Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 150 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT We Are The Table
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 13 | Aired on 2008.09.08
Before the bath, she calls Esteban to tell him she's been questioned and released. "And?" And, um, she had pancakes for breakfast. "What kind?" There's something off here, and she can feel it. This isn't a boyfriend and girlfriend being inane, this isn't romantic interest in breakfast, this is a blank spot where you fill in the question after you've given the answer. This is a man who keeps lions, who kills men; who cut off Schlatter's face and left him on the fence. This is a man who got who knows what information out of that face before it died. "...Blueberry," she says guardedly. "You?" His response seals it: this is not what it looks like. "Yogurt, coffee and toast." She sails his words and his moods like a tiny little boat, she knows the wind and the direction of the sun on her face; she knows the lion just showed up. "Sounds like a nice breakfast..."
"I'd like to see you," he says. It's neither a question nor a request. She swallows and says she'd like to see him, too. They're both telling the truth but it doesn't mean we're not lying, here. He clarifies that he means tonight, and he's sending the car. "Has to be tonight?" she asks tiredly, and he says it does. Her face repeats, over and over, even as she's offering to drive herself, "Dammit dammit dammit." Because she's all about the gamble and the high-stakes risk, but this means she's going to have to keep a card she was happy to hold onto not only for its trumpiness but for the fact that she's spent the season ignoring it. Which is to say, sitting in Maternity World, at the end of a birth canal shooting out children day after day, talking Clinique and customers through the ups and downs, pretending to be ignorant of everything, even your own woman's body, is a lot harder when you're not allowed caffeine. But it's Nancy Botwin: would anything less than the promise of torture and murder make her admit what's been right in front of her -- and us -- all season? The smarter you are the crazier you get to be: Nancy is the table, and she always has been.