Cox Digital Cable Description: Cody uses martial arts to rescue Dana from thugs in a biker bar. (hahahaha, no way this episode lives up to that)  This episode starts out with little Dana coming into the kitchen and politely complimenting Carol. At this point in the series we have only seen Dana be rude (you can only mostly spell Darlene without Dana) so we already know something is up. The thing that is up: Dana wants permission to see her favorite folk singer Arlo Prine with her friend Bernice at Jake’s. She assures Carol that Jake’s is a perfectly reputable establishment. This gets Carol talking about being a young girl and seeing Sonny and Cher, and before you can say “who’s Sonny and Cher?” (the writers did not have Dana say this, I was shocked), Carol goes and blathers on and on about the old days. This scene culminates with Dana getting permission to go to Jake’s and Carol singing the Name Game, and I’m half-confident this was not scripted but rather Suzanne Somers non-subtly hinting for more musical numbers.  In the next scene, Cody “Code Man” The Codeman, guitar in hand, is asking Dana why she likes this ARLO PRINE fellow’s music but not his. In his bid to impress Dana, Cody makes crappy Sonic Youth-esque noise on his guitar, without even touching the fretboard (how hilarious is it that the producers had a “shitty guitar noise” cued up rather than letting Cody actually make a crappy guitar noise). Dana says that she will only listen to his music if he writes a song about “toxic waste, social injustice, or the greenhouse effect.” What a shitty way to enjoy music, hey Dana just wait 15 years and you’ll have a new music hero: JOANNA GRUESOME. Oh wait, her music just IS toxic waste. (If you enjoyed that joke, I am available for high fives.)  Carol then walks in, explaining why Frank had been sitting there for that whole scene, and after a Gabe-and-Mrs.-Kotter-esque bit of dialogue (“I put Floyd in charge of the driveway and he messed it all up.” “What was wrong with it?” “It leads to the wrong house.” *shared laugh*… what in all hell could have possibly been cut for syndication if THIS made it through?), Carol asks Frank about Jake’s. Frank tells her it’s a ruff-n-tuff bar. But both Frank and Carol are too chickenshit to tell Dana she can’t go to Jake’s, Frank because him and Dana haven’t really “bonded” (foreshadowing), and Carol because… well, I don’t know, neither me or the writers could figure out a reason why Carol would be unwilling to tell Dana “no, you can’t go to a bar where you’ll likely be raped.” Fat Lady/Brendon/Mark Watch: Around the kitchen table in the next scene, Carol asks about everyone’s weekend plans. Younger Fat Lady says what fat, lonely lady-centric thing she’s doing, Older Fat Lady makes fun of her, and Mark says stupid bullshit about science. Brendon just sits there. Now let’s get back to the real episode.  Carol finally mans up and tells Dana she can’t go to Jake’s. Dana is unhappy about this. As she pouts away, the camera pans past JT, who hasn’t had a line all episode, sitting at the table. Man, I remember old Step by Steps being a lot more JT-centric than they are. In fact, I remember me and my friends generally considering JT “cool.” Maybe this came as a surprise to the writers? They couldn’t imagine people being anything but repulsed by JT so they kept him in the background at first before the idiots that were Children of the 90s latched onto him?  That night, Dana tries sneaking out of the house with Karen’s help, and they get caught by Al and JT. She has to give them five bucks to keep it secret. How does this pay off? Take a gander at the next paragraph why don’t you.  EVEN LATER that night, Cody “Code” The Codester is cleaning his motorcycle engine in the kitchen with a borrowed toothbrush (we can take this to mean that Cody doesn’t own a toothbrush). JT tells him that Dana is at Jake’s and Cody runs out to save her, nearly forgetting his motorcycle engine. I completely didn’t remember Cody’s crush on Dana being a “thing” in these old episodes. I’m kinda uncomfortable with it. It’s fine though, I’ll take it, I knew what I was getting into as a Step by Step write-upper.
Later, we go to Jake’s, which you may remember as the bar where Homer Simpson found Lurleen. Whether animated or live-action, there is apparently only one single “roughneck bar” set in all of sitcom-dom. Dana is wearing something that I will merely call something you don’t want to wear in a bar full of possible rapists, while her friend Bernice wears a tasteful pantsuit (tasteful means hideous, right?). Bernice gets scared and runs off, and since she was Dana’s ride there, Dana is completely abandoned in this den of squalor. Man, that’s seriously pretty terrible. Shouldn’t these girls have been carded before they were let in in the first place? How important IS Arlo Prine for goodness sake? Was Quentin Tarantino a consultant on this show?  Back home, Karen is about to go the movies when Frank says he’s gonna go talk to Dana. Karen tries to cover for Dana by saying she’s not in the house. She’s ON the house, on the roof, fixing the TV antenna. Man, fuck it, I’m saying it: GENUINELY FUNNY. Karen is awesome. Karen then blabs that Dana is at Jake’s and Carol and Frank go off to rescue her.
BACK AT JAKE’S, while a lowdown degenerate named Psycho is trying to get up in Dana’s grill, Cody the Codeface shows up to save the day. A bar brawl ensues, which is good news for me because there is not much to write about a fight scene. The bad guys charge at Cody one at a time, Cody dodges every punch or kick, says SHYEAHHH SHYEAHHH SHYEAHHH over and over, and wins the fights with wedgies and other dumbassed things of the sort. One of the bad guys falls backwards through a plate glass window in slow motion, that is the kind of scene we’re dealing with here. Then Frank shows up and helps Cody fight some bad guys in what may or may not be Patrick Duffy and Sasha Mitchell’s joint audition for the lead roles in the movie version of Double Dragon. Even Carol beats up a guy, unfortunately it turns out to be Arlo Prine!!! The audience doesn’t know whether to laugh or applaud, may I suggest both? The end: Frank, Carol, Dana and Codebrain come home. Carol yells at Dana for getting everyone into this situation. Then, Frank and Dana have a serious heart-to-heart, “bonding” in the process. Remember when I parenthetical’d “foreshadowing” earlier in this write up? This is what I was talking about. Somehow I’ve managed to write up an episode featuring a Cody fight scene without making a single wife-beating joke. I’m either proud or disappointed with myself. Oh Step by Step, only you can get these emotions out of me.
“Write me a song about toxic waste, social injustice, or the green house effect, and I’ll listen to it.” You know what Dana would really like? Troma movie theme songs. If I ever wanted to impress Dana with a mix tape remind me to put THE TOXIE RAP as the lead-off track. Oh man, I loved the terrible action scenes in this. Is there honestly any other sitcom that had the balls to just make the family patriarch and his nephew just show up and beat up bikers? Married with Children might do that, because basically Al made it his mission to keep the number of dicks Kelly sucked per week down to the paltry 1-5 range. It’s like an absurd joke! The script meeting had to have started this way “Hey guys, wouldn’t it be awesome to only turn in a 12 page script?”
The end features Frank at home bonding with Dana, and the gag is he has a tub of ice cream as if he’s going to eat it. But when Dana leaves and the coast is clear he dives his fist into it. I guess it’s because of some theoretical punch that he threw that made his hand sore, but I actually remembered the ending going into this episode and watched for the punches... I’m PRETTY SURE he didn’t actually punch anybody! He head-butted a dude, sure. He threw a dude across a bar, yeah. But no punching. My theory is that he really wants to fist his wife, but she’s not really into fisting (“Frank, we aren’t in JAMAICA anymore!), so a melty tub of Rocky Road is the next closest thing to his wife’s gash. Hey, is this too rude to be included in the write-up?
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