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Original Air Date: February 4, 2008
After MELANIE — busy reading a book for medical school instead of paying attention to her job — meets a cute marketing executive and UCLA graduate named JEROME RICE (guest star Mehcad Brooks, formerly of Desperate Housewives) during her waitress shift, they hit it off over her blunder calling the coffee she served him cream, and she agrees to go out with him for a real cup of coffee later. The first date comes and goes, and Melanie returns home all happy to see DIONNE … until she gets a text from Jerome asking her out on a second date … to see a Sabers game.
Dionne advises Melanie not to make the date all about DERWIN and her whole relationship background since they live in San Diego and will eventually go to either a Sabers game or SeaWorld. When the couple gets to the game, however, Melanie is mortified to find that they’ll be sitting in a VIP skybox instead of the bleachers. Jerome was able to get the lavish seats through his client Cost Low.
Cost Low happens to be the same company looking for an eco-friendly spokesperson for a forthcoming green campaign. TASHA took their call, and now she’s excited about pitching MALIK for the gig, helping him make more money so he can become her client again, and then moving herself and KELLY up and out of their current jobs. So, who should Melanie see first at the Sabers game but Tasha and Kelly.
Melanie pretends she doesn’t know them when they call her name, and she rushes Jerome into the exclusive skybox area. Tasha and Kelly decide that’s where they need to be to work their charms on the Cost Low executives, but they can’t get past Leroy standing guard at the door. Inside, trouble heads Melanie’s way anyway when a food worker recognizes her as Derwin’s girl with another dude and calls someone on her cellphone to gossip.
Word then spreads throughout the stadium’s support staff like wildfire, until the news reaches Derwin just as the team is about to hit the field. He, of course, pretends not to care since he’s the one making tons of money, but JASON and Malik see right through his act.
Meanwhile, Tasha and Kelly finally manage to get into the skybox by bribing another security officer into letting them use the paging system to call Leroy away to a fake call from his parole officer. Melanie begs them to leave her alone because she’s on a date with a guy who knows nothing about her past, and they agree to act like they don’t know her.
There’s more trouble ahead, though, when Jerome introduces Melanie to MR. HARRIS (guest star John Colton), Cost Low’s top executive, as a “very special” person and then shoves her off on the man’s wife while they go watch the game. Mrs. Harris immediately starts talking about Melanie participating in weekly social functions arranged by Cost Low executives’ significant others, which sounds too much like Sunbeams gatherings for Melanie to bear. She jumps up and leaves in a rush.
When Jerome catches her in the hallway, Melanie goes into a spiel about how she shouldn’t be dating at the moment since she just ended a relationship with one of the Sabers players, the one serious relationship in her life. Jerome doesn’t even know who Derwin is, and he manages to convince her that he’s not interested in a relationship either, just showing her a good time and maybe scoring a few points with his boss. Now seeing eye to eye, the two go back into the skybox area to finish the date.
After Tasha and Kelly both try to convince Mr. Harris that their man — Tasha’s son Malik and Kelly’s husband Jason, respectively — is the best athlete for the green campaign endorsement deal, the Sabers win the game, and the executive sends everyone downstairs for free autographs. There, Tasha attempts to give Malik the edge by urging him over to introduce himself to the Cost Low team, but her blatant strategy backfires when the executive recognizes the player from an incident when he punched a man in a wheelchair.
A stony-faced Mr. Harris informs Malik that his son is in a wheelchair, too, and he walks away to greet Jason enthusiastically. Momentarily stunned, Malik recovers quickly and orders Tasha to stop interfering with his career because he has his own representation now. When Kelly walks over next to express genuine sympathy about what just happened, Tasha tells her she won.
In another area, Derwin becomes distracted during an interview with a sports reporter when he sees Melanie and Jerome standing together. Yet, instead of avoiding her former fiancé, Melanie walks over to introduce the men and then congratulates Derwin on his three touchdowns. The episode ends with Derwin staring after Melanie as she leaves holding Jerome’s hand and saying “You, too” in response to her compliment of “Good game.”
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