Butt News #23: Kindergarten Cop

Chat GPT Could Never Come Up With Chekov's Weasel

[Hello! Did you know that I turned 41 in March? And if you thought 40 was an important birthday, well, 41 is 1 more than that!! IF YOU WANT TO GET ME SOMETHING FOR MY BIRTHDAY, MY ONLY BIRTHDAY WISH IS THAT YOU SUBSCRIBE TO BUTT NEWS USING MONEY! Especially if you recently ran away to Oregon with three million dollars in drug dealer bones you stole from your evil ex-husband Mister Ponytail!

As always, if you have suggestions for future movies, put them in the comments HERE.

Also, I’m STILL ON CAMEO! Just in time for… Flag Day? You should book me! I will ramble at your loved one about quesadillas and ice cream sundae bars for four and a half minutes longer than you want me to! If you booked one and I missed it, please rebook! PS Hollyweird Fun Fact: You know how the TV writers are on strike? It’s not UNRELATED to me relentlessly begging for money on here!]

We open at the mall and—immediate heartbreak—that is not what malls look like now! Bustling!? No empty storefronts? A thriving marketplace? A VIBRANT FOUNTAIN? Teenagers!?!?!??!?! Can you imagine? It looks like Times Square in there! The mall used to be so great because you could go on the weekend and get an Orange Julius and all of your friends, crushes, and enemies would also be there! Float in one place outside the Disney Store and ambiently collect gossip in your tendrils like a little fat jellyfish! I literally miss mall-as-community-hub sooooooooooooooo much. Yes, the mall is arguably an expression of capitalism and capitalism is bad, but capitalism is also what took the mall AWAY from us! Fight capitalism by BRINGING BACK THE MALL, STEVEDAVE.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is at this particular mall wearing 1990’s finest clip-ons. These are clip-ons, right? I know they are because I had the same ones! But why? This character does not wear glasses! Anyways, he looks like absolute shit, like he crawled here straight outta the smelter.

Arnold is stalking a ponytail guy through the mall and that’s something we have in common: I, too, am obsessed with this wide-necked, horse-haired, Stable of Stars Tommy Wiseau. First of all, ponytail: real or wig? It’s soooooooooo thick. Second of all: WHO IS THIS??

How are you going to be one of the leads in an absolute BLOCKBUSTER SMASH starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and more importantly Linda Hunt but never seen again before or since!? Did he Slide here through a wormhole, do this movie, and then winkle back to his home dimension where he’s literally Tom Hanks and Tom Hanks is the town’s designated ASS CLEANER? (Also I heard in Ponytail Dimension Jerry O’Connell got all of Leonardo DiCaprio’s roles and became the ICON he deserves to be!!!)

Mister Ponytail, whose name is Cullen Crisp (even the character is from another dimension wtf kind of Bucklebury Ferry name is that), is just SMOKING IN THE MALL while he strolls past the Cobble Shop, Brookstone, Casual Corner, Florsheim, and something called Sports Fantasy¹. Can you imagine telling these extras that in just a few decades everything the light [of the Nature Company’s plasma orb] touches will be gone? Inconceivable!

I’m going to say that Arnold—character name: Datactive Jah Kimboh—is doing a bad job following this guy. He is not following close and also not being inconspicuous. He is making a HUGE SCENE out of NOT keeping track of Cullen Crisp at all. He gets so far behind that he has to shove a fat lady off the escalator! Hey, go die! Leave my queen alone!

Cullen Crisp goes into a salon called Angles, as he should—get that topsytail sawed off, brother! You can’t hear what the receptionist says but I assume it’s “oh my god, we’ll cancel all our clients for the day.” Unfortunately for society, he is NOT there to get his pony trimmed, he is there to MURDER TWEAKERS!!! Seems like more of a Gadzooks activity, but sure.

The tweakers are in the basement of Angles doing some exposition about how they’re going to extort $1000 from Cullen Crisp, which couldn’t possibly go wrong. The girl tweaker isn’t supposed to be there so the man tweaker makes her hide inside of a mannequin box. Missed opportunity to have her pretend to BE a mannequin, tbh! The Zucker Brothers would never!

Crisp shows up and is like oh HI Danny I heard you have gossip for me and Danny’s like yeah but only for one thousand bones and Crisp is like sure thing I have plenty of those what on account of my violent drug deals so Danny with an unearned sense of personal safety says OK, here’s the cheese, boss: turns out Danny was doing a delivery “for Corky” (truly the Tino of K-Cop) out of state and peepy-pied Crisp’s missing wife who recently ran away with three million of Crisp’s bones AND Crisp’s son, Crisp Jr.! Danny says that the wife changed her hair and looked like a million dollars—“in fact she looked like about three million dollars.” Hey, maybe don’t make fun of Crisp right now! He seems a little on edge and he could have an entire Iron Age war hammer hidden inside his ponytail!

Danny tells Crispy that the wife and son are in Astoria, Oregon—“it’s a real nice healthy place where they’re living—it snows in winter there!” Which, does it? Like maybe one inch per year, but why is that the defining detail you’d seize on about Astoria, Oregon?? How about THE PACIFIC OCEAN?

Crisp: “You tell anyone else about this?”

Danny: “No way! I’m not stupid, Mr. Crisp!”

Reader, he is, in fact, stupid. Crisp immediately kills him with an Iron Age war hammer. Actually a gun, but it coulda been!!!!!!! That log is thicccccckckckckcccckkkcckckcckc!

Crisp leaves and Danny’s girlfriend comes out of her box and is like “Danny, get up! Get up!” Girl, he’s deceased! Datactive Jah Kimboh heard the gunshot so he runs in there, not particularly hot on Crisp’s heels but that’s okay—the police definitely deserve bonuses at the expense of schools! He doesn’t have time to take a statement from this screaming woman right now so he HANDCUFFS HER TO HER CORPSE BOYFRIEND TO TRAP HER THERE WHILE HE CHASES DOWN CRISPY. Can not possibly be legal.

Back in the salon, Crisp’s mom is being mean to her gay stylist when Crisp shows up having just straight MURDERED A GUY to tell her the good news about his wife and son moving to Oregon. I smell a road trip! A salon attendant approaches and says, “Manicure, Mr. Crisp?” and I love that we’re supposed to be impressed that he’s some kind of high roller at this mall, ha ha. Yeah, if you go by Excalibur, tell ‘em I sent you. They’ll let you try on the knight suit.

Arnold arrives at Angles and just runs in waving his gun around like a psycho. When people react with extremely reasonable fear and a brave security guard is like “hey stop?” Arnold goes, “I’m a cop, you idiot!” Okay, SORRY, you look literally exactly like Cyberdyne Systems’ T-800, recently seen committing apocalyptic mass murder across Los Angeles, so sue me!

Crisp is not worried: “You can’t just walk in here and put a gun in my face. I’m trying to get a manicure. I have witnesses.” Arnold arrests him anyway, with only half his cuties done!

Back at the station, Danny’s girlfriend, Cindy, is not cooperating: “I’m not doing any lineup and there ain’t jack shit you can do about it!” I assume she is mad about getting handcuffed to her swiftly rigor-mortis-ing soulmate despite being a witness/victim, not even a suspect, NOT THAT THAT WOULD BE OKAY EITHER, so now she’s ACAB for life! Solidarity, Cindy! Sue the LAPD for 69 billion bones!

Arnold says that Cindy’s attitude is not acceptable, so his work frenemy Phoebe comes back with a devastating read: “What are you going to do? Handcuff her to the bumper of her car and take her for a ride?”

No, Arnold says, he’s going to downtown LA (pre-revitalization) to commit some casual shotgun murder in the name of justice. He finds some punk rockers assaulting women and, even worse, some Black people near his car, so he beats them all up and says: “My name is Detective John Kimble. And I love my car.” Fair enough! He kind of is a car.

Then he goes upstairs to this chill invite-only loft party so he can intimidate Cindy into testifying and all the punk rock party boys immediately start shooting at him (why on earth????) so he SHOOTS EVERYONE WITH HIS SHOTGUN and then says, “I’m the party pooper.”

I’M SORRY???????????? Pretty cool catchphrase, but this is not how the justice system should work!

There’s no way that drug dealer Cullen Crisp is more dangerous and deadly than Datactive Jah Kimboh! A shotgun is literally designed to be imprecise! Dick Cheney fired one ONE TIME when he was OUTSIDE in a FIELD and he still managed to shoot his 78-year-old friend Harry Whittington in his FACE AND HEART, collapsing not only his lung but also his legacy as anything other than the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face and heart! And Arnold is just spraying buckshot hither and thither inside this crowded fire-trap? HE WOULD HAVE KILLED SO MANY PEOPLE.

This is why only the worst people want to be cops. They see movies like this when they’re kids and think being a cop is all about walking into a den of dirtbags and blowing ‘em all away! Real eyes realize real lies: Kindergarten Cop is also cop kindergarten. That’s why police cars look like the Christopher Nolan Batmobile now!

But the 400 funerals were worth it, I guess, because Arnold finds Cindy and tells her he has nothing better to do than to bother her forever, plus he just killed everybody she hangs out with, so she might as well go do the lineup. She identifies Crisp and he goes to court, but Crisp says they’ll never convict him on Cindy’s junkie testimony alone! Damn!

So Kimble says FINE, he’ll just go to Oregon and get Crisp’s wife who stole $3 million of his drug money to testify instead. (Shouldn’t they be looking for her anyway? WHY WOULD THE COPS LET HER KEEP THE DRUG MONEY?) Then Crisp’s like yeah, whatever, you’re literally obsessed w me, and at least MY wife left me because she wanted my money and not because of my bad personality! As far as I can remember the movie never totally explains why Arnold’s wife left him, but “just hated ur cop guts” seems believable to me!

The captain tells Phoebe and Arnold to fly to Oregon and track down the wife and get her to testify, and Arnold is like “I WORK ALONE,” which is rude, but captain says no can do, bud—Phoebe has to go because the plan is for her to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher at Crisp Jr.’s school! What’s the alternative? For a MAN to be a teacher? Lol.

Phoebe is eating a sandwich on the way to the airport, establishing that she munches 2 live and lives 2 munch and foreshadowing her imminent downfall! On the plane they look at Crisp’s wife’s high school yearbook to try and figure out what she looks like but all they can find is a blurry picture of her ear. They don’t have a current photo of Crunchwrap Jr. either! These guys are hosed!

The stewardess brings them each a massive tray of full-size food (THOSE WERE THE DAYS—and this is in coach!!) and readers, I would not lie to you about this, she is LITERALLY ANGELA BASSETT.

See the bulkhead carpet??

Nowadays on Alaska Airlines you just get the Northwest Box, which AIN’T FREE, and contains four crackers, six tiny nipples of salami, smoked gouda spread, and one Almond Roca when everyone knows the Surgeon General’s daily minimum is TWO!

Also, upsetting to recognize that weird textured carpet on the Alaska bulkheads!! Am I really regularly flying around in planes from 1990?? I don’t know how old I expected planes to get before they retire, but I’m 41 and NONE of my bones work!

Phoebe says no thank you to the food, which is a red flag. This hungry hog is always drooling for a hambone!

The kid behind Arnold keeps kicking Arnold’s seat so Arnold goes, “If you don’t stop screwing around back there, here’s what I’m going to do to you!” [SNAPS PENCIL]. Why is it scary that he can break a pencil????? Anyone can do that! Also, they’re trying to get work done—don’t you NEED that pencil? Now he has to finish writing his notes with a lil nub! Talk about a self-own!

Phoebe and Kimble discuss their cover story, which is that they’re supposed to be married and apparently she supports them with her kindergarten teacher salary while he, idk, walks around town shooting people. Arnold says they should just say they’ve been married a long time and that’s why they don’t like each other and never talk to each other. Phoebe is like wow, you rock!

GREAT JOB (not sarcastic!) to this movie for having an interesting woman character! Phoebe has a great personality and lots going on—way more depth than Kimble tbqh!!! His only attributes are pencil pincher and party pooper!

Phoebe starts to get food poisoning from her dawn hoagie and she has to run to the bathroom. We touch down in Oregon and Phoebe is horking like it pays the bills: “Maybe it was the burrito. Or it could’ve been the sausages. I don’t think it was the crab salad. It couldn’t have been the donuts.” Gotta punish a woman for eating!

They pull over at a rural gas station and she runs to the attendant like THE BATHROOM KEY! GIVE ME THE KEY! Ma’am you are in the middle of the forest! Chunder in a glade! They pull over again and she vomits again, then she trips and falls in her vomit and then Arnold helps her vomit off a bridge in the rain, then carries her back to their 1989 Plymouth Acclaim.

Phoebe: “That’s why I quit teaching. I got so sick of other people’s kids. I was afraid that I’d never want to have any of my own.”

Arnold: “I have a son. He’s 13. I remember when he was five. He lives with his mother and stepfather.”

Exqueese me you have a WHAT!? Who lives WHERE? With WHO? What the fuck are you doing, man?

Then a ferret slithers out of Arnold’s duffel and on to Phoebe’s face and Phoebe screams. Please. There’s no way that ferret wouldn’t have peeped out of the bag before now. They’ve been traveling all day! What about at the airport!? Did the ferret go through the x-ray machine?!??? Also I don’t buy this as a character detail. The movie gives NO background on why/when/how this murderous workaholic cares for this ferret. You’re telling me Detective John Kimble spent months litter-box-training a weasel?

They check into a cute motel and Phoebe promises she’ll be better the next morning. She is NOT better the next morning. Luckily Arnold is all cleaned up and ready to go.

Arnold: “How do I look?”

Phoebe: “Take off the gun.”

Arnold: “That’s a good idea.”

Phoebe: “The little bastards are gonna eat you alive.”

Arnold: “They’re 6-year-olds, how much trouble can they be?”

Phoebe: “On second thought, take the gun.”

A CLASSIC JOKE!!!!!!!!!!!

Arnold meets the principal, Linda Hunt/Ms. Schlowski, and introduces himself as the new kindergarten teacher. Linda Hunt is like, “We were expecting a Miss O’Hara,” and complains that the cops told her she had to fire Mrs. Hagley last-minute and replace her with an undercover cop but they wouldn’t tell her why. THERE’S NO WAY THIS WOULD HAPPEN!

The murder of Danny (which… is that even what Crisp is on trial for? How would his ex-wife be a relevant witness? What about the drug dealing??) is a crime committed in California. So you’re telling me that the LAPD can call up an elementary school principal in Oregon and tell her to fire a teacher—a public employee—and replace her with an undercover cop with no credentials or experience? And she HAS TO DO IT? Surely the teacher’s union has something to say about that!

Principal Schlowski: “I assume you have some teaching experience.”

Detective John Kimble: “They wouldn’t have sent me otherwise.”

MAYBE YOU SHOULD CHECK, LINDA!

Schlowski takes Arnold to his classroom and tells the kids that their previous teacher is gone and will neither confirm nor deny that she has died. Then she leaves Arnold alone with the kids.

This man is out of his depth! His first problem is that he has no finesse. He doesn’t even pretend to be interested in getting to know them—he only cares about getting them to say whether or not their dad is a famous drug dealer. Kids hate that! His second problem is that kids make terrible informants. He asks them easy, straightforward detective questions like “who here was born in Astoria?” but the kids are all pee pee poo poo penis vagina! What the hell!? This is going to be harder than Datactive Jah Kimboh thought!

One child (undefeated 90s powerhouse Sarah Rose Karr) needs to go to the bathroom but she doesn’t know how to unbuckle her Osh Kosh B’Goshes. Arnold, whom the government trusts with deadly weapons, also cannot figure out this child’s overalls, so he runs into the hallway in a panic to locate a woman (nature’s clothing expert). Great news for him, because the closest woman is Penelope Ann Miller and she is HOT. Arnold tells Sarah Rose Karr that she is HIRED as wingman! Arnold is gonna get laid so much as long as this kid always stays hydrated and never learns how to navigate buckles!

Penelope Ann Miller is also a teacher at the school and her name is Joyce. Arnold tells Joyce that he’s the new kindergarten teacher and she’s like yuh-yoh—shouldn’t you get back there?

Joyce: “Kindergarten is like the ocean. You don’t want to turn your back on it.”

Arnold. “Don’t worry. Everything is under control.”

GUESS WHAT IT’S NOT!

It sounds like a one-man band made the music for this movie.

When Arnold gets back to the classroom he finds that the children have turned into little monkeys and they are going ape! They’re screaming and fighting and throwing toys and throwing food and climbing on desks and one boy is LOOKING UP GIRLS’ SKIRTS, which the movie thinks is funny, which is why we have Clarence Thomas. A kid rams his toy wagon into Arnold’s ankle and he loses it! He makes a crazy face and screams “SHUT UUUUUUUP!” which causes all the kids to start crying in extreme fear. At first Arnold is overwhelmed by their tears. He does not know what to do. But then inspiration strikes: He runs to the car to get his ferret!

You keep your ferret in the car??? John Kimble, civil servant, is RAMPAGING through life, recklessly endangering children, adults, and animals. And this is all in service of catching a DRUG DEALER? LEAVE HIM! WHO CARES? Detective John Kimble is the villain of this story!!! In keeping with my Top Gun theory, which you can read about in my book Shit, Actually, he is Maverick! And Ms. Schlowski is Ice Man! And Phoebe is Tom Skerritt! And the ferret is Goose!!!!!

Now all the children pet the ferret and peace is restored. The day is done and John Kimble is exhausted. A child named Dominic stays to help him clean up and delivers many savage roasts about how Arnold sucks shit at teaching.

Dominic: “Mrs. Hagley is a lot better than you… My mom’s a teacher in this school and she’s a lot better than you too.”

Arnold goes back to the motel and passes out. He has never been more tired. Taking care of children is even harder than murder!!! He tells Phoebe that she has to take over tomorrow, but she says no way—it’d blow their cover!

The next morning at school all the gossipy single moms are horny for Arnie. They can’t believe how hot he is. Question: Is he hot? I legitimately can’t tell. He’s too baked into my psyche. Is this… a hot man?

Arnold meets a woman named Jillian, one of the moms, who is a SEX WOMAN in a VINYL COAT. He thinks she’s got to be Mrs. Ex-Crisp for sure, but reader, don’t take the bait—she’s a blonde herring! Jillian says her son Sylvester’s father doesn’t live with them anymore and Sylvester’s been acting strange lately, specifically playing with dolls. “It’s weird.” She’s concerned that not having a dad has turned Sylvester into a proud homosexual man. And then we’re plunged into the DARKEST, MOST 1990 DIALOGUE OF ALL: Arnold tells Jillian not to worry because “[Sylvester] uses the dolls to look up the girls’ skirts.” And then JILLIAN SAYS, “Oh, well, that’s a relief.” OH, WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF! A relief? That’s what that is!

I was terrified that my son had crushes on other boys but I am thrilled to learn he’s merely a sex predator!

Arnold says he’ll keep an eye on Sylvester and make sure he doesn’t do anything gay.

Then Jillian mentions that Sylvester’s father lives in California and Arnold starts to get police-horny because CRISPY lives in California! But then she adds that he left them for another man, which is, again, worse than sex crime. Arnold is disappointed. That can’t be Crisp—Arnold knows that Crisp is ramrod straight and known for ramming his rod straight into women ONLY.

Some random kid comes up and says, “Are you married, Mr. Kimble?” and Arnold says “No” and the kid yells, “He’s not married, mom!” EXCEPT HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE MARRIED FOR THE COVER! It tracks that you’re bad at teaching but why are you also bad at detecting????

A fat kid eats everyone’s lunch, which is for sure what we always do, so Arnold screams, “You eat other people’s lunches? STOP IT!” and DROPS THE KID FROM A GREAT HEIGHT, BREAKING ALL OF HIS BONES.²

Now he makes them play a game called “who is my daddy and what does he do” and at first the kids start guessing who Arnold’s daddy is, LOL. That’s the kind of bit I like. Then, famously, Arnold says he has a headache and the morbid kid says it might be a tumor and Arnold says one of the Great Lines of Cinema: “IT’S NOT A TUMOR.” ChatGPT wishes! Support human writers!

Now all the kids talk about their dads.

“My dad repairs cars that are driven by women who are pinheads.”

“My dad’s head is so big that he can’t wear any hats.”

“Our mom says that our dad is a real sex machine.”

“I don’t know what my dad does. I haven’t seen him in a long time. He lives in France.” ←————— KABOIOIOOIOIONG

“My dad is a cynegologist, and he looks at vaginas all day long.”

Then a girl speaks in Spanish and Arnold is like WHAT? Which, I know German isn’t a Romance Language, but I feel like Arnold would have a rudimentary grasp of Spanish! Someone ask him!

Anyway, forcing kids to talk about who their dad is is a very traumatizing thing to do and should be illegal (maybe is illegal?)!

A kid named Zach Sullivan keeps his back turned for the entire “game,” and Arnold asks what’s up with that guy. “He doesn’t like anyone to talk to him,” explains one kid. “He’s a poo poo head,” adds another. Then the whole class screams at Zach Sullivan that he’s a poo-poo ca-ca. Zach just sits there crashing two toy cars together. Arnold’s detective glands sniff something yummy again. Could this be our boy? He asks Zach, “Did your daddy teach you that game?” because a drug dealer WOULD teach a kid to play car crash game instead of a NICE game like looking up girls’ skirts!

The fire alarm goes off and Arnold is Shaqtin’ a Fool. He tells the children there’s a fire and they’re all going to die, so they all run out of the building screaming. But it was just a drill! Okay, he could have kept it together better (SIR YOU ARE A COP), but shouldn’t someone have told Arnold, a teacher at this school, there was going to be a drill today?? Arnold soothes his shame by sharing a sensual look with Joyce.

Arnold is now 100% sure that Zach Sullivan is Crispy Jr. He follows Zach out to the car but Mrs. Sullivan speeds away before he gets there. Even more suspicious!

Phoebe is feeling better so she and Arnold go out clubbing and run into Joyce and Dominic (who is Joyce’s son btw) on the absolutely POPPING-OFF streets of Astoria. Phoebe thinks fast and pretends to be Arnold’s sister Ursula instead of his wife so she doesn’t cockblock the intense sexual tension between Arnold and Joyce. She really commits to her Austrian accent here and I love her for it!

Arnold: “Why did you tell her you were my sister?”

Phoebe: “Relax, butch. The love doctor is here.”

Inappropriate and not at all what you’re here for, but sure! Ursula orders chicken wings, a green salad, clam chowder, a rib-eye, and blueberry pie with ice cream, and it’s honestly refreshing to see a non-fat character be obsessed with food! Gluttony at Every Size!

Arnold says he’s having a hard time getting to know some of the parents and Joyce says that some people who come to small towns are hiding from something. HMMMM.

They leave dinner and Phoebe is like “I think you scored” and then says, “Kimble if you were any stiffer we could take you surfing,” and I screamed “EW!!!!!” because I thought she was talking about his penis!!!!!!!! But then my whole family made fun of me because apparently “OBVIOUSLY” she was talking about him being conversationally awkward. I’m sorry but they were just arguing about whether or not he likes that woman!

Phoebe reassures Arnold that this case is close to done and “You’re gonna be back to dealing with junkies and murderers in no time.” Ah, yes, two equivalent things: junkies and murderers.

Arnold is ashamed that the kids are walking all over him, so Phoebe tells him to show no fear. He shows up to school the next day with a new game plan that plays to his strengths! To conquer kindergarten, he just needs to be himself!

Arnold: “Today we’re going to play a new fun game. It’s called POLICE SCHOOL. I’m going to be the sheriff. You’re going to be my deputy trainees.”

He says they’re no longer allowed to go to the bathroom and their mommies aren’t there to wipe their tushies anymore and “It’s time now to turn this mush into muscles!” Real question: are kids supposed to have muscles?

Arnold puts the kindergarteners through boot-camp-style police training exercises. They march in step. They run through the tires. They do sit-ups. Arnold does his own practice fire drill and the kindergarteners become the FASTEST AT ESCAPING FIRE IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL! These children are now an elite paramilitary force and they are loving it. Arnold has finally found his rhythm! There can’t be anything bad about this.

The children settle down to enjoy some milk and have story time. Arnold reads an A.A. Milne book and gets sad about his son Alex.

Kid: “Where is he?”

Arnold: “He lives with his mother… You see, his mother and I, we are…”

Kid (dirgelike): “Divorced, we know.”

Dominic says that divorce is when a daddy doesn’t want to see his little boy anymore. Damn, dude!!!

Movies in the 80s and 90s were SO obsessed with divorce being bad. Was that a reaction to the introduction of no-fault divorce in the 70s? Because divorce is good, actually! It is good when people are not forced to remain married!

Arnold reads the book out loud and all the kids take a nap and it’s very sweet, but WHY DID ARNOLD ABANDON ALEX THOUGH??? Then Arnold falls asleep too and has a nightmare that Crisp slides up to the window on a conveyer belt and—sorry, he fell asleep while he was watching the children??? Is that what happened to Alex?

Joyce comes into the classroom to wake Arnold up from his nap and invite him over for dinner. Then, this jump scare:

Joyce: “You’ve got a little mustache”

Arnold: “Oh, it must be from the milk”

DISGUSTING! He’s got a dry milk mustache????? And, reader, SHE WIPES IT.

Arnold gets home and there’s a car parked in front of his motel room and he hears Phoebe MOANING IN PAIN. Arnold runs in with his gun (of course) and says FREEZE! But, oops, it’s actually the moans of erotic bliss. Phoebe’s bumbling fiancé Henry came all the way up here to surprise her for her birthday and he cooked her favorite dish, pasta el olio! Henry puts on Phoebe’s frilly pink robe, because he is a silly girly-man who cooks for a living, not a REAL MAN who does murders. Phoebe hands Arnold the pasta so she can have sex with Henry some more. Arnold leaves.

Back at school Arnold finally catches up with Zach’s mom, who’s been avoiding him. She tells her kindergartener to “go for a walk” (!!?!!?!!) so she and Arnold can talk privately. Hey, isn’t this MAYBE supposed to be the fugitive six-year-old of the evil drug dealer?? You sure he should go wandering the streets solo rn?

Zach’s mom says, “I know what this is about. I suppose you saw the bruises on Zach’s legs?” Arnold is like HUH? She says her husband is in counseling for his anger problems. Arnold asks if he’s beating her too and she says she’s “sure there won’t be any more occurrences.” Arnold says, “If he does it again, I press charges.” That guy obviously sucks, but how many people’s businesses do you gotta BE IN, man???? Contact a relevant agency!

Arnold goes to dinner at Joyce’s. She weirdly lives in a mansion, which Arnold rudely points out, and she says it belongs to a friend of hers who’s letting her stay there since the divorce. Dominic takes Arnold outside and shows him his secret hiding spot in the bushes where he keeps his lasers (tin foil worms).

Dominic: “I put up these lasers to protect us.”

Arnold: “Protect you from what?”

Dominic: “The bad people.”

Dominic points out a radio tower and says he’s going to plant one of his lasers up there but he has to do it at night otherwise the bad people will know it’s there. Huh! No red flags here!

Arnold snoops around the house. He’s suspicious. He digs through the closets! He sniffs the panties! Now Arnold and Joyce have an intimate fireside moment. He asks what’s up with her ex and she says her ex moved back to France and doesn’t take care of them at all, but it’s okay because Dominic likes not having a dad actually. Arnold’s like R U SURE?

Arnold: “Dominic was talking about having to move around a lot to keep the bad people away”

Joyce (busted): “Truth is my ex husband is a walking nightmare. He didn’t leave us, we left him.”

Arnold (kaboioioiooioioioioing yet again!!!): “I’m glad he’s in France and doesn’t live nearby.”

Joyce: “He doesn’t live in France. I told Dominic that he lived in France.”

Joyce tells Arnold that he can’t tell ANYONE about her abusive ex and he says she can definitely trust him, which she can’t!

The children practice the Gettysburg Address for an upcoming Abraham Lincoln party or something. Phoebe is there—she’s done some digging on Joyce and says Joyce doesn’t SEEM like she has millions of dollars. Phoebe doesn’t think Joyce is the woman they’re looking for. Jillian shows up to donate a mini-horse to the raffle, which personally I don’t think is a pet one should obtain by pure chance!

Arnold and Joyce have a VERY EROTIC MOMENT IN THE HALLWAY IN FRONT OF ALL THE KIDS—you guys are at work!!!—and then Zach’s mom shows up late with Zach and Zach is all fucked up. Arnold sees the sleazy dad across the street and runs over to beat him up: “You hit the kid, I hit you.” The whole school comes out to watch. The best way to handle this, for sure!

Linda Hunt calls Arnold into her office and says she checked him out and there is no record of him ever teaching in California or anywhere else. WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THAT BEFORE? You think he’s going to get in trouble when she lists all of his unconventional teaching methods, but then she says, “I have no idea what kind of police officer you are³, but you are a very good teacher.” Is he??? Have the kids learned anything besides "go to the carpet"?

Meanwhile in LA Cindy is dead because Mother Crispy poisoned her cocaine I think.

Without Cindy, the case has 1000% fallen apart unless they can locate Crisp’s ex-wife. One of the cops says that Arnold and Phoebe think they’ve found her but they haven’t found the stolen drug money yet. Then this bitch says they should tell her that Crisp has been released and he knows where she is, so “If she wants police protection she’ll have to come up with the money.” I’m sorry, IS THAT HOW THAT WORKS? That is sooooooo fucked up! Like, if you’re going to make police propaganda, TELL ON YOURSELF LESS!

Now Crispy is free!

At the Abraham Lincoln parade (?) Arnold and Joyce do the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Three Legged Race together and then fall down and accidentally have coitus on the lawn. The kindergarteners do their Gettysburg address and Arnold is so proud. Schlowski introduces Mr. Kimble to the school and everyone cheers and all the kids hug him! He has finally found his true calling—it wasn’t shooting people after all! It was teaching! A different kind of blasting brains!

Meanwhile, Crisp and mommy show up in Astoria.

Evil Mommy: “I’ll be in the pharmacy, Cullen. Try not to step in anything.”

Sorry, what kind of people are these supposed to be????? Los Angeles elites?

Cullen goes into the toy store and tries to buy a car game for Crisp Jr. but there’s only one left and an old man named Daryl is already buying it. Cullen offers him 4x the price but Daryl says no so Cullen leaves in a huff. Hey, WHY DON’T YOU LOOK AROUND THE TOY STORE FOR A SEC? Get your kid something else you weirdo! How do you know he ONLY WANTS “Thunderloop Thrillers”? You don’t even know him! You’ve been in Fake France for years!

At the fair, Phoebe tells Arnold, “We’ve run out of time. We have to press Joyce and we have to press her now… She’s gotta cooperate and tell us about the money or she gets no police protection. Nice, huh?” No, Phoebe, it’s not nice and I hope you become a whistleblower after this egregious miscarriage of justice!

Arnold comes clean with Joyce at the fair: “We’re police officers. We know who you are.” He says they can only offer her protection from Crisp if she tells them where the money is. Joyce is livid. She can’t BELIEVE she shared a leg with this man. She says there never WAS any money—it’s just something Crisp made up to get a bunch of creeps to go looking for her! Crisp doesn’t want money—he wants DOMINIC. Joyce grabs Dominic and tells him, “the bad people have found us again,” which seems gratuitous, and they run away.

Meanwhile Crisp robs Daryl in broad daylight and takes the dumb toy. Then he finds his mommy at the pharmacy buying a bunch of children’s medicine.

Mommy: “There’s a lot of flu going around.”

Pharmacist: “It is the season!”

THERE’S NO WAY IT’S THE SEASON. IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL OUT.

Arnold runs to Joyce’s house but Dominic has disappeared. Joyce says that Arnold is a bastard and Dominic “said something about getting his lasers.”

Arnold: “Lasers? I think I know where he is.”

Yeah, he’s just CLIMBING THE RADIO TOWER ALONE AT AGE FOUR. I’m gonna say this kid doesn’t know anything about lasers. Arnold and Joyce get to the tower just in time to see Dominic SLIP AND FALL BUT HIS BACKPACK CATCHES ON SOMETHING. VERY STRESSFUL. Arnold climbs up to get him and they go back to the house. Anticlimactic, tbqh.

And also: WHY WOULD YOU GO BACK TO THE HOUSE? GO TO YOUR MOTEL! You know Crisp escaped from the air fryer and is on the loose!

Arnold is like you can trust me, but Joyce is like ACAB. Arnold says he doesn’t see his son because his ex-wife “doesn’t want me to be a part of his life. I lost my family. I should have never let it happen.” (DISTURBINGLY VAGUE.) And then: “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose Dominic.” You’ve know her for a week!!! This is less convincing than Love Is Blind!

And now Joyce is just back working at the school?????? Arnold and Joyce do a full tongue kiss in the hallway—did you fill out some disclosure paperwork or anything??—and Phoebe shows up to make a presentation to the class about stranger danger, which I guess is their entire plan to defeat Crisp.

Little do they know that Crisp is in the principal’s office THIS MINUTE!!!!!!!!! Doin’ slurmy behavior! Ms. Schlowski gives him a tour of the school (HEY, ARNOLD, HOW ABOUT YOU SHOW THE SCHOOL A PICTURE OF CRISP SO THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN) and he sees Dominic in class with Phoebe and Arnold. He goes back to the car with his mommy and says, “She calls him Dominic. She always wanted to name him Dominic. What a dumb name.” Haha. Mommy gives him a gun.

Now he sneaks back in and SETS THE SCHOOL ON FIRE???? Jesus! Luckily Arnold gave the kids military fire escape training. But only some of the kids. The rest of them can suck it I guess! The hall is full of smoke and all the other grades are freaking out except for the kindergarteners who are elite. What was the point of all those fire drills if when there’s a fire you just run around screaming?

Dominic has the ferret stuffed down his shirt and you know Chekov’s famous rule: if you see a ferret in the first act, someone with a ponytail is getting bit by a ferret in the climactic scene! Arnold loses track of Dominic in the hall because kids keep falling in the human crush. Then Crisp is there! He steals Dominic! But all the newly trained kindergarteners point at him and scream STRANGER. That’ll stop him!

Arnold chases them upstairs and gets his gun out and accidentally points it at a group of small children. We love a good guy with a gun!

Crisp gets called out for being a stranger but luckily he had a cover story ready.

Crisp: “I’m a fireman. I help people.”

Dominic: “Well where’s your hat?”

Crisp: “My hat?”

I DIDN’T THINK ABOUT THAT! Crisp has no choice but to come clean.

Crisp: “I’m no jerk fireman!”

I’m a curry fireman! (SORRY.)

Now Crisp has a very unhinged conversation with Dominic in the science room while Arnold races around trying to find them before they sneak out of the building and run away. Hey, how about anybody do one useful thing and PUT COPS AT EVERY EXIT? It is not that hard to keep a man from getting out of a building!

Meanwhile Phoebe tries to get into the school but can’t, so she’s just running around with her gun in her hand and Crisp’s mommy RUNS HER OVER WITH THE CAR AND STEALS HER GUN.

Joyce finds Crisp and Dominic and Crisp punches Joyce right in the face, which is terrible PR with Dominic. Read the room! Arnold shows up, so Crisp holds Dominic at gunpoint.

Arnold: “He’s not your hostage, he’s your son.”

Crisp: “The boy is mine! [I’m sorry but you/seem to be confused!]”

Then the ferret emerges from Dominic’s sweater and runs up and bites Crisp’s jugular just as he is about to fatally shoot Arnold! This causes him to miss and shoot him in the leg instead. Then Arnold shoots Crisp 2 DEATH. But then evil mommy shows up! She sees dead Crisp and she shoots Arnold again in the shoulder or something! But just when she’s about to shoot Arnold in the head… Phoebe shows up and beats the mom to death with a baseball bat! She’s so strong because she eats SO MUCH SPAGHETTI!!!

It’s a happy ending! A child saw his father shot to death in the bathroom of a school!

USA when it’s time 2 solve gun violence

Anyway, now the movie is over. Arnold eats emasculating Jell-O in the hospital and Phoebe weirdly kisses him on the mouth and asks where she should send his invitation to her and Henry’s gay wedding. And the answer is… Astoria, Oregon! He’s going to stay there and marry Joyce and keep being a teacher forever! “I’m back.” Har har!

Meanwhile in Joyce’s classroom she’s teaching about the Civil War, which is actually illegal now (CRT). Joyce sees Arnold in the hallway and runs out of class to see him, and, like, I’m sorry, she didn’t know he was out of the hospital? Aren’t they dating? Then they make love.

So, Ms. Schlowski is just cool with Arnold teaching there even though he STILL has no credentials and more importantly he rained destruction down upon the school and a whole wing burned to ashes and several children probably died!?

We’ve GOT to defund the police.

1. Me and Jimmy Butler have quesadillas and an ice cream sundae bar and binge-watch Happy Valley. He’s never seen it before and he LOVES IT and is never on his phone.

2. Ironic because I have never actually stolen anyone’s food, but something that does happen in real life is that people “joke” about stealing fat people’s food and throwing it away for our own good! This is literally DARVO!

3. HE’S A BAD POLICE OFFICER!