Episode Report Card Joe R: C- | 15 USERS: C YOU GRADE IT Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
By Joe R | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.04.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Matt and Harriet continue to have the big break-up fight at the dinner, where Harriet's relatively strong case for why Matt's a jackass unfortunately gets boiled down to the fact that he never asked her to marry him. She's finally able to stop him in his tracks by mentioning how she'd like to make sexytime with Luke. And, of course, now that they've broken up, Matt can't manage to tell a simple joke. So I guess he and Harry are even now. Kim Tao finally ends up passing out due to her rather heroic intake of tequila, so Tom and Simon take her back to Tom's dressing room at the studio where, joined by Jack, they try to help her get the room to stop spinning. That doesn't work out, though she manages to sway Jack to her side with tales of Child Prodigy Syndrome. So when Kim's parents come to retrieve her, and Zhang reveals that he speaks English and always could (!), Jack risks the entire Macao deal by telling Zhang to ease the hell up on his daughter. And, in a completely unexpected and unprecedented twist (unless you count the time it happened with these same two characters five episodes ago), Zhang is impressed by Jack's forthrightness and agrees to help him out with Macao. Simon keeps acting like a dick to Darius and essentially tells him to stop writing like Whitey's looking over his shoulder. So they're friends again, provided Darius keeps calling Simon "sir." Cal and Bevo predictably end up losing the coyote under the stage as well, and one Humane Society rep and one big lie about mold spores later (don't ask; it's still a really stupid subplot), they're tearing up the stage floor to get to the lost animals. Danny and Jordan, still stuck on the roof, pass the time by throwing things at a homeless person (really) and with Jordan's magic tricks, like slipping little pieces of folded paper into Danny's watchband. After more of the same round-and-round about all the reasons they shouldn't be going out, we learn that, essentially, Jordan is afraid. Of her feelings! Or something. Once they're finally liberated from their rooftop prison, Danny discovers another piece of paper slipped into his watchband, from Jordan. And it reads, "I'm crazy about you!" Allow me to make the easy joke and say she's half right. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: there was a viper loose in the studio, then a ferret, so next on the food chain is "coyote." Jack commissioned Tom to convince Kim Tao to stick with the viola instead of pursuing Tom's jock through a career in comedy. Simon called Darius an "Uncle Tom" because he didn't want to write a sketch about a militant African fruit. Harriet dumped Matt for good after finally tiring of his push/pull nonsense. And Jordan and Danny made like that Drifters song, as well as many sitcoms before them, and went up on the roof. And then got stuck there.
We open on Matt and Harriet, who aren't exactly basking in the afterglow of their breakup. Matt would like to "calm down" and go back about ten minutes to before Harriet pulled the rug out from under him. Harriet would rather go back four days, "to when you decided you didn't want me but didn't want anyone else to have me either." Or, she suggests, go back two years, when Matt denied in the press that he and Harriet were dating. Or four weeks, when he kissed her during the Christmas show simply because Luke was there. Matt starts mumbling about "due process" or something, because being called on your miles of shit can certainly seem like being put on trial. And, because Harriet has him dead to rights on the auction thing and the Christmas show thing, Matt latches onto the two years ago thing, because that's the one where she's kind of overreacting. Bottom line: a gossip columnist got a scoop about Matt and Harriet dating, Matt's publicist no-commented, while Harriet's publicist (or Harriet herself?) confirmed it. Harriet says that made her look quite stupid, and Matt says that he has no control over just how smart or stupid she makes herself look. "Except for the TV show I write," he adds, "which made you a star." "You made me a star?" Harriet snaps. Caught, Matt returns to the idea that he wasn't the one who made her look stupid two years ago. "I don't participate in gossip columns," Matt says, calmed down. "I know you know this, because you're not borderline retarded." Why on Earth Harriet is allowing this stupid gossip column thing from two years ago to be the issue rather than the shitty things Matt has done in the past month is beyond me. I come from a long line of argument winners, and you don't get anywhere by allowing the other guy to take you off on a tangent that has almost no bearing on what you're actually trying to say. Harriet tries to get back on track by saying that the auction thing, the Christmas kiss, "feigning jealousy over Darren Wells," are all "acts of cruelty, disguised as cuteness." She says that Luke wants to date her, and she wants to know how Matt can say they can't work together and date at the same time, while Luke doesn't seem to have a problem with it. I'd say that it has to do with a film shoot only lasting a few weeks while a TV series lasts a hell of a lot longer than that, but regardless, Harriet's once again barking up the wrong argument. It's not that Matt won't (or can't) date her; it's that Matt won't (or can't) date her and yet still pulls off jealous boyfriend crap and sends her mixed signals and generally obsessively fucks with her at every turn. And vice versa re: Jeannie, as we'll soon be reminded, but since Harriet's the one advocating the long-overdue clean break, I'm on her side. Anyway, Matt's like, "I don't say we can't work together and date, we can't work together and date." "Well doesn't that work out nicely for you?" says Harriet, and she stalks off. Matt's sad-sacky "No, it doesn't," leads us into the credits.