Greek: Flashbacks and a Myriad of References

Greek:

"Freshman Daze"

It figures Greek picks the night Gossip Girl comes back to bring out the truth behind the "bing." But now I'm ready to graduate from the high school soap and spend a little time in college.

Tonight's Greek was a very interesting episode. Probably not the most entertaining ep of Greek ever, but definitely a good one since we now have the back story pretty well hammered out. To summarize: Cappie and Evan have known each other since childhood because they attended the same camp. Upon arriving at college, Evan talked Cappie into rushing a frat, and only got into his top choice Kappa Tau (!) because of his affiliation with Cappie. Which leads us to the issue that's been nagging us for weeks:

The Kappa Taus call Evan "Bing" because he was half way between a "bid" and a "ding." Yep, I would never figured that one out. It doesn't help that I've never heard of a "ding" before. Of course, I have a Bachelor's of Arts degree in English and I didn't get Frannie's Of Mice and Men reference either, so my self-esteem is a little damaged right now.

Meanwhile, the Cappie/Casey/Bing triangle had been going strong since the moment Casey met the two boys. After Cappie stands Casey up for the ball, Evan offers to take her, and then Cappie finally shows up and a major beat down (a "snafu" according to Casey) takes place between the now ex-BFFs. Hmm, a fancy party and a fight...how delightfully like The O.C.

Other observations:

• Ugh, Rebecca's back. I thoroughly enjoyed the lack of her last week. Although, she did temporarily win me over with:
• Frannie: "Isn't Casey doing a great job?"
  Rebecca: "Beats our last president."
• Cappie: "Listen to the name, Spitter, it's a ball...like a testicle. I don't want to go to a testicle!"
• Kind of gutsy of Evan and Cappie to drink beer in their freshman dorm room on the first day of college with the door to the hall open. I think even my lackadaisical RA would have noticed that.
• "Hot-man-istan" was stealing from his host family. Ha. And putting it in his "fanny-pack-istan."
• Ashleigh: "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
  Casey: "Um, not really." Ha.
• Casey's starting to look nuts with her anti-Frannie mantra. This seems to me like it might be an Oliver situation a la The O.C. season 1 when Ryan maintained that Oliver was nuts until everyone started to think that Ryan was nuts, only for Oliver to then really turn out to be nuts.
• Dale's "USAG Ball." Oh nooo.... "It's going to be a sin-free evening filled with non-alcoholic drinks, line dancing, and subtle prostilitizing."
• I loved the Dale flashback of him pushing the kid who was converting to Catholicism.
• Did you catch Cappie's extremely astute passing reference to the Jonestown massacre? Wow, that kid really is smart if he's whipping out allusions like that. Nicely done.
• Ahh! Look at Beaver's long, flowing blond hair! And how great is it that he got his nickname because he chewed a baseball bat. I was definitely expecting something worse.
• Evan: "Cappie was already a monster; I just pointed him toward Tokoyo."
• Props to Greek's attempts to recreate the pop culture of 2006 with the Grey's Anatomy spoof, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," etc.
• Rusty: (explaining his search engine prowess) "I use a lot of Boolean navigators." (Wow, how crazy is it that I've had to Google four different things from tonight's Greek? This isn't Lost, people!)
• I like Casey's red dress.

Well, after this episode and its flashbacks, I've definitely been pulled much further into the Casey/Evan camp than I've ever been before. In the flashbacks, I actually felt sorry for Evan. Aside from his beyond iffy facial hair, 2006 Evan was pretty great. I guess we'll see how great 2008 Evan is next week when Casey maybe tries to get him back.

And, best of all, it looks like we'll get more Dale next week! Wohoo! I was wondering how long it would take for us to see Dale enter the dating world.