Creeps and Carnies
Updated 2002-03-24 16:00:00
Once again, "Parental Discretion is advised." Jeez. Now that this show's in the time slot after 7th Heaven, they really ought to kill off people in ways the whole family can enjoy.
This week on Glory Island, there's a carnival shindig called the "Seafarer's Festival," or "FishFest '02," or some damn thing. There's booths! Prizes! Fish! Fish booths! Zane manages to land a ping-pong ball in a goldfish bowl for a prize. Sam is not impressed and is staring dreamily off into the distance. "What are you gawking at?" asks Zane. She's staring at some guy working at one of the other booths. He's got one of those nasty postmodern postmullet shag cuts. And chin acne: dude, you gotta wipe the bong off once in a while. In short: total carny. Zane spots him. "You've got to be kidding," he tells Sam. "He's like a guy guy."
Elsewhere at FishFest, Rudy is trying to hit the target on the "Sink the Siren" games, where the object is to dunk some chick in a bikini. He misses. "Aw, come on, the target's so small," he tells Mike and Ellie. Ellie picks up a ball, hits the target, and the girl falls in. Ellie cheers, but Mike starts wandering off, looking not too particularly thrilled. She catches up with him and asks, "What's with the tortured existence?" Mike says that his father used to bring him to the festival: "Without him, it just seems annoyingly pointless," he says. Ellie remarks that "the old dead dad card has resurfaced." "That's harsh," Mike says, and Ellie says that if he's going to be dark and brooding, he ought to come up with some new material. Then she adds, "I'm kidding!" Mike looks at her as if to say, "I'm SO glad you get to be the ***** this week," but Rudy comes up to say he wants to try the speargun booth. Then they'll go over and watch the kids play in the inflatable room filled with fish heads. Okay, I made that part up. But I didn't make up the speargun game. That is freaking twisted.
Someone, wearing the show's trademark Black Leather Gloves of Androgynous Predatory Mischief, loosens a knot on a rope tied to a mast. The rope is holding up one end of a big wooden festival sign. Meanwhile, Miss Sinkable Siren is sitting innocently on her dunk tank platform. Mike looks up and sees the sign shake and begin to fall. "Look out!" he yells. The sign swings down and clocks the girl on the head, sinking her once again. And then she keeps on sinking and sinking and she's unconscious and there's blood in the water and it's not pretty. Except actually it is, kind of.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhwaah!" That's the siren call of the theme song. Don't listen. You'll get really annoyed.