“Speaking of a good time, Vampira69 awaits!”
-Dale
This week’s episode of “Greek” was about whether or not you can ever “go back” to how something used to be. Casey wants to go back to being friends with Evan and Cappie like she was during freshman year. Rusty wants to go back to how things used to be with Jordan, and Dale is considering getting back together with Sheila. Ashleigh and Fisher want to go back to how things were before their temporary break up. Except for Ashleigh and Fisher (and who knows how long that will last…my guess: not long), none of these attempts to go back were very successful.
The episode opens with Rusty chatting with Jordan over a Skype-like computer program. Jordan is talking about all the new friends she’s making in New York City, including one guy, and Rusty is seriously jealous. He and Jordan are no longer together because Rusty didn’t think long distance would work, and Calvin and Dale are determined to help him move on. Dale isn’t exactly providing a good example, though. He’s getting over what happened with Sheila the landlady by embracing his “atheist supervillain” side. He’s joined an online chat service and has been having naughty conversations with someone who goes by the handle “Vampira69.” Calvin, however, has a more practical approach. A guys’ night at a club.
The whole club thing doesn’t go well, so Calvin has a new idea. The guys take a trip to the Ohio River Comic Con. Calvin’s theory is that Rusty can meet a girl more his type at the con. One who won’t be freaked out by his dorkiness. I’m making a mental note right now of Calvin’s theory, even if it doesn’t really work for the Greek guys (sorry…spoiler alert!). Anyway, while waiting in line for parking at the con, a girl all painted green notices Rusty and tells him to find her once he gets inside the convention center. My thoughts? Orion Slave Girl (or “green alien” as Greek put it) is not really an “in” costume these days.
Rusty does find Orion Slave Girl after mistakenly approaching a few others, but then he comes on way too strong. He talks about having a relationship and meeting his family before they even have one real conversation. Orion Slave Girl tries to let him down as gently as possible. Meanwhile, Dale has found his “friend” Vampira69 at the con, and it’s none other than Sheila. He toys with the idea of getting back together with her as Rusty decides he needs to talk to Jordan. He thinks it was a mistake to let go of a girl who actually understood him and embraced his quirks. His faux-Skyped conversation with her, where she doesn’t take him back, is accidentally broadcast to an entire auditorium. Rusty and Dale both realize they need to move forward in their love lives, not look to the past. Dale also re-finds religion. As it should be. Dale punishing himself was getting old.
Meanwhile, Casey is intrigued by the fact that Evan and Cappie might actually be friends again, and she takes to snooping and interrogating the guys. This concerns Evan and Cappie, because they’re afraid that if Casey finds out that they’re truly friends, she’ll find out about the Amphora Society, which is supposed to be very, very secret. They attempt to stage a mock fight at the coffee stand’s outdoor café tables to throw Casey off the trail. Things get out of hand when Beaver and some other Kappa Taus see the scuffle, and Beaver, screaming “Cappie!” dives into the fray. Omega Chis in the area join in too, and soon there’s an all-out brawl. This was one of my favorite moments of the episode. Beaver is always adorable, especially when he’s defending his Cappie.
When Cappie accidentally tells a variation of a joke Evan already told Casey at the beginning of the episode, Casey realizes the fight was a set-up. She takes her sleuthing to a whole new level. She hides a baby monitor in a fruit basket and leaves the fruit basket on the KT pool table, so she knows exactly when Cappie is leaving the house. Then she follows him all the way to Amphora Society headquarters. Cappie and Evan try to keep Casey hidden from the other Amphoras, but it doesn’t last long. The Amphoras aren’t quite sure what to do with her, and one advocates killing her. Eventually they decide that finding their headquarters shows so much ingenuity that Casey should be inducted into the society.
Casey agrees at first, even going through the ritual emotional purge and telling the rest of the group all about her history with Evan and Cappie. By the end of the episode, however, she decides that she doesn’t want to be an Amphora. She sees how much good having their own space has done for Evan and Cappie’s friendship, and she wants to go forward with a new type of friendship between the three of them.
Our final characters struggling with whether or not to go back to how things were or move forward are Ashleigh and Fisher. They are having trouble making this new iteration of their relationship work. Fisher is being extra considerate, afraid to disagree with Ashleigh on anything. The two of them go to see a showing of Clueless, and Fisher doesn’t like it at all. He pretends he likes it, though, until he and Ashleigh are at an event with some of Fisher’s film school buddies, and he can’t hide it anymore. The two of them decide that they actually want to go back. They want to be comfortable and honest with each other again. I must question Fisher and the other film students’ hatred of Clueless. It’s really a brilliant movie. It is so, so much more than Valley Girl speak. It perfectly captured the pop culture of the early 90’s. It was an extremely successful, in an artistic sense, attempt to modernize Jane Austen’s novel Emma. I'm a bit of a snob in my artistic taste myself, and I adore Clueless. So there, Fisher!
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