretending to be excited. Laterrian frowns. So do I. An O-Towner and Msaada both float about how exciting and scary the balloon thing is. No excitement is mustered. B/M gives up. Commercial.
We open with E.T. Carl saying, "Well, it'll be a race from the minute I say 'go.'" Um, isn't that how it usually works? Maybe you better call in Bob Gowan to help you out with your segment work, sister. She won't stop reiterating the specifics of the race. Blah blah blah Jann Carlcakes. Our kids huddle and cheer, "Nine!" earning a little extra pocket money from B/M. One member from each team jumps off the cliff with this little balloon strapped to them and they float (I mean, they actually float) and like most of the missions this season, it's very boring. Kids cheer. Theo points "down," very proud of himself for mastering the directions. James lands on the beach. We see that the "high" cliff is actually about ten feet tall. Montage of balloons. Split-screen parabouncing. Msaada looks stunned for a second. Holly smiles. They mission does very much not work. Shares of Parabounce stock plummet! So sad. Our kids all make it down to the beach and run to their boat. G of S: "Road Rules Takes The Lead." It's too bad that sentence has never been written in reference to ratings.
O-Town ain't that good with the parabouncing and still work to get the whole team off the cliff as our kids arrive on their boat. Some pony-tailed sailor/helper, who we'll call "Cap'n Ron," asks the kids if they know where they're headed. Cap'n is suppose to "help" and feign ignorance, so he gives the kids five minutes to get the boat ready to head out. If B/M had any balls they'd make the kids sail alone, but then again James managed to wreck a pick-up truck; imagine the damage they could do to a twenty-foot schooner. Crazy split-screen "getting ready" shots. James predicts that they have an advantage, you know, having a four-minute lead. James's expert analysis floors me. So, like, if you're in a race, and you have a lead, that's a good thing? Wow. I don't know what I've been thinking all these years. The RR boat heads out with Msaada at the wheel. Kathryn asks how to "turn on" a little navigational device. Maybe she should take it into the bathroom -- stick with what's worked for you before. So O-Town O-Finishes and runs to their boat. We see the RR boat is still docked. But it wasn't a second before. That ol' B/M magic's got me in a trance. Our boys, wearing green tank tops, pull ropes and yell shit like "jib" and "belly" and "winch it, dog!" Theo realizes he hasn't handed me an easy joke in a while, so he shouts, "That's tight, dude. That's really tight." Thank you, Theo. O-Town is sad because our kids are ahead. Don't worry boyz, you can be sure the Road Rulers will find a way to fuck it up. O-Town has their own Cap'n, who gives them their heading and says he'll tell them more later. Yo, these kids are like fourteen, and really annoying. They're sure to be a hit. Our kids raise the sails. Kinda like "raising the roof," but more rope-related.
Cap'n Ron, talking to six-year-olds: "You need to go zero-two-seven. Okay, you're pointed at sixty degrees right now." Hee. Theo throws off compass bearings with the powerful vacuum in his head. O-Town is sailing and we see the kids' boat way ahead of them. Oh, yes, Road Rules will indeed find a way to fuck that up. Don't worry.. Cap'n Ron starts to clean up strewn ropes but James and Theo quickly run to impress the Cap'n and help. Cap'n Ron just walks away. One of the O-Town boys does some schtick with the yellin' about sailing and my cat picks up the phone and tries to cancel our cable. Instead she fucks up and end up ordering Forces of Nature on the pay-per-view. Stupid cat. So the Incongruous Fiddlin' of Bad Competition begins as Laterrian notes that the boyz are getting "closer, yo." Which in nautical terms is slightly closer than "closer, dude." Montage of jibbing and hoisting and winching. Reminds me of the closing-night parties at the Renaissance Faire I used to work at. Sailing. Sailing. One of the O-Town boys starts singing and quickly stops, realizing that if we hear him sing without filters and vocalizers and computers making the voice palatable, no one will ever buy the album. Boyz closing in. James tells the girls that they're "catching wind," which is sort of, like, part of the whole sailing game, isn't it? I think the O-Town boys threw their two "girlfriends" off the boat because I haven't seen them the whole race. Jettisoned them like they used to do horses to lighten the load after having them pull the boat through the doldrums. Everything I need to know about sailing I learned from Jim Morrison poetry. Sailing. More sailing. Kathryn having trouble navigate. Theo yells, "Let the jib out." Yes, it has to pee. Man, there is really nothing happening in this episode, folks. They're sailing. The boy band is pulling closer. That's it. "There's something going on, dude," chaws Theo, as the O-Boat begins to pass them. Theo is standing on the front of the boat like Jack on the Titanic. "I'm the King of the Hicks!" Our kids are all yelling at each other and one of the boyz floats, "I think we're going to pass them and never look back." Baby, bye bye bye.
Suddenly, I love B/M because they proceed to give us a one-minute-long sequence with no talking, just a shot of the boyz passing the Road Rules boat. Thank you, B/M. Hey, I have a great idea for a good mission: mime! Make the kids mime! A good old mime-off. And I'm not saying that because off all the pain it would save me having to recap the broken mumblings of morons. Oh, and there are the two O-Girls. Just sittin' around, waiting to see if the band is really going to take off like B/M promised. You know those boyz are getting their asses dumped the minute O-Town's first album debuts at number 489 on the Billboard charts. It's not a pretty future for these pretty boys. "Hi, welcome to Old Navy." "Hey, did you used to be in that fake band?" "Um...cargo pants in aisle seven." G of S. "O-Town Passes the Road Rulers." The boys cheer because they pass Road Rules...and also because they just got pubic hair and that's always exciting. They make it even worse when one of them gives just about the gayest high-five I've seen since Siegfried and Roy beat Lance Burton and Danny Gans in water polo. O-Jacob tells the camera that victory is close, and that he can smell it. No Jacob, that's just Theo. On schedule, James immediately starts complaining. "[Beep] it man, I wanna win this bitch, dude. I'm not going home a loser." Oh, yes you are, James. Don't you always? Sailing. Sailing. Bad Music. Commercial. I've never been happier to see Fred Durst shilling his new special at the Playboy Mansion. Wait, Fred Durst is doing a...never mind. I'll fast forward to the new Coke spot. At least Coke doesn't wear a Kangol.
Hi! Sadly we're back. My wonderful fellow recapper Pamie, who is in town visiting, walks into the room to see a couple minutes of Road Rules. She promptly pats me on the head, chuckles, and walks out. Damn. The show dissed by the chick who had to watch Get Real, Young Americans, and now Gilmore Girls. That ain't good, y'all. So O-Town is in the lead with less than half-way to go. Kathryn, who has gone down below (she's always going down, I told you) explains to the camera that while they are heading straight for the target, the O-Town fuckers are using a "zig-zag" method to better employ the wind. She describes the method as "up and down, up and down," something she obviously knows quite a bit about. So now "Road Rules Makes A Move" as the makin' a move music starts we see that our kids are indeed closer. The one cool thing about this race is that the closer they get to the finish line, the closer we are to the end of the show. Go Team! Sail like the wind, boys! Now James steers hard to the left behind the O-Boat and Msaada and Kathryn, lying side by side on the bow, wonder what's going on. I'm wondering why Kathryn and Msaada are lying together so snuggly alla sudden -- fuck the race. O-Ashley wonders what's going on...with the boat not with Kathryn and Msaada. He's not interested in that sort of stuff. Theo yells, "Stay strong, Jim. Stay strong." Yes, once again employing a line from that magical night in the hotel with James.
More sailing. Sailing. The Music of My Constantly Increasing Drinking Problem. O-Town pulls away. The O-Cap'n explains that they now have to head to the "Red and White L.A. sea buoy." Cap'n Ron explains the same thing to a very confused Holly and Kathryn. Why they picked those two to navigate is beyond...oh wait, aside from Msaada they actually might be the two smartest on the boat. Yikes. So now the G of S informs us that this segment is called "Where's The Buoy?" Indeed, the kids come upon a yellow buoy, get confused, and immediately start yelling at each other. Holly goes crazy Scaryteeth and says, "Racing a sailboat is the most jackass thing...they've ever thought of." While I enjoy any bitchy comments about B/M, she and her cast-mates are the ones who can't find the right fucking buoy. Not B/M. Now, I'm no pirate, but didn't the Cap'n just explain that the buoy is "Red and White"? L.T. mumbles. James mouths curse words and punches the air. O-Town is way ahead. Holly continues to blame B/M: "There can't possibly be one straight [beep] competition." Well, not with James and Theo around. ["To say nothing of the O-Townies." -- Wing Chun] Sad music. Staring. Holly floats, "I'm sitting there trying to tell people 'this is not the way we should be going,' but nobody is listening to Holly." Huh...oh I'm sorry, Holly, could you repeat that. I wasn't listening. Cap'n Ron subtly tries to help the kids. They just all stand there with there arms open, wondering where the buoy is. I'm wondering where the closing credits are. O-Town boat. They find the buoy. Back to the RR boat. Cap'n Ron makes me fall in love with him when he crustily says, "When I was your age I would have died to have an opportunity like you guys have. You sit here and you piss and you moan about it, and that isn't the way it's supposed to happen." You had me at "piss," Cap'n. You had me at "piss." James voice-overs that the group dynamic is not good. Through the magic of editing, the kids find the buoy, (they probably just did what they should have in the first place and followed the O-boat), and "buckle down" for the final stretch. James floats that he likes it when someone pushes him and around and "lights a fire under [his] ass a little bit." All right James, keep your weird little fetishes to yourself, alright? Thanks much.
So Msaada steers and the kids yell "dude" a hundred times as James almost loses a finger on the jib, whatever the hell that is. Sailing. Sailing. The kids are running around and yelling and saying that they can still win and "dude"s are flying and suddenly it's like the climax of Wind, but without Matthew Modine -- which in retrospect would have made Wind a much better film. Sailing. Laterrian floats that the kids finally came together as a team after nine weeks. I thought it was ten last week. Whatever. G of S. "The Home Stretch." Yee-haw. O-Town tacks, turning left. Classical music starts. Sailing. Theo yells about the O-Sails "shaking" and we read that Road Rules has taken the lead but has not tacked yet. So the kids do this big tacking and jibbing thing and everyone's yelling and Msaada's steering but something goes wrong. Msaada voice-overs, nearly in tears, that she over-rotated the wheel and now they have to make a full circle and everything's fucked. She says that they're "drifting into a dead zone." Honey, you've been in a dead zone since the minute you walked onto the Shasta.
Back to O-Town. They do more furious sailing shit and "get the wind." They congratulate each other very sweetly. Something's rotten in O-Town. Overhead shot of the two boats. One is turning right behind the other. Everyone is yelling "Go!" Pamie walks into the room again and begs me to turn it off. I apologize, hand her cotton balls for her ears, and twenty bucks for putting up with this. Just as the kids are close to the O's, a sail comes loose and flaps furiously in the wind. O-Town is jumping up and down and the kids fix their problem and continue the race, the O's in the lead. More sailing. Furious sailing. It's "exciting." One of the O-Town girls yells, "I'll hold it while you crank it! I'll hold it while you crank it!" Nothing needs to be said. Sometimes it's Just. That. Easy. We see that they're approaching the harbor. It's a close race, actually, but O-Town wins. The Music of Embarrassing Defeat. Shot of the Road Rules kids, sad. James voice-overs that they came in thirty-seconds behind the boyz. Sadness. Sadness. The boyz start chanting "O-Town! O-Town!" Homo says "O-Town." "O-Town!" Exactly. Now the boyz are hugging and howling and yelling. "Oh my God, talk about a race. Talk about a race," says Billy or Hank or whichever fucking boy-band dude this is. Don't tell me what to do, jackass. The kids clean up the boat as L.T. tells the camera that they complained and bitched and then when it was time to "suck it up," it was too late. It wasn't for Kathryn that night in the bathroom, though. (No, I'm not ever going to let that die. Ever.) Everyone is on the dock now, and our kids semi-congratulate the coolest boy band in the world! The boyz once again yell the name the name of their band -- the world yells back, "Who?" As Mayor Jann hands over a huge fake check to O-Town, James rubs his face in defeat. Pamie asks, "Why does O-Town need twelve thousand dollars?" Oh, just wait a few years until O-Town is O-ver. Just wait. One of the boys takes the fake check saying, "We proudly accept this, but for the Road Rulers giving us a chance to come out here and get out of rehearsal, and have an awesome, awesome race -- it was so close -- we want to give them half." Our kids cheer and look happy because they're getting money and no one seems to realize what shits they were indeed being. They're just jazzed for the money. I'm just jazzed because I'm on minute twenty-eight. Rock! So James now floats that his ego suffered when they lost to the boy band and that having the kids give them half was a "miracle" (the creation of life is a miracle, James, not a boy band giving you money on a shitty TV show), and goes on to say that they didn't deserve it the way they were "trash-talking." B/M then hands him a fifty and he adds that the boyz are "sweet" and he wishes them the best of luck. The Music of My Dry Tear Ducts. And...credits! Yee-haw!
"...on Road Rules." (Aaaah! When's this fucker of a season ending?) Msaada is uncomfortably kissing someone. Kathryn, wearing a whipped cream bikini, tries to hitchhike. The kids are playing "Truth or Dare," someone tells us. B/M has resorting to seventh-grade party games as missions. Game over, people. Game over. Theo strips. Dances on top of Msaada. He floats, "Who wants to dance?" Not me. The kids sit around a table with B/M people -- including some blonde who looks familiar from a past season of RR or RW. A guy explains, "No one has ever not received their entire handsome reward." I'll give you a handsome reward. The blonde tells them that they'll get to make up their own final mission. "Figure out what really scares the crap out of you." Fade to black. I'll tell you what really scares the crap out of me -- that Road Rules keeps getting picked up by MTV. That's some fucking frightening shit.
Closing credits. Road Rules morons (and Msaada) and the O-Town boyz having dinner. Our kids toast the band's future. Oh man, that's a jinx right there. Shouldn't let the Road Rulers wish you any kinda luck. Just walk away slowly. They can smell fear. That's just asking for it. Theo says something I can't hear. Laterrian asks, "So, how does it feel to just know you're going to be successful this time year? I mean, just like imminent success." Oh, for fuck's sake, Laterrian. Do you have to bend all the way over for B/M, or do they let you stay standing up for it? Theo adds, "unless you pull guys a Richie Valens." Theo apologizes and makes a few lame jokes to cover his bad taste, which was just really masking the fact that he made a very stupid joke and that B/M has no idea how to end this episode so they just fade to Making The Video. I fall to the floor where I just lie still, gasping for breath. Pamie walks into the room, pats me on my haunches and says, "That'll do, Stee. That'll do."