The Yard recap, episode 4: the peanut butter racket and the ol’ poop switcheroo

The Yard recap, episode 4: the peanut butter racket and the ol’ poop switcheroo

THE YARD Episode 4

Pretty much anything can be smuggled into the yard—Super Soakers, N-rated video games, dogs—but it’ll cost you, as we learn this week. The hottest contraband? Peanut butter, which to a 10-year-old kid has the same narcotic effect as a crack pipe. “Have you ever held a girl’s hand while eating a PB&J?” asks the ever-creepy Johnny. “It’s the best.” Honestly, no kid on TV has made our skin crawl this much since Glen on Mad Men.

As J.J. explains, even the most vigilant wardens teachers can’t stop the peanut butter racket. “There will always be demand,” he says, and Frankie and his crew seize on that demand, spending hours every day assembling sandwiches, then smuggling them over the fence with the help of a bushy-browed junior high student—this was the last remaining option after unmanned drones (remote control cars) and underground tunnelling failed. As the warring crews fight it out for control of the PB&J market, Johnny once again finds his idiocy exploited for nefarious purposes, and the show somehow manages to outdo itself in the gross-out department, beating sharts and pee-filled water balloons. All of the intel on the yard’s black market, larva consumption and the world’s nastiest sandwich after the jump.

This is actually Nutella. (Image: Alexis Lamster)

THE SETUP: When Pork Chop is busted for smuggling sandwiches, Frankie uses Patti’s feminine wiles to con Johnny into abetting (likely channelling Blake Lively in The Town, she agrees to let Johnny kiss her on the cheek and put his hand in her back pocket for five seconds). Frankie later puts out an order for our beloved Cory to distract Nick and the gang by eating insect larva, but he was hungry anyway, since his mom slept in and forgot to pack him a lunch. When the smuggled sandwich bag turns out to be filled with menstrual pads—which Johnny only figures out after he tries to set the table with them, of course—Frankie blackmails him into becoming a permanent accomplice. “Someone is bound to get hurt, and not just the allergic kids,” J.J. wisely points out.

THE SCHEME: Johnny continues his tailspin into legume smuggling, repeatedly excusing himself to “drop the Browns off at school,” which eventually leads Nick to suspect that he has an “irritating bowel syndrome.” Johnny is eventually busted (not going to lie—we cheered), and Nick publicly disowns him. But there’s more than meets the eye in the yard: turns out it was all a sting orchestrated by Nick and Johnny to take control of the peanut butter trade.

THE UPSHOT: Nick uses his man on the inside to smuggle—wait for it—peanut butter and feces sandwiches into the yard. (Forget allergies—isn’t E. coli a concern here? This show is disgusting.) Frankie’s authority is undermined when the kids all literally eat poop, so Nick’s crew is able to take over the system and, as J.J. points out, improve it by offering fresh bread, fair prices and safe Epi-Pen injection sites.

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER: Nick, both for his crafty scheme and for publicly humiliating Johnny, even if it was just an act. Runner-up: Suzi, for her commitment to animal-themed T-shirts and for calling Johnny a “nut gargler.”