In the beginning, God created Man. Man created Step By Step. God kills himself out of embarrassment. Philosophers declare “God is dead.” Step by Step stays on the air for 7 laugh-free seasons.
This episode starts out with Carol reading a magazine with sex advice inside. Fucking typical. Frank is excited at first when Carol announces “this magazine will teach us to be gross in a new way,” so much so that he spits out his tooth brush and hops into bed. The article suggests they should try out a role-playing rendezvous. They should pretend to be strangers, meet in public, and then hook up! Frank hates this idea. He wants to bone in the bedroom or the truck, but going to a bar to fake flirt with his wife is too much. He’s the Sam-I-Am of fucking his wife. Loosen up Frank. It’s the 90s AD!
The next day (I guess) Dana catches Rich just as he’s about to go play hockey. (“They call your team ‘The Might Sucks’” JT quips). Dana and Rich boo-hoo about how they never get to see each other with this new-fangled school schedule of theirs. So they decide to find a class to take of mutual interest. Couldn’t they just hang out? Why a class? They decide on pottery. Guess what? Rich is actually good at something other than grossing me out! His teacher considers him a prodigy while Dana struggles with her clay like a monkey playing with his (or her, lets not be sexist!) stool. The pompous teacher brings out his most prized piece of self-made pottery and puts it on a stool. “Dana, could you please drop a clump of clay onto a spinning potters wheel in such a way that it flies off and smashes this vase?” “Sure thing, teach!” Dana exclaims as she does said thing. Step by Step, you fucking sitcom.
This sucks. Frank calls Carol at home in the middle of the day pretending to be Armando Suave, an offensive, swarthy bullfighter. Carol hangs up thinking it’s a prevert crank call. Frank calls back and clears it up, he was just role-playing like that dumb magazine said to do! Carol starts getting in on the act. JT and Karen then enter the kitchen, having an argument about who is better, Jerry Springer or Rikki Lake. Boy, when I said it was the 90s earlier, I wasn’t kidding. Their fight basically sounds like a staged argument that me and my friends would have when we entered a room in high school and wanted to avoid the other people in there. Among the arguments were: Did Jesus get split-ends? Jesus vs. Godzilla: Who would win? And a third thing that probably also had to do with Jesus. I was in high school, fucking sue me for finding basic sacrilege funny. JT and Karen believe Carol is cheating on Frank. They are going to spy on them. I can’t stop them.
Lilly and Al play checkers when Dana comes home with her pottery project, concealed in a box. They brow-beat her into showing it off. It looks like shit, of course. Just then Rich comes home, with HIS pottery. He tries to be nice, then when the girls request to see his pottery, he tries to be a nice, modest guy and declines. Dana, being a jerk, assumes it’s because he fucked up. Rich is forced to show off what he made: An impressive teapot and a matching set of tea cups. Eat shit Dana. Eat it out of your dumb pottery. You fucking blew it and I’m disappointed in you.
I guess we HAVE to revisit the parents. Cut to the Rusty Rudder, where Carol (aka Candy Apple) takes the stage. Wait, what? She booked herself a gig singing at some bar just so she could fuck her husband creatively? Come on! Why isn’t Carol just doing that as a regular thing? She clearly has talent... in this universe, anyway. Not ours, NEVER ours. Frank then enters dressed like Guy Caballero, fake mustache and all. JT and Karen enter to see the disgusting display. After some antics involving the fake mustache, JT & Karen confront Carol. Everything is cleared up when Frank comes back from the toilet, and everyone is disturbed and ashamed of themselves.
The End: Rich tries to help Dana make a half-decent pot and she cunts out and flings a bunch of clay at him. Mark Watch: Nowhere to be found, like the last however-long-I-spent watching and writing up this terrible episode. Sorry this stunk, everyone!
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