Episode Report Card M. Giant: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Say Quakerism, You Say Aneurysm
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 8 | Aired on 07.23.2005
I'm not really sure what's going in this scene, because some of it's going on in Spanish. Before the CotW'a funeral, Rico's glad-handing in the chapel, paying the priest and the dove guy (who threw in an extra twenty doves). Then he meets the arriving parents and says something in Spanish to them before directing them to the front. Nate watches this from the chapel doorway, then turns and leaves, his expression disapproving for some inscrutable reason. You know how you can tell when something's bothering Nate? He's awake.
Claire's busy at her desk at work when Lawyer Ted comes up to her looking for a printer cartridge. "Supply closet," Claire says. Lawyer Ted makes a helpless face. Which is enough to get Claire to lead him into the darkened supply closet, where it turns out that what he really wants is to make out. Told you he was grabby. Lucky for him, Claire is up for it as well. To my surprise, Kirsten doesn't walk in on them. I guess they're saving that for next week.
Hey, Maggie has an apartment after all! She opens the front door of her place to reveal Nate standing there. He apologizes for being early, saying work was just too depressing. But he took the time to go home and change, looks like. Maggie lets him in and tells him to make himself at home (which is something he should be doing anyway, in the literal sense) and goes to get them a couple of bottled waters. They sit on the sofa together, and Nate just starts right the fuck in on how he and Brenda are always fighting. "We see the world in such completely different ways…I guess I conveniently ignored that fact when we got married." Maggie chuckles, and Nate disingenuously apologizes for coming in and "unloading all my shit," as if he knows any other way to interact with people. But he's looking forward to sitting and being quiet at tonight's meeting. Sure he is. Nate asks how she's doing, and she says she wonders how she wound up in L.A. And then she remembers, "I was on my way out and my dad begged me to stay." Nate says that's what happened to him with his mom. Which she should understand, because his mom and George totally double-teamed her. "Any regrets?" Maggie asks. Nate says, "About becoming the one thing I never wanted to be? Oh yeah. Or not. I don't know." He says he used to feel like he was helping people, but has lately begun seeing the whole business as unnecessary, which adds to the general feeling of uselessness he has. "I may have this handicapped child and there's not anything I can do about it. I can't make the baby healthy, I can't make myself more ready to deal with it, I can't even make myself want to deal with it. I can't do anything." Maggie says he's allowed to be scared. "Life is scary." Oh, don't encourage him. She takes his hand. Dammit, she encouraged him. So Nate shifts over and starts kissing her. She tries to stop him, but he just stays up in her face until she starts getting into it.
Cut to Brenda, sitting alone at the Quaker meeting. Oops. She looks at the door, like she's wondering where Nate and Maggie are and what they're doing. Wait, I take that back -- she's wondering where Nate and Maggie are doing it. You know, this is the second week in a row that someone in Brenda's life told her to open up to Nate, and it's the second week in a row that she actually did it, and it's the second week in a row that Nate kicked her in the teeth for it. Although something tells me that unlike the last five minutes of last week, they won't be basically pretending that the current developments never happened.