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Julie tells Matt that she thinks they should have sex and he immediately goes to the drugstore with Landry to buy some condoms where Tami sees them buying condoms and then goes home to wait for Julie to come home and then confronts her daughter and somehow finds a way to toe the line between saying "NO WAY IN HELL, MISSY" and also "I love you, and I want you to be able to talk to me about this" and if I sound breathless it's because it was all perfect.
Jason goes to Austin for quad rugby tryouts and meets -- surprise -- an Austin girl with a lot of tattoos.
Tim finds out that -- surprise -- his pallid drunk of a father is a jerk and a thief.
Buddy did Tyra's mom (thank the LORD it was off screen) so of course he has to fire her, but it turns out that he is one Fat Cat too many because she goes to CHURCH on Sunday morning to confront him in front of God and everybody else.
And Julie keeps pursuing the sex until she tells Matt that she thinks a stuffed deer head is judging her dirty intentions, which tips him off that maybe she isn't ready, so instead they just leg wrestle and tease each other about their dirty feet and then fall asleep and so Julie misses curfew, and the Taylors are up waiting and pissed but she tells them the truth that she and Matt didn't have sex and she thanks her mom for the talk and hugs her and did I mention it was all perfect? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
The Saloon, Austin. Tim and Daddyshack are hustling pool. Tyra is there watching; Daddyshack is fully off the wagon. Or is it on? I always have a hard time with that idiom. One of the guys they're hustling starts giving Daddyshack a hard time. Daddyshack talks some trash about the hundred bucks this guy owes them. Tim looks back at Tyra mischievously and she tells him "Don't." But, oh, he wouldn't be Timmy if he didn't. He grabs a pool ball and thwaps the guy in the kidneys with it, which sends Daddyshack into convulsions. The guy turns around and demands to know who did it, and even though this whole bar will come out in support of kicking Tim's ass later, nobody gives him up here. Also, for some reason the bouncer that will throw Tim out for starting to scuffle with this guy for some reason doesn't see "cheap shot to the kidneys" as a bounceable offense. But I guess if Timmy and Random Bar Fly didn't start scuffling we wouldn't have a chance to witness Daddyshack leaving Tim's ass to flap in the breeze as he opts not to help the poor kid out.
Flashcards of sexytime. This here is a whole different world of conjugation than the one I'm familiar with. Matt asks Julie "hablar," and she thinks for a second before rattling off "hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos." You forgot the informal third person plural, Julie! ["Not to mention the vosotros form! I know!" -- Joe R] You'll thank me for reminding you when you are trying to have an affair with a haughty Spainiard in Granada your junior year abroad. After she masters the conjugation, she challenges Matt to remain master of his domain as she lunges for him and they fall backward onto the bed making out. Knock at the door and Matt rolls off Julie and falls onto the floor just as Grandma walks in wanting to know if he ate her pudding. Grandmother!! She complains that he knows she likes a little pudding at the end of the day. Well, don't we all, Grams, but control yourself woman! Finally, she tells her grandson, "Hands off my tapioca, Matthew." Glark? Are you reading this? T-shirt please. She closes the door, and Julie and Matt devolve into giggles, Matt still wedged on the floor between his bed and the wall, Julie trying to look casual on the bed with her flashcards of sexytime.
Cut outside where Tami waits in the car for Julie. She and Matt pause on the stoop; Matt proposes another study session, Julie proposes sex: "I think we should have sex." Matt stutters his way toward Bethlehem as Julie tells him that it's time and that "we should get on that." Julie struts off to her mom's car. Tami calls out the window to Matt, and he looks after those saucy Taylor women: "Huh-huh-hi...Mrs....Mrs. Coach...."
Uninspiring credits. Alamo Freeze. Matt and Smash are working, Landry just hanging around. We catch Landry dispensing not only bad but possibly deadly bad advice this time as he reaches into his wallet and pulls out an old condom to give to Matt. Smash walks over with his tongs, snaps the package in their grip and tells Landry to "get that nasty ass raggedy thing outta here." Smash pulls the embarrassed Matt toward the back and employs a Ye Olde Sex-as-Sport Metaphor in his own version of bad advice. "You got her at first-and-inches, but you still gotta read the coverage." Smash talks out both sides of his mouth when he tells Matt that he isn't trying to encourage sex out of wedlock but that if Matt is going to do this he will need to "think about logistics." Time, place, fresh protection, he says.
Herc drives Jason down Sixth Street, and it must be that magical two-hour window on Sixth Street when there aren't frat and srat folks puking all over the pavement. I wonder if Jason might run away to Austin to become the assistant for that guy who does airbrush paintings of unicorns and manatees raising their beautiful Manacorns? Herc tells Jason that Sixth Street is "party central" and that he'll be eyeball deep in beautiful ladies. He then proceeds to honk his horn and "woooo!" out the window at a couple of co-eds standing in the rain waiting for the bus. Jason is just worried that they'll be late for practice. After their accidents, I suppose, Herc got the overactive "wooo!" gland; Jason, the unfortunate "lame-o" reflex.
Herc and Jason wheel themselves, along with their Sportz Chairz into the gym. Blah blah blah, Herc is a randy horndog, Jason is a wet blanket. They wheel up to the two young women working the registration table. Herc is all "Hey, baby!" while Jason is all "Um, I don't have time for a conversation" to his girl. The girl tells him she isn't trying to have a conversation, she's just asking him the questions on the form. Jason reacts a little disproportionately to what just happened. Instead of looking slightly embarrassed, he looks like he just accidentally pooped on the desk in front of her. The woman is all tough doe eyes. I don't understand the forced import of this interaction. Also, I don't understand why I should give a fuck.
Tyra walks up to a little house and knocks on the door. A blonde answers and Tyra asks for Billy. The blonde calls behind "Billy! Some chick's here." Billy comes out, and Tyra tells him that she's there because Tim is drinking again. The blonde calls out from the background that "Deal or No Deal" is on. If they were watching the Telemundo version it would be "Vas o No Vas," a translated title I find hilarious to utter in a really deep, dramatic voice. Billy tells Tyra that Tim's drinking is "right on schedule" and then tells her that she can't help him, that he chose Walt (i.e., Daddyshack), he's made his bed and all that.
At Applebee's, Buddy and Coach sit at the bar and enjoy some riblets (presumably). Buddy broaches a terrifying subject. He asks Coach if they are friends, and Eric, funnily enough, pauses before answering, "Uh, sure." Buddy says that he has "strayed outside my marriage" and then starts to explain the sordid ordeal, she wants more than he can give, et cetera. Coach interrupts and says "Uh-uh, uh-uh" and insists that he doesn't want to know who it was or any of the details. Buddy continues to want to provide those details. Specifically, that Tyra's mom "is a wildcat." GOD. "You know how it is," Buddy tells Coach, and like a real man, Coach responds, "No, Buddy, I don't know how it is!" Buddy asks for advice, and Coach gives it to him: tell the woman it's over, go home and take care of your family. Coach gets up, grabs his jacket, and then seethes at Buddy, "I'm gonna let you cover the bill." Buddy is left with his glass of whiskey, at Applebee's, some other party's birthday balloons floating behind him. Depresso.
In the drugstore, Landry and Matt stand before the condoms. Which are all labeled "Inconceivable." Ha! Is this why Texas is full of barefoot and pregnant types? Because they done got different style condoms down thar? A kind that one can't mentally pronounce with out saying it in a Wallace Shawn voice. Landry reads off all the different types ("Endure," "Elasticon," (heh) "True Fit") that Matt could get, declaring that they "can rule out mega." Shot of Tami Taylor around the corner trying on some sunglasses. Yoips! She catches a glimpse of the boys, and we hear Matt begging Landry to just let him pick a pack before he dies of embarrassment. They do and walk off, Tami walks over to where they were and confirms that they were indeed in front of the enormous condom display. Meanwhile, Tami looks so hot in her jeans that lesbians everywhere spontaneously conceive. Talk about sex education!
At home, Tami sits with her hand marking a place in a book, but she's staring off into space, gazing at the pictures of little girl Julie that line the mantel. Julie comes home and starts heading down the hallway to her room. Tami jumps up and launches right into it. The camera is in front of Julie so we see the girl's face, her mother calling after her from behind: "I saw Matt Saracen buying condoms today." Julie stops short, her face stunned. She tries to play dumb, but Tami tells her that he was either buying them for her or for somebody else. "Think you'd better come talk to me." Julie turns toward her mother and just says "Okay" and shrugs. Tami asks if they are having sex. Julie says no, then pauses and looks down while she says, "We're thinking about it." Tami nods and nods and repeats "You're thinking about it." Her face doesn't give much away right now, but as she starts asking her daughter Sex Ed 101 questions -- "Are you thinking about pregnancy? Are you thinking about sexually transmitted diseases?" Julie is all "Um, hello? Like that is why he was buying condoms?" Tami scrambles a bit as she snarks at her daughter for thinking that buying condoms makes you ready "to make love." Julie can't suppress an embarrassed grin at the usage and she repeats with horror, "Making love?" aaaaand start Emmy clip now ["WORD." -- Joe R]:
Connie Britton raises her voice in absolute parental abandon, it sounds loud and warbly and absolutely terrified, "Don't you smirk at me, I am VERY. UPSET. You are NOT allowed to have sex! You are FIFTEEN years old!" Julie looks down again and wonders what the big deal is. "It's just one body part going into another." Tami, calmed a bit after her outburst, tells her that it isn't just one body part going into another, and Julie saying that it is "makes me real clear that you are not ready for this. And I need you to be able to hear that. I need you to be able to hear me say that to you." Julie tells her mother that she's listening, which, frankly, for a fifteen-year-old to say that to her mother at ALL, let alone in the context of a sex talk, pretty much means that Tami apparently possesses the golden key of wisdom. Tami continues, giving an honest account of what is really at stake for a smart girl who most likely already has the whole "protection" angle covered: "You can be hurt, and you can be degraded. You can become hard, and cynical, and I don't want that to happen to you." Her voice cracks as she lists these possibilities. Tami tells her daughter that sex is special and is for people who are in love, "and you can wait." Long pause. Tami tells Julie that she wants her to be able to talk to her about it and Julie says, "Okay, we're talking, right?" Long pause. Tami brings her hands to her face, smiles ruefully, and then approaches her daughter and hugs her. The camera pans in on Julie's fingers slightly caressing her mother's side as she hugs her back. That detail is gorgeous. On one hand, it's childlike, the little baby caressing a comfortable figure; on the other, it's totally adult-like, the grown child comforting a hurting parent. Tears! Tears, Idle Tears!
The football players file out of the locker room on their way to practice. Julie leans against the building and catches Matt as he comes out. She tells him that her mom saw him buying condoms. Zach Gilford's reaction shot is perfection. He's clearly thinking "witness protection." His first question is whether Tami told her husband, Julie assures him that she didn't, though you can tell this is a bigger deal to Matt than Julie. His second question is an assumption that they won't be having sex now. Julie: "No, we're gonna do it. I just don't understand what the whole hysteria is over losing your virginity." Matt tells her that he got Bradley's lake house for their rendezvous, and Julie is immediately, yup, a bit hysterical over the prospect of Bradley and the whole team knowing. Matt tells her that Bradley won't tell, that he promises nobody will know, and Julie nods trustingly. Another sign that you aren't ready to have sex? Ever believing that the whole team doesn't know.
On the field, the whole team knows. Smash declares, "Hundred eighty seconds. Anything else is failure." (Glark? Another t-shirt? Perhaps for the XXX Glarkware line?) Matt stutters, "Hundred eighty? I can do a hundred eighty." I half expect Smash's pep talk will continue with him recommending that Matt imagine Coach Taylor in the room with a stopwatch, but then I quickly realize how horribly, horribly wrong that image is. Some other boy instructs Matt that he needs to use a camera phone. Matt mutters that he doesn't even have a phone. Tim tells Matt not to listen to these rookies and then weighs in with his own stellar advice: "Remember the first time you drove a car?" Sports metaphors are one thing, but if you find yourself comparing sex to driving a car, well, you probably aren't very good at sex I suppose. In any case, Matt tells Tim that the first time he drove a car he "crashed it and now Landry drives me around." Oh, lord, there is a joke in there somewhere.
During all this awesome stuff, some other annoying stuff is happening, like Daddyshack coming onto the field and making big blabbies about how great Tim is doing on the field, harassing Coach about playing Tim more, ignoring Coach's requests that he watch from the sidelines, and then whining like a big crybaby about how Coach thinks he's better than him. I could not have less patience than I do with this idiot. Shut up, Daddyshack.
After practice, Coach is in his office when Mac "Just a Mistake" MacGill comes in and tells Coach that a camera is missing from the AV room. Coach exposits that it's worth $3,000 and instructs Mac that he'd better find it. Is Mac going to get a spin-off where he tracks down stolen items in blonde pigtails, a short plaid skirt, and some ass-kicking black boots?
At the Garritys' house, Lyla is on the phone with Jason while he -- this time literally -- blah blah blahs on and on about Quad Rugby. Buddy comes home with flowers and heads into the kitchen where his twenty-five-year-old wife is making her fifty-year-old husband and eighteen-year-old daughter dinner. Lyla looks on in horror as Buddy starts making out with her mom. Jason is still blabbing but we hear him realize that Lyla isn't listening, and she tells him it's only because of the horror show she's witnessing. Then Lyla overhears Herc shouting to Jason in the background about a party. Lyla's all "But hunny! I thought we were lame!" Cut to Jason's room where he lies that it's not really a party, but Herc outs him by saying loud enough for Lyla to hear, "It's not 'party,' its 'par-tay'" The man speaks the truth, at least. Cut to Wittle Wywa fuwwowing hew wittle bwow.
Cut to the Par-Tay with lots of wheels and lots of woos. PEOPLE STOP IT WITH THE WOOS! A girl walks over to the kitchen sink and opens the cabinet door underneath, and our friend the quadruple amputee rolls out. Yawn. Like that doesn't happen every Wednesday night in my house. The girl --with that particularly bad "alternative" shade of died red hair (I can mock because I've done it) -- shrieks and everybody laughs. Jason sees his Our Lady of Wheels near the stereo, and he approaches her. She says she's supposed to pick out the song, but she doesn't recognize any of the music. Jason points to one saying, "It's a classic, gotta go with that one." She puts it in, expositing, "Loretta Lynn, nice." Whatever. Jason apologizes for his TRULY HORRIFIC gaffe the other day. WTF? She apologizes back, and they make small talk. She tells him that her "business" is "ink. I'm a tattoo artist." Jason LOVES it. "BECAUSE I'M A CRIPPLE AND I WANNA TATTOO, MOM."
Back in Boring Land, Mac informs Coach that someone saw Daddyshack coming out of the A/V room right before the camera went missing. Mac says this information once. Then Coach says it once. Then Mac repeats it. Then Coach sighs. Fantastic scene! Bravo!
Cut to Coach walking up to the Riggins's house, where Walt is presumably now living. Walt answers the door, and Coach tells him that the camera's gone missing. Walt snarks about whether Coach is going door to door asking all the parents about it. Coach is honest and says no. Tim comes out from behind his dad and says, "He says he doesn't know where the camera is, Coach." Eric turns to leave, and Tim follows him outside, haranguing him about whether he's going to other players' fathers. Coach turns on a dime, tells Tim he didn't know he was there, and apologizes.
"Angela, please." Buddy is firing Tyra's mom. He tells her that his friend needs "a front office girl" and then hands her "six, seven hundred dollars walking around money" from a wad of cash. She sniffles and stalks off.
Julie and Tyra are browsing the Slut Department. Julie asks Tyra what her first time was like, and Tyra responds, "You ever watch the nature channel?" Julie goes chalk white before Tyra laughs and says she was kidding. Tyra looks at Julie intently and tells her that she doesn't have to do this. Julie says she wants to, and Tyra assures her, "Because there will always be a steady stream of horny football players in Dillon, I can guarantee that." Julie giggles and says she really likes Matt and then confesses that she thinks this is "the perfect opportunity where I can control the whole situation. You know, get the information and gather the data." Tyra's eyes widen in disbelief as she looks at a black lace thong, "Wow, sounds hoottt." She tosses the thong to Julie and says, "For Matt. Throw the guy a bone while you're gathering your data." Heh. So, is Julie talking about the gathering of data BEFORE the sex -- asking girlfriends what it's like, buying sexy underwear, internet research (ugh, maybe not that last part) -- or is she literally planning on gathering data during the act itself? Like, she's reaching around Matt's back with a clipboard in one hand and a pen in another, all "Well, controlling for variables, I'd say that the results of this experiment are: DISAPPOINTING."
Austin bar. Despite cranky Austin ex-pat opinion to the contrary, I'm pretty sure they are in Casino El Camino. Though it's hard to tell since that bar is usually only lit by the light of one firefly butt, while the one on screen looks like it's at least got 45 watts working for it. In any case, lots of novelty piercings in the house. Jason talks to Susan about his accident, saying that the minute the ball left his hands he knew it wasn't good. The rest of what he says is what we already know. Susan is a sucker for a sob story, and she tells him that if it were her, she'd spend her whole life wondering "why?" Jason is truthful and says that there is a lot of that, and that everything he ever did to try to answer that question didn't work. And that now he's ready to get rid of the anger. Herc wheels up and spits (literally), "Hey! After School Special!" and then tells Jason that the bar has the best jukebox in the city, which means...it's time for a dance party. And then, Jason does something that quite possibly might make him dead to me forever. He reacts to this proposition snarkily. Listen, pal, if you aren't part of the dance party solution, you are part of the world's problem. Susan asks if he wants to get out of there, and he agrees.
They go to her tattoo shop, True Blue. Cut to Jason flipping through some of the designs. He asks what one is, and Susan answers, "That's the Chinese symbol for 'wealth.' It's also the Chinese symbol for 'douche.'" Heh. My thoughts exactly. Jason asks if there is a Chinese symbol for "cripple" and Susan declares -- please note this, because it will become important in a moment -- "No Chinese symbols!" Then she adds, "No barbed wire, no naked ladies" and tells him she's looking for something for him. I know! The Tasmanian Devil? Cuz he's whimsical and badass at the same time? Gosh, there are SO MANY ways to go wrong in a tattoo parlor. Jason asks her about a design hanging at her station and she says it's the wallpaper from her grandmother's house. He asks if they were close and she responds, "No! She was a bitch on wheels and everyone was glad when she died." Sentimental but not cloying this girl. She finally finds the design she was looking for. Not no Chinese symbol, neither. Nope, what she's picked out for him is...Sanskrit. Saying "Peace." Gun. To my head.
Grey morning at the Playgirl Ranch. The house is a wreck. Tim comes out bleary-eyed and his dad asks him from the couch, "How ya feelin' buddy?" What a gross relationship. Tim goes outside and rummages around their junky shed/garage/slash trash pile. He finds the camera and brings it inside to show his dad. Who immediately acts like a four year old and swears he was going to take it back, "I swear." Tim tells his dad to get out. Daddyshack gets up and tells Tim to watch "how easy this is." Ouch. That is really mean. He leaves.
Evening. Matt drives up to the lake house, turns on the lights and sees that it is full of dead, stuffed animals and, also, is filthy. He starts cleaning up. Cut to Julie in her bathroom in a robe, with total Sex Hair (my friend asked whether she was planning on floating on a shell later that night), putting her make-up on. She lets out a big sigh as she looks at herself in the mirror. Back in the cabin, Matt waits on the couch. Julie comes to the door and, at the threshold, tells him she needs to be home by eleven, "so we should get right down to the sex, right?" Matt is just slackjawed. Julie chirps, "Good!" The girl wasn't kidding when she talked about controlling the situation.
Coach is "looking" for something. I put "looking" in quotes because it seems whenever my husband is looking for something, what he is really doing is "looking" for something. Anyway, he's rummaging around the bathroom for the aspirin. He pulls out a plastic bag and brings it out with him. He asks Tami if she is planning something special for the night, and before she turns around, she jokes that she's cooking him dinner and if he gets rid of his headache he might get lucky. But when she turns around, Coach is holding up a leopard thong demanding to know if those aren't hers what their fifteen-year-old daughter is doing with them. Tami takes a deep breath and says she guesses she needs to talk to him about something.
She tells Coach about Matt and the condoms. Coach doesn't furrow, he doesn't clench, this time he only blinks and blinks. And then blinks some more. "I'm sorry say that again?" Tami won't repeat it because she knows he heard her. Tami says she talked to Julie -- Coach wants to know if this talk involved the rule that if Matt touches her, she's getting sent to a nunnery -- and then tells her husband that she told Julie she was too young and "tried to make the best case that I could against it." Coach wonders if maybe they should just get Julie her own apartment. Tami tells Eric that the reason she didn't consult him was because she thought he'd freak out. She doesn't say "like you are right now." Something occurs to Eric, and he asks "Where is she right now?" Tami says she's at Lois's studying.
Cut to Coach on an awkward phone call with Mr. Lois. "Well, was she supposed to come over there?" he asks while Tami's eyes widen behind him. He hangs up and bitchily tells his wife she might want to figure out where their daughter is.
Tyra's in the kitchen at Applebee's. Tim comes back, and she scolds him for being there. He asks if she can take a break, and she scoffs that it's the dinner rush and she can't take a break. He looks at her with those eyes of his, which are both his and eyes, and then walks off, telling Tyra to forget it.
In the cabin, Matt is on top of Julie on the couch and they are making out. Julie pauses and tells Matt that the deer head on the wall is staring at her. Indeed, it appears to be true. Matt tells her to just not look at it. She feels like it's judging her and so he hops up to cover it with a blanket. When he does so, he mutters something so endearingly dorky, "See? There, he's sleepin.'" And then he hops back toward her, saying that "it's hard not to look at you cuz you're so good-lookin'." PER-E-SHUSH. They resume making out. And making out. Until Julie wonders whether it's really hot in there. Matt hops over and opens a window. More making out. Until Julie then wonders whether it smells like wet dog. Welcome to the world of sex, Julie. Dead deer judge you for it and it can be hot and smelly sometimes, too. Matt pauses this time and rests his head on her cheek. He pulls back and says "Let's not do this." Julie stutters this time, saying that she wants to, she really does, but Matt says that they "don't have to." The relief on this girl's face when she hears it is heartbreaking. "We, we don't?" Matt says they can just hang out or eat of something and Julie, brightly, "Really?!" She shifts her legs out from under him and starts to lean towards him for quality cuddling. Matt, kneeling on the couch, with a frozen grin waves her off, "Uh, just don't touch me right now, uh, give me a minute."
Julie might be having a sweet night, but her parents are having a bitter one. They sit in silence watching the clock. Tami finally breaks the silence and tells her husband that they have the exact same amount of experience being parents. That the truth is, for the most part, they are winging it. She confesses she didn't know what to do in this situation but that "the most important part to me is that my daughter be able to talk to me. A girl is entitled to that with her mother." Sing it, sister. She tells Eric that her mother used to tell her that she'd go to hell if a guy even touched her, and that didn't work to keep her from doing it. She pauses and looks off into the distance before saying that they raised a smart, moral girl and that she has faith in them as well as in Julie. "We just gotta let her go." Coach looks at her and says "I'm sorry if I hurt you" and they reach out to one another.
Over in the Cabin of I Could Die of the Cuteness, Matt and Julie are leg wrestling. They are laughing and giggling and loving each other. Matt gets a glimpse at Julie's feet and teases her that she has the ugliest feet ever. She says that having the second toe longer than the first "is a sign of royalty." Aw, I love that. A little joke that is clearly a Taylor family joke, and she's sharing it with the boy that she loooovveeess. She points out that he has dirt all over his feet. "Omigod, we were gonna have sex tonight and you didn't even wash your feet?!" Matt mutters, "I was gonna keep my socks on!" Aaaaahhahaha! I love that he thought the issue through ("What will be on my feet while we do it?") and came to that conclusion ("They will be be-socked!"). Boys: Coming to ridiculous conclusions about sex since the beginning of time.
Ponderous piano chords of Ryan Adams's "Political Scientist" take us over to Shaggy Greasy Timmy Riggins, swigging a forty out front of the bar from the opening scene. He tosses the bottle to the ground. He wanders inside and makes eye contact with the guys he and his dad hustled. He just stands there at the door, his head lowered as the entire bar full of men start moving toward him. Cut over to Tyra finding out from her mom that Buddy fired her. Tyra's mom shrills that she doesn't want to talk about it. Tyra's phone rings, though, and it's her bartender friend Theresa telling her that Tim is about to get his ass kicked. Tyra tells her mom they'll finish the conversation later.
Back outside the bar, the slow music adds terrible import to poor little Timmy in the center of a circle of about twenty or thirty full-grown men. As Ryan starts howling, "There's no guaranteeeeeees, there's no guaranteeeeees," Tim runs at the ass he hustled, who throws him to the ground and starts punching the crap out of him. Tim smiles with feral abandon, his mouth bloodied. A good number of the men file back in to the bar, their desire to watch a full-grown man beat up a high school kid satisfied. But the Hustled Man keeps after Tim, smarming about Tim not having his father there to protect him. He lands four or five terribly violent punches before Billy and Tyra pull up and rush to break them up. ["In their time-traveling Delorian, one would assume. Unless it took Tim and Hustled Man twenty minutes to walk outside." -- Joe R] Billy shoves the ass away, telling him that Tim is "just a kid, man, he's just a kid." Tyra peels Tim off the ground, and then she and Billy hoist him between them and carry him off, lurching.
Crackling fire, Julie cozy in Matt's arms on the couch. Matt stirs and catches sight of the clock. "Hey, uh, Jules, it's kinda um..." It's 1:30 in the morning. Julie jumps up, panicked, and we cut to them pulling up in front of the Taylor house. Julie tells Matt to kill the lights. Why kids think their parents will be sleeping soundly when they're three hours late for curfew, I will never know, but I know every time I did it -- every. single. time -- I thought I had a chance of sneaking into my room without them realizing. Once again the moral is: kids are stupid.
They pause at the curb while Julie rummages for her keys. Matt asks if he should walk her to the door, and she asks if he's kidding. "My dad's gonna kill you if he sees you." Julie keeps rummaging distractedly until Matt blurts, "Julie, I love you." She stops and stares and says, "Uh, what?" She stutters and then says, "Uh, me too. I love you, too." She gets out of the car with a sweet smile toward Matt, but as she walks away from the car in slow motion, the sweetest smile is the one she sort of makes to herself, like this is some very unexpected data that makes the experiment even that much more exciting.
Inside the house, Tami and Eric stare off into space, completely crazy-faced. Julie comes in the door, Tami jumps up. Coach just demands, "Are you alright? Are you alright?" Julie says she is and then before anyone can say anything else she launches into it: "I'm sorry, I know I'm late, and I should've called....but I was with Matt and we fell asleep and...nononono, nothing like that happened, nothing that you're thinking happened, I swear to you guys, that nothing happened." Tami just looks at her daughter in silence. Julie says good-night and comes forward for a hug from her mom. The two women cling to one another for a moment, and as Julie pulls away, she says, "Thanks for the talk." Tami just nods, Julie looks sheepishly at both her parents and then turns to go to bed. Tami turns around to her husband, whose hair just sort of faints away and falls back in a teenager-induced stress-swoon.
Church. Preaching. Matt looks around and catches the eyes of the Taylors, Julie with a slight smile, Tami and Eric burning fire with their eyes at him. Buddy clasps his wife's hand. Out in the land of the Godless Sluts, Tyra's mom drives her daughter down the road while Tyra chatters on about getting a paper and looking through the want ads or maybe going to see a movie. It is a grey, grey, rainy morning. Angela looks dead-eyed. She swerves the truck unexpectedly and zooms into the church parking lot. Tyra tries to keep her mom from doing this, but Angela rushes out and marches toward the congregation gathered outside the church, chatting after the service. She beelines toward Buddy and slaps him across the face and calls him a lying son of a bitch before Tyra can grab her and pull her away. The Godly Non-Adulterors look on in complete horror (Julie gathering yet some more data) as Tyra pulls her mom back to the truck, whisper-shouting to her, "What were you thinking?!" Pam Garrity runs off in shock and embarrassment, Lyla follows her mom, Buddy calls after his wife.
Drive-by Camera, grey Texas suburbs, shabby ranch houses go by one by one. Tim stops his truck and hops out with the camera in his hand. His face is all kinds of fucked up. Can we charge that Hustled Guy with a crime against the state? Coach opens the door and immediately asks Tim what happened. Tim just hands him the camera; Coach asks if he is okay, and Tim sort of simultaneously almost wells up in tears and nods "yes." Coach invites him inside, but Tim chokes out that he'll just see Coach at practice and walks back to his truck, Coach looking after him with concern in his eyes and in his hair. Playoffs? What playoffs?