The episode starts with Nick, Jessica, and two unfortunate hangers-on riding around in a black Cadillac Asshat. Jessica is regaling them with stories of her childhood ignorance, not to be confused with her adulthood ignorance, which is different in that it involves being totally unaware of the fact that there is basically no difference. Apparently, her seventh grade history teacher asked the class if anyone could name all the continents -- and at this point, whoever's sitting in the back seat self-importantly and quite seriously nods, "There are seven." Her tone is, "Woooow! That's more than you can count on your fingers!" Legend has it that little Jessica, eager to impress on the first day, shot up her hand and shouted, "A, E, I, O, U!" Everyone giggles, because twelve-year-old Jessica was a giant dumbass without her current saving grace of a gigantic rack. "Mind you, those aren't even consonants!" points out Nick, because he has to make sure the viewing audience knows he understands. "They're fucking vowels!" Jessica laughs, but inside she's musing, "Consonants…isn't that what old people have when they wear a diaper because they can't control their vowels?"
Credits. Dear GOD. That is all.
Over an establishing shot of New York City, Jessica dreamily voices over that they're in town to shoot her new Dessert campaign. She calls it a perfume line. Inside her hotel room, where she's hanging out with Ma and Pa Simpson, Jessica whines that she just wants to be at home in L.A. for more than a week. "And the Super Bowl's this month," she complains. Her mother practically jumps out of her skin, worrying that it's the same day as the Golden Globes. Oh, God. Had that been the case and they'd had to choose, poor downtrodden Nick would've lost that argument in such spectacular fashion that it would have greatly moved up their inevitable divorce. Pa says that the Super Bowl is February 1. "Which one?" Ma says. "The only first of February we have this year," Pa Simpson says, with what he imagines is a clever finger-point that punctuates the delivery of this brilliant joke. Jessica's inner monologue: "Oh, right, because it's a leap year." Actually, I think it's possible Ma Simpson didn't hear which event he'd said was on the first, and was actually asking him to repeat himself; the only reason I'm defending that moronic woman is that I think Pa Simpson is such a slimy slab of ass butter. He acts like he's saddled with and superior to these two idiots, when really, he's living high on the hog because of them (witness: the gleaming diamond stud perching hetero-fabulously in his left earlobe) and he's really not any brighter. Just possessed of more common sense.
It takes two or three more questions for Ma and Pa and Jessica to all get on the same February 1 page in their mental datebooks, but when they arrive it sends Jessica straight onto another page, this one marked "Golden Globes (Not The Ones In My Bra -- The Other Ones)." She asks if she's going, and Pa says she's singing at the post-party. "Is that after, or before?" she asks, screwing up her face. Pa says it's after, and Jessica frowns. She thinks it's weird that "post" means "after." Helpfully, Ma points out, "Don't think of a fencepost," because she's dumber than one. Jessica assures her that this is not the birthplace of her confusion. Rather, she always thought of it as before because "you post a letter before you send it." Everyone laughs. Jessica protests that you do indeed put postage on a letter before you mail it, and it's clear immediately that she somehow just learned this lesson in the season and a half of quasi-self-sufficience she's had to endure for the sake of the show (and her bank account). "Postage? You're using 'post' as a prefix for '-age'?" Pa says incredulously. These people have no idea what they're even saying. I love watching idiots try to win debates through what they think is rational explanation, but which is really just an exercise in whose point is the least asinine. No one specifically points out that to post a letter is to mail it, and is not a synonym for the act of putting postage on an envelope, but Pa Simpson does tiredly tell her that stamps are called "postage stamps," a name that comes from that most magical of places, the post office. "It does?" Jessica asks, impressed. They all stare at each other for while, minds well and truly blown and puffing on a lovely post-release cigarette during the afterglow.
Jessica asks if she's doing anything Monday; she's not, but her Tuesday is booked. It's her photo shoot. Jessica acts annoyed that she has this commitment, and Pa Simpson gets pissy that she's complaining about the schedule. Then suddenly he's explaining to her that the company's paying for everything from the studio to the photographer, possibly to make her shut her ungrateful mouth. I'm not sure. "He has a missing thumb," Jessica whimpers. "What does that have to do with this?" Pa asks. "I think he's got a good heart," Jessica says, putting on her best "deformity is on the outside, love is on the inside" voice in the hopes of attracting a "The More You Know" spot from NBC. Luckily, the photographer ostensibly still has both of his middle digits, and can engage them accordingly. Pa Simpson can't believe what he's hearing, because if he acts shocked, it means more screen time. "Dad, we're women," Jessica explains. And what? Women have no stomach for physical imperfections? Women are graceless judges of anyone whose digits add up to a number, or fraction thereof, lower than ten? Can she even count to ten? "I have a heart for people who don't have fingers, but I just can't be sexy when..." and here she trails off. Honey, you don't have to imagine him stroking you with his thumbless hand. You just have to space out and pout. That can't be beyond you -- it's what you do in every single scene.
Nick overhears this and deems it mean. "It's not mean!" she insists. "What are you looking at his thumb for?" Nick asks, laughing, blissfully unaware of his wife's thumb-war fetish and her former virginal curiosity about the old adage, "You know what they say about the size of a man's hands…" To her, no thumb probably means no wang. "It's all I can look at," she says, likening it to when someone has a giant zit and it's impossible to look away. If you were raised in a barn, which, with her horsy looks, might be more on point than I realize. "I love him, though," Jessica lies. "I feel awful." Nick shakes his head and asks her what to do about the dry cleaning. "Ohhhhh," Jessica breathes, with no idea what he's talking about. Nick cracks that they can't go to that cleaner any more because he heard a rumor that she only has one toe. Ah, I see. He sets them up…and then he knocks them down for himself, too, because his wife is too lazy and stupid to do any of it. Jessica hunches over, laughing and blushing. Nick smiles. Pay attention, because that's not going to happen again.
Jessica goes to a hair salon that stayed open just for her. She needs highlights for her photo shoot, and she once again explains the perfume line. "You can lick it," Jessica says. "No! That's HOT!" the hairdresser says. Can't you technically always lick your skin after you've put perfume on? It's not going to taste great, but there's nothing stopping your tongue if that's where it wants to go. Boy, did Nick learn that the hard way. Jessica adds that Dessert has a line of lip glosses and body butters and the like, thereby making it demonstrably not just a perfume line, but whatever -- at least, for once, she's partly correct. Then she whines that she's hungry and starts dropping outrageous hints to Nick about him going to get her some food. Nick's ignoring her, though. He's fascinated by his chair. "My nuts are vibrating!" he gasps. He starts feeling around his pants, as if he's honestly wondering if he left his cell phone in his Hanes, and if not, checking to see if it might fit there for all eternity. He asks if trains pass underneath Madison Ave., and the hairdresser claims they do not; I can't speak to that because I don't live in New York. ["It depends on the cross street, but generally, no, they don't." -- Sars] Regardless, Nick sits back down, thrilled with the nut-buzzing chair. I'm a little surprised Jessica didn't get up and sit on one and demand that her hair be completed while she has a nice little massage with release.
Hotel suite. Nick's working on his laptop while Jessica watches TV. "I love Family Feud," she says. She wants to go on it; she thinks she'd be good. Is she high? That whole show is predicated on guessing the common-sense answer to whatever question they pose. Jessica would be as good at that as she would Jeopardy. "Yeah," Nick lies. You can tell he's thinking, "After the divorce, my clan will KICK YOUR ASS on that show." Nick must not want to watch the game show, because Jessica starts complaining about how they always watch what Nick wants to watch, specifically SportsCenter at 11 PM. "And I never say anything," she insists. That's true on a philosophical level, because what she says is a whole lot of nothing, but empirically it's hard to pretend that she's not constantly flapping that suckhole of a mouth. Even Nick calls her out on this fib, and says that at home of course she doesn't complain because she can just go watch another TV set, as they have eight. Jessica blows one of those tongueless raspberries that end up looking like what horses do when they're exhaling. Which is appropriate, as she's a first-class nag.
Nick calls Drew to see if they're ready to go to dinner. Jessica drearily puts on her coat and then bumps into the door and makes an even more pathetic face. "Owwww," she whines. "I think I just broke my kidney."
Leah is wearing a newsboy cap. Dear God, people. Can't we let them go? She says sadly that she misses New York. "She's been like this all day," Drew mutters. Nick figures that Leah sounds like she wants to move back there, and the way he says it comes off like he thinks she's been at the crazy pills again and is about two inches away from saying something even more irretrievably ridiculous, like "You know, Nick, you didn't have to get married to get laid." This conversation has taken an ugly turn for Jessica, who manages to suss out that she's not at the center of discussion and promptly swings it back in her direction. She wants to know if Nick's tagging along at her photo shoot, and she then explains for the gazillionth time that her new perfume line is coming out, and that it's all edible product. Perfect, y'all! It's, like, all the taste, but, like, none of the fat! I can just see her squirting the body mousse into her mouth and pouring the lip gloss on top of her fat-free frozen yogurt. There's a close-up of a brandy snifter as Nick clears his throat and intones to Jessica that his mother called, and informed him that In Touch magazine asked her if Jessica is pregnant. Jessica stares at him. "It caught me off-guard," he says, almost wounded. He looks like he is a shade away from demanding why she hasn't told him about their forthcoming bundle of bliss, so christened for its inevitable ignorance. "That's sure crazy," Jessica drawls. Nick says it would be exciting. Jessica stammers, "I'm with you on that. Not yet. I mean, it will be exciting, but don't you think we have to get a dog first?" Everyone giggles, which is clearly why Jessica then went and repeated that as her statement to every single media outlet that asked. We hit the commercial break all too aware that Nick is clearly aching to experience sex without a condom, but will be relegated to whatever alone time in the shower he can muster because he has a better chance of enrolling her at Oxford than getting her to let him hose down her womb with man juice.
Central Park. Jessica explains for us that she's going to a photo shoot for her new line of products. Really? That's odd. I thought she was reporting for work at C-Span today. "It's called Dessert," she says. "We're all going to be sugared out." Then she moans about the weather. "This is why we live in L.A.," she pouts. Nick scoffs that their room was so overheated last night that they slept with an open window. "Your wife is pregnant. She's kicking out some extra heat," jokes someone who I assume is her stylist or personal assistant, and who seems to be named Brad. Nick smiles happily and coos, "In that case, I would gladly sweat." Is he for real? He wants to spawn more of her kind? It's moments like this that remind you Nick really isn't bright at all, and that he only seems smart in isolated moments when compared to his walking Slurpee of a wife. Someone teasingly congratulates Jessica, and she wonders how the rumors got started. Brad gossips that an item in a local rag said she has to do the shoot right away because she is pregnant. To diffuse the situation, Nick cracks that the story will be that it's all a hoax to cover up that he shoots blanks. Everyone laughs but Jessica, who whines, "That's horrible!" Oh, like you're going to use those, Jessica. Go sniff some glue.
At the shoot, Jessica briefly meets the thumbless photographer. No one gets chyrons on this show. It's very confusing. To distract her from Tom Thumb's criminal shortage of digits, there is a little white furry dog wearing a pirate sweater. It's hard for me to look at, because I loathe, loathe, loathe the trend of putting clothes on dogs, and I usually can't tolerate those who do it. To wit: "I want a dog I can dress up," Jessica squeals. Exhibit A. Then, as she's playing with her hair, she apparently loses her wily husband and goes to find him. "I wanted to see where you were," she schmoops. "Do you feel bad now? About the comment?" Nick prompts her paternally. Jessica is blank for a second -- well, blank-er -- and then nods robotically and says, "Yeah, I feel bad." Nick stares at her. "He is a nice man," Jessica says unconvincingly. Nick rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
Jessica coos over the packaging of her product. Clearly she's not actually involved in this, or she'd have seen and approved it already. This company is smart: Keep her away from anything that requires business sense. Or, you know, sense. They squirt the body mousse onto her hand and she gushes, "Oh, so it moisturizes?" She's fascinated. She's so frosting Nick's birthday cake with this shit. Jessica blithely -- and, mercifully, rhetorically -- asks why it is that products are so much fun. Then she makes a crack about the pregnancy rumors. A stylist eagerly tells her that Dessert tracked down who started the rumor and canned her ass.
Jessica is ready for the shoot. She's wearing a white satiny corset-style top and low-rise jeans, with her hair in loose curls that wave around her face. Tom Thumb tells her to be innocent and sensuous, holding a cupcake and licking the frosting off her finger. Is this guy a real photographer? I feel like this pose is the first assignment in Remedial Fashion Photography at the Long Island Upstairs College of VCR Repair. Jessica sucks on her finger, wipes it through layer after layer of hot pink frosting, and pouts at the camera. Tom Thumb's missing digit is really more of a stump. He's got half a thumb. He probably lost the other half in a tragic soldering accident during the Flashdance class at his aforementioned alma mater. Suddenly, Tom Thumb isn't happy. He frowns. He needs to change the cupcake. The one they're using really just isn't the best one. What, it's not talented enough? Backstage, Brad giggles to Nick that they want to have a contest to see who can eat the most Dessert before throwing up. "I'm going to be on a sugar high!" Jessica preens, wiping her finger through another cupcake's frosting. Then something drops to the floor with a thud. She jumps ten feet. "What was that?" she gasps. Everyone there cracks up, which indicates that they're all already high on something else.
Apparently, the stress of having the crap scared out of Jessica prompts them all to take a brief break. "I thought I got shot!" Jessica exhales, flopping down on the couch. Oh, now there is a picture: Jessica licking sugar off her finger with a giant oozing bullet hole where her left nipple would be. It would seem, sadly for him, that Tom Thumb stored all his artistic vision in the lost fingertip. Nick and the gang tease Jessica about how sick she's going to get from gobbling all that icing, and Brad wants to get her a chuck bucket.
Jessica gets back up to take more photos. Tom Thumb tells her to put yet more of the frosting on her finger, and she actually manages to mess that up, because it requires a part of the brain that can…well, it requires her to have part of a brain. Incidentally, I looked at the Sephora site, which is pimping Dessert, and they used one of these photos. However, in what I like to think of as Tom Thumb's Subtle Revenge, the photo that was chosen makes it look like she has four fingers and no thumb on her right hand. He's all, "Yeah, thumbs up on the picture, bitch!" It obscures the other thumb, too, but in a more logical way, because that hand's got the cupcake in it. The company also is hawking a product called "Deliciously Kissable Belly Button Love Potion Fragrance." Personally, I can't imagine flavored navel grease coming in handy. If I rubbed a bunch of that into my belly button and then cooed at my boyfriend to eat up from his own personal Dessert bowl, he'd be like, "Are you kidding me with that shit? I need a beer."
Jessica starts to get sick as the shoot continues. The music grinds to a halt. Nick moseys over to make sure his wife isn't about to throw up all over the costume, because that might cost actual money to replace, and he's not making any of that right now. Jessica holds a bagel chip. Huh? She closes her eyes and horses her lips again as some dim bulb to her holds Jessica's fairy princess pink shoe up in her face. As if sniffing her own foot odor will settle her roiling stomach. "Where's the closest bathroom?" Jessica moans, piling her hair on top of her head. She crouches down on the restroom floor. Nick peeks in to check up on her, and she self-indulgently wails something unintelligible in reply. God. She's such an attention whore that she has to turns something that was already All About Her into something that's even more Jessica-centric. Her mother brings Jessica a plate of food, which she promptly puts down at her feet. It's a plate of crackers and cheeses, and a hunk of French bread that looks to be topped with slabs of Brie. Rich cheese as Pepto Bismol? Oh, Ma Simpson, you homeopathic genius, you. Of course, someone makes the inevitable morning-sickness jokes, and Jessica just squirms and whines and shoves floor saltines into her mouth and whimpers some more.
Jessica curls up on the couch. Apparently, she's spent the last three hours throwing up. One thing's certain here: I'm definitely not buying any so-called edible Dessert products. Everyone decides that they have to reschedule the shoot, which will save them several hours and the sight of Jessica moping around screeching about her stomach. "I don't think the pictures will be very cute," Jessica agrees. Ma Simpson says something dumb about how Jessica is still cute. I guess we know who gives her all those ideas about her appeal. Shut up, Ma. Tom Thumb, visibly put out, gives his assistants the…er…pointer-fingers-up to start dismantling the set. "We're not always this dramatic," Nick lies. Oh, please. She is the most suggestible person on the planet -- tell her you heard she's pregnant, and she starts throwing up. Hey, Jessica? I heard you ate nails and got a lobotomy.
Back at the hotel, Jessica milks this for all the attention she can get. She crouches while waiting for the elevator, curls up on the lift floor, and caps it by crawling to her hotel room door. Ma Simpson helpfully points out that Nick is going to have to carry her. Nick ignores both of them, because he's busy on the phone asking his lawyer to tape the show for use in his forthcoming temporary insanity defense. "You're not pregnant, are you?" Ma Simpson chirps. We smash to the commercials suddenly wondering if poor Nick's going to get any sex at all in the wake of this, so that Jessica can say, "See? It's impossible!"
NYC skyline. Jessica, the poor little wolf in lamb's clothing, announces that she's had a rough time in New York. She apparently went to a doctor and got hooked up to an IV for two hours, and found out she had a twenty-four-hour flu. My ass. Those cupcakes were skanky. They're back at the studio to finish up the shoot, this time with close-up shots of her applying lip gloss -- which basically means she's posed like she's going to fellate the application wand. Nick checks up on her. "As long as there's no vomiting, that's a step in the right direction," he nods. And in a flash of a montage, the shoot's complete. Tom Thumb really had her under his.
Jessica, Nick, and pals sit at a restaurant at night, clearly drunk off their asses. She's talking about how the crescent moon makes her think of a baby. Her drunk friends, who I think are Leah and Drew, are not sober enough to laugh politely and instead are all, "What the fuck?" She giggles and slurs that it reminds her of moon-and-star decorations you see in nurseries. She then drools over the pretty cloud passing over it, and someone has to correct her that it is in fact smoke being burped from a stack. Then…you know, I should stop trying to find linear progression in these conversations. It just makes my brain hurt. Somehow, Jessica decides that all this is like "the seagull flying with the baby attached to its…gulls." Duct tape. That's what we need here. Duct tape can fix anything. No one can believe the inanity of what they've just heard, so Jessica just giggles and tries to look cute so that Nick won't file for a divorce until the cameras have switched off. "My mom had me in an hour," Jessica announces. Couldn't wait to get rid of you, huh? "Impatient from day one," Nick says, barely able to muster a pleasant expression even when making a joke at Jessica's expense, which I think isn't fun for him anymore because he has to act like it's a loving and affectionate jab, when really, he'd prefer that to be stabbing at her with his dickknife. Or a cleaver.
Hotel suite. Nick's dressed in a Miller Lite shirt, because that's all he can afford these days on his earnings. Jessica whines that she can't find a bottle opener. "What are you doing?" Nick asks, apparently allergic to the obvious. Jessica says something about wanting to open her soda because she already took it out, ostensibly from the mini-bar, "and we already paid for it." Unless she took it out of the bar before the maid came in and tallied their stock, that's not really possible…oh, forget it. ["In Jessica's defense -- I know! I'm sorry -- some of the mini-bars now are computerized so they can tell what you've taken out, and they just charge your room automatically. Not that she would even know that, though." -- Sars] As Nick fumbles for an opener, Jessica asks about getting hamburgers for lunch. He says he's going to get food like that at ESPN Zone. "Excuuuuse me," she snots. Nick shrugs that she's welcome to come, inside rejoicing that she would clearly rather take the SAT than slum it in a sports establishment. It's a brilliant way to get rid of her, I must say. "I'm not trying to exclude you," Nick lies. Jessica sniffs that she would much rather go shopping with her mother. That must be when she feels smart. Nick uses a knife to pry up the bottle cap. "You're going to have two sips of this," he sighs. "I'm going through all of this and you'll have two sips and that'll be it." Leaning it against a table, he slams his hand on the cap and the bottle opens. "Ahhhh, thanks, baby," Jessica says, eyes wide, like he's MacGyver. Nick asks if it was worth all that trouble. Dude, that took half a minute. Get over yourself. "It tastes like Pine Sol," she brats.
Nick is at ESPN Zone watching football, and Jessica went to Fred's for some rich-looking pizza. Her stomach sure seems fine to me. Jessica proclaims her sausage pizza better than anything those culinary wizards at Domino's could possibly produce. She's also wearing a houndstooth newsboy cap that matches the dreadful outfit Shandi always wears in her interviews. Who authorized houndstooth? That somehow came back without my permission, and it frightens me. Ma Simpson talks about hamburger pizza and Jessica is just shocked, shocked, to hear she's eaten that before. "Hamburger on pizza?" she gapes. Visions of quarter-pounders sitting on pizza slices dance in her head. Jessica always thought the hamburger pizza she was eating was actually sausage pizza. "Sausage is pig," she says, apropos of nothing. "Can't sausage sometimes be cow?" Ma Simpson decides that beef sausages do exist, yes. What follows is a very high-tech conversation where Ma explains to Jessica that pork waste is turned into pork wieners, and cow waste becomes beef wieners. "But there is beef sausage?" Jessica asks, confused by the introduction of wieners into this conversation. I'm surprised she doesn't get befuddled that they're both synonyms for "penis," yet they're not themselves the same thing.
Jessica then busts out with, "What's a bratsworth? Is that a pig or a cow?" Actually, I think it's an upper-middle-class suburb of Connecticut. "It's white," Jessica says. Which also supports my thesis. She can't figure out if it's "bratsworth" or "brastworth," even though the word she's fumbling for is "bratwurst," and you'd think she'd know that because she puts the "brat" in it. Jessica decides that Nick would know what's in a bratwurst, and why it's white, because he's the expert on porking in this relationship. She calls him at ESPN Zone and actually asks him what kind of animal is the chief ingredient in "the white thing you eat with sauerkraut." Ma Simpson giggles vapidly. "He says [it's] pork," Jessica reports. "Why is bratsworth white?" she asks. "Is it the German pig, and they're white inside?" Honey, you're not going to get asked to be a spokeswoman for German sausage -- nor for a prude New England town -- so stop trying. ["Also, bratwurst is pink. Weisswurst is white. Shut up, Jessica." -- Sars] Nick is trying not to listen, and totally gets caught out on watching the game and not caring what she's saying. Jessica wants him to poll the group for an answer to the mythical question, "Why is bratwurst white?" She pauses. Then she covers the phone and laughs, "He says, 'I'm not going to ask them!'" They hang up.
Ma Simpson suddenly has an epiphany. "I know why!" she cheers. "It's a boar?" Jessica asks. If you are referring to this topic of conversation, and you are playing with homophones, then yes, yes, it is a boar. But I doubt that's what she's doing, since she likely thinks a "homophone" is what one uses to call the Queer Eye lads into action. Anyway, back to The Jackholes: Ma Simpson's grand theory about why bratwursts are white is, "Pork chops are white!" Jessica blinks. "Okay," she says slowly. "So, it's the chop of a pork?" Ma Simpson starts laughing really hard, which is the only thing that leads me to think they're trying to stage this conversation. I really do think they're both exactly this stupid, so I don't think they're intelligent enough to pull off a wholly faked conversation; I do, however, think they can probably identify a Chicken of the Sea moment when they're in the middle of one, and might then choose to play it up as much as they can. Hence, they are trying to mine this one for gold a second time. "Perplexing," Jessica announces to the camera. Quite.
Suddenly, we're back at the hotel. Jessica's getting ready to go somewhere. Nick is trying to rush her along, and can't fathom why she's standing around at the sink. "What are you doing, baby?" he asks, about to regret that choice of word. "Making sure the rumors aren't true," she replies, and we see an EPT wrapper. Good lord. A pregnancy test. You know Jessica was one of those truly dumb middle schoolers who would French boys behind the bleachers and then write to Seventeen and say, "I tongue-kissed Billy Ray Hogsnuggle and now I'm having stomach pains. Will I need an abortion?" Nick jerks up his head, startled, and in that split second, you can see him panicking that a) he is never, ever going to be cleanly free of this pig-ignorant wench, and b) if they ever have a baby, he is doing all the work, from diaper changes to 4 AM feedings to undergoing intrusive exploratory surgery to see about installing a womb so he can birth it for Miss Priss, too.
time: Nick and Jessica play around with some Huskies. As the credits roll, we hear Jessica says she doesn't want a dog that acts like a priss -- and then, predictably, she coos over some little ratty pooch in a leopard-print outfit. "I can't see myself picking up a big turd," she asserts. "I can't really see you picking up anything," Nick cracks.