Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 63 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT An Airbag Saved My Life
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.17.2013
Alicia: "Yeah, so somehow he ended up on the Mexican Consulate's watch list. Being the wrong Tomas Ruiz meant he was the right Tomas Ruiz to be the wrong Tomas Ruiz. I mean, it's hilarious."
Natalie: "I can see that being funny to you, due to how your brain works. Anyway, I have to go be on a date now."
Eli sees her from outside the restaurant, ordering wine for them on their date, and has a moment where he's like, maybe it doesn't matter if Natalie is affecting his judgment just the one time. In terms of Marilyn it doesn't, but in terms of Natalie it does, and so you're trading out the relationship with Peter, which is central to his life, for a relationship with a girl who lives in another city and is from another era and has no reason to be with him long-term.
And also, siding against Marilyn in a way that puts Peter on her team, which is unacceptable. I always thought the reason Michael Scott hated Toby so much was because HR is about mediating the line between employer and employee, and Michael Scott's entire pathology was about his denial that that line exists, so Toby was like a walking bomb of everything wrong with Michael Scott, looking him right in the eye. And that's Marilyn for Eli, especially when it comes between him and his candidate (or -- and this is always present too -- his candidate's marriage). She can't win, which means he has to do whatever Peter wants even though Peter never actually knows what he wants.
Anyway, so he calls and tells her he's dropping out of their date and also Peter is re-cancelling his cancelled speech, and watches her be sad through the restaurant window... And then again, for the third time in the episode -- with diminishing Richard Curtis-type returns -- he changes his mind and comes running, and whatever. Did he eat the apricots? Yes, and they were gross. Annnnnnd there's the jack o'lantern. So cute, so nice to see them together. Don't really care this week.
SWEET F/A
One of those twee covers this show likes so much -- which is still better than hearing some oldies song you've already heard a billion times, Shonda -- plays, "All I Have to Do Is Dream," because I hate to say it but that's the kind of person Alicia is. She's playing it on Matthew Ashbaugh's Jawbox, which always makes me tear up, and why she is doing this is, she is luxuriating in her new offices! All alone, with her husband about to come see them and lavish her with praise... And then he shows up with fuckin' Marilyn. Which doesn't kill it at all, but it's annoying. Until he reminds her that she's about to take over the world, from right here in this room. All she has to do is dream.