Robbie's football team is terrible because the school decided that students cannot play sports unless they get good grades, so only the small, weak boys like Robbie can be on the team. The guys take it well because they realize they aren't nearly as good as the teams on their schedule.
After an 8th straight clobbering (and I must give the show credit for depicting some action scenes of football games, unlike most shows of this era when one of their regulars is supposed to be on a team but we see nothing of sports action at all) all of the girls in the school, led by Robbie's girlfriend-of-the-week, Lissa, decide they can inspire their boyfriends by refusing to date them at all unless they win the final game of the season against Fremont.
Much of the episode deals with the football players trying to find dates for the upcoming, poorly-named "Victory Dance" which is apparently held each year on the Thursday night preceding the game against Fremont. They wind up finding only freshmen girls willing to go out with them. When Robbie picks up his freshman date, he encounters her older sister, home for the weekend from her freshman year in college, and she is quite willing to join the pair and visit her old high school. Until they arrive, where Lissa takes the older girl aside and tells her about their "scheme," resulting in her breaking her date and even taking her little sister back home, leaving Robbie alone at the last minute.
They again get clobbered by Fremont but by the time Robbie gets home after the game, Steve has had time to go through weekly scores for Fremont's games this season and notes that although they beat Bryant Park 40-0, that was a closer score than some of their other games, and he interprets this as sort of a moral victory for Bryant Park, which cheers up the girls, which in turn cheers up Robbie.
It's hard to figure out where to start with criticisms of this inane plot. Little things, such as short views of the scoreboard each time show a total score not correctly added from the quarterly scores on the board. How did Robbie's "dates" get back home, since he obviously drove them to the dance? Why does Mike's joke-song about standing up for "Bryant" High not correctly say the name of the school, "Bryant Park." Did Steve really believe his mumbo-jumbo comparative score figuring to be valid in any way? So what if Fremont played better against other foes, they still whipped Bryant Park 40-0.
Almost all high school sports teams in public schools, today and 60 years ago figure the students who struggle with grades need some sort of reason to care about going to school. Athletes normally can play with only a D or D+ average grade on the figuring that if you take away the one thing they truly care about, they really won't care about school and might well drop out.
The joke song teasing the team about their losing seemed to be popular with the whole family and somehow didn't bother Robbie. I understand he knew the team wasn't good, but it still cannot be fun to be teased like that about your team being horrible.
The bigger issues: This "Victory" dance is held the night before the big game? Even ignoring that would make it on a Thursday night-a "school night", what sort of school wants its athletes focused on going to a dance the night before the big game? Why were these girls so happy to not go to the dance with their boyfriends as a means of punishing them for not being talented in football? Weren't they really punishing themselves as well? Nothing was mentioned about what happens after they skip the big dance, and lose to the team supposed to be the toughest of any on their schedule. Do they continue this dating freeze throughout basketball season as well?
Nothing about this episode made any sense, including the fact that it originally aired on the last day of April. No high school in the country plays its football season in the spring.
I found nothing to laugh at, even if I ignored all the things that make no sense. Cannot justify giving this one a score higher than 2 out of 10.
After an 8th straight clobbering (and I must give the show credit for depicting some action scenes of football games, unlike most shows of this era when one of their regulars is supposed to be on a team but we see nothing of sports action at all) all of the girls in the school, led by Robbie's girlfriend-of-the-week, Lissa, decide they can inspire their boyfriends by refusing to date them at all unless they win the final game of the season against Fremont.
Much of the episode deals with the football players trying to find dates for the upcoming, poorly-named "Victory Dance" which is apparently held each year on the Thursday night preceding the game against Fremont. They wind up finding only freshmen girls willing to go out with them. When Robbie picks up his freshman date, he encounters her older sister, home for the weekend from her freshman year in college, and she is quite willing to join the pair and visit her old high school. Until they arrive, where Lissa takes the older girl aside and tells her about their "scheme," resulting in her breaking her date and even taking her little sister back home, leaving Robbie alone at the last minute.
They again get clobbered by Fremont but by the time Robbie gets home after the game, Steve has had time to go through weekly scores for Fremont's games this season and notes that although they beat Bryant Park 40-0, that was a closer score than some of their other games, and he interprets this as sort of a moral victory for Bryant Park, which cheers up the girls, which in turn cheers up Robbie.
It's hard to figure out where to start with criticisms of this inane plot. Little things, such as short views of the scoreboard each time show a total score not correctly added from the quarterly scores on the board. How did Robbie's "dates" get back home, since he obviously drove them to the dance? Why does Mike's joke-song about standing up for "Bryant" High not correctly say the name of the school, "Bryant Park." Did Steve really believe his mumbo-jumbo comparative score figuring to be valid in any way? So what if Fremont played better against other foes, they still whipped Bryant Park 40-0.
Almost all high school sports teams in public schools, today and 60 years ago figure the students who struggle with grades need some sort of reason to care about going to school. Athletes normally can play with only a D or D+ average grade on the figuring that if you take away the one thing they truly care about, they really won't care about school and might well drop out.
The joke song teasing the team about their losing seemed to be popular with the whole family and somehow didn't bother Robbie. I understand he knew the team wasn't good, but it still cannot be fun to be teased like that about your team being horrible.
The bigger issues: This "Victory" dance is held the night before the big game? Even ignoring that would make it on a Thursday night-a "school night", what sort of school wants its athletes focused on going to a dance the night before the big game? Why were these girls so happy to not go to the dance with their boyfriends as a means of punishing them for not being talented in football? Weren't they really punishing themselves as well? Nothing was mentioned about what happens after they skip the big dance, and lose to the team supposed to be the toughest of any on their schedule. Do they continue this dating freeze throughout basketball season as well?
Nothing about this episode made any sense, including the fact that it originally aired on the last day of April. No high school in the country plays its football season in the spring.
I found nothing to laugh at, even if I ignored all the things that make no sense. Cannot justify giving this one a score higher than 2 out of 10.
