Previously on Pasadena: Robert thought he'd be inheriting the job of publisher of The Los Angeles Sun from his dad, but he's wrong, wrong, wrong; Beth had sex with a Jew; Nate got beaten up by thugs; Catherine was vaguely threatening towards Henry; Henry wondered aloud to Lily why Catherine was trying to hide her former relationships with Phillip Parker and Meredith Weller; John Walsh warned us all about the world's most dangerous terrorists; and a bunch of men in tight pants ran around waving sticks and throwing balls. Those last two are more like "instead ofs" rather than "previously ons."
We open up this episode with somebody trying to take our picture. Dude, don't even ask me to smile. I have bad teeth. It's Henry "Bailey" Bellows, working on his "Great Homes Of Pasadena" mystery project. Even if he doesn't find who he's looking for, he's got a potential coffee-table book here. There's no point letting all the work go to waste. Henry sees some woman coming out of a house and getting in her car. He surreptitiously takes her picture. And by "surreptitiously," I mean that he stands out there right on the sidewalk and shoots her while the woman pretends that she doesn't notice him.
Meanwhile, Catherine "The Great (Big Crazy Lady)" Greeley McAllister is driving Lily "Velma" Greeley McAllister around, and they're discussing Nate's attack from last episode. Apparently, Lily has been told that it was some random act of violence rather than the truth, which is that Robert hired some thugs to beat Nate up for stealing Catherine's bracelet. Lily sees Henry and asks Catherine to pull over. Lily gets out and calls out to him. Henry sees her, and his face goes carefully blank. He definitely looks like he didn't want to run into her. Lily asks him what he's up to. He lies that he's not really doing anything, which is all rather silly because Lily knows about his photography project. And if they want to convince us that Henry's taking photographs of the homes of the rich, then perhaps they should have picked a neighborhood with prettier lawns than this. I see a lot of brown patches.
As the two of them are chatting, we cut to Catherine's point of view from inside the car. The camera meaningfully zooms in on Henry, who smiles while talking to Lily and generally looks all cute so we get that Catherine might be "getting ideas." As if the commercials declaring "sin is in" while showing this scene didn't give us a big clue (and are, coincidentally, the same teaser line for the new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous coming to the Comedy Channel). Lily leads Henry over to the car to ask Catherine if Henry can come over and go swimming. Catherine regards Henry for a moment, realizing that, like a praying mantis, perhaps she can have some fun with Henry before biting his head clean off. Then she smiles and says, "Of course he can."
We cut to the McMansion's McPool. Lily floats on a little raft thingy while Henry sits poolside. As he takes off his shirt, Catherine comes out to ask him if he wants to borrow a pair of swim trunks as an excuse to sneak looks at his lithe young body. Henry declines. Catherine, trying to find ways to continue looking at Henry's lithe young body without making him suspicious, asks him if he wants anything to drink. Lily says she'd like some lemonade. Henry agrees. Catherine heads toward the house, stopping to give Henry's lithe young body one more look before she goes. After she leaves, Henry looks back in her direction with slight trepidation. Whether he suspects Catherine's game or not is unclear.
Inside, Catherine pours a couple of glasses of lemonade for the kids, then notices Henry's camera bag. After making sure nobody is going to walk in on her, she sneaks a look in the bag and notices a bunch of eight-by-ten prints. She thumbs through them and notices that they're all pictures of middle-aged women around Pasadena, taken, like the one in the beginning of the episode, surreptitiously. Maybe he'll follow up the book on great houses with Pearls and Pavement: Pasadena Society Women on the Way to Their Cars. We fade to the tinkly music-box credits.
We return from commercials to see Mason "Dick Son" Greeley McAllister wearing his typical headphones at the breakfast table. The music drowns out Lily's attempts to try to get him to take the headphones off. I don't know what the hell he's listening to; it's some crappy, cheesy fake techno stuff that sounds like background music for a Nintendo 64 game. Housekeeper Pilar stumbles over the table with a bowl, looking queasy. Her illness becomes evident when she leans over and vomits all over Lily's lap, in full view. My reaction was much like Mason's -- I was shocked for a second, and then I burst out laughing. I should be more critical; this subplot is pretty much pointless. And I don't normally find vomit to be a source of amusement, but I laughed nevertheless. Lily, however, has a shrieking hissyfit and freaks out.
Upstairs, Catherine and Will "Brood Simple" McAllister are getting dressed for another day of sublimating their disgust with each other. Catherine backstories for us that she's surprised to hear that her father's stepping down as publisher of The Los Angeles Sun, and that Robert is excited about the prospect of taking over. Will knows that this isn't the case at all and asks Catherine why Robert thinks he's taking over. Catherine says that George told Robert this was the case, and that "it's a family tradition. The paper has been passed down from father to son, since, I don't know, 1890." Yeah, that's like three transitions. Rich families up and down the Eastern seaboard laugh hysterically while polishing their silver Paul Revere tankards at your concept of what constitutes a dynasty. Actually, they probably just chuckle politely so as not to seem crass.
So the parents hear the brouhaha downstairs and head down to see what the crisis is this time. Mason joyfully explains the vomit incident. Catherine and Will attend to Pilar and offer to get her something to drink to soothe her stomach. For those of you who recall Pilar getting bitten by a rat last episode, the early symptoms of rabies include fever, headaches, and a general feeling of malaise (or so the CDC explains). If this show actually had a story arc where somebody becomes rabid, I would love it forever. Mason mocks Lily, telling her that seeing her covered in vomit makes life worth living. I'd tell him to shut up, but Catherine shuts him up for me by making him clean up the vomit off the floor. Take that, you obnoxious little imp.
Cut to Robert "Dubya" Greeley, fantasizing that he's sitting in his office at The Sun while two women make out with him and a bunch of his frat brothers cheer him on. Am I suddenly recapping Mind of a Married Man? I certainly hope not, because rumor has it that after each episode, Aaron calls Sars and threatens to drink Drano in order to get out of his recapping duties. ["It finally worked, too." -- Sars] Well, at least we're not expected to believe that Robert's fantasies represent some sort of "truth" about men, unlike Mike Binder's delusional masturbatory twaddle. Anyway, Robert is really standing on the elevator on the way to his office. As he gets off -- the elevator, I mean -- a woman approaches him and serves him with papers. Jayleen's suing him and Reese Corp. for wrongful termination and sexual harassment due to his treatment of her in the first episode. Robert's smirk fades quickly. In college, the brothers would all serve as alibis for each other when some whiny sorority girl accused them of date rape, and they never had any problems like this.
So Robert tracks down Will and waves the papers in his face, claiming that he doesn't understand why Jayleen is suing Robert when Will was the one having the affair with her. Will is surprised about the lawsuit and asks if Robert did indeed sexually harass her. Robert shirtily responds, "I don't know. The point is, you're the one she's trying to get back at. You started this. You had the affair; you've got to get her to drop it." I can't tell whether Robert is lying about what he did to Jayleen, or if he's so smug and arrogant and dumb that he's forgotten about it entirely. Robert explains to Will that he can't be having these problems crop up right now, because George is going to announce his retirement and name Robert as the publisher. Robert grins idiotically; Will is carefully blank. Robert tells Will that he's going to be "leaning on [Will]" heavily for assistance during the transition. No, I think he's going to be leaning on Jack Daniels to help him forget the embarrassment. Will says he'll take care of Jayleen as he walks away. Robert shouts after Will, asking if Will's going to congratulate him on landing the top spot. Will, imagining how much more humiliating this is all going to get for Robert, blandly does so as he leaves.
At school, Lily stands around eating an apple while waiting for her cue to start the scene. She finally gets it, and turns to ask Henry who it is he's looking for in Pasadena. Henry tries to switch his mystery with hers. He tells her that he did some research on Meredith and discovered that her disappearance was a big controversy at the time. Allegedly it was on the cover of all the papers. He asks her if she ever found out what Nate meant when he told Lily in the first episode that the Phillip Parker incident might tear the family apart. Lily's onto Henry's game this time and points out that he just tried to change the subject. Henry responds, "So you're satisfied with your mother's story. You want to just put Phillip Parker to bed?" Lily points out that he just did it again. She complains that she doesn't know anything about Henry, while he knows all this stuff about her family. Henry asks Lily what she wants to know. Lily asks him what his parents are like, if he gets along with his brother, how he ended up in Pasadena, and who he's looking for. There's an awkward pause as Henry looks at her, then down, then her, then down, then perhaps to the right to see if there's an escape pod to get him out of this situation. Finding nothing, Henry muses aloud, "I wonder if Meredith Weller is still alive?" As Lily sighs in frustration, Henry hands her some more news stories about the woman's disappearance to look over.
Back at The Sun, Will attempts to talk to George about the little problem with Robert, only to be met outside his office by Lillian "Snob Hill" Greeley. George is in there with a doctor, getting a physical (read: Pasadena's budget constraints allow for only one grandparent per episode), so Will can't see him. Will takes Lillian aside to see if she knows what's going on with the transition. After some bumbling around on Will's part, Lillian explains that she already knows that George has named Will his successor. Will is confused as to why Robert thinks he's going to be publisher. Lillian gives a thoughtful pause; it's interesting to note that Barbara Babcock (the actress playing Lillian) gives pretty much the same facial expressions that Dana Delany does when she's trying to figure out the best way to gloss over something uncomfortable. I don't know if it's intentional on the part of the actresses, but it's funny to see. Lillian explains, "[Robert's] always been so presumptuous. He presumes; it's his defining trait." That's certainly more diplomatic than admitting that her own son is both arrogant and dumb, but you know that's what she really means. Will says that George needs to deal with Robert before he makes the announcement. Lillian agrees, and promises to talk to him. Will walks off, and Lillian stands outside George's office with her arms folded and a rather sly look on her face. I'm not sure if it means anything, but Mark Snow thinks so, because he ratchets up the sinister music box in the background as the scene ends.
We cut to Beth "Boopsie" Greeley, who is painting some small mural on a wall in the McMansion. Catherine wanders by and asks Boopsie whether she's painting a dog or a monkey. Boopsie gives her the stink-eye, but Catherine tries to pretend that she's just curious and not at all suggesting that Boopsie's art sucks. They snipe a little bit. Catherine asks if Boopsie's having problems with Jimmy. Beth says that's not the problem: "Having a boyfriend isn't the answer. I need to focus on me." In other words, Jimmy dumped her crazy ass about ten seconds after they left the Greeley dinner party last episode when he realized that Boopsie only brought him there to piss off her parents. Catherine wants to know what Boopsie's problem is. Boopsie says she wants to be a "real artist" and wants to express herself. Catherine regards her for a moment, then responds, "But in order to do that, you have to have something to say." Hee. Ouch. Boopsie gives her major stink-eye, then turns back to her mural. Poor Boopsie. She needs to channel Hunk-Ra and go kick some ass.
Elsewhere in Pasadena, Nate "K-Hole" Greeley is stumbling into his apartment building after an evening of partying with an unidentified blonde chick. They both are strung out to high heaven and are practically clinging to each other to stay on their feet. The chick is sucking on a lollipop. I think I'm going to call her Crissy. The two of them stumble their way over to the door leading to the apartments. A security guard watches them warily. As Crissy goggles at everything as though she's unfamiliar with the concept of "natural lighting" (and I suspect she isn't), Nate asks the guard to buzz them in. The guard refuses. He's under orders by the landlord not to let him in. Nate hammers on the door impotently. It's totally illegal for the landlord to do this, though I can't imagine Nate being able to call the police in his current state. Although perhaps the landlord did send eviction notices to Nate previously and he ignored them.
Catherine is driving Mason and Lily around. Lily dredges up Meredith again and asks why Catherine never told Lily what happened. You know, I don't know a damned thing about my parents' high school chums. What exactly is the protocol for telling your kids that somebody you knew before they were born had died or disappeared? If I ever have kids someday (yeah, right), do I have to tell them that this girl who was once my biology lab partner was killed by a drunk driver while in college? If I don't, am I "covering it up" and keeping secrets from them? Lily wonders if perhaps Meredith is still alive. Catherine dismisses this, pointing out that she's been gone for twenty years. Lily mentions that Henry has found a bunch of stories about Meredith's disappearance. Catherine points out that Henry is becoming "quite the little investigator," and says she thinks that Lily likes him. I think they had this exact conversation last episode. Lily complains that Henry won't talk about himself and mentions that he's looking for somebody in Pasadena, but won't say whom, and describes his photography project. Catherine tries to hide her interest in Henry's search. Lily admits that she's obsessed with him.
We cut to Henry, who is looking over the photos mentioned previously, crossing out some, but staring with interest at another. He's at home, I guess, but this doesn't look anything like his home from the pilot episode. He hides the photos when he hears a door slam, just before Tom "Charlie" Bellows walks in without knocking to show off his new look. He's shaved off the ugly facial hair (thank you), and I'll be damned if Tom doesn't also bear more than a passing resemblance to Noah Wyle, with a helping of Billy Campbell. Good sibling casting, I guess. Now do something about his bowl-cut. Tom notes that Henry is reading Moby Dick and encourages Henry not to get too caught up in his studies and to have some fun with his youth. So Henry's the responsible teen, and Tom is the adult who refuses to grow up. Where have I seen this before? Tom is suspicious that Henry is acting distant and is up to something. Henry insists that he's just studying, and tells Tom that things are fine. After Tom leaves the room, Henry takes a couple of photos of a middle-aged blonde woman out of the drawer and pastes them to the wall. Considering that his brother wanders into his room without knocking, is it the best idea to be attaching photos he's trying to keep a secret to his bedroom walls?
We return from commercials to see Jennie "Daphne" Bradbury at school, attempting to brush her hair seductively (and failing miserably) while "Brick House" plays as background music. This is why those Herbal Essences shampoo ads must be stopped. They're misleading impressionable girls into thinking that their hair is a G-spot or something. The girls are going to end up believing that an orgasm feels a lot like pulling out a tangle. And then the boys are going to get confused, and when girls refuse dates by claiming that they have to "wash their hair," the boys are going to think the girls are saying they'd rather masturbate than date them. Though that's not necessarily wrong. Schoolboys watch Jennie with lust through the blinds of a nearby window. The boys I knew in high school would be a lot less shy -- and a lot more crass -- about expressing their attraction to Jennie. Lily wanders up, wondering if Jennie is having sex with her brush. See, now Lily thinks that's where sex takes place, too. Look what you've done, Clairol! Henry wanders up to say hello to them both. Lily asks him if he wants to do something together. Henry says he has to go to work, and then after that, he has "stuff to do." Lily's all, "What stuff?" Henry's all, "It's just generic stuff." He promises to call her later and leaves as Lily gets exasperated at his vagueness. After he's gone, Jennie repeats her perpetual blather about high-school boys being too immature, et cetera. Hmm…there's no mention of her attempts to woo Nate. Perhaps she's decided against the "warped, twisted, and revolting" men she was pining for last episode. Witnessing a bloody beatdown can do that to you. Anyway, Jennie doubts that Henry's mystery is that big a deal and tells Lily that they should figure out what it is themselves, today, so Lily can bloody well get over it.
Catherine arrives at the school, but she's not there to pick up the kids. Instead, she approaches some school administrator or counselor, who just happens to be standing around outside the school for no apparent reason (read: no budget for another set). Catherine asks briefly about her kids' studies -- Mason has a private tutor and is on Ritalin. That explains a lot. He's still annoying. Catherine's really there, however, to ask for information about Henry. She calls him "Henry Bellow" instead of "Henry Bellows," like I do. I've been driving myself slightly crazy trying to figure out whether his last name has an "s" or not, as if anybody really cares. The show's official site has it, but often the episode descriptions do not. And I swear sometimes it varies in the show itself. To split the difference, I will now refer to the two guys as Tom and Henry Bellow(s) and cover both bases. At last, I can sleep at night. Catherine wants to know something about him, explaining that Lily's been spending a lot of time with him. The administrator/counselor/whatever tells Catherine that Henry is there as a scholarship student and is very smart. She then invites Catherine to come to her office (conveniently located crumpled up in a ball in a trash can at the studio's accounting department) to discuss the matter further. Way to violate a student's privacy, administrator/counselor/whatever.
Boopsie gets a simpering voice-over as she paints, whining that Catherine's wrong when she claimed that Boopsie had nothing to say. Well, all you've had to say thus far is that you should be able to date whoever you want to, which isn't going to be much of interest to the vast majority of us who aren't slack-jawed simpletons and had already figured that part out. She asks herself what she has to say. There's silence. We see that Boopsie's canvas is blank. Heh. She's interrupted by a knock at the door. It's Nate. He needs a place to crash. I guess Crissy wasn't very accommodating in that respect. Boopsie lets him in.
So Jennie and Lily approach the home of the Bellow(s)es, which is absolutely, positively not the house from the pilot. On the other hand, it looks more like a house where poor people would actually live. Lily worries about getting caught, while Jennie sees the trashiness of the place and worries that they're serial killers, because that naturally follows. It sounds like Jennie has definitely gotten over her "bad boy" phase. Darwin would be proud. Jennie climbs on top of an old trashcan in order to access a second-floor window. She gets stuck climbing in, giving us all an extended view of her ass. No doubt somebody at Fox saw that and wished they had made Nicole Paggi wear hot pants or something, rather than a mid-length skirt. I bet they would have promoted the show a lot harder. The girls manage to stumble their way in. They find Henry's room and discover all his pictures. As they're looking through them to try to figure out what's going on, they're startled by Tom, who opens the door to the room, drawn to the noise. He's fresh from the shower, wearing only towel, and is equally startled by the girls. He asks them who they are, though he's already met Lily once. They stutter to explain that they're friends of Henry's. Lily tries to come up with a good excuse for the intrusion, but Jennie decides to just drop the façade. She tells Tom that Lily has a crush on Henry and they're on a top-secret "reconnaissance mission," in the hopes that Tom won't spill the beans. Then Jennie flirts with Tom, and Lily has to drag her away so they can make their escape.
We cut to Will and Jayleen, who are having a Three Martini And Awkward Conversation lunch. Will tells Jayleen that he and Catherine are working things out. Jayleen lies that she's glad to hear it. Will asks Jayleen how she's doing. Not so well. She's having trouble finding a new job, may have to take out a second mortgage, and is having trouble sleeping. And her mother has ovarian cancer. I'd say that she makes me feel better about my own job search, as I don't have to worry about a mortgage or my mother's cancer. But then I remember that Jayleen isn't actually real, and I feel bad again. Will asks her to drop the lawsuit. Jayleen demands her job back. Will says he can help her find a new job, and offers her some cash if things are getting tight. Wow, that's such the wrong tack to take. Will's not so smooth after all. Jayleen gets offended and says she can't be bought. Will slathers on the bullshit about how sorry he is that this happened to her and that she's a great person and she's going to go far and blah blah blah. Dude, you already dumped her. She doesn't need this speech. Jayleen refuses to drop the suit. Will broods some more. Is it just me, or is Martin Donovan being totally wasted on this show? His entire role consists of going around apologizing to people.
Catherine returns home to the McMansion with Grandmother Lillian in tow. They're talking about Beth's recent behavior. Lillian and Beth are no longer on speaking terms until Beth apologizes for her behavior at their last dinner. They chatter for a minute about George's upcoming retirement (Lillian insists that they're just "transitioning"); then Lillian notices Pilar sleeping on the couch with a washcloth over her face. The two of them approach Pilar slowly, like a couple of cheerleaders would approach a closet in a slasher film that may or may not have a brutal serial killer inside. Catherine wakes up Pilar and asks why she's there. Pilar doesn't have any air conditioning, and it's too hot at her place. She thinks she has heat stroke. Catherine asks if Pilar wants to go to see a doctor. Pilar says she just needs to rest; then she asks if Catherine can bring her a piece of bread: "Or maybe toast. With a little bit of cinnamon." Lillian watches this all with undisguised shock and horror, as though Pilar had asked them to participate in a lesbian three-way. The help asking the employers to do something for them? That's crazy talk!
Just then, the phone rings. Unfortunately, the cell phone is resting atop Pilar's chest. Catherine gingerly picks up the phone, then wipes off the mouthpiece before answering. In the background, Lillian is covering her mouth with a handkerchief. Perhaps she, like Mason, worries that Pilar has been infected with the bubonic plague. Or possibly she's afraid that poverty is contagious. Anyway, after Catherine identifies herself to the caller, we see that it's Jayleen, who just wanted to let Catherine know that "for the six months [Will] was making love to [Jayleen], he called [Catherine] a 'cold bitch.'" Then she hangs up.
Commercials. Some blonde tries to convince me that she's worried about the security of her relationship with her boyfriend during the second season of Temptation Island. She'd be a little more convincing if she wasn't smiling like an idiot.
When we return, Catherine are Will are in bed, about as far apart as they can be from each other without curling up on the end tables. Catherine's sitting up in bed, and Will finally notices that she's not sleeping. She asks him to tell her about Jayleen. Will stupidly asks, "Who?" At this point, he's pretty lucky that Catherine tries to repress things, because a normal woman would have gone postal on him more than once by now. Catherine, though, just quietly reminds him that Jayleen is the woman he had an affair with for the last six months. She wants to know what Jayleen was like. He describes Jayleen as intelligent and ambitious. Catherine asks if he loved her. Will denies it. Catherine asks if it was just "a sex thing," then. Will says that it wasn't just sex. She asks what he said to Jayleen about her, and he tells her that they never really talked about her.
The day. Lily's puttering around a classroom after the bell rings when Henry comes up to confront her about breaking into his house. Lily apologizes, but whines that she was just trying to get to know who Henry was because he wouldn't tell her. Henry finally opens up about his home life. His parents are dead; his mom died when he was a child, his father of a heart attack last year. He and Tom have to work to survive and pay the bills. Henry got a scholarship and has to keep up the good grades in order to stay in school. And the stress of dealing with his slack-ass older brother while having to pretend that he can stand being around Jennifer Love Hewitt and Lacey Chabert is causing him to develop an alcohol abuse problem. Okay, not so much that last sentence. Lily tries to apologize again. Henry tells her not to worry about it: "Don't feel sorry for me. My parents may be dead, but at least they're not liars. I feel sorry for you. When it's time to wake up, let me know." Wow, that's a strangely venomous non-sequitur. Why would Henry be so angry about Lily's parents' lies? Oh, wait a minute. Let me just check something. Yes, according to my records, I have watched television before. Clearly, Henry blames whatever happened with his mother on Lily's family and is tied to them in some way. Henry stomps off.
As Mark Snow serenades us some more with The Vaguely Sinister Music Box Of Vague Mysteries, Lily reads through the additional documents that Henry gave her about Meredith. Again, it looks like the Greeleys didn't do so good a job of controlling the coverage about them.
Meanwhile, Boopsie is forcing Nate to model for a painting. The painting doesn't entirely suck out loud. I've seen worse hanging in museums, not that anybody has ever asked me for any critical opinions regarding art. Boopsie simpers about taking control of her life, then asks Nate if he's back on drugs. Uh duh. He denies it, though he's way past the point where he could be covering it up. I don't think there's any point to do this part of the dance anymore. Just act like you know he's doing drugs, because you do, and move to the step. There's a knock at the door. Nate answers it; it's Lily, who claims she was looking everywhere for him. I hope she didn't go to his usual haunts, unless she was interested in getting invitations to some rather intimate parties in dimly lit places. While Lily takes Nate aside to talk, Boopsie sneaks a peek inside Nate's jacket and finds a vial. It's full of powdered sugar, and this is bad because Nate's a diabetic, so she pours it out in the trash. Or possibly it's some other white powdery substance. And speaking from personal experience, druggies get really, really pissed when you dump their stash. I speak as the dumper, not the dumpee. Sorry, Mom. DARE just fucked with my head. In the other room, Lily is following up on Nate's comment to her before about the Phillip Parker mystery. Nate asks her if she knows about some other rumors about the Greeleys about the night Meredith disappeared. She hasn't, and neither have we. But she gets to hear them and we don't, because they cut away to another scene. Unfair!
So now it's Jayleen's turn to get a mysterious phone call. It's Catherine posing as a person from another local publishing company, claiming that they're interested in Jayleen as a potential VP of marketing. I would say that Jayleen is neither as intelligent nor as ambitious as Will claims if she hasn't already approached and isn't already networking with all the big local publishing companies. But Jayleen's immediately snowed and agrees to meet with her tomorrow at Bistro 45.
We pan over Henry's wall of photos, featuring several different shots of that one woman he had been focusing on earlier. It's Carly Simon! Henry thinks Carly Simon is his mom. Stalking celebrities is bad mojo. Wouldn't it be anti-climactic if it turned out after all that the Greeleys had nothing to do with Meredith's disappearance, and both Phillip and Henry are simply crazy? Anyway, it's not Carly Simon -- she just has the same hair. Henry walks in with his camera gear to see Tom in his room, looking at the photos. Didn't I warn him that this would happen? The people in the glowing box never listen to me when I tell them things, and then they always end up fighting. Henry is angry at Tom's intrusion. See? Fighting. Tom wonders why Henry has all these photos up and asks if Henry is looking for someone. Henry denies it. Tom says, "Good. Because I wouldn't want you to be tracking down somebody that we both know is dead." Carly Simon's not dead. She's remixin' it up with Ms. Jackson. Oh, Tom means their mom. Henry lies that it's a photo project for school. I don't think they teach stalking at Henry's school. He lives in Pasadena, not Glenoak. Still, Tom is satisfied and leaves.
Later that evening, Henry shows up on the McMansion's doorstep to apologize to Lily for being so mean earlier. Lily invites him in. She brings him up to her bedroom to tell him what she found out from Nate. Nate claimed that he had heard rumors while growing up (I would guess he'd have been around eight when this took place, so it's not like he was an infant or something) that Phillip Parker told the police that he had actually dropped Meredith off at the Greeley house and therefore he was not the last person to see her. If Meredith came to a bad end, it's possible that somebody in Lily's family may have been responsible. While the two of them are chatting, Catherine is surreptitiously watching the two of them through a window from the other side of the McMansion. Unlike Henry, she actually knows how to be surreptitious.
Later, Henry leaves the McMansion, and he's wearing a full-blown shit-eating grin. It's at this point that I conclude that Henry is totally playing Lily to get information about the Greeleys and has no real romantic interest in her. He gets into his car, and his giant grin is immediately wiped from his face when he looks to his right and is startled to see Catherine looking right into his passenger side window while holding their little foofy dog. I don't know exactly what breed it is, but I'm going to call it the McPoodle until somebody actually gives it a name. Catherine smiles and asks if he and Lily had fun. Henry recovers from the shock and says yes. Catherine tells him that she heard from Lily that he's looking for somebody. She asks him if he's looking for his mother, so she must have gotten information about Henry's Party Of Two status from the administrator/counselor/whatever. Henry says that his mother's dead. She responds, "But you are looking for somebody. Maybe I can help. I know just about everybody in this town." Then she smiles and bids him goodnight before walking away. Whether or not that statement was a threat or an offer is, of course, mysteriously vague. Regardless, Henry is absolutely terrified of Catherine. He's about to piss his pants.
The morning, the family is downstairs having their various breakfasts. Mason crudely asks Lily if she and Henry had sex last night. Will chastises him for his language. Mason pushes Lily to find out if Henry is her boyfriend, "or just [her] lover." Shut up, Mason. Lily ignores him and asks Pilar how she's feeling. Pilar is sitting down with her head resting on a table; she lies that she's feeling better. Will tells them all that he has an announcement. He explains to them all that George is stepping down as publisher of the newspaper and has named a successor. Catherine's back is turned as she fiddles with something else, thinking that she already knows what Will is going to say. But then Will says that George has named him as the publisher of the paper. Catherine spins around and looks at him in shock while the kids congratulate him. Catherine asks to speak with him in another room.
In the other room, Catherine's all, "What the hell? What about Robert?" Will explains that Robert jumped to conclusions about who was going to be named publisher. I still think George is partially responsible for stringing Robert along. The only real justification I can see for George requiring Will to keep it a secret from his only family was that he recognized that Robert was deliberately trying to make Will look bad in his handling of the Jayleen affair, and didn't want to give the guy time to try to sabotage Will's appointment. Catherine, however, concludes that George is deliberately trying to humiliate Robert in front of the newspaper's board, and orders Will to tell Robert before the meeting so that he doesn't make a fool of himself in public when he finds out. It's funny how everybody knows that Robert needs to be "handled" so that he doesn't make the family look like a bunch of morons. Except, of course, for Robert, who thinks he's shooting for the stars.
Back at Boopsie's place, Boopsie has managed to convince Nate to allow her to slather his head with plaster of Paris and make a mold. Then she can use a variety of different art techniques to decorate it. Does she mean decorate the mold, or make sculptures using the mold and decorate those? Normally I'd guess the latter, but it's Boopsie, so who can tell? She covers Nate's entire head, leaving him with a straw in his mouth so that he can breathe. She tells him that the plaster will take about forty minutes to dry, so she's going to run out to the art store and pick up some supplies and be right back. She leaves Nate there alone, no doubt hoping to himself that Boopsie doesn't encounter any of those Scientologists with those self-esteem questionnaire pamphlets, because then she might not ever return to take the mask off.
At the McMansion, Catherine checks the time and synchronizes her watch to prepare for Showdown At The Trendy, Overpriced Café against the woman who would take liberties with her man. It's thirty minutes until the scheduled meeting. Pilar rushes in and throws up in the nearby sink. And just in case you want to know, yes, we do get to see the vomit. Thanks ever so much. Pilar asks Catherine if she'll take her to the doctor. Catherine looks put out for a moment, then walks over to a closet, pulls out a baseball bat, and orders Pilar to get in the car. No, she's not going to take Pilar out somewhere and beat her to death. At least not in this episode.
At school, Lily and Jennie wander up to Henry at his locker. Jennie Cordelias, "I'm sorry about your parents being dead and everything," as Lily stares daggers at her. "That really sucks." Then she tries to find out if Tom is dating anybody. Tactless, table for one. Really, I think Robert is just the man for Jennie. Lily manages to get Jennie to bug off so she can talk to Henry. Lily tells him that she has to find out what happened to Meredith. Henry agrees and says they'll do "whatever it takes."
Cut to Robert in his office with Will. Robert pulls out a couple of cigars, which he'll probably end up using to compulsively burn his own flesh once he finds out how screwed he is. Robert asks Will what's wrong, and tactlessly tells him that he "looks like crap." See? Robert and Jennie forever, in all their statutory rape glory. Will says that there's something important he has to tell Robert. Robert assumes it's about Jayleen not dropping the suit; he tells Will not to worry about it, they'll do whatever they need to do to beat it. Will explains that's not what he needs to talk about. He says that he's been talking to George about the future of the paper. Robert looks concerned, but we cut away before Will drops the bomb.
Catherine pulls into the parking lot of the Bistro 45 with Pilar barely conscious on the passenger side. She checks her watch as a car rolls up to the valet and Jayleen gets out. Slightly pretentious orchestra music begins to play as we enter our final montage of lunacy for the episode.
Meanwhile, Nathan is still sitting around with his head encased in plaster. He stumbles around the apartment, unable to see. He finds his way to his jacket, though it's now hanging from a coat hook rather than on the bed where it was earlier. He finds the vial of narcotic goodness and yanks it out.
We cut to Robert, who is staring out of the window of his office. He loosens his tie, then turns and walks over to his desk. Then he grabs the keyboard of his computer and breaks it in half across his knee. How butch! He trashes his office and sweeps everything off his desk. That's what flat surfaces are for in soap operas, you know. Sweeping everything off in a melodramatic rage.
We cut back to Nate. He unscrews the top of his vial, then takes the straw out of his mouth and manages to get it up one of his nostrils. He tries to use the straw to snort the cocaine out of the vial. Man, he's jonesing. I can't imagine he'd be able to suck cocaine all the way up a normal-length straw. Not that I've ever tried or anything. There's nothing left in the vial anyway, thanks to Boopsie, so Nate starts to cough and sputter. He freaks out and can't figure out what's going on because he can't see. How embarrassing would it be for him to suffocate and die in this fashion? He'd definitely end up in "News of the Weird." He pulls the mask off in a rage, ruining it, then has an angry fit when he discovers that his vial is empty.
Back at the bistro, Catherine grabs the baseball bat and gets out of the car. She walks over to Jayleen's vehicle and starts bashing the windshield with the bat in slow motion. Pilar regains some semblance of consciousness and witnesses her boss freaking out, no doubt regretting ignoring Rosa's warnings about Catherine's lunacy. Catherine bashes the windshield about twenty times, then calmly returns to her car and takes off, presumably to take Pilar to the doctor.
Later at the McMansion, Catherine is unwinding with a drink (much like she did after she went postal on her dining room in the pilot) when there's a knock at the door. She opens it to find Henry there. She smiles and invites Henry inside, but tells him that Lily's not at home. Henry nervously tells Catherine that he's here to see her, not Lily. He haltingly spills the beans, telling Catherine that his mother's not dead and that he believes that she's living somewhere in Pasadena. He's here to ask Catherine if she'll help him find her. Catherine smiles by way of response. Who's playing whom? Given that the ratings for this episode are down nearly a point from the previously already-meager ratings, cross your fingers in hope that we'll ever find out.
week: Robert brings Jayleen to a Greeley family party as his date. Henry spends the night at the McMansion, and once he's in bed, Catherine comes in and offers to be "like a mother" to him. I don't know about you, but my mother never looked at me like that. And she certainly never tried to kiss me like that, either.