So here's the deal. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, hates this show. I hate it. You hate it. Sars has never even seen it, and she hates it just on principle alone. Add that to the fact that virtually no one is posting in the forums (and those who do seem more concerned with my love life than with the show), no one is reading the recaps (except for you. Hi, you!), and the mailing list is holding steady at about twelve (three of which are me and my various e-mail addresses). So, from a purely demographic standpoint, it doesn't make much sense to continue recapping this crap. But, because I'm a nice guy (read: incredibly masochistic and desperate for your love), I've decided to give you this one last chance to save your MoMMy. You can express your opinion in the utterly non-binding poll to your right, but the real test will be how many people sign up for the mailing list. If we don't get at least a hundred between now and week, this will be the last MoMM recap you ever read. Yeah. I know. You're crying a river. But don't despair, I'm sure we can find something for me to recap before Six Feet Under's spring second season. In fact, right about now I bet you're wishing First & Ten was out on DVD, aren't you? Don't we all.
Also, as an added treat, this week's recap will be interspersed with a few quotes from HBO's live fan chat with Mike Binder. Here's a sample of some of the hard-hitting, no-holds-barred, investigative questions and comments you can expect to be reading answers to:
"Mr. Binder, your show is great because it's so innovative and honest. It is very unique to find a show so sincere on television today."
I swear to God I'm not making this stuff up. It's right there on their website. Something tells me Binder and bin Laden may well be using the same publicist.
No walk & talk this week, as we join a party already in progress at the Binder house. The Dorky Discussion Du Jour involves the fact that Carol and Doug enjoy deer hunting. Donna can't believe that her friend would want to shoot Bambi, but Carol explains that calling deer "innocent" is just "propaganda put out by those animal rights people." You know, kinda like calling Mike Binder "sincere," "innovative," or "honest." Mickey describes the deer as being "murdering, thieving, drug-addicted deer who deserve to be shot." You know, kinda like how I describe Mike Binder. Anyway, it's worth noting that the guest list includes not just Doug and Carol, but also Jake and his wife and the NBF and his NBG (New Black Girlfriend). Jake's wife, incidentally, is played by Brigitte Bako, whom some of you may remember fondly as the hooker who gets raped and murdered in Strange Days. I, however, will always remember her fondly as the adulterous wife who gets raped and commits suicide in the very first episode of Red Shoe Diaries. What? Stop looking at me like that. I was fourteen when that show premiered. I mean, we've all forgiven Duchovny by now, so why not me too?
The whole hunting discussion comes to a painfully visual halt when Carol describes the way in which seeing her husband killing a defenseless animal makes her horny. "Sometimes," she reports, "I even clean his gun." With the de rigueur single entendre out of the way, the conversation turns to Jake and his hobbies, which apparently include antiquing. Once again, we're informed that his wife finds something incredibly sexy about seeing her husband get a good price on an antique chest. I'll let you make up your own single entendre on that one. And finally, Mickey asks the NBF for his hobbies, but NBF doesn't want to say, because he's on a first date. This week's "Written by Mike Binder" credit, by the way? Appears over total silence. Ah, if only it could stay that way…
Later that night, Donna is doing some more of her contractually obligated plot advancement. Or, as I like to call it, incessant whining. She's upset that they don't have any hobbies, and that Mickey spends all his time with his buddies instead of her. It's not until she suggests that they themselves go antiquing, however, that Mickey loses it. First he makes another back-acne reference, and then he tells a story about some friends who bought a beautiful antique, brought it home, and discovered that it was covered with some sort of mold that made their kid sick. Donna's response? "Where do you think of these things? You're insane. You should be ashamed of yourself." I couldn't agree more, honey. Mickey then revises his story to say that it was actually lead paint chips instead of mold that made the kid sick. "[He] had the shits for months. Poor little kid just shitting everywhere around the house. Just constantly, twenty-four hours a day, just little shit droppings everywhere." Something tells me I've found this week's Repetitive Word Of The Week. Also, Mike Binder is a shithead. He continues, "So, if you want that, we'll go and get some antiques, and we'll let the shit-a-thon begin." I'd say you're about five weeks too late on that last one, buddy.
The Daily Mirror. Memmet is whining about how he's just "an old city desk guy" and how he doesn't understand why anyone would want to read a column about this newfangled "internet" thingy the kids seem all hyped up about. To be fair, I can certainly understand why people associated with MoMM wouldn't want to read this particular internet column, but my advice to them would be to stop whining and just call their agents. After all, you've only got a few weeks left until the inevitable cancellation, and you've already been dumped to that treacherous 10:30 timeslot previously reserved for such televisual gems as Arli$$, Real Sex Nine Billion, and G-String Divas. I mean, your future's so bright, you can forget about the shades and just go with one of those mining helmets with the lamp on top. Meanwhile, Jake receives an e-mail calling him, yep, you guessed it, "a piece of shit." This is rapidly followed by another informing him that he's "a piece of shit, cockhead." I threw that second one in because it's not very often that you get a chance to use the word "cockhead" in a recap, and besides, what are they gonna do to me, stop covering the show on MBTV? Yeah, I wish. Anyway, Memmet delivers a few more meta moments, and we get a nice, long, lingering shot of Eileen The Oversexed Entertainment Editor to make sure we all know who sent the e-mails. Except, of course, for the fact that she was sitting in Memmet's office the whole time, and couldn't possibly have sent them.
Mike Binder, on why people watch: "Probably the same reason that people watch car races. They are hoping for a wreck."
Now it's time for the walk & talk, only this time there's a twist. It's Donna and Carol, strutting down the sidewalk, swinging their stuffed-full shopping bags. This whole scene is based around the shocking, newly-discovered premise that men don't like to shop. Wow. I had no idea. Donna suggests that Mickey considers shopping to be roughly the equivalent of a trip to a "castration hall." Okay, first off, that's not a half-bad idea, at least as far as the future of the human race is concerned. Secondly, however, what the hell is a "castration hall"? Seriously. That's not the sort of place I want to wander into by accident. There's more "humor" about guys shopping with their wives, including an especially "witty" and "insightful" bit featuring Mickey holding a purse, and then Carol advances the "plot" a bit more by reminding Donna that shopping is a great way to spend time with the spouse.
Jeers. Medium Pussy is playing pool with the boys when he notices what he describes as "the hottest woman [he's] ever seen" entering the bar. There's much ogling and macho banter, the substance of which involves the idea that no matter how attractive this woman is (and, to be fair, she is quite attractive), there's at least one guy out there who's tired of having sex with her. "You think that's true?" asks Doug. "Or is that just something that men have sold themselves on so they feel better about themselves and their inability to get a woman like that?" I certainly know I've told myself a lot about my inability to get a woman like that, but in my case, most of it involved an adamant refusal to spend a thousand dollars an hour on a call girl, and not the idea that I would ever actually get tired of the sex. But that's really neither here nor there (nor legal, for that matter), so let's just move on. The Really Hot Girl is joined at the bar by some schlub that Mickey identifies as "Murphy." Turns out that the RHG is Murphy's wife, and Medium Pussy seizes on this as an opportunity to check off yet another plot point. Uh, I mean, "find out if Murphy is really tired of having sex with his wife." He even goes so far as to tell Mickey that finding this out could be worth a Pulitzer Prize. If you ask me, I think I deserve a Pulitzer Prize, especially if my campaign to get this show cancelled is successful.
Jake's Joint. In a Dream On shout-out so unsubtle that my corneas are still bleeding, we fade up on a young boy watching TV while seated on the living room floor. I think it's sad that this show has to aspire just to reach the incredibly unlofty heights of breast-jiggling quality entertainment that Dream On used to provide so well. In any case, the kids are joined by Jake and the wife, but the nice peaceful scene of domestic bliss is interrupted when Jake shoves his hand up his wife's skirt. Then he climbs up on the sofa and mounts her, right behind their two utterly oblivious children. Trust me when I tell you, those are some lucky children. Cut to later, as Jake is carrying his son to bed. Apropos of nothing, the kid asks what's underneath his Daddy's cheek. Jake promises to ask a medical reporter from the paper, and I can't help but wonder if that was a subtle shout-out from Binder, asking me to turn the other cheek in my recaps. On the off chance that it was, let me assure you that the only cheeks I'll be turning towards Mickey are the ones I'm using to moon him.
Mike Binder, on Mickey Barnes: "No, heavens no, he's not likeable!"
Jeers. Medium Pussy continues his heartwarming ways, this time steering the conversation towards the subject of Viagra. Both Mickey and the NBF claim never to have used it, with the NBF adding that he prefers "God's Viagra -- new pussy." Doug, however, cops to taking the occasional dosage, as does MP. "I keep my Viagra in my nightstand right to my gun," he says. "Because if I've got my gun, and I've got my Viagra, I know nothing's going to come up in the middle of the night that I can't handle." I probably should have mentioned before now that Murphy is there playing pool with them, but the image of Medium Pussy sitting naked in bed with Viagra in one hand and a Colt .45 in the other has left me (for obvious reasons) somewhat distracted. Or maybe that's "disgusted." Anyway, Mickey asks Murph if he's ever tried Viagra himself, and Murph replies that he can't answer that yet because there's still twenty minutes left in the episode. Okay, so he actually said that he doesn't talk about his wife or his sex life because he wants to "keep it pure," but the stalling subtext was pretty clear. Finally, MP suggests that maybe Jake could get the answers out of Murph, because, as the NBF points out, "Jake has people skills."
Mike Binder, on the blatantly obvious: "But I'm going to keep the show from the male point of view, and there are going to be some periods over the course of the show, if I get to do it for a while, that women are really not going to like."
I swear to God the opening line of this scene is, "Dingo-dick, I need you in my office." I shouldn't really have to tell you anything more than that, but Sars gets mad when I only recap the dirty words and don't bother with the plot. As you can imagine, she's been getting mad at me a lot lately. I keep trying to tell her that there is no plot, but she just mutters something about triangles and soulmates and looks so angry that I have to back away slowly. Incidentally, I think we can all agree that she made the right choice giving Dawson's to Jessica rather than to me. I mean, given my views on Binder's ego, can you imagine what I'd have to say about the Beek? Anyway, the dingo-dick in question is Jake, and the office belongs to Memmet. It seems that Memmet has received an anonymous letter, which reads (in full): "I find the conduct of your entertainment columnist less than entertaining. ["Don't we all?" -- Aaron] He's in the habit of poking his married and curiously crooked penis into the loins of unsuspecting fellow employees. ["Don't we…nope, not gonna go there." -- Aaron] I imagine the readers of this paper would find his behavior as disappointing as had the recipients of his skinny and uneventful cock." Okay, "skinny" I get, but "uneventful"? Are we to assume that his penis has no scheduled activities planned? That it prefers to stay in and rent movies instead of going out on a Saturday night? You know what? I've just realized that I've written a fairly long paragraph here dealing almost entirely with the genitals of a man I don't even like all that much. Yeah. If you haven't signed up for that mailing list yet, please don't. At long last, Memmet puts down the letter and instructs Jake to remedy the situation immediately.
Mike Binder, speaking directly to Sars: "I guess if you are talking about Paul Reiser, I would love to have him on a show, and we did 'The Diner' [sic] pilot together years ago; I've always been a big fan of his, and I thought 'Mad About You' was an incredible television show. If that's who you mean, and you can talk him into doing a guest spot, I would LOVE it!"
Out in the main office, Jake runs into Eileen The Over-Sexed Entertainment Editor. She tries to blow him off (Ew. Not like that. But again, I don't blame you), but he follows her to the elevator. Just before the doors close, she tells him that he needs to grow up. This, of course, leads to him acting all childish and them doing that "no, I don't"-"yes, you do" back-and-forth thing that wasn't even funny the first forty-three billion times it appeared on other shows. At this point, the medical reporter guy shows up with a diagram of the human cheek for Jake's kid, and the scene mercifully comes to a close.
In Mickey's office, Missy is once again calling his writing "great." I'm out of jokes on that one already, so feel free to insert your own withering sarcasm here. Mickey asks her if she and boyfriend have any hobbies, to which she replies, "I used to be his hobby, and he used to be mine. But now I come home, and he comes over and goes right to the football." Except, of course, for the five days a week when there is no football, but whatever. Besides, it only gets worse. "I go in the bathroom," she continues. "I get into the tub and take the warm water expressway to heaven." This, of course, is accompanied by shots of Ivana Milisevic thrashing about in the bathtub while aiming the spray nozzle at her, uh, [insert euphemism here]. Mickey asks why she feels the need to tell him this sort of thing, what with the whole, you know, SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAWSUIT she was going to file against him in the premiere. Missy points out that Mickey has himself repeatedly overshared in the past, so she just figured it was okay for her to do the same. Then we get more shots of the tub thrashing as she leaves. Man, where's Chumbawumba when actually you need them? Finally, Memmet stops by for a visit. After a joke that's not worth transcribing and a few gratuitous uses of the word "fuck," he asks Mickey if he's okay. "No," replies Mickey. "I'm not at all okay."
Mike Binder, on Ivana Milisevic's acting ability: "She's also great to look at, so we're probably going to keep her around."
Cut to an extended (and I do mean extended -- sixty-seconds plus) montage of Mike Binder standing out in front of last week's massage parlor, trying to decide whether or not to go inside. I'd have to assume that's exactly the sort of suspicious behavior people are supposed to be watching out for these days, but unfortunately, no one calls the FBI on him. Anyway, he goes inside, and once again gets a naked (and yet still wisely metaphysical) Sashiko to perform his massage. "You tense today," she tells him. "Hard. Like rubbing back of dump truck or something." She makes, however, no reference to the back-acne. Thank God for small favors, I guess. Mickey blathers about the problem of the week, which is that he doesn't really enjoy spending time with his wife. I guess this is supposed to be an equivalent dramatic device to Tony's sessions with Melfi, or the Fishers' conversations with The Late Nate, but somehow it all just seems cheap and tawdry, rather than dramatic. I wonder why? And then, with an extreme close-up of one of Sashiko's inordinately pointy nipples threatening to scratch the camera's lens, Mickey declines another opportunity for a "happy ending." Well, I guess that answers that question.
Cut to a gun shop, where Mickey wants to buy some rifles to go hunting with Donna. In a continuation of our "Recycled Comedy 101" theme this week, the joke in this scene is that the clerk thinks Mickey really wants to kill his wife. "Okay, can I be honest?" Mickey says. "I'm just looking to quiet my wife down. I don't care what kind of rifles you give me. I just want to take her into the woods, and I don't want to get all muddy. I want to get in, and get the hell out and go home." I'll take a brief pause here to allow you to recover from your peals of hysterical laughter. I mean, what will this guy think of ?
Mike Binder, on not learning from his own mistakes: "Train your mind to think quick, be facile. Just being in front of an audience every night really will teach you what is and isn't funny, and how it pertains to your performance."
At the Binder family apartment, Mickey has returned home with a pair of rifles. Donna, however, has absolutely no desire to go hunting, and after working in the RWoW (she calls the whole idea "bullshit"), she instructs him to get the guns out of the house. There's more arguing and screaming, but I'm too bored to really care. Can you tell how enthusiastic I am about this show? Yeah, that's what I thought. At one point in the argument, Mickey declares that in his life, he's "coming back as a husband who takes a lot less shit." See? Look at that. The only thing I care about anymore is counting the RWoWs. When Donna suggests that instead he come back "smarter," Mickey counters with "If I come back smarter, I'm not so sure I'm getting married again." We get a DEK moment of Mickey sleeping on the sofa, and then he apologizes.
Cut to Mickey and Donna shopping for antiques. My old friend the Hyper-Kinetic Editor Who's Finished Narcotics Anonymous And Is Now Simply High On Life chops the scene up into little tiny pieces, so I'm not really sure what's going on. I can, however, report that the funniest joke in the entire episode appears here. When told that a piece dates back to the Revolutionary War, Mickey points out that Donna is British, and will now be "cranky for weeks." What's that? Yeah, I know it's not funny. That doesn't mean it wasn't the funniest joke in the whole episode, though. Donna pushes Mickey into some big armoire, and then does the most intelligent thing anyone's done in the entire episode: she locks him in. We see Mickey on the inside as he frantically pounds on the door, and then suddenly bullets start punching through the wood. A vaguely Hunter Thompson-esque Donna is for some reason out in the woods, angrily spewing round after round of shotgun blasts into the armoire. I knew I liked that girl for a reason. And with that, Mickey wakes up from his nightmare, finding himself back in bed with the wife. My nightmare, sadly, still has ten minutes left.
Jake's house. He tries to explain to his clearly suspicious wife that he's only going out so that he can quiz Murphy about whether or not he's still sleeping with his wife. Brigitte Bako doesn't understand that any better than I do. She reluctantly lets him go, but Foreshadowing drops one of those laser-guided "bunker-busting" bombs through my living room window, so I'd imagine we'll be revisiting this subject sometime in the future. Hopefully, however, I won't be watching when they do. Later on, at the bar set I'll continue to call Not Jeers, Jake finally has his sit-down with Murphy. While Murph oh-so-subtly tries to turn his product-placed Heineken so the label faces the camera, Jake confesses to frequently cheating on his wife. He does so "more often than Billy Graham, but less than Jesse Jackson." Murph, however, hasn't cheated once in twelve years. In fact, he says, his wife "still gets [him] hot and turned on. Every day. Three or four times a day if she'd let [him]." There's more discussion in this vein, including the revelation that every time Murph sees his wife, he pictures her with her clothes off. And while I've only seen Murph's wife once, I have to admit to pretty much the same reaction. "I see you guys running around here looking for strangers," he says, "but not me. I don't like strange. I get into bed, I want familiar." Don't we all.
Jeers. Jake reports back to the boys, but he doesn't have the heart to tell them the truth. "You were right [Medium Pussy], he hardly ever touches her. In fact, I think he might be impotent." MP delights in hearing this, but Jake just turns to leave.
Mike Binder, on why we should be worried about the future: "I'd like to own HBO. World domination has always been a major goal for me."
At work the day, the boys are all gathered in some glass-walled room, eating their lunches. The sole purpose of the glass-walled room, by the way, is to create a reasonably cool visual for these shots, so as to better distract us from the utter inanity of the dialogue. After mocking Doug's lunch of home-cooked meatloaf as "gay," Mickey complains further that Donna is still whining about having hobbies. "She gave me this whole speech about all the times she's been in Chicago and she's never been out on the lake," he says. Doug, always a master of the obvious, points out that the lake is still there. Seeing the light bulb appearing over Mickey's head, Jake wonders, "Do you ever get tired of us doing all of your thinking?" Judging from the fact that Mike Binder doesn't really seem to be capable of thinking with anything other than his, uh, [insert euphemism here], I guessing the answer to that is no.
In a tidy episodic resolution that surprises no one, we now get a scene of Mickey and Donna on a sailboat he's rented. Of course, he doesn't know how to sail, so they have to keep it moored to the dock. You'd think he could have gone to the trouble to hire a captain or even some kids from the local yacht club, but I guess not.
Mike Binder, on that last snarky comment: "I thought of using Bob Denver, who played Gilligan, but he's not available."
Anyway, back on the boat, Mickey and Donna have moved into the cabin below. He joins her on the bed, and they discuss potential hobbies they could try. He suggests collecting glass rabbits, but Donna doesn't seem enthused. Her idea? Yodeling. "I want to be one of those couples who yodel together," she says. "I did a piece on them once. They have great, great sex. Yodeling gets you very hard." As an informative public service, I'll report here that the highly unscientific experiment I conducted on just this very subject in my own apartment does not seem to be confirming her hypothesis. In fact, it seems to have gotten more of a rise out of the neighbors than, uh, anything else. Mickey doesn't seem to believe her either, and asks for proof. "I'm not going to yodel to get your dick hard," she replies, "I may do plenty of other things [Ack! Bad Stooges flashback!], but I'm not going to yodel." Mickey, always a master of the obnoxious, climbs under the covers and proceeds to yodel repeatedly into his wife's crotch. And I gotta tell you, if ever there were a perfect metaphor for this show, it's yodeling into someone's crotch. That's almost poetic.
After yet another montage (and the less said about this one, the better. Binder is topless again), we see the happy couple relaxing on their boat. From there we cut to Jeers, where Mickey is relating the story of his weekend to the boys. NBF is shocked to discover that they only had sex once the entire weekend, mainly because when he takes "a babe" away for the weekend, he has to "hit that ass at least six to ten times. And she better have a credit card to split the expenses when [they] check out." Somehow we're expected to believe at this point that Mickey is disgusted by his friend's crassness, because he yells something about marriage being a marathon rather than a sprint and then bolts from the restaurant. Oh, please. Like there's anything more disgusting or offensive than Mike Binder himself. I guess we're supposed to think his character is growing -- unfolding like a flower, or something. I just don't see it, though. The NBF talks us through the closing credits, before finally coming to this crystal-clear conclusion: "I've got to stop hanging out with married guys." Say it with me, everyone: "Don't we all."
And finally, Mike Binder on, well, me: "I know already that the show has pushed a lot of buttons; there are a lot of people that really, really love it, and a lot of people that really hate it...So I guess I'm just hoping some people will stick with it, and give it a chance to grow into the great comedy I think we are capable of becoming."
Not gonna happen, buddy. Not gonna happen.