Episode Report Card Djb: D | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Love Pope
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 08.01.2000
Gloria Nathan shows up at Glynn's office, sunglasses barely concealing the beating she's taken over her left eye. She tells him that she wants to come back to work, and that she wants to do it right now. Glynn tells her that "healing is a process," and she retorts that the only thing that will make her feel better is to confront Ryan O'Reily. Let's cut right to that, shall we? Over to Sister Pete's office, where Gloria starts right in on Ryan that she knows he is responsible for her getting raped. She wants him to admit it. Fine. He admits it. She rails that all he ever wanted was her love (awwwwww), but that she's come here today to tell him, "That will never, ever happen. In fact, it's the opposite. I hate you. I will always hate you until we are both dead in the ground." Ryan goads, "Fine. Then tell me something else. When he was fucking you, did you think of me?" Doctor Gloria Nathan, consider yourself zinged. She lunges at him, and the guards pull him out. Tears and more tears.
Hill tells us to comfort the afflicted. Sing it loud and proud, narrator man. Back in Sister Pete's office, the nun tells Ryan that Gloria is planning on pressing charges, so he's looking at another five years on his sentence. Three cheers for Dean Winters's contract renewal! Sister Pete tells Ryan that she doesn't think he had anything to do with Gloria's rape. He counters, "I say I did it. I did it. Okay?" Okay.
Over in the laundry room, Cyril asks Ryan when they'll be seeing Gloria "and those nice people" again. Ryan has a mean man's rare moment of clarity in telling Cyril that he, Ryan, is to blame for Preston's death and also for Khan's. Khan. Almost forgot about him. Cyril recounts a story about remembering how their mother took them to confession when they were very young. He remembers, "We'd go in the big wooden box and tell all our sins. And mom would say by telling God, all our sins were washed away." I think I finally figured out why I have such the soft spot for Cyril. He speaks so slowly that I can transcribe every word he haltingly deigns to say really, really easily. And with ten minutes left in this episode, I'm not even taking the requisite time to breath or blink, much less rewind until the analog tape finally wears away completely and snaps from its black plastic casing, just plain bursting into flames. The mentally frail: a lazy recapper's dream. And so Ryan (with ten minutes left, talks too fast) stops by for a confession with Ray (with ten minutes left, too long-winded), telling him, "Today I lied. I told someone I did something that I didn't do." Why? "Because it's what she wanted to hear. Because it's what she needs to know to make herself whole again." Cue shots of Gloria back at work, beaten and bruised and very, very broken. Could this episode be any more disturbing?