The scene opens with Mr. and Mrs. Garrison sitting in the kitchen. Jenny comes downstairs and her parents say "Good Morning"
"Is it Good?" she snarkily asks.
Then there's a running gag where everyone who comes into the kitchen takes a piece of the newspaper away from Mr. Garrison. He's looking through the Classifieds trying to find discount tickets to the Grand Canyon. Another teenager enters the kitchen, and we find out that his name is Matt. He wants to look at the classifieds to find a new amp that will "Blow out the windows" His mom shoots him a look.
Matt suggests to Jenny that they get the band together to practice. He's working on a new song.
Dennis, the little brother says he heard, and goofily sings "Oh Oh, Randy Jo!" Matt shoves a banana in his brother's mouth and tells him to eat more fruit. Jenny can't practice because she wants to go shoe shopping.
The back door opens and Sly invites himself into the home. I feel like this was a recurring gag on 90s TV shows. There was always an annoying neighbor/friend who went into people's homes uninvited. (Steve Urkel, Kimmy Gibbler, etc) I should also point out that Sly is wearing a ridiculous cow-print vest. Oh that wacky 90s fashion!
Sly tries to put the moves on Jenny, and she's not having any of it. She humors him for a moment before telling him to wake up from the dream.
Sly and Matt take off for Sharkey's, the local hangout to check out girls. Mr. Garrison checks the Classifieds for a new best friend for Matt.
The boys arrive at Sharkey's. Sly tries for what is apparently not the first time, to convince Matt to let him be the manager of the band. Matt shoots him down.
Their friend Tony arrives at the table. He works at Sharkey's and is taking a break. He spots a girl named Vanessa and tries to hit on her. She giggles and tells him he's too much. Tony's eyes glaze over and he declares "I love being me!"
Sly tries to convince Tony to let him manage the band. Tony says "No way" and calls him Sylvester. Sly does not appreciate being called by his full name. While the guys are hanging out, their friend Tiffani joins them. She's a sweet, perky surfer girl carrying a brightly colored surf board with a yin-yang painted on it. Remember when peace signs and yin-yangs were all the rage in the mid 90s? I wish I had some pictures of some of the ridiculous get-ups I owned. I had a ton of clothes with all that stuff on it. When I was in 5th grade, we all drew them next to our names on everything we had to sign or write our names on.
The gang is chatting away, when a girl walks in flanked by a gaggle of more teen girls. Matt gets all gooey eyed and sighs "Ohhhh Randy Jo." Haha. Way to bring back a minor plot point from 5 minutes ago. Remember when Dennis was teasing Matt about Randy Jo? Here she is!
Tony is about to offer some valuable Babe-Watching advice to Matt, but then his boss appears and tells him to get back to work. Sharkey and Tony bicker a bit about California employment laws. That reminds me of when I used to work 10 hour dishwashing shifts a couple days a week at the 99 when I was in college. (One semester I had a schedule that only had me in classes 2 days a week.) My boss never gave me breaks, and I was pissed. That job didn't last too long.
At that very moment, Randy Jo walks over to talk to Matt! He gets all tongue-tied, and I think we're supposed to think it's funny, but it just makes me cringe, because poor Matt's nervousness is painfully realistic. At least it is for me, but I was (AM) a nerd, so maybe it's just me.
Randy Jo wants to hear the band play and invites herself to Matt's garage that very day! Matt's friends are thrilled for him, but can't help but to tease him for being so nervous.
Cut to band practice at Matt's house. Randy Jo arrives and they play her a song. She likes what she hears and asks them to play at her Sweet 16 party on the following Friday. It's their first job, and they all jump around and hug. Jenny gets so caught up in the excitement that she even hugs Sly. They run into the kitchen to tell Matt and Jenny's mom. Their outburst causes her to drop the stack of plates that she was carrying.
I also want to point out that throughout this entire scene, Matt is sporting a t-shirt with a musical score imprinted on it. I'm not great at reading music, so I can't tell what it is.
Mom is happy about her kids' gig and tells them that they can pay for the dishes with the money Randy Jo is paying them. Dad walks in and announces that he has some great news. He scored tickets for the whole family to go to the Grand Canyon. But, uh-oh. Conflict! They leave on the same day as the gig!
Jenny and Matt tell their friends about the conflict, and they're not happy. Jenny and Matt don't want to tell their Dad that they can't go. They want their Mom to tell him and she says that she wants no part of it. If they don't want to go, they have to tell Dad themselves. She leaves them with a request that Dad not be near anything breakable when he gets the bad news. Dennis just wants to know if he can have Matt's guitar when Dad kills him.
Tiffany wonders if they can ask Randy Jo to move the date of her party. Jenny tells him to call her, but refuses and says that he'll ask her the next day because (drumroll) he has a date with her!
Cut to Matt's room (which totally looks like Zack Morris' room) everyone comes in to ask him how the date went. They also want to know if she'll move the party.
I know the images are sized and laid out weirdly, but that's the only way I could get them side by side. I'll also try to find a better screencap of Zack's room
Anyway, everyone's bugging Matt and he lectures them about barging into someone's room without knocking. Matt didn't ask Randy Jo to move the party. Jenny asks him why he didn't, and all he can say is "She's so beautiful" Mr. Garrison joins the group and tries to get them all excited about the trip. Poor Mr. Garrison. He's so excited, and his kids can't even muster up a shred of enthusiasm for him. They finally find the courage to tell them they're not into this family trip idea and he's understandably bummed.
Matt and Jenny feel terrible and want to find a way to make it up to their dad. In the next scene they tell the gang to play at the gig without them. Sly begins to devise a plan to get the Garrison's to take a later flight so they can play at the party AND go on the family trip. I've seen every episode of this show approximately 100 times, so I know that Sly's Plans = Wacky Hi-jinks!
In the next scene, we see Sly exchanging tickets with another family of 5. The father in the group calls shenanigans on this and says they can't exchange the tickets until they meet the famous rock stars that Sly promised. Somehow Sly has convinced this family that Matt is Van Halen. The son tells Matt that he recently went to a Van Halen concert in Calcutta. "Even from the back row, you were most awesome, dude!" Matt gives him a high five. Matt takes of the wig and tries to tell them that he's not really Van Halen. Instead, they still think he's Van Halen, just without the wig. They take pictures with a plan to sell them to tabloid magazines. Sly switches the tickets and sends the family on their way.
I usually give this show a lot of credit for being slightly more realistic than other teen shows, but this plot was a bit of a stretch as plane tickets aren't transferable, and no one would believe that Matt is Van Halen. Anything to move a plot along, I suppose!
Next scene! The California Dreams play at Randy Jo's party while Matt and Jenny's parents and brother awkwardly hang out in the background. Randy Jo thanks the dreams for playing at her party and suggests that they play at her friend's party the following month. The friend talks like a Valley girl, and Tony calls dibs on her as they saunter away together.
The band plays their last song of the night. It's a special one that Matt just finished writing. And HEY! It's the show's theme song, set to a montage similar to the one we see in the opening credits. Then the gang invites Sly to be their manager after all.
Mr. Garrison thanks his children for going through the trouble of switching the flight, and the conflict is wrapped up in a 22-minute package.
Whew! Thanks for reading the first recap. I don't know how often I'll update as the first episode took longer than I thought it would to recap, but I'll see how things go.
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