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Man, this middle third has been fucking fantastic, hasn't it? The last three or four have just been the best this show has done. I'm so proud. A girl who works for Allure winds up in the ER with a bullet in the head, and Jackie promises her she'll be around after the surgery. If you know Jackie, you know that didn't happen; what you might not expect is how roundly and effectively she calls Jackie on it. I don't know what it is about the character, but she's phenomenal and I hope we see her again.
The other case, a gay couple with a DNR situation, is just as powerful -- funny, touching, intriguing -- with the added firepower of Harvey Fierstein, who's so known for being such a great actor and performer that you forget what a good actor he actually is. His exasperation at being treated -- by everybody from Coop to Thor -- as a walking sandwich board for GAYNESS is especially sour and well-tuned. I mean, not that playing a heartbroken lonely old gay near-widower is the freshest territory for him, and not that his tics aren't just as visible now as they've always been, but he still managed to wring tears out of it.
Which is sort of a thing with this whole episode, which: This is not the show you go to for crying. It's too bright and acidic for that, which has always been its greatest strength given the subject matter. But man, this episode just tugged every heartstring. Like, Jackie's talking to Eleanor about the breakup with Sarah, and tries to explain how you can love two people at once, and Eleanor's response -- "I'd rather be dead than be Kevin or Eddie" -- is as true and breathtakingly awful as it is funny. And when Jackie sweetly replies that she liked Sarah but won't miss her -- "I like being your girl" -- it's like you're called upon shed the tears Eleanor can't. Gorgeous stuff.
In actual story terms, Jackie and Eleanor crash Fiona's Show & Tell -- removing the fake cast in front of the teacher and proving Fi's not being abused -- while Kevin takes Grace to her first psych appointment. Grace isn't talking to Jackie, still, and for the record Eleanor acts even more insane around multiple kids than she does in front of just a few.
Coop meets up with an old school chum, the lovely Georgia (through whom we learn that the compulsive boob-grabbing started long ago, which I always wondered about) and -- riding high on the Face Of All Saints thing, and having mercifully given up tweeting for good -- decides to set her up with Eddie. Good idea, right? Except for how he brings his date to Kevin's bar, where Eleanor has requested a night of drinking with her favorite couple in Queens.
Once Eddie starts daring everybody to connect the dots, referencing All Saints staff in front of Kevin and the like, Eleanor grabs Jackie and jerks her out of there faster than the hook on The Gong Show -- but not before they can have that same threatening conversation again they have every week. Dying to find out what happens in the last act? Me too!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!So between the fake cast, the Real Blood, and her stitched-up lip, all of which are completely making her day, Fiona is no match for her well-meaning teacher, who assumes -- especially once she explains excitedly about how all of these procedures were done at home -- that something truly dreadful is going on at home. Of course, there is something dreadful going on at home, but not this particular thing he thinks. Thank God they sent Gracie to the special school, or else he could just take one look at her hooded living-bummer eyes and assume they were being kept in cardboard boxes labeled Sylvia Likens & A Boy Called It.
Teach calls Kevin with a quickness, and he gets very itchy and sounds, if rational, a bit on the defensive. Which is exactly what you would be, if somebody called about your daughter's fake broken arm and asked for a sensible explanation. She wanted the cast for Show & Tell, her mother is in fact a nurse, and how about we all sit down for a confab before anybody starts throwing government-agency words around. Firstly, that's good, because my reaction would have been to laugh weirdly and then start talking in a crazy British accent, because horrible possibilities are way worse than horrible certainties and I'm only good under certain kinds of stress. But honestly, you would think that being Fiona's teacher you would've at least learned the basics of Fiona, which is: Whatever the weirdest most morbid reasoning might be, bingo that's your answer.
Lots going on in this episode. For an act-break it's fairly nice, the busy-bee calm before whatever storm is coming, but frankly it's the power of the guest stars and not their roles that makes the difference here. Because all I'm getting from where I'm sitting is a rather hackneyed Patients Are People Too sort of parallel structure, in which both major cases exist to make a point that doesn't really need to be made. And in pursuit of that, you have one story that works -- by relating to the actual people of the show, namely Jackie -- and one story that works only because Harvey Fierstein is a national treasure, but gets there by pulling out every single hoary cliché in the book to do so, from Terms Of Endearment screeching to the kind of strident morality you'd expect from a Hallmark Hall Of Fame Blue Ribbon Special Presentation. Nobody even really does anything bad or inexplicable to him, but there's not a moment he's not squealing like Ronald Reagan himself just threw Ed Koch at his head.
Gloria's sort of acting like Zoey today, all twitchy neck and voluptuously conspiratorial tone, as she explains that she's doing performance assessments due to some budgetary reason she never really explains. Zoey's doing good (yay!), Thor's doing better (yay!), Sam needs work, and Jackie... Well, of course Jackie tells her straight up -- and without even looking at her -- not even to think about saying anything about her performance. Cutely, Gloria's like, "Wouldn't dream of it." But as always, acknowledging the all-powerful nature of Nurse Jackie means compensatory punishment, and she assigns Sam to shadow her all day. Like, even more than he usually does.
"Always watching, always learning," Sam intones, and Gloria orders them to work out their shit. Jackie, with Sam a foot behind her, reminds Gloria how much she hates him. Gloria says to take it to HR, and Sam sort of meaninglessly goes, "I'd be happy to go to HR!" Like he's warning Jackie. But of course he can't be doing that, because that would mean his murder. "Shouldn't you be peeing in a cup somewhere?" Jackie asks him, and he answers her question with the same question. And the only reason she doesn't punch him is the call she's getting from Kevin.
"Spagnolo needs to mind his own goddamn business," Jackie explains when she gets the story about Fiona's sudden Child Welfare issues. They talk about how back when they were kids, there were enough black eyes and chipped teeth to go around, and nobody asked about it, because they were too busy fighting off pterodactyls and Visigoths and inventing penicillin. They're all about the united front with Mr. S, but then they remember that Grace has finally gotten her psych referral to Dr. Bowen, so they have to split up again; he wants to ask her something but she is done talking and hangs up.
Eleanor ignores a call from Sarah in her office, and then Jackie opens the door, meeting her curt greeting with an awesome list of demands: "I need a town car and a saw." Whatever it is, Eleanor is fucking in. She doesn't even know it's about Fiona yet! Jackie tells her to leave her doctorly accoutrements on -- stethoscope, lab coat, badge -- and Eleanor gets more and more intrigued.
Over to Fiona's Show & Tell, where Eleanor removes the cast -- on "the arm that was not actually broken," Jackie reminds Spagnolo pointedly -- and they do a little song-and-dance ("Ça va?"" Ça va bien!") just to entrance the teacher, who gets to hold the plaster saw. And how does the arm feel? Itchy and tingly. And how would it feel if it had really been broken? (Not that this matters, since obviously the cast arrived a couple weeks ago at most.) Fi's arm would be quite bruised, and she wouldn't be able to wiggle her fingers, "like this." Fiona wiggles, and Eleanor's like, "Satisfied?" They are the perfect pair of awesome. "Lives to save. Shall we?" And they blow kisses to the kids, and vamoose. Nothing's really broken.
Outside All Saints, Eleanor pulls her phone from an enormous Grimace-colored purse, what you call aubergine though my spellcheck would have you believe aborigine, and ignores another Sarah call. Jackie asks if they're okay, and this is the answer: "Not really? And not now. It's not that I'm unwilling to discuss it, but just not here." Jackie's entire philosophy in one handy denial speech. Eleanor asks, breezily enough that you know it's a biggie, if she can come to Queens and drink scotch with Jackie and Kevin. "And a plate of those little... Monkey bits?" She means buffalo wings, which Jackie awesomely already knows. "Yeah. Fucking appalling!" Of course she can. And now that Kevin has learned to hate Eleanor twice as much with Sarah it stands to reason that he will hate Eleanor with no Sarah only half as much as usual.
They walk past Coop, who's sitting outside having coffee with his adorable-if-pointy friend Georgia, whom you might recognize from the short-lived American version of Life On Mars, where she was named Rose Tyler for a crazy reason we don't need to go into but is totally brain-bending. What Georgia is doing currently is laughing at Coop, because of last week when he grabbed Libby Sussman's breast and she died. (Yep, still funny.) Georgia confirms for us that this has long been a coping strategy/legitimate disorder for Coop, citing a time in high school when they were surprised by "what's-her-face's mom ... in her ratty old robe with a cup of coffee," and Georgia had to keep restraining him from going for the boob. I like this girl already.
Coop tries to hook Georgia up with an unnamed gent, described as follows: "A little bit older, smart, likes all that indie crap you like... Public radio... Might go to plays, I'm not sure. Really cool." He gets paged for a GSW and heads inside, but only after she learns that this person is Coop's "total opposite," at which point she accepts the setup. Which is girl talk for "I really like you," but A) Coop is oblivious to everything and B) Coop is fucked up enough that he would never date a normal person like Georgia, because she's neither a celebrity nor a woman ten years or more his senior: She doesn't intimidate him, so there's no attraction. He would never grab her breast accidentally, so it wouldn't occur to him to grab it on purpose, which is the story of Coop and Women.
The EMTs wheel in a gorgeous 24-year-old woman who was found down in Union Square, so Thor naturally assumes she's "another skinny chick from Vogue skipping breakfast and passing out on the subway." Jackie says to get her hydrated and out of the way for the gunshot, and Zoey calls dibs on the gunshot so Sam and Thor will have to deal with the girl, and finally the young woman speaks up. "Excuse me, I'm your gunshot. Assholes," she adds, in an admirably non-bitchy appalled tone. They look around at each other. "And by the way, I'm at Allure, not Vogue, so fucking bite me." Message received.
But also: Message received. You just gave us the entire moral at the end of the story, and you did it in the least pat way possible. And the actor playing this girl Lily is simply amazing, I love her. Justine Cotsonas, apparently from As The World Turns, is simply phenomenal. Steals the episode, in my opinion. But so what will happen the rest of the episode? Basically that, over and over again, but less awesomely and much more loudly.
Bit later and she's explaining how she was randomly shot in the head while boarding the Six. Sam asks questions that are not strictly pertinent, and Jackie jumps up his ass for no reason, and Sam once again tells her to stop picking on him. "Just her way of showing how much she likes you," Coop says, "Been there and done that." God. Jackie asks him WTF and once again Lily goes, "Bullet. In my head." They discuss her CT scan to find the bullet and she suddenly recognizes Coop, hitting on him and asking him out for a drink after surgery. He's down.
"Do not make promises you cannot keep," Jackie warns him, but the second everybody's cleared out Lily completely changes her tune. She grabs Jackie's arm and fights back her tears. "Lily, look at me. Do I look scared? If I'm not scared, you shouldn't be scared. There's a lot going on, I will be there when you wake up." She's beyond grateful, and only lets go of Jackie's hand reluctantly. It's amazing to see her flip from cute breezy girl hitting on the famous Face of All Saints to a girl who wants her mom, but that's not the only reason Jackie loves her.
Jackie yells at Sam for drumming on things at the nurses' station, and he stalks away. Zoey suggests Sam's not a great candidate for tough love, because Zoey is under the mistaken impression that Jackie is being professional when constantly crawling up his ass. Not that he is her living peeve, which nobody could assume. Zoey tries to roll her chair back across the station, but eventually Jackie has to give her a big shove, without looking away from her computer screen.
Harvey drags a chair in from Admitting, trailed by somebody from over there calling for him, but he explains to Jackie that his husband's in respiratory failure and he needs to have a bit of a sitdown since they wouldn't let him ride in the ambulance. She chills out on him immediately and tries to figure out what's going on with the patient, name of Markus Franke. He's in a trauma room with Eleanor, so she takes Harvey in there, carrying the chair all the way.
Lunching in the park, Eddie is none too impressed with this blind date thing. Coop swears he's doing it more for Georgia's sake, and that Eddie's right up her alley. "Newsflash: I'm up a lot of girls' alleys." They both wrinkle their noses at this turn of phrase, and Eddie promises he's all good on the dating front. "But the question is, could you be better?" Good old Coop, I think this is his version of being a friend. Eddie admits that though he's seeing somebody, "Sometimes it doesn't feel like that much of a two-way street."
Coop doesn't really get that, because he has no idea there are any streets that go both ways, and then he gets a thumb up from some random guy who recognizes him from the billboards. Eddie is of course nonplussed, because Coop's entire life seems to be unconditional praise and unfair advantages. Fitch takes out his phone and just when you think he's about to motherfucking tweet about this latest thing, he surprises you again, producing a picture of Georgia from this morning. Eddie reconsiders the date, and Coop goes for a high-five that turns into a fist-bump that turns into an awkward one-man spaz-out, which is the story of Coop and Men.
Gloria informs Harvey that his chair belongs in Admitting, and Jackie tells her lightly to back off. "Did I ask him to go anywhere? Sir, did I ask you to go anywhere?" He acknowledges a bit fearfully that she didn't, and Gloria leaves again. Zoey comes immediately barreling around the corner with a cart, and giggles out an "Excuse me!" that she has to explain to the incredibly prickly and protective Jackie was an "almost bumped into you" excuse me and not a "please move" excuse me. Harvey, for no real reason -- especially since we just had this scene with the patient -- clears his throat, all, "Excuse me, I'm right here," and Zoey assures him that here is a perfect place for him to be. She even offers to bring him a Diet Coke or a meal tray or maybe some Ensure. Can you imagine what her cats' lives are like?
Coop assumes he's the new handyman, but Jackie -- her best friend is nearly a lesbian, you see -- explains prickily that Harvey is a paper hanger whose husband's in respiratory failure. Intrigued and delighted, Coop welcomes him grandly to All Saints, and Harvey says he is nearly but not quite pleased to meet him, given the circumstances. "It might comfort you to know that I have two moms," Coop says in a flesh-crawling sotto voce way, and Harvey feigns ignorance as to why, because wouldn't you? The need in Coop's eyes goes all the way back, man.
Now, even though this show is built on random serial occurrences in a given hallway or hallway intersection -- even given the fact that we're at the nurse's station -- we are pushing it. Because Thor immediately appears to explain that Coop is quote "a mess," which: Girl, and then thank Harvey for "paving the way." And so now Harvey has a whole other thing to be self-righteous about, and he goes for it. "Can I not be gay right now? Can I just be a guy whose spouse is dying? Can I have that, please?" And I mean, I feel you on this.
But that feeling that it's 1995 and we're all wearing pink triangles and demanding to be taken seriously -- but not so seriously that it's stigmatizing -- and wanting to be special -- but not so special that it's weird -- and so angry at undefinable things that we're throwing condoms around the Vatican and chanting SILENCE = DEATH and all of these things, that feeling is not going anywhere. And maybe it's a generation gap thing, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel about all this. Isn't it a good thing that Harvey's constant protest about every single thing that happens feels a little archaic, not to say annoying? Isn't it a good thing that our high-handed rhetoric in 2010 is mainly about something as retarded as the right to get married? Can I not be gay right now is a powerful and meaningful statement, but it goes for all of us, and all of us watching this show gay or not, and I gotta say Harvey's being gay in a really lesbian way right now.
When you are born special -- when your very existence radicalizes and challenges the grotesque male/female dynamic on which our entire society is and has always been based -- you have two choices: You can roam through your life constantly educating people to ignore that fact, telling them what they're allowed to think and say, or you can accept and take possession of the fact that you are extraordinary.
Eleanor comes out to speak to Harvey, inviting him to her office -- "blocking the hallway," she explains, "Not that it matters" -- but he doesn't want to go anywhere, given that they've had 26 years of close contact so far. She takes him into the trauma room, explaining the patient's respiratory failure, and Harvey finds another nit to pick. (And again, I do totally buy it based on the strength of the performance, but it's still really hard to sit still for all this business.) "My stomach got a little... When you called him patient. How about he's Markus, until he's not?" Take it up with the AMA, sweetheart, puppydog eyes or otherwise. (Harvey looks exactly the same as he did twenty years ago, it's amazing.)
Anyway, Eleanor explains that Markus's heart wants to fail, but his defibrillator won't let it. She wants him to talk to a cardio, a Dr. Hayes, who "may or may not" bring up the idea of deactivating it. Harvey assumes Hayes is a man, which just makes the whole ACT UP thing in this episode even more confusing when both Eleanor and Jackie immediately correct him, because how do you every get anything done when you're fighting about assumptions instead of changing them? Markus isn't in pain, they confirm, and he mourns: "He has more brains asleep than Einstein had awake. For the record."
Zoey tells Jackie that Lily's out of surgery, but she doesn't really hear her. Thor yells that Sam left an empty box of gloves on the counter, and Sam goes, "When you are wrong, promptly admit it." Zoey commends him on quoting AA, and therefore being "deeply sober," and Jackie still hasn't registered that Lily's out of surgery: Now she's getting texts from Eddie about how he has a date tonight. There's the thing she's thinking about, and the thing she's not, and she'd prefer to think about the thing right in front of her. "Do what you want," she replies, and asks Harvey how he's doing, and he is of course not doing so great.
Adorable framed children's paintings line the walls of Dr. Bowen's waiting room; Kev assumes they're art by her patients. "I think it would be good to be a patient," Grace says, still pulling at her braids. Something Fiona figured out weeks ago.
Harvey quotes Rodgers & Hart at Jackie while she changes Markus's catheter: "Sing to him, each spring to him/ And worship the trousers that cling to him..." She admits she didn't recognize it. Eleanor reports that Hayes is on her way, and notes how "elegant" Markus is. From what you can see, he's a silver fox. "You think it's crazy that a guy like him would spend his life with a guy like me, huh?" Oh my God, the unending self-esteem issues of Harvey the paperhanger. Eleanor says it's not crazy, and Jackie who loves him admits she thinks it's a little crazy. He shoots her the kind of heart-melting grin that might cause Matthew Broderick to stalk you, and Hayes arrives.
"I will leave you two alone," Jackie says, and of course he immediately pipes up that there are three of them, and Jackie apologizes. And again, it's like, you're not wrong? But there have actually been medical shows before, so it's like reinventing the wheel, and he does it so unceasingly that it's like the squeakingest wheel of all time.
Outside, Kev reports that Grace seems to have enjoyed her time with Dr. Bowen, but is refusing to speak to Jackie. It gets real tough, real fast. Jackie doesn't say anything; he asks if she wants him to try again, and she says not to bother. Now ordinarily in this circumstance, she'd take Eddie to a movie to get back at Grace, but Eddie's got a date. So what do you do? Nothing. Coop sits down with Jackie and awesomely goes, "Do you ever suddenly hate the way your hair stuff smells?" For some reason I love that. Jackie, not so much. She takes off without a word.
You know what Jackie needs? To be friends with Fitch Cooper. Not because he's so great or because he has anything to teach her exactly, but because his complete obliviousness ends up in the same place as Eleanor's total loyalty. You can bitchslap him five times and he'll still sit down to you like you're even friends, and start talking about hair products. She pretends that's the kind of friend Eleanor is, it's a game they play, but it's totally not true. With Coop it really would be true, and all you have to do is stroke his ego twice daily, which she and Eleanor do for each other all the time anyway. And it's fine, because there's no power differential. Eleanor's a doctor, like Coop, and a brat like Coop, but because she's a woman it's not gross to treat her like a housepet, which is all either of them really want.
But the big secret of men is that they are incredibly easy to work, because they only have a few buttons; Jackie's power and the wonderfulness of her lies in her absolute inability to push those buttons, and it's why Gloria loves her so much -- not to mention Eddie and Kevin -- but honestly it makes things so much simpler. Maybe that's the problem: Maybe Jackie hates Coop the same amount that she hates Sam because they are both questions she cannot possibly answer without losing everything that makes her Jackie.
Jackie knows what women are, so she knows Eleanor's secrets and she knows Eleanor will never surprise her, either by grabbing her boob or making any of the other white male power plays Coop makes daily without thinking twice about it. She can fight with Gloria all day long and never get scared or feel vulnerable, because they're both in the same position vis-à-vis the actual hierarchy. Even Thor and Mo-Mo would fall under this one. But regular old men, they will surprise you and do incredibly cruel things to you without even knowing they're doing it, which is why if you're going to trust them with even a piece of yourself they have to be cordoned off: Kevin here, Eddie there. And if you're Sam or Coop, the power differential is so torqued and fucked up that there's never going to be a way around it. So it's war, all the time.
Eleanor joins Jackie before a statue of St. Sebastian, lips gone tight and sad, and identifies with him: The million arrows stuck through him, through and through. They finally discuss Sarah, in code, and Jackie admits that, "for whatever it's worth, it is possible to love more than one person at a time." She loves Kevin, she loves Eddie... "I might love Eddie," she corrects herself, having said a bit much, and to her credit Eleanor doesn't snort a bit when she says, "I'd rather be dead than be Kevin or Eddie." Line of the night? It's a great episode, dialogue-wise among other things, but still.
They stare at the saint, and Jackie -- they can't look at each other for these conversations -- sighs. "Don't get me wrong, I liked Sarah, but I'm glad she's gone. What can I say? I like being your girl." She checks Eleanor's face, after a nervous moment; Eleanor doesn't smile to herself until Jackie's looked away again. Friendship is tricky; honesty is trickier. I do believe that's the kindest thing Jackie's ever allowed herself to say out loud. I like her like this, as Kevin would say.
Hayes pulls Jackie over on her way out the door and explains that Markus was a lawyer, and signed a DNR. Harvey signed on for the deactivation, but now has cold feet. This must be dealt with, because she's got an eighth grade cello recital in 45 minutes. "Same thing happened during the Christmas concert," she growls, and Jackie nods. Hayes bears a strong resemblance to Elena Kagan.
Jackie stops in to say goodnight, in her usual oblique way of solving these things, and Harvey asks her to run through the deactivation thing, since it's 1992 and thus that age-old drag queen/lesbian conflict must rear its head and he hates Hayes. So they wave a thing over the heart, and whatever's in there -- pacemaker or defibrillator, or as Harvey suggests, "record players ... sewing machines" -- will turn off. Otherwise, the heart will eventually stop beating only to be shocked back to life again, over and over, forever. "It's a quality-of-life thing," Jackie nods, and Harvey admits that his life's gonna suck either way. He has a quiet humor, I think is what it is, more than anything, that makes it okay. He knows what he's saying and how it sounds, which makes it all worthwhile.
"He will go back to the heart he was born with," Jackie explains, which Harvey knows was a shitty heart. Which Jackie says she understands, in a way that suggests she's realizing, or Eddie is realizing, that they're only alive via defibrillator. She was born with a shitty heart, maybe, and no matter how hard Eddie tries, it's just a fake cast on something irrevocably broken. And if she can convince herself of that, then it's just a quick jump down the rabbit hole.
If her failure to fulfill her promise to Lily is about Gracie, which it usually is when she's in the caretaker position, then that makes Eddie the Harvey, whose quality of life is going to suck either way. This date with Georgia is one step closer to deactivating the false sense of life and love that's keeping them going. If he stops loving her, he calls her bluff, and she is allowed to stop loving him... But then it all comes down. No wonder she's so stressed out. No wonder she'd rather focus on Harvey, who is just walking with a ghost and knows it, over the living breathing person to whom she promised her loyalty, which is Lily.
"Okay, we're getting there," Harvey says, needing to talk his way through the whole thing. She gets it. It won't hurt, she assures him, when they finally turn it off. But that's not true either. Haley sticks her head in to see if Jackie's worked her magic yet, and guess what? Harvey goes off on her. "What's the matter, you got someplace else you gotta be? Am I keeping you? Is he fucking with your schedule? Lucky for you, this is going down on my timeline. My timeline. I say when! Not you, not her, not them assholes in the other room still want their fucking chair back. I say when. Me. John Decker." (Now give Barbara Hershey the shot! And Harvey the same Tony he gets every year!)
Bump over to the station, where Gloria stands all alone like the Cheese, offering four hours of overtime and wondering who will take it and who has seniority. Zoey appears out of nowhere, and she offers her the shift. "Oh my God, I'm so flattered!" she heaves for some reason, and Gloria points out that all she actually did was appear. "I'm still flattered," Zoey mumbles, and it's not only a nice break between the unbelievable tension of just a second ago and the unmitigated shame about to happen, but also seems to exist mostly to satisfy some kind of union rule that Merrit Wever gets to be incredibly adorable at least five times every episode.
Jackie finally visits Lily hours after her surgery, making gawky ashamed small talk about the hospital food before Coop zooms into a reparative "Hey, what'd I tell ya? Surgery was a breeze! Was I right or was I right?" Lily was despondent, trying to be gracious, but offers Coop a zillion-watt grin, showing him the bullet. "Jackie, thought you left," he says offhandedly, which just makes it worse. "Are you afraid to touch it?" Lily asks him, and he grins. They make their plans and he leaves again. So does her smile.
Jackie asks to see the bullet, with a caring smile, and she nods. "That was in my brain. Which is fine, by the way." She breathes, with Jackie watching. "You said you were going to be there when I woke up," she says quietly. "It was the only reason I didn't completely lose my shit." Jackie doesn't drop the smile, as she apologizes, and offers to get rid of the bullet. "I want you to hang onto it." Jackie's not sure why. "Keep your fucking promises," she says, again with that near-exasperated sigh. Just up to the edge of snarky, without going over.
When your existence radicalizes and challenges the male/female dynamic on which our entire society is and has always been based -- whether you're gay or lesbian, or a man like Coop who understands on some level that things are fishy, or simply a woman who speaks above a whisper; like Lily, like Jackie, like Gloria Akalitus -- you have two choices. Ultimately you're the only one making the choice, and everybody else is doing whatever they're doing. But it's not a huge jump from there to realizing that we are in this together. Keep your fucking promises.
"Monkey bits for the ladies!" Kevin says, smiling at Eleanor for once, at the bar. "Ah, this may very well turn out to be my favorite place on the planet!" Eleanor giggles, and Kevin feels so expansive that he actually asks about Sarah. Jackie grabs her head like there's a bullet in her frontal lobe, while Eleanor looks around awkwardly. "What? I like her. She's great!" He realizes he's fucked up, and apologizes. She tells him it's fine, and they get into a bit of a dick-swinging contest about who's paying for the drinks. "I drink a lot," she says, but he's in her debt from a second ago, so he pushes harder: "I have a lot."
Jackie tells them they both win, and Kev nods and they do a shot. "Here's to us," he says, and thanks her for her performance at Show & Tell: "You were a big hit with the second grade. Probably helped us dodge a bullet from Protective Services." Jackie tells him not to kid, but she's grateful for the kindness behind it. Maybe what Kevin needs is to be friends with an Eleanor O'Hara, who doesn't give a shit about money or where you came from.
Eddie walks in with Georgia, and even the camera can't believe it. Things get nearly fisheye for a second, and Eleanor gasps: "Oh my God, he's completely mad!" Now you're getting it. Eddie proudly introduces Georgia to his friend Kevin and his wife Jackie, and then introduces himself to Eleanor, whom he has known for years. "You look familiar!" Eleanor assures him he doesn't know her, and Jackie rushes to fill in the STFU blanks here, and Kevin intuits just enough that something's off that he rushes to Eddie's defense. "He's just saying you look familiar!"
Georgia will not be riding Eddie's motorcycle if he drinks, so he's not allowed to join in the scotch-drinking; he wants a "coke and a smoke," but she doesn't like making out with smokers either. "No one's got a gun to your head," Jackie smarts off without even hearing herself, and Eleanor rushes into the breach, asking how they met. Of course, they were introduced by Eddie's friend Coop, a name Kevin in turn recognizes, so Eleanor immediately jumps up and starts waving her arms around about something very vague and very important that they have to do. "Kev, it's been delightful as always..." Jackie runs to accompany her while Eddie fools around with the cigarette machine, and Kevin gives Jackie quarters for their friend with a goodbye kiss. "Take your cigs, take your girl, get the fuck out of my bar." He thanks her with a huge smile, and heads back to the bar.
Harvey sits on his chair from Admitting, right outside the curtain, staring at the camera, refusing to move. Refusing to let it end, just yet. But we're getting there.
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