Cox Digital Cable Description: Valentine’s Day at the Lambert house; Frank helps out at Carol’s beauty shop; Cupid’s arrow misses the mark for Dana. It’s a Valentine’s Day special! What’s so special about it? ABC Family is giving us a break from season seven and playing these very special Valentine’s Day specials! It’s a day of Step by Step Classics, featuring this gem from season two. It is no exaggeration to say that this is literally the best valentine I got this year.
This episode starts out with Dana, still strawberry-blonde as opposed to platinum, still in Darlene mode, getting dumped by her boyfriend (not Rich, he wasn’t born yet at this point) via phone. A phone break-up, conveying the jerkiness of the boy while avoiding the need to hire another speaking role for the episode… well played, Step by Step. Well played. What’s that sound I hear? The sound of audience cheering? That can only mean one thing in season two Step by Step: any cast member is walking on stage. In this specific case, it’s the Codeman! It’s a real shame that I’m the first write-upper to get a Cody episode, because I am nowhere near a good enough writer to explain what Cody Lambert means to the Step by Step-verse. So we’ll have to settle for a summary of the scene’s dialogue: Dana says Darlene-y things about how men are scum and romance is a sham, Cody says “SHYAAAHH-H-H-H” 85 times and the audience laughs at every one. Oh lord, here it is, the classic Step by Step opening theme. The one with all the lyrics; you KNOW the lyrics I mean obviously we ALL know the lyrics. But here’s a point by point visual guide to the classic Step by Step opening theme:
Now it’s time to get into the actual show! Frank and Carol are making out in the middle of the living room when a young, bemulleted JT asks Frank for money for a limo for the big Valentine’s Day dance. Oh yeah, this is the second reference in the episode to the big Valentines Day dance (BVDD from here on out), the first was Dana grousing that her bf dumped her right before the BVDD. It’s unclear if this is a high school dance or some sort of town dance, I would assume high school but it is never a good idea to assume when it comes to Step by Step. Frank gets mad at JT for interrupting his makeout session with his wife, and a limoless JT saunters his plastic backpack, brownish denim jacket, laceless shoes, t-shirt tucked into jeans with belt, and mullet haircut to the kitchen to talk to Cody. Cody takes a break from saying SHYAAHHH to make a few extremely dated references to Don Henley, “the Hammer” (“the”?) and “that bald chick.” JT tells Cody how his date promised him “a night he’d never forget” in exchange for a limo to the dance, but since JT is still a virgin in season six, we know how this ends up. Then Cody says SHYEAHH 50 times, and somewhere in there the Whitest Possible Haircuts Brothers form a plan where Cody will drive the limo himself and rent out the limo to “the little dudes” (?) during the dance to cover the costs. Following this brilliant plan Cody calls himself “Einstein with a buzzcut SHEYAAHHH-H-H” and the set collapses from the force of the audience’s applause.
Later, in another kitchen scene, Dana is dressed in a waitress uniform. Was Dana a waitress in season two or was it just for this episode? Cause I don’t remember waitress Dana and I’ve seen me the hell out of some season two Step by Step. The restaurant she works for is called “The 50’s Café” and there’s a picture of a poodle on the shirt, way to earn your keep Step by Step production designers. Dana is planning on working on Valentine’s Day to keep away from all the lovey-dovey-ness of the Lambert house, and she’s at maximum Darlene in terms of being rude to Frank. Hey, here comes Al and she’s pre-puberty, maybe I can get through an episode without jerking off. She wants to wear overalls to the BVDD instead of a dumb ol’ dress! Hahaha, remember when Al was like that? Oh, you don’t? Just me then? Fair enough. Al kind of talks and looks like she has braces but she doesn’t. Either that or they’re really good invisible-type braces. I wish I had invisible braces when I had braces, damn.
Carol runs into the kitchen. “Frank, I need you right now.” Frank knocks the fruit off the kitchen table and tries to bone her right then and there. Carol is horrified. I may make a joke about it when my mind fully processes what it saw there. Carol gets Frank to help her in the beauty parlor. For some reason a pregnant lady is there and she gets priority because she’s “due in a couple of hours.” What the-- you want your hair to look nice for your delivery what is wrong with you lady you are just going to sweat it out your hair should be the least of your problems! Ridiculous. Anyway, Frank turns out to be surprisingly proficient at beauty salon work, he does everything just right and doesn’t mess anything up at all. No, just kidding, he accidentally burns a patch of hair out of someone’s head because he forgets to take out her “color weave” on time (I will bet cash that the writer of this episode cannot tell me what a “color weave” is).
Next we go to The 50’s Café, which is empty except for Dana and the chef. Why would The 50’s Café be empty on Valentine’s Day, doesn’t anyone take their sweetheart out for a malted anymore? Things sure have changed since my times. A boy who looks like a boy version of Jared Leto walks in and Dana be’s all man-hating at him, but he’s ALSO lonely and sad because he was dumped on Valentine’s Day too. They strike up a conversation. Somehow Dana went from this dude to Rich in four years, what happened there? Have I mentioned that Dana is looking pretty fine in her waitress outfit? Was she 18 in 1993? I won’t do the math, I’ll let this live in my mind forever as I want it to, this is Valentine’s Day, let me have this.
We go outside of the BVDD to an actual FILMED LOCATION BIT, with JT and his date who I was positive was played by a young Jessica Simpson. I had to look through the credits to see if it was her, and when it wasn’t, I was pretty relieved because I had no idea how I was going to work a “Chicken of the Sea” joke into this, and that’s the only Jessica Simpson joke I have. They go to their limo, driven by the “Code-fer” (I’m not sure if this is JT’s joke or mine, it sounds more like he’s saying “Confer” or “Code-vert,” maybe he got nervous in front of the film cameras). But they can’t get into the limo because Mark, Brendon and a bunch of children are having a silly string fight in there, so much for getting through an episode without jerking off. Mark pops his head through the sunroof to say “Hey JT, is that the girl you said would be all over you like a tent?” causing Jessica Simps-clone to leave JT. Oh Mark, just you wait, in four years JT will exact his revenge on you with a strategically shaken can of soda.
Hey so that’s two plots wrapped up, now all we have is the Frank and Carol business. Frank talks the pizza boy’s ear off about his problems, Carol comes in and apologizes to Frank for forcing him to work in the beauty parlor when he didn’t know how, they bone and make up.
The end: A girl comes to Carol‘s salon wanting a patch of hair burned out of her head, because the girl who it accidentally happened to has become cool. Man, bullshit like that WOULD become a fad in the 90s, fucking typical. Lilly Watch: Just a gleam in Frank’s boner when he throws the fruit off the kitchen table. Title reference: Love, American Style 
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