We start out focusing on the outside of a nice little house somewhere in the valley, one of those retro modern things that basically says the architect was too bored to actually be original. We zip inside and see an elderly couple. The man is welcoming home his wife, who has apparently been off doing something that makes her walk funny on the stairs as she basically ignores her husband.
Then we’re upstairs in Old Lady’s fancy closet (think “bigger than entire apartments you’ve lived in“), where she’s arranging her shoes just so. (Proper shoe alignment makes you a better person, yes?) Then she’s back downstairs, pouring herself some tea from a way cool teapot. It’s clear that she’s not very happy, despite successfully cleaning her closet and having a distinctive hairdo.
Just as I’m starting to think “hey, that looks like Katy with a serious makeup budget going on”, we zip back in time where we find young Katy and her probable beau sketching on drawing pads in some trashy but funky dwelling. They make funny faces at each other, a clear indication that they’ve been having sex, then Beau shows Katy the sketch he made of her. She looks exactly like Joan Jett, so I’m not sure what went wrong where. But Katy loves it, and they immediately tape it to the wall because actually framing it or anything would be too tiring.
While they fool around for a little bit while looking young and pretty, we cut back to Old Katy in her bedroom, where she’s sitting at the end of the bed and still not happy, despite being able to afford the expensive modern art on the wall behind her. She sighs and stares off at nothingness. (No sight of the husband. Those stairs might have been too much of a challenge, and he’s waiting at the bottom for her to remember he’s still living.)
Back to young and artsy Katy and Beau, as they do interesting things with makeup and put on odd clothing, because that’s just something you do in your early twenties. They strut around and take pictures of each other in their studio/apartment that appears to be decorated like the 70’s that Katy clearly did not live through. No matter, they’re in love and thematic accuracy is really not that important.
Cut to a dance that might be at a school or possibly a church, where the 70’s thing keeps going, with lots of older people wearing the horrifying outfits that people wore during the decade when Nixon lied and everybody was stoned. This is the part of the song where Katy is singing about Johnny Cash, so of course Beau is wearing black and Katy looks vaguely like June Carter. At least her hair does.
The bad couture does not prevent our lovely couple from stealing bottles of champagne and guzzling them while they run around and scream for attention in that questionable-child-rearing way, so they do that for a while. Eventually they get sick of looking at all the horrid clothing and they run out the door, leaving the old people to wait for fashion styles to change.
Quick check on Old Katy. She’s still on that bed and still sad. Got it.
Whoops, now Young Katy is sitting in Old Katy’s mammoth closet, staring at all the hanging fancy clothing like one of them might be named Michael Myers. Not sure what that’s all about. Then we’re back in the day to the young-lovers studio, with Beau giving Katy a tattoo by candlelight, using this nasty-looking needle thing that I wouldn’t let anywhere near my body. Katy doesn’t seem to mind the pain, though, because he’s making a heart, and we all know that if you tattoo something on your body, it will stay true forever. (Right Johnny Depp and Wynona Ryder?)
Then we have a not-really-clear scene where Katy and Beau are waking up after the tattoo session. He’s anxious to run off and do who knows what, so Katy just lays there in her party dress and wears sunglasses that she stole from the set of Almost Famous. Brief montage of random things, then we have Young Katy sneaking into Old Katy’s bedroom and watching her sleep. (Creepy, much?) Old Katy wakes up and starts singing part of the song, while Young Katy and her jacked-up psycho hair watch the warbling.
Back to the studio, where Beau and Katy are standing in front of giant canvases. Beau is doing really well with his after-school project, creating a nice mural, but Katy has some focus issues and hasn’t drawn a damn thing. Well, Beau, because he apparently has rage issues that Katy hasn’t noticed before (despite him wanting to pierce her skin with a rusty spike), marches over, grabs Katy’s arm, and forces her to paint something ugly. Then he goes back to his Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Well, Katy ain’t havin’ none of that, so she picks up some paint from the trashy floor and splashes it all over Beau’s handiwork. Thus ensues a big fight where Beau eventually storms out (dude, you started it), mixed in with some split-screen footage of the Young and Old Katy bellowing the song together. (Perhaps that bit was a tribute to Lindsay Lohan in the remake of The Parent Trap, back when The Lindster was known for her acting and not her inability to “just say no”.)
Anyway, Beau grabs his guitar (just like Johnny Cash would have done!), throws it in his black muscle car (warning sign!), and then he peels out, while Joan Jett Katy looks traumatized and cries a lot, both in the studio and in the fancy future closet that really isn’t hers and she should stop going in there.
Brief shot of Old Katy leaving her retro modern home, driving a car that looks just like Beau’s from back in the day. Hmm.
Cut back to Beau in his version of the car, tooling down the highway and still not looking very impressed that Katy put paint where it shouldn’t have been. (Young Katy continues to cry in the not-hers closet.) Beau jacks around with the one of the window visors, because the script said to do so, and out drops a bit of Katy’s outfit from the drunken hoedown at the church. (Can the girl just not put things where they belong?)
More crying from Katy as Beau stares at the bit of Katy fluff and does not stare at the road, so of course he doesn’t see the pile of rocks that have apparently been arranged by Martha Stewart in the middle of said road. At the last minute, he notices the centerpiece and swerves out of the way, which of course means his car has to plow through a rustic wooden fence (also designed by Martha) and become airborne. We’ll have to assume that Beau bites it, even though nobody from the CSI’s in Vegas, Miami or New York shows up to confirm the details.
The real song ends, but then we hear a bit of a Johnny Cash tune (naturally) as we watch Old Katy get out of her version of the muscle car and wobble her way to the wooden fence, which Martha has kindly replaced at some point, probably as a condition of her parole. She stares down the deadly hillside for a bit, then Beau magically appears and holds her hand. Then he fades, and the Johnny Cash song cuts off.
Old Katy finally turns and heads back to the muscle car.
Meanwhile, Old Husband That Katy Didn’t Really Want is still standing at the bottom of those stairs, wondering who the hell is crying in Old Katy’s closet…
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