Another day, another Step By Step write-up.
OPEN: JT is dragged to a health club by Al & Karen. The enter as JT complains about being dragged there. Did these guys just sit in silence on the drive over? This is conversation you could have in the car, easy. I guess this happens in every sitcom. I’m just a fuddy duddy I guess. So anyway, Al & Karen are taking JT there to meet girls, since JT and Sam BROKE UP. Whoa whoa whoa, not so fast there, Step by Step. JT & Sam broke up? Is this the first we’re hearing about it? Or did they break up during one of the Halloween or Christmas episodes that ABC Family decided to skip? Thanks for that, by the way, ABC Family, and by extension nearly every cable channel in the world that shows sitcoms in reruns. Are the seasonal Step By Steps truly that special that you need to hold them back? You must have Step by Step mistaken for some classier organization, like the Charlie Brown holiday specials. Good grief. JT does the classic thing of moaning that there will never be another girl he’d care about like Sam, and then instantly starts drooling over some aerobics instructor. JT plans to take her class to get closer to her. Al and Karen warn him that it’s pretty intense. “What’s the worst that could happen?” What do YOU think will happen, reader? JT does good at aerobics and impresses the girl, I bet!
Following some fantastic commercials advertising some fantastic products, we see Dana sneak into Rich’s apartment to grab her plain, beige BIOLOGY book which is on the coffee table next to a sleeping Rich. Carol and Frank come downstairs to see Dana exit the apartment and jump the conclusion that Dana got fucked. “I was just getting my Biology book” Dana explains. Carol still thinks there’s funny business going on. Perhaps she thinks they brought the Biology book into bed with them so they can learn how to bone like a couple of trout?
Following this scene is a time-lapse montage of JT getting sweatier and sweatier during aerobics. Yuck. This technically isn’t a music montage: There’s music involved (“Maniac” by Michael Sembello), but there’s still dialog and stuff. So I ain’t uploading it to youtube. JT barely keeps it together enough to ask the areobics instructor out on a date, but he does. She accepts and ropes JT into a 50 mile bike ride. This reminds me of the time I got roped into a crazy bike ride. I had this friend down the street who had this dad named Sid. Sid was a very youthful dad and very much into EXTREME sports. He was actually kind of Cody “The Codeman” Lambert-esque in the way he spoke, except a lot more disparaging, willing to call you a wuss at a moment’s notice. He brought a video of himself skydiving to one of my classes in 4th grade set to “Right Now” by Van Halen, which was at the time all over TV in Crystal Pepsi commercials. Well one day he took me and my friend on a bike ride. My parents specifically made sure that we were just gonna ride around the neighborhood. He promised. Sid basically took me and his son hostage for 2 hours, riding through various, un-charted woods. He was an adult so we had to follow him. We both begged him to take us home, and he wouldn’t. He didn’t give a shit that he was running us ragged. Trying to reason with him resulted in “AW COME ON! JUST RIDE!” My parents were worried sick about me, we were gone way longer than we were supposed to be, and it in fact had gotten dark for a lot of our bike ride. Ask any parent: KIDS AND NIGHTFALL DO NOT MIX. This story doesn’t have much pay off. I got home late and muddy and my dad emptied all his screams onto Sid’s face. I was only allowed to go over to my friend’s house when Sid wasn’t home. The next time I saw him was when I worked at the movie theater, fucking years and years later. He told me he witnessed an exorcism.
Cut away from me at the theater (it’s weird that Step by Step included that story about my childhood in the episode, huh?) and back to the Step by Step house. Dana wanders the house with a half-zipped dress, looking for somebody to zip her up. She wanders into Rich’s apartment, who just so happens to be in his boxers. He offers to help, but also playfully kisses the back of Dana’s neck, as boyfriends are want to do. Ugh, why did I just say that? Carol comes home and hears the commotion. “STOP KISSING MY NECK AND ZIP UP MY DRESS ALREADY!” Carol, furious that she is now being forced to take the Norman Fell role in this watered-down Three’s Company scenario, enters and yells at her child some more for something she didn’t actually do. Dana then accuses Carol of only thinking everyone else has sex on their brains is because she and Frank are constantly bumping muffs upstairs. “That’s different! We’re married!” Dana then makes a bold proclamation that she will marry rich just to get her off her back. Rich is a little apprehensive about this. “Here’s a little preview of the wedding night!” Dana says as he grabs him for a big ole’ smooch. “Say hello to my little friend!” Rich exclaims, as he gets a boner. Frank comes home to Carol being mad about what just happened. Karen enters. They ask her where Dana is. Karen, instead of saying “I don’t know” begins hemming and hawing, obviously keeping some kind of secret. Frank and Carol outsmart Karen by acting like they know too. Karen starts blurting out details that, to her, would just be expository at this point: Dana and Rich are going to go tie the knot at some cheapo chapel and Frank and Carol run off to stop them, and also to go dig up more clichéd sitcom jokes from the same cemetery they got the last batch.
Outside, Karen and Al fill a little red wagon with firewood, presumably to take around the neighborhood to sell to fellow children. JT comes home from his bike-riding date with Sid, I mean, Monica, the aerobics instructor. He looks like hell and is in a lot of pain. They share a mother-and-son type kiss and the audience goes nuts. They have more date to go on later tonight! We better get to that!
So cut to that night. JT is still in pain. He can’t even button his shirt up without moaning. Monica arrives: “How’s my hunky bike guy?” Wait, did she say “funky butt-lovin?” It doesn’t take JT to break down and admit that he’s sorer than he’s ever been before. “I didn’t think you’d go for a pillow boy like me!” JT whines. The Urban Dictionary defines “pillow boy” as “A boy who dry humps and makes out with his pillow, pretending it is a girl.” That is filthy and terrible, but I guess about right. Monica still likes JT, and they decide to have a quiet night at home.
The End: Dana and Frank drive to stop Dana and Rich from getting married. They run up to the alter to stop a couple who obviously aren’t Dana and Rich. Even from behind you can see Rich has too much definition in his jaw. When fake Dana flips around and wheels on Carol it’s: SURPRISE! Angela from the US Office, in her first on-screen role! Turns out Dana and Rich didn’t go through with it. “Lets go talk this over dinner! Lets go across the street and eat at the ole’ Pump and Dump” says Frank. Rich: “Actually it’s the Pump and Rump.” “You’ve never eaten there, have you, boy?” Way to make me think of loose bowel movements and gay anal sex at the same time, Step by Step. But maybe that’s just my psyche. Mark Watch: Mark is not in this episode. Lilly Watch: Lilly is not in this episode.
Is it just me or did JT somehow look less gross than usual when he was all sweaty in the workout montage? Maybe it's because he literally looked like a zombie and I could at least pretend he was dead. Al in her aerobics costume. That's all. Leopard print motif: Dana's nightie and robe at the beginning of the episode, and Monica's dress on her date with JT. I'll be posting the possible meanings of this on the Step by Steppedia.
|
