The Surreal Life 5 - Episode 4 Summary

'They Battered The Wrong Women' By Estee

Honestly -- what did I do that was so horrible? If you kill a half-dozen people, they just send you to jail for a while, or put you up in a nice bed-and-breakfast-and-pills vacation home until you feel sorry about it, and maybe once in a great while they'll say 'You know what you need? A nap,' and put you out for -- well, you do wake up eventually, but then you have to go through the whole diaper thing again, which isn't so much a punishment as it is really, really premature. And don't even get me started on Gerber. Yuck!

But you kill a half-dozen reality shows, and what do you get? You get sentenced to the entire season of The Surreal Life. Your day begins with Janice, ends with Janice, and in between, you may be subjected to random searches, confiscation of what little sanity you have left, and sudden attacks of Janice. You're locked in a circus tent with seven Q-list clowns, and clowns are never funny, clowns are just there to show you what funny is because once you eliminate what a clown is doing, anything left is hilarious just from relief. You're placed in close proximity to Voldemort, have to deal with what Bronson thinks are his brilliant lines, the only reading material provided is an indestructible copy of Jose's book (and believe me, I've tried), and did I mention Janice? I could have sworn I'd mentioned Janice. It's the sort of thing that you'd generally have to bring up, especially during an international trial concerning the abuse of prisoners. Amnesty! Amnesty International! Send cookies! Send newspapers! Send tapes of Hell's Kitchen, which I would have volunteered for if I thought it was going to be any good at all, I swear! I'm reformed! I'm sorry for what I did! From now on, I'll make it my life's work to become a network executive and make sure the interesting stuff dies before it even gets on the air! Just let me out of here --

-- I could have sworn that counted for reforming...

(sigh) Oh, look. It's my weekly conjugal videotape. I guess it's time to be officially (censored) by reality television again.

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So: Last week on There's Laws Against This, You Know, the housemates were told to take it off, take practically all of it off, which came within three seconds of causing Janice's final decapitation before the producers explained that they'd meant an old-fashioned burlesque show, plus that wasn't where Janice was keeping her brains anyway. The group was split into two teams competing for the usual budgeted reward of the series -- absolutely nothing -- with Janice, Caprice, and Jose as America The Booty-Ful, going against Voldemort, Carey, and Sandi on the Westward Hos. (Bronson kept his clothes on and read their names off a cue card, for which we were mostly thankful, expecting the 'listening to Bronson's read-aloud monotone' thing.) Janice, in keeping with the only tradition we've developed this season, fake-quit because she's a parent and didn't want to traumatize innocent children who might be watching the show by subjecting them to the sight of her stitch lines. (This was, of course, completely pointless. There are no innocent children watching the show. At least, after three seconds of viewing time, they weren't innocent any more.) Eventually, after an emergency ego-stroke that required the full breadth of Sandi's parenting skills plus a lot of not-water, Janice was persuaded to go out on stage and do what she did best. Surprisingly, the audience did not respond well to being flipped off, and the Hos won this week's share of nothing, which increases their chances of getting the grand prize at the end of the show: a lifetime supply of zilch, also known as 'you mean you've never heard of direct-to-airplane projects?' Voldemort returned to the Estate and found bad news waiting there: her best friend's father had died. Voldy immediately went into crisis control mode by getting on the phone with her friend and staying there for as long as it took to help her friend deal with the grief. Naturally, this took a backseat to Janice's plans for calling all her imaginary friends and ordering her housemates' immediate deaths, so a fight ensued where it turned out that Janice doesn't understand death: she only makes people wish for it. And everyone evacuated the small bedroom, leaving Jose on the couch, five housemates in one bedroom, and Janice all by herself in the other, because after all, it's all about Janice, and that includes exposure to her carbon monoxide production.

What will the housemates do this week? Is anyone going to stake a definitive claim to Jose's rear? Will Sandi and Carey glance at each other, say 'Why are we the only sane people here?', and leave immediately? Will Voldemort finally experience a backslide, or are we going to start trotting out the name 'Tom Riddle' any summary now? How long will it take Janice to fake-quit today? And why am I still subjecting myself to this torture?

Because it's better than flirting with the guards. Roll opening credits.

Day Four dawns bright and early in the Surreal Estate, and most of the house seems to have gotten a good night's sleep -- excluding Janice. As Voldy confessional-tells us, 'She's allergic to herself' -- back in mainstream, Janice coughs twice in her sleep -- because when you have that many artificial components in your person, the few remaining organics are going to react badly to at least one of them. So Janice wakes up in her usual mood -- and if you have to ask what that is, hello! Welcome to the series! Run! -- which means that her soul slaves had better be very careful to produce some even layering today. There was a hint of skeleton peeking out at the burlesque club, and someone's going to pay for it. But honestly, with all they have to do every morning, who can remember to screw an eyeball all the way in?

Janice c-ts her love of waking up all by herself. Don't worry, Janice. No one who sees you on this show would ever dream of taking that pleasure away from you.

Jose got an exceptionally good night's sleep thanks to a brand-new experience that Caprice and the camera are only too happy to point out. The pantyhose from the burlesque show? He never took them off. He feels very comfortable in them, feeling they're just like wearing thin knee-high socks. He's even stuck a spare tube of Chapstick down one of them, which is generally a little low for a man to be carrying a spare tube of Chapstick, but never mind that. This is an extension of the 6'4", 260 rule: when you're 6'4" and weigh 260 pounds, people generally let you make your own fashion decisions.

Carey spots this immediately and figures no one's going to say much of anything about it. This still excludes Janice, who takes some mainstream time to tell him 'Good morning, gorgeous' and a little c-t to say Jose looks 'a little Village People-esque.' (As opposed to Janice, who looks a little Village Of The Living Damned-esque.) 'From two World Series to drag queen.' Which is just silly. Just because Jose can't figure out how to get the eye makeup off and feels comfortable in stockings, it doesn't make him a drag queen. It just makes him better-looking than, just pulling out an example at random here, Janice. Next up on Jose's voyage of discovery: the joys of bikini waxing!

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