Summary
Regina sits crying in the principal's office while Mr. Duvall reads the Burn Book, which she claims to have found in the girl's bathroom. Regina points out that there are only three girls in the school not in the book (presumably Cady, Gretchen, and Karen). Cady is called out of Health class to Mr. Duvall's office, where Gretchen and Karen have also already been summoned, and exchanges a tense look with Regina on her way out. Cady claims that the book isn't hers. Gretchen tries to explain the book is Regina's, despite the insults directed at her in it. Meanwhile, on her way out of the school, Regina tosses and scatters photocopies of all of the pages of the book throughout the school hallways for students to discover at the next bell.
As students pick the pages up with their various names and see the insults scrawled on them, they begin yelling and physically fighting in the hallways. Among the scuffles, Ms. Norbury is pushed down, and sees a page with her name on it, describing her as a "sad old drug pusher." In Mr. Duvall's office, the girls meekly deny knowing anything else about the book, as in the hallways, Regina looks on as full-blown chaos has erupted in the halls. Another administrator alerts Mr. Duvall to the melee unfolding, who smashes a nearby fire alarm with a baseball bat so the sprinklers activate, and angrily orders all junior girls to report to the gymnasium immediately.
In voice-over, Cady remembers the feeling of being spoken about by everyone sitting in the gymnasium bleachers. Mr. Duvall, appalled by their actions, scolds them for their violent behavior and proposes that the junior girls need an "attitude makeover." Feeling unable to provide the perspective the girls need, Mr. Duvall turns to Ms. Norbury, who asks the girls to close their eyes and raise their hands if they have ever talked about someone behind their back, or been talked about. When most girls raise their hands for both questions, she challenges them to confront one another face to face about their actions. After Ms. Norbury tries to oversee multiple heart-to-hearts, Regina complains that some of them don't belong there because they are only "victims." Ms. Norbury asks everyone who has ever felt "personally victimized" by Regina George to raise their hand; almost everyone does, including many of the teachers and Mr. Duvall.
Proceeding with her intervention, Ms. Norbury asks Cady if she has anything that she wants to apologize for, but Cady refuses to own up to any of her actions. Ms. Norbury tells Cady she's disappointed in her, and beseeches that the girls stop calling each other "sluts" and "whores." She asks the girls to write out apologies, recite them to the group, and perform trust falls, which goes well for a time. In a hoodie and sunglasses, Damian heckles a girl from the back who does not actually attend the school. When Gretchen reads an especially smug apology, everyone but Karen in the crowd parts before the trust fall, leading Gretchen to crash to the ground. In Janis's apology, after she is taunted once more by Regina, she reveals to the group of girls in the gymnasium her complicated plot with Damian and Cady to ruin Regina's life over the course of the year.
Regina stomps out of the building in a fury, and Cady chases after her to try to apologize. Crossing the road to her mom's car, Regina angrily calls her a "home-schooled jungle freak," and rejects her apology, before being broadsided by a school bus. Cady explains that Regina was seriously injured by the collision, and that rumors circulated that she pushed Regina in front of the oncoming vehicle. At home, Cady argues with her mother, and after hearing that she failed her calculus test, her dad attempts to ground her.
Back at school, no one talks to or trusts Cady any longer, and she eats her lunch alone in a restroom stall like on her first day of school. In math class, Cady finds that Mr. Duvall and police are investigating claims about Ms. Norbury selling drugs, given the credibility of the claims about Coach Carr sleeping with students. Aaron coldly dismisses the burn book as written by "stupid girls" bored with their "lame lives."
Despite knowing that Aaron will hate her, Cady finally stands up and confesses to writing the burn book. Having confessed, Cady goes on an apology tour. She brings flowers to Regina's house, where Regina is laid up in bed, and tells Ms. Norbury how sorry she is for writing about her in the Burn Book. Ms. Norbury tells Cady that, as atonement for her actions, she can join the Mathletes and compete in the final tournament of the season.
Analysis
The film at first leads the viewer to believe that Regina goes home and scrawls an obscene comment in the Burn Book next to a photo of Cady, when in fact Regina uses a photo of herself. Regina's scheme, in which she turns the book in to Mr. Duvall and advances herself as its ultimate victim (before exposing its contents to the entire school), is a drastic escalation of the previous events of the film, which now involve the entire junior class of girls at North Shore High, rather than just Cady and The Plastics.
Cady's previous fantasies in the film of teenagers behaving like violent animals come vividly to life in the North Shore hallways after Regina liberally distributes photocopied pages of the Burn Book on her way out of the principal's office. The exposure of the Burn Book turns the school into a wild jungle, rife with conflict, and has a number of serious consequences: Coach Carr flees the school for sexually abusing minors, Ms. Norbury falls under suspicion for dealing drugs, and Mr. Duvall calls an emergency assembly in the gymnasium as a kind of makeshift intervention for the girls in the junior class.
One major theme of the film is learning to accept blame and forgive others. In particular, the refusal to accept blame is fundamental to the way the film's "mean girls" behave—for instance, Regina only offers Cady a secondhand "non-apology" apology through Gretchen after she kisses Aaron. In Mr. Duvall's office, Regina blames the other girls for the contents of the Burn Book, and they in turn blame her. In the assembly, Regina insists that she is only a "victim," before Ms. Norbury conducts a quick poll to confirm that this is actually not the case. When Ms. Norbury asks Cady if she has anything she wants to "apologize for," Cady refuses to own up to her behavior.
Even during Ms. Norbury's well-intentioned exercise to get the girls to forgive one another and perform trust falls, they lace their apologies with egotism and spite. In Fey's script, Gretchen's self-congratulatory "apology" leads to the comic image of the crowd letting her fall to the hardwood floor, visualizing how difficult and precarious it can be for girls to be open and trust one another. Regina also refuses to accept Cady's apology, and instead becomes more vicious than ever upon learning that Cady was conspiring with Janis and Damian to sabotage her life. The bus hitting Regina echoes one of the very first scenes, in which Cady narrowly misses an oncoming bus on her first day of school, reinforcing the film's Cady/Regina parallels.
Also like her first day of school, Cady is once again consigned to eating her lunch in the restroom, after rumors begin to circulate about the circumstances of Regina's injury. At this point in the plot, Cady has gone full circle: from outcast, to Plastic, to outcast again. Moreover, Cady's failing grades and indifference toward her previously held interests and hobbies alienate her from Janis and Damian, as well as her family, leading her to become more miserable and socially isolated than ever. Cady's decision to finally accept blame for the Burn Book marks a turning point in the film, after which she struggles to atone for her actions.
