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(tm Sars or MBTV or TWoP or somebody. Don't sue us. We only gank from the best.)

Episode 415: The Paper Chase

The pictures are more interesting than the episode

By Dyslexia

If you get the impression that I tried really hard to just pump out any old recap, you're right. This episode sucked wads. It bored the piss out of me. Seriously, I wanted to turn the channel once or three times, and that frightened me. I take consolation in the fact that next week's episode has to get better, but the hell? What a waste of friggin time. We're on the Countdown to Goodbye, people! Time is precious and they wasted this episode with filler shit. Anyway, on to the episode, recapped in my own special half-ass way:

Ben's staring at an ultrasound picture with Sean nearby. Sean goes on about how the kid's got a big nose and squinty eyes just like Papa. Funny, but puke. ["Puke? What!?? This was like the only glimmer of goodness in the entire fucking episode! Hahaha, say I!" --Carmexa] ["I thought it was adorable, too. Especially the facial expression Speedy had when Sean was doing his baby talk. Mmmmmmmm." -Litigia] Ben says Lauren still hasn't decided about Arizona and Sean says hey, you should totally get a lawyer because 21-year-old college students who work in coffee shops have rights too, ya know. Sean starts cooing over the baby, which is pretty funny but not as funny as the look on Ben's face. Felicity walks in and asks what's going on, and Ben says he got an ultrasound picture from Lauren. Felicity asks, "Of the baby"? No, Princess, of Ben's left kneecap. Talk about living in denial. ["Huh? I think it's just awkward for her. She's not denying the situation; she just doesn't know what to do or say." --Carmexa] ["I think it just conveyed her general awkwardness." -Litigia] ["Isn't that what I said?" --Carmexa]["Hee! I thought the kneecap thing was funny." - Bitchavia] Anyway, Felicity looks at the picture and seems really sad, and rightfully so. Sean says, "Hey, is that a little peeter I see in the picture?" and Ben's all, "Yeah, it's a boy." Felicity says congratulations, and the show begins with a big ol' awkward silence. Mind you, this is like the second to the best scene. Yikes.

FELICITY: Hey Meghan, can you type your art history paper a little softer? I'm trying to pick a topic.
MEGHAN: Holy shit! You haven't started your 30-page paper yet? Sean told me about the whole Lauren preggers thing, and don't worry, everything will be peachy.
FELICITY: Yeah, but when Ben was looking at the ultrasound pic I was like, ohmygod, he's totally drifting away. I worry that after that little bastard is born Ben will change his mind and move to Arizona.
MEGHAN: No way. Ben is the shit, and he loves you. Take someone's dissertation paper from the library and copy it. Earl does it all the time and no one ever caught him. Trust me. ["And Earl is also, from the looks of him, a 42-year-old college student, so I don't think copying Earl's scholastic habits is such wise idea." -- Bitchavia]
FELICITY: No, I can't do that. I'll figure something out.
MEGHAN: Of course you will, you nerd. Good luck with all that. ["You shouldn't have wasted that much space on that scene. Shorter version....FELICITY: Stupid baby. Stupid school. Woe is me. MEGHAN: Suck it up, dumbass." --Carmexa]["Or: FELICITY: Wah, baby! Wah, essay!" MEGHAN: "Shuddup! Cheat! -- Bitchavia]

Sean loves Pop Tarts and he loves working at Webb. He's all excited that he landed the Bowers account. Noel's all, "Shit, Webb wants to meet with me today. I know he's gonna talk about how he's concerned that I'm boning his daughter." You should use my revolutionary FEPS system, Sean proclaims. Something about a firm handshake, eye contact, a power fist, and a solidarity squeeze. Works every time. Give me a power fist before you go off to that meeting, Sean asks Noel. ["I would love to give Noel a power fist . . . to the groin." -Litigia] ["What groin?" --Carmexa]["Power fist?? What is Sean, a Black Panther?" -- Bitchavia]Noel gives him a lame fist and then does it again, looking even geekier ["That's possible?" -- Bitchavia]. Sean says, "You go, girl!"

Javier's new plan
Play tennis to meet hot men
What happened to Sam?

Rita found a man
Javier wants to be loved
Tennis anyone?

There once was a dipshit named Noley
Who thought his meeting was about Zoe
Webb says "No jackass, it's Sean
If he doesn't cool it he'll be gone
I'll leave it up to you to take the controly.
["Nicey poemy, Dyslexy."-- Bitchavia]

RITA: Javier, meet my new boyfriend Michael.
JAVIER: Elena, I need your help in the stock room.
ELENA: Huh?
JAVIER: Elena, Michael is gay. He dated my friend once.
ELENA: Huh?
JAVIER: Should I tell Rita?
ELENA: No. ["At least Elena spoke in this episode!" --Carmexa] ["And the sad part is, that was originally written as a scene between Ben and Javier! They had to steal Ben's scene just to give Elena something to do. Counting down to goodbye, indeed." -Litigia]["I think based on the spring season so far, Tangi Miller should be downgraded to a cameo appearance guest star credit, and Felicity's cowboy shirts should move up to a starring role." -- Bitchavia]

Felicity's freaking out because she can't get into the Guggenheim web site. ["You know why, stupidhead? Because it's not .edu, it's .org. Typing the right fucking address would probably help your cause. And geeze, you know that Ben isn't going to be any help. He doesn't even know what the Internet is, as far as I can tell. But if he did--or if Scott did--he would love the goddesses. Ha. Riiiight." --Carmexa] Ben tries to help her but has no luck. The phone rings and it's the pregnant drunk asking if Ben will go to Lamaze class with her. Nothing like adding to Felicity's stress, but oh well. Felicity says she has to go to the library to start the paper and Ben assures her that it's just a class. ["Uh huh. And Carmex is JUST a cold-sore remedy. Pleeeeaaase." --Carmexa]

At the library, Felicity asks some freaky librarian where the dissertation section is. He looks at her suspiciously, and I have no idea why, other than he's just freaky. ["Because it's a contrived plotline." --Carmexa] She finds the dissertations, looks through them, photocopies one, goes home, and types up her paper. ["She actually spends time copying from the dissertation in longhand! What a waste of time! Oh yeah, that's the theme of this episode." -Litigia] Yeah, I'm sure this will work out just fine. She hands the phony paper into her teacher who's that lesbian chick from Best in Show. ["Christy Cummings." --Carmexa]["Rhapsody in White! Sherri-Ann! 'We both like soup.'" -- Bitchavia]

Back at the loft, Ben tells Felicity that Lauren is moving to Arizona. Apparently Lauren's ex-boyfriend is moving there and she wants to go with him. ["So much for the whole 'my parents are there and can help me' line." --Carmexa] Ben says he's going to talk to a lawyer. Just as Felicity's telling Ben how sorry she is, Meghan walks in and says Carnes, the art professor, wants to talk to Felicity about her paper. D'oh!

Noel tells Sean his plan
I will pitch the next account
"Use FEPS!" Sean agrees.

Rita is pissed off
When Javier says Mike's gay
What's the point of this?

[Blah blah fucking blah
This whole storyline sucks dick
Can't we just trash it? --Carmexa]

["Seven eppies left
And they waste it on Rita?
Someone should get fired." -Litigia]

[Who cares anyway?
Getting fired matters not
If show is cancelled. -Carmexa]

[Maybe the writers
Played joke on J.J. and let
Monkeys write this one -- Bitchavia]

[You know things are bad when the Goddesses lapse into haiku in the middle of a recap.]

Felicity confesses her cheating to Meghan. Meghan says, "Damn, well when this happened to Earl…" and Felicity interrupts with, "You said Earl never got caught!" ["Who cares if Earl ever got caught? He's got a sweet gig on 'Alias,' so what does he care about some stupid college plagiarism?" --Carmexa] ["Awww, Marshall. How I love thee." -Litigia] Meghan tells her to calm down because Felicity's starting to act like she's having a baby. Could it be that Keri…aw, never mind. ["Stop." --Carmexa] So, Meghan says Felicity should go back to the library and throw the dissertation away. Destroy the evidence! ["Because it's not like they would have the dissertation on microfiche or Adobe or anything. God, this storyline blows for some many reasons." -Litigia] ["You totally stole the whole microfiche/Adobe thing from a poster at TwoP. Who's the plagiarizer now?" --Carmexa]["I worked in the university library during my school days, and one of my shitty ass jobs was to copy dissertations for outside requests. They exist in so many forms, that you'd have to torch the whole library and zap a few zillion hard drives to destroy the evidence. And yes, people do request copies of old dissertations that you'd swear nobody ever read. Felicity should let her hair curl up again. I think the relaxer has relaxed her brain too." -- Bitchavia]

Ready to take the lead at Webb, Noel starts his sales pitch to some luggage company. Sean interrupts immediately and goes off about a monkey or something. Sean's really over the top. Noel says they should take a break and pulls Sean into the hallways. Noel confesses that Webb thinks Sean is a sucky sales guy and tries to dilute the whole bomb-dropping by throwing in a hammer analogy. ["I hate Noel's analogies. They're always stupid and irrelevant and unhelpful, much like Noel himself." --Carmexa] ["Another thing about Noel's analogies-they're always about something that happened to him. Because no matter what the issue, to Noel, it's always about Noel!" -Litigia] Sean isn't that stupid because he gets pissed and says he's quitting Webb. Buh-bye!

Turns out Professor Carnes isn't going to bust Felicity. In fact, Felicity's rip-off paper is so damn good that Carnes submitted it to the UNY Journal. ["What professor would submit an article to a journal without the student's permission? And why the hell didn't Felicity tell her right now that she didn't want it published. 'Yo, prof. Thanks for the offer, but my boyfriend's alcoholic one-night stand is carrying his child and I'm trying to be an architect without having taken a single class in it right now, so I really don't have the time to prepare this article for publication. Just give me the "A" and let me be. Thank you. Good bye.'" -Litigia] The editorial board has to review it first. For the love of Pete. Why didn't Felicity change some shit around in that paper?

FELICITY: I'm a cheater!
(DYSLEXIA: No shit. Took you that long to figure?)
MEGHAN: Go to Carnes and tell her you don't want the paper published. If she gets suspicious, deny! Deny!
BEN: Deny what?
FELICITY: Nothing. Um, my paper is gonna get published.
BEN: Cool, man.

Sean loafs on the couch
Thanks for walking out, Noel says
Fuck you! I'm leaving!

I know you're gay, Mike
J says in the dentist chair
I think not, Mike says.

[Oh, give me a break.
You're a fucking hygenist!
La la la, so gay. --Carmexa]

Meghan's upset about Felicity's conundrum. I guess she should be since she sort of put the cheating idea into Felicity's naïve little skull. ["Felicity has no right to be naive. She got busted for cheating way back in the first half of the first f-ing season. It's her own damn fault. People give bad advice all the time; it's only morons who take that advice." --Carmexa] Sean asks his wife if he's overbearing, and she says, "yeah, for sure. You have to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em." You mean like hammers? Meghan says, "The hell?" ["Meghan hates Noel's stupid analogy, too!" -Litigia] I guess that's a nice healthy marital conversation. ["For Sean and Meghan, that's about as healthy a conversation as I've ever seen them have." -Litigia]

So get this, some of the editorial board members think some of the content in Felicity's paper looks "questionable." ["Whatever. Like the editorial board remembers every dissertation ever written at a college of that size. Not bloody likely." --Carmexa] You don't say? Professor Carnes assures Felicity that the board will clear everything up because Felicity is such a kick-ass perfect student. Gulp.

"Merry Christmas! Here's that dissertation that you plagiarized," Meghan says to Felicity. She thanks Meghan and they talk about what their lives will be like a year from now. Felicity tells Meghan that they are totally going to be friends forever, and it's a pretty cute scene.

Turns out Sean asked for his job back at Webb and Papa Webb agreed. Awww, gag.

RITA: Know what? Michael is queer. You were right.
JAVIER: Sorry.
RITA: It's cool. There are other freaks out on the court. Let's go play!
["Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . " -Litigia]

Felicity's staring at the ultrasound picture when Ben walks in. He asks her what she's doing and she tells him that she was just looking. Ben says it's hard to get used to, and Felicity agrees. Ben sits next to her in bed, and I'm hoping they'll get it on ["Well, after the cameras stopped rolling...." --Carmexa], but this episode blows chunks all over the place, so why would the writers even bother trying to redeem themselves at this point? Ben says he talked to the lawyer and the lawyer basically said Ben should move to Arizona. Damn, how much did that legal consultation cost? I could have told him that. Ben assures Felicity that he's not going anywhere, and he repeats himself. Felicity tells him that she copied her paper, and Ben asks why. The stress was too much, she said, and now she doesn't even know if she'll graduate. Ben tries to comfort her and tells her everything will turn out fine, and once again, they will get through this shit of a mess. Felicity says for the millionth time, "I'm not so sure." ["Lather. Rinse. Repeat" -- Bitchavia] Blah! Can I be done?

Next week: Lauren gets nice and hammered and takes Ben for a drive. Ben's all bruised and hooked to IVs and whatnot and Felicity's at his bedside stroking his beautiful face. Of course, that bitch Lauren ends up fine, even though this would have been the perfect opportunity for the writers to kill her ass. Felicity gets sassy on Lauren and is all, "You selfish bitch!" Way to finally get some spine, my girl. Next week will be better. Hang in there, America. ["Yeah, until a couple of weeks from now, when things get so amazingly fucked up that you'll be begging for bullshit like this piece of nothing episode. God, ain't television grand?" --Carmexa]