Generics and Graves
Updated 2002-03-16 16:00:00
"Tonight's WB Mystery is intended for our teen and adult audience. Parental discretion is advised." Huh. That's new. I guess all the murders in this week's episode aren't very tot-friendly.
Mike's out in the woods interviewing one of the town's lovable eccentrics, Mr. Metal-Detector Guy. Mr. Metal-Detector Guy finds a beer bottle cap from 1957 and is very excited. Mike is not impressed. There are other things he could be doing in a forest preserve in the middle of the afternoon, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. He says that his "ego is a little bruised" since he was once a novelist and now he has to do human-interest stories on people like Metal-Detector Guy. Like, he actually says this to Metal-Detector Guy. And then Metal-Detector Guy's metal detector starts beeping furiously, probably because it's picked up on the fact that Mike is a COMPLETE TOOL. But all they find is a watch. Metal-Detector Guy is thrilled. Then he hears some strange feedback over his metal-detector headphones and listens for a second. "Huh. Thought I heard something." He shrugs it off, and he and Mike walk off. The camera pans over to a pair of plastic pipes sticking out of the ground, and we hear some guy's voice, muffled but yelling, "Help me! Somebody help me, please!" The camera "travels" underground to where the guy is screaming. "HELP!!!! Can anyone hear me? CAN YOU HEAR ME?" And I'm thinking that maybe this is that guy from those cell-phone commercials and something's gone horribly, terribly wrong, but hey, we can hear him! Good.
Dolan house: Sam and Zane. New neighbors are moving into the house across the street, and Sam is spying on them with binoculars. Music that's suspiciously like the American Beauty soundtrack plays. Zane is blathering on about some party at a friend's house, but Sam is more interested in peering out across the street, where Mitzi is bringing a cake to the new neighbors. Mitzi points at a teenage guy over by the moving truck and mouths to Sam, "THERE'S A BOY!" Mitzi walks a little way and then mouths "DID YOU SEE HIS ASS?!" Heh. I would totally watch a one-woman show called Mitzi Mouths. It wouldn't have to be closed-captioned. Anyway, Sam directs her binoculars over to the neighbor boy's ass and mutters, "Hmm...no, he's a total Boy Scout. I need a guy with edge." This leads Zane to start babbling about how he's thinking of buying a motorcycle and hitting the road. Sam looks at him. "You'd be a dweeb on a bike," she says, witheringly. Zane slinks off, wounded, Sam ignores him and keeps peering out the window.
Mitzi goes up and introduces herself to the neighbors. The neighbors are: Calvin Jarrett, lovely wife Beth, and son Conrad. And an Irish setter, Bucky, that rushes up on cue. They've just moved to Glory straight out of the pages of the Land's End catalog. Mitzi makes pleasant small talk with Calvin and Mrs. Generic, and invites them to dinner the following night. Mrs. Generic shoots Mr. Generic a worried look, but Mr. Generic graciously accepts. He turns to his wife and says, "We're going to be really happy here, hon." They kiss. "You people make me sick!" blurts out Mitzi. "In a good way!" They all toss back their heads and laugh that eerie, compulsory white-middle-class kind of laugh.