Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Personal
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 13 | Aired on 11.15.2010
"You could have come to me. We would have worked it out."
Which is true, in its way. She admits she panicked, because she's not really into explaining her whole entire deal about how that would never, ever happen, and he almost laughs. "A thousand chances you had, and you took my child away."
As though it's a debate, as though there's a winner here, she pulls a "you kidnapped Shane" in recompense, and Esteban points out that she forced that too. Besides, he's a killer. She returns the serve -- Isn't this exactly like divorce mediation? All the meaningless points getting scored that change nothing -- and says Esteban's a killer, and Guillermo's a killer too. Except, of course, for when he's supposed to be.
"Fucker! Dealbreaker fucker," she grits at him, with even a little wall-eyed can you believe this guy glance at Esteban. And when Guillermo explains he hates her ass, she laughs at him. "You love me, you sociopathic piece of shit." He promises to kill her, gangland style, ugly, and she goes back to making fun of his shoes.
"My shoes are awesome," he sighs, and she turns back to Esteban, begging him to let Shane go in peace one last time. He laughs at her for being such a devoted mother, and she reminds him of just what that means, and how they're connected: "You'll say nice things about me to Stevie?" Plan C's already gathering, all around them, and the boys don't even notice.
It's not that the personal is political: That's a Baby Boomer lie that tells us we're so special the world won't keep turning unless we keep our own importance in our mind's eye at all times. And by turns the political is revealed as personal: Single choices, aggregating. But when you're left out of the conversation, when you're pushed into shadow economies, the personal is staunchly not political because you have no voice in the body politic, which is why her crimes were never crimes: When you're pushed out of the conversation, the personal is all you have left.
Esteban says that Stevie's mother loved him so much she was willing to sacrifice everything, even her life, for him. Which is true, in a way. But not a way he can see yet. She finally stops, in the corridor, near the door, so that anybody who might be standing behind them -- all the faces, all so concerned with getting where they're going -- can see her face, and offers him a farewell fuck. Just long enough, just random enough, that he'll get it moving again, toward the door: "That's crass. And it won't save you."
And when she asks what will save her, and he says nothing, she already knows what will: She can see the sunlight on the windshields of the cars lined up outside the concourse doors, the glints of their guns, the earpieces in the men that are surrounding them: Plan C.
Surrounded on all sides, with Esteban to her right and Guillermo to her left and the baby on her chest, surrounded by the ocean of everything she's ever been terrified by and all the things she's ever run from, she nearly smiles. The FBI screams at them to put their hands up, and she steps, just lightly, carrying the full weight of her on her toes, one last time, to the front of the crowd:
"I killed Pilar Zuazo. Please arrest me."
And then, just a little quieter: "Please."
The lights come up, suddenly, on a bright-blown certainty: The thing that makes you suck is the thing that makes you awesome. She's always known it, she's always assumed it, and it's what makes Daredevil Girl such an impossible, such a necessary girl. She's not falling, she's dancing. Watch her dance.