1. Lelaina: I know this sounds cornball, but I’d like to somehow make a difference in people’s lives.
Troy: And I’d like to buy them all a Coke.
Hey, Troy, I get that it’s part of your anti-consumerist schtick, and was likely the apex of wit in 1994, but do you ever say anything that isn’t just a corporate slogan parroted back in a sarcastic voice?
Troy: [begins nihilistic seashell poem]
NOPE, DON’T EVEN WORRY ABOUT IT.
2. Troy (when Lainey’s dad tries to give her a BMW): Yeah, just think about all those starving children in Africa who don’t even have cars.
Lainey’s mom: Troy, does your father give you gifts like that?
Troy: Well, actually, my father’s dying of prostate cancer, so I don’t really trouble him much for gifts.
Jesus fucking Christ, Troy, could you be normal for one second? These grown-ups are just trying to have a conversation with you because their asshole daughter brought you along to family dinner (without asking, probably). They don’t actually give a shit about what you think—YOU’RE A TWENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD UNEMPLOYED POET—they’re just being nice. They have mortgages.
3. Lelaina: He’s so cheesy I can’t watch him without crackers.
This is kind of a good line if you’re Bugs Bunny in 1952.
4. Vickie: Welcome to the maxi pad.
Sammy: Yeah, with new dry-weave, it actually pulls moisture away from you!
Look, Sammy, I know you hang out with Troy a lot, but it doesn’t have to be like this. You can just do you.
5. Lelaina: I finally figured out what your problem is.
Troy: What’s that—I’m not a pepper?
Seriously, it’s like a verbal tic at this point. It doesn’t even make sense.
6. Lelaina: Troy, aren’t you excited?
Troy: I’m bursting with fruit flavor.
:-|
7. Sammy: I don’t understand why this moment has to be Memorexed.
LOL, “Memorexed.”
8. Troy: Lelaina. You know the punishment for premature evacuation.
What does that even MEAN!!? I see that you’re doing a pun on “premature ejaculation” because it rhymes and stuff, but how does “evacuation” apply in this context? You mean evacuating the apartment? But what’s the “punishment”? You just sitting there some more? Her not “getting” to hang out with you for the rest of the night? Because that was kind of the idea. Seriously, Troy, I think you have some significant style-over-substance issues you’ll need to deal with if you really want to be a professional, um, whatever it is you’re into. (Just a reminder: Condescending Guy Covered in Oil is not a job!)
9. Lelaina: The most profound, important invention of my lifetime. The Big Gulp…I guess it really doesn’t take much to make me happy.
Lelaina and Michael: Blah blah blah blah blah blah…
Michael: I should have stayed in college and got a degree in astronomy or something.
Lelaina: Oh, god, I love astronomy.
Michael: Really?
Lelaina: Yeah. I just—the math, though. It was the math that just, like, got me every time.
Michael: I loved astronomy too, and I got into class, and it was like, everything was three-squared times pi equals the root of pi. And I just wanted to look at the stars.
This movie’s like a Shithead Manual.
10. Troy: I am really in love with you…….…PSSSSHHHHHHH!!!! Is that what you want to hear? Well, don’t flatter yourself.
Okay, so clearly Lelaina should have never spoken to Troy again starting from this moment AT THE ABSOLUTE LATEST. And I’m supposed to be happy that they end up together at the end?1 Nobody’s happy in the long term with someone who’s this much of an emotionally abusive, weird, manipulative, controlling, wet snake. Boooooooo. Or, as Troy would put it, “Easy, breezy, beautiful. Cover girl.”
11. Troy: It’s all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Those are good. The sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain. The moment where your laughter becomes a cackle. And I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.
It’s possible that I hate Troy more than any other fictional or living human. I know he’s brooooooken, or whatever, and he’s scaaaaaaared, and twelve-year-old me is horrified/bewildered by this entire sentence, but “broken and scared” and “not being the most unbearable blowhard on earth” are not mutually exclusive. And twelve-year-old me is still mad that Jo didn’t end up with Laurie, so what does she know?
12: Lelaina: I’m not going to work at the Gap, for Christ’s sake!
Vickie: Shut up.
That line’s not embarrassing. That line is fucking boss. VICKIE 4 LIFE.
13. Troy: [runs hand through hair]
TAKE A SHOWER. YOU LOOK LIKE A BARBECUE MOP.
14. Troy: What happened to your normal clothes?
Michael: Wow!…You look like…
Troy: A doily.
Lainey: I’m gonna change.
Michael: No, don’t change.
Troy: Don’t go thinking for yourself either.
Michael: Come on. Let’s go. You don’t need this.
Troy: You don’t know what she needs.
Michael: I think I know what she needs in a way that you never will.
Hey! Or maybe you could actually treat her like a human being? Nightingales R people 2!!! This is approximately the thirtieth time in the movie when you’re like, “Oh, you should not be talking to these dicks anymore.”
15. Lelaina: They’re just videotapes, right?
Yeah, kinda, actually.
16. Lelaina: I worked so hard on them, you know?
Did you? I mean, did you really? Are you sure you have a solid perspective on what “worked hard” means? Because it seems like mostly you just hung out and got drunk with your friends and carried around your Memorex.
Man, there’s nothing America loves more than a really pretty woman who kind of tries. That’s the most sympathetic thing in the world. A really pretty girl who tried a little bit.
17. Lelaina: I just don’t understand why things just can’t go back to normal at the end of the half hour like on The Brady Bunch or something.
Troy: Well, ’cause Mr. Brady died of AIDS.
I hope Troy dies of GLIB.
18. Michael: I just feel like maybe I deserve
