American Dreams 10/3/04
 

Milo Ventimiglia shows up as the bad boy next door, much to Meg's surprise, though Rox is more than okay with it. Having Daphne Zuniga as the mother of the bad boy and new neighbor makes me feel old, though it was over a decade since her Melrose Place days. Milo has to be in his mid/late 20's by now, still playing a teenager...

The new principal starts integrating the boys and girls at Meg's school. Hormones will be flying.

Meg tries to wear her peace buttons on the AB show, but Dick Clark shoots down that idea. Then she plans to have the girls wear them at school, but no one will, and the buttons are discovered in her locker. Her punishment is to direct the Henry V school play (since it involves a war as its backdrop).

Helen is reticent about Patty interacting with her gay co-worker (on the Campbell Soup "American Dreams" contest), but finally puts aside her prejudices.

Jack decides to go door-to-door in seeking out the women vote. That wasn't going well, so his brother suggests the black vote is another viable alternative. Dom isn't on board, so he jumps off the Jack train, as does the barber. Henry bites his tongue. Jack used money saved for the summer trip for his campaign, and Helen was upset because she thought he should have at least talked about it. They argue, but get through it (they WILL be going on their summer trip, though).

JJ gets new orders, probably some special ops assignment. The missions appear to be targetted for Cambodia. I would suspect that the Vietamese girl will help him learn the language because he'll need to learn it for his missions, but refused her help before he knew of his new orders.

Sam catches the eye of the pretty basketball team tutor, which makes him want to make the team even more, though Henry was concerned about taking on too much too soon in college.

I don't know why, but I had this sudden craving for soup while watching this episode. Mmmmm, mmmmm, product placement. :D

I'm really liking Beth's new folk-singer friend. He is played by Ben Taylor, who is the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon.

I was surprised by the Daphne Zuniga sighting. I almost screamed "Princess Vespa!" when she showed up at the door.

The only storylines I cared for are Jack's run for office and now going after the black vote and JJ's possible new assignment in SE Asia.

Milo is in type-casting hell.

How tall is Zuniga? She was towering over Helen outside the Pryor's house.

According to IMDB, she is 5' 8" and Helen is 5' 3".

She really pulls off that slutty 60s Playmate look well. :)

I like all the storylines except for the gay dude storyline - like I said last year, I think they are forcing too many controversial things into one time period.

Frankly, for everything else, the Vietnam segments are what I find least interesting.