Episode Report Card Djb: D | 3 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT In The Claire
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 8 | Aired on 08.29.2000
Cut to an as-yet-undetermined time later, in which Keller shows up at Sister Pete's group therapy session and tells her that he's an addict who wants back in. She deadpans, "I don't want him in this room," and the attending guard escorts him out before I can formulate a damn snarky thing to say about it.
Hey, it's Dr. Nathan. Standing at the entry of the prison, she is waiting for someone to meet her. The gates open and -- well, BONJOUR MA SOEUR PETE! Ca va? Pete is wearing the latest style (read: the 1970s) in bright red berets, and I still can't fully decide if she looks more like a gun-toting WWII European warmonger marching to battle or if she's on her way from her visit with Gloria to the auditions for elfin waifs in the Emerald City Theater production of Oliver. Either way, bonjour, bonjour, bonjour! For Gloria, this scene plays strictly as contractual obligation to plug all of the majors into the faux-finale, because Pete tells Gloria that she has received the papers that will release her from the convent, a speech she offers identically to Ray just a few scenes down the line. She worries that when she signs the documents, she will transition from "bride of Christ" to, as she asks, "Christ and I are divorced?" Blossom! That's who she looks like. She looks just like Blossom.
Ow! My eyes! Should I not have gouged them out with a spoon in that painful way? Well, then perhaps I should have been spared these here nudie porno shots of the budding liaison between rapidly-fading-in-attractiveness-and-overall-cachet Ryan and his feathered-hair friend with the freakish torpedo knobs. I'm just sayin'. But did I have to be just saying the word "knobs"? Ew. So the stark lighting and general awkwardness of their (from behind? Kill me!) copulatory exercises (a bulkier expression than "fucking," sure, which frankly I'm growing a bit weary of) is juxtaposed (Ding! Ring me up some fifty-cent word) against a vision that O'Reily is having of himself and Gloria under soft lighting, under satin sheets, in a comfy-ass bed, and blah blah blah missionarycakes. Cut to his and Cyril's pod, where the not-so-innocent passes some judgment for once of the non-gotta-watch-Wapner variety in telling Ryan that he knows about the "bad" thing he's doing with Officer Claire. Then Cyril says "fuck," too. Heh. Cable: 1 billion. FCC: 0.
Back in Sister Pete's office, she has decided to forgo the becoming graces of le chapeau for the de rigueur allure of eternal damnation. Ray joins her, and she again claims that she will be signing the papers. Ray doesn't want to be any part of it, so he passes O'Reily on his way out the door. But Ryan wants to lie to them both today: "It's my brother." He tells them that sleep deprivation has made Cyril delusional and aggressive. He's making things up. Really. Pete promises to meet with him, and Ryan practically blows his cover with the one-step-too-far sentiment, "You've GOT to remember this. The stuff he's saying? Man, it's crazy." All he needs now is to cross his eyes and make those spinning circles with his pointer fingers next to his ears. Then I shall even better come to understand the not-at-all-contrived nature of the expert, ass-covering psychological analysis. Ryan? You have shamed me. You have shamed us all. And since I can't be having anything you put on Claire anywhere NEAR me without proper sterilization, I am afraid I must terminate our relationship immediately and see if four months apart can't change my feelings on the matter at all. Ugh.