Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Prime of Miss Nat Newman
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 5 | Aired on 09.20.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Holy shit that was good. I haven't been this hyped for the next installment since we were still selling edibles, and it's just only barely because of the massive cliffhanger. Just unbelievably, crystal-clear good, from beginning to end. Showtime's official announcement of Season Seven today just got that much sweeter.
Okay, so the cliffhanger from last week -- cops outside the lesbian hash supplier -- is taken care of pretty easily, in a sparkling scene that recalls the best of the show's early seasons. However, the van is now no longer useful, and will soon lead the cops to realize that the Botwins are hiding in Seattle. Meanwhile, God saves Doug -- thanks a lot -- by tossing Cesar and Ignacio enough coincidental hints that they get all the way to the motel. That's two groups closing in.
Luckily, Nancy's already working on leaving town, planning to stiff her hash customers and flee with the extra cash. Several problems arise with this plan, as follows: (1) Silas has decided to stay in Seattle for school and activism, (2) Shane's got those Lunch Mommies on his case and calling CPS, (3) Andy's having a major freakout about his life choices, and that (4) awesome hotel maid, Latrice, is onto her scheme.
One short (offscreen) fistfight later, Latrice is out for blood (5), Nancy notices Doug tied up in the back of Cesar's car and realizes (6) Mexico has gotten closer than ever, the Mommies have the sheriff and a deaf CPS agent outside (7), there's a random crossbow and naked Andy making them all look insane (8), Latrice's backup has a warrant (9) so they're both going crazy, and Shane just got kidnapped by Cesar (10). It is at this point that Nancy locks herself in a strange bathroom and goes into a sort of crazy rage fugue.
And that's just the awesome plot. The rest of it is all witty Stee dialogue and gorgeous relationship mechanics: About a hundred dearly awaited moments between Nancy and Andy, including acknowledgment that she has been playing him this entire time and has every intention of continuing to do so; a pretty moving moment when Silas realizes once again she'll never actually let him go; Andy's reexamination of his desire to have a normal life v. his desire to have crazy fucking Nancy; the semiotics of Toblerone bars and the bald women that love them; and best of all, the fact that with 15 different enemies banging down the door, Nancy's only thought is still to get her boys as far out of danger as possible.
This sense of momentum can be as fleeting as it is delicious, so I don't want to say that the season is ramping the fuck up heading into its middle next week, but that long-ago feeling that absolutely anything could happen on this show, that feeling we lost somewhere in Mexico? Way back. This episode felt about two hours long; here's hoping it's a sign of things to come. Good work. Excellent work.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The cops yelling at Randy and Nathalie are not, of course, yelling about the weed trimmings. I wish every cop on TV were Louis CK, so much so that in my head I was expecting Louis CK this week. Instead of him it's this, like, Every Gay Person On TV. The other one doesn't speak, because white men in cop uniforms are more intimidating than black men in cop uniforms, because that's like white-squared.
Anyway, the reason the cops are yelling is that the Audra Van has been booted, because it has more than six grand in tickets and the plates don't match anyway. So whoever Silas got the plates from was not good at parking legally, and now there is trouble. But this scene is about more than just putting Nancy back on the road and grounding her without transport: It's also about hilarious talking.
Randy, under his breath, tells Nathalie to run, run fast and she goes, "Whut. I. Van." That's her gift of gab a-workin'. Then she and Randy go into this hilarious attempt at being from Seattle: "That suburban minivan? No. Ew. Totally. We're cool people. Urbanites. It's sort of our identity?" Gay Cop isn't buying it, and so Randy tries to help: "Silly, we know, these days. When gonorrhea is becoming drug-resistant. When Iran is teetering. Turducken..."
"The hell are you babbling about?" asks the cop, and Nathalie jumps into a whole speech: "Those are just a statement of defeat, like, I'm just gonna buy into the whole thing.Or maybe you're trying to impress someone, by being something you're not, when in truth, you don't love this person and you never really did. And maybe they're just really judgy, with weird limp hair... For example..." Talking shit about Alanis Morissette's anything is like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, in my opinion, but if the overconditioned Canadian winter fits...
Randy is getting so steamed he forgets where they are and makes a succession of hilarious pouting faces while Nathalie explains this weird lie to the Gay Cop about how they aren't on a stroll, just taking out their lawn trimmings, and Randy locates their recycling bins, and Nathalie's like backathehouse backathehouse backathehouse and the cop stops them because they put it in the wrong bins, and it's very tense and whatever, and Randy says he's colorblind, and supports the police in their "current funding fight with the city," and then nervously and weirdly Nathalie explains, over her shoulder, "Sometimes we use the back door..." It's just aching with awkward. Back of the house, she pounds Randy's shoulder instead of screaming bloody murder at how bad that almost got.