Keith and Mariah get to school, and Keith is immediately approached by a freakishly giddy Shelly, who asks if KC will be at the Charcoal Pit after school. Keith tells Shelly that KC will in fact be there, if that’s what she wants. After Shelly skips away, Mariah remarks that she never knew Keith had a cousin. Keith mutters something about KC being “from far away”, but Mariah seems less than convinced.

That night, Keith is having dinner with his dad. After a bit of awkward small talk, Keith notices some weird stuff growing on his hand.

He makes an excuse about needing to do homework, and hauls ass upstairs. He puts on one leather glove (how very Jacko of him) and uses it to take the vial of Sardo’s potion and throw it in the trash.

But then the phone rings. It’s Shelly! And she’s asking for KC! And she’s using a sexy voice!

What’s a boy to do? Pretend to be KC, that’s what! Keith deepens his voice and says things in a dismissive tone, which totally fools Shelly. Shelly asks him if he wants to “come over and watch TV or something tonight.”

Whore.

Of course, Keith says yes, and soon after fishes the potion out of the trash.

Cut to KC, all suave and shit. After “watching TV or something” with Shelly for awhile, they stand on her porch and say goodbye. But before he goes, KC asks her to the dance. Shelly says something about Gary, and KC is all, “Oh really? Has he asked you?” Shelly thinks about it for a moment, and agrees to go to the dance with KC. Fade out as they play tonsil hockey on her porch.

The next day, Keith wakes up and finds that he’s undergone a few inconvenient changes overnight…

Yeah, that could be a problem.

Back at the Charcoal Pit, it’s after school time, and Shelly and her friend are busy talking about the slutty dresses they’re planning to wear to the dance tomorrow. Mariah comes in and asks if they’ve seen Keith, since she didn’t see him at school today. Shelly gloats and says that she hasn’t seen Keith, but she’ll be seeing KC tomorrow at the dance, since they’re going together.

And here’s what’s awesome about this scene: Just as Mariah comes in, Shelly’s friend asks, “Is it tight?” and Shelly replies, “It’s so tight!”

Of course, we know they’re talking about dresses. Dresses, that’s what they’re talking about.

Mariah is all, “Whatevs, beyotches,” and storms out.

Meanwhile, at Sardo’s magic shop, he and Keith are trying to figure out what the hell is going on with him. Sardo admits that Keith is the only one who’s ever bought the potion, so he’s not quite sure what will happen to him next. He checks his big book of magic potion info (which I guess is kind of like the Physician’s Desk Reference for magic shop owners), and he and Keith figure out that the potion isn’t actually supposed to make you perfect.

In fact, it’s really supposed to make you face the worst in yourself (as in, “the dark dragon within”), so that you can discover the best in yourself. Hence the weird stuff happening to Keith. Though, this doesn’t particularly explain why the potion makes him sexy and confident. Not that I really care. I mean, come on:

Awwww, yeah.

Later that day, Mariah tries to visit Keith and find out what’s wrong. Geez, clingy much? I like you, Mariah, but if this is how you get after Keith misses one day of school, no wonder he keeps his distance from you. And then, after nobody answers the door, Mariah uses the spare key—she and Keith are so close that she knows just where to find it (that, or she really is stalking him)—to get into his house anyway.

She stands outside Keith’s door and asks him if everything’s okay. Keith decides to be honest with her and reply that, no, things are not quite okay the moment.

Yikes. Is this what the makeup for that Meat Loaf video was based on? Methinks so.

Mariah says she wants to help him, but Keith tells her to go away, because no one can help him now. Mariah looks sad as she leaves.

Later that night, a hooded Meat Loaf Keith sneaks over to his locker, while elsewhere, the school dance is in full swing. He takes a drop of Sardo’s potion, then turns hot again. Nice. Could I have a watered down version of that stuff to help me get ready in the morning? It’d be handy on those days when I’m running late.

But it turns out Mariah followed Keith to school and saw his whole transformation. As Keith heads over to the gym or whatever, Mariah heads to his locker… ruh-roh!

In the meantime, Shelly has been waiting for KC to show up, and is starting to feel like a little bit of a tool, standing there in her “so tight” dress with nobody to dance with. She even sees Gary, who decided to take another skank to the dance after she told him she was going with KC. She starts to get all sad puppy-face, but then Keith/KC shows up and distracts her for a little bit, though you can tell Shelly still feels kind of crappy about the whole thing with Gary.

As Keith slow-dances with Shelly, he says this might be the best moment of his life.

…Which is then duly interrupted by one of the teachers announcing that it’s time to hand out the award for “the best athlete in school”. Um… did anybody else’s school ever do this? At my school, all they had was the homecoming queen and king, but whatever.

And who should win the award but Gary? When he gets up on stage to accept his trophy, he says that even though he’s the best athlete in school, Shelly will always be “first place in [his] heart”, and he’d give anything if she would dance this dance with him.

Awww…

Not!

Gary took some other girl to the dance, remember? So now there’s this chick probably standing around heartbroken, and to make things even worse, she’ll most likely need a ride home, since her date will be too busy frenching his ex-girlfriend to bother dropping her off. You really are kind of a douche, Gary. Seriously.

But this demonstration is enough to win Shelly back. As Shelly and Gary start dry-humping to a generic ’90s love song, Keith wanders away. He looks crestfallen, until he sees Mariah in the crowd looking unexpectedly foxy.

Rowr! Well, in that fakeover way, anyway. But clearly everybody wants a piece of the new Mariah, especially Keith.

The two of them start dancing, and Keith eventually figures out that Mariah took the potion. She explains that since Keith wanted “a beautiful girl”, she became one so he could love her back and shizz. Unfortunately, Mariah starts having a minor conniption fit before Keith can say anything else.

Keith pulls her into the hallway as she starts to gag and convulse. He’s all freaked out, and asks her how much potion she took. Mariah tells him she drank the whole bottle. Whoops. And when she looks up, she’s got all this crap on her face.

Yeah, too bad about that. She only got a few minutes of utter hotness before the weird crap started settling in.

Mariah collapses, and Keith holds her in his arms and says that he should be the one changing, not her, because it’s all his fault. He says he was just so sick of being stared at because of his leg, and not being able to walk right, and not feeling “normal”, that he really started to hate himself.

And so, it looks like everything is pretty much in a k-hole. But then Keith begs Mariah not to go. This instantly clears up her skin and brings her back to her normal self, except still hot. We know this because her glasses didn’t magically reappear on her face.

Oh, and Keith is also still hot—we know this because his hair is still nicely styled.

Mariah blinks, looks around, and asks Keith what just happened. He says that he finally beat the dark dragon…

That’s what she said!

…that’s been inside of him ever since the car accident. Turns out that the potion did exactly what it said it would. Cool.

The same teacher from earlier comes out of nowhere and asks Keith and Mariah what the hell they were doing. Keith smiles and says that he was just taking his girl to the dance. Aww.

The two of them walk away hand in hand, and with that, we go back to the campfire, where David wishes Gary a happy birthday and… yeah, that’s it. No interesting campfire shenanigans to cap off the episode. Hmm. Kinda lame.

Okay, so the moral of the story: if you’re taking medications that cause sudden spurts of body hair, facial deformations, voice alterations, or skin discoloration, go ahead and keep taking it. Chances are, it’ll all work out in the end and you’ll probably end up hotter and hook up with somebody new.

By the way, I checked up on the actor who played Keith, and found out that he’s still in the biz! I’m not surprised—I’d have to say he’s one of the better young actors I’ve seen on this show. You might be wondering if he’s still cute, and the answer is… well… actually, yeah, he is.

Keith (or Chuck Campbell as he’s known outside of AYAOTD?) has been on a bunch of shows and movies, but I guess people would probably know him best for Stargate: Atlantis, which I guess he was on for like, four years or something…

No kidding. My question is… does he still talk with the Grover voice? That’d be fierce.