I really do hope my hard work for this pays off one day. Maybe they’ll make a post-modern Step By Step theatrical film some day (like those Brady Bunch Movies, you know?) and I’ll get to write it! Seriously, if that is ever a thing, PLEASE let me do it. I won’t let you down! Hell, I’ll write the Full House or Family Matters movie while we’re at it. But not You Wish. Any other TGIF sitcom but You Wish. I’d sooner write the Camp Wilder movie.
JT enters he and Rich’s apartment carrying a brand new cable box. I assumed he bought an illegally modified box that will descramble all scrambled cable channels (Remember when that existed? Analog scrambling? Watching Playboy Channel and occasionally it would clear up long enough to see two naked girls washing a speedboat? A black screen reading “you are not authorized to view this channel” and then an 800 number for ordering instructions just isn’t as charming. Fuck the digital age.). But no, he got it so he could PAY for pay-per-view like a chump. “The Caribbean Tropic Bikini Contest,” to be exact. I guess there’s no such thing as E! or the Travel Channel in the Step By Step universe and you need to rely on pay-per-view for BIKINIS. Rich asks if this is moral, since he’s dating Dana. “It doesn’t matter where you work up your appetite, as long as you come home lookin’ for suppah.” JT says in a gross affected east-coast accent of some kind. Trying to install the box JT rips the back of the TV off like an asshole, obliterating their TV. They plan to hook up the box to the family TV. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable looking at yabbos while Frank and Carol are around.” Rich whines. Yabbos, huh? You’re takin a page out of the Walt Disney’s Hocus Pocus playbook with that euphemism. Hocus Pocus remains the weirdest choice for a movie I’ve ever seen played on an HDTV/Blu-Ray demonstration set-up at Blockbuster. Maybe the employees were just sick of watching Fast and the Furious 3 all day long and decided enough was enough. Lets see what Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and the voice of Peggy Hill bring to the table upconverted to 1,080 progressively scanned lines of vertical resolution. They also hatch a plan to invite horny dudes over to watch the bikini babes and plan to charge them “15 bucks” a pop, so they can pay for the special and a new TV.
Back from the sweet, sweet commercials. Frank scoops ice cream for Karen and Al (here we go lets get those dicks in those hands, gentlemen). Carol comes downstairs in a sexy dress, asking Frank what he thinks. “I’d tell ya honey, but I got an X-Rated opinion and this is a PG-Rated room!” Just make with the close-ups of Al and Karen’s ice cream eating and we’ll be well on our way to dragging the rest of the room to your level, Frank. Carol mentions she’s going to wear this dress at Frank’s high school reunion. Frank begins to fake-throw-his-back-out. “No reunion for me!” Carol sees through Frank’s incredibly clever ruse. Frank admits he doesn’t want to go because he’s avoiding Roy Tucker, the coolest guy in school. Frank was basically number 2 to this guy, and I think maybe Frank needs to do a little conferring with the man in the mirror on that one. Sounds like little baby Frankypoo couldn’t take being not the best when he was in high school. You’d think he’d be well over that by now being the head of a family that is exclusively full of fuck-ups.
JT and Rich gear up for their boner-fest. I don’t care if you’re making 300 bucks from this, guys. No price is worth it to me to be in a room full of other dudes getting a boner at the same time as you unless there’s at least ONE actual woman around. As everyone makes their way out of the house they are reminded by Dana that they need to put Lilly to bed by 8’oclock. Turns out in preparing for this episode they made the same bone-headed mistake that the writers make 3 out 4 episodes: they forgot about Lilly! JT comes up with a solution: bribe Lilly to stay upstairs. Lilly gets incredibly sad at this idea that JT doesn’t want her around. She doesn’t realize that from certain people, like JT, rejection is actually a compliment. There’s a lot of AWWW from the audience as JT brushers her off with candy and pizza and Olsen twins videos which Lilly glumly and half-heartedly accepts. Come on JT, hang out with Lilly upstairs. Let Rich run the party, and tape the special. That way the next day you can slip a sock on the doorknob to your apartment and enjoy the special to it’s fullest potential.
At the reunion, Frank and Carol are confronted by Roy Tucker, who shows up with some hot-lookin’ arm candy. “He’s with his daughter so maybe he won’t be a complete jerk.” Carol offers. Yeah, that’s his daughter. She looks good, sure, but there’s a ten year age difference AT BEST here. That’s not that unusual, Carol, you dickhead. Roy gloats about opening his 40th tire store, patronizes Frank about what he does for a living, then exits to go look at the old auditorium. “I’m thinking about donating a new one” Roy says.
Back at home, Lilly mopes around while JT is insensitive, brushing her off. She invites him to have a tea party with her stuffed bunny Mr. Buttons. JT gives her a bag of pork rinds. Come on Lilly, don’t be sad. If those pork rinds became sentient and somehow gained the ability to speak then it’d be pretty fucking close to what it would be like to hang out with JT for realsies. “Thanks a lot.” Lilly says, then proceeds to walk out into the Kitchen. “Come on Mr. Buttons. If JT doesn’t want us here, we’ll go away and have a tea party of our own.” Lilly makes her way out the door to run away for good. The audience erupts in a huge round of applause. They cheer louder than they’ve ever cheered before. Before we cut to commercial, they cut to a picture of Lilly and an intertitle fades up reading “Lilly Foster-Lambert: 1995-1998 (Age 7).”
After a few tasteful advertisements we cut to an establishing shot of the house with Girls Gone Wild music playing. All the dudes continue to keep their boners alive, oblivious to the fact that a child has died. Dana and the girls come home, and are FURIOUS that dudes are in their house watching bikinis. Now, we all know that they have a right to be mad because of the whole Lilly situation, but they don’t know she’s missing yet. Isn’t Dana over-reacting a tad when she shuts off the TV and yells at everyone to leave? Aren’t the guys over-reacting when they indiscriminately yank cash out of Rich’s hand and storm out the door en masse? You know guys, you’re one button-push away from getting to see the end of the sexy bikini movie. JT, take the girls aside, explain you’re making some cash, and then split the profits with them. That’s all it takes you fucking train wreck of a human being. The girls yell at JT for watching that while Lilly is in the house. They have a point there, I guess. It doesn’t take long for the girls to realize Lilly isn’t in her room.
Back to the reunion, for some reason. Roy and his slightly younger lady friend sit at Frank and Carol’s table. Roy eats Frank’s meatballs and continues to humiliate him with stories of being better than him. Frank stands up: “I’m gonna go find a sandwich I left in my locker about 25 years ago.” You could tell he was starting to say “I’m gonna go fuck myself” but then decided to keep it PG at the last moment. His mouth was making the f-sound already, “find a sandwich” is the best he could come up with I guess. Roy walks away to take a leak. It doesn’t take much time at all for Roy’s lady friend to reveal that Roy isn’t as successful as he says he is, in fact she isn’t even his fiancé: She’s a cashier at the tire store he works at. Not OWNS, mind you, works at, as an assistant manager in the retreading department. He’s paying her to be there.
Back at home, Dana calls the police, ruining her and all our shot at leading a much more peaceful, Lilly-less existence. She’s also the one who put the hole in Frank’s diaphragm. JT wanders outside and notices something: The light is on in the boat! Yes! The boat! Remember, from a few episodes back? It’s still there! Lilly was in there the whole time! JT wanders in, they have a chat, I try to make a joke connecting Lilly and the boat with Cody and his van, I fail, this sub-plot is over, this paragraph ends.
The End: Frank fishes for his and Carol’s coats as he intends to get them the heck outta there. Carol gives Frank the scoop about Roy. Frank celebrates Roy’s shit life, but Carol tries to convince him that he should pity the guy. Roy then loudly challenges Frank to an arm-wrestling contest. Frank tries to turn him down, but Roy needles him into participating. Frank starts strong, shooting daggers at Roy while Roy taunts him. Frank clearly has this thing locked up. But then Roy starts ranting and raving that he’s better than frank with the more desperation in his voice than I’ve seen on an episode of Step by Step, and that’s saying a fucking lot. “I’ve got a hot little fiancé and more money than I know what to do with!” Roy shouts with a lump in his throat. Cut to Carol frowning. Suddenly it’s All in the Family and Carol is Rob Reiner. Frank lets Roy win, Carol verbally points this out after the fact so that the retards who watch Step by Step can fully understand what’s happening without getting confused, there’s respectful applause, and Norman Lear’s credit appears over a helicopter shot of Astoria, Queens. Mark Watch: Mark is not in this episode.
|
