Summary
Bender grabs Brian’s lunch bag and asks, “What are we having?” Bender says that every food group seems to be represented as he pulls out soup and a sandwich. Bender asks if his mother married Mr. Rogers. Brian says, “No, Mr. Johnson.” Bender stands to do an impression of Brian’s parents interacting, mocking the idea that his home life is idyllic.
Andrew asks what Bender’s family is like. Bender gets up and lowers his voice, mimicking his violently abusive father. Brian asks if the mimed hitting is for real. Andrew says he doesn’t believe a word of it. Bender shows Andrew a cigar burn on his forearm. He says, “This is what you get in my house when you spill paint in the garage.” Bender walks off and climbs the stairs, shouting aggressively. Then he sits in silence. Claire tells Andrew he shouldn't have said that. Andrew says he couldn’t have known because Bender lies about everything.
When Vernon spills his thermos of coffee, he leaves his office and goes to the faculty lounge. The students sneak out of the detention room, walking down the hall to Bender’s locker. Brian asks why they’re doing it. Andrew says he doesn’t know and will beat the shit out of Brian if he asks another question. At Bender’s locker, Bender pulls out a bag of cannabis. Brian is scandalized. Andrew tells him to put it back. He doesn’t. Brian asks if Allison approves of it; she doesn’t reply.
The students, while walking down the hall, see Vernon, and so run to beat him back to the room. A musical montage follows in which the students keep nearly running into Vernon as he calmly and obliviously strides around the halls. When they run into a gated-off area, Bender sacrifices himself for the others: He puts the bag of drugs in Brian’s pants and runs away from the others, shouting as he tears down the halls. His voice attracts Vernon’s attention. Eventually, Vernon tracks Bender to the gym, where Bender is playing basketball by himself.
Vernon brings Bender back to the detention room, where the others have returned to unbeknownst to Vernon. While shaming Bender, Vernon says that if the others visited John Bender in five years, they’d really see who he is. Vernon pulls Bender from the room. In the privacy of a storeroom, he tells Bender that sometime in the future he’ll find Bender and kick the shit out of him. Bender asks if he’s threatening him. Vernon says no one will believe him—Bender's word means nothing against Vernon's. Vernon dares Bender to hit him in the chin, saying he only needs one shot. Bender doesn’t move. Vernon fakes a punch at Bender before leaving him in the storeroom, saying he’s “a gutless turd.”
Bender escapes the room by climbing through the air ducts. He falls through the soft ceiling in the detention room, then walks down the stairs. He tells the others he forgot his pencil. When Vernon comes in asking what the “ruckus” was, Bender hides under Claire’s desk. The others don’t give Bender up, feigning ignorance about the sound.
Bender sees Claire’s crotch between her legs. As if entranced, he moves his head between them. She squeezes his head with her thighs and kicks at him, but doesn’t give away his hiding place. Vernon warns them all that he “will not be made a fool of” before walking away. As he leaves, the students see that a toilet-seat protector is hanging out of the back of his pants.
The students laugh, aside from Claire, who hits Bender’s back and calls him an asshole. Bender asks Brian for his “doobage.” As Bender walks to the back of the room, Andrew says he’s not going to smoke that in there. However, Claire and Brian go off to smoke with Bender. Andrew hesitates, then reluctantly joins them. Allison watches the others go off. While Vernon walks the halls, Claire, Bender, and Brian smoke a joint. When high, Claire talks in fragmented speech about how popular she is. Brian wears sunglasses and does impressions.
Andrew leaves a smaller Foreign Languages classroom after filling it with smoke. He takes off his sweater and runs around the library, making fists and doing somersaults and running up the wall. He returns to the Foreign Languages classroom and screams, breaking the glass on the door. Meanwhile, Carl catches Vernon going through confidential files in a storage-room filing cabinet. He makes Vernon pay him $50 to keep it a secret.
Analysis
Hinting at the parental neglect Bender deals with at home, Hughes shows that Bender is the only student whose parents haven’t packed him a lunch. The other students’ lunches also represent their characters: Claire’s sushi is suggestive of wealth and privilege, Andrew’s many courses suggest his athletic need for fuel, Allison’s sugar sandwich reveals her weirdness, and Brian’s well-balanced meal is suggestive of supportive parents.
But while it might seem that Brian’s parents are picture-perfect, Brian watches Bender’s impression of his father with a concerned expression, as if he is privately considering the difference between Bender’s idea and who his parents really are. This suggests that Bender has once again misread Brian, seeing Brian only as a “dork” stereotype who couldn’t possibly be affected by family dysfunction.
The theme of family dysfunction continues with Bender’s impersonation of his own father, who he portrays as crude and violent. Although the tone of the pantomime Bender performs begins humorously, it suddenly shifts when he implies that his father beats both him and his mother. The students watch with grim expressions, but Andrew doubts Bender is telling the truth. To prove it, Bender shows his father put out a cigar on his forearm because Bender spilled paint in their garage. With this moment of vulnerability, Bender shows that his rebellious and provocative behavior has roots at home, where his authoritarian father treats him with contempt.
Hughes once again balances drama with comedy by next showing Bender lead the students in a rebellious act. With Bender having collected a bag of pot from his locker, the students attempt to sneak back into the library unnoticed. However, Vernon is out of his office, strolling around. In an instance of dramatic irony, Hughes shows the students nearly running into Vernon several times; Vernon, meanwhile, is oblivious to the fact he isn’t alone in the halls.
Despite Bender’s hostility toward the other students, he does an unexpectedly heroic thing and sacrifices himself. Rather than let everyone get in trouble, Bender diverts Vernon to the gym, allowing the other students to return to the library and escape getting deeper into trouble. Irritated by Bender rebelling yet again, Vernon locks Bender in a storage room. Hughes shifts the tone back to drama when Vernon threatens him, implying that one day he will exact his revenge with physical violence. The look of fear on Bender’s face reminds the viewer of the fact that Bender is a child who has been abused by a violent father.
Once again contrasting the dramatic tension with humor, Hughes shows Bender immediately escaping the storage room through an air duct and falling through the ceiling. Rather than give up Bender, who earlier sacrificed himself for them, the other students feign ignorance—even Claire, who conceals the fact is Bender sexually assaulting her by sticking his head between her legs. In an instance of situational irony, Vernon insists he will not be “made a fool of” before making a fool himself, unwittingly revealing that a toilet seat protector hangs from the back of his trousers.
