Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Niedermeyer -- dead!
By Sobell | Season 2 | Episode 17 | Aired on 02.18.2007
And now, as the scents of fried green tomatoes and catfish come wafting on by... T-Bag is frantically picking up trash and he calls out in a manic voice, "Come on, chitlins! Pitch in!" Susan tries to reason with the crazy, telling him they can't live in the place. T-Bag screams, "Not like this! We gonna clean! We are cleaning! We gonna rebuild!" And let me tell you, I am a HUGE fan of those TV shows where people force you to clean your house, which means I have seen many ridiculously cluttered and filthy households in my day and am therefore a sofa-side expert, and I think T-Bag's on to something: all he needs is a supporting crew that includes Niecy Nash and quite possibly some square-jawed carpenter. Susan tells T-Bag to look at the kids. They're looking pretty shell-shocked. As T-Bag locks them into a dark room, he says, "We're past me wavin' that gun around, don't you think?" Susan would like to know if there's a reason T-Bag's separated her from her kids. T-Bag sits her down and lays it on thick: "Susie, Susie-Q, do you think I'd bring you down here to so sacred a place to me as this if I meant you ill -- LOOK AT ME! I am not the animal you think you see before you. I am the laws of karma all come down wrong. Don't you understand?" I take back the Erskine Caldwell remark. We're not looking at a neighbor to Tobacco Road. We're looking at the shack down the road from the Dollangangers' place. Hello, V.C. Andrews!
Susan says she doesn't understand, actually, and T-Bag tells her, "What I'm trying to say is that... I am the sin of my father." Susan would like to know why she has to hear this. T-Bag says, "Because I love you. Because I want you to understand me. I am the last in the line of Bagwells. The tail end of the corrupted breed. The Earth, thank God, shall see no more of our generations." T-Bag stops for a moment as if pained, steels himself, then admits, "I cannot procreate, Susan. And yet there is something in that, that gives me great hope. No more Bagwells shall roam this planet, with that vile blood in their veins! All I want to do is end that bloodline! Extirpate it! And start another, afresh, a new family." As Susan whispers, "Oh, Teddy... " T-Bag plows on, "Those children are my salvation. My chance to make this work a better place." T-Bag kneels down before Susan, touches her face, and chokes out, "I will be good, Susan. I will love them. I will love you. I will take communion, be baptized under a truer light. All I ask, is that you love me back, just a little. Or learn to do so in time. Can you do that, Susan?" There's a moment where T-Bag's leaning in to kiss the weepy Susan, and then she pulls away, saying, "I can't. I can't. I'm sorry." T-Bag stands up, his face blank and implacable now. I have ten synonyms for this scene too! Overwrought, ludicrous, fatuous, melodramatic, grandiose, mannered, histrionic, overweening, lamentable, exhausting.
Then we cut to Susan and the kids locked in a basement while T-Bag sits outside and contemplates the head of an ax. And I realize this is a totally inappropriate time to think of this, but I just got a good look at the bones on that house and it's one hell of a fixer-upper. How on earth does T-Bag manage to keep falling into these fabulous real-estate steals?