By Wing Chun
Alaska-ness. From shots of a mountain, a squirrel, and a sheet of ice, we cut to the Inn, and then to the bathroom, where Marin, brushing her teeth, notices a nearby glass of water briefly jittering back and forth. She montages through several attempts to break out of a hair rut with updos, but finally gives up, letting her hair fall into its usual foofy mop. It's called an elastic, Marin. Buy one and move on with your life.
At the Chieftain, Jerome lustily shows Ben an ad for the meat smoker he wants to buy. Down at the end of the bar with Annie and a sandwich (which is better company? Call it), Marin craps on his enthusiasm. Annie quaveringly asks if she's okay, and Marin snaps that she hates her hair today. "Ohhhh," say Annie and Theresa in knowing unison. "Seriously, you can get that crabby about your hair?" asks Ben, amused, and the women all assure him that you can. Marin says that a bad hair day has the power to "throw you off your game." Theresa drawls that she's had bad hair years, and Marin says that what she remembers most about Y2K is "bad bangs." Jerome shrugs that Marin looks fine to him, and Marin replies, "Thanks. You're also drunk." There's the gracious princess we all know and...can identify. Ben tells Marin to go get a haircut, and Marin says that the only person she trusts with her hair is Serge, in New York, who's been her stylist for ten years: "Longest relationship I have ever had." Ben can't believe it, but Marin says she'd trust Serge with her life.
At this point, Jack enters, and Ben practically jumps on him, so excited is he at the prospect of getting out of this inane conversation. No such luck -- Marin leaps off her stool and intercepts Jack before he can even get near the bar and asks, "You notice my hair, right?" She tosses her head back and forth, posing with it, and Jack's like, "Notice what?" Annie and Theresa share a look. Marin tells Jack to think back to when she first came to town. "...Okay," says Jack. "Now look at me," orders Marin. "Okay," says Jack again. Marin, her face falling, asks if he doesn't notice any difference, and Jerome warns Jack not to answer: "I smell a trap." You smell right, by drunken friend. "I don't know, Coach," gruffs Jack. "You always look good to me." Hot. "Good answer," says Jerome approvingly. True -- and proof that women really doll themselves up more for each other than they do for men. Having nimbly extricated himself from Marin's hair trap, Jack heads for the bar, but Marin's self-esteem has not been shored up, and she takes her seat again, saying that she needs a "maintenance day." "Me too!" enthuses Annie. "Are we still talking about hair, or cars?" asks Ben, probably not wanting to know the answer. Marin says it's not just hair, but her whole physical being, and that in New York, she'd have a maintenance day every six weeks -- hair, mani/pedi, facial...she doesn't say "wax," but I'm going to wager that was a big part of it -- and that she's forgotten to take care of herself. Theresa mutters, "It happens up here." Ben, exasperated, asks what difference it makes what Marin looks like in Elmo: "I mean, look around you." Good point. There are probably Japanese soldiers in Jerome's beard who don't know the war is over. Marin also calls out the dudes' "unruly facial hair," and then another tremor jitters her glass. "Did you feel that?" she asks, alarmed. No one else seems affected; Jack asks what she felt, and she tells him it was the earth moving. Everyone waves her off as Jack says, "The earth moves all the time up here." Annie nerds that there were 17,000 earthquakes in Alaska the year; even Jack is kind of dismayed that she knows that, and she covers, "I sit in an office all day, so I read." To Marin, Jack metas, "You get used to it -- get so you don't even feel the tremors anymore." Marin doesn't think that likely, crabbing that the closest thing to earthquakes in New York is "the rumble of the 7 train." Annie eagerly takes up the thread: "Or when crazy people come up to you in the street and shake you?" Marin, taking the subject back to its rightful place (herself) tells everyone to laugh it up: "But don't complain when my hair looks like a mop." "Got it," murmurs Jack. Hee! Marin defensively asks if he's saying her hair looks like a mop now (er...kind of), and as Jack contemplates his answer, Jerome smugly reminds him that it was a trap. Fortunately, the scene ends before we have to watch Jack chewing his leg off to escape.