What to Do on a Date

More fun thanks to MST and daydreamers of the 1950's. Gangly oaf Nick can't get the nerve to ask Kay out on a date. She's seen Wagon Train already and will not see it again. Nick's friend suggest a scavenger sale with cokes, streamers and paper elephants. Most people see this as geeky, but this means one thing that should make guys happy, KAY IS EASILY ENTERTAINED!! She also likes taffy pulls and weenie roasts too. And she doesn't mind if the guy is cheap. THIS IS FANTASY!! Where are these women? Unfortunately we don't get to see Nick and Kay's future adventures and these taffy pulls, bike rides, Bali puppet shows and illegal border crossings. One can speculate that they live happily ever after magically not having sex yet having lots of children!!

The following is more of a summary of the movie than a review:

In "What To Do On A Date," Nick, a lovesick dork who sounds perpetually constipated, wants to go on a date with Kay, whose status as a member of the fairer sex is confirmed when she needs Nick's manly help to nail a paper elephant to a rafter. Nick calls up Kay, and asks her if she wants to go see a movie on Friday night. But Kay knows that in the darkness of the movie theater, Nick might put his arm around her shoulder or hold her hand, and that would cause their swell little fifties white suburban world to implode, so she rejects him. Fortunately, our flustered hero has some help from his smooth best friend Jeff and a fifty-year-old's Authoritative Disembodied Voice, who clearly knows what all the teenagers are into. They suggest all sorts of sanitized dating ideas for Nick and Kay, most of which involve doing things in a group so the teens can frustrate themselves trying to suppress their hormonal urges. Nick and Kay talk about various dull, non-sexual dating scenarios and Nick discovers a great pick-up line in the process: "Say, you like to do lots of things, don't ya?" Nick asks Kay if she'd like to go for a bike ride or a weenie roast or a bowling party or a baseball game or a taffy pull next Friday, and here we reach the climax of the movie: will Kay go on a second date with Nick, or will she dump him for somebody who's not such a loser, or will she spend Friday night listening to the Authoritative Disembodied Voice tell her about the importance of home economics? Will Nick continue to have a bland and asexual relationship with Kay, or will he find true friendship and companionship with Jeff, or will he become celibate and devote his life to nailing paper elephants into rafters?

But still, the fact that a socially inept loser like Nick can get a girl to go to the community center to set up a garage sale on a first date should give the rest of us hope.

The human courtship ritual is a veritable minefield riddled with hidden explosives and tattered fragments of cardiac tissue. I was feeling lost, unsure as to how to approach that "special girl". Thankfully, director Ted Peshak had already catered for my social inadequacies. 'What to Do on a Date (1951)' is a Bible of essential information for any love-sick adolescent. A date needn't be expensive, the film tells us; just take your Juliet to a scavenger sale. Yes, that's right, to help set up. (Woohoo, free manual labour!) As we might expect, based on our experience with reality, the date goes very well. So well, in fact, that manly hero Nick scores himself a second date, with Kay agreeing to attend a dubiously-named "weenie roast." So... now that I've got the full dope: who wants to help me set up a garage sale next Friday?

Man, girls sure scare me. I mean, I like them and all; they sure are swell, but I just don't know what to do or say when they're around. If I see a girl I like, how do I ask her out? And if she says "Yes" (Hey, hope springs eternal, right?), then where do I take her? What do we do on a date? My own ideas of shopping for roofing nails or going to the supermarket and playing with the electric doors always fall flat. Fortunately for me, and all the other socially-challenged basement-dwelling geeks out there, this film exists to instruct in the ways of social interc-, er, interaction.

In this film, Nick, a gangly, goofy, but good-natured young fellow, yearns for the wholesome Midwestern affections of Kay, the wholesome Midwestern girl next door. He's in the same mess I am - how to convince Kay that being seen in public with him would not be the social suicide she fears it is? Nick's smirking know-it-all buddy Jeff is ready with lots and lots and lots of condescending and unsolicited advice. Soon Nick and Kay are hitting the town, going to all the hottest and hippest scavenger sales around. They seem to be on track to live happily, wholesomely and Midwesternly ever after.

This instructional short from the early 1950's is a corny, but sweetly affable example of the genre. And that Kay sure is a cutie. Rrrrrowwrrr!

Man, if only I could have dated a hip, cool dude like that gawky teen! Think of the fun we miss these days... weenie roasts, bike rides, and tacking paper elephants to ceilings. This "how-to" film really sets the tone for squeaky clean fun. I just wish they'd made a sequel... "What To Do on Your Second Date"