Purgatorio

Season 1, Episode 4

It’s two days later and Matt is on the Avalon payphone pleading with Ashley to let him explain what really happened with Brooke, because apparently Matt’s family doesn’t own a telephone so he has no choice but to conduct this embarrassing conversation on the one phone in all of Vancouver that affords the least privacy to its users.  Ashley hangs up on him leaving Matt to wallow in public humiliation.

At Hillside, Courtney and Deadpool walk through the corridor and continue to flog the dead horse of their parents’ marital problems because if it weren’t for this convenient ongoing family drama, these two would have absolutely nothing to talk aboot.  Billy is wearing an incredible T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of some local zoo and Courtney looks like she’s aboot to audition for the role of scullery maid on Downton Abbey.   They debate whether it’s wiser to adopt an optimistic or pessimistic ootlook regarding the fate of their parents’ marriage but since these siblings are repellent magnetic poles, the question is rendered moot.  Their conversation comes to a halt when Ashley mopes down the stairs with some oversized rucksack slung over her shoulder looking more like someone whose entire family was just murdered than someone who caught her boyfriend staring at another girl’s ring.  She tells Courtney that she’s ok, albeit sleep deprived.  Courtney asks her if she’s spoken to Matt and Ashley responds, “matt who?”, indicating that she’s suffering from early onset dementia or just being a little twat.  I’ll leave that for you to decide.  Courtney suggests that perhaps Ashley should allow Matt to explain himself, but this is aboot as successful as her suggestion to Deadpool that he should adopt more of a glass-half-empty view aboot their parents.

The boys’ locker room.  Jake is rocking some form-fitting jeans as Matt fills him in on Ashley’s refusal to talk to him, leading to this exchange:

Matt:  I don’t believe this!  I spend two minutes talking to Brooke and Ashley has a cow!

Jake:  Sounds like she had the whole herd.

Matt takes offense at Jake’s attempted witticism, so Jake tries another approach: “Don’t be so macho.  You can talk to me.”  Jake, Jake, Jake…no 15 year old boy’s go-to word should be “macho”.  Haven’t you ever wondered why even Courtney treats you like a fucking eunuch?  Matt admits that he really cares aboot Ashley and then these two geniuses, each of whom received a forged note from the other right before it all went down, finally figure oot that Brooke must have intentionally set the whole thing up, which is a bit like watching the monkeys in the opening sequence of 2001 gradually learning to wield clubs.  Jake offers to have a talk with Ashley and Matt thanks him as he gets up to leave while Jake conspicuously leers at his ass on its way oot the door.

Billy sees his sister sitting in the lounge staring at her unopened bag lunch and asks her if she’s seen Dylan.  Her surprise at the inquiry prompts Billy to gush aboot Dylan’s awesomeness and tell her that they’ve been hanging oot and Dylan even lets him play the drums.  Courtney wonders whether it’s good for her little brother to be hanging oot with “someone like Dylan” – and that’s when he goes all Deadpool on her ass.  Billy grasps Courtney’s neck and twists it 180 degrees until you can hear her spinal cord sever from her brain stem.  Her body collapses to the floor as Billy straddles the motionless carcass and says, “Never underestimate the stupidity of idiots!”  Just kiddin’.  He just sorta whines for a bit while his cunt of a sister suddenly decides that Dylan may be a bad influence on her brother, but he sure is one fine piece of ass.

Jake is desperately chasing after Ashley so that he can put in a good word for Matt.  She resists in the most animatedly bitchy way that Ashley can muster until he mentions the forged notes and tells her that Matt is waiting for her at The Avalon so they can talk.  As Ashley ponders what to do, we see Courtney flat-oot spying on this little scene from behind a column.  Ashley continues to hesitate until Jake positively begs her to go talk to him – “Please!  Just for 5 minutes!”  Damn, Jake.

Finally, Ashley begrudgingly agrees to go meet Matt for 5 minutes as Jake’s yenta of a girl-crush comes oot from behind the pillar and asks, “So, what do you think?”.  Rather than telling this horrible douche canoe to mind her own fucking business, Jake crosses his fingers to superstitiously enhance the likelihood that Matt will realize Jake is the love of his life did him a solid.

Matt is at The Avalon, nervously tapping his fingers and brooding over a sandwich and a glass of milk with two straws.  Ashley enters and approaches the table in her signature vulnerable stance, which is to place both of her hands behind her ass (usually, she employs this move when running oot of a room in tears, but here she puts a subtle spin on it to make it more appropriate for nervously entering a room).  Matt tries to explain what happened but Ashley’s responses sound like she’s having a completely different conversation with some invisible entity at the table (a very common dialogue oddity on this show).  Finally, Matt asks her why she was hanging oot with Kelly on Friday, but even this fails to cause any light bulbs to activate above her moronic blonde coconut.  Jeez, this girl is dense.  All possible attempts at reason exhausted, Matt pulls oot all the stops and tells her that he thinks he loves her.  Incidentally, he doesn’t appear to be drunk.

Courtney sees Dylan sitting in the lounge, shoves her hands into the pockets of her grotesque floor-length frock and saunters over to him in a way that I assume is meant to be seductive despite the fact that she looks like an anthropomorphic yeast infection.  She stands in front of him like an idiot for what seems an eternity until he finally looks up from his Auto-Finder magazine and asks, “Did you wanna talk to me or something?”  Courtney says no, then she says yes, then she says “not really”, before at last settling on thanking him for being a friend to Billy.  Then, a mere 10 minutes after warning Deadpool that Dylan is a bad influence, she proceeds to invite herself to come hear him play sometime.  Dylan responds with a mumbled, “Yeah, right.  Sometime, maybe.  Who knows?” while Courtney’s face contorts in disappointment over the fact that her completely unplanned plan to seduce Dylan was a dud.  We haven’t even scratched the surface of this swamp donkey’s awfulness.

At their lockers, Kelly informs Brooke that she saw Ashley this morning and she looked, “Gray.  Just gray.”  They congratulate themselves on the stunning success of their plan just as Matt and Ashley come down the stairs, hand in hand.  Our favorite bitches’ mouths drop open as they stare at each other in stunned disbelief.

Olaf is sitting on a bench in the lounge wearing a green cardigan with an iron-on patch of what looks like a cartoon Viking on the sleeve.  He’s playing chess by himself.  Deadpool is getting a soda from the nearby vending machine.  He says hi to Olaf, they briefly discuss chess and Finland and just like that, a new friendship is born.  I realize that this whole paragraph was uncharacteristically light on the jokes, but that’s because Olaf is the only character on this show who doesn’t make me feel like going on a cross-country killing spree.

In the girls’ locker room, Ashley is regaling Courtney with her incredulity that Brooke could possibly do something as mean as she did.  This whole time, Ashley is tucking her purple turtleneck into her jeans and I realize with mild alarm that I can’t tear my lecherous eyes away from her slim little waistline to pay attention to what she’s saying.  Obviously, Courtney’s not paying attention either, because as soon as Ashley takes a brief pause, Courtney immediately changes the subject to ask her what she thinks of Dylan.  Know what, Courtney?  Because you’re such a narcissistic asshole, I’m not even going to listen to what you say for the rest of this scene.  Ashley, I think your shirt’s still untucked, you better fix that.

Kelly and Brooke are walking through the hall when Jake spots them and marches over like he means business.  Jake starts to give them what-for and Kelly splits, leaving Brooke alone to absorb his wrath.  Brooke capitalizes on her hasty exit by telling Jake that the fake notes were all Kelly’s idea and Jake believes her because he’s a fucking numbskull.

Cut to The Avalon and a close-up of Matt shouting at Jake in bewilderment, “…and you believed her?!”  The camera pans oot and we see that Courtney and Ashley are sitting at the booth, too.  Jake appears to be cradling a copy of the Vancouver Yellow Pages that’s on the table in front of him.  Courtney floats the possibility that maybe Brooke was telling the truth “even though she’s a…” – Matt interjects, “What’s the word she’s looking for?” setting Jake up for the boldest line of the entire series, “Five letters, I think…rhymes with ‘witch’”.  Jake is in the presence of both objects of his libidinal desire at one booth here, so he’s bringing his A-game.  Courtney continues to defend Brooke which sets Matt off on a rant that somehow takes a U-turn and lands squarely on Ashley, the girl to whom he just moments ago declared his love.   With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell that the viewers are supposed to suspect that Matt had been drinking before arriving at The Avalon, but I prefer to pretend that he came to his senses and remembered what an infuriating little dipshit he’s dating.  Enter Brooke, who approaches the table and starts apologizing on behalf of Kelly, saying that since Kelly’s her friend, she “feels kinda responsible” and hopes that she can still be friends with all present.  The buck successfully passed, Brooke retreats to a counter stool while the brain trust at the booth continue to wonder whether she’s being sincere.  Matt finally says, “Let’s get oot of here,” and they all get up to leave except for Courtney who just can’t resist staying behind to make an ass of herself in front of Brooke.  Courtney tells Brooke that she believes her, then compliments her top and says she’s been thinking of buying a similar one that she saw at the mall, which is obviously a lie because Brooke’s top isn’t made of age-yellowed flax.  Brooke correctly guesses that Courtney’s trying to impress a guy and rather than just say, “yeah”, she reacts with horror to the inquiry and swears that “it’s nothing like that!”, which is the second most commonly spoken phrase on this show even though Courtney’s the only one who says it.

The Blackwell junkyard.  We hear some bluesy guitar notes coming from Dylan’s garage as the camera lingers on the exterior shot long enough for us to make oot a winch (?), a gray pick-up truck with a busted windshield, and what looks like a late-70s Crown Victoria with both the trunk and the hood open.  Inside, Dylan’s doing what Dylan does as Deadpool enters, still wearing his amazing zoo t-shirt.  Billy tries some of his parent-related optimism oot on Dylan but is once again advised not to get his hopes up.  Sensing Billy’s disappointment, Dylan explains how he doesn’t get along with his “old man”, sounding like John Bender in an edited-for-television broadcast of The Breakfast Club.  His angsty speech is interrupted by a knock on the door and – guess who! – it’s fucking Courtney slithering her uninvited way into her little brother’s only port in the storm.  From ootside of the shot, Billy asks, “What are you doing here?” and a horrifying close-up of Courtney aw-shucksing herself into Dylan’s world abruptly closes oot the scene.

At The Avalon, Kelly enters and approaches Brooke’s table.  She. Is. Pissed.  Brooke pretends not to understand what the problem is as her tight-lipped and motherfucking livid friend sits down and glares at her in intimidating silence.

Ugh! – Dylan’s fucking garage again, and just when things were getting interesting at The Avalon.  Deadpool’s banging away, Dylan’s playing guitar and Courtney is staring at him while perhaps trying to discretely hide the growing damp spot on her horrible dress.  The song ends and both Billy and Dylan make it clear to Courtney that her pathetically transparent plan to get into Dylan’s pants is pathetically transparent (but thankfully, her dress isn’t).  Oblivious, she invites herself to stay and asks Dylan to play something he wrote himself.  He says sure and then treats her to the same riff from 2112 that we’ve already heard him play even though this is only the second time we hear him play.  Courtney gets all googly-eyed with infatuation while Deadpool glares at her from behind the drums.

YES! – back to The Avalon.  Kelly is tearing Brooke a new one for telling everyone that Friday night’s escapade was her idea.  Brooke attempts to defend herself, but Kelly isn’t having any of her shit.  Kelly menacingly looks Brooke in the eye and says, “I won’t forget this, Brooke.  Never.” Clearly rattled, Brooke desperately changes the subject to concocting a new and better plan, rises from her seat and tells Kelly not to worry because although it may take some time, sooner or later, they will get revenge.  A now solitary Kelly closes oot the episode with this line which drips from her tongue with more venom than a colony of box jellyfish: “Oh, yes.  It may take some time, but there’ll be revenge, Brooke.  And you can take my word on that.”

Damn straight.