Usually I tape this show on a Canadian network so I can get it a day early (yeah, I know -- I'm a glutton for punishment), but this week I forgot. Or maybe my subconscious was trying to do me a favor or something. Anyway, having to catch the show in its regular Monday night timeslot made me realize just what I've been missing out on: namely, those dreadful, dreadful promos. You know, the ones with the deep-voiced announcer who makes every episode sound like it's going to be important and life-altering, instead of the inevitable crapfest that makes me want to throw heavy objects at my television. Well, this week Mr. Announcer informs us that Dopey is planning to convert to Judaism. He adds, "[Matt's] conversion will be something his father can't accept." Yo, big surprise there. The promo producers back up this argument by giving us a shot of RevCam telling his son, "You're not Jewish!" The shot is of Dopey turning away in disappointment, as though this is news to him somehow. Go, Dopey! Folks, I predict this is going to be a very, very long episode.
The opening scene already feels about three or four centuries long, as I have to listen to Dopey's bride whine on and on about how she doesn't want to attend the big meet 'n' greet with their respective families this evening. Matt uses this opportunity to attempt to coerce her into revealing their secret marriage to their families so that they can act married. He leeringly adds that that would make him much more "relaxed." Oh, great -- now I'm thinking about Dopey's sex life. Thanks a lot, Brenda. Mrs. "Plot Contrivance" Dopey brushes off this suggestion, since I suppose the writers haven't finished beating the life out of the puerile secret marriage plot yet. PC expositions that this big dinner is to take place at her parents' house, and that it is a Sabbath dinner.
Once the exposition's out of the way, Annie and Ruthie are free to enter the kitchen with a bunch of groceries. Apparently, Annie's gone psycho again, as she berates Ruthie for not reminding her to pick up chicken fat for the kugel she's planning to make. Ruthie rolls her eyes and says, "Oy vey." Hey, Ruthie? Shut up.
Today's Opening Credits Timewaster involves Annie making a lot of funny faces while cooking. She's reading from a cookbook called Mrs. Kaplan's Guide to Jewish Cooking, and the background music is vaguely middle-eastern-sounding. That's a thoughtful touch, Brenda. SuperMom seems utterly confused by the extremely difficult process of making kugel. I'm not sure how believable that is. Annie's been cooking meals for her huge family for, what, a couple of decades now? And she can't get the hang of putting together ground meat, onions, and noodles, even with a recipe in front of her? I've made a kugel that looked similar to what Annie's cooking, and let me tell you, it's not like making croquembouche.
Ruthie comes into the kitchen and is enlisted to try out some of Annie's kasha varnishkes. Ruthie forces herself to try it, and she's even marginally polite about it, but she refuses to try the kugel. Oh, come on, Ruthie, it's not like someone's forcing you to eat bull testicles. These foods are really not so exotic. Annie says that she's cooking Jewish food to take to the Glasses' house for Shabbat dinner. After explaining that Shabbat is Hebrew for Sabbath, she says that she's "never cooked this type of food before." Between the two of them, Annie and Ruthie make it sound like this is the weirdest cuisine ever. As members of a culture that considers Slim Jims and Twinkies to be "food," I'm not sure how much their opinion on this is worth anyway. What I want to know, though, is why Annie is bringing food. Since she's not even sure whether she'll actually bring these dishes to dinner, it doesn't sound like she ever asked Mrs. Glass if she should bring anything. I know I'd be annoyed if someone brought food to one of my dinner parties without asking. I'd feel compelled to serve it, even if it didn't go with anything I've prepared, or if I'd already prepared something identical. Plus, it seems kind of insulting to bring parts of the actual meal, as if you don't trust your hostess to prepare them properly herself. Why can't Annie just bring flowers, like a normal guest would?
Ruthie makes her escape and runs into Robbie in the yard. She warns him to stay out of the kitchen so he won't have to sample any of Annie's weird food. Ruthie's not exactly thrilled to be attending this dinner in the first place, though Robbie tries to psych her up for it. That's easy for him to say -- he's staying home to baby-sit the twins. He feeds Ruthie lines about how exciting it will be to attend this first meeting between the two families, especially since she'll have the opportunity to observe "another culture firsthand." Hey, Robbie, she's just going over to someone's house for dinner; she's not spending months in a rainforest studying native culture. There's no killing Robbie's buzz, though, as he tells Ruthie she can be a "young Margaret Mead." Ruthie replies, "Like I don't already know more about human nature than Margaret Mead?" And just what has Margaret Mead taught us anyway? That all those slaves were really happy being slaves? In light of that, it's entirely probable that Ruthie does know more about human nature than the famous anthropologist did, sad to say. She trots off to annoy someone else, while Robbie walks to the back door and starts to open it. After getting a whiff of Annie's cooking, though, he changes his mind and goes around to the front of the house instead. See, it's because Jewish food is so strange and icky. Funny, huh?
Simon and Morris are walking down the sidewalk, exhibiting a heavy flirtatious vibe. Morris is trying to get Simon to invite him to dinner, arguing that he's "half-Jewish" -- whatever that means -- and that he has no plans since someone named Megan broke her date with him. He claims it's because "no one likes [him]" after he brought Simon to Mike's party, though I think it's more likely that she suspects where Morris's true affections lie.
Back in the CamKitchen, Annie is completely frazzled because none of her food has turned out the way she wanted it to. Man, if so, she really has to be the worst cook in the world. RevCam comes in, and Annie starts whining to him about how upset she is that she didn't get to invite the Glasses over first. She loses my attention around the time she starts talking about how the Glasses must think the Camdens are "standoffish" for not inviting them over. RevCam doesn't seem to be listening to her either.
Upstairs in the girls' room, Lucy is trying to figure out how she will get out of going to dinner tonight. Why? She wants to stay home with Robbie to "clean up" the "unfinished business" from their relationship, and apparently no other time will do. Could that be the most contrived subplot ever? I do believe it is. But wait -- it gets worse. Lucy decides that she will fake fainting, and she gives us a little sample of her craptacular fainting technique, but nobody's impressed, least of all me. I do perk up a bit, though, when she suggests cracking her head against a wall. You know, Lucy, if you want to spring for my airfare out to Glenoak, I'd be more than happy to come over and cause you some bodily harm. I could start by kicking your ass. Think about it.
Simon is trying to convince Dopey and PC to let him bring Morris as his date to the dinner. He argues that since Morris is "half-Jewish," he can be a shining example of how well mixed marriages work. That's because Morris is "a good student, honest, a fabulous lay." Wait a second -- I must have misheard that. I better rewind the tape. Oh, okay, Simon was actually saying that Morris is "responsible." Oops, my bad. Simon's argument wins his brother over, since Dopey thinks this scenario will prove better than their original plan of telling their parents that being married is good, since "a lack of frustration will allow [them] to focus on our studies." Ew, that's twice now that I've had to think about Dopey's sex life. I feel…defiled.
Down in the CamFoyer, the whole big group of losers is getting ready to depart for dinner. Annie's wearing one of those big-ass fake flowers on her lapel. How ultra-fashionable of her. Not. I think it's safe to say that once those flowers started turning up in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart, as they did here about six months ago, the time may be right to retire them from your wardrobe. Lucy tries to get her fainting act going, but nobody's paying any attention. Before Lucy can get to the actual fainting part, Mary comes downstairs in her bathrobe, claiming to be sick. Lucy turns to Ruthie and demands to know if the girl talked to Mary. Ruthie says, "I didn't talk to her," with such disgust that I have to laugh. To me it sounds like Ruthie's implying that nobody in her right mind would want to talk to Mary, and I have to agree with her. Annie allows Mary to stay home, leaving Lucy incensed.
At the dinner table, Rabbi Richard leads us through two of the rituals of the Shabbat table before launching into a stand-up routine. Amazingly, he's a lot less annoying than he has been over the past two episodes. I'm thinking that maybe the writers have finally decided that it's wiser to let him use some of his own material instead of the dreck they usually churn out for the guest stars. It also helps that he keeps his routine short. Rosina Conehead gets up to bring the soup to the table. Annie offers to help, but Rosina politely tells her to sit down since she's a guest. Annie insists, though, and then looks terribly affronted when Rosina says that PC will help her instead. Has Annie ever actually been a guest at anyone's house for dinner? First she insults the hostess by bringing her own food, and now it's almost like she's insulting Rosina further by implying that she can't bring food to the table properly without Annie's help. Look, Annie, one offer of help is nice. Now step aside and let the hostess do her work, okay?
Morris changes the subject by thanking the Glasses for having him over. Dopey brings up the fact that Morris is "half-Jewish." Rabbi Richard is polite enough not to challenge that statement, instead just asking if Morris's family does Shabbat dinner. They don't, although Morris remembers having dinners at his grandfather's place, where they would light "about a dozen" candles. Rabbi Richard points out that Morris must be thinking of Chanukah. Actually, as a few posters have noted in our forum, some people like to light many candles for their Shabbat dinner, so maybe Morris is right after all. I'm a little less inclined to believe it, though, when Morris starts confusing other basic facts, such as calling this dinner a seder. Rabbi Richard puts Morris out of his misery by changing the subject, giving us a little PSA on the various Jewish movements. We learn that the Glasses are Reform Jews, though they keep kosher because Rosina was raised to do so. Rabbi Richard offers to field questions about Judaism, and Ruthie starts off innocuously enough, asking why Mrs. Glass covered her eyes while saying a blessing. (Answer: To focus her devotion.) Ruthie goes on to ask about circumcision, which causes nearly everyone at the table to drop their cutlery. Rabbi Richard handles it well, though, explaining how the custom originated as a covenant between Abraham and God. Ruthie's statement, "I just wonder what made Him think of that: circumcision," is one which Richard wisely chooses to ignore, however.
Robbie is back at the CamPound, watching a hockey game, when Mary strolls in. She's thrown off her bathrobe and Kleenex and dolled herself up in a pair of tight pants and a midriff-exposing t-shirt. When Robbie comments that she must be feeling better, Mary replies, "Much. I think it was one of those twenty-four-minute bugs." That's probably a joke (and a pretty funny one at that), but the fact that Mary's saying it makes me question if the writers are mocking her again. She demurely asks if she can watch the game with Robbie, then plunks her ass down on the couch so that she's about an inch away from him. Subtle.
Annie is doing her part to make the dinner succeed by complimenting Mrs. Glass's food. Or else maybe she's just fishing for compliments on her own food. Rabbi Richard offers to try her kugel, then pretends he's having a heart attack after one bite of it. Trust me, it's funnier than it sounds. He praises the dish, saying he would give it "five menorahs." What a tool. Mercifully, he changes the subject, joking about how happy he is that Dopey's marrying into his family so that he can regale him with all his "routines." I thank my lucky stars that my own father-in-law is a nice, quiet man instead of a bad stand-up comic whose jokes I'd be forced to fake-laugh at. Really, Richard's still doing better than in past episodes, but I can see how he'd work my nerves hard if I had to spend a lot of time with him. He's pretty gracious, though, about allowing Lucy to use his phone when she rudely requests to do so right in the middle of dinner.
Mary and Robbie are still watching the hockey game when the phone rings. Mary seductively reaches across Robbie to answer it, almost thrusting her breasts in his face while doing so. It's Lucy calling to bitch her out for faking sickness to stay home with Robbie. For Robbie's benefit, Mary pretends it's a telemarketer on the line. I wonder who's more annoying, Lucy or a telemarketer. Normally I'd say the telemarketer, but Lucy's pretty bad tonight. After Robbie leaves to check on the twins, Mary displays one of those rare moments of funny bitchiness that make me temporarily like her. She torments Lucy by suggesting that she and Robbie have been spending the evening slow-dancing. That news makes Lucy's eyes go all buggy in a colossal bit of overacting. Mary hangs up on her ass without even saying goodbye, though in this case I think she's justified. Robbie spoils Mary's seduction plans by bringing down the twins to "hang out" with them.
Morris is trying to undo some of the damage he's done to his reputation as a human being with a brain. I'm afraid he does not succeed, but his speech is so funny that I'm going to reproduce it in its entirety. He smugly says, "I'm only half-Jewish but I still follow many of the precepts of Judaism. For example, at a ballgame, I always order the kosher hot dog. Okay, it's usually more expensive, but what's a quarter to help support your religion, huh?" Ha! Poor Morris. So hot, and yet so stupid. As soon as Lucy comes back to the table, Simon asks if he and Morris can use the phone . Damn, those Camdens are rude. When Simon and Morris leave the room, everyone else stares uncomfortably at each for a while.
Simon takes Morris into the study to berate him for not knowing enough about Judaism. Morris looks utterly crestfallen. When Simon tells him, "You're supposed to be a good example of mixed marriages," Morris sadly says, "I didn't know I was here as some kind of exhibit," and walks out of the room. This scene totally makes them seem like a couple.
Back in the dining room, Dopey is trying to justify getting married, but RevCam's not having any of it. When Eric tries to enlist Rabbi Richard's help in protesting the union, Richard goes off on some bizarre tangent about how his wife looks in Manolo Blahniks and how he loves to read Oprah's magazine. Fortunately for us, Dopey cuts him off to extol the advantages of him and PC marrying. He talks about how hard medical school is, but I miss most of the rest of what he says because I'm laughing real hard, as I always do, whenever Dopey mentions medical school. Richard tries to lighten the mood some more by joking about how his daughter used to have trouble with high school algebra. He says some other peculiar thing about how she used to break out with "isosceles triangles" all over her face. Is that supposed to be a joke? Or is Richard just rapidly losing his mind and we're getting to witness it firsthand? RevCam compliments Rabbi Richard on his ability to take the whole kids-marrying thing in stride. Richard admits that at first he and Rosina were "thrown" by the idea, but now that the idea of religious conversion has been suggested, they're a lot happier. Like a dork, RevCam automatically assumes that it is Sarah who would be converting, and he beams happily. Talk about arrogant. His smile fades, though, when Dopey mentions that the person planning to convert is not PC.
After the commercial break, RevCam is still frozen in shock, his fork poised over his dinner plate. Dopey tells him that he's just "exploring the idea" of conversion, but even that doesn't break RevCam out of his catatonia. Annie finally jolts him back to consciousness, but he's having a little trouble coping with reality, which becomes apparent when he asks Rosina the name of the food on his plate. It's peas. Either he's trying to change the subject or else Dopey's news caused him to suffer sudden neurological complications. I just hope he doesn't have to go to his brother-in-law Hank for treatment. I know Hank is an OB-GYN, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he suddenly changed his specialization, should a crappy subplot call for it. But where were we? Oh, yeah -- Ruthie is still fixated on genitals, as she asks Dopey if he will have to be circumcised. Oh, oh -- not only have I had to contemplate Dopey's sex life twice already, but now I'm expected to think about his foreskin? At that prospect, I lapse into a catatonic state for several hours, until my husband revives me. I ask him the name of the object in front of me -- a plastic thing with numbers and letters on it -- and he replies that it is a keyboard. I take a few deep breaths and continue with the recap. After Lucy gets up to use the phone again, Rabbi Richard rambles some more, asking if anyone needs to use his other phone or the rest room or the closet. I'm disappointed that the camera doesn't show Simon or Morris while Richard is mentioning closets. The rabbi is pretty funny, though, when he starts talking about the emergency exits in his house, and how he himself can't flee because this is his house. As your recapper, let me just say I know exactly how he feels.
Uncomfortable as the dinner party scene is, I'd still rather watch that than the one with Robbie and Mary. She tells him that she wants to talk about "us." I know Mary's a fictional character whom I detest, but I still cringe pretty hard when I hear her saying something so utterly pathetic. Robbie very rationally points out, "There's a 'me' and a 'you,' but no 'us.'" The phone rings before Mary can humiliate herself further -- at least with Robbie. Of course the caller is Lucy, who's still stuck on the same old tired topic of Mary being alone with Robbie. Mary continues with the pretense that the caller is a telemarketer and tells Lucy, "Ma'am, if you continue to hound us with these high-pressure soliciting tactics, I'm gonna have to call your boss, the Solicitor General. You could lose your job." That's our Mary, stupid to the core. After Mary hangs up, Lucy stares at the phone in disbelief, though I'm willing to bet she doesn't have a clue what the Solicitor General actually does either.
Back at The World's Tensest Dinner Party, Rabbi Richard is apologizing to RevCam, since he assumed the minister already knew Dopey was thinking of converting, but Eric's taken refuge in catatonia again. This gives Lucy the chance to come back into the room and announce that she has to leave. Ugh, words can't begin to describe how loathsome I find her in this episode. Simon helpfully offers that Morris can drop him and Lucy off at home. Despite all this vast rudeness, Rabbi Richard still pretends that it was nice to meet them.
After the three losers depart, RevCam rouses himself to criticize Dopey for trying to change who he is, "as if changing religions is as simple as changing shirts." Hey, why not? After all, Dopey made the life-altering decision to get married on a whim, and his sisters regularly contemplate marrying guys they've known for a few weeks. I thought that sort of thing was normal for the sick, shallow world of Glenoak. Annie interrupts her husband's diatribe to suggest that they discuss the matter at home, but RevCam won't be stopped. He says to Dopey, "For twenty-one years you had this one abiding concept in your life: Jesus. And now you take one bite of kugel, and suddenly no Jesus?" That's funny -- I would have thought the "one abiding concept" of Dopey's life would have been something like stalking, or acting like a patriarchal prick, since I don't think I've ever heard RevCam talk about Jesus before. Poor Eric seems to have developed a fixation with kugel, as he continues with, "It's not even Jewish kugel; it's good old-fashioned WASP kugel." Rabbi Richard tries to bring the hysteria down a notch by suggesting they all have dessert and then go over to his temple for the Oneg Shabbat service. He sounds like he's trying to talk a jumper off a window ledge, which isn't all that far from the truth. Annie agrees that Richard's idea is a good one, but Dopey and RevCam want to fight some more. Eric tries to tell Dopey, "You're my son. I know who you are and who you're not, and one thing you're not is a Jew." Realizing how bad that sounds, RevCam tries again: "I just mean that some people are Jewish and some aren't." That's really not much better, is it? Eric should probably just quit trying. After all, he's only got two feet and I think he's already inserted both of them in his mouth --a pretty admirable feat when you consider that his head is so far up his ass. Rosina saves him from embarrassing himself further by complimenting Annie's kugel and asking her how she got it so creamy. Annie happily responds that she didn't have any chicken fat, so she substituted cream instead. Rosina looks distraught, and PC kindly explains to Annie, "Jewish dietary rules forbid the mixing of meat and dairy at the same meal, so technically the meal wasn't kosher. You didn't know. It's not the end of the world." Rosina is upset enough, though, to start crying. She leaves the room, and her daughter follows.
Back at the CamPound, Mary really can't take a hint, so she tries to resurrect her big important conversation with Robbie, but he's just not interested. She insists, "I must be having these feelings about you for some reason." Spoken like a true stalker. When she sees that she's not exactly succeeding here, she tries to kiss him, but Lucy walks in and cheerfully spoils the moment. Lucy sums up her evening thusly: "Sarah's parents are great, the rabbi's funny, Matt's going to be Jewish, Dad stopped breathing, and the food was great." Lucy and Mary fight over who's going to finish watching the game with Robbie, but fortunately for us, this is interrupted by the doorbell. Robbie uses the opportunity to escape the clutches of the two loser sisters. The girls argue much too loudly for a bit, but I don't care about them, and you shouldn't either.
The unexpected guest is International Pop Sensation Joy Enriquez! Yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled either, though at least the writers have the good sense to make this a very brief appearance and they don't give her many lines. She and Robbie start making out instead. Naturally, Mary and Lucy are spying on them from the stairs. The sisters are suddenly great friends again, as they pretend that Joy's appearance settles the question of this ongoing Robbie situation once and for all. Sure it does -- until the episode, probably.
Annie and Rosina are apologizing profusely to each other in the kitchen. Annie gets in some trite observations about how she's always telling her kids "to be themselves," yet she didn't follow that advice herself and went overboard trying to impress Rosina and Richard. I guess that's supposed to explain her annoying behavior throughout this episode. Rosina explains away her own behavior by telling Annie how upset she is that her only daughter is an adult already. She says, "This little girl, who used to come to Shabbat dinner as my daughter, was there about to become someone's wife, and it felt like I was losing her." The two women continue bonding with some irritating observations about motherhood, like this one, when Annie says, "When my oldest daughter, Mary, moved out, I was devastated. I thought I'd never be the same." Is she forgetting that it was she and Eric who shuffled Mary off to Buffalo? I'm not sure that's quite the same thing as Mary "moving out." There's a genuinely nice moment when Rosina says, "Annie, I'm glad you went overboard. It makes me feel so good to know that my daughter's marrying someone who has a mother who cares enough to go overboard." Wisely, Annie makes no mention about that other time she went overboard and banished her children to the unfinished Garage Treehouse.
RevCam and Rabbi Richard are undergoing some bonding of their own in the rabbi's study. Eric apologizes for freaking out while Richard tries to be understanding, explaining, "You got blindsided. You stepped off a curb and got hit by a furniture truck." Hey, that's a fabulous idea for a future episode. Take note, writers! RevCam calls himself a hypocrite for not following the advice he always gives his children: to make decisions and then live with them. He gets more specific by saying that he's disappointed in himself for not being able to live with Matt's decision. Note that this really has nothing to do with making a decision oneself and then not being able to live with it, but when does this show ever make sense anyway? It's probably just a contrived opportunity to wield the theme mallet, as Eric says, "I have to do more than pay lip service to these things I teach my children." Yeah, okay, someone finally said the episode title. Duly noted. Rabbi Richard goes on to explain that he had trouble accepting his daughter's decision to marry Dopey at first, and he destroyed a lot of ping-pong balls in his frustration. He shows a bunch of them to RevCam, which is kind of weird. You'd think he would have thrown them out a while ago, but there they are, still on his desk. He also shows RevCam his favorite ping-pong paddle that he also destroyed.
Before Rabbi Richard can show Eric all the other things he wrecked, Dopey knocks on the door. Let's take a quick look at our scorecard for this episode and see who's taken five minutes or less to resolve their differences so far. There's Mary and Lucy, Annie and Rosina, and RevCam and Richard. Surely Dopey and his father can solve their problems now too. Yep, sure enough, after one little sappy speech from Matt, everything's just hunky-dory again. I could transcribe that speech for you, but I'm sure your time would be more profitably spent by digging up the most hokey Hallmark card you've ever received and rereading the terrible poem that's printed inside it.
At the temple, Rabbi Richard explains the meaning of "Oneg Shabbat" as "Sabbath delight." You know, his voice is kind of soothing, even when he's nattering on about pointless, boring stuff like the oatmeal-raisin cookies that one of the members of his congregation bakes. He very graciously says that one of his delights on this Sabbath was to welcome Dopey and the Camdens into his home and his family. He invites RevCam to say a few words. Unfortunately, Eric takes him up on the invitation and serves up some nice, albeit pedestrian, observations about love. I wonder how many member of the congregation are secretly doing crossword puzzles right now, like my dad always does in church. My mother has never been thrilled about that, but I think she figures it's better to have him look like he's taking notes on the sermon rather than napping, which is what he probably would be doing otherwise. Eventually, RevCam finishes and everyone can go home.
That should give us all a little time to recover before the episode, which promises to contain a bunch of storylines as fake as the engagement ring Dopey will give his wife.