I'm going to miss the credits for this show. They're so perky.
Steven bops down the quad, but stops dead in his tracks and gapes in horror at the parking lot. There, he sees a dark red Ford Crown Victoria, and he does what any car-loving male would do -- he runs. Far away.
He ends up diving into Lizzie's room and hiding behind the door. "Steven, you have to knock first!" squeals Lizzie, who is doing a blue facial mask and wearing her bra. Honey, if you're sitting around in your bra, yet you're serious about being modest, LOCK THE DOOR. Steven barely glances at her, focusing instead on peering out into the hallway and begging Lizzie to be quiet and not say his name. Sure enough, Hal -- the proud owner of the Crown Vic -- strolls into the dorm and knocks authoritatively on Steven's door. "Steven? It's the police," he booms, which isn't in the closed captioning, so I'm guessing it was a Loudon addition to the script. Emphasis on "loud." Hal waits, and hears nothing. "Just kidding, it's your father," he calls hopefully. "Remember me?" Still nothing. Steven isn't breathing. Hal shrugs good-naturedly and strolls away.
Steven turns to Lizzie and heaves a sigh of relief, dropping into one of their chairs. He complains about Hal's ubiquity and propensity for popping by unannounced. Lizzie pities Hal and figures he's just lonely. "I know," Steven says. "I just wish he would be lonely by himself sometimes." Ouch.
Lucien and crazy Hillary (Amy Poehler, back again) exit his room, with him gazing fondly at her while Hillary looks apt to slice off her nose with tweezers just to up the entertainment value of this moment in her life. "I can help you with the human pretzel icebreaker," Lucien offers awkwardly. "Could be fun." Hillary's face says, "It could be, if I was dead first." She coolly assures him that her residents can handle it. Interestingly, those Hillary-conceived t-shirts came back from the printer -- the front has a crude drawing of a tall building and says, "We like it on top," and in red lettering down one of the sleeves it says, "Tenth Floor." She's wearing it with pride, like an advertisement. "Well, I'm available. You know that, right?" Lucien pants, imbuing his words with as much double entendre as a fatally awkward person can. Hal strolls down the hall and waves. Lucien recognizes him as Steven's dad, and introduces himself. Hillary appraises him. "Hello, parent," she says. "Me R.A. You R.A. Dad." If anyone had said that to my father, he'd have cocked his eyebrow or squinted in non-comprehension, and later asked me who the pillock in the dumb shirt was, and how she ever got into college. But Hillary laughs, and Hal joins her. Hal then explains that it's been several days since he saw Steven, and he's worried that his son got into some trouble. "Um, okay," says Hillary, all business now. "Lucien, can we borrow your room-slash-office for a second?"
Lucien's Room/Office. Hal and Hillary face each other while he unloads the sob story about the divorce and his job waiting tables, and how he should've gone back to college but it's too late to do that now. Hillary chirps that it's never too late. "There are seventy-five-year-old yogis in India who wrestle tigers for a living!" she exclaims. "Your life is just starting." Hal slobbers that she's so great. "I am," she nods knowingly. "And you know what? Newsflash: So are you!" Ha. Hillary calls Hal "relatively" young and good-looking. Hal blushes and calls her amazing, which warms the cockles of Hillary's heart, which in turn warms the heart of Hal's cockles. She takes his hands and asks him to do one thing for her. "Dare you believe in yourself," she intones very seriously. "And remember -- you're never too old for anything." Nudge, nudge. Hillary's making her point pretty clearly. And Hal is also making a point very clearly -- turned-on, he pitches a tent and invites her crotch-camping. The two start kissing.
Ron exits the elevator, carrying a brown leather briefcase, which is a nice touch for a business major like himself. I hope Seth Rogen was carrying some other scripts in it, because I'd hate to lose him if this show gets cancelled. As he passes Lucien's ajar door, he hears giggling and peers inside. Hillary and Hal are smooching and flirting. "Oh, my ass," Ron chokes delightedly, sprinting off down the hall. He bursts into his room, asking for Steven. Heath grunts and points across the hall. But by then, Lizzie and Steven have opened the door and emerged. "Come with me! It's horrible! Hurry!" shouts Ron.
Cut to everyone hovered outside Lucien's door, staring at the action inside. Lucien, apparently, didn't stick around to make sure no one defiled his room/office. Or his Hillary. "Daddy?" Steven whimpers. Lizzie covers his mouth and pushes him down the hall, while Heath, Ron, and Larice keep watching with a mixture of disgust and interest.
Everyone confers in the Frosh Pit. Lizzie explains that her psych professor would call this typical behavior for a divorced man. "You call ruining your son's life 'typical behavior'?" Steven whines. Lizzie figures he should give Hal space, because Steven certainly wouldn't appreciate it if Hal showed up and said, "You can't date Lizzie." Steven stares morosely at the table. "I know, you're right. It just…ew! It sucks," he shudders. Ron, from the cheap seats in the corner, agrees, then brightens and asks if anyone wants to go see if Hal's "riding the pony." He makes hoof-clomping noises with his mouth. Heath cracks up, but Steven looks ill.
Rachel and Shaggy wander down the sidewalk. She's gazing up at him very flirtatiously indeed, and it's immediately clear why -- he's carrying her backpack. She thanks him, her voice dripping with honey. "No problem," Shaggy insists fervently. "I have two shoulders -- one for me, and one for you." He bumps her teasingly. As Rachel reclaims her bag, Shaggy desperately tries to prolong the moment by inviting her to the student union to play some games. Rachel declines, claiming she has to go get a new student ID with her hair looking good. And she's so shallow that I actually believe her. But her hair? Looks stupid. This is one of the episodes shot after the lengthy hiatus, and so her locks are a paler shade of blonde. Feh. I'm so over her. Shaggy lamely calls after her that maybe he'll stop by her room later. Rachel just waves. Shaggy rubs his chin and gets off all-fours, human once more.
In the UNEC lounge, a perky, quirky Japanese girl with ponytails and a low-cut shirt leans over the pool table, racking the balls. Shaggy sees her, and it racks his balls. She smiles winsomely, wields a large stick, and smacks the cue ball for a clean break. Shaggy's impressed with her stick work, inwardly hoping it bodes well for any nude encounters they have. "Mind if I play?" he asks. "It's more fun with two!" The girl hands him a wrapped cookie and says, "Kikuki!" Shaggy introduces himself, and Kikuki rattles off something in speedy Japanese. "Yeah, I don't know what that means," Shaggy giggles. Kikuki's ponytails twitch, and she grins.
Ron's alarm clock screams loudly and jolts him awake. As he sits up and exposes two very pale Ron legs, he gapes in amazement at Shaggy's bed -- untouched, neatly made, and empty. He is so confused that he actually bends down to see if perhaps his roommate is under the bed, or passed out on the floor in a pool of his own vomit. Nope. So Ron goes into the common room and gleefully points out that Shaggy never came home. "Maybe he hooked up," Heath says, way too nonchalantly. This is Shaggy we're talking about. It's momentous when he has a conversation with a girl that lasts more than two minutes. To actually have Shaggy hook up with a girl is sort of like Satan investing in earmuffs.
Just then, Shaggy enters with Kikuki in tow, dispensing baked goods to Heath and Ron. That crazy Japanese girl hands out cookies like an Asian Mrs. Fields. "Here we go again with the cookies!" Shaggy says, clearly mystified but speaking in perky tones the way you do to a baby when you know they can't understand your words but will respond to your tone of voice. So you can say things like, "Daddy needs to get off his fat ass and change the diapers," but you say it nicely, and the baby gurgles and smiles. And then spits up on your shirt. Kikuki is that gurgling, puking baby. "Isn't she cute?" coos Shaggy, kissing Kikuki's cheek. "Cutie Kikuki!" She giggles foreignly. ["Is it significant that MS Word's spell-check suggested 'Kabuki' for 'Kikuki'?" -- Sars]
Rachel bounds across the hall looking for Shaggy, and stops short when she sees him with a breasted appendage. Rachel, it should be noted, is either wearing a more heavily padded bra than usual, or Monica Keena had some things retooled under there. Because she looks bigger, and in the episodes, she looked perky but heavily, heavily pushed up. Who knows. Rachel stares confusedly at the new couple, while Ron waxes poetic about the glories of Shaggy finding a girl who speaks no English. "It's like you found the perfect girl!" he crows, waving his hands in front of her face as if the language barrier also blocks hand gestures. Shaggy whips out the electronic translator Kikuki gave him -- they have his and hers models, a male and female voice -- and uses it to tell Kikuki that she's cute. She is happy. "It's like we're on the cutting edge of dating!" Shaggy exclaims. "It's like we're on a chat page but we're standing right here." Rachel flinches. Shaggy brings Kikuki into his room while Ron grins merrily at his action-starved roommate, who is clearly getting some foreign tail.
Rachel saunters up to Ron and sputters that it'll never last. "She's got the boobs of a six-year-old, and she's, like, dumb," she bitches. Then Dumb Rachel starts whistling because the water's boiling. Heath pipes up absently that it's wrong to assume a dumb girl wouldn't be Shaggy's perfect mate. "Yeah, and I don't even think she's dumb, necessarily," adds Ron. "She just seems dumb because she's foreign. Like [Heath]." Heath glares at his laughing roommate. "I'm gonna hurt you when you least expect it," he says calmly.
Lucien strolls innocently toward the elevator, dreaming about Hillary and gumdrops and fluffy bunnies and balloons filled with candy. But those bubbles burst when he heads laughing in the elevator, and peeks inside to see Hillary and Hal all over each other. They're clasping hands. "Ooh, my hand is so much smaller than your hand," she cackles. "Aaah, don't hurt me, giant!" The doors slide closed as they move in for some creative tonguing. "H…Hillary?" gasps Lucien, wounded, pierced through the heart by the act of her tongue-sword stabbing Hal's…oh, no, that sentence is starting to make me queasy.
Lizzie kneels on Steven's bed, massaging his shoulders. Heath is reading a magazine. They're listening to some techno music. Lucien storms in and orders Steven to turn down the stereo, and Steven laughs it off. "Bring it down, man," Lucien says angrily. Heath lazily points out that it's already low-volume. "I'm not talking to you!" scolds Lucien. "People didn't enroll at UNEC to listen to your 'cool' music." He tries to be all threatening, but it's still silly, sweet, fey Lucien at the heart of it all. He dares Steven to cross him, because he'd eagerly borrow Sars and Wing Chun's shoes and boot him into oblivion. "This face?" he hisses. "Take a good look. It's your worst nightmare." Let's examine: Stringy hair, reedy goatee, pasty skin. I guess he almost looks like Jewel. Lucien threatens Heath, too, then scampers away, leaving Heath and Steven utterly stunned and convinced that Lucien smoked some bad pot through a stale apple bong.
Steven walks Lizzie to the elevator and chats casually with her. "The word 'canada' actually means 'small village' in…I believe Uruguay," he babbles. "I could be wrong." Heh. they'll be bantering about that Historical Society commercial that depicts Canadians inventing basketball, or discovering new parts of Canada while mistakenly thinking they'd found China. I loved those commercials. They were like, "Sure, he was a complete blithering idiot, but at least he'd discovered something." Lizzie pushes the button, and the elevator dings to reveal Hal and Hillary almost hugging -- they're holding each other's arms at the elbow joint and gazing at each other. They leap apart. "Hey, there he is!" Hal overcompensates, bellowing loudly and too happily. He pretends he'd forgotten what floor it was, and Hillary was just helping him out. "I'm just going to be by myself now," Hillary says awkwardly, closing the elevator doors. Hal quickly ascertains that Steven's fine and then pretends he has to leave, leaping toward the stairs. Steven's just staring at him like Hal's finally gone insane. As soon as Steven's gone, Hal runs upstairs to Hillary.
Shaggy and Kikuki sit on the quad together being a cute little couple. She makes her translator say, "Hello," and mouths along with it while her ponytails act perky. Shaggy giggles and points to her knees. "Japa-knees!" he says triumphantly. Kikuki doesn't understand, so he tries to explain the difference between "Japanese" and "Japa-knees," and ends up figuring that it's best to do less talking and more slurping. So Digital Shaggy asks in Japanese if it's okay. "Proceed," DigiKuki says.
Steven and Heath are brushing their teeth in the bathroom when Lucien skulks in and decides it's a perfect time to get pissy. "What the hell, man, that's disgusting!" he shouts. Steven stares down at his sink area, which is covered in thick red hair shavings. They so clearly don't belong to Steven. He tries to explain that the guy with the huge red beard was just shaving in there, and said man even walks past Lucien, but he denies it and so Lucien's like, "Let's not play the blame game, Karp! I will write you up!" He's so venomous, but in the mildest way, like a snake that spits dish soap. Steven can't quite believe this and just stares blankly at Lucien.
Ron catches Rachel in their room, holding up Shaggy's translator in triumph. "You better put that back -- that's, like, the key to [Shaggy's] sex life," Ron warns. Rachel snits that he shouldn't have left it out in the open, because she considers "buried at the bottom of his backpack" to mean "out in the open." Nosy cow. Rachel grabs Ron and tells him they're about to have some fun. "We gonna make out?" he perks up. But instead, Rachel looks up Kikuki's number in Shaggy's planner and then calls her, letting Ron leave rude messages with the translator. He can barely contain his snorts of laughter while typing things like "I light my own farts" and "Where is the eel farm?" Rachel grabs it and types, "You think you are so hot, but you are so not," and snorts hysterically as she listens to it play. Ron hangs up the phone. "That was kind of mean," he derides, grabbing back the translator. Rachel can't believe her boobs alone didn't make that the funniest, cutest thing she's ever done. Her new hair wilts.
Steven grouses to Lizzie and Heath that he's getting vilified by Lucien because of his father. "Let's monkey-shine his ass," Heath says mischievously. Lizzie hates that idea, so Steven swears he won't do it. As soon as she leaves for class, though, Heath goes, "Are you a man or not?" Steven nods. "Monkey-shine," he giggles.
Thus begins a montage of hellish things being visited upon Lucien. The guys explode some cans of shaving cream, knock on Lucien's door, and flee, so that when he opens it, he's covered. Lucien slips and slides around on all-fours, screaming, "Who did this? WHO?" Cut to Perry lying on the ping-pong table, duct-taped to it. "What happened?" Lucien gapes. Perry glibly answers that his sex temptress is stopping by in five minutes to pleasure him. He doesn't really breathe while delivering the line. Oxygen is your friend, Perry! Drink it in. But it's still funny. When Lucien appears to believe him, Perry shouts, "No, you moron! Untie me!" Lucien scurries off in search of his scissors and finds that his room's been emptied, his sheets knotted into rope, and his furniture hung out the window. He finds a note that says, "Try the vending machine," so he goes there and discovers all his stuff neatly lined up inside it. Freaking, Lucien grabs some money and feeds the machine. "Are you buying a candy bar?" screams Perry. "No, I'm trying to buy my scissors!" wails Lucien, who stops moving and literally holds his breath while waiting to see if his scissors will drop. God, I've been there. There was a whole Seinfeld episode about being there. It's one of life's cruelest tricks: the anti-gravity vending machine.
Cut to Lucien singing in the shower. "…kiss you and hold you, oh Hillary," he sings, off-key. Heath and Steven cut up his jeans and then guiltily bolt out to the lounge, waiting for their prey to mosey out of the shower. Lizzie notices that they're hiding guffaws, and very badly, behind some magazines. Lucien staggers out to his room, holding pieces of denim over his crotch and crack. Steven and Heath are so stupid that they sit there snickering loudly, and it's apparent who the culprit is. Lucien reams them, stopping long enough to grab a towel with his teeth. He kicks Steven out of the dorm. "You're not my dad!" Steven yells. Even worse, Steven: he's yo' daddy. "No, I'm not your dad," Lucien retaliates. "If I was your dad, I'd be nailing Hillary!" He turns to snarl that he's watching Lizzie, too, then pauses. "Buttercup," he simpers. Best line.
Shaggy and Kikuki are facing off -- or rather, DigiKuki and Shagganese are sparring, and their counterparts are speaking confusedly in their own languages. "Why do you ignite your gas?" DigiKuki asks, while Kakuki glares at Shaggy, hurt, her ponytails drooping. "Where is the eel farm?" Shaggy's like, "What the fuck, woman?" DigiKuki says, "You make no sense." Shaggy repeats that, and then Shagganese says, "No, you make no sense." All four voices yell that back and forth, as Shaggy and Kikuki wave the translators around like weapons. "Stop yelling at me!" wails Shaggy.
Steven pouts that Lizzie and Heath were no help at all with Lucien. He mocks Heath, waving his hands around and saying, "Oooh, let's go monkey-shine Lucien's arse," and his exaggerated accent is really funny. Heath chuckles and admits that they "shined it too hard." Steven vows to take Lucien down with him, and Lizzie and Heath delightedly decide they're completely behind him.
Heath gleefully cranks his stereo, and they drag mattresses down the hall, creating padding at the end of it. P.B. and The Samoan appear and help move the Generic Cold Drinks machine in front of Lucien's door, and they all toss buckets of soapy water onto the linoleum. Everybody slip-'n'-slides.
Shaggy gripes to Ron that Kikuki's really angry, and the more she tries explaining, the less sense she makes. Ron shakes his head and confesses that Rachel stole the translators, and they joined forces to leave rude messages on "Kookooroo's" voice mail. Shaggy stops walking, utterly floored. And just when you think it's because he's angry, Shaggy throws his arms in the air triumphantly and proclaims that Rachel's jealous. He runs off in a horny frenzy, for he thinks he will be feeling some breasts soon. Ron yells, "Where are you going?" and then mutters, "Other than 'nuts'…"
Hillary and Hal calmly undress in her bedroom. She tells him that he should prepare for Steven to be shocked by their affair and decides to role-play, only Hal will play Older Man In The Corner Staring Confusedly At The Crazy Woman, and Hillary will play everyone else. She says Steven might come at him with, "What are you, some kind of freak? Why would you date someone so much younger than you?" Hillary then pretty much goes off the deep end, her calm eroding into wild panic. "Then he'll say, 'Everybody says she's crazy, she's on medication,' and you'll just be like, 'What? She's not crazy…she doesn't take the medication because it makes her sleepy, and gets rid of her sex drive. Oh great, what a life!'" Hillary explains, totally wound up now. "And he'll be like, 'She slept with everyone on the floor, Dad.'…He might just start screaming, 'She's a whore! She tried to sleep with me and I said no, and she's just doing this to try and get back at me,' and you just have to laugh and say, 'What?'" Fantastic stuff, that. Hal seriously just stands there growing more and more skeptical of her sanity, while Hillary goes nuttier than a Snickers.
More slip-'n'-slide. Lizzie goes, and you can tell Carla Gallo didn't get enough momentum, because she slows down halfway there and they have to cut away from her. The Samoan slides across the screen on his belly. Lucien wakes up, hears the sounds of uninhibited joy, and realizes there's a parade that needs some threatening storm clouds overhead. He whips open his door…and encounters the vending machine. "Hey, hey, hey!" he screams.
Somehow, Lucien wiggles past the machine and into the hall. "What the hell are you freshman idiots doing?" he screams. Steven defensively says that it shouldn't matter, because he's already been kicked out. Lizzie and Heath agree to leave the dorm, too, all in the name of freedom and truth and beauty and wet soapy floors. Heath makes a nasty and inappropriate remark about how he'll leave if Lucien is done watching him. That's kind of a dumb thing to say. "You are a dead man, Karp," Lucien seethes. "You want to take this outside? Because I'll take it outside!" Steven figures this is too lame to take outside, so of course that bolsters Lucien's courage. Heath offers to take Lucien outside. "I'm not asking you to take it outside," Lucien stammers. Heath suggests that they all go outside. "Okay, fine, let's take it outside!" yells Steven. "I don't want to," shrinks Lucien. Steven shouts at him for kicking him out of the dorm, and Lucien defensively squeals that he doesn't even have that kind of authority. Ha.
Hillary charges downstairs and rails at Lucien for losing control of the floor. She snaps her gaze over to Heath and with barely a breath she says, all sultry, "Heyyy, [Heath]." Lucien tattles on Steven. "Were you 'slipping' and 'sliding'?" Hillary fumes. "If you do that one more time, I swear to God…" So naturally, Steven turns and takes a running jump onto the skip-'n'-slide area. Hillary, enraged, runs after him and flops atop him, kicking and yelling. Steven screams, "You're not my stepmother!" while Hillary yells, "Look what you've done to my dorm!"
They skid to a halt, and Lucien demands that they stop the madness. "Everybody knows you're giving it to Steven's dad!" moans Lucien. "Look at this, this is because of you! So blind, so blind, my sweet Hillary!" Lucien starts rubbing his nipples. "You don't see the beauty in front of you," he beseeches. Um, I am certain there is no beauty in Lucien's nipples. He wails about Hillary not taking a chance on him, and flees weeping to his room/office/mental ward. Everyone stares after him, then stares at Hillary, then stares at each other, not sure where to look or why this episode has suddenly ground to a halt.
Hillary stands and apologizes to everyone. "He's right, I think things have gotten a little out of control," she trembles. "But we're going to have a good time tonight. I want to let everyone know that the Muslim Awareness Pizza Party changed from 5 PM to 6 PM." Slowly, Hillary loses her battle against tears and just starts shrilly crying. "We have pizza there," she sobs pathetically. "We don't have any judgment, we just have pizza there. We just…have…pizza." I stand corrected -- that is the best line of the show. Amy Poehler makes this simultaneously hilarious and kind of sad, in a good way. I feel sorry for crazy Hillary the Slut Whore. She blathers that she's okay, then starts to leave, but stops when she reaches Hal. She stares up at him, then sighs and punches his chest lightly and affectionately. Hal doesn't watch her leave, but mournfully touches the spot Hillary touched. Man, suddenly this show is depressing me. And I really didn't need the help.
Shaggy calls Kikuki, and lets Shagganese tell her that he can't be with her because he's in love with Rachel. "Intercourse you," DigiKuki says. Oh, damn, a tie for the best line! Crap. I am so indecisive. Or I'm a line-whore. Shaggy sniffles and hangs up, weary of heart but sprightly of crotch, ready to bang Rachel three times sideways.
Rachel and Shaggy attack the quad again, as flirty as ever. But this time, she agrees to go play pool with him, having warmed to the idea of knocking around some balls with Shaggy and a big stick. Yeah, have fun with that, Rach. As they walk away to the Student Union, he walks close to her, and as he talks, he keeps reaching his arm behind her and letting it drop so that it brushes against her, and occasionally he lets it linger. It's really funny and well-done.
During the credits, Lucien tries to get out of the elevator, but he's confronted by a perplexing cinderblock wall with two eyeholes. "This better not be permanent!" he announces. "This wasn't here when I left this morning! Visually, I could not see this!" Ha.
One more to go. This is so, so sad.