Timber!
Updated 2000-09-21 17:00:00
The season opens with one of those not-so-cute "what I did on my summer vacation" speeches. It's like they're trying to make fun of something but someone forgot to explain the exact nature of this satire (i.e. a dream sequence or a teacher who might actually still make kids describe their summer vacations). Vice Principal Calvin Krupps invites Sam and Brooke up to the podium to talk about how they spent their summer vacations. Is Vice Principal Calvin Krupps teaching a class now? Where is Principal Hall? What class is this?
They speak, and there is all this irony over how Sam and Brooke's cheery description of their summers differ so much from the flashback. The flashback explains that Jane is mad at Mike for not finalizing the divorce to Kelly, and that Kelly's husband has left her now that he knows about the first non-annulled marriage. That meant that Kelly was free to hang around Brooke and make reparations. And by reparations, I mean "gifts from Hermes."
Meanwhile, Sam and her own mom had their own problems. While Jane McPherson, looking positively hag-like, does various household chores, she ruminates over how Peggy Lipton's appearance at her and Mike's wedding took her "back to high school" where she'd always lose out to the homecoming queen. "I'm thirty-six, for God's sakes. When am I ever going to feel like I'm on solid ground, when I'm dead?" Nice symbolism -- bringing it back to the kids. I mean, if high school is still all that sore a spot with you, you might want to -- oh, I don't know -- see a therapist. It might also explain why you decided to start a family at the age of twenty and saw fit to raise your only child to be one of the most spoiled, annoying children on the planet. Oh, and Jane? I'd hate to go without oxygen since you were thirty-six although we are giving you points for making Sam get a decent haircut. (Oh, by the way, I have nothing against anyone starting a family one year before they're legally able to drink, but when you consider that Jane saw fit to lecture both Sam and Brooke on the perils of being sexuality active, I imagine that an explanation for Jane's early pregnancy -- during a time when birth control was readily available -- is seriously in order.)
Kelly's constant presence in the lives of the McQueen/McPherson family members causes tension. There are silent meals and fights between Kelly and Mike McQueen. "All in all," says Sam, "a pretty uneventful summer." Yeah, that's about as ironic as rain on your wedding day.
Credits. No, they didn't shoot new ones. They didn't even take out the parents. The only difference is that Bio has been added as a series regular, but her "glamour shot" is after the parents'. Someone obviously wants to see me very angry.