By Sabrina Cognata
Imagine your lowest social moment in high school. Now multiply that by fifty-thousand and you have the basic social standing for Justin (Dan Byrd) our tragic protagonist & high school junior. The problem with Justin is his unflagging hope to end his run as the school dork. His mother, Franny (Amy Pietz), perpetuates this problem by falsely building up her son’s ego.
The first day of Justin’s junior year of high school things appear to be working out. He avoids the ritualistic beating, he’s invited to join the conversation going on in the locker room (even if it’s about how someone slept with his sister), and he’s placed on the Senior’s Ten Most Bangable Girls list. This nomination solidifies the end to any hope he’d have at being anything other than the class joke.
His sister Claire takes the third place spot on the list, and after his mother complains to the guidance counselor Justin moves from eighth place to sixth. If there was ever any hope for his social life it was fleeing from Justin’s grasp at warp speed. During a conference with Justin’s high school counselor his parents are talked into becoming a host family for an exchange student. It will give Justin someone to bond with and revive his public persona.
Here’s the twist, at the airport, Justin and his parents are gathered together with the hopes of welcoming a teenage boy flying in from London. They make the assumption this boy will be a strapping lad with blond hair and blue eyes and right out of the third Reich. What they end up with is Raja (Adhir Kaylan) a teenage boy from Pakistan. Justin’s parents have completed the circle by causing Justin to commit social suicide.
When they return home Franny puts Raja to bed at six o’clock in the evening while the family scrambles to figure out what to do. The only solution is to keep Justin at home from school while Raja experiences the hell of a day in a Middle American high school alone. Upon his completion of his first day of high school Raja wants to know what is wrong with everyone. Something about his honesty got Justin to open up and the two boys bond all afternoon.
Meanwhile, Franny’s trying to force the guidance counselor to send Raja back. In a meeting with Justin’s guidance counselor, admits he tricked Franny and her family into becoming Raja’s host family because the last family backed out when they heard the student was a Muslim from Pakistan. The counselor then refuses to send Raja back. In a desperate plea to save Justin’s social life from her mistake she takes matters into her own hands. When Franny gets home she finds Justin and Raja praying to Mecca. This sends Franny into a dither and out of desperation she tells Justin his grandma is dying to get him out of the house. Once in the car she explains to Justin his grandmother is fine and they have to send Raja back to Pakistan one way or another. Then she books a flight for Raja on the first flight out of Wisconsin.
Upon their return home Franny tells Raja that there’s been a mixup and their insurance will not cover him so he has to return to Pakistan. Turns out Franny is not another heartless wench, not completely at least. She tries to buffer the situation by telling Raja how excited his parents will be to see him and that they must have missed him so. Whoa, here is where the bomb drops. Raja’s parents are dead and he gets to go back to living life in third world poverty. Geez Franny, you’re a total gem, aren’t you? News of this melts Franny’s socially aware black heart and she tells Raja he can stay with them.
As much as I am dying to hate this show I cannot find it in my own black heart to hate it. I dunno if it has what it takes to survive the axe of network executives, but with the right story direction it has the potential to be hilariously funny. Then again, it could milk the fact that Raja is a foreigner in an average American high school and will probably shoot himself in the face before the end of the year.