TVSquad

(S02E05)

I Wrestle My Sons HARD --bumper sticker on Tom's car

Gary Busey guest stars in this episode, as, oddly enough, a man who is completely and utterly insane. More exactly, he plays Coach Harris, a man trying to lead the Jefferton Pinners wrestling team to victory using such esteem-building techniques as telling all of his students they're nothing more than little girls trapped in little fat boys' bodies. Meanwhile, Tom, who is the team's "equipment boy" and dresses as if he's an extra in Flashdance, discovers that the kids have been using an illegal supplement called "Flaxamax." Tom discovers this while hanging the boy's jock straps in the locker room and spraying them down with a garden hose.

Concerned, Tom confronts Coach Harris, but in the middle of Harris' tirade the coach keels over from a stroke. Tom takes his concern to the Mayor, but the Mayor is a huge wrestling fan who invented a move called the "crab" that he used to paralyze several children, and he's not about to let Tom expose a scandal that could get the team disqualified. The Mayor gets an ingenious idea to admit to the city council that the boys have been taking Flaxamax, because he believes that once a team is disqualified the entire match is decided by a coin toss (and he has a two-headed coin). This, of course, turns out not to be true, and Tom ends up having to wrestle everyone himself because the team has been kicked out of the tournament. Driven crazy (and fat) by the Flaxamax, Tom manages to defeat all the small children, and twenty years later has a smaller wrestling statue placed next to the Mayor's, though he's now confined to a wheelchair from his excessive Flaxamax use and can't really appreciate it as much as he should.

A very funny episode, I thought, and one that didn't venture off onto too many side roads as other episodes have done in the past. It was about as close to a "straight" narrative I've seen on TGTTM in awhile. Of course, we had the usual visit from the Married News Team, which always cracks me the heck up. Then again, maybe I just find false homoeroticism in the guise of false heterosexualism amusing.