In the cafeteria one day Louis saves the school's sort-of celebrity Blake Thompson (who's made a couple of TV commercials) from choking. Blake is grateful and takes a liking to Louis, inviting him to join his ""in"" crowd. Louis takes to his new status right away, putting a strain on his old friendships with Twitty and Tawny. But as soon as Blake sees that Louis is gaining some popularity himself, he drops him like a hot potato. The result is that Louis is out of favor with both his new friends and the old ones, too. Tawny comes up with a ""life-saving"" scheme, though.

Meanwhile, Ren is being given a hard time in her job as school policy monitor by Larry Beale, who heckles her when she speaks at lunch and fills her suggestion box with not-so-nice suggestions. Ren feels like she's ""lost her mojo"" when it comes to handling Larry and is going to quit her policy monitor position, but she gets some encouragement from Louis--and unexpectedly, from Larry, too.

The 7th graders are terrorized by the approaching of ""Scrub Day,"" the day when the upperclassmen are supposedly allowed to do terrible things to them. Louis is desperate to find a way out of it, but Ren and Donnie offer him no help. Louis organizes the ""United Scrubs of America"" to stand up to Larry Beale, their chief tormenter. Larry thwarts them by saying that this year they will only concentrate on one scrub--Louis. Louis turns around to find that all his supporters have deserted him. On Scrub Day the patrol is out in full force seeking Louis, but he proves to be elusive for them. Finally they catch him, when who should show up but big brother Donnie. But instead of rescuing Louis, Donnie arrives dressed like Gandhi! (He's appearing in the Living History Pageant.) Donnie has taken Gandhi's philosophy to heart and advises Louis not to fight back, then he gets a page and leaves. Beale and company take their prisoner to the cafeteria where they dump him in a vat of sloppy joe. Remember

Louis plans to make an entry in a local young people's film festival. He recruits Tawny and Twitty for his cast and Tom for his crew and they begin making his extremely low-budget space alien love story. Louis proves to be a fanatical and dictatorial film director, and after Tawny almost gets hurt on a cheesy special-effect shot, his cast and crew quit en masse. Louis finishes the film alone and shows ""Three Eyes Wide Shut"" at the film festival, where it plays to great laughter from the audience, especially in the scene where Louis has his arms wrapped around himslf pretending to be two people kissing. Louis is humiliated, but Tawny at least will stand by him after the film's showing.

Also, Ren is ready to tell Bobby Deaver that she's interested in him, much to the delight of school gossip-monger Ruby. Ren practices her lines she's going to use on Bobby, then writes them out. Ruby mistakenly gives the note to Bobby. Ren is frantic to get the note back, but it turns out that, rather tha

Louis wants to enter the school talent show and do his comedy routine but he waits too long and misses the entry deadline. He tries to get Ren to let him share her spot in the show with him, but she has no sympathy. At dinner Louis gets his parents to pressure Ren into doing an act with him, much to her annoyance. They do Louis' act in rehearsal and it gets a lot of laughs. Larry Beale sees this and doesn't like it. He tells Ren that she's just being her brother's flunky in the act and that he keeps all the good lines for himself. Falling into Larry's trap, Ren gets mad at Louis and quits the act. When the talent show comes around, Larry and his partner Ivan go onstage before Louis and steal his act. Louis is crushed now that he won't get to do the one thing he felt he was really good at. Ren takes pity on him and at the last minute they come up with a comic opera routine that wins the brother and sister first prize.