* Photo credit to The Closet *
So how about this for a monkey wrench: Todd Wilkins, Liz’s devoted slave of a boyfriend, is paying Liz a visit at Camp Echo Mountain, where she’s a junior counselor, and Liz is all cranky and pissed off because his presence is totally ruining her summer fling with college guy / acting instructor Joey Mason. How dare Todd! What an insensitive clod. Liz is now viewing Todd as “boring as butter” and sneaking smooches from Joey while Todd is still visiting. And just as she gets up the nerve to dump Todd on the morning he goes back, she watches the sunrise with him and kisses him “with a fervor she didn’t know she felt,” and decides that “she did love Todd—definitely.” I’m about to lose my mind, I want to punch her so bad. I’m typing this with my fists!
After Todd leaves, Liz’s rival Nicole Banes sweetly reminds Liz that she can’t have her cake and eat it too: If Liz doesn’t dump Joey and put in a good word for Nicole, Nicole will be happy to write Todd a letter that confesses Liz’s dirty deeds. Liz obliges, acting like the whole thing is just so unjust. When she confides in Nicole’s best friend Maria Slater, Maria’s all, “I don’t know what’s gotten into that girl,” to which Liz responds, “Nothing’s gotten into her. She’s just revealing her true personality.” Excuse-fucking-me, Elizabeth. Because you’ve known her all of a week and she hates you, this must be who she really is. And to say that to Nicole’s friend! I need to keep a little paper bag nearby when I read these books.
Nicole starts seeing Joey and goes on and on about them making out in front of Liz, and it does my heart good to see Wakefield squirm and feel “as though she’d been physically assaulted.” I like how Maria Slater is Liz’s conscience, saying, “Maybe [Nicole] felt justified in blackmailing you on some level. Maybe she felt like she deserved Joey. After all, you do have a boyfriend.” Burn, Liz, burn!
Jess has taken a liking to strapping young kitchen cook in town Paul Mathis, but he keeps pushing her love away and telling her he’s “not interested in silly blondes with nothing between their ears”! What’s his glitch, y’all? Jess does some detective work using Paul’s little sister Tanya to help her trap Paul in a canoe with her. Oh, dear. It turns out that a blonde junior counselor has broken Paul’s heart a summer or so ago and he’s held a grudge against anything relating to the camp ever since. The writers are really reaching, aren’t they? Anyway, Jess sneaks away from camp to go romantically grill burgers with Paul at his family’s restaurant and nearly gets caught coming back by the camp director, who later pulls her aside and gives her a stern talking-to.
For some reason, half of the junior counselors are acting in the camp play. If this is a performing arts camp, shouldn’t the kids be the ones performing? Nevertheless, Jess has the lead, and I feel sorry for her to have to deliver Liz’s GARBAGE of a plot. Listen to this “scene,” described by Joey:
This is your final scene. You’re out in the woods together, and you’re all alone. There’s nothing to eat, so you’ve been gathering berries. As you meet front center, you give each other a meaningful look and then drop a handful of berries into each other’s mouths. You kiss to seal your fate, and then you hold hands and move slowly backward, fading away into the mists of time. The stage goes black. All we hear are the sounds of chopping wood.
I can’t get over how LAME that is! Ugh, it makes me innards ache. Anyway, Jess invites Paul to the play via a letter that he never gets, so he’s all pissed until she rides into town on a bike to his house, but gets stranded there just an hour or so before show time. She’ll never make it back in time! Quick, Liz, stand in for Jess and no one will ever know the difference! So Liz does, and Joey is the only one who knows it’s her based on her acting style (he’s so talented to notice!). They smooch with longing, and Nicole vows to make Liz pay for this. Dun dun dun!
Winston Egbert gets a sub-plot! He’s stuck in the doldrums now that he’s convinced his beloved Maria Santelli is leaving him for a cowboy named Hank—he’s all she talks about in her letters, after all. Aaron Dallas and Todd insist that if Winston wants to keep Maria, he has to become a cowboy too, so he starts cock-walking around camp, gnawing on wheat, and learning how to ride horseback. And who should notice but a sultry, fifteen-year-old, redheaded temptress named Lara? She’s always coming onto him, telling him he’d make a sexy cowboy and offering to let him lasso her. Kinky! Then Maria sends a picture of Hank—a weathered old man who’s perfect for her grandma. Oh, Winston! Then Lara shrugs off his rejection and goes off with a fourteen year old, which is a surprise reminder as to how old these kids really are.
Other Notes:
- I wish that the ghostwriters would throw Winston a bone and talk about him being geeky and foxy. Even Enid Rollins gets classified as “pretty in her own way”!
- Lila Fowler knows how to sew! Sexy!
- I admit that I’m slightly aroused by Winston’s outfit of red jeans and a “DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!” T-shirt. I want you, Winston! Lasso me!
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