WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD. TURN BACK IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW.
It’s that time in the Greek season where the writers cram all sorts of new drama into the last few episodes to set up a more dramatastic season finale in three episodes’ time. “The Popular Vote” introduced or reinforced the plot lines sure to be semi-answered but brought back next season anyway. In case you missed it:
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
- Rusty and Jen K go on a date. All sorts of drama blooms.
- Calvin breaks up with his boyfriend because he’s confused.
- Cappie still sorta’ wants Casey, keeping a thousand lonely teenage girls’ dreams alive.
- Dale…had the week off. Surely he’s off coming up with some good drama.
- Frannie and Casey sling mud like crazy over the ZBZ presidential election, with all sorts of personal attacks springin’ forth and creepy parallels to election 08 (including an October surprise, har har). Everything veers toward pure chaos until Ashleigh tells everyone to stop and think about the house. This single sentence is enough to see Ashleigh achieve the Libertarian wet dream of a third party, write-in candidate winning the election. Yes, Ashleigh is ZBZ president.
Pretty crazy stuff. “The Popular Vote” served as a pretty decent way of introducing all these season finale story lines, before that final twist blew the audience away. That is, until you sit down for a second and realize it sets up a perfect conclusion to the ZBZ election story: Ashleigh says I can’t do this, we get another election between Frannie and Casey. Book it. As an individual episode, it was all over the place (and loaded with horrid, horrid cultural references) but as a set-up to an ending, it worked well enough. The last two episodes should be pretty nutty because rule number one of a young adult TV drama is to always outdo what you did before.
Summary
Uhh, the part up there covers everything pretty well. Except Rusty and Cappie speed date, and Rusty makes a pretty good joke.
Representations of College
- Speed dating…it happens. And college kids freak out when it comes to their campus, especially at the social tundra of Northwestern (trust me, I’m like a polar bear on campus). Folks, it’s just an event where you meet new people. It’s rush reduced to 20 minutes.
- Calvin talks about The Mighty Ducks. College kids love this movie and love referencing THE KNUCKLE PUCK and THE FLYING V and EMILIO ESTEVEZ.
- Cappie talks about “meaningful hookups.” Doesn’t that go against the concept of the meaningless hookup? Or are we trying to assign depth to two people snogging in a dorm suite before never talking to each other in a weeks’ time?
- Calvin and Rusty practice beer pong using water. I’ve never seen anyone do this, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find some super-intense college kid doing it.
Examples of Greek’s Bad Writing in Action
- A few highlights of the bad cultural references present in “The Popular Vote:” The Hills, mixed nuts, Monica Lewinsky-gate, The Goonies, musical theater, World of Warcraft (complete with mandatory druid drop), swift-boating. Just because something happened at some point in time doesn’t mean it automatically becomes funny with time.
- Evan to Calvin, while playing basketball and talking about Calvin’s boyfriend issues: “Either way, the ball is in your court.” This is as bad as having two characters drop the “grass is always greener on the other side” line while literally standing near two different shades of grass.
- Casey, to Frannie as she eats ice cream: “Is the Lemon Lies? Or MINT CHOCOLATE BITCH?” Wait, this is awesome, how’d it get down here?
- Cappie: “You can always go back to your soul-mate, that’s why they’re your soul-mate.” Keane called, they want their lyrics back.
Closing Question: Who doesn’t think Max is the best character? He stands around and basically shows just how ridiculous and overblown every other character’s life is. Sucks he’s going to be screwed over in the end for the inevitable Cappie-Casey reunion :(