In true HERE WE GO fashion, here we fucking go.
Fade up and onto a Parisian restaurant balcony where Brenda and Donna sit at a table, eating. Donna's yammering on about all the delicious French pastries she was just shoving in her maw at a human trafficking soiree that was absolutely reported to Interpol. Brenda busies herself pushing food around her plate while not paying attention. Donna notices this and queries, "What's wrong, Bren?"
Brenda says, "You know how you keep on thinking that you're seeing David? Well, it started happening to me." I know that sounds like a fucking waking TERROR, but she actually means that she's now falsely seeing Dylan everywhere, as evidenced in Part 3. She continues, "I started thinking, what are we doing here?"
Donna, now living that glass half full life, declares, "We're...immersing. We're learning new things in a new language, in a new culture." She's really selling it and I'll say it again: I love these two together.
Brenda agrees, continuing, "I would hate for people to look at me and think that I was some pampered kid from West Beverly High. I really wanna be a whole person, with many sides, many talents, and many interests. I just don't know what they all are yet." Erm...is it bad that I'm one thousand years older than Brenda and am still striving for these very things?
Donna says that she's glad Brenda came to France instead of Kelly - which: SAME - because, "She'd be the one complaining, and I would've felt like I had to cheer her up. And honestly, I just haven't had it in me." Glad to have confirmation from her oldest mate that Kelly is, and always has been, a self-involved slag. A real friend for the ages.
Brenda seems touched and assures her, "You know, you're gonna be okay. And I'm gonna be okay. I mean, this is the summer before our Senior year. We're gonna find out what it's like to be on our own, and we are gonna have the time of our lives." I'm pretty certain this soundbite was used in the tv ads for the Season 3 summer episodes because hearing it is making me feel some kind of way: young, hopeful, unjaded, and non-dead-eyed for the first time in at least five years, so. Nostalgia's a helluva drug.
Donna agrees with a non-grating giggle (those are reserved for Mz. Taylor OH YOU'LL SEE) and a, "Absolument!" She then sheepishly asks, "So, uh, what was that time difference again?"
Brenda cutes, "I'll race you to the phone, because I want to catch my boyfriend right before he proceeds to have a good ol' roll in the sand - the first of SEVERAL times he's going to do that this summer - with my pick-me so-called best friend, because being betrayed and repeatedly lied to by them over the course of the next many months won't instill in me a deep-seated distrust in all people, including and especially those closest to me, that I will never overcome or anything"...
...and then they scamper off into the night.
Fade to Nana Zuck's Zone of Camp. They're playing some kind of charades, with Cameron miming an elephant; it's Dumbo! Hurray! Kids disperse...
...and Cameron's mother, Ellen, approaches, laughing and thanking AHHHHHHNdrea for her time and laying on a little good-natured guilt about how much her son has thrived under AHHHHHHNdrea's tutelage.
AHHHHHHNdrea's only response is to smile weakly...
...then turn to look as Cameron steps on a bunch of necks...
...and then smile with a knowing shake of her head all, oh, kids!; very this coded, which makes sense since they're the same age.
Here. David, silenced this entire episode and we couldn't be happier, continues to play his keyboard inside the cabana, but he's now wearing headphones so as not to come across like some Main Character Syndromed prick who thinks the world revolves around them. I'd like to include this character arc in my PowerPoint presentation to all the dipshits I come across on my walks and hikes around Los Angeles, who are apparently woefully ill-informed and unaware that headphones do in fact exist in this very dimension and have for many, many decades. Imagine their minds BLOWN once I fill them in on a little invention called Bluetooth.
Pan to Kelly sunbathing out front. It's a cute suit but she can go straight to hell. Dylan arrives, jam-pantsed to the GODS, and plops down on the chair next to her. Jack McKay is apparently OJ Simpson-levels of "criminal," given that the first thing out of Kelly's mouth is, "Sorry about your dad. I heard on the radio." Front-page news and a fucking breaking radio bulletin? Okay, Pearl Harbor.
Dylan sighs and says, "Yeah, when they started dragging out affidavits from, like, a hundred old women who'd lost their pension funds in one of Jack's high quality investment portfolios, we kinda knew it was over." Wait: so Jack is cut from the Tom Girardi cloth, no? Whatever, he doesn't seem too torn up about the now-destitute elderly Jack swindled, adding, "It's all right, though. He'll be up for parole again in 6 months." Just in time for the holidays! How lucky for the most assuredly-unhoused victims of his crimes!
To further propogate the narrative of Dylan and Kelly ~tWiN fLaMeS~ connected by the otherworldly, Kelly lays it on real thick with, "I guess we both know what it's like to have fathers who only care about themselves." I couldn't give my laptop screen more dirty looks while typing this out if I tried.
He then fills her in on Brenda's phone call, in which she relayed to him the brain-eating incident, and about which he seems to have little-to-zero interest. He also says that he didn't tell her about Jack: "I didn't wanna bring her down."
Then this dumb bitch: "Yeah. They're off in Paris having the time of their lives, and we're stuck here, miserable." YOU CHOSE TO STAY, IDIOT, because of your new, psychic connection with your family and life-ruiner Baby Erin and you'd already been to Europe and PLEASE PLEASE GO FUCK YOURSELF.
Fuuuuuuck: "To tell ya the truth, I'm not that miserable."
NO: "To tell ya the truth, neither am I." To tell YOU the truth: this whole exchange between them is another that I believe was used in the commercials for these eps and it's bringing up some pure, raw-dog levels of nostalgia as well, this time tinged with venomous rage.
Also: sly smirks pass back and forth between these two...
...as I scream into the void.
Elsewhere, AHHHHHHHNdrea approaches Ellen and Cameron, who's mad depressed, yo. Ellen advises that she told Cameron about AHHHHHNdrea's imminent departure.
AHHHHHNdrea then takes Cameron two feet away and tells him, "You and me, we're friends. I like you"...
...and then we cut over to THIS skulker! WTF?! Way to take away from the nice moment between The Zuck and the kid to show this degenerate not doing what he does least and worst: working.
AHHHHHNdea approaches Brandon following her heartfelt conversation to which we weren't privy. Brandon feigns empathy with, "That musta been tough sayin' goodbye." She informs him, "I wasn't saying goodbye"...
...and we see Ellen and Cameron hugging...
...and back to AHHHHHHNdrea telling Brandon, "I told him I changed my mind. I decided I'm staying here all summer."
Brandon - already ready to hit the breaks and gaslight AHHHHHHNdrea and everyone else with whom he crosses paths into oblivion by telling them that they're JUST FRIENDS, ONLY FRIENDS, what would make you think otherwise, GOD, and then begin dating a succession of Flavors of the Week - asks, "You are? What happened? What about Jay? What about CNN? What about Houston?"
And then she does something one should never do; she tells this gremlin he was right: "You hit the nail on the head. I mean, how can I turn my back on Cameron now? He needs me. More than Jay, or CNN, or God knows, the Republican party." I give up.
And I give up even more so when this anal leak's ego somehow becomes even more embiggened and he smugly inquires, "So...I had nothing to do with your change of heart? Come on."
If only this was said without a dash of levity.
Anyway, whatever, he flings an arm around her neck and they walk off into the toxic codependency sunset together.
Fade to Jay and AHHHHHNdrea walking along the shoreline.
No one cares: he says she's missing out on a great opportunity; she says they can be long-distance once he's back at Northwestern if that's what he wants; he's glad that she's staying for Cameron and not for Brandon, and if he believes that then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'm DYING to unload on him; he then asks if she's lying and really is staying for Brandon - YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES; she tells him she's a Democrat and doesn't lie...
...and then she lays a little Sensual Healing on him and does this in a real show of non-sultry (though Gabrielle Carteris does look gorge here)...
...and then this. Curtains on Jay? I believe so.
Curtains on Steve and his flame-broiled trunk? No such luck, dolls. He arrives behind these two scumbags to say, "Wake up, campers. AHHHHHNdrea's having a major tug-of-war down by the water and we need you."
This happens. Whatever. I can't. And she also squeal-giggles here and I couldn't hate her more.
And then this.
Some real Boogie Down Synth plays as we get Brandon, Steve, Dylan, and Kelly on one side...
...and the kids, AHHHHHHHNdrea and NOT Curtains-on-Jay on the other.
The kids end up taking the W.
Dylan falls to the ground on his back and OH look who comes down on top of him.
These two bicker about, I don't know, Steve being a clown and Brandon being worthless, I wasn't really paying attention.
Kelly and Dylan LAUGH AND LAUGH as they straighten themselves out and sit upright, and she GIGGLES, "I'm sorry. I got tangled up." He chuckles - FUCK YOU - and says he did the same.
And then Steve, the true whistleblower of this whole fucking operation! approaches and says from above, "Come on, lovebirds. Get off the rope."
Dylan then stands and helps Kelly up as Sexy Synth plays and they're all grossly awkward with each other and keep exchanging glances all sort of lustfully and I think we're done here. No, like, done-done. With this blog. And, like, existing as a whole. Completely unrelated, but: this "second puberty" through which I'm currently fighting for my goddamn life is going great, why do you ask?
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