Oh lord. I don’t know if I can do this. This episode was boring as sin. These early episodes really aren’t that interesting. Let’s hope Cody can give this series a much-needed shot in the arm. He’s coming!
The episode opens with the Foster family (That’s Carol, Dana, Karen, and Mark, for those of you keeping score) at the dinner table, sitting around with empty plates. I thought perhaps they were waiting for the lost boys to teach them about using your imagination (A Hook reference! COME ON! And by “COME ON” I mean BANGARANG). But no, turns out they are waiting for Frank and his rude crew of Lamberts to show up. They’ve been waiting for a half hour and are NOT happy. The Lamberts show up; they were at a ball game or a monster truck rally or a drag race or some lowbrow shit, and they all already ate hot dogs or other dudes puke or garbage or SOMETHING along those lines. Carol is upset that they didn’t observe dinner time. CLEARLY something needs to be done.  Later that night, Frank enters his bedroom, then enters his bed, then hopes to enter his wife. But she’s busy writing up new house rules. All she has so far is DON’T BE TERRIBLE but it’s crossed out, since we have Lamberts in the house we need to lower our expectations. Frank and Carol quibble about the idea of rules; Frank doesn’t have rules for his kids at all. That’s the conflict here. THAT IS THE BASIS OF THIS EPISODE. Do you understand that? Great, then we can move on.
Fat Lady watch: Redhead is moaning about not being part of the family meeting going on, even though she doesn’t live there. Mother fat lady fucks with her by telling her maybe that’s what the meeting is about. Redhead then freaks out more. Oh god, just kill yourself right now. I honestly mean that, you lead a terrible life if that’s what’s giving you diarrhea right now (I assume these ladies get diarrhea at least once a day from either dietary or anxiety reasons and today this is what’s doing it).
Carol presents various chore charts and a list of rules and laundry procedures. They include: 1. Everyone has to make his or her own bed. Fair, I guess. But I am an adult who never makes his bed. I have a very chaotic way of sleeping and using blankets and making my bed does not fit into God’s plan for my bedtime. I was able to get my mom off my back on this one. Beat on a drum long enough and you can get out of any rule. 2. Breakfast is served promptly at 7:30 AM, Dinner is served at 6:30 PM Okay! 3. Bathroom time: Everyone will be limited to 12 minutes. Wow, this seems rough. This refers to the morning shower I guess. Later in the episode you see that they actually have a crazy schedule posted on the door. Hey Frank and Carol, why don’t you open up your bathroom to kid use in the morning? Are you counting on fucking so frequently that it’s just impossible to let Mark pop in so he can brush his bully’s retainer before school? 4. Everyone is allowed 6 hours of television watching per week. Honestly, this doesn’t sound so bad to me. Here’s the thing about me and my sickness: I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I do ARCHIVE a lot of TV. So rather than actually watch shows I like, I’m recording them to DVD (a carryover from my childhood of obsessively taping things and editing out commercials on my dual-deck VCR). I watch stuff I REALLY want to watch, but mostly I’m working on various personal projects or doing something else while that business goes on. That way when I get hernia surgery and am laid up in bed, I have shit to watch that I haven't gotten to yet. But how would a parent police THAT? I guess I was a weird kid. It IS troubling though to think that if this rule were in play for me today that I’d literally have to dedicate all my TV time to watching STEP BY STEP for this website. This rule has more to it: Carol will give you 12 TV tickets that are good for a half hour of TV each. If you have extra tickets at the end of the week you get a gold star for each ticket! If you get 10 gold stars, you get 2 dollars added to your allowance that week! Do you think giving up 5 hours of TV is worth 2 bucks to the terrible Lambert children? Well, one Foster kid seems fine with it: “It really adds up!” Mark pipes up. This following exchange occurs:  Mark: I’ve invested it in a mutual fund that has an attractive dividend!
It’s actually GENUINELY FUNNY, the audience seems shocked that something that’s ACTUALLY FUNNY happened, so it takes a beat for them to actually laugh at it, but they eventually do. It’s like “woah holy shit, honest laughter is about to come out of me at a sitcom taping?” Fuck you Mark, those people are laughing AT you, not WITH you. RIGHT IN THE FUCKING KISSER, MARK. YOU DESERVE IT. There are 6 more rules, but they don’t get to them in the show, because all the kids fight. I wonder if the prop department even bothered to actually put something on the easel Carol made with the list of rules? My guess is it’s just a list of shout outs to different crew member’s pets.  Later, in the kitchen, JT is seen mixing chocolate syrup and milk in his mouth. I distinctly remember imitating this after seeing it on TV, and my mom yelling at me. “CLEARLY THIS IS FOR HUMOR, MOM!” I shouted at her. I was a very sophisticated child. But my mouth was still full of chocolate milk, which went all over the place, so maybe I wasn’t THAT sophisticated. So anyway, JT is moaning about the rules, but Frank tells him he needs to follow them and set a good example for the other children. Apparently Frank was going to get JT a pair of high-top sneakers. Frank reverse bribes JT by saying that if he doesn’t follow the rules, he won’t get them. This pays off later in the episode like this: (Frank and Carol fight about the rules) Carol: But the kids are fine with the rules, JT is doing great.
AND THATS IT. Yeah, fuck you audience!
Al enters the girls room, making a point to not hang up her coat, watch TV during homework time (wait, there’s a TV in their BEDROOMS? Well then fuck the TV rule, how are Mom and Dad going to possibly monitor that?), and throw books all over the floor. I was for sure that this was going to pay off by Al explaining she got her first period, but then I remembered this show wasn’t Roseanne. This ends with Al concluding that she needs to run away.
Later, Frank is desperate to watch the World Series, but is out of TV tickets. Unfortunately he can’t fudge the rules; Carol won’t let him because Brendon is in the room. Frank begs Brendon for a spare ticket. Brendon has 4, but is unwilling to give them up. He wants to save them for watching Dumbo. Isn’t Dumbo from the era of Disney when they were making “feature films” and they were all like 42 minutes long? Come on Brendon, you can spare a ticket. Frank then asks one from Karen, whose purse is too much of a mess to navigate and find one. Frank’s last hope is Mark, who plays hardball and sells him a ticket for 5 fucking dollars. Frank tunes in just as the World Series ends. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back for Frank, so he takes Carol into the kitchen to scream at her and possibly rage-fuck her. While Frank blow-dries his wife with his shouts, Dana enters to deliver the news that Al is moving out of the house, and is waiting for a cab on the porch.  So Carol goes to talk to Al, they come to an understanding, and Carol decides to loosen up a little on the rules. Al’s runaway plans? She’s going to move in with her grandma. So she actually had a legitimate runaway plan! Carol talks her down by getting Al to admit that she wouldn’t be happy there, since it’s a senior community and all there is to do there is Bingo and shuffleboard. I don’t know if I actually remember this scene, or if I remember it from Salute Your Shorts, when Michael tries to scam his way out of Camp and his grandparents want to take him away and he says the same exact shit.  The End: It’s dinner time, but this time the Lamberts actually make it on time, though they all run in at the very last second. When it’s mentioned that there’s a space shuttle landing on TV, the family campaigns to go eat in the living room. Carol buckles, and the excited family runs in to go watch a school teacher survive a shuttle for the first time in NASA history. Al’s Pig Watch: Al tries to bring the pig to the dinner table in the opening scene. Carol objects, “no pigs allowed at the dinner table” Dana makes the same joke I was about to make.
Sheesh, ANOTHER Al and Carol bond ending? I know I made a vague threat about these, but I'm too fascinated by the choice to end two out of the first three episodes with essentially the same scene to make good on it. Especially knowing that it doesn't pay off at all, do Al and Carol even share a scene past season one? The Lamberts running to the kitchen table from all over the house at the last minute was later rotoscoped into a Simpsons couch gag.
|
