Episode Report Card Aaron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dog Dead Afternoon
By Aaron | Season 2 | Episode 11 | Aired on 05.11.2002
Upstairs, Claire and Ruth are enjoying another breakfast together. Claire asks for and receives permission to have Parker sleep over, and then wonders if Mommie Drearest has plans with Nikolai for the evening. "I think he's losing interest in me," confides Ruth. "He's been spending a lot of time alone lately." Claire points out that Nikolai just spent six weeks living on their couch and peeing in a bedpan, so it's reasonable to assume that he just needs some time on his own. "Guys need a lot of space," she asserts, which perhaps may explain why she never returns any of my calls. Faced with an obvious, if unappealing, explanation for the situation, Ruth chooses to do what she does best, which is blurt. "He doesn't know how to take care of himself, and he needs my help!" she shouts.
Whoops. Looks like Rabbi Ari really does know someone with a pre-need. Nate is meeting with a rather surly looking young man in a managed care facility, and at first I thought this guy was being played by Chris Weitz of Chuck & Buck (and American Pie) fame. It turns out, however, that he's actually Glenn Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Lonnie Schlichting from Flirting With Disaster. I guess The Late Nate must have recommended him for the gig. He's initially quite hostile towards Nate, because his terminal illness has made him "antisocial," but eventually he comes around and chats about his disease, largely because it's easier for the writers to draw parallels to Nate's anvilitis that way. If you're interested, Lonnie has pancreatic cancer, which is "one of the worst ones you can get." Apparently, it's caused by eating quail soaked in LSD, or something. Anyway, after a handful of brain shots, and a subtle indication that Lonnie likes "the good rabbi" just as much as I do, the scene comes to a close. I have to say that out of all the potential red-herring DGDJs the producers have dangled this season, Lonnie gets my vote as the most likely to die by gimmick sometime in the next few weeks.
The Body Shop. A pair of cops interrogates Rico about how he discovered the hot dog, and I'm forced to admit that Rico actually made me laugh a little bit in this scene. Of course, he did so solely through the use of a hand gesture (while explaining how far down the woman's throat the hot dog was wedged), so "Shut up, Rico" still applies. The big news in this scene is that the cops know it was Vanessa who failed to find the frankfurter, and now Rico is forced to admit that she's his wife.