It Didn't Happen One Night
Episode #: 126
Airdate: June 20, 1997
TiVo Synopsis: A disgruntled date spreads rumors about Al at school.

Cox Digital Cable Description: Al’s disgruntled date spreads rumors about her at school; Carol and Dana are fed up with Frank and Rich’s behavior.

In this episode, Frank gets the Maximum Sports Channel and watches it with Rich, causing the two of them to not listen to their respective partners Carol and Dana. Yup, that’s what this episodes about. Men watch sports, do not pay attention to women. Don’t expect many jokes in this write-up, I don’t want to put more effort into this than the writers did into the episode. For goodness sake, they named the channel the MAXIMUM SPORTS CHANNEL.

Next, Karen and Al are at school, which is only slightly more populated than Bayside High, and eat lunch with each other lest the producers hire another actor for this episode. Karen is setting a trap for pretty boy Kyle McCormick by strategically spraying her perfume in places he’d be, which will get his motor running and lead him all over her. If only the writer of this episode made the man the one doing the perfume spraying they could have been a good five years ahead of the creator of Axe Body Spray. “That’s very romantic… if you’re a moose,” Al quips, which explains how Sarah Palin got that husband of hers. Look, I said I wasn’t going to try on this write-up, and if it wasn’t a Sarah Palin reference then it would have been Natasha from Bullwinkle.

The perfume does attract Kyle, but he asks out Al instead of Karen! Al laughs at Karen‘s hubris, and Karen does a passive-aggressive mocking laugh back at her, which made me legitimately laugh. Then, in the span of the incidental music and fade out, Al mouths “sorry,” looks upset for a beat, and then looks away and smiles. Was it a fuckup no one noticed? Or was Christine Lakin really in character? Either way, it also made me legitimately laugh. Two laughs in two seconds on Step by Step, am I an idiot?

Anyway, the next scene is Kyle driving Al back home after their date in his cool convertible. Kyle is supposed to be a pretty boy I guess and I’m not saying he isn’t but to me he looks like a Pete and Pete bully. Not any one specifically but he looks like he COULD be one. That’s just what I see when I look at him. Maybe it’s because he made his convertible into a Lovemobile that folds into a bed, and cars modified to transform into bachelor pads make me think of Endless Mike teaching Pete how to fog up a window. Anyway, he tries to get a roll in the hay with Al. I’d call him an idiot for trying this in a convertible with the top down in the driveway of the Lambert/Foster house but I’ll just give the producers the benefit of the doubt and assume that the Makeout Point set was being used by Boy Meets World that week. Al rebuffs his advances and leaves the car, which is an important plot point that will come back later. Also important: Al’s nipples make a return in this scene, which is too bad for me because I’m trying to get through one write up without openly lusting after the female cast, no matter how fly Dana’s ass looks in the next scene.

The next day, Jean Luc runs into the kitchen while JT is-- oh why don’t you take a fucking guess. No, really, just take a wild shot in the dark here. Yup, you got it, JT is making a sandwich. What a stretch. Sorry, there just isn’t much to talk about in this scene. Jean Luc gave Carol and Dana makeovers to attract the attention of sports nutz Frank and Rich (he calls them “stupid Americans”-- another legitimate laugh from me). With all that exposition out of the way, JT runs upstairs with his sandwich. What the fuck? He doesn’t live upstairs, his apartment is next to the kitchen. Is he having a sandwich date with Brendon or something? Oh damn, I just went and put more thought into this episode than the writers did.

Post-makeover Dana and Carol go in the living room and be all sexy and shit while the boys whoop it up for sports and don‘t even notice them. On an introspective tip, when did I get all into Dana? I always hated her while the show was originally running. Hmm, it’s something to think about for sure. Jean Luc yells at the men for being a bunch of dummies and promises to give THEM makeovers into real ladies men. Oh crap, have I already wrote this much about this episode? It’s not even any good! I’ve written more paragraphs than there’s been scenes. My attempt at not putting more effort into this than the writers is a failure to say the least.

Hey, speaking of scenes, here’s another one. JT is taking phone messages for Al! She’s so dang popular all of a sudden! Karen wonders why the boys now want Al instead of her. JT runs back upstairs (still unexplained) as Karen’s black friend comes in, who wasn’t in the lunchroom scenes and isn’t pulling off “high school age” at all, leaving one to wonder why she is so up on high school gossip as she tells Karen that word is that Kyle and Al did, and I quote, the “horizontal Macarena.” Al walks in thinking that her sudden surge in popularity must be because her sweater is really working for her, not realizing the rumors of her promiscuity floating about (and also her sweater really is working for her, oh god her rack looks just bodacious I‘m sorry readers I‘m so sorry). But Karen believes the rumors, even when Al tells her the truth about the date, because it’s the only explanation of why boys would be more interested in Al than her. Black friend goes upstairs during this scene, and she CERTAINLY doesn’t live there, so I guess Brendon got a Nintendo 64 and him, JT and black friend are going to play three-player, possibly Goldeneye.

Wow, I’m thinking about an imaginary round of Goldeneye 007, am I that bored here? Yeah, I am, the rest of this episode is a snooze. Jean Luc sets up a romantic double date between Frank & Carol & Rich & Dana, in the backyard because the “romantic restaurant” set was probably taken by Sabrina the Teenage Witch. A whole bunch of gags transpire over the course of this scene, and in the end the ladies learn that their men might be clods sometimes but they love them anyway. Yeah. So, that happened.

At school, Karen and Al sit next to each other at lunchtime even though they’re supposed to be fighting, and Al’s low point is illustrated by a side burned chess nerd trying to get a piece of that. Al runs into the hallway and cries about her poor circumstances in life, and look, Al is hot and all but she’s a terrible actress and watching this scene was pretty embarrassing. I could barely even jerk off to it. In the end, Karen believes Al that nothing happened with her and Kyle. Karen runs into the lunchroom to tell the whole school (all two dozen students) what REALLY happened and humiliates Kyle for good. I won’t go into this scene because the writers just took an old Boy Meets World script and did a find/replace on the character names.

The End: Jean Luc watches some of the MAXIMUM SPORTS CHANNEL and gets so wrapped up in it that he doesn’t even pay attention to Carol when they’re supposed to be going to a beauty parlor convention or some shit, I don’t know.

Mark Watch: Before Kyle’s big humiliation, Mark sits at Karen and Al’s lunch table and says some dumb shit. He’s yelled away quickly, but just the fact that he would approach their table so quickly suggests that these girls are not as popular as we’ve been led to believe. I know Mark is a family member, girls, but this is school, all three of you had best know your roles.

Brendon Watch: Brendon does not appear in this episode.

Lilly Watch: Lilly does not appear in this episode (it is possible she may have been the fourth player in Goldeneye, but since the game is rated T for Teen, this theory remains unproven).

In the scene where Jean-Luc is excited to tell sandwich-making JT about Carol and Dana's make-over, he starts off by saying one of the most unnatural things you could say re: a thing you can' wait to say: "Guess what's about to burst out of me?" JT thinks for a bit and makes a bathroom toilet joke. Am I a weirdo for thinking maybe an alien was gonna burst out of him? Like A french dude maybe had the wrong idea from American culture and thought it was a good thing to have an alien in you?

The football goon's name is KYLE MCKORMICK. This aired slightly less than a month before South Park premiered. Obviously Matt and Trey were inspired by this episode, naming one of their kid’s KYLE and another one Kenny MCKORMICK. They had to be Step by Step fans! Why else would they make Scuzzlebutt's leg be Patrick Duffy?

Also, I don't buy that Karen is not a slut. Was she always not a slut? I have a feeling the show started and was a little edgier and they implied she was blowing dudes left and right but as Disney started creeping into ABC they turned her into a puritanical virgin who is just a hug and hand-hold slut. I can't even picture her making out with anyone. Hopefully when the series loops back around to the beginning on ABC Family I'll get to find out for sure.

I laughed out loud at Al's cry-acting which I thought was awesomely over-the-top. I wish I could believe she was doing it on purpose.

Also this episode was produced before JT''s apartment, but aired after. That's why he was going upstairs. I thought maybe he needed to go fuck his sandwich and Rich always ignores it when JT puts a sock on the doorknob.