Episode Report Card Joe R: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Brick Dance
By Joe R | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Aired on 08.26.2007
Motel. Celia's working on her martini and playing solitaire, while Isabelle reads a book about prisoners. Heh. Child Protective Services come knocking -- Isabelle called them up -- to determine whether this is a suitable living arrangement for a child. Isabelle tells them there was a condom in her bed. Celia tries to play it off like it was a plastic wrapper. "With a reservoir tip?" Isabelle asks. Celia hilariously tries to play the poverty card, telling the CPS lady that just because she's lower on the income line doesn't mean her dwelling is unfit. Cue the loud lovemaking sounds of the couple in the room next door, one of whom seems awfully insistent that she be fucked harder. Harder! HARDER! Oh, Celia. Isabelle? Loving her life right now.
Nancy's pick-up assignment is at a bar we don't ever get the name of, so I'm going to call it Cholo McDo-Rag's. Nancy gingerly approaches the bartender and says U-Turn sent her to pick up a package before slurping the rest of her frappuccino. Nancy doesn't speak Spanish, which is part of the problem. The other part being that she's in way, way, way over her head. So the ringleader of this here operation, Guillermo, tells her that if she wants this package for U-Turn -- this fat brick of weed -- she's going to have to perform a "brick dance." After a couple lame attempts at booty-shaking, Nancy finally just turns on some music, gets up on the pool table, and makes like she's Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You, shaking her ass for this room full of scummy fuckers. She keeps edging herself closer and closer to that line, doesn't she? "White slavery" suddenly doesn't sound like much of a stretch when she's writhing around on a table for a brick. Not to mention how when she leaves, brick in hand, and one of the cholos asks why they didn't "have fun" with her, and Guillermo's response is "You don't rape the messenger," it makes two references to raping Nancy in the first three episodes, which scares the hell out of me for her season-long prospects. Again, she's edging closer and closer to that line, isn't she? Anyway, Guillermo tells her to tell U-Turn that he's a "lawn jockey" now. Whatever that means.
Nancy returns to U-Turn with the brick and the "lawn jockey" message, and U-Turn is incensed. He didn't send Nancy to pick up any pot, he sent her to pick up a kilo of "jack," which Nancy understands is a street term for heroin, which kind of makes her want to lie down at the thought of it. U-Turn says this is all Nancy's fault, though Nancy quite reasonably says not knowing what it was she was supposed to pick up makes it hard to blame her in this situation. "I did a brick dance for you, okay? I got a parking ticket!" He tells her to cut up the brick, move it, and bring him back $12,500 for it, which Nancy says is impossible. U-Turn, being U-Turn, doesn't so much care, and in fact he's also tacking on the cost of what he payed Guillermo for that jack he didn't get onto Nancy's debt. Nancy freaks out at this, saying she has kinds and bills and a life and how is she supposed to make ends meet if U-Turn keeps upping her debt. U-Turn looks her dead in the eye and says what many of us have said at least once or twice during the course of this series: "Get a fucking job!" And it's not so much that as the "a-doy" look in his eyes after he says it that makes me dismayingly note that I may love U-Turn a little bit. Just a little!