In my putative position as your recapper of record for The Mind of the Married Man, I find myself with a bit of a disturbing dilemma. As I said on the homepage, we here at MBTV take our civic responsibilities very seriously. We also (occasionally, at least) take our political correctness responsibilities very seriously as well. Which, in this case at least, is a crying shame. If ever there was a show that truly called out for jokes like, "Man, this show makes me feel so dirty, I should be taking Cipro," well, this would be that show. I mean, I can't even make any good "Let's go to war against Mike Binder" jokes here. I could probably get away with something along the lines of "We here at Mighty Big TV strongly urge the United Nations to take action against the evident human rights abuses contained within The Mind of the Married Man," but that's not really the message I want to send. After all, it's just that sort of fuzzy-headed, left-wing, liberal thinking that would lead people to concur that poor, innocent Mike Binder couldn't possibly be at fault for all these atrocities, but rather that we here at MBTV are somehow responsible, what with our isolationist policies toward the sitcom world and our ongoing sanctions against the children of Picket Fences. And to top it all off, I can't even suggest that we bomb this fucker back to the Stone Age, because that would obviously be an extreme evolutionary advancement for the man. Damn you, Mike Binder! Damn you to hell!
We open with the weekly walk & talk. The Dorky Dilemma Du Jour is Donna's desire to have a second child. There's a reference to a fight between Mickey and Donna, as well as one to the make-up sex, which left Donna "like Jell-O," and concerned only with Mickey's ultimate happiness. I'd have thought it would be self-evident that anyone who was concerned only with Mike Binder's ultimate happiness would have to be the mental equivalent of Jell-O, but I guess not. At least there's no shimmering or glimmering in these shots. Or Bill Cosby, for that matter. I don't think I could have handled that. Mickey goes on to explain that when it comes to sex, "if I do my job right at my house, I get a big star on my forehead like back in school. I get a day and a half where I'm pretty much the Commander in Chief." Fortunately, Clinton jokes aren't covered by my obvious newfound respect for our American political institutions. Unfortunately, however, I've already spoiled any potential punchline by telling you that, so now I won't bother coming up with an actual joke. Incidentally, this week's "Written by Mike Binder" credit plays over a strikingly silent Mickey, and I again think that someone in the graphics department may signaling some subtle discontent. Mickey now reveals that he's decided to go along with the second kid plan. His reasoning? "What am I going to do, Doug? Keep having sex with her every day for the rest of her life just so I don't have to have another baby? That plan works when you're eighteen, but I got a job, I got a kid, I got shit to do. I need my rest." Okay, first of all, I need a rest from this freak, too, but you don't hear me complaining. Secondly, I'll just ignore the somewhat obvious flaw in the whole "have sex to avoid having a baby" plan, and instead point out that if Mike Binder truly believes that inflicting daily intimate contact with his flabby, naked body on an unsuspecting person would be an appealing prospect to them, well, he's even more egomaniacal than this show has already led us to believe.
The neighborhood bar. In tribute to all those obscure yet linguistically obvious (and really not all that funny) puns I'm so rightly famous for, I've decided to call this place Jeers. Wow. You know it's bad when I start stealing jokes from TV Guide. Anyway, Jake arrives, positively giddy with delight, and informs the crew that he's ended things with Eileen The Over-Sexed Entertainment Reporter because "it was time." "What does that mean?" asks Doug. "Do you have some sort of deviant biological clock that tells you when it's time to dump your affairs?" Well, I don't know about the rest of that stuff, but these freaks are definitely deviant. On the other hand, bad biological clock jokes made Marisa Tomei the Oscar™ winner she is today, so maybe these guys know something I don't. Jake explains that Eileen was fine with things being over, but The Hyper-Kinetic Editor With An Obvious Caffeine Jones And A Bad No-Doz Habit shows us a half-dozen shots in the span of about three milliseconds which seem to indicate that Eileen is not, in fact, "fine" with things. Jake also mentions something about trying "to give the fans their money's worth." I won't tell you how much we make as recappers here at MBTV, but I could be writing this recap on a Cray supercomputer at my villa in the South of France, and I still wouldn't have gotten my money's worth for this fucking show.
The Binder Bed. Mickey and Donna bask in a presumably post-coital afterglow. Dear God in heaven, Mickey's not wearing a shirt. I repeat, MIKE BINDER IS NOT WEARING A SHIRT. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss Peter Krause. Aww…remember back in the day, when I only did quality shows? Yeah. Those were some good times. Now Donna isn't sure she wants the second kid, and is in fact willing to wait if Mickey is having second thoughts about said second child. Upon Mickey describing his wife as being "sweet and pliable" after sex, Donna (and I kid you not about this) flips him over and begins checking him for back acne. You know, I don't care what Dante says. With this show, there is ALWAYS another circle of hell you can descend into. And while we're at it, who else agrees that she probably did find a few nasty-ass zits back there?
We now go live to a bar that isn't Jeers, where the boys are playing pool with yet another newly appearing friend. All you need to know about this new guy is that it's pretty obvious that he only got his MoMM gig after being turned down at those open auditions for The Sopranos last year. Between his demeanor, his dimensions, and this show's sophomoric subject matter, the nickname is obvious: Medium Pussy. Of course, I also have an ulterior motive here, which is to continue contrasting this crap with the quality entertainment HBO oh-so-desperately wants to be known for. I do so in the hopes that they'll eventually come to their senses and cancel the damn thing. In fact, I'm beginning to think the real reason they keep postponing the Emmys is the fear that Mike Binder might actually show up. Anyway, Medium Pussy delivers an extended monologue, punctuated with a great deal of poorly-executed Color of Money camerawork. His rant features, among other things, an analogy comparing children to drywall, repeated use of the phrase "poopy-pants," and several shots where the dialogue mixing is so bad that his lips aren't even moving. And then we come to the real, er, meat of the scene, wherein Medium Pussy regales us all with a tale about receiving oral sex from his wife while watching a Three Stooges video. This is somehow presented as being the ultimate male fantasy, although Binder does make at least one salient point here when he inquires, "What could the Three Stooges possibly add to a blowjob?" I guess there could be an onomatopoetic "nyuk, nyuk, nyuk" joke in there somewhere, but for your sakes, I won't try to find it. The upshot of the story is that Medium wasn't able to achieve orgasm because the video featured Shemp, not Curly. Yeah. I don't get it either. But more on that later.
Or maybe now. In celebration of her newfound freedom from Dawson's Creek, I hereby present you with a Sars-style sidebar: You see, there comes a time in every man's life when he is forced, once and for all, to take a declarative stance on his own personal Stooge preference. This is my time. To be perfectly honest, however, I don't really like any of them. Never have, never will. The Stooges rank somewhere between Gilligan's Island and Inside Schwartz on the list of shows whose appeal utterly escapes me, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. Heck, I've got a friend who claims to be Curly's third cousin, and I still don't care.
Meanwhile, back at the Binders', Donna is chatting with Karin (who I will again remind you is Doug's wife, because I know you don't care enough to remember these things on your own.) (Which leads us, I suppose, to the larger question of why any of you care enough to even be reading these recaps.) (Which, of course, makes me worry about my job security in these turbulent times, so perhaps I should just get back to telling you what happened on the show.) (Wow.) (If this paragraph were any more purposely parenthetical, it would be an Amazing Race recap). Donna describes the "Zen manipulation" she used to convince Mickey to agree to having a second child, but then the scene suddenly descends into what may ultimately prove to be most patently offensive moment in the (hopefully brief and in no way inherently hilarious) history of the series. You see, while the men are out being manly and laughing about blowjob stories, the women are at home having the following conversation:
Donna: Sometimes I'm really, really sweet to Mickey, and then, from nowhere, I hold back. Just to be mean. I don't know why, either. ["I do." -- Aaron] It's like I get in this place where he doesn't deserve to be complimented, even when he's done well. ["Me too." -- Aaron] It's awful, isn't it? ["I'll say." -- Aaron]
Karin: Yeah. We should all feel bad for some of the things we do to these men.
[Long, contemplative pause]
So basically, all the men can go out and party and be raunchy, but God forbid the women should ever show anything but absolute deference to their man. I guess I should have expected as much from Mr. Mike "Misogynist" Binder, but still. That's just wrong. Obviously, one of the many differences between Sars and I is that she would have (rightly) put her vitriolic sidebar after this paragraph instead of before it. I think we can all agree that that's why she's the boss, and I'm the one watching Mike Binder every week.
Later that night, Mickey is trying to explain the Stooge-job story to Donna, but she totally fails to understand why Shemp's presence would be funny. Or, for that matter, non-conducive to climax. The argument morphs to the bedroom, with Mickey getting all snotty, and also offering some meta-comedic commentary. "You can't explain a joke, Donna," he says. "It's like dissecting a frog. You can examine it all you want, but at the end of the day, you've learned very little, and the frog is still dead." "Now that I don't get," remarks Donna, and while I wholeheartedly concur, I can't help but point out once again that the image of a dead frog is, in fact, an excellent meta-commentary on the show itself. There's a great deal of whiny bickering about whether or not they get the same jokes, and then Mickey introduces some anti-meta-commentary by claiming to have been "humoring" us all this time. Yeah. I don't think so, buddy. Donna, on the other hand, actually did make me giggle a bit with, "It's because Shemp's a funny name, right? Ssssssssshhhhhhhemp… 'Hello, I'm Shemp.' It's funny."
Staff meeting. Ew. That wasn't a pun, people. Memmet is handing out story assignments, including a triple homicide which generates a great deal of interest until the staff learns it was in a housing project. Good God, man. I've seen Andrew Dice Clay performances that had more class and less overt racism than this crap. "I'm touched by your compassion and bravery," growls Memmet, but that still doesn't make up for the fact that Binder felt compelled to include this portion of the scene in the first place. Man, what an asshole. Mickey clowns around a bit (in a not-funny/crying-on-the-inside-clown kind of way), and immediately looks over at Missy to see if she's laughing at his jokes. For the record, Binder doesn't even try to provide justification as to why Missy is the only secretary in the room, thus exposing everything that follows as a poorly-designed plot point. While Memmet drones on about another reporter and his hemorrhoid (actual sample dialogue: "It's big and it hurts. I've named it Randall"), Mickey wads up his paper coffee cup and tosses it at Missy. In our Pratfall Of The Week, he misses and hits some old lady instead. There's some non-funny, non-physical comedy where he tries to convince her to throw the cup back at him, and the bit ends with Missy holding up a double-underlined note that reads, "U R a nut!" I'm quite frankly surprised that Binder didn't have someone in the art department add a bunch pink hearts and "Mrs. Missy Barnes" doodles to the thing. Nothing else funny (or offensive) happens here, so let's move on.
Or maybe we could just go back for a while. Yeah. Who else wants to keep talking about that last scene some more? Huh? What's that? Why am I stalling, you ask? Well, it's just that the sixty seconds or so represent the second single most disgusting moment of my life. It's an extreme close-up of the back of Mike Binder's nappy head, as he, er, "talks to the kitty" (tm Regina). Eww. Ugh. Argh. Ack. Blech. You get the idea. First it's Donna that he's with, and then Missy, and then back to Donna again. You know what? Let's just take a moment here to consider what going to work each day must be like for Ivana Milisevic and Sonya Walger. How would you like to be handed a call sheet at 6:00 AM, only to discover that you'll be spending the better part of the day with Mike Binder's face planted squarely between your thighs? And that's while you have to pretend to enjoy it, by the way -- never mind the knowledge that millions of people will eventually bear witness to your shame. Actually, to be perfectly honest, the CGI is in these shots is so poor that it's pretty obvious the women weren't even in the same room with him. Can you really blame them?
Jeers. Mickey and Jake are the only ones there, and Jake is delivering yet another diatribe about Mickey's lack of manliness. Desperate to earn even a speck of grudging respect from me, Mike Binder resorts to hockey metaphors: "This is all okay when we're having target practice," he says in reference to his fantasies about Missy, "but we pulled the goalie. Any one of these slapshots could be my kid. I'm thinking about Missy way too much. If Donna gets pregnant, Missy'll have some sort of psychic, emotional, chromosome link. She'll be like the uber-mother or something." On behalf of Fametracker, Hissyfit, Sugar Larry, and the entire Uber family of websites, shut up, Mickey. Also, unless Donna uses a diaphragm, that's a pretty crappy metaphor. Jake advises Mickey to look for love inside his marriage, and look for sex outside. Then, in a sentence which also includes the phrases "knockin' boots" and "all you need is someone to snap the end of your dick and send you home calm," Jake offers to take Mickey to see Seshiko, his "little Asian piece of heaven."
Cut to Doug, reading to his sleeping child. He picks the little girl up, walks us through some physical comedy when he bangs her head against the doorjamb, and then deposits her in her bedroom. Moving to the master suite, he finds Karin decked out in a silk nightie to celebrate their "half-anniversary." "Is it our half?" asks Doug. "Aww. I forgot." There's some kissing and giggling, and also a shot of Karin bossing her boy around. Who can guess what comes , by the way? Anyone? Yep, that's right. Doug notices that the nightie is new, and flips out about the expenses. Karin stomps off to the bathroom, which allows The Hyper-Kinetic Editor Who Has Now Moved On To Jolt Cola And Crystal Meth to show us the door slamming about seventeen times. She eventually emerges in a paint-splattered sweatshirt, and is afforded the opportunity to utter the memorable line, "Come on, Doug. Let's get fuckin'! I got playground duty at the school tomorrow, and I gotta be up early. Let's roll." Doug wilts under the intense pressure of her sarcasm, and suggests that she put the nightie back on, even after he learns that it cost $250. He also seems to be calling her Carol instead of Karin, but not even I really care enough to go check the definitive listing on HBO's website. You know, if I had even the tiniest bit of respect for Mike Binder's abilities as a writer (and please be assured that I don't), I might suggest that he was attempting here to make a relatively subtle joke: that women are pliable after sex, whereas men are more pliable beforehand. It's an old joke that's already been done to death, I know, but at least he didn't feel the need to smack us in the face with it. You know, like the way he'll be doing it in just a few scenes.
Even though I've just said that I don't really care about Karin's name, I will point out that I've just discovered this week that the paper Mickey works for is called The Daily Mirror. Wow. Is there anything about this show that isn't narcissistic? Anyway, Eileen sits at her desk (which, thankfully, does not have a goldfish bowl on it) and observes as Jake welcomes his episode one "computer consultant" into his office. After she seductively closes the blinds, and The Hyper-Kinetic Editor Who's Not Even Editing Anymore, But Is Instead Just Twitching Wildly And Randomly Hitting Buttons shows us four billion shots of Eileen pouting, we cut to later at the elevator. Heh. I didn't even mean for that one to rhyme. Eileen approaches the Computer Conslutant and tries to make small talk, but ends up just humiliating herself. While I enjoy watching attractive women insult each other just as much as the guy, there's really nothing else here worth mentioning.
Binder Boudoir. Mickey is in bed trying to read, but Donna apparently has other ideas. She curls up on top of him and literally tries to beg him for sex. I'm so sorry, Sonya. I really am. They end up in a long drawn-out fight which finally reveals that Mickey is "a little freaked out" that she didn't get the Stooge-job joke. "You're telling me we're not having sex because of three long dead Stooges?" asks Donna. "Of course it's not about Stooges," replies Mickey. "What am I, an idiot?" Nah, too easy. Mickey is actually worried that they just don't get the same jokes anymore, and has somehow managed to internally rationalize that fact as a reason to repeatedly fantasize about his assistant. "Frankly, the way you're acting, I'd rather fuck one of the Stooges," says Donna.
The day, Jake leads Mickey up to a massage parlor, with Mickey whining "I can't do this" all the while. "Mickey, you lay on your back and a girl rubs your dick," replies Jake. "Mental patients can do it." Ahh, there's that old decorum and good breeding we've all come to know and hate. Thanks, Mike. And, oh, but it gets even worse. Upon hearing that Jake even plans to cover the cost of this little excursion, Mickey replies, "You're gonna pay for me to get a hand-job? That seems a little gay to me." You know what? I can't even be bothered anymore. Just assume I inserted some sort of pithy criticism of the show's offensiveness here, because there's only so many ways I can say that this show sucks, and I'm fairly certain I've used them all at least twice so far.
Once inside, The Hyper-Kinetic Editor Who's Come Down From His High, Realized What Kind Of Shite He's Working On, And Exacted Revenge By Ignoring The Script And Simply Cutting Together Any Extraneous Pieces Of Film That May Be Lying Around shows us an extended montage of Mike Binder doing a bunch of hideously unfunny things in an empty massage parlor. One of those things involves him adopting a patronizingly offensive Japanese accent and doing that old Bar-Mitzvah stand-by, the Chicken Dance. I just thought you should know that. Finally Seshiko enters, and Mike introduces himself as "Doug." Okay. I need to be honest with you people for a moment here. I don't want to cause undue panic or alarm, but I've received credible and specific information that Mike Binder is naked for the remainder of this scene. There's also a brief moment where it appears that he's playing with himself. I'm not saying you should run out and buy a gas mask, but I will admit that wearing one would at least help obscure your view of the screen. Oh sure, there's a towel covering the really disturbing parts, but that thing looks kinda flimsy, and I'm not taking any chances. Anyway, Binder, perhaps realizing that there needs to be at least one thing in the frame that won't make viewers vomit, has Seshiko strip as well. Of course, even that moderately intriguing image is trampled underfoot by the purely puerile "me so horny" vibe she's forced to exude. Eventually, she strips Mickey's towel off, rolls him over, and offers to provide him with "a [hand-job] happy ending." In the course of doing so, however, she actually says the words "Oh! Nice dicky, Doug. You got nice dick." I'm speechless, people. I am without speech. This really is the worst show ever. Seriously. I challenge anyone who's actually watched this crap to name even a single program that could be considered its inferior. HBO, I'm begging you. Pull. The. Plug. You're better than this. Trust me, having this show on your schedule (be it at ten or ten-thirty) is way more embarrassing than the flack you'll take for dumping it. For God's sake, man, I'd even be in favor of filling the timeslot with Arli$$ reruns. The scene continues as Mickey declines the "happy ending." Seshiko gets all metaphysical on his disturbingly-still-bare ass and suggests that Doug has "sad eyes." Then she drapes herself across his chest while he waxes philosophical about how all men have "issues." His psychobabble is merely boring, whereas the part where Seshiko glances at his lap and proclaims, "Looks like he wants happy ending to me" is just plain gross. Declining one final time, Mickey gets dressed and goes home.
Where he immediately encounters Donna, who forces him into the living room to watch more tapes. Reluctant at first, Mickey is delighted to discover that they're actually Three Stooges videos. Oh, dear Lord. For the record, I'd already guessed what was, er, coming, at this point, but in my defense, there's no way I could have imagined how bad things would actually get. Donna proceeds to give a brief history of Stooge lore, complete with repeated uses of the Repetitive Word Of The Week, "Shemp." She also makes it clear that she now gets the joke, which is that Shemp is not as funny as Curly. Oh. Well, that explains it, then. "Anything you can throw at me, I can handle," says Donna. "So if you want invent problems for this marriage, you're going to have to come up with better ones than this." Once again, I apply a heartily meta "I'll say."
So, yeah. Here's the big, uh, climax. The exact moment where Mike Binder's depraved, demeaning, disgusting, and depressing worldview finally crossed the line from being merely bad TV and moved squarely into the realm of the truly intolerable. Somehow feeling that her husband's amazingly annoying antics of these past few days deserve a reward, Donna drops to her knees and proceeds to provide Mickey with his ultimate male fantasy. Yep. That's right. The final one minute and twenty-three seconds of this show was one long, continuous shot of Sonya Walger's head bobbing in Mike Binder's lap. They ran the credits over it, for God's sake. And Binder's got this goofy-ass smile on his face the whole time that makes me despise him even more. At this point, mere words can no longer convey the depths of my hatred for this show. To truly do them justice, I'd need spreadsheets, bar charts, a CPU with a good floating-point processor, and like a nine-billion-inch monitor.
And finally, for those who care: The show's been moved to 10:30. It's now on after Curb Your Enthusiasm, a problem I doubt anyone will be having with regards to Mind of the Married Man.
I need a shower.