Study up!: here's Part 1; here's Part 2.
BHBC.
Brandon's still a-runnin'.
He jogs up to Donna, who's sipping a drink out of a glass that matches her bathing suit and generally being adorable. She tells him she saw Brenda and Dylan a little bit ago, down by the showers. Yeah, we ALL saw them by the showers, Don:
Yowza.
Currently at the showers, however, is AHHHHHHHHHHNdrea and the kiddie camp small fries, who've most certainly by now heard tell of their summer school marm's tenure as Editrix-in-Chief of the ever-loving Blaze and are collectively devising a plan to casually wade themselves into the Pacific Ocean and never look back the moment she turns away from them while she scans the Club grounds for any sign of Brandon and his peacock walk, which is always.
Lucky for her at this moment, he arrives!...
...and she in turn orgasms, pushes three children to the ground to get to him, and starts pawing at his arm. She introduces him to the kids and asks after some badminton equipment. Brandon, who really didn't want to talk to her in the first place, quickly tells her its whereabouts and then asks if she's seen Brenda/Dylan. She points over to a bike rack...
...where they stand, talking and giggling About being Hot Sluts, I assume.
He jogs on over and sure knows how to bring down the mood real quick: "Mom and Dad joined the Beach Club. Cabana 33."
Brenda's all, "Oh, my god, Dad and his embarrassing JCPenney clearance table shirt said he had a surprise." Brandon advises that they should probably take off, and Dylan, whose mussy hair still manages to get me every. Single. TIME. says, "I'll go up there with you right now if you want me to." Brenda tells him no: "They might not even know you're here."
So Dylan is OUT, walking away but stopping and turning around to say, "Fine, Bren, if that's the way you want it, you're callin' the shots...whatever you want! I'm through playing games." And then goes to catch some gnar-gnar combers and contemplate life and love atop his rhino chaser. Probably, I mean.
The fucking Synth Ghee-tar DOOM track starts up as Brenda steels herself and walks past Brandon in a march toward her destiny and unavoidable downfall.
Brandon isn't a total festering penile boil for once in his dumb life and follows behind, advising her along the way, "I think you better have a damn good story ready." Brenda asks him, "What would you say?" and, never mind, he IS a festering penile boil because he condescends, "I wouldn't be sneakin' around in the first place." Right. Because you wouldn't have to. Because none of this would be happening if you did the exact same thing. OR, you would never come clean and no one would give a fuck and you'd be back in your role as Jim's blameless little princeling by episode's end.
ANYWAY, Brenda tells him that it's easy for him to say: "If they were keeping you from someone you loved, you'd be singing a different tune." The dingleberry on the backside of humanity wins back my favor every-so-slightly by asking, "You want some moral support?"
But she's determined to go it alone and heads up the stairs.
Also, Priestley is getting in some genuinely FANTASTIC gum-chewing work in this episode. Kudos, you Carefree King.
Brenda arrives on the cabana scene HOT, all overly-cheerful and theater-kid-levels of enthusiastic: "Mom, Dad, hi! Brandon said you joined the Beach Club, so this is a surprise! This is great! I can't even believe that I'm here today!"
Jim...
...and Cindy both maintain their stony visages, however, as Brenda continues with her far-too-bubbly lie: "Kelly and Donna wanted to cheer me up. They thought they'd take me to the beach, you know, get some sun." Brenda, respectfully: shut your gorgeous trap. Which she finally does after Cindy, looking to the world like a woman defeated and dejected, i.e. a woman married to one Jim "Mano a EVERYONE" Walsh, interrupts her with, "Brenda. Stop."
And then it's Jim's turn: "Why is it whenever I see the two of you together he always has his hands all over you?" OH SHUT THE FUCK UP. Maybe they could just bone down under your roof as you listen from the next room - how's that? But OF COURSE he's not done because WHEN IS HE EVER: "And to think that you have been feeding us this entire misery routine. You have been lying to us and sneaking around for, for what, for two months now, haven't you? Haven't you?"
On and on, round and round they go, Jim asking if he raised a liar (well, yes, you actually raised two liars because YOUR SON HAS LIED TO YOU JUST AS MUCH) and Cindy saying, "I think you know I have always been sympathetic. But this deceit, this total disregard for everything your father and I have said..." but of course Jim can't let the little woman finish a fucking sentence and he EXPLODES, "Where's Dylan? Didn't he have the guts to come up here and face the music?" UHHHHHH, why would she have brought Dylan? She didn't know you knew anything; she was trying to maintain the lie, duh.
So then the only one who decides a goddamn thing around these parts demands, "We're going home," and starts to stomp inside, but when Cindy doesn't immediately hop to and stand at attention and yell, "Sir! Yes, sir!" while clicking her heels and saluting, he gets shitty with HER and snipes, "I said, let's go!" Cindy, seemingly dissociatively fugue-ing but really mentally hatching her post-divorce-paper-filing escape plan, says nothing.
But Brenda does!: "Can I say something? Can I please say something?"
Jim, hootin' and a-hollerin' like a real fucking hillbilly: "No, you cannot say something! Don't say a word! I'm finished listening to what you have to say, Brenda!" Truly, what a lovely first impression the Walsh family is making on their inaugural day as Beach Club members. I can't wait for the cops to come and break it up after it inevitably devolves into a knife fight. Also: when does Jim ever listen to a word Brenda has to say? Like, EVER?
Brenda rightfully FLEEEEEES the cabana and the descends the staircase with Jim hot on her heels as he's of course SHOUTING after her: "Brenda, come back here! Brenda, come back here this minute!"
And as a crowd forms around them because OBVIOUSLY, Brenda whips back and gives her father the ol' what-for: "You know, you are wrong, Dad. You've been wrong for a long time. You're wrong about me and you're wrong about Dylan. But you're right about one thing. Dylan and I shouldn't be sneaking around and I shouldn't have lied to you. And I'm not gonna lie to you anymore. I am in love with Dylan, Dad. He is an important part of my life and I'm gonna see him whenever and wherever I want."
But of course Jim, verbal assassin and first-rate bully, has to have the last word, threatening her at the top of his lungs with a bunch of witnesses in earshot: "BRENDA, I'M WARNING YOU!!!! You walk away from me and things will never be the same!!!!" I mean, let's hope so.
In response, Brenda looks back at him one last time, then quickly fast-walks off in another direction. I must note: her hair-flipping throughout this series of scenes was top-tier.
Jim. Panting. WHAT'S NEW.
Here.
Inside, AHHHHNdrea, Kelly, David, and Donna sit at a table as Steve pours water and says, "I still can't believe Jim and Cindy actually splurged and joined the club." I would take him to task for calling his friends' parents by their first names, but then I remember that he's their age, so.
Also, he pours water all over the table, because Steve is a failure at waitering, refilling, hairstyling, and LIFE.
Donna, wearing a glorified ice-skating costume that I unabashedly love, says, "Poor Brenda. She'll be lucky if they let her out of the house again." David says that he wishes he had brought his camera: "Did you hear Mr. Walsh?" As Kelly says, "I think everybody in the whole club heard him," I realize that David is to videography what AHHHHHHHHHNdrea is to the high school newspaper, i.e. an obsessive blight upon the medium and also on friends and family members and everyone watching this godforsaken show.
Speaking of, AHHHHHHHNdrea chimes in with her most patronizing tone and facial expression yet, and that's saying A LOT: "Did it ever occur to anybody that maybe she wanted to get caught?" Hey, AHHHHHHHHHHHHNdrea? Freud wants you to shut the FUCK up, FOREVER.
Brandon enters and sits at the counter before Steve. Picking up a glass of soda he says, "Watching you just gave me a revelation." He gestures at the glass: "Soda."
He gestures at Steve: "Jerk. Soda jerk. Get it?"
Steve and his deep-V are as unimpressed with Brandon's non-humor as we all are, and tells him, "Go on, insult me. The money's as good as mine." Then Nat yells at him to get to work, but Steve ignores him in favor of further ribbing Brandon with, "Must be pretty cozy down there at the Beach Club with your parents and AHHHHHHHNdrea Zookerman [yes, he says Zookerman and Ian Ziering should've FULLY been required to take pronunciation refresher seshes periodically over the course of the series because this man was the MASTER of saying other characters' names incorrectly] looking over your shoulder."
He then wields Brandon's prized spatula and sticks it in his crotch and Brandon looks on in horror and it's all the exact opposite of whatever "a gas" is.
Brandon then joins the others, Kelly asking him about Brenda: "I was worried about her after I dropped her off." Brandon chuckles and says that he's too afraid to go home. That Walsh patriarch sure makes a home feel like a detention center house, doesn't he? Generational trauma: who is she?
The Zuck (The Zook, if you're nasty) then decides to be an even bigger hindrance to Brandon's quality of life than she already is by asking to carpool to work with him...
...and Steve, taking what's probably his twelfth break of the day, sits down and mockingly suggests Brandon could drive her home everyday, too. So, in summary, in case you didn't catch that: even though Brandon clocks in an hour-and-a-half earlier than her, he will now have to stick around for an hour-and-a-half after his shift ends and wait for AHHHHHHHHNdrea's workday to wrap up. And she has precisely zero qualms about it. I don't know for which domestic terrorist organization AHHHHHHHHdrea is an operative, but she should be surveilled, double-crossed, taken into custody, and placed in a below ground maximum security cell at the government's earliest convenience.
Enter Peter Krause, here known as Jay Thurman, though following this showing, I will forever refer to him as a void-of-personality DRIP.
AHHHHHHHNdrea, convulsing and practically foaming at the mouth, SHOUTS out to him, waving her arms around wildly like he's not just five feet away: "JAY! JAY! OVER HERE!" I wonder if Nat has any random tranq guns lying around.
The human piece of balsa wood comes over and everyone besides Brandon knows him, as he was the previous editor of sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh The Blaze and graduated the year before the Walshes moved to town.
We then get many, MANY shots of Brandon looking unimpressed and - dare I say - jealous of, seriously, the dullest octonary character in the history of this show; nay, television.
Seriously: that don't impress me Brandon much.
At all.
This is the face he makes after Jay mistakenly refers to him the "features editor" on the paper and Brandon has to correct him with, "Uh, no, sports" and then he looks him up and down. THEM'S FIGHTIN' WORDS.
Jay informs everyone that he's still at Northwestern, and AHHHHHHHndrea brags that he's working in the election unit at CNN for the summer, with Jay adding, "Well, I'm still just an intern, but I will get to go to the conventions."
Brandon, unable to hide his absolute disdain for the block of styrofoam that stands before him: "That's great." Meee-OWWW.
And then two walking synonyms of the word "tedious" are off to see Batman Returns...
...and Brandon has an internal MELTDOWN as Donna asks, "Are...are they...is that a date?" Steve says they look very chummy and Kelly adds, "AHHHHHHHHNdrea could do a lot worse." Worse than that? I mean, she's a total day/night/midday/walking terror, but COME ON.
Steve kind of leans into Brandon and quietly tells him, "I guess you won't have to be worrying about AHHHHHHHNdrea ZOOOOOKerman looking over your shoulder now, will you?" Yes he will. Because see: my diatribe in Part 2 about Brandon and AHHHHHHHHNdrea's sick, sick little psycho-sexual (heave) games.
HoW. Tense music.
Inside, Cindy looks through Brenda's nearly empty closet, Jim standing behind her: "Both of her suitcases are gone and most of her clothes." Jim and his patented Tough Guy© hands-on-hips pose tell her, "At least we know where she went."
Cindy declares, "I'm calling there," and picks up the cordless, but before she can finish dialing, Jim, on the precipice of a misdemeanor DV charge, yanks the phone from her hands and huffs, "No. I'm going over there." Okay, girl.
Inside Dylan's dreamy Craftsman. He's walking into the living room when there's a knock at the door...
...where Brenda and her suitcases stand. I guess she took a cab? Or walked? He asks her what's up, and she tells him, "I left home. I can't live with my parents anymore. You were right. We can't sneak around and I can't keep on fighting with them. If my parents don't approve of my life, they don't have to watch me live it."
Dylan, looking baffled, goes in for a hug and tells her, "It's gonna be all right. Don't worry." She cries, "What am I doing?" and I'm all, "Moving in with your hot as fuck boyfriend. Slay." Because that's absolutely how I talk.
But Dylan's response is to sort of shrug over her shoulder and pull her in tighter as we all wish we could trade places with Brenda in this moment.
Fin. Sort of. One more to go. Soon.
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