Episode Report Card Sobell: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jacob Have I loved, Yet Esau I Have Hated …
By Sobell | Season 4 | Episode 19 | Aired on 05.01.2009
This tremendously self-serving line of dreck finally snaps Michael out of his I can't believe the writers went there! fugue, and he shouts, "You don't know why I did the things I did! You weren't there!" Aaaaaand we get to the real issue: the abandoned boy who is furious that the abandoner is second-guessing all the decisions he was forced to make as a result of her departure. After Christina ruminates on Michael's squandered potential and theorizes that is because he was trying to spare Linc's feelings, Michael finally points out that "Lincoln was more of a brother than you were ever a mother. You left. He stayed." But you know what? This whole scene has veered into the absurd. So I'm going to cut off Christina's ridiculous nattering and go to my happy place: season two, when Michael and Lincoln see the sweet yacht Michael had built, and they bond over the fact that Michael was honoring their dead mother. At least then we had the only mildly implausible backstory of a parent who had disappeared to draw his enemies away from his family; we didn't also have to swallow the development of a parent who faked her own death because she was tired of being mommy-tracked at an evil global conspiracy.
Christina deftly manipulates Michael into calling Linc, but Linc is a little busy chasing down Slick and isn't available to answer anyone's calls. Don Self chides, "Keep up with him. Come on," and Lincoln petulantly responds, "I am, so shut up!" I love how Lincoln in a car is either the supremely irritated dad who is constantly threatening, "Don't make me pull over," or he's the teenager who wishes his parents were, like, invisible so nobody could see the uncool loins from which he sprang.
Anyway, Michael finally tires of Christina's prattle -- thank goodness -- and drags her to the bathroom, where he begins running the tub. So he's going to relax the information out of his mom? "Speak now or it's another capful of Jean Nate in the suds!" "Nooooooo!" Oh, wait -- NOW I get it. He's going to waterboard his mom. Well, ain't nobody gonna prosecute him for that. Dr. Sara is a little touchy about this, what with having been on the receiving end of that sort of business courtesy of Kellerman, but not touchy enough to stop him. Sensing that the steam might do some damage to the inch of kohl she's got rimming her eyes, Christina makes a big show of buckling and says, "There's an energy conference at the Panda Bay hotel in about an hour. He'll be there. That's the truth." Michael turns off the water. He does not ask Christina how she can be so certain. For someone with a big brain, he is not super-good at using it quickly.