6-19 “Gone With the Wind, Part 1”
A clip from this episode was posted to Nancy McKeon’s Twitter. It includes the part where Michael Damien (swoon), playing the singer of a club band, flirts with Jo. Nancy’s reaction:
“Why oh why do we have the same haircut?”
It’s true. The season six and seven mullets are a natural wonder.
I had one too, but I don’t have any pictures of it handy, so here’s a picture of John Taylor from Duran Duran.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We don’t even know that Michael Damien is in the episode yet! What we do know is that it’s spring break as Blair kvetches about having nothing to do. Kevin, played by Ryan “the forgotten” Cassidy, is in this episode for a minute. He showed up a couple of episodes ago with his dad, who was Mrs. Garrett’s old beau. He never served much of a purpose except when he made out with Jo once, and this is no exception.
Tootie, clad in flowered pajamas, has been watching game shows for four days straight, and I wish I could say I don’t know a thing about what that’s like.
Enter Natalie. Her grandmother has just called to tell Natalie that she’s going out of town, and Nat should invite some friends to her condo in Fort Lauderdale for spring break! Natalie negative Nancys (negative Natalies?) that spring break is half over already so there’s no point in going.
Aw hell no, Tootie argues. It’s only Thursday; they’ve got four days left. They can get there on Blair’s dad’s plane, natch. Once Kevin dismisses spring break in Fort Lauderdale as “just wall-to-wall hyped up college kids on the loose,” the girls are unanimous that they have to go, and they’re off to an establishing shot.
One of the best things about this episode is the consistently terrible fashion.
Natalie’s grandmas condo is a grandma condo. Plastic covers the flowered furniture and unique antique gee gaws fill the place (e.g., a very old egg covered in fur). Natalie pleads that they all be careful with grandma’s stuff (nothing could possibly go wrong), while Tootie flits about the place with typical Tootie enthusiasm. Oh hay, she found something upstairs.
It’s Ben Rutledge, played by Mark Tymschyshyn, who has a robust acting career but perhaps nothing more memorable than his stint on Seinfeld as Elaine’s date who “took it out” (“Took what out?” “It.“).
Blair and Jo wink-wink/nudge-nudge about cute boy in the house. Blair cheekily asks what exactly Tootie and Ben were doing upstairs, and Ben plays along. Natalie explains that Ben is a good friend of her grandmother’s.
“He seems to like women of all ages,” Blair snots.
Ben: “But not all types.”
Blair: “Well, what is your type, then?”
Ben: “When I see it, I’ll let you know.”
Oooh! Tension. I have no idea where this could possibly be going. Blair looks down her nose at his career as the resident handyman, and he continues to dismiss her.
When he leaves, the girls rib Blair about her obvious crush on Ben. Blair protests, but we all know better.
Later, the girls wear different but equally horrible clothing out to the club.
We are reminded that Jo never really reformed her criminal ways as we learn that she made fake IDs for Tootie and Natalie. Tsk tsk. Tootie can’t wait to order her first real drink.
The waitress takes their order. Jo gets a draught beer, while Blair orders a white wine, which, ew. There is a wonderful book by a San Francisco bartender about how to be a decent bar patron, and one of his tips is to order wine almost nowhere. If his customers ask him if he can recommend a wine at his bar, he says “no.” Typically, beer bars don’t sell enough wine for the bottles to go quickly enough for the wine to stay decent. I guess it’s less bad with white wine, since it’s refrigerated, but yeah, I would not touch this bar’s wine selection with a ten meter cattle prod.
Natalie wants orange juice, and is gobsmacked upon learning that this Florida bar does not have orange juice, but Tang instead. That actually sounds kind of delicious right now, but I remember that the last time I bought Tang in a moment of nostalgia I was unimpressed.
Tootie: “I’d like a whiskey sour, no rocks, and put that in a shot glass.”
Waitress: “Would you like a cigar with that?”
That order doesn’t even make any sense. A whiskey sour, no rocks, in a shot glass is basically a shot of sweet and sour with a tiny splash of whiskey, and it will taste like shit because sweet and sour is meant to be cold. I think what they meant to have her order was a whiskey up, the drink of tough old men.
Indeed, Jo says, “Tootie, what are you doing? You’re drinking like Hemingway here!” I have it on good authority that Hemigway’s favorite drink was a classic daiquiri. Rum and lime juice, that is, not the frozen sugary thingies with little umbrellas that you get at beach bars. But I’m sure he enjoyed a whiskey or two in his time; he wasn’t exactly picky about his booze.
Tootie insists that she’s not going to drink it; she just wanted to hear herself order it. Well, since what she ordered is pretty much non-alcoholic, there’s not really any reason why she shouldn’t drink it.
Conveniently, they’ve gotten there just in time for the band’s first set and have managed to secure a table right in front of the stage. Now is when we meet Michael Damien, whose cover of the David Essex hit “Rock On” would be super-popular in a few years. He is also typically 80s new-wave hot, and I had a huge crush on him, mullet and all.
The song is very very very 80s, but I cannot confirm that it exists, because it’s so generic that it is impossible to Google. Curiously, there is no music credit (other than for the theme song) in the credits of the episode. If you know anything about this song, please let me know.
There’s one girl on this earth
That I want to be with
TONIGHT!
The evening is waitin’
And I know the feelin’
IS RIGHT!
Natalie thinks the singer is smiling at Jo. Jo brushes off the idea.
All I want is you!
All I need is you!
Tootie: “Jo, I think that guy is singing to you.”
Come with me
Stay with me
Be with me now
I NEED YOU!
Natalie: “Jo, I think he needs you!”
Jo: “He does not. It’s just a song.”
I’m taking you with me
There’s no turning back
I WANT YOU!
With Jo on stage, Tootie decides it’s time for her to start mingling and she flits off to the dance floor.
All I want is you
All I need is you
All I want is you
All I need is you
I want you!
I want you!
Blair needs a faux love interest while she works through her silliness about Ben, so a dude straight out of central casting joins her and Natalie at the table.
I can’t judge; he’s totally my type too. He looks like a young Justin Hayward. When he says, “I’m Morgan Wilson. Pre-law. Brown,” I lose interest. There’s nothing wrong with pre-law or Brown, but there is something wrong with a person who introduces themselves with those two facts up front.
Morgan’s friend, John, reacts well to Natalie inquiring what kind of tree he is, so they pair off as well.
Tootie bops back to the table and buys a round of drinks for EVERYONE IN THE BAR before informing Natalie that she invited the entire bar back to Nat’s grandmother’s condo after the bar closes. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.
At the condo, the party rocks and Natalie worries. John offers to bounce anyone or everyone as soon as she says the word, and this mollifies her. She allows John to use his branches to clear her a path through the crowd.
O hay look, the band came!
Jo’s beau, it turns out, is named Flyman. No one knows how he got the name. The guy in the silver thing is the guitarist.
Michael Damien sure is easy on the eyes, though. I can’t lie, there was always a scene like this in my head, with me in Jo’s role as the badass chick that the hot singer pulls up on stage. He explains that he chose her for her aura…and also because the microphone reached. Solid basis for a relationship, that.
Tootie, meanwhile, has picked herself up a dude.
The dude reads from Frost’s snowy woodland poem. I want to judge Tootie for the ridiculousness of flirting by allowing some dork to read poetry to you at a party, but I can’t ’cause it totally would have been me when I was a junior in high school. Oh, the stories I could tell you from the debate days. I made out with more than a few dudes by bonding over Shakespeare or Blade Runner or whatever pretension I was going with at the time.
Ben comes down the stairs, and Natalie says she’s glad to see a responsible adult, an image he shatters by snarking on Natlie for the party without actually doing anything about it. He tells Natalie to relax and “let [him] worry about the storm.”
Uh oh.
In the kitchen, Blair, thankfully starts to understand that Morgan is a creep.
He declares that “two such beautiful people should not be kept apart” and leans in to try to kiss her. Ben conveniently interrupts and snarks on Blair before trading some verbal barbs with that gross Morgan guy. Blair and Morgan get out of Ben’s way so he can board up the kitchen windows.
Morgan: “So, Blair, did I tell you about my plans after I graduate from Brown?”
Blair: “Probably.”
Morgan: “Harvard Law School. My father’s a friend of the dean’s, but it doesn’t matter. My grades’ll get me in.”
Ben: “And your charm.”
Blair: “So, what kind of law are you thinking about going into?”
Morgan: “Oh, corporate law, of course. It’s the only area in which I’ll get paid what I’m worth.”
Ben: “Can you live on that?”
Blair openly laughs now, but Morgan is too arrogant to get the hint. He leads her out of the kitchen, promising her to take her to the right restaurant with the right atmosphere.
Ben: “And the wrong guy.”
But Blair and Morgan are already gone. What will become of this palpable sexual tension?
Meanwhile, Tootie and Peter are still goofy and Flyman and Jo are still hilarious.
Jo: “I still don’t understand why you like me.”
Flyman: “Why not?”
Jo: “Well, we’re just so different. You come from another world, and I come from…this one.”
He insists that he’s just a regular guy and OH SHIT YEAH ANOTHER SONG!
She don’t care about my past
She looks only straight ahead
Not concerned about the cash
There are other things that turn her on
She’d rather be with me than show off in the crowd!
She is in a different world
How I want to get her into mine
Such a sweet and lovely girl
She is in a different world
Natalie stresses about the volume; Blair crawls around on the floor trying to avoid Morgan. No, seriously.
She don’t need to brag at all
‘Cause she’s got everything there
She doesn’t long for the spotlight
She’d rather run off to the countryside
She’d rather take a train than go riding in a fancy car
She is in a different world
How I want to get her into mine
Such a sweet and lovely girl
She is in a different world
As the song continues in the background, Blair seeks advice for how to lose gross Morgan. Jo suggests telling him that it’s raining in his sunroof, and Blair shuffles off on all fours. She comes nose to knee with guess who? Ben, of course. She feigns finding an earring and hurries off while Ben stares lustfully after her.
How I want to give her everything
In the world that I can give her
I offered furs, I’ve offered diamond rings
She says all she wants is love!
She is in a different world
How I want to get her into mine
Such a sweet and lovely girl
She is in a different world
Awwww. I love this so much. It’s the perfect soundtrack for an 80s beach fantasy. If you’re reading this blog, you know exactly what I mean.
The band starts another song, which I believe is called “No for an Answer” and is on the same album as “She’s in a Different World.” This all makes me want to buy that album, but it’s super-hard to find, it turns out. Now y’all know what you can get me if you ever want to get me a gift. I think it’s on YouTube but it’s not the same.
As the band plays, Ben tells Natalie that the storm has been upgraded to a hurricane, and while he’s taken care of the big stuff, no one is allowed to leave. He hands Natalie a checklist and says he has to go check a couple of other condos. Natalie vows to stay calm.
“We’re having a hurricane!”
Blair catches Ben leaving, and insists that she wants to come with him. Natalie panics as Tootie and the other partygoers declare the hurricane as a reason to party harder. Stock footage takes us to the end.
Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion!
