Episode Report Card Sars: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Lady Stays Vanished
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 05.10.2003
Elsewhere at Fisher, Diaz, & A Pizza Place, Mrs. Tully is telling David that her husband got electrocuted, and she doesn't want her children to see him like that. David starts to sell her on Rico's restorative artistry, but Mrs. Tully cuts him off: "No. I don't want my children to see him dead." David is trying to come up with an answer to that when the doorbell rings, and he excuses himself to answer it. It's Keith, wearing earth tones and looking contrite.
Cut to the two of them sitting on the front steps. Keith's all, "What do you mean, 'missing'?" David fills him in -- sister in Santa Cruz, never got there, fishcakes. Oh, excuse me -- "vegan-friendly soy fish-substitute-cakes." Sorry. Keith is appropriately concerned, and offers to hit up his remaining contacts in the sheriff's department. David isn't that hot on the idea, saying that Nate already did that and filed a missing-persons report, but grudgingly says that if Keith thinks he can find anything else out, sure, why not? Keith cocks a brow and, after a pause, says, "We need to talk. About us." "I know, and we will, but not right now," David says, explaining when Keith starts to call bullshit that he's got a customer waiting, so they get up, and Keith says he'll make some calls and let them know if he hears anything. "Thanks," David sighs. Keith touches David's arm and heads down the steps; David stands there for a moment, kind of hunched over, his body language reading a combination of "grr" and "blecchh."
At a housing complex, Brenda follows the landlady down a brick sidewalk, commenting, "This is so Day of the Locust." "Oh, no locusts here," the landlady predictably responds. "Cockroaches, maybe, but no locusts." They enter a small furnished house, and the landlady natters on about the sleeper sofa and how it's handy for overnight guests -- "you know, like family, that sort of thing" -- and then stubs her toe on the anvil doubling as a coffee table when she asks all nosily, "You do have family, don't you?" Brenda responds flatly that she doesn't -- they all died in a flood. Not sure what to make of the mode of imaginary death she chose there. The landlady says she's sorry, and Brenda snorts, "Don't be," so the landlady moves on to admitting that the complex does see the occasional break-in, and Brenda might want to sleep with a can of pepper spray under her pillow, "you know, just in case?" Foreshadowing Brand -- It's The Mace-iest! ™ "Smells like cats," Brenda observes neutrally, and the landlady says they don't allow pets anymore, but Brenda doesn't seem inclined to make an issue of it and asks how much. $175 a week. We move to a shot over Brenda's shoulder of the identical house across the way before Brenda sighs that she'll take it.
Fisher, Diaz, Knees & Toes, Knees & Toes, Knees & Toes. Claire comes out to the carport to find Russell lubricating the hood of the Green Machine. "What are you doing here?" she grumps. He holds out a Rodin-by-way-of-Spencer-Gifts sculpture and little-kids, "I made this for you." Claire: "[Eye-roll.]" Russell babbles in an almost-crying voice that what happened between him and Olivier "was totally fucked up," but what happened between him and Claire "wasn't fucked up at all, it was -- the opposite of fucked up." Claire calls his bluff and asks what did happen between him and Olivier, exactly. Russell tries a condescending "doesn't matter," but doesn't quite pull it off, and Claire isn't buying it anyway: "It matters to me -- did you fuck him?" Russell says it's not important: "What's important is that I love you!" Claire isn't buying that either, and asks without missing a beat, "Did he fuck you?" Russell protests that he "was drunk! And stoned, and he was playing this head trip on me, I mean, you know what he's like!" "What, did you give each other blowjobs or something?" I love how Claire 1) can totally see that Russell wants to pretend the thing with Olivier never happened, and 2) deliberately refers to it as crassly as possible so that he can't get away with doing that. I mean, I feel kind of bad for Russell, and I don't think he's a dick or anything, but his level of denial isn't helping anyone here, and good for Claire for not going along with it.