It's anyone's guess why they used this title, which is also the title of an obscure science fictional yarn by Scott Bradfield. There's only one animal in the whole episode -- a carriage horse who shows no discernible Mr. Ed star appeal. It can only logically be understood as an MBTV reference, and an acknowledgment that the show's principals do in fact resemble ferrets, primates, and Abyssinian guinea pigs.
Previously: Belinda licks chocolate sauce off of Mikey's abs while straddling him in what looks to be a set of Superman Underoos. In medias res, Mikey goes to the kitchen and meets Belinda's spooky roommate, Lucy. Jill dickers with Anchormatt for Jack's affections. Jack tells Jill that Anchormatt makes her happy, and Jill says he'll make her happier. Judging from Jack's coiffure in this scene and later scenes, they clearly mean "nappy" and "nappier." Later Jill approaches Jack and announces, in a crescendo of adenoidal whimpering, that he's scared "for the rest of [his] life [he'll] be comparing every woman [he] meets to [her]." He challenges Jack to tell him she doesn't feel it too, and suddenly he's on her like bald on Bruce Willis. Anchormatt tells a stuttering, cowl-neck clad Jack that he has turned down the job in DC and wants her to move in with him. Elispa tells Jill not to give up and he takes this as a green light to commandeer a horse-drawn carriage and hit on Jack while she's out with Anchormatt. Both Jill and Anchormatt are all, "What do you say, Jack?" and she stands there looking like a big mouth on stilts as usual.
Fade in on a freeze frame of the final scene in last week's show: two bachelors and some teeth on a stick. Jill looks petulant and Anchormatt looks aggrieved. Jack gazes sorrowfully at Anchormatt and he says, "You know this makes no sense." "I know," she says, affecting a damsel-in-distress expression in yet another Señor Wences sock-hat. Anchormatt gets in a cab to clear the way for a Jack and Jill coupling, and thereby the precipitous end of this series. Jack grins goonishly at Jill and leaps onto the carriage. The horse adjusts its blinders so as not to witness to their amorous shenanigans.
The song budget for this show must have gone the way of the set budget, because the scene opens on the horse plodding down the only street in Jack 'n' Jill's neighborhood to the strains of a song they've used three times in as many episodes. You guessed it, it's "I've got the soul search hunger . . . You've got the deep heart desire, but we try to deny we were perfect from the start . . ." I'm as thumbs-up on Warner Brothers synergy as the guy, but in this case, the guy is Ted Kaczynski. Play this tune one more time, and I'll hurt someone. Badly. So the carriage moves slowly down the single Rockwellian street of No New York I've Ever Seen, pausing so Ick 'n' Ill can share a face-fondling French kiss which incurs the honking of irate motorists. They adjourn to a handy snow-capped grotto where a band of schoolchildren stop to hoot and gawk at their PG-13 antics. Ick cackles with her mouth agape, and Ill fears for his head.
Cut to Barto fussing with an anatomical model of the human heart. Mikey walks up in a muy Guido leather car coat and watch cap. "So that's it," he says, "the Big Kahuna of organs." What with the protagonist of his early films being his johnson and all, I'd think Mikey/Simon Rex would locate the Big Kahuna of organs a little further south. Barto calls the heart "number two on my all-time hit list," and judging from the sultry way he stares at Mikey, I think we know what number one is for him. Mikey puzzles over the mechanics of the human body and Barto tells him not to think about it too hard "'cause it gets kind of weird. And whatever you do," he adds, "don't start thinking about your tongue." This cryptic advice spurs Simon Rex to assume the quizzical "Whassup?" expression that is the alpha and omega of his acting technique. The ferret scurries in jauntily, looking like an unmade bed in a variety of mismatched chenille garments. "One quick question," she says. "Valentine's Day." Barto transfers his sloe-eyed gaze to her and says, "And an answer that won't get me in trouble would be --" "Yes!" Ferret blares. Unwittingly, she has donned an orange crocheted hat that makes her resemble an inverted number 2 pencil. Barto agrees regardless, and she informs him that a friend of hers can get them tickets to Roseland, which he correctly identifies as "the swing place." He looks dyspeptic at this prospect and Ferret says, "We can do anything." Barto says, "Good, because I was planning on taking off my clothes and singing My Heart Will Go On in the middle of Times Square -- you know, something a little less embarrassing." Justin Kirk delivers this line with the timing of a man who has just consumed a square foot of hash brownies. "Okay, you can do that on the way home," says the self-actualizing rodent, who's listened to enough Tony Robbins tapes never to take non for an answer.
Close-up of Elispa's limpid brown eyes as she says, "I'm telling you -- there is a woman vacuuming naked in the apartment across the street. Cut to Mr. E's raised eyebrow. "I'm not gonna fall for that again," he says. "Okay, how 'bout on the count of three, we both get to blink," she suggests. He's not buying. He asks, "So, would you describe yourself as a gold person or a silver person?" Cut to Elispa looking intrigued in a proto-Stevie Nicks gauze peasant top and floral shawl ensemble. I'm thinking she's a gold dust woman and Mr. E is a rhinestone cowboy. "What do you mean?" she asks. "Jewelry-wise," he says, causing her to blink in consternation. Mr. E says, "Yes!" and makes standing-O crowd noises. She says it's not fair for him to "play the jewelry card," then asks if "this is because Valentine's Day is tomorrow." She admonishes him not to get her anything, but he says he wants to. If the way they get their kicks is by having staring contests, then perhaps he should get her a deck of cards or, say, a Ouija Board. Elispa shrills, "You just feel like you have to because some card company brainwashed you into thinking the only way you can show someone you care is by giving them chocolates or flowers or jewelry, accompanied of course by a card." Wow, that Elispa doesn't wear leotards and refuse to wash her hair for nothing -- she's a rad sixties throwback, with the ersatz Marxist rhetoric to prove it! "So you really don't want me to do anything for you?" Mr. E asks skeptically. "At least not on February 14," Elispa says. "Any other time though, I'd love it." She then throws down the gauntlet for another staring contest, and he suggests "the best 27 out of 53," leading me to wonder if the reason for their mysterious bond is that they're both Amish. Let's examine this further: Mr. E plays acoustic guitar, they don't drink and use candles instead of electricity, and Elispa's clothing has no buttons. Jill had to borrow that horse-and-buggy from someone, and the last person he was seen speaking to was Elispa. Who made a horse reference. And has an apartment filled with Shaker furniture. I rest my case.
Back to Ick and Ill. Ill turns the horse over to an old man, clearly an Amish stable-keeper or some operative of Elispa's. Ill pats the horse goodbye wistfully, because once it's out of the picture, there's nothing standing between him, Ick, and some dreaded hetero busy-ness. "I'm gonna take you somewhere," he stalls, hoisting the suede-swaddled sock puppet up and twirling her in the X-mas-lit street. Meanwhile, Mikey sponges a countertop while Belinda looks on with a "way to go" expression. "You have the best wipe," she says. Should I repeat that, or did you get it the first time? "The way you get all that schmutzy stuff with one flick of the wrist," she gushes. Mikey looks tentatively pleased and says with dual meaning, "Yeah, you make as many messes as I do, you get pretty good at cleaning up." He asks where Lucy is and Belinda says, "She's working late, I think." "Cool," Mikey says, looking as pensive as a single-celled organism can. Belinda says he can stay over again and he claims he has to work the late shift at the bar because he needs the extra cash. Lucy ex machina. She's wearing a mauve pashmina and carrying a big sack of Blockbuster videos. She says, "If I read one more self-indulgent, self-important, great new voice of American fiction bull --" and then looks up to see Mikey and Belinda. If they're peddling this person as the woman of Mikey's dreams, aren't they placing undue stress on her literacy? Are they paving the way for long Socratic dialogues wherein Mikey asks Lucy if Bret Easton Ellis is the Big Kahuna of American writers? Stop this ride, I want to get off! Lucy asks if she's interrupting anything, and Mikey says "No!" a tad too enthusiastically. Belinda says, "I made pirogues," and Lucy says, "Aww, and Mikey's cleaning up. I wouldn't have pegged you as a kitchen guy." Her enunciation during this scene is so bizarre that it almost distracts me from her wardrobe, which is stranger still. Under her winter coat, it seems that she's opted to wear a turtleneck dickie as a blouse. Mikey says sagely, "I'd think for someone who's as quick to peg people as you are, I'd think someone like that would be pretty good at pegging someone like me." Lucy grimaces demonically while Belinda simpers approvingly and says, "He's so funny." Boy, get these three together and you've got a veritable Vesuvius of inanity! Lucy offers to leave them alone, but Mikey wants to know what videos she got. Looks like "Point Break, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Speed and The Matrix." Mikey has a little eyebrow episode and says, "Ah, a chick who appreciates the unique talents of Keanu." Yes, as precocious as Simon Rex's vapid line delivery is, Keanu remains the uncontested Big Kahuna of one-note pretty-boy actors. "I love the man," says Lucy, with excessive, inscrutable topspin. Angela Featherstone's acting technique seems to consist of a losing battle to gain mastery over a chronic facial twitch. "He's so lame!" protests Belinda, sealing her fate as the odd man out in this threesome. "He's so misunderstood," Mikey and Lucy say in unison, immortalizing their Keanu Kismet by doing a complete-the-sentence recitation of plots from his films: Lucy says, "He finds the perfect wave," and Mikey says, "Whoah!" "Finds the bomb on the bus . . ." "Whoah!" "Finds out he's the messiah . . ." "Whoah!" Belinda looks on with an expiration date of yesterday stamped on her forehead. "So which one should we watch first?" Mikey says, because suddenly, it seems, he doesn't have to work the late shift after all.
Jitterbug music plays as Barto gets jiggy with his anatomy skeleton, doing an elaborate swing dance in accordance with some instructional video. From his groggy, half-lidded expression, it looks like Barto's been stretching the definition of medical marijuana again. Segue to the feisty Ferret, Jazzercizing in a sports bra and sweatpants. Flexible Ferret executes a variety of squat-thrusts and stomach-flexing lunges as an instructor counts tediously. In one step, a muscle-bound man flings her across the room and she falls to the floor like a sack of hammers. Her Jazzercise colleagues affect concern, but the stoic ferret cannot be deterred from further lewd gyrations.
Meanwhile, Ick and Ill are back on the same block of the same street they're always on. They should really get out more; who knows what the employment and entertainment opportunities might be outside that one-street radius? Ill leads Ick forward with her eyes covered, but she's peeking the whole time "just to expedite things." Ill tells her to "let go -- a little" and suddenly they're on the roof of their building, where there's a handy greenhouse for them to have sex in. Cue the inevitable beatific wailing of some Enya/Tori Amos hybrid as Ick says, "Wow," with emphatic eyebrow accents. thing we know, they're in the greenhouse going at each other like dueling air-powered nail guns. "This is weird," she simpers, "I mean good weird. But still -- I feel like me, but different. And you seem like you, but --" Straight? We'll never know how she planned to end this sentence, because Ill puts a stop to it -- with his lips! After another bout of turbo-soul-smooching, Ick says, "It feels a little less weird." "Only a little?" Ill asks, which is the signal for them to rip each other's shirts off, exposing their pasty white torsos to the repulsed plant life around them. They gnaw on each other listlessly. Ivan Sergei looks badly in need of a user's manual, leading me to concur with Sars's and manimal's contention that foreplay of the hetero variety is not his bag. The camera thankfully pans out onto the snow-covered roofscape, sparing us the stark moment of truth wherein Ill finds out Ick is packing a unit. "I was looking for someone," wheezes the ethereally emphysematous Enya knock-off.
Atmospheric aerial shot of people cross-country skiing in Central Park. Cut to Mikey looking tufted under a chenille blanket on Lucy and Belinda's mustard-colored couch. Lucy offers him coffee, jutting her pelvis toward him in an ill-conceived outfit of a white, midriff-baring oxford and flared gray dress slacks. She has correctly guessed that he takes it "black, with lots of sugar." Mikey asks after Belinda, and Lucy says she's in art class, then asks, "You and Belinda: how did that happen?" "I fired her, then I asked her out," Mikey says. "Ah -- classic love story," says Lucy, and I'll be the first to admit that Belinda's subhumanly stupid, but how kosher is it for her roommate to be oozing estrogen all over the ambulatory plankton she's bunking with? "Well, we're not exactly a love story," Mikey says, calling a spade a spade, or rather a sexcapade a sexcapade. Lucy and Mikey start talking at the same time and Mikey says, "We do that a lot," to which Lucy responds, "Yeah, we do," with such deranged enunciation that Mikey must seek solace in his piping hot cup of joe.
Somewhere on the same street, Ick and Ill stagger in the door of the Bachelor Barn with their collagen-enhanced lips soldered together. Ick clutches Ill's lapels and giggles toothsomely as they turn around in a circle. He asks if she's hungry, and she says, "Starving," clawing on his polar-fleece pullover like my cats on a priceless antique. Ill claims she hasn't really eaten until she's tried Eggs Jillefsky, and this statement catalyzes yet another dance of the seven veils on Ick's part. She basically backs toward the couch with a cross-eyed, slack-jawed leer on her face until Ill becomes inflamed by the equine nature of her face and jumps her. Fast-forward to empty plates of "Eggs Jillefsky," on the same Formica counter where Ick is ostensibly writhing bare-assed, caught in yet another vacuum-lock clinch with Ill. Calling Mr. Clean! There's not enough anti-bacterial kitchen cleaner in the world to contend with this sanitation emergency! Fast forward again to two glasses of orange juice, with two disembodied hands reaching up to get them just as a key turns in the lock. Mikey walks in blathering and says, "Whoah!" when he sees Ick and Ill rutting on the floor. Ill stands up in his boxers and says, "Hey -- morning, Mikey." Ick sticks her bare ass in the refrigerator and stands there looking like a dead ringer for Sammy Hagar. "So, Mikey has the keys to your place!" she says to Ill, who grunts in assent. "So, you guys had sex on the kitchen floor!" Mikey contributes, with facial gestures appropriate to the promotion of a delicious soft drink. Just then Barto walks in and puts down his backpack. He registers the scene with a morphine-addled expression on his face and asks, "What's up?" "Mikey has the keys, and Jill and I just had sex on the floor," says Ick, still chilling her naked butt amongst the condiments and whatnot. "And that's about it." She realizes she's late for work and somehow pulls on pants while Ill causes a distraction. She plants a grody good-bye smooch on Ill and simpers, "Bye," in a tiny wittle voice with that stadium-sized yap of hers. Ill exchanges self-satisfied smirks with Mikey and Barto and says, "Yeah," as if this foul liaison is something to be proud of.
Audrey staggers down the street dressed like Speed Racer as Barto ambles behind her. "On the kitchen floor?!" she says incredulously. "Jack wouldn't even eat a piece of toast she dropped on the floor." It speaks to the grittiness of Ferret-Face's hardscrabble, urban-rodent upbringing that she considers it strange not to eat crumbs off the floor. Barto says Ferret must get her ankle checked out, and suggests that she go to his dad's best friend, who's an orthopedist. Ferret accuses him of trying to get out of dancing with her on Valentine's Day, spurring Barto to escalate his compulsive diagnoses, saying, "You can barely walk. You could have torn a ligament, you could have soft-tissue damage or a fracture, why don't you just let me check it out." Ferret tells Barto he's "just going to have to play doctor with someone else," and, too stoned to put up much of a fight, he backs off.
Adding insult to injury, it's Ick again, looking like a Rastafarian on a bad hair day. She leers drunkly at a male officemate as she enters the office with her coat falling off. Elispa follows her to her desk, lisping urgently in unbecoming office casuals: a turquoise mock turtleneck and pleated black maxi-skirt. "Jack, you are four hours late." Ick acts pleased with herself and starts scratching herself behind the ear like a dog, claiming that she "had to do that thing for that guy in . . . that department." "Which guy?" asks Elispa, who has been covering for Ick all morning while Ick swaps bodily fluids with the guy Elispa just broke up with. Ick makes earnest eye contact with Elispa and admits she was with Ill, then asks if it's okay for her to talk about it with Elispa. Elispa assents spinelessly and Ick grins dumbly, elated to have another target besides Ferret for her skanky, Ill-related confessions. "I told him not to give up and I guess he didn't," says Elispa, causing Ick to bare her wisdom teeth in narcissistic glee. Elispa asks how she ended things with Anchormatt, and Ick looks inconvenienced by this reminder of the eight-hour turnaround between Bachelors 1 and 2. "Oh, kind of abruptly. I really need to talk to him," she says, combing her hands through a hairdon't not even Carrot Top would sanction. Elispa regards Anchormatt, who is slumped in his IKEA office cubicle wearing a tan suit, and wishes Ick luck. Ick's face droops with trepidation.
Throwaway scene with Ill and Mikey, wherein Mikey admits he might be interested in a relationship with Lucy, then counsels Ill not to call Ick, claiming "there's a reason nature has a dude fall asleep after coitus. It's to keep a girl on her toes." Mikey, I believe what nature intended in your case was that a dude shut up every once in awhile. Mikey implies that he will dump Belinda after Valentine's Day, transferring his affections to Lucy.
Cut to Anchormatt approving copy from some minion. "That'll do it," he says -- words he should have said to Ick long ago. Unwilling to let bygones be bygones, she approaches in form-fitting Club Monaco separates. Matt looks nauseous and tries to deflect her lame apology, which consists of "I just want to say I'm so. Sorry." Anchormatt waves his hand dismissively and says, "I'm a big boy." A call comes in for Ick on line two and Anchormatt and the station manager watch while she answers it. It's Ill, wanting her to know he's thinking about her. She tells him it's not a good time and hangs up. Ill sits there with a dumbfounded look on his face while Mikey insists that his call "freaked her out." Meanwhile the station manager wants Ick and Anchormatt to revive some subway piece they were working on "for the five." Ick shrugs irksomely and mugs to Anchormatt, having forgotten that he no longer finds her antics adorable. Anchormatt says he's taking the DC job, and she looks shocked that he's not going to stick around to fondle her hem. She attempts a can-do attitude and says, "I'm glad -- I mean, not glad that you're going but just glad you didn't lose out on something you wanted . . . because of me." Anchormatt says "whatever" with his body language and suggests they find the IRT footage. Ick looks put out that he's not wrecked over her desertion.
Back at the Low Rent rehearsal space, Ferret tests her ankle as the Horns of Orthopedic Endangerment blare insidiously.
Nearby in the Bachelor Barn, Ill and Mikey jiggle their respective joysticks -- for a snowboarding video game, that is. "She's not gonna call," Mikey insists. "Right now she's worried you're plastering the walls with her picture and having her name tattooed on your ass." Seeing as she's brokered a sublet for her ass in the Bachelor Barn's refrigerator, I'd be surprised if Ick took offense at any of the above. Ill says, "Thankfully, we don't all live in the World According to Mikey," and doggedly gets up to call Ick. Mikey says, "Don't do it!" and Ill explains that he needs to leave, but he wants to find out if they're "still on for tonight." Excuse me, but isn't that point rendered moot by the fact that you have a -- portable phone?
Cut to Ick and Anchormatt, looking for I.R.T. footage in the dusty video archive. Ick says, "We didn't leave it at your place Friday night, did we?" thus reminding Anchormatt of the haste with which she hopped from his bed to Ill's floor. An extra enters and announces a phone call which Ick must accept while standing on a foot stool in the video closet, with Anchormatt holding the receiver to her ear. She predictably tells Ill she can't talk, adding that she's "kind of in a weird -- place." Ill stares woundedly at the phone, wearing pants the color of Gulden's mustard. Mikey capitalizes on his distress by saying I told you so. Ill is incredulous that Ick could have second thoughts after nailing him on the kitchen floor. Regardless, Mikey advises an "insurance breather," just to get Ick "back on her toes." Ill takes on the lights-out expression of someone capable of taking Mikey seriously.
Barto enters the building to discover Ferret slouched on the stairs, wearing a cap like an acorn masquerading as the Taj Mahal. She tells Barto she'd like to see his doctor friend and admits that she's scared. Barto carries her up the stairs, and instead of getting the Tiny Tim vibe they're peddling, I'm hoping that Ferret has leprosy so she will never dance again.
The episode has become so insufferable that I'm elated to see Elispa and Mr. E again. They walk past a garish Valentine's Day display; Mr. E accuses Elispa of looking. She reaffirms her allegiance to the proletariat, insisting, "I'm not buying into it. They'll never get me." "With their hearts and teddy bears," sneers Mr. E. Elispa elaborates: "They've got us drooling like Pavlovian dogs, drooling at the thought of gifts and chocolates." Um, Elispa, I'm afraid your drooling is purely a function of your cleft palate and can't legitimately be blamed on capitalist society. Carry on. "We denounce the whole thing," says Mr. E, and here I'll come out of the dank, single-occupancy closet I've been lurking in and admit that I find Mr. E almost tolerable, if not in fact somewhat cute. A stooge-like customer emerges from the store, laden with frilly pink products. "By the grace of God," Elispa lisps, and in a blatant continuity error they start walking back in the direction they just came from.
Cue the Clarinet Noodlings of Trouble in Poor Man's Paradise. Ick wears a black satin shell-and-pants combo and picks ineffectively at her frazzled hair. The phone rings, and Ick sits on the bed and says, "Yello," then exposes her molars on discovering that it's Ill. But Ill, under Mikey's diabolical influence, asks for a "rain check" on their tentative date for that night. Mikey, fondling a basketball in the background, gives Ill a soul-brother salute, spurring him to make further stuttering equivocations to the disgruntled Ick. "Okay, well I'm just -- I'm gonna go to bed early," Ick says, and Ill says, "Okay, so I guess I'll see you tomorrow." They hang up, and Ick looks skyward, as if to implore Jah to send her some creme rinse. Acoustic whimper-rock insinuates itself into the background as both characters go to the window to stare vapidly at the street they can't seem to escape.
I'd just like to say that if the Ford Taurus were really built for the way I live, it would have a mini-bar and two litterboxes. But that's neither here nor there. Back to Ferret and that gammy leg of hers. This injury seems to bring out the worst in her lips, which she keeps inflating to maximum capacity. Ick walks up in a flower-embroidered gray sweater with satin piping around the neck. She asks Ferret what else she can do for her, and Ferret asks that she distract her by telling "every single dirty detail" of her assignation with Ill. Ick picks at Ferret's scalp, then puffs out her cheeks in exasperation until Ferret asks her what's wrong. "Well, he flaked on me last night," she says. "We're on this total high and suddenly he's got 'stuff to do.'" Ick says the words "stuff to do" with such withering disdain that she may as well have said "heroin to inject" or "funds to embezzle." Ferret drops the ball in her attempt to comfort Ick, referencing "those guys that lose interest after the chase is over, who only want you when they can't have you because you're dating someone else and then you finally get together and have this one night of amazing sex because it's so pent-up. Then you wake up the morning and it's like . . ." Ick panics because this scenario is a little too close to home. Ferret overcompensates by insisting that Ill was planning some elaborate surprise for Valentine's Day, causing Ick to don her habitual grin of unwarranted self-satisfaction.
Meanwhile Ill composes a Valentine at a drafting table with Mikey and Barto looking on. "You're the one: my moon, my sun," he mumbles, then crumples up that priceless draft and throws it in the brimming waste-basket. Mikey helpfully suggests, "We did it on the floor, we did it by the door, so if you don't mind tonight, let's do it some more." Technically, taking into account the greenhouse episode, he could have enhanced this verse by replacing the second line with "We did it in manure" -- but who's complaining? Ill looks dumbfounded and Barto says affectionately, "He's like an X-rated Dr. Seuss." Barto looks rather cozy in his blue cable-knit sweater, lying on the couch with his heart model after lengthy interaction with a Tokemaster. "Bro, you're putting way too much pressure on yourself," says Mikey. "You've spent a total of one night together. Way below the flowers and card requirement." He exhorts Ill not to "go tossing [the word love] around," and Ill looks progressively befuddled as Barto adds, "Just write something from the heart. 'Thoughts of you flow through me as the blood flows from the superior vena cava into the right atrium and out the right ventricle.'" Ill looks aghast and almost puts an eye out with his pen. "I don't want to say the wrong thing," he says, but the dictates of prime-time teledramedy demand that he says the wrongest thing possible, a minimum of twice an episode.
Fade to a big, bushy flower arrangement on an IKEA desk somewhere in ManNOTtan. The Flute of Dashed Expectations trills in the background. Ick sits eagerly at the desk and bares her vampiric fangs yet again as she plucks the card from its holder. The card says simply, "Happy Valentine's Day -- Jill." "Jill? Just Jill?" Ick mutters irately, clearly expecting a noble title of some sort.
Alarming close-up of Ferret's paw in the grip of some doctor. She has fortuitously worn ankle-enhancing pants with an embroidered paisley cuff. The doctor works Ferret over, and he and Barto swap ER-speak. Ferret demands to know what they're talking about and the doctor says, "Before I make a diagnosis, I'd like to schedule you for an MRI. "How long will that take?" Ferret asks, and he responds, "Just a few days." This triggers an "I gotta dance" monologue from Ferret, including the line, "I'm a dancer. That's my life. That's my livelihood. I can't be out for a couple of days!" Pardon me, rodent, but isn't that point moot? MRI or no MRI, you've sustained an orthopedic injury and won't be ambulatory for a couple of days regardless. I'm no doctor, but I know from orthopedic injuries. Amazingly, the doctor neglects to increase her orthopedic distress by giving her the Indian rub she deserves for acting like a diva though she's actually a glorified aerobics instructor. Instead, he implies that he will violate hospital policy to give her an MRI that very day. Barto looks smugly satisfied, as if to say, "Look at the moxie on this field-vole I'm dating!" He has clearly obtained some morphine in his travels through the hospital's corridors.
Anchormatt crosses the newsroom with a bin full of stuff. He wears a black trench coat this time, proving yet again that he is the London Foggiest man on television. Ick comes scrambling after him, hell-bent on eking more melodrama out of a breakup Anchormatt seems to be over already. It seems Ick has mistaken a whisk broom for hair extensions -- again. "I just wanted to say goodbye!" she simpers, causing Anchormatt to stare expectantly at the elevator and say, "Okay. Bye!" Ick looks chagrined that he's not more of a wreck "I just wanted to say that I don't regret anything about us and I hope that, in time, you won't either," she whines. Anchormatt presents her with his profile and beats a hasty elevator retreat, but not before claiming that he has no regrets either. "Hey, good luck in Washington," blurts Ick, determined to milk an epiphany out of this mundane situation. Anchormatt says, "See ya!" and the elevator closes on Ick looking plaintive.
Cut to @Bar, where a fatheaded, aging frat boy nuzzles a vapid blonde cheerleader type. Their endearments are all tuber-related. She's his potato, he's her "big spud," et cetera. Mikey asks for their order and they get a "Slippery Nipple and a Sex on the Beach, " causing Mikey to look dyspeptic and say, "I hate Valentine's Day." Long story short, Belinda flounces in wearing a crimson Paddington outfit and tells Mikey she's got a present at home for him that's "worth the wait." Mikey looks nauseous, tries to weasel out of it, then caves and says "Damn!" when Belinda leaves. The cozy couple remains entwined at the bar, tussling over who wuvs who more.
Meanwhile, Ick and Ill sit mopily in a garish Chinese restaurant with a giant gong in the background. Ick has thoughtfully dressed to match the décor in a red satin kimono sewn from a tablecloth. They have a stilted exchange about potential entrees, and my boyfriend points out that, among the extras in the background, they have seated a distinguished Chinese man with a she-male dressed like Eddie Vedder. Ick thanks Ill for the flowers, indicating her displeasure at his undemonstrative note. Ill keeps frantically hailing the waiter so he can drink his way through this encounter just as I did, taking a page from the book of the long-suffering keckler. A gong sounds to symbolize the utter failure of Ick and Ill's chemistry as a couple.
Barto fondles Ferret as Ferret looks glum. They are in the waiting room of the so called "Imaging Center." Barto acts compulsively gung-ho about Ferret's impending recovery; Ferret asks him to be her boyfriend, not her doctor. A nurse arrives to ferry to her doom -- I mean, room! -- forbidding Barto entry to the Imaging Sanctum. Barto fidgets in the lobby, wearing his best "Don't Fear the Reaper" face. Ferret assures him she'll be fine.
Back at the Habitrail Hideout, Ick ushers Ill to her door and embarks on an exegesis of her keys. "They used to be all color coded, with little plastic rings," she begins, concluding that now, for whatever reason, her key-coding system is "kaput!" She says "kaput" in such guttural tones that I assume her gender identity scam will now be exposed -- though it's anyone's guess what Madame Butterfly antics she employed during their last encounter. Ill looks annoyed and laughs listlessly, compelling Ick to ask, "Why do you even want to come in anyway?" He's on the ropes immediately, stuttering explanations as Ick goes for the jugular. "Funny how a couple days ago we were greatest wish, horse-and-carriage material and now I'm getting rain checks, and you've got 'stuff' to do --" Sorry, Ick, but if you wanted to come off like a Rules girl, then you shouldn't have dropped trou on the first date. At any rate, it comes out that Ill thought Ick was "in a weird place" emotionally, as opposed to in the video closet with her chilling ex-flame. They reproach each other for becoming so alienated over an unfortunate word choice on Ick's part. Before you know it they're in another torrid clinch, with Ick baring her gums in vulpine delight. "You want to go inside?" she asks Ill, who waits a beat before saying, "No." Fade out on Ick's incredulous horse face saying, "What?!"
Thank God, it's the relatively chaste and small-mouthed Elispa, with the rather charming Mr. E. They open the door of Mr. E's apartment to reveal a turbo-charged fire hazard, with candles burning on every surface and rose petals carpeting the floor. The Acoustic Meanderings of Burgeoning Love Despite Dead Spouses begin to waft as Mr. E says "Happy Valentine's Day" to Elispa's "Oh my God!" She trudges through the petals, opening and closing her mouth like a fish as Mr. E claims he "couldn't help it." Elispa takes issue with this statement and Mr. E says, "You didn't really want me not to do anything, did you?" She wheels around all "J'accuse!" and says, "We had a deal!" Her objection, apparently, is that he lavished her with luxury without giving her the opportunity to reciprocate in kind. So much for her Marxist principles. Mr. E's solution is to give her a gift-wrapped guitar string he bought for himself and tell her to give it to him. Simp that she is, Elispa is won over by this tsunami of sap staged by Mr. E. She dithers appreciatively.
But look, it's Belinda, in yet another outlandishly eclectic outfit! She answers the door to Mikey in an orange nylon shirt depicting cells going through mitosis, over which she wears a woolen bustier. She's got on blue hiphuggers and sports a Sacajawea-riffic set of mini-braids. Not since the immortal Liberace has there been a character with more sartorial derring-do. She will be sorely missed. Mikey stands there looking sheepish in the patented three-quarter-length leather car-coat that only assholes wear. Mikey tries to break up with Belinda, but she drags him into the apartment and threatens to blindfold him if he doesn't close his eyes. He sinks down in a chair and closes his eyes with a sigh. We hear footsteps, then Belinda tells Mikey to open his eyes for his surprise. The camera assumes a Mikey's eye view as he unshields his eyes to see Belinda -- and the ever smirking, chronically unattractive Lucy. Lucy attempts to look ironic and above it all as she allows her simpleton roommate to pimp her out to a troglodyte. Sorry, babe, but acting cool doesn't cut it when you've spent all your screen time hankering after a man with the depth of a contact lens. Am I right? I am right. Moreover, she's dressed like a Kindergarten Valentine, in a pink, rhinestone-spangled sweaterlet and God knows what else. She looks pseudo-demurely at the ceiling as my boyfriend asks, "Are they going to have a three-way?" Mikey seems to be getting the same signal on a different frequency. He says, "Huh?" his slack face framed by a glass pillar and a miniature bamboo forest. It seems opportune to mention here that in the last episode, Belinda and Lucy flounced into @Bar claiming they were on their way to adopt a shelter pet. Said pet is nowhere to be found, proving that it was just a plot device to establish "opposites attract" tension between Mikey and Lucy. Unless they adopted a chameleon, and it's camouflaging itself in the draperies throughout this scene. "Look Mikey," Belinda says. "You're a really great guy, but I need someone more adventurous!" She keeps a goofy grin plastered to her face, while Lucy looks like she's digesting a sack of nails. "And you and Lucy -- I don't even need to tell you guys, do I?" Belinda blathers on. Mikey looks downcast that what's being suggested is in fact serial monogamy as opposed to a kinky three-way. "Anyway," Belinda continues, "I'm in the middle of throwing this really cool pot, so -- good luck!" Um, Belinda? I think you need to stop throwing pots and start smoking some, because reality clearly isn't your bailiwick. Good enough? All righty then. She flounces out, leaving Mikey and Lucy to marinate in the painful atmosphere she's created. Mikey says, "I don't know if that's the nicest person in the world, or the weirdest," he says. Lucy insists that it wasn't her idea, and Mikey takes this as implied rejection. "Oh," he says. "So you don't even really want to . . ." "Oh, no," Lucy interrupts with many daring eyebrow pyrotechnics, "I do." They stare fixedly at each other's tracheas until Mikey suggests they take a walk and Lucy gratefully assents. On the way out the door they both start talking at the same time again, which is meant to imply that they're soulmates, but to me only proves that they're windbags.
Ferret hobbles to the waiting room on crutches, bidding farewell to a nurse who overacts frantically to compensate for her total lack of dialogue. Barto gets up to meet Ferret and grips her shoulders. "So. What did they say?" he asks. "No serious tears, just stay off it a couple of days, it should be fine," says Ferret, smiling wanly. Barto is enthused, but Ferret wants to fixate on what might have been: "time I fall and tear my ankle and really rip something, or I fall on my knee funny and that's it: I'll never dance again," she says. "Or you could get hit by a bus or fall off a building or get diverticulosis of the gall bladder," says Barto, whose version of the Hippocratic oath apparently demands that he pepper his casual conversations with medical terms whenever possible. "Audrey," he says, "You're lucky you can dance the way you do and you knew this would be a part of the bargain and you knew that you'd be able to handle it." He delivers this last line with her pointy little snout gripped in his hand, which she seems to enjoy. "You have a nice bedside manner," she says. Barto gets all come-hither and asks, "As a doctor?" "As a boyfriend," she says, and he grunts appreciatively. He then strips her of her crutches and explains that he doesn't want all his swing dance training to go to waste, so . . . the Ferret makes alarmed protestations as Barto picks her up and starts twirling her in the hospital lobby to imaginary jitterbug music. The hospital staff gathers to look on, wishing collectively that the Ferret's diagnosis had been dire enough to prevent this saccharine spectacle.
Meanwhile, Mikey and Lucy walk amiably on the solitary street of ManNOTtan, no doubt discussing the Hegelian dialectic. They pause and exchange kisses, but sadly, a cute couple this is not.
Elispa and Mr. E, by contrast, seem as innocent as small woodland creatures as they blow out every last candle in the tinderbox fire hazard that is Mr. E's apartment. Elispa wears a way Amish apron over an ankle-length skirt, and Mr. E has grown a neck beard and carries a buggy whip. Okay, that was true except for the last part.
Anyway, it wouldn't be Jack and Jill if the show didn't conclude with a scene featuring the eponymous protagonists in a post-coital stupor. And what do you know, they're back in the greenhouse again. Where's Farmer MacGregor when you need him? Ick asks, "How did we let all that happen?" They quibble over how much time has passed while I notice that the bags of mulch they're lying on are color-coded to their outfits. "We started overthinking," says Ill, and Ick insists, "You started it!" "You ran with it!" Ill says. Ick bobbles her matted head and says, "Let's not do that anymore." Ill says, "Okay. It's gonna be hard, though. Especially for you." He lunges to make out with her and she fends him off, giggling with self-enthralled rapture. But soon they are on each other like buzzards on road kill. Ick shivers as Ill removes her coat and Ill suggests that they go downstairs. He starts to get up, but Ick regards him with her eightieth feral smile of the episode and drags him back down for another unsanitary romp amid the fertilizer. The camera flees the greenhouse as the screen flashes the name of the Satan responsible for this dreck: the abominable "Randi Mayem Singer."
week: Elispa moves in, and her presence hinders Ick and Ill from copulating.