Into the Woods
Episode #: 9
Airdate: November 15, 1991
TiVo Synopsis: Mishap marks the family camping trip.

Cox Digital Cable Description: Misadventures plague the Lambert family’s camping trip when Frank’s truck goes into the lake and the children meet a bear.

Frank calls a family meeting to give everyone some exciting news! The family is going on a camping trip! Yeah, it’s been about eight or nine episodes, I guess it’s time for a camping one. The Lamberts are excited, the Fosters fucking HATE it. “Where will this nightmare be taking place?” Mark asks in a line reading that screams “my acting coach is my mom.” Dead Man’s Clearing, Frank answers. The Fosters hate the sound of roughing it in the great outdoors, even Carol. But Thomas Miller and Robert Boyett simultaneously lower from the rafters to explain that they’ve spent the equivalent of the set budget of the entirety of season seven making an outdoor set for this episode, so the Fosters are fucked: they’re going camping. Carol first makes Frank promise that the Lamberts will go to the opera if the Fosters go camping. Will this pay off? Let’s find out together!

With that cold open out of the way, Cody and the fat ladies start the show off proper. Cody pontificates on the similarities between grapes and M&Ms. Redhead Fat Lady asks Cody if his parents had the same last name before they were married. Cody responds “Well you got me, I didn’t know ‘em before they were married!” God help me, I laughed. I mean I LAUGHED. Some Step by Step laughs I will stand behind. This isn’t one of them. I am not proud of this laugh.

Carol rushes in to tell her fat sister all the rules of house-watching while the family’s out camping. Cody beer-bongs grapes as they talk. Then he shoots a grape out at Dana walking by, who ducks just in time. The camera lingers on this for an obscenely long time before cutting to the next scene.

Now one of these scenes: While the Lamberts are packing, Karen brings two suitcases full of cosmetics, Mark and Dana bring a boombox and video games, and Carol brings Ratatouille on Blu Ray Disc (Disney’s cross-promoting is getting ridiculous!!!), as well as a cooler full of fancy foods. Frank yells at them and tells them that the true spirit of camping is to rough it. “My idea of roughing it is slow room service,” Carol pouts. Frank laughs and tells everyone to get ready for the six hour drive.

Six hours later, it’s still daytime, how about that! The whole Lambert/Foster clan is at their campsite in the first and last non-backyard outdoor set in the history of Step by Step. Karen finds herself a rock she can use as a pedicure stand, but she uses the rock Frank was using to prop up the truck as it was parked on a hill. And in the first of I assure you MANY camping mishaps to come, the truck rolls into Port Washington CGI Lake. How will they ever get all the RAM out of the upholstery?

We then go to a commercial break (who could possibly change the channel after that?????????) and Frank tells them they’re screwed. The truck is completely submerged in pixels, and they have to wait for Ranger John Lasseter to come by and get it out, and for months after it will have eyes for headlights and the voice of Larry the Cable Guy. But until then, they are stranded for at least six days. The Fosters are pissed, man.

The worst thing that can possibly happen on a camping trip happens next: they have to put up with Mark. Mark is a-scared of crickets and owls and even Brendon age 5 calls him a homo. Then, they eat some gross mystery meat. Karen sneaks in a chocolate bar, and the Foster kids fight over it. Carol takes it and tries to eat it herself. Frank grabs the bar and stashes it. Then the scene ends. Syndication cut, or did they just end this scene without a joke? We’ll never know.

Hey, I think this is going to end up being my first short write up! There’s really not much joke fodder in this episode and I’m not in the mood for thinking of jokes to make about camping show clichés. I guess the Step by Step staff was so impressed with their campsite set that they just let themselves off the hook in terms of putting anything interesting in the episode.

Dana tries to run away to the ranger station and JT spies on her in the hopes that he’ll be there when she eventually has to bathe (or was this just my hope?). JT tries getting Dana to go back to the campsite when they run into a bear! It’s not even a puppet or guy in a suit or anything, it’s a real, actual bear. That’s kind of cool, right? How about if I make a Gentle Ben reference? What if I make a reference to a fat, hairy gay dude? How obscure do I have to get here? Because I’ll do it for you, if you want. Frank comes and saves them by getting the bear to go after the half eaten chocolate bar from a few scenes ago, way to go Karen you saved their lives.

The end: Some crap happens, lessons are learned, and the opera thing is brought up again. See you next time, readers!

Oh lord, this episode was rough to get through. It's basically their version of the Simpsons episode when they go camping in Season 1 and the scene from Problem Child when the bear shows up. I myself wound up with not a lot of notes on this. Basically I'm mad at boner-killer Mark for getting involved in a Dana/Karen cat-fight and delighted that for a split second you can actually see the Bear's trainer trailing behind the bear. It's basically just shadows, but it's unmistakably a person. That, or it's Brendon hanging himself, munchkin-style.

What's most shocking of all is how lamely this episode ends. The bear scene happens and they go to commercial, and then it comes back to them just coming home and breezing past an explanation while walking through the door ("Oh the ranger saved us and helped us get the Truck out of the lake") This easily could've been a double episode. Wait, what am I saying?