Even Stevens Ranked!

When a duchess named Lady Jane comes to visit Sacramento as a foreign exchange student, the Stevens take her in for the week. Ren promises to show her all that America has to offer! Which by Ren-standards, is code for a boring as all hell historical tour of the city. Meanwhile, our main plot follows Louis and Twitty. They’re on a mission to chow down a freaking giant burger called The King Sloppy. If you’re able to eat the entire thing in 30 minutes, you get it for free –  and  your picture on the restaurants’ wall of fame. So, they concoct a scheme which includes a character “Mike Hegeman” who they both dress up as, hoping to get away with taking sneaky turns eating the burger. Spoiler: They don’t.

Ren starts working with Ruby at the mall food court at this place called Your Toast, where the only food they serve is… toast. (Which is actually not that weird and reminds me of real life, New England based restaurant  Cheeseboy ! Up until recently, their gimmick was only selling grilled cheese.) Their boss, Mr. Squirelli, is running the place like a dictatorship though. Sooo, that’s not cool. For Louis’ subplot, he gets a drumming instructor! (Which is unfortunately the only part of this episode actually worth talking about. Sorry, Ren!) Just to clarify: I weigh both the main plot and the subplot of an episode when determining an appropriate rank for it. Even though Louis’ subplot is pretty strong, Ren’s main plot overshadows that for me and I can’t help but think of this episode as “the toast one I don’t like.”

If there’s one thing all of my lower-ranked, least-strong episodes have in common, it’s the strange lack of any stand out quotable dialogue or laughs. Not only that, certain episodes feel “off” to me. Specifically in Season 3. As if the show lost it’s touch towards the end or something. It’s hard to explain. But, a handful of episodes in the 3rd season make me feel like I’m watching an entirely different, surreal, and warped version of the show. In this episode, Louis and Twitty get Principal Wexler to quit his job and pursue a career as a model after anonymously submitting some photos of him to an agency. This leaves Vice Principal Landau in charge. (Who we’ve never seen or heard of before.) This was Louis’ goal, because he wants school to be one big party and Landau is a total pushover. Everything  is  one big party, until Landau actually steps up and goes to pretty sadistic extremes to restore order. Elsewhere, Donnie needs Beans’ help to win a giant teddy bear for s...