We open with J.T. doing what he does best: Eating food he did not purchase. No, I mean this literally. That is the one thing he does exceptionally well. He can’t even look not like a piece of shit for 22 minutes. This is the only thing he’s mastered. So anyway, JT is eating a lard sandwich when Frank comes in and starts bragging about his great birthday present for Carol: A road-side emergency/first-aid kit. Frank makes a big stink about how cashmere sweaters and jewelry are for the birds. This gift offers security, the one thing women want. I’d say Carol has all the security in the world if she doesn’t mind walking down the street with everyone in the world knowing she’s married to such a dipstick. Ugh.
Dana enters a contest for a scholarship that goes to whoever designs the best community recycling program. Mark enters the kitchen just so she can say it all out loud to him, but really she’s saying it out loud to the stupid audience, who are all stupid! She explains she chose a partner: Denis “pitstain” Steckler, a science dweeb who is known for smelling like shit. When Rich comes in and excitedly tells Dana that he signed him and her up as partners, Mark grabs his can of alien food and runs outta there, avoiding the scuffle. Dana and Rich fight briefly because of this: Rich is offended that Dana doesn’t deem him smart enough to do the project with. This whole thing can be defused with Dana saying something like “it’s not about that, it’s just that I already picked a partner, and I didn’t realize you’d wanna do this” but then I guess this wouldn’t be a shitty episode of Step By Step without some bullshit conflict, so fuck logic and deftly handling a touchy situation with another human being.
Lilly/Brendon Watch: They kill two terrible characters with one stone by having them appear at Carol’s birthday party! So Carol’s birthday is now here, and predictably Carol receives cashmere and jewelry from people who aren’t Frank, who sweats the opening of his present. JT tortures Frank by hyping Frank’s present. What is with this family? They all get extremely happy when somebody is about to make a fool out of themselves. Does anybody have anyone’s back in this administration? So anyway, here’s what happens: Carol opens it, is polite, Frank is a little self-deprecating (though he should’ve been more so) and felt dumb. But again, there’s a lack of Frank just saying “look, I know I blew it! I’ll take you to a nice dinner tomorrow to make up for it!” I could be all these asshole’s life coach and fix all their lives. And by that I mean I’d spike everything in the fridge with LSD and convince them to pile into the car and drive it off the nearest cliff. It was good enough for the O’Doyles, Lambert/Foster Family. Quite frankly, it’s TOO good for you.
Rich enters while Dana and her dork partner are working on their project, referring to them as Pinky and the Brain. Rich then presents HIS partner for the project: A cute, ditsy cheerleader. Who woulda guessed that? A retarded person? A puppy dog? JT?
So we cut to an establishing shot of the school, which I thought for a split second had a statue of Abe Lincoln in a wheelchair. Rich and Dana have a little run-in with their respective partners. When a bunch of fellow cheerleaders show up to be assholes, Rich gets a brilliant idea: “That’s it: Cheerleaders! They’re the answer to the world’s ecological problems!” (I heard this was a working tagline for an early version of NBC’s ”Heroes”).
This is a total aside, but the actress who is playing the cheerleader is obviously bringing much more to the role than simply “Cheerleader.” She seems like a lower-level sort of burn-out cheerleader. She’s a real cute girl that you imagine comes from a poor family and is actually sorta funny sometimes even though she’s legitimately stupid and is only really a cheerleader because her friend got her into it, but her friend got thrown out for bringing pot to school and now she’s gonna quit the squad in support of her friend (also because she thinks the other cheerleaders are cunts). That’s what I read into the performance. Why? She slouches more than the other cheerleaders. All slouchy cheerleaders have trouble with drugs. I can read her slouch like a book.
Back to Carol and Frank. Time to wrap this shit storm of a b-plot up: Frank buys Carol a speedboat. Carol tells Frank he didn’t need to do that, gives him an encouraging speech about how him being with her is all the birthday present he needs from her, and then they both look at the audience and reveals the whole sub-plot was a prank! IT wasn’t actually a sub-plot! It was a waste of time! FOOLED YOU AUDIENCE! You’ve been Step’d!
So now we go back to the school where the winner is announced for the bullshit recycling contest. Big surprise: Dana and her fartner I mean partner have come in second place! Their plan was to make a car that runs on cow manure. Rich is the real winner, and his plan is this: Cheerleaders for recycling! Station a cheerleader to stand next to a recycle bin and cheer for dudes who throw their soda cans into the right container. Wow, what a way to treat a fellow human being with respect: make them hang out with garbage cans and cheer people for not being animals and throwing soda cans away properly. Also, how does this encourage women to recycle? Wouldn’t it make them kinda sick to their stomach and not wanna go near that uncle tom rhyming next to refuse?
The End: depicts Dana, who for some reason has, uh, volunteered? That or has been somehow FORCED to dress like a cheerleader to cheer dickheads for recycling for an afternoon in the school cafeteria. She of course puts a bitter, sarcastic slant on her cheers. Then Denis walks in with a shopping cart full of deodorant cans and he’s supposed to look smug, but he actually looks retarded. I don’t mean that to be mean, he literally looks like he has downs syndrome. He intends to make Dana Cheer for him one can at a time. What a creep.
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