Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Personal
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 13 | Aired on 11.15.2010
The thing that makes you awesome is the thing that makes you suck. 100% of the time. But we hardly ever get to talk about the opposite thing, which is also true: The very worst thing about Nancy Botwin is the very best thing about Nancy Botwin.
Nancy gives Esteban the baby and tells Silas to get on the plane a couple of times. His refusal is all about her safety, not Larsguinard or anybody else, and there's a complicated negotiation between them that breaks when she walks him to the gate. Silas's point is that she's about to be murdered, or run with Esteban, and neither of them are okay; he doesn't know about Plan C. Stevie's crying, in Esteban's eyes.
Silas wishes her luck -- with her "new, old, fucked-up life" -- and the assumed nastiness with which she assures him that she's choosing Stevie over him -- "He's fresh, you're cooked" -- is so unconvincing she can barely stand up when she walks away. And that's how he knows she's not choosing Stevie at all.
"When you kill her, let us know, okay? Just for closure."
She wants to turn around so, so bad, but she doesn't want that to be the last thing he sees. When he finally gets to the door and ready to leave, she can't take it and runs to him. "Lars was teaching me how to change spark plugs," he says, throwing his arms wide, and she gives him one last hug goodbye.
Silas joins the boys and Shane, already a basketcase, nearly smiles at him. He doesn't want to ask but he wants to make sure that Silas saw her, before they left. The three Botwin men share a very awful, very silent moment, that Schiff doesn't even register. He just calls Silas "Midas," again. Every time he says that it gets sadder, because that's what Silas could have been. The opposite of his mother.
Nancy assures Esteban she's not going anywhere -- and that, any time she's said that before it wasn't that she lied -- and he finally gives the baby back to her. She's embarrassed and scared, because Plan C is still not for sure, and she holds her baby like a lifeline.
The cops arrive, heading toward the plane, and for a second she allows herself to hope. But they just keep walking, all the way to the gate and through it, and right to the boys. Shane stares, Andy's scared, it takes them forever and ever to get down the aisle. And that's when they arrest Warren for the robbery.
He gives Shane his giant plane pillow -- which is clearly stuffed with cash -- and they take him away. Outside, talking louder and louder, eventually shouting, he tries to explain to Nancy (I suppose, wondering why she's not yet on the plane) the following:
"If this was a confession -- which it isn't, because I'm innocent, but theoretically speaking -- if I were to do something like rob a post office, it would be because I loved someone very, very much, and I always will."
It actually hurts her, what he's saying, because it's all falling apart; she's the opposite of Midas. "Theoretical love is not dead," the cop snorts. "Hooray for us all."
Esteban won't let her watch the plane take off, so they head back out of the airport. She makes small talk -- Cesar's retired, retired-retired, not dead; buying a boat -- and lets it die. Surprisingly, especially for Guillermo, Esteban finally speaks up. She's spent all season trying to get him to talk to her, and now that he's won, he can.