Jessica Stays Over thoughts

ahelm13

New member
I really enjoyed this episode. I thought that the Hal plot did get pretty ridiculous there at the end but his paranoia at the beginning was pretty funny.

The cold opener was absolutely classic. Jaime is already starting to figure out how dumb Reese is.

And speaking of Reese being dumb, it was hilarious to see Dewey turn Reese's crazy idea into a great prank, and then when Lois doesn't care about it.

I've always liked Jessica and she was great again. I've gotten to the point that I can see the manipulations before the characters do but it is still quite funny. It was also nice to see Malcolm get the upper hand at the end of the episode.
 

lifeisunfair

New member
Kickass episode and Jessica was tolerable too.So, basically everyone but Reese are smart and I loved his story in this episode.
 

wando

New member
great episode, i thik one of th best. the opening was great! i woul have fallen for that one! the hal plot got a bit tedious but was good as a whole, reece and dewey were cool, and lois didnt care what dewey was doing to reece, and malcolm and lois worked very well that malcolm now feels that he can talk to hi mother about anything atall, rathere than everything being an arguement.

great episode once again!!:cool:
 

CJman327

New member
I loved the Reese/Dewey plot. That was great!:D. The Malcolm/Jessica plot was tolerable too. And the Hal plot ending was awesome when he smashed his car to kill the bee! Another classic moment! And if I have anything to say about it another classic EPISODE too!:) :D.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I really enjoyed the episode and I think it will make me homesick if I watch it in the future because--I'm being honest here--I certainly don't have that close of a relationship with my mom.

So I guess my comments go down like this:
The Dewey/Reese storyline was absolutely fantastic. It was put together extremely well. Like last week's battle of the dumb vs. the cripple, we were able to see that Reese is resorting back to violence this year, but because that's the only way he knows how to handle situations. In this case, he thinks his pen pal is personally responsible for Pearl Harbor, and believes he's doing the right thing.

Jessical always hanging around the house always tends to creep me out a bit. I mean, I understand when Lois allowed Stevie to stay over for a little while, but Jessica seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Remember how their relationship ended last year in Pearl Harbor? She was banned from the house. I question why Lois is so accomodating to other people in the neighborhood. But I thoroughly enjoyed the plot between Malcolm and Lois. It seemed like the ending where Malcolm raced home would reveal some sort of genius-trick. I wasn't expecting his relationship wiht Lois to end that quickly, just like that. I thought maybe he'd say that Lois went shopping or Lois met up wtih someone else and Malcolm let them be for awhile. That was rather odd, but I guess they couldn't be like that forever.

I also enjoyed the Hal storyline. It's funny when Hal is contradictorily saying he won't let a bee ruin his life as he devises this complex plan of getting in the car to Lois. I also enjoyed the scene where Hal appeared to be bumping his car into the bee as if it were another car. Very well done. And for those of us who are still trying to figure out the series' mysteries, the scene revealed that Hal works in an industrial park, probably somewhere to the South, judging from the tropical-like trees. Which means our current most accurate predictions of somewhere like Arizona, or New Mexico, or extreme southern California may be most accurate.

Finally, as if one time wasn't bad enough, you would think they would learn from their mistakes! You will recall that in season 1, Reese was playing a Game Boy with no cartridge. Well, Dewey did exactly the same thing in Jessica Stays Over. More or less, I found it funny that they would mess up on something so goofy not once, but twice!
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Overall a greta episode but i have noticed something recently that i dont feel the episodes are long enought, i sorta feel the ending was to early and i didnt see it coming.

The hal storyline was brilliant and it gotta be the best thing, i disagree with the other who said it was to far fetched. Also the animated bee bits are new to MITM (i surpose they did butterflies) but they do do animated things like that normally, but when hall was driving it was brilliant!

The reese thing was good but not what i expected, from the spoliers i thought he was end u somewhere (not china) but somewhere he thought he was in china and would wonder around (i dunno like china town in the local area) and then i he would bump into malcolm or something and go why are you in china etc. (anyways i thing that would have been a better storyline)

The malcolm thing was ok, more malcolm being upset! but it didnt surprise me, the whole lois thing being upset with him was strange, as we never saw it happening or the aftermarth.
 

samboo1

New member
I thought, personally, that it was the weakest episode of season 7 so far. I dont really know why i just enjoyed the others more. It was good though:D
Hal plot; This was my least favourite plot. It was typical Hal but i think they took it a little far...i mean he crashed his car because of a bee! For me, when the Hal bits came on i was bored.
Reese/Dewey; This was my favourite plot. I agree with TJ that they could of made it way better but still i enjoyed it.
Malcolm/Jessica/Lois; This was ok. It was nice to see Malcolm and Lois bond. I liked how Malcolm scared away Jessica's boyfriend. She gets a taste of her own medicine.
 

Dabney

Deutscher Moderator
I agree with samboo that this episode is one of the weaker ones so far. I tstarted perfectly, though. The cold open was so funny, i nearly fell off the chair. But then i just didn't laugh as much as in recent episodes. And i realized that gameboy mistake, too. It was rather obvious. I wonder if that was intended to show people something like: We don't care about people showing us how many mistakes we make.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
That was my thought too. Malcoholic pointed out all the nastalgic connections last week, and maybe they were just trying to make a subtle joke to the viewers who have watched since season 1. It seems like they're trying to breath new life into the series this year, while giving us nastalgic connections from the first seasons at the same time. It's a good mix and I like it because it seems to tie everything together.
 

Wildcat

Retired Moderator
Great episode! I don’t think it was the weakest this season. For me, the weakest so far was Halloween. I know most everone loved it, but I didn’t care for it overall. I liked this one better as a whole.

The cold opener was great. Reese getting fooled by a year old. That’s sad. :)

For the record, I hate Jessica! Everytime I see her, I just want to slap her silly. :D I loved seeing Lois and Malcolm get along. It’s weird to see her being so nice. I felt bad for Malcolm a the end (though the excessive crying was a bit much.) Too bad she didn’t believe that he was being sincere now even though he was only trying to manipulate her at first. At least Jessica’s plan got ruined though.

I loved the Reese/Dewey plot. My gosh, I know Reese is stupid, but I think this has got to be one of his stupidest stunts yet! (Does it seem like he’s even dumber this season than in previous ones?) I knew where it was going as soon as I saw that Jessica’s boyfriend was Asian, but it was still funny. Didn’t he recognize his own garage and see Dewey standing there when he came out of the box? What an idiot! The whole thing was brilliant on Dewey’s part. I loved it when Lois told Dewey to leave him in there when she found out.

Hal and the bee was my least favorite plot. It started off okay, but the ending was far fetched. It was too cartoonish. At least in butterflies, they didn’t make it seem like the butterflies were actually capable of thought like they did with the bee.

BTW, I agree that the scenery definitely looks a lot like New Mexico/Arizona/Nevada/Southern California. I think we can safely narrow it down to the southwest states.
 

Malcoholic

New member
I think in this episode Jessica comes closest to filling the need this series has always had for a funny-obnoxious teen girl. Cynthia was obnoxious-obnoxious. The trouble in the past has been that Malcolm writers have seen teen girls as too fragile to take much punishment, so the writers couldn't do funny-bad stuff to them. The writers have been brutal to the adult females: they chopped off Ida's leg and dislocated her neck; knocked out Lavernia's tooth and punched her unconscious; broke Old Mrs. Griffin's arm; terrified Caroline into giving birth prematurely; and, in "Water Park," they flat-out killed the elderly babysitter. But they never laid a finger on the girls. There's nothing fragile about Jessica. She doesn't take bodily punches, but she's been emotionally battered by her criminally insane father to the point where she doesn't feel pain any more.

Jessica's lesson to Malcolm in emotional manipulation is that to fake pain convincingly, the cause of the pain has to be real, only the pain itself must be fake. This works fine for Jessica because she's totally callous. Malcolm's trouble is that as soon as he starts pouring out his feelings, he slips into sincerity and loses sight of what the manipulation was for.

I found the contrast between Jessica and Malcolm really entertaining; she was much more fully fleshed out here than in previous episodes. It was funny to see how Jessica was appalled to see Malcolm let a good snow job go to waste. In this sense, she's a lot like Ida--her horrible life has left her with complete contempt for sentimentality: "Yeah, Malcolm, save the girl talk for your mom!"

The other stories worked fine as pure laugh-getters. There's a typically deranged Reese project--absurd in concept, ingenious in detail. The bee story is just a pretext for Hal's fail-proof clowning.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
We're curious people and don't worry we won't be angry at you for expressing your opinion! :) So share it. Tell us why and give us reasoning for your ideas. We are interested. :)
 

allison

New member
I think this episode was pretty good. Like most people here I found the Hal plot a bit annoying, but the other plots were quite ok. I agree with Wildcat that it´s a little weird that Reese didn´t even recognise his own garage. I think he´s becoming stupider and he´s kind of going back to his old self. During the 6th season I thought that Reese has become a really soft person and also the burning man episode made me think so, but it seems like he´s becoming a bit more violent again. I liked Dewey in this episode as he behaved like a real kid. It´s funny to see that he still loves to play pranks on Reese and make him suffer although they seemed to be pretty close lately. I like the way Reese is outsmarted by all his brothers regardless of their age. The Lois/Malcolm plot was good, too. It really seems like Lois is quite a sociable person if you know how to handle her. I don´t really care for Jessica. I think she´s ok, but I prefer Cynthia. The end with the Asian guy of course was predictable, but still it was entertaining. But as tjpeople said it maybe would have been funnier if Reese had ended up somewhere else. It´s kind of like the "Malcolm´s car" episode: You have great expectations and in the end they don´t even leave the driveway or garage. But all in all it was a good episode and I especially liked the scene where Lois found out what Dewey was doing to Reese and didn´t care at all. :D
 
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