Previously: Jack turns the lights off and tells Jill to "proceed as usual," doubtless setting off a lengthy spell of forearm-nibbling on his part. Elispa and Mikey find their living situation fascinating, and belabor this issue with various cronies. Mr. E issues an ultimatum about Mikey -- and Elispa chooses Mikey. Undaunted by their various "issues," Barto and Ferret vow to drag the wheezing carcass of their relationship through a couple more episodes.
Jack scuttles to the door carrying a rainbow-colored duster and a bath mat. Why hello, Poor Man's Transsexual Felix Unger -- is that your pasty white abdomen I see? For the first of what promises to be numerous times in the coming hour? I need a drink. Of arsenic. And here comes Jill -- who, to ensure that the audience makes no mistake about his newfound status as a photography hobbyist, now comes permanently equipped with a camera and assorted gadgets! "Locked out again?" Jack asks smugly, returning to her anal frenzy of Venetian blind detailing, or whatever. Jack wears stiff low-rider Toughskins and one of those doily-esque, bubble-sleeved peasant blouses favored by the barmaid on the St. Pauli Girl label. Though even the St. Pauli frau had the good taste not to wear a black bra under hers. "It's the third time this week!" she needles him. Jill rattles off all the places the keys might be, then grouses about Barto not being around to let him in. Jack fusses by the window, arranging the bathmat on the windowsill. Um, what? Perhaps the script directions read, "Engage in frantic busywork, the more nonsensical the better. PS: No one's watching anyway!" Meanwhile, a look of dawning realization from the Lucille Ball School of Sit-Comical Scheming manifests itself on Jack's chisel-face. "You know, you could always leave a spare key here with me, and I can leave one with you," she says. "Purely as your neighbor -- not as your girlfriend." Jill says, "Okay," rather warily and they quibble tiresomely about the "insignificant" kind of key exchange that goes on between neighbors, as opposed to the "way more significant exchange" represented by inter-relationship key swapping. Jill contemplates leaving his key with Audrey but decides not to, based on the possibility that she might lose it. Which is an extreme likelihood, since those Lycra unitards she's forever wearing don't seem to come equipped with pockets. "I guess you're my only choice," Jill grumbles, adding, "Or Miss Petroskie in 3C -- she seems nice," which is the cue for Jack to bat at him with the duster and fall cackling into his lap. The truth about Romeo? He's out of a job.
I don't know about you, but I'm glad Nick Drake offed himself before he had to see "Pink Moon" used to shill Volkswagens. And not that I'm anti-it, but the new gold dollar commercial makes me nauseous with the infinite regress of money being branded and marketed. What are we supposed to be thinking -- "Hey, I think I'll go buy me some of that funky fresh cash the kids are talking about"?!
Shaker Shack. Elispa walks into the kitchen in a navy-blue bellbottom pantsuit, looking like the product of an unholy union between Shaft and Judith Light. She checks the contents of various empty cereal boxes, tossing each aside and saying, "Mikey." The knuckle-scraper himself stumbles down from the Lecher Loft scratching himself. They have a terse exchange wherein she asks if he's seen her keys and he says he hasn't seen the floor since he moved in. She locates the keys and exits, just as Mikey finds her discarded banana peel and says, "Dude!"
Here's a familiar scene: Jill watches morosely as his key is copied in a hardware store, while Mikey, Arch Enemy of Commitment, recites an epic catalogue of risks he's taking in doing so. Jill protests that a key is just a key, but Mikey insists that "it's a symbol," and that "thing you know she'll be stealing your favorite sweatshirt and taking the messages off your machine, and BAM! She's got one of your drawers." Um, Mikey, if you'd been paying attention you'd know that Jack got into Jill's drawers back in February, so you're a little behind the curve. But carry on, by all means. "Once you give Jack that key," he drones, in a voice dripping with foreboding, "you're giving her an all-access pass to your entire life! And she willuse that pass, bro!" It's anyone's guess why Simon Rex parts his hair somewhere centimeters above his left ear, in a part zone heretofore utilized only by bald men attempting comb-overs. Perhaps there are some truths about Romeo best left unknown. "I'll have a pass, too," Jill says. Mikey asks what he's going to do with it and Jill gets flustered, whining, "Wait, are we talking symbolically, or for real? I'm confused here." Mikey hands him the finished key, uttering the menacing non sequitur, "You feeling me now?" Jill pouts.
Jack walks down the hall in the denim jacket and pants outfit popularized by TV's Chachi Arcola. She pauses outside her apartment to listen to the barking and braying noises emanating from within. She walks in to find Ferret talking loudly to herself. "I'm acting," Ferret explains, and Jack gives a "whatever" shrug, presumably because at no time in that sentence was her name mentioned. She excuses herself to take a shower. Ferret, woefully bereft of mini-braids, sports a lank, bi-level shag that emphasizes the Cubist deformity of her features. She asks why Jack doesn't shower at the gym, and Jack reasserts her role as the show's lovably Howard Hughesian germ freak, squealing, "Like, a jillion people shower there, I don't need some crazy foot fungus." Takes one to know one, sister. Audrey ponders Jack's banal anality, then remembers that Jill brought by a present and hands it to her. Jack's teeth come to the fore as she opens a jewelry box containing Jill's key. She shows the key to Ferret with a smile intended to be winsome, but weighing in instead at loathsome. "God, you're easy," Ferret says as Jack scurries off with the key.