The Yard recap, episode 5: Worst. Episode. Ever.

The Yard recap, episode 5: Worst. Episode. Ever.

This week’s most valuable player: us, for watching the entire episode

THE YARD Episode 5

This week’s episode of The Yard is all about the peanut butter racket and the inexhaustible supply and demand surrounding the salty-sweet contraband. Wait—what’s that you say? We must be talking about last week’s episode? No, sirs (and ma’ams), you heard us correctly. This week’s episode is about the exact same thing that last week’s episode was about.

The Yard’s gimmicky premise is wearing really thin by episode five, as the business of smuggling peanut butter into the schoolyard—a joke we’re already tired of—takes its toll on Nick, who’s finding the pressure to be too much to bear. He basically whines, faints and whines some more, and that’s all that happens in this crappy episode. And we don’t mean that literally, since this one doesn’t even have any creative gross-outs (gone are the days of poop sandwiches and sharts) to spice up the mix. We look at what went down—including Johnny almost killing Cory—after the jump.

THE SETUP: Running the yard and managing the peanut butter racket is too much for sensitive, feathered-haired Nick, whose home life, apparently, resembles that of Charlie from Party of Five. The kid is overworked, what with having to feed and clothe his brothers, deliver papers and lovingly assembly dozens of PB&Js every day, eventually fainting from sleep deprivation. Meanwhile, the demands of the yard are growing, especially since the masses are rising up against the peanut butter tax increase. Or something. To be honest, we were only half paying attention because this episode was boring.

THE SCHEME: Sir Ladyhair (we mean Nick) and Mary, his metal-mouthed maiden, concoct a plan in which Nick gets busted for planting sandwiches in the yard, earning himself a leisurely suspension in which he spends his time napping and making hats out of newspaper. Don’t kids have video games and the Internet now? What a waste of a suspension. He makes the bonehead move of leaving his responsibilities to Suzi (who wears more cat T-shirts than anyone should ever wear) and—wait for it—Johnny. Suzi ends up punching everyone who asks her for help, while Johnny, of course, embezzles the peanut butter money to buy himself a gold lamé (or, if we’re not feeling French, lame) magic suit. Why didn’t Nick leave his business to boy genius J.J.? The logic escapes us.

THE UPSHOT: Nick is pulled back into the thick of it after Johnny almost kills Cory. The latter is pretty much starving to death without a can opener for the mysterious canned lunch food his alcoholic mom gave him (it could either be peaches or dog food, he tells us). Johnny, having spent all his money on his magic suit (don’t get us started), can only offer him a peanut butter sandwich, and the deathly allergic Cory goes into anaphylactic shock when he eats the crusts, making Nick realize that the yard needs him. He eventually accepts his need for a work-life balance and bequeaths the peanut butter business to Frankie. He and Mary also continue their awkward adolescent courtship, and we continue to not care.

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER: Us, for watching this entire episode.