Cox Digital Cable Descritpion: Mark's date overhears him bragging about their time together; Karen gets dumped and blames her "imperfect" body.
Boner watch: The opener of the episode, where Al is helping Karen button a pair of exceptionally tight jeans with a crowbar. Al says if she pulls any harder she will break Karen's pelvis. I actually have very clear memories of seeing this episode back when it originally aired which explains my fetish for girls breaking other girls' pelvises with crowbars, and why I need a Saw movie to jerk off anymore, thanks a lot Step by Step. Karen says that it's for a date with a boy who likes tight jeans, and when Dana is about to yell at her for it, Karen calls her out on her bullshit, finally.
We then go to the kitchen where Mark is asking out hot babe Alana Mills as his new friends Brendon Look Alike and Black Nerd look on. She accepts (he asks her by phone, if that makes it more believable) and they disco dance in the kitchen like idiots. JT and Rich walk in to steal food and learn Mark has a hot date. Rich laughs at him making it the first time in the show Rich can laugh at someone and be justified. They let Mark have the bachelor pad for his date. Who would have guessed Mark would be the first one to get any in that room? Well Frank and Carol probably snuck in there and fucked at some point, I bet.  Karen's back from her date, and it's gone horribly! The boy left her for another girl, despite Karen's tight jeans. She surmises that it must be because the other girl had bigger lips like Claudia Schiffer (whose lips aren't THAT big but unfortunately they made this several years too early to put in a reference to Angelina Jolie or Skye Sweetnam). Karen's tight jeans cause her to do a John Wayne walk up the stairs, foreshadowing her future as a country singer.
It's Mark's date night! Mark dresses in a silk shirt with some sort of built-in ascot, leather pants, and beige socks with brown loafers, because he was clearly thought his hot date was named ALAN. Mark's HOT DATE shows up, played by Maggie Lawson of Psych and the TV movie Model Behavior, in which she dated Justin Timberlake. Going from Mark to Justin Timberlake is what we in the business call an "upgrade." The only way it could be a bigger difference is if it was from JT to JT.
Mark has done her English homework, explaining how he got a date with her in the first place, and she tries putting the moves on him to show her appreciation. Mark runs out of the room to ask the only two freaks more hopeless than him in the romance department, JT and Rich, for help. They are eating turkey legs dipped in peas, which look like turds, and as such I was too distracted to know what's going on in this scene. Mark gets some sodas, promptly spills them on her tits, and doesn't even have the decency to wipe it off. What a pube. This explains my fetish for watching soda being wiped off tits, which absolutely NOBODY makes porno for, and now I have a lifetime of sexual frustration thanks to Miller/Boyett. Alana takes her shirt off (what is she, supposed to stand there with soda on her tits like a fool?). Mark realizes that where tits go, vagina follows and runs out of the room screaming like a baby looking to suck on Carol's tits (I can't quite blame him in that regard [wait-- Carol IS his biological mother right? Who can remember with this show]).
The next day, Mark brags to Brendon Look Alike and Black Nerd about how his date with Alana went, and presumable "cool kid" Letterjacket McFloppyHair proclaims him a fellow cool kid. That is, until Alana shows up to tell them all what really happened. Mark officially becomes the worst character in sitcom history when he loses the respect of Brendon Look Alike and Black Nerd. The whole school finds out what a wimp Mark is, and the Gay Ben Seaver (Ben-Gay) becomes a laughing stock, which he deserves. Frank comes by to bail Mark out while he's holed up in his locker. What the hell do you care Frank, you're not even his dad. Frank tells Mark that he thinks it takes guts to walk away when a girl is moving too fast. What the hell, come on Frank, THIS IS A KID YOU WOULD HAVE BEAT UP IN HIGH SCHOOL. Keep the status quo up, take him home and beat the gay out of him, that's what a REAL LAMBERT man would do. Then... THEN a girl asks Mark out. The fuck?!?!? Because he's "the only guy in school who isn't a horndog." So let's get things straight: Mark:
Complete bullshit. Well, I can say from experience that being a huge queer in high school does not get one any. For fucking sake, Frank and girl with zero-degrees-Kevlin expectations, he's not a "gentleman" he's just a wuss. Well Mark, enjoy your relationship with this new girl and having her treat you like a neutered dog, because the exact second you show a hint of libido she will talk you into how you don't need to go there because you're such great friends and your relationship is worth so much more than that and you will die with blue balls, possibly at my hand (and by that I mean YOU Christopher Castile). Mark is the fucking worst, as is this episode.
Oh wait, that leaves the rest of the titular Karen plotline of the episode to go. I don't even care anymore, let's lightning round this mofo. Karen got huge lip injections, looks silly, talks like Elmer Fudd, gets laughed at, Brendon Watch: Brendon walks in to say she looks like the Joker, and Karen runs off to her room crying. Which Heath Ledger reference should I put here? I'll go with "Y so serious?" Carol comes upstairs to talk to Karen, who has her turtleneck pulled up over her mouth like Mort from Bazooka Joe, and to congratulate myself for a reference that awesome, I'm going to just skip over both the "lesson" Karen learns about how true beauty is on the inside and the dumb closing scene about JT and Rich trying to steal a cake.  Lilly Watch: Lilly guest stars as Karen's lips in this episode. Pop-cultural name checks: "She's moving too fast for CHARLIE SHEEN" Mark says (I would actually bet Charlie Sheen has a decent soda-tits porn collection, someone get me some tickets to a Two and a Half Men taping).
Also, I would kill for rehearsal footage of this moment: post-collagen Karen reluctantly and nervously big-mouthing the ear of corn in front of her siblings who are laughing at her. The grotesque lips take away from it a bit, but I'm willing to bet the Al-Bundies in the crowd hooted at the moment at first and had to be yelled at by the crowd wrangler for subsequent takes. It looks pornographic, and would especially if she didn't have the comedy lips on. I'm surprised Kon didn't mention it!
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