January 30, 2010
SVH Super Edition, Spring Break: Another Stumbling Block for French-American Relations
What's with the trenchcoats? Are they spies now?
Summary: Jessica and Elizabeth spend spring break in Cannes, because no one thought of the possibility of Jessica causing an international incident. They stay with a woman whose son, René, is a jerk to the twins because he hates Americans (it’s his daddy issues – his father, who ditched his family, is American). Elizabeth meets a guy named Jean-Claude, whose grandmother is a countess (not that that ever really matters in the story), and when Jessica decides to ditch the guy who’s been trying to get closer to her, Marc, she glom onto Jean-Claude and tells him she’s Elizabeth.
Jessica hangs out with Jean-Claude and they start to fall in love (of course) while Elizabeth tries to make René see that not all Americans are annoying. Jessica is no help in that department. Elizabeth finds out that Jessica has been pretending to be her, but before she can confront her sister, Jessica and Jean-Claude almost drown in a boating accident. When Elizabeth sees that the two Js are in love, she pretends she’s Jessica to save Jessica’s relationship with Jean-Claude. And then Jessica tells Jean-Claude the truth anyway, and he doesn’t care, so whatever. Also, René’s best friend drowned, so now he doesn’t like water, but he gets over it when he has to help Elizabeth save Jessica and Jean-Claude, and then he decides that Americans aren’t so bad after all, so there’s a happy ending, blah blah blah.
The B plot is completely stupid: René’s sister Ferney is staying with the Wakefields, and she looks exactly like Tricia (I’m so sure), so Steven’s all in love with her. This means he’s neglecting Cara. Instead of actually discussing this with each other, they basically just break up, because that’s normal. Then Steven finds out that Ferney is nothing like Tricia, and he realizes that he loves Cara, so there’s a happy ending for them, too. Fantastic.
Thoughts: 13+ hours on a plane to France with Jessica? Elizabeth really is a saint.
Elizabeth wants to write in her diary about everything that’s happened so far on the trip…16 pages into the story. And all she’s done is fly from California to New York, go to duty-free, and get back on the plane. I bet she fills six pages on that junk.
Jessica lets Jean-Claude think she’s Elizabeth (for no real reason – why not just introduce yourself instead of trying to pick up where Elizabeth left off?), then decides she’ll tell him the truth after he’s fall in love so deeply that he doesn’t care who she is. Yeah, waiting until he loves you before you tell him you’ve been lying to him the whole time is a brilliant idea. As Jessica tells Elizabeth later, she’s fine basing her relationship on a lie because she’d rather have Jean-Claude than not. What a normal outlook to have!
Speaking of normal, at 16, Jessica still crosses her fingers when she lies. her fingers are probably stuck like that.
Clearly, any time Jessica screws someone over, she just needs to have a near-death experience to distract the person she screwed over.
Elizabeth goes along with Jessica’s lie after seeing how much she and Jean-Claude care about each other (after, like six days). ENABLER!
Jessica’s attempt to apologize, or something, to Elizabeth: “It was for a really good reason. I had to do it.” She really thinkgs Elizabeth falls for crap like that?
