Square Pegs – ‘It’s Academical’ – Part Two

Here’s part one!

PART TWO

We left off with our quiz-show team chosen three: Muffy, Larry Simpson, and Patty, and we can already see there are going to be competitive issues between Muffy and Patty for Larry’s love and adoration.

It is already apparent that Larry is drawn to Patty, but it is also apparent that she becomes a blithering idiot in his presence (“girlf”), and may not be up to the task of competing for him. But you also know that Larry is a little bit afraid of Muffy (aren’t we all), and Muffy is really no competition at all.

Who knows how it will work out!

Let’s take a look!

Muffy, Larry and Patty sit squeezed together in a booth at the local hamburger joint. Lauren sits at the counter nearby, basically coaching Lauren through what to say, through vigorous hand gestures and pantomime. Larry busts Lauren on this a couple of times, glancing over and seeing her wild gesticulations, and he starts to crack up, before getting himself together. It’s endearing.

Look at how they’re all squeezed in there – obviously so they can all be in the same shot in close-up but I want to say, “Guys … learn boundaries – no need to sit ON TOP of each other. Unless of course, you want to … Just don’t do it in an open grave, mkay?”

Naturally, Muffy is dominating here. She is turning all of her focus onto Larry, and she talks as though she is in a Barbara Cartland novel.

“We are from two totally different walks of life, Larry!” she exclaims passionately.

Larry says, trying to keep everything in a more practical vein, “But we’re both high school students.”

Muffy barrels on, sighing, “C’est la truth.”

Poor Patty.

Poor Patty, how ’bout poor Larry! Larry squirms through all of this, but still – he has that tragically attractive quality of still trying to be nice, even though all he wants to do is say, “Muffy. Back off, lady.”

He tries to divert the conversation to more of a group event. “How was your burger, Patty?” he asks.

Patty doesn’t know what to say to that, because … she doesn’t have one thought in her brain in that minute, and has no idea how to conduct herself. She glances over at Lauren desperately, who mimes to her that she should say, “It was THE BEST burger I have EVER tasted.” hahahaha Guys like girls who are enthusiastic, apparently. So Patty, desperately, does what Lauren tells her to do, and gushes, “It was THE BEST burger I have EVER tasted.”

Larry is kind of taken aback by the overly passionate response. He’s like, “Uhm … wow … I’m really happy for you …” Then he glances at Lauren, sees the tailend of her giant pantomime, and then gets what’s going on. He starts to laugh, trying to hide it. It’s kind of unbearably sweet and I don’t care who knows my feelings on that score.

I know I keep saying this, but look at Muffy in that last shot! It just cracks me up. She is so annoyed at the interruption and that she does not have Larry’s undivided attention.

Muffy blows right over Patty’s gushing over her hamburger and continues on her romantic pursuit, leaning in over Patty, and insisting, in a breathless voice, that working together – with their two giant brains – will be the greatest love story of all time. Larry is caught, trapped. All he wants to do is get the hell out of there.

Muffy has one of the funniest lines in the episode here. She confesses, emotionally, “Larry, you bring out a level of pep in me I never knew I had.”

Finally, he extricates himself from Muffy’s clutches, but not before she reaches out to wipe the corner of his damn mouth with her napkin. He basically ENDURES that, but he’s twitching away from her at that point. He picks up the check and says, “I have to go – let me get this – ” Muffy can’t have this, she reaches out and snatches it from his hand, saying, “Heavens no – this will be a Pep Club expense …” All generous and benevolent … and he’s visibly uncomfortable now, picking up his books – “Okay, okay,” he says, getting up – “I’ll see you guys later” and basically rushes off, free at last.

Muffy watches him go, desperately. Doesn’t look at Patty but hands her the check, still staring off after Larry, saying, “Patty, I seem to be short on cash … could you get this, please?” and she rushes off after him shrieking, “LARRY???!” Again with the comedic slam-dunk of Jami Gertz.

The second Muffy is gone, Lauren races over into the void, to commiserate with her friend about how things are going. Lauren gets an idea. “You can’t be too smart, Patty. Boys don’t like girls who are smart.” Patty is baffled, “They don’t?” Lauren then launches into a giant monologue about why this is so, and how there is historical precedent to prove her point. “Did you see A Star is Born on TV last night?” she says. “James Mason plays a movie star, but when his wife gets more successful then him, he becomes an alcoholic wreck.”

Patty is a lamb lost in the woods, she obviously can’t handle interactions with Larry on her own steam (“girlf”), so you can tell she is considering Lauren’s advice.

And you just know that this will not go well.

But very few things DO go well when you are 14 and in love with a hot senior. With “vigorous chest hair” and forearms that make you want to kill yourself if you’re not allowed to touch them on your own terms and for as long as you want, PRONTO.

Next scene shows a study session with Larry, Muffy and Patty in the library. Muffy has taken the reins of the entire thing. She has somehow gotten transcripts of all of the quiz shows in the past – “It is said,” she declares, as though she is talking about some Egyptian creation myth, “that they don’t repeat questions … but they may be lying.” She has written flash cards with all the questions on it, and she ostentatiously passes out copies to Larry and Patty. Larry, meanwhile, is treating this all kind of humorously, because there’s really no polite way to fight Muffy’s bossiness … and Patty sits sweltering in silence, waiting for her big moment to “act dumb”.

Please notice how Lauren is hunched in the background of the second shot. That makes me laugh!

Larry does his best to assert his own power here, and says, holding the flash cards, “Okay – why don’t we try some American History questions?”

He looks at the flash card and reads, “List the five presidents, in order, after Hoover.”

He ponders this as Patty tries to look stupid, even though she probably can figure out the answer. Patty hems and haws, saying, “God … I feel so DUMB … I should know this … why don’ I know this?? I’m so STUPID!”

Larry starts to give her weird looks. Huh? What the hell is going on?

Patty makes a wild guess at the answer, “Didn’t some of them have beards?”

Larry is basically surrounded at the moment with women who are flat-out lunatics. He has nowhere to turn now.

Muffy barges into the void, exclaiming: “ROUGH TOTS EAT COOL JELLO.”

Oh, Muffy. Please stop being so crazy.

Larry and Patty are stunned into silence by her gibberish. Larry says, “What?” Muffy explains, proudly, “Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson! Rough Tots Eat Cool Jello!” I mean, how do you respond when someone acts so crazy?

Patty forgets that she’s supposed to be acting dumb, and says, bitchily, “Kennedy doesn’t start with ‘C’.”

Muffy loses it. “Are you trying to imply something about my intelligence?”

Patty snaps, “That’s infer.”

Uh-oh. Patty is showing she’s smart. She then crumbles back, saying to herself, “How did I know that?” She turns directly to Larry and says, “Normally, I don’t know things like that.”

Larry doesn’t know who he is anymore. What the hell has happened to Patty?

Also, why is she abandoning him to her own brand of lunacy, leaving him alone and undefended against Muffy? It would be much better if it were two against one – the two smart NORMAL ones against the smart INSANE one.

Muffy is on a rampage. “You may get grades as good as mine, but I have an advantage because I will be faster on the buzzer. I grew up with a push-button phone.”

Larry is no longer concentrating on the study session. He keeps looking over at Patty, confused. Muffy then sees a group of students working on a banner in the other corner of the library and she howls in anger, “Oh, they’ve spelled my name wrong on that banner!” and flounces off. (You can see the big banner in the background – with huge letters: M U F Y. hahahahahaha)

Now comes a killer scene, which is really rather unfair, because it raises expectations in the fluttery hearts of adolescent girls everywhere. He CARES about her. That’s the message. Devastating!

The second Muffy leaves, Larry turns to Patty and says, “Are you feeling all right, Patty? You really blanked out on that Presidents question.”

What I like about the script here is that Patty doesn’t keep up the charade. It gives an opportunity for a moment of connection – which does happen from time to time in high school (I am thinking of one of the best books of high school life and emotion that I have ever read – Prep, by Curtis Settenfeld – my review here. Prep is an unbelievably accurate – wrenchingly so – evocation of the adolescent experience from the ground up. So much of it has to do with play-acting, pretending to be a certain kind of person – choosing a persona, or having one chosen for you, accurately or no … and it’s a wilderness of make-believe, but sometimes – rarely – a moment can crack through that facade, and you are TRULY seen. More often than not, such moments are devastating, rather than pleasing … but boy, those are the moments you remember). So the script writers, instead of having Patty keep up the act (which just wouldn’t have been as interesting, much more cliched) – they have her ‘fess up.

It’s like Larry Simpson, and his concern for her, disarms her completely. He can be trusted. You can tell him things. You can admit your silliness. He won’t judge.

Patty looks at him, hesitating, and then comes clean. “Have you ever seen Star is Born?”

He replies, kind of joking, but sweet, “Are you drunk?”

Patty’s braver now, she’s back in the realm of truth, and she says, “A friend told me that you would like me better if I wasn’t so smart.”

Larry almost laughs at this and says, “I don’t think you should listen to that friend anymore.” (as Lauren hovers in the background, subliminal).

Patty is relieved. “Really?”

He’s gentle, now, talking to her very seriously, like he’s trying to give her advice about how to live. “Patty, why do you think I went out with a college girl? Because she’s smart. I like smart girls.”

Uh oh. See, when you make a connection like that (college girl = you, Patty) you build up someone’s hopes! He doesn’t just say, “I like smart girls” – he says: “I went out with someone BECAUSE she was smart” and in a crazy 14-year-old’s brain, that will immediately equal, “I want to go out with YOU.” Whether or not that is what you intended!

Also, you can tell that Larry is proud of the fact that he dated outside of his age-group. He’s a little vain about it.

I like him better for this small flaw.

Patty says, “You do?”

Larry says, and it’s strangely intimate the way he says it, like he’s not talking in a generalized abstract way, but very specifically – about her – “Yeah. So you don’t have to do all that with me. You’re smart. I like that.”

To quote my friend Mitchell, the Jew: “Sweet Jesus.”

He makes sure she got the message, with a quiet insistent, “Okay?” She nods, happily. It’s a heart-cracker. Then he says, gathering up his books, “Okay … I’ll see you later, okay?” And off he goes, the most romantic hero of our era.

The second he leaves, Lauren swoops over, wanting to hear everything. “Tell me everything that just happened.”

Patty is sitting taller now, her shoulders straight, her face calm and peaceful. She says, “Larry doesn’t like dumb girls. He likes smart girls.”

Lauren takes this in, and, true to form, immediately adjusts. “Okay, then, you now need to be the smartest girl he has ever met. Start studying!”

She is oblivious to her contradictions. She goes whichever way she is needed. It’s hysterical. Patty calls her on it. “You do realize that that is the exact opposite to the advice you gave me yesterday?”

Lauren shrugs. “If I can be flexible, so can you!”

Now we come to the big moment: the filming of ‘It’s Academical’ in the school gym. Longfellow Tech (boooo) vs. Weemawee High. There are battling squads of rival cheerleaders, people with banners, TV crews setting up … general pandemonium.

Vinnie, LaDonna and Jennifer stroll into the gym.

I just need to take a moment to say: Look at their clothes.

Shame. White-hot shame.

Vinnie is still trying to figure out a way that he can get seen on the dance show. He has heard that there is going to be a sequel to Saturday Night Fever and he wants to be in it. “It’s going to be directed by Sylvester Stallone,” he raves, “and you know he doesn’t just go around doing sequels.” Ha. Funny line. Jennifer is, as always contemptuous (her epitaph should say “Meh” – a phrase I despise on the face of it – it, to me, suggests everything that is wrong with social interactions in this internet age. Oh it must be so DIFFICULT for you to be so OVER everything, to be so BEYOND joy that all you can say to pretty much anything is “Meh”. Boo. Boo on Meh.) Jennifer says, “Yeah, like I really want to, like, stand in line to see Sunday Night Fever.” Poor Vinnie, dating such an unsupportive drip.

Meanwhile, Dan Vermilion is “backstage”, putting his makeup on and straightening his beard, and he makes some bullshit comment to the assistant principal nearby about how, “yeah, we all do our own makeup … DeNiro … Hoffman … Pacino …” Hilarious!

Now we get our first glimpse of the rival team, and have to say it, they are an intimidating and snotty looking bunch. Their air of competition is far more frightening than Muffy’s more anxious shriek-fest of “gimme gimme gimme”. These are worthy foes. Don’t underestimate them.

They make the Weemawee team look like little kids.

Nice to see that Larry has once again donned his washed-up-professor-of-18th-century-French-literature’s blazer.

Very appropriate for the occasion, smartypants.

The show begins. Lauren is LIVING it from the audience, shooting her support and love up onto the stage out of her eyeballs in a blinding-white paralyzing glow.

The quiz show begins. At one point, it becomes apparent that something fishy is going on. Dan Vermilion doesn’t even finish the question before the Longfellow Tech main beeyotch rings her buzzer and gives the right answer. They are obviously cheating! They knew the questions beforehand – it is so obvious! It gets so bad that Dan Vermilion says, at one point, “In 1678 –” BUZZ from Longfellow Tech. Vermilion says, “Yes?” and the main blonde beeyotch leans in and says, “The defenestration of Prague?” Which, I’m sorry, is just fucking funny. Vermilion shouts, “CORRECT!”

Not fair! Is that the only damn thing that happened in 1678?

Next question: “In 1253 –” BUZZ form Longfellow Tech. Vermilion says, “Yes?” Blonde leans into the mike: “Mongols sack Baghdad.” “CORRECT.”

The audience is starting to get unruly, the cheerleaders from Longfellow are leaping around, and there’s an ugly mood to the proceedings. How will Weemawee compete with such egregious cheaters?

Sadly, though, we begin to see Larry’s character flaw in a clearer light.

At one point, he leans over and whispers to the snotty blonde, “How do you know all the answers?”

She smirks. “It helps if you know the questions beforehand.”

And instead of being turned off, you can see that this young man is, alas, turned on. All you need to do, apparently, to get in with Larry Simpson is be a haughty blonde saying, “The defenstration of Prague”! (note to self …)

Uh-oh. Foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, the Weemawee team is having internal trouble. No matter who buzzes the buzzer (and it’s usually Patty), Muffy cannot leave well enough alone – and she single-handedly ruins two answers in a row, due to butting in. One of the answers is to spell “Erebus”. It’s Patty’s guess.

She says into the mike, “E – R – E …”

And Muffy cannot wait, cannot sit back, and screams at the top of her lungs, “B – U – S!”

Dan Vermilion, so lax with the haughty cheaters from Longfellow, is a hardass with the Weemawee kids. “Hey – which one of you is answering?”

Muffy shrieks, “I am!”

Vermilion replies, “I’m sorry, then, your answer is incorrect. You just spelled ‘BUS’.”

hahahahahahaha

Another tragedy occurs when, as they had hoped, a question is repeated from a former show. The question is, “Please name all the US Presidents after Hoover.” I am sure we can see which way this one is going. Muffy, ecstatic, manic, pounds her fist on the buzzer and hollers like an opera queen, “ROUGH TOTS EAT COOL JELLO!”

Vermilion replies, “Uh … no … that is not correct … Longfellow?”

Naturally, haughty blonde coolly gives the answer like a Hitchcock heroine. “Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson.”

Larry and Patty are not happy here. And rightly so. The game goes to Longfellow. All because of Muffy.

And that’s that. The game breaks up, and Lauren races up to Patty to console her. Patty seems to be taking it okay, laughing with Lauren, saying, “Muffy! She just could not keep her hand off the buzzer!”

Lauren, still working it, says, “Now you and Larry have to go out and console each other.”

“Really?”

“Yes! Defeat is so romantic!”

Of course it is, Lauren.

The crowd is mingling, and you can see Larry, in the background, see Patty, and come over to talk to her. He’s pretty easygoing about the whole thing, too. I mean, you can’t be too upset when you lost because your teammate is, frankly, a buzzer lunatic screaming “B-U-S” and “ROUGH TOTS EAT COOL JELLO” at the slightest provocation.

He says, laughing, “Well, at least it was fun, right?”

Patty gawks up at him, in love. “Yes, it was.”

The moment trembles … it is almost perfect … if the stars align, and Mercury rises into Jupiter’s orbit, and the sun moves behind a cloud … something might happen next. Larry might ask her to go grab something to eat. Maybe take a walk and laugh about Muffy. Something … They tremble on the abyss of possibility …

I’m sorry, but he is just absolutely to die for here. I love men.

Lauren can feel the vibe between the two as well. She stands there, beaming upon it … WILLING it to happen.

But then. Ruination.

The blonde from Longfellow sidles up to Larry, and says in an insinuating voice, “Larry, I would love to get your thoughts on the Treaty of Ghent.”

Never have the words “Treaty of Ghent” sounded so salacious.

Larry gets the message. He says, taken aback, but drawn in at the same time, “Okay … sure!”

She takes his arm in a proprietary manner and leads him away (again, shades of Eunice Burns. Is that Larry’s fate? To be yoked to a dominating boss-lady? Perhaps! Although my very spirit balks at the thought! Maybe it’s a phase!). He says, “Bye, Patty,” in a kind heartbreaking tone … and then off he goes, to (vigorous quote marks) “discuss the Treaty of Ghent”. Yeah, in the back seat of his convertible. Or perhaps in an open grave.

Patty is deflated. Once again. Lauren, ever the optimist, gushes, “Look on the bright side! At least he’s dating closer to his age group now!”

Cold comfort, indeed.

And now it is time to kiss Larry Simpson goodbye.

Wave goodbye, class! There he goes!