Charm School: We Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself. And Herpes.

Previously on Charm School: Bubbles swam in the air even though Charm School has a pool, Kip and Marcia decided they hated each other, the dolphin squad squeaked at Porno, and Porno got sent home to get some nookie (and I threw up in my mouth a little). Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Charm School. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

It’s a rainy day in, uh, wherever the fuck this school is located. I think it’s in L.A. somewhere, but I don’t remember L.A. having a whole lot of wet weather. Maybe storm clouds are attracted to crazy chicks? No, cause then the entirety of SoCal would look a lot like Seattle. Meh… I’m hungover and rambling. Let’s see what our Charming Ladies in training are up to.

Tranny is bitching again about how much she hates Kip. Okay, we get it. You guys don’t like each other. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of no one caring. Tranny tries desperately to convince Marcia that Kip resembles Darth Vader. Here’s a photo comparison for everyone.

That’s the best match I could find, and I looked pretty hard. Yeah, Tranny, maybe you should leave the snarky nick-name giving to the experts (i.e. me) and you just stick to gobbing on the make-up and looking like a man, k?

So Marcia is making fun of either Kip or Brittanya and Brittanya is all sorts of pissed. She yells at Marcia a bit, but then remembers that she’s got a one-way ticket to women’s prison burning a hole in her pocket and stops short of actual physical violence. It’s a shame, cause these bitches are getting boring and a good old fashioned chick fight might really liven things up.

Ricki gets on the intercom and calls the ladies down for their lesson, which today is “Thou Shalt Face Thy Fears.”

Lala introduces Dr. Allison Arnold, also known as The Fear Liberator. She tells us that fear is mostly created in your mind, and holy shit did anyone not know that already? Jesus, lady, did you go to fake head doctor medical school for eight whole years to learn that?

She tells the ladies that when we get hurt we have to build up armor around our hearts and become tough or defensive or scared or cool. Seriously? This is crap. I could learn this all from listening to a country radio station for ten minutes.

So the Doctorator calls the ladies up one at a time to confess to what they’re scared of. Brittanya is first, and she says she’s scared that her son is gonna turn out all fucked up if she goes to jail for a year. I’m pretty sure her son is gonna turn out all fucked up anyway, just because his mom seems to enjoy being a giant skank on national television, but I guess I could see the jail thing kinda compounding the issue.

So Brittanya cries a lot and there’s some hugging or something and I decide to start drinking. K.O. is up next and her deepest fear is losing her brother because he’s her only blood relative. She says that she doesn’t think her life is worth living without him and Doctor Arnold has all the ladies come up and say something nice to K.O. about how not worthless she is. This would have been way funnier if they all had to say something nice to Kip or Porno or something, but as is it’s pretty genuine and everyone thinks K.O. is just awesome.

3bay is next and she says she’s scared of getting murdered. Apparently she has a stalker and she carries a gun at all times. The doctor makes her lay down, and then for no reason I can really understand the other ladies come up and play Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.

Doc tells her to turn her fear over to god and trust him to protect her. Yeah, that sounds like a way better plan than packing heat. You let me know how that goes for you, there. 3bay yells about committing to life and then we get our second Nancy Kerrigan impression of the season.

Kip is next and she’s scared that her son won’t be proud of her. Now why would your son possibly be ashamed of you? You are a paradigm of chastity and virtue!

Kip tells us she grew up dirt poor with a single mom, and the reason she strips is so that her kid will never have to know what it’s like to be poor. That’s all well and good lady, but how do you justify going on reality television and showing your hoo-hoo to Brett Michaels?

Bubbles is next and she’s afraid of getting attacked by men because she was sexually abused as a child. Ummm… I don’t think I can make fun of childhood sexual abuse, so let’s just move on. 3bay feels like crap for being so mean to Bubbles, and then all the ladies come up and hug her.

Tranny is up next and she says she’s scared of not being in control and of letting people get close to her. The Doc tells her she’s dying by not living or some other such psycho babble and then tells Tranny to talk to some invisible Tranny that’s sitting in a chair and tell her that she needs to let people in.

Tangible Tranny doesn’t want to do it, and Lala is very disappointed.

It’s Marcia’s turn and she says she’s afraid to get hurt, and copes with tequila. Hey, you and me both, sistah! Helps, doesn’t it? After some goading Marcia vows not to have another sip of alcohol while she’s at Charm School. Anyone wanna take bets on how long that’s gonna last?

Risky steps up and says she’s not afraid of anything, but she says it while crying so it loses a bit of credibility. She says she’s been through too much and she doesn’t see any reason to talk about it and relive it. The doc says that part of living fearlessly means choosing to live fearlessly for yourself because it’s what you want. So far as I can tell living fearlessly involves a lot of crying and hugging in her world.

P.S. I fucking hate emo kids.

They thank the doctor and say goodbye and HOLY CRAP LALA IS A GIANT!

So the ladies learn that they’re going to have a challenge that involves facing their fears, and they get broken up into two teams. The blue team is 3bay, Tranny, Bubbles, and Kip, and the pink team is Risky, Brittanya, K.O., and Marcia. They hop on the short bus in their conveniently color-coded winter coats, just in case someone forgets what team they’re on, and pull up to an old abandoned hospital. Kip thinks it’s ugly, but Kip thought Brett Michaels was hot, so her opinion is null and void.

Lala tells the ladies that it’s a very old hospital and a lot of people died there. Holy crap, you guys! A hospital that people died in? That’s just crazy talk! No one dies in a hospital. Dr. House always figures out what’s wrong with them and it’s always Not Cancer, except for that one time when it was.

Kip informs us that she believes in ghosts, and is very much frightened of them. Who thinks Kip is gonna freak out and totally bone this challenge?

Stryker tells them that they will have to complete tasks to face their fears, and each task they complete will raise money for charity. They go to a Safe Room and each team is told to pick a communicator to stay in the safe room and direct the other ladies through their tasks. Blue picks Risky and pink picks 3bay. I’m sure there’s some sort of joke about racial profiling and black girls being good at talking a lot in here somewhere, but like I said, I’m hungover.

Oh yeah, back on Charm School, the blue team is up first and they have to go secure some lockers in the morgue or something. Tranny and Bubbles head down to the body lockers where they’re told to move some dead bodies out of the way. Bubbles is all freaked out about moving the dead bodies (which are in body bags) and I have my suspicions that maybe, just maybe, those aren’t actual dead bodies in there. I think it’s illegal to just leave dead people laying around in an abandoned hospital.

So Tranny decides that Bubbles needs to face her fears and graciously allows her to do all the work. Tranny’s such a nice man/lady. After some freaking out about rats and ghosts and stuff they complete their task and head back to the safe room. Team blue earns $200 for charity. Wow, way to pony up the dough there, VH1. I’m sure those little kids dying of cancer really appreciate the half a day of medication you just bought for one of them.

It’s team Pink’s turn, and they have to do vermin removal. I have a question… If this hospital has been abandoned for 15 years like Lala said at the beginning, then how in the fuck are there still live rats in the traps? You know what this is?

K.O. and Marcia head off to board up a window and retrieve some rats, and they have decided on a tactic of screaming profanities at the ghosts.

It’s kinda hilarious because they mostly just sound like they have wicked turrettes, but they manage to kick the board in and grab the rat traps, and they head back to the safe room. Kip tells them not to touch the rats because they (the rats) probably have a disease.

Two hundred bucks for the Pink team, and I really hope that whatever charity they’re playing for is in one of those third world countries where American dollars are still worth a bunch of money, because this is just weak.

So it’s blue’s turn again, and they send Kip off all by herself to disarm some electrical equipment, because abandoned buildings are always full of functional electrical equipment. She goes to some testing room, and check out the awesome graffiti on the walls.

Her walking talkie is breaking up, but she manages to pull some lever and yank on some wire, which sends a bunch of sparks flying at her.

Kip freaks out and runs around the hospital, gets lost, and blue has to send Tranny down to go retrieve her. Even though she got lost, she did manage to “disarm” the electrical equipment, so blue team gets $500.

Back to team pink, and they send Brittanya off to collect some bio-hazardous waste. She makes it down to the testing room, but she doesn’t know what a bio-hazard is and she gets very confused. Here’s a hint, honey: Anything you ladies have touched is a bio-hazard. Just grab the whole building and head back upstairs.

Brit manages to figure out what she’s supposed to collect, throws it in a bucket, and heads back upstairs. $500 for the pink team. Woo fucking hoo.

So with the scores tied it’s up to Lala and Stryker to make the incredibly difficult decision of picking a winner. They decide that since Kip got lost they’re gonna give the victory to the pink team. Tranny gets very angry and tells the cameras that she blames Kip for her team losing. Ummm… yeah, they just said your team lost because of Kip. This isn’t really up for debate.

So team pink is on The Dean’s List, and team blue is off to detention.

The ladies vote and it’s two for Kip, one for Tranny, and one for Bubbles. Risky is safe from the carpet and the other girls are up for expulsion. Thank god VH1 takes the time to explain that to me, because I never would have figured it out on my own.

Kip tells the cameras that Bubbles should leave because she’s so stupid, and then Kip gets outsmarted by a door.

Lala and Stryker go in to talk to Ricki about how all the ladies did. They say that Risky and Tranny suck at sharing and they aren’t really trying. I concur that Tranny isn’t really trying, but she is the only one that got asked to talk to some invisible version of herself in a chair. I think I would have refused too.

Lala thinks that Bubbles, Kip, and Marcia all did a really good job of crying and emoting and stuff. Come on, they have ovaries. This isn’t really that much of a victory. I wish I could get the women in my life to do a whole lot less of the crying and emoting. Maybe I should date Tranny.

Blah blah blah, tough decision, blah blah, glad I’m not you. Yeah, we’ve heard all this before, and it was boring the first time.

With that it’s time for the expulsion ceremony. They talk to the ladies a bit and Marcia once again vows not to drink anymore. Bubbles talks about how she faced her fears and doesn’t deserve to be on the carpet. She’s kinda cry-yelling, which makes her difficult to understand, but I swear she says when she was in the morgue she was really scared of getting tagged. Yeah, I have no fucking clue what she’s talking about.

So Tranny, Bubbles, and Kip hit the carpet. Kip says she doesn’t know why she’s down there and Tranny gets all angry and says Kip is only doing good because Farrah isn’t there. Kip says that’s lame, and I’m gonna have to agree. Ricki tells Kip that she was a bully when she first got there, and that she’s been on the carpet four times, but that she really sees a change in her and she sends her back to join her classmates. I hope Ricki feels like a moron when she watches this show back and sees the shit Kip says to the cameras.

So who’s going home? Tranny or Bubbles? Ricki doesn’t think Tranny is making enough progress and Tranny says she really doesn’t need the prize money. Well that’s good hon, cause your ass is expelled. Ricki congratulates Bubbles on finding her voice. Umm… Yeah… Good for you, but could you maybe find a different one?

Next time, the ladies struggle through the building of some sort of swing-set, everyone loves K.O. except Kip, K.O. winds up in the hospital with a cardiac block, and Kip thinks heart attacks are annoying.