Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 150 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT We Are The Table
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 13 | Aired on 2008.09.08
Shane's playing piano when Andy and Silas come in bearing boxes of headcheese sandwiches; Andy says they'll store them in the Botwin freezer and take them to Doug's later, whenever he decides to pick up the phone. Shane wishes his brother a happy birthday, shaming Andy, who has forgotten. Eighteen? Silas says it's not a big deal, and when Andy pushes him about it, he barks at Shane to stop playing the fucking piano. Shane finishes up with a resentful flourish just as Nancy's entering. I cannot believe -- I mean literally cannot believe -- how much I've come to love Silas Botwin. The boy who poked a hole in a deaf girl's condom so she couldn't go to college. Happy birthday. I love how he's still stuck in that in-between place, and he really just wants a birthday cake. I love how without Judah he decided to become a man on his own, and actually seems to have managed it. I love how, in an episode all about telling our fears and heartbreaks and most of all our shame, he does it better than anybody, and without saying a word.
"Look who's not in jail," Andy jokes, and Nancy assures them there's no reason she would be, since she's just a sales girl. She kisses Silas a happy birthday and tells him -- with only a tiny smack of defeat in her voice -- to have fun with Lisa at his birthday dinner date. He tells them they've broken up, once again, and he won't be having a nner date tonight: "Happy birthday to me." Nancy's sad for him and offers to take everybody out, to an Italian place, at seven. She heads upstairs to take a bath and get the DEA spittle off her face and the smell of guilt and blood and being trapped out of her clothes; Silas follows her to the stairwell. He says that a firm answer on the "small business loan" they've been discussing would make a great birthday gift, and asks point blank if she's going to back him or not. She tells him twice that this is a bad time to talk about it, and like a disappointed but professional man, he ducks his head and thanks her for giving it some thought.