Episode Report Card Aaron: B | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Super Hole
By Aaron | Season 6 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.25.2003
Props to NASA. They're gonna need 'em.
We fade up on Hill in the God Pod, giving us a quick reminder of how it all began. "In the beginning," he says, "there was the word. And then the 'word' begat 'Wordy McWord,' which begat 'Edited to add,' which begat the broken keyboard, and then a plague of slasher/shippers were set forth upon the Earth to be fruitful and multiply." Okay, not so much on that last part, I suppose, but there are still plenty of shout-outs to go around in this episode, so it's all good. Hill reveals that our theme of the week is "communications," and seeing as how that was my major in college, I do feel eminently capable of intelligently recapping his thoughts on the subject. Of course, anytime you attend a Big East college and more than half the basketball team shares your major, you know it's not exactly [now inappropriate "rocket science" joke deleted here]. Hill goes on to explain that God just wants someone to talk to, whereas mankind is too busy with "gossip pages and phone sex, re-runs of Seinfeld and auctions in cyberspace" to pay attention. Oh, I don't know about that. Something tells me that if God were to start selling stuff on eBay, he probably wouldn't have too much trouble meeting his reserve price. Not to mention the fact that I can totally hear the heavenly phone sex conversation: "Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as you wish (Genesis 19:8)."
An opening shot worthy of the famed Law & Order "cha-chung" shows us a no-nonsense female homicide detective arriving at Oz just minutes after the death of Kareem Said. Her conversation with Leo, which basically just recaps the events of the previous episode, is inter-cut with McManus, who is providing the same service for the inmates of Em City. You know, I think we should all be glad McManus isn't recapping this show for real. He'd probably still be going on about the metaphysical benefits of spooning as an "emotional enema." The prisoners all respond in various ways when they hear the news, with reactions ranging from tears (the Muslims) to indifference (the Italians) to "Where the hell is craft services?" (that one fat biker-looking extra in the background).