"Life In The Fast Lane" is an episode in the seventh season of Family Matters.
When the captain of the cheerleaders accuses Laura of being too heavy to remain at the top in the pyramid routine, Laura decides to take diet pills. Things quickly escalate when Steve takes some of those pills, thinking that they were Vitamin C pills, which leads to problems later as Carl enlists his help at building shelves in the garage.
Tropes in this episode:
- Distracted by the Sexy: The cheerleaders' captain's complaint about Maxine is that she's "distracting players from both teams", prompting the captain to tell Maxine to lower her skirt to minimize the issue.
- Epic Fail: Zigzagged. Carl's construction of a shelf is fine, but Steve's result is... less satisfactory, as far as shelves go.note Granted, the diet pill-induced stupor doesn't make Steve less accident prone than he already is, but no one knows about his diet pill-induced state at the time.
- Food as Bribe: Once Laura decides to take diet pills in order to stay thin enough to remain on top in the cheerleaders' pyramid routine, she asks the other member for them. The member in question brings a bottle of diet pills later and, when Laura inquires her about how much money she spent on the pills, tells Laura that she got the pills from her cousin, who had been attempting to lose weight via diet pills but ended up giving that up instead — willingly, at that, once she offered her cousin a box of ding-dongs.I tell ya, that girl had no self-control.
- Funny Background Event: After the cheerleaders' captain delivers her remark to Laura about her weight gain, Laura is more than willing to lunge at the captain the moment the latter's back turns, only for the other cheerleader members to restrain Laura before she can attack the captain, who is completely oblivious to what the other cheerleader members are doing behind her back.
- Hurt Foot Hop: Played for Laughs. During the shelf construction sequence, Steve, upon witnessing Carl taking his hammer out of his tool belt and catching it with finesse, decides to imitate Carl at it, only to fail to catch his own hammer, causing it to literally drop... onto his foot. Cue the hop.
- Let Me at Him!: Or "her", as this scenario goes. The cheerleaders' captain's remark to Laura about her weight gain causes Laura to lunge at the captain the moment the latter's back is turned — or she would have, if Maxine and the other cheerleader member weren't successful in restraining her at it.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title of this episode, "Life In The Fast Lane", overlaps this trope with Shout-Out, to Eagles, as it's also the title to one of their songs.
- Take That!: As Laura keeps Steve company while the latter is recovering from his diet pill-induced state, she suggests for Steve to sleep through his recovery time, before they tune in to CBS, which leads to both of them falling asleep within seconds.
- What the Fu Are You Doing?: Early on during the shelf construction sequence, Steve decides to saw several boards at once. When that doesn't seem to work (or at least not quickly enough), he resorts to karate-chopping them, obviously failing to deliver the desired result.
- You Are Fat: This is the reason the cheerleaders' captain says Laura shouldn't be the one on top in their pyramid cheerleader routine. Laura is NOT pleased by her remark.
