God I hate the voice-over. I'll paraphrase: An ordinary man falls to his death, and the brain goes here in this new guy, see? Ordinary man lives on in hunky bod of "twenty-six-year-old" (BA HA HA HA HA!!) Artificial Guy, who, instead of embracing the superpowers he now has, whines and cries about ordinary stuff he misses. He has a new life and superpowers, and is he happy? Nooo.
Artificial Guy and Dr. Morris are riding in the limo, again. A.G. longingly fingers the newspaper, and instead of smacking his hand away, Dr. M. just says "Mr. Wiseman..." all warning-upward-rising-inflection-y. A.G. whines and cries about it being "cruel, you know," and "barbecuing a steak in front of a starving man" and "you are the devil's incorrigible brother." First, is that a real phrase? "The devil's incorrigible brother"? Did Lucifer have a brother? I want to know. And, second, is A.G. really getting all worked up just about not being able to read the paper? Dr. M. has a reason for this: He doesn't want A.G. to know what the events of the day are; he's being kept in the dark, like the rest of the public. "My body's as hard as a rock, but my mind is turning to silly putty!" Just the way I like 'em! C'mere, you big stupid thing, you! Now shut up!
It's nighttime, and A.G. is sloppily brushing his teeth, STILL bitching about the no-reading rule. He says, like the dingy ding-dong he is, "Reading, to me, is like breathing. Words are like..." He trails off and Dr. M., reading my mind, says dully, "Oxygen." A.G. babbles on about how he courted his wife with letters because they couldn't afford long-distance phone calls and Dr. M., like me, could give a hoot as he says of the toothpaste spittle around A.G.'s mouth, "You look like you have rabies." A.G. begs some more for something to read. "C'mon, doc. Just a book, any book. Tom Sawyer?" How about Pat the Bunny? That's at your reading level for sure.
Theme song! Unh! Yeah! C'mon! Unh unh! You can grunt all you want and this show still won't be interesting.
Coming up soon on CBS, The John Denver Story starring Chad "I Cried at the Oscars Because I'll Never, Ever Win One" Lowe!
Fade in from commercial. The screen is filled with letters on lined notebook paper written in flowery, cursive script. Lisa is reading her "love letters." They are not pornographic. Dang. She reads, "Hurry up and finish school and come to New York, you lazy wench, and I will never leave you." That's just how I want my love to speak to me -- oh yes, so emotional, not. Then -- oops! -- she wakes up and goes to the closet, and pulls out a box that contains the exact same letters in her dream. She (re?)reads the EXACT SAME passage and gets all googly-eyed. Are these letters intentionally bad so everyone else in the world that watches this (all twelve of us) can feel smug about the love letters they have gotten? The fortune on a Bazooka Joe cartoon is more romantic. Lisa moves into Mom-mode and bellows, "HEATHERRRR!" They have to go to school and meet with her guidance counselor. We see Heather stashing her report card under her bed. I tried and tried to still the shot but the report card blurred too much in the freeze frame for me to read it. So we STILL don't know if Heather's a good student of not.
In the limo, again, Dr. M. is reading the paper, again, so A.G. is compelled to whine and cry about how unfair it is, AGAIN. Dr. M., referring to A.G.'s metaphor about eating steak in front of a starving man, says that he's "taking him into a steakhouse." Where now? A medical library. Will the hilarity ever start? I mean, "cease"?
A library geek is explaining a problem they've discovered to Dr. M.. A student came in to do some research on a phantom limb study Dr. M. published, and this has to be a shout-out to me and my pain in watching this show, because the only ex of mine I can't stand wrote a song called "Phantom Limb," and I cannot decide which annoys me more, being randomly reminded of him or watching this show, and I have to choose Now and Again because it's on every week and not only do I rarely see the ex anymore, thank god, but I know that was a LEARNING EXPERIENCE, unlike this show. So the library geek takes Dr. M.'s study off the shelf and Dr. M. leafs through the pages; they are blank. No words. Just like the title of this episode. Dr. M. is surprised. The library geek explains, "Whatever it is, is seems to be spreading. Saturday it was just your book. Now, it's the whole section!" BUM BUM BUUUM! I'm so scared!
Heather slams the door and Lisa-Mom glares at her from her perch on the steps. She wants to see Heather's report card, NOW. If I ever become a parent I promise never to ambush my children like that. What's the point? To maximize their sense of dread? To make sure they never feel safe coming home? Heather trudge trudge trudges up the stairs to her room, heads under her bed to retrieve her report card, sloowly pulls it out, and whoops! It's blank. Lisa snorts at this until she goes to her room and finds her love letters of old are blank too! May I? BUM BUM BUUUM!
Elian's dad is going to be on 60 Minutes. A woman I work with thinks he's a hottie.
It's morning in the Gilded Gym. The dappled sunlight is winking off the lap pool and the workout machines wait expectantly. Bluebirds form a line at the Stairmaster. Dr. M. and A.G. are in bed, holding each other, sleeping peacefully. Just kidding. Dr. M. is reading the paper, about another location where books have been erased. Where is it? A.G.'s former home. He wants to get a look inside; does A.G. want to come? A.G. leaps out of bed in a flash.
The phone rings; Lisa answers. She apologizes to her neighbor about all the reporters standing around on the lawn; Roger had called the media and the police to see if they could do anything about the incredible disappearing print. Roger looks baleful, Heather hateful. Bling-blong! It's Dr. M. and A.G. at the door! What a surprise! "The government asked me to drop by. Mind if I come in and have a look?" Super casual. Lisa leads A.G. upstairs, explaining that the pictures and paintings on the walls haven't been affected, just books and their letters. Heather asks Dr. M., "What does the government think about all this? Maybe someone is telling us we don't read enough." Gee, YA THINK? "It really creeps. Me. Out! I'm waiting for the walls to drip blood." That would be interesting. Dr. M., in full Scully/denial mode, says stupidly, "There's a scientific explanation for everything." Sure there is, Dr. Scully. Now I know CBS is out of it -- they don't even watch The X-Files.
Lisa is standing in her bedroom with A.G. She's yammering on: "My husband loved to read...." A.G. says, "I know." Whoops! Busted! He stammers, "Grisham, right?" Ooh, nice save. Lisa picks up her precious love letters and says, "It's spread to these. They used to be letters. Now they're blank." A.G. takes them from her and, even though his expression is as totally blank and vacant as the pages he holds, I can guess he's supposed to be feeling some kind of melancholy at the sight of these stupid love letters his wife/widow still reads and treasures. Too bad he can't act and SHOW US this. He sniffs a bit and Lisa says, "Do you think they'll come back?" A.G., spacing out, says, "Excuse me?" Oh, you oaf. They stand less than a foot away from each other, and though Margaret Colin is throwing out sparks like a buzz saw on sheet metal, all A.G. can do is stand there and stare at her. He says, "No matter what, you will always remember them." The electricity half-crackles between them, sort of, and they look into each other's eyes.
Lisa and A.G. go back downstairs after nothing happens. Heather dully says that the crowd of reporters is leaving: "They can't take notes!" Lisa says that the print is gone from her newspaper by the time she brings it to the table, Heather can only do homework on the computer, and remarks, dryly, "Thank god for TV." AMEN to that, sister. Dr. M., all ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-sand-y, repeats his earlier baloney about there being a scientific explanation for everything, and they leave.
In the limo, Dr. M. is thinking:. "It's almost acting like a virus -- a disease. A plague." Go ahead, load it up. A.G. points out that the one connection between the medical library and his old home is nothing else but Dr. M. thinks differently: "You're the point of origin." Dr. M. should make some kind of horrified face or an "auugh!" noise, but he's too repressed, I mean, um, dignified for that.
The screen goes black and white type reads, "Somewhere in the Pentagon." The assembled generals, including a lady three-star general (progress?) are sticking pushpins in a map of America. Dr. M. comes in, still clueless as to what could be causing this thing. The lady general says it's "nanobots," and asks, "Would you explain it to my colleagues?" Hee hee, that's the oldest trick in the book. Dr. M. says that nanobots are to the future are "what the transistor was to the fifties and sixties." You still aren't explaining it, dude. Okay, they're "microscopic molecular machines," that replace the functions of an immune system. They were created to live in A.G. and to speed along his healing process. They've moved outside him, though, and now replicate and eat ink. The more ink they eat, the faster they replicate. This makes the tribbles episode on Star Trek look important; at least there, there was a danger of being overpopulated, or overpowered by tribbles. Here, the danger is books disappearing, and thanks to technology, it CAN'T HAPPEN. THEY CAN MAKE VEGETABLE-BASED INKS, you know. The lady general makes a joke and tells Dr. M., "You are the author of our current plight." Yuk yuk. Dr. M. still doesn't look horrified enough for me.
It's sleepytime in the Gilded Gym. A.G. is wearing jammies with feet. Kidding. Dr. M. is watching TV and A.G wanders out, all sleepy and rubbing his eyes to watch too. The "plague" has spread to the West Coast and Japan. "It's starting to eat the ink off money. There's rioting in the big cities." A.G. says, "Wanna sleep? Can you sleep? My terrarium is your terrarium. We can take shifts." Then he pats Dr. M. on the shoulder but there's no response.
Now we get a nice little montage of Dr. M. collecting blood from A.G. and examining it under a microscope. Some ersatz Dave Matthews Band music starts up (Lyrics: "If the key don't work you can knock on the door") and I leave to barf. When I come back, Dr. M. is printing out a piece of paper from which the print fades right off. He crumples it up and A.G. picks it up and uncrumples it. Pathos, I guess. Or fishcakes.
Lisa's in bed. Heather asks to come in with her. "Did they cancel school again? They shouldn't let a thing like no books stop them from teaching. They still have blackboards. And lunch. And Gym." Yeah, having no books doesn't stop the Philadelphia public school system from opening up shop. Heather says, "It's Sunday." Oh. Lisa says, "Your dad would have hated this..." because he loved to read the paper and curl up with a book so much. Um, I think John Goodman would have loved to curl up with a nice steak and a baked potato, but I could be wrong. No, I'm not. Heather is bummed by what she just saw on TV. Is it that they're renewing Now and Again, sweetie? That would be a bummer. No: The president has made a new law that any existing book left can't be read to yourself, but must be read aloud to a group of ten or more people. As if. Or is that supposed to be fascistic? Since these recaps aren't even read by a group of ten or more people, I henceforce decree that this will be my last one. But I'll finish the episode for you, my ten readers.
Heather continues about the new public reading decree, "If/when the book fades, technically someone will be around to remember it. It's not a book; it's a memory. Like when someone dies, the world is different now. You get up in the morning and move on. I'm gonna tell my kids about these things we used to have: Books." This is kind of sad; Heather's equating the loss of books to the death of her father. After a loss, all you can do is pick yourself up and try to continue. It's hard and painful, like writing these recaps. It's a pretty fatalistic sentiment and I can totally relate. Lisa holds her and says, "The world is different now. The world is different now."
A.G. and Dr. M. are in the limo. A.G. says, "It's killing you, isn't it?" Wow, how does he know how I feel? Wait, he's talking to Dr. M. Referring to the steak/starving man metaphor, Dr. M. says, "It's like being a farmer, but everything you grow kills people instead of nourishing them. Wanna know the irony?" Uh, it's SO FUCKING OBVIOUS, what are you going to do, spell it out? Write it in the sky? Call me up and tell me personally over the phone? "I remember the day I got my first library card," but he doesn't say the date. It's this non-attention to detail I hate a lot. "[The library] was clean. They had air conditioning. They had a water fountain...the water was icy cold. That's why I went there, to get out of the heat." Ooh, what a paradise! Of course, if we knew where the doctor was FROM, this might have more meaning. Is he talking about the heat of New Orleans in August? That would be hot. He goes on to say when he was twelve he came across Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and because he saw the Mr. Magoo cartoon, he thought the book would be a hoot. Then, at age fifteen, he stole a copy of Gray's Anatomy, just to have it on his shelf at home. Then, it was just like Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart: Having the book filled him with guilt. A.G. groans appreciatively at this metaphor; he thought the book was scary too. Help, my eyes are stuck in the back of my head. Dr. M. was caught putting the book back on the shelf, and was banned from the library for three months. Boo freaking hoo. Dr. M. sees some sort of commotion outside the limo and orders the driver to pull over.
There's a good old-fashioned book burning going on. The crowd is riled up and the flames are high. A rabble-rouser screams, "C'mon! We gotta burn 'em, burn 'em all!" Dr. M. drops to his knees (at the same time I do) and sees that some of the books still have words in them. The rabble-rouser screams some more, "They're bad! They have germs! We gotta kill 'em!" Through the flames a little girl sniffles and holds on to her copy of A Christmas Carol until her father pries it out of her fingers and throws it on the pile. Bringing the kids to a book burning -- an interesting choice. Dr. M. watches her through the flames with NO EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE AT ALL.
Church. The priest goes on about how he can't ask the congregation to turn to a page in the hymnal, or read along, and that the last copy of the Gutenberg Bible in the Library of Congress is now gone. People gasp. I can't roll my eyes anymore, they're tired. "Let us prey to stave off our despair as out printed history disappears." Dr. M. is there, covering his eyes. A kindly old man tells him, "They find a cure for everything." Tell it to the common cold, cancer, and AIDS patients out there. They're waiting for a cure too. Dr. M. cries, I think.
Now Dr. M. is reading Tom Sawyer into a microphone. It's the scene where Tom paints the fence. Twain uses words like "deep melancholy" and "life seemed hollow," and that has to be a meta-shout-out to me. Then Dr. M. stops. "It's gone," he says. A huge "AWWW!" swells up and it's revealed that he was reading to a mass of people assembled in Central Park. Then he wakes up.
Dr. M. calls the Gilded Gym to ask if someone's with Mr. Wiseman. Then, what day is this? He goes and collects his morning paper, smiles, and then skips off to the bookstore.
Baldy is ordering A.G. though his morning workout. Do three hundred more, he says. A.G. asks, "Are you on crack?" Zing. Dr. M. comes in with two bags full of books for A.G., because his dream has shown him the errors of his ways: "I've changed my mind. I think I was wrong." Baldy says, "This is scary." He is so right. Dr. M. starts handing over books, including Grisham, A Christmas Carol, and Gray's Anatomy. A.G. says with a blank face, "You mean it? I can read? Wow. This is like Christmas." Then he scoots off to read, presumably. Dr. M. calls after him, and I am NOT KIDDING, "God bless us, every one!" Oh boy. How about, THE END! Because it is. ["It sure is. And God bless Alex Richmond for sticking it out as long as she has." -- Wing Chun]