Melissa & Joey: The Images of Lennox and Ryder

note: Recaps and Remarks are going up later than usual due to Comic-Con and TCA.

So, although so much has changed since I was in high school, not everything has. We didn't have social media networks, so I can't relate to Ryder's catastrophic decrease in friends, but I do remember acting dumber for the benefit of others. I can't say that I was jealous of a friend who scored 250 points more on their SATs than I did (we were all busy wondering how a class clown bested all of us with his 1400s score!), but I also wasn't clever enough to just show someone else's chemistry midterm to look a little less dorky. I purposely didn't read Call of the Wild in seventh grade so I wouldn't get a great score on a quiz... and, just like when I learned a pair of Calvin Klein jeans wouldn't make me popular, I discovered that having something in common with "the cool kids" wasn't enough to grant me the same "happiness." Similarly, like Ryder, I also tried a "bad girl" image, which worked better than anything else but was too difficult to maintain when I ran out of movie references. Image is a big deal to teens, but fortunately its prominence fades away quite a bit if you go to a large state school...

Melissa & Joey "The Unfriending" (S03E08): Mel's friend, Anita, comes over, but Joe thinks it's a bad idea because Anita isn't a good person. [she really sounds horrible, actually.] Mel tells her that she only has an hour, but Anita gives her puppy-dog eyes and asks her to go to a bar. Mel winds up missing a meeting with the mayor the next day because of the antics, and Joe tells her that she needs to cut off all ties with the woman. [that might be a little harsh.] He even demonstrates how to do it. [haha!] Mel follows through, but when Joe heads grocery shopping, he runs into Anita, who uses the eyes on him to start a relationship. But, Mel suspects that Anita is using Joe to be near her, only he won't believe it until Anita is forced to admit it. [saying it was "a means to an end" was a bit too much, I thought.] 

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Holly unfriends Ryder, and then other kids at school follow suit, causing him to lose hundreds of friends, including Lennox. Home-bound Ryder becomes desperate to look more popular again, even blackmailing Zander into friending him after he learns that the kid is smarter than Lennox but faking it so she doesn't freak out. [you get your SAT scores via email now?? man, I remember waiting for those results every day in the mail all those years ago... also, Lennox's outfit was hideous.] What actually helps, however, is when Anita friends Ryder, as her many risque pictures quickly get him a lot of "friends."

Melissa & Joey "Something Happened" (S03E09): Joe is paranoid that Lennox will have sex with about-to-be-18-years-old Zander, so he spends a lot of time with the teen at the batting cages to wear him out. But, it's too late, as Mel reads Lennox's blog, noting that she's already had sex, and it wasn't that mind-blowing. [I couldn't imagine putting that on the internet!] Joe wants to live in denial while Mel thinks that she should spice up the experience for her niece. [I also cannot fathom a world where you want your teen to have better/more sex!] Lennox is embarrassed but she then turns to Mel anyway when Zander dumps her because of what she put on the internet. [funny that Zander figured the batting cages would be a place where nobody would look for him.] 

Kira thinks Ryder is a "bad boy" because of his suspension, so he pretends that he's a real gangster, using television characters' names from Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos for the sheltered girl. Unfortunately, she tells her mothers, who ban their daughter from seeing him. [I was never able to understand kids who told their parents everything. they certainly ruined all our fun, LoL.] He has to come clean to keep the relationship alive, though Kira still thinks that he's a bad boy who lied to her parents, not to her. [haha, making up evil deeds to seem cool. I was there once, too.]

Melissa & Joey "Family Feud" (S03E10): Zander spends the night in Lennox's room because he was drinking the night before. [ugh.] This obviously becomes the main attraction for Joe and Mel to discuss, but they just so happen to do so on local television, where they're filling in as co-hosts on a morning show for a week. [that was a TERRIBLE commercial! I can't believe they were given a larger assignment based on that!] Although Lennox doesn't hear it, Zander pretends that his parents kicked him out of their house because of it. [the key word being "pretends," as Joe later goes after the kid when he learns it isn't true!] Mel wants to make an apology on the air the next morning, but Lennox tells her to keep quiet about her homelife.

Of course, that only means Ryder comes up instead, and Joe talks about how he's far from being sexually active. [I could see how that would be embarrassing, but nowhere near as much as the conversation about Lennox!] Lennox decides that "over-sharing is a two-way street" and tweets about Mel's oenophile tendencies. [yikes!] Though it is making Mel more of a household name (which is important for a state senate candidate), she and and Joe must leave the show before they exploit their family further. [another month?? don't local shows usually shake up the guest hosts in times like this?] They even tell the teens that they were fired for being boring. [I'm still curious as to how everyone was watching a morning show live...]