Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT No Country For Newmans
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 7 | Aired on 10.04.2010
"What are you gonna do, right?" says the widow. The gross family shoves their way to the front of the line, ducking between the metal bars, and Shane starts to get nervous. "No big deal," she says, just like a real person: "We'll all get on eventually." And though it isn't fair, the fact is that those guys are idiots and that everybody else will shoulder the brunt of getting pissed about it -- their people, their rules -- and they'll get shoved back. Right, because the world is an essentially fair place and paternalistic white line-jumpers always get shoved back. It's enough to make you, I don't know, start a shadow economy in an illegal industry with the artificial scarcity provided by prohibition laws.
Nancy's resolve to take the human way out lasts as long as it takes to get to the gate, where the young strange guy counts the last people through and then shuts the line down for the day. Midway closes early on Wednesdays, for maintenance. First Nancy tries the "my dead husband" card, "this young boy's dead father was a rollercoaster designer" card, but the boy is sorry: That wouldn't be fair.
After a slight altercation with Bluedouche that goes nowhere, because he has all the cards -- and an even shorter attempt to get like one of these women to care -- Nancy picks out the beefiest, angriest dad in line and pulls him forward. You go to the Heartland for values and realize that the men are just like men everywhere, but even easier: "You were behind me in line. This guy cut in front of us. You gonna let him do that? You're gonna let him do whatever he wants? And walk all over you?"
The fight that results is brief -- they all know each other; they're all cousins, eating butter together, fucking each other's wives, bagging each other's tea, divorcing in defiance of God's law together -- it works out. The crowd is incited, country-western shirts and purses flying, denim vests all-asparkle, and Nancy and her son sneak past and onto the ride. He is like her. The line won't ever work for him either.
Doug feeds Stevie cotton candy, washes it down with ice cream. He and Celia, I bet their sex was shocking in some ways but really, altogether I think they really had a thing, whatever they had.
Mike and Randy Newman, tokin' up, desperate to get hungry enough to eat thirty pounds of butter. Just typing that makes me want to fucking hurl. Mike added cinnamon to the hash, back in Seattle, for flavor; Randy approves. "Sometimes I think you're the son I never had," Randy tells his son Mike. "I'm serious, I feel a special kinship." Silas almost grins: "Because we're related."