Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Deep End Of The Ocean
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 13 | Aired on 08.31.2009
And if anything I would say that this episode, and season, represent a major epiphany for Nancy Botwin, which is that judging men on a scale of rapeyness to usefulness is really unhelpful, not to mention unhealthy. It cuts out all the normal people who could have supported her instead of carrying her, for one thing; it turned one son into a gibbering freak and pushed the other into an unnatural maturity, for another. It kept her weak and it kept her immature, locked in grief and searching out her next high, and everybody's still following that lead. Esteban's the first person she's met since Judah died, and she honestly seems to have figured that out now.
But even though I'm proud of her, it doesn't mean she won't pay for having learned too late: There's her kids going nuts, and there's Guillermo calling himself "her boy," and all the ways she still has to pay. But for now, it's a nice moment. It's the same day she figures out that she doesn't know her sons anymore, and finds out that she does. It's the same day she realizes Pilar is the answer to all her questions about men, and how with a strong hand at the strings she doesn't have to be a puppet anymore. It's about jumping into the deep end and learning that the deeps never stop: they just get deeper.
"I can't rely on men. It doesn't mean I don't love them, it doesn't mean I walk out, it just means... I adjusted my expectations. Men are weak." Andy, still hoping, says with much conviction that he is "fucking steel," and she giggles indulgently, slipping into Men Are Weak mode without even noticing. "Yes, you are! And you're getting married..." He tries to compare them to an O Henry story, like they're on these crossbones graphs where they keep missing each other, but she smiles intimately, having finally realized: "No. We're our own fucked-up little story." They don't fill each other's holes and they don't miss each other's spaces, they're not square pegs or round holes, or anything else. She gives him the gift of intimacy, and tells him what she's just learned: that's the glue. Not just an approximation, not a fantasy made flesh, but the actual goal.
Esteban enters, still feeling unmanned, and immediately asks why Andy's always there. And where before yesterday -- before Andy took her apart in the jailhouse, before she realized just how much power Pilar has over her life -- she would have rolled her eyes or jumped to hateful sarcasm, now she just smiles: "I like him." It's possible to just like guys, to have friends, brothers; to let their love and their hate be theirs, and simply exist alongside them. That's the glue. I think most of us are still on the way to really getting that one down. Men and women are an O Henry story but only for as long as it takes you to remember it's not a story: It's your life. Dive in, and you can do whatever you want.