Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Find The Lady
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 08.17.2009
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 next 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.
Gracie's getting crowded by Kaitlyn, more violently now, enough so that Jackie intervenes, even against Grace's protests. Kaitlyn's mommy asks Jackie, in a warning tone, not to scold her kid. Her kid responds by asking Grace if she even practiced, sending Jackie into the early stages of berserker rage, and after a bit of this she asks Kaitlyn straight up if she's always been this snotty. She gets into it with both of them, embarrassing Grace, and finally tells the mom to fuck off. Before the teacher can get involved -- or Kaitlyn and her mom can team up about how Jackie "said The F" and "in a church!" -- Jackie's yanking Gracie out the door, shouting in a way that seems eminently reasonable to her but in fact is just tacky and weird and depressing.
While the guy who's come to sell the staff on their eponymous new pill robot machine, Zoey asks Jackie quietly how she hurt her finger. "I smashed it with a hammer," she says, not bothering to mention that this proceeded directly from Zoey's religious meanderings -- God doesn't punish us, so somebody's got to -- or that she did it to keep her worlds separate. She knows Zoey won't believe her, and in her Zoey way will say, "It's okay, you don't have to tell me."
Eddie complains that they're not getting a Pyxis, and Gloria explains that this machine cost half as much. The nurses all quietly grouse and bitch, and the guy doesn't get it until Eddie explains that it's costing his job. Zoey meekly offers to the room at large that she thinks it's "totally inappropriate" to have this meeting in front of Eddie, and Mohammad agrees. He leans in close and asks Gloria how she can even sleep at night, and before she takes her leave she looks him in the eye: "I hired Eddie Walter ten years ago. This is the saddest day I've had. You want to try doing my job, you go ahead." I imagine there was probably a time when she expected people to hear that part, or to convince them of it, but she doesn't even try anymore.
Then it's later and Jackie's hanging out with Eddie in the chapel hall; "Fuck 'em," he says, and they laugh. She shows him her finger, the one Grace taped, as a small concession: "my kid" she says, just like that "my kid taped it." He kisses her finger and she tenses up, but he reminds her he doesn't work there anymore, after today. He says he'll miss her, and slips a bunch of high-octane oxycontin in her pocket. She gets teary, and he tells her he loves her. She stares at him for awhile and then says it back, out loud. She's sad to see him go.
Coop's stitching up a Hassid and grilling Zoey about Jackie's lovelife. Zoey's information is as follows: She and Jackie are very close, Jackie gave her a penlight, Jackie likes gum, Jackie likes coffee. Zoey likes hugs, dancing, rainbows and cake. Eddie shows up with Coop's pager, which he of course left on Eddie's desk, and without thinking Coop offers him his hip pocket. Eddie is weirded out as usual by the complete lack of no homo, and peaces; Zoey takes it and drops it in his pocket herself. "I think she's seeing someone," Zoey says, managing to only slightly wink-wink nudge-nudge eyebrow spasm at the place Eddie was just standing, and then they are squirrely some more, and then Melissa the Girlfriend shows up again wearing fur and causing a terrifying rictus of smile to burst out, like the coldest sun, over Coop's face.
Jackie's fully smoking now, outside with Eleanor as she instructs Jackie to omit the "getting thrown out" part the next time she tells the tap class story, and to instead say that Kaitlyn's mom pulled a gun or something. I would believe it. Jackie talks about how fucking embarrassed Grace was, and -- thinking she's changed the subject -- Eleanor asks if she even wants to know how the finger got broken. "Nope," says Jackie. She's rented out all her secrets; somebody knows everything, even if nobody knows every single thing, but this one is too weird, and sad, and fucked-up and gross for anybody to know.
Half a block away, Coop is breaking up with Melissa; to calm her down he boneheadedly explains that she's totally his type and therefore this is totally his problem: "I've dated a hundred of you!" Her response is hilariously on point ("Oh my God that's worse"), but you can see how Coop would think that's a compliment. "Yeah, on Mars!" Melissa yells, and I keep hoping she will bash him with her giant purse.
"I'm trying to say you're perfect," he says, which to be fair is what he was trying to say, and she asks what on earth the problem is, then. The problem is that he kissed (was kissed by) someone else (Jackie) and felt something he never felt (a horny kind of mommy-hating reward/punish terror) that has changed his life irrevocably (for at least ten minutes). She's like, "So date other people!" He doesn't want to: only this person. "It's a focus thing," he says, which, I don't even know what that means but I feel it's offensive. Melissa explains that she's willing to stick around for him to figure it out, but that if it's over it's over. Once he goes into the (very true) "I'm a fucking mess" part, she realizes he really is this stupid, and shoves him. Purse! Hit him with the purse! Throw your fur coat over his head and toss him in traffic! It would be hilarious!