Acquaint yourself with Parts 1 and 2 here and here, respectively. And now: prepare to be sickened. Moreso, I mean.
At the Beach Club, Brandon and Brooke and her Kelly Kapowski-coded dress walk along. She asks, "So what should I wear to dinner tonight? Casual, dressy? Whips and chains?" What an absolute caution this one is.
Brandon insists she doesn't have to do it, "it" being dinner with the Parents' Walsh. Brooke, as egomaniacal as Brandon, flings an arm around his neck and assures him, "Don't worry. Parents always love me." Cindy will probably love Brooke because she will mistake her for her similarly-maned bestie Jackie Taylor.
Brandon explains that he'll be late picking her up: "Remember that homeless guy we saw on the beach yesterday? I got him a job interview with Henry."
Brooke leans up against a wooden post and asks with obvious revulsion in her voice, "Well, what makes you think he wants a job?" This is when, if I were Brandon, I would've given Brooke the ol' heave-ho; however, he's much more measured than I, so he simply informs her, "Because he told me he did."
At that, Brooke makes a face...
...and Brandon's all, "What?"...
...and she, a seemingly very privileged person from a wealthy little coastal area of Los Angeles called Palos Verdes Estates, schools Brandon on all of her much-researched and vetted expertise about the unhoused: "Guys like that are hustlers. They'll say anything to get enough spare change so they can go out and get another jug of wine." Brooke has a bright, fear-mongering future ahead of her as a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend. She certainly already has the hairdo for it.
Brandon insists Jack's not like that, and, contrary to Brooke thinking he wants to save the world, "I'm just tryin' to help out one guy who's had a run of bad luck."
As she steps toward him and puts her arms around his neck, she calls him "idealistic" and queries, "Who knew you'd turn out to be such a soft touch?" That sounds...filthy.
They kiss and their lip-smacking and the popping saliva molecules can be heard from space, where no sound is supposed to be able to be heard, but in this case it's made a disgusting exception.
After they pull away, I take back every nice-ish thought I've had about Brandon trying to help Jack out when he proclaims, "Didn't anyone tell you? I'm the nicest guy in America." Farewell, sweet prince. I fucking loathe you once more.
Whatever, before she bounces she tells him, "Watch your wallet." I tell her, "Watch your hairstylist the next time you go into the salon when you ask for the 'Demi Moore in Ghost' and they instead give you the 'Season 2 Zack Morris but With Bangs'."
Here. Steve sits in his car wearing a string bikini top and bobbing his head along to some other horseshit song of David's.
These two villains pull into the parking space next to the Corvette. Kelly shouts across to Steve, "Hello! Would you please turn that down? It's bad enough I have to listen to David playing that garbage all day and night."
Steve - clearly suffering from some kind of auditory neuropathy since he can't tell that this song is VERY OBVIOUSLY SUNG BY DAVID AND HIS PRE-PUBESCENT TIMBRE that sounds EXACTLY LIKE HIS SPEAKING VOICE - excitedly asks, "Then this really is David's music?"
Kelly continues to disparage her step brother's non-talent in the "singing songs" department: "Why would anyone lie about something that sounds like that?" But Steve seems geeked about it before reining in his obvious elation: "Yeah, well, everybody's a critic." He tells them to not saying anything to David about it...
...and then peels out, speeding off out of the parking lot with the wind in his ringlets and threatening to whip the wee straps of his tank right off of his areolas.
Degenerate Dylan asks Degenerate Kelly, "What was that about?" but we don't care about her response because they're both degenerates. Moving on.
Over here. Brandon talks with Jack about what his new job will entail: "It's just cleanup and stuff, but it should be steady work for a few weeks." A few WEEKS? How trashed is the Club after it closes down for the season??? What in The Great Gatsby party scene will be going on there?
Anyway, they make plans to meet up the next day so that Brandon can introduce Jack to Henry - hey! Maybe Henry can use his "guys hidin' behind the flag, lookin' for a handout" line as an opener! - and as Brandon starts to wheel his bike away, Jack thanks him. Brandon says, "Yeah, well, you're a war hero. You deserve a break."
Jack leans back and sarcastically exhales, "Oh, yeah, real heroic."
Immediately! Brandon comes to the worst possible conclusion: "Are you sayin' you were never really in the Persian Gulf?" Get several grips, my word.
And it's not even the case: Jack explains that he was on the front lines, but when Saddam Hussein's troops retreated back to Baghdad, Jack and his unit sat in the desert for another six months waiting to be called home: "While my wife moved out and filed for divorce."
Brandon apologizes and Jack reiterates, "I really appreciate everything you're tryin' to do for me, dude. I really do." They shake hands and Brandon doesn't douse his with gasoline and light it on fire or anything this time.
Over to the Cabana of LIES. Inside, Kelly sits on the coffee table, applying aloe to her arms as Dylan sits on the couch behind her and applies it to her back. Fuuuuuuck, these two are the WORST. He asks her to come to Paradise Cove with him the next night: "Camp out under the stars? Two sleepin' bags. No foolin' around."
"Then why bother?" Oh, that is RICH.
He continues to try to convince her: "We can get away. We can talk. Kel, we might be able to figure out what we've been doin' the last coupla weeks." I can sum it up for you real quick: you're being pig-dog liars who lie with no intention of ever coming clean about your Summer of Love and Laughter by the Sea.
Kelly turns serious and tells hin, "I know what we've been doing, that's why I can't go."
He puts his hands up in defeat: "Okay. But you are missin' my cookin'."
And then my least favorite scene in the history of MAN happens: Kelly taps her shoulder with the aloe bottle and baby-talks, "You missed a spot, right there."
He caresses said spot - hork - and asks "Here?" She coos, "Mm-hmm"...
...and then he kisses it and I lose the ability of ever keeping food down ever, ever again.
More babyese: "I meant put aloe on it, I didn't mean for you to kiss it."
More smarm: "Oh, was I kissin'? Did I kiss? I'm sorry."
Baby-voiced to the GODS: "You're bad."
Cliché cheesedick to the GODS: "I know. You know. Everybody knows." WHO WROTE THIS DIALOGUE.
I would've laughed in this Cosplay Charles Bukowski's face but Kelly apparently finds his inanity to be a real turn on, because she leans in to start smoochin'...
...but lo! MEGA DORK David comes bee-boppin' up, inexplicably swinging a volleyball back and forth, and OF COURSE these nimrods left the cabana door wiiiiiiide open for all the world to see their debauchery...
...so OF COURSE David gets an eyeful of it - similar to Kelly happening upon David and Nikki's literal entanglement in the previous episode - before stammering, "Oh, god, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were in here," and fleeing the scene.
Kelly stands and runs to the door, shouting after him, "David, wait, it's not what you think! David!"
Turning back to Dylan in a panic, NOW she realizes, "This is not good." Seriously: NOW this isn't good??
Dylan stands and walks toward her: "You gotta go talk to him, Kel." These people are TERRIBLE. BREAK UP WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND YOU NINNY. Just be done with it! My god.
Kelly apparently agrees with my observation, because she runs her hands through her hair and, verging on tears, tells him, "What do you want me to say? Dylan, we can't do this anymore. We're being stupid. Somebody's gonna get hurt. Somebody we both love."
And then they just stare at each other as if that's a resolution. Rot, the both of you.
Exterior, The Hotel That Foam Core Built.
Inside the girls' room, Brenda, looking sheepish, enters as Donna's reading in bed.
Donna rolls her eyes...
...and gives Brenda a stern look that would make Felice proud. She raves, "It's two in the morning!"
Brenda pretends not to have noticed the time and comes around to sit on her bed to take her shoes off. She tells Donna that she had a really nice time with Rick (yick) and that it was too hard to say goodbye, and also that she would've been back sooner "but he insisted I meet him again and he wouldn't let me leave until I agreed!" What you've just described is a crime, Brenda. It's what we call "unlawful restraint."
Donna reminds her, "But our closing ceremonies are tomorrow! And our goodbye party!"
Brenda insists that she'll just stand him up, that "It'll be better that way."
Donna, in turn, softens and tries to reassure her: "Thirty hours from now, you'll be on the plane, heading home to the love of your life." Let's not get carried away: they're still literal children.
After tucking themselves in and turning off the light, Brenda lies for a moment and then launches into a dippy little soliloquy about, sighhhhhhh, the kismet of it all, asking, "Donna, do you ever wonder if there's somebody in the world that you were meant to meet...and then by chance or some weird twist of fate, you don't? And you miss out on your true destiny?"
Donna, however, shares in my reaction and responds, "What on earth are you talking about?" then speaks some mad truths: "Look, Bren. You've been missing Dylan all summer and this guy just touched off all your feelings for him." Hear, hear for some goddamn reason up in this bitch.
Brenda agrees but it's clear that she actually doesn't agree as she exhales into the darkness and silently wonders how and why exactly she's so attracted to an abiotic object such as Rick. Much to think about.
Immediately into the Dining Room of Walsh, where Jim, Brooke, Brandon, and Cindy are finishing up dinner. Brooke's sucking up about how great the food was, and Cindy, one minor LA-related inconvenience away from bolting back to The Land of 10,000 Lakes, gushes, "It has been a real pleasure talking to somebody from back home." This is your home now, Cindy. Here. In Beverly Hills.
Jim adds, "Mmm, yeah, suddenly I'm getting nostalgic for wind chill factors and the mosquitoes at Lake Minnetonka." That Minnetonkan water runs through these people's blood, including Brooke's, because she continues to lay it on real thick, proclaiming, "You went to Lake Minnetonka, too? So did we!" Cindy, the Grande Dame of Hennepin County, declares, "Well, everybody did." Brooke, cringe in human form, adds, "Well, everybody who's anybody." Woof.
She and her over-the-top Big Theater Kid Energy then non-sequitur into broaching the "Brandon Saves the World" subject, asking the elders, "Tell me something: which one of you does Brandon get his idealism from?" Jim and Cindy are intrigued by the ask, and Brooke elaborates, "He's single-handedly solving the nation's unemployment problem."
Brandon pretends that he doesn't want to be showered with the praise that he believes to be his birthright and downplays, "I just helped a guy get a job interview today, that's all. Brooke chimes in with her ghoulish clarification: "A homeless guy."
Jim and Cindy are proud of their son - WHEN ARE THEY NOT - with Cindy and her shirt that looks like the exterior of a Fazoli's literally patting him on the back and Jim commending him with, "Good for you!" Brooke takes the opportunity to make one last classist, passive-aggressive dig about the whole thing: "Well, there's nothing wrong with helping others, as long as they wanna be helped." I'm so thankful Brooke's days are numbered.
Daytime; Office Building of Taylor and Silver.
Inside, David enters Kelly's room - knockless, natch - as she stands in a robe with wet hair. Under the watchful eye of Aja Leith, he greets her and she immediately buries herself deeper with additional falsehoods: "Hey, David, look, I wanna explain about..." David cuts her off, insisting, "Your secret is safe with me." She says that what he saw is not what he thinks it was, that Dylan was simply putting lotion on her back. With his dick, apparently.
But since David has the ability to, you know, see, he blows off her explanation but also wants to make a deal, i.e. strike up a mutual, potential-blackmail scheme between the two of them: "I won't tell Brenda about what 'didn't happen' between you and Dylan, if you don't tell Donna about what 'didn't happen' between me and Nikki."
Kelly, being just as awful of a friend to Donna - whom she's known and supposedly loved since grade school - as she is to Brenda, smirks and agrees, "It's a deal." Nothing like a scumbag pact to bring two ghastly step-siblings together.
But enough about those pesky cheating allegations and their low-life efforts to conceal them!: Kelly tells David that Steve was looking for him at the Club, that Steve recently took a tumble head-first into a marble counter top, suffering serious brain and intracranial injuries and now for some reason "likes [David's] music."
David's thrilled, thinking Steve and his tragiqué tresses will be able to score him a record deal. Kelly understandably guffaws at this, asking incredulously, "Is that what you think?" Yes, he does think that, and that someday, "they'll be begging me for autographs, and you can say you're the stepsister of a superstar." This level of delusion must justify long-term stay in a mental health facility, no? Or perhaps is an indicator of a serious natural gas leak in the OBoT. They should get that checked out.
Back here. Music bumps.
Inside the lobby, a party is in full-swing.
Lynette - remember her? Yeah, I barely did, either - stands holding a camera and twangs, "Hasn't this been the most très bien summer ever?"
At the bottom of the staircase, waiting for the snap to be taken, are Maggie, Donna and Brenda (babes, all of them, sans Donna's Mötley Crüe coiffure monstrosity). Maggie grits through her tight smile, "Lynette, are you gonna make a speech or take a picture?"
She does the latter, then yells for someone across the room and takes off, Maggie running after her with, "Hey, that's my camera!" The high jinks, that have ensued.
Donna turns to Brenda: "You have been so quiet all day." Brenda mopes, "I guess I'm just tired."
But! Just then! Rick and some other 30-year-old call center floor manager who doesn't know not to look directly into the camera walk through the front door...
...and Brenda freaks!: "I don't believe this!"
She scurries behind the banister, demanding of no one, "What is he doing here???" Donna asks who and Brenda tells her, "It's Rick! The guy in the blue shirt."
Donna gets all horny at the sight of him and drools, "Oh, well, now I can see why you liked him." Brenda doesn't know how she's going to get out of this one, but Donna let's her know, "Well, I don't think you need to do anything. Looks like Maggie has it under control."
Shot of Rick and Maggie, flirting flirting flirting.
Back to Brenda immediately getting her back up: "She certainly didn't waste any time now, did she?" And what about Reek?! Why is he trawling for teen girls at some random party? How did he even end up here??
We cut over to Maggie chatting Rick up, talking about some "club scene" to which she can introduce him. Donna hustles up behind her, telling her she has a call, and when Maggie says to take a message, Donna insists, "It's urgent."
Donna drags Maggie away, steering her toward and flinging her at Brenda in her hiding spot. Brenda gives her the lowdown: "The guy you were talking to...that's Rick. The guy I told you about, you know, at the park."
Maggie looks at Rick, sighs, then to Brenda, "You owe me one." BELIEVE, it's no loss, Maggie - you would've been bored with that coma come-to-life in about ten minutes flat.
Brenda, however, revels in Rick's ability to put her into REM sleep, and she approaches him with a, "Bonjour." He turns around, thrilled at her presence, asking what she's doing there. She says, "Saying goodbye to my American friends."
Ruh roh! Just then, Country Strong here appears at Rick's side, saying to Brenda, "Well, there y'all are! I thought I'd lost y'all for good!"
Donna, a true friend, plays interference, swooping in and making it look like Lynette was talking to her: "Well, you found me!"
She drags Lynette away and puts her hand over her mouth as Lynette says, "Who's that feller with Brenda?" Remember those high jinks I mentioned a few moments ago? If you couldn't tell they are well underway.
At this, Brenda grabs Rick's arm and drags him to the door: "Too many Americans here!"
Outside, they walk through a very pretty garden and talk about the moon and how he loves her French accent and that she doesn't sound like any of the girls back home. Oh, Rick; you poor, gullible doof. She asks him about girlfriends and he says he has a few, but, "No one like you."
Brenda, nearly in tears, tells him, "Don't talk like zhat. You know there is somebody else..."
Rick - who met Brenda about 36 hours prior, and the only things he’s contributed to their conversations have been near-constant pesterings about how many dudes she's currently dating - cranks the incel level up a few notches and sternly insists, "Yeah, I know. And you know if he was Mr. Right, you wouldn't be here with me right now."
She tells him to stop; he obviously fucking doesn't and goes in on their meeting having been "fate" and, "To meet someone and click like we did right from the start? Like we've known each other in some other life?" Good god, MAN. Get a hold of yourself.
Brenda tells him that why it's so hard to say goodbye, and he says that she doesn't have to, then invites her to spend the next two weeks backpacking through the rest of Europe with him. She declines, saying, "Reek, zhings are not always what zhey seem. You don't really know me at all. And I don't know you." He claims to know enough about her - A DAY AND A HALF, people; in show time, we met this dweeb about 30 minutes ago - to want to get to know the rest.
She looks down because he's such an embarrassment...
...he says, "Hey"...
...and lifts her chin up with his hand...
...and follows with more face-gobbling which has put me off solids for the rest of the week. Fin. But not, because there's one more.
No comments:
Post a Comment