Season 3, Episode 3 - U Got the Look

Original Airdate - October 1st, 2003

An iconic episode. Here she is. Welcome to the stage, Manny Santos.

The Spirit Squad and soccer team hop off the bus after an away game. Manny tries to flirt with cool guy Sully. We’ve met Sully before. He was mean to Ashley and he sucks. But Manny wants him! Paige says that Manny isn’t really his type. She’s cute, he likes hot girls. Manny decides she’s done being cute.

The next day, Emma is excited to launch her personal project for the year, a new student club dedicated to the environment. Manny tells Emma that her project is being hot. She’s wearing a tube top. She lets her hair down. She means business. She immediately draws the eye of one Mr. JT Yorke. He falls off his skateboard, staring at her.

In science class, JT starts flirting hard. After school, Emma and Manny debrief at the mall. Yeah, it’s JT, but he’s gotten cuter. Manny appreciates being noticed. Maybe she will go for it. But she wants to set her sights higher. It’s time to escalate. She buys a thong. JT gets such a big boner about it that he runs into a pole. And he’s not the only guy staring.

Liberty isn’t so amused about her look. She tells Manny it’s distracting to see her underwear, and reminds Manny it’s against the school code of conduct. She non-subtly threatens to go to Raditch. At lunch, Manny helps Emma hand out brochures for her student group. Lots of guys line up to take a brochure. Liberty walks up and Emma tells her that JT likes Manny. Liberty doesn’t want to hear that.

JT screws his courage to ask Manny out and Emma pulls Liberty away to give them privacy. But the Grade 9s are interrupted by Sully, who takes a brochure for Emma’s group.

Emma’s group is extremely well attended, but it’s clear that this is because of Manny, not the environment. Leading the horny pack is Sully, who says that Manny should go by Manuela because it’s more exotic. Gross! JT is jealous, and Emma is a little peeved that her group got taken over by teen boy hormones.

She complains to Sean, who had to miss the group for shop class. This is our second little hint that Sean and Emma aren’t exactly locked in right now. Manny walks up and Sean can’t really handle her attitude or look and walks away. Emma tries to talk about the group getting derailed, but Manny only wants to discuss whether she should go by Manuela.

Raditch comes up. Someone, we all know who, complained about Manny’s visible underwear. He doesn’t care if low riders are in! Manny better not have a visible thong tomorrow. She’s pissed, but finds the perfect solution. She shows up the next day without any underwear at all.

In science class, she almost exposes herself and JT has to jump in to protect her from doing so. Manny is making a total spectacle of herself, and it’s becoming less cute. JT re-approaches to ask her out. Sully is nearby and tells JT to buzz off. What a dick! Manny shuts JT down and doesn’t admonish him.

Emma sees all of this and is over it. She corners Manny. She’s acting like a total dick. Emma says her ego is over the top, which I agree with, but then does some not nice slut shaming.

This devolves into what is always the source of conflict for our favorite bffs. Manny feels like she always plays second fiddle to Emma, and always shows up for Emma no matter how little she cares about the cause. But now that Manny’s asserting herself, Emma is jealous. Emma has some legitimate criticisms of Manny’s behavior, but probably is a little jealous! It’s exactly the kind of stuff teen best friends fight about and I like it a lot. Minus the slut shaming.

Manny makes her choice. Forget Emma. Forget JT. She likes the male attention. She has coffee with Sully and watches her old friends through the window. New year, new look, new Manny.

Unfortunately the B story is Joey. I don’t really need as much adult characters as I’m getting! But this is our fate this season. Craig is no longer grounded from skipping school, which is great because he’s been missing practice with his new band. Joey’s ears perk up at that. Joey was in a band that had exactly one song in the original series and they bring up that band and that song all of the time. I do not care for it.

Joey offers his garage for the band to practice. He’s having a romantic candlelit dinner with Sydney when he hears the boys practicing. He says they should go check in. The band is not good. Craig is the lead guitarist and singer. Spinner is on the drums. Jimmy is on bass and I think Marco is a second guitar. Ashley and Angie are watching.

Joey tells the band they should incorporate a keyboard. He starts leading them in a painfully awkward jam session to the aforementioned single song from the original series. It’s a terrible scene and I hate it.

He goes to Caitlyn to borrow her camcorder to help the boys learn stage presence. She urges him to cool off. They’re teens. Let them be teens. Joey does not listen and ruins the vibe by filming practice. He urges the boys to play out-of-date covers. He heads inside and the teens all complain about him. Craig goes especially hard, and the camera captures everything. Craig walks in on Joey reviewing the footage and feels extremely guilty when Joey sees what he said.

Craig avoids him a bit, and practices in Marco’s basement, but can’t stay away from home forever. He apologizes to Joey, but Joey says he got carried away. It’s so tempting to try to capture something that felt so good as a young person. He urges the boys to keep using the garage and says that he’ll stay away.

Here we go. Manny goes on a roller coaster this season, and it all starts here with some low rise jeans and a truly tacky thong. Every look she wears is a disaster of fashion. Every man responds with a cartoon tongue rolling down to the floor. It’s everything I want and more.

But returning to this story as an adult in 2026, I’m feeling a little conflicted. It was 2003. I suppose I shouldn’t expect a nuanced take on a woman choosing to change her look to attract men. I don’t like the feeling I’m left with that Manny’s decision to be hot would never have gone well.

Because I think if that slut shaming wasn’t here, this would be a really good story about something I find very relatable. Having the unfortunate luck of being attracted to men is hard. Because at some point, you’re going to want men to be attracted to you. And doing things to attract men always feels a little ridiculous. It’s often a slippery slope.

The problem is that men, and I include myself in this, are depressingly easy to attract. Men like compliments. Men like things that look nice. Men like feeling important. As soon as you shed the social conditioning that tells you that only certain kind of people or bodies are attractive, you realize just how easy the whole game is.

You show a little forbidden skin. You laugh at the dumb shit they say. You find moments to strategically touch without seeming too available. You make them feel good. Putty.

But when you’re young, and you’re figuring out this power, you run into a few pitfalls. You don’t realize that you have this power because men are kind of stupid when it comes to their hormones. This magic trick you can pull requires no special skills at all.

It’s easy to get a big head. And it’s easy to get caught up in your own feelings of validation. This is especially true when you’re gay and also a man. You know how you can make them want you by wanting them, they can do that too!

There is no secret magic. There is no great power. You are simply pushing the biological buttons that come with the Y chromosome. Not everyone figures out how easy these buttons are to push, and many have to deal with the bullshit cultural conditions that turn people into sexual racists or fatphobic morons. So it’s easy to see yourself as a magician when you’re able to crack the very simple code.

But then people get so judgmental. How dare you push these biological buttons? How dare you recognize how good it feels to be wanted? You’re supposed to fear men. You’re supposed to make them feel like they have to work really hard to claim you as a prize.

Slut shaming is so boring. It’s hard enough to deal with the bullshit that comes with wanting to sleep with and date and partner with men. Why do we demand that everyone deals with bullshit to attract them as well? Plus, going too far the other way gets you no attention at all. We demand that those of us who want to date men strike the perfect balance between getting no attention and too much attention.

Let Manny be a slut! Just ask her to stop being a bitch. Be a sister and tell Manny that Sully sucks, but stopping pushing her on JT just because he’s your friend. Tell her to wear a thong that’s less tacky but let her show her upper pubic area if that makes her feel good!

And maybe try to be a slut while you’re at it. Realize how easy it can be. We all need to learn that about men eventually.