“It’s the end of the world, Cappie, what are you going to do?”
For the first 53 minutes of the season three premiere of ABC Family’s “Greek,” the answer appeared to be nothing.
Cappie’s first appearance was 15 minutes in. I thought the suspense was killing me, when in actuality the outcome was.
With seven minutes left, the show concluded with a flashback to the night before. As Cappie sits on the roof, he visibly snaps to his senses and starts looking for Casey. But before he finds her, he bumps into his new buddy Evan Chambers. His (admittedly unintentional) douche-baggery in the final scene of the season premiere completely negated the work he had been doing at the end of last season to turn himself from an entitled asshole into a friendly guy. Evan talks Cappie out of chasing after Casey with the exact same argument Casey had been using to convince herself Cappie was not right for her: Cappie’s fun-loving laziness and Casey’s future-minded goals will never mix. So instead of fulfilling destiny — I mean, Casey’s dreams of a romantic silver screen reunion — he walks off with Evan.
The flashback did not just reveal Cappie’s secret, however. After Cappie and Evan skipped off, the camera panned through the party crowd to Rebecca Logan locking lips with Ashley’s boyfriend Fisher. My viewing party and I saw it coming a mile away. Rebecca paid Evan to act like her previous night’s hook up but the camera angling and the awkward tension between Rebecca and Fisher at the beginning of the party gave it away.
But most of the episode focused on what the title implied — “The Day After.” Calvin and Dale in particular had to deal with morning-after regrets. Calvin awoke thinking he had slept with his roommate and fraternity brother Grant, but his blackout prevented him from remembering that the farthest they went was a make-out sesh. Dale, on the other hand, obliterated his purity pledge with an apocalypse-fear-induced romp with his landlady. His subsequent guilt over the situation prompted him to propose to her which in turn prompted her to break up with him.
Rusty spent the day after attempting to pull up his chemistry grade by breaking into the lab to finish the work he blew off to go to the End of the World party the night before. Casey ignores his pleas for help but comes through when Jordan explains the situation to her. They team up as an indestructible bro-sis duo — you know the drill, Rusty uses his brains and Casey uses her charm and beauty to get themselves out of some sort of a jam (not unlike my own brother and I, except he’s got the good looks and I’ve got the brains) — and manage to steal a security guard’s keys. It’s Cappie who lets them into the actual laboratory, however, as he pulled some ninja moves to help out his Kappa Tau little. In the lab, Casey awkwardly reveals her disappointment that she and Cappie will not be getting together and then they are forced out of the lab by an accidental gas leak. Cappie takes the fall for them all by diverting the security guards’ attention with a hilarious portrayal of an animal right activist.
Oh, yeah, and Max packed his things, quit grad school and moved back to England to work after Casey broke his heart.
All in all, I would call the episode a disappointment. It would fare fine as a regular episode, but for a season opener they should have packed the heat more. I would have liked to see more revealed in the final seven minutes since the first fifty-three packed more blah than bam. The previews left me with high hopes for the rest of the season, however. I just wish Cappie and Casey would get together already!
