Drake Bell And Rory Bushfield In Splash Beef Shock Horror!
I don't know what it's like to be a fading celebrity -- and, God willing, I never will -- but I can appreciate that it isn't easy. You find yourself on the wrong end of your career success bell curve, you're selling your own memorabilia on eBay to keep yourself in veneers, and then the agent that handles you (and some ventriloquists) calls with an offer: a competitive reality show on ABC wants you! No, not Dancing With The Stars. No, not Celebrity Wife Swap. No, not-- look, it's a new show about diving into water. In the absence of any other prospects, you take it, thinking that Dancing has revived the careers of, like, Cloris Leachman and Joey Lawrence. Hey, Joey Lawrence is hosting this diving show -- that could be you in a few years, hosting a show about washed-up celebrities learning how to groom dogs or something! So when you get on the show, actually turn out to be pretty good at diving, and no one seems to be watching or talking about it, and you see your comeback dreams dissolving away, like pee into the pool you just dove into. So if you're Drake Bell, you think, "I've got to make something happen for myself. I'm starting a feud!"
Bell leads off the diving in the latest episode, following a clip package establishing how tough he is: he has two black eyes from hitting the water face first, he gave himself a bloody nose in practice by landing wrong, he needed a special pep talk from dive master Greg Louganis, etc. Then he does his dive, and makes what seems to be the most common mistake among these amateur divers by rotating too far and hitting the water on his back. It's immediately clear from Louganis's and Bell's fellow contestants' reactions that he's fucked it up, and clearly Bell is angry at himself as he goes to take his critique and scores. Unwisely, he doesn't use his training as an actor to act like he's okay -- or! Does he just maybe, possibly, use his training as an actor to exaggerate his pissiness so that commentators will give the show some attention the day after it airs -- hey! Kind of like I'm doing right now!
This "At least I went in head-first" business only kind of makes sense at this point in the episode because the camera keeps cutting to Rory Bushfield, so we can assume it's directed at him, but we don't know why. We may remember that at the start of the season, Bushfield -- as an extreme downhill skier or whatever the hell he is -- had a hard time overcoming his trained instinct to land on his feet, which is obviously the opposite of what you're supposed to do with most dives. And by the way Bushfield reacts to the initial comment and to Bell's snippy "You know what I meant" when co-host Charissa Thompson asks him about it. But we won't know for, like, fifteen more minutes that Bushfield's dive this week finds him doing a triple somersault and landing feet-first -- and maybe Bell realizes this midway through this little routine, because he bails on it before the end of his interview with Thompson, praising Bushfield for continuing in the competition despite a ruptured eardrum (which also elicits a non-verbal "what the fuck, man?" hand gesture from Bushfield). And by the time Bushfield does go to take his dive -- which I guess we're supposed to think is pussy-ass, based on Bell's snittiness about it -- Bell is in the "Dive Lounge" cheering him on the loudest.
So, the possibilities are:
- Bell genuinely did get as mad as he seemed about his bad dive relative to what he perceived as Bushfield's comparatively easy one, yet to come, not realizing how inscrutable such comments would be under the circumstances.
- Bell ginned up beef between Bushfield and himself in order for there to be one thing in the episode anyone might possibly want to talk about -- but then remembered that being too big an asshole would prejudice the voting audience against him and backed off.
- Bushfield actually dove first, and editors changed the order of the episode for broadcast purposes, meaning that Bell's bitchiness would have made more sense at the time (but still been excessive under the circumstances).
- I have given the matter 5000x the attention and consideration it deserves.
Fine, it's 4. But it might also be 2, and if so, it worked: now I'm invested in the outcome of the finale next week. DAMMIT.