Episode Report Card Tumbleweed: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bad Timing And Dirty Laundry
By Tumbleweed | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.15.2000
Jack and Anchormatt hail a cab, which in this cinema verité masterpiece stops even though its "off duty" light is lit. I can tell by the look on Jack's face that this scene is going to give me an itchy problem rash. And in no way am I disappointed. The badly mustachioed driver asks where they're going, prompting Jack to rattle off the following information: "We don't know. We're just winging it. Flying by the seat of our pants." And with those two statements, the cliché index for this episode becomes hazardous. But listen: she's still talking. "We were going to go to Central Park but we ended up going to the Guggenheim, and we were going to spend the whole day there but then we got in the mood for the Strand, and now we're thinking Thai, but we could end up doing Italian! We just have no idea!" For the love of all that is sacred, will you please. Just. Shut UP. During this interminable monologue, Jack looks delighted with herself, Anchormatt looks enthralled, and the driver scans his phrasebook for the sentence, "I asked for a destination, not an autobiography, you prattling slag." "I know," says Jack, "What's your name?" as I perk up in ghoulish fascination to learn how she'll annoy me next. The driver says his name is Yuri, which is also the name of a Russian dwarf hamster I had my freshman year of college. But this coincidence doesn't stop Jack from saying, "Okay, Yuri. You decide. It's your call." Yuri mumbles something about "turistas" and heads Bronx-ward in search of a shallow grave to bury these suckers in. Or at least that's how it would go down on Law and Order, and any number of other bearable shows.
Jill, Allison, Christmas lights and dry ice. Jill chides Allison for not putting out an APB when he didn't show for their date. "For all I knew I was being stood up," she says, laughing nervously. "Oh yeah, the old 'stuck in the laundry room' story -- works every time," he jokes, but his impetuous humming of "We Will Rock You" tells us that, indeed, his thoughts are elsewhere. When Allison expresses her distaste for said anthem of J 'n' J's laundry-room adventure, two things happen: Jill ups the ante on the Eyebrow Olympics, going for a double-tilde, but achieving only an inverted breve; and Freddie Mercury exhumes himself yet again to spend some royalties on a stiff drink. Which I suppose is the only kind of drink the undead can have.
Elispa walks angrily toward the coffee-haus where Mr. E strummed her life with his words. She looks in the window and sees him conversing with a gaggle of sycophantic grungeniks. Sensing the laser-like beam of her wounded gaze upon him, he emerges from the café and they have a scintillating exchange wherein Elispa tries to establish that she's not a skanky ho, while Mr. E intimates that there's something terribly wrong with him. "I'm not someone that you walk out on," she says, as if that decision were up to her and not the person doing the walking. Bottom-feeder of platitudes that she is, Elispa snaps up the bait on his whole "don't touch me, I'm damaged" line. "Just out of curiosity," she says, "why don't I want to get involved with you?" "Because there's stuff -- aboot me," he falters, revealing that the first skeleton in his closet is an ill-concealed Canadian heritage. He then hums the chorus of "I'm not the person you're looking for" and deflects all her helpful suggestions about what he really means: "You're with someone?" No. "You have a fatal disease?" Nein. Possibilities he doesn't decline: lapsed priesthood, switch hitter, dead spouse, IV drug user, Witness Protection Program, and alien origins. Take your pick. I for one called it correctly in the forums, but you'll have to wait on manimal to tell all in the next recap. But wait, Elispa is still talking, chiding Mr. E for not "sticking around [to find] out how horrible we both are." Now there's a dance of seduction as done by a master! He buys it, saying, "I'm not -- horrible." Elispa, resmitten, smiles gummily and Mr. E offers his full name: Jonathan Alter. "Elispa Cronkite," she says, and they shake hands while my dog checks the tags of her new squeeze, a dissipated spaniel whose issues include abandonment anxiety and fear of commitment.
Cut to a close-up of The New York Times. Finally, things are starting to get interesting! But just as I've assembled my magnifying apparatus to read the articles on the front page, Jill folds the paper down to reveal Jack in a tank top tighter than a sausage casing. "I'm sorry to bother you, but do you have any sugar?" she says. "No, but I have mace," Jill fails to say, opting instead for, "Sugar, light-bulbs, paper clips, tweezers, blah blah blah -- we both know why you come here. I'm not saying I don't like it, okay, I'm just saying let's not pretend anymore." He gets up and moves toward her with alarming speed. "We're past that," he says, "I mean, we've been . . . to the laundry room. No turning back." Jack's eyebrows execute a quick grave and acute accent combo, but he's on her like naked on a nudist before the judges can make their decision. They're interrupted by a husky voice saying, "Luuuke, I am your faaaather," but I must be hearing things since the closed captioning says it's just Allison calling Jill's name. Dream Sequence Jill explains to Dream Sequence Jack that "it's Allison," causing real-time Allison to croak, "Well, who else would it be?" And if you didn't think Allison was spooky before, this scene will seal the deal for ya. Suffice it to say that she looks embalmed and sounds like an emphysematous Tom Waits. Jill squashes his puffy face into the pillow and his blank stare seems to say, "Could it be that I'm drawn to my sassy, ubiquitous neighbor, who's wrong for me in so many ways but in other ways so right? Because if so, I'm presented with a conundrum unexamined by any entertainment medium in the entirety of showbiz history!"