* Photo credit to The Closet *
Liz looks like a giant! A big, condescending giant! I just want to tighten that lavaliere around her perfect size-six throat… The poor victim in need of Elizabeth saving this time is sophomore dancer Jade Wu, the Asian chick on the cover who is likely to vanish into the Sweet Valley Abyss after this story, only to be brought up again when some kind of dancing is to be mentioned.
SVH is putting on a “music and dance show” to raise money for kids to take dance as an elective, and guess who’s in charge of it? YES—Saint Liz! Isn’t that the most, to say the least? (The very least.) Amy Sutton is sure that she’ll get the coveted solo dance part, and even though everyone else is abuzz with the rumor that Jade Wu will try out and get it, Amy is confident that that ain’t so. “She’s Chinese! She doesn’t look right for the part!” she wails. Oh, good—we can add “racist bitch” to Amy’s already long list of awesome personality traits.
Jade wants to try out—as does artsy stud / show set director David Prentiss—but she knows that her father would forbid it; he’s a traditionalist who thinks dancing in public is gross. He doesn’t even let her date, and all she wants to do is fit in and be like Jessica and Elizabeth! (Yes, she actually says this.) She is humiliated that her grandparents own a laundry and keeps this fact a secret, even though the money from that laundry goes toward her private dance lessons. Meanwhile, David is totally hot for Jade and can’t understand why she keeps turning him down for dates. The truth is, she’s just too, too embarrassed to admit she can’t date, so she lets him go on thinking that she doesn’t want anything to do with him. This is a good idea.
Jade winds up with the solo part to no one’s surprise, and goes to rehearsals in secret while her mother works on making her father change his mind. David thinks that Jade won’t go out with him because his family is poor, but when he finds out that she’s just ashamed of her own family, well, he just ain’t havin’ that. He’s so upset by this, in fact, that he quits as the set director and tears up the set he made for Jade and storms out. Drama! While this is unfolding, super bitch Amy finds out that Jade’s grandparents work at the laundry and tells everyone because she’s bitter that Jade got the solo part. She also does it because she’s herself.
Jade turns to her mom and confides about how embarrassed she is about her grandparents, and her mom verbally rips her a new one, saying how ungrateful she is, and Jade experiences a change of heart. Everyone goes crying to Liz, who intervenes and gets David to forgive Jade, whose daddy lets her dance in the show after all and even shows up to watch her dance. Jade dances like she never had before, and then David meets her parents and they’re so impressed with his politeness that they consent to their only daughter going out with him. Then! A talent scout offering a dance internship materializes and says that if Jade is to accept it, she has to change her last name, but Jade tells him to get ta steppin’. Then she smooches David over a pizza and all ends well.
Over at the Wakefield residence, Ned is having a mid-life crisis and wants to be young and hip again. The twins can’t bear their father changing his personality—or anyone upsetting their worlds as they know and like it—so they try to show him how horrible being young is. They insist on the importance of working out, running 12 miles a day, and riding an exercise bike. Jess even manages to drag her father out to the Beach Disco, which is sort of cute. Winston Egbert is there and “seemed eager to try his hand at making Mr. Wakefield’s night miserable.” Mr. Wakefield realizes that his daughters are RIGHT (of course!) and decides to be happy in his forties, and everyone has a good familial laugh best suited for Full House episodes.
Other Notes:
- The standard description of the twins’ similarities/differences actually doesn’t show up until chapter two! I was so desperate—I had no idea who was who and what was what and had to rely solely on dreadful exposition in the meantime.
- Jess fears that Mr. Wakefield will “grow a mustache or something horrible” in his efforts to be young—like she thought Scott Daniels was so icky looking! And we all know what that guy looked like.
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