Anyway, Nookie Fest 99 ensues. On the counter, on the tables, on the floor. Its the most grotesque moment captured on tape in the history of the moving image. And if you think thats hyperbole, you missed the episode, didnt you? Didnt you? Anyway, as I avert my eyes from this torrid display and muse on why a tourist restaurant in the middle of the desert would not be equipped with central air conditioning, another voyeur creeps down the stairs and silently catches the two in the act. Liz, hiding behind a counter, registers a horrified look of "hmmm . . . maybe I wasnt brought by the stork after all." This whole thing, like, TOTALLY reminds me of when I was sixteen. Yeah. RIGHT.
We pick up after the break in a more or less "before the break" vein, Liz Parker hearing a weather report about "this bizarre December heat wave" while taking a cold, cold shower. Her journal entry about how she feels "stuck" then takes us on a tour through the hallways of West Roswell High, where everyone -- EVERYONE -- is coupled up against lockers like soldiers on shore leave or plane-crash victims trapped at the tops of snowy mountains who have just seen a woman for the first time in ten years. Oh, did I say "everyone"? I meant "not Liz." Liz continues to peer confusedly around as if her sixth-grade health textbook has suddenly come to life all around her. Cut away to the once-mentioned and long-abandoned hook-up haven "The Eraser Room," where Maria and Michael continue their low-budget groping ("even in the eraser room, you cant erase the passion burning in my loins"), to my unending horror. Turning a corner, Liz walks smack into Kyle, whos holding hands with a dumb leggy blonde whose career is about to take off as the dumb leggy blond in the upcoming sitcom revival Threes Company 2K. Easily a foot taller than Kyle (and just a few years shy of my parents in age), the newly-minted "Vicki Delaney" volunteers the fact that theres a party this Friday at "the old soap factory." Kyle appears wholly nonplused that his new girlfriend should be too stupid to hate his old girlfriend, and Liz agrees to go, just out of spite, I think.
And in the episodes first scene that doesnt involve too-smooth high schoolers pawing each other in the public domain, Liz spies Alex (also known by his spankin new nickname, "Lil Hanks") going into a meeting with another nicknamed fella who should feel right at home in these sex-drenched surroundings -- thats right, Porno. Inside the interrogation room, where both Porno the interrogator and Alex are sweating profusely (see, its really HOT out), Alex denies that he was talking to Renee about anything of importance. Then the scene abruptly ends less than ten seconds after it begins, taking with it any hope of developing the one-note theme of this entire series. Thank goodness for this new element of "everybody making out constantly," which Im sure can be developed in any number of thematic directions. Or not. ["Not on network television, at any rate. Wheres Zalman King when you need him?" -- Sars]