Shawn is calling the answering machine at Turner’s house to check to see if his dad called. I was going to make some crack about how in the 90s you had to actually call an external machine to check your messages… but these days even though you can access your messages from your cell phone, you do still have to call a different number to listen to them.
Shawn and Turner are going apartment hunting for some reason. Shawn doesn’t like any of the apartments they’ve looked for. He doesn’t understand why they have to move to begin with. I’m with him.
He points out that they also have nice neighbors there. In comes Eli, escaping from the lecherous eye of Ms. Dubcek.
If only it made any sense for it to be THAT Ms. Dubcek.
At school, Feeny compliments Eric on his newly reenergized self. But he got a D on his paper. Why are they still turning in papers even though they had final exams already??
Feeny then suggest tutoring. The last time Eric was tutored it didn’t end so well, but it turns out Feeny means for Eric to be a tutor. There’s some dumb jock that needs a C average to get into college, and if Eric can work on him, he’ll get extra credit.
Meanwhile, Shawn doesn’t want to go apartment hunting because he moved around so much as a kid. This is the first we’re hearing about that. But okay.
Later(?), Eli is sampling Turner’s duck, which I intentionally phrased to sound vaguely dirty. No, Turner made duck a l’orange, but Eli says it tastes weird and wonders if he used Tang. Turner yells at him for eating so much of it. They’re such a cute couple.
Eli asks what got into Turner’s grits, and Turner says he’s just excited because in 48 hours he becomes Shawn’s legal guardian. Shawn comes in then, Eli leaves, and Turner reveals he has a date that night. I’m sure that date will only lead to wonderful things for Turner and we’ll be seeing his date so often after this we’ll all get sick of her.
Shawn goes through the mail, finding a letter from his dad, who’s at a truck stop outside Reading, which some of you may best know as the name of one of the railroads in Monopoly. Shawn throws out the letter without reading it, being upset that his dad is 50 miles away and didn’t bother to come visit Shawn.
Also Turner mentions that he’ll officially be Shawn’s legal guardian in two days. Shawn’s confused because he thought Turner took care of that stuff months ago. Turner explains that he got the paper work but didn’t get around to filling it out. Shawn’s all “Didn’t ‘get around to it’?” Then Shawn leaves in a huff for like the third time in 7 minutes.
The guy Eric’s tutoring doesn’t know the name of the king who came before Louis XIV (it was Louis XIII). Maybe the study session would work better if they weren’t in a burger joint but were in a library or something.
Shawn shows up and tells Cory to go with him to visit his dad. Shawn stole Turner’s bike. Shawn says “What’s the worst that can happen?” Shawn gets arrested.
I accidentally wrote a children’s book there.
So Turner bails him out and scolds him. The gist of their argument is that since Shawn has been reluctant to help Turner look for a bigger apartment, and Turner has been putting off taking care of the guardianship papers, they were both secretly hoping their living arrangements wouldn’t be permanent.
So Shawn decides to move in with his Uncle Mike and asks to store his stuff at the Matthews home.
Eric’s upset at how stupid that kid is. The one he’s tutoring, not Shawn. He’s especially p.o.’ed that a kid that dumb has 20 colleges climbing over each other to get him but Eric can’t even get into one. Eric also casually drops some obscure history knowledge so I think perhaps this was all a ploy of Feeny’s to get Eric to learn so he does well on his paper.
Cory tells Alan about Shawn and long story short he decides to go find Shawn’s dad to convince him to come back himself.
This lady thinks Cory would make a wonderful boyfriend. Topanga, who came with Cory for some reason, drags the lady outside to “chat.”
Wherever they are, there’s a sign that says “fluffy pancakes with bacon” which is all anyone should ever want in life.
Cory finds Chet (Shawn’s dad) and tells him that Shawn needs Chet to come back. Chet thinks Shawn is doing fine without him, actually even better than he had been doing. Cory’s like “But you’re his father!” Chet says he loves Shawn, but he’s just not what Shawn needs right now. Now that’s responsible parenting. Recognizing that even though you’re immediate family, sometimes you aren’t the best person to be taking care of your kid.
Topanga and the lady come back, now friends, and the lady tells Topanga if she teases her hair she could probably be six feet tall. Topanga’s got a good two feet of hair so the lady’s not wrong.
Eric tries to talk to Feeny before he grades the mid-terms about – wait, MID-TERMS?? Don’t they usually take mid-terms in the, you know, middle of the term? Didn’t they just take finals like two episodes ago? And it’s almost the end of the school year anyway. I can’t even justify this at all.
Well, anyway, Eric wanted to talk to Feeny about that kid he was tutoring, but Feeny already graded the mid-terms. Eric still tries talking to him, saying Feeny knows how hard it can be to teach someone who doesn’t want to be taught.
But the kid actually got a C+ on the mid-term anyway. Good job, Eric! And Eric got an A. Eric’s very pleased, and also realizes this must’ve been Feeny’s plan all along, to get him to teach himself. I don’t know if I should be pleased that Eric and I both figured that out.
Uncle Mike’s trailer was gone so Shawn slept in the park. A cop found him and brought him to the police station, where they called Chet, I guess. Chet says he got close to finding Shawn’s mom a couple times but she dove off a river boat at one point. He’s pretty much given up on her – “If she wanted to be caught, I would’ve caught her by now.”
Shawn makes his case that he wants to stay with his dad – Shawn needs Chet, and Chet needs Shawn. Chet’s still not sure, because Turner’s such a good influence, but they decide to live together again anyway. Turner shows up, having bailed out Shawn, and he’s pretty okay with the situation.
What a weird and emotionless ending.
Turner and Shawn didn’t really do much together anyway, so I guess no big loss.
