S2, E33: "Eating Contest" / "Rhonda's Glasses"

Today is all about happy. Happy first day of May, happy Sunday (AKA New Review Day), and happy early 23rd birthday and new job to me!

My siblings, sibling in-laws, and I went to this tiny Latin-Mexican restaurant for my birthday last night in Bay Ridge. We got melted Monterrey jack cheese and tomatillo sauce melted over warm nachos for an appetizer (which were fantastic!), and for the main course, I got this awesome dish called Arroz con Pollo (rice with chicken), topped off with black beans, onions, and peppers... oh, so good. And to think I was going in there ordering burritos! I'll be craving arroz con pollo all week now. 

Why am I practically Instagramming my dinner to you guys? To get you starving like a coyote in the desert--that's right, the next episode is all about food, food, and nothing but food: 

"Eating Contest"

So, the annual food festival is coming to town. Of course, Arnold's little friends are roaring and ready to chow down on hundreds of pounds of delicious and disgusting foods. Why do they participate in everything? These aren't normal kids. Maybe the fact that it's all totally free is the kicker.

Oh, and Oskar is a judge. Why would you need a judge for an eating contest other than to make sure people aren't cheating by sliding food into their lap?

Arnold is disgruntled because he thinks eating contests are stupid. I bet it's because he thinks the masses of food could be fed to starving kids in African countries. He doesn't say why, but I can see this being one of his reasons. Grandpa says it's a family tradition to enter and win the eating contest, and then brings him into another room to show off the trophy he won when the world was still black and white:

Grandpa reminisces back to 1929 when his father coached him for weeks for the Great Eat-Off and won:

Personally, I prefer blueberry pie. Or pumpkin. Mmm... pie.

If it's such a family tradition, why doesn't Grandpa ever talk about his own kid winning the contest? In fact, we haven't heard anything about Arnold's parents in the past 33 episodes. I get that his parents are missing, but to never bring them up in conversation at all? Hmm...

Grandpa has a lot of money bet on Arnold winning this thing, so Grandpa tells him to go to bed, as Arnold is now in training.

The next day at lunch, some of the guys try to out-eat each other, but Helga comes by and tells them they don't stand a chance against this one kid from another neighborhood, Seymour (AKA "The Disposal").

Big deal. When I was 9, I could eat an entire family size bag of potato chips. 

Arnold goes to Grandpa to say he ain't eatin', but Grandpa pretends to be asleep and fake-dreams about Arnold winning the contest, basically guilt-tripping Arnold into participating against a human vacuum. This has to go against some kind of child law or something. 

Even the other boarders get in on helping Arnold win. And I'll be damned--this kid's another vacuum. Does he even chew, or does he just push food through his face?

I think Grandpa is also training Arnold to binge and purge, because after Arnold pukes up an entire week's worth of food, Grandpa shoves chopped-up lobster meat in his face, causing Arnold to puke again. Good thing none of these borders let anything leak to CPS, otherwise Grandpa's bony ass would be hauled to court.

So, it's the day of the contest, and preparation for the eating contest seems to be going smoothly. Though it's not without its shenanigans:

"What are you doing, Oskar? You're supposed to be a judge."
"That's what I'm doing; I'm judging the shish kebab. A-heh-heh-heh-heh!"

Grandpa asks Oskar if there are any potential eating machines who could possibly beat Arnold, and Oskar points out Seymour down the street, dropping rolls into his mouth tray by tray.

Does he have a black hole for a stomach?

Grandpa shits his pants at his mistake forcing Arnold into the contest, and tries to warn him about Seymour. But it's too late. Grandpa has pushed Arnold into this, and he's not backing down now.

The contest begins with a tray full of tacos. Mmm. Harold is the first one out, surprisingly, after taking two enormous gulps of tacos. Pace yourself, man!

The contestants are wiped out one by one until it's down to just Arnold and Seymour. Of course it is. The final dish: ice cream cake, specialty of the Jolly Olly Man. Or should I say Sweet Tooth? Look at that demonic grin:

Arnold is starting to slack, as all that food is starting to pile up in his stomach. It would have been funny if Arnold just puked right then and there. Seymour goes at this thing like it's nothing. Jeez Louise, where does he put it all?! What I don't get is that Arnold doesn't even take a bite of this thing--he merely watches Seymour eat, and just looks at the ice cream disapprovingly. How is he still allowed in the contest? 

Seymour actually has reached his limit--he drops his fork and drowns in his own puddle of ice cream blood. In real life, that would be blood because certainly your stomach would burst after all that food. Maybe if he didn't have 10 trays of rolls before the contest, he might have had room for the cake.

Regardless, this kid's got a metabolism of every human's dream.

Now that Seymour is dead, all it takes for Arnold to win the contest is to eat just one bite of ice cream. What?! You're telling me that after all that cake Seymour ate, he loses simply because he passed out? He fucking ate like 80% of that cake! Under technicalities, he won. I don't care if he ate himself into a coma. He may not be able to eat anymore, but he ate more than Arnold. Plus he ate his pre-contest breakfast of rolls and pizza.

Arnold, I love you, but it's total bullshit that you won just by eating a cherry and bit of whipped cream. In that case, everyone could have held back a bit until the last dish.

Grandpa's so proud of his "Shortman" for winning by escaping through a loophole. Some eating contest! They should just call this show, Arnold Wins Everything!

Side note: I just realized this plot is almost exactly the same as "Steely Phil":

SP: Grandpa enters a Chinese Checkers tournament after Arnold pushes him into it.
EC: Arnold enters an eating contest after Grandpa pushes him into it.

SP: Why? For glory.
EC: Why? For the glory of keeping up family tradition.

SP: Grandpa reminisces about when he played Chinese Checkers against Robby Fisher and lost.
EC: Grandpa reminisces about entering the eating contest and won.

SP: Arnold helps Grandpa train for the tournament with unorthodox methods.
EC: Grandpa helps Arnold train for the contest with unorthodox methods.

SP: Grandpa wants to back out, but Arnold pushes him back in.
EC: Arnold wants to back out, but Grandpa pushes him back in.

SP: Although Grandpa doesn't technically win, he claims his glory as a Chinese Checkers champion.
EC: Although Arnold technically loses, he claims his glory as a gluttonous champion.

SP: Shiny trophy.
EC: Shiny trophy.

Steve Viksten, Joseph Purdy, there's a little concept I'd like to introduce you guys to: PLAGIARISM.

"Rhonda's Glasses"

Rhonda's inner bitch comes out when a new, ugly girl sits next to her on the bus, and she tells her to GTFO because of her blind schoolteacher garb and most importantly, her glasses.

And why does she look so much like a female version of Arnold from The Magic Schoolbus?

Speaking of glasses, Rhonda goes to the nurse for compulsory eye exams, and it turns out Rhonda can't see shit. Karma comes around to bite her where the sun don't shine. Yup, right in her Bloomingdales bloomers--Rhonda needs glasses.

Welcome to the club, nerd.

Where did the stigma come from, that glasses are for nerds? Some of the coolest people we ever encounter wear glasses. I wear glasses and I'm not a nerd. At least, I don't think I am.

Rhonda's mother makes a soap opera out of having to smudge her "perfect" little girl's image with these bended, plastic frames. Yes, it's so dreadful that her mother doesn't even want to say the word. Glasses, glasses, glasses! Glasses!

Rhonda tries a few pair on, and seeing how none of them fit properly, Rhonda believes her ears are crooked. Now that's funny.

Rhonda cries to her daddy on the phone about how much her life sucks now that she's totally blind now. Oh, cry me a river, rich bitch. You're just upset now because you're going to have to sit in the back of the bus. Rejected, dehumanized, and unwanted like blacks in the 1950s. I'm sure if glasses were in vogue, you'd have a pair for every day of the year.

The next day (or rather some weeks later since prescription lenses take a while to develop), Rhonda gets on the bus with her brand-new spectacles:

Everyone gasps in total and complete shock. Rhonda, princess of the bus, is now about to eat the shit she has thrown at the geeks all her life--a lesson in humility? I believe so.

Another cool girl--a non-four-eyed freak--banishes Miss Rhonda Wellington Lloyd to the back of the bus as she is now deemed too uncool to be showcased to everyone hopping aboard. Bruce Wayne would be proud that justice is being served.

And so the lass covers her ears and bows her head in shame. At least the "nerds" are awfully nice, even after Rhonda banished them back there.

"It's official: 8:15. My life is over." - Rhonda

Rhonda can't bear to be seen in class with those... those things, so she fakes sick and heads to the nurse's office. Almost the whole class has seen Rhonda with her glasses; who else is left? Harold? Since when would Rhonda care what Harold thinks of her?

Rhonda claims she feels sick, so Eugene offers some soda crackers to help her stomach. But they won't do. Rhonda's the coolest girl in class, and the plastic eyewear shielding her eyes is detrimental to her cool factor. Oh, the inhumanity! Oh, the curse of astigmatism! Why? Why? Why? WHY?!

Rhonda takes off her glasses to watch a graphic puberty video in class, and she obviously wasn't scarred for life with the gross images since they were blurry. And then Helga points out that Rhonda obviously does need her glasses since she has been walking around with bubblegum on her ass. Cue the laughter:

And then Rhonda proceeds to ram into a door and cause her nose to bleed. Sheena lays a hand of support on he shoulder and says not to worry as nosebleeds happen to her all the time, and then Rhonda backs away from her like she's a disease and says, verbatim, "Please don't touch me, Sheena. I'm not one of you." Oooh-hoo-hoo. That's a paddlin'. I wish Sheena wasn't such a pacifist, because that is deserving of one good punch to the face.

The more Rhonda continues to be a bitch, the "geekier" she becomes. Bandages on her nose, toilet paper stuck to her shoe, sitting and breaking her glasses.

It's official. Her transformation into a full-fledged geek/nerd/uncool/loser is now complete.

Everyone but Helga continues being super nice to her, probably to piss her off. Or maybe Nickelodeon is telling us to smother the bully with kindness regardless of what they do or say to us.

But it's not until recess when Rhonda finally sees the reality of life as a geek--they get pushed around, ignored, given the worst tables and toys, and are basically underclass students. And because Rhonda doesn't like it, she gathers the geeks together--Sheena, Eugene, Brainy, and Curly--and forms an alliance to rise to power. And no, before you say Rhonda is beginning to understand that what she's doing is wrong, she's only rebelling against the status quo because it's an inconvenience to her. Bitch,

So there is an "i" in "we" after all.

The next day on the bus, Rhonda tells the "cool" girl to scootch her bootch so she can sit down, but the girl laughs in her face. Rhonda stands up for her right as a new geek to sit where she wants, and inspires the other kids to do the same.

What are these unwritten rules about geeks and kids with glasses having to sit in the back of the bus anyway? Ah, it doesn't matter, because now it's a free-for-all. And the only open seat left for the "cool" girl is a nice, shaky seat in the b-b-b-back.

So, Rhonda gets a new pair of glasses that are probably harder to break, and plays nice with the girl she shunned at the beginning of the episode. Does this mean Rhonda has changed for good? Hahahahaha! Status quo is God, my friends.





Lessons Learned From This Episode: you can get away with stealing plot lines if you're too cheap and lazy to write an original one; binge and purge to fight the urge to feel breakfast surge; treating people who are different like shit is wrong because it's not fair; geeks can rise if they make a stink about it