Ursus Pacificus

Could kind, sweet, simple Brick Tamland have led Ron, Champ and Brian into the NewsGang Rumble? Could Brick have been a tool… used by the likes of Wes Mantooth, to lure the Channel 4 NewsTeam into an ambush?! Say it ain’t so, Brick!

Consider the following:

Brick announces that he has an IQ of 48. This establishes him as being … well.. not the sharpest fish on the porch.

After the arrival of Veronica Corningstone at Channel 4, Ron, Champ, Brian and Brick all try to woo her, to no avail. Ron eventually succeeds, but one thing that could easily escape notice is Brick’s pass at Veronica. He awkwardly tries to invite her to a pants party, a party with pants, and so on… Veronica then asks him if there is a party in his pants and she’s invited. He responds in the affirmative. She refuses the invitation, then asks if Brian put him up to this. Again, he responds in the affirmative.

After the wooing, and Ron’s first date with Veronica, the men of the NewsTeam have a confrontation with Wes Mantooth and the Channel 9 gang. It ends without violence, but Mantooth is humiliated, especially by Brick’s retort, “Where did you get those clothes? At the toilet … store…?”. Mantooth berates his colleagues, “You guys can’t say one thing? Even the guy who can’t think said something!”

Later, Brick is leading the Channel 4 NewsTeam to a men’s clothing store, on foot, via a route none of them is familiar with. They are four men in suits walking through an industrial area in Southern California. Something is amiss. They had been walking for about three quarters of an hour, when the other members of the NewsTeam, begin to press Brick as to whether he knows where he is leading them. He simply responds, “Fan-tastic!” and “Okay!”

What can be established from these three bits of information?

Well, Brick announces in the beginning of the film that he has an IQ of 48, but additionally reveals himself to easily confused and manipulated in the “pants party” incident.

The “pants party” incident also shows that Brick doesn’t think well on his feet. After Veronica rejects him, he asks a random technician standing nearby if he wants to go to the party in Brick’s pants. He clearly has no idea how to react. This comes up again, later, on the way to the “suit store”

We know that Wes Mantooth has it out for Ron from the start, but he also doesn’t think very highly of Brick.

It is also clear that Ron and company are number one in the ratings, and they have no qualms with flaunting it, and also that the other newscasters resent them for it.

It’s fairly clear that the Channel 9 team was not actually surprised to find Ron and Company behind that warehouse.

So what happened?

My suspicion is this:

After the non-violent confrontation between the channels 4 and 9 NewsTeams, Wes Mantooth, or a surrogate, contacted Brick, somehow, and convinced him that there was a new men’s clothing store either at the location of the rumble or beyond it, such that Brick would lead the gang to the ambush. Mantooth states that the location of the rumble is Channel 9’s turf, which raises the question of why would the Channel2, Public TV and Spanish Language NewsTeams be there, unless they were invited to dispense a little NewsGang justice to Burgundy and his pals?

What are your thoughts?