Mad props to my late-night editor Jeff, who kept me going when I was sick of it all.
A summer to remember. Five fifteen-year olds discover more about themselves than they ever thought possible. I'm already nauseous. They call it "The Coca-Cola Summer Premiere: Young Americans." We'll call it Diet Dawson.
We open with overhead city shots accompanied by the song from that car commercial where all the kids are driving to a party in dad's expensive convertible and decide to turn around and keep making out while looking at the stars. They want us to have that feeling going into the show. It's not working.
Ah, the voice-over. The staple of every new teen drama. "New Rawley. For me, it's home. It's an okay place to grow up, but as far as options, it's kinda limited." We see a smaller Diet Dawson walk down a street. The shot changes to an exterior view of a school. "Rawley Academy. The Billionaire Boys' Club across town. Where summer session begins this week, on about a hundred acres of rolling hills. And get this: It's high school, without parents." We see brochure-friendly shots of the rolling hills, rowing on the lake, sunsets. "For those who attend, the future can be, well [laughs], anything. And now, maybe for me, too." Diet Dawson looks up from his journal as he leans against the tree. We go to a tight close-up as we fade to black. The car commercial song continues.
I already hate this show.
A boy in a red t-shirt with a white undershirt rides his bike. He's smiley. His hair blows. He's at least twenty-five years old. He pulls into a gas station, and it's supposed to be all old-timey, but it looks like he's riding his bike through the sets of Back to the Future and Gremlins. Red Shirt walks into the gas station, slowly walks over to the COCA-COLA freezer, pulls out a dripping cold COCA-COLA bottle, uses the bottle opener, and walks outside. Close-up on Red Shirt as he says, "Hi." We see a hand washing the front of a car. She assumes he needs directions to Rawley Academy. The blonde in the half-shirt likes to smirk. During her special close-up, she tells him that he can find Rawley by following his nose. "It smells just like money." Heh. Townie humor. Oh, the fun! He says that he actually just wanted to pay for the COCA-COLA. She gives a breathless smile. So does he. She says they're on the house. Smirk. Eyebrow raise. Blonde Smirk leans over to dump her rag in a bucket, and I assume the bucket will be filled with Diet Coke. But I'm just a tad off. Instead, Red Shirt (who is pretty much just wearing a Coke can) leans over and puts one of the COCA-COLA bottles on top of the car. Car commercial song starts up again. There's, like, an old gas pump there, for some reason. She grabs the bottle of COCA-COLA and smirks. She holds it and looks at it for a while. She looks off. Red Shirt is peddling away. He raises his bottle of refreshing COCA-COLA at her. He then smiles, and puts the cool, crisp COCA-COLA to his lips, and takes a big gulp as he pedals off. Fade to black.
If this show is going to be always Coca-Cola, I'm going to be sick. For real.
Close-up on Diet Dawson. He smiles and looks around. We pass by fields of boys playing Frisbee with dogs running around. I didn't know you could have a dog at prep school. As their pickup pulls into the school's yard, Diet Dawson's Mean Scruffy Dad says, "What do you want, an escort?" Diet Dawson gets ready to leave. His mom is all teary-eyed, but still gives the stink-eye to the Bad Dad, so we know that Bad Dad's all mean and cruel. She tells DD that she's very proud of him. Bad Dad declares that they are "out of here," and leans in and says, "You'd better hope this works out for ya." Somehow, he's the only person with a Southern accent. I guess you know dads are mean if they sound like they're from Raliegh, not Rawley. But you say the names the same way, so it was confusing me until I checked my Entertainment Weekly. Oh, and for those of you who were wondering? EW gave it a C+. DD's mom then gives him a look like, "I'm going to be beaten later. Try not to think about that while you're getting your first kiss." They drive off.
Pan down to Red Shirt cuddling his mountain bike. He is. I don't know. Just sitting there waiting for him as the truck pulls away. He introduces himself as Scout Calhoun. DD has a name too: Will Krudski. Poor guy. Scout informs Will, "Hey, we're roommates!" You'd think that Will would remember that his roommate has the name Scout, but he's totally surprised. Scout walks Will into the school. Small talk ensues.
Steel drum plays the music from True Romance as we pan up to what looks like the lead singer of the Verve looking through a camera with a zoom lens. He's snapping photographs of the Rawley Academy for Girls. We get to see the pictures he takes. He then spots someone on a motorcycle riding into Rawley. Verve is very complimentary of the bike, but then zooms in on the rider taking off a helmet. The rider is clearly a girl, but we aren't supposed to know that yet. For now, she's "Just One of the Guys." We'll call her Terri. Verve snaps a photograph of Terri, for some reason.
Will and Scout walk through the dorm halls. No Nawanda yet. Their dorm room is enormous. Scout says that it's not the Waldorf, but it'll do. Will asks what a Waldorf is. Scout tells Will to take the bed by the window, and that he's going to flip him for it after Christmas break. Huh? I thought this was just a summer school. Scout asks Will where he's from. He says he's from the other side of town. Got a scholarship to Rawley. Scout is impressed, but Will says he's just that year's "charity case." Oh, wah. Scout shrugs off that he's from Greenwich, "a couple hours from here." Verve walks in and announces that Will and Scout lucked out: "This room is totally Feng Shui." Will again pulls the "Huh? I'm a local. Rhymes with 'yokel'" bit. Verve explains Feng Shui. I won't do it for you. He says his name is something like "Hamilton. Fleming." I'm not sure which is the first name, and which is the last, or if that's even correct. So, for now, he's just Verve. Verve shakes Scout's hand and acts chummy. He gives Will the brush-off. Verve says that his room is to the dean and the dean's wife ("a.k.a. Mom and Dad!"), but that he's not a narc.
The boring dialogue is interrupted by howls and shouts from outside the dorm. The three boys run to the window and see the students running in their underwear towards the lake. "This wasn't in the brochure," Will yuks. Verve explains that it's a yearly "rite of passage" at Rawley. He points out the boys in their underwear, and then the girls running from their school in their skivvies. Bum-chicka-bum-bum music starts up. Verve, Scout and Will decide not to break tradition (they actually said, "Gotta LOVE tradition," but I thought I'd spare you. Then I decided I wouldn't. I'm a cruel mistress), and start to run off. Will, of course, has a moment of doubt and self-reflection, but Scout convinces him to go.
I can't believe this. The credits roll. Incredibly long montage of kids running half-naked towards the lake. The girls are not wearing bras, just little white strappy-things. They're jiggling, baby (go 'head, baby). It's like a Howard Stern segment. Everyone is so incredibly happy, so tan, so thin, so wearing combinations of swimsuits and underwear. There is not a real minor among them. Rawley has a strict weight limit. Some jump over the camera in their heated exuberance. Slow-motion shot of Will and Scout naked from the waist up, staring and laughing at each other as they run. They look completely naked and completely in love. They all get in the water and splish around for a second, like maybe they'll have a water fight. Scout stands, water dripping from his perfectly formed full-adult-male pecs and says, "Oh, man. I think I'm gonna like this place." Secretly, I might, too. Just because these people keep getting naked. Suddenly, all of the boys grab Will and Scout and pull them away. They run out of the water and totally in the other direction. Okay. No parental supervision. Boys. Tons of almost-naked girls. And they carry off the two half-naked boys? I don't get it. I really don't. Will and Scout are all smiles as they are carried away. They leave me in confusion for the first commercial break.
The WB takes this moment to inform us that the series premiere of Young Americans is brought to us by Coca-Cola. Thanks.
Coke commercial. I plan on doing a word search after this recap to see how many times I end up typing the word "Coke."
Oh, good. "And now, the Coca-Cola Summer Series Premiere of Young Americans continues." Just in case we forgot for a second.
The hazing continues. Apparently Will and Scout are the only freshmen at the school, as they are the only two that are blindfolded, spun around, and then dropped off on a patch of grass outside Main Street. The other fully-dressed boys (I guess someone brought extra Madras for the Socs) then jump into their convertible. I have to rewind three times to understand what one boy then shouts. Here it is, in all its verbal glory: "Soobie Doobie, so's your bootie, baby!" Or something like that. I don't know. Fists are then raised in the air, boys shout and peel off. Will and Scout remove their blindfolds and we hear in a voice-over, "Damn, seniors." The townspeople point and laugh at Will and Scout. Will is overly embarrassed because this is his town, and he knows all of these people that are laughing at them. Whatever. The townspeople are dressed for fall.
Will and Scout walk across the street in their underwear and Skecher boots. Suddenly, they aren't wet anymore. They walk up to Blonde Pump Girl. Scout is all smirks and smiles. Pump Girl gives a slow-motion eyebrow raise. In extreme close-up. Scout opens his mouth and stares in slow motion. She gives an incredulous, "Willie Krudski?" "'Sup, Bella," Will says back, all embarrassed. Oh, God. Her name is Bella. I hate these people. She asks if he's now a Rawley kid. He says that he's just doing his Marky Mark impersonation. She offers to go get his mom from the beauty salon so she can see him. "All right, Pump Girl," he says. (Hey, that's my line!) "How 'bout a ride back to school?" Check out the witty banter. Bella tells Will to ask his friend to just call a cab with his cell phone. Scout says he doesn't have a cell phone. She asks if his "Beemer" is in the shop. She says he looks dumb and rich. He says he's smart and poor. She says, "'Fraid not. That's our act." He actually says, "It's a tough one to follow." Smirk. Smirk. Close-up. Close-up. Everything. Is. Said. In. Close-up. Half-naked Will touches half-naked Scout on the chest and says, "Come on, Romeo. I know a short cut." Close-up smirk. Close-up smirk.
Fade out to Will and Scout walking half-naked through the forest. I guess Bella really didn't want to drive them back to school. Good. More bad voice-overs. "That girl. I gotta get to know her," says Scout. He asks Will if they ever hooked up. "Please," Will says, and tells him that they've known each other forever. He says that he was too busy "lusting after the school nurse." "Hot, huh?" Will says not really, that she weighed close to three hundred pounds. "Scared of that." "Yeah, something about that uniform." Oooookay? Will tells Scout to share something dark from his past. Scout laughs and says that last summer he took his dad's '64 Jag out and sideswiped a tree and caught it on fire. He told his dad that it was stolen and he got it replaced with insurance money. Will says that when he was nine he and his friend were in his garage "reading porno mags and smoking butts" and they caught the garage on fire. Burned it to the ground. They didn't have insurance, and it never got replaced. "My dad broke my nose." Way to bum us out, Will. We know you're poor. Quit ruining the fun. They are still in their underwear, and since they are only shooting from the waist up, these boys look like they're naked, sharing stories in the forest. I keep waiting for J.D. and Veronica to show up with bags of mineral water and postcards of Joan Crawford. Scout says that last summer he had sex with his mother's best friend in St. Tropez. "Cool!" opines Will. Scout says that it's not really that cool, because the woman got pregnant and had his baby. No one knows. Will asks if Scout's serious. Scout nods and walks off. Will stops and realizes that he's going to have to top the getting-your-mom's-best-friend-pregnant-with-your-kid-when-you're-fourteen story and thinks that this will do it: "Scout. I cheated on the entrance exam. I bought it online." Now, first of all, that story doesn't even come close to comparing, but more importantly, Scout immediately busts out with, "Will, I was kidding. I thought you were kidding about the garage." Will tries to counter with the "No, I'm totally kidding, too. Ha. I'm funny, man. Cheating. Online? How? www.rawleyentrancetest.com? Right. Sure." He doesn't say that, but he does.
Will leans his naked chest in and asks, "Why the hell did you do that?" Scout's blue eyes are glowing so bright that he looks like he's about to suck Will's brain dry. Scout says he won't tell anyone. Will says he didn't have a choice. "I had to get out of that house. I had to get away from my dad. Somebody was going to get hurt and it wasn't going to be me." ["Oh, so it's going to be his mom? Nice one, Kruddy." -- Wing Chun] Scout says he'll take it to his grave, but he's still all smirking, like he thinks the whole thing is very funny. With the two of them yelling all close and mostly naked, I think this is the perfect time for someone to catch them together in the forest. Unfortunately, no one does, and instead, because Scout said the word "grave," we solemnly take a few quiet moments to watch some ducks on the lake.
Fade into a bunch of boys standing on the pier. Oh, and Terri, leaning against a post. I guess this is supposed to be some sort of class. Who knows. Verve walks up to Terri and says, "'Scool bike." Terri has the scariest ears I've ever seen. They hang three inches above the rim of her baseball cap, and they are all translucent and huge. Like baby elephant ears. Verve tells Terri that students aren't allowed to have motorcycles. Terri pulls the coolio by saying that she does lots of things students aren't allowed to do and no one has stopped her yet. Verve says that she'll eventually get busted unless she makes friends with someone who is in the know with the higher-ups. If she lets him ride it every once in a while. I'm bored. Verve calls her bike a "hog." Verve says he can keep a secret. "Can you?" Terri deadpans.
Oh, Captain, my Captain. "Afternoon, Gentlemen!" A man makes a beeline to the edge of the pier. "My name is Finn. No 'Mister' necessary." He walks straight into the lake. Everyone has a good laugh at the nutty professor. Will, however, takes this all very seriously, because he like, gets it, you know? "What?" Finn asks. He also has stubble. A little George Michael beard. He looks like Bill Pullman after an all-nighter with Nick Nolte. "It's time to throw convention out the window. Get ready for the greatest summer of your lives." Everyone smiles, looks down and thinks, "Because I'm getting laid! Woo-hoo!" Finn tells everyone to get in the boat. Everyone gets in the crew boat as the True Romance music starts up.
They row. Finn is in a different boat with a Janet Jackson headset on, asking the boys for the greatest writer that ever lived. Everyone is quite shy, until Will (who is pretty much just Ethan Hawke in Dead Poets Society for this entire scene) shouts, "Faulkner." Finn says that's interesting, but wrong. It's Shakespeare, because he's Finn's favorite. Oh, English teacher humor. When will it end? No, really. When does this end? Because I am so hating life right now, I can't even tell you. "Remember, I'm not just here to make you a kick-ass crew team, but to edify you about the superstars of literature." Now, let's welcome, all the way from Las Vegas, Siegfried and Roy!
Finn announces that the boys will learn of Shakespeare and Faulkner and Hemingway and Steinbeck. And they will only read books by men because they are men, and they will shake their penises at the world and give a mighty yawp. Terri looks concerned. That must be why they have her as the coxswain. Oh. They probably have her as coxswain for a joke. About the cock. And Swain. Like Swank. "Those guys have passion!" Finn interrupts my stream of consciousness. "Let me tell you about passion!" Please, do. "Doesn't come from here [points to head]. And it doesn't come from here [points to chest]. Comes from right here! [grabs and wiggles his crotch]." He tells Will that he's going to have to know these things if he's going to live up to his "impressive test scores." Apparently Will never learned how to cheat on a test, and got himself the third-highest test score in Rawley history. Smooth move, Diet Dawson. Someone does Terri's voice-over like Sean Young as she tells two-man that he's going into the water too early. The boys pass a group of scantily-clad girls shouting and waving on the shore. Finn tells them their heads should be in the boat. Whoa. I just saw some girl's ass. Smirks. Wind-blown hair. Smiles. Winking. Triumphant music plays. This is like watching Fraternity Vacation. Where's Wendy Jo Sperber? "Keep that up, you'll be catching a crab!" Thanks, Finn.
Finn is on his back in his boat. "Listen very closely, gentlemen." The boys are all in the boats, listening to the water. Finn asks what they hear. Oh, come on, you know what's going to happen, right? Scout offers something obvious ("Birds."), Verve offers something dark ("Pond scum."), Terri offers "wind," Finn tells them to look deeper and Will spouts off with, "History." Finn, of course, tells him to go on, so we have to hear this big monologue while the car commercial song plays again about how Will grew up on this lake, and how there's so much history there. Town fairs with people getting food poisoning from a blueberry pie-eating contest and puking until the lake turned purple ("Stand By What?"), and how he learned to swim in that water. Scout gets all excited and says that his dad used to crew when he went to Rawley. So many close-ups. Finn says that there were hundreds of men there before them sitting right where they are now and they'd give up their Wall Street seats in a heartbeat so that they could be fifteen and have their whole lives ahead of them again. But he says it like this: "Possibilities of the universe at their fingertips." He tells the boys to make the most of their days. Instead of "carpe diem," though, he chooses, "Exceed the expectations." I puke imaginary poison pie all over my cat. Finn kicks everyone out of the boat for the "swimming portion of the curriculum." Terri calls Finn "a wanker."
Montage of boys playing in the water. I reel from the homoeroticism.
Night. Will and Scout are in their beds. Scout says he can't get Bella out of his head. I can't stop staring at his manly chest.
Finn walks into the dorm hall and sees a light fixture on the fritz. It helps that it's right outside Will and Scout's dorm room. Will and Scout, of course, immediately start discussing how Will cheated on the entrance exam and how he feels guilty about it. Scout basically tells Will to do the right thing and find a way to feel better about the situation. Will's all, "And what? Tell Finn I cheated, get kicked out and go home? News flash: I don't have one." Oh, man. This is some bad writin' here, people. Scout says, "Look. I mean, if you can't learn to live with it, it's really gonna bother you, let's figure out a way for you to fix it." Strummy guitar and soft music bring us to blackout as Finn looks down in total shame for his Prichard boy.
Coke commercial. Surprise, surprise.
Pan down to the school campus. Terri is hacking into some computer gaming system ("Molten 3"). Verve walks into her room. "Feel free to barge right in," Terri says. She's really getting the Terri voice down, but I think that she does all of the lines in a dub after the scene has been shot. Verve asks if she's found a place to stash her bike. "Huh. Well after six schools you get a handle on these things." Verve asks if Terri's parents move a lot. "Nope." "So, why would you switch schools?" "Waiting for someone to notice." Huh? What? Sorry. I was asleep. What's going on? Oh, right. NOTHING. Okay, here Terri says something about busting into her mom's email account and getting her attorney to wire her money wherever she says, but her mouth clearly says, "Dad" and "He." I don't know why they dubbed the alternate gender, unless they were playing around with the he said/she said again. "So, that's how you scammed the single room?" Verve asks. Terri acts all indignant: "Scam the single room? You should see what happens when I hack into your dad's database." Is that a dis? Is that a come-on? I can't tell. I really can't. Verve is clearly confused by the line as well.
These kids still don't have names. Verve and Terri. Good enough for me.
Will gets his student ID and acts like he was just knighted. He reads the school's coat of arms. "Veritas est virtus." Some kid goes, "Truth in virtue." Will corrects him with "Truth is virtue." "Whatever," the kid echoes all of our thoughts as he walks off. Extremely long extreme close-up on Will as the Latin truly soaks into his pained psyche.
Verve and Terri are walking through the school. Verve asks if Terri really hacked into NASA. She says that she did, but you can only stay in for thirty seconds. "That's so Wargames." They laugh. If these kids are fifteen, weren't they still fetuses when Wargames came out? Verve takes off Terri's baseball hat and says, "Cool cap." Terri fiddles with her hair as Verve puts the hat on. After a few moments of them walking and fiddling, Verve hands the hat back to Terri. "Smells good," Verve says, like he's confused. The True Romance music starts back up. "I didn't mean..." Verve begins. "It's okay," Terri interrupts, fixing her hat. He keeps trying to stammer an explanation, but Terri says, "It's cool."
Scout pedals up to Bella's gas station. She leans in and smirks. Smirk. Open mouth smirk. Eyebrow. Smirk. Genius! She walks up to him, drags her right hand across her vagina and says, "Hi." I don't know, she does, okay? She asks if he lives in a mansion "like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." He says it's more like Billy Madison. "Tell me you're kidding," she laughs. He asks if she can take a break. "I'm working." "I'll wait." "Give me a minute." I fall completely asleep.
Bella and Scout are riding his bike with Scout on the handlebars. His mouth is on her shoulder, then it isn't, then it is. Her hair is behind her shoulder, then it isn't, then it is. Ignore the bad edits. It's how I cope. Strummy guitar. Scout says he didn't want to go to Rawley because he thought his dad would force him to, but then he didn't, so Scout realized that Rawley was where he wanted to go. "Aw, you're such a rebel without a cause," Bella says for absolutely no reason at all. Bella realizes that Scout has quite a legacy in his family with Rawley. There's a hall named after his family. Scout asks if Bella works with her mom at the gas station. Bella says that her mom left ten years ago. It's just her, her dad and her sister that looks just like her mom. Scout asks if Bella is just like her dad. She goes into this long-winded, painfully obvious explanation about how her dad isn't really her real dad, but is her real dad as far as she's concerned, and as far as anyone knows. Her mother had a scandalous affair, but she's not supposed to know. Family secret. She says she doesn't talk about it with him because he doesn't want to "freak him out." Smirk. Smirk. "It's all so very twentieth-century."
Bella and Scout sit under a tree and play this game where one of them says something, and the other one gives its duration. "Leaves on a tree." "Six months." "Ice cubes. Water to freezing." "Good one. Um, I don't know, thirty minutes?" "Approximately." Scout laughs, gives her a real look and says, "Hurt feelings not hurt anymore." Bella smiles and says, "That is like, so relative. And what would you know about hurt feelings anyway, Master Scout?" Who talks like this? She calls him a Fresh Prince again. She squints and pouts and says she's sure he always gets what he wants. Scout's all, "I don't know what I want." She says that he'd better figure out something that he wants. He's stammering about how he knows what he wants. She says he's giving her the "I'm gonna do something to you look." He says that he is, and that he's about to, and that he can't wait to, and that he's wanted to, and that he really will, and then she shuts him up and they tongue-kiss. FINALLY. God. The music plays and I think I'm not supposed to notice that it's basically "Storybook Story" from The Princess Bride. After the kiss, Bella and Scout do what any other fifteen-year olds do after a first kiss -- they look off vacantly in two different directions. She looks back, squints, pouts, smirks, squints, and smirks. The emotion.
Will walks alone through the dorm hall. Finn approaches him and asks if he knows who Hobbes is. Will asks if he means the one with "Calvin and" or the philosopher. Finn is amused. He asks if Will knows Hobbes's philosophy. Will admits that he doesn't. "It was there's an inherent social contract of which honesty is the foundation." He then tells Will, "I'm onto you." Close your eyes, the close-ups get crazy-dizzy here. Will: "Meaning what?" Finn: "Meaning you cheated." Will: "Look! I didn't have a choice!" Finn [with stern look and low villainous voice]: "You got nothing but choices [sic]." He's the English teacher, right? Just checking. Will [totally rushing through lines, ignoring intent, emotion, motivation, acting]: "God, please don't do this to me. Look, I've never got a break. You gotta understand. Please." Finn says that not only did Will cheat, he took a space from a student who deserved to be at the school. Will asks what Finn is going to do. "You need to be thinking about what you're going to do." Ooh. Burn. Finn walks off. Will looks around all distant-like.
That strummy song with a guy begging someone to "tell me why" while a choir orders someone to "come on come on come on" is playing. Bella is working on a truck while Scout rides up on his bike. Man, when they say no parental supervision, they really mean it. It's like really late at night, I think. Scout asks if she likes the truck. What a stupid come-on line. Bella doesn't notice and says that she has fantasies of her dad giving her the truck when she turns eighteen. Smirk. Smirk. Eyebrow. Squint. "You stalking me?" she asks. Scout's turn. Smirk. Smirk. Eyebrow. "I couldn't decide between obsessive-compulsive or cool and disinterested." I'll tell you which one I'm going for. Bella says she always thought "cool and disinterested was overrated." Smirk. Head-lean. Eyebrow. Big glossy smirk. Bat eyelashes. Smirk. Scout leans in. Smirk. Mouth-breathing. Eyebrows. Double eyebrows. He asks Bella to dance. She asks if he's kidding. Oh. My. God. He says this: "I never kid about anything as serious as dancing." Smirk. Laugh. Smirk. They take each other's hands and begin to dance. She looks like she's trying to dig her fists into his underarms, and he's all "What is this? Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" She laughs, but I don't get it. The cameraman leaves to get a beer, and he jostles the lens just a bit on his way out. He dips her; she gets too happy, so her dad has to walk in. All fun ceases. Bella's dad looks just like Finn. There's apparently both a weight limit, required eye color, hairstyle and facial hair law in Rawley. The George Michael "Faith" look is so in, man. Bella's dad has shorter hair and no glasses. He barely takes Scout's hand to shake it, but instead looks like he knows a funny joke he can't tell right now. Daddy's got his face shadow and his lips all pink and glossy. His rugged flannel shirt is open to the third button, exposing a healthy patch of chest hair. I think Bella's daddy is moonlighting on Red Shoe Diaries. He tells Bella to lock up. "See ya when I see ya," she says to Scout. He winks at her. Bella's dad says, "I don't think it's a good idea for you to come around here anymore." But he says it like he's reading it from a Nuclear Physics textbook.
Terri flips off her bedroom light. She drops her jeans. Her panties show and so does the bottom of her ass cheeks as she leans over to look out the window. She sits on the bed (in front of the fully open window) and takes off her shirt. From behind we can see the girdle/ace bandage thing that she's wearing over her bra. Good idea, Terri. Push 'em up, and mash 'em down. All boys have bra straps on their shoulders. The better to practice popping. The bra is clearly for this shot, though, because Terri flings off the bandage, stretches out on her bed in a matching white panty and bra set, arches her back so her tight tummy and firm breasts heave and wiggle, and she smiles a satisfied smile. No covers, pajamas or modesty for this girl. Fade to commercial. ["You know, I don't recall Hilary Swank miming 'I Enjoy Being A Girl' like this in Boys Don't Cry. Is Terri transgendered or what? Why doesn't she just go to the girls' school? What the fuck?" -- Wing Chun]
I think maybe I'm turned on? I'm not sure. Am I supposed to be?
Fade up on ducks. Scout and Bella sit on a pier, half-naked. Bella explains that it's not that her dad doesn't like him, he just doesn't like Rawley guys. "He thinks guys like you use girls like me..." smirk, look down all coy and shit, "for sex." Scout says that's stupid. Bella gets insulted. "So you don't wanna have sex with me?" Scout asks if that's a trick question. Bella then says, "Eyebrow, smirk, look away and show some teeth." Scout asks what she's thinking. "You so don't wanna know what I'm thinking," she says. Man, why does everything have to be so damn drawn-out between them? Just say things! Say them! Dammit! He says he really does. She says he really doesn't. He says he really does. She says he really doesn't. Oh, come on. No, you come on. Well, I told you to come on first! No, I did! No, you didn't! Cute! Smirk! Pecs! "Okay...I was thinking...is this the guy I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with?" Then she's all embarrassed that she told him that and he says, "No, I love that! That is...awesome!" and continues with similar romanticism. She says that she's only known him "what, five minutes?" and that she now sounds like "something out of a Jane Austen novel." He says something about her being brave and how happy he is that she said that and that he'd never tell her what he was thinking. Smirk, head wiggle, pursing of lips. Baby voice. She says she already knows. Coy smile. Exhale. Smirk. Running, chasing, catching, pulling, kissing. Puking, praying, carving, hair-pulling, knitting, renouncing of religion, bashing forehead into brick, screeching, sobbing, flipping to HBO to watch Mr. Show reruns.
Scout chases Will to the study hall and announces he's had a "newsworthy day." He shouts that he's in love with Bella. Will really doesn't care because he figures Scout was the snitch that told Finn that he cheated on the test. Scout swears that he didn't, and the fight continues with the same "did not/did too" point/counter-point for like, five minutes. I'll spare you. We've grown closer, I think, at this point. I could never hurt you. Sometimes Will has a Southern accent. I will say this though. These two boys are screaming at each other in a closed boys' dorm. An RA should be on their asses in two minutes. Breaking curfew and shit. Fifteen-year olds are watched like hawks in those places. Will tells Scout to stay out of it and storms off. During the close-up on Scout afterwards, we can see him furiously bite chunks of flesh from the insides of his cheeks in an effort to draw tears, but it doesn't work.
That steel drum is killing me, people. Verve is giving Terri the lowdown about the "total miscommunication between guys and girls." It's a bunch of crap about how when a girl says something about liking someone or asks how the relationship is going, she's saying that she's in love and wants to get married. But when a guy says something like that, it means, "I want to have sex with you." They are bugging the roof of a building to get a better network connection. That's how they explained it. Apparently this small black box with a red button will "be totally faster than 64K." During this conversation, Verve whips out his penis and pees on a wall. Terri acts shocked, and then curious, and totally watches Verve pee as he talks about other sentences that say one thing, but mean, "I want to have sex with you." Verve now looks completely like Robby Benson, and Terri looks like Alicia Silverstone with short, black hair. Verve totally catches Terri looking at his penis, but doesn't say anything. Instead, they lean in towards each other to say in unison on the last punchline, "I want to have sex with you," and then Terri leans in even further and starts kissing Verve. She backs off, says, "Ooh!" like she forgot she was dressed as a boy, and then begins apologizing profusely, getting all uncomfortable and backing away. Verve wipes his lips. Terri smiles and apologizes again. Then she's suddenly scared and says, "Oh, God, I'm sorry," and runs off. Okay, this was where I was going to put in the Boys Don't Cry joke, but I can't figure out why I keep having to hear steel drums whenever those two are together, and I don't know why she thinks this is so funny. Close up on Verve rocking back and forth and looking around like Rain Man.
Will rows. Overhead shot of rowing. I'm sure there's some sort of homoerotic thing here, too, but I'm becoming desensitized.
Will sees Scout sitting in a chair in some room with good lighting. He walks over and apologizes for not trusting him the night before. Will says, "I've always wanted to be here. This school. Rawley. Be one of you. For you guys, anything is possible." Scout asks if Finn said anything else. Will says the ball is in his court. "I don't belong here. I wish I did, but..." "Will," Scout interrupts, "nobody belongs anywhere. It's in your head." Oh, Lord. He tells Will that his grades were good enough for the scholarship, he just has to believe that he was good enough to get in without cheating. Will says he doesn't think he's good enough. Scout says he thinks he is. They lean in close, and the sparkle of each other's eyes is just blinding. Will rocks a little and thinks.
Scout shows up at the gas station to talk to Bella's dad. Okay, you want the long version, or the short version? Long version: Blah, blah, blah, sit down, blah, blah, Bella's dad doesn't really hate Rawley guys, blah, blah, blah, knew some great ones, blah, blah, including Scout's dad, blah, blah, blah, hard to grow up in Rawley because the rich Rawley boys get everything, blah, blah, Scout shouldn't see Bella anymore, blah, blah, blah, Bella's mother liked her some Rawley boys too, blah, blah, blah, especially Scout's dad. Short version: Scout has been tonguing his half-sister all week. Scout gets nauseous and runs from the gas station. He runs right into Bella who kisses him. He pulls away and says he has to leave. "You just got here! What's wrong? Scout!" Fade to black. Commercial.
Sprite commercial. Brought to you by the Coca-Cola company. Why don't they just change Will's name to Coke? He's the only one with a bland name, anyway. Well, at least he has a name. The two reliving Chloë Sevingy's film career are nameless.
Will walks into Finn's office and says, "My whole life's been about limitations, what I can't have and what I can't do and I bought into that. Let me take the test again." He says he wants to know if he would have passed. He says Finn can throw him out afterwards. Finn pulls the test out of a drawer and says that he can take the test. "But more importantly, I want an essay. No less that three hundred words." Will gives a look like he's never learned how to count to three hundred. "Who are you, Mister Krudski? You have ninety minutes." Finn walks out, leaving Will in a room, presumably with Internet access, so he can just copy some online journal's bio. For some reason "She speaks like silence" is written across the chalkboard, so we know Finn's all deep and shit. Crazy close-up on Will as he looks around the room fifteen times.
Fade into Will slumped in a chair writing. We hear his essay in a voice-over. Doogie Howser alert. Oh, man, there's a montage of the entire episode up to the future where Finn is reading the essay and walking in the park while Will gives us this crap: "You asked me to write an essay telling you what I have to say. And what I've realized is that...I've been ordered to listen from the moment I was born. But now I know it's my time to speak. What I figured out is that I've always seen myself as others have seen me. This poor kid. This smart kid. This dreamer who doesn't have a chance. I've known the comfort of my mother's arms. And the violence of my father's disappointment. But everyone encounters obstacles. The trick is to discover the opportunities within them. I've learned that everyday we create who we are, by what we do, and what we think, and how we behave. So now that it's my time to speak, I just hope I have something to say. And I'm gonna set my expectations high, and one day, I'll exceed them." Will taps his pencil on his desk and marvels at his own genius. Hey, Will. That's 146 words, buddy. YOU LOSE!
Verve knocks on Terri's door. She bolts upright. They stand really, really close and stammer and say things at the same time for a while and apologize and say that they will both just ignore it, pretend it didn't happen, and just be friends. They shake hands. Verve punches Terri on the shoulder awkwardly and announces, "You da man!" Terri points back and says that yes, indeed she is the man. As Verve walks out, Terri flops herself onto the bed in anguish. That damn steel drum is at it again. Verve walks away from the dorm and says to himself, "Oh, my God. I think I'm a gay." That's what he said. Mr. Feng Shui thinks he's "a gay."
Finn walks into Will's dorm and announces that he has good news and bad news. Oh, Lord. I am stuck inside a sea of clichés. I can't see the forest through the cheese. "Good news is you passed the test." Will assumes the bad news is that he's kicked out anyway. "No. The bad is after reading your essay...I think you're a writer." A writer of CRAP! Triumphant music. Will beams for a long time in a crazy close-up. Finn smirks and runs off to attack that one chin hair that got just a bit longer than "stubbly" and was threatening to go all the way to "beardish." Will looks around his enormous dorm and hopefully thanks whoever it is that made sure laws and school codes don't apply to him. He does this by jumping up and down and screaming, and then bolting out of the room.
Back at the Pier New Hampshire, Scout is just not smirking. Bella walks up to him and can't help smirking, since that is her only method of showing emotion. She cracks that good looks run in their family. Oh, she got him to smirk! He tells her that's not funny, and she exhales and asks, "Who's laughing." They both stare at each other and bite their lips because they're just going to fuck each other anyway. To hell with genetic disorders! Scout says he can't stop thinking about her. She says, "Me too," but we're supposed to know what she really means. "So now what?" Bella offers that they are friends. "Just like that." "Well, I don't know what else to do, Scout. It's so out of our hands. I don't know." Oh, man. The version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" that you hear on the eToys commercials starts up as Scout laughs and says, "I thought of a good one the other day. Bellbottoms to straight leg and then back to bells again." Bella exhales and says, "Thirty years." "Maybe." "Civilization," Bella says. "Uh, five hundred years." Much exhaling. "Overcoming the loss of a true love?" Bella asks. Scout has no answer. They just stare. A. Lot. Will comes running up announcing that he passed the test. Scout says he knew he would. Will walks into the lake and starts talking about that damn history in the damn lake again and how perfect everything is now and how he's perfect and he's "throwing convention out the window" and "exceeding expectations." He throws himself into the water as Scout and Bella share a long, long look with smirks and obvious thoughts like, "Throwing convention out the window? Hey, that's not a bad idea, sis. Gimme those titties." Overcome with smirk and the large Hawaiian singing about lemon drops and chimney tops, they must throw themselves in the lake as well and scream and hoot. Someone picks up Bella and puts his face in her boobies. I just couldn't tell which one it was because of the glare of the setting sun.
Fade to Scout, Will and Bella sitting on the pier in the setting sun as we have to hear Diet Dawson give the recap: "And so, our adventure begins. We find our heroes, and we uncover our fears. And sometimes, we triumph."
Dude. It's just the first episode. Calm your ass down.
One last Coke commercial. They got it in, those bastards.
week Terri's hair gets shorter, Bella says something about having been in a boys' dorm after hours before, there's a brawl between Will and Scout at a saloon, and Will looks at the ground while he sits on a stoop. You know you can't wait.
Is that sticky coating on my tongue from all the Coke, or from the saccharine dialogue? I'd better go brush my teeth, regardless. It's nasty. I feel like I just had oral sex with some Yellow Peeps.