This Plan Stinks

As if we needed more proof that Nick is a scary rageaholic with no business raising children (we didn't), "Bad Blood," the first season's penultimate episode, revolves around the end of a long estrangement between Nick and his brother Frankie. To say that Frankie is a Central Casting cliché is itself a cliché, but...I mean, seriously.

This is a guy whose watch cap, pea coat, and wide-legged dungarees with patch pockets on the hips mark him clearly as both a merchant mariner and a rough character, and it takes about four scenes before he's regaling the girls (who initially just think he's one of Nick's old friends, not his brother) with tales of all the crazy pranks he and Nick got up to in their youth. And given that Patty's just gotten into beef with Doreen, a kid in her grade, Frankie's talent for schemes and scams may just come in handy! What a great way for the girls to bond with their new uncle, right? Too bad this plotline is COMPLETE HORSESHIT.

First of all, since when have these girls needed anyone's help pulling off capers? They've been doing this shit since the series premiere/movie, when Diane faked emotional issues to weasel out of getting adopted because she didn't want to get separated from the other girls; then they all collaborated on ruining Nick's hoity-toity party with an angry rock performance/motorcycle terrorism. Since then, they've gone on to ruin another party with gorilla suits; campaigned against a real estate developer; and nearly committed arson. This is not an area in which the girls need a mentor.

Plus, the girls' pranks sometimes work. Frankie's sucks. When Patty explains that she wants to get revenge on Doreen for wrecking her science project, Frankie tells the kids about a stink bomb prank he and Nick pulled off in their youth and even shares his secret formula, and the next day at school, the girls set the surrounding plan in motion. First, Rose finds Doreen at her locker and tells her someone's called her on one of a pair of nearby pay phones, which are side by side in the hall in handsome wooden phone booths. When Doreen -- who apparently doesn't suspect anything from Rose's snotty tone of voice -- goes to get it, she finds fucking Mickey waiting there for her to hand off the receiver. Marva -- who is in the phone booth right next to Doreen's -- keeps her on the line with a fake radio quiz while Patty puts the stink bomb in Doreen's locker. So everything hinges on Doreen leaving the locker open, which apparently is more convenient for her to do provided her brother and his buddy stand there and guard it for her, which, why would they, but for the sake of plot contrivance they do -- I guess so that Diane has something to do, which is calling them away with a fake report that their car is about to get towed. But then, oh no, stupid Patty slams her scarf in the locker door!

Have you literally ever had a school locker with such a tight seal that you couldn't have slid a SCARF out of it? Have you ever needed to wear a wool scarf any time you've been in Los Angeles? Even if the answer to either of those is yes...what we already know is that the stink bomb is a two-part process: you have to add one chemical to another at the very last moment to set off the stink. So why wasn't the plan for Mickey to have just activated it when she saw Doreen coming, and then closed Doreen into the phone booth? Doesn't it make more sense to trap her in there with the stink than to have it diffuse all over the whole hallway?! I won't say that this plan is so idiotic that I'm glad we're about to learn he's in the process of dying of leukemia, but...you know, if he were a better tactician, his death would have definitely been a bigger loss to the world.

One aspect of the episode that manages to ring true, if only on a subtextual level: that tension would simmer between Patty and Doreen.

In a few years, these two "tomboys" will figure something out about themselves, and that what Patty wanted to put in Doreen's "locker" was something very different from a stink bomb. If you get my drift.