FinaleWatch: 'Greek'

Greek wrapped up its season tonight with a close look at the dreaded Hell Week, with each house having its own twist on the time-honored initiation rite.

The hour begins with Rusty and the Kappa Taus, who seem to be all about humiliation of the gender politics variety, making the pledges wear bikinis and pointing out love handles in their best Dr. 90210 impersonations. The pledges must make it through Hell Week to become initiated, and anyone could be cut at any time. If you get three strikes, you're out! For their first test Rusty is dished a cup full of goldfish and having seen Animal House he immediately jumps the gun, drinking the glass full of fish before the brothers can explain their task. The catch is that he was supposed to take care of the fish for the week, not eat them, and the brothers are horrified. Oops, and hee! This earns him strike one, and I'm sure one heck of a wicked stomachache as well.

Rusty also swings and misses when he's asked why he should be a KT brother and he runs down his accomplishments, with the brothers quickly shooting them all down. They give him strike two, and tell him he has to go out in the world and find a way to prove he deserves to be a brother. Harsh! Rusty stumbles on the perfect way to prove his worthiness: steal his old Omega Chi pledge paddle from the Omega house, which Calvin recently discovered when cleaning out some boxes. Of course, he totally gets busted when trying to sneak out but manages to get away with the whole Omega house chasing him. He leads them down the street into an awesome KT/Omega battle, just like in Anchorman! Or 300. I suppose that one is more relevant, considering the Greek connection and all. During the melee, Evan totally steals back the pledge paddle and whacks Rusty HARD across the face with it. Man, Evan is a jerk! I know Rusty hit him first, but that was excessive. (Remember when he was a redeemable character? It's getting harder and harder to recall.) Cappie immediately comes to Rusty's rescue and punches Evan out. After the madness is over, Cappie asks a badly beaten Rusty why he tried to steal the paddle, and reveals that there was really no way anyone in the pledge class wasn't getting into the brotherhood. Rusty then gets initiated, which he accepts with glee. It's actually quite the touching moment. Here's to full-on brotherhood next season, Russ!

Dale is only in the episode for a few quick scenes, enough to utter some funny lines and tell Rusty God told him they would be roommates again. Here's hoping, because Dale is awesome and the show wouldn't be the same without him.

In contrast the the Kappa Taus, Calvin and Omega Chis Hell Week is more about physical exertion and slave work than humiliation. While the other pledges are practically tortured, Calvin gets a break from Evan by consistently getting easier tasks than the rest of the pledges. His pledge brothers start to notice that Calvin is getting off easy, and ask him to help and ask Evan to ease up a bit. Calvin confronts Evan and asks for equal treatment, pulling out the "you are abusing the Evan Chambers name" card. Evan agrees with pride, saying he's doing it on purpose because he can. Still, Calvin gets what he asked for and is forced to hold up a book for three hours as his Hell Week duty. When Calvin confronts Evan on it, Evan says that he and Calvin are more alike than he realized which gives Calvin pause, especially when he finds out that Evan hit Rusty with the paddle and doesn't seem remorseful about it. Will Calvin have a change of heart about his brothers next season?

Zeta Beta Zeta Hell Week is a little more tame, with the girls only being "pretend" hazed with their initiation pretty much guaranteed. Casey is totally focused on summer rather than initiation, and starts talking to Max about a "summer of fun" together when Max breaks the news that he got into grad school in California so he won't be around after the summer, so this is their last chance to be together. Casey goes to Ashleigh for advice, which probably isn't the best idea considering her long-distance boyfriend was a total turd. Needless to say, Ash talks about how horrible the situation was until she finds out it's Casey and Max and backtracks, telling Casey to play it by ear and decide in the fall if they want to try the distance thing.

Casey decides to take Ash's advice but things change again when she gets offered a job in Washington by none other than Cindy Walsh (the Congresswoman from the ZBZ conference episode). This is awesome for Casey, but means she can't have any summer fun with Max so she immediately considers turning down the offer. Oh, Casey. Learn from LC's mistake - always choose Paris! (Well, in Casey's case Washington, but you know what I mean). Sure enough, as soon as I think LC, LC shows up in Casey's dream to offer her own advice! At first she seems to be on the side of staying, but admits that she did the wrong thing and totally should have went to Paris. Well, her boyfriend Jason was a total cokehead douchebag, so yeah. She should have gone to Paris. Max, on the other hand, is awesome. Still, Casey should go to Washington. Career before boys in college, ladies!

Things get more complicated when Cappie shows up while Casey is shooting pool, and we all know that Cappie + Casey + pool = trouble. She spills her guts to Cappie and they get flirty, because it's the season finale and that's what they have to do. He tells her to take the internship over Max, citing that she's been looking for her future all year and now she has the chance to grab it. When she breaks the news to Max, he wants to try long distance but she wants a clean break because long distance will be too hard. Max offers to go to D.C. with her for the summer, with her potentially transferring to a college in California in the fall. She makes a stand and says she can't keep making decisions for the guys in her life, even though this decision in particular makes her sad. They break up, and I'm just as sad as them because I really like Max. In the end, Max makes a mysterious call to his future professor at Cal Tech. Could he be sticking around? And will Casey's heart still be with him or is there something with Cappie looming in the future?

Rebecca, on the other hand, isn't looking forward to summer at all because she has to go home to witness her parents' divorce first hand. Her sour attitude seeps into her sister activities, and when asked reveals to Ashleigh that she didn't get Casey a big sister gift (except for not killing her for kissing Cappie during Spring Break, which...hee). Ashleigh, trying to make nice between them, tells her Casey got her a very nice gift so she should think of doing the same. Unfortunately for Casey, Ashleigh doesn't get the chance to mention this to her so when Rebecca presents Casey with her gift she doesn't have one to give back. Ashleigh tries to save the day by swooping in with a present just in time, but Rebecca immediately realizes that Ashleigh bought the gift instead. When will Rebecca and Casey's feud end for good? And do we want it to?

Evan and Frannie are making plans of their own for the summer, but while Evan is thinking of fun for just the two of them Frannie is fixated on things like visits to the Hamptons with his parents. Frannie is so a future politician or society maven. I'm leaning more toward politician, however, because of the stunt she pulls next: deactivating the sorority at the initiation meeting and announcing she's starting her own sorority...and that half of the sisters are going with her. Ugh, why do people want to follow Frannie? And why are so many of the ZBZ girls so obviously not awesome for supposedly being the most awesome sorority on campus? The biggest question is...will Rebecca follow in their footsteps? I guess they are planning on leaving us hanging, because the episode ends on Rebecca's torn face. If Rebecca leaves now that would be awfully cold of her, considering everything Casey did to keep her in ZBZ this year.

I guess we'll all have to wait until 2009 to find out! See you then.

Favorite quotes:

• "They painted my pepperonis blue. In permanent ink!" - Ben
• "I've got to be openly mean to you to offset the homoeroticism of so many of our rituals." - Random ZBZ sister I can't identify
• "You two wouldn't know hell if it stuck you in the bottom with a pitchfork." - Dale
• "Hark! I'd recognize that girlish scream anywhere." - Cappie

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