Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT When They Do the Double-Dutch
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 8 | Aired on 07.27.2009
on Sundays or when her novelas are on, no cleaning, no laundry: Just baby. Nancy's heart breaks a little bit more with each condition. Lupita waxes joyfully about taking up surfing again, and Shane comes in, happily surprised to see her; she offers to take him surfing, for an additional fee.The blonde waitress at a crummy Mexican restaurant puts Andy's flaming drink in front of Audra as she tells him her geography: "Oregon, West Germany, Uruguay." Andy's is less amazing: "Tarzana. And then the other side of Tarzana." She's not impressed. He asks what she wanted to be when she grew up, Jane Goodall, and he says he wanted to be a dog and blows out his drink. "This is fun! I'm having fun!" he says desperately, trying to convince them both. She finally just gives up and tries to bounce. "We haven't even gotten our combo platos yet!" She explains that, in considering her night's options, she would rather be in her PJs watching Friday Night Lights DVDs than dealing with his sixteen miles of bull.
He asks what's wrong, and she says something that is so rarely appropriate that seeing it used properly is like seeing a unicorn: "In a nutshell? I'm past you." Past in what sense? "In life." She explains that there are plenty of girls that would be "dazzled" by "two-dollar taco night at Borracho's," or the way he can balance a salt shaker on the bridge of his nose, but that honestly, he lost her about fifteen minutes in. She downs a shot and looks to see if he's still alive. "This is stunning," he says. Great and careful work, Andy. "I'm stunned."
"Stunned," she says. "Really." Because he's unemployed, nearing forty, drives a car from a TV show, and his greatest recent accomplishment was beating "the upside-down kill screen" in Ms. Pac-Man, "which I know meant something to me at some point, but I couldn't handle that movie about the hygiene people playing Donkey Kong so that word means nothing to me now." Man, the dialogue in this episode is way above average for this show. So Andy's exasperated that she wasn't paying attention: "I didn't beat it, I just got to it. I died almost immediately, the thing's upside-down!"
Audra tries to explain that Andy is a frozen margarita, while she is a doctor, and manages to do this without coming off like a complete asshole, and he tries half-heartedly to go to the "I play doctor" place, she's not having it, he finally asks why the hell she went out with him at all. "My mother always said if they feed you, go." Heh. She stands up, noting that this was not the only terrible advice her mother ever gave her, and assures him she can find her own way home: "Preferably in a car where the doors open." He stares after her and is wounded and sweet.
Lupita says the baby sleeps too much, and Nancy says he's probably just waiting to wake up when it's all over. "I really need to name this baby," she says, and Lupita stands up in her surf gear, offering "Bernardo," by way of reference to the huge schnozz in West Side Story. I love that movie. I wasn't allowed to watch it when I was little because my mom thought Natalie Wood was being racist or something. Meanwhile Mickey Rooney in Tiffany's was a regrettable moment in our culture heritage, but none of those fake Puerto Ricans! Ah well. I still like Breakfast At Tiffany's way better, and I like to think that it's because even as an innocent child I knew musicals couldn't be trusted.