Episode Report Card Pablo G: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The One About Auggie Without Auggie
By Pablo G | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.10.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Jonah and Riley are still at odds over that whole cheating-on-each-other thing. Relationships are so complicated. Their petty differences take a backseat when The Complex becomes overrun by Detective Rodriguez's crime squad, who are looking for Auggie, whose blood was found on the murder weapon found last episode. Riley is aware of his whereabouts and withholds that information from the police, making it way too convenient for Jonah to get even more angry over Auggie. Jonah's sick of all this Auggie business and decides to take some time away from Riley by helping out with a publicity emergency of Ella's. Meanwhile, Riley contacts Auggie online to try and find out some more information about his involvement in Sydney's death. His cryptic responses lead her to believe she could be wrong about her friend. She chooses to turn him in. Good one, Riles.
On the other side of the relationship, Jonah goes off to help Ella, who is meeting with the renowned German director, Franz Keppler, in hopes that she can convince him to sign a publicity deal with WPK at the request of Caleb. Keppler happens to be a favorite of Jonah's. Are we sure this isn't Quentin Tarantino using a German alias? They meet at Coal for lunch and Keppler immediately begins aggressively trying to hit on Ella. Jonah, being the pal that he is, steps in and starts pretending to be Ella's fiancée, much to her delight. She's so pleased with even getting to pretend to be involved with Jonah that they do a great job of swaying Franz to sign with WPK. Yay! But then Ella has to deal with the reality that this thing with Jonah was all fake. Boo! Ella tries to use this as an opportunity to point out to Jonah how natural they are together compared to him and Riley, but he takes offense and gives Ella a harsh reality check. He's meant to be with Riley -- not her, he asserts. Ella is about as devastated as she can be. I'm about as angry at a fictional man as I can be.
Lauren's a tired whore. She's falling behind in her medical studies and drawing the ire of Dr. Mancini. Something has to give. Luckily, David decides to be a dumbass and kidnap his little brother, Noah, for the day to take him to a carnival. While there, Noah has a nasty fall and gets seriously injured. David has to rush him to the hospital and naturally seeks out Lauren for help so he can avoid having his father find out that he took Noah. Lauren can't avoid that, nor can she avoid being the doctor treating Noah because she has a Hippocratic Oath tramp stamp. Dr. Mancini takes notice of Lauren's skillful care of Noah and of David's love for his little brother. Lauren also takes notice of the little brother love and begins to take some interest in David, who comes on to her. He claims he's given up his cat burglary because of her. They kiss, but Lauren stops it before it can go any further because she knows she can't get involved as long as she's a whore.
Violet has been summoned to appear in court for a resisting arrest charge. She remembers that she's got a blackmail gift card redeemable at Dr. Mancini. She threatens again to show his wife the video she took of them getting naughty if he won't use his connections to get her a good lawyer pro bono. Turns out the judge on her case is a good friend of Michael's due to those same connections, which means the tables are turned on Violet, since he can simply put in a bad word about her to the judge. Violet's forced to delete that pesky video, setting Dr. Mancini free from ginger tyranny.
Oh yeah. This whole time, Auggie was in Mexico. Lucky him.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Naked legs slide under sheets next to a bottle of champagne in a bucket. Lauren and some guy have just finished up and Lauren's clock watching. The guy tells her she's amazing. Lauren just rolls her eyes and gives the most unconvincing, "So are you." At this rate, not even Craigslist pervs are going to want you, Lauren. She's ready to go, but the guy wants her to stay until sunrise for an extra grand. She's all his.
Fade transition to another bed at the Cold Love Nest where Jonah and Riley are sleeping in the anti-spoon position. Strangely, Jonah's hair looks really long on his pillow like he has it in a ponytail. That's all that's interesting about this.
Pan transition to Violet carefully reading over a document. Slash cuts over the text reveal that it is a court summon for Violet under the charge of resisting arrest.
The sunset transitions us to Lauren hopping into the backseat of a car to shamefully change out of her hooker uniform.
Back at the complex, David is on the phone as he walks out into the courtyard. He's asking if someone's sure there won't be anyone home. He hangs up just as Lauren walks into the courtyard in scrubs. They exchange quick pleasantries before David has to scoot off. Lauren quickly runs into Ella who greets her with a teasing, "Lauren! Long night of making people feel better?" which Lauren quickly deflects with her serious doctor voice. "Let's see, we had two car accidents and a kidney failure [and a lot of stuff that was totally not having sex for money...]" She starts to walk off to go get a quick nap before rounds, but Ella stops her with concern on her face to say, "Hey... take care of yourself." Lauren nods back that she will heed the encrypted whore warning.
It's passive-aggressive stunted conversation time at the Cold Love Nest. Jonah asks Riley if she's just forgotten to set back their clocks or if she's actually an hour late for work. Teacher conferences, she explains. She doesn't need to be in to work early. Riley fires back a question about Jonah working on his treatment for Kendra. Oh, he's working on his treatment of Kendra, alright. After all this riveting discussion has subsided, Riley finally breaches the subject. "Where are we, Jonah?" Jonah doesn't know, but I do. You guys are in the Cold Love Nest. I've only been saying it for these last nine weeks or so. Riley states the obvious that they shouldn't be kissing other people if they're engaged. Jonah's attempt at wisdom: "Too bad in life there's no undo command." I wish I could command + Z this conversation. Jonah's next bright idea has to do with taking a road trip for himself to get his thoughts together. This rubs Riley the wrong way because she was just about to suggest they spend some quality time together. Incompatibility, much? Just then there's some loud banging outside the apartment. They rush out together to see what's going on and find Detective Rodriguez and probably a good percentage of the LAPD scrambling all over The Complex Courtyard. Riley asks Rod what this is all about. The detective asks if they know where Auggie is. The police found Sydney's murder weapon covered in his blood. Auggie is wanted for her murder. Oh, geez... is this investigation going to follow the suspects in the same order we were presented them? Jonah turns to Riley as if to say, "You kissed that guy."
WET TITLE CARD
WPK. Ella walks in to Caleb's office where he's tossing around a football by himself. "Boys and their balls," is Ella's opening statement. Caleb asks Ella to clear her schedule for the afternoon because corporate wants a conference call to go over their branch's earnings. Ella's thrilled that she is wanted as Caleb's wingman in the call. In fact, that is not what Caleb wants. He wants her to take over his lunch meeting with a client during the call. The client is Franz Keppler, a German director Ella is not too fond of. The reason behind Caleb insisting on Ella making this guy happy is that at the meeting with corporate, Caleb plans to say they have Franz secured as a client. He'd be lying to his boss if Ella doesn't come through. Makes sense. Ella's on it.
At the Deadbeat Dad Mansion, Michael is walking out of the house in a hurry with his wife as she nags him. His phone rings during all the hectic discussion and he looks down to see it's Violet calling. He tries not to let this bother him, but it obviously does as he answers his wife's questions. He and his wife agree to meet later and hammer out the details when their son comes running up to them, being chased by the maid. He says he wants to say bye to mommy, but Michael picks him up to give him a kiss. The kid reiterates he said "mommy." Even the son you chose to raise doesn't like you, Doc. Dr. and Mrs. Mancini give the child back to the housekeeper and promptly turn their backs to go about their business. They drive off in their separate vehicles and we see that David is parked out in front of their house, staked out. The maid is still chasing after the kid when David enters the yard and greets her in Spanish. Really? Then the kid sees David and runs up to him for a big hug. Housekeeper Leticia doesn't feel good about this, but David reassures her. David walks off with his little brother. This can't possibly go wrong.
Cold Love Nest. Jonah is doing his conspiracy theory thing again. He's fairly certain that when your blood ends up with the blood of the victim on a murder weapon, more than likely, you committed that murder. This guy's good. Riley isn't ready to convict her close friend just yet, and it doesn't help that Jonah isn't the most objective guy in regards to Auggie. It's also convenient, in Jonah's opinion, that Auggie has disappeared upon the discovery of this knife. Riley lets it slip that Auggie is just probably off on his surfing trip. What surfing trip? Jonah grills Riley until she admits that she kind of sort of maybe knows where Auggie is and has withheld that information from the authorities. Jonah gets upset over this because it's just stupid to risk going to prison for aiding a fugitive and because he thinks Riley might not really know Auggie as well as she thinks she does. He's interrupted by his phone going off with a text. It's from Ella. She needs him at WPK ASAP because she's having some sort of emergency. "Of course she is," Riley sneers, "You better hurry." Jonah's had enough. "This might end up being a blessing in disguise. I was talking about spending some time apart. Why not start today?" He grabs his stuff and walks out while Riley just shakes her head in jilted disbelief. Take that, fiancée!
COMMERCIALS
Carnival time! That's carnival, not Carnivàle. Sorry. David's with his little brother and he sets down a ground rule: they are not leaving until they ride every single ride! "Why can't we do this every day?" David's kid brother asks. "That's a little complicated, bud" Aww...
WPK. Jonah enters through the front door to find Ella standing in front of the front desk, waiting for him. "Auf wiedersehen, Mr. Miller!" she yells out. "That kind of means 'goodbye.'" Ella disinterestedly and without embarrassment: "Oh." Jonah wants to know why he's there. Ella does the self-centered sales pitch about needing help wooing this German director. Jonah is a little irritated with this considering the real emergency is going on back at their home where there are cops raiding the place looking for Auggie. Ella takes this news in a totally not suspicious way by turning her back to Jonah and carefully asking questions about whether Auggie has been arrested. Jonah can almost be as self-centered as Ella, as evidenced by him completely missing this suspicious behavior and turning the discussion around to include Riley's fascination with Auggie. Ella turns around quickly at this opportunity to drive a wedge between the couple. Jonah stops the advance to ask who this director guy is. Elle tells him it's Franz and he flips. Jonah's such a fanboy. He's such a fanboy that he can't believe it and thinks this has to be some sort of joke. No joke.