Episode Report Card Gustave: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Debriefing of Kiefer
By Gustave | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 03.04.2002
My boyfriend has this friend from work who dropped by because she was in the neighborhood seeing her psychic. So she plops down on my couch and proceeds to tell us that this psychic told her that "everybody in the psychic community has always known" that our 42nd president is going to be assassinated before he finishes out his first term, and Bush is our 42nd president. So I'm all, great! That's just what we need right now: martyrdom for Dubya. Before you know it, we'll have a Dubya School of Government at Harvard, a Dubya International Airport, and a Dubya Center for the Performing Arts. Then Laura Bush is going get remarried to a Greek shipping tycoon who'll buy her an island and all the Valentino gowns she wants. Listen up, anti-American terrorists! If you really want to stick it to the Bush family, don't shoot George, for crying out loud! Let him ride out his pitiful presidency and force him to take responsibility for his incompetence. If you shoot him, the country gets behind him even more, and we'll have a stronger government because he won't be involved in it. Don't you get it? I repeat! If you want to fuck with the U.S., keep George alive! New assistant, who looks like Kelly's Crispy Lesbian Friend from 90210 with Felicity hair pulled back in a bun, promises Palmer to get right on that. Hmmm. I've never seen this girl before, and yet she gets a line that doesn't advance the plot. Think she'll be important later on? Nah! She's got her hair in a bun. There's no way she's up to something!
Back in the really really ugly kitchenette, Lady MacPalmer pours coffee from one of those white plastic decanters -- you know, the one with the stopper at the top that you have to spin clockwise until there's a large enough opening for the coffee to come splashing out and subsequently stain your outfit? -- and places it back on a Crate and Barrel blond birch serving tray. Palmer enters and asks Lady Mac what's "on her mind." Come to think of it, what in the damn heck is on Lady Mac's mind now that the Theo story has been killed? She's been doing nothing all morning but complaining about that story, and now that it's gone, how's she going to kill time until midnight? You know how you finally pop a big zit on your chin that's been bothering you all day and it's one of those sweet pops that's executed with just the right combination of pressure, timing, and fingernail positioning which totally decimates the pimple? It's such a great feeling; you keep looking in the mirror and marveling at your skin and consider dropping by the office of your dermatologist -- the one who keeps telling you not to pop your zits under any circumstances -- just to gloat. So you keep thinking about that glorious zit pop for hours, and you even reach over to your chin and try to pop the non-existent zit again just to recreate that lovely accomplished feeling. The problem is, you no longer have a zit there. You popped it. It's gone. You go looking around your face for other zits to pop, but there aren't any -- well, maybe a couple pink ones that aren't quite ripe yet. So you keep squeezing the place where your zit used to be, hoping that there's some pus left that you didn't get the first time. Nothing. It starts bothering you just as much as the zit did in the first place. Well, Lady Mac's right there in that. She tells Palmer that he needs to put his "best face forward" today and forget about mentioning Ferragamo or the murder cover-up. Lady Mac? He just told you a few minutes ago that he wasn't going to do anything about the Theo situation. You won. Drop it! Palmer tells her he's over it…because he's being blackmailed by his campaign backers. Apparently, someone planted evidence in Ferragamo's office that could implicate Theo in the murder. Lady Mac flips out. "Does Theo know?" asks Lady Mac. "No," says Palmer. "And he's not going to!" And when Palmer says he's going to do something, there's no changing his mind. No way, José. I bet that Theo is going to be in the dark about this for a good five or six minutes. That Palmer is a rock, I tell you!