SPOILER CITY - "Greeks and Geeks"
Thomas j. Evans
entirely pointless or not fully played out.
Beware of the nasty spoilers!
"Do not take offense to what I am about to say to you. You are one
spoiled little man. This is not about a card, Benjamin. OK? This
whole thing is about being a part of the greatest family in the
world... the American family. The American democratic system, which
you take for granted with your lack of voting, exists because of
people like me: people who care, people who want to be a part of the
process. And if you don't understand that, or can't... then maybe you
should be the one taking this test instead of me."
Sometimes a show will attempt to cram as much material as it can
into a single episode, hoping that the seperate stories will fit
together well enough to make the episode work. Sometimes it does
work. Sometimes these seperate stories share a similar theme, or
somewhere along the line they cross paths, or a character is involved
in all of the seperate events. In the cutely-named "Greeks and Geeks"
however, none of these things are true. We have Sean and Meghan
fighting again, this time over Meghan's new job as a phone sex
operator. We have Ben helping Javier study U.S. history so he can
pass his citizenship test. We have Noel trying out for a techie job
and facing off against the King of the Geeks. And we have some
fallout from Julie's unexpected departure from New York, which takes
its toll on Felicity and ultimately results in Felicity waking up
half-naked next to some strange guy.
This is like when you're at a buffet and you stack so much stuff on
your plate that you can only get a little taste of each thing before
you're already full and wondering if it was worth $12.
I'll start with the Noel versus King of the Geeks story. Noel
wants to get this job as a computer techie, so he has to impress this
stereotypical super geek who takes offense to calling a computer an
"it" when clearly it is a "she" and flashes that Star Trek Vulcan hand
signal on occasion. I thought this was the dumbest thing that the
show has ever done. Forgetting for the moment that all of the actual
computer stuff they were talking about was either just silly or just
wrong (zztop.exe?), the actual point of this whole story completely
evaded me. Where we supposed to root for Noel to "beat" the geek and
show him that he truly can be a computer nerd? Was it supposed to be
funny? I don't know. But when it came down to the big ending where
Noel saves Elena's work, complete with a slow motion scene as the
super geek is about to press enter and presumably kill everything in
the computer with the evil "zztop.exe" command, I laughed. Not
because it was funny, but because it was so stupid.
Next we have Sean and Meghan fighting again, leading us to believe
that these two aren't doing so well as a couple. First it's Sean's
nose, now it's Meghan's job. Ah well...
Meghan decides to get a job as a phone sex operator, and naturally
Sean has a problem with that. We're given a couple short scenes
between them as Sean complains and Meghan retorts with her usual calm
and pleasant personality. But in the end, it's resolved with a sort
of quick throw away line when Meghan, anxious to tell Sean that she
lost Felicity at the frat party, quickly says that she'll quit her
phone sex job. Again, I'm left with a sort of "so what?" feeling. At
least their argument about Sean's nose ended with a cute twist when we
discover that Meghan had a nose job when she was a kid. This bit just
felt like wasted time.
Javier finally becomes a citizen in this episode. I have a problem
with that already, because he's supposed to be a freshman at the
college. I'm pretty sure you have to be a citizen of the country in
order to attend college, unless you are a foreign exchange student.
So if Javier is just getting his green card now...
But anyway, putting that aside this is probably the best part of
this episode. Javier has an enduring respect and admiration for the
country, and it plays well off of Ben's indifference.
I'm pleased to see that Julie's departure is having some lingering
effects on the characters. It would have been easy for them to just
have everyone carry on without any further acknowledgement of Julie,
which is often the case when a character gets axed.
Despite my optimism for the character last week, axed may be
exactly what happened to Amy Jo Johnson because this week there is a
moment of emptiness where Amy's name used to appear in the opening
credits. Interestingly, it hasn't been replaced with Sarah-Jane
Potts, so Molly may only be temporary or a semi-regular. They may be
waiting to see how people respond to her before giving her "regular"
status. Incidentally, her scene with Felicity at the end where she
gives Felicity a bindi was pretty silly.
Anyway, Felicity finds some crystal meth in Julie's former closet -
which she now apparantly shares with Molly. Molly says it's not hers,
so the assumption is that Julie was taking drugs. Concerned, Felicity
calls Julie's mom (adoptive, not biological) and tells her that Julie
dropped out of college and left New York (though she doesn't mention
the drugs). We find out later that Julie's mom got angry at Felicity,
blaming her for letting Julie leave. Felicity has always been
hyper-sensitive, so it's no surprise that this put her in a state.
Keri Russel turns in an good performance in the scene where she tells
Ben what Julie's mom said to her.
Felicity feels guilty and gets very depressed. Meghan and Molly
decide to take her out to get her mind off of things, so they go to a
frat-party (a phrase that has "trouble" written all over it). They
take some Jell-O shots (see "frat-party") and play a little strip
ping-pong (see "Jell-O shots"), and Felicity ends up half-naked in bed
with some guy. She wakes up, puts her clothes back on, and then
wobbles home, stopping only to puke in a trash can. She obviously has
no idea what happened. She gets a call from Julie who, of course,
denies that the crystal meth is hers and everyone chalks it up to
being left there by the previous tennants (yeah, right).
Unfortunately for this episode, the ramifications of the events at
the frat-party won't be seen until next week. So really there isn't
much to say about it here. The episode ends at Javier's citizen
swear-in where Felicity meets up with Ben. We're led to believe that
she doesn't tell him about it. That leaves a lot of unanswered
questions, and as a result adds to this episode's growing weakness.
The only thing I will say for this particular part of the episode
is that it's entirely believeable. Some people may find it hard to
believe that Felicity would do what she does here, but I can tell you
from personal experience - those Jell-O shots are little gifts from
hell. They make you very drunk very fast, and by the time you realize
that they are stronger than they taste, it's already too late. It's
no wonder they got Felicity hammered in no time. Take this as a
lesson to you young people - go easy on the Jell-O shots.
So I guess the show can't always succeed. I think this is the series'
worst episode to date. It tried to do too much, and while it didn't
get everything wrong, it wasted a lot of screen time on the things it
did get wrong.
Next week: Everyone finds out what happened, and Felicity faces the
consequences.
DeeTigress
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> The only thing I will say for this particular part of the episode
>is that it's entirely believeable. Some people may find it hard to
>believe that Felicity would do what she does here, but I can tell you
>from personal experience - those Jell-O shots are little gifts from
>hell. They make you very drunk very fast, and by the time you realize
>that they are stronger than they taste, it's already too late. It's
>no wonder they got Felicity hammered in no time. Take this as a
>lesson to you young people - go easy on the Jell-O shots.
Actually I think it's going to turn out Felicity was the victim of "ruffies, "
aka the "date rape" drug.
>
>
