My Louisiana

While busy duping the Real Worlders, Bumpkin apparently forgot to check up on his girl; so he quickly backtracks to his home turf to save face--followed by some trim on the side.

Analysis

"My Louisiana" is such a frustrating episode which clearly illustrates some of the series' fundamental pitfalls. First and foremost is the whole throwing continuity out the window deal.

Right from the get-go we're lead to believe that after milling around in Georgia and Florida for the past three weeks, the Roadies would double back to Louisiana just to give Bumpkin some lovin' coupled with some flying lesion, that's absurd! It's obvious that the producers perceive the viewers as a bunch of naive suckers with attention spans no greater than that of a sparrow!

Anyone with half a brain could tell that this episode was arbitrarily taken out of its context right after "Frosty Face-off, Part II", then for unknown reasons inserted back into the line up some four weeks later. It's almost as if this episode fell and was overlooked on the editing room floor, then three weeks later some editing buff finds it, calls the supervising producer, which leads to a conversation like this:

Editing buff: "Sir, I found it, I found it! I found the missing episode 905, where Theo visits his girlfriend and the cast flies power-chutes!"

Producer: "Great! File that baby into the line up! We'll air it right after the Kathryn & Laterrian/synchronized swimming episode."

Editing buff: "Ugh, but sir, the cast left Louisiana several weeks ago. Wouldn't viewers find it odd to suddenly see the cast back in Louisiana?"

Producer: "Of course not! Most of our viewers are geographically inept Gen-X/Yers who wouldn't know the meaning of 'continuity' if you stamped it on their foreheads! Remember, Veronica didn't even know where Tennessee was."

Editing buff: "I guess that's why we took away the 'You are Here' progress map right?"

Producer: "Exactly, just a pre calculated precaution. Now get that tape ready to air!"

Editing buff: "Yes sir!"

And what about those continued missing horns eh? If there was anything I was looking forward to in this particular episode it was an explanation as to the whereabouts of the missing horns--which were stolen in a fraternity prank previously mentioned in "Get Shorty". But at least give the millions-(am I giving the show too much credit?) of misinformed viewers with out Internet access a freaking clue, will ya?

Second there's the typical recycled Road Rules romance plot. Here Bumpkin and our boys yet again attempt to lay their mackdown on a group of (seemingly) naive party girls at a local bar in Lake Charles. And despite their impressive moves on the dance floor, they eventually strike out (that's two so far). Afterwards, Bumpkin reflects upon his flirtatious history, which in turn leads him to drop his girlfriend, Mandy a line and confess about his pimp outing the night before.

And as expected, Mandy is not at all too happy with this latest in the long line of troubling BS confessions in an already uncertain relationship. However, Bumpkin promises that he'll try his best to remain faithful to Mandy; but from what I've seen to date suggest that Bumpkin's as faithful as his options! Essentially, Bumpkin's dilemma boils down to yet another example of a cast member who comes to a crossroads in their relationship [TM].

I've already seen this worn-out premise about a half a dozen times over the past three season: There was Brian feeding his girlfriend a line of BS over Sylvia in "Trust"; Yes and Alissa in "Shanghai Surprise"; Piggy and her loser boyfriend in "Mud Football"; Dan and his girlfriend over his fling with Holly in Challenge 2000; and recently Kathy and her boyfriend Reed over the rest room incident. Sure, there're different variations, but overall it's the same deal.

Wanting to save his relationship, Bumpkin even seeks advice from his brother Zeth who's currently housed in a rehab center for alcohol abuse. Zeth basically tells him to check himself and hang up his pimp act before it's too late, because he has a great girl who continues to put up with crap a lot of other girls wouldn't tolerate (apparently Zeth was told to dress up for the measly 3 minute cameo. He looked as though he was going to a corporate meeting). But never fear, Mandy soon arrives to rescue Bumpkin because I'm sure Mandy already knows... sometimes you have to save your man from himself! She knows what'll happen if he doesn't get his "medicine"...

There's also a fairly interesting mission here, where the Roadies travel to Welsh, La to fly power chute planes in a head-to-head competition for... for... ugh, what were they competing for anyway? Well, according to Mr. Mayor (Tim) their objective was to drop as many condom bombs on the bull's eyes below as possible. The person who scored the most hits would win a special prize. Well as things turned out, not everyone was successful in scoring a hit, yet they get rewarded 6 token coins anyway--which BTW is a total contradiction to what we were told at the beginning of the trip.

Only M'saada was successful in nailing the most hits; and what "special" prize did she receive for her awesome performance? MTV Movie Award tickets? A Gap shopping spree certificate? How about a crappy plaque? C'mon! What kind of cheap cop-out is this?!? They might as well had given her a pack of Citra! Another person who got rolled over this week was Kathy who temporarily relinquishes her "Playgirl" alias since this is pre-rest room scandal.

As it turns out, Kathy has a fear of flying, so you know B-M would exploit it for all it's worth. When Kathy takes off for her flight everything's A ok, but once she reaches cruising altitude her radio contact with Tim abruptly cuts off, gee how conveeenient. Between this, James and Laterrian's down-to-the-wire escape from the Belfort Estate, and Reed's surprise visit B-M's doing a lousy job at creating surprise and suspense. And unfortunately for B-M Kat neither freaks out nor slams into terra firma; instead, she glides safely to Earth while the B-M control room operators swear under their breath. Lesion of the week: Never disclose any potential weaknesses on your B-M application, it'll come back to haunt you!


NEXT WEEK: The troopers play Family Double Dare.


Jump straight to "Take a Leap". Or go back to "Goodbye".

Viewer Rating	Results
Q: How do you rate My Louisiana? (of 55 respondents) 26%   5 - Excellent. 9%   4 - Above Average. 40%   3 - Average. 17%   2 - Below Average. 6%   1 - Far Below Average. 3%   0 - I'd Rather Watch Informercials.

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