Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT You've Ruined Me, Eddie
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 03.20.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Well, Karen's not really dealing so well with last week's whole shame spiral: She's blacked out and started hacking away at her hair pretty much randomly, she's got one of those nostril/earlobe Jane Child chain things that are so popular with the youth these days, and she's started the eponymous video diary. Things start getting dark right around the time Lip stupidly points out that, judgment-freely speaking, she always was kind of a whore... So by the time Frank stumbles home full of Oxy, that's just one more reason for her to get stoned and fuck him on video, for the whole world to see.
Frank's worker's comp thing has been cancelled, so his whole object in this episode is to get a dangerous but not fatal job that will take him out of the workforce once again. For a Frank storyline it's not even really that annoying, and his final choice -- some kind of furniture finishing off-gassing nightmare -- even gives us a fairly fun round of whimsical coworker bingo before he nails himself to a cabinet in order to get out of there.
Fiona's confusing new friend, Amy Smart, kisses her on the mouth a few times and generally acts like a crazy person but I think it's too soon to tell what she's really up to. Tony stalks Steve all over the place and ends up handing him a pretty impressive ass-beating, and an ultimatum: Go to jail or disappear.
Ian and Lip spend the episode looking for Ian's biological father, which while it's the backbone and most interesting thread this week, it also seems a bit rushed and silly. First they go see Grammy Gallagher -- Louise Fletcher, from Cruel Intentions and also the planet Bajor -- who tells them of her sons three: Frank's blue-collar twin; the suburban success story; and Wyatt, who lost his testicles in the Navy. The twin is pretty funny, paranoid and bearded, but the boys instantly know when they visit the cul-de-sac of the second brother that that's their mark.
Of course, so does his wife -- given that Ian and their son Jacob are pretty identical -- and the boys eventually bounce. Ian's already made peace with their family's peculiarities, and is fairly open the entire time about the fact that he's only been indulging Lip's fantasies of having another life and father. Of course, he might have reason to rethink that, since the next thing that happens to them is that Tony calls in the stolen car they're driving, under the assumption that Steve is behind the wheel, and gotten the boys into the biggest trouble of their lives.
Next week's finale: More pressure, more noises, some pretty confusing messes for Fiona and poor shitty old Eddie Jackson gets it in the teeth once again.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Oh, Fiona and Steve. Aren't you being adorable? Wiggling your ears at each other, curling tongues and doing tricks. Fiona sticks her ankle behind her ear and sings "The Star Spangled Banner," as one does, which is exactly when Debbie shows up to ask what the hell they're doing, and whether sex is even weirder than she thought. "This has nothing to do with sex," they explain, and even those two have to agree that makes it a weirder little moment.
So why is Debbie there? Well, the Monica Thing churned up a lot of stuff, obviously, and in this case it also activated Debbie's orphan shame: She signed Monica up for the PTA or whatever, a responsibility she's longstandingly left off Fiona's impressive To-Do list, and so now Fiona has to go there and make decorations for some party. Fiona is not interested, because of the ladies involved -- "All they do is talk about their husbands and their jobs and their dental plans" -- and while Steve thinks maybe she could impress them by sticking her ankle behind her ear and singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (once we meet Jasmine, as you'll see, it's possible he's not wrong), Debbie's only real issue is that their kids are as terrible as their moms and she's getting some heat. So, of course, Fiona will be cleaning up Monica's mess once again.
Fi heads downstairs to make some coffee and Debbie leans on Steve once again, asking if he's told Fiona about his other life as Jimmy, and he swears he'll tell her soon. Maybe sooner than they think: Tony and a partner we haven't seen before are staking out the place, bitching about Steve's Porsche and hoping that Tony will soon move on to obsessing about "another skanky hood girl." At this point I don't know what it will take! She has screwed him over like eleven times, even discounting the fact that boys are idiots about this kind of thing and he takes offense to all kinds of unnecessary stuff.
Deb: "Snob Mob says it's not fair that I get to go to all the class parties and stuff, even though we don't contribute."
Fiona: "You can't listen to those bitches, Debs..."
It's half-cute, half-sad the way Debbie marches Fiona around the house to dress as nicely as possible for this little disaster in the making, and eventually they end up in Lip and Ian's room -- "Stop downloading porn!" -- looking for clothes. Seems Lip is still very interested in looking for Ian's biological dad in the wake of last week's DNA revelation; of course, Ian couldn't care less about any of this.