In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Kevin's hot sister is pretty annoying but we'll see how that goes. She'll be staying with the Peytons for a few weeks, so I guess most of this season? She's a trainwreck, and possibly will be dating Eddie. Nothing else of note is really happening with home life this week.
What is going on, though, is: Everything is super weird. If this were the new tone of the show I think that would be a great move, because this episode managed to be both funnier and more acidic than usual, while still maintaining a sort of grace that generally doesn't happen on this show. And lots and lots of weirdness. Like, God steals a piano off the street and hauls it into All Saints so that he can counsel Zoey about her Lenny love life... While playing the piano. That kind of thing. Sort of a Northern Exposure cuteness to everything. Akalitus getting into it with this priest who is going to be removing all the statues from the chapel, because it turns out the chapel hasn't been consecrated since the '70s, which seems like a major thematic move for this show, is treated about equally lightly as the guy with a shishkebab skewer through his face, or Thor taking over Coop's fantasy football team.
One of the more enjoyable episodes, I would say, of the series. Which is funny because there weren't really any jokes or anything, just this pervading sense of lightness in a show usually quite happy to simmer in its own filth. And what's weirdest is that it was written by Linda Wallem, who is one of the creators of the show, so the intent behind all this is even stranger and harder to pin down. Here's hoping some of this magic sticks around.
Oh right, and then there was the guy that Jackie mugged last season? I totally forgot about him, with the teeth? Brought flowers; was super scary. So he's back, and it turns out that his deal is basically to be a freelance supervillain for drug addicts: Push them all the way over the edge, so that their redemption/rehabilitation arc actually takes. So basically, like, the human definition of evil. And guess whom he's decided will be his greatest challenge?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Last week: Jackie threatened everybody she loved with the concept of hunting them down and hugging them to death in a last-ditch attempt to get them nudged back in place. to that, she mugged an epileptic drug dealer with his own scary agenda, and of course she thought there would be no consequences, because there never are.
Under the "you're out of the woods" song from Wizard Of Oz and, memorably, The Sopranos, Jackie's feeling pretty good. Everything's almost back to normal, Eleanor's nearly back, Kevin's getting waffles and sandwiches for breakfast. It's kind of like making amends; she's even making a show of avoiding coffee because caffeine is a drug, et cetera.
Upstairs, Kevin's sister Tunie is curled up around Fiona in bed; Grace is already awake, grinning and lovely, explaining that Tunie broke up with her pilot boyfriend and crept into their house under dark of night last night. Apparently this is something that happens regularly, and we never knew, and Jackie never knew. Tunie's not such a bad egg, although her language could use some adjustment:
"So he breaks up with me while I'm still at work? What a fucking butt knuckle!" Of course Fiona's parents cannot accurately define "butt knuckle" for her, but so anyway, it was a text-message breakup, complete with sad-face emoticon: The funniest kind if you're the breaker-upper and the butt-knucklest if you're the breakupee. Tune proceeded into the British Air Executive Lounge to take advantage of his discount, but it's only open until ten, so she just drank herself silly and crawled into bed with the girls at three AM.
"In all fairness, I'm usually gone before you guys even get up," Tunie says, which is not terribly comforting, but as usual Fiona's got it on lock: "I'm never scared, I just pretend she's the Tooth Fairy." Aunt Tunie admits to having been shitfaced, and everybody has some delicious breakfast. Tunie is the kind of person that doesn't use a plate, just eats off the plates of little children. Turns out she gave Grace her pilot's wristwatch at some point in the night, and now that she's sobered up, she needs to take it back. She softens the blow by offering to buy her fancy shampoo, which should be nice for the few strands of hair Grace hasn't yanked out yet.
Tunie gets Jackie alone -- after a reminder about the whole "getting Eddie a job at All Saints" con turns Kevin almost completely back around -- and hugs her tightly, horribly, about the whole intervention thing with "that snotty doctor you work with." Jackie doesn't want to talk about it, even though Tunie is being hilarious ("Kevin, interventions are just fuckin' rude!") and offers to "be here and there for [her]," and then more hugging, and then of course the request to crash until she figures her shit out. More hugging, more hugging, until finally Jackie's just standing there with her arms at her sides basically praying for a world without all the hugging.
It's funny because it's so in-character, they always have people hugging her and her hating it, but also, I was thinking maybe she also hates hugs because they literally hurt. Chicken/egg situation, where the pain -- and Jackie's horrible personality -- add up to make her a drug addict who hates hugs. I think a healthy amount of suspicion toward the idea of hugs is okay, but having that be a basic thing of your personality is a pretty big red flag.
Walking to work with Eddie, this is a very good scene, Jackie confides about Tunie and everything, the pressure on Jackie's marriage and how having extra people in the house might help, and finally Eddie just goes, "You know what, this is fucked up." Eddie gets real on her about how their friendship is bullshit and the confiding is bullshit and how she's pulling her con on him that she pulled on everybody else: Doing whatever single thing it takes to get you back in her clutches again. Acknowledging that, because Eddie is in love with her and in an intimate relationship with her husband, it doesn't take half as much to get him back under her thumb.
Which: Don't fall in love with married drug addicts, of course, but also, if the world is made of Eleanors and Zoeys, you really want to be more of an Eleanor when it comes to being the easy target. You put the snake in your pocket and then you're surprised when it bites you, every time, but most especially you want to at least think of yourself as the kind of person who can recognize a snake and take some kind of precautions.
Which is valid, and true of Eddie who is the only person who ever calls her out, which causes Jackie to do this sort of amazing Hail Mary of Authenticity, where by acknowledging this she actually makes that part of the narrative: Yes, this is a funny thing we have together where you are my brain slave, emphasis on together. It's very sweet, and underneath that, kind of scary, because you can be totally honest and still be totally lying, but underneath that it's sweet again:
"I'm sorry, Eddie. I don't know how to do this. If you need for us not to be friends, I get it. You might wanna call your buddy Kevin, tell him you got the job. He's crazy about you, you know?" And just like that, everything's normal and they're just witnesses or bystanders to the weirdness of the situation she has totally created and to which he is totally an accomplice: "This is weird," he says; "So fuckin' weird," she snorts. And it's all true, and it's all exactly what he needed to hear, and it's all exactly what she needed to say; but it's also how she actually feels. Works if you work it.
God finds an upright piano stranded on the street, painted with Starry Night, and rolls it away and into the hospital, where He can do the most good with it.
Speaking of God, our first patient -- and this one is super in-depth, like, a Grey's Anatomy amount of energy is put into this patient, which never happens on this show -- is a lady who fell into a hole in the sidewalk and has really bad internal bleeding. She and her husband David, with whom she has two kids, are majorly Orthodox and he wants her transferred to Beth Israel. Problem #1 is the internal bleeding, problem #2 is that she is a convert -- possibly they both are -- and so her parents are making this into a battle of wills with her husband.
Jackie separates the parents and husband, gets the ICU ready, and barks at Zoey for nearly touching one of the pens in her desk caddy. One assumes that it is full of drugs, or lies. Meanwhile, there's another set of patients coming in, a Farsi and Armenian pair of street-vendor rivals who got into a hot-oil fight. Apparently Nurse Sam speaks all the languages, so he translates their various insults while over here, Fitch is trying to flirt Thor into helping him with his fantasy football team. And by "flirt" I mean a Fitch Cooper kind of flirting, where everything he does is both flirting and not flirting, because he has no clues about the world.
"That's the first time in two years you've gotten my name right. You call me Sport, Chief, Wegian and Grande D, which I assume stands for Big Diabetic." Bygones now; Sam warns Thor that Coop will probably end up sleeping with his boyfriend and Coop shrugs, like, not even Coop can tell you what Coop's likely to screw up in a given day.
Jackie tries with the husband, David, but he manages to make his case -- for transfer to Beth Israel -- in about the only way she would actually listen to: "We made vows. We have beliefs. They either mean everything or nothing." Jackie's pretty susceptible to church logic, because her relationship with God secretly underpins everything else, but you can also see her being, at this moment particularly, very drawn to and fascinated by (but also terrified of and repelled by) the idea of actually being committed to something.
Jackie's image of herself is of a no-bullshit person who stands by her word, which is a very good thing to be, and which technically she is. On the other hand, she is a completely bullshit person who lies every time she opens her mouth. Which is, in the larger sense, why Grace keeps pulling her hair out: What truth she intuits about the world does not match up to the image the world is showing her, which induces paranoia in anybody smart enough -- which Grace is -- to pick up on the underlying contradictions.
And as Grace is to her home, Jackie is to herself: It's holding onto the complete contradictions in herself, the extreme sinner and the extreme saint, at the same time. These are the kind of internal contradictions that create the most energy, like two magnets nearly touching, but generally just burn you up from the inside if you can't resolve them in time.
The bad news is, that's everybody who ever lived, and the really bad news is, you can't ever solve it. If you've been trained into weakness, or projection, that's what borderline personality disorder actually expresses: The complete otherization of the sinner or the saint onto some unsuspecting somebody, the unwillingness to accept grey when black/white is so much easier. And if you've been trained into martyrdom or flights of fancy, you get Black Swan where the idea of perfection by melding the two extremes is not only attainable but your certain doom.
The good news is, you might as well shoot for that and learn the love of the whole of yourself, because you'll never actually get there -- we're not designed that way; it's God's problem -- but in heading that direction, you'll see as much of the landscape as possible.
Why I bring up God right now is that there's more God in this episode than normal, both physically and generally, and He relates specifically to Gloria's new storyline. Seems that when All Saints built a new addition in 1978, the whole property was rezoned commercial, meaning that the chapel has been officially deconsecrated since then. Which -- especially if you're called something like "All Saints" -- is kind of like getting a cardio scan and learning that what you thought was your heart has actually been a TV remote or The Clapper this entire time.
Basically, this priest has shown up to take away all her statuary and relics and things, which should have been warehoused 33 years ago but which action Gloria has been secretly and bureaucratically deferring and stalling ever since. "Bureaucrat to bureaucrat, can't you just look the other way?" I love that. I also love this sort of idea, under the surface, that the Church has finally gotten on the information superhighway or bought new computers and is closing redundancies and loops. Gloria informs him that this is "bullshit" and then screams, "I know Michelle Obama!"
I'd like a montage of her yelling that at like hotdog guys, her personal trainer, a bird that crapped on her shoe. Just shaking her fist at the rain or whenever NCIS gets interrupted by breaking news. It's especially awesome because, you know, she actually doesn't, which means she's just melting down about her saints on this guy.
Lenny does a whole Little Tramp pantomime number on Zoey, super sweet and super cute, with silent flourishes of cloth napkins and tuna on raisin bread and real wine glasses and everything. Then she bites into her sandwich and cracks a filling on his housekey, which romantic gesture is lost on her because it was jarring and kind of dumb.
Lenny: "I saw it in a movie. This is level, Boo."
Zoey: "Don't put stuff in my food, Lenny."
God rolls His piano past them, toward the hospital. It's going to be okay.
Eleanor is at a loss with the Orthodoxy/parents debacle, so of course Jackie heads in. The parents' point is valid, which is that their daughter is dying and that this whole Beth Israel thing is just straight-up superstition and not worth fighting about at this time. Like, you already got our daughter and grandkids in this cult, which is annoying, and then on top of it you're going to kill her? You can kind of see what they're saying.
But then, according to David, his wife is exactly the zealot they're accusing him of turning her into, and thus would want to be transported to the right hospital, to fix the mistake the EMTs made by, you know, trying to save her life. Dad freaks out on David about having "faith" that everything will turn out fine, because to him it sounds like standing on ceremony, and it's actually about this internal fight that David is having with himself about "how strong is my faith" and questions like that, which is fine if you're on an Eat Pray Love safari but not really relevant when my daughter is bleeding out.
But I mean, the classic answer here -- which either makes total sense or no sense at all, depending on how you personally feel -- is that matters of faith are only decided in moments of crisis, and it's the rest of the time that you're on the Eat Pray Love safari. It's a tough one for me, not really in terms of faith but in terms of convictions, because I know this to be true:
Your actual character is only ever determined, or transformed, by the decisions you make under duress or against your immediate conclusions. The actual times that you reach into your own self and wrench something straight, even though you'd prefer -- rationality would prefer, conscience would dictate, more people would approve -- to do the obvious thing.
It's one thing to live in accordance with your convictions: That's the natural, positive way of being an adult. But if you're going to actually change who you are, that means acting against the natural/positive ways you've always done things. The Saint lives in accordance with her convictions; it's the Sinner that blows everything up. It's the Sinner you need to pull the world apart and put it together, because the Saint knows everything's going to be fine.
Which, with a girl on the table bleeding out, this may seem nuts or bleak or negative, so look at it this way:
For an addict, their body and mind and universe are about acting in accordance with their addiction. That's the conviction they are following, and it's the easiest way to do things no matter how complicated and full of hassles it looks to the rest of us. (Same way gravity works in space, how the surface of the actual three-dimensional universe could be curved and bent all kinds of crazy, as seen from the outside, but from inside the system makes perfect sense.) The only way of keeping that life alive, in this metaphor, is by leaving that girl on the table at All Saints. By taking the path of least resistance, following the curvature of the universe along the shortest route from A to B, where she lives.
It is a leap of fucking faith, in a real sense, to step outside the system you've set up, as an addict, which is why they bring the God Thing into it at all: If you are going to change, something inside you is going to have to die. And it won't feel good, it will actually feel like dying. It actually will be dying.
And no person in her right mind is going to choose that, a complete change of life and character, when she's gotten so good at keeping her body and her mind and her universe in check. Changing the actual gravity bends in the universe so they go somewhere else; wrenching time and gravity straight. Sticking your hands inside your guts up to the elbows and screaming and bleeding everywhere until things work right. It's a crime only the Sinner can accomplish, because only the Sinner hates herself enough to go through with it.
Recovery isn't about strength, it's about rerouting the way the entire world works, inside and outside your head. It's about dying and being reborn as somebody completely different, which is the bitch of things.
So when the husband begs, "She's my wife. Why won't any of you help me do this?" maybe it will make more sense to you when I say that Jackie doesn't even hesitate: "I will." It's not the Saint that tears up the world inside and all around you, it's the Sinner. And figuring that out, learning to love and rely on them both, is how you approach God.
(Or, in Jungian terms, the Self-identified Ego, the Saint or the addict, says "I am God." Not helpful. The Shadow-identified Ego, the Sinner or the repentant, says "I am the Devil." Also not helpful. They're both forms of spiritual possession, and lead straight to Crazytown if you get stuck living there. But they're also doors you're going to walk through, a thousand times in your life, and that's their only real value: Identification with the Self, with God, is the thing that keeps you moving when you're in the dark places, the Eat Pray Love reminder of your own divinity. Walking through the Shadow door is the way you periodically burn off what doesn't work, which gets you closer and closer to the actual goal, which is the Ego-Self Axis: The ladder the angels are always climbing up and down, where you're in communication with both of them, but don't have to be either of them.)
Lenny can't help, he's got a call in Madison Park, and so finally Jackie -- rolling her eyes with embarrassment -- ends up calling 911 from the ambulance bay of her own ER, which seems connected to that metaphor above if you think about it. At least enough so that she immediately snags that pen from the desk caddy, earlier, and sneaks into the bathroom for a couple pills.
Gloria follows the priest through the chapel -- him putting little stickers on them one by one, like a yard sale -- talking about how she's super Catholic and everything ("I could have this entire conversation in Latin if you'd like") and asking for the greatest amount of possible time to say her goodbyes. "Pillaging a hospital chapel, nice work if you can get it" she hisses, and they leave.
Jackie enters, and sits down with David in the deconsecrated chapel; he nearly starts crying when she tells him the ambulance is coming, because he knows he may have just killed his wife and because nobody stopped him. Because the Sinner helped him out, in the service of God.
The vendors are still screaming at each other -- apparently if you even leave your cart for a bathroom break you can get majorly fined -- so Jackie snags their phones and tells Sam to call "Home," get their families down there. Great idea, but of course the second Sam actually praises her she snits about how he should've thought of that himself. She seems like she's going easier on him these days, doesn't she? It's kind of nice.
God gets help from facilities guys on the elevator, who don't question His errand in moving the piano into a random storage room. The Devil waits in Admitting.
"I come in peace," the Devil says. "Walk with me."
Jackie takes his wallet, and tosses it to Eddie: "I'm going out for a cup of coffee. If I end up dead, this guy did it." They go on a little date together, Jackie the Saint and her mugging victim. Everybody in the coffee shop waves hello to him, and he explains he's known around the AA and NA meetings circuit. Then he says the most horrible, awful, scary, watery-boweled flesh-crawling Toadies-song thing.
"I'm a former drug and alcohol counselor: Former. I got tired of pouring my life force into people who weren't ready to get sober... Usually people who succumbed to bullshit interventions, who then tried to get sober for all the wrong reasons. I burned out watching people relapse after getting sober too soon, so I decided to specialize. I'm the guy who helps people bottom out, find their all-time low by supplying them with drugs and then supervising their downward spiral for a hefty price."
Outsourcing your Sinner. I
wonder what his success rate is. And especially for a Saint like Jackie, that's the worst thing you can think of. The one thing you know you would be strong enough to do, if you ever got around to it, he's offering to do. What could the value of that possibly be? Or, to put it another way: How weak would you have to be, to let some other Sinner reach into your guts and pull you straight? He probably charges; definitely there is a price: "That's repulsive."
"I take people right to the edge, till they beg for sobriety. I trawl the rooms looking for the weakest pie-eyed newbies with 30, 60, 90 days of sobriety, wait for them to relapse and then I make my move."
And why Jackie? You know why. The closer you get to the sun the darker things seem:
"I'm tired of lightweights."
He produces a thirty-day coin, from a woman over in the corner who is already doomed to failure. He makes it disappear.
"What I'm saying is, if you need my help I'll be around. I've dealt with addicts for twenty years. You took drugs off a man having an epileptic seizure: New low. Well done."
You know you're getting close when the Devil starts viewing you as a challenge.
"Hypothetically, how far am I from hitting bottom?"
Not even close. This show wouldn't have it any other way. He slides her a single pill, smiles; she shakes her head and walks away. Salvation that's too easy is still salvation.
Shaken, Jackie asks Eleanor for a snack or smoke break, but Eleanor's busy; not "I still hate you" busy but actually busy, and she makes sure Jackie gets the distinction. Across the station, Coop does a funny sandwich dance to lure Thor into helping him with fantasy football: "This just isn't any fantasy football league, it's all the hot-shot doctors upstairs who've always looked down on the ER. It's five grand a head!"
Thor quirks an eyebrow. "And you're trying to bribe me with a Quizno's combo meal?" But also, I had no idea there was a hospital where the ER doctors are looked down on. Maybe I just don't know anything, but I always assumed they were the hot shit. "These guys are assholes of the highest order. Seriously, they're only letting me in because they think I'm easy money."
Thor asks why he should help Coop join "a club of assholes," nobody supplies the obvious punchline there, and Coop turns it into this whole "win win for the ER" thing that is transparently transparent. Thor is unswayed, for like one second, until Coop turns on his Hello Kitty eyeballs and goes, "They're no different than the bullies I knew in the fourth grade, the ones who gave me shit for having gay moms. Dude, they called me Martina!"
It is agreed that Dr. Fitch Cooper is prettier than Martina, but the gay-solidarity point is scored, Thor agrees, major hugging and dancing happen. "A doctor bought me lunch," he smugs to the world at large, and we quietly wonder if this little story, or any other plotpoint on this show, will ever recur.
While God softly plays the piano, Zoey confides about the sandwich key. As usual, the God scenes are so perfect it's no use describing them.
God: "I saw that in a movie. He wants you to come over more."
Zoey: "God, I'm conflicted. It's like one minute I'm just crazy about him, I wanna rip his clothes off. And the I just wanna stab him. In the neck. With a fork."
God: "I saw that once in a movie too."
Zoey: "It's not just that he cracked my filling, I just wish he would, you know... Slow the fuck down, son."
God: "...I confess, I wanted to ask you out."
Zoey: "Thanks, but it'd be too much pressure to date God."
Lenny goes running to Jackie with a simple fuuuuuck and she actually indulges him. Good: Giving her a key. But in the sandwich? "Holy shit, Lenny." Her point, and it's true for both ladies, is that you gotta stop trying to handcuff her: "Give her some space, she will make a beeline to you." (Jackie, the lightbulb to the moth that is Zoey, knows from this.) "Suffocation is not really much of a turn-on. Lenny, please."
Thor and Fitch fight over the team: "A good offense is a good defense, isn't it?" asks Fitch, provoking sighs; "You don't get to type. You get to stand there and look pretty." They both agree this is in his wheelhouse.
Gloria catches the priest tagging statues he doesn't get to take: "They're architectural embellishments that do not fall within the scope of the chapel." He actually praises her for catching him on that one, and takes off, and then standing to a giant Jesus Christ Gloria spits, "Jesus Christ." And I guess there's a point to be made about Gloria privileging the existence of these statues over the actual religious experience, but then I would also say that hidebound addiction to superstitious stuff like not saying "Jesus Christ" in front of a statue of Jesus Christ is probably worse.
God plays piano for them as Lenny apologizes to Zoey and explains he loves being with her, and doesn't want to suffocate or handcuff her, and everything Jackie told him to say, and then they slow dance, and it's just amazing. So of course Gloria appears out of nowhere and yells at them and sends them scattering; left alone with God she asks where the piano came from and He says, "I made it!" and then she sends him running, too, with a "Jesus Christ!" of his very own, before sitting down to play on God's piano for herself.
The families of the vendors show up in Admitting -- Gloria still playing that Colonel Bogey whistling song from Bridge on the River Kwai, (aka "Comet Makes You Vomit") -- and all the people of the hospital get pulled into their drama in a quirky, busy way that seems like a stand-in for a much larger scene of chaos. I'd like to think that Gloria only knows that one song on the piano, and only because she identifies with the constant Penelopeian/Sisyphean futility of building and unbuilding a bridge to nowhere in the service of something higher, because that is her theme song of life.
At Kev's bar, Fiona has an important update: "I have to tell you something! Aunt Tunie's pilot needed space!" Jackie thanks her for the info, and then is appalled by her followup: "What's a sugar daddy?" The girls had beernuts and cherries for dinner, which is adorable, and Jackie tells everybody how Tunie is staying with them for a bit. Just to rub it in his face, the functionality of their marriage, Jackie gets to say she's fine with that plan -- "We shouldn't have to check in with each other about every little thing," she says, just yankin' those strings -- and they're all a happy family again.
Further to that, Eddie's got the job! Kevin proudly tells his wife he got the call earlier, and Tunie brightens. "Eddie, that's the one you want me to go out with, right?" Jackie cocks her head and Kevin shrugs, "It's just a thought. The last one broke his heart."
Jackie just stares at him: Still fuckin' weird. But that's a deal for another time, and just like Eleanor, like Kevin, like Eddie, like the Devil, she's got plenty of time. Make me good, God. But not yet. Not for a long, long time. The last one broke his heart and Tunie's not going to be the one to put it back together, but it's still fuckin' weird.
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!