Props to the town of Las Vegas for having such an excellent selection of mullets and karaoke bars. I will never let de-elevator break us down.
Hill. Businesses of America. Jail. It's all booming. Really.
We fade up on Said and Ryan in the lunchroom. Ryan is serving up a heapin' helping of good lookin', and Said asks after Cyril. Ryan says he has fully recovered from the overdose and will be fine except he suffered from a little brain -- oh wait. Never mind. Said praises Allah and moves on down the line for some mac and cheese. Ah. A Schillinger approacheth. Let's listen in, kiddies! "Sorry to hear about your girlfriend, O'Reily." Schillinger's cell-buddy sneers from his perch high atop Mount Ass-kiss and snarks, "Who's his girlfriend?" "Dr. Nathan. She took a leave of absence apparently, after almost choking to death when her boyfriend Ryan tossed M&Ms in her mouth to see how many times she could catch them." Naw, he didn't say that. He really insinuates that she gagged while giving Ryan good oral lovin' Ryan explodes with a mighty "fuck you Schillinger!" and slams a tin full of unidentifiable mystery food onto said demon, and Vern leaps over the counter to kick some booty. Who knew the old geezer was so spry? While the cued cheer arises from the room of masticating inmates, guards cuff Ryan and restrain Vern. Claire says she will take care of Ryan. Oh man, if only I had known at this point how sick and wrong her idea of "taking care" of someone is. Anyway, she takes the now cuffed Ryan into an un-known bathroom with nary a guard in sight. She puts him on the floor and tells him to stay down, only to have Ryan request that she blow him. I don't write it, people, I just recap. Claire replies (insert recapper's violent twitch here), "Again?" with a sly little smile that makes me raise my clenched fists to the heavens, shouting, "Why God? For the love of all that is holy, whyyyyyyy?" So, she does.
Cut to Stanislofsky wearing a yarmulke in his "safe" cell as a rabbi exits. Enter Martin "You need to know, I love you so, and I'd do it all again and again. Whoa. Whoa" Querns in all his soul-glo glory. Querns asks him if he's feeling better, to which Stanislofsky replies, "A dead man needs to cover all his options. Sometime after you send me back to Emerald City, Ryan will find a way to kill me." Querns croons, "I like you, Stanislofsky. I don't know why, but I do." Querns tell him he can let him hang out a few more days in the cell, but Stanislofsky feels he should face the proverbial music. No sense in postponing being killed, I guess. Querns tells him that it's not necessarily written in stone yet. He'll have a talk with Ryan. He leaves, and Stanislofsky sits on the bed as they shut the cell door. He is so dead.
Cut to Querns in his office, pouring himself a cup of joe. He turns to Ryan, who sits demurely across the desk, and tells him that he is trying to eliminate violence from Emerald City. "And you're doing an amazing job, sir." Querns: "Cut the crap, O'Reily! When Stanislofsky returns, if anything happens to him I hold you responsible." Ryan surmises the situation. "But, Hoyt is the one with the hots for Stanislofsky." Querns doesn't care. "So, in other words, I'm responsible and if anything happens, my ass is grass." Querns confirms this and then tells him to get lost.
Warning: the following paragraph may cause nausea and/or drowsy side effects due to loss of blood flow to the brain and piercing pain behind the eyes. We, uh, cut to the same bathroom Claire took Ryan to after his brawl, where we are treated to Ryan, Claire, and Claire's ass -- which, by the way, is as stunning as her chest -- and we witness the horrifying act of vertical love as Ryan asks her, during the passion of the moment, if she loves him. She does, and that's a duh! He asks her if she loves him enough to do anything for him; I take a call from the red phone in my apartment that I keep under a glass dome, which also works well as a cake plate. It's Toledo, and they're just letting me know they've dispatched the sub-plot and it's heading my way. We've basically established that Claire is now Ryan's go-to heifer.
We trot on over to Ryan's pod, where he stares at his newspaper clipping of Dr. Nathan (in case anyone missed that he's over the moon for this girl). Knock, knock. It's Claire with Cyril, who looks fresh as a daisy from the infirmary. Ryan bear-hugs him. Claire breaks it up with "O'Reily, you know that thing you asked me to look into? Well, it's returning to Emerald City tomorrow." Huh? Hey wait a minute, I think they're talking in some kind of love code! Ryan walks over to the door with his patented wince. Claire tells him that the sitting duck known as Stanislofsky asked Querns to let him take a bath before his return. Ryan says, "You know what to do." They share a meaningful look that only a fox and a hound can share, and off she goes to commence bowing to Ryan's whim. Ryan turns back to Cyril and hugs him again.
Cut to Stanislovsky in the therapy room taking a bubble bath. I guess we aren't supposed to ask where he got the bubbles. Claire shows up and tells the guard she's there to pick up the prisoner. She lumbers in the room. He asks for five more minutes since he's enjoying himself so much. Claire says, "I bet I can help you enjoy yourself even more." God. Please. No. She reaches into the bubbles and gives him a hand. Thankfully, it doesn't take that long, and as he lies back into his tainted bubbles, Claire makes ominous small talk about how quickly he was satisfied, and that a man like Ryan can please a woman and last longer. Way to bring a guy's ego down before you wax him. She gives Stanislofsky a rubber ducky, which she says is a small token of Ryan's affections (since she got a large one earlier), and while his eyes widen at the sight of this unexpected gift which he immediately begins playing with, Claire picks up a hairdryer and drops it into the bubbles. Claire watches him jerk and roll his eyes (for the second time) until he's still, and then rushes out to tell the guard to call a medic because "the Russian guy is dead!"
Cut to the main room in Em City and Querns striding his way across the room; Ryan approaches and says, "I heard about Stanislovsky. It's weird. A guy dies before coming back to Emerald City?" Querns gives him his patented B-movie stink-eye and snarls before continuing on his way. We see Cyril look up from his seat at a table and look from the exiting Querns to his brother. Claire walks through the room and gives a sidelong wink at the severely depreciated Ryan, who returns the wink while Cyril takes note of this also.
Cut to death row. Schillinger walks in with the mail and delivers a small package of what I guess is more art supplies for the racist pig, who is still working on his self-portrait, which I like to call "Fuckwit In Repose." Schillinger compliments him on his masterpiece, and our resident Van Blow rambles about how it's an amazing work of art, blah blah blah, and Schillinger just makes the "whatever" face and moves on to drop Moses' mail on the floor. "time, hand it to me, Schillinger!" Schillinger departs after a few disparaging remarks and in walks the lunch guy, who is black, and who proceeds to do the same in reverse by dropping Van Blow's chicken nuggets on the floor. Ah, divine retribution. In walks Shirley's former paramour to escort Moses to meet with his lawyer. Van Blow ridicules him for believing he can overturn his death sentence. A few "blow me"s are tossed around, along with a "fuck you" thrown in for good measure. Even the guard o' love tells Van Blow to shut his cakehole, and off they go to meet the lawyer. Moses enters the room with a hopeful smile, which lawyer woman dashes against the rocks of despair with the words, "The judge has denied our appeal." He swears a lot. She tells him the best they can hope for is to go to the state Supreme Court and appeal the appellate court's decision. Moses asks how long that will take. A year. He wigs. "Dawn, I can't sit up on death row another day much less a year!" Dude! You're gonna be alive for another year, so if I were you, I'd relax on the tantrum jest a tad. Dawn tells him she has no control over the length of time their decision takes, and explains that the case load is heavy blah blah blah you're-screwedcakes. Dawn blames Devlin in that he rejects anything he considers to be "tough on crime." Um, isn't his acting a crime? I'm just sayin'. Then she says time is on their side, yes it is! The Rolling Stones call to see if that royalty check can be made out to cash while Dawn explains, "What I'm sayin' is, governor's got prostate cancer. If he dies, retires [falls off a footstool and cracks his oblong head open?], a new chief may look at the death penalty differently; meanwhile, you're alive another year so I suggest you make the best of it." (I'm SAYIN'!)
Cut back to death row, former home of the best damn character ever and I still miss her, where Van Blow is goading Moses about how he always calls him "black boy," and while he was downstairs with his lawyer, Van Blow was thinking of other racial slurs to call him. I'll tell all of you right now, as long as I recap this show, I will not type racial slurs. I will always skip over them, because that's the kind of power the recapper has. I'll type dumb-ass scenes, sex scenes between Ryan and Claire until I'm driven to bang my head against the laptop keyboard causing me to walk around the rest of my life with the home keys embedded in my forehead, but there are lines. I draw them. There you have it. Also, Van Blow's dialogue is just dumb. I have an aversion to dumb-ass dialogue. Moses draws a screwdriver from the cast on the arm he broke hitting the wall the last time Van Blow slurred him); all the while VB is spouting racist nonsense, and Moses begins chiseling away at the wall between them. While the voice of logic and reason inside me says, "There's no way in hell he can dig through -- I mean, the first time someone approaches the friggin' cell they'll see it!" the southerner in me who hates Van Blow with, and I'm gonna quote Djb here, the fire of a thousand suns cheers his screwdriver on and waits for the season finale where the smackdown will surely be delivered.
Cut to the usual flashback of what usually is a new prisoner, but this time it's of our near and dear Stephen King doppelganger, a.k.a. Eli, who apparently landed himself in the gray-bar hotel by throwing boiling oil from a frying pan containing eggs (?) into the groin area of his former boss, who seems to act a lot like the guy I work for, except his screams are way more realistic. Mine screams like a girl. We go to Hill. Eli is helpful in that he says his own prisoner number so that Hill can catch his breath. We go straight to Keller entering the library. Eh? Not only does Hill not drone on, but Keller can read? And Eli can too? Either I need to cut back on the drink or on drinking through a bendy straw, 'cause I'm not believin' what I'm rewindin'. Anyway, Keller puts on his best "I'm gonna git you sucka" voice and says, "Hey." Eli jumps to the ceiling and back down and says he's gotta be somewhere. "No, no, you gotta be here with me," Keller says, with the calmness of a person who's about to teach someone that nobody puts baby in a corner, and proceeds to ask how Eli's daughter's teeth are doing since he raised all the money to have them buffed and shined. Eli eagerly tells him that they're pearls now. Keller's glad. He tells him he's glad he could provide for his daughter before he dies. (Insert pause while doppelganger absorbs. That's okay. We'll wait.) "Jesus, Keller!" Keller holds him in his chair and calmly says in his ear, "You told Tobias Beecher that I killed his kid." "No!" says Eli, "Schillinger made me do it!" Keller basically tells him to get his affairs in order 'cause the smackdown is about to unleash and there's no coming back from it. He rubs Eli's hair.