Case #4.23: "How I Saved the Senator"

Catherine, a news reporter, live at the Truman High School cafeteria, announces that an undercover unit thwarted an "attempted incident" involving Senator Phillips. We see the unharmed senator being whisked to his limo. Details are still unclear but "all hell broke loose" during his appearance at Truman's PTA dinner. Catherine credits Jump Street with saving Senator Phillips' life.

Catherine arrives in the squadroom just as the officers are getting ready to sit down for pizza. She asks to interview them and motions for her cameraman to join them. Instinctively, the four undercover officers hide. Fuller hears the commotion and comes to see what's going on. Catherine demands interviews; the Truman incident is a big story.

Cap'n Rufus warns the cameraman that if he doesn't leave "I'm gonna take that camera and carefully insert it--" Catherine shouts over him, refusing to go until she gets the story. Catherine thinks there's potential for a movie in what happened. She wants an exclusive and promises not to show them on camera. Fuller escorts the cameraman out.

Catherine tells the officers that reporting is just a day job; she really wants to be a movie director. "Like Lethal Weapon 3?" asks Doug. Harry offers to give her the scoop. Catherine turns on her tape recorder. Harry says last night was "a classic battle between good and evil."

Flash to a Buddhist temple. A monk tells a group of young boys, "Observe the stone. When you can pluck it from my hand, you will have learned all I can teach you." Young Harry raises his hand and says, "I believe I can pluck the stone, Master." Of course, Harry succeeds. The Master chuckles. 

Young Harry also somehow pulls a live rabbit out of his pants. The Master produces a ping pong paddle from inside his robe, telling Young Harry he will learn the meaning of respect. Young Harry warns the Master that he'll be sorry if he hits him.

Catherine interrupts to ask what the point of this story is. Harry explains it's his background. Truman High received a bomb threat; the device was scheduled to go off during the PTA dinner. When the Secret Service didn't find a bomb, they asked Jump Street to be at the high school in case the caller showed up in person.

Flashback. Harry watches the Senator come out of his limo and became suspicious when a van from a Chinese bakery parked near the school. A clown car's worth of pastry chefs hustles out of the van. The last to exit is an old man carrying a big cake box. Harry follows the chefs toward the cafeteria entrance. Inside, one of the chefs is smoking a big cigar. That's suspicious as well as in violation of several health codes.

When the old man set down the cake box, the pastry chefs surrounded him. Under the seemingly ordinary facade of a cake is a sophisticated-looking bomb. Harry appears and says, "I'd like a piece of that cake." The old man orders the pastry chefs to attack. Harry takes off his shirt. The chefs come at Harry one by one, kung-fu movie style. Harry easily knocks them all out.

Onstage, the Senator has begun an offensive joke about a rabbi and a priest playing golf with Aunt Jemima and Geraldo Rivera. He's unaware of the old man's presence. Harry leaps into view and lets out a wild karate yell. The crowd murmurs about who the strange Asian could be. The old man bolts, taking the cake box box with him.

Harry chases him into a suspiciously large storage room. Seriously, there's two forklifts in there. The old man assumes a karate ready stance. Harry advises him not to be foolish. The old man punches him in the face. They fight. The old man stops his kung fu long enough to peel off his fake beard, revealing the Master. 

The Master draws his ping pong paddle, which now has large blades around the edge. He throws it at Harry, who dodges it. Harry levitates off the floor and does a somersault in the air, nearly giving the Master a heart attack. He punches the Master, who dramatically falls on top of his own bomb. It goes off, splattering Harry with frosting. "Now we're even," Harry declares.

Back to the present. Judy tells Catherine that's not what happened. Tom offers to tell her what did happen, but words can't describe it. A black-and-white title card pops up that reads: "Jump Street Pictures presents Little Tommy Hanson in The Waiter." Another title card explains that Tommy was assigned to protect the Senator, but who will protect the Senator from Tommy?

I hate silent movies, so I'll be quick. Tom's utter incompetence somehow saves Senator Phillips from being blown up by a literal mustache-twirling villain. Cap'n Rufus makes a cameo in a uniform clearly stolen from a London bobby; Judy is briefly seen as a singer in a flapper dress. The object of Tom's affections wrongly credits another man with saving her life and they walk off into the sunset while Tom pouts.

In Judy's flashback, she's drinking whiskey in a marabou-trimmed bathrobe when Fuller enters with a cheerful "Hiya, doll." I'm glad they didn't go with the obvious choice, which would be clothes and dialogue more suited to Black Dynamite. Cap'n Rufus asks what Judy is doing after the show. She has friends stopping by: Johnnie Walker and his brothers Blackie and Red.

Cap'n Rufus advises Judy to stop pining after the guy in the picture on her dresser. "I can't forget, Fully," she says. Rufus asks if she's an elephant. "I'm just a woman...scorned," Judy says dramatically. Rufus tells Judy to pull herself together; there's a lot of "muckity-muck" at the show tonight, including people from the William Morris Agency. Rufus yanks the glass out of her hand.

Judy goes onstage wearing a floor-length, slinky, champagne-colored dress. We hear the Senator telling the same golf joke, then it's time for Judy to perform. She has a beautiful, smoky voice. Her former beau appears in the audience. When the song ends, he waves Judy over. The accordion player sets his instrument on the stage right behind Senator Phillips' head. There's a blinking red light inside it.

Judy tells her old boyfriend, "You got a lotta moxie showing up here." He wants her back. If Judy takes him back, it'll be on her terms. She goes to the stage for her next song. The accordion player has disappeared. She notices the abandoned instrument and the red light in it.

Judy picks up the accordion, saying she wants to dedicate her next song to "all our Polish friends." She starts playing the accordion, motioning with her head for Cap'n Rufus to go into the hall. She tells Rufus the bomb is in the instrument. Judy tosses the accordion into the laundry room, where it explodes.

Judy explains to Cap'n Rufus that Lester the accordion player split after her first song. She tells Rufus to find him so she can give the folks a show. "That's my little star!" he smiles.

Back in the present, it's Blowfish's turn. He wanted to go to the dinner because he graduated from Truman High. Flashback. Blowfish is wearing a '50s letterman jacket and a tie that looks like a fish. A nerd says admiringly, "Sal, tell us again about the time you scored 7 touchdowns against Jefferson." A nerdy girl asks about Wilbur Freedman.

Wilbur was the janitor during Blowfish's freshman year. He was a weirdo who lived in the tool shed behind the football field. "One day, he took a weed whipper and turned the entire cheerleading squad into hamburger," Blowfish goes on. The nerd boy thinks Blowfish is lying about that as well as his athletic prowess.

We hear the heavy breathing of someone or something lurking in the hall. It stalks Blowfish into the bathroom, where he's patted down by one of the Senator's aides. The aide lets Senator into the bathroom. The masked janitor, armed with a weed whacker, knocks Blowfish and the aide to the floor. "What's going on out there?" a panicked Senator Phillips calls from inside his stall. Blowfish saves the politician from Wilbur, using only a toilet plunger.

Last but not least is Doug's version of events, which takes place in the format of an old, cheesy Bond movie. Doug parachutes onto the front lawn of Truman High. He straightens his hair before going in the building. A hostess in a low-cut strapless black dress asks for Doug's name. He replies, "Pen, Doug Hall." The hostess escorts him into the gym/auditorium.

Doug wins a game of roulette by betting on 00. A different woman in a revealing black dress leaves them game because she's "busted." "Yes, of course you are," says Doug. More bad double entendres are exchanged. The woman suggests they go somewhere cozy.

That place turns out to be the school kitchen, which for some reason boasts leather furniture, a desk, and a phone. The woman asks Doug to pour drinks while she puts on something more comfortable. Doug asks for her name. The woman reappears wearing a floor-length silky black nightie that covers up much more than the dress did. She introduces herself as Ample.

Doug, who found a microphone hidden in the chandelier, asks Ample where the bomb is. Blowfish enters, totally bald and carrying a taxidermied iguana in one hand and a gun in the other. Blowfish does the classic Bond villain thing of revealing his entire plan. There's a bomb in the laundry room, just behind the Senator's seat. After the explosion, the Senator's dead body will be replaced with a living lookalike. Blowfish's minion will infiltrate Washington. 

We never find out the endgame of this play because Doug shoots some kind of fog out of his watch. Doug goes down the hall and produces a lock pick from his watchband, then opens the laundry room door. Seriously, why does a high school even need a laundry room. Oh, who cares? We're at the 40-minute mark.

Ample enters and helps Doug find the bomb. One of Blowfish's henchmen is close behind. Doug fights him. The henchmen gets hit in the head with the accordion that Judy in her lounge singer dress tosses into the room. Doug successfully disarms the bomb with only 1 second remaining until detonation. Ample gushes that Doug is her hero.

Back in the present, Judy rolls her eyes and says, "I always get nervous when I disarm an air conditioner." Doug defensively tells her it was a new model. "Oh God," mutters Catherine the reporter, looking like she can't decide whether to laugh or cry. She turns off her tape recorder. Cap'n Rufus asks if Catherine got what she needs. "I did...for a kung-fu musical silent international spy epic," she replies. Compared to the Jump Street team's stories, "Batman plays like a documentary." Rufus takes Catherine to the holding cell, instructing the inmate to tell her what really happened.

During the dinner at Truman High, we see the blond inmate sitting at a table reserved for the Truman High Astronomy Club. Senator Phillips is saying some nonsense about there being high schools on Mars in the future. Instead of auto shop, kids will take rocket shop. Blond Inmate stands up, slingshot in hand, ready to fire a water balloon at Senator Phillips. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Blond Inmate quotes. The water balloon hits Senator Phillips in the head and he dramatically collapses. Cap'n Rufus escorts the kid to the door.

Back at the Chapel, Catherine flips her tape over to record a longer interview with Blond Inmate. Cap'n Rufus is slightly disappointed: "I don't know what she wants to interview him for. I'm the one who caught him."

We skip back to Blond Inmate being put in a police car. Cap'n Rufus, in full Western regalia and a cowboy hat, rides off on a horse. "Happy Trails" plays. End of episode.

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