October 30, 2000

CD: Jessica Biel was OUT OF CONTROL last night. I think we're looking at a showdown for next week.

BM: I was working on my bills - wasn't Jessica babysitting her cousin drunk or something?

CD: I cringed all the way through last night's episode.

Matt definitely wins the "creepiest member of the Camden family" award, for the seventh or eighth time. When the show starts, we see him chatting up a blonde cutie named Kim at the library. It turns out that she knows Heather, Matt's deaf ex-fiancee, and once she realizes who Matt is, she gives him the cold shoulder. Why? Who knows, but Matt is intrigued - intrigued enough to begin stalking this girl. He gets her phone number and address from the school, gives her a call (she tells him not to call any more and hangs up on him), and finally he shows up at her apartment, where her brother is waiting to pound the crap out of him. Why doesn't Matt know enough not to stalk girls? Is he unhinged? Why doesn't anyone else see how creepy this is? (Aside from the roommate, who sees what's happening but contents himself with rolling his eyes and wisecracking about it. Come on, Matt's roommate. We need you here.)

For some reason, the brother lets Matt talk to Kim. It turns out that Kim's not interested because she assumed that Matt has a thing for disabled girls. Kim has an eye disease called something like retinatitus pigmanitis, which makes her partially blind. She explains the disease in a monologue that sounds like the back of a "Walk for a Cure for Retinatitus Pigmanitis" flier.

Clearly Kim is not in the mood to date Matt, and still finds him creepy, yet Matt asks her out for a date again. She turns him down - again - but they have a nice laugh and he goes home. Strange. I'm wondering if this is setting the stage for a later episode where Matt distracts the family from Mary's problems by being arrested in the college library wearing nothing but a bathrobe. We'll see.

The younger kids were more annoying than criminal. Simon spends half the episode staring at himself in the mirror and playing with his hair and clothes. He's having trouble with that inevitable transition that comes when child actors on long-running television shows suddenly hit puberty. When it happens to girls, they grow breasts and wear chic clothing, and it's cool. (Lucy is a textbook example.) But when the guys grow up, suddenly their voices are different and they have facial hair and masturbate, and they aren't the loveable cherubs that the audience wants to see. (Fred Savage probably has a lot to say on this topic.) Simon knows he's lost the cute factor, so he's determined to become manly and adult-looking and try to shave off some of Matt's younger fanbase. When the hairgel and the sleeveless shirts don't help, he decides to sneak out of the house and get his ear pierced. This subplot ends limply, however, when the parents see the earring and just demand that he take it out. With everything else going on, this doesn't make it on the radar.

Little Ruthie has a sleepover with her two best friends - Rachel, from her old school, and Sara, from her new preppie elitist school. The two girls fight over who gets to be Ruthie's best friend. This annoying subplot goes on for a couple scenes before Lucy makes them both go home. My only comment on this is that, while the actress playing Rachel was pretty good, the girl who played Sara was by far the ugliest and least talented person I've ever seen on the WB. This little girl got whacked but good with the ugly stick. You really should have seen it.

Lucy spent the episode baby-sitting the younger kids and cleaning up the house. Her suck-up routine makes me sick. She isn't even dressing slutty anymore, like she did in the season premiere. Clearly she's showing off to make herself look better than Mary, and I'm waiting for the scene where Mary gets fed up and beats the piss out of her.

Last but definitely not least, Mary. As we know, Mary is irresponsible, she's flushing her life down the can, and her new married trailer friends, Frankie (the girl) and Johnny (the guy), smoke dope and fight a lot. So far, so good. In a weird moment of reconciliation, Mary tries to win back her family's trust by volunteering to be a babysitter.

Recovering alcoholic Aunt Julie and her husband Dr. Ed Begley Jr. (see last season) need to go out for the day. Mary offers to take care of the baby, and Julie tells her frankly - the writers of this show can't write anything but frank dialogue - that she doubts Mary is responsible enough. But somehow, Julie and Ed are persuaded to let Mary take care of their kid. Bad move.

Mary sets up shop at Julie and Ed's house and all is well - until Frankie shows up with her baby. Frankie needs to leave the kid with someone while she runs around town looking for Johnny, who she suspects is two-timing her. "Don't get mixed up in this, Mary!" I say, already cringing at what I know is going to happen. "This is your first chance all season not to fuck up!" At first Mary insists that she has to play by the rules, but she's finally persuaded to take the extra baby. Later, she's rummaging through the baby's bag and finds one of Frankie's beers stashed in with the milk bottles. By now I'm actually shouting at the TV screen. "Dammit Mary, throw the beer away! What the hell are you doing?" Mary stares at the bottle for a while and finally decides to drink it.

Ed and Julie are settling in for a nice dinner when they call home and find that the line's busy. They rush back and find the phone off the hook, two babies in the crib, an empty longneck in the trash, and Mary missing. She's wandering around upstairs somewhere (this is not explained). They go into their tirade against Mary and kick her out of the house with the surplus baby.

While all this is going on, Frankie and Johnny are on the other side of town having their lives intruded on by none other than the Rev and Annie. Rev. and Annie Camden took the day off to have some fun, which lasts about ten minutes before the Rev. spots a lost soul in trouble: Johnny is skipping his court-mandated drug counseling to hang out at the pool hall - with a woman who's not his wife. After spying on them for a while, the Rev. finally goes over to confront Johnny. Around this time Frankie shows up at the pool hall and sees the other woman. She gets in a shouting match with Johnny that ends when Johnny tries to slug her - and ends up beaning the Rev., who got in the way! Finally we see that missionary work isn't all just smiles and drippy speeches!

The Rev. and Annie tag team our lost souls, Rev. Camden talking to Johnny about how his life is in the shitter and he needs help, and Annie trying to persuade Frankie to take her kid and leave. They spend a while at this before letting Frankie and Johnny discuss their options in private. This part is beautiful. In the past, a tormented sinner would hear the Rev.'s words of wisdom and immediately turn his or her life around. But Frankie and Johnny are too smart for this. "If we don't tell the Rev. what he wants to hear, he'll never let us leave," says Frankie. So they play nice and reassure the Camdens, and then run back home to smoke dope and drink beer. So nice! It's great to some Camden-proof villains on this show.

Mary brings the baby back to Frankie and Johnny's trailer, which brings us to the cliffhanger of the episode: Johnny offers her a joint, and it looks like she's going to take it. What will she do? Give up on herself and become a "drug addict"? Resist temptation and start up that long, windy road to redemption? We'll find out next week, though the trailers make it look like things will get nastier before they get better. I'm betting they kill her off.

BM: I seriously think Mary is being prepped for a write-off.

You know, the one part of Seventh that I paid attention to was the Matt storyline. The whole time I was thinking, "Doesn't this Prettyboy have anything better to do than chase women with assorted handicaps?" What is next for him, a nasty combination of leprosy and the Clap?

Incidentally, since I got the satellite dish, I get to see all sorts of made for tv crap reruns on HBO. One of these winners was "Coed Call Girl," starring an untalented Tori Spelling. Who else was in it, playing her love interest, but Barry Watson...Matt Camden himself! The talent scale swung heavily in his direction.