Crime & Punishment

Season 2, Episode 10

No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful.  Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful! – They Might Be Giants

Phew!  That last episode was quite a ride.  I posted that synopsis three days ago and everyone’s still talking aboot it, including Ashley and Dylan who we now catch in mid-conversation next to their lockers.

Ashley:  he was so creepy aboot it!  he said you and i were secretly dating or something…that i was using him, stringing him along.  i’m not like that, am i?

Dylan:  Of course not.  He’s being a jerk.

Ashley:  really!  i never knew matt could be such a creep.

Chris appears from oot of nowhere and interrupts their private Matt-bashing session: “Well, if it isn’t the beautiful Ash Blonde Ashley!”  Normally, Chris gets spared from the worst of my mockery because he’s such a perfect dick and as such, is just what the rest of the Hillside student body deserves, but this stupid nickname he devised for Whisperina makes absolutely no sense and this is far from the last time we’ll hear it.  He makes a few inappropriate comments before asking Dylan if he talked to Arseman aboot joining the band.  Dylan says that he hasn’t, then nods towards the stairwell as Arseman and Billy descend together.  Deadpool is boring the shit oot of Sassy Afro with more of his weird and disjointed self-promotion when Dylan steps in between them for fear that his little drum monkey will say something so stupid that Arseman will reject their offer.  After some mandatory sass, Arseman finally tells them that she’d like to take the gig as the band’s singer.  Dylan and Deadpool nearly shit themselves with excitement, but Chris strikes a more businesslike tone: “Well, it’s nice we finally know who we got.  Okay, show up at the garage at 4:00 today and be ready to wail.  Jerry’s gonna be there.”

Arseman finally scrapes the bottom of her sass reservoir and takes off, leaving the band to engage in some celebratory guy talk in the lounge.

Chris:  At least with her on stage, the fans will have something to look at.

Dylan:  Uh huh.

Chris:  What do you mean, “uh huh”?

Dylan:  Well, I thought you weren’t just interested in her singing.

Chris:  How’s that?

Dylan:  Well, I, uh, thought you had a bit of a thing for her, and now I know it.

Chris:  Hey, she’s a nice looking woman.  Nothing wrong with that…especially when she’s interested in me, too.

Dylan:  What?

Chris:  It’s obvious!  Haven’t you noticed how she looks at me?

Dylan laughs at Chris’ unjustified overconfidence before implying that he’s more the type of guy someone like Arseman would find attractive, setting himself up for a challenge that even Olaf would have seen coming from a mile away.  (Remember Olaf?  I kinda miss him.)  They make the bet official: “The first guy that gets a date with Arseman, the other guy has to buy him a deluxe pizza”.

At The Avalon, Janice is admiring a necklace that Courtney took off to show her, explaining that she got it from her grandmother.  “It’s so pretty!  Is it an antique?”  Meanwhile, Arseman enters through the side door and greets Matt who is sitting alone at a table near the payphone.  He responds by shrugging his shoulders and making a noise that sounds like “fah”, causing me to wonder what time of the day this is for him to be so fucking shitfaced already.  Arseman gets a drink from the counter and joins her friends at their booth.  Like Janice, albeit completely unprompted, she gushes over Courtney’s ugly pooka bead necklace before announcing that she joined the band.

Janice:  That’s great!  I’ve never had a rock singer for a friend!

Arseman makes a few painfully unfunny quips in response, then Janice informs her that Courtney has big news, too.  (She doesn’t.)  She just got another fucking letter from Jake, who’s due home “in a couple weeks”.  Arseman asks her how she feels aboot that, “Happy?  Scared stiff?  Or both?” and Headband replies that it’s a little of both.  “Of course, I miss him, but in those letters, he seems to think we’ve got this heavy relationship going.”  Yeah, and I’m sure you said nothing to encourage that belief, right, Shit Drapes?  Janice asks if he’s cute and Courtney confirms that he is.

Janice:  Well, if you’re interested in him, he must be pretty terrific! (Arseman and Courtney burst into uncontrollable laughter) What?  What did I say?

Courtney:  Nothing, it’s alright.

Arseman:  Just that you should see some of the goofs Courtney’s been interested in!

That would be Dylan and Matt, Sassy Pants.  Matt just showed that he doesn’t find you worth giving the time of day to and in aboot another season and a half, you’ll be experiencing the same unrequited love for Dylan as Headband here did last season, so you might want to put some effort into shutting your hyperactive cakehole for once.  The three amigos break into a simultaneous giggle fit that mercifully ends this interminable visit to The Avalon.

Dylan and Deadpool are holding an impromptu band meeting in the lounge, the content of which is so asinine that it really doesn’t need my commentary.

Dylan:  I gotta have a serious talk with Chris.

Billy:  What aboot?  This bet on Arseman?

Dylan:  No.  Aboot the band’s artistic direction.

Billy:  What’s that?

Dylan:  Well, you know, what kind of music we’re gonna play.  He’s gotta stop sneaking thrash metal riffs into the songs.  He’s trying to make us sound like Collateral Damage!

Billy:  Collateral Damage is a good band.

Dylan:  Hey, they’re a great band, but they’re not us, especially now that we’ve got Arseman.

Deadpool seems to find this conversation just as ludicrous as I do, so he pulls a slender rectangular gift-wrapped box oot of his backpack and tells Dylan that he took his advice aboot getting a girl a present: “I bought a scarf!”  Dylan asks, “For who?”, and then jokes that if he’s after Arseman, too, then the bet’s off.  Billy reacts with offense, so Dylan clarifies, “It’s a joke, Billy!  Obviously, I’m kidding.  Arseman’s fifteen!”  Deadpool’s not having any of Dylan’s ageist shit, so he exclaims, “Excuse me!  This other girl’s fifteen.  I’ve decided I don’t have much in common with girls my own age.”  Dylan laughs and seems to give Billy his blessing to pursue the mysterious older woman as he gets up and walks away.

Of course, Ashley sits down at a table in the lounge at this exact moment, so Deadpool takes a deep breath and walks over to where she’s sitting.  He nervously asks if she minds if he sits down, and Ashley says, “Of course,” then asks what he’s having for lunch.  Deadpool tells her that he already ate, so she wonders aloud why he’s so keen on watching her eat, leading to a torturously awkward silence.  Ashley comes to his rescue by bringing up the topic of Arseman joining the band, punctuating her statement with a pronounced “eh?”, which is something of which we hear surprisingly little from this all-Canadian ensemble.  Billy chokes oot a few queasy sentence fragments in response as he starts to pull the gift from his backpack just as the bell rings signaling the end of lunch hour.  Keep your fucking Zack Morris jokes to yourself, dear readers.  Ashley splits and Deadpool heaves a frustrated sigh as he shoves the gift back into his bag.  I wonder if he used this same approach on Scarlett Johansson.

At the garage, Dylan is finishing up his “artistic direction” speech to Chris whose only response is to reiterate, “Billy can’t play for squat and you keep playing stuff from the Middle Ages”.  Billy and Arseman enter together and Chris greets their new singer with a smarmy “Hey, Beautiful!”  With all the subtlety of a drunk in a MAGA hat, Dylan steps between them and starts to creepily gush to Arseman aboot how great it is to have her in the band.  Rather than acknowledge either of their retarded advances, she asks Billy to “do that thing on the cymbals” during Mama Says Be Glad.  They may have sexual tension and bitter resentments, but Fleetwood Mac they ain’t.  (For those unfamiliar, Fleetwood Mac was a band from the Middle Ages).

Jerry is putting on his jacket as he exits The Avalon shouting to someone behind him, “See you later.  Gotta go see this band that’s been pestering me to audition.”  The camera pans oot to show Ashley, Courtney and Janice sitting at a table near the door.  Whisperina opines that Jerry is “so full of himself” just because he’s the owner’s son, but Courtney jumps to his idiotic defense and lauds him for “setting up all the rock bands playing here.”  That may sound ridiculously overblown, but think aboot it: if this audition goes well, The Avalon will soon be hosting Collateral Damage, New Kids On The Block, Jimi Hendrix and The Grapes of Wrath.  Pretty impressive for a small café in Vancouver whose marquee reads “Chinese Foods”.  Janice suddenly declares, “That necklace is so pretty, Courtney!” and Ashley concurs.  Headband replies, “Yeah, I don’t think they make stuff like this anymore,” setting up Ashley for her first and mercifully last attempt at comedy as she affects a stupid old lady voice and quips, “Nope, they don’t make ‘em like they used to, Dearie”.  Janice gets up to leave, then sits back down, picks up her drink and says, “But first, a toast to the band!  May they pass the audition!” followed by a three-way clinking of glasses.  Janice finally leaves and Courtney muses, “I think Janice is gonna be a really good friend.”

It’s audition time.  Rather than describe the band’s performance in words, I’ll let Jerry do all the work for me in three quick screen shots:

***

***

Regardless, he tells them they’re hired and our incompetent quartet reacts with shameless unmitigated glee.  Feeling the moment is right, Chris sits down next to Arseman, puts his arm around her shoulder and tells her that he’s really glad she’s in the band.   She stares at him in mild disgust while Dylan and Deadpool try to stifle their laughter.

Deadpool is skulking around by the lockers when Courtney comes by and says something aboot their dad to remind us that these two are supposed to be siblings.  The gift-wrapped scarf is poking its head oot of the top of his backpack, so he tries to shove it back in at the appearance of his horrible sister.  She congratulates him aboot The Avalon gig, then shows off her necklace, which Billy recognizes as their grandmother’s.  She confirms that it is, calling it a “family heirloom”.  Billy presciently warns her not to lose it before haltingly changing the subject in an attempt to get up the courage to broach the topic of his Ashley crush as Matt trudges by like he’s fucking sedated on 800 mg of Thorazine.  Deadpool calls oot, “Hi, Matt!” and gets this reaction:

Apparently, seeing Matt in this zombified state gives Billy the courage to ask Courtney if she knows where Ashley’s locker is.  She responds, “Yeah, why?” but Deadpool pussies oot and tells her to forget it, then begs her not to tell Ashley he asked.  With a smirk, she tells him that it’s locker 276.  Billy walks off mumbling, “With my luck, she probably keeps it locked,” which, from what I’ve seen of these lockers, is highly unlikely.

Dylan and Chris are at The Avalon trying to come up with a name for the band.  I swear on the ashes of my mother’s beehive hairdo that what I’m aboot to type is fucking verbatim:

Dylan:  Pinball!

Chris:  Nah.

Dylan:  The Pinball Machine.  The Chairs.  The Tables.

Chris:  That’s so dumb!

Dylan:  The Ashtrays.  How’s that?  That’s not a bad name for a band!

Chris:  Yeah, right…a bunch of butts lying around.

Dylan:  Alright, you come up with one.  I’m making all the suggestions.  You’re just shooting them down!

Chris:  Let’s not have a name at all.  The No Name Band.

Dylan:  No, that’s been done.

Chris:  Let’s call ourselves TBA.  To Be Announced.  That way we’ll get a lot of bookings.

Dylan:  Maybe we should get someone else to think of a name.

Chris:  You mean Billy?  He’d wanna call us Really New Kids On The Block.

Dylan:  No, I mean we’ll get everybody to think of a…hey, wait a minute – that’s not bad!  We could have a contest!

Chris: Oh, come on, Dylan!

Dylan:  No, wait, listen!  This is good!  A name the band contest!  We’ll let them do the work for us!

Chris:  I hate to admit it, but that might work!

Incidentally, this was exactly how The Butthole Surfers decided on their iconic name, too.  They decide to make a banner and a suggestion box to put in the student lounge as Ashley and Arseman walk in, effectively ending their meeting of the minds.  Dylan and Chris proceed to assault her with the most inept flirtation imaginable, but Arseman just shakes her head and tells them to “save it for a song lyric”.  Chris proclaims that he’ll do just that and Dylan counters, “If he writes it, it’ll be a thrash metal wall-banger.  I’ll do the most romantic ballad you ever heard!”  They finally leave and Ashley asks, “What if they both have a crush on you?” to which Arseman replies, “Both of them?  What a drag!”  Sassy Afro goes on to opine that “Dylan’s alright, I guess, but Chris can be such a jerk!” and Ashley counters, “But kind of cute, right?”  Yeah, you read that right.  Ashley and Chris.  I’d completely understand if you decide to bail oot of reading this blog any further now that you have this foreknowledge.

In the girls’ locker room, Janice is sitting on the bench rubbing her knee when Ashley enters and asks if she’s okay while she pins a note on Courtney’s locker.  Janice explains that she banged up her knee falling over Courtney in a volleyball game.  As Ashley walks towards the door, Janice shouts, “Courtney’s great, isn’t she?  She always has something good to say aboot people!”  You mean like, “I’m sure she means well, but she’s so irritating!”, Janice?

Dylan and Chris are setting up their Name The Band sideshow in the student lounge when some unknown kids walk by and treat them to some well deserved mockery.  After they walk off, Guitar and Bass continue to snipe at each other over who Arseman finds more desirable.

Courtney is at her gym locker when she notices that her stupid ugly necklace is missing.  She desperately scours her locker and rummages through some dirty clothes on the bench, but it’s nowhere to be found.  You should’ve listened to Deadpool, Moron.

Ashley and Arseman are still at The Avalon, engaged in the same idiotic conversation aboot whether or not Ashley thinks Chris is cute when Courtney comes running over to their table in a panic.  She bellows that someone stole her necklace that she’d placed in her locker during gym class.  Arseman is positively aghast at the news, but Ashley responds by asking her if she got the note that she taped to her locker.  It comes oot that Janice was in the locker room when she was leaving the note.  Who Farted is sitting at the counter and when she overhears this last earth-shattering statement, she gets up and runs oot the door.

Who Farted rushes up to the table in the student lounge where Brooke is eating lunch.

WF:  This is good.  This is very good!  This is prime!

Brooke:  Don’t keep us in suspense, Dahling, do tell!

WF:  It’s aboot Janice!

Larry, Moe and Curly are back in the girls’ locker room searching for the necklace as Larry whines that she should have listened to her brother and wonders how she’ll ever break the news to her grandmother.  Arseman advises her to ask Miss Leddingham if anyone’s seen it, but Courtney is certain she left it in the locker, though she can’t believe that Janice took it.  Janice enters the locker room smiling from ear to ear and asks, “Do I hear my name in vain?”  Her smile melts when she faces her three stone-faced friends and asks, “What’s the matter?” just as Brooke and Who Farted walk in.  This is by far the busiest we’ve ever seen the girls’ locker room.  Look at this shit:

Brooke begins to bloviate: “What’s the matter?  Now that takes nerve, wouldn’t you say?  I mean, I have to admire a woman with that kind of gall, entertaining us with her innocent routine after she’s the one who stole the necklace herself!”  Arseman and Ashley cut in to remind Brooke that people are innocent until proven guilty, and they go back and forth as Janice stands awkwardly between them until Brooke claims that Janice faked an injury to get into the locker room by herself and lifts up the hem of her skirt, proclaiming, “There!  See?  No bruise!”  Janice runs from the locker room as Brooke crosses her arms and says, “I’m sorry, Courtney.  I know you thought she was your friend.”

Jesus, I’m fucking tired and hungry.  If the lack of a closing joke for this post disappoints you, just make one up yourself, okay?