This week's recap is brought to you by the letters O and G, and the number one -- for without Omar G's tape and the quick work of the U.S. Postal Service, I wouldn't have seen the entire episode. So say it with me: Omar's #1! Omar's #1!
For newbies who need a bit of backstory: Lizzie loves her possessive and quirky high-school sweetheart Eric, but after a fight with him in the pilot, she slept with Steven. We haven't seen the aftermath episode, but we presume they agreed to keep it a secret from Eric; indeed, Steven even helped Eric win back Lizzie in a killer episode called "Eric Visits."
We open this week with a shot of Steven sitting on his bed, swatting the laptop that's balanced on his legs. It's misbehaving. It needs a spanking. It's got to be a Dell. "How do you expect to take over mankind if you keep crashing?" Steven groans at it. His paper is saved to a disk, but it's due tomorrow and Lizzie is supposed to do "questions and comments" on it, and they can't if Steven's computer is on the fritz. I wonder if "questions and comments" is a class-related thing, or if one of them devised it as a way of spending time with the other. I'm looking in your direction, Steven. Lizzie bounces into the room and chirps, "Ready for 'questions and comments'?" Steve sadly says that his computer is experiencing a mild brain hemorrhage. "Ohhhh, poor Karpy!" coos Lizzie through her nose, petting him and feeding him a carrot and sugar cubes. She offers to "q-and-c" it on her computer, grabbing the fluorescent green disk with a Supergirl smile. "Dude, you're the best," Karpy-poo says gratefully. That's so sweet. I think that's inscribed on my mother's wedding ring. He begs Lizzie not to lose the disk, because it's the only working copy of the paper that he's got. "Steve, would a friend lose it?" Lizzie sighs, scolding him teasingly. Karpy-Schmarpy grins as she leaves, then notices Heath snickering at the two of them. "Oh, poor Karpy!" he mimics. The Karp-enter of Love doesn't appreciate this. "You're ridiculous," Heath decides. "We're friends," Karpo Marx insists. Heath contends that his pal is erecting all kinds of obstacles to a potential romance, so that when it comes time to erect his trouser-tent pole with her once again, The Complex Karpohydrate feels a greater sense of accomplishment. And if that's not the case, well, Heath will just decide that his roommate's a wimp. The Karper ponders this, perplexed.
A laminator churns out a poster for Master Joel's martial arts school. Master Joel is extremely mundane-looking, and looks like he'd be more at home teaching a class in CD cleaning than martial arts. ["I thought it might be Joel Hodgson, late of MST3K, but he had a lot of facial hair, so I couldn't tell for sure." -- Wing Chun] The camera pans out to reveal chubby, balding Kyle Gass, half of the genius band Tenacious D -- here, he's playing a crony and co-worker of Eric. "That sucks that she cheated on you again," Eric calls out to another friend, Greg, played by David Krumholtz (memorably, the kid who got a dick drawn on his cheek in 10 Things I Hate About You). "It's baloney. I'm sorry," Eric adds emphatically. I wonder how "baloney" came to be synonymous with "crap." ["Maybe because the first syllable sounds a bit like 'bullshit'? You know, the way some people say 'sugar' when they really mean 'shit'?" -- Wing Chun] I feel bad for that poor maligned-by-association lunch meat. Eric, by the way, cut his hair, ending up with a short mop of unkempt curls. I like it, but it just doesn't say "Eric" to me. Eric blasts Greg's willingness to tolerate infidelity, and wonders why he doesn't just dump the slit. "The only reason I haven't dumped her yet is...I kind of can't believe she goes out with me in the first place," Greg admits. Kyle chips in that "she" is totally hot. They're in agreement about her off-the-charts hotness. "I've never been with anyone that hot," Greg confesses. Eric shakes his head and proclaims that he'd simply die if Lizzie cheated on him. Unless it was with Adam Sandler, which of course didn't bother him one bit, and it was allegedly last week. Thank God they're pretending that episode never happened -- like the Dallas season that turned out to be Bobby's bad dream, or for me, like the entire eight-year run of Step by Step. Wow, Patrick Duffy has been involved in some real crap over the years. Anyway, Kyle and Greg snap their heads up and exchange nervous glances, because Eric's been playing Magellan up his own anal canal again. "Then you're already dead," Greg grunts. Eric drops his jaw and emits a high-pitched laugh, a sound right out of Amadeus. "You'd better check yourself," he giggles. But his cronies figure it's completely obvious that Lizzie has cheated on him already. Their logic? Because she's hot, and thus, there's an all-access pass to her pants floating around the UNEC campus. "She is really hot," opines Greg. "I would totally do her, except that I've got a girlfriend, so..." Ha! I love that line. But it would've been much sweeter if he still had the dick on his face. Penis humor never gets old. "You guys are jokesters today!" Eric gapes, loving all the jollity. He decides he can easily prove them wrong.
Rachel answers a call from a devastated-sounding Eric, who weeps that he heard what happened between Lizzie and Heath. Back in the copy room, where Rachel is unknowingly on the speakerphone, Eric cracks up silently, enjoying the deception. Kyle and Greg sit calmly, expectantly. Meanwhile, I love that Eric used Heath for his little lie, like he's the only member of the Frosh Pit Lizzie would even touch. "I just feel so broken up about it!" Eric fake-sobs. Rachel, perched on her bed and tying a shoe, can't quite digest all this. "Lizzie hooked up with [Heath]?" she squeals. "Nobody tells me anything!" Cut to Eric throwing up his arms, signaling a silent touchdown, a massive moral victory. "Was that before or after Steven?" Rachel asks. Eric's arms sag down to his sides. The ref has reversed the call, and the coach yanked him from the game so the skinny third-string quarterback could ram it into the end zone, just this once. Kyle, to his credit, has the grace to look startled. Eric and Rachel freak simultaneously, the former losing his breath and the latter's eyes bugging out to Looney Tunes proportions. She hangs up and begins to hyperventilate, while Eric slowly disconnects the call, unable to move, his pal Greg still staring at the ground because he knew this wasn't going to end well. On the wall behind Eric's irate body hangs a copy of the Lizzie-and-Eric prom photo. "Lock up the store," Eric growls. It's go time now. Eric's rage is frothing like a dropped can of soda, and he's about ready to pull the pop-top.
Cut to the blue Honda hatchback, the Chariot of Fire, in which Eric blasts the rap song "Danger" and sings along with his Goon Squad. "DANGER!" they all shout, headbanging vigorously. "Danger, Steven Karp!" Eric spits. It devolves into throaty growls of "Bring it on!" and "AAAH," the kind of screaming only wimps deem manly. It's hilarious. Eric's about as dangerous as a carpet, as threatening as a paper towel wrapped in bubble paper.
Rachel scampers into Lizzie's room. Wait, I thought they were roommates! Maybe Rachel got the call in their room, then fled to find Lizzie, then returned and realized Lizzie had come back to the room...or, I desperately need to figure out where the hell these people live and sleep. I'm more confused than a blind woman at a maze convention. Before Rachel can get out the words, though, the phone rings, and Lizzie answers it happily. It's Eric. "Hey, baby!" she delights. "Got something you need to tell me, Elizabeth?" he drones. "Yeah," she frowns. "I've been wanting to tell you...how much I love you!" Man, she's the schmoopiest person on the planet. "As much as you love having sex with Steven?" Eric's depressed monotone drawls. "Why you tryin' to play me?" Lizzie freezes. "Where are you?" she whispers. Eric intones, "Let's just say Daddy got a cell phone." We see the elevator doors close over Eric's face as he admits he's in the building. Kyle's face is twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated mild irritation. "I want to talk to Steven," Eric growls, but the elevator tampers with the signal and warps his voice so that he sounds like a dying record. Lizzie hangs up, frightened, and runs across the hall.
Shaggy, Ron, and Heath sit casually in the Frosh Pit, waiting for some shit to happen so that they can build a drinking game around it. Lizzie appears. "Eric knows," she says frantically. They play dumb for some reason, as if she might be talking about the zit she hid from him last week, or the answer to that pesky math problem about trains A and B. "Hey baby," breathes Eric, suddenly right behind her. Lizzie spins around and tries to act like everything is normal. "Hey baby," she gulps, spying the Goon Squad. "The whole gang's here." Eric sets his jaw and stares icily at his girlfriend. "So how was having sex with Steven?" he inquires politely. Lizzie denies it vehemently, claiming that Rachel was misinformed. "She's drunk half the time and she's always lying," Lizzie stammers. Ha. Eric looks past her into the Frosh Pit. "They do it?" he asks the posse. In a remarkable series of unconvincing denials, the trio proclaims its ignorance -- words collide, hands fly around, and the gang generally confirms that people on television invariably lie ineptly, unless they're marked as The Evil Characters.
Steven chooses this moment to mosey out of the shower, wrapped in his fluffy blue robe, clad in orange boxers, and toting a blue shower caddy that looks somewhat more like a Nine West purse. "Hey, Eric," he says, cheerfully. "How was sexual intercourse with my girlfriend, Steven?" Eric asks, calmly, his mouth-foam calming down to a barely perceptible simmer. Steven's jaw hits the floor and knocks loose the linoleum. "You told him?" he shrieks at Lizzie, sprouting breasts because he is so thoroughly Busted. Eric convulses himself into a right old tizzy, whipping around and pointing haphazardly at Lizzie and the gang, trying to choke out words but failing because a keg of bile in his throat is impeding all speech. Heath shoots up to his feet, somehow figuring this will help. He looks worried for Steven's health. "I'm gonna beat you up so bad," Eric calmly informs Steven. "And I'm gonna LOVE it!" Steven starts to tremble. "No," he protests feebly, dropping his shower purse and running down the hall. "Bring the ruckus, boy!" bellows Eric. Steven runs smack into a guy in the hallway, knocking him to the ground, then escapes through a doorway through which Eric follows. Eric looks to be roughly three steps behind Steven. Run, Steven, or he'll drain your blood to make a toner cartridge!
Steven strolls through the hallway, barely breaking a sweat when he should be running for his life. Diving into the laundry room, he huddles in the corner to a whirring machine and snatches a nearby towel to cover his head. This fools Eric, who starts combing the hallway while a desperate Steven searches the laundry room for an exit. "Hey buddy, where'd you go?" Eric sing-songs, slowly circling the area. "I just want to talk to you for a second." Even Steven isn't gullible enough to buy into that line. Steven spots a vent, and climbs up to try and hide inside it. "There once was a little boy named Steven," rhymes Eric gleefully. "And if I just punched him once, we'd be even. Come on out, little boy!" A clattering crash interrupts Eric's bizarre, horror-flick euphoria. The vent, which couldn't handle Steven's ninety-pound frame, has dropped like an aging prom queen's britches. He crawls out, coughing, and scampers down the hall past Eric. But his enemy stops him to find out what happened; Steven nonchalantly explains. "My God, are you all right?" Eric asks, ceasing the chase. "Yeah, I think I'm okay," Steven says. Eric grins, the twinkle of macho menace alight once more in his eyes. "Wrong answer," he intones. Steven nods understandingly, then sprints away.
The Mortal Kombat theme is the background tune of choice for the chase scene, and it's perfect -- a techno blitz of desperation and intense pressure and abject silliness. There's a drum club congregating outside the dormitory; as Steven, still half-nude, and seething Eric sprint through its circle, not one person there so much as glances at the action, nor tries to use one of Steven's legs to spear an hors d'oeuvre. The frantic race takes Eric and Steven across campus to a garbage can, against which two scooters rest. Marty grabs one and hops aboard; two seconds later, Biff arrives to snatch the second. "I'm gonna get you, scooter boy!" Biff screams, which only makes McFly move faster. "Bad little boys have to pay the piper!" More chasing. "I only get faster!" spits Biff, so Marty ditches the scooter and drops it to make Biff trip. But nothing short of manure can stop a man spurned, so Biff screeches his scooter to a halt, leaps over the obstacle and screams, "Nice try, you cuckolding jerk!" Still clinging to his scooter, Eric keeps running after his enemy. "I'm sorry!" Steven yells desperately, right before he spots a laundry cart zipping across campus. Inspired, he speeds up, reaching for it. "Grrrrrr," Eric says, according to the captioners. Steven leaps onto the cart and rides the dirty laundry to safety. So, Steven can reach this thing on foot, but Eric can't? Right. Sure. A disembodied torso could catch one of those. "You're dead, Steven!" Eric screams. "And I'm your executioner!" Then, sweetly, he hops back onto the scooter and toddles back toward Lizzie's cheatin' womb.
Steve takes refuge in a storage area somewhere, possibly in the bowels of his dormitory. He calls Heath from an emergency phone down there; Heath figures Steven can either fight Eric or transfer, and since he doesn't want "some weird foreigner" moving into his room, Heath thinks that Steven should put up his dukes. That's about as close to a declaration of brotherly love as Heath's going to give our little Karpal Tunnel. Steven asks Heath to retrieve his disk and deliver it to him, and while he's at it, he should grab Steven's jean-shorts. It's a good idea, because if a horny chicken catches sight of him, we might see some very uncomfortable attempts at inter-species nookie.
Eric, meanwhile, yells at Lizzie for hurting him. "You're the last person I thought would hurt me like this!" he cries. "Did he make you do it?" Lizzie insists this was all her fault, which is correct. "I hope you wore a condom," Eric sniffles. "Well, he wore a condom," she corrects him, agitated. "Oh, that's...oh, you're so smart, huh? You're so damn smart, huh, college girl?! Well, you're so smart that you're dumped!" When I first heard that line, I thought it was, "You're so smart that you're dumb," which I liked slightly better, if only because it fit the juvenile mood and seemed typical of the quasi-profound lunacy of my beloved Eric. Rachel, eavesdropping outside in a common room, sitting under the mustard wall, flinches at this as Eric and Lizzie bicker about breaking up. Eric tearfully insists that he never has to listen to Lizzie again. Rachel's expression more closely resembles relief than guilt. Sitting at a study table, Larice looks intrigued. Larice apparently shares a living space with Lizzie and Rachel all of a sudden. She's the Sexile who lusted after Heath, and swooned at his Shakespeare recitation. Back inside the boudoir, Eric leans exhaustedly against Lizzie's desk. He's placid -- until he spies the neon disk. "Is this his disk? You have his disk? You two share disks?" he spits. But it's a small, floppy disk, which should make Eric feel better. "Eric," Lizzie whispers, trying to reason with him. He can't handle this, though, and leaves. "I'm done with you," he chokes, brokenly. "I don't want to be around you anymore...You're not my girlfriend. You're my girl enemy." Eric is absolutely gutted, and I confess he's making me want to reach out and squeeze him. I'm totally rooting for him to sleep with Rachel.
As Eric stalks out, Lizzie runs weakly after him, but stops in the common room. "You ruined my life!" she accuses Rachel, who fails to point out that the whole penetration thing was pretty much Lizzie's decision from start to finish. Rachel feels terrible, and Larice pipes up that she's very sorry Eric cheated on Lizzie. Naturally, Rachel corrects her and explains that she accidentally blew the whistle on the fact that Lizzie blew Steven's whistle. "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," Larice notes, critical of the fact that Lizzie's wrath is directed at Rachel and not at her own damn Eric-betrayin' self.
Kyle and Greg wait in the Chariot of Fire, unsure why Eric left them there. "We can't back him up in the car," Kyle complains. Greg is more concerned with the Filet-o-Fish smell tainting precious oxygen inside the car. I'm concerned that people still eat the Filet-o-Fish. Kyle wants beer. "I bet you there's some beer up there," he whines. "Let's just go up there and get it."
Shaggy and Ron are hanging out in the Frosh Pit. Heath enters and makes them swear to take down Eric if he arrives in search of Steven. "I'm from Canada," protests Ron. "We don't take people down." Not unless you're Wing Chun, baby, and someone's ass is romancing her boot. ["That's goddamn right." -- Wing Chun] Heath accuses "you Americans" of being wusses when it comes to fighting, which I attribute to the high cost of emergency care in this sweet nation. Heath's ramblings about the hard life in London's East End win an unimpressed stare from Shaggy, who just wishes everyone would leave him alone until the writers come up with something befitting how fabulous he is. "Are you two men, or pretty little ladies?" Heath levels. Ron raises his hand. "Pretty lady, right here," he says. "I'm a pretty lady," Shaggy agrees. Easy joke, but flawlessly executed. Ron blurts that Steven deserves a good mangling. "He should take his medicine like a man," Ron argues. "Let Eric beat his head in...and he'll have a new brother in his manhood." Um, I don't think there's room for two in Steven's manhood. Just then, the Goon Squad enters and ask to wait for Eric in the Frosh Pit. Heath tries to act tough. "Why would we let you wait here for Eric?" he glares. The Goons reveal that they're over twenty-one, which I presume means they're offering to acquire beer, because if beer's already up there, age wouldn't be a real issue. This makes me smile, because there's so much beautiful beer in my apartment right now. If there's one thing that's stuck with me after high school and college, it's the enormous importance one should place upon the acquisition of beer. Beer is fucking great. The only thing better than beer is junk food and beer.
Steven, still in the storage room, flips out when he hears that his archenemy stole the glorious neon key to academic mediocrity. "My paper's due tomorrow," Steven panics. "If I could just explain..." Heath sighs. "It's true," he replies, archly. "If he knew why you had sex with Lizzie, he'd be fine with it. In fact, he'd probably let you do it again." Indeed. Certainly, Lizzie would pop open like a champagne bottle. Steven frets that he's not exactly a finely honed fighting machine. A perfect exchange follows: "In every man resides a fighter, Steven," Heath intones. "Where? Does he hide in my ass?" Steven retorts. Well, there are worse things that could hide up there -- like Brussels sprouts, for example. Nasty little buggers. Heath wonders if Steven loves Lizzie. "Of course I love her," yells Steven. "I'm in pain every single day because I love her so much. I hate being her friend." But, he notes, he can live with sexual frustration if it means not sparring with Eric. Heath takes a deep breath and engages in some mental masturbation. "We were born to commit murder, Steve," he ejaculates. "We're all cavemen." Steven considers this, impressed.
In a visual Solo Cup symphony, Ron and Shaggy drink beer with the Goon Squad and giggle that they're riding the bench behind Steve and Eric. "Want a piece of me?" snickers Greg. "Bring it on, right here!" sputters Ron. "Look out!" Cut to a few pints later. They've brought out the boom box and commenced breakdancing, standing in a circle while Shaggy cuts loose with a slick arsenal of moves. He's totally footloose. His Sunday shoes are swinging from a chandelier across town. Kyle has fashioned a turban from his jacket. Greg sways from side to side and swings his arms like an ape. A drunk, dancing ape. The best kind. Rachel and Larice watch, subdued but smiling. "I can't, I don't want to go, I can't go," protests Ron when it's his turn to bring the jiggy. Then, he catches the fever. "Oh, oh, what? What's happened?" Ron giggles, slowly starting to do the robot. "I'm a little nervous! I'm a little scared! What is this?" I'm laughing out loud by now. I'm a sucker for dance madness. I'd like a season ticket for this soul train. Larice notices that Rachel can't shake the blues, and quietly assures her that Lizzie will calm down and forgive her eventually. "My Nana didn't talk to her sister for sixty-two years," she says. "They're the best of friends now. They own a jam company." Larice feels a bit derivative to me. I'm scared she'll become a font of wacky stories from her youth in St. Olaf.
Greg lies on his back and lets the gang help fold him into an embryonic pose. They then spin him like a top. "Woohoo! Kitten play! That's cool!" someone shouts, if the captioners are to be trusted. I swear, the captioners are just drunk and transcribing some of the stuff they're slurring to each other.
In the basement, Steven swings gamely at the air, psyching himself up for The Fight that HBO Forgot. He says that Hal always claimed his son had the build of a fighter, but that Steven's always been held back by his basic fear of getting hit in the face. "Fear is my only obstacle," he announces. Heath promptly clocks him in the face. "How was that?" he asks a staggering and whining Steven. Shaking off the agony, Steven lies, "Not as bad as I thought." Heath is pleased. "If you can handle that, you can handle a fight," which Heath defines as perhaps twenty more blows just like that one. "Maybe I could fight," Steven gasps, guzzling the Kool-Aid like it's crack juice. Heath winds up and decks him again, followed by two low blows to the body. "AAAAAH," Steven tells him. The practice session devolves into a catfight. Dropping his hands from his face, Steven throws up his fists and swings a few times, landing one wee jab on Heath's chest. "Does Lizzie slap you like that?" taunts Heath. "Show me what'cha got!" Steven answers with a blow to Heath's ear. "I can't hear!" yelps Heath, grabbing his head. "You busted my eardrum! It's bleeding!" Contrite, Steven inches toward Heath to apologize, and gets a kick for his trouble. "Gotta watch out for the fake, Steven," Heath sneers, vampiric in his enthusiasm for geek blood. "Men fake, too!" Ha. Steven charges at him, backing both of them up against a huge pile of boxes. Heath delivers four stellar punches, to which Steve responds by throwing a deadly cardboard box at his rival. They end up hugging, punching each others' backs in a wild attempt to dislodge some kidneys.
Shaggy and his hot-orange shirt pump coins into a soda machine. Eric appears beside him. "Want to borrow a dollar?" he hisses, madness glowing in his eyes. Shaggy declines. "You sure you don't want to borrow a dollar?" Eric drawls dangerously.
Heath and Steven have collapsed on the basement couch, coughing. Heath's phone rings; he answers and hands it off to Steven. It's Shaggy; he nervously insists that Eric left after returning the disk to Lizzie. When he hangs up, we see that Eric is holding a shiny silver staple gun to Shaggy's head. "Good boy, [Shaggy]," Eric cackles. "Good boy." He pulls the trigger. The gun clicks, Shaggy flinches, but nothing happens. "There weren't even any staples," giggles Eric insanely. He's wearing the symbolic Small Floppy of Steven's Deflowering on a chain around his neck.
Steve and Heath cheerfully exit the elevator. The captioners claim one of them says, "I had no idea she was Chinese!" I didn't hear it, so if it was excised during editing, that's a huge shame because it's a funny non sequitur. And informative, because I didn't know Little Bo Peep was Chinese, either. Shaggy frantically whispers for Steven to flee, but he doesn't understand. "Well, if it isn't the whack-ass buster," Eric sneers, standing up and startling Steven. Wow. Eric needs to marry me with that silken tongue. Lizzie bolts into the common room, stunned that Eric is still hanging around trying to crack Steven's skull. "Wait, this is a fight, isn't it?" she gapes. Heath is all proud, because his little boy's about to become a man. Steven asks where Eric wants to throw down -- a parking lot, or a warehouse? No, Eric wants to fight in the common room, surrounded by plush cushions and a television and a Trivial Pursuit box. Tough as strawberries, they are. Shaggy, Ron, Rachel, Larice, Greg, and Kyle scramble into the room to spectate; each side's goons make macho. "Steve, I've got the guns, ready and loaded," Ron booms, flailing his fists in an attempt to look trigger-happy with his weapons of street justice. "Ain't gonna be no thang," Eric mutters. "Ain't gonna be no thang."
, the fighters bicker like children about who should start. It goes a lot like this: "You start." "No, you start." "I think you should start." "I think you should start." "Nuh-UH!" "Yuh-HUH!" "Stop pulling my hair!" "Stop pulling my hair!" "Stop repeating everything I say!" "Stop repeating everything I say!" "MOM!!!"
Finally, Eric makes the first move. "Why don't you hit me, little boy?" he snarls. "You touched my girlfriend. Why don't you touch me? Want to wait until you go through puberty first?" Steven hauls off and slams Eric in the cheek. Eric staggers backward and into a chair, clutching at his face in agony. Kyle recoils. Ron and Shaggy cheer, and Heath looks impressed and a tad relieved. I don't think he expected Steven to make a fist successfully, let alone make contact. "I didn't want this," Steven insists. "Now it's over." But Eric won't go down. He springs to his feet and pounds Steven in the chest; Steven spins and falls against a coffee table, chipping one of his front teeth and bloodying his mouth. Lizzie gawks at the injury. "Am I bleeding?" Steven asks, clueless. Shaggy recovers the tooth chip and hands it to his pal. "Just put that on some ice," he suggests gently. Eric is stunned. "Oh my God, let me see it!" he chokes, covering his mouth in abject horror. "Are you okay? Oh my God, that's horrible! That looks disgusting!" He rips the disk off his neck and throws it at Steven, then flees for Lizzie's room, wailing. Eric is a sensitive bruiser. He can't hit, because he feels. Lizzie exits to console her weeping copy boy, hoping to turn this Fight Club plot into a pornographic climax. "Steve, you just kicked your first ass," Heath glows, proud. Steve grins, forgetting the diagonal chip that's missing from his right front tooth. Rachel feels guilty, so Larice tells a stupid story about her fake front teeth. She should be quiet. The actress is funny, but her part in this episode was not.
Lizzie sits down to Eric and apologizes for causing so much havoc. She inches her hand up his thigh, then uses her tongue to check whether any of Eric's teeth, or tonsils, got chipped in the brouhaha. He enjoys it, until he opens his eyes and catches sight of the growing collection of UNEC memorabilia and photographs decorating the wall over Lizzie's desk. Eric pulls away. "This isn't right anymore...I can tell, baby, it's not right," he says softly. She's surprised. "You're my little L-bug, right?" Eric quavers. "Well, you can't hold a bug in your hand, or it's going to bite you, and it flies away." He pairs this line with some great illustrative gestures. He should really consider ditching Kopy Town for a career in interpretive dance. Lizzie can't believe the two of them are actually splitting up. She sounds upset to be losing her long-time boyfriend, but looks like a girl who just found out she missed a sale at Nordstrom. Eric pulls her close, rubbing her hair and clutching her head to his chest. Sobbing, he makes her promise him one thing. "Promise me that you will always remember not to drink and drive, because it's not safe, you know?" he blubbers firmly. "That makes me so nervous!" Perfection.
Later, Lizzie solemnly hangs up a photo of Rachel. Steven enters and beams widely at her, exposing the chipped tooth. He exposits that it was just a cap anyway, from the time in third grade when his best friend bet that Steven couldn't bite through a rock. "I could not," he says. Then, Steven notices that Lizzie purged her wall of Eric photos. "We broke up," Lizzie says, and you can tell she thinks it's final. Steven nods, then spies a goofy picture of himself waving uncomfortably at the camera, squinting. He's subtly delighted. "Wicked," he understates. "I made the wall." Lizzie smiles, and we fade out on Steven's lopsided grin, his tooth cracked but his broken heart finally on the mend.
During the credits, we get excerpts of the Chariot of Fire blazing toward campus with three guys anxious to kick Steven's ass. "I'm gonna kill him! Oh, yeah!" Eric screeches. "I'm gonna rip off his head, and then I'm gonna kill his head. And then I'm gonna whale all over his body! Ohhh yeah!" David Krumholtz cracks up right here, I think. Cut to another shot. "Tonight's the night, Steven Karp," Eric menaces, staring straight ahead at the road. God, Jason Segel is brilliant in this part. It could so easily have been a caricature, and yet he imbues it with enough heart that I'm totally rooting for Eric. He should turn out to be gay and make out with Shaggy, just so Segel and Timm Sharp can get more screen time. The credits sequence ends with a funny argument about who gets shotgun on the way home. Eric counsels his goons like a patient parent. "He calls it every time and you always get in front," he tells a pouting Greg. Yes, our show is back. I missed it.