Of Cabbages and Kings

Synopsis

When the School is chosen to add an item to a times capsule that will be opened in 100 years, the hunt is on for the perfect item to represent the school.

Meanwhile Miltie who is on his last chance, or face expulsion struggles when he is forced to write a song for Shorofsky's Class and so resorts to cheating.

My Review

After a number of what I consider weak and dodgy episodes we finally get to a period where things start to look up and the feel of the episodes is similar to other seasons. Sadly its all too late for show as the end is nigh!

My favourite episodes are the ensemble ones and I really like the idea of this episode and the thought of doing a time capsule. I think the hunt for something to represent the school works really well and for once we pretty much have the whole cast in one episode except Billy and Eric, although Billy does appear in flashback. From a nostalgia point of view the flashbacks work really well and we get a chance to see some of our old favourites back on screen, which is a reminder of these older characters ready for their return in a couple of episodes time. Plus talking about past episode events gives us a nice sense of continuity.

In some ways it might have been nice for this episode to be mixed with the final episode as I think this would have been a good episode to end on and have the old characters come back too and remember the old times.

As we’ve got most of our cast I’m not quite sure why we needed to give Miltie so much air time but the current producers seem intent on making him a key part of the show, even though he's only a guest star. At least they do have Shorofsky mention how little work he's done over the last three years but if that was true wouldn't he have been kicked out by now? After all he's got to maintain a C average to be in shows so he must be doing some work.

It's not just the flashbacks that give us the continuity as there is dialogue and references to previous episodes too. There is a nice nod to Season Five's "His Majesty Donlon" as the tourists Miltie tries to con are from Vatonia, the made up Country where the people in Season 5 come from. However here Miltie says Musicals are banned in Vatonia! That seems odd as the guards serenaded the Prince and Princess with song, every time they entered or left a room! Also when Jesse talks about going to a movie he references Jeff Stave who was the director making the film in the School in "Love Kittens Go To High School". The new movie is "Mortron's Revenge" and Mortron is the monster in "The Monster That devoured Las Vegas".t

I like the concept of the video capsule and showing the different aspects of the school is great but I’m not keen on the song itself "Ring of Love" or rather its a collection of music all put together. I would imagine a song like "The Best In You and Me" would have been so fitting for the video concept.

Ian's "Burn Down The Night" is okay but I'm not a great lover of Michael Cerveris' voice here. However, Olivia Barash's voice on the love ballad is really lovely. The song they use is a 16th Century song so not sure why they refer to as being from the 14th Century. They've obviously had to do a little research to find the song so someone must have noticed the error in the script!

I guess, even though I'm not keen on him Miltie's song works well for the character too.

Episode Pictures