I’ve already admitted to being completely smitten by Max, Rusty’s semi-geeky (but totally adorable) resident advisor. It appeared that Max had set his eyes on Casey and she on him but it was also evident that there was something about Max that wasn’t yet revealed to us. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with NASA, which keeps coming up and I’m still convinced there’s more to that story than what we’ve been told. No, the revelation about Max was that he has a girlfriend. Or technically, he had a girlfriend.
After having a sweet, kissy dream about Max, Casey decides to make up an excuse to see him. Since he didn’t seem all that into the idea of hanging out at a bar, she hires him as her astronomy tutor. The “date” doesn’t go as Casey planned though when Max includes a bunch of jocks in his tutoring session. He doesn’t respond to her flirting once again and Casey doesn’t know what to think about this. Then Rusty comes across a photo of a girl and Max says she’s his girlfriend. Rusty relays this news to Casey who realizes the game is over. She sends Max a check for his tutoring services and plans to leave it at that.
Max shows up to tell Casey she forgot to sign the check but when she goes on of a mini-rant about him having issues, he ends up kissing her, then quickly walks off. It was a sweet but totally confusing moment and leaves Casey even more in the dark than she already was. She finds Max and talks to him about the whole girlfriend thing and he explains to her that his girlfriend died six months ago of cancer. Heartbreaking. He’s still not over it and tells her that he doesn’t think it’s the right time to date because being around Casey makes him think of his girlfriend. She consents to bow out, realizing Max obviously isn’t ready to play the dating game. And she thought Cappie and Evan had baggage! Max’s grief puts their problems to shame.
At the end of the episode Max finds Casey in the astronomy lab and tells her the story of Orpheus, a Greek mythological figure who lost his love by “looking back.” There’s a metaphor in there but it’s late and I’m not sure I’m up for pondering it right now. Long story short, Max doesn’t want to look back anymore. Their conversation ends with a kiss, better than the quick one he gave her earlier. It looks like these two are going to be a thing now and that’s great as Max seems like a great guy. I’m just wondering if Casey is up for this challenge. It can’t be easy dating a guy who lost his love to cancer at such a young age. Casey admitted to having almost no experience with loss. The only thing she knows that died was Rusty’s cat, whom she ran over with the car.
In less serious news, Rusty and his fellow pledges are gearing up for the big pledge challenge that will hopefully put an end to their pledging and make them full brothers. In studying up on all of the actives in Kappa Tau, Rusty comes across a brother he’s not familiar with named Joshua Whopper. When trying to track down Whopper, Rusty questions the Women’s Studies professor of a class that Whopper is supposedly enrolled in (according to the records Rusty and his pledge brothers hacked into). Since Whopper has an A in the course, the professor says he might not show up for regular lectures.
Rusty becomes convinced that Cappie is Whopper and seeing as they don’t know Cappie’s real name, it’s possible. He questions Cappie about this and reluctantly, Cappie explains that Whopper is a fake student, enrolled each semester by the KT brothers. It started back in the 80’s when the school started using computers to keep track of the grades. Fearing the school would revoke the frat’s charter if they didn’t keep their average GPA up, one of the nerdier brothers created Joshua Whopper, a fake-student who always got A’s. He exists only in the Cyprus Rhodes grading system, basically. Rusty’s curiosity is satiated by this information but there’s another problem. The professor he questioned looked into Whopper’s performance in the class and realized she didn’t have the exam he supposedly got an A on. The teacher’s assistant shows up and asks Cappie where Whopper is, saying she needs him to retake the exam or there will be an inquiry. Cappie says he’s Whopper and will retake the test. He scrambles to study for it, learning all about “Phalluses” with the help of his brothers. While he goes off to ace the exam, the brothers that studied with him, including Beaver, got all girlified from their newfound appreciation of feminism. Then they drank some beer and were cured of their temporary “insanity.”
And in the final story arc of the episode, Michael is back but from the looks of it, he might not be around for much longer. Calvin and Michael are enjoying a quiet romantic night when Michael questions Calvin as to why he doesn’t have more gay friends. He convinces Calvin to go to Gentleman’s Choice (the strip club? No. The other one). Gentleman’s Choice is a gay club where Calvin can spread his big gay wings. He agrees reluctantly.
Calvin ends up inviting Ashleigh to join them. Ashleigh invites Rebecca, who is down since breaking up with Cappie. While Cappie was off separating his own sex-costumes from Rebecca’s, Rebecca has been brooding over the breakup, so she agrees to go to GC with Ashleigh. Ashleigh assures her that gay guys will tell them they’re fabulous and make them feel hot.
When they show up at the club, Michael does his duty of making sure Ashleigh and Rebecca are well taken care of. He recruits one of his gay friends to do the whole “OMG! You guys look fabulous!” routine and take them off to dance so that he can spend time with Calvin. Calvin runs into Heath, his ex-flame from their rush days. The two hit it off, exchanging a few laughs, including “You know how I know you’re gay? You go to Gentleman’s Choice.” While Michael is more refined and wants to show Calvin all of the great things about gay culture, Heath likes Judd Apatow movies as much as Calvin. Now that Heath and his boyfriend have split up, I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before these two get back together.
Finally, Ashleigh spent part of the episode looking for a job but had problems with most of the unflattering attire she might be required to wear for certain jobs. In the end, she took a job as a campus tour guide and I can see her doing really well with this… unless the people on the tour ask about academics or anything other than Greek life, fashion and guys.
