Previously on Boston Public: Lauren and Harry decided to be exclusive; Morgue Friend told Harry that Jamal brought friends in to party with a dead body; Jamal promised never to do it again; Juan Figgis told a sob story to Harry about his rocky home life; The Exposition Fairy asked Milton if it was a crime to like him, and he said yes.
Starbucks. I mean, it's not Starbucks, but trust me, it's a Starbucks. Milton Buttle gets a latte or something, and carries it over to a table, along with a big pile of Shakespeare books. Some foam leaps from the cup directly onto the tip of his nose, and he puts his stuff down to wipe it off, noticing that he's being watched by an attractive girl in a Harvard sweatshirt. I guess she must be a Harvard student; I mean, that's certainly all the proof I need, here in the city of Boston with college paraphernalia available on every corner. Anyhow, she says, "Are you in Lieberman's class?" Guh? "Shakespeare. Lieberman." Milton's impressed: "Ronald Lieberman? Are you in his class?" I guess Lieberman is a famous Shakespeare scholar who's supposed to teach at Harvard. (Hey, remind me to tell you guys some time about Harold Bloom. Who is an actual famous Shakespeare scholar, rather than a made-up one, who teaches at an actually good college, not just one with a big name.) So then there's a cute little exchange. "Is he as fantastic as they say?" Shakespeare? "No, Lieberman." Oh. He's okay. He's a little limited by the subject matter. "Shakespeare?" No, Lieberman. "No, I know Lieberman. But you're saying he's limited by the subject matter of William Shakespeare?" The girl apologizes, noting she's upset Milton (Buttle, not John Milton, author of Paradise Lost). Milton asks if she likes Shakespeare, and she says, "I think he reads very well. But if you've ever seen his work performedHave you?" Many times, says Milton, and that goes for me, too. "Well, I think he's a little untruthful when it comes to human behavior."
You know what I hate? When pseudo-intellectuals treat the Western Canon like it's a roster of rock bands, as though the popularity or name-recognition of certain writers and thinkers has to do with them selling out to a desire for a mass audience. ("I only liked Voltaies before his Collected Letters went platinum.") This isn't like when somebody is a big Britney Spears fan and you try to turn them on to real music, like Belle and Sebastian or Ben Folds Five. Shakespeare is the greatest writer of English, ever, period, and his less famous contemporaries are less famous because (while a number were good, and at least one, Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, may have been a genius himself) they are on the whole not as good. And, incidentally, Shakespeare did sell out to mass audiences in his own time; his plays were popular entertainment, intentionally appealing to all classes, from the aristocracy to the so-called "groundlings." So, Harvard chick? Shut up. Speaking of which
“ 'Why do they think that?' says Harry. I'm guessing because Juan told them, and they're stupid. 'Because I told them, and they're stupid.' Swish. ”
"The very essence of Shakespeare," Milton is saying, "is rooted in human behavior." Word. She asks him what his favorite scene is, and he hedges, then lays down a challenge: he'll say one line, and she'll know the scene and the play. Nice game, except he picks what might be the most well-known line of Shakespeare after the opening of Hamlet's soliloquy. He says, "Friends" and before he can add Romans or countrymen, she says, "Julius Caesar. Marc Anthony's eulogy." Though it is, technically, Caesar's eulogy, which Marc Anthony delivers, but who's quibbling. It was a really easy one. Then she launches into an explanation of why that speech is a good example of what she's talking about, but I'm too lazy to poke holes in her argument, and I don't have a copy of the play handy, so let's move on to where Milton, impressed with all of this hoo-ha, says, "How old are you?" Twenty. How old are you? "Twenty-nine. Would you like to get a drink some time?" When will you be thirty? "Not till year." She says okay.
Opening Rack Torture. Break into David Spade's house. Tazer him. Record yelps of pain. Use R2D2 as drum machine.
Teacher's lounge. Milton is telling Coach "Just Bounce Your Storyline Off Me, Because I Don't Have One" Kevin and Harry, about his exciting encounter with Harvard Girl, who, being twenty, is too old to get a Lolita-inspired nickname. But since she goes to Harvard, let's just call her Sucks. Milton is talking about how uncharacteristically forward he was, and Kevin says, "Look, I don't give advice on these things, but Louisa: she's a pretty solid catch." Harry adds, "And you're not!" Milton says he thinks that Sucks could be the one, and that there's something contagious about her, and that "Louisa's great, but she" Meanwhile, Louisa's entered in the background, so Kevin cuts him off by saying, "here!" Smooth. She looks at Milton, "I'm great, but I what?" He covers brilliantly, using all the literature at his fingertips to devise the most plausible lie: "You don't fish. We're planning a fishing trip, and deciding whether or not to bring girlfriends, and you don't fish. Do you? Awkward pause?" Louisa turns away from Milton, unfurls her wings, and works her Expository magic on Harry: "Juan Figgis's mother was busted on cocaine possession with intent. Second offense. Juan's packing his locker. He's dropping out."
Juan's locker. "I got no choice," he's telling Harry, who begs to differ. "Look, I got two brothers and a sister, my mom's going up, and I gotta pay the rent now!" Harry tells him he only has one year to go, but Juan stands firm: "I'm head of the family now." He tries to leave, but Harry calls upon his vast knowledge of the law (he's probably a lawyer too, right?) and points out, "What do you think social services is going to do? Let you raise kids? Two of them are under ten." Juan says that social services thinks the kids have a father. "Why do they think that?" says Harry. I'm guessing because Juan told them, and they're stupid. "Because I told them, and they're stupid." Swish.
Harvey and Marla's classroom. Harvey is lecturing, it seems, on Benjamin Franklin's discovery of electricity. "I don't even know if he was trying to invent electricity at the time. He just had this thing about kites. Kites are fun. And they fly high up into the sky like a plane. Of course, in Ben Franklin's days, they didn't have planes. And you couldn't fly unless you were a bird. But Benjamin Franklin, he liked birds okay, but he loved the kite. Kites have tails. And rain. Rain is wet. As you can see. So when you fly a kite in a thunderstorm, you may not get electrocuted, but you'll sure get wet." Harvey looks really happy, and his hair, such as it is, is slightly more unkempt than usual, and this speech is awfully weird, even for him. So, for all these reasons, Marla asks him if he's all right. "I think I'm gonna die," he says, grinning like a madman. "I feel so warm and fuzzy. What can do that to a person, besides death?" Guh? I don't know. Alcohol, sex, drugs, a roller coaster, winning something. I've never thought of death as being particularly warm and fuzzy either. But maybe he's right, because after he giggles a bit more, his eyes roll back in his head and he passes out.
The hallway. Harvey joins the pantheon of characters who've been taken out of the school on a gurney, as Steven jogs alongside, promising to come to the hospital and see him right away. Lauren appears, and asks if Harvey had a heart attack. "They don't think so. I'm driving, why don't you come with me?" I hope he means to the hospital.
Milton's car. He and Sucks are having a quick bite in traffic. Of food, people, a bite of food. She asks if he always eats this way, and he says, "When I'm caught in traffic and only have ten minutes left to eat? Yeah." She regards him with the arch gaze of a twenty-year-old Harvard kid who thinks she knows everything, and says, "High-school teachers have no money, do they?" He says, "As opposed to college kids?" Zing! Except if she's a legacy she's probably, like, Lucindra Sucks, of the Southampton Sucks family or something. She could be rich is what I'm saying, basically. She says something about how all her classmates have dot-com startups (ain't that the truth; I'm so glad that bubble is bursting and they're all going belly-up), and how in lieu of financial success she'd take family or "Or what?" Not Shakespeare, she says. Then she asks him what he's thinking. Um, that he'd like to nail you? But he says, "I was just remembering back to when I was twenty, and knew everything." See? Word. Me and Milton are so on the same page this episode. He asks what she's thinking. "Are we having lunch because you want to sleep with me?" Wow, everybody's on the same page this episode! He says that it's rare to find a woman who can recite Shakespeare, and she says likewise, and then says, "So that's two things we have in common." Oh, I guess the other thing is that they both want to sleep with each other, right? He says, "What's the second thing?"
Milton's bed. Harvard sweatshirt strewn across the chair. Milton and Sucks go at it under his portrait of the Bard, who looks down upon this scandalous debauchery with approval. "Joy To The World" blasts on the soundtrack, which is I guess a little blasphemous, or something. But not to me, so who cares. "Something for the groundlings!" quoth William, wetting his quill.
Milton's classroom. Anthony Heald is questioning a confused classroom full of students. "He just didn't show up?" The class says, "Blank stares." He asks, "Have any of you seen Mr. Buttle?" Didn't he hear them the first time? They say, "Blank stares!" He storms out.
The hospital. A doctor is explaining to Harvey that he did not have a heart attack, while Steven and Lauren stand by. "We'd like to do a brain scan," the doctor says, "You're colleague said that you wereacting strangely?" Harvey says, "That's in my character." Heh. She tells him he was 104 degrees earlier, and asks if he takes any medication. "None," he says, "I started feeling hot. Then I felt really good. Then I got light-headed." The doctors knits her brow thoughtfully. So does Steven. By the way, weren't Steven and Lauren not speaking to each other last time we saw them, because he called her a racist? I guess that's water under the bridge, eh? Everyone thinks really hard and tries to figure out what happened to Harvey. He felt good, they think, but how good? Like, really good? Like, ecstatic? I wonder what could have happened to him.
Juan's apartment, which Juan is instructing Harry to get out of. So Harry comes inside. "You're seven months away from a diploma." Juan's not having it: "Look around! Eleven, seven, and four!" What's that, a locker combination? Oh, the ages of Juan's siblings. "They need to eat more than I need some diploma. So forgive me if I'm screwing up some teacher bonus you had coming." Harry says, "I don't go chasing every kid" Insert Dana Poole joke here. "who drops out!" In the foreground, the three younger Figgae (that's Latin for Figgises. I knew Homer ["actually, 'Figgis' is a third-declension noun, so the plural is 'Figges.' I knew Vergil" -- Sars]) are playing video games. Um, why don't they sell the Playstation and pay some bills that way? Harry says that he's going to have to report Juan's family to social services. I think he actually says, "The S.S.," but that's a little disturbing, no? Juan objects, "They'll split us up!" Harry says he has no choice, he's required by law, and tries to leave. Juan grabs him. Geez, kid, do you want him to stay or go, make up your mind! "You can walk out of here and not say nothing! That's a choice! They will break us up."
Commercials. Does anybody else actually kind of dig That '70s Show? I never watch it on purpose, but the times I have caught it, I've always found it pretty funny, and original, and the girls are all really adorable. Just thought I'd share, since they seem to have done a little Charlie's Angels-type episode, or something, according to this ad.
The stairwell. Lauren and Harry, who may or may not have had relations already, come down the stairs. "So are you going to tell?" Harry says, firmly but quietly, "I have to, Lauren. How could I not?" She's all, "You don't have to yell at me, Harry." Oh, shut up. Isn't that how it goes? As soon as they're a couple, everything is suddenly about her. He wasn't yelling, first of all. He wasn't upset at you, second of all. Thirdly, shut up. She asks if she can help, and he says no, just as they pass Milton Buttle and Anthony Heald. The former is apologizing to the latter for his unforgivable tardiness: "My car broke down." But why didn't he call in? "Because I was nowhere near a phone. I want to apologize." Guber tells him to apologize to his class, and snarks away. Milton, skin aglow with after-sex tingly goodness, gives himself a little "I'm the man" waggly-headed nod thingy. Coach Kevin, who I may start to just call "Coach Lamprey The Plot Parasite" until he gets an arc of his own, flanks Milton as he starts down the hall. "So, not only do you sleep with this twenty-year-old you just met yesterday, you blow off class to do it." Milton says, "You know me, Kevin, I am not an impulsive person. I pencil in trips to the bathroom in my day planner!" Oh, that reminds me. No, idiots, it reminds me that I need to get a new day planner. Anyway, Coach Lamprey the Plot Parasite tells Milton that he's going to get hurt, and he shouldn't jeopardize what he has with The Exposition Fairy. "Guys like me," says Milton, "don't get a lot of chances with the addictive kind of girl thateven if it only lasts a weekthere's something about this girl. " Parasite Lamprey asks if Milton is falling in love, and after more floundering he concludes, "I felt more passion in the last twenty-four hours than I have collectively in my whole life."
Ms. Souter's classroom. A female student comes in and asks Marilyn how Mr. Lipschultz is doing. "They think he's okay. In fact, he's being released." So everything's fine? "Well, I don't know, Kelly. They still don't know what caused it." Kelly closes her eyes, guiltily, and sighs as though some transgression is weighing upon her conscience, and also purses her lips in a manner that suggests an unpunished wrongdoing. "What's wrong?" says Marilyn, because she cannot read body language. Kelly says, "Can I tell you something in complete confidence?" Hasn't she been watching the show? Every time a girl asks that, she ends up transferred or suspended or in court. Marilyn says that depends on what it is, and can't give her word, but Kelly decides to take the plunge anyway: "I didn't think it was dangerous or anything. I did it as a joke." Did what? "I put E in his coffee." E? "Ecstasy. I ground it up and put it in his coffee. There's not supposed to be any dangerous side effects or anything. Could you just please tell the doctors so they can make him better?" Marilyn wants to know where she got the drugs, but Kelly won't snitch: "I'm willing to get myself in trouble, but notI only told you to help Mr. Lipschultz."