The Secret Life of the American Teenager – “Sex.” Drink!

Carissa’s back Guest-Clacking for us again about a show she has no secret about being hooked into.

Last week, we learned about revenge sex. Adrian and Ben decided to have sex to get back at Ricky and Amy for kissing (and because they thought they did more). Amy asked Ricky to kiss her because the boy she likes hasn’t called, and she thought it was because she was a bad kisser (the reality was that he saw a condom in her purse, and thought she was ready to have sex and therefore lying to him about not wanting to have sex again in high school — duh!). So Ben and Ricky have become best friends. Now Ricky’s best friend and girlfriend had sex, and there will be ramifications from that. I can honestly say its not a lesson I learned at 15 or 16 (and the lesson I learned was quite different). If this is what being a sophomore in high school is like these days, I no longer have a problem with being old.

Basically, everybody was busy learning lessons about sex and lying. Ricky ended up on the short end of the sex stick for probably the first time in his life. He also told Adrian he loved her (via text message), and then found out about the sex. He cried. Cried! By the end of the show, he was gone. Packed and left. What happened to Ricky?!

Meanwhile, the goofy best friends duo, Madison and Lauren, took pictures of themselves with Amy’s baby to mail to their boyfriends because they were thinking about marrying them and having babies. Then they thought it would be far more to their advantage if they called their respective boyfriends and told them they never wanted to have kids or get married. A little reverse psychology always works, right? Wrong! They were dumped. Luckily, the boys told the girls they broke up because they didn’t want to date girls if there wasn’t a possibility of a future with babies and marriage. Whew! At 16, these boys don’t want to get involved unless there is a possible future. Hmmm … maybe being a sophomore today wouldn’t be so bad if this town was real. Oops — I forgot about everyone else for a second there.

Ben called his soon-to-be stepmother, Betty, a hooker to her face by saying he wouldn’t take sex advice from an ex-hooker. She responded by saying she loved him; definitely not what he expected. When he apologized, she asked if he ever had conversations in his head in anticipation of what might happen in real life. I don’t know about you guys, but I do this all the time, so I was interested in hearing what Betty had to say. She said before she met Ben’s dad that she used to imagine asking him to breakfast, and then him saying she was a hooker and to get away from her because she was a “dirty bird.” She played it over and over in her head so many times that she didn’t even give herself a chance to have a real conversation with him. She finally had to talk herself out of the imaginary hole she dug for herself, and it turned out completely different. She encourages Ben to stop thinking about what Amy will say if he talks to her and to be the hopeless romantic he is and just go for it. Out of this we find out that Ben doesn’t think he wants to be the good guy any more. Frankly, I can’t see him fitting in anywhere else. Although he does behave like a jackass very well, he doesn’t have the rakishly handsome side that makes for a truly good bad boy.

Ricky called Ashley and told her where he was and that he was OK while the rest of the town scrambled to find him. He was looking for his birth mother. He hates himself. He found his birth mother and told her he wished she had let his dad kill him because at least he wouldn’t be screwing up other peoples lives now. It pains me to think that children really grow up to feel that way. Turns out she had been saving money for him ever since she found out he put his father away in jail again. A token of her appreciation. She tossed a big wad of cash at him and told him to go back to being a dad and to have a good life.

George and Anne have been in therapy and Anne finally breaks down and says she’s sick of living with everybody’s mistakes. Being as good of a therapist as the warden of OZ could be, Ernie Hudson as the therapist told her that we are the sum of all of our experiences, whether good or bad, and if it wasn’t for pulling through after mistakes had been made, she wouldn’t be the strong and beautiful woman she is today. Amazingly, I say that ALL THE TIME! I know how to put a positive spin on mistakes; yes I do. Shailene Woodley finally showed some acting chops as Amy let it all out in a crying jag, and Anne was able to share that same advice with her daughter, and really mean it.

Adrian is lost, wanting her parents to get married so she can have a real family. Somehow she seems to think this will be the answer to all of her problems and the fulfillment of her dreams. When her dad asked her, hypothetically, when having sex might wrong, Adrian said, “When the sex isn’t fun.” Gotta love that attitude! Of course, that’s not what a dad wants to hear. He was trying to get her to understand is that sex is better with someone you love and not to just toss herself all over every guy she knows. But in her eyes, she and Ben had evened the score. Ricky was Amy’s first, and now Adrian was Ben’s. So there. Even.

The glimmer of things to come is how much George trusts Ashley, and that Ashley has actually started to lie to her dad. Their relationship changing could alter the whole family dynamic, so it should be interesting to watch. All in all, an impressive two episodes with some life advice that teenagers could really use. Hell, I could really use it, so I know they can. I think I need to count the times they say “sex” during an average episode and, in doing that, thank God that this show wasn’t around in college, because if I had to drink every time they say sex, I’m fairly certain I’d die of alcohol poisoning.

Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Mar 01, 2010 @ 23:02 EST5EDT