Episode Report Card Djb: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT West Said Story
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 2 | Aired on 07.18.2000
Over in the visitors' area, Beecher meets his father, who informs him that they have turned up Hank Schillinger. Here's the usual impressive dossier for a junior member of the Schillinger clan (I should probably say "Klan"): He's a drug addict, a petty thief, and he pimped his girlfriend. And he won't come to visit dear old dad unless he's paid for his troubles. Beecher asks how much. "I don't know. Probably what it costs to get him his next high." Yeah, we know. Drugs are bad. We don't need another "Just Say No" diatribe from the WASPy masses. I've seen more subtly delivered "The More You Know" segments.
Ray interrupts Vern playing pool to tell him "Hank is here." Vern is overjoyed. Back in the visitors' quarters, Ray tells Hank his father is coming. Ray just wants to know when the money is coming his way. So he can get high again, the rat stoner bastard Nazi jerk. They bond and hug, and Hank tries to make the fast break, but Ray sets him down with a stern, fear-God fish eye that I'm so sure always works in disciplining misguided, smack-addled Aryan youth. I can't even discuss the ghoulishness of Vern Schillinger's ecstatic smile. Because I just turned to stone looking at it. ["I love Vern." -- Wing Chun]
Ray makes his way to Beecher's pod to give him the status update on the scene we've just finished watching. Ray reports that Hank "eventually settled down." Beecher asks about Schillinger's reaction, and I don't know why Ray and Beecher share such a moment of pure chewing satisfaction over the truism that, as Ray puts it, "I've actually never seen him happy. But that's what he seems to be." Ray can't get over "how much Schillinger truly loves this kid." Beecher asks the father if he's ever "loved anybody too much," then stops himself and apologizes and says something about celibacy restricting love or some such other non-sensitive thing. Beecher rephrases the question, and Ray tells him it's all about how the love manifests himself. And then, to my relieved delight, Ray adds before leaving, "And the answer to your first question is yes. I have." You can see the back-story coming from Toledo.
Meanwhile, back in the The Land of Redundant Narration, Hill stares into the camera and conveys for our convenience: Blah-di-blah blee blee blee death blah.
Hill is bidding his wife goodbye as Mobay enters the visitors' room to talk to his "girlfriend." They kiss madly and whisper a bit, his "girlfriend" telling Mobay that the "Lieutenant" wants to know when "he'll see some arrests." Mobay tells her that the investigation has slowed to a crawl since his two drug connections inside Oz were killed. "Girlfriend" whispers for him to "take it slow, partner," to remind us once again that she is in fact his partner, and not his girlfriend. Thank you, thank you, thank you all for that helpful reminder of the mechanics of "going undercover." We get it. He tells her he doesn't want to stay in Oz a minute longer than he has to, which, of course, is shorthand for "I'm dead inside of three more episodes."