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Secret Life of the American Teenager: Pizza Is the Ultimate Comfort
27-Aug-2008
Written by: Ivana Cheong
New relationships surface with pizza in the background of every scene.
When the last episode ended, Amy decides to raise her baby with Ricky wanting involvement. Grace and Adrian become friends, and Ricky gets irked. Meanwhile, Adrian works hard at finding her estranged father.
“Slice of Life” begins with Amy and Ashley spending the day with their father, George, who is having marriage problems and is not living with the family. Amy’s boyfriend, Ben, hasn’t seen his love in a while and decides to drop by with a pizza and best friend Henry in hand. George, who’s been living at his furniture store, borrows Adrian’s apartment (whose mother he is dating), while Adrian goes out with Grace for the night.
At the condo, Ben and Amy talk about their future together in terms of the baby and Amy’s schooling. Ben, always faithful and loving, wants Amy to come back to school with him. But Amy is intent on not returning to her old school because she can’t bear to face the vicious faces of judgmental high school kids. Henry has just been dumped by Alice, the girl he’s dated since they were in third grade; so when it got awkward at the dinner table, George sends him to bring a pizza to Amy’s sister, Ashley.
When he gets there, he and Ashley start conversing. She actually liked him! As viewers later find out in the episode, Henry told Ashley that she may be the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, causing her to tear up for unknown reasons. Probably all the drama that she’s been hiding in her 13-year-old self is beginning to boil and surface.
Amy’s mom, Anne, is left home alone with her wine and her raisin bran as her girls do some bonding time with the dad. Quite weirdly, Ben’s dad, the “Sausage King” drops by with some pizza to discuss Ben and Amy’s future together. Like Ben, he’s still vying for the two to get married. It’s a little off-putting, but hey, like father like son, right?
Meanwhile, Adrian has acquired her birth certificate from the school counselor and she takes good-girl Grace out to keep her company while she searches for her father. They park all night across the street from the man’s house. Adrian tells Grace that she has no intention of contacting the man, and she just wanted to see what he looked like.
During the stakeout, Ricky tries to call Grace and Adrian for company. After no luck at Grace’s house, he goes over to Adrian’s condo, where George and Co. are having a chit-chat. George obviously didn’t think his cover through. His daughters previously thought that he was living alone, but when Ricky knocks and calls out, “Adrian! Adrian!” his cover got blown. Actually, Amy jumps off the couch and screamed, “You’re dating Adrian!?” It was a nice comic moment.
While waiting with Adrian, Grace gets nervous feelings—some for Adrian, some for the fact that she’s going against her parents’ wishes of not staying out late, and some for the fact that she’s leaving her little brother Tom home alone. She feels as if Tom’s getting into trouble and she is not there to protect him.
In reality, Tom was not in trouble. He’s actually enjoying himself. It turns out that he’s throwing a private party just for him; he ordered a pizza and . . . a stripper? Jennifer Coolidge guest stars as the stripper who’s quite friendly to Tom. There was no dancing shown—after all, it’s a family show!—rather, they just sit there talking and she gives him advice. She says things like a lot of the dancers are mean-willed and Tom is lucky he got her, for the other ones might come in and rob his house. She also says that if Tom doesn’t pay her, a very powerful man will get pissed. After the seemingly-short conversation, she says, “That will be $200,” and Tom pays her, just in time for Grace to come home.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. As Tom makes a new friend, Adrian’s dad comes home from work. She sees him, and yet she still sits there. After a while, the man comes out and confronts her. “My wife says you’ve been parked all night,” he says. After a few moments, he realizes that it was Adrian, and Adrian looked happy that he recognized her. But he tells her that he and her mother had an agreement, and that he never wanted her to come to his house again. Cue shock and tears. It really was a heartless confrontation from his part.
Ricky, on the other hand, is still friendless and lonely, being the womanizer that he is. He has no luck getting through to Adrian or Grace, so he decides to call up one of Amy’s best friends, Lauren. In the previous episode, Lauren and Amy’s other BFF, Madison, got into a small tiff to prove who was hotter in Ricky’s eyes.
After battling him and saying that she’s not falling for his tricks, Lauren finally succumbs and Ricky stops by her house with a box of pizza. Ricky tells her that all he wanted was to talk. He says that Amy should not come back to school because that would put such a damper in his social standing. Cocky and confident like any other day, he then tells Lauren that she’s jealous that Amy got to sleep with him.
It looks like she fell for his charm and sweet talks, for they end up making out, with Madison and Lauren’s older brother catching them in the act. Ooh, future drama! When Lauren left, quite quickly, Ricky tries his luck at a different girl. An upset Adrian picks up and tells him to come on over. He left Lauren’s house quickly, smiling his face off. Another woman down, he must be thinking.
When Amy and Ashley return home, Ashley tells her mom that her dad is broke and that he should live with them again. She says that even though her rep is already ruined with a pregnant sis and separating parents, she will not tolerate people thinking they are poor! Anne agrees after everything, but only if Ashley told her dad.
Back at the condo, a tearful Adrian asks George how a man who’s been married for 15 years with two daughters can just walk out of their lives, because that’s what her father did. George avoids the topic, and gives Adrian some comfort. At the same time, little Ashley walks in and furiously says, “It’s one thing to cheat on Mom, but it’s another thing to cheat on Amy and me.” She told George that he can come back—out of pity, duh—but she vows that she’s not speaking to him again.
And she probably won’t. After everything, Ashley is the star for me in this show—she’s the one who’s smart enough to figure things out, and she’s not naive, even though she’s only 13 years old. And I admit that I’m hooked onto this show, despite some cheesy plotlines in previous episodes. It’s got a good message, and some of the actors are pretty good. It’s a fresh air from mindless, non-substantial, so-called reality shows.
Although I cannot figure out why they squeezed in Jennifer Coolidge as a semi-Erin Brokovich in there. I suppose it’s for comic relief. I for one am most excited to find out what’s happening, if anything, with Henry and Ashley. The previews look pretty good, albeit confusing. It seems like Ricky is still working to get on Amy’s good side, who is trying out school again with Ben, despite all the fears. And we see footballer Jack walk down the hallway with Alice—that is the perfect time for me to say, “HUH!?”
Overall, the show strikes the right note to the target demographic of teens. Some say that as a summer TV show, it’s quite rightly that the ratings almost match those of Gossip Girl—even though if they were in the same time slot, Secret Life is no match. But since it won Choice Summer TV Show in this year’s Teen Choice Awards, Secret Life of the American Teenager deserves a good mention.
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