Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Weak Adults & Corrupt Children
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 01.30.2012
Hanna pulls down Ali's copy of Lolita, which she borrowed a long time ago and never had the chance to return, and there's the clue, of course: A claim check for some snow globe or bracelet trove or a stump or hockey stick or something, to be sure.
MAYA'S HOUSE
Emily shows up fairly early in the AM to explain to Maya that -- passive-aggressive bitchiness be damned -- she's upset about the boyfriend not because of sexual weirdness but in fact because she doesn't want Maya dating anybody. (Or as Daniel Tosh says, "It's not you versus some skank, it's you versus every skank. See how that changes things?") Maya leads her inside, where she's redecorated it to look like they are under the sea -- because of Emily getting kicked off the team, you see -- and then they do it. And I mean they do it.
NEXT DAY
Spencer doubles Vivian Darkbloom again, calling to redeem the claim check for next week. I can't tell you how happy I am they went there, finally, because I can't think of a book more... Well, I guess Scarlet Letter and Crucible were both pretty brilliant books to reference for this show, but if you want the real shit? It's easy to be smart and it's easy to be perverse, even easier to be perversely smart. But to be smart about perversity, that's very hard, and it's something he was able to do and something that this show, in its frequent high spots, nails just as well.
I love Lolita. I haven't read it since I was a lot smarter than I am now, but I still remember a lot of it because I liked it so much. I was into smartypants wordplay and stuff back then, more than I am now, but the thing that I loved about it most was that it was so surprisingly moral.
Everybody acts like it's this Human Centipede of perversion but actually... Robertson Davies, who is right as often as he's wrong but always just as loudly, described it as something like, you get confused and think it's a story about a child being exploited by an adult, but that really it's the story of a weak adult being exploited by a corrupt child. Not a Byron coming after an Emily, you understand, but an Alison coming after an Ezra. A Jenna, coming after a Toby.
And you could easily just rename this show that -- Weak Adults & Corrupt Children -- but I felt a little differently about the book. More like, it's not a story about one person getting what he or she wants most at somebody else's expense -- like you rub the lamp and wish and this is what you get -- but two people getting what they think they want most. Only they're both too immature -- literally -- to wish for anything good. So they both become the wish of the other one, and it destroys them. Just destroys the shit out of them.