Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | 1 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Laika Was An Astronaut
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 09.26.2007
Joan is getting made up at the apartment with Loser Carol, complaining that she's "stuck between Doris Day in Pillow Talk and Midnight Lace," when what she really needs is to be "Kim Novak in just about anything." Midnight Lace I get, because of the whole "we will never actually have a relationship" aspect of her relationship with Roger, and I guess I can see Pillow Talk vaguely, because she has no idea what a giant bitch she is and probably thinks of herself as a fairly harmless charmer, not a femme fatale...so it's funny that she's thinking about Kim Novak now. I mean specifically right this second: "What a rut! 1960, I am so over you!" Carol zips up her gown and smells her hair, and you go uh oh. "Shalimar?" Carol asks, and Joan wonders if it's too much. "You never say die, do you?" Carol says affectionately, and Joan minces for a second before remembering to care: "Carol, sweetie, it's not that bad. Tomorrow's another day!" Carol protests that she's actually doing okay, and Joan snaps her head, that way she does when a subject is closed: "Good. No waterworks. Mascara!" But the subject is not closed. "I'm just so happy right now!" Joan laughs and asks if she's taking pills already. Carol's like, "No, silly! SSRIs won't be invented for twenty-eight years! I'm talking about totally lezzing out on you!" Joan's like, "We do have fun, don't we."
Which is where, I think, Carol screws this up. I am not a connoisseur by any stretch, but I do have a fair amount of knowledge, not to say experience, of the most likely sequence of events when the Girls successfully Go Wild. I venture to suggest that preparation for mining the fleshpots is far, far less advantageous a moment to Go Wild or attempt to induce spontaneous Going Wild in a female lady friend than, say, at the end of the night. Not to mention that this is a case in which actions are always, always going to trump words. There has never been a case of Going Wild that resulted purely from rhetorical skill, Carol. If you know what I'm saying, and I think you do. "Joan, I love you. I really do." Joan doesn't look, but there's a lilting lightness in her voice that suggests she just mentally flipped into My Life Is Now A Movie mode: "You." Sort of flirtatious, sort of warning her to take it to a lighter level, sort of an internal kind of "..And here we fuckin' go."
"That first week in college I saw you walking down the commons and I thought, who is she? When college was over, you came here. And I followed you." There's a certain amount of surprise on Joan's face, but you'd need a special pair of glasses to see it. If she was capable of registering this on her face she wouldn't be Joan; it's the first skill she learned. "You needed a roommate? I moved in. Just to be near you. I did everything I could, to be near you." Joan doesn't break eye contact. Once. She's walking a very thin line between being here for this and not being here at all; between admitting she knows what Carol's talking about, and pretending it's nothing. "All with the hope that one day you would notice me. Joanie. Just think of me as a boy." Joan doesn't look away, until she does, and then smiles sweetly. There are a thousand ways this could go: trust Joan to pick the most graceful, least damaging one. Trust Joan, even in this instance, to play the social organizer, reminding Carol about the rules, teaching her about the ways we behave: "You've had a hard day. Let's go out and try to forget about it, okay?" It's not just a no, it's defining the world and the possibilities it contains, for them both. If all you get to be is a Doris Day or a Kim Novak, a Birdie or a Joanie...not worth it. Not when even Doris Day has to sleep with Rock Hudson. When even Rock Hudson has to sleep with Doris Day: Carol nods, taking the offered out, and Joan smiles broadly, lovingly. "Good. Because I'm starving." She leaves her there, to get her shit together and come back into Joan's world.