Episode Report Card Demian: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Farewell, My Liver
By Demian | Season 7 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.13.2004
"Dicks!" Raige hisses. She and Brody stand in front of a frosted-glass door upon which "MULLEN BROS. DETECTIVE AGENCY" has been stenciled. "Heh. 'Dicks,'" Kerr Beavises. Or Butt-heads. Your choice. "No!" Raige exasperates. "Private eyes! Detectives! Don't you see? They wrote themselves in as the heroes of their own book." She then name-checks Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe before nodding at Kerr to open the door. He shoots her an "I can't believe this bullshit" look before they enter the office together to find Mikey Palmice smoking at the desk, in the middle of some never-heard conversation with the missing Eddie Mullen. Eddie, incidentally, is being played by some infant named -- I kid you not -- Bug Hall, who's apparently best known for portraying Alfalfa in that wrongheaded remake of the Little Rascals series a decade ago, so we all know what his nickname will be this evening, right? Raige politely apologizes for the interruption. Mikey Palmice huffs, "The newcomers? [Alfalfa], I thought you said you didn't know them." Alfalfa vows he's never seen Raige and Brody before in his life. Alfalfa also looks like he's all of sixteen years old, which makes me very sad indeed. Kerr apparently agrees with me, for he snorts, "Wait a minute. You're [Alfalfa]?" Alfalfa's all, "You got a problem with that?" and Raige is forced to admit they were expecting someone older. Mikey Palmice skeeves something about Raige's apparent preference for older men, Kerr defends Raige's questionable honor, and Mikey Palmice's working some serious hair plugs. Ew. Mikey rises to introduce himself as "Johnny the Gent," correctly guesses Raige and Kerr met a few of his "associates" earlier in the day, and wonders if they, too, are after "the Falcon." "Like the Maltese Falcon?" Raige guesses. "Everyone knows the Maltese Falcon was a fake," Alfalfa snorts. "The Burmese Falcon," he corrects her. Kerr and I both howl, "You've got to be kidding." Unfortunately, Kerr, they're not. Long scene short, Raige clues Alfalfa in on her real identity by emphasizing that she came from his school, and convinces him to agree to a private chat. Mikey Palmice greases his way out of the office. Once he's gone, Alfalfa turns to Raige and Kerr and groans, "Of all the books in all the libraries in all the world, you gotta get sucked into this one?" Kerr, Raige, and I all look like we'd sooner throttle the little shit than put up with more assy lines like that one. They follow Alfalfa into an interior office, where he...
...expertly slings his fedora fifteen feet across the room, where it lands perfectly on a coat rack, and I've got to wonder how many takes it took before Bug got that right. This must have been an excruciatingly long day on the set. The shot abruptly cuts to an overhead, through-the-ceiling-fan shot of Alfalfa discarding his coat as Raige and Kerr amble in after him. Alfalfa tiredly reaches for a pack of Luckies, and Raige gets in a tedious antismoking PSA as I light my fifteenth cigarette of this recap. We learn that Alfalfa's brother Dan was offed by a couple of "corrupt cops" because of a disagreement over this whole Burmese Falcon thing. "What is it with this 'Falcon'?" Raige demands. "Why does everyone want it so badly?" "'Cause we wrote them that way," Alfalfa duhs. "It's their whole motivation." Raige softens her tone a bit, complimenting Alfalfa on constructing so complex a magical reality. Alfalfa's genuinely surprised to learn that twenty years have passed back in San Francisco, as in the book, Dan just got whacked yesterday. Raige wonders why Alfalfa didn't escape from the book the moment Dan died. Alfalfa, clearly lying, explains that once the story was set in motion, neither of them were to leave until it reached its natural conclusion. He and Dan sketched out the basics, you see, then entered the book to see how everything would play out. "It was supposed to be fun," he glums. Kerr, growing impatient, begins to growl something, but just then, Alfalfa's phone rings. He excuses himself to take the call, and asks them to wait in the outer office. Raige and Kerr stupidly comply, leaving Alfalfa alone to greet Mikey Palmice on the other end of the line. "Nah," Alfalfa says, "they don't know anything about the Falcon, but I think they're gonna be trouble anyways." DUN!