Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Thumbs Up
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 02.15.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.El Diablo is out of jail, and he vows he's going to put the hurt on Patrick. Patrick and Stacy Keach are pretty psyched to be working together again even though the training Patrick goes through is brutal, but Patrick is less jazzed about living in some fleabag motel where the highlights of his life are ice baths and unwanted visits from Mikey Fumbles. He sees Theresa, who seems a lot happier to see him than you might have expected, although their meeting is still plenty awkward. However, Ava tells Patrick that she overheard Theresa asking a friend for a lawyer reference, and even though Patrick assures her everything's fine, he's shaken by the news, and also by a thumb he takes in the eye while sparring that distorts his vision.
Johnny tries to make amends with Patrick and Stacy Keach both, but while the latter is not having it AT ALL, Patrick goes out with him and reminisces about how great Johnny was before he got hurt, but Johnny tells him that Patrick was always the one with the discipline to be a real success. Two boxing sluts then pick them up, and when the one disappears with Johnny, Patrick and his bad eyes try to drive the other one home, and he ends up running them off the road. At the hospital, the doctor tells him there's blood behind the eye that will take a few days to work itself out, so he's got to protect it until it heals. Johnny, for his part, tries to cover the whole thing up, but Mikey Fumbles gets wind of the whole thing and says he's going to run an exposé, forcing Patrick to warn Theresa about the incident, and she is of course not thrilled. But then, the piece doesn't even run, but it's not because Mikey had a change of heart -- it's that Johnny's (or possibly someone else's?) cover-up efforts were more effective than it originally seemed, and the fact-checkers couldn't verify the story. Even though Mikey gets fired, however, he tells him to kick some ass, while Margaret goes to see Theresa and inform her Patrick needs his family, and even though she expresses sympathy for everything Theresa's been through, she points out that she fell in love with a fighter, and as such, she should let him fight. The episode ends with Patrick training harder than ever, and while it's a total placeholder, El Diablo is sufficiently scary for the anticipation to be worth it.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Apparently the El Diablo fight is quite real, as we open at a press conference at which an interpreter tells the room that ED would like to thank God, Barry K., and "the Borinquen quarter horse El Conquistador, whose ligament is holding together his left knee." Everyone laughs for some reason, and the interpreter then goes on, with prompting in Spanish from ED, that ED's plan for the fight is "to inflict damage, and to take blood from the old man." ED, who's smoking a cigarette just in case you didn't get the point from his criminal past and evil talk, turns to Patrick and says in much better English than I would have guessed from the interpreter's presence that he's going to punish and retire him for good. He then presents him with a walker, and I will give extra points for the big pink ribbon tied to it, and then after Barry K. grandly introduces Patrick, Patrick plays along, talking the walker and shuffling up to the mike before saying how happy he is to be coming back and to be training with his father again. After some more pleasantries, a reporter asks if he sees the fight as a stepping stone to a rematch with Reynolds, prompting Patrick, reasonably enough, to ask if ED really looks like a stepping stone to him. Everyone again laughs, but I wouldn't be so quick to mention anything in ED's presence that could give him ideas for weapons.
Mikey Fumbles then stands up and asks if Patrick wasn't in talks to fight Jojo, and Patrick plays the company man by saying they looked at several opponents, but Jojo had a "training accident." I'd agree, in that his hand looked like it got run over by a train. Mikey asks if that means Patrick was booked to fight him, and if Barry K. is as unclean as the show seems to want us to believe, I find it hard to buy that Mikey is the only reporter in the room that cares about this, but whatever, Barry K. smooth talks for a bit, and even though Mikey doesn't play and asks if he bought ED's parole, Barry K. is unfazed, making a joke out of the question before calling the contestants up for a photo op. Perhaps you can guess where this is going, as Patrick's suggestion that ED put his cigarette out quickly devolves into hands being thrown, with Patrick landing one on ED's face and Johnny then entering the fray and banging a member of ED's entourage on the back with a folding chair. Man, we keep hearing about how great a boxer Johnny was, and yet he fights like a slow-witted extra in Road House...
...but, as it turns out, all of this was a publicity stunt, which could have used some work, given that the ham battle on last season's premiere of Mad Men was more violent. Backstage, Patrick and ED shake hands and even shoulder-hug, but then ED, who speaks even better English than I thought (was the interpreter also for show? Weird), drops the act and tells Patrick he's not going to last two minutes. "Tell your daughters to pray for you." And isn't it just lovely that the statutory rapist referenced Patrick's girls there. After ED leaves, Johnny comes over and asks Patrick not to tell Barry about their split, and Patrick is basically like "I don't have time for your sorry ass," and bounces. And after that little run-in with ED, it'd be hard to blame him even if Johnny weren't such a loser. Credits.