Baked Beans
S1 E8: Wedding Day Sale
Superstore, 2015.
There are weddings, and then there are Cloud 9 weddings, which, statistically speaking, are 80% more likely to involve tasers, canned legumes, and fake résumés listing “Managing Editor of Vogue, 1972–1981.”
Bo and Cheyenne, teen parents-to-be and America’s most endearing cautionary tale, are planning a wedding. Bo’s contribution? Five grand in settlement money from the time he was hit by a drunk and legally blind old woman in the seventh grade. “Isn’t he lucky?” Cheyenne beams, the way only someone can who has not yet priced out strollers or lactation accessories.
Amy, who once got married at 19 and now flinches every time someone under 25 says the word “forever,” tries to gently introduce them to the concept of financial responsibility by turning baby expenses into a laser-tag-style death game: Diapers! Boom! Wipes! Blast! Breast pump! Squirt squirt! The game ends not in delight, but in economic despair: $2,500 for the basics, and that’s before you get to the daycare and soul collapse.
Bo panics. He disappears. There is no note. Just the faint memory of a man who said “poo poo” while pretending to shoot at Pampers.
Enter Dina. The only woman in the world who responds to a missing person report by grabbing a taser and a can of beans from her truck’s dash. Not just any beans. Her beans. Amy, for some reason, accepts a ride.
The search is loose. Philosophical. More a meditation on missed chances and bad exes than an actual plan. Dina offers to sing. Amy declines. Dina asks her to name a song. Amy does. Dina doesn’t know any of them. Not Thriller, not Dancing Queen, not even Uptown Funk. The only thing she knows is “Danny Boy,” which she begins singing with the slow, lethal energy of a ghost who haunts VFW halls.
Eventually, it’s revealed that neither woman is all that interested in returning to Cloud 9. Too many brides. Too much sparkle. Too much pressure to have found someone, to be someone, to know what you’re doing with your life. Amy confesses that she got married too young. Dina reveals that one of her exes was gay, racist, mean, and a redhead—all one man. They bond. It’s beautiful. If you’re not crying, you’ve never eaten beans from a glove compartment while parked in front of a high school football field.
When they finally find Bo, he is not playing video games or riding his bike into traffic. He is handing out résumés. Résumés that claim he’s a summa cum laude Harvard grad, cardiology chief at Johns Hopkins, and former Vogue editor from the disco era. Dina sees lies. Amy sees growth. America sees both.
Cheyenne takes him back. Bo vows to raise a baller-ass shorty and plan a baller-ass wedding. Amy, who has just seen the full arc of his emotional incompetence and strange ambition, shrugs. Let them throw the party. Let them dance on the edge of disaster. Let them start their lives, even if they’re too young and unready and covered in fake credentials.
They’ll figure it out. Probably. Or not.