Make It Or Break It: Sunday, Bloody Sasha Sunday

Before we go any further, what is that episode title? Gossip Girl puts more effort into cutesy-ass punny titles than this show. But don't let the title fool you -- this was a pretty good episode.

After the previous night's adulterous sexcapades, Lauren is feeling pretty guilty. It's a good thing she decided to go to church with her gross dad and his secretary on the very Sunday the sermon happens to be about crushing, inescapable guilt. Sorry, Lauren, but even God thinks it's disgusting to sleep with someone else's boyfriend -- you're totally in heaven's burn book now.


MADE OUT WITH A HOT DOG

At the Kmetko household this fine Sunday morning, Emily gets a call from Coach Handsome McBritishrussian telling her she needs to come in for practice. This is problematic, as Emily was scheduled to work a double at the pizza joint. Tila Tequila Mom whines that Emily needs a break from all this work, but she clearly needs to be reminded of the often overlooked eleventh commandment:



Nonetheless, all the girls show up to the gym, where Beloff teaches them a ridiculous passive-aggressive lesson about how Olympic gymnasts never drink and how going to parties and engaging in social interaction is for LEMMINGS AND LOSERS WHO ALWAYS LOSE. The girls are clearly in for a very hard day, and it looks like Emily should think again if she still thinks she's going to make it to work.

Never fear, though! Mizz Kmetko arrives at the Pizza Shack to tell the manager that Emily won't be in for her first shift, but oh no! They are SLAMMED! Of course the manager says that if Emily doesn't find someone to cover her shift, she is fired. This, of course, sets us up for a classic Skrewball Skeme: Tila Tequila Mom dons an apron and voila! She's Tila Tepizza!

You know, I say Skrewball Skeme like there ends up being a huge food fight or Yakety Sax starts playing or something, when in fact the shift progresses without incident, and Emily's mom doesn't have sex with even one pizza.

Back at the Rock, the girls are being put through a punishing workout regimen by Coach Man Version of Jillian Michaels.


From each according to his ability, to each according to how ripped his abs are

But he can see that they are not working in sync with one another because they're high school girls and high school girls only have one mode: hate. So he has them all write down their various resentments of one another, promising to burn them in a trash can in the gym because he's goddamn Admiral Safety, but when the girls hand them in, he just reads them aloud because apparently he, too, is a high school girl.



Payson resents that no one will just accept that she's a walking gold medal; Kaylee resents that people don't believe her when she lies to their faces about not having a boyfriend; Lauren hates having to be in the same gym as someone who's not as wealthy as she is; Emily resents that she's totally prickly and has a huge chip on her shoulder and doesn't understand why no one is making her feel welcome.

After Sasha plays this horrible mind trick on them, he totally peaces out and leaves them to kill each other like in some kind of Saw trap. They squabble briefly about who is the best and who is the worst, but don't worry, Emily quickly jumps in and lets them know that they are ALL the worst.



She's the only one with a job, after all. A job she's missing RIGHT NOW.

In what I suppose is the climactic moment of the episode, the girls band together to bust Emily out of the Rock so she can make it to her second shift at the Pizza Shack, with the promise that she'll be back before Sasha notices she's gone. How long are shifts at pizza places? I thought they were, like, six or seven hours.

At any rate, she does get back just in time for Sasha to dispense a proverb about candles, teaching them a lesson that doesn't involve beer. After such a punishing day, he dismisses them at last, none the wiser about Emily's absence. The episode ends the only way it could: with a Zoolander-style water fiiiiiiiiiight!



Sadly, there were no casualties.

Blowing Off Steam

This week's episode was all about two things and two things only:


BREW AND BOOTY

The episode opens with the introduction of former gymnastics coach Sasha Beloff, who left his sport of choice because the pressure was too high. Now he is unwinding with the king of sports and sport of kings: fly fishing.


Yes, like most former Olympic-level gymnastics coaches, I tie my own.

Lauren's dad approaches him to make a smarmy plea to come coach at The Rock, but Beloff appears uninterested, saying he hasn't even watched the sport in years. But then, what's this? Why does he have a creepy list of Lauren's gymnastic shortcomings? Piking her layouts? Costing her tenths of points? All the signs are there: This guy LOVES 16-year-old girls.

Meanwhile, back in Boulder, Kaylie is getting fed up with the new coach (who Alicia has just informed me is also Kaylie's dad, DUH), whose name I can't remember right now: Coach Lay Off YOU'RE SUFFOCATING ME. The situation is about to reach a breaking point! Something must be done -- something that results in Blowing Off Steam. So, since the universe is a very fair place, while she, Emily, and WhatserPays are having lunch, some greasy douchebag hands them a flyer for Blast Off, which he describes as "the biggest kegger of the year, music, bands, and all the beer you can drink, it's gonna be dope." Music AND bands?



But this show is such an exquisite tease, drawing out our anticipation to watch SPOILER ALERT underage gymnasts get wasted on one beer. Before this epic, life-changing kegger can actually happen, brah, there needs to be some kind of unrelated plot development.

This development comes when Sasha Beloff, unable to slake his hunger for young girls, agrees to Lauren's dad's proposition and signs on to be the coach at The Rock, convinced by an impassioned speech from, okay I'll say it, Payson. He meets that speech with one of his own, a real Braveheart affair rallying the girls to eat, sleep, breathe, and poop gymnastics with every action, every thought, every iota of their insignificant lives.



But even the dethroning of Coach WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME is not enough to keep Kaylie from Blowing Off Steam. The kegger will proceed as planned.

As Payson has wisely abstained, Kaylie and Emily are soon away to Blast Off. And my goodness, who should be there but our emo friend from the pizza shop. He bends Emily's ear about how she's a snob for not wanting to associate with "someone who smells like pepperoni", and surprisingly she finds this offputting and sends him away. BUT WHAT'S THIS? HE'S IN THE BAND? The organizer promised there would be bands and music, but how were we to know it would be emo! What a treat!

While this magnificent revelation is happening, Kaylie's plotline is climaxing with, of course, a dramatic keg stand. Which is, naturally, when her boyfriend comes upon her and is immediately dismayed.



They fight, a bitter, protracted affair. The teenage equivalent of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. Which is why, afterward, he is in such a fragile emotional state that when Lauren shows up to comfort him, he allows her to move in for the kill.

They totally bone. HIGH FIVE!

The episode ends with, unbeknownst to him, Lauren reading a text on his phone, a plea for reconciliation the way only young lovers know:

Where's Marty?

So here we are again. Another week of awesome gymnastics and hot girls getting mad at each other. Catching up with the little things:

Payserface can't concentrate without Coach Stern But Fair's three gold medal guidance. Houston knows The Rock is sans coach and is trying to recruit the dull but talented Payton. Kaylie's hot brother has shown up, making all the girls swoon while he throws around the kind of erudite nautical phrases hot boys learn in college, like "How's the slave ship treating you?" and talking about "jumping ship."

Stop yammering about your scholarship problems so I can grab your boobs.

Meanwhile, Queen Bitch Lauren is doing her thing in Denver (Denver?) and is, I guess, better than before but she looks pretty much the same to me. I haven't been invited to judge for the Olympics yet, though, so what do I know? She walks in on her dad macking on DJ Tanner and loses her shit over it.

How rude!

On the other side of town, Emo Boy is getting all up in Emily's grill about what she does in her non-work time when Tila Tequila Mom shows up and is all BOARD MEETING BOARD MEETING yadda yadda yadda, but the kids skip out and go to Denver to confront Queen Bitch and Coach Stern But Fair.


Damn, Queen Bitch's bars look good. Payserface goes all REALLY ARE YOU KIDDING on Coach Stern But Fair. He pulls the rug out from under her (all of us) and does his best Michael Corleone "It's just business" impression. Take it to the mattresses! But it's trickery! He's just trying to motivate Payserface. What a man.

While the whole episode leading up to this part was solid enough, let's not kid ourselves you guys. It was all just filler for that sweet kung fu fighting scene. Pretty princesses versus thugs - who will come out on top??


That was some superhero action, yo!

Hot mom gets lost getting ice cream (so typical) and catches Coach Stern But Fair and Kaylie's mom, the former pop-star, sucking face on his front step. Zip up my heart, wash your hands and walk away! BUSTED! Case closed!

Drill it!

Both Alicia and I went into the premier episode of Make It Or Break It (Mondays at 9 pm eastern on ABC Family) expecting a full-on campfest, Stick It: The Series. We were expecting pretty much every one of our criteria: asshole boyfriends for all; unsupportive parents ("Your father and I forbid you to do even one more damn gymnastic!"); and a few throwaway training montages set to the Ting Tings.

What we didn't expect was the Friday Night Lights of competitive gymnastics television shows.

Make It Or Break It follows four teenage aspiring Olympic gymnasts as they train to qualify for Nationals. The show is set in Boulder, Colorado, a town where it's apparently a total drag to be a young person.

I can't wait to win all the Olympics so I can get out of this one-horse town.

There is Lauren (seen above), an uber-rich, bulimic c-word-in-training who believes herself to be the top of the heap, when in fact she is only fair. Her bulimia is presented as a simple matter of fact, which was the first indication that this show wasn't going to be the lighthearted teen competition romp we had thought. You just hear her yakking in the bathroom, and then one of her teammates informs her that doing that is super-bad for her electrolytes.

Then there are the two secondary (for now) characters of Paysworth and Whatsherface.

They are both well-meaning and very pretty. Paysley is the top gymnast in the group, and Whatsherface's current claim to notoriety is her secret boyfriend (because no one should ever date a gymnast). Apparently, they, with Lauren, round out the BFF triumfeminate of the Rocky Mountain Gym, the premier gymnastics training center in the Boulder area. But uh oh, here comes trouble (gorgeous, slinky, sexy trouble):

EMILY KMETKO. She's a firestorm of gymnastic power, she's got a troubled past, a mom who looks like Tila Tequila ten years from now, a crippled little brother, and an indeterminate ethnicity. She is unassuming at first, with her Goodwill leotard and unkempt hair, but she soon proves a formidable rival to the conniving Lauren in every field but Lauren's specialty, the beam.

They're all working under the aegis of this handsome coach:

Whose name I can't remember, so for the purposes of this recap, we're just going to call him Coach Stern But Fair.

And now, the plot: Lauren's father, a rich and influential man who has donated a ton of money to The Rock(y Mountain Gymnastics Training Center), wants his daughter to have a promised place at Nationals, but Emily's unbelievable talent has threatened that dream. It looks like this is going to be the main plot contrivance of the series. As long as it doesn't turn into some kind of gymnastics-based Spy Vs. Spy, it should be pretty compelling.

In this episode, Emily was hit hard by both Lauren and her father. From the moment Emily steps into the gym and proves herself to be the coolest dude, Lauren takes a break from vomiting and generally being stank to instruct her two henchwomen to give the new girl the coldest of shoulders. Lo gets some good rich-bitchy insults in, but her friends seem reluctant to get too invested in the rivalry.

This culminates at the climactic tryouts before Nationals, when, at an opportune moment, Lauren pencils in a change for Emily in the distance from the springboard to the vault, placing it five inches further away. It turns out to be some true Million Dollar Baby shit when Emily leaps from the springboard, flips, and fucking smashes her kidneys against the vault. Oh my fucking God, dude, I may have stifled a cry of, "NO!" (But, you know, not stifled it very well.)

However, like every kid with big dreams, not even the promise of shitting blood can keep Emily Kmetko down. She returns to the competition just before Lauren is crowned Queen of The Olympics and asks to redo her vault, this time with the correct springboard distance. They allow it. She's awesome. Lauren goes back to being Queen of the Mediocre County Fair and Parade.

However, Emily's little stunt cost the others dearly. After hiring a private detective, Lauren's dad digs up some undisclosed terrible information on Coach Stern But Fair, forcing him to leave the Rock and work at a facility where he will keep his promise of getting Lauren a guaranteed shot at the Olympics. No one knows what the information is! Cliffhanger!

We're going to do our best to recap this show every week (better than this, with more gifs and shit), because this is honestly an awesome show with a lot of potential, but we're not going to rate it with the criteria, because that would be too much work.