Episode Report Card Mollie: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Here's To The Ladies Who Lunch
By Mollie | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 02.20.2008
Hooray, Eva Garcia returns! She and Abby are in Wendy's office, and Wendy has just produced "a terrific script" for Abby to read. Abby is excited about the project -- a young-adult novel adaptation -- but single-minded momager Eva is there to talk Pink Poison and doesn't fall for this bait-and-switch. As far as Eva is concerned, the movie is a done deal, and all that's left to decide is what size breast implants Abby should get. She has actually brought several sets of implants with her, and now lays them out across Wendy's desk to get her opinion. Wendy summons assistant Josh and instructs him to escort Abby down the hall, where she can meet the director of the project the script for which Wendy has just handed her. Then she turns back to Eva. "Part of my job is to see trouble before it happens," Wendy begins. She doesn't come right out and say that Abby looks like a Lohan in the making, though; instead, she gently observes that Eva seems to want Pink Poison much more than her client/daughter does. Eva can't believe she's getting a speech on mothering her teen daughter from Mommy Tsunami over here.
Janice is looking over another ugly book-jacket proof when Nico appears in the doorway of her office, unannounced. Nico proclaims that Janice and Wendy's feud has gone too far. "Don't act all grand with me, Nico Reilly," Janice sneers. (Aw, show, I appreciate the last-name shout-outs.) Then, under the pretense of cutting Nico down, Janice exposits that Nico is "a Greek girl from Flushing, Queens, whose daddy ran a diner." I guess that heritage makes her first name slightly less ridiculous -- but boy, she was lucky her husband's surname didn't turn out to be "O'Reilly." Janice goes on to explain that Wendy did more than just pull out of the Hillary-book bidding war we heard about last week: "She went on record last year to say that I publish trash." Nico calmly informs Janice that the Mariska book is "dead." Janice's response gets my nomination for Feeblest Line of the Series: "Far from it! I'm launching the website: Grand Slam on Bad Maam dot com." Note to Janice: stringing together random words and making them rhyme isn't clever! Note to writers everywhere: adding "dot com" to a random phrase doesn't make it a punch line! Excuse me while I scream into a pillow.... Okay. I feel better. Janice notices that her coffee is cold (or gone) and shouts, "Reheat!" The office door opens and in comes a chubby-cheeked man, endearingly eager to help. "Who the hell are you, sweater boy?" Janice yells. Hee. I do get a kick out of her unprovoked, unchecked hostility. Nico introduces sweater boy as "Harold -- he's your new assistant." It seems as though Nico has brought Nora -- the homely young woman we've seen at Janice's side these last two episodes -- over to Bonfire. "I hired her to do nothing but type up Janice Lasher stories," Nico explains, "and she's got quite a few." Okay, I accept that Nico is a powerful woman, but can she really control the firing and hiring of other people's assistants at companies she does not run? That is difficult for me to believe. Now Nico claims she's preparing to run the story of Janice's "lost weekend in Bangkok," and leans over Janice's desk to take her shot at winning the episode's Most Cringeworthy Punch Line competition: "Who knew you could do that with a ping-pong ball?" Wow. That was a really good effort. I definitely cringed. But that line is merely stale -- and out of step with everything we know about the character in question. The "Grand Slam on Bad Maam" line tops it by being complete and utter nonsense. Advantage: Janice. Nico ends the scene by announcing that this sort of thing -- professional blackmail, I guess -- is "what friends do for each other." As she leaves, she pointedly adds, "You'd know if you had any." Friendless Janice is pissed. Boy, Nico is lucky there aren't any skeletons in her closet! What kind of tell-all book could Janice ever publish to take down Nico?
Joe shows up at Victory's that night and immediately turns on the charm, asking, "Are we alone, or is your cracker assistant still lurking around?" Wow, Victory, I can see why you keep falling for this guy. He goes on to say he's not sure whether they fought last night or not. How can you stay mad at a man who pretends not to know why you're mad at him? It's genius! Victory says that she just needs to "figure some things out." And you know I'm all about the hating on Joe, but Andrew McCarthy still makes me laugh a lot when he replies, "And this is all because I don't want to have Sunday brunch with Wendy and Shane and little Shane and baby Shane?" Writers, this doesn't make up for that nonsense in the previous scene, but still: ha. Victory now launches into a speech she has clearly been rehearsing for a while, explaining that Joe's world is "like a carnival ride of life's greatest hits." Joe can't joke his way out of this one, and his ringing phone interrupts his speech about how, when he's with Victory, "it is not world, it is our world." So he acts like he's leveling with Victory and says that his workday wears him out so much that he just doesn't want to be social in his downtime. This makes Victory teary, and to Joe's credit, he knows better than to linger.