10 Items Or Less: The Ren Fair

Here’s a little behind-the-scenes vignette on the Season 2 finale of 10 Items or Less.

A pox on that! Hither with the episode recap, anon!

Huzzah! It’s ye olde Renaissance Days at the G&G, and prices (and personal hygiene) are being rolled back to the time before the printing press. (Didn’t Steve Guttenberg invent the printing press?) Renaissance Days is Leslie’s best promotion ever. It’s much better than the “Cheese or Not Cheese” idea he and Carl had. The G&G crew is dressed up in their best Ren Faire attire. They look like rented costumes from a high-school production of King Lear.

The crew is not so thrilled with the promotion, but they’ll put up with it to get their bonuses (or is it bonii?) Oh, about that. Leslie announces that times have been tough and there will be no bonuses this year. Now Yolanda can’t send her kid to Space Camp or modeling school. (Leslie was once an underwear model in the Sears catalog. Well, not quite the catalog, more of a supplemental magazine.) Leslie says he’s going to cash in his mood ring collection and throw the employees a party or, better yet, they’re going to challenge Super Value Mart to a joust with shopping carts! How this gets Yolanda’s kid closer to Space Camp, I do not know.

Once they get the problems with their codpieces figured out, Leslie calls upon the beer wench to bring forth fine ales for the parching of throats and the wetting of whistles. Yolanda’s not happy about being the beer wench. She wants to be a maiden like Ingrid instead of a pub ho. But if Yolanda’s going to degrade herself with the silly costume, at least she’s going to get drunk in the process. [Hiccup!] Huzzah!

Charles from Super Value Mart is beckoned to the G&G to hear King Leslie’s proclamation that the G&G challenges the Super Value Mart to jousting tournament. If the G&G loses, Leslie won’t put produce on sale for a week. Huzzah!

But Charles is already on the offensive. He meets Yolanda in the parking lot and tries to sell her on taking a management job with Super Value Mart. They have free health care for management. Not sure if Hooked on Phonics is covered. Charles wants Yolanda to show a sign of loyalty by helping SVM win the joust.

Yolanda doesn’t have the money for Space Camp, so she asks Carl for advice. Carl thinks that being a rodeo clown is the best career path for Yolanda’s boy, since only Buzz Aldrin, Glen Campbell and Joey Fatone have been to space and there’s not much opportunity for astronauts. Yolanda decides she’s going to take Charles up on that offer after all. She tampers with the G&G’s cart to make sure they lose.

The Super Value Mart team shows up at the G&G party. They’re not in Renaissance garb, but they’re ready to get their joust on. They’re ready to get their drink on, too. There’s mead and grog for all!

The joust will feature brave Todd the Butcher vs. Don “The Bags” Bagley. Before the jousting commences, Charles has a plan to have the SVM team throw the match, have Don pretend to get injured and then sue the G&G out of business. Charles demands that the teams switch carts, so that SVM has the cart that Yolanda sabotaged. So in the heat of competition, the wheel falls of SVM’s cart, launching the brave knight Don off his steed and into a display of crackers. And Don isn’t faking injury. His spine is really messed up. Huzzah!

Charles says he’s going to sue, but there’s a way Leslie can avoid it. If Leslie lets SVM take over the G&G, all the employees can keep their jobs. Leslie doesn’t have much choice. Two weeks later, the G&G is now a Super Value Mart, and Yolanda is the location’s new manager. Leslie is just a little too excited about being demoted all the way down to Carl’s old job. But Yolanda feels guilty about the whole ploy. She confesses to sabotaging the cart and then she quits.

Yolanda and Leslie track down Don, who is in traction and in a wheelchair, at his home in a trailer park. Don tells them that Charles was behind the conspiracy to commit fraud against the G&G, and that Super Value Mart would be implicated in the crime. So Charles has no choice but to give Leslie back the G&G, and all is well again.

Huzzah!

Best Moment: Todd catches the shopping cart square in the jewels when a wheel sticks during a joust test run. Things in the groin are awesome!

Employee of the Week: Ingrid. Her only lines for the whole episode are “Huzzah!”

Product Placement: Alas, none. Unless you count Space Camp. Or the 1986 movie SpaceCamp. “Max and Jinx … Friends … For-e-ver.”

Thanks for checking out the recaps! It was a fun Season 2.

About Ryan Berenz 2166 Articles
Member of the Television Critics Association. Charter member of the Ancient and Mystic Society of No Homers. Squire of the Ancient & Benevolent Order of the Lynx, Lodge 49, Long Beach, Calif. Costco Wholesale Gold Star Member since 2011.