Episode Report Card Cate: D | 1 USERS: C YOU GRADE IT How do you solve a problem like Mary?
By Cate | Season 5 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.12.2000
It's time for the Hamiltons to sing for their supper -- or their dessert, I guess -- by pretending to care about Mary and her stupid problems. Mrs. Hamilton gives Annie a hug in the kitchen. There's none of that girly stuff between the men, though. Mr. Hamilton is giving Eric solid, heterosexual advice over in the living room. It actually is pretty good advice about how RevCam shouldn't wait too long before helping Mary. Of course, after this snippet of useful advice, we're back to the tired old refrain of "I wish I knew where Mary got that money."
Annie leads Mrs. Hamilton into the twins' room, where they both stop in overblown horror to see Ruthie pouring rice into one of the twins' piggybanks. Annie calls Eric into the room. Lucy and Simon come in too, because of, you know, the busybody thing. After taking a nice, long look at the Camdens' discomfiture, Mrs. Hamilton finally says that she and her husband will let themselves out. You know this latest news will be all over Glenoak within the hour. Oh, look, it's kind of convenient that Dopey picked this moment to show up so that all the kids will be there for the big, dramatic confession. Ruthie tries to take the blame, saying that she's been stealing the money bit by bit. I think the jig is up, though, when she claims she used the money to buy a horse. Dopey admits that he and his siblings stole the money for Mary. RevCam says, "Go downstairs and take a seat in the living room." We'll have to wait and see whether Dopey interprets that as a command to steal his parents' furniture in the same way he used to steal their groceries. SuperMom says, "This is pathetic, really pathetic." I know, Annie, but some people actually like the show, and meta-statements like that from you could ruin it for them, so you might want to hush up. If you wrack your brain, I'm sure you can come up with something nicer to say about the show! Why, even I can come up with a thing or two, if pressed. RevCam wants to organize a good, old-fashioned intervention. Yippy skippy. Annie asks what they will do after that. Potato-sack races? No, RevCam says he has an idea. That makes Annie look sad. RevCam just looks kinda blank.
The whole Camden family waits for Mary. She walks in, sees the lynch mob, and wants to know what they're all doing in the living room. She asks RevCam, "What is this, one of your creepy interventions?" Hee! They've used the word "creepy" twice in this episode to describe Eric! I love it. RevCam tries to glam it up by calling it a "prevention." Not surprisingly, Mary wants no part of the process, no matter what RevCam calls it. But what if he dubbed it "The Amazing Robbie's Big Schlong-ervention"? Okay, maybe then she'd consider it. Finally, RevCam orders her to sit down; I beg Mr. Cate to crack open a bottle of wine. Uh-oh, time for another cliché alert! RevCam starts off with, "I was taught that life is a school, and some lessons are harder than others." He passive-aggressively pretends to take the blame for Mary's woes by claiming he should have offered her some guidance earlier. I whimper in pain as RevCam catalogues many of the ways those fucking loser Glenoak busybodies have violated his over-eighteen-year-old daughter's civil rights. There's the pool hall guy sharing with RevCam why he fired Mary; the pizza guy doing the same thing, but then going it one better by stating that the reason he fired Mary was because she was hanging around with the wrong crowd. Can't Mary sue for wrongful dismissal? What about invasion of privacy? There's the stuff about the Greg Brady cop suspecting that Mary was drinking and then shooting his mouth off about it, even though he can't know for sure since he never gave her a breathalyzer. Annie breaks in to tell Mary how much she loves her, but she's shaking her head while she says it. She's not the only actor who does that. I've seen this phenomenon a lot, and I find it mystifying. What's also mystifying is that Annie calls Mary "kind." Maybe she meant to say "kind of a loser," but the editors were feeling frisky that day and decided to edit out the rest. I have to laugh when Mary gives her parents a weary, heartfelt, "Oh, please!" SuperMom plays the probation card, pointing out that if Mary is caught driving drunk she will go to jail. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the rest of Annie's speech is quite good, even if I can't muster up a whole lot of sympathy for Mary -- especially when she reacts to her mom's nice speech with an irritated sigh.
Dopey puts on his best church elder voice for his soliloquy, and he even steeples his fingers to reinforce the church theme. Or do you think maybe I'm reading too much into this? Ugh -- the Dopester goes on about how he hasn't been around much, and that maybe he should have cornered her sooner to shove his opinion down her throat. He says, "I see so many young women who are losers." I'm sorry to say, he does not follow that up with a big wink and, "It's mostly when they're lying underneath me, counting ceiling tiles, if you know what I mean. Heh? Heh?" No, instead it's blah blah, "responsibility," blah, "affects us all," blah, "best you can be." He tells her he loves her, but at least he doesn't shake his head while he's saying it. Maybe Barry Watson is a better actor than I thought. ["Go lie down." -- Sars]