Ah, the high school field trip. A time rich with possibilities. A time for hooking up, looking like an idiot, and trading in vouchers for alcohol. This week, the gang almost all had better luck with love than any one of them has had all season. They learned some things, they got suckered into buying key-chains, and Neil developed a pretty killer old prospector accent. It’s nice to have a setting outside of the hallways. Being on the field trip gives the guys a legitimate excuse to mix with people they otherwise wouldn’t, and it added some more interesting characters to the mix.
For instance, there’s Lauren, a cute semi-bohemian chick who sat next to Will on the bus ride to the Civil War Experience. Will, unfortunately, has awful motion sickness. “How come you get sick on the bus but not on a roller coaster or in the car?” Simon asks. “It’s a class thing,” Will admits. Once they get to the reenactment village, Will tries to lay claim to Lauren, but he isn’t quick enough on his feet. Simon and Lauren hit it off, and run off into the woods together. Will, resentful that Simon didn’t abide by the dude code of dibs, watches the two having fun all weekend. But he has a trump card, and that card is Carli. When Carli sees Simon with Lauren, she’s clearly jealous. “She’s a little edgy for you.” Will sees the tension and encourages Simon to sit with her, where Carli informs him that “it’s nice to be with a normal dude who knows that sitting next to a girl doesn’t mean you can ask her out.” Whoops.
Will then gets to sit next to Lauren, but his generosity with the magnetic motion sickness bracelet that prevented him from puking on the way down leads to his downfall. He goes to the improbably large bus bathroom and vomits over all his clothing. What can you do, on a moving bus, when your clothes are all soaked in your own barf? Well, you can do what Will does: Strip to your tighty whiteys, feel the shame, and own it.
Jay, meanwhile, has finally found a girl he’s interested in. The trouble is that she’s two years younger than him. After you turn 20, that hardly matters. But when the younger party is 13 and the older one is 15, then things get a little hairy. “It’s not illegal until I’m 16!” Jay exclaims, jubilantly. But it sure is weird. It’s unclear where this storyline is taking us, but the age difference coupled with Jay’s general attitude towards sex makes the pairing a little icky. Even Neil was a little off tonight. Though he began the field trip without knowing what the civil war was, he ended it somewhat of a history buff. It was cute, but not as funny as he’s been in the past. Let’s hope getting back to high school helps The Inbetweeners out.