By Jacob
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The (knockoff) Pyxis arrives, making this Eddie's last day at the hospital. Gloria promises to help him find something, but is distracted by Victor! Garber!, a grumpy film critic who comes in with a broken elbow and whom Zoey misdoses right into a coma. She's off the floor and in major trouble, and of course Jackie shoulders some blame, too. Especially since Gloria falls in love with him at first sight, as any sane person would.
Fitch Cooper breaks up with that girl Melissa, having decided he's in love with Jackie for the moment. He shakes Zoey down for advice about Jackie, but of course Zoey doesn't know the first thing about Jackie, because nobody does. Finally plying her with pink roses and gum, he nearly causes her to go insane and murder him... But instead she just takes the flowers home to her girls.
After she nearly kills Victor! Garber!, Mo-Mo and Thor take Zoey out to a late lunch and counsel her about her shambles of a career, and she finally makes the connection to Thor's intense gayness, which results in a lot of feelings-eating for Zoey. Less in love, with Jackie or anybody else: Grace, who has felt the sting of her mother's social dysfunction one too many times after a headbutting session with the lady from the parish gets them thrown out of dance class.
Eddie shows Jackie how to reset the pill dispenser's memory, thinking they can be together now. Of course, that's not happening, and he follows her to Queens in what he thinks is a romantic fashion, only to find her in the arms of her loving husband and daughters! Who have just bought her an expensive new wedding ring! One episode left, in which I'm sure Jackie will find some way to pull the entire borough down around her ears.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Grace is sitting at the bar wrapping up Jackie's finger for the day, while Fiona to her fiddles with the bandages. Grace shines like the sun, helping her mom and her sister. Fiona nearly spills the beans about her errand with Kevin -- going to a jewelry store to buy a replacement wedding ring -- but everybody stops her in time. The clouds gather over Grace's head, but Jackie nods. "It's hard to keep a secret," she says; she should know. She takes off with Grace for tap class, and after they're gone Fiona protests that she wasn't really going to tell. "Yes you were," Kevin says indulgently, and she grins. "I know." He laughs.
At tap class Kaitlyn's mom, the former homecoming queen, is trying to jumpstart a casual boilerplate conversation about how she wants another baby, don't you miss babies, because that's what moms talk about. But the thing that makes Jackie the way she is, the original ingredient that sets her and Zoey apart, is that she has no interest in doing what people do just because they do it: she flatly tells the woman she doesn't miss babies at all. The wheels of social interaction grind a little bit, unlubricated, but Jackie was always weird, and then class starts.
Grace is into it, still timid as usual, but paying her usual furrowed-brow attention, and not moving fast enough to the side that Kaitlyn doesn't bump into her a few times. Neither of the girls are worried about it, none of the other moms would notice, but to Jackie: that's other people in your space. That's an invasion. She asks Kaitlyn to spread out and stop crowding her a few times, but there's nothing really to be done: Grace moves slow, and Kaitlyn doesn't care. Her mother is no help, because her mother knows something Jackie's about to learn for the first time: "The steps travel, that's how it goes. If she's not moving..."
The first ring Fiona picks out, from the not-too-unctuous jewelry store guy, is a bit much. After all, he says, Jackie's not that fancy. "Yes she is!" Fiona yells, because fancy is awesome, and Kevin agrees with her, while silently shaking his head at the man, dramatically, to demonstrate just how radically unfancy his wife actually is. The hair alone! Fiona then decides they should get many rings, and Kevin talks her down to one, that they both love. Fiona asks if it's for Jackie's broken finger, which is a larger question than either of them understand, and she holds it up, in the light. It is just fancy enough.