Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Did Newton Need Blake?
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 08.25.2008
Nancy listens to Shane and his goth-skanks discuss the relative nutritional value of Pop-Tarts, which is to say, they talk about nothing. She makes coffee and listens half-heartedly, because that's all she ever does. Finally she admits to noticing they're still here, and asks if their parents are okay with them sleeping at some boy's house -- because that's real bohemian. One of the girls explains that, no, their parents are American, which I think engages Nancy's love of irony to the point where she realizes it's time to talk. Pop-Tarts are delicious and take a minimum of effort to enjoy; they're the kind of meal a parent might cook, or toss onto a plate, if she were only pretending to parent. It's the idea of food with nothing behind it; if you ate Pop-Tarts every day you'd die.
So this science experiment: it includes information on reproduction? Disease? "Your presentation includes those things? In addition to volcanoes and ... wind." The girls start getting scared, but it's only when Nancy asks what went down last night that they scatter. Shane doesn't answer: "I'm thirteen." Nancy points out that they are too.
What I mean to say is that he's smuggled them into her house, under her nose, through a tunnel she dug herself. They're only thirteen.
"Fuck you, Judah!" she finally screams. Finally. Shane swears he can handle it; his mother swears that she can't. And he tells her it's over, the joke is over: "Quit pretending to be a mom." Her face goes vulpine, that awful face, that "STFU Marvin" face, and she grabs him, striking out in anger, spanking him like a child. But if half his life was learning to survive without her, how on earth can she complain when he does?
Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.
Silas chuckles nervously, entering by another door, and asks if she's okay. Too high on adrenaline, she pours the coffee down the sink and asks WTF she did, to bring us here. "How did this happen? What did I do?" Silas says it's because she had boys, and that's true because Judah died, and because nobody, especially Nancy but including Andy, Doug and the boys themselves, has any idea what a man looks like. But if their roles were switched and it was Celia standing here, then Isabelle could say it's because she had girls, and that would be true too.
Doug watches Mermex sleep in his dingy new place, with coffee and donuts in his lap. She wakes up to him staring, and he smiles -- he tried waking her up with a little nookie, but she sleeps like a corpse. She laughs nervously, because at least he didn't realize she was awake. He stares at her: "You are so totally beautiful." He's so well-meaning, and yet so deeply creepy... I always thought this show dropped the ball on his creepiness, based on the abject fear Josh showed in the pilot, but it seems to be coming back to center with this whole immigrant hostage sex doll situation. Nasty fuck. He drops his pants and Mermex is horrified, all, no: "You must ... win my affection." He says he understands, they have to get to know each other, he must win her heart. Every word is crawling like spiders with scare quotes and air quotes: "Can I just see one boob?"