Get out your school spirit, it's time for "Homecoming"!

The first thing I have to observe about this episode is that Adam's freakout in the last one (shown here in the "Previously On" segment) is still so funny. "You don't see what THEY do, Miss Weiss! You don't SEE it!"

To be completely honest...I love the show, but this one kind of feels like filler. Nevertheless, let's see what we've got.

It's Homecoming, and Adam ("Most Dramatic") is making a run for Homecoming King. Starting his campaign by exhorting his Newspaper colleagues -- the people who know him best -- to vote for him is either very smart or very foolhardy. As Charesse dryly observes, "All I know is that if Adam doesn't win, it's going to be a rough couple of days."

The big event, newspaper-wise, is that after last week's failure of an air-clearing editors' meeting, Mrs. Weiss has a new tack to try to promote peace in class: changing the seating arrangements. She puts Amanda and Alex -- the newspaper's #1 and #2, recall -- next to each other, puts Adam in a corner all by himself (hee), and separates Giana and Trevor. Alex shows off the maturity Mrs. Weiss chose not to have leading the paper by whining, "I can't write good stories if I'm not happy." Little does he know what "not happy" REALLY looks like: Trevor and Giana, pouting on a picnic table like it's 19one or the other of them is about to be shipped out to the Russian front. "I don't want to go to class tomorrow." "I don't want to go to class ever."

At home, Amanda continues musing on the unrest at the paper, and pulls down a photo of the previous year's staff, marveling that it wasn't so long ago that they all still got along. "I don't recognize my own smile," she sighs. Might be because it's under a different nose.

The photo gives Amanda an idea, though: the next day, she brings it to class and quietly slips it up at the top of the board. It has the intended effect -- all the newspaper veterans gather around it and laugh about the good old days. Amanda admits that it was she who brought it in, and Alex even forgets himself for a moment and literally gives her a pat on the back (Alex-style, which means that he touches two fingertips to her back for half a second and quickly removes them before anyone else can see what he's doing). Adam later proposes that they take a new photo, to try to recapture that feeling, but Giana has to be a jerk about it and refuse out of hand to participate.

Amanda, naturally, thinks she's above any teenager-ish school event, and tells her dad she doesn't think she'll go to the Homecoming dance unless she gets a date, so lo and behold, MTV finds her one! Or, Joey Hodges of the Latin Club spontaneously decides to make his nerdy move. Either way, he invites Amanda and she agrees to go. But then Joey mysteriously gets grounded and can't take her, but by then she's pot-committed and has to go.

Amanda does seem to have fun at the dance, and when Adam -- who does win Homecoming King! -- tries to stage another photo, the anti-Amanda faction decides to make a federal case about it. Trevor and Giana stick by their refusal to appear in it. For his part, Alex makes sure EVERYONE knows how much he doesn't want to be there by complaining nonstop about how much time it's taking to get it organized, and then -- even though he's standing IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SHOT -- he REFUSES TO SMILE. Dude, you know, either have the stones to refuse to be in the photo if it's such a gigantic imposition on your time and principles, or FAKE IT. Ugh, that guy.

Best lines of the episode:

"Maybe someone'll spike the punch. Well, that's what we did." "I know. I saw 'Grease.'"

"It's hard to have a discussion with someone with words written across their genitals."

"Save me a dance, you hunk! Not you, Bennetts -- Larry."