It's time for Nationals, ya'll.
Payson would have cameltoe. Go figure.
The Rock girls have finally made their way to Boston, where they will sort of compete as a team. If you'll recall, only the four girls were assigned roster spots, complimented by an army of alternates. Yes, the team stands in front of the arena in Boston, and by Boston I mean Vegas.
Why. Why in the world would they pretend that there's a damned PYRAMID in the middle of Boston? What an eyesore. The pyramid, not Payson.
The girls walk into the casino/arena where they encounter a slew of paparazzi. Because obviously.
Bitchface Chloe is thrilled. The other girls, not so much.
As any fan of elite gymnastics knows, there is always a red carpet/paparazzi situation when an athlete first arrives at the arena. They walk the red carpet, and have Perez Hilton types accost them and rummage in their gym bags.
Papa Cruz is totally down with it, wildly swinging a very obviously empty coffee mug around, a wild reminder for Kaylie to SMILE!
Just fucking thrilled. Everyone's swamped with attention, except for mousy old Emily. She calls up Demon on the flip phone to tell him how crazy it is. Demon's like "Oh man, attention, lameskis. At least your mom and Brian are there, right?" and Emily moans that NO, stupid Random Joe didn't even pay for her brother to fly all the way to Boston, even after she was super nice to Random Joe and didn't berate him or make her mom break up with him or anything. Forgive me for sounding Republican, but ENTITLED MUCH??
Payson's interview gets interrupted by the arrival of her Majesty, the Queen Adult Baby Kelly Parker. The Casey Kasem wannabe (RIP) asks ABKP about her lingering tendon issues, which may have stemmed from her win at Nationals last year, or was it Worlds? Who knows, who cares. What matters is that while some people love drugs, *cough* Payson Keeler *cough* ABKP just says no.
Because no one cares about her, Emily is standing alone in the dark arena, as one does. The lights come on, and some cantankerous old janitor asks if she belongs there. "I guess we're about to find out." Oh shut the front door.
Brian has been left at home alone, to fold everyone's laundry and watch the meet on TV. Naturally, he leaves the front door open at all times. So Demon doesn't even have to knock when he strolls over to pick up Brian for their cross country road trip. Before Brian can even agree to it, Demon has grabbed Brian's bucket of laundry and is headed towards the bus. Radiohead's tour bus, that is. There is no front door to shut.
After getting their room assignments, Lauren taunts Emily while Payson bitches and moans to Kaylie. Because of all of the cortisone, she "feels like a fraud." I feel like the writers just googled "cortisone" and learned it was a steroid, and then were all "OMG, STERIODS ARE BAD!!11! Mmmkay?"
Emily doesn't have time for Lauren's shit, because she needs to lay down in bed and do some of MLT's arm sets. The arm sets of champions.
But once she closes her eyes, flashbacks of her many, many failures haunt her. She sprints full blast out of the hotel room, while Lauren points out that this mental giant is her team captain. Brava.
Kaylie is taking a walk with her brother, Leo 2.0. They discuss their parents, life, feel good sibling stuff. Leo 2.0 points out that Mom loves Kaylie, and Dad loves Kaylie, and he loves Kaylie... and someone else loves Kaylie too.
Creepy Carter oozes out of the shadows to further beg for Kaylie's affections, only to be brutally rebuffed. Kaylie walks away, leaving Creepy with only his hair to flop in the wind.
Time for the meet!
Day One features the parade of teams. No silly march in for these girls.
The girls strut down first, followed by their lowly alternate minions.
Eventually the reach the floor, and upon arrival, Coach Sasha gives the girls a peptalk. Now the gals are on their own. Emily is first on vault, despite all the hubbub of the past episode saying otherwise, (remember Payson's "But you said I'd go first on EVERYTHINGGGGG!") She does a tucked yurchenko, fine elite fare.
Lauren is up on beam, and just isn't projecting enough personality. Everyone knows what makes a great beam worker: personality.
Speaking of personality, Payson's attempt at a comeback to ABKP's jab is to congratulate her on becoming the face of hemorrhoids. Oh, ABCFamily, never change. Payson's on UB, and does a fine NCAA routine with transitions and everything.
Sister Mary Summer has decided that Lauren is stinking it up because her biological mother ditched her. So SMS feels, nay, KNOWS that it is her duty to call up Lauren's mother and tear her a new asshole. But SMS is immediately cut off, and receives some news from the other mother. But whatever is it?
Payson is now suddenly finishing the meet on beam, with a whoosh whoosh double full dismount. ABKP mounts beam right afterwards, and looks scared for one hot second.
She catches Payson's eye, and for one moment she has Payson convinced that she's scared. SYKE. ABKP rocks out her typical super perfect Courtney Kupets routine.
All the Rock girls just stand on the sidelines, staring at the beam while another team competes. It's hilarious. ABKP of course tops Payson's score, because ABKP is awesome and Payson sucks.
Speaking of suck, Kmetko is wrapping up the day on FX, with her super boring Sasha prescribed classical routine. Very mediocre.
Daddy Tanner goes up to his hotel room to find a fuming Sister Mary Summer packing her things. She's in a rage because Daddy Tanner is doing what he needs to do to be a good father. She's mad that he's not allowing her to butt her face into all of his family business.
Turns out that Daddy Tanner forbade Mama Tanner to come to the meet. Sister Mary Summer insinuates that Daddy T's protectiveness is something unhealthy, unholy. Maybe it's all the VC Andrews books I've been rereading lately, but the scene screams INCEST instead of Doting Protective Father. I'm assuming ABCF was going for the latter.
Daddy Tanner wants to know where they go from here. Sister Mary's all "I know where I go. I go out this door. You? You can go to..." Nope, she can't say it. SPOILER: it's hell. HELL!!!!!
The Rock girls are outside at some sort of thing, although we don't really learn what it is. All we know is that they don't want to be there. Sharing the spotlight is the effervescent ABKP.
She is officially my #2 Bitchface Chloe. True love. She runs into the Rock girls, and burns each one personally. Payson does drugs, Lauren's a slutty boyfriend stealer, Kaylie lets her boyfriend pork her best friend, and Emily who?
Kaylie is being lectured by her dad/agent, and she's not having it. He reassures her that she doesn't need to win the gold, not now, not ever, because she's got the looks and personality of a winner. So actual winning doesn't matter. "Of course I want you to win, but we have to think realistically." Very supportive indeed. I bet those were Valeri's exact words to Nastia, not "Win or do not come home."
Lauren wants to know where Sister Mary Summer is, and Daddy Tanner informs her that SMS bailed. Lauren and her mommy issues freaks out, and rejoins the table of losers.
ABKP struts over to further assert her dominance, when she's interrupted by a huge tacky tour bus. I don't know how many tour buses are wheelchair accessible, but this one apparently is because Brian literally rolls right off it and into the crowd. He leads a cheer with a bullhorn, E-M-I-L-Y, what's that spell?! ANNOYING.
Whoop whoop. Emily ignores all other training/activities, and lounges with Demon until nighttime. She confides in him that she has a huge mental block, where she only sees herself failing over and over. So Demon takes out his handy dandy blindfold, ties Kmetko up, and commands her to visualize herself being awesome instead of sucky.
The girls are miserably lounging about the hotel room, when Lauren comes in with a brilliant plan.
Yup, that's ABKP's gym bag. PRANKS! SHENANIGANS! The girls race off to stock it full of embarrassing crap before lights out. The run smack dab into Coach Sasha, but Emily convinces him that they're off to the gift shop to buy tampons. I thought gymnasts never ever ever got their periods until they were fat and retired???? Sasha must not know this, because he buys her story.
Time for Day Two of nationals, but first Kaylie has some business to attend to. She knocks on the door "Umm yeah no.... you're cute and all, but you're not a champion. #sorrynotsorry."
The girls walk the red carpet on their way to the meet, because of course, and watch as ABKP is stopped by that annoying guy to have her personal and private gym bag rummaged through.
After pulling of an economy sized tub of lip hair remover and a dating book, the annoying guy dives even further in to rip out a massive box of condoms.
So funny! And not at all invasive. Rock Girls-1. ABKP- 53782789.
Coach Sasha gives a personalized peptalk to each of his girls.
Emily points out a message on the jumbotron to Kaylie.
Aww, what a nice message...
OMG GO AWAY! Everyone hates you! Kaylie waves him down, and he eagerly races to her, ready to accept her forgiveness. Instead, she returns his necklace, and tells him to kindly fuck off, that she needs to work for herself right now. Papa Cruz is watching in the stands, nodding with approval. That is until she waves him down, and fires him as her manager. BURN. Free of all the leaches in her life, she is finally ready to compete.
Prior to learning her two-day Amanar, Kaylie vaulted a yurchenko half off, for a 16.2. Success! She doesn't eat shit.
She's followed by a ripped Lauren, who does an average tucked handspring front with a half, with a sizeable hop on the landing.
Sasha asks her to at least pretend to give a fuck. Lauren goes to grab her phone, and makes a quick call to Sister Mary Summer, asking her where she is.
This girl in the background appears to be a Jan type. She pops up on like every event. On floor it almost seems like she's doing the choreo from the 89-92 compulsories.
Oh right, Sister Mary is still there, just sitting away from that wicked Daddy Tanner. Hooray!
Best gymnast ever Princess Payson is next on vault.
I wonder what such a champion will vault!
OMGGG A TUCKED YURCHENKO CAN YOU EVEN BECAUSE I CANNOT!!1!!1!
MIOBI guys. MIOBI.
All of that supremo awesomeness vaulting takes its toll on Payson, so she runs off to the bathroom to shoot herself up with that sweet sweet cortisone.
She's all about to casually inject herself in the back, but then she hears a voice in the locker room, instructing someone to give her "the normal dose."
GASP! Payson asks ABKP and Fake George Clooney what they're doing, because ABKP said before that she didn't need drugs. BUT EVERYONE NEEDS DRUGS, PAYSON. Jeez. Payson has a Come to Jesus moment, and dumps her needle into the trash bin. Because that's where needles go. Screw you, cantankerous old janitor!
Lauren's up on beam, and does the world's fastest beam routine. Punch front on, switch leap, switch leap, wolf jump. BHS, LOSO, immediate whoosh whoosh double full dismount. That earns her the highest score of the day on beam.
MIOBI, guys.
Payson chalks up for bars, while the announcers inform us that this could be her winning routine. The glorious music begins, seemingly the same as Nadia's whenever she does epic bar routines. She launches into her SUPER POWER MOVE shaposhnikova, and just barely misses her hands.
Oh shit.
It's all very dramatic. I wish they would have ditched the dramatic DUN DUN DUN music. While all the screaming and sobbing is theatrical, what is really painful about live injuries is the silence. When Bross fell on vault, the entire Xcel Energy Center, which is known for being loud, was dead silent. Ten thousand people didn't make a peep, sand all you could hear was screaming from a 17 year old. Absolutely haunting.
But back to the comedy, Payson's Mom is violently shaking the stretcher as Payson is being wheeled off. Now, I'm no medical student, but I'm under the impression that if you have an athlete stabilized on a stretcher, shaking said stretcher back and forth isn't the wisest move. It works though, because Payson manages to mumble "I didn't take it," to her poor mother, who has no clue that her hard earned money has been used to purchase icky drugs.
Following Payson's harrowing injury is the queen of splat herself, Emily Kmetko. Coach Sasha knows that Emily doesn't have a prayer of making the national team with her shitty Steve Nunno classical floor routine, so he tells her to go back to her emo routine with the lyrics.
This hot routine opens with a front full into a punch front, and wraps up with a layout into a layout.
Those are the only two passes.
MIOBI, guys.
She exits the floor to rapturous applause. Meanwhile, Payson is just coming to in the hospital. Her parents inform her that she fractured her back, and is done with gymnastics for good. Appropriate meltdown ensues.
Back at the arena, the competition is down to two athletes: Kaylie and ABKP. The announcer claims that Kaylie will compete before ABKP. There is an awkward patchwork montage of both girls competing, including about 7 different tuck jump fulls, and ending with Kaylie's cutey patooty pose.
Despite saying that Kaylie competed before ABKP, Kaylie runs off of the floor and waits for her score, which will determine the winner of the meet.
Well kiss my grits. Kaylie is your new national champion! Lauren comes in forth, and we're stuck around waiting to see if Emily made the team.
She does.
I feel exactly like the girl on the right. *clap clap clap*
While Kaylie celebrates having discarded all of the useless men in her life, a gaggle of males flock to Emily, for whatever reason. Emily and Demon are interrupted by Leo 2.0, who informs Emily that he's going to be at the Rock all summer long. Demon isn't thrilled. Then Leo 2.0 brags about his grant for something or another getting funded.
Demon marks his territory by pissing on Emily. I meant kissing. He kisses Kmetko. Gross.
No time for PDA, because the girls have to go meet Payson at the hospital.
Sadsies.
The end. Whatever will happen to Payson. She's done forever! OR... maybe she'll come back as an artistic gymnast, and crabass her way to the Olympic team! Oh the surprises that lay ahead.
Until then, may your gym bags be full of condoms.
