Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT I'm Ready For My Hinky-Ass Close-Up!
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 5 | Aired on 07.03.2005
Billy sits at the lunch counter of a diner, looking cleaned up and a whole lot less twitchy. He's still got his beard, but it's nicely trimmed, and he may have even gotten a haircut. Claire comes in and sits on the stool next to his, and he smiles and thanks her for coming. He announces that he's back on his meds. Claire sits there like she's waiting for something more, and asks, "Is there a specific reason you couldn't tell me that on the phone?" ["Because he's…lying? Was it just me who thought that?" -- Sars] Billy says he needed to see Claire to get some closure. "Should we order?" he says, opening his menu, but Claire shuts that down. "Is that it?" she asks. "Have we achieved closure?" Billy says yeah, and Claire gets ready to go. Billy stops her, and she sits there blinking angrily at him. "I just want you to know that I still care about you," he says. Claire says she knows, and actually makes him ask if she still cares about him. Claire admits she does, "but we're broken up now." Billy asks for a hug. Claire reluctantly agrees, and Billy hangs on for her way too long, until she pushes away and heads out, declining his offer to walk her to her car. He says he'll stick around and have a piece of pie. Claire demonstrates what a negative amount of interest looks like as she leaves him sitting there looking forlorn. Smart move, there, Billy, because on the continuum of things Claire finds attractive in a man, there's borderline crazy at one end, and there's needy and desperate waaaaaaay at the other.
Nate's replenishing the mint bowls at the funeral home when Maggie comes in the front door to pick up George. Nate's all dorky-schoolboy-crush when he sees her. He offers her a mint and everything. "We buy them in bulk." Sweet-talker. He's not discouraged when she declines, and he invites her over for dinner the next night. "Here?" she asks. He says, "No, my place. I mean, our place, Brenda and Maya and me, I mean." I can see why the chicks dig him, what with him being so smooth and all. Maggie agrees. The little moment is rudely interrupted by the sisters of Faux-mar Sharif, who enter carrying laden food trays the size of manhole covers. Maggie takes this moment to extract herself, freeing Nate to ask the sisters, "Who said anything about food?" They explain they brought cold cuts and "bacon-wrapped ham balls" for the viewing. "It's what Danny would have wanted," they insist. Nate agrees to take the food downstairs to the fridge (Time to turn back and descend the stair). With the bodies, I guess. Is that legal, let alone sanitary? Furthermore, I now have to add a new line item to my living will that Terri Schiavo made all of us get: "Don't ever store me with the bacon-wrapped ham balls."
Keith and David are discussing Anthony on the way home. They only met one kid at that whole picnic? Keith's doubtful, citing Anthony's claim that he doesn't want to be adopted, but David thinks the kid was just protecting himself. "I just thought he was special." Off Keith's look, he rolls his eyes and adds, "Not retarded special." He gets Keith to admit that he liked Anthony too, "In a fucked-up with serious problems kind of way." "I want him," David insists. Keith wants to make sure David understands that they can't undo anything that's already happened to the kid, and "It's not gonna change anything that's already happened to you, either." David gets that. "I just think it's doable." You know, Trash and I never went to an adoption picnic, but we did browse a few websites. There was one child who seemed perfect for us, but we knew we'd have to snap her up before someone else did and we didn't think we'd be ready to be parents for at least a year or so. And then, of course, our son was born three weeks later. But it worked out great, because instead of getting a kid who was already screwed up by someone else, now we get to screw him up in our own way.