Through the gap in an open door, we see a girl button her shirt, dart a lingering glance at the bedroom's unseen occupant, and tentatively step into the common room while smoothing her unkempt curly hair. She notices Steve sleeping on the couch, two pillows trying desperately to prop up his head. He waves. "You don't look very comfortable," she says curiously. That's because he isn't, Steve notes with an awkward smile. "Well, hon, why do you like sleeping on the couch?" she asks, amazed. Steve, stunned that she can't put together why he's exiled to the couch, stares at her as if her bra is dangling from her left nostril. Curly fills in that Heath explained Steve's insistence on the couch, and how it's all tied into his back problems. "Oh, yeah," Steve covers ineptly, unable to make eye contact. "And we both know how [Heath] is terrified to sleep alone," pities Curly, who leaves unsaid the fact that she selflessly helped Heath through another terrifying night by flashing her twin nightlights and letting him, er, load the battery. Steve gives an "ooooookay" nod, and Curly suddenly looks slightly suspicious. Turning slowly, yanking on her shirt, and fussing with her tresses, Curly embarks on that most sacred morning-after ritual: the walk of shame. Steve politely calls, "See you soon," to which Curly replies, "I hope so." Ten bucks says Heath can't remember her name.
Steve later confronts Heath about the endless string of booty calls blocking the phone line that is Steve's half of the bedroom. He wonders whether Heath feels at all guilty about what he does to these girls. "No, actually, I feel quite good about what I do to these girls," Heath answers mischievously. Steve suggests that perhaps they want more than just sex. Heath blinks, bites back a smirk, and averts his gaze, because he knows they want more, so he spanks them for no extra charge. "They all probably like you a lot, and you could be -- and this might sound stupid or whatever -- but you could be hurting them," Steve stammers heroically. Heath whatevers that no one has complained to him before, but Steve counters that Heath never talks to them again, so he wouldn't know if his conquests feel slighted. "I know that I love to talk after sex," Steve says, praying Heath doesn't also read that Seventeen magazine stashed in the bathroom. "You've had sex once," Heath snarks, rolling his eyes. "And we talked!" Steve exclaims. Heath says nothing. "It was great," Steve nods.
Rachel and Lizzie stroll into Shaggy's and Ron's Internet Porn Shack and coo sympathetically. They apparently heard that Shaggy was sick; the loud, hacking noise he's making, plus the chunks of lung on his pants, probably tipped them off first. Shaggy sniffles that he feels awful, but is headed for the university doctor. Rachel gasps. "Listen to me: doctors are bad!" she preaches. Shaggy shoots her a terrified look, the fear of a little boy being told that Superman eats kittens for breakfast. "They fill your body up with all kinds of chemicals, and they don't even know what the hell they're doing!" Rachel insists. She tells him that her remedies are of the herbal, all-natural variety, and that they work better than anything doctors prescribe. She looks to Lizzie for confirmation. "Uh, yeah," Lizzie lies. "I had a cold last week, and she gave me these weird herbal pills, and I was better in what, four or five days?" Rachel squeals, as if that's ultra-fast, and smiles maternally at her patient-to-be. "And they're all natural," she soothes. "From the Earth!" Shaggy coughs again. Ron pipes up that he once ate a ton of grass and puked it all back up again, after which he felt remarkably better. He's mocking homeopathic medicine, to which I offer a hearty "right on!" Dope me up and let me ride out the damn virus in a state of hazy euphoria. Rachel insists again that her treatments are fabulous, and offers to help Shaggy if he's truly ready to make a commitment to health. Shaggy politely promises to consider it, and Rachel floats out of the room on a cloud of deluded triumph. Ron inches toward his sick roommate. "Dude, she just offered to take care of you, right?" he whispers. "You should totally do that! Think about it!" Shaggy squints and ponders the door for a minute, then brightens. "And then she'll spend time with me, and she'll feel sorry for me, and then doctors won't put chemicals in my body!" he exclaims. It seems the lightbulb burning inside his head has a very low wattage. Shaggy huddles on his bed shivering, chewing on this insight but not totally sure where it's leading. Ron allows him a second and then chips in, "Then it's boob time." Shaggy exhales twice in blushing euphoria. "Man, this flu rules," he sighs.
After seeing the damn Levi's ad with the singing belly buttons, I can only pray that Jamie-Lynn Sigler (Meadow on The Sopranos) never, ever gets encouragement in her singing career. I can't listen to her one more time. It makes me want to assault my own belly button.
Heath ushers Steve out of the bedroom. "All right, Mr. Magoo, time to leave; Rebecca's gonna be here any second," he says. Steve grabs his pillow and retorts, "Have fun, and in case you need me, I'll be sleeping on that disgusting-ass little couch right there that Ron puked on the other night. Thanks." Heath cracks that they'll try to keep their conversations at a low volume.
As Steve sets up his makeshift bed, we hear Shaggy coughing up a storm. Ron emerges from the room toting blankets and pillows, and informs Steve that he won't be able to take the couch that night. "Oh, come on, why? [Shaggy] isn't having sex tonight, is he?" Steve snorts. Poor Shaggy. It's such a foregone conclusion. Ron says his roommate is sick, so Ron can't bunk in there lest he catch the germs currently befouling Shaggy's innards. Steve whines that he got to the couch first, but Ron waves him off, banishing him to the dorm rec room. "Just go. You're not gonna win the argument. Just go, come on, one-two," he says. Steve angrily acquiesces, collecting his things and growling, except from Steve it sounds like a prepubescent Simba chasing butterflies.
Serenely, Rachel counts to twenty-one, and we pan out to see she's squeezing droplets of liquid natural medicine under Shaggy's tongue, which is begging for a bit of Rachel's saliva to help it all sail gently down the hatch. He goes to swallow, but Rachel frantically stops him -- the brew must sit in his mouth. Coughing, Shaggy clamps his lips together, then gets his first bitter taste of the crud and adorably tries to cover his horror with overt enthusiasm. "What's in it?" he asks, mouth full. "Eastern Evergreen root oil and some antitoxins," she answers soothingly. "It increases favorable prostoglandins." From the look on Shaggy's face, "prostoglandins" means "gag reflexes." He lies that it feels better, and when Rachel delightedly lights up and strokes his feverish forehead, Shaggy melts into his sheets and becomes a giant puddle of puppy love. "You're smart," he compliments her, getting a blush in return. "And pretty," he continues. Pause. "You're smart, and pretty...like a dolphin," Shaggy gushes. Rachel is unnerved. "Uh, thanks," she replies. Shaggy snuggles under the covers while Rachel dabs his forehead with a wet cloth. Suddenly, he blinks. "God, it's hot," he moans, kicking off the covers in a feverish frenzy.
Padding into the rec room, Steve discovers a large group of students already there, watching television. "This is the school's video show, and I'm the host, and it's supposed to be me talking about music but they want me to play videos, so as usual, I'm just going to talk until they cut me off," a kid blathers, faintly audible. "Coming up , we have a generic R&B video. I don't know who it's by, but I bet it'll have a shot of a guy without a shirt on spinning around in the rain." Brilliance. This guy is way better than Carson Daly, although a pig-wolf hybrid with three snouts and elephantiasis of the tongue would be better than Carson Daly. Steve gingerly asks whether he's interrupting a slumber party. "No," answers a girl flatly. "Our roommates are having sex. How about you?" Steve exhales, thrilled to be among kindred souls -- a motley crew of the score-impaired whose roommates get more ass than a toilet seat. "Yeah, he is," admits Steve. He sets up shop to his new friend, surprised that everyone in there got temporarily evicted for the same reason. "This is where we wait until they're done," she says. "Who's your roommate?" Steve bites his lip and confesses that he lives with Heath. The girl's eyes swell into twin Jupiters as she murmurs, "Yeah, that must be hell." Steve graciously asks who her roommate is, and learns it's the brown-haired girl with the large chest. "Oh, Lucy Big Boobs, I've seen her," Steve nods knowingly, a current of empathy passing between them.
Heath lies in bed with his conquest, Rebecca, basking in the afterglow. Rebecca finally decides she should leave soon, and rolls on to her knees en route to climbing over Heath and out of bed. "Okay, well, thanks," she says awkwardly. "I mean, you know -- thanks." As she hovers over him, Heath blurts that she could stay and talk for a little while. "Really?" she squeals, elated. "Yeah, of course, we should talk," Heath sputters, mentally flogging his big mouth for adhering to the sexual tao of his one-fuck roommate. "That's one of the things I like to do after -- uh, with you, is talk," Heath continues. Rebecca plops back down to him, her head in the crook of Heath's arm, and waits for sparkling conversation to commence. Heath stares at the ceiling, while Rebecca's eyes flicker between the window, the wall, and Heath's chin. They giggle whenever their eyes accidentally meet. Rebecca sighs. Heath wriggles. Everything he had to say shot out of his penis already.
Ron grabs Lizzie and Rachel. "You guys gotta come here and see this," he says, leading them across the hall into the Frosh Pit. On his bed, coughing up kidneys, lies a half-naked Shaggy. He's prone, but so tensed that all joints are slightly bent and his shoulders are rammed up into his earlobes; he's sopping wet and glimmering with sweat even as he shivers uncontrollably. If he's like me, then he's just spotted a spider on the wall. Sitting up with considerable difficulty, he trembles and flops his trembling hands in front of their faces. "I think my hands are shrinking. See?" he sputters, lying down and convulsing. "Is that supposed to happen?" Lizzie asks, grossed out and fascinated. "That's a lot of sweat." Ron tries to coax Shaggy into hauling ass toward the nearest professional physician. Shaggy continues his violent twitches, sniffles, and coughs, saturating himself with perspiration. "This isn't bad," Rachel insists. "He is just sweating out the toxins. It means the fever's breaking." Ron and Lizzie exchange glances of the "you get the keys, I'll get the straitjacket" variety. Feebly, Shaggy pats Rachel's arm and tries offering a sincere compliment to Rachel's bedside manner.
"We talked and talked and talked," Heath says sunnily, walking the quad with Steve. "That girl is funny." The way he turns the last syllable into sing-song sounds utterly false, as though the only funny he could hear was the way she screamed the Pledge of Allegiance during orgasm. He inquires about Steve's night, which we learn was dreadful because he loathes bunking in the rec room. "It's not for nothing, Steven," Heath beams. "You'll be happy to hear that Rebecca and I are going out on a second date." So basically, they agreed to screw again; same time, same place, same three positions. Steve groans. "Wow, second date. Whoop-de-doo," he spits. "Should I throw a party?" Other than the one in Heath's pants? No. Heath complains that nothing makes Steve happy, and that, personally, he feels a second date is "good." Which it is, for Romeo over there, but for Steve -- who probably doesn't get many second dates either, but not for lack of trying -- one year is a "good" achievement, not two nights. "I bet you probably couldn't last with her until, like Friday, or something," Steve mocks. Heath pshaws this, insisting that obviously he is capable of sticking with Rebecca that long. "This is serious, Steven," he says forcefully. "It could last for, like, a week." Unable to keep a straight face, Heath snickers and struts slightly ahead of his scrawny moral guide. "See, what are you doin'?" Steve shakes his head, irritated but oddly entertained and resigned to his role as the guy who's really sweet and a great friend but just not date material. "You don't care about girls," Steve accuses. "And, you're just way too self-centered to even, like, listen to them, or care about their needs." Heath's grin morphs into sultry condescension. "Easy, sunshine," he scolds, glaring. "You're getting ahead of yourself there." Strangely, I feel that if the guys were in a diner, Steve would throw down and fake an orgasm between bites of his ham sandwich. Steve stops and crumples a bit, defeated. "Well, that's what sleeping in the rec room will do to you, okay?" he shouts.
Lizzie and Rachel giggle together after class, the former unable to comprehend how such a tiny textbook cost $55. I can't wait until she sells it back for fifty-five cents. Campus bookstores are a brilliant racket. Only there can you sell a book for a buck and then watch your friend buy that same used book for the bargain price of fifteen dollars. If I walked away from book buyback days with a twenty in my pocket, I felt richer than Bill Gates. Anyway, Ron bounds up to Rachel and demands that she free Shaggy from the shackles of homeopathic therapy so that a real doctor can treat him. She insists that Shaggy doesn't need other treatments because he's improving so beautifully on his own. Ron disagrees. "He looks like death," he insists. "I almost buried him this morning, okay?" Shaking her head in confident superiority, Rachel calmly restates that Shaggy's corpse is simply releasing toxins, when in reality the bug is passing through his system exactly as it would without the ingestion of crackpot herbs, but Rachel is too stupid to know this. "He needs to go to a real doctor," Ron tells her. "Not a witch doctor, with, uh, skull necklaces, and, uh, jungle mud, you know? Like, a doctor, with pills and tongue depressors." Lizzie is subtly cracking up during this exchange, by the way. It's pretty funny. Rachel bucks up on her high horse and informs Ron that doctors are totally ignorant, which she knows from deeply personal experience -- her uncle had stomach pains, so surgeons removed his kidney, only to decide that the organ had been healthy after all. "Now he has to go through life without a kidney!" she concludes. Remember what Steve said last week about UNEC being a school with low admissions standards? Yeah, I remember that, too. "Well, you'll be very happy to know that he does have a kidney because you're born with two kidneys, you moron!" Ron says, frustrated. Rachel calls him an idiot, to which Ron heartily agrees, admitting that he told Shaggy to take the herbs because it might give him extra time to spend with his crush. Narrowing her eyes, Rachel sneers, "You think you're so much smarter than me, don't you, Ron?" Groaning, Ron denies sitting around and wondering how his brain stacks up with hers, or thinking how darn smart she seems, and how it "takes a lot of smarts to cool your eyebrows." Ron must be smarter than I am, because I've got no clue what that last bit means. Ron mocks her for a bit, then delivers the final blow: "I don't think that, Rachel, okay, because I am so obviously smarter than you," he finishes coolly. Rachel slowly seethes, then smacks Ron in the chest and yells that he's a jerk, stalking away in a fit of indignance -- but an all-natural, non-toxic one. Ron shouts one final plea for her to exert influence and get Ron to take real pills. "No!" she screams. "Because I am right, and you're wrong!"
Frosh Pit. Rebecca and Heath reach that most vaunted of milestones in young love: The Second Date, otherwise known as mandatory clothed interaction and a polite feigning of interest before dirty foreplay can commence. "How come we never hang out in my room?" she muses. Heath suddenly feels very, very cagey about small talk, since it's non-sexual and all, and is therefore anathema to his sensibilities. "This is only the second time I've seen you," he points out warily. Rebecca feels this proves her point -- they spent the first "date" in his room, so logic and etiquette demand that the reprise should take place in hers. Heath swallows his instincts, along with about three quarts of bile, and stares agape at her until a smooth lie is installed to patch this glitch, and at least get them to afterglow before another breakdown. Calmly, Heath stammers that the oversight is clearly his fault, and swears he'll visit her room time if it will please her breasts. Rebecca shoots him a sappy smile and gushes, "You're so sweet," before yanking him down onto the bed. There, she clasps her hands behind Heath's neck and perches on his knee, gazing gooey love at him before announcing, "We're like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt." Girl, that's far too flattering to both of you. Heath gulps. "Well, yeah, but they're, like, married," he chokes. Silently, she keeps beaming.
Steve rounds the corner and spies the blue scrunchie adorning his doorknob. Pissed, he sees Ron sleeping on the couch, throws up his hands, and twitches toward the rec room. He will find solace with the other sex lepers there.
"My name is Nicola, and I choose to take this risk," says Steve's first rec room buddy. She's solemnly staring straight into the camera. "Faller ready?" a guy asks. "Ready, falling," Nicola intones. "Fall on," she is told. With that, Nicola flops backwards onto a bed of people's outstretched, joined hands. They cheer her enthusiastically as she spies Steve and greets him warmly. "Where's Roy?" asks Steve. Nicola informs him that Roy's roommate broke up with his girlfriend, thereby giving him access to a bed again. Teeming with jealousy, Steve feigns excitement for Roy's good fortune.
Cut to the Circle of Soul-Searching for the Sexually Challenged. Nicola frets that their nights of abstinence and exile in the rec room add up to one chilling reality: they are all complete losers. Steve boldly asserts that they're just as cool as their pork-loving roommates. "Are we?" retorts one guy. "I spent six hundred dollars this month on internet porn." Several of the celibates gawk at this figure, while others either pretend it's no big deal or scratch their heads in guilty mock-surprise. A girl I'm going to call Larice, because she reminds me of someone, pipes up that she feels most sorry for Steve because Heath is so damn sexy. Nicola shrugs her silent assent, as though they can't fight the animal magnetism dripping from the Frosh Pit's lone studmuffin. "Oh, and once, mmm, I took a picture of him bending over at the water fountain," giggles Larice, bouncing. Steve's eyebrows shoot right up into his hairline. "He is so fine, to me," Larice insists. Boldly, Steve asserts that he's not jealous of Heath in the slightest. "And none of you should be, either," he decides. "Did you ever think that maybe we're not hooking up every night because we're choosy?" Impressed, the Sex Lepers sit a fraction taller. "And from where I sit, there's a helluva lot of hot, choosy people sitting right here in this room, right now," Steve concludes. Nicola peers hungrily at him. "That's right!" she crows, scooting an inch closer to the Leper King. "I'm hot and choosy!" Another budding Lothario puckers his lips and lisps, "Yeah, any woman would love gettin' with this!" He points to his chest, trying to act like a fierce gangsta mofo. "Yeah, they would!" Steve squeaks, enthused. The Porn Master bubbles that all he needs is to find a girl he didn't download off the internet. "And you know what?" Steve grins. "One day, that's going to happen." Someone else claims he'd settle for anyone; Larice swears she's saving herself for Heath. Incidentally, Larice is the same co-ed who nearly wept when Heath recited Shakespeare on the quad, his attempt to scrounge investment dough. Nicola devours Steve with her orbs of white-hot lust. "You know what? you might want to rethink that one," Steve suggests to Larice.
Shaggy leans weakly against his headboard while Rachel dabs at his forehead again. "You need to find a temperature that's neither hot nor cold, because those don't feel good anymore," he croaks, congested and coughing. Eerie new-age healing chimes play in the background, and Rachel has a cluster of presumably scented candles burning away, which is incredibly sensitive to Shaggy's blazing hot temperature. He's making me feel woozy. I seriously just paused my tape and swallowed two Vitamin C tablets with eight ounces of orange juice. Rachel pityingly asks whether he truly does feel better. Lying so fiercely the devil would blush, Shaggy murmurs a yes, but can't manage much more than that without horking up his spleen. "So you don't want to go see a doctor?" she frets, desperately seeking affirmation of her holistic powers. Shaggy shakes his head and buck-up-little-campers that he's going to take a shower and go to class because he's alive and kicking and feeling herb-tastic. Rachel is pleased, but promises to sleep in Ron's bed just in case. A goofy grin spreads on Shag's face. "Goodnight," she purrs. "Ya-eeeeee-eeeeee!" shrieks Shaggy, scaring Rachel, who leaps back onto the bed, horrified that he's in serious pain. In his best sick-but-sultry voice, Shaggy intones, "That means 'thank you' in Dolphin." This weirds her out again, but she understands that it's his way of being complimentary, so she accepts it; slowly, wiping his wet hair from his equally moist brow, Shaggy leans forward, moving in for the kiss. Alarm creeps across Rachel's face with every degree of incline Shaggy adds to his position. Unfortunately for him, coughs seize Shaggy, and halfway to the promised land he starts hacking uncontrollably. Rachel shoots backward, practically up against the wall, and bids Shaggy a hurried goodnight. Poor Shaggy. Finally freed from being a garden-variety "really sweet friend" type of guy, he's morphed into something worse: walking mucus. He collapses against the bed, whimpering in Dolphin.
Sex Leper Central. D'Angelo's saucy "Untitled" video -- the one in which the camera makes sweet love to the singer's ripped abdomen and his pelvic bone leaps out to poke us in the eye -- plays on the campus television station. Everyone is curled up on the ground, sleeping or watching. "It's nice in here," Steve admits to Nicola. Suddenly, as D'Angelo ripples his muscles, we notice a girl slowly reach down and clasp the hand of the guy to her. Elsewhere, a guy trails a cracker down his conquest's nose, then feeds it to her. D'Angelo shows us his shoulders. The guy who earlier proclaimed willingness to bang anything he could get is making out with a brunette, who pulls away briefly, so he turns to his other side and shoves his tongue down someone else's throat. The Sex Lepers are becoming swingers. The Porn Master moves in on Larice, but she warns, "Is your name [Heath]?" Oh, denied! And oh, deluded! If Heath hooks up with her this season and he's sober when it happens, I'll graciously recap that episode upside-down while my roommate feeds me wine through a straw. D'Angelo rubs his nipples, then continues on down to his nethers, his groin tensing in telltale arousal. "How does it feel?" he croons. It feels like an orgy in the rec room. Steve looks down and realizes his and Nicola's hands are twined. Because D'Angelo is such a sexy bitch, and it feels tingly, Steve rolls over and smooches Nicola.
Shaggy feels like microwaved death. Ron, trying to fall asleep in the Frosh Pit common room, hears this cough/cry hybrid and covers his ears, but he's concerned. If Shaggy dies, his porn password dies with him.
Morning. Ron tries to rouse Shaggy, who finally comes around but doesn't know what's happening. He looks so sick. I used to dread days like that; when my roommate got the flu, it felt like I could smell the germs in the room, the uncomfortable aroma of inevitable infection. And there's nothing I could do about it, so naturally I ceased all homework-related activities, thereby allowing my body full access to resources that might fight the rampant virus. Anyway, Ron lies that Shaggy has to grab his student ID card immediately and follow Ron outside without waking Rachel. Confused, Shaggy simply stares at Ron, who lies that he found a guy who can make fake IDs, but only if they meet him right that second.
Cut outside to the quad. One of Shaggy's arms is looped around Ron's neck, while the other is practically dragging against the ground. He can't stand erect which, come to think of it, would've put a damper on any fun with Rachel anyway. "So I'm gonna be able to, like, drink, and rent a car?" Shaggy asks hopefully. Ron nods, trying not to breathe. "That's great, Ron," he celebrates. Suddenly, he spies the Health Center sign and bolts upright, suspicious of his friend's true intentions. Ron covers that the clinic is where fake IDs come from, but Shaggy learned all about the birds and the bees and knows bloody well that the stork delivers the cards right to people's doors, swaddled in blankets. He posits that Ron is trying to trick him into seeing a doctor, and claims he doesn't need to go, but can't choke out the sentence without releasing toxins into the air by way of a gag-cough. Throwing up his hands, Ron admits that he is taking Shag to the health clinic because his roommate is dreadfully sick and desperately in need of proper medical care. "Do you want to die of the flu? Is that what you want? Do you want to die? Because that would be...pathetic," Ron decides. "That hasn't happened for hundreds of years." Sheepishly, Shaggy gazes at Ron and confesses Rachel slept in the room last night. Groaning, Ron puts his hand on his hip and lets Shaggy talk. "It was amazing," Shag says dreamily. "I dreamt of what our kids would look like, and stuff." Ron can't deal with any more of this pathetic fantasy, so he offers a few insincere "that's beautiful" comments before grabbing the Shag in a headlock and trying to wrestle him inside. Ron must have no muscles, because he can't budge Shaggy an inch despite the fact that the sick kid looks made of liquid. Shaggy starts coughing germs right into Ron's face, so Ron releases him and spits, "That's disgusting!" Shaggy staggers away in his PJs and striped scarf, an exact vision of Quasimodo as drawn by Dr. Seuss. "You're not my friend, Ron," he chokes. Ron shakes off the germs and seethes.
I must say, university health clinics don't inspire much confidence in me, either, based on my experience. We'd go in with any number of symptoms, and the nurse would open The Drawer and say, "Here, take this. It's penicillin." Stomach ache? The Drawer. Sore knee? The Drawer. I could go in there with my arm dangling by a thread of skin and she'd still go to The Drawer. Eventually, when I realized this cost me actual money, I stopped going and doped up on over-the-counter crap.
It's night again. Heath and Rebecca lie clothed on his bed while he absently strokes her arm. "What's it like being so good-looking?" she ponders, curious whether people treat Heath differently. Here, I have to confess that while he's cute and has an adorable accent, I don't think Heath -- this one or the Ledger -- is the hottest thing on legs. That bandwagon rode down his trousers without me on board. Heath figures people don't alter their behavior based on his looks. Silence. Rebecca huffs, "Aren't you going to ask me?" This confounds Heath. "What?" he asks. "What it's like being good-looking?" she replies. "Or do you not think I'm attractive?" Heath suaves that she's more than attractive -- she's beautiful. "Forget it," she pouts. Defensive now, Heath insists that Rebecca isn't being fair, because he didn't intuit that he was supposed to spit back every question she poses to him. "Of course you're attractive! You're beautiful!" he insists again. "That's why I'm here!" Oh, my. Busted! Rebecca flips around and spits, "Is that all that matters to you?" Heath tries to cover, but she demands that he list other things about her that he appreciates. "You're nice," he offers. She hates that answer, and that word. "What does that even mean? 'Weak'?" she says, irritated, wondering aloud why they're cuddling there and what it signifies. "We're getting to know each other," Heath defends himself. Rebecca brats, "We had sex. Don't you think, if you had any respect for me, you'd have done that before you violated me?" So a one-night fuck would've been more acceptable to her? She could've kept her clothes on and not ridden him silly, if the principle meant so damn much to her. Heath scoots forward on the bed and says he doesn't understand, taking her hands and quietly smarming that he wants her to explain her feelings. "What are you doing?" she shrieks. Indignant, Heath points out that he's being sensitive to her needs and listening. "Oh, well aren't you so sensitive! Here, let me take off my pants! I'm so lucky to know you!" Again, all things that would make more sense had she not already removed said pants in the first place. Rebecca kicks Heath out of the room. Heath sensitively protests that they can make it work, if she'll just give him through Friday, but Rebecca is resolute. "We're not like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt," she zings. "We're like Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow." Oh no she di-iiiint! Naturally, Heath doesn't get the comparison. "They broke up," snots Rebecca. "Forever!" Getting the picture, Heath slinks out of the room while Rebecca holds her head in a picture of self-aggrandizing teenage agony. If she hadn't been so easy up front, her argument might've made sense, but she blew it when she blew him.
Heath defeatedly skulks toward his room, but spies the blue scrunchie on the knob. Steve, inside, is smooching Nicola. They're so awkward! They're sitting side by side on the bed, hands clamped to the mattress, but his torso is twisted all the way around and they're trying to make out madly without actually groping anything. It's like seventh-grade Spin the Bottle. Rudely, Heath knocks. "Is this your idea of a joke?" he growls. Smoothly, Steve yells, "Sorry, [Heath], I'm in here with a lady. Come back in a little while." Heath glares at the door, then swivels to see Ron snoring away peacefully on the couch. Realizing his own medicine tastes shockingly like rat poison, Heath grimaces and descends into the second circle of Hell: the Sex Leper Lounge.
Meanwhile, Steve and Nicola scheme. "How much longer should we do this?" she whispers. "Another half an hour should be good," he tells her. Nicola darts a sidelong glance at him and heaves, "Just be sure to save some energy -- we have to go to my room ." Boo-ya!
"Welcome to No Requests Live," barks the campus veejay. "We're not live. Why no requests? Because I don't get to pick a video, so why should you?" Heath stuffs his hands into his pockets and winces, "Evening." Larice immediately greets him, ogling him like he's a pint of Ben & Jerry's that comes with its own handy spoon.
Cut to Heath's face. "My name is [Heath], and I guess I'm ready to take this risk." He drops backward onto the bed of hands, of which I'm willing to bet at least three pairs are burning with the urge to fondle his tight ass. Look, I didn't say he wasn't cute, okay? I'm only human. He grudgingly admits it was fun, then peers up at Larice and says, "Hi, I'm [Heath]." She cocks an eyebrow and smoothly says, "I know."
Standing slowly and inhaling deeply, Shaggy swivels and then coughs mightily, careening sideways against the wall. He staggers into the hall, clad in boxers, boots, a winter coat, gloves and his tank top, ricocheting back and forth off more walls in his futile attempt to feign normalcy. Rachel sprints into the Frosh Pit and wakes Ron, hastily apologizing: "You were maybe kind of right, and I was maybe...kind of wrong, and I think maybe [Shaggy] should see a doctor." Ron grouchily asks why this revelation couldn't have waited until such time as he was awake of his own accord. "Because I need help carrying him," she winces.
Rachel and Ron stare down into the elevator, as the doors close partway and bounce open again. "What's that in his hair?" Ron wonders. "It looks like...shaving cream," Rachel says incredulously. We see that Shaggy has passed out on his back, half in and half out of the elevator, which is closing on his hips. He is officially Homer Simpson's illegitimate child.
Steve dudes his way down the hall the morning, encountering a sullen Heath. "Hey, how'd it go last night?" he chirps. Scowling, Heath spits, "I don't want to talk about it." Doing his patented non-suave nod of forced machismo, Steve cheers, "Yeah, the rec room rules! Am I right?"
During the credits, we see Ron and Rachel staggering across the deserted quad, carrying Shaggy. Ron's holding him under the armpits, while Rachel leads the way with his feet clamped to her hips. Shaggy sags between them. "I think if we leave him here, someone will pick him up," Ron theorizes. No response. "You know, you should really be carrying the heavy end," he complains. "My back is killing me." Rachel cheerfully offers him some tannis root for the pain. "Tannis root," slurs a half-conscious Shaggy. "That's what helped me." Grimacing, Ron turns Rachel down.