Las Vegas at night. It's very neon, it is. It's also zooming by at, like, 85 miles an hour and giving people with weak stomachs a total case of motion sickness. Which may be the new hip thing -- in a world where Ugg boots are apparently the height of fashion, nausea may be the new good time.
Anyway, Mike is walking some polo-shirt-wearing tool on out the door, explaining, "All right, so it took me a while to find the wheels you wanted, but I think you'll be happy." The fifteen grinning goons behind him think so too. Ah, we've got a bachelor party. Oh, wait -- multiple bachelor parties. The alpha groom is all, "Good thing you brought that around back, because if our fiancées saw…" They'd what? Be taken aback that you think sneaking around is a fine precedent to set in a long-term relationship based in some part on trust? Go into the kind of suffocating paranoia that sends the "THIS MARRIAGE IS DOOMED" message? Ask to come along, get it on with the stripper, then leave you wondering whether you weren't enough man for her? Please -- fill me in.
My curiosity will never be sated. We see a giant charter bus, and some dork shrieks, "Stripper bus! Awww, yeah!" Nobody's had the heart to tell him he's been routed to the short bus instead. We see the stripper bus, which has all the ambiance and charm of an airport shuttle, and a few women doing some warm-up spins around the pole. Some big-hair refugee from the 1980s vamps seductively in the bus door and asks, "Ready, boys?" They bellow an enthusiastic yes. Mike watches with a weirdly paternal expression.
Everyone loads on to the bus, and Alpha Bachelor is all, "I could die happy!" And just think, if he did, his fiancée would never see the gurney with his body on it, since they're parked in back. Everyone wins in that scenario.
Mike wanders away from the party bus when a woman dressed in WhoreMart's finest corporate casual begins berating two women as they walk off; she informs him, somewhat drunkenly, that she's a showgirl and she was just trying to pass on her résumé to those "stuck-up beeyotches." Heh. But -- showgirl résumé? Perhaps the action items read like "Facilitated vanilla fantasy in repressed couple at 10 PM topless review" and "Supervised colleague liaisons in 'Dance of 3 Girls and a Pole' number." Anyway, Mike's kind of rolling with it, because the last thing you really ever want to do with a loud drunk is make it look like your departure was anything but their idea, and after Lucy Lush executes a grimly unsexy shimmy and off-balance high-kick, Mike catches her and restores her balance. Lucy Lush brays, "Geddoff me! I don't need your help!" Apparently, the drink gives Lucy reverse beer goggles; I can't speak for anyone else, but I would've checked Mike out and been the kind of crafty drunk that "stumbled" a few more times. Anyway, Lucy makes her declaration of independence right into the path of the oncoming stripper bus. Mike yells, "Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey! Drunk lady!" but Lucy's oblivious, so he tackles her and brings her down safely out of the bus's path. Why the bus elected to keep moving forward whilst honking the horn, as opposed to hitting the brakes, is a mystery. The bus passes by. Mike watches it go while lying flat on his back, then lifts up to ask the now-unconscious Lucy Lush if she's okay.
Elvis thinks she is, as she fits the "little less conversation" criteria to a tee.
When we get back from commercials, there's a dragon in the Montecito's lobby, and Big Ed's in wizard drag, explaining to his boy apprentice Danny that you kill a dragon by -- oh, I'm kidding. It's a dragon like you see in Chinese New Year parades, and it comes with its own percussive soundtrack. Mary stops the dragon in its tracks and says, "Hey! Hey! You're ten minutes late. Get into the bar, buddy. Go on, get!" She shoos a second dragon on its way, then stops some woman in a white suit and asks her to pass on a threat vis-à-vis welcome baskets. I like how, for extras and tertiary roles, women are in business casual attire, but every day is cocktail party day for Mary. The Chinese percussion section heads on over to the bar -- better then than the morning, when a bunch of cymbals are the last thing any overimbiber wants to hear -- and Mary heads to a table to pick up a prop clipboard as a crimson-corset-clad Sam strolls on over and asks how Mary's day is going. Mary snarks, "Aside from two dozen brides demanding that I make Sunday the happiest day of their lives, just great." You know, I cast a suspicious eye on the whole wedding-as-happiest-day philosophy, if only because that would imply that your marriage peaked sometime during its first six hours, and that's dreary beyond words. Anyway, Sam sighs over her Chinese high-roller who wants her to spoon-feed him caviar. How would that work: "And heeeeeere's the winning poker hand…open up!" Oh, wait. He wants Sam to spoon-feed it from her navel. That changes the dialogue considerably. Sam winds her way through the lobby, greeting assorted people in Mandarin. Danny stops her by the bar and asks when she began speaking the Mandarin dialect, and Sam replies, "Since I learned 80 percent of high rollers were Chinese." Could it be? A plausible reason for some otherwise improbable plot development? I may pass out from the excitement. Danny then sets the wheels of exposition in motion by asking how Sam landed high-roller Mr. Zhao, best known for playing the Monte Carlo; Sam explains that Mr. Zhao's daughters "go to school" in New York and they don't get to see the paterfamilias all that often, so she used them as a lure to get the old man into the casino.
And here come the little girls now, wearing the Chinese flag in ways that the Communist Party probably never intended. There are catcalls. There are flashbulbs. There are anvils with "Hey! Which two heiress sisters get crammed down an entertainment-media-reading public's throat in real life!" painted on the side. As if to confirm this, Danny pants, "Who are they?" and Sam answers flatly, "They would be Mr. Zhao's daughters, the new 'It' girls. Ah, to be rich and beautiful, and [to] know it. Magazines can't get enough of them." They're not the only medium. We get a long, lingering shot of bare thigh, which makes me wonder if anyone's bothered to tell the folks making Las Vegas that Skin is dead, gone, and no threat to the valued too-cheap-for-cable demographic. The girls vogue for what feels like an eternity, while their father rolls his eyes and grimaces in a way clearly meant to convey "There's a reason we have a continent, an ocean, and some 22 hours' jet lag between us." Zhao takes Big Ed aside for a word. Danny continues to gape, since it's not like he's ever been exposed to scantily clad women before.
Up in Big Ed's office, Mr. Zhao is requesting that security keep an eye on his daughters. Mr. Zhao should probably just pack up the girls now and head back to the Monte Carlo; we are referring to the same security team that apparently put its offices somewhere in Elko, given how damn long it takes anyone to get from the main hub to the floor, and dressed the house thugs like deckhands. Anyway, we get a shot of the girls awkwardly dancing with the two dragons -- a tableau so self-conscious and staged, it's prompted dozens of graduate students to begin writing theses on the collision of McLuhan's media hierarchy and Lacanian imaginaries and Baudrillardian simulacrum before their brains explode. Anyway, Daddums wants Big Ed to make sure the girls don't leave the hotel. He harrumphs about "the obsession your media has [with my daughters] is not something I'm pleased with," since it should be totally evident to anyone with eyes that the privacy-seeking introverts he fathered are tortured by all the attention. Big Ed points out that, like the poor, the paparazzi will be with us always, and asks tiredly, "What is it you suggest I do?" Zhao rants that he doesn't need dragons or someone feng shui-ing the swimming pool; he just wants Bonnie Fuller and her ilk tossed in the brig. Zhao finishes, "Keep them out of trouble. If you can't do that, I'll find a casino that can." Here's a radical idea, Zhao: maybe don't agree to a casino reunion in the first place. Anyway, Big Ed assures Zhao he'll put his best men on it, then whips out a notepad and writes a reminder to hire those best men. He then turns back to the monitor so we can zoom on down to the girls. They're shimmying with the dragons and doing that weird "we're sisters, and yet we think it's so hot to dance provocatively with each other" thing. The press, naturally, is eating it up.
We flash to Vegas magazine, with its cover image of the two girls dancing and the headline "Zhao girls make a splash in the desert" and then to Showbiz magazine and its headline "Wowie KaZHAOie!!" We then get a montage of shots where they're posing on barstools and pouting prettily before kissing. All this scene needs is some Coors-swilling frat boy screaming, "And -- and twins!" I just don't get why lesbian incest is such a turn-on to straight guys.
Meanwhile, Mike and Mary's subplots collide, as we see a shot reminding us that the Montecito also hosts mass weddings right as Mike strolls into view; he's taking plaudits from the strippers, who somehow managed to see his save whilst also twirling around poles on a careering bus and feigning interest in the dorky bachelors pawing at their G-strings. Mike then notices two people with the clean-cut blond good looks that only the recently-escaped Amish and the designated TV-yokels-of-the-week have. He correctly susses out that they're here for The Mass Wedding In Defense of Marriage Rally '03: Take That, Massachusetts! (or "TRAVESTY," for short) and steers them over to the registration table. The woman staffing it looks far too calm for someone who's been dealing with almost-brides all weekend. Anyway, the blonde rube-ette shakes Mike's hand, introduces herself and her male companion as Karen and Bill, and adds, perhaps unnecessarily, "This is our first time in Vegas." Mike deadpans, "Never would have guessed it." We then find out that the rubes of the week hale from Edina, Minnesota. You know, I realize it's fun to pick on the Midwest, but Minnesota is the state that gave us Prince, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Mystery Science 3000, Paul Wellstone, and The Utne Reader; it's not exactly the epicenter of Hillbilly Nation. Bill drawls, "Our whole town's about as big as that pyramid we saw on our way in." Who the hell drawls in Minnesota? Then the two carry on about how cool it is to get hitched in Vegas like Elvis and Priscilla. So Karen's a tenth-grader, is what you're telling me, and Bill has himself a fondness for the peanut butter and barbiturate sandwiches?
Karen, who apparently stopped reading Elvis and Me after page 32, coos, "I just hope we'll be as happy as they were." Just then, Mary comes over and Mike uses her as a way to try and gracefully extricate himself from the Twin Cities Hillbillies. Bill babbles on at length about how they're dropping a not-inconsiderable sum of money on TRAVESTY, but they just looooved the idea of riding in a limo and going to a buffet. Mary shakes them and then asks Mike, "Vegas virgins?" Mike sighs, "Yep. And they got the fever bad." Oh, there will be Vegas hijinks aplenty before the TRAVESTY, I can see that now!
Mary wanders off, and then a shyly smiling woman comes up and asks Mike to sign her copy of the newspaper that features his photo and a huge story about how he saved a drunken dancer from joining the insects on the grill of the bus. Nessa and Danny come up just then, and Nessa teases him with a few chop-socky moves, asking if he doesn't have more damsels in distress to save. Mike deflects the question by asking Danny where his two charges are. "Follow the crowd of flashbulbs!" Danny chortles. Oh, he does not. He tells us the girls are off getting massages. There's some more busting-of-chops back and forth -- apparently, Mike's feat of derring-do inspired one strip joint to name a drink the "Cannon Blast" -- but a process server gets in the last diss by handing Mike papers. He's being sued by the woman he tackled. Danny's all ready with a sympathetic ear, but -- oh, actually, he's not. He's on his cell phone, because it turns out his charges have crashed Mary's TRAVESTY champagne brunch.
Cut to the girls feeding each other choice tidbits and doing other coy tricks for the camera; Mary bitches at Danny, "I got the press out to cover the TRAVESTY brunch, but all they've done is take snaps of those two." Smart press: the only way anyone's going to buy a paper with two yokels feeding each other croissants in it is if there's a reality show attached. Delinda snips, "Aren't you supposed to be babysitting these two?" A better question might be directed at Big Ed: "Why did you lie and tell Zhao you'd put your best men on the deal?" Delinda and Mary's comments fall on Danny's deaf ears; the sound of his own drool puddling onto the floor is apparently overpowering. The sisters are busy throwing little bits of pastry at a man, and his fed-up fiancée comes over and barks, "Stop! Harassing! My! Fiancé!" The girls claim that a) the man in question liked it, and b) if the woman pelted her intended with pastry, he wouldn't be so receptive to carbohydrate missiles from other women. Maybe the guy's just on Atkins and really jonesing for a muffin.
Danny skids up then and wants to know why the girls aren't getting massages. They whine in unison, "We got bored," then begin twining around Danny like kudzu as they take turns cooing, "If you had massaged us like we asked, we wouldn't have gotten bored," and "We need constant stimulation." Danny is an epidemiologist's wet dream: if Las Vegas were felled by a plague, he'd be Patient Zero, what with the way any woman who crosses his path begins rubbing all over him. The boy should carry Purell and use it liberally on the women he talks to. Anyway, the girls go to leave with Danny herding them along, and the bride of the pastry target guy shouts, "Tramp!" This inspires one of the sisters -- I have no idea which one and, frankly, they're interchangeable -- to grab a nearly mimosa and fling it at the woman. Unfortunately, it lands on Danny, as he was trying to make sure he was intercepting the woman. The sisters find this wildly hilarious. Delinda and Mary heckle Danny on the way out, and he finally snaps and tells the paparazzi to back off. He then tells the sisters, "If you two weren't so damn cute, you'd be in a four-by-six holding cell right now." So Danny discriminates based on appearances. Lovely. The sisters protest that they don't want special treatment, and plead with him to frisk them, handcuff them, and spank them. Insert your own Castle Anthrax joke here.
Just as Sir Launcelot arrived before Sir Galahad's virtue could be compromised by wicked, evil, naughty Zoot and Dingo, so does Big Ed gallop in to save Danny. Only he does it by telephone, calling Danny to see how it's going with the girls -- whom I've just decided will be called Zoot and Dingo henceforth -- and asking if Danny maybe can't also handle multiple bachelor parties tonight too. Danny replies that he's got his hands full with the girls, but Big Ed's not taking no for an answer: "You're a Marine with guerilla training, Danny. You think you can take two co-eds." Danny weakly counters that guerillas don't wear six-inch heels. But, like the sisters, they do go commando. Or are commandos. Take your pick. Anyway, Danny notices that Zoot and Dingo are nowhere in sight. He heads over to the security guard with whom he had charged the girls' temporary supervision, and asks where they went. The guard shrugs. I'm sure upper management goes to bed happy knowing keen men like him are watching the casino. Danny stops the conveniently-placed Mary to see if she's seen the Zhao sisters; Mary has not. Danny's all, "You sure?" and Mary sarcastically points out, "They're a little hard to miss, don't you think?"
Speaking of hard to miss, it's a neon rube. Oh, it's Karen, telling Mary that getting married in Vegas is awesome because, unlike her church, Vegas doesn't smell like beef. Well, her church sounds like the place to be for Communion: "Body of Christ? Blood of Christ? A side of chips?" Mary reassures her that the Montecito's rehearsal space smells nothing like beef, and hurries Karen along for the rehearsal. Karen goes to snag Bill, but he's too busy getting some action at the tables to be bothered to come along for their wedding rehearsal. Bill's all, "It's a rehearsal, baby! We can be a little late." Bill has clearly never been around a bride-to-be before. Karen tugs at his arm and implores, "This is important to me!" Bill replies, "Winning the house money is important to me!" This is the point where Karen should point out, "I'm glad it's more important than ever seeing me naked again. See ya!" but she only watches as Bill throws the dice. There's a random act of CGI. Tragically, Bill is rewarded for his behavior with a win. Karen protests, "You said you didn't gamble!" Bill shoots back, "Yeah, well, you said you were a natural blonde, but you don't hear me complaining." Karen, leave him now. You're only in for years of him weaseling out of commitments and belittling your priorities, then telling you you're not fun if you call him on his crap. Go back to Our Lady of the Smorgasbord and find yourself a nice boy. Anyway, the whole table laughs at Bill's insult to his fiancée, and Karen looks miserable. She pleads with him to come with her, but the entire table begins chanting Bill's name. Sure enough, Bill wins again: two comely women drape themselves all over him as he crows, "Slap my ass and call me Sally!" They do. Call it off, Karen! It's not too late!
Karen prepares to launch a hair-pulling assault instead; only Mary's last-minute intervention -- heroically done at the expense of her own neckline -- spares us the catfight.
Meanwhile, Mike's meeting with the woman he saved, and her lawyer. The lawyer snots that Mike sprained Lucy Litigious's trapezius muscle, which she needs for the day job as a dancer. Mike points out that, had he not done anything, a sprained trapeze muscle would be the least of Lucy's problems, but that sort of logic and reason aren't nearly so compelling as the prospect of soaking the Montecito for grillions of dollars. The meeting doesn't go well.
Danny is still on the hunt for Zoot and Dingo; he finds them on the set of a rap video, where someone is feeding two other women a line about how he's from Pakistan, but Detroit is his spiritual home. After a brief conversation during which we establish that the "producer" in question isn't and the Zhao sisters will get naked for anyone, we see a silhouette of Zoot and Dingo pole-dancing -- or trying to, since neither has any moves past a bobblehead-like totter -- and then Danny's silhouette picking up the girls and carrying them off.
In the shot, the two are complaining about how they wanted to be in MC Lockjaw's video. Hee. Is he on the Rusty Nailzz record label? One of the girls snots at Danny, "Our father's not going to like you pushing us around like this." Danny counters, "Actually, your father said I could use anything short of a stun gun to keep you in this place." Zoot and Dingo turn to Plan B: slithering up and down Danny. You'd think they'd see the initials carved on his lapel by all other women who try that ploy. You'd think they'd also see their irate father crossing the lobby and screaming in Chinese. It sounds like an excellent language with which to berate someone. The girls head into an elevator, sulking because it's so unfair that their dad forbids them from mounting the hired help in public. Turns out Danny called Dad. As he gets in the elevator with all three Zhaos, the sisters do that creepy incestuous lesbian thing all over his front again.
Fortunately for Danny, he seems to be as disconcerted by it as I am; when they get up to the penthouse level, a ninja assassin is waiting there so he can throw those metal stars at Mr. Zhao. We see it go by in slow-motion. The girls scream, and Mr. Zhao herds them back into the elevator, leaving Danny with the Chinese assassin. The would-be killer breaks out the nunchakus. Danny pushes a convenient room service cart toward the guy's knees. He fails to execute a Jackie Chan-style leap or anything showy. Danny uses everything -- a tablecloth, a plate setting, fisticuffs -- to subdue the assassin, and manages to make it back to the elevator, where he barks an order for penthouse lockdown into the walkie-talkie.
In the scene, Big Ed, Danny, and Luis are reviewing the footage. Fun fact number one: There are apparently no cameras in the penthouse, because that's illegal. Fun fact number two: The red box that appears on the fight footage and then superimposed over regular casino footage helps match people by examining kinesthetic characteristics. Fun fact number three: Danny's got a nosebleed, and a field full of cotton crammed into his right nostril. Fun fact number four: Luis has dropped the Spanglish dialect. As he prepares to leave -- he claims his people have finished questioning the Zhaos, but I'm betting it's more like "the detectives ran screaming after a few minutes of that creepy inbreeding act" -- Big Ed tells him, "The last time I saw a blade like that, I was working the Chinese border." Danny interrupts, "You worked the Chinese border?" and Big Ed gives him a withering stare before spitting, "No. I never worked the Chinese border." Luis asks if this story has a point. The point is, Big Ed suspects a would-be assassination. Insights like that are why he gets to run the casino in Lieutenant Fancy's absence. Big Ed then tells Danny to get the Zhaos out of the Montecito, since he can't be having with all those assassination attempts around here.
Cut to Danny having an ineffective conversation with Zhao. Bulls-eye is not budging; he's lost $2 million to the Montecito, and he plans on winning it back. You'd think that the loss, combined with the assassination attempt and the ill-conceived reunion with Zoot and Dingo, would lead him to conclude that maybe it's not a good idea to linger at the Montecito. Then Danny has an ineffective conversation with Luis; it's basically a stand-in for the usual Danny-Mary conversation wherein they dump all over each other and stalk off.
Speaking of Mary, here she is, sidling up to Bill at the bar. Turns out that hot streak ended; Bill's all, "That casino made five big ones off me." That seems like a lot of money for someone who was all excited about eating at a buffet earlier. Mary's not offering a shoulder to cry on; she tells him, "Excuse my frankness, but what you did to Karen was pretty crappy." Bill claims that Vegas made him do it. We find out that Karen's moved to another room; too bad she hasn't moved to another state by this point. We end the scene with Bill asking Mary how to make it up to Karen; she replies, "Jewelry." Nope. Not good enough. Karen doesn't need another piece of cheap Zales gimcrackery cluttering her vanity; she needs Bill groveling in front of a crowd so he can see what it feels like to get dissed in public.
Mary passes Mike as he's en route to his deposition and wishes him good luck. In this case, "deposition" is the same as "a club sandwich at the Montecito coffee shop," and the lawyer tells him they're going to settle. Mike protests that he didn't do anything wrong, and the lawyer tells him, "You're taking this personally. Look at it from a cost-benefit perspective. For a hundred grand, we could make this case go away. If we push forward, we could lose a million." Mike wonders why they can't investigate the case, since the issue of whether or not Lucy Lush's trapezius muscle is actually injured hasn't been resolved one way or the other. The lawyer can't be bothered. Mike protests that the settlement could be construed as an admission of his wrongdoing, and asks, "What happens the time some lady might get hit by a bus?" You stop and ask why on Earth the bus drivers are aiming for pedestrians, my man. The lawyer's all, "Don't help people." Mike nearly shouts, "I can't help people?" and the lawyer says around a mouthful of Monte Cristo, "Unfortunately, we live in a very litigious society." Coming from corporate counsel as it does, that sentiment carries the same validity as a beauty queen's bitching about the ozone layer while her Aquanetted hair deflects missiles. Mike gives notice via "I sure as hell am not going to work for a company that says I can't help people. I quit."
Big Ed sees this -- he's like Bruce Wayne sulking in the Bat Cave with his technology-fueled omniscience -- and heads on down to talk Mike out of orbit. He gets Mike to sit on the resignation for a weekend and think about it. Mike agrees, and stalks off.
Back at the TRAVESTY bachelorette party, people are doing body shots off one bachelorette as others drink and shriek at the male strippers. Danny looks around with an expression of horror, and then heads over to Mary to pronounce, "Women are pigs." "You have no idea," she replies. Delinda adds, "Wait until you see this."
"This" is a male stripper in fireman drag. Male strippers are like Playgirl -- they're just a lame form of "what's good for the goose…" Before my eyes are permanently seared, Zoot and Dingo show up. Danny strikes a deal with them: he'll totally violate his boss's orders and let the two girls run around less than a day after a death threat, if they'll tell him why someone might be aiming for Zhao. The girls flat-out state that Daddums has some shady dealings with the Triad, but he won't go to the police lest his sterling business reputation be tarnished. Zoot or Dingo claims, "It's very stressful…that's why we go clubbing." Nice one. They're also bitter that Daddums is gambling away the family fortune, but I suspect that has less to do with a concern over his compulsive behavior and more to do with concern over what will happen if they run out of Manolo money.
Meanwhile, Karen's vamped it up; she slinks onto a seat to Mary and drunkenly tells her the wedding is called off. Glory be! She laments, "I was with him five years. Thought I knew all his faults -- the pro wrestling, the snoring, the third nipple. I could live with all that, but ever since we got here, it's like I don't even know him." Mary watches Karen belt back some asinine Technicolor bar shot, and cautions that one's behavior in Vegas isn't indicative of one's behavior in the real world. I bet that's a conceit that comes in handy for the locals. Karen's not paying attention -- there's a fireman-cum-stripper making eyes at her, and she heads off saying, "You hear that? That's the sound of a fire engine. And it goes, 'Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!'" Curiously enough, that's the sound her dignity makes as she leaves it behind and heads out on the dance floor for some bump-and-grind.
And now Danny drives up to the strip mall that Las Vegas likes to call its own little Chinatown. He gets out in front of a restaurant, and goes inside as a chef beheads a cooked duck. Was it smiling at him? No big surprise, the chef knows Danny. Danny calls, "Charlie!" Good thing we're dealing with the Chinese and not the Vietnamese, eh? After the two men hug hello, Danny asks if Charlie's ever heard of the Sun Fah Triad. A busboys= stops and glares suspiciously. Charlie's all, "I hear they run with the Moo Shu Boys!" Heh. Charlie points out that being Chinese does not guarantee automatic entrée into the Chinese underworld. Danny's all, "Now I remember why I beat the crap out of you in grade school," and Charlie replies, "You were just jealous because I was the one scoring with all the honeys." Charlie should see Danny now; in fact, if he looks down, there may be two of three women clinging to his shins. Danny heads out, and is promptly beset by Chinese brigands. With six, you get ass-whooping. They're buffeting him about, and one finally screams, "You're asking questions about Triad, huh? You a cop? Choose three bruises from column A, two kidney punches from column B! Extra for Bactine!" Or something to that effect. A thoroughly thrashed Danny invites everyone to go hell, but before the busboy can knife Danny and send him on his way, someone pulls out his ID. Danny is saved because he knows Big Ed.
B-plot: Karen and Bill are having it out. Bill is not clothed; Karen is still looking pretty good. Big Ed comes down as Bill fishes a red thong out of a fireman's hat and Karen throws a vase across the room. His entreaties to maybe turn it down and not damage hotel property fall on deaf ears. Bill howls, "My mother was right: you are a skank!" Oh, that's over the line. It also implies five years of awkward family get-togethers, to say nothing of a really tense Thanksgiving if these two numbskulls really do go through with it. Karen does nothing to help the situation by bellowing, "Your mother is a bitch, and I wish she would get back on her broomstick and fly home!" Hmm -- might a scene with Mom have been cut? As Karen imprecates her future in-laws, she unplugs a lamp and goes to hurl it. Big Ed looks appalled. Bill shrieks, "At least she's not a hussy!" "A hussy?" Karen screams back, wondering if he's going to call her a roundheels , and flipping through her 1950s-to-English dictionary for an appropriate rebuttal. Big Ed commands, "Calm down!" Karen goes for his throat, threatening, "Bitch! I'll kill you!" I love it. Security swarms over everyone.
In the scene, the former fiancées are being frogmarched down the hall -- Bill does not ask for the ring back at this point, no doubt sparing Miss Manners the letter that begins, "Dear Miss Manners: After nakedly confronting my strumpet ex-fiancée…" Mary comes up and understates, "I heard there was a problem." Big Ed tells her it's a past-tense problem, as he's checked them out of the hotel. Mary protests that they're supposed to be getting married; Big Ed does not spit, "That's obvious." Instead he blah-de-blahs about not ignoring disturbances or destruction of property. Mary protests, "But I've been hyping this TRAVESTY for months, and if the reporters find out we kicked out one of the couples, we'll have bad PR." Big Ed is distracted by a call from the Triad, so he leaves Mary to deal with the problem.
And deal she does. She asks what happened, and Bill sulks, "You told me I should make up with Karen!" Mary snaps, "I said you should buy her jewelry, not break into her room nude." Bill protests that he thought it would be romantic. Not when you look like you, Bill. He then blusters that he saw the fireman coming out; Karen protests again that they just talked. Bill ain't buying it. Karen grits, "He had a lot of positive qualities." Bill ripostes, "Like what? A hose? I'll show you a hose!" and goes for his towel. Mary puts a halt to that before a nation goes to bed haunted. "Check it out!" Bill invites. Mary has her hand out blocking her eyes, and she's all, "AGGGH! That's enough of that." Now the two are on a break. Because that always works out so well.
Cut to Big Ed exchanging a few karate moves with the Triad head while Danny sits tied to a chair wondering when he turned into moo goo gai pain. To the surprise of no one who watches this show on a regular basis, Big Ed knows this guy from his CIA days. After asking about Big Ed's fake wife -- kidding! -- we learn that Triad Timmy is now the #1 distributor of fake handbags in the southwest. He warmly invites Big Ed to take some home to the wife and daughter. The men reinforce their bonds by making fun of Danny, and the upshot of this is that any Triad in Las Vegas is the Red Herring Triad. Oh, whatever.
As Danny and Big Ed walk back through the casino, Big Ed tells Danny to keep his head down so his multiple lacerations, contusions, and abrasions don't attract attention. Otherwise they might have to comp people for the trauma. Big Ed tells Danny to give a yell if he's in over his head; Danny thickly denies that he is. Luis pops up just then, and Big Ed steers them behind a tree to talk, admonishing Danny to keep his head down. Big Ed drifts off, and Luis asks, "Who worked you over?" "A couple guys who sell handbags," Danny replies. Heh. I feel his pain when I look at the Louis Vuitton Murikami bags myself. Luis then backtracks on his whole "we work separately -- me for the cops and you for the Montecito!" rap to ask Danny to run a list of solo travelers from China through the Montecito computers. Danny should snot something about not working for the police, but doesn't. He limps off, promising to call if he gets any hits.
Then we get a shot of Danny working at a computer, which is just about as exciting as you or I working at a computer.
Danny decides to take a break by heading over to the wedding chapel, where Mary is twirling around with a veil on like she's auditioning for the Stevie Nicks role in a Fleetwood Mac cover band. Danny watches for a moment; Mary turns around, and the one thing keeping her from collapsing with embarrassment is the thought, "At least Danny didn't catch me singing, 'Mary McCoy. Mary McConnell-McCoy. Mrs. Danny McCoy!'" She and Danny both laugh. Mary pushes back her veil and grins, "Do you mind? I'm trying to have a private girly moment here." Aww. I like their rapport. Danny keeps grinning, because it hurts his face too much to do anything else. Mary clucks over him, and he changes the subject to, "I thought you wanted to get married in leather pants, and ride off on Prince's motorcycle." "No, Danny, that was your dream. And you fulfilled it during that shore leave in Bangkok, remember?" Mary says. Oh, she does not. She pleads youthful fantasies, and counters that Danny wanted to marry Daisy Duke. Turns out he still does -- or at least the Daisy Duke of 1983. Mary laughs, "Oh, that was forever ago. I'm beginning to think I'm just not the marrying kind." Danny counters, "As far as I can remember, you wanted to have, what, five kids and ten dogs." Mary nods. Just then, Danny's cell rings; some faceless drone in security has finished processing the names of the solo Chinese travelers, so it's showtime. Danny leaves Mary at the altar. No, really -- she's sitting there with her veil in her hand, while tulle-wrapped anvils crash down all around her.
Danny heads across the casino floor, where Zhao is having it out with Zoot and Dingo. Danny heads over to where Sam is eavesdropping. She tells him, "It's the same argument since day one: he wants them to stop showing up in People magazine; they want him to stop betting ten grand a hand. Family stuff." Danny wanders into the fray to extricate Zhao and take him down to the police office to maybe ID some people who want to kill him. Zoot and Dingo go on the charm offensive.
Big Ed is sitting and having a little conversation with the most cost-considerate corporate counsel that ever was. When Big Ed offers to front the costs for an investigation into Mike's case, the lawyer says patronizingly, "These employees are like your soldiers." Big Ed corrects him that they're more like family. I wonder if anyone would be insulted to be compared to Delinda? Long story short: Big Ed asks Ruben from housekeeping if he'd like to make a few hundred operating a video camera.
Meanwhile, Danny and Zhao are in Danny's Bananamobile, zooming down the Strip toward the police station. You know, it seems like an open car is maybe not the safest place for someone with a death threat hanging over his head to be sitting. Anyway, Zhao thanks Danny for taking care of his daughters, and Danny replies modestly, "They weren't a problem." Zhao says tightly and levelly, "Don't lie. They are life-sucking she-devils, and have been since they were born." If it's wrong to wish that Big Ed was in this conversation saying, "Hey! Mine too!" then I don't want to be right. Zhao says his daughters' temperaments were only to be expected, since they were born in the year of the tiger, same as the not-at-all-in-this-episode Mrs. Zhao. And then Zhao goes on to dismiss the effectiveness of either the LVPD or the Montecito's casino. You can tell he's the one at cocktail parties everyone tries to escape. Danny naively and hilariously says, "We have our ways. Like, in your town, if you need to find someone, you've got a go-to guy, right? In Vegas, I'm that guy." No, Danny, you're more like the "go far away from" guy. Or the "go on, pull the other" guy. Zhao sniffs, "You talk big, but you'll never find him." And right then, Danny does. Hey! It turns out the convertible ride was a ruse to draw the hired killer out in the open anyway.
Back at the security office, Big Ed is giving Danny a hard time about one of his wounds when Luis fills us all in on the results of the questioning: Han was hired to kill both Zhao and Danny, and the only thing he can reveal about his employer is that she's a Chinese-speaking female. It's Sam! The caviar incident pushed her over the edge. As luck would have it, the pay phone where the woman made her calls from is right near a traffic surveillance camera, and so we see that Zoot and Dingo managed to shake the press long enough to go out and place a hit. I suppose putting Daddums in Gamblers Anonymous would have been too much trouble.
Mary and Delinda are now working on reuniting the yokels of week. They're at Mystique, and Mary's telling the glowering Karen and the sullen Bill that she can't refund the wedding, so the breakup's going to cost; she suggests talking it over for 30 minutes before saying yes or no. Karen sulks that half an hour won't change her mind; Bill feels likewise, adding a "firehouse skank" for effect. You know, I would never seriously date, much less marry, someone who resorted to name-calling as a way to strike out at someone. Karen should just take the loss and head back to Minnesota. Anyway, Mary huffs that she did them a favor by bailing them out with Big Ed, so they should just take the private dining area Mary and Delinda have inexplicably prepared for them, and use it.
Back at the security office, Danny's matched up Han to the unknown assailant, and they all discuss the daughters (smarter than they look) and their motivation (Daddums is blowing the family fortune at the tables). Big Ed tells Danny to lead Luis to Zoot and Dingo while he takes care of something else.
That something else would be the world's laziest lawyer. Big Ed shows him a tape, made last night, of the plaintiff at a tailgate party, and then at work stripping. While it's all very crafty of Ed to conduct this investigation on the cheap with Ruben, what person suing for fraudulent injury is going to be stupid enough to gambol around while alleging that she can't move? ["I served on a jury for a case like this, and -- you'd be surprised." -- Sars] Big Ed growls, "After they drop the case against Mike, I want you to notify the D.A. so they can charge [Lucy Lush] with fraud." The lawyer squeaks that he'll get right on that. Big Ed then berates the lawyer for letting some kid in housekeeping conduct the investigation for $200, and bills him for it.
Zoot and Dingo are actually getting massages and pedicures this time around, and discussing their own mystique while the aestheticians roll their eyes discreetly. Danny and Luis come in, and Zoot (or Dingo) gets up off the massage table and makes a big deal of putting her underwear back on in front of Danny while Dingo (or Zoot) is off talking to Luis. Zoot coos, "I've always liked you. If you want, we could be very close friends." After the world's shortest interrogation, Luis declares failure and blah-de-blahs about taking the sisters down to the station. Luis is a wuss. Danny has a grand plan to get the sisters to talk; he heads back to talk to Zoot, who resumes clinging to him like a remora and oozes that she'd like to help him take his cares away. Danny appears to acquiesce by telling her, "The cops found this bad-ass named Han. Now, [Dingo] said she doesn't know him, but she says that you do." Zoot feigns innocence, and Danny sells the story further with, "You have to promise me you're not going to mention any of this to [Luis], okay?"
Dingo comes back in as Danny leaves; he places a bug on the hutch as he goes. Up in the security area, Sam is interpreting, with Big Ed correcting her on certain profanities. Aw, those two have a cute rapport too. The girls express remorse for not having Daddums done in while he was still in Beijing. Luis decides it's time for everyone to head to the police station.
Mary is lingering by the fire pole when she hears a crash and a very loud grunt from Karen. When she flings back the curtain, she sees Bill lying on the table while Karen rides him. Judging by where she's sitting up on his ribcage, I'm guessing that third nipple ain't the only extra anatomical feature floating around his torso. Mary leaves the two of them alone so she can go scrub her eyeballs with bleach.
And now, Zoot and Dingo are doing the perp walk; oddly enough, they're wearing the same drapey mesh halters that Paris and Nicky Hilton were running around in this summer. Because, you know, we would have had no other way of knowing which heiress sisters the Zhao girls were based on. We see another set of headlines -- the Las Vegas Sun runs "Killer Beijing Babes" and Las Vegas Life runs "High Roller Zhao: I should've had sons," while Vegas Golfer runs "Zhao sisters tell all: 'Dad gambled away shoe allowance. He had to go'" and Las Vegas Weekly goes with "Fashion beauty homicide?" Showbiz sticks to "Party's Over." Zhao slinks behind his sashaying daughters, clearly wishing his wife had made like The Joy Luck Club and just left the girls by the side of the road as infants. As everyone goes by, Sam gleefully reveals that news of the killer Beijing babes has apparently broken all over the Asian continent, and thus scores of Chinese high-rollers are on their way to the Montecito so their kids can make death threats too.
Small, boring conversation with Big Ed and Mike.
Mary has rounded up everyone to witness the TRAVESTY. Appropriately enough, it's headed up by Hugh Hefner. I should mention here that when I wanted to get married in Vegas and I provided my own officiant, we needed documentation signed in triplicate by God, but Hugh Hefner just waltzes on in and binds several dozens couples in a state of holy matrimony. The traditional values lobby must consider this a real victory. Hugh then grins benevolently while everyone kisses. Danny and his shiner observe Bill sucking the life out of Karen, and comment on how they survived Vegas fever. Mary opines that they were lucky. Well, she doesn't have to be at the Thanksgiving where Karen makes veiled comments about her mother-in-law's coven, so I guess she would call it lucky. She reveals, "One of their crazy ideas was to have hot monkey sex on a dining table." Danny grins and patronizes the people who keep his hometown's economy afloat. He turns to Mary and says, "They come to town, and they start having these crazy impulses…" Mary turns to him and falters, "At least us locals know better…" They almost kiss there, and Danny leans into Mary just as the credits go black. Oh, Las Vegas, you tease.