First off -- mighty big props to Mighty Big TV for its glowing mention in both Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone.
Wallace sits alone in his darkened office contemplating life, liberty and the pursuit of drunkenness. It's neatly apropos, given that his life revolves around having complete liberty to pursue drunkenness. He begins to pontificate. "Who, what, where, when," Wallace voice-overs. "The four easy Ws. The fifth -- why -- is the hardest one. And I'm supposed to answer that three times a week." I'm already too bored to feel pity. Hey, Wallace, here's a "w" for you -- wpiss off. We see scenes of New York City and Wallace's aimless strolls through clogged sidewalks. He's stumped on some of the whys of life. Why would a woman steal someone else's newborn baby? Why would a twentysomething kid jump off the Brooklyn Bridge? Why would McDonald's make "hamburger" patties that are far smaller than the buns? Wallace's voice-over continues. He's thinking all this stuff at his father. "You always called me 'My little observant one,'" Wallace says, recalling how he and his dad would people-watch and make up stories about each weird character creeping past. ['"Little'? Benton pè must have died when Wallace was three weeks old." -- Wing Chun] Mr. Benton used to encourage Wallace to "see them as fellow sufferers. But you never talked about your own suffering." Wallace stops outside an apartment building and stares up at a female figure silhouetted against the closed blinds. "You said I'd understand when I was older," Wallace voice-overs. "I've got news for you, Dad -- I have no idea." The writers are apparently tapping into Benton's demons, but I'm not sure I'm wholly ready for that insight. Not without a passel of prescription drugs at my disposal. Wallace watches the woman remove her shirt. A cop car pulls up and an officer ambles toward Benton with a look of light admonition. Officer Extra urges Wallace to move along, because he's publicly intoxicated and being a peeping tom. "One, she's my Daddy's widow. Two, she ain't a whole lot to look at," Wallace says. And yet he watches her shadow as she undresses. How very Oedipal -- a word close to Wallace's heart because it rhymes with "edible." Wallace explains that he's standing vigil outside the apartment because it's the anniversary of his father's death, and, clearly, spying on the widow is the best way to pay respect to a dead parent. Officer Extra looks sad. "I pray on his grave every year," Wallace blathers. "'Daddy, God give me the strength to dig you up and beat the crap out of you with a shovel for leaving me the way you did.'" Confronted with this kind of crude, slurred cynicism, the cop immediately realizes he's talking to Wallace and that prolonged exposure could lead to nausea, headaches and a minor rash. "Oh yeah," Wallace growls for no reason. So, we've established that Wallace is in a funk. Roll credits.
The Ghost of Cancellation Future flops down on the couch. "I just stole Dick Wolf's lunch money and fed it to my cat," it says, proudly, putting its arm around my shoulders and settling in for the duration.
Benton is feeling argumentative today. He wants a specific type of black pen, and the copy boy delivered the wrong one to his desk. The copy boy tries to point out that he is in fact a she, but Wallace has no time for such trifling things as gender because he needs a non-Bic pen and he needs it now. Bics don't win Pulitzers, people, and they don't omit noxious mind-addling odors that you can sniff for inspiration. ["I hate Bics too, but at least I'm still able to get off my fat ass and get my own pens now and again." -- Wing Chun] All Ms. Copy Boy is saying is give Bic a chance, but Benton will have none of that hippie crap and refuses to call her anything but "copy boy." He heckles Ms. Copy Boy for her inability to distinguish a Bic from a Rollerball, then ridicules her desire to be a reporter. Wallace throws his pen cup at the wall as she runs out of the room. I sense the onset of a legendary Benton Black Mood.
Brooke peers into the office, having witnessed the semi-violent exchange between her semi-husband and the semi-Copy Boy. She's semi-surprised to see him so fully disgruntled. "If I were a copy boy, I myself wouldn't be so damn casual," Wallace snaps in his own defense. She jokes that he never had to slum it like that because his mother called in a favor and scored him a high-level job. Brooke then asks Wallace why his column is late, and he replies that Nikki is running a "Best of Benton" series beginning Monday. "That should last us until Tuesday," Brooke cracks. Wallace snaps at her, putting Brooke on the defensive because she was just trying to cheer him up with laughs. They spar: she claims he's the man she ran from, not the one that got away; he calls her "incapable of intimacy" and says it shows in her brittle prose. "You're the one who slept on the couch during our honeymoon!" Brooke yells. ["Yikes." -- Wing Chun] As Wallace storms out, he blazes past Nikki, who demands his column and says she doesn't have time to indulge his writer's block. "I can't turn it on and off like a faucet," Benton snarls. Nikki replies, "I don't have that problem with your paycheck." Ha! So Wallace has antagonized three people. On a good day, Wallace is the dark cloud in everyone's life. Today, he's Hurricane Andrew after the storm ate too many ginger snaps and got indigestion.
"How was your day?" Wallace's voice-over sneers at his father as he strolls toward a club. "Do you hurt the one you love, act like a moron at work, watch the clock for Happy Hour and then wonder where it went?" This is malaise. We're supposed to appreciate Wallace as some kind of tortured genius. He may eat housecats or staple students' thumbs to the table, but my God, he can churn out copy.