IMHO "10 Things I Hate About You" 1.6 "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

Why are all the men wearing shirts this week?

Three weeks running, the under-the-radar ABC Family gem has dealt with gay issues, and two weeks running, it’s been dominated by them, and used a deft hand in subverting the situations it creates. Why can’t it keep its arrow up?

Kat has a problem with her blond, bubbly newly engaged teacher giving the whole class an A on their papers. I only mention this because it turns out the teacher in question just got engaged to the health teacher. The health teacher who dumped the school psychologist; who, if you’ve been paying attention, is Mary Cherry. It is classic Mary Cherry. And sadly, the gayest moment this week.

No one does jealous in a slightly unhinged way like Mary Cherry.

Bianca is having money problems supporting the HBIC’s shopping habit. Daddy says get a job, but since that would make her unpopular, and be, well, work, she hatches a scheme. She’s going to start a web show and be a cam girl (just not Cam’s girl).

She asks Cam to come set up her e-commerce site, and he’s already drooling at the thought of being invited into her life. But Patrick asks him when his testicles are going to drop, in a visual bit that was really clever when I caught it for a second viewing. Patrick attempts to tell him how to be a protector, to have fangs, but Cam completely destroys the alpha-male metaphor by deciding to be her antivirus.

Patrick and Cam speak different languages.

Cam, or course, is her first customer. And indeed he, and Michael are the only customers, until Dawn scratches her back. Then the texting begins, and the number of viewers, all boys at her school, goes up, as indicated by this not-at-all phallic meter.

As the girl's intimacy goes up, so do their male viewers...

Kat’s grade goes down, and she goes off on the teacher directly, and trashes Marcie, err, Mandella’s paper. This hurts Mandella’s feelings and leads to Kat learning not everything is about her.

The girls promise the boys a Katy Perry moment, and are delivering the basics of that. This may not deliver good results on the $5/viewer going rate, as boys seem to be having viewing parties, which I find vaguely disturbing, considering. At least they're not standing in a circle.

I thought boys wanted privacy when viewing these cam shows?

What follows is a PSA about webcams, sexting, etc., and results in the loss of the bedroom door, which gave me a Rosanne flashback.

Remember when they took Becky's door on Rosanne?

Kat and Mandella make up after dad tells Kat that she is so interested in saving the universe that she’s looped back around from selfless to selfish.

And finally, Cam tries to defend Bianca’s honor from a scummy guy that offers serious cash if the shirts come off. Cam pushes the cretin down, but when he comes back to fight, and Patrick looks on with admiration, Cam flinches, and Bianca defends him knocking the bully out with a pink Trapper Keeper.

Cam really wanted to be all fangs and muscles like Patrick.

So why the sideways arrow? Well, there really wasn’t anything gay about the episode, and that’s kind of what we do here. And all the men kept their shirts on.

There was a smart testicle joke, and those are rare. It had a sexist male defender storyline that the feminine sister, Bianca, disposed of, while the sister running around touting her feminist credentials had to show her softer caring side.

So the show continues to subvert the tropes it pulls out. It’s also teasing out the one note characters, like Patrick, making him mentor Cam on getting the girl, and Mandella had feelings about being told she was too fat to ride the Ferris wheel.

They took a really mean fat joke and made it sweet.

The show still has its heart.  And it hasn’t corrected Bianca’s perception of Cam as her Gay Best Friend, and Mandella’s reaction to Kat’s selfishness was very much like a spouse who was taken for granted. Sure, Michael, who I think is coded gay, watched the girl’s web show, and showed interest, but it was more about the sensationalist nature.

Can any straight male besides Chuck Bass pull off Michael's outfit?

All in all, the status quo exists the same as it did last week. All the gay storylines still need resolution. We just got a little depth added. If it were a review of the show anywhere but here, I’d give it an up arrow, because they didn’t corrupt anything. I’m still going to watch.