Greek 3.19: "The First Last"

“Well, personally I would have preferred to battle it out during Greek Week. I think a victory achieved on a technicality is far less satisfying. But, I’m going off to Yale Law, so I’m moving the frick on.”

-Katherine

I liked “The First Last” much more than I’ve liked many episodes of “Greek” this season. I know I’ve been pretty hard on the show in general. This episode was pretty fun, had a positive message, and nothing about it especially irritated me. For season 3 of “Greek,” I’d call that a success. This episode was mostly about when to be the hero and when to pass the torch to the next generation. Both Casey and Cappie dealt with these issues within their houses. Both wanted to be the one to solve the problem their house was currently experiencing, and both eventually realized the importance and value of one of the younger members of their respective houses.

Cappie is preparing for the Greek Gods of Golf tournament, where he hopes to deliver a final humiliation to Evan, who is competing for Omega Chi. Cappie is also talking a lot of smack about having some grand plan for revenge against Evan. The whole KT house is still smarting over the incident that led to Wade, Jeremy, and Ferret’s expulsions. Rusty is anxious to know Cappie’s big plan, but Cappie’s not talking. Rusty just gets increasingly frustrated. His pledges, in turn, are getting kind of frustrated with him. Rusty keeps telling them stories about how awesome his pledge class was (like the Vesuvius incident), and they feel like they can never measure up.

Meanwhile, over at the ZBZ house, the news has broken that Greek Week has been cancelled. This turned out to be the result of machinations by Natalie, the Gamma Psi president, of course. She convinced the powers that be at CRU that Greek Week funds should be moved to fall rush. The upshot of her plan was to get rid of the final opportunity for Greek Blue Ribbon points so that Gamma Psi would remain the number one house. Casey goes to Katherine to complain. Although as a Gamma Psi, Katherine would benefit from Natalie’s plan, she prefers to win in a fair fight.

Katherine hints to Casey that Casey should request that the “Greek Goddess” beauty pageant be re-introduced to balance out the guys’ golf tournament and give the sororities one more chance to win blue ribbon points. Casey does as suggested, and a “female empowerment” themed pageant is in the works. There’s a little bit of competition within ZBZ about who will represent the house at the pageant. Ashleigh takes herself out of consideration due to traumatic child pageant memories. Casey and Rebecca are both very much still in the running. Casey feels bad for Rebecca over the whole mess with Evan, but that doesn’t extend to giving up on her bid to compete in the competition. Especially because Rebecca refuses to show any outward emotion about the break-up.

The sisterhood votes in favor of Casey, and there’s no way Casey’s not going to accept. To Rebecca’s chagrin, Casey is gung-ho about finding a gown and preparing for the question and answer session. Several of her friends question whether Casey’s just looking for one last shot to be the ZBZ hero, but Casey brushes it off. Casey can’t, however, brush off more Natalie sabotage. Casey had taken her gown to be hammed, and Natalie made sure it was hemmed way too short. It’s looking like Casey won’t be able to compete. Luckily for ZBZ, thanks to her political life, Rebecca has two pageant-appropriate gowns, and she’s ready and raring to compete instead.

At the pageant, Rebecca finally shows some vulnerability. One of the Omega Chis yells out “slut” as she takes the stage, and it’s all she can do to keep her composure. Casey is finally a good big sis to Rebecca for once, and she gives Rebecca the pep talk she needs to get back on the stage for the question and answer round. Casey tells Rebecca that she is the future of ZBZ, which I thought was sweet. Rebecca spins her answer to a question about health care reform into a speech about how yeah she made a mistake recently, but the only person in that auditorium who has a right to talk to her about it is Evan. I thought this was a really great moment. This season of Greek, despite the character of Katherine, has seemed to focus more on the superficial side of Greek life. Here we’re seeing a woman be empowered by her sisters, and it’s a lovely thing. And to top it all off, Rebecca wins the pageant and is named Greek Goddess.

Cappie and Rusty have a similar journey to Casey and Rebecca. Inspired (or maybe scared) by Rusty’s grand stories about his pledge class, the pledges organize a heck of a prank of their own. They kidnap Cappie and Rusty dangerously close to the time for the golf tournament. Of course everyone, including Cappie and Rusty themselves, think the prank was the work of Omega Chi. Cappie and Rusty argue incessantly over who should take the lead in figuring out how to get them out of their predicament. They both make contributions. Rusty uses WD-40 to weaken the adhesive on the duct tape that had been binding them. Cappie calls Casey to get a ride home (that doesn’t happen until after the two guys obstinately each decide to take a separate walking path home).

Unfortunately, by the time Cappie arrives at the golf course, it’s too late and he’s been disqualified from the tournament. Evan is named Greek God. Cappie and Rusty, however, have come to an understanding. They pool their brain power and finally come up with a plan for revenge against Omega Chi. Cappie admitted that he had been cagey about his plan because he didn’t have one, by the way. Cappie challenges Evan to night golf. It’s one shot each, and whoever gets closer to the cup wins. If Omega Chi wins, KT will give them the use of one of their brothers’ beach houses for spring break.

At the challenge, Cappie makes a big show of giving his shot to Rusty. Rusty is a horrible golfer, and he doesn’t even come at all close to beating Evan. The Omega Chis are thrilled. They probably shouldn’t be, though. Cappie and Rusty soothe their dejected brothers by reassuring them it was all a set up. Phase two appears to be rigging the beach house to make the Omega Chi spring break experience miserable. Should be a fun time- I do love KT mischief.

There were two other smaller plots going on in this episode that really didn’t hold my attention all that well. Calvin and Grant end up breaking up because Calvin realizes that Grant, as a newly out gay man, really deep down wants to experience the gay single life. Dale has apparently ben engaging in romantic trysts with Laura in the ZBZ house pantry. Dale wants to take the relationship public, but Laura wants to keep it secret. Dale ultimately comes out a winner, because after Laura states in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t want to go public, Dale makes a big announcement to the ZBZs that he is once again on the market. Both of these plots sort of come together because Dale has asked Calvin to counsel a member of his church who thinks he might be gay. I thought there was a decent amount of character growth for Dale throughout this. It was nice to see how accepting he has become of Calvin’s sexuality even though he is very religious. It’s also nice to see him have enough respect for himself to get out of the situation with Laura since he was unhappy with it. Overall, though, these stories just didn’t matter to me all that much.