Greek 3.04: "High and Dry"

“He smells like cupcakes and man.”

-Ashleigh

Monday’s episode of Greek was all about second chances. Casey appears to be giving friendship with Evan a second chance, Ashleigh is giving Fisher a second chance, and Rusty, though his own persistence, has given himself a second chance at a respectable CRU academic career. There’s also the sub-plot where Calvin is kind of thrown for a loop when his boyfriend Grant’s girlfriend from back home visits and Grant hasn’t come out to her yet. Other than a pretty funny scene where Rebecca is pretending to be Calvin’s girlfriend on a double date with Grant and his “girlfriend,” nothing much of consequence really happens in that plot, so on with the recap.

The episode begins with Casey in yet another Panhellenic meeting. Continuing in her quest to be more assertive and make a difference in Panhel, Casey speaks up about her dislike of “Dry Weekend.” It turns out that the Greek houses are going to be patrolled more closely than ever this year to make sure nobody drinks on Dry Weekend. Casey comes up with the idea for every house to have a Dry Weekend themed party to make the weekend a little easier to get through. She is also put on patrol duty with Evan of all people. As much as I dislike Casey and Evan together romantically, I think this is an interesting set-up. As Casey even mentions in the episode, it’s been a long time since she has had a prolonged conversation with Evan because of all the horrible things he did to her. I always enjoy when shows switch-up the usual dynamics and pair characters together (platonically) that we don’t usually get to see.

As Casey and Evan are patrolling the Greek houses on Dry Weekend, it’s awkward at first. Which you’d expect. Things change somewhat when they eat brownies at the Gamma Psi house that, unbeknownst to Casey and Evan, have, shall we say, a bit of an extra kick. They end up sitting in a shower stall in the ZBZ house, hoping to avoid the Panhellenic president, who wouldn’t be terribly happy to find Casey stoned. While hiding, Casey and Evan do talk about some important things. Evan acknowledges that he’s done some horrible things to Casey. Casey also finds out that Evan was the person who convinced Cappie not to go seek her out on the night of the End of the World Party after she broke up with Max. I think this was a conversation Evan and Casey needed to have, even if they couldn’t have it while they were sober. Hopefully it will help Casey heal a bit and move on with her life. It was also good to see Casey actually happy for a prolonged amount of time. She may have needed a little chemical help to get to that point (and now that I think about it…drug use on ABC Family? Kind of boggles the mind…), but she was care free and having fun being stupid with Evan.

Ashleigh wasn’t thrilled with Casey’s idea that all the houses should hold alcohol-free parties on Dry Weekend, because that meant she would have to see more of Fisher, ex-boyfriend and ZBZ house hasher. Fisher continued to try and win Ashleigh back. In fact, Fisher’s quest has gotten to almost stalker-like proportions. At one point, he deliberately stops Ashleigh from flirting with a guy at the ZBZ party by offering the guy a cupcake. Against her better judgment, Ashleigh does take Fisher back at the end of the episode. I’m really not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I liked that Ashley was respecting herself enough to cut someone out of her life for cheating. On the other hand, if Fisher is really, truly sorry, is it a bad thing to be trustful of someone?

I’m getting a little tired of the “Rusty struggles to balance academia and social life” plots that have gone on since the beginning of Greek, but the particular iteration of that plot in this episode was fun because it involved a few of the other Kappa Tau brothers. Rusty is upset that the rest of the engineering department is calling him “The Anchor,” referring to the fact that his low midterm grade “anchored” the grading curve. He feels that he needs to restore his reputation by taking on some independent research. This leads to Rusty taking Cappie to a somewhat fancy Engineering Department reception for a professor who recently published a book. Cappie decides to approach finding Rusty a faculty advisor like he would approach finding a hot girl. The results are quite amusing, made even better by a cameo of Beaver dressed as a geek. Rusty does eventually use some reverse psychology to get the professor he wanted to be his advisor from the beginning to offer his help. Rusty now has a second chance with this professor and a second chance to forge an academic reputation at CRU.

I didn’t love this episode of Greek, but it certainly did have its amusing moments. I liked that Casey is becoming more sure of herself in Panhellenic. She had a complaint about something the group wanted to do and was able to back it up with an alternative solution. That’s always an important leadership quality. I also liked that Casey might be on her way towards healing from her disastrous break-up with Evan. I’m also hoping that since Rusty’s academic career seems to be more-or-less back on track, we won’t hear about it so much. Although Rusty’s crotchety professor is played by the very talented Dan Castellaneta (of Simpsons fame), so seeing more of Rusty the academic could provide some funny moments.