After four long seasons, Tim has finally finished his second hot rod. The big day would be Sunday, Valentine's Day. Well, he does love that car. To mark the occasion, Tim wants to do something special to reveal the 'rod to the world. Jill's suggestion proves futile, so he turns to Brad and Mark. Brad is no help either, but Mark suggests filming a video tribute. Tim loves the idea and puts his son in charge of making the video, and even provides him with three ground rules: "My show, my show, my show." Okay. How the hell is that going to help? So, Mark sets up interviews with the guys who helped Tim put the beast together, and of course, the Tool Man can't keep his mouth shut for the duration. Eddie, the body shop guy, gets a little too carried away with his plans for spending his profits, and Sparky Henderson gets very emotional about this era coming to an end. Finally, after two hours of editing, Mark's video was finished, and the whole Taylor family gathered in the living room to watch it.
Mark was beaming with pride, claiming this to be the best thing he'd ever done. However, his so-called masterpiece was a mish-mosh of unfocused, extreme close-up and tight shots, overlapping audio, and to finish it off, Eddie and Sparky swap heads for some reason. Bottom line, it looked like hell. It looked like Mark had never filmed anything in his life, yet they earlier established that he had. He was "interning down at Tool Time and he was doing good." The family's reaction to the video? The girls and Brad were truthful in saying it was lousy, though Claire thought it was scary...and it was, and as for Tim, the guy who commissioned the video and built his son up to this, he lied his ass off, stating some kind of new union policy that just came out at work. Mark got the message and stormed off. But, as usual, a talk with Wilson makes everything alright. He helps Tim realize that maybe giving Mark the guidelines of "my show, my show, my show" was a stupid thing to do. So Tim goes down to Randy's room to talk with his youngest son about the video, even telling him about a lost episode of Tool Time, told from the perspective of the saw... most likely Tim was making that all up to prove a point, but I wouldn't put it past the guy to actually try something like that. In short, they decide to try again, and this time, there would be more focus. The result was a really awesome, well-shot music video with Tim, Al, Heidi, the whole Tool Time gang, even Jill and Wilson, lip-syncing to "Greased Lightning" as Tim's hot rod is at last completed. So this new video was a hit and everything worked out... Oh wait, we have time for one more stupid joke: Mark says he went over budget... so wait, Binford didn't fund this video? It's their show, after all. I guess not, so where the hell did Mark get his budget from? Anyway, Tim dismisses his request to get reimbursed by saying that's show biz.
Okay, here's the rundown: the jokes sucked, but that Greased Lightning video was awesome. What do I mean by the jokes sucked? They did. First of all, why couldn't Tim have been honest with Mark on his first video? Just say, "Son, you did a good job, but unfortunately, I can't use this. It's not good enough, I know you tried," or something like that. Why lie about some union policy? Because it's a sitcom and we have to laugh every five seconds? I don't think so. But again, by Season 8 the jokes were forced, as opposed to coming naturally. So the writing was flawed, thanks once again to Tracy Gamble, but again, that video at the end makes it all worth the while. Incidentally, we have plenty of gags around Brad being a cripple from the previous episode. As if we didn't already have enough forced, pointless gags crammed into this episode! Bottom line, I'd say skip this one, or skip ahead to the Grease parody. The rest of it is crap. Incidentally, Mark's original video wouldn't become a trend until about 2007 with the invention of the "YouTube Poop."
Mark was beaming with pride, claiming this to be the best thing he'd ever done. However, his so-called masterpiece was a mish-mosh of unfocused, extreme close-up and tight shots, overlapping audio, and to finish it off, Eddie and Sparky swap heads for some reason. Bottom line, it looked like hell. It looked like Mark had never filmed anything in his life, yet they earlier established that he had. He was "interning down at Tool Time and he was doing good." The family's reaction to the video? The girls and Brad were truthful in saying it was lousy, though Claire thought it was scary...and it was, and as for Tim, the guy who commissioned the video and built his son up to this, he lied his ass off, stating some kind of new union policy that just came out at work. Mark got the message and stormed off. But, as usual, a talk with Wilson makes everything alright. He helps Tim realize that maybe giving Mark the guidelines of "my show, my show, my show" was a stupid thing to do. So Tim goes down to Randy's room to talk with his youngest son about the video, even telling him about a lost episode of Tool Time, told from the perspective of the saw... most likely Tim was making that all up to prove a point, but I wouldn't put it past the guy to actually try something like that. In short, they decide to try again, and this time, there would be more focus. The result was a really awesome, well-shot music video with Tim, Al, Heidi, the whole Tool Time gang, even Jill and Wilson, lip-syncing to "Greased Lightning" as Tim's hot rod is at last completed. So this new video was a hit and everything worked out... Oh wait, we have time for one more stupid joke: Mark says he went over budget... so wait, Binford didn't fund this video? It's their show, after all. I guess not, so where the hell did Mark get his budget from? Anyway, Tim dismisses his request to get reimbursed by saying that's show biz.
Okay, here's the rundown: the jokes sucked, but that Greased Lightning video was awesome. What do I mean by the jokes sucked? They did. First of all, why couldn't Tim have been honest with Mark on his first video? Just say, "Son, you did a good job, but unfortunately, I can't use this. It's not good enough, I know you tried," or something like that. Why lie about some union policy? Because it's a sitcom and we have to laugh every five seconds? I don't think so. But again, by Season 8 the jokes were forced, as opposed to coming naturally. So the writing was flawed, thanks once again to Tracy Gamble, but again, that video at the end makes it all worth the while. Incidentally, we have plenty of gags around Brad being a cripple from the previous episode. As if we didn't already have enough forced, pointless gags crammed into this episode! Bottom line, I'd say skip this one, or skip ahead to the Grease parody. The rest of it is crap. Incidentally, Mark's original video wouldn't become a trend until about 2007 with the invention of the "YouTube Poop."
