Make It or Break It S1xE4 "Sunday, Bloody Sasha, Sunday"

[babydraco]

A minister is solemnly reading a Psalm about purity, cleanliness, forgiveness and punishment, while Lauren is surreptitiously glancing down at Carter’s cell phone, still with Kaylie’s message on the screen. Kaylie is in bed in what looks like a bedazzled bustier, obviously hung over.

Summer, Lauren and Steve exit church. Summer walks ahead to greet the pastor. Their church has stained glass windows and a pastor who wears robes and a stole, and they actually bothered to put on church clothes so they must not be evangelicals. Lauren complains that there are easier ways to get laid than having to go to church and pretend to believe in God. Steve protests that he does believe in God, but anyway, he’s not getting any from Summer because she doesn’t believe in premarital sex. Lauren scoffs, and Steve says he thinks it’s “refreshing, when so many women and girls today hop into bed with anyone who gives them the time of day.” Steve, you’re one of those men who loves that sort of woman, don’t you lay all the blame on them. In fact, Lauren's acceptance of the way Carter treats her and Kaylie is probably a result of your claim to respect Summer more because she's not sexually active. While simulataneously dismissing with a blithe wave of the hand all those other women you slept with, who were people and had feelings and maybe even wanted to go somewhere serious with you, but never mattered because they put out and she doesn't.

Lauren looks guilty and snips that Summer’s probably never even been to this church before. That would be hilarious if it was true.

While the Tanners and Summer are making nice with the pastor, each Rock girl receives a call from Sasha, ordering them to the gym. Emily angsts about having booked a double shift, and Chloe offers to go to the Shack in her stead.

Only Payson, Emily, Lauren and Kaylie were ordered to practice, and they worry that Sasha knows about last night’s party. He’s kind of glaring at them from the office, so I think, yeah. Payson says that it can’t be that he knows, because Lauren is there and Lauren wasn’t at the party. Oh, Payson…

Sasha walks over and tosses them each a beer.
“Why are we here?” they ask.

“I must have misunderstood. I thought you wanted to be exceptional. But it seems that you’d rather go to parties and drink. So let’s get stupid!” And he starts chugging.

Lauren tries to claim she wasn’t at the party, but Sasha shows everyone the entrance stamp on her wrist. Then he yells at them about not being dedicated enough and puts them all on probation. Then he makes them do exercises.

Chloe shows up at the Shack to take Emily’s place, and no one seems the slightest bit bothered by this. But I guess that’s what you get when you’re a pizza place managed by a drug addict. She grossly flirts with Damon and he grossly flirts back.

Keeler household. They have an antique metal paneled pie safe and charming country style pictures of chickens. Their whole house is designed to scream We’re From Minnesota. Payson’s little sister doesn’t want to go to an art fair downtown, even though “Sunday is family day”. Uh- I don’t know why we just watched that scene, other than I now want an antique metal paneled pie safe.

Castle Cruz. Carter shows up desperately seeking Kaylie. Leo is the only one home, he’s practicing his golf on his father’s miniature indoor home putting green. Leo tells him Kaylie is at practice.

“Is Lauren there too?”

“I assume so, since the bitch is back.”

After much hemming and hawing, Carter prepares to confess to Leo. Leo is horrified, and admits he wants to punch Carter. Carter says go ahead, he deserves it, but Leo declines. “I gotta get to the Rock and tell Kaylie,” Carter says.

“One more thing,” says Leo as Carter stands up, and he socks him in the stomach.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to hit me!”

“I changed my mind,” says Leo. And it seems to all be okay.

Back at the gym, Sasha is making the girls repeatedly climb the ropes (you know those awful things they used to make you climb in gym class and probably don’t anymore). They complain to each other that it isn’t fair, they just went to a party.

“Do you think Kelly Parker goes to parties?” Payson scolds. We can presume at this point that Ms. Parker is a successful gymnast from another club. Steve shows up and Lauren climbs down to run over and plead with him to take her home. Sasha makes them all start again because Lauren stopped.

No, Steve isn’t there to get Lauren out of her punishment, he’s there to talk privately to the coach about how much money he spent on building the Rock. He wants to be reinstated as president and manager. Sasha won’t commit to an answer and Steve leaves disappointed. Carter shows up and tries to get in to talk to Kaylie, claiming he left something in his locker, but Sasha isn’t fooled and tells him the gym is closed. Sasha is carrying an empty trash can…

Carter goes to a payphone, calls Leo and asks if Alex Cruz still has keys to the gym.

Sasha hands each girl a yellow legal pad and a pen, saying that he doesn’t think they act or think like a team. He wants them to write down all the resentments they harbor towards each other, then he will burn the letters in the trash can, and they’ll start with a clean slate. After he reads them aloud.

Payson resents that no one else works as hard as she does and “Sasha doesn’t seem to notice”.

Kaylie resents that Lauren tried to get her kicked out of the gym and doesn’t believe she’s not dating Carter. (Well, Kaylie, maybe she doesn’t believe you because you are dating Carter).

Lauren resents that her friends abandoned her when “Miss Trailer Trash” moved in, and did better than her-not- she stresses- “because she’s better than me but because I was having a bad day” and she goes on to trash Emily’s gymnastic skills. Lauren! You cheated at the competition by sabotaging her vaults in a way that could’ve killed her! And your friends didn’t “abandon” you, they were just trying to be polite, which you didn’t even try to do.

Emily resents that no one has made her feel welcome.

Now that they’ve “cleared the air” Sasha makes them clean the gym. They do it while arguing, which Emily puts a stop to by yelling at them about how they have someone to do everything for them, and all that’s expected of them is that they train, while she has real things to worry about, like a job she has to be at in thirty minutes or she’s fired. That shuts them up for now.

Meanwhile, Chloe Kemetko is blabbering to Damon about how Emily is a world class gymnast at The Rock. Something Emily didn’t want her coworkers to know about.

The girls open up and admit they’ve misunderstood Emily and she has misunderstood them. Then Kaylie gives a speech about how they can’t trust each other in here if they don’t trust each other “out there” and proposes that they all cover for Emily so she can get to work. Lauren is reluctant but both she and Payson come around. They assist Emily in climbing out the window while Sasha is gone. Since getting out the window requires shimmying quickly up the ropes, I wonder whether Sasha arranged this situation to come out exactly the way it did. There’s an amusing bit with Lauren trying to toss Emily’s gym bag up to her and Emily repeatedly failing to catch it. Payson runs back in, hissing that Sasha is on his way back. Emily disappears through the window and the girls rush back to cleaning mats, failing to notice in time that the window is open and the rope is dangling outside it.

They claim Emily is in the bathroom. Sasha pretends to believe it.

Outside, he runs into Mrs. Keeler, there to pick Payson up. He explains that the girls will be working for a few more hours, and she argues back that Sunday is family day since they never see each other the rest of the week and the girls never get to rest otherwise. Sasha offers her the job managing the gym, because he wants someone who cares about the kids, not the money or gold medals.

She has to consult her family but she’s definitely interested.

Chloe and Damon flirt a little more about how Damon is obviously moving in on Emily even though Razor is his best friend. Chloe tells Damon that Emily doesn’t usually have time for boys, she’s not sure Emily’s ever even been kissed.

“Mom!” Emily gasps, appearing in the doorway to the Shack’s kitchen. “You worked all day for me?”

There’s a sign behind Chloe’s head, showing a man at a sink and the words “May Come Back to Haunt You”. Just thought that was interesting. “What did you tell him?” Chloe is embarrassed and gets out of there as soon as possible.

Leo arrives with the keys to the gym, warning Carter that even sneaking in could get him banned forever. The girls are inside, still cleaning and sniping over who has secrets and who doesn’t.

“Well, I have a secret, “ Lauren admits. “I’m not a virgin anymore.”
Kaylie scurries over and drops down next to her.

“You lost your virginity?” Well, yes, Kaylie, that does tend be what ‘not a virgin anymore’ means.

“Last night, at the party.” She won’t tell them with who, claiming it was a guy she doesn’t know. She admits it wasn’t exactly romantic.

Payson, however, is more upset at what this will do to Lauren’s gymnastics. She’s convinced sex will “trigger your hormones and you might grow big boobs or-“

Lauren immediately shuts down this ridiculous line of thinking, as well she should for two reasons. Number one, because it’s not true. Sexual activity, or even level of sexual desire/interest, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the shape of your figure. Having sex won’t trigger some extra puberty, if you want to have sex, puberty’s already been very busy with you. One major source of angst for young women is how puberty does not take your life goals or personality into consideration when your body decides what size your chest or hips will be. Beyond regular, proper exercise, it’s nothing you can control without surgery or an eating disorder. Number two, both Payson and Lauren have clearly already developed reasonably sized breasts, they’re played by two girls who already look like healthy older teenage women.

Kaylie confesses that she does have a boyfriend and it’s Carter.

Anyway, Payson doesn’t understand why gymnastics isn’t enough for the other two.

Carter shows up, Kaylie greets him enthusiastically and says “Oh, it’s okay, we told all our secrets today.” Carter glances over at Lauren in terror, who gives him a miserable look back. Payson warns them that Carter can’t get caught in the gym, and he swears he’ll call Kaylie, as he’s dashing away. Of course, he can’t, since Lauren still has his phone.

Everyone kisses and makes up and gets silly, and Emily comes back and pretends she was in the bathroom the whole time and even though Sasha doesn’t believe her, he pretends to because getting them to work as a team was the whole point.

Outside the gym, Carter meets up with Lauren again to apologize for the night before, saying it was his fault things got out of control.

“Don’t worry about it, “ says Lauren. “It’s not like it was my first time.”

He thanks her for not telling Kaylie, and she replies that she didn’t do it for him, she did it for Kaylie. He asks if she’s seen his cell phone, and she denies it. After he’s gone, she takes it out of the pocket of her blue crushed velvet hoodie and looks longingly at the photos of him and Kaylie on it.

“What was that about?” Steve asks as she gets in the car.

“Nothing,” Lauren replies. Steve and Summer do not look as though they believe her at all and in fact, they look quite worried.