The Shot

Previously on Ed: Molly gets screwed. Both literally and figuratively. She starts bangin' some bowling ball salesman and falls in love with the guy, who seems perfect in every way. The only problem is his wife feels the same way about him. Molly breaks up with the guy when she finds out he's married, and is currently nursing a broken heart and several gin and tonics on a nightly basis. Yes, Molly's a raging alcoholic. Of course, this is never shown, hinted at, or implied in the show, but trust me...nothing fuels binge drinking like finding out the person you're humping is leading a double life and you're the reason for it.

We crack open this nut of a show with Ed and Mike walking through the streets of Stuckeyville like a pair of vagabond weasels. I should clarify...a pair of vagabond talking weasels because as we all know vagabond weasels can't talk, and Ed and Mike can gab more than four old biddies playing bridge for six hours straight. Ed's wearing some comfortable pants and wants Mike to know they're comfortable. Ed says that he feels when you find comfortable pants, you should buy two dozen pairs and you're done; you have pants for life. Mike notes that this is true unless your ass becomes the size of Montana, which is a thinly veiled shout-out to yours truly, which I would rather not acknowledge at this point. Mike asks Ed if he's coming to the big Stuckeyville basketball team reunion and Ed doesn't know if he will be attending or not. Mike asks him if it's because of "the shot." Ed doesn't know what he's talking about. Apparently, during the state championship game, Ed missed a shot that cost the team the state championship. Ed begins whining and asking why nobody can remember that he scored twenty-one points in that game; all anybody remembers is that he flushed every hope and dream of every single person in Stuckeyville down the proverbial toilet with that one single shot. Mike says that a goat is a goat is a goat is a goat. Ed asks if Mike's calling him a goat. Mike says that he doesn't know and then says, "Bahhhhhhh...bahhhhhhh" like a sheep. Ed's slightly offended, but then remembers that this good-natured chiding is coming from a known sexual harasser, and drops the subject as the opening credits start.

I would now like to print the words to the theme song as I know them. They are as follows: "When it's my moment in the sun. Oh how beautiful I'll..." and that's all I've ever heard because I usually am banging my head against a wall repeatedly at that point until I knock myself semi-unconscious trying to get that guy's horrific voice out of my skull.

Commercials. Ding! Dong! The Bald Guy's dead. Which Bald Guy? The ER Bald Guy! Ding! Dong! The ER Bald Guy is deaaaaaad!

At the Stuckey Bowl, Ed's on the phone to Mr. Henry, trying to convince the poor decrepit old man that you can sue your neighbor for almost anything, but Ed's pretty sure the guy's neighbor didn't buy an ugly dog just to upset Mr. Henry. Those wacky Stuckeyvillians! Their mental hospitals must be overflowing in that sleepy little burg! Two big tall freaks run into Ed's office and Ed recognizes them as fellow teammates on his high school basketball team. You remember, the ones he let down with that last shot in the state championship? Seriously, if you don't remember, this is going to be one helluva long recap if I have to keep reminding you about it. So anyway, Ed says they haven't aged a day -- they've aged fifteen years! Chuckles galore as one of the guys calls Ed a "quick-witted bastard," which was at one time going to be scratched into my tombstone, but now I'm leaning more towards "Handsome Chunky Bitch Boy." One of the guys goes behind Ed and wraps his arms around Ed's chest, trying to give him the Heimlich, since the last time he saw Ed, Ed was choking at the foul line. Ed's all "oh yeah, ha ha," and you can tell he's still ashamed about screwing that shot up. One of the guys is a dermatologist in South Carolina; the other guy makes screen doors. They've heard that Ed defends professional bowlers. Ed corrects them and explains the whole bowling alley/lawyer gig, which would make for a great running joke if it had ever been funny in the first place. The guys ask Ed if he's coming to the reunion and he says he doesn't know. They convince him that nobody cares about a stupid foul shot gone awry from fifteen years ago, and his feelings aren't hurt anymore so he takes his thumb out of his mouth and says, "Sure, I'll come!" Stupid dim-witted bastard. He should have stuck with his original plan of pulling a Molly and staying home to drown his sorrows in a half-empty bottle of Dewars. Now he's going to be ridiculed by the entire town. What an ignorant shit biscuit.

Meanwhile, Phil and Kenny are at the shoe-rental counter. Phil's telling Kenny to check out "two o'clock," meaning to look straight ahead and to the left a few degrees. Except he's wrong and Kenny tries to correct him, letting Phil know he means "ten o'clock." They get into a brief debate over which is ten o'clock and which is two o'clock before Phil finally drops his cool facade and says, "Look over at the snack counter." Shirley is sitting on a stool while a hulking Michael Clarke Duncan-looking guy with dreadlocks and a stocking cap stands over her. The guy looks like he could tear Shirley in two with his bare hands. The monster scares the bejeezus out of me and I duck behind my recliner, opting to watch the rest of the scene from behind my chair. Phil's convinced that love is in the air and Shirley is crazy about the guy. Kenny asks how he can tell that and Phil says that it's his job to know about women. Shirley's reading some papers, signs them, and gives them back to Frankenhomie and they silently part ways. I climb back into my recliner and pray to God that the writers give me some advance notice before slapping that guy on my TV screen without warning again.

Over at the Smiling Goat, Ed's former teammates are going into this long, drawn-out spiel about the night Ed blew it for the entire town. They're doing it in sports-announcer fashion: very dramatic, very fast, very unrecappable, so don't even ask, you little cretins. Carol asks where she was for all of this and Molly says she was probably at some exclusive super-cool party. Carol's all, "Shut up Molly!" when she really means, "Say that again Molly!" because Jackass is out of town and she's surrounded by former jocks who still look decent for their age and she's hoping to bang at least half of them while Ed watches, torturing the poor bastard just a little bit more. The jocks continue their little play-by-play of the big moment in the game as Ed tries to diffuse the situation by offering to buy everyone cheeseburgers. But the entire table is enthralled, listening to tanned, head-full-of-hair Head Jock relive that magic moment when Ed totally blew it, while Carol stares at him dreamily. Ed missed the shot, and the ball ended up in the hands of Rich Reid, who took it and scored the final basket, winning the game and the state championship for Jaspertown, Stuckeyville's evil twin. Carol can't believe Ed never told her that story and Ed mumbles that it slipped his mind. Carol's all hot and bothered. Head Jock suggests that they challenge Jaspertown to a rematch which everyone seems to think is a great idea. They ask Ed to stay away from the foul line though, which he good-naturedly tries to laugh off. The team starts chanting, "Eddie! Eddie!" as Ed reminds them all that he had twenty-one points in that game. They all leave the Goat, announcing that, "The goat is leaving the Goat."

As they all file out, Molly bumps into Jim, the slimeball married guy she was humping like her life depended on it a few months ago. He asks how she's doing. She says fine except she cries herself to sleep each night and is thinking about taking up heroin usage to ease the pain of her broken f'n heart. Jim asks if he can buy her a beer and she says she's on her way out. He asks for one freakin' beer. Some malt, hops, yeast, and water. Maybe toss some barley in there somewhere. Describing a beer like that is too much for Molly and she can't resist tossing more alcoholic content down her gullet and agrees to have a beer with the guy. They sit, he asks if she wants a glass and she says no, a trough will suit her just fine because she's a heavy drinker now. He tells her he's missed her. She's missed him too.

It's morning and Molly's putting lipstick on while staring at her reflection. She bends down to pick something up and we see her bed in the reflection...with that slimeball Jim laying in it!! My God!! The drunken slut caved and porked Jimmy like he wasn't a family man or something!! What kind of...who the hell does she....what in the world is she...man!! This is hot scoopage!!! So Jim asks her what she's doing and she tells them she's going to school, remember? She's a freakin' teacher, Jimbo! Or maybe you don't even remember anything specific about the poor woman, all you remember is that she had an ass you could eat a picnic off of. Jim reminds her that it's Saturday and there's no school on Saturday. He tries to put her at ease by telling her that six years ago, he married the wrong woman. The only problem is, Molly is in severe freak-out mode and isn't listening. She says that there's a doughnut outside waiting on her and she must go eat it because it's doughnut time for Molly, and then she hauls ass out of her own bedroom and house, leaving Jim alone to sniff the sheets or whatever the hell this pervert plans on doing.

Back at the alley, Shirley is handing some papers to Frankenhomie and he walks away. Phil asks Shirley to walk with him. He says she has a crush on Jack a.k.a. Frankenhomie. She says she doesn't. He says she does. She says she doesn't. They continue walking and talking in rapid-fire staccato fashion. It's giving me a headache and my hand is cramping from trying to take notes furiously. He asks why she won't talk to Frankenhomie. She says she's shy. He asks if she's shy because she has a crush on him. She says no, she's just shy. He asks if she's sure she doesn't have a crush on him. She asks if she did have a crush on Jack, why would she tell Phil. Phil says because she trusts him like a brother. She says she doesn't trust him like a brother. He asks if she did trust him like a brother, would she tell him that she had a crush on Frankenhomie. She says that if she did trust him like a brother, she would probably tell him about a crush on Frankenhomie. She then asks why are they walking like this. Phil says he doesn't know, but he saw it on The West Wing and it makes everything seem more important. This made my wife burst into a fit of giggles and me scratch my head aimlessly because I've never watched the show and have no idea what they're talking about. All I know is, I just spent fifteen minutes of a valuable Saturday morning rewinding my copy of Ed so that I could recap that one little scene. My sympathies to deborah, who recaps The West Wing, because man...that must be one hellish gig right there.

In Ed's office, Ed is watching his bungled shot over and over again on videotape. The ball misses; he rewinds and hits play. The ball misses; he rewinds and hits play. If they show a typewriter with the words "All work and no play make Ed a dull boy" typed over and over again on a sheet of paper, I'm hiding behind my recliner again. Carol walks in and greets "Mr. Choke Artist." Ed corrects her, saying it's just "Choke Artist." Carol notes that this whole thing must really be bothering Ed. Ed says that he came to a fork in the road with that shot. Because, you see, there are two types of people in this world: the Haves and the Have-nots. Haves are the cool people who have everything they could possibly want and Have-nots are losers who don't get invited to parties and don't get to bang Carol Vessey after buying her a shot of Jagermeister in a smoky dive. Had Ed made that shot, he would have catapulted into the Haves category and the whole town would have loved him and he could have gone through life being a shit-ass snob and everyone would still have to love him because he was a hero that won the state championship for the town. But since he missed it, he has to be nice and charming to everyone in the hopes that they say, "Even though that Ed Stevens missed that shot fifteen years ago, he's still one charming sonofabitch." Ed's whole life changed with that one shot. Carol disagrees and Ed tells her that she's always been a Have, never been a Have-not, and has no idea what being a Have-not is like. Carol admits she doesn't and then announces that she has to go ball a couple of Haves in their hot tubs and wishes Eddie a fond farewell.