A glossy copy of Imagine magazine fills the screen, and the camera slowly backs out to show the gawky teen holding it: a skinny, dark-haired boy teetering between eternal geekdom and finding the stud within. He's the kind of sweet nerd everyone either personified on the outside or let dwell underneath -- someone caught between longing to be someone bigger, projecting the façade of certainty that he already is, and utterly unsure how to reconcile that with his core dork. He is our protagonist; he is Steve. Trying to be cool, his nervous energy bubbling dangerously close to the surface, Steve points in a pseudo-macho way to Matthew Perry's spiky haircut and announces that he wants that look. The hairdresser obliges, and as he does, Steve speaks to his longtime high-school buddy, who watches with eyes like saucers as his pal tries to transform himself into something older and edgier. "I grew seven inches senior year," Steve says, holding his hand near his chin. "Everything from here up is all new." The hairdresser has the good grace to remain impassive during this bit of overzealous insight. "Sixty percent of all people meet their future spouses at college," Steve continues, sounding like way too many of the freshman guys I met at college, who were dead set on graduating in four years with a fiancée. And people joke that women are just there to get an M.R.S.

The scene swiftly changes to Steve's room. "My future wife could be seated right beside me," he continues excitedly as his pal that we'll call Walter -- he just looks like a Walter -- stares with a mixture of confusion and awe and envy. "You...and a girl?" Walter asks, as though Steve hooking up is a feat less probable than his climbing Everest atop a dolphin during the winter would be. That aside, I sort of get the impression that Steve is like Farmer Ted in Sixteen Candles -- he's the King of the Geeks, and his loyalists erroneously believe that he's a bridge between the In Crowd and the decidedly less elite. Walter is wearing a Snood t-shirt, which worries me because he's supposed to be a nerd and I love Snood and paid for it even though it's available for free. But I don't have a t-shirt, so I suppose I can cling to the illusion that I'm cool. Steve, by the way, is doing an excellent job at the latter. He's trying to be nonchalant while working his scrawny arms on a small exercise machine, and what we see of his biceps suggests less Schwarzenegger -- hell, less Seinfeld, even -- than Sally from Peanuts. He is lifting so energetically that the center panel on this bizarre machine -- he's standing on it, yanking upward on weighted cords -- jerks upward dangerously. On almost any other sitcom, that bar would be headed straight for a collision course with Steve's crotch. Fortunately, this show isn't that obvious. Earnestly, Steve explains through his panting -- hey, he's lifting weights, after all -- that people in college won't know him, so that means his young image is tabula rasa. Walter vigorously agrees: "Yeah, they don't know that you threw up on the bus in sixth grade, or had to have your finger reattached after that wood shop...." Steve sort of interrupts his friend here, probably not interested in revisiting the chronicle of his past humiliations. "Point is, I'm tall, and handsome, and I've gained weight and, like, finally got a fashion sense...it's like the beginning of a whole new era!" Steve proclaims, a wild daily affirmation of sorts that should end with "and doggone it, people like me!" Walter is dubious, unsure that a new haircut and some height will translate into a giant aura of hip. Steve, however, is certain he is New Steve. To prove it, he yanks his X-Files poster off the wall and tears it into messy quarters, nodding with in-your-face bravado. "Dude, what the hell are you doing?" screams Walter. "I would have taken that!" This jolts New Steve out of his trance, and he stares at the debris with a level of dismay only Old Steve should feel. After a beat, he panics, "Oh God, oh God...."