babydraco

The Rock, where the real gymnasts work out in the background and never speak. Kaylie and Carter are sending messages to each other by drawing in the chalk that gymnasts use for the uneven and parallel bars. Some girl gets there first and messes it up. Kaylie’s father is acting like an obsessed drill sergent the way people who aren’t sure they’re qualified to take on the bulk of responsibility they’ve assumed often do.

Steve Tanner has driven to somewhere called “Cambria, California” to visit a small, stone cottage out in the middle of nowhere. He taps on the door.

We cut back to the gym, where the girls discuss the fact that if they don’t get a famous coach soon (or any coach at all) they’ll get bad scores at Nationals.

Cut back to Steve, approaching a handsome blond man who is preparing a fishing pole.

“Mr. Belov?” Steve asks. He mentions that Belov has been out of the sport for too long, and that “you once assembled one of the greatest teams in the history of the sport, I think you can do it again.” Oh yes, I forgot to mention that in the previous episode, Kaylie and Payson were looking at an old gymnastics magazine, at a picture of Marty winning a medal alongside his old teammate Sasha Belov, yes the very same man we’re meeting now.

Steve offers him more money.

“You think I left England to go to Romania because I wanted more money? Who do I look like, David Beckham?” HAH! Because he left England to go to the LA Galaxy because they offered him enough money to swim in…even though non Hispanic North Americans aren’t that interested in soccer. Hah, it’s a soccer joke I actually got.

“Yes, actually, you kinda do,”Steve replies. HAH! He does- if he had more muscle and was a little taller.

“I’m sorry I wasted your time, Tanner.” Steve is sorry too, and starts to walk away. “Tell your daughter she’s piking her layouts,” Sasha adds.

“I thought you stopped watching gymnastics,” Steve says.

“You don’t fish, do you, Tanner.”

“I-no-“

“That wasn’t a question.” Sasha goes on to explain that Tanner doesn’t have the right lure. Sasha is interested in The Rock and its trio of amazing potential stars, he won’t go to Denver even if Marty leaves, and now he doesn’t want to go to Boulder either after Steve broke up their winning team.

Back to The Rock.

Kaylie is on the beam and her dad is overcoaching her. Just as they’re about to fight about it, in walks Steve and Lauren. They’ve come bearing gifts. Payson threatens to kick Lauren in the head, but Steve swears up and down he has a better deal for them all this time. Sasha slowly walks into the frame and I can see from Emily’s face that she thinks that shot is as hot as I do.

Wait, now we’re getting the theme song? Wasn’t that a strangely drawn out opening?

Carter and Lauren are shooting each other intense looks. The adults are all yelling at Steve in the office. Sasha quietly stands up and leaves- and he doesn’t slide the door closed, so all the kids can hear the argument. He walks out, and all the gymnasts follow him in their bare feet and leotards. Payson leads the charge and insists that he can’t leave.

Apparently she was successful, because now the parents are all getting along again and all the kids are sitting on the floor listening to Sasha give a speech about how hard he’s going to work them. He also stresses that they are in a unique situation that other people will never understand, and that’s why they all need each other. Lauren looks guilty. Sasha ends his speech by ordering them to show up tomorrow at 5 a.m. Everyone looks shocked except for Payson, who looks like Christmas came early.

“He expects us to spend every waking moment here?” Kaylie mutters as she and Payson walk away. Well,sure, I mean, you people are homeschooled, not allowed to date or have jobs or eat junk food, what all else are you doing that he’s taking you away from?

Kaylie and Payson invite Emily to Spruce Juice to spite Lauren. Once there, Emily declines Kaylie’s offer to pay for her drink because she knows she’s just there to make Lauren jealous. The other two hastily deny it, but you know that’s what their original plan was. Lauren has followed them and is sitting at another table with three girls I guess she’s trying to turn into lackies. It’s her birthday, she tells them, and her old friends are momentarily distressed that they forgot.

A teenage boy comes by handing out flyers for a kegger. Payson doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t understand “what’s fun about a party?” Neither Kaylie nor Payson has actually ever been to a high school party, and they ask Emily what those are like.

Kaylie and Emily want to go, Payson doesn’t but finally agrees “to keep them out of trouble”.

At the Kmetko home, Emily’s mother got a job through one of Ronnie Cruz’s friends, but she also forgot to pay the phone bill. At the Keeler home, Payson tells her parents she’s going to a “high school party” but she isn’t drinking and if Kaylie does, she’ll drive her home. Her parents are so amused and relieved that she’s trying to be a normal teenager that they don’t protest at all.

Carter breaks a date with Kaylie, without telling her why…gee, I wonder why.

The party is a pretty generic outdoor teenage kegger, in fact, it seems kind of boring. I didn’t go to keggers in high school (and am now past the age where they are interesting or appropriate) but I probably wouldn’t have lingered long at this one. Kaylie wants beer, Emily seems to be trying to separate herself from these two rubes.

Lauren and Steve are at a fancy restaurant. Lauren tells the waiter to take away the third place setting, but Steve stops him. Summer is also coming to dinner. Lauren is not happy, complaining that Summer is too young for him and “What makes her different from all the other women you blow through?”

“She’s really smart,” Steve says. “And her faith is very important to her.”

“I can’t believe you’re falling for that,” Lauren snaps. “Please, how much of a Christian could she be? She wears Dolce and Gabana.”

It's really the left wing Christians who tend to be more sackcloth and ashes. Well to do conservative Christians revel in their materialism, because they're convinced that they're doing well financially because God favors them due to their exceptional faith. Or at least they'd love to believe it.

The kegger. Emily is standing around awkwardly waiting to get her beer. The stoned boy in front of her keeps staring at her. That boy from the Pizza Shack walks up and introduces Stoner as his “band mate, Jasper”. Then a third guy comes over and I recognize him because he’s going to be on the show a lot longer than the first Pizza Shack guy. His name is Damon and he challenges “Razor” and “Jasper” to answer a music trivia question, “Who named the Rolling Stones?” Neither of them can get it, but Emily does.

“How could you possibly know that?” Razor asks, impressed but incredulous.

“My mom has a thing for musicians,” Emily admits. Oh good grief. Why can’t she just have known the answer? Girls (who aren’t musicians themselves) can like rock’n roll for its own sake, really, they can. I would’ve been mildly offended that a guy was surprised I knew the answer to a classic rock trivia question. Especially one that isn’t particularly hard for anyone interested in music history.

He asks Emily if she’s here with a date, and she tells him she tagged along with friends. But she also asks him not to tell the girls she works at the Pizza Shack. First he jokes that she’s embarrassed about the low brow work, and then he gets the wrong impression and thinks she’s embarrassed that he works there. He says “see ya later” , kind of sadly.

Steve presents Lauren with a charm for her charm bracelet. And I just noticed, but Lauren’s breasts are practically falling out of her dress. Yup, she’s exactly the sort of girl who’d wear a top that low cut to a father/daughter birthday dinner. Steve cheerfully confesses that the entire charm bracelet tradition was Summer’s idea, and that she picked out all the charms.

Then he runs off to the bathroom.

“So, you’re telling me all the special gifts I’ve been getting from my father for years were actually picked out by you?”

“Well, he paid for them,” Summer says lamely. “He just needed feminine guidance, you know how men are.” On the one hand, that is pathetic of Steve, and a hard thing to learn about your dad, but on the other, it means Summer understands her more than she realizes.

Lauren once again accuses Summer of being after Steve’s money, and Summer denies it. Lauren storms out, just as Steve comes back with a candle lit cake.

Razor and Damon’s band, “The Shelter Pups” plays the kegger. You know, I’m gonna say it now, I’m bored with this storyline already. Emily, at this count, has three male love interests and they’re all interchangeable.

Kaylie’s doing keg stands and sees Carter’s face looming up in front of her. He gives her a scolding shake of the head. “Oooh, is that the boyfriend?” the guys in the crowd snicker. Apparently, Carter is upset because Kaylie said she couldn’t come see him (wait, that’s not how I remember it) and here she is at a kegger . He’s tired of dating on her terms and jumping through hoops and while Kaylie is arguing that she lives her whole life on his terms and her father’s terms and she just wants her own space sometimes…I have to say, Carter, that dating means doing things all on the woman’s terms. The entire structure of heterosexual dating is about doing everything on the woman’s terms so that she will feel like you are someone she can be safe with, and get close to, and then she will let you sleep with her. The process is the same whether you only want to have sex with her once or you want to marry her. Also, Carter, didn’t you stand her up to go to this very same kegger?

Leo Cruz shows up (Emily called him) and drives the girls home, as Razor informs Damon that he has a roadie gig for a couple of weeks, and needs him to fill in at “the shack” and “watch out for Emily”. Sure, Damon says. He’ll totally watch out for that girl he had instant sparks with. Meanwhile, Carter slogs drunkenly up to some sort of wooden porch and flops down.

Lauren appears in a gap in the crowd, still wearing her birthday dress. She stares sadly at him, and then climbs the steps to sit next to him. They commiserate over what a selfish bitch Kaylie is, going out and having fun without her boyfriend who hadn’t even planned to see her tonight, and totally abandoning Lauren when the new girl showed up, all trying to be polite to a new teammate and everything.

Leo drops Emily off, Chloe Kemetko flirts with him. He carries Kaylie to her room, takes her shoes off and tucks her in. Kaylie sends a drunken text to Carter, apologizing (for WHAT?).

Carter is just sitting up on the couch inside some awful abandoned cabin at the kegger. He and Lauren are adjusting their clothes. After making sure that she’s okay and has a way to get home, he takes off. Lauren hears a phone ringing and finds his cell under the cushions, displaying the message from Kaylie.

I’m not going to call this the worst birthday ever, but I’m sure she believes it is.