Remember when Blue Mountain State roasted lacrosse players with a Patek joke?

Zach Blass

I am always watching the latest hit television shows, but every now and again I will find comfort in enjoying a classic I have already seen. A show which ran for three seasons, across only a year or so, Blue Mountain State became a cult-classic, at least in America, as one of the last television series to engage in that American Pie/National Lampoon sense of humour. The show aired on the now defunct Spike TV network, a cable channel geared towards young adult men, before later being rebranded as the more broad Paramount Network we have today. And, while it was not critically well-received, it found a decent audience during its run, particularly young men like myself who were on the cusp of graduating from high school. It was later when Netflix received the rights to stream the show that it found a wider viewership, the growing fanbase resulting in a movie sequel Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland.

The show centres around a fictional college football team, and primarily the crude and comical activities they get up to while off of the field. Like any American Pie-esque comedy, the show had hilarious sequences of exaggerated, at least at times, American university life, with moments of hazing, sex, drugs, drinking and prank wars. And this leads me to the horological tie-in found in season one, episode eight titled “LAX”. The episode synopsis reads: “When Alex is busted with a lacrosse player’s girlfriend, he unwittingly breaks a 24-year football/lacrosse team truce, causing a take-no-prisoners war which he must figure out how to end.” After the so-called truce is broken, this unleashes a prank war between the two squads.

As the football players are about to jump two lacrosse players in order to cut off their precious “flows”, poking fun at the long hair lacrosse athletes typically keep, we see the two lacrosse players walking on the Blue Mountain State campus. The show is also poking fun at how lacrosse in America tends to be perceived as a W.A.S.P. sport for rich, white, suburban kids. We see this as the lacrosse pair, in their matching blazers and slacks, discuss what one had received for their birthday from their parents.

“That must have been a horrible birthday. What did you do?”

“I threw that cheap a** Rolex at mom and told her to get me a Pah-Teak – or I was going to Spain for Christmas.”

I honestly cannot remember if the joke went over my head at the time, but this is a testament to how ahead of the curve, in terms of watch-humor, the writing staff was. I mean the episode itself aired in 2010, 13 years ago, and who knows when the script itself was written before then. Not only does the joke acknowledge the prestige Patek Philippe has over Rolex, something the mainstream would certainly not have registered yet, it also poked fun at how often the brand name is mispronounced. I know this is all super silly, perhaps not worthy of an article hundreds of words in length. But seeing the episode again earlier this week the episode made me laugh that much more in the moment. Who knows, maybe I will rewatch other shows from my past and find more horological-humour nuggets in them. @Brodinkee, @watchumor, if you are reading this you have my permission to memeify this clip ASAP.