The previews now comprise a full quarter of the show's running time. To describe them is basically to recap the whole season. But that's why I make the big bucks, so here goes: Jack and Jill practice non-critical CPR on each other before copulating in a greenhouse. This sets in motion a series of events that leads to Jack sharing noodles with Jill -- while said noodles are still in her mouth. Meanwhile, Barto and Ferret-Face have issues, but Barto's "not ready to lose [her] yet." Mikey falls for his girlfriend's roommate Lucy, which enables him to go shirtless for the bulk of an episode. He calls her his "girlfriend" in front of Elispa "Amish much?" Cronkite, tells Jill she makes him "wanta move forward," and the thing you know, Lucy's curbing him with her recyclables. As a consolation prize, Elispa asks Mikey to move into her new Shaker Shack, since her old crib has rats.
Open on the night sky, and those two perennial stargazers, Jack and Jill, lying on a heap of moldy blankets on the roof. If the stars hate them as much as I do, they may be in for an asteroid shower. Jack goes on a schoolmarmish tangent about the Pleiades, in a baby-talk monologue designed to captivate us with the anal, yet whimsical, straight-A student she must have been. She claims the Pleiades "used to walk the earth but Orion kept hitting on them so Zeus turned them into birds so they could get away. That's how they ended up in the stars." Jill gives a snorting "I don't know you" laugh at the fact that she knows ephemera about Greek mythology. "The constellation is also the Subaru logo," Jack whispers. Jill looks delighted to learn that even the stars are branded. Gee, this moment would go down well with a CD changer full of Warner Brothers recording artists. But I digress. "You are a strange, strange girl," Jill says, even though all she did was rattle off a product placement and a variety of astrological facts she could have gotten out of Ranger Rick. "I like you," Jill adds and Jack says, "I like you too," with her eyes all squinty. They both say "I --" at the same time and then "what?" Jack tells Jill to go first, and after a beleaguered silence, he says, "I . . . think that's the Big Dipper. Legend has it it's a ladle." Jack stares cross-eyed at the sky, clutching Jill's putty-colored sweater with one clawlike hand and smirking dreamily. The truth about Romeo? He doesn't like girls.
It's anyone's guess why the Honeynut Cheerios bumblebee has confined his base of operations to one barbershop in Italy. What kind of demographic is that? How much cereal can one elderly barber really buy? What that bee needs is the global marketing savvy of a Joe Camel. Get those youngsters before they grow teeth and they'll be yours for life. Oh, the show's back on.
Jack and Ferret are unpacking stuff in a new brick-walled apartment that would run you the national debt in Manhattan. Luckily, this is ManNOTtan. "I really thought someone was gonna say it," Jack says, crossing the room with a cordless drill. "Then why didn't you?" asks the industrious ferret, clad in a buttercup-yellow sweater and struggling to hang an artwork of some kind. "That someone has to be him. First, anyway," says Jack, adding, "Look, I haven't said it to that many people. But I've never said it first." Elispa emerges, wearing a pumpkin-colored t-shirt and overalls, for God's sake. "Said what first?" she pesters. "I love you, Jack won't say it first," says Ferret, acting all Bob Vila about the hanging of one picture. "Of course not, that's just basic," says Elispa, gingerly picking up a clock crafted out of driftwood. Clearly she and Jack have read Wendy Shalit's A Return to Modesty with highlighters in hand. "Have you and Barto said it?" Jack asks. Ferret leers slightly and says, "I think, once, when I was about to --" "Doesn't count," say the Modesty Twins in unison. Jack has on a diaphanous scoop-necked dashiki, which makes her judgments all the more compelling. "Well," Ferret tries again, "We've said, "I'm falling in love with you . . ." Jack and Elispa shut her down again. "When did you and Jill say it?" asks Jack of Elispa, then shrieks, "No, don't tell me!" Farmer Greenjeans googles her eyes and says, "I wasn't gonna." "Well, I'm not gonna say it first. No way," Jack says, clearly under the impression that someone other then her might appreciate this non-information.
Habitrail Hideout. Barto and Ferret are apparently digesting Chinese food. Ferret prattles on about how "bloated" she feels and Barto tosses off a medical analysis of the Pu Pu Platter -- and what quicker way to get boffo laffs is there than a casual reference to Pu Pu Platters, I ask you? It's comedy gold, pure and simple. Ferret prances around in a snug puce-green tank top and capri pants apparently sewn out of drapery samples. Suddenly she realizes she's alone and finds Barto a-snooze in bed. "Man, you're quick," she says. Barto mumbles, "I'm so tired," which fails to deter Ferret from straddling him and stealing his breath. "We don't have to watch the movie tonight," she says. "Really? Great," says Barto, abruptly turning his back on the Ferret's seductive antics and snuffling, "Good night, baby." "Night?" says the Frazzled Ferret, looking peeved.
Cut to Jack and Jill going at it on a bed for once. Heavy breathing, mutual t-shirt clutching, and all manner of face and neck slobbering. "I fnunh you," Jill breathes, while administering a hickey to the crook of Jack's arm. You know a fella's off-base with hetero foreplay when he interprets it to mean gnawing on a woman's forearms. Jack says, "I love you," thinking Jill said it first. Jill continues grazing on her elbow with a "Zoiks!" look on his face.
It's a quorum of the Testosterone Trio, in the Elispa-free Shaker Shack. "So what did you say?" Barto asks groggily. "I want you," says Jill. "And then she said . . ." Barto prompts, ignoring the fact that Jill's last statement was obviously directed at him. "I love you!" Jill says, owning up to the love that dare not speak its name. Mikey stands at the foot of the stairs, to a sign that redundantly says, "Slow down thoughts." "Aw man," says Mikey, perhaps irked because Barto gets all the guys. "So do you [love her]?" asks Barto, intentionally ignoring Jill's valiant attempt to hack his way out of the closet. "I don't know, almost," says Jill, wearily resuming the pretense of heterosexuality. "Probably. I mean it seems so soon, we just got together." Mikey stands fondling his driftwood clock with a smitten expression on his face. Clearly, it is his Rosebud. "This is one of those rare areas where girls are faster then guys," he says. Have you ever noticed that Mikey's dialogue has no content? It's only put there for other characters to respond to by rolling their eyes or making "that darn Mikey" faces. If all his lines were eliminated and replaced with, say, Woodstock's dialogue from the Peanuts cartoons, nothing of substance would be lost. Let me demonstrate: "I just don't want to say it until I'm sure, you know?" says Jill. "'''''''' '''' '''''''," says Mikey. "But if I don't say it, she's just gonna be wondering why I didn't say it back," Jill muses, trudging around with various boxes. "You're right, that's a problem," says Barto, hoisting what looks to be a bag of garbage. "Do you and Audrey say it?" Jill asks. "Once, when I was about to --" Barto begins, but before he can say "fill her kibble bowl," Mikey and Jill say, "Doesn't count." "Not exactly, no," admits Barto. "Not the big three." " ''''' ''' ''''' ''' ''''' ?" Mikey asks. "Damn, everything was going so great," laments Jill. And Mikey says something else.
Jack and Ferret wend their way toward the inexorable Cloudia's Café. "I think he said it," mewls Jack in her unwashed denim jacketlet. The Ferret feigns concern, swaddled in the giant powder-blue tea-cozy she's wearing as a poncho. "What do you mean you think?" she asks. "Well, it was sort of muffled. I'm sure he said it, I mean what else could he have said?" It's just a thought, but "I love men" comes to mind. "Well, what exactly happened after you said it?" asks the Ferret Inquisitor. "Nothing. It just felt like the whole room took on this really weird vibe," Jack says. The Ferret urges her to say it again, but Jack objects that it's too big a risk. "Damn, everything was going so great," Jack whines, though she might have gotten a clue from the fact that most of their dates took place on a moldy roof with no one watching. Let's face it, Jill didn't want to ruin his cred with the Chelsea crowd by squiring even a virtual female around in public. Let's move on. The menus arrive and Ferret blurts out, "So Barto and I didn't have sex last night." Jack looks disoriented by this revelation and Ferret says, "Yeah, we're gonna take a little swim in Lake Audrey here for a minute." Pardon me, then, while I suit up in an STD-repellent neoprene unitard. That's better. "Okay, so you didn't have sex and then what?" asks Jack, making a heroic effort to wrest her attention away from herself. "We've never not had sex after a date," Ferret boasts. "Ever. In fact, we've pretty much had sex every single day since we started going out. At least once." Anyone for taking a bilge pump to Lake Audrey before this gets any more graphic? I'm bailing out. "I know: I live with you," Jack simpers with an inappropriate smile. "I don't think Barto even noticed," Ferret says. Jack suggests that perhaps they've gotten to a point in their relationship where they "don't need to have it every time." The Ferret, incredulous, asks, "Why?" "'Cause you just don't. It's nothing bad," Jack says. "How can it not be bad?" brays Ferret, causing Jack to bare her gargantuan chompers and guffaw.
Elispa sits on her couch riffling through a fashion magazine when Mikey walks in with a giggling Amazon, who on second glance turns out to be Showgirls' Elizabeth Berkley. What's that noise in the background, you say? Just the death knell sounding for her career. "Hey, Elisa, this is Gabby," Mikey says. Gabby says, "God, this place is amazing," looking like a case study for botched orthodontia. "We're subletting it from a friend of a friend who knows Donald Trump," Mikey says, earning toothsome laughs all around. Before Mikey and the Beaver hasten upstairs for a soulless one-night stand, Elispa blurts, "Your highlights are amazing! Where do you get them done?" Am I way too circumspect about etiquette, or is it totally wack for a woman to call attention to another woman's dye job in front of her date? Someone start a forum on this, please. "My guy Howard," gushes Beaver. "He's a genius. I could give you his number if you want." Elispa babbles about how she's been conthidering lowlights, and Beaver insists that auburn "would be awesome with [her] skin." Mikey, experiencing separation anxiety from cheap sex, mopes, "I've got skin." Elispa, looking Smurflike in a turquoise hooded sweatshirt, apologizes for stealing Mikey's friend, but it's too late: Beaver wants to know where Elispa got those righteous pants. Elispa brags that she has another pair in velvet, and Beaver demands, "Show!" They adjourn to Elispa's closet while Mikey sits there with a thought bubble over his head that says, " ''''' '''' ''''' ''''' ?!"
Cinema Miserablo: Ferret, Barto, Jack, and Jill on a tension-fraught movie date. Throughout this scene, there's a single trivia question freeze-framed on the movie screen, offering a metaphor, perhaps, for the stagnant triviality of this show. Barto and Ferret consume popcorn, and it occurs to me that it's a rare scene in this show when Ferret isn't chewing on something. Doesn't she have any other tricks? Burrowing, digging, dam-building? Must her every appearance be prefaced by a languorous shot of her busily munching mouth and flabby liver-lips? Last I checked, ferrets don't fall into the category of ruminants. Nevertheless, mouth full, Ferret regards Barto with a hooded gaze. He asks what's wrong; she says nothing, then wheels around and hisses, "Except why didn't we have sex last night?" Barto says he was just tired, and Ferret asks if he's sure. "Yeah, I'm pretty good at knowing what tired feels like," Barto says. And even better at knowing what stoned feels like, I bet. "It's not like us," muses Ferret. "I was thinking maybe it meant something." Meanwhile, the Clarinet of Imminent Impotence runs rampant on the soundtrack. "Like what?" asks Barto, smooching her forehead under her vermilion headband. "You're right: we're fine," Ferret says. "We're better than fine," Barto says, attempting a virile tone. "We'll just have to do two nights' worth tonight," brays Ferret, with one of those hair-raising smiles where suddenly her head is replaced by a wall of teeth. "Exactly," Barto says, looking like a man who has stared into the abyss -- and seen the abyss's huge, scary teeth. Hey, how did the Yeti gain admission to a movie theater? Oh, wait, it's Jack, her hair looking like a decade-old shag carpet. Jill is there, too, with his Converse hightops propped insouciantly on the seat in front of him. "I know I didn't say it back, okay?" he says. "What do you mean 'back'?" Jack quibbles, "I thought you said it first." "I said, 'I want you,'" Jill says. "Ohhhh. 'Cause I never would have said it if I didn't think you had," Jack whines. Jill says, "Oh," without inflection. "So why don't I just take it back? Then everything will be all normal again," Jack suggests. Jill says, "Okay," looking like his heart isn't in it. "I feel so much better!" blathers Jack, rolling her eyes and presenting her ski-jump profile for Jill's admiration. "Me too," he agrees listlessly. They both stare at the frozen trivia question, sneaking worried glances at each other.
Barto and Ferret recline melancholically, staring ceiling-ward after some coital mishap. Barto says, "The true horror is that I feel compelled to tell you this has never happened before." He goes on to explain that no matter what he tries to think of, all he can focus on is Ferret demanding "two nights' worth," which would normally not be a problem, blah blah blah Viagracakes, but the upshot is that he's been "victimized by expectation." Ferret attempts an infectious giggle that succeeds only in being bacterial. "I think it's kinda cute, actually," she says, causing Barto to adopt a menacing tone and say, "It's not cute. Ferret hurriedly agrees.
Topographical overview of Ferret's leotarded leg. What do you know, she's stretching again. Enough with the stretching and the chewing, I say. In this scene, it's Jack's turn to chew constantly, which she does while reflected in a mirror behind the limber Ferret. "I tell ya, Jack. I started a horrible vicious cycle. I got freaked out by us not having sex when we were just not having sex, and now we're really not having sex because I got freaked out. So I am just gonna wipe sex out of my mind and everything will be okay again." There's a knock at the door and Jack stops mechanically chewing long enough to get up and answer. "I'm starting to sound just like you," Ferret says, making a "brrr" sound and shivering at that grody thought. It's Jill at the door, in a hemp-woven brown sweater with no shirt underneath. How itchy! Jill, you're not in the gulag anymore! You can take off your hair shirt! "So, that conversation we had last night was kind of strange, huh?" he says. "You noticed, too," Jack says breathily, lapsing once again into vocal infantilism. "We both said we felt better, but we didn't," Jill adds. "We lied," Jack says. The teeth appear. "So I was thinking I'd take you out tonight and we'd pretend last night never happened," Jill smarms. "Deal," says Teeth McGillicuddy, grinning with insipid joie de vivre. They canoodle. Jill leaves and Jack says "I love you" to the closed door. Ferret says, "See, now that's insane! You obviously feel it and you're obviously dying to say it, so why don't you just say it?" "I will say it, after he says it," says Jack, mincing off with a self-enthralled smirk on her face.
A toaster waffle pops up and Elispa gets it, wearing pink and purple polka-dot pajamas. With her "Last Days of Pompeii" hairstyle and the aforementioned pajamas, she looks like what I imagine when I hear the words "Pierrot Lunaire." Mikey walks up in a snug heather-brown sweater and says, "Pajamas. I never pictured you in them. Or out of them. I never pictured you in the morning." Now is that any more informative than a series of diacritical marks bracketed by smart quotes? I think not. Elispa says, "Last night was fun. Gabby's great." Mikey pours a half-bottle of syrup into a coffee mug, prattling on about the possibility of creating a "roommate forum," so if either of them needs to discuss "roommate-related" issues, they can say, "Forum!" "Sounds like a good idea," says Elispa, prompting Mikey to say, "Forum!" His statement can be paraphrased by quoting the bumper-sticker that reads, "If the van's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'." "Oh," says Elispa. "You're saying you wanted her checking out your pants instead of mine." "I like the way you put things," says the smirking man-child, toasting Elispa with his mug of syrup. "This forum thing's working!" he adds. Elispa makes like the Fonz and says, "AAAAY" just as Mikey's toaster-waffle pops up and the whole scene devolves into a "Leggo my Eggo" commercial. Filmed in hell.
Lunchtime with the Thoracic Threesome. Mikey and Jill make ham-handed attempts to comfort Barto about his plummeting virility. "I'm deeply unhappy," says Barto. "You've got to account for the pressure -- it's bound to bring a man down," Mikey says. "Figuratively speaking," he adds, uproariously. "Drink eggs!" Jill exhorts, before tapering off into incoherent mumbles. Barto asks what his step should be and his bachelor brethren invoke "medication" and "health insurance coverage." "Oh my God!" Barto spazzes, "Just kill me now, please!" "What did Audrey say?" Jill asks. Barto hisses, "She said, 'Oh, baby, I love when you do that to me' -- WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK SHE SAID?" Clearly, Barto's last batch of weed was laced with some street-grade PCP. Jill cajoles him into admitting she said it was cute, and they all groan with empathetic emasculation. Barto says something about figuring this out alone and Mikey recycles some dialogue from Young, Hard and Solo, saying, "Good idea. A little alone time never hurts. Just to get it working again, you know?" He illustrates by making the universal "wanking" hand gesture. "It works!" says Barto, a little protest-too-muchly, "It works." He storms out, leaving Jill and Mikey to say, respectively, "Ow!" and "Glad it ain't me."
Ferret struts around her bedroom, chanting, "I'm not gonna think about sex." She decides to watch some TV and proceeds to straddle the bed, grabbing the remote with frightening fervor. But sadly, Ferret's satellite dish responds only to signals from Skinemax. Every channel coughs up six degrees of copulation, causing Ferret to curl up in a fetal ball on her duvet cover. Barto, meanwhile, is having a soothing cup of tea with his laptop and trusty skeleton, Mr. Bones. Maybe that's why he can't get it up with Ferret anymore -- he's a real gone necrophiliac, and a monogamous one at that! Just give me some slack, here. I've got to take my jokes where I can find them. At any rate, Mikey struts in in his habitual Champion leisure-wear and says, "I brought ya something I thought might -- ya know, help." He displays the cover of a magazine that appears to be called "Play Pen," but I can't be sure because the second word is ripped off. "Get. Out. Of here," Barto says wrathfully, but Mikey smirks and drops the magazine on the table in front of him and says, "You got it!" with a double thumbs-up, as if he expects Barto to drop trou and start pleasuring himself the second he leaves. Barto acts bothered, then starts flipping listlessly through the magazine just as the phone rings. He says, "Hello," in a Spice Channel baritone before realizing it's his mom on the line.
Elispa gazes bitterly at Mikey's clock, then hides it on the bottom shelf of the complicated shelving system. Mikey walks in with Roxanne, a dizzy blonde with a zig-zag part and a phony smile. Mikey instructs her to "go upstairs and pick out some tunes," then tells Elispa, "So what do you think -- that music thing could be our little code!" "Who is she?" says Elispa. "What's she doing here?" "Lots of stuff, I hope," says Mikey, that irrepressible rascal. "What about Gabby? I thought you liked her!" says Elispa, as though the fact that Mikey isn't faithful poses some kind of theodicy for her. Mikey recuses himself for another bout of high-risk intercourse, while Elispa looks heavenward in her red lycra top and scraggly pigtail and says, "Some things never change."
A belly dancer undulates to a sitar as the camera pans through yet another obscurely ethnic restaurant festooned with giant gongs. Jack is bringing a whole new meaning to the term "finger food" by all but using her hand as a shovel on her cous-cous. Big as her yap is, she still ends up wearing her meal. She stops a befezzed waiter to demand a fork, but Jill bribes him not to give her one. Showing some of the screwball comedic genius that makes her beloved of movie critics from Roger Ebert to Andrew Sarris, Amanda Peet plays this entire scene with her mouth full to bursting. She pushes her plate toward Jill and challenges him to show her his technique. He manages to scoop up some items with pita bread without spilling. Jack smirks yuckily, and Jill asks what she thinks, exposing a cleft chin so cavernous that it looks like a baby's ass has been grafted onto his face. "I think I wuv you," says Jack in a baby-whimper, prompting Jill to look crestfallen. "I know I took it back before, but I don't want to take it back, because I feel it, and if I feel it then I should be able to say it, and I don't think it should matter who says it first or whether the other person says it back or not -- it's the millennium, for crying out loud. So there it is." Oh, Jack? Woody Allen's on line two, he wants his neurotic run-on sentence back. Or at least your coach-class imitation of it. "I love you," she adds in a laughing-gas falsetto. Jill all but spits up his beverage and says, "Thank you," with palpable boredom, while Ivan Sergei wonders what went wrong in his screen test for Kiss Me, Guido. Sadly and surreally, Jack's hair looks almost touchable in this scene -- but there is no one hankering to touch it.
The bachelors jog across an intersection somewhere in the heart of ManNOTtan. Mikey congratulates Jill on not caving to Jack's expectation that he conform to "I love you" reciprocity. "The thing is, I just want to make sure I mean it," Jill says. "I mean, I've said it before. But all those, you know, they ended." What with the variously fuzzy (Barto) to bristly (Jill 'n' Mikey) naps of their hair, the bachelors look like a gaggle of plush toys in this scene. Mikey makes some noises that sound like human speech, Barto responds with marginally more cogent noises, and Jill says, "person I say it to, I just want to make sure it's the last person. You know, the very last person." It is at this pivotal moment, with Jill squinting into the sun, that I realize he also has a cleft in his forehead, making his face resemble a parenthetical phrase turned sideways. "You are one sensitive guy," says Mikey, and Jill says, "I am. I'm a sensitive guy," before swaggering up to the ticket counter and ordering "three for Blood, Guts and Revenge."
Jack's at Elispa's again, pretending to help unpack so she can mewl about her problems to a captive audience. "It's like I'm just hanging out there, waiting for something to come back to me, like a broken boomerang," she says, scraping the sides of the metaphor bin. Elispa flounces purposefully about in a leotard and misshapen skirt crafted from old corduroys. She has belted this freaky ensemble with what looks to be a macramé plant hanger. "You know," she says, "Just because he isn't saying it doesn't mean he isn't feeling it. I mean, he rode up to you on a horse and carriage, in a blizzard for God's sake. If that doesn't say I love you then I don't know what does." But couldn't that just as easily say, "I'm Amish" or "I'm too cheap for a limo"? "It's not the same," Jack complains, and Elispa wheels around and says, "Not even close." Ouch, a little acid rain from Holly Hobbie. They cast about for other things to talk about, Elispa dutifully mouthing a product plug for Blink 182. "Why won't he say it?" shrieks Jack, baring her teeth, gums, uvula, and tonsils to the saucer-eyed Elispa. "Yeah," she croaks, "I'm gonna go now." On the way out, she finds an earring, which Elispa suggests is the property of "one of Mikey's many." And what do you know, there's another knock on the door, because buzzers are superfluous in ManNOTtan. It's the gerbil-toothed Elizabeth Berkley again, looking capable of gnawing her way through Tokyo. Elispa announces her as "one of Mikey's -- Gabby knows Mikey." Jack leaves with an elaborate eyebrow shrug and Elispa and Gabby have a dithering duel over the earring, which Gabby apparently lost "in the couch." "So how is it living with Mikey?" Gabby asks, prompting Elispa to take a page from Tony the Tiger's book and say, "Grrrrreat!" "Cause I mean he is just so -- wow!" Gabby elaborates. "Like, I could get addicted to him, ya know?" Elispa says "Mmmm hmmm" like she's just been at Betty Ford for a mean Mikey addiction of her own, then stands there opening and closing her mouth like a smoke-ring artist without a light. Gabby prepares to leave and Elispa says, "I think you're great and I think women should stick together when people who are not women could wind up hurting them." Gabby acts befuddled and Elispa says, "Mikey's a player. I'm just giving you a heads-up because if it were me, I think I'd want to know." Elizabeth Berkley affects a look like she's been asked to recite the Periodic Table of Elements, then flounces off to a guest turn on Silk Stalkings.
Times Square. Barto and Ferret shopping for sexual aids. I really can't go into it. They trot out a joke about edible underwear, which ranks up there with the Pu Pu Platter as the gold standard of American comedy. Later they retire to the Habitrail Hideout for some invigorating porn. This scene was obviously created just to furnish an "in" for the two following ersatz porn titles: "American Booty" and "Sperms of Endearment," which Barto describes as "a three hanky flick." Can there ever be enough double entendres about seminal fluid? Apparently not. Barto attempts a sensual massage, but ends up setting the mattress ablaze with aromatherapy candles. The scene ends with Ferret crouched in a corner while Barto hyperventilates. "I don't know about you," she says, "but I'm turned on."
Elispa puzzles over a glutinous melange of Chinese takeout and pasta with marinara sauce. "Now that looks completely wrong," she says. Mikey says, "No problem, babe," into the phone and hangs up, asking if there's enough food for him. Catty Elispa asks, "What, no spokesmodel tonight?" Mikey pronounces her the first person he's lived with who's not elated at his parade of buxom bimbos. Um, wasn't he just living with his parents? He adds that Gabby was on the schedule for tonight but she just called to cancel. Conscience-stricken bumbler that she is, Elispa admits that she may have caused Gabby to flee by saying "some things [she] shouldn't have said." "I didn't mean to, and I wasn't planning on it, but I guess I just like her and I didn't want to see her get hurt," she babbles. Mikey takes righteous offense at this, since the only thing Gabby stands to get hurt by is her own teeth, which if they keep growing at this rate are likely to impale her brain inside of a decade. "You have so many, what's one less?" Elispa protests. Mikey accuses her of judging him, and she says she's only judging him "a little." Mikey shrills, "That sucks!" before adjourning to the corner, dragging his plate of marinara-smothered baby corns along with him.
Mikey relays the particulars of the spat to Jill, insisting, "It's like she's up on some throne looking down at me, thinking, 'You're bad.'" Jill insists Elispa isn't thinking that, but Mikey is convinced she's not only thinking it, "she's saying it to all [his] ladies." Jill says Elispa just "went overboard" and "she does this sometimes," prompting Mikey to ask if she was "this bad" when Jill lived with her. Jill explains that he only lived with Elisa "for, like, a day," and at the time he wasn't bringing home other women. Mikey asks "why not?" and Jill says there was no room, what with the other men. Or something to that effect. Mikey grouses that Elispa is taking all the fun out of having his own place, and Jill correctly guesses that the only reason Mikey wanted an apartment was to scam on women. Mikey commends Jill for not conforming to the fascist "I love you" imperative set in motion by Jack. He sagely advises Jill to jab himself with a toothpick each time he feels himself sliding down the slippery slope to "Big Three reciprocity." "It's Pavlovian!" Mikey says, with facial gestures appropriate to the promotion of a nutritious yet tasty breakfast cereal.
Ferret lies nibbling orts on the bed and asks where Jill and Jack are going. "To a party," Jack says listlessly and Ferret jibes, "And you're in such a party mood." Jack hovers over the supine Ferret, sneering, "And what are you guys doing tonight? Gonna burn up the sheets again?" She then cackles as if she might cough up her lungs while Ferret stares at her with vague concern. What do you know, another knock on the door! Everyone's got a key to the lobby in ManNOTtan! It's Jill again, just in time to swap petulant inanities with Jack about those three pesky words. She's all tricked out like a Care Bear in a fuzzy blue robe, which Jill designates as "cute -- not ready, but cute." Jack bustles anally about the kitchen island explaining that she doesn't want to go to the party -- but he should go anyway. She reveals in the halting tones of a Diane Keaton manqué that she's upset, but she doesn't want to be, and she knows she's not supposed to be mad and has no right to be mad, but this isn't just about her saying what she said and him not responding; it's about more than that. Jill takes the bait and asks what it's about and she says, "It seems like ever since we met it's been about you pursuing me. And I liked that. I like that. Well now all of a sudden it seems like it's been flipped, or tipped, the other way. And you know, I just feel shaky. And I don't like that." "I see," says Goofus, looking steamed all of a sudden. "So then this doesn't work unless you're the one being adored the most -- or the loudest?" Jack denies saying that, but Jill's twitching eyebrows reveal that he's well on his way to an adenoidal aria of epic proportions. "Yes, that's exactly what you just said, maybe you don't realize it, Jack," he begins. "I can't promise that I'm always going to be the one taking the lead. Sometimes it's going to have to be you. You're going to have to be okay with it!" As he winds down his eyelids flutter as if on a dimmer switch, and he walks out abruptly, leaving Jack to look stricken while fondling the belt ends of her Teletubby costume.
In Martha Stewart's world, geese are called "Gwyneth" and Chow Chows have royal titles! What baby wouldn't want to be swaddled in her line of high thread-count infant linens? My new motto: "Girl, get some Tampax and get on with your life."
Barto, wallowing in modes of substitute satisfaction, plays electronic darts while Jill paces with a cordless phone pressed to his skull. "Just call her," Barto says. Cut to Ferret splayed on a couch in the Habitrail Hideout, wearing a baseball shirt with the numbers "00" on the front -- I guess to reflect Barto's RBI. "Just call him," she says to Jack, who paces et cetera. "I refuse to call her," says Jill, "the ball's in --" "-- your court," finishes Ferret. "She doesn't like the ball in her court," Jill asserts. Cut to Jack whining, "I'm not used to it," her face taking on a Jimmy Durante cast. "It's probably scary for her," drawls Barto. Ferret says now Jack knows how Jill always feels, Jill claims Jack never thinks about this, Jack admits she never thinks about it, and Barto and Ferret invite Jill and Jack to go bowling. "I don't know -- maybe," the two Js answer in split screen, thus ending this exhausting cross-cutting extravaganza, which taught us nothing we didn't already know beforehand.
Elispa hums tunelessly, wearing one of those ghastly Indian-print hippie shirts we all had in high school. I believe we all had her heinous perm as well. Mikey trots down the circular staircase from the Lecher Loft and rips a box out of Elispa's hands. "I was just emptying it," she squeals. "I'll move it into my room," Mikey insists and retreats to the Lecher Loft, leaving Elispa to stand there mouth breathing. What do you know, it's another knock at the door. It's the Gabby the Beaver again, in shiny leather gear with mucho cleavage. Mikey trots down to greet her, then excuses himself to fetch his own bitchin' leather accessories. Elispa blithers, "So you guys are still --" making a hand gesture that could mean anything from "getting busy" to "spinning in a widening gyre toward death." "Yeah, why?" asks turbo-ditz Gabby, and manimal said it first in the forums, but I must repeat that Elizabeth Berkley's resemblance to Mackenzie Phillips is truly staggering. Which can only mean good things for her career. Elispa seems put out that her warning didn't spook Gabby for good. I suddenly notice that she's wearing a black push-up bra beneath her boho smock, demonstrating the kind of sartorial schizophrenia that keeps me on the edge of my seat every week. "But wait, why did you cancel?" she asks. The Beav looks conspiratorially behind her and says there's this other guy -- Todd -- who she's been wanting to bunk with "for over a month!" and he finally asked her out. "He's so cute," Beaver gushes and Elispa adds, "You could get addicted to him," all girlfriend-to-girlfriend, even though we know her biggest addictions are butter-churning and doily-embroidering. Beav exhorts her not to tell Mikey, and Elispa says, "I wouldn't dream of it," just as Mikey bounces up in his Guido car coat. He and Beav lock lips and spin toward the door while Elispa expresses pleasant surprise commensurate with the discovery of an exceptional stain remover. She slams the door on them and leans against it looking unhinged, the implication being that mutual infidelity and casual sex are things she's never encountered in her Pennsylvania Dutch corner of Manhattan.
Gutterball. Jack keeps score as Ferret prepares to bowl again. Barto appears and issues advice, but Ferret tells him to "quit backseat bowling." They bicker back and forth until Barto smarms, "You are looking gorgeous." Jack thinks this is way funny, and issues a gum-baring chortle that nearly dislodges her earrings. Ferret bowls with much hyperbolic physical comedy and scores a strike. Here we learn that for Ferret, victory dancing is synonymous with dirty dancing. She high-fives Jack and approaches Barto with her pelvis canted forward, but Barto seems oblivious to her mating signals -- and, in fact, to her very existence -- prompting me to think, "Girl, get some Tampax and get on with your life." It's Jack's turn and she scurries up in her unwashed denims and heaves the ball underhanded. Despite her efforts to correct its course -- which include grunting, squinting, and crouching like a person in severe menstrual pain (leading me to think, "Girl, get some" -- well, you know what I'm saying), the ball hits the gutter anyway. She does an irksome little jig of frustration just as Jill walks in and says, "I don't think the ball can hear you," with his poor -- nay, destitute -- man's Cary Grant smirk. Pointed eye contact all around until Barto and Ferret take the hint and adjourn to the snack concession. Jill 'n' Jack make halting small talk while Barto and Ferret saddle up in front of a greasy case of revolving luncheon meats across the room.
Ferret gets down to business, chewing on the closest edible item, which turns out to be Barto's hot dog. I think I know where this is headed. "Do you want a hot dog?" Barto asks. Ferret declines with her mouth full, and he asks, "So why are you eating mine?" "I just wanted a bite," she says, refusing to relinquish it. "Okay, maybe two," she adds, and they stand there staring at each other with what we are to interpret as mounting lust. "Oh. My God," they say in unison, and Ferret asks, "Where can we go?" with a lascivious twitch. Barto spins her around and hustles her off-camera, leaving us to contemplate the numerous savory options for clandestine sex in a bowling alley. The shoe repository? The unisex public bathroom? What do you make of the fact that Barto finds it aphrodisiacal for Ferret to devour his stolen wiener? Do you think maybe there's a Freudian lesson in there, maybe?
Jack glares hatchet-faced over the horizon of a bowling ball. It's another gutterball, but Jill feigns enthusiasm, shouting, "Alllmost hit somethin'. Wasn't a pin, but still. Hey, good form." Jack returns to position, looking haggard despite the fact that her festive fuchsia mini-T matches her ball. She stands there for a second and says, "I need help." Jill jumps up and starts critiquing her technique until Jack wheels around and says, "I'm not talking about bowling." Jill resumes his habitual "why me?" pout, staring wistfully at the ball while thinking, I guess, of other balls he has known. "I'm scared," she whimpers. "Because I've never felt this." "Me too . . . and me neither," Jill says robotically. She continues: "You're right. If what I feel is sometimes different -- or more -- than what you feel, then that should be okay." Jill tries to interrupt but Jack shuts him down, barking, "No! And I don't want you to say anything, ever, that you're not ready to say." Jill fondles the ball and smirks tentatively until Jack wrests it from his hands, quipping, "Now let the mastah have his space!" I seem to have ruptured something recoiling in disgust, but there's no one to hear my screams. Never mind -- the show must go on, and I must write about it until I draw my last gangrenous breath. Elated by Jack's admission that she's a he, Jill lunges at her from behind and affixes himself to her neck, causing her to cackle raucously, turning her mouth into a makeshift airplane hangar. She extricates a stray dreadlock from his mouth before hurling the ball overhand -- and predictably, this time it's a strike. She emits a shrill howl of triumph and leaps into Jill's arms, a trick of Amanda Peet's that's got old the second time she did it to Anchormatt. Jill spins her around with celebratory glee as dogs mobilize from all corners of the earth to respond to her ear-piercing squeals.
I think we all know what's coming. This is like those moments of nauseous tension in Jaws where the shark swims away for awhile -- but never for good. And if the scene doesn't make you scared to go back into a bowling alley then you're made of stronger stuff than I am. The camera pans through the inner workings of the bowling alley, the pins being sorted by a machinated assembly line. And before our eyes have a chance to adapt to this setting, Ferret and Barto heave into view. Ferret sits astride Barto with her skirt hiked up and a feral grimace on her face. Barto leans slack-jawed against the sorting machine as she bounces up and down on him in a movement meant to seem erotic, but which succeeds only in seeming aerobic. Sadly, from the orientation of their bodies, it's clear that -- unless Barto is freakishly well-endowed -- Ferret is actually humping his abdomen. It's anyone's guess what motivates the actions of a ferret in estrus. Barto loses his concentration and staggers forward, knocking over several stacked boxes of bowling pins. My cats seem mortified by this lewd display and begin grooming themselves fastidiously.
It's Mikey time again. He sits on a couch eating phallic snack foods, shouting, "Go, go, go, go, yes, yes, nice! Ha ha!" He's filmed bare-chested from the waist up, so viewers of the last scene may interpret this as a reprisal of a sequence from Young, Hard and Solo. Like all true virtuosos, he no longer needs to use his hands. Elispa creeps into the living room, still tricked out in her patchouli-saturated hippie garb. She sits down with her legs tucked under her and utters the non sequitur, "Mikey, sometimes I think there's Mars, there's Venus, and then there's the world you live in." Mikey says, "I get the feeling there's almost an apology in there." That's interesting, because that sounded more like an insult to me. Elispa launches into a dizzy monologue about how he's "such a damn heartbreaker sometimes," and she just wanted to save "one of them" because there are "so many." Mikey keeps prompting her to say she's sorry, but she keeps blathering about how she wanted to be "loyal to womankind" when she should have been thinking of missing links like Mikey -- her roommate and boon companion. She finally apologizes in a breathless falsetto, asking Mikey if he forgives her. "I forgave you two days ago," Mikey says. "That's what they do on my planet." They stare affectionately at each other, their mouths full of baby carrots, until Mikey asks Elispa why she keeps hiding his clock. Luckily, a well-timed knock at the door (again!) saves Elispa from this conversation. It's Mr. E, who laughs demonically while embracing her. He scans the new apartment approvingly until his eyes fall on shirtless Mikey, who nods amiably and asks, "How ya doing?" Mr. E nods, a smile frozen on his face, and says asks Elispa in monotone if this is her roommate. "Yeah!" Elispa says brightly, as if she just found a way to get her fine washables even cleaner.
It's that darn greenhouse again, and that dratted roof-dwelling couple. Get a room, you all. And when you do, stay there for several months without food and water. J 'n' J hold hands and stare musingly into the camera -- I mean, sky. Jill blurts, "I love you," then pulls Mikey's toothpick from his pocket and impales himself on it. Either that, or he says, "You heard me, right?" and she simpers, "MMM-HMMM," and he says, "Good," with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. And that's that. I'm out. Except for the previews, which indicate that Jack gets liquored up and poses naked for Jill in the episode. He sells the pictures and boy, does he have some 'splaining to do. Riotous hijinks ensue. Soundtrack available on Warner Brothers records.