I need to give a shout out and a huge thank you to Jay G who donated $10.00 to this website last week. I’ve never made anything monetary from this website, and I’ve never expected to, I just like writing these reviews for fun. I added that donation button when I was unemployed and very desperate, but honestly it’s such a good feeling to see that someone out there appreciates these reviews enough to donate and support creativity and writing. Thank you again so much Jay, and I dedicate this review to you!
Hello everyone. I hope y’all are enjoying fall (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere). I can safely say this is my fav season. I love fall clothing (flannel, cardigans, boots etc.), pumpkin flavours, the crisp air and my two favourite holiday’s, Thanksgiving and Halloween, are during this season. So yes, I am enjoying this brief moment of time between the grossness of summer and the bleakness of winter. Anyway, enough on my thoughts of the seasons, let’s move on with the review.
I will admit I have been dragging my feet on rewatching this episode. It is highly melodramatic, and it involves Amanda’s family so I instantly don’t want to deal with this. But I owe you guys a review so let us go forward.
The episode opens with Amanda and Busy hanging around Amanda’s pad discussing how much cooler Leonard is than Phyllis because he took Amanda to a water park. I don’t even have kids, and I realize it’s a lot easier to be the “fun” parent when the parents are divorced and the spouse not living in the home only has to deal with the kid every other weekend.
Ok, I’m sorry, but I have to pause the review for a second. But pray tell, is Amanda wearing shorts or is her skirt in her ass crack in this scene? I honestly don’t know and I need some insight.
Anyway, back to the review. So Phyllis is clearly not in the mood to hear her child gushing about her shitty ex and tells Amanda to pipe down. Of course Amanda gets all bitchy at that remark and states to Busy that her mom is boring and not spontaneous because she has to chew an apple five times when she eats. Hey Amanda, maybe your mother has OCD which is a very real disorder so quit being a little brat.
This causes the girls to start cracking up which makes Phyllis even more irritated. She tells Amanda she’s sick of her coping an attitude every time she goes off to see Leonard. At this Amanda whips out her tired threat of moving in with Leonard instead of living with Phyllis. By this point if I was Phyllis I would say be my guest, but for some reason she still likes having this teen around and you can tell she’s upset by the remark. As usual they are having domestics in front of Busy and it’s super awkward for her. Finally Leonard ring-a-lings and Amanda takes off giving her mother 48 hours of relief.
Next scene Amanda and Leonard are playing ping pong and I can now see Amanda is definitely wearing a skirt… so yeah production did her dirty allowing that shot of her with a massive wedgie into the episode. Leonard orders “everything from the left side of the menu that is chocolate” from some restaurant which also delights Amanda. So the episode is making clear like who the actual parent is aka Phyllis does the parenting while Leonard does all the goofy stuff no real parent would do on a daily basis.
Leonard also has a surprise to show Amanda. Turns out he is now a video game designer or something, because he’s made some game for Gameboy (memmmmmmmmories) and he has called it AMAZIM since it has an environmental theme and is named after Amanda. He also wants Amanda to demonstrate it at some showcase next week.
Next scene is a short one, with Amanda showing off the game to Busy at school and Busy getting excited as it is pretty cool that Amanda’s dad created a game. Monkey Ears then nabs it and starts playing it and then attempts to start making money off of it by getting some randoms to pay him to play. Amanda grabs the game back before any of that can occur. Stick to selling photocopies of pictures from that Joy of Sex rip-off book, Monkey.
After school the girls are walking home with a super cute umbrella. Amanda is still going on and on about how Leonard is father of the year because he lives in a massive condo, they watch cartoons together, he buys her tons of glorious junk food etc. etc. Busy of course is jealous because all Sam does is yell at her to clean the house and make Italian subs for her. Busy is 100% rocking the Canadian tuxedo in this shot as well. Oh speaking of clothes, its important to note that jacket Amanda is wearing is Leonard’s… it will matter in the near future.
That evening Amanda and Phyllis start getting into it again because A. Leonard wants to do the demonstration of the game on a weekend that is technically Phyllis’ with Amanda and B. Amanda is being snotty about washing the dishes because she needs to practice the game for the demonstration. It’s pretty short and not really worth having screenshots for, it just shows that the relationship between Amanda and her mom is getting worse and worse with each passing day. Honestly though, it doesn’t surprise me. Do any teenage girls have good relationships with their moms? I certainly did not lol.
I guess Amanda got sick of Phyllis because she’s now at Busy’s house and they are both wearing the same clothes so it’s still the same day. Sam is singing some opera and torturing the girl’s eardrums while making sausages. Amanda points out to Busy that it must be nice having her dad around all the time, which Busy is like yeah it’s a blast hearing him hork up shit every morning while leaving the toilet sit up. Amanda tells Busy she’s reached her limit with Phyllis and she’s going to ask her dad this weekend if she can move in with him. Busy’s not thrilled, as her moving to the city means they’ll never see each other. So yeah, they must live in like Etobicoke or Scarborough or some outter part of the GTA i.e. the suburbs as I always suspected.
So Sam leaves, and as Amanda reaches into the pocket of the jacket to grab the GameBoy, a picture falls out. Busy picks it up and says Leonard might not be too keen on having Amanda move in with him as it looks like he has a lady friend now. Amanda’s confused as he’s never mentioned anything before about it. Amanda then looks at the back of the picture and notices the date…. The picture was taken while Leonard was still married to Phyllis. Escándalo!
Busy and Amanda then start analyzing the picture, saying it looked more like joking around/people being chummy, but you can tell by Amanda’s face she is not convinced. Busy pulls out her family photo albums and tries to find a non-romantic picture of people with their arms around each other which takes her a long time to find. Finally she finds one of Sam and her grandma, but like we already know this relationship and you could kind of gather from the age difference this was likely a mother with her son. Leonard’s bitch looks exactly the same age as him, as well she’s like leaning into him all couple-like, it’s not just his arm around her. So this whole exercise did not help calm Amanda’s growing fears that her dad is a trifling good-for-nothing-type-of-brother.
It’s finally the weekend of the toy demonstration and Leonard is all nervous and taking it out on some poor guy dressed as a frog for AMAZIM.
Amanda pulls up with her mom and Phyllis takes the time to apologize for being short with her and recognizes that Amanda deserves a relationship with her father. Amanda still has the photo on the brain and asks Phyllis if her dad has some long lost blonde relative she’s never met. Phyllis gives her a wtf look and states she sure as hell hopes not as apparently his relatives are still obnoxiously inviting her to events. This just points Amanda’s thoughts more towards the cheating scenario.
Amanda goes into the demonstration and see’s Leonard talking to some woman, but she starts imaging him with the blonde woman.
Amanda goes up to Leonard and doesn’t even beat around the bush, presenting him with the evidence of his cheating ways. You can tell by the look on Leonard’s face that he realizes Amanda knows he did a bad, bad thing. (Yes I’m going to keep referencing song lyrics if they apply to this episode).
Amanda immediately notices it as well. Leonard tries to brush it off, taking the photo and trying to proceed with the demonstration of the video game to the potential buyers. Amanda starts playing the game, but you can tell she’s far too shook by these recent developments and keeps making mistakes and dying in the game. Would this matter though? Maybe she’s just a shitty video game player. She keeps looking at the same lady she started imaging as the blonde in the beginning and I can tell by the lady’s face that she’s weirding this woman out.
Finally Amanda has had enough and cannot fake this spectacle anymore and runs off leaving everyone really wtf at the whole situation. Leonard should be the exception if he has half a brain and can put two and two together as to why she is upset.
Amanda runs off to Busy’s for condolences. She tells her she has confirmed her dad did cheat on her mom like a true rat bastard. Busy asks her what she’s going to do and Amanda says she has no idea, and how would Busy react if her dad did it. Busy makes a face I can definitely relate to because can you actually picture Sam cheating on Lucy? I can barely picture Sam showing affection to his wife, so him cheating would’ve been a hugely random development. Amanda then states she hates these cheesy fun weekends she’s forced to have with her dad and how Busy is lucky because she can just exist with her dad, and maybe if her jerk of a dad didn’t go sniffing around other women their family wouldn’t be broken. She realizes all these years she was blaming the wrong parent for it ending. Gotta say that was very good of Phyllis to allow Amanda to treat her like shit just to protect Leonard and Amanda’s relationship. Busy asks if Amanda thinks her mom is aware of the cheating, and Amanda’s like who the hell knows. P.S. Laura Bertram acts this scene out really well, she’s very good at these emotional crying scenes.
A very short scene at the school the next day has Amanda yelling at Monkey Ears to fuck off because he’s still bugging her about that dumb game. It’s old news Monkey Ears, go away.
Later in the evening Amanda is now being super nice to Phyllis because she realizes she’s the true victim in everything that happened in her family’s drama. She is even doing the dishes for her even though it’s not Amanda’s night. She hugs her tearfully and Phyllis is like what the hell, why is my child suddenly being nice to me after years of being a little shit stain.
Phyllis leaves to go to the dry cleaner, and Amanda goes into her room and shoves Leonard’s jacket into a bag and kicks it under her bed. She hears a knock on the door and figures it’s her mom but it’s actually her deadbeat dad. Leonard’s is outside the door pleading his case to Amanda basically saying he fucked up big time and wish he could take back everything he did. Amanda asked if Phyllis knew about it and Leonard confirms she did and that she never told Amanda because she didn’t want her to hate him. Leonard says that this has nothing to do with Amanda which really upsets her as she states they aren’t a family anymore and how can that have nothing to do with her. THIS EPISODE IS REALLY HARD TO MAKE FUN OF. I’ll admit this scene had me teary eyed… I cry easily, OK?! Amanda slams the door in Leonard’s face. He wanders off in defeat while Amanda cries within her apartment.
The episode ends which what looks like some time later; Amanda is reading a letter from her dad and is now trying to write a response back to him. I guess sorta minor spoiler, Amanda won’t be talking to her father for quite a while, at least not for the rest of this season.
God this episode was dramatic! Can we go back to the episodes of catching people calling into radio sex shows and having random teens stealing cars? I miss those simple, whacky episodes. So I guess we finally have a definitive answer as to how the Zimm household broke up. Do you guys think Leonard cheated before or after he lost his job? I’m assuming before, because it looked like they were at some party together and Leonard was living in sweat pants once he was unemployed. Either way, it’s pretty good how this show portrayed this, like how the kid always blames one of the parents for the divorce happening, and how they never really know what actually happened behind the scenes.
Ooof, I am glad that is DONE.
Next episode is my favourite of this season; teens thinking they are wasted off of non-alcoholic beer destroy a home. Until next time!
Ready or Not Reviewed! 