#19: Season 3, Episode 15 - “The Big Splash”
Louis surprises everyone by joining the diving team, but then surprises no one by only doing cannonballs. This eventually leads to Louis reevaluating the future he envisions for himself. Should he remain a class clown forever? Or should he start taking life more seriously? Meanwhile, Ren’s on a mission to win “Best Smile” in the yearbook.
We start our episode with Tawny, Twitty and Tom (oh wow I just realized that all of Louis’ friends names start with the letter T lol) sitting in the stands at a school dive meet. Louis told them to go, yet he’s suspiciously nowhere to be found. Until a mysterious hooded guy walks out with LJH’s team, dramatically takes off the hood and… yeah. It’s Louis. Louis is apparently good at diving according to Twitty and Coach Tugnut (“Stevens, you don’t stink so bad!”) but he decides to squander his talent for laughs instead by doing cannonballs. It’s so cringy. Not only because doing cannonballs at a dive meet and soaking the entire audience & judges is beyond immature -- but, because his cannonballs are so fake lol. There’s the initial surface splash, and then an immediate second one that looks like a freaking nuclear bomb. Unless we’re all watching this from the perspective of Shallow Hal and Louis is actually 600 pounds, it makes no sense. I know it’s just for the lulz... but still. The gang gets a kick out of it.
We cut to the subplot where we see Ruby rushing around and tallying people’s votes for yearbook superlatives. Ren finds out that she’s a lock for “The Big Three” -- Most Likely to Succeed, Most Intelligent, and Best Personality. Is it just me, or is Best Personality a little debatable? (No offense, Ren.) Monique asks who’s in the lead for Best Smile and Ren gets salty when she finds out it’s some random chick Kelly Kerwin. Sooo, now Ren is determined to beat Kelly for Best Smile, as if she doesn’t currently hold the title for literally everything else. Seriously, girl. Let some other people get their time to shine. Dang.
After school, Ren lets the cat out of the bag to Steve and Eileen about Louis joining the diving team. Steve is beyond excited and tells Louis he’ll try to make it to the next meet. Clearly, Louis does not want his family to attend and witness his latest goofball stunt.
Next, we get a time-lapse of Ren being her own personal dentist in the bathroom before school because god forbid she doesn’t win Best Smile. It then cuts to Ren having a smile showdown at school with Kelly. This is the second time in the series where we get that annoying sepia, cowboy standoff thing. This cliché never works for me, ever. This goes on for 1 minute and 14 seconds which might seem like a short amount of time, but my god does this scene crawl by. Definitely the lowest point.
Steve decides to attend Louis’ next dive meet and brings his boss, Mr. Kupchack, along with him. Oh, boy. Tugnut compliments Kupchack’s fancy blazer and he responds “Thank you. It’s the finest Italian suede” and all Tugnut can say is “.........too bad.” HAHA. Of course, Louis gets up there and does another massive cannonball, completely soaking the audience... Including Mr. Kupchack and his fancy Italian blazer. Steve is livid and rightfully so.
Louis’ guilt is starting to sink in...
At home that night, Steve has a serious talk with Louis. He tells him that he was incredibly proud before the meet, (hence why he brought Kupchack along) only to be disappointed yet again. Louis tries to brush off his immature decisions by saying “I’m a kid. That’s what I do. I have fun.” But, Steve poses the question “It may be fun now… But where are you gonna be 10 years from now?” This really resonates with Louis. It cuts to a dramatic shot of him looking at a crap ton of “Class Clown” trophies later that night. Uh… When did Louis get all those trophies?! Where does he keep them? They don’t really let us see lol. It seems like they have their own private display room! Do schools even give out trophies for prestigious accomplishments such as “Seventh Grade Class Clown”? That’s the real question here. Anyway. This fades into a daydream Louis has of a 10 Year Lawrence Jr. High reunion.
As a kid, I always thought 10 years was too small of a time jump. Especially because Louis imagines Tom married with two kids and another on the way. But, 2017 marked the 10 year anniversary of my own middle school graduation. Now I'm 24 and a recent college graduate. Not to mention a lot of my friends are already getting married, having kids and starting their careers of course. So… Looking back at this as an adult, it's actually pretty accurate.
I love how since Twitty is a musician, they had to give him a ponytail down to his freaking butt.
I’d also like to point out that Tawny is a fashion designer, wearing rope lights as part of her outfit, and talks about spending time in Rome. Was Disney Channel under the assumption that clothes featuring rope lights are a high fashion ~Rome~ thing? Exhibit B:
Louis’ daydream is so depressing... but I absolutely love it. He basically imagines himself as a total screwup man-child. He can’t relate to his accomplished adult friends because he never grew out of being his middle school jokester self. It’s too real. You just cringe the entire time because everyone is trying to have a mature conversation and Louis is literally incapable of doing so. One by one, they all become annoyed by Louis’ antics and make up an excuse to leave. Twitty’s the only one left in the end and asks for Louis’ email to keep in touch. We reach the final straw when Louis says: “It’s [email protected]..... With a K.” OHHHH GODDDDDD IT’S SO BAAAAADDDDD. I just wanna die of embarrassment. Twitty is fed up at this point too and peaces out. Louis snaps out of the daydream and whispers “No...” to himself -- clearly deciding against a future like that.
The moment Twitty lost all hope.
That whole sequence is definitely the standout moment of the episode for me. Not because of how funny it is (like you might imagine a standout Even Stevens moment to be), but because of how not funny it is. It’s something we’ve never really seen on the show before. I think taking a peek into Louis’ potential pathetic future was so great. It’s almost like they expanded on what they started in Uncle Chuck. This profound moment segues back into the pointless Best Smile drama. I think it’s kinda interesting how Louis’ plot is very existential here and Ren’s is very superficial. I wonder if that was intentional or not.
Since Ren was so desperate to win and forced herself to smile non-stop, her facial muscles end up getting stuck in a rather disturbing grin lol oops. She’s scheduled to sing the school song at the dive meet in 5 minutes. This somehow leads to Ruby giving Ren a makeover to “distract from the mouth.” She also gives Ren the brilliant advice to cut through the steam room on her way to the pool. The end result is the long lost sister of Pennywise. Ren, The Singing Clown:
Hiya, Georgie!! (No, but really. She looks terrifying.)
Even though he wishes Louis would take it seriously, Steve still goes to the meet to show support. Kupchack also makes another appearance because his first-grader son (Played by Hayden Panettiere’s little brother) wants to see “The Cannonball Kid!”
Louis has built up a name for himself apparently. There’s a massive crowd there to see him! I would imagine these are the same kind of people who stand right next to the log flume ride at amusement parks just to get soaked while fully clothed for whatever unimaginable reason.
You can see that Louis is under a lot of pressure to either give in to the weirdos in the crowd and give them the cannonball they want -- or to take the first step towards seriousness and do an actual dive. In the end, his decision to do a real dive is so admirable!!! I love it so much. But, naturally, when he emerges from the pool and declares “You know what? From this day forward... Let it be known: I am not a clown” we see that he’s standing there as naked as the day he was born.
I was going to ask why Louis is the only team member who wears trunks instead of a speedo... but I guess this is the reason why, haha. He needed to wear something flimsy so it could fly right off of him later I guess? lol. I’d also like to point out Tawny’s freaking FACE:
Um... okay, gurl. I always thought it was weird how she (along with, like.. 50 other people) saw her future boyfriend naked in public like that.
Anyway, Louis scurries off embarrassed and that’s it! The “final minute” bit is Ren coming home from school with a copy of the yearbook already??? She won The Big Three... and the last minute honor of “Best Class Clown.” It’s like Louis and Ren swapped stories in the end. THAT’S WHAT YOU GET, REN! That’s what you get!!! This is also the second time we see Ren wanting to achieve perfection in the yearbook and having it totally blow up in her face.
I love this episode. It was actually the one I was most excited to rewatch while I was organizing my list. Since Louis is my favorite character, this one obviously gets a lot of “personal favorite” points for me. As I mentioned, it isn't even necessarily funny. As soon as Louis does his first cannonball, I get kinda depressed actually lol. The reason I'm ranking this one higher is because I just really love the plot-line and this more serious side of Louis which is seldom seen this prominently. In contrast to Uncle Chuck though, this episode spins the depressing factor into a positive and leaves you feeling optimistic about Louis’ future. You get the sense that he’s actually going to finally make an effort moving forward.
This episode would be even more effective if they actually aired it in production order!! “The Big Splash” is #320 in production. “Model Principal” is #319 — Ya know, the episode where Louis acts like an actual clown and singlehandedly turns the entire school into a circus??? Yeah. They decided to place that episode 3 episodes after this one. If “Model Principal” aired the episode before “The Big Splash” — LIKE IT WAS MEANT TO — it would’ve been so much better. We would’ve seen the height of Louis’ ridiculousness followed by the sobering episode where he decides to knock it off. The episodes leading up to “The Big Splash” in production order are all next-level zany Louis stuff. The few episodes that follow don’t include too much over the top stuff from him, so it would all make total sense. Instead, we get a really solid episode for Louis’ character development, later followed by a total regression of that development. Curse Disney’s f’d up schedule! WHYYYY?!?!?!
Thanks for reading!!
Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Hope you all had a nice holiday. I took a break for Christmas, so yeah. I was actually so mad that the Christmas/Hanukkah episode wasn’t next on the list. It would’ve been perfect timing to review it last week. Oh, well. That episode is really good and deserves even higher than #19 ;)
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