Make It Or Break It S1xE8 "All's Fair in Love, War and Gymnastics"

[babydraco]

Kmetko house. Emily is staring at herself in the mirror as that emo tune from last episode plays. She goes over to her cd player and shuts it off. She goes into the kitchen to ask Chloe where her blue hoodie is, and Chloe suggests she look in the pile of dirty clothes. Brian offers her the use of his “almost clean” red one. Brian and Chloe are sitting at the table, and it’s covered with overdue bills. Emily is aghast, but Chloe swears they’re all getting paid off today.

After Emily leaves, Brian points out that she forgot to sign one.
“I didn’t sign any of them,” Chloe says with a conspiratorial smile. Because if you forget to sign it, even if they strongly suspect you did it just so they’d have to send it back, giving you more time to make sure the money’s in your account, they still have to send it back because they can’t cash it at all otherwise. And they’re required by law to allow you the chance to pay if you’re clearly attempting to pay. A few utility companies are changing the way they operate so this won’t happen- if you have no, or poor, credit history they may insist that you sign up for their direct deposit program, in which the amount of your bill is automatically deducted from your bank account each month. This is great for the corporation, because they’ll always get their money no matter what (unless there’s no money in your account at all and you don’t have, or have already bled dry, your overdraft protection).

But it’s terrible for consumers, because they’ve taken away your choice of when and how you’ll pay, leaving the very poor without the ability to perform the financial sleight of hand that keeps them off the streets.

Their right to receive all the money you owe them on demand, supersedes your right to have the ability to pay anyone else or even to pay them in the future, because they’re starting out this relationship on the assumption that you’re going to try and cheat them, the utility company, the only people on earth you have to pay money to! And you know what? It’s entirely all because you’re poor. Credit scores are what tell corporations whether they can trust you, and they’re based on ability to pay for things, and that means your trustworthyness, your morality, is based on how much money you already have. Low scores mean you pay more for things, the poorer you are= the worse your credit = the more you will pay for cars, insurance, rent, utilities and credit cards, even if those things are of average or poor quality compared to what friends and family with better credit have.

So it’s probably not likely that in, what, 2008? Chloe Kmetko could make the “forgot to sign it” trick work or even forget to pay the phone bill. The utility companies wouldn’t allow her to, they’d simply force her into an automatic deduction plan and take all the money they think she owes, whenever they think she owes it.

Kaylie and Carter sit in his car (again) discussing how Ronnie is cheating on Alex. Kaylie is incensed, as well she should be, but Carter tries to make excuses. Kaylie is having none of it. Her father pulls up, Kaylie ducks down and he walks past without noticing and barely acknowledging Carter at all. Yeah, I’m really not shocked his wife managed to cheat on him and he didn’t notice.

Emily is doing her floor routine to that same song from the previous episode. Sasha shuts it off and gives her a classical piece. He’s trying to teach her that it isn’t necessarily always about your own feelings, the judges won’t be impressed by loud rock. I’m sort of glad he pointed that out, because her song selection was obnoxiously on the nose.

Payson’s back hurts again and Sasha asks her to sit out. While she’s getting water, a cute guy pops up and flirts with her. He noticed her back pain and when she confesses that her parents won’t let her have any more cortisone shots, he tells her that his father is an orthopedic surgeon and he can get cortisone for her. Payson naively agrees.

Lauren stares longingly after Carter.

“How are things with you and Carter?” She asks Kaylie.

“My dad almost caught us in Carter’s truck this morning.” Kaylie adds that if Alex Cruz finds out about them a week before Nationals, it’ll be the end of them. Alex calls Kaylie over to look at some papers and Lauren watches her run off with an evil little smile creeping onto her face.

Summer and Kim Keeler look through Summer’s wedding wish book. Lauren enters the office and gets snippy because Summer is there. Summer shows Lauren a photo of a yellow dress, and Lauren says “Isn’t the bride supposed to wear white? But considering your past…”

Summer explains that she meant it for Lauren to wear as her maid of honor.

“Omygosh, I’m so touched,” Lauren says. The dress is an almost exact replica of Belle’s yellow ballgown from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It seems a little over the top for a wedding party dress at an upper middle class wedding in the mountains of Colorado when the maid of honor is seventeen, not eight, but yellow is a great color on both Lauren and Summer so at least the poor woman is trying.

“Really?”

“No!” Lauren snaps. She refuses to have anything to do with the wedding at all, and after announcing that she’ll be staying for a few days at “The Cruzes, where there’s no drama,” she flounces out. Kim comforts Summer, who seriously looks like she’s about to cry.

Castle Cruz. Kaylie enters some sort of…I don’t know what room they’re in, but her mother is unboxing “sugar free, fat free, gluten free cupcakes” for the Nationals send off party. Kaylie is sarcastic about them, and Ronnie demands to be treated with respect. Kaylie snaps that she lost all respect for her when she found out about Marty. Ronnie argues that now is not the time to bring these issues up, because “this party is very important to your father”. Kaylie agrees not to cause trouble, but only for her father’s sake.

When you’re a teenager, nothing seems as important as honesty. The adults are the ones who seem to think kids can’t be trusted, but it’s always the kids who do the most arguing and pleading for everyone to just be honest and open. They’re at that stage where they still believe that the world should be like that, and that it’s wrong to pretend to be someone you’re not or believe things you don’t really believe.

Payson agrees to pay $100 for the guy’s stole cortisone shots. He’ll bring them to the National’s party. Damon comes to visit Emily at the gym, which just upsets her because she wants to keep her two worlds separate.

“You have to go, I’m not allowed to have-“

“Friends?” He asks. “Isn’t that all we are?” Because of how Razor told him to watch out for Emily, meaning Razor considers himself Emily’s boyfriend and has delegated his best friend to keep other guys away from her, but Damon is falling for Emily himself. And yes, we do have to waste a lot of time on this lame subplot even though Razor is a fairly short lived character.

Kim Keeler is very excited about the team going to Nationals in Boston. They’ve booked 25 hotel rooms for three nights (which I guess answers any previous questions I had about that) and Mr. Keeler is coming too. She’s so excited that she willingly forks over $100 for Payson to “buy a dress for the party tonight” because Payson “works so hard and deserves it”.

Kaylie and Lauren try on party dresses in Kaylie’s room. Lauren holds up a dress that Kaylie admires.

“Like it?” Lauren says. “It’s from their new Candies line.”

“What are you, their spokesmodel?” Kaylie teases. This is some sort of in joke that no future audience is going to get, I don't even get it.

Lauren presses her again about Carter, and Kaylie reiterates that Alex will never let her near Carter again if he finds out. Kaylie goes down to deliver a box of trophies to her dad, who wants them all in the living room for the party. He talks about how they’re in this together and nothing can change their relationship.

Alex shows Lauren an expensive necklace he just bought to celebrate Kaylie’s making Nationals.

“Now she can replace that cheap little thing she’s been wearing,” Lauren opines.

Meanwhile, at the Kmetkos, Chloe and Brian are trying to sell their junk on Ebay. It’s a lot harder than you might realize to “do anything to make ends meet”. Emily has to break the news to her that they have to pay for their own Nationals warm ups. Because the team can’t possibly show up at Nationals in outfits people have already seen them in, for Pete’s Sake. The warm ups will cost $280. Each. Despite the fact that $280 could pay for half the team's warm ups if they shopped from less exhorbitantly expensive manufacturers or like, wore the ones they always wear. But "gymnastics is a sport of perception" as they will repeatedly remind us.

Chloe insists that they can cover it, and cheerily sends Emily off to get dressed. Then she calls up what obviously must be a not all that wonderful ex boyfriend to beg for help. This, people, is why we need strong government safety nets for impoverished people, particularly vulnerable ones like disabled people and single mothers. So they don’t have to stay in ugly relationships just so their kids can eat. No, a $300 gymnastics warm up suit isn’t exactly a vital necessity, but if it wasn’t that it’d be something else.

Payson asks to borrow a dress from Kaylie. And that’s just hilarious considering their sizes. The girls tease her about that boy they’ve seen her talking to so much. Summer arrives at the Cruz house, bearing three pans of homemade lasagna. Lauren sneers “What are you doing here, I came here to get away from you.” She has so little respect for Summer that she doesn’t even bother waiting until they’re alone to insult the woman, much the way she couldn’t bother to demonstrate even token politeness to Emily. Ronnie is highly embarrassed and beats a retreat from the room.

Now that they’re alone, Summer explains that she understands how Lauren feels about having a father who doesn’t pay enough attention to her, because her own father ran off to Hawaii with a neighbor. And she loves working for the Tanners and taking care of them, but the best thing she can do for them right now is walk away, so she’s ending the engagement.

Chloe shows up with deviled eggs made with spray cheese. Summer’s lasagna burns, and Ronnie flips out, crying to Chloe that she’s a bad mother and a bad wife. Chloe has been there, done that, so they both start drinking vodka.

Carter finds Kaylie and Lauren on the porch, Kaylie insists that Lauren stick around to cover for them. Listening to their sickening couple talk makes Lauren so mad that she reminds them both of the time Carter kissed her when they were twelve. Kaylie jokes that Lauren used to have a crush on him, “But you’re over that now.” Alex Cruz pops his head out the door and commands her away. Carter tries to scold Lauren for being so awful, but he doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on here, as Lauren points out.

Kim Keeler and Sasha arrive. Chloe and Ronnie tipsily gossip that those two could be hooking up and then totter over to greet them. Ronnie mentions that Payson looks “lovely in Kaylie’s dress.”

“Kaylie’s dress?”

“Yeah, one I bought her last year.”

Emily finds out that Chloe is drunk and coerces a confession out of her that she called “Joe”. Emily is furious, because they moved to Fresno to get away from him. Not only is this an interesting bit of backstory (I guess) it’s also another subtle indicator of the Kmetkos lack of grasp of etiquette, an implication that they lack class because 1) Chloe is already drunk and she’s been there a total of five minutes, and 2) they’re arguing about their personal financial woes in the main room of someone else’s party. But the Cruz family is about to beat that.

Lauren goes back into her overnight bag and retrieves Carter’s phone. She sets it to show the pictures of Carter and Kaylie, then tip toes into Mr. and Mrs. Cruz’s spacious, comfortable Barbie Dream House bathroom and places the phone on Alex’s shaving tray. Then she moves it, in a sudden burst of inspiration, and puts it next to the necklace Alex bought for Kaylie.

Just as Payson is making her drug deal, Kim appears behind her and confronts her about the dress. Payson claims she lost the money, and Kim falls for it.

Sasha drives a potted Chloe home, but insists on no hanky panky. Cortisone Boy meets Payson in the Alcove of Secrets and gives her the medicine for free (also, kudos to the wardrobe people, because Kaylie’s dress on Payson really looks like Kaylie’s dress on Payson, it's too short and a little tight in the bust). Alex is going upstairs to get Kaylie’s necklace. Lauren asks to borrow Kaylie’s phone because her own is “dead”. She uses it to call Carter’s phone, which rings loudly just as Alex is leaving the bathroom. He naturally goes back to check it out. Following me so far? When he answers because he can see the call is coming from Kaylie’s phone, Lauren hangs up.

Alex comes storming back into the party and demands to know what the photos are about. Kaylie cries “Daddy, I love him!”

“I thought we were a team!”

Carter tries to explain, telling Alex he doesn’t even know Kaylie, she’s just another trophy to him. It gets way out of hand, Carter socks him in the face and Alex has to be held back by the other guys. Carter gets thrown out of the party. Lauren follows him into the hall and begs him to take her with him.

He tells her that he will never be with her, because he knows how Alex got that phone.

Sasha listens to Chloe explain about Joe the Ex (there is no hanky panky because Sasha has told her that it’s against the rules to get involved with the moms). As he’s leaving, Chloe asks if that wasn’t the rule, would he be interested in her?

“Definitely”, Sasha lies.

When he’s gone, Chloe’s phone rings. It’s Joe.

“What? He’s Emily’s coach…..Where are you?”

Chloe turns to the door with a nervous expression when she hears a knock.

Kaylie and her mother have an emotional heart to heart, or at least, Ronnie tries. Kaylie thinks Ronnie “doesn’t love dad the way I love Carter”.

Lauren arrives at Summer’s apartment in devastated tears.