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You know how people always say Zoey is the best part of the show? Those people are philistines. However -- and with no disrespect to everybody else -- those people are increasingly right. Of all the characters who have evened out this season (particularly Gloria and Eleanor, who once were so fabulously elemental that some viewers accused them of being hallucinations), Zoey's writing has gotten a lot tighter this season -- accessing the full range of Merritt Wever's talents without going for that creepy cringing thing she did last year -- and making what was already a semi-ensemble cast into a career-making group effort. In fact, the show hangs together overall a lot better than it did last year; certainly moreso than the last few seasons of, say Weeds, where the writers sometimes don't even seem acquainted with one other.
Anyway, this season is really impressing me. It's much better than last season, which was already very enjoyable. So Zoey -- whose deal with God last week apparently includes flirting with Lenny -- is cowed by Sarah's fame, and goes into her own personal spy movie trying to treat her brown recluse bite without admitting her. Jackie has her own reasons for taking over, after overhearing Sarah talking to one of her other girlfriends. Eleanor's well aware, but Jackie -- cheater to cheater -- threatens Sarah with certain death if she hurts her BFF.
A mean old rich patron of All Saints shows up in the ER after fainting, makes fun of Coop's whole deal with cuteness and squirreliness, and dies of a stroke after Coop grabs boobs for the first time this season. Gloria decides that her dying wish was to take a billion dollars out of the Children's Wing budget and put them into Emergency.
Eleanor's girlfriend Sarah hits it off with Grace in a big way, so we get to see what her smile looks like for once. It looks like heartbreaking. Kevin is of course none too impressed, and at the end of the day starts such a row that Jackie -- so exhausted from the usual Eddie shit she might've dumped him again -- must say all kinds of horrible things before running off to a diner for lonely pie. But which one of them is responsible for crummy old Grace? It is a very necessary, very worrisome, very authentic fight.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Kevin's none too happy to have Eleanor and her girlfriend running around the place, shooting silly string and shouting at Fiona for her birthday. She is in weird-little-girl heaven. Finally Jackie takes it all away and sends Fi upstairs to Gracie, yelling at Eleanor to behave. Kevin's in quiet mean mode, tossing all the garbage, and Eleanor stoops so far as to first offer help cleaning and then praise his macaroni and cheese, and when that doesn't do the trick, staring into his mean old eyes begging for like one shred: "The best lunch I've had in weeks?" She doesn't get sad, but she does bounce, and when she's gone Jackie gives him the big eye. "You couldn't be just a little bit nicer?" He says he was; maybe he's not lying. Maybe this is the best he can do, after all.
Grace spins the globe, asking Sarah which countries she's been to: All of them, four times. Still hopped up on birthday freakout, Fiona comes running deliriously through the room, spinning in circles and giggling to herself. Grace is patently in love with Sarah, who gives her a little grin: "Look, if you want to drop out of high school and just travel the world, you'll end up way smarter than all those other stupid kids."
Eleanor giggles, and Gracie informs her that she's only in fifth grade. Sarah can scarcely believe it. Fiona finally gets Grace on her feet, and within a few seconds has punched herself in the nose with her fake arm cast. Chaos, blood running down her face, and Eleanor right in the middle of things, cooing at her and Grace staring.
Jackie overrules Kevin's protests and takes her into the kitchen to clean it up. Eleanor runs upstairs for her kit, and Jackie takes her into the kitchen while Sarah comforts Grace. "Will she have a scar?" Is there anybody that won't?
But isn't that what the cast was about anyway? Putting on the outside what Grace wears on the inside? Fiona loves secrets, depravity, anything dark; Grace just swallows them. Her belly's getting full. Kevin is a false cast on the broken arm that is Eddie; Eddie is a false cast on the broken arm that is Kevin. All so they can look down and say, at the end of the day, "Nothing's really broken."
Kevin watches anxiously as they stitch her lip up. Afterwards, Eleanor thoughtfully labels the drops on her cast: REAL BLOOD. "Marvelous," she says, and Fiona looks at her, still sort of panicky. "You'll show that to all your friends. Because you're not scared at all, are you, darling?"
Kevin's relieved, until Sarah grabs a camera and throws down some reportage. "...And it's been a bloody afternoon here in Queens. But residents seem optimistic that everything will soon return to utter chaos..." Eleanor giggles; Kevin stews. He doesn't hate them for any other reason than he always hates Eleanor: She's better than him. She's Jackie's. She's part of Jackie's better life, and lives the way he never could; she can give Jackie things without thinking twice that he can never give her. Her existence is a condemnation in a way that mere jealousy doesn't cover, and she knows it, and he hates that she knows it, because it makes him small and mean, but he can't help himself. He's a bartender. They even saved his little girl. Grace watches, fussing with her hair, taking on one more person's pain.
"So weekend we'll take Fiona's tonsils out on the porch?" Eleanor giggles again, getting out of the car at All Saints: "You're welcome." Sarah gets a call while they kiss and discuss dinner -- she calls dessert "pudding," which cracks Sarah up -- and while Eleanor heads inside, Jackie lingers. There's a bell going off somewhere, as she recognizes Sarah for one of her own. A cheater, or a liar, or a person with more than one life. Something shifty in the eyes. "I can't listen to every single voicemail that you leave me," you can barely hear her saying. "Sweetie, what am I supposed to do? Come on."
Zoey fidgets with her tiny gold crucifix, finally absent-mindedly popping it into her mouth. "Are you praying?" Thor asks, concerned, and she flails before not-quite-admitting it. Why? "Um, because your lips are moving and you're wearing a cross?" Zoey says that, firstly, she made a deal with God that "If I wasn't pregnant I would make some serious changes in my life and my work. And my appearance," she says, indicating her ponytail. But also, her lips move when she reads. When Lenny approaches, she praises his goatee, and he stares at her for a second, surprised, before she takes off. Sam and Thor encourage him to finally follow up: That was some heat, considering the source, and besides, she's not pregnant after all, so he's got a shot.
Gloria nervously accompanies an EMT with an old bitch on a gurney who won't get off her phone. It's weird to see her worried. She threatens the EMT and then barks a summons at Eleanor and Jackie: "Both of you. Now. Libby. Sussman." They jump into action, and Thor makes fun of Sam for not knowing who she is: "Hello? The Sussman Foundation? The Sussman Cardiovascular Institute? The Sussman Surgical Theater? Do you read any of the plaques around here?" Sam giggles. "You said Sussman like twelve times!" Thor is beside himself.
She collapsed at the Waldorf, about to bid $25K on dinner at Per Se, and that's all Libby Sussman knows. She laughs at Gloria, who has snapped into Akalitus mode: "Do you remember whether or not the Sussman Foundation has decided to increase its endowment to include the improvements in the ER?" Libby bitches at Jackie for her cold hands before Gloria tries to distract her: "You know, Dr. O'Hara is from Britain!" Eleanor says, with only a little sarcasm in her voice: "Yes, I'm from the whole of Britain." Libby says she remains light-headed, most likely from "All the talking. And touching." Jackie can identify; Jackie can also see herself stabbing Libby Sussman in the face.
Coop runs in, hands on hips like a superhero: "Check it out! I heard there was another celebrity in the ER!" Libby bursts into laughter at him -- "Look at him! He's ridiculous!" -- which earns her just a little love from the ladies. Coop's sure she's got a head injury, but she hasn't; they just let her keep going. "You look like one of my grandson's action figures!" He promises he's a good doctor, and Libby just laughs at him, his hair, his posture, the face of All Saints, and asks for a real doctor. Eleanor reminds her that she's the doctor, which surprises Libby just enough that Coop can leave somewhat happy.
Outside, Zoey asks him to sign off and he's like, "What, am I real enough for you?" Zoey starts to explain that while he's faker than the majority of people on this earth, of all the people who have posters of their faces he's definitely... He shoves her out of his way before she can finish the thought, and she blushes a little. Sarah jumps at her out from behind a corner and Zoey slaps the air in front of her face when she realizes famous Sarah Kohri knows her name.
"Ellie is my... Dr. O'Hara?" Zoey is all over that, and how amazing it is that Eleanor talks about her, to the Famous Sarah Kohri, and it just gets weirder instead of better, until finally Zoey has figured out their relationship, and thuds down a resounding: "Oh. God. It's like I can't see gayness or something, it's so annoying! Not that you're gay." And then with that weird conspiratorial thing she does, where she thinks she's being super meaningful and complicit but really is just making no fucking sense, goes, "Not that you're not." There's the hint of an eyebrow wriggle.
Sarah realizes that you have to strike fast with old Zoey, and pulls back her sleeve to show Zoey a two-week-old brown recluse bite. "I went to the ER in Phoenix, but the nurses were just too... Tan, and friendly." Zoey is friendly but confused: "So you want me to treat you because I'm pale?" No, you silly thing. "I don't want you to admit me because I can't possibly sit around here all day, and Ellie tells me you're the kind of girl who gets in there and gets the job done." Set and match! Zoey gives her another eyebrow and leans against the wall, promising to get her done off the record, in the most bizarre way possible. "Meet me at the end of my shift in the bathroom. I'll get what you need. But we gotta be cool." With like a finger along her nose. Sarah rolls with it.
Can you imagine meeting Fiona Peyton and Zoey Barkow in the same day? You would literally lose all sense of reality.
Gloria crawls all over Libby's wallet while they work on her, and Libby pretty much straight up says that it depends on how much they kiss her ass whether she's willing to take a million bucks from the Children's wing for the ER. Gloria is comfortable with that, and more willing to kiss ass than anyone alive. Gloria offers to make a deli run for her, and Jackie's left alone with Libby. She tries to apologize for Gloria, but Libby's more pissed about the blood she's taking for her tests. "I never take more than I can use," she says, and turns to leave. Libby Sussman actually snaps her fingers at Jackie's back and orders her to bring her purse, so Jackie kindly explains that she will not be snapping at her from now on. And then, without skipping a beat, Libby asks Jackie to open her compact for her. She does, grudgingly, thinking along the lines of, "Your ancient arthritic fingers can snap at me like a fucking dog, but can't seem to force open your Elizabeth Arden all-in-one? I hope you die ugly."
Jackie comes upon Sarah at the snack stand, around the corner from the Virgin, telling whoever's on the phone that she is literally right this second in Tehran, and that she's still not interested in listening to this person's voicemails, baby: "I leave you pretty fucking interesting messages, so of course you listen to mine!" Sarah remains cool on discovering Jackie behind her, and smoothly complains of a work crisis: Could she tell "Ellie" she'll be back after her shift?
Jackie gives her the eye, but then answers her own phone. It's Eddie, calling to bug her, and she says she'll call him back. "Oh, you're calling me back. Are we doing this now?" Jackie, awesomely, goes, "I don't know what we're 'doing,' right now I am working." She hangs up, and Coop walks by snapping rubber bands angrily, maybe angrier than we've ever seen him. Libby Sussman, protect your breasts!
Zoey wanders the supply room, talking angrily to herself about how she can't find the right syringes to give Sarah the antibiotics she needs, and then finally summons Sam in there like a distracted bizarre whirlwind and lectures him, amazingly and at length, about how this room needs to stay, "like, Container Store organized." Or else they are -- channeling Gloria -- all completely screwed. And so where are the 19-gauge needles? In the bin marked "Tongue Depressors," he says, locating them instantly. She spazzes out a whole lot more, still very Gloria, and then leaves him there to fix everything up, because the countdown has started. Out in the hall, she gives Sarah a weird little gesture and heads over to the bathroom with her.
After a second of strutting and big-bopper music, Thor lunges at her, begging to talk about boys without her judging. She looks at Jackie, who has just cut off her path to the bathroom, and then with a long-suffering martyrdom gives him leave to babble. Long on stuttering, short on info, and he drones off into oblivion.
Jackie gives Eleanor the message, and then admits that it sounded somewhat like she was talking to Eleanor herself at the time. "Yeah, well, one in every port," Eleanor says, a bit brittle, and Jackie looks sidelong at her. "I'm just saying," she starts, and Eleanor throws her hands wide: "Well, yeah, I know. I know." She walks off, feeling stupid and embarrassed in front of her friend, after all that giggling and planning and kissing and hugging and Silly String, that her relationship is maybe no more real than any of the others. Jackie just wants to hate Sarah, like she did the other day.
Jackie grabs Zoey, who has just won free of Thor, to wait for cab outside with an old lady in a wheelchair. Zoey sighs, and goes to the bathroom to wash her hands. She hurls herself against the door, once through it, startling Sarah once again. "Okay. I have to get a cab. I'll be right back. If someone comes in, just tell them you're here to go to the bathroom." Her naked yearning to impress Sarah, to impress Eleanor, to be a part of something, but more than anything: To be totally awesome. She deserves like one day where she's actually cool.
Outside, Lenny asks what she's doing later, and Zoey -- mind on her mission -- says darkly, "It's safer if you don't know." He laughs, and she goes on. "Last week I thought I'd be living in my parents' rec room with a newborn, so I'm feeling like I should grab everything by the balls, but it's confusing because I don't think I'm really a ball grabber? I don't know." The old lady and Lenny stare at her, she notices him. "Why are you listening? What do you want?" He asks her to dinner, and she agrees but only on the way to leaving him there with the old lady -- "I've got some shit to take care of" -- and when they're alone, even the old lady can't quite deny the charm of Lenny as he celebrates, kneading her shoulder with delight.
Coop is taking his rage out on a whiner, whose fingernail is like really troubling. He asks Sam -- "attractive man to attractive man" -- what he should do about being undermined because of his looks. Sam demurs several times, but finally admits that he thinks you should smile and tell people to go fuck themselves, which is the wrong answer because it's Coop and he is crazy. Coop nods once, brightly, and heads off after warning the man to bring his own cuticle clippers to his manicure, like Coop does.
Jackie surprises Zoey sneaking back into the bathroom, using the eyes in the back of her head. Zoey throws her arms wide and goes into something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon, and even Jackie has to laugh. "Really, Zoey: What the hell." Zoey lies about a "bladder infection," and Jackie rolls her eyes, and they come in together. Sarah is none too happy to see Jackie, because A) She can't roll her like she could Zoey and B) This means that Jackie literally does know everything that happens, everywhere. Which, cheater to cheater, is a terrible thing to figure out. Zoey gives Jackie the rundown on the spider bite, and Jackie gets rid of her, taking the supplies she'd quote "pinched" earlier.
Jackie checks it out, and goes into pro mode: "Well, I can give you two shots in one cheek and you'll be sitting funny, or I can give you a shot in each cheek and you won't be sitting at all." They get into a stall and Jackie gets the stuff ready. Sarah knows better than to drag it out, and admits that she's been in the US for two whole weeks, with somebody else, and didn't call. Jackie gets it: "The questions would make you feel awful." Sarah doesn't exactly want her agreeing, and declares that Eleanor knows about all this, whether she talks about it or not.
"As if she isn't running around with some boy half her age?" Jackie warns her, very kindly, that Eleanor is her friend, and Sarah nods. It's a nice little moment -- Jackie is home for Eleanor, whatever else they are to each other, and even this little meeting is a bit weird without her -- because it isn't about power, for just a second. "It's not like I don't love her," Sarah says before the second shot. Jackie gets that too. It's not about love, it's about keeping a space to breathe. Something to yourself, so you don't get swallowed.
"I'm tired of people walking in and out of here. Don't you knock?" Jackie informs Libby Sussman that they don't knock, no, and that she'll be discharged soon. She tells her to call her driver, and Jackie reminds that this is also not her job. Before they can get into that little corner of hell with each other, Coop comes running in, practically still crying, and yells at her about how he's a doctor, a good-looking doctor, but that she has no right to discredit him in front of his people. Thereby discrediting him in front of his people, even if it's only Jackie and she already can't stand him. Her look at this point is priceless, like, "At least the old bitch isn't bothering me about her purse right now, but on the other hand if the hospital closes we're all fired, but I'm still going to wait and see what happens, because this is awesome." Her mouth goes o.
"I don't know who you are," Libby says, which is also awesome. She informs him loudly and at length that being on a poster does not make him important, because it's people like Libby Sussman that make doctors like Fitch Cooper "worthwhile at all." She ends on a high note -- "I built them up like that and I can tear you down just as easily, you silly little runt" -- aaaaand there go the boobs.
He stands there with his hands on Libby Sussman's breasts and Jackie's eyes popping out of her skull and the whole time Libby's like, "Let go of my breasts!" and he's like, "I literally cannot!" And Gloria comes back with the sandwiches, onto this little tableau, and from between his boob-grabbing arms she's like, "Not one dime."
Gloria apparently never knew about the boob-grabbing -- and seems almost comically surprised that he would grab Jackie's mean old boobs, which just shows Gloria doesn't understand why he does it in the first place because to him, Jackie's are the prime grabbing boobs of all time -- but more importantly quotes Zoey's little speech at them about how they're "screwed, completely screwed" if Libby pulls her endowment. Jackie promises they can fix it, and in a rare show of compassion offers Coop what may be his last sandwich ever. Left with Jackie, Coop's like, "Maybe I should..." And Jackie just shakes her head, because nothing goes at the end of that sentence.
Gloria screams: Libby Sussman is stroking out, while they were standing out there. Coop gets nervous about starting compressions -- "I don't think I should go anywhere near her chest!" -- but soon they're all working on her, efficiently and quietly. Doesn't help though: She's dead. Everybody stares at everybody else for a while, and then Gloria -- amazingly, I mean I was actually shocked by this show for once -- goes, "The events leading up to her death were unavoidable. And it is our responsibility to carry out her dying wish: To take $1 million from the Children's Wing and give it to the ER. Right? We all heard that, right? Right?" Gee, hope that doesn't bite everybody in the ass.
"I need some time to, um, figure out if you are the love of my life, or... A pathological liar. And I don't think that seeing you is going to help." Eddie explains, in a very useful and apropos metaphor, that she's "moving the target" so often he doesn't know what he's supposed to give her: "First you're single. Then you're a single mother. Then you're married, with two kids. Half the time I'm with you I don't know what the fuck to think."
Eddie's theory is that she doesn't want him to "get too close," which is crudely about half the truth, and what she says is the other half: "I do. I just need to take a breath." He snaps that he's not waiting by the phone, and she asks where he is now. He says home, but he's standing outside All Saints; and later, leaving, she walks right past Eleanor and Sarah imploding. The night's not over yet.
Kevin's partially but not entirely pissy, sitting in his jammies on top of the sheets. She thanks him for waiting up, and he reminisces about when it meant something. "I'd stay up for you, you'd stay up for me. We'd talk. Remember that?" He wants to do that again. She kisses him again and again, promising they can talk. She talks about the birthday party, and the cake, and he lies there angrily. "What, you want to talk? That's fine. All right, let's... We'll talk." He accuses her of checking things off his list -- my God, this is the most lesbian fight I have ever seen on TV -- and that he doesn't want to be something she "gets done," and then he's off.
"You know why we had great cake, Jackie? Because while you were working, I went out and got it!" She thanks him for that, and remembers to tell him how much she appreciates him, but it's no good. "No! What you appreciate is people doing whatever you want, and not getting in your way. You want to stitch up our kid in the kitchen? Go ahead. And I don't give a fuck if your friend is a doctor, when I say I want to take our daughter to the hospital, I mean it! You don't listen to a fucking thing I say! Get in the car. Go to urgent care. Take an extra day off! It's like I'm white noise between you, and wherever you're going..."
Um, Kev? You just lost the fight. The way to demonstrate that you're not being heard is not screaming about how you're not getting heard. The only thing you can do at this point is railroad over everything she tries to say -- check -- with yet more bullet points on the unending list of grievances you've decided this fight is about. So what started as something kind of vague, but valid, becomes suddenly about everything, and the fight is having you and not the other way around, and that's how you lost the fight. And that really sucks, because every word is true and every word is correct. You are saying in words what is killing your daughter, in quiet shadows. And she won't hear you, because all she's hearing is a siren coming up the road, the firetrucks on their way, because you spoke out of turn and showed her that her safe life wasn't safe.
"Wait a second, Kevin. I have taken more time off in the last month than I have in the past two years..." He asks her how that makes up for it, and she gets to the point and she gets there fucking snappy: "What is it I'm making up for, Kevin?" He doesn't even know. He can't say it in words. He just digs in his heels: "You've taken five days off in the last two years, is that enough?" Enough for what? What the fuck?
She goes to the bathroom; he keeps screaming: "It doesn't even matter because most of the time when you're home you're not here. I mean, yeah, you're standing here, but you're a million miles away. I don't know where the fuck you go!" More truth. Too much truth. "You always come home and then you pretend like you didn't miss anything. And then you run around and try and fix shit. You become a shitstorm of Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! That's the last thing Gracie needs."
It's like watching somebody put together a puzzle you've done before, or suffer through the last ten minutes of a movie you've got memorized: Just horrible. Painful and eternal, watching him fumble through all this bullshit and the conflicted anger and sadness that's been building up, like this incredibly dense forest that he's wandering through, and he's getting so close to the answer and he doesn't even know it's the answer because he doesn't know what the question is. It hurts to watch. And on some level, it scares Jackie to see him come so close to the stuff she's not even allowed to think about, so she rises to the occasion.
"Gracie? Who said anything about Gracie? You're not going to fucking put this on me. Fuck you, Kevin!" He swears it's not him, he's the one who's there, which is not just a hint about their sham marriage or her cheating or her tinker-toy creation of this entire universe around herself, but a comment on her as a mother to a broken little girl. Which is also how you lost the fight.
"Of course you're here. Where the hell else you gonna be? At a concert? At a fucking class? Reading a book somewhere? No, this is where you are, this is where you were, this is where you're always gonna be, because you're a fucking bartender!"
And what he'll never understand, and she barely knows, is that this is exactly why she loves him. She's not trying to hurt his feelings -- she's pushing buttons, but only because he pulled out the knives first -- she's trying to explain why he is essential. Kevin is, Kevin was, Kevin will always be. He is home. Without him, there could be no Eddie and without Eddie, she could never be with him. She is his completely; she is not his at all.
Ginny Flinn, Eddie, everybody taking him away from her. Grace and Fiona, if it comes down to it: She loves him for the same reason we love anybody. And using it as a weapon is just as perverted, and just as natural, as any of the other twenty horrible things they've done tonight. To themselves and to each other.
"You have no idea what my life is like," she says, and it's not an attack: It's a prayer. "You have no idea, what it feels like to be me." And you never can, or I will die. All the pieces will collapse into a single nightmare, and I'll lose my breath, forever.
Jackie sneaks down past him on the lounger, with Fiona and her broken arm cradled on his lap. She takes her jacket, and she leaves. He breathes softly, in the quiet. She doesn't go to work. She doesn't go to Eleanor. She doesn't go to the Pill-O-Matix, or to the Chapel. She doesn't go to Eddie. She goes to an all-night diner down the road, for pie and hot chocolate. She goes to breathe.
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