Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All Aboard The Crazy Train
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 2 | Aired on 06.11.2005
But Maggie's not nearly as uncomfortable at I am as I watch this scene of Rico, down in the Body Shop, leaving what sounds like only the most recent of a series of desperate voicemails for the dental hygienist who's blowing him off. Rico needs to stop leaving messages and start getting them, methinks.
And up in Claire's former studio, things are about to get even more awkward. David's helping Claire get ready to move a desk or something over to Billy's apartment, and offers her a way to return the favor: "Donate some of your eggs to Keith and me?" Claire doesn't look too excited about the prospect, but she thinks for a second and asks, "Like, when?" David says as soon as possible. He then explains that they have to find a surrogate first, and then she and Claire would have to go on birth-control pills at the same time to synchronize their menstrual cycles, and Claire would get hormone injections, and she couldn't exercise, drink, or use drugs: "Eventually the eggs would be harvested through a needle inserted through the vagina. Your vagina." Through all this, Claire has gone from mildly ooked out to horrified. "Ew," she whispers. "It's like...surgery," David finishes. Claire sits. David says he realizes it's a lot to ask. ["It is, which is why women can make as much as $8000 donating them, if a slide I recently saw before a movie is to be believed. When he saw that, and realized what a nice TV that money could buy, Glark considered donating his eggs." -- Wing Chun] Claire says she hadn't given much thought to her eggs, but she's not sure she wants to give any away. "It really wasn't fair of me to ask," David says. "You're not mad?" Claire says. David scoffs: "Even if it all worked out, there'd be the weirdness of having a niece that you're also the mother of." Claire agrees that that's kind of creepy. "It would make Thanksgiving dinners a little awkward," David says. Claire chuckles uncomfortably. Nicely done, David. Keith would be so touched to see the way you both asked her to do it and talked her out of it in practically the same breath.
It must be 2:00, because the staff meeting at the free clinic is just starting. Brenda joins a half-dozen or so other clinic workers in a meeting room that's smaller than her office, and the boss introduces her. She takes a seat on a folding chair and joins the circle. One of the other workers there wants to discuss a "client," and he gives the bullet: "Thirty-two years old, habitual user of crack cocaine and occasional prostitute. The state is seeking custody of her twelve-year-old child after said child complained that her mother tied her to the coffee table, whipped her until she bled, and then sexually molested her with a rolled-up copy of Newsweek, all for the viewing pleasure of her boyfriend." The guy adds that obviously the girl is lying: "There's no way that woman reads Newsweek." Everyone but Brenda chuckles darkly. I sympathize somewhat with her horrified reaction; I'd have trouble working with people who make such obvious jokes myself.