Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Any Tool's a Weapon if You Hold It Right
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 3 | Aired on 08.30.2010
g this with a Barbie doll in the house of a thousand mommies is just a brilliant, tiny little detail that's metonymic for the whole thing.But it also reinforces the idea that even if Nancy had been the perfect mother -- which the only thing better than one mother is two mommies and science will back me up on this -- there would still be violence, because it's also about violence. Case in point: Kish fully rips the head off the Barbie/gun just as they're clarifying his gender. Fiona sends Kish to the Contemplation Corner, which is more-lesbian-than-lesbian for Time Out, and he goes cheerfully and sweetly.
But Nathalie goes off into a contemplative little corner of her own mind, about halfway through this sentence: "Boys can be really violent. It's all kill, kill... Kill..." Because sometimes, it's really about kill. And boys have violence in them, and it's different from the violence in women. Or maybe it's not. Maybe Nancy's mantra that Shane would've killed is just a big dumb lie, which it obviously is, but if that's a lie then what else is a lie? How far back does it go? What was her first mistake? Was it having sons? She's said that before. She lived in a house full of men and blamed them for everything. But this is a house full of women, even the boys are women, and you still have violence and you still have kill and you still are to blame for everything your children do. Kill, kill, kill. Kish. Kill.
She needs out. Nathalie needs out of this house, where even a masculinity-free environment can't give her what she needs, and refuses to give her the leverage she wants. Because every time she goes up against a woman -- Heylia, Celia, Peter's ex, Pilar Zuazo, her sister -- she comes out the loser. And if she can't even work a couple of lesbians (look at her, are they nuts?) then she isn't safe here. But if she can't work them, at least she can work the system. Either way it's time to go.
Fiona tells her they're throwing away the trimmings until the Health Dept okays them for edibles, and Nathalie shakes her head. "Health Department. Notorious feet-draggers, could take years. I'll take them." She offers them a hundred dollars, the price of a Yippity! Sippy, and just at that moment her son Shawn -- yippity-sipping on an iced latte of his own -- notices a Yippity! Dragon, unattended I believe outside a Mommy & Me group, and gives a quiet Yippity-yip.
"Yippity-ki-yay, motherfucker," Shawn says, in his floppy cardigan. Maybe Judah let him stay up late and watch Bruce Willis movies; maybe Bruce Willis made him feel like Judah never left. Anything could be a weapon, if you hold it right: A golf club, a croquet mallet. Anybody's a father if you know what you're doing: Ignacio, Bruce Willis.
Shawn Newman.
Once Doug walks into the house in Ren Mar, which has been tossed like a salad, he'll assume that there was a great big party. "Andy? Silas? Creepy Downer? Hello?" he'll ask. Cesar and Ignacio will appear, gun to his head, and he'll shake his head. "Guess you guys weren't invited either, huh?"
We'll already have traveled up Mike Newman's nervous calves and shapely thighs, as he reads; while Nathalie tosses her trimmings and ice into the washing machines with an internet printout recipe in hand; while mentor-seeking Randy offers Wagner a beautiful fruit-topped cake and it's tossed in the garbage with a cigarette butt crushed into it; while Shawn pushes Avi down the sidewalk, in a cardigan like Judah's, sucking down an iced latte like Mom's.
Tired Mike and tired Randy will meet Nathalie down in the laundry rooms, where she's just produced her first batch of hash. It's a change, a Newman change: A new life, same as the old one. They'll shake their heads at the light in her eyes, the ugly freedom there, but she'll just nod: "This is our normal." But upstairs, just before, this is normal:
If you want to see the inside of the spaceship, go to page 64. If you decide to stay in the forest, go to Page 114. Paul's voice is hushed and delighted, feet swinging off the foot of the bed. "Go inside, go inside!" Daredevil Paul urges Mike, delighted. "Your move has paid off. They welcome you in for a meal," Mike says. And softer, almost too soft to hear, incredulous after all these risky chances and ugly choices and constant urging, on and on, after all this he still can't believe this luck:
"...You never die."