Episode Report Card Aaron: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Zed's Dead, Baby. Zed's Dead.
By Aaron | Season 2 | Episode 8 | Aired on 04.20.2002
Once inside the apartment, Zhora immediately tries to find some mistletoe under which to kiss Nate, and Brenda comments on how drunk her mother is. So basically, everything seems normal in the Chenowith household. Until, that is, the evening's "special guest" is revealed to be none other than Billy. Dun dun duh! Billy's hair is cut quite short, and he's wearing a Bill Cosby sweater, so we're apparently supposed to think he's been cured. "Don't worry," he says, trying to calm a shocked Nate and Brenda, "they pumped so much electricity through me you could light up the Eastern Seaboard." Some tense greetings are exchanged, and then the boys head over to the drink cart while Brenda pulls her mom aside, demanding to know why she wasn't warned about this. "You need to be warned about seeing your own brother?" wonders Mom. Brenda reminds her about last-season's aborted tattoo-removal session, and then is even more shocked when she finds out that Billy has been released for good, and will be living right there with his mommy. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this isn't going to end well.
Nate and Billy, however, are managing to have a much more civil conversation over by the drink cart. "I guess you're happy to be home," offers Nate, who looks more than a little wary about the whole situation. "Happy is a concept I try not to buy into," says Billy. "It just gets me into trouble." After an awkward silence, Billy offers a reasonably heartfelt apology for everything that happened, claiming that he was "sick" at the time. "And now you're not?" wonders Nate. "I'm still sick," answers Billy. "I'll always be sick. It's just the cards I was dealt. I can manage it through medication for the most part, but it's something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. It's not up to me." And, once again, it's all about Nate's brain. Although I guess it's not surprising that someone with such a rectangular head would be finding parallels everywhere.
Wow. When I bust out the geometry jokes, you know I'm in trouble.
And just to make things worse, we get a quick interlude with the Diaz family next. Ramon and his wife come over to deliver some Christmas presents, and everyone except Ramon's wife looks tense and uncomfortable.
In a significantly more interesting plot, David has joined Keith and Taylor for a Christmas dinner of their own. Unfortunately, Keith has decided to make "fig pudding" for dessert. He thought it "sounded Christmas-y." Taylor thinks it "looks like throw-up." In an effort to save their rapidly foundering evening, Keith suggests that they gather 'round the CD player to sing a few fun-filled Christmas carols. "Okay, you two can sing songs," snarks Taylor as she gets up to leave. "I'm going to get a Ding-Dong and watch The Simpsons." Oh, Taylor. You have no idea how jealous I am. Once they're alone, David gets up to give Keith a back-rub and a few words of consolation. "You've been through a lot lately," he says. "You can afford to cut yourself some slack. It doesn't mean you're a doormat." He also offers up the idea that Keith might be suffering from post-traumatic stress related to gunning down that junkie, which is something that Keith vehemently denies. Why do I get the feeling that this shooting is going to end up being this year's version of the Gilardi sub-plot -- you know, the one that gets mentioned every week, but never ends up going anywhere? It'd be sort of like the gun that goes off in the first act not being shown in the third. Or something like that. Anyway, there's a long pause, and then David invites Keith and Taylor over for the big Christmas dinner. Keith searches for any number of excuses not to attend before finally settling on, "I don't think Taylor is ready for something like this." In one of the more amusing unintentional gaffes I've ever seen, the closed-captioning mis-transcribed that line as "I don't think Thor is ready for something like this." Hee. The idea that deaf people everywhere are concerned that Keith might show up to dinner with a Norse God on his arm has provided me with no end of giggles this week. "Are you sure it's Taylor that's not ready?" wonders David rhetorically.