Written by J. David Stem & David N. Weiss
Synopsis:
Kevin and his friends, Toby and George, discover that a modern-day college applicant needs more than a relatively high SAT score to be accepted. After their attempts at getting more extra-curricular activities (to pad their resumes) fail miserably, they decide to pursue a legendary SAT code, a repeating pattern in the answers that would allow them to attain perfect scores.
Meanwhile, Posey opens her own massage business. Unfortunately due to a misprint in her advertisements, everybody comes to her thinking they’ll be having sex. This catches the attention of the neighbourhood pimp, who insists on his cut for her working his territory. Posey adamantly refuses to pay him anything. When Andy mocks the stereotypical pimp, the pimp tries to throw him off the roof, but his back stiffens up. Posey massages him back to health, and then kicks him off the roof while he’s sighing with relief.
Unbeknownst to Toby and George, Kevin gets the aid of a jock to collect old SAT tests for data. Their hard work fails to bear fruit, and when Toby and George find out the jock stole the old tests, they abandon Kevin. Despite his best efforts, Kevin runs into a dead end, and in his frustration ends up destroying his computer, along with Toby and George’s, which were all hotwired to analyze the massive amounts of test data.
Kevin then hears from Wally about another man who once searched for the SAT pattern. Kevin finds him and with their combined efforts, the code is cracked. Kevin then runs to school to take the test, with the code in hand. Toby and George refuse to use the code, while the jock takes it, and explains he’ll be giving it to all his jock friends. Kevin realizes it was a mistake, fearing college will become ruined with too many jocks in it. So he destroys the code and gets beaten up for it. To get out of the test on medical grounds rather than fail it, he insists Toby and George beat him up some more, which they do, after Kevin explains he destroyed their computers.
Review:
Apparently this episode is a parody of the independent film “Pi,” which I haven’t seen. Luckily, that means you don’t have to have watched the movie to enjoy the episode. It’s actually a clever parody of the anxiety and at times, seemingly hopeless quest about getting into college, especially for people who aren’t involved in extra-curricular activities. During Kevin’s detailed analysis of the old tests, Kevin breaks down in a very funny scene with some really neat visuals, and some variations on the old “If a train leaves New York at 10:00 am…” etc.
The subplot with Posey’s massage business provided quite a few good laughs too. Probably more laugh-out-loud moments than the main plot. You can never go wrong with a good pimp joke, complete with that authentic 70′s wa-wa music. (You know what I’m talking about). And even though this was another episode that was kind of heavy on the sex jokes (it doesn’t offend me usually but some people can see it as ‘lowbrow’ at best), I think it was done tastefully enough so as not to be overly vulgar.
4 out of 5
Capsule:
No Capsule Yet
Trivia:
-From a message board… “Does anyone else think that the episode where Kevin tries to find the code in the SAT’s is a rip-off/reference to Darren Aronofsky’s “PI”? I thought it was widely known(at least within the circle of Mission Hill fans) that it was a spoof of that.”