Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lesson One: Jump That Shark Like You Mean It
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.06.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Did you ever jump a shark so fuckin' hard you landed in LA? Trump just did! Eighteen contestants -- post- some just hideously fake Trump stuff -- build a giant tent on the lawn of a mansion. Major players: Heidi, who leads well if apologetically; nasty, trashy Frank, who screams straight out of his ass more loudly than anyone else; and Martin, a law professor dressed like a clown who is allergic to effort of any kind, who stands on a rock "supervising" the whole time, like a fool. Heidi and Frank are chosen as team leaders after the group admits they bossed them, and they choose teams: Heidi (Team Kinetic, though they didn't get names this week) gets all the girls, a guy named Surya, and good old Derek. Frank (Teamâ¦"Arrow") takes all the other guys, and the few remaining ladies. The task: operate a carwash. Frank runs around with Hottie Aaron, acting like a douche and screaming horrifically; Kinetic's marketing is so heavy and successful that things get blurry, and they eventually start washing cars by hand. Ivanka (as newly sole Viceroy) is both amused and impressed by this, not to mention the go-go boys Heidi's team purchases to advertise their location: smack, as it were, in the middle of West Hollywood. When she visits Frank's site, she is horrified to hear that he's deserted the team to go finally make signage, even though there's only an hour left. Other standouts include Angela, the Olympic hockey player; James the Very Awesome IT Geek; and Carey, the beautiful black bald gay man who may just be the redeeming bald gay black man foretold in the reality TV prophecies of yore. Did I mention Derek? (!) Lots of Derek, who with James is the go-to guy for spitfire commentary this week (Martin, for all his faults, gets some zingers in as well). Kinetic wins by like $64, and then: The Twists! The winning team gets to live in a "luxurious" mansion apparently designed and furnished entirely by Ikea, while losers Arrow live on the lawn, in tents with temporary sinks and showers, leading them of course to whine about having to live in "the third world." Odious shrieking Frank immediately gets defensive as he sees Arrow Hottie #2, Tim, spinning a web of blame around him. Since Martin busily continued not doing a goddamn thing at the carwash, Frank's choice is clear; he also brings back Tim for calling BS on him in front of Trump. Tim is, of course, immediately dismissed from the Boardroom -- including Kinetic PM-in-perpetuity Heidi as Viceroy Minor & Royal Apple-Polisher -- which goes on and on for a million years of screeching, but ultimately/obviously, it's better to be an aggressive idiot than a passive suck-ass, so Martin goes home, pissy and whining to the end, and Frank stays, to scream another day. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I always used to say that Queer As Folk (US) was about as realistic and relevant to my life as a gay man as Smallville was. And you know, I meant it. In every possible way. Nowadays my life is more like Laguna Beach, or possibly freakin' Battlestar Galactica, some days. But the point isn't that I watch a lot of television, the point is this: remember when this show was awesome? It wasn't like real life or real business, and it certainly wasn't an "n-week-long job interview"; however, it was recognizable in the grander scheme as a television show about people doing things. You could at least say that it was realistic in that people are often known to do things. In great variety, oftentimes. But now... I don't know what this goddamn show is about, but it seems somehow less realistic or relevant than ever before. Sorta people sorta doing things. Crazy things that make no sense, or sorta make sense, that is what this show is about. Specifically, the things they are kinda doing this week: yelling, and... screaming. The whole thing was a blur, I have to say. I think this might be the best season ever, now, because you've also got Trump losing his shit in a massive way in the real world, in realtime, to add that frisson of excitement, and also because it is a truth universally recognized that a once-awesome, slipping television show -- much like Richard Simmons, typing pool names, The O.C. or any David E. Kelley drama -- has only one chance: to go from actual quality to shitty to utter cracked-out awesomeness. I feel like I say this every season, but this time I mean it: I submit to you the possibility that this has happened here.
This Show Is Going To Be Cracked-Out Shark-Jumping Awesome: Exhibit A
NYC is rainy and cold, and cold-hearted people with umbrellas scurry about like ants underground, because contrast is the most powerful force in the world. Except in terms of Trump always basing like about 60% of his identity on being a New Yorker and how New York is yooge or whatever, it's kind of a mixed message to be sending. Inside the limo, with loving songs of love, Donald Trump is talking into a telephone which is connected to absofuckinglutely nothing whatsoever, pretending to be having a conversation with his mail-order wifebot and their robot baby. While this is not, in fact, happening, I am at least relieved at the relative quiet of his voice. I was expecting screaming right out the gate. The baby from that Aaliyah song gurgles over the phone, I mean seriously the exact same sound, because not even the person or persons employed to create the illusion of Baron Trump can be buggered to bother this season. Melania, who is not on the phone, and Baron, who is not on the phone, are not in New York, they are in California. If in fact they exist at all. You know the Donald would be just as happy with a hologram. Be for real: as long as he could take it out on the town to prove that a "sexy" hologram like Melania would consent to his oily fearsome touch, he'd be fine. So he's riding in this limo, pretending to talk to his hologram wife, on the way to the airport, so that he can go to LA. He has buildings and things just all over the place, as you might know, and now he's building a house in LA. The loving rainy music goes TOTALLY FUCKING SWANK.
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