Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Daredevil Girl Survives Fall
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 2 | Aired on 06.15.2009
"She plays the victim, but she always has time to put mascara on," Jill says, the truest and funniest explanation of Nancy Botwin I've ever heard, and the saddest. And Jill turns from a really unpleasant person with a minor in Endearingly Quirky, in this moment I would say, into a real person with probably very real grievances, and in fact the embodiment I shouldn't wonder of a lot of Nancy's entitlement shit and the price, or the Price, that you pay for it. Celia got warped so bad playing the mirror to that she's barely human anymore, and Peter's ex-wife was more than anything a victim of Nancy's ceaseless whirlwind of destruction and causing everybody to go abruptly crazy around her because she's amazing: she plays the victim, but she always has time to put mascara on.
But in fact, Jill will have you know, she is the real victim. And Andy is a victim too, because she, Nancy, doesn't appreciate him, Andy, and "you're cute" she says to him, stretching it out to "your cuteness," which is basically the same statement but less daring, less like a decision has been made and more just a statement of fact. Andy's cuteness is undervalued. A married woman can point that out; a victim can commiserate about that with her fellow victim, no problem.
Jill reaches out: "You have... Um... Eyelash." He doesn't. She laughs, it's a weird unfamiliar sound to us and to her both: "You know what, it's just your skin!" Getting a little scary now, a little slurry, as she reiterates that she, and Andy, both deserve to be appreciated, because it's been a long time since she was "appreciated," she airquotes freely now, and they stare at each other and he says, "I can appreciate that," and the decision's made and it's mission accomplished. Elves triumphant. But Shane appears, the kid they forgot about, and he grins at them scandalously as she gives him a hearty, boozy greeting and tells him to hit the mall if he's hungry. His eyes and smile are wide, because it is early to be this drunk and she's pretty married to be this up on Andy's jock; he vanishes and Andy's on her before the door closes.
First things first, affairs in order: she goes to Dean Hodes's hotel room, and lists all her secret stashes and life insurance policies; he's distracted and interrupts to show her his new brochures, pinnacles of tastelessness he's been stashing in ER waiting rooms: Dean Hodes ("You can't spell misfortune without fortune!") with what she kindly terms "quite a healthy head of black hair" and a whole terraced community photoshopped in. He thinks the hair gives him a certain Atticus Finch quality; she goes on to tell him more about the money, the arrangements, the facts and figures of her life once it's over.