SVH #13: Kidnapped!
A disturbing book starts with a disturbing moment: Jessica asking her brother Steve to zip up her dress, while his hair is “still wet from his shower, a green towel wrapped snugly around his waist.” Not to mention the fact that she just barges into his room, when she must have heard the shower running. And he gets the zipper up, after “bending his six-foot-one body over [it].”
Anyway, the stage is set. Liz is not home yet because she took someone else’s shift at the hospital. I wonder if it’s deliberate that she was in harm’s way because she was, as usual, doing a favor for someone else? And Jessica is beside herself with anticipation of the party, because she wants to meet Nicholas Morrow. Steve asks her if it’s possible that Nicholas is not Mr. Wonderful, and Jessica reassures him that he’s gorgeous and rich, so what’s to worry? Just in case you forgot that Jessica is the shallow one.
After Steve leaves, Jessica gets a graveyard shiver and mulls calling Liz at Max Dellon’s, whom Liz is supposed to be tutoring, but decides against it, on the grounds that Liz might end up being even later. Later, Jessica is going to beat herself up quite a lot for not waiting for Liz to get home. Well, also for lying to Todd at the party, but it should be noted that before Steve left, 45 minutes before Liz’s ETA, he offered to run Jessica over to the party, and she declined, saying she’d “better wait.” So he actually showed less regard for Liz than Jessica did.
Anyway, Jessica calls Cara Walker, gets a ride and leaves a note. On the way over, they allude to their silent agreement not to pursue the same guy, and in this case, Jessica literally saw Nicholas first, so he’s hers. Whatever. They also discuss Steve and Tricia, which leads to another disturbing moment, wherein Jessica suggests that Cara wait until Tricia’s leukemia takes its toll, then swoop in. Cara squeals that that’s morbid, to which Jess replies, “No, that’s life...We all know she’s going to die, and afterward my poor brother is going to need someone to help him pick up the pieces. It might as well be you.” I’m not sure what’s worse - Jessica encouraging Cara to be Steve’s rebound chick, or classifying her as a “might as well” option. As for her attitude towards Tricia, why doesn’t she just start a death pool? But Cara dismisses the idea, not wanting to be a “grave robber.”
So they get to the house and it’s magnificent. They meet Regina and she’s beautiful. And deaf. Jessica thinks first that Regina is snubbing her, then that she’s drunk, and when Regina offhandedly mentions her deafness, she says, “You poor thing...how awful for you,” which makes me cringe now, but probably was not offensive in 1985; I don’t remember. I do wonder, though, why Jessica asked Regina where the booze was. Was she being snarky, or did she actually want some? Oh, and the idea that Nicholas might be deaf too is a “horrible thought.” Well, on that she can bite me. Think of the many ways to facilitate communication with a deaf person, Jess!
And Nicholas is all swoony, and protective of Regina, telling Jessica sternly that she wouldn’t appreciate a pity membership of APA. On this, though, I can understand Jessica’s logic: keep your friends close and your enemies closer, so you can have the same agreement with the tragically deaf beauty that you have with Cara!
Chapter 3 begins with our first glimpse of Liz, bound and gagged in a van. She left the hospital, got in her car, and was dragged out of it into the van. Short segments that ends with no further indication of what’s going on. Kind of melodramatic, but it’s a scary situation no matter how it’s described.
Then cut to Max Dellon, sitting in his basement staring a hole in Othello. In a way, he’s also trapped: his parents are upstairs, seething about his poor grades and attitude. Music is the only thing that motivates him, so naturally his parents tie it to the behavior they don’t like, instead of seeing it as a curbing influence. [1] His grades have been suffering, though, and good ol’ Roger Collins made the Call of Concern. Which made his parents lower the boom: no music until his grades improve, and if he fails the upcoming English exam, his dad will make him quit the Droids.
So while Max is puzzling over Shakespeare, he starts becoming less aggravated by the wait and more concerned about Liz. Finally he decides that he owes it to her to go looking, since her glowing reviews have helped the Droids so much. I think the importance of a school newspaper is a bit overstated, but it is interesting that the “bad” kid is the first to start thinking of worst-case scenarios. So he gets on his motorcycle (!) and heads over to the hospital.
Back to the party. Jessica flirts with Nicholas. He tells her that Bruce Patman had said, “You’ll never have a dull time with Jessica.” But Nicholas is either too unimaginative or too conservative to read between the lines. Todd approaches, asking about Liz. Jessica is frostily rude, Todd grabs her arm, and Nicholas intervenes. Jessica sees Lila ready to pounce if she leaves Nicholas’s side, so she LIES and tells Todd that Liz is babysitting Teddy Collins. All this to impress Nicholas. Seems to me that a guy who could be lost forever if you express concern for your unaccounted-for sister would not be worth having anyway.
And we return to Elizabeth. She’s in a house now, and I really have no snark. Discomfort, sensory deprivation, fighting against panic...it’s all realistic, not melodramatic at all. What’s especially disturbing is the bit where the kidnapper, who Liz can’t see because she’s blindfolded, walks towards her, and she prays that whatever happens will be over fast. Instead of hitting her, he caresses her hair and tells her he won’t hurt her, and Liz verifies her rep as the sensible one by not being convinced that this means he’s harmless. I mean, really: he chloroformed her, tied her up, threw her in a van, and now she’s bound to a chair in his hovel. That’s not the way you show love, regardless of what he says!
And of course, it’s Carl, the sad-sack orderly from the hospital. Liz decides to play on his sympathies while plotting to escape, which is also not a bad idea. If there is any such thing as a good idea in her situation. Let’s move on.
The party again. Todd is becoming more anxious, calls Mr. Collins, gets a WTF response, then goes and finds Jessica who is batting her eyelashes at Nicholas. He pushes her in the pool, which is not quite as jerkish as it sounds, since she’s wearing her bikini and has already gotten wet, but it’s still Todd’s usual brute-force approach. Tell me again why he’s supposed to be the nice guy? Nicholas certainly doesn’t think so, and is starting to escort him out, but first, Todd tells Jessica that it’s 9:30, and if Liz isn’t here, that can only be a bad thing.
So NOW Jessica’s “concern is mounting with every passing second.” She calls her parents, who just got home, and being adults, they don’t have to have pictures drawn for them. Plus, they’ve been subtly keeping tabs on Liz ever since the accident. Jessica runs out of the house in only her bikini and a towel (which Nicholas thoughtfully placed around her shoulders...awww...) and she and Todd drive away. He’s still pissed, but not too much so to notice that she must be freezing, and gives her his jacket, despite Jessica insisting, “I deserve to get pneumonia!”
Carl reveals his agenda to Liz: he wants them to be together forever. And again, it’s disturbing to think that he claims to be in love with someone he doesn’t really “know,” but was able to keep tabs on well enough to know her schedule and what car she drives. He lets her go to the bathroom, but doesn’t let her out of reach long enough for her to make a run for it. She looks around his truly pathetic house, tries to draw him out about his empty life, starts to feel sorry for him, but checks herself. That’s right, Liz: don’t get drawn into Stockholm Syndrome! She softens him up enough to get him to untie her, and as soon as he does, she bolts, and she’s just at the door when he catches her and overpowers her. I’m thinking that whoever wrote this one must have cribbed it from real-life stories of obsessed men. They say the woman is the most precious thing to them, but the operative word is “thing.” If she doesn’t cooperate, well...
But we’re left hanging with Liz thinking “This is the end,” and catch up with Jess and Todd as they return to the Wakefield house. Ned calls the Dellon’s, thereby dropping a dime on Max, then calls the police. Again, I can’t snark; this is all too real. Meanwhile, Max is at the hospital, checking out Liz’s car. D’oh! He’s discovered in the act by a local cop who already has him pegged as a no-good, and now puts words in his mouth, and cuffs him.
Flash forward to Liz, at Carl’s house in the early morning. He didn’t hurt her; instead he cried and begged her not to leave him. She figures her only choice at this point is to be brave and hope he left evidence that will lead the cops to them. Carl knows she likes pancakes - how does he know this? Because he heard her mention it to a patient -- and he feeds her by hand -- “I’ve seen you feed patients at the hospital like this.” Cree-pee. Is there anything she’s done that he doesn’t know about? He has to go to work, so as not to raise suspicion, but he leaves three paperbacks for her to read. He’s illiterate, you see, so he chose three at random: a book on investing, another on raising farm animals, and a collection of bedtime stories. Now, this, I think, indicates that he really has no social skills or perception. The kind of guy one normally thinks of as clueless would choose the books with heaving-chest couples on the cover. But Carl doesn’t even understand stereotypes about women, let alone real women. He leaves, and Liz finally breaks down. Then pulls herself together and makes a notch on her chair: Day One.
Max stood up to questioning, and is released to the loving, ha ha, arms of his parents. Todd still thinks Max is guilty, even though Steve and Jessica try to talk him out of it. Liz is alone with her thoughts, which turn to Jessica. She must have been the first one to realize Liz was missing! She probably missed the party! Heh...if I were Liz, I’m not sure I would be above holding this over Jess’s head in the future.
Jessica is similarly holed up in her room, and is so depressed, she doesn’t even rejoice when Nicholas appears and tries to comfort her. He tells a story about Regina disappearing after they’d had a squabble, and how that was especially scary because, you know, when you’re searching for a missing deaf person, your options are somewhat limited. However, Jessica is not comforted by this: “She came back...But I may never see Liz again!” Damn, girl; at least PRETEND he made you feel better!
And Carl comes home from work and tells his “beautiful bird” that he’s going to take her to the mountains, where she can’t fly away from him. They’re leaving the next night. Yikes. At school, Lila prods Jessica and Todd into confronting Max Dellon, as if, as Jess points out, she even knows anything about him. Max is on thin ice as it is: house arrest, except for school, where he is now a pariah, and he still has to take that Shakespeare exam. Collins gives him the option of postponing it, but he wants to face at least one challenge. Afterwards, he’s sure he passed, perhaps even with an A. [2] Afterwards, though, Todd pulls his usual alpha-male routine on Max, and Jessica has to break it up. Then she suggests that they return to the scene of the crime. Really, you wonder why the cops didn’t do this. But I guess they figured they had their suspect, and if it wasn’t Max, it wasn’t anyone.
So Max, Jessica and Todd start looking around the alarmingly low-security hospital. Carl sees Jessica and takes her for Liz. Max (not Todd for a change!) tackles him, and Jessica distracts him long enough for the cops (not hospital security) to arrive, and he’s dragged away wailing about how he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids. Jessica and two cops release Liz from Carl’s house, and it’s all hugging and crying.
Then they get home and start planning a party (!), and also reflect on how they’d both shown strength they didn’t know they had. And while Liz is basking in the glow of home and safety, Nicholas appears at the door and falls in love at first sight. Groan. So all’s well that ends well, but it’s just a teeny bit difficult for me to reconcile Liz’s very plausible trauma during her abduction, with her instant recovery. Especially since the motorcycle accident is referenced in this, but AFAIR, this incident was never mentioned again!
Sorry, not much snark here. This was actually one of the better stories. One thing, though: it doesn’t lead smoothly into the next volume. Jessica was crushing on Nicholas throughout the whole thing, but it ends up with him falling for Liz, and unless I remember wrongly, Jess doesn’t even get jealous in #14. Perhaps she figured that just having Liz alive was more important than any guy?
Clothing: Jessica wears a sleeveless, iridescent silk dress that matches her eyes, and the neckline is “about as low as a sixteen-year-old could get away with.” But then she puts on open-toed navy heels! At the party, she changes into a black-and-white bikini. Later, she changes into sweats and an SVH t-shirt.
Steve wears jeans, a plaid shirt, and a black leather aviator jacket.
Regina wears a black silk jumpsuit that fits her tall, statuesque body perfectly. (Funny, I pictured her as small and slender; probably because she’s always supposed to be so vulnerable.)
Caroline Pearce wears a pink shirtwaist dress buttoned right up to the collar.
Alice Wakefield wears a stylish suede jacket.
Dated elements: Max’s spiked wristbands. Absence of cell phones; if they’d existed, Liz’s disappearance would have been a lot more obvious a lot sooner.
[1] This was not an uncommon attitude in the ’80s. There was a lot of paranoia about Satanism and suicide at that time, and the proposed solution was to censor recorded music, discourage forming of garage bands, and send your kid to boot camp if he wouldn’t cut his hair. Nowadays, people have come to realize that music is a creative outlet, and hey, you might end up with a millionaire rock star to support you in your old age! But back then, we sang “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and meant every word.
[2] Supposedly, just reading Othello over and over burned it into his brain. Well, perhaps, but if that’s all it took was memorization, it sounds like the exam was more on a middle school level. And rote repetition does not always make something understandable. I recall reading and rereading a school assignment, and I still bombed on the exam. If something’s over your head, it just is.
Anyway, the stage is set. Liz is not home yet because she took someone else’s shift at the hospital. I wonder if it’s deliberate that she was in harm’s way because she was, as usual, doing a favor for someone else? And Jessica is beside herself with anticipation of the party, because she wants to meet Nicholas Morrow. Steve asks her if it’s possible that Nicholas is not Mr. Wonderful, and Jessica reassures him that he’s gorgeous and rich, so what’s to worry? Just in case you forgot that Jessica is the shallow one.
After Steve leaves, Jessica gets a graveyard shiver and mulls calling Liz at Max Dellon’s, whom Liz is supposed to be tutoring, but decides against it, on the grounds that Liz might end up being even later. Later, Jessica is going to beat herself up quite a lot for not waiting for Liz to get home. Well, also for lying to Todd at the party, but it should be noted that before Steve left, 45 minutes before Liz’s ETA, he offered to run Jessica over to the party, and she declined, saying she’d “better wait.” So he actually showed less regard for Liz than Jessica did.
Anyway, Jessica calls Cara Walker, gets a ride and leaves a note. On the way over, they allude to their silent agreement not to pursue the same guy, and in this case, Jessica literally saw Nicholas first, so he’s hers. Whatever. They also discuss Steve and Tricia, which leads to another disturbing moment, wherein Jessica suggests that Cara wait until Tricia’s leukemia takes its toll, then swoop in. Cara squeals that that’s morbid, to which Jess replies, “No, that’s life...We all know she’s going to die, and afterward my poor brother is going to need someone to help him pick up the pieces. It might as well be you.” I’m not sure what’s worse - Jessica encouraging Cara to be Steve’s rebound chick, or classifying her as a “might as well” option. As for her attitude towards Tricia, why doesn’t she just start a death pool? But Cara dismisses the idea, not wanting to be a “grave robber.”
So they get to the house and it’s magnificent. They meet Regina and she’s beautiful. And deaf. Jessica thinks first that Regina is snubbing her, then that she’s drunk, and when Regina offhandedly mentions her deafness, she says, “You poor thing...how awful for you,” which makes me cringe now, but probably was not offensive in 1985; I don’t remember. I do wonder, though, why Jessica asked Regina where the booze was. Was she being snarky, or did she actually want some? Oh, and the idea that Nicholas might be deaf too is a “horrible thought.” Well, on that she can bite me. Think of the many ways to facilitate communication with a deaf person, Jess!
And Nicholas is all swoony, and protective of Regina, telling Jessica sternly that she wouldn’t appreciate a pity membership of APA. On this, though, I can understand Jessica’s logic: keep your friends close and your enemies closer, so you can have the same agreement with the tragically deaf beauty that you have with Cara!
Chapter 3 begins with our first glimpse of Liz, bound and gagged in a van. She left the hospital, got in her car, and was dragged out of it into the van. Short segments that ends with no further indication of what’s going on. Kind of melodramatic, but it’s a scary situation no matter how it’s described.
Then cut to Max Dellon, sitting in his basement staring a hole in Othello. In a way, he’s also trapped: his parents are upstairs, seething about his poor grades and attitude. Music is the only thing that motivates him, so naturally his parents tie it to the behavior they don’t like, instead of seeing it as a curbing influence. [1] His grades have been suffering, though, and good ol’ Roger Collins made the Call of Concern. Which made his parents lower the boom: no music until his grades improve, and if he fails the upcoming English exam, his dad will make him quit the Droids.
So while Max is puzzling over Shakespeare, he starts becoming less aggravated by the wait and more concerned about Liz. Finally he decides that he owes it to her to go looking, since her glowing reviews have helped the Droids so much. I think the importance of a school newspaper is a bit overstated, but it is interesting that the “bad” kid is the first to start thinking of worst-case scenarios. So he gets on his motorcycle (!) and heads over to the hospital.
Back to the party. Jessica flirts with Nicholas. He tells her that Bruce Patman had said, “You’ll never have a dull time with Jessica.” But Nicholas is either too unimaginative or too conservative to read between the lines. Todd approaches, asking about Liz. Jessica is frostily rude, Todd grabs her arm, and Nicholas intervenes. Jessica sees Lila ready to pounce if she leaves Nicholas’s side, so she LIES and tells Todd that Liz is babysitting Teddy Collins. All this to impress Nicholas. Seems to me that a guy who could be lost forever if you express concern for your unaccounted-for sister would not be worth having anyway.
And we return to Elizabeth. She’s in a house now, and I really have no snark. Discomfort, sensory deprivation, fighting against panic...it’s all realistic, not melodramatic at all. What’s especially disturbing is the bit where the kidnapper, who Liz can’t see because she’s blindfolded, walks towards her, and she prays that whatever happens will be over fast. Instead of hitting her, he caresses her hair and tells her he won’t hurt her, and Liz verifies her rep as the sensible one by not being convinced that this means he’s harmless. I mean, really: he chloroformed her, tied her up, threw her in a van, and now she’s bound to a chair in his hovel. That’s not the way you show love, regardless of what he says!
And of course, it’s Carl, the sad-sack orderly from the hospital. Liz decides to play on his sympathies while plotting to escape, which is also not a bad idea. If there is any such thing as a good idea in her situation. Let’s move on.
The party again. Todd is becoming more anxious, calls Mr. Collins, gets a WTF response, then goes and finds Jessica who is batting her eyelashes at Nicholas. He pushes her in the pool, which is not quite as jerkish as it sounds, since she’s wearing her bikini and has already gotten wet, but it’s still Todd’s usual brute-force approach. Tell me again why he’s supposed to be the nice guy? Nicholas certainly doesn’t think so, and is starting to escort him out, but first, Todd tells Jessica that it’s 9:30, and if Liz isn’t here, that can only be a bad thing.
So NOW Jessica’s “concern is mounting with every passing second.” She calls her parents, who just got home, and being adults, they don’t have to have pictures drawn for them. Plus, they’ve been subtly keeping tabs on Liz ever since the accident. Jessica runs out of the house in only her bikini and a towel (which Nicholas thoughtfully placed around her shoulders...awww...) and she and Todd drive away. He’s still pissed, but not too much so to notice that she must be freezing, and gives her his jacket, despite Jessica insisting, “I deserve to get pneumonia!”
Carl reveals his agenda to Liz: he wants them to be together forever. And again, it’s disturbing to think that he claims to be in love with someone he doesn’t really “know,” but was able to keep tabs on well enough to know her schedule and what car she drives. He lets her go to the bathroom, but doesn’t let her out of reach long enough for her to make a run for it. She looks around his truly pathetic house, tries to draw him out about his empty life, starts to feel sorry for him, but checks herself. That’s right, Liz: don’t get drawn into Stockholm Syndrome! She softens him up enough to get him to untie her, and as soon as he does, she bolts, and she’s just at the door when he catches her and overpowers her. I’m thinking that whoever wrote this one must have cribbed it from real-life stories of obsessed men. They say the woman is the most precious thing to them, but the operative word is “thing.” If she doesn’t cooperate, well...
But we’re left hanging with Liz thinking “This is the end,” and catch up with Jess and Todd as they return to the Wakefield house. Ned calls the Dellon’s, thereby dropping a dime on Max, then calls the police. Again, I can’t snark; this is all too real. Meanwhile, Max is at the hospital, checking out Liz’s car. D’oh! He’s discovered in the act by a local cop who already has him pegged as a no-good, and now puts words in his mouth, and cuffs him.
Flash forward to Liz, at Carl’s house in the early morning. He didn’t hurt her; instead he cried and begged her not to leave him. She figures her only choice at this point is to be brave and hope he left evidence that will lead the cops to them. Carl knows she likes pancakes - how does he know this? Because he heard her mention it to a patient -- and he feeds her by hand -- “I’ve seen you feed patients at the hospital like this.” Cree-pee. Is there anything she’s done that he doesn’t know about? He has to go to work, so as not to raise suspicion, but he leaves three paperbacks for her to read. He’s illiterate, you see, so he chose three at random: a book on investing, another on raising farm animals, and a collection of bedtime stories. Now, this, I think, indicates that he really has no social skills or perception. The kind of guy one normally thinks of as clueless would choose the books with heaving-chest couples on the cover. But Carl doesn’t even understand stereotypes about women, let alone real women. He leaves, and Liz finally breaks down. Then pulls herself together and makes a notch on her chair: Day One.
Max stood up to questioning, and is released to the loving, ha ha, arms of his parents. Todd still thinks Max is guilty, even though Steve and Jessica try to talk him out of it. Liz is alone with her thoughts, which turn to Jessica. She must have been the first one to realize Liz was missing! She probably missed the party! Heh...if I were Liz, I’m not sure I would be above holding this over Jess’s head in the future.
Jessica is similarly holed up in her room, and is so depressed, she doesn’t even rejoice when Nicholas appears and tries to comfort her. He tells a story about Regina disappearing after they’d had a squabble, and how that was especially scary because, you know, when you’re searching for a missing deaf person, your options are somewhat limited. However, Jessica is not comforted by this: “She came back...But I may never see Liz again!” Damn, girl; at least PRETEND he made you feel better!
And Carl comes home from work and tells his “beautiful bird” that he’s going to take her to the mountains, where she can’t fly away from him. They’re leaving the next night. Yikes. At school, Lila prods Jessica and Todd into confronting Max Dellon, as if, as Jess points out, she even knows anything about him. Max is on thin ice as it is: house arrest, except for school, where he is now a pariah, and he still has to take that Shakespeare exam. Collins gives him the option of postponing it, but he wants to face at least one challenge. Afterwards, he’s sure he passed, perhaps even with an A. [2] Afterwards, though, Todd pulls his usual alpha-male routine on Max, and Jessica has to break it up. Then she suggests that they return to the scene of the crime. Really, you wonder why the cops didn’t do this. But I guess they figured they had their suspect, and if it wasn’t Max, it wasn’t anyone.
So Max, Jessica and Todd start looking around the alarmingly low-security hospital. Carl sees Jessica and takes her for Liz. Max (not Todd for a change!) tackles him, and Jessica distracts him long enough for the cops (not hospital security) to arrive, and he’s dragged away wailing about how he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids. Jessica and two cops release Liz from Carl’s house, and it’s all hugging and crying.
Then they get home and start planning a party (!), and also reflect on how they’d both shown strength they didn’t know they had. And while Liz is basking in the glow of home and safety, Nicholas appears at the door and falls in love at first sight. Groan. So all’s well that ends well, but it’s just a teeny bit difficult for me to reconcile Liz’s very plausible trauma during her abduction, with her instant recovery. Especially since the motorcycle accident is referenced in this, but AFAIR, this incident was never mentioned again!
Sorry, not much snark here. This was actually one of the better stories. One thing, though: it doesn’t lead smoothly into the next volume. Jessica was crushing on Nicholas throughout the whole thing, but it ends up with him falling for Liz, and unless I remember wrongly, Jess doesn’t even get jealous in #14. Perhaps she figured that just having Liz alive was more important than any guy?
Clothing: Jessica wears a sleeveless, iridescent silk dress that matches her eyes, and the neckline is “about as low as a sixteen-year-old could get away with.” But then she puts on open-toed navy heels! At the party, she changes into a black-and-white bikini. Later, she changes into sweats and an SVH t-shirt.
Steve wears jeans, a plaid shirt, and a black leather aviator jacket.
Regina wears a black silk jumpsuit that fits her tall, statuesque body perfectly. (Funny, I pictured her as small and slender; probably because she’s always supposed to be so vulnerable.)
Caroline Pearce wears a pink shirtwaist dress buttoned right up to the collar.
Alice Wakefield wears a stylish suede jacket.
Dated elements: Max’s spiked wristbands. Absence of cell phones; if they’d existed, Liz’s disappearance would have been a lot more obvious a lot sooner.
[1] This was not an uncommon attitude in the ’80s. There was a lot of paranoia about Satanism and suicide at that time, and the proposed solution was to censor recorded music, discourage forming of garage bands, and send your kid to boot camp if he wouldn’t cut his hair. Nowadays, people have come to realize that music is a creative outlet, and hey, you might end up with a millionaire rock star to support you in your old age! But back then, we sang “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and meant every word.
[2] Supposedly, just reading Othello over and over burned it into his brain. Well, perhaps, but if that’s all it took was memorization, it sounds like the exam was more on a middle school level. And rote repetition does not always make something understandable. I recall reading and rereading a school assignment, and I still bombed on the exam. If something’s over your head, it just is.