Ugly Americans, S02E17
Mark prepared to propose a proposal to Callie on April Fools' Day, but the DOI was under lock down due to Mark's predecessor's escape from jail. Barney had swore murderous revenge on all of them, so they were taking precautions by escaping to a cabin out of town. Mark found it hard to believe that their emergency was real and resisted sharing their panic until he started to see his friends dead in the woods. He also learned that Callie used to date Barney and was likely still in love with him. When Mark, Grimes, and Callie were captured by the madman, they were forced to participate in a twisted dating game show, where Barney seemed to have won Callie's heart again. Mark fell into a jealous rage and tried to kill the man, but his friends stopped him by letting him know it was an elaborate prank after all. While all of this was going on Leonard and Randall tried to get back to town to cash a lottery ticket. They managed to escape from some rapist, hillbilly pig people, but when they tried to redeem the ticket, the clerk refused to accept it because it was ripped in half.
I thought it was kind of half-assed of Mark to want to ask Callie to be engaged to be engaged. For someone who always pretends to be so responsible, it just sounds like a shallow commitment to trick someone into thinking they were actually serious. I did like that when he brought up doing it that Randall did seem a little worried that Mark would move out of the apartment one day. But with them one stage below engaged, I doubt that Randall has to worry about that any time soon. Even though I thought his proposal was pointless, I still thought Callie would appreciate the gesture, but she barely paid attention to him when he asked her in Randall's van. I wonder if they weren't all trying to trick Mark would she have been a little more happy about it.
Once Mark made it known that he didn't care for pranks and suspected that the whole DOI emergency was a ruse, I knew that no matter what happened that he was going to be right. I also assumed that Callie would propose to him in the end since she was a little too disinterested in Mark and his ring in the car. I feel like she would be the tiniest bit more concerned that her boyfriend was making such a grand (or not) gesture of their love. However, I enjoyed watching the horror movie-like setting unfold. It was an interesting idea that Callie's ex was a much better match for her than Mark, and I liked how he was doubting that they belonged together at all (since he was the exact opposite of Barney). It was also nice to see Mark get mad and stabby. He rarely lets his temper get the best of him, and it's even rarer that he would resort to violence to solve a problem. He must really love Callie to get that upset.
I know that they were pranking Mark, but did Eric really use to be a human? I mean, obviously the guy they paid to play Barney hadn't really worked at the DOI in the past, but I could believe that ridiculous story that someone killed Eric and he was rebuilt as a robot. He's not made out of anything organic, so someone had to put him together. So for what purpose was he built? I usually don't pay attention to his character at all, but that scene where they explained his origins made me curious about his actual story. But who knows if they will ever address that. It's only important to people as random as me, I guess.
I actually thought that Leonard's winning lottery ticket was an April Fools' joke too, but it was real after all. I'm not surprised that Randall became a part of it and tried to swindle him out of the ticket. What was an interesting turn of events was when those hillbilly pigs captured them. Never saw that coming. Glad we didn't have to see too much gross stuff in that department. I could just laugh at their horrible predicament without having to witness the creepy, sexual things they were exposed to. Sucked that after all that mess, the clerk refused to honor the ticket. He made things worse by saying that if Leonard had taped the ticket together first, he might not have noticed it was torn and accepted it. Oh, well. Leonard would have surely been a bastard as a millionaire. He's not the most grounded person to begin with.
For some reason, this episode made me feel like it was a season finale. That could be possible since they just started the season where they left off before. I don't think that there's anything really special about Mark and Callie's engagement to engagement, but maybe for them that's a huge step (since I get the feeling that Callie was pretty serious about the reason she was with Mark didn't amount to much more than getting used to him being around). I didn't have a lot of laughs in this story, but I still liked that everyone worked together to fool Mark. Despite it being a predictable development, I enjoyed the ride to the obvious conclusion.
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