Episode Report Card Manimal: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT When You Wish Upon A Car
By Manimal | Season 1 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.22.2000
Jill's workplace. Two big yellow brick structures are on a table, from which Jill's head emerges like the mighty Grendel of yore. He looks rumpled. His boss tells him to rise and shine. Jill apologizes and launches into an explanation of "there was a little old man's car alarm," but rather than reprimanding him, his boss is telling him they're going to need him "full steam," now that "Zantopia here..." and he gestures to the structure on Jill's desk. "What's wrong with it?" Jill says, expecting to get ripped a new one.
New scene: @Bar. "Absolutely nothing," Jill is saying excitedly to Barto and Mikey. He goes on to say it's going to be the new Lego set, the modern-day equivalent of an Erector set, yippety yappety yap ready for Christmas next year yappety yippety yoo. Barto and Mikey congratulate him. Mikey says, "That's absolutely amazing -- that's been like number one on your wish list forever." "What?" says Jack. (Uh-oh, kids -- can you hear that in the background? That THUMP-THUMP-THUMP? Why, you're right -- I do believe it is the footsteps of Mr. Overused Theme! Pull up a chair, Mr. Overused Theme!) Mikey continues, "The toy for the ages, the single great plaything for the --" Barto interrupts, "The single great TIMELESS plaything." Mikey says, "Right, I forgot timeless." Jill does his best approximation of a double-take (poor Ivan Sergei, they don't teach double-takes in modeling school) and goes into the "wait a minute guys, the craziest thing happened last night!" monologue about the cute little old man, and he tells Barto and Mikey the whole eerie coincidence. Mikey says it's too bad that Jill's great success happens along right when Jill is obviously losing his mind. Jill protests that it really happened, while Barto and Mikey point out the unlikeliness of anyone selling ice cream in the middle of the night, let alone three wishes.
Right then, hitting his mark, Mikey's boss Kevin wanders up to tell Mikey to hop to work because they're three waitresses short. Mikey says he hopes the wish-dispensing dude will come by tonight, and that way he could wish for more help. No, wait, he says, that'd be a waste of a wish -- instead he'd have to go for one night with Laeticia Casta. After a pause that goes on for a bit too long, Jill says, "Yeee-aaaah," in his best frat-boy imitation, leading me to believe that Ivan Sergei can't read and had a hard time with the TelePrompTer. ["Or that, as Tumbleweed's boyfriend and I have long maintained, Ivan Sergei doesn't like girls 'that way.'" -- Sars] Mikey says wait a minute -- he could wish for Laeticia to wait tables. Oh, that lovable rogue Mikey! Don't you just wish YOU had him as YOUR buddy to toss out these hilarious one-liners during stressful life situations? Maybe Mikey could have a seat next to Mr. Overused Theme! After he tosses off his latest bon mot, Mikey moves on. Next, cut to Barto's double-take reaction, which is totally out of sync, so the effect is not unlike watching one of those poorly dubbed kung fu movies from the seventies. Then Jill and Barto give each other "oh, that Mikey!" looks.
Next scene. Street fair. Elispa, wearing a hoodie and a black jacket, and Jack, training for her second career as a sherpa by wearing a purple poncho, wander the streets. Jack complains that she now hates street fairs since she did her bills last night and cannot buy anything until May. BOO-FUCKING-HOO. For some reason they turn to watch a mime. Elispa stops to pick up a hideous, cheaply enameled blue porcelain tin that she exclaims over. (Antiques Roadshow would use it as a spittoon, I'm so sure.) The woman at the booth tells her it's eighteenth-century "Severigne [sic]" French porcelain -- five hundred dollars. Now, I'm no antiques expert, but shouldn't that be more like FIVE THOUSAND dollars, since even a nineteenth-century-imitation-Shaker rocker made of cheap Philippine mahogany goes for like six hundred bucks at Crate and Barrel? But whatever. Elispa makes little "too rich for my blood!" faces and puts it down. Jack asks her about Jonathan. Elispa, lisping so much she sounds like Daffy Duck, tells Jack that he drives a cab, and then lists what I consider all of Jonathan's terrible qualities: "Plays a guitar. Sings at Max's. Makes me very, very happy." Jack prompts, "Except?" Elispa says, "I just don't feel like I know a damn thing about him. All we ever do is talk about me. Which -- normally [here Elispa makes a self-deprecating moue that would make Scarlett O'Hara proud; also, Jack starts laughing a beat too early, BEFORE Elispa gets to the punchline] would be fine, but I don't know -- like, for example, I've never seen his apartment." Jack says, in the hushed tones one would normally reserve for talking about someone's debilitating illness, says, "Maybe it's not much -- where he lives." ( As opposed to his other apartment, that he keeps livestock in?) "Oh my God, you're probably right," says Elispa, as if Zeus had struck her with a thunderbolt. "So stop worrying," says Jack. I sure wish that girl would learn how to deliver a line instead of using the tricks she learned at the Helen Hunt School of Eyebrow Emoting. Also, over-enunciating and moving your lips a lot is not an acting technique, or so I've heard. So just as Jack says, "Relax," someone knocks into her from behind, and in a slo-mo sequence borrowed from Charmed, an ostensibly expensive bottle gets knocked out of her hand and onto the ground, where it breaks. Jack goes into convulsive apologies. The porcelain hawker tells her not to worry -- since Jack's paying for it. Jack asks if she can borrow money from Elispa after all. Elispa says sure. Jack asks how much the bottle was. The porcelain hawker apparently thinks that chintzy shard of lavender glass is "Baccarat -- signed -- sixteen hundred dollars." D'oh!! Jack curls her eyebrows in distress. The porcelain hawker says, "I can let it go for fifteen hundred." Jack's eyebrow distress becomes even deeper, making her forehead look like some Botox experiment gone really wrong.