 Sorry Brendon, it’s fucking over for you. This episode starts out with a brand new opening title with Lily blowing out her birthday cake and GUESS WHO ISN’T THERE? Have fun being gross off-camera, you little shitbag. So this is the first episode of the elusive seventh season of Step by Step. A Season I haven’t seen a single lick of because it was on CBS, the nursing home of rejected series. Everything here is unfamiliar and a little daunting to cover. I guess I’ll have to take it step... by step.
We start out with the kids going to their first day of school. Dana is over-prepared while Rich has a bag of M&Ms and a Gameboy. And it’s an actual OLD Gameboy! Like I bet it was the actual actor’s actual Gameboy, that’s how old it looks! I like that. Lilly enters and Frank tries to pump her up by telling her she’ll get a brand new box of crayons on the first day of school. Man this is something I completely forgot about from childhood. It makes me wish I’d get a box of crayons for enrolling in college. Lilly completely pollutes this moment by saying “we have computers! I get to make my own WEBPAGE.” Hey Lilly, why don’t you eat my balls, fight Mr. T, and go die. JT walks her to her bus, but has to be crow-barred away from the table of food first. Lilly Note: Thank fucking god they didn’t do some dumb story about Lilly adjusting to a new school year. Right? Important Note: This episode actually has a theme song/credits! It’s the super truncated version where it’s basically stock footage of the theme park, and superimposed headshots printed as if they were photo-booth photos (that’s a roomy photo booth to get such great angles on JT).
So cut to college. Carol has enrolled in Karen’s classes. All of them. What a creepy weirdo. I could understand if she wanted to take a creative writing course and weird everyone out there, but taking all your daughters classes is psychotic. Meanwhile Dana and Rich look at their grades from a recent test. Dana gets on Rich’s dick about being proud of getting a C. So that sets up THAT subplot.
Back to the house. Carol comes home while Frank is doing the go-to living room business of putting Lilly’s Toys into a basket. Seriously, that is always what one parent is doing when somebody else is coming home to start a new scene. What the fuck did they do before Lilly? Did they clean up JT’s deli tray or Mark’s asthma inhalers? And isn’t Lilly old enough to put her shit away when she’s done playing with it? If she’s old enough to learn HTML then she’s certainly old enough to pick up after herself. I hope this is building to something, or else I’ll be very upset. Anyway this scene happens: Carol: I am so excited and I have YOU to thank for it!
Yeah buddy? Is that something Bert Reynolds said? Because my mind went directly to Brak. Carol explains she’s excited about going to college. Frank is concerned that she’s mentally ill, but phrases it a little more gently than that.
Next Scene: Dana and Rich study, and Rich doesn’t take it seriously. Meaning he jokes around when he doesn’t know the answer to one of Dana’s study questions. What, would you rather have him depressingly beat himself up over not knowing something? “I don’t know if we have much of a future together” Dana says. Rich is visibly shaken.  After the commercial we see Rich moping. Rich thinks he just got dumped, basically. JT is happy at the prospect of gaining his pre-dating-Dana friend back. Now they can “party, hang, and pig out” just like the old days. I like to think the writers of Step By Step just wrote JT as a pig because they wanted the actual actor to start porking out in hopes that it makes his features less rodent-esque. Rich says something like “Just because your girlfriend is away (yadda yadda fill in the blanks)” Does this mean no Sam for Season 7? Is she gonna break up with JT via postcard? Different actress playing her for the two-second shot of her photo as JT sobs? Time can only tell. JT proposes they cut loose with “Two spoons, a jar of peanut butter and a full hour of Xena: Warrior Princess.” The peanut butter is inside his over-sized trench coat. What a fucking fatso in training you are, JT. Rich gets outta there, grabbing some books before he goes (I wonder what he’s gonna do with those?).
Back at college, Karen has transferred to another class to get away from Carol, and Carol FOLLOWS her, transferring also. The subject of a “child’s attachment to security objects” comes up and Carol INSTANTLY tells a humiliating story about Karen’s childhood stuffed toy. Seriously, you have to be a real nincompoop to not understand that you are being a nutball doing shit like that. Karen runs out of the class to “get therapy.”
Rich runs into Dana in the hall. Dana condescends to him as if he’d stayed up with JT all night. Rich informs her that he’d actually been studying all night. He even used a highlighter for the first time ever in his life: “I have the yellow on my hands to prove it!” Rich holds up his hand and it’s fucking covered with yellow highlighter ink. What kind of retard is he that he gets highlighter ink all over his hands? It’s not like you see him with ballpoint pen ink all over his hands in every other scene he’s in. My point is, a highlighter isn’t much different. It baffles me. Cut to the fucking chase: Rich gets an A on the test! And big surprise Dana gets a B! Though I thought it was gonna be a big plot thing that Rich drags her studies down. Not much is made about it, she Lisa Simpsons out, Rich good-naturedly ribs her and they make out (revolting).
Frank is fixing the door knob when Karen comes home, hopping mad. She smashes him in the face with the door. I actually laughed at it! Then Frank opens the door a little as a safety precaution but still gets bonked again by Carol, and fuck me if I didn’t laugh again. Carol complains about Karen’s behavior and Frank sides with Karen. Frank, having learned his lesson has migrated far away from the front door... only to get bonked by the kitchen door by Al. Goddamn it, what is fucking wrong with me? I CRACKED UP. If I had a girlfriend she woulda looked at me and said “I don’t know if we have much of a future together.” Carol asks Al how she’d feel if she attended class with her. She clears it up by bluntly stating she’d want to die. Carol learns her lesson.
The End: JT steals food from the fridge, lining the inside pockets of his trench coat. Frank sees him, but waits for him to finish. He then enters, insists on a hug (creepy) and squeezes everything so it breaks and drips out of his coat. Somewhere in the world, somebody jerked off to it. Mark Watch: Not in this episode. Too busy filming an infomercial for an early version of the Sham-wow that can get soda off of a slutty girl’s tits.
It was honestly hard to get through. I was shocked by how much worse it was than any Step by Step yet. I can't believe CBS has that much lower standards than TGIF for god's sake. It makes me wonder how bad season 26 of Family Matters was or whatever season they were on by the time the Winslows Judy'd Harriet and left ABC for the dumber pastures of the CBS Block Party. Also: worth noting that Jean-Luc is not in this season because Bronson Pinchot was doing Meego at the time. I have no joke about it, I just wanted to point it out. PS I thought I imagined "yeah buddy."
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