Episode Report Card Sobell: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Get out, Nate. Seriously.
By Sobell | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 04.12.2003
Oh, Nate. If you keep lying like that, you'll stunt the baby's growth. If that's not an old wives' tale, let's make it one now. I'm thirty, I'm married -- that should qualify me for spreading these sorts of crackpot domestic theories, yes?
After Lisa leaves, Nate has a meeting of the minds with Maya, brainstorming their day: "We could fill some things up, dump 'em out. Maybe later we can poop. Whaddya say?" I say that postpartum depression and/or psychosis is a lot more understandable if this is what stay-at-home moms have to look forward to during the day. Maya's keeping her plans a secret.
Meanwhile, Ruth is attending a bargain-basement rave, if by "bargain basement" you mean "Arthur's room" and by "rave" you mean "fractal art set to really tedious MIDIs." She's exclaiming over Arthur's musical talents -- yes, we're witnessing Arthur's magnum opus -- and Arthur tells her he didn't exactly write it himself. Ruth coos, "You are so multifaceted!" Arthur's all self-deprecating with, "It's just a theme by Debussy, but I've developed it somewhat, put a drum beat underneath it just for fun. It's nothing much." Ruth is unconvinced. There's a few more rounds of unctuous flattery on Ruth's part and embarrassed ducking on Arthur's, and then she asks, "Where's the button to make it play again? I love that little tune -- it's so haunting." Arthur tells Ruth he needs to get going, and she blurts out, "So soon?" Oh, Ruth. Get another job. Get a hobby. Get a dye job like Anne Bancroft's in The Graduate so you at least pull off the seduction-of-a-younger-man thing with some panache.
Anyway, Arthur tells her he's going for a run, and Ruth practically sings, "I didn't know you ran, Arthur!" Arthur tells her, in a manner not unlike a ninth-grader struggling to deliver Willy Loman's lines in a class reading of Death of a Salesman, "Well. I haven't, actually. But I thought I ought to give it a try. I seemed to have gained some weight lately." Ruth protests that Arthur looks fine, then mows over his cue that she should leave by babbling, "People and their weight nowadays -- it's such a strange fascination! I see you all the time around the house and you just look fine -- just fine!" There's the barest awkward pause before Arthur says thanks. Ruth realizes she should leave, but as she turns to go, she pivots back around again and worms Arthur's running trail out of him: he'll be going to Pan Pacific park. After Ruth finally leaves (she goes out on, "Thank you for sharing your music with me, Arthur. It's very rhythmic"), Arthur's able to get a moment's privacy so he can contemplate the spill of his love handles over his tighty-whiteys as his composition plays in the background. I half expect Ruth to charge back through the door and carry on the Fisher women's tradition of deflowering men under that roof, but -- thank God -- no such thing happens.