2-3 “Double Standard”
One of the best things that ever happened to me at law school was when I found out that one of my classmates reads this blog. It was his birthday last week, so, as I did last year, I shall recap the episode of his choice, and it’s a doozy.
The girls, minus Blair, play Scrabble while Mrs. G looks on and backseat Scrabbles, much to Jo’s annoyance. Enter Blair, with one of her patented white-boy-with-chiseled-features boyfriends.
Ugh. So typically 80s “attractive.” But then I liked this guy back then, so I have no business criticizing.
Blair’s blond boy is Harrison Andrews, son of longtime friends and business associates of Blair’s wealthy family. Blair gushes about how they’ve known each other all their lives and it was the hope that one day they’d join both families’ “great bloodlines.” Throughout this exchange, Jo inserts some Jo-style bon mots and makes a four-letter word on the Scrabble board, and you can see that Harrison is intrigued.
When Blair starts gushing about Harrison’s Porsche and Jo chimes in with mechanical questions before challenging him to race his Porsche against her motorcycle, he’s clearly hooked. Mrs. Garrett vetoes the race and tells the girls to get ready to make dinner. Like a puppy following its new master (or a steak), Harrison trails after Jo.
He overhears her telling Tootie and Natalie that she has other plans tonight so she won’t join the after-dinner Scrabble game. Harrison grills her about what she does. She gets on her bike and hits the streets, right? She must come home at all hours! And when he gets out of her that she’s probably going to the arcade tonight, he asks how she’d feel if he showed up.
“It’s a public place. I guess I couldn’t have you arrested.”
And with that, Harrison asks Jo to tell Blair that he had to take off, and he beelines out the door, but not before upping the creep factor with Mrs. Garrett.
Mrs. Garrett: “What a well-mannered young man.”
Jo: “I know. Doesn’t he give you the creeps?”
Blair returns to the cafeteria, society smile glued onto her face. When she learns that Harrison bailed, she’s annoyed, particularly because he didn’t say what time he was picking her up to go to the High Crest Country Club the next day. Blair corrects Natalie’s assumption that they’re going to a dance; apparently it is not a dance, it’s a cotillion. Mrs. Garrett explains the difference:
“When they hang crepe paper and play records in a gym, it’s a dance. When they hang crepe paper and play records in a country club, it’s a cotillion.”
Blair clarifies that Harrison hasn’t actually invited her to the dance cotillion, but she can’t imagine any other scenario. He’d started talking about it earlier, but got interrupted by a phone call. His mother told her mother that they were going together. What could go wrong?
Later that night, Tootie, Natalie, and Mrs. G are back at the Scrabble board, while Blair frets that Harrison still hasn’t called. She is not pleased.
Jo returns. Apparently she had a delightful time at the arcade, except when Harrison showed up and wouldn’t leave her alone until she agreed to go out with him.
Blair: “You mean Harrison asked you out on a d-d-d…”
Tootie: “Date, Blair. We call it a date.”
Jo: “Yeah, some wing-ding tomorrow night”
Natalie: “Could that be your wing-ding, Blair?”
Blair: “I don’t go to wing-dings. I go to cotillions.”
Jo: “Well if that’s a dance at the High Crest Country Club, your cotillion and my wing-ding are the same thing.”
Mrs. G senses a conflict about to arise, so she intervenes. She explains to Jo that Blair hoped expected thought that Harrison was going to invite her, and she’s been waiting all night for her invitation confirmation of her invitation. Jo is amused that “poor little Blairsie” has been waiting all night by the phone for Harrison’s call, but Jo isn’t a shit, so she tells Blair that she respects her turf and she won’t take her guy.
“Take my guy? When it comes to men, the only thing you could take from me is lessons.”
Yeah, not smart, Blair. Jo warns her not to push it but Blair goes on, commenting how Jo is out of her league and doesn’t belong at the cotillion anyway.
“I’ve got just as much business there as you do. And I’ve got more. I was asked.”
Yep, Blair, you’re done. And Jo’s going to the cotillion with Harrison just to shove it down Blair’s throat. I don’t blame her.
The next night, Tootie and Natalie are enthusiastic about Jo’s preparing for the cotillion, while a morose Blair forlornly lies on her bed. Enter Jo.
I could write a whole blog post on Jo’s terrible fashion sense. In fact, I did.
Indeed, for a moment Jo worries that maybe she really is out of her league, since she doesn’t have fancy shoes to go with the dress. Fortunately, through the magic of television, Mrs. G. is exactly Jo’s shoe size and she gives her a pair. “Gee, this really is like Cinderella!” exclaims Natalie, echoing an earlier conversation where she and Tootie identified Blair as a wicked stepsister.
Later, at eight o’clock (we know this because Natalie says so), Natalie and Tootie fold laundry while Blair pouts. The younger girls imagine a romantic dance between Jo and Harrison and compliment Blair for taking it so well.
Meanwhile, Jo has returned from the dance and is lurking in the hall, not looking her best.
She decides against going into the girls’ room and instead knocks on Mrs. Garrett’s door. Mrs. Garrett invites her in and immediately asks her if she’s been in an accident.
Jo tells us that it was no accident. Instead of going to the dance, Harrison took her to the club’s golf course, pushed her onto her back in a sand trap, and told her to relax. Jo berates herself for being a poor judge of character in this case, and expresses surprise that a guy with Harrison’s background could possibly be a rapist.
In a time when sexual assault wasn’t always taken seriously, when there was no such thing as marital rape in a number of states, when “date rape” wasn’t even a phrase, when many probably thought as Jo did – that a guy with a suit and a Porsche and a trust fund couldn’t possibly be dangerous – Facts takes on the issue head-on. Mrs. Garrett reminds Jo that being able to yodel in three different languages doesn’t make someone a gentleman. Whatever “gentleman” means, anyway. The point is, being rich does not equal not being a dick.
Jo asks to stay with Mrs. Garrett until the girls go to sleep so she doesn’t have to explain. Good luck with that. Even if she manages to go into the room after the girls have stopped waiting up for her; and even if she avoids waking them up (at which point they’ll demand a play-by-play); she’ll still have to explain everything in the morning. This crew ain’t gonna be satisfied with a simple, “It was fine and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
But for the time being, she sits with Mrs. G and tells her about her Cinderella fantasy – that she would show up at the cotillion and everyone would looking at her wondering, “Who’s that classy girl? Where did she come from?”
It’s very emotional as Jo says she just thought she would feel like she belonged there, and she wanted to make Mrs. Garrett proud. Mrs. Garrett says she is proud. After all,
“Harrison put you in a terrible position tonight.”
She clarifies that she means that what he did was inexcusable, and yet Jo handled it with dignity, grace and, yes, class. She’s still furious, though, and part of her wishes that Jo had just popped him.
“Oh, I did. See, that’s what happened to your other shoe.”
Back in the girls’ room, Blair still can’t figure out why anyone would ask Jo out when he has Blair ready and waiting. Awesome Natalie, the smartest, most astute, and most sex-positive of these four girls that there will ever be, answers Blair’s question of what Jo has that she doesn’t. A motorcycle.
Natalie explains that Harrison, who as a man approaching his 18th birthday is in a state of flux, will be interested in someone he sees as adventurous and unpredictable, and that is what the motorcycle symbolizes to him, and that’s why he chose Jo. Natalie makes this wise observation despite the fact that she’s still wearing the hideous whale sweatshirt that for three seasons no one tells her is awful.
Triumphant in her diagnosis, Natalie leads Tootie downstairs to raid the kitchen, where they run into Harrison, who has returned to Eastland to return Jo’s shoe. Blair, meanwhile, has decided that if Harrison wants rebellion, he’ll get it from her. And she joins them, having tried a new look.
Tootie and Natalie make their well-timed exit, while Harrison bluntly tells Blair she looks ridiculous; the look just isn’t her. She says that she understands how someone who has steak every night can suddenly crave a “sloppy Jo,” but he explains that his date with Jo wasn’t about any of that. If he had any intention of being seen at the dance, he’d’ve had Blair on his arm, but since what he was after was something more physically engaging, he took Jo instead.
Oh you piece of shit. And he explains it like it is (or should be) obvious to Blair that “that kind of girl” is where you go for that kind of goal. Blair is incredulous as she rightly points out Harrison’s double standard (hey! That’s the episode’s title!).
“So what you’re saying is that there are two kinds of women. The kind you marry, and the kind you…don’t.”
By now, Jo has joined them downstairs, and Blair can’t believe she isn’t throwing punches. Jo says she already did, and as Harrison tries to make a quick getaway, knowing he’s in deep, Blair decides she’s going to deck him herself.
Jo physically restraining Blair from punching the douchebag is one of my favorite moments of the whole series.
Blair talks out her frustration, noting how much it sucks that guys act like that. It’s important to remember that this is only Jo’s third episode; at this point, she’s barely shown up at Eastland and she’s already gotten Blair thrown in lockup and put on permanent kitchen duty, so it’s remarkable when these two girls realize that they have common ground. We never find out what happens to Harrison, but we do start to get an inkling that when it comes down to it, Blair and Jo are going to have each other’s backs.
Seven more seasons, here we come.
