Consequences Of Falling

Harrison and Clarence are in their hospital room, now known as the Church of Ann-Margret, comparing favorite memories of Christmases past. Both of them are wearing skiing caps, presumably to hide their chemotherapy-induced hair loss. Actually, Clarence has traded his in for a Santa hat. He looks like the Grinch. Harrison tells this "important story" about getting a baseball glove and a batting tee from his dad for Christmas when he was in Little League and then practicing with him outside the whole day. The synthesized violins were playing pretty high for the whole story, so I'm guessing we should pay attention.

So then Clarence tells this raised-in-a-Walmart home-spun story about him and his brothers and sisters waking his mom up one Christmas with waffles in the shape of the Star of Bethlehem and giving her a fake diamond ring.

They joke about how bad the cafeteria food is, and then Clarence dies. Yep, that's right. Oh God, do I have to describe it? Okay, well, first Clarence doesn't answer Harrison, so Harrison is all, "Clarence, quit fooling around." Then there's a shot of Clarence looking really washed out and pale and not moving at all, and Harrison keeps going, "Clarence? Clarence?" You get the idea. thing you know, they've moved the body to the morgue and someone's in there packing up the angels.

Well hello, Alley Mills, Harrison's lesbian mom! Who, by the way, is looking really cute in this red v-neck sweater with a starched men's shirt underneath. Her hair is blonder, and she's got this whole Meg Ryan-as-Tintin thing happening. She's sitting there at Harrison's bedside, listening to him obsess about Clarence's death. Clarence's death has left Harrison a cynical bitter teen. She tells Harrison that she was talking to Clarence's mother, who said that even though Clarence died too soon, he really did have "a wonderful life." Harrison dismisses his mother's perspective as random crap. Mrs. John reminds him of meeting "God." Harrison tells her that he's decided that Ann-Margret was just some escapee from the psychiatric ward. Nurse Dan comes in to get Harrison to walk around and circulate his blood. Harrison doesn't want to, because there's no point. They wheel him to the hallway anyway and try to get him to walk to the end of the hall and back. There's a zoom-in/pull-back to indicate that even walking up and down the hallway is a challenge, and Harrison starts crying, saying that he's too sad and hurt to keep going. Nurse Dan says they'll try again later, and they take him back to his room. Alley Mills crosses her arms and leans against the wall to indicate that she is "concerned." See you later, Alley Mills, Harrison's lesbian mom!

Okay, wouldn't now be a great time to switch to a nice Mary Cherry or Nicole subplot that's full of black humor, bitchery, and pop-culture references and which, more importantly, has nothing to do with any of this? Yes! Does it happen? No! This whole episode is all about Harrison and his cancer, which we know isn't even going to kill him. Harrison is dreaming about hanging out on a baseball field in his robe and hospital jammies, playing with a glove while his father walks through the field, tossing a baseball up and down. It's one of those "we never played ball together" hallucinatory confrontations between an absent father and son. Last time I saw this, it was Noah Hunter doing it on , and boy, was it riveting. Well, actually, by "riveting" I mean "the opposite of riveting," and if you are scratching your head and wondering who is Noah Hunter, that pretty much explains how ineffective "we never played ball together" is at establishing meaningful character exposition. Well. it turns out that Harrison's dad never got him the glove. Harrison invented the story to "protect" his father. "I had to make up the wonderful times in my life," says Harrison. Um, seeing as how in just a few minutes Clarence is about to walk you through a world into which you'd never been born, shouldn't you ease up on the dream sequences? A little goes a long way. Just saying.

Harrison is woken by a visit from Carmen and Lily. Lily tells him it's Christmas Eve and that he "looks great." "Thanks, Zuzu," says Harrison. Yes, for those of you who didn't get it already with the "Clarence" business, Zuzu was the name of one of Jimmy Stewart's daughters. Okay, I get it! We're paying homage to It's A Wonderful Life. Let me order a Carvel cake or something in honor of this brilliant example of post-modernism. Zuzu/Lily brings him a present: some Buddha beads, "a positive harbinger of change." She puts them in his robe pocket so they'll "stimulate his chakras." Thank you for doing your leftist New-Age skank routine, now shuffle on. Carmen and Harrison have a tender "hey!" moment that even I have to admit is a sweet moment for both those actors. Time passes, Lily and Carmen leave. Sam and Brooke appear. Brooke is in civilian clothes, having been released from the hospital for her eating disorder. That was fast! They found a Habitrail set at a antique shop and they filled it with eight pet mice, one named after each of this friends. Mary Cherry and Nicole are included. Um, aren't they all supposed to be warring? Nevertheless, Sam explains that "you can look over and when your friends aren't there, in a weird way they are."

Now, I'm sure that some of you think this is a sweet gesture, and I have to admit that, the first time around, even I thought that these hamsters were adorable. But what the hell are Sam and Brooke thinking by giving Harrison a frickin' RESPONSIBILITY while he's trying to devote all his energy to fighting a life-threatening disease? There is nothing loving about basically forcing someone who can barely walk to change hamster-cage litter every three days or so. Not to mention that no matter how on top of the litter changing you are, you still can't get rid of that hamster stench that fills the room So as Harrison is lying there in this chemotherapy haze puking his guts out, he can also surround himself with hamster stench. Oh, but they're so cuteto look at. It's not like you can cuddle with them in bed or get any comfort from them whatsoever. You can just watch them and change their cages. It's like Brooke and Sam are ultimately saying, "Here, even though you can't be around us, you can still take shit from us." ["Plus, hello -- he's in the hospital. I'm so sure the staff would allow rodents. Not." -- Sars]

Oh, and then they tell him that neither of them is his bone-marrow type. And they tell him that they've "set up a web site" to find a donor. Right -- I'm surfing the web, and some web site I stumble onto tells me to donate my bone marrow to this sidekick. I'm so sure. Maybe they got Donna Martin Originals to put up a link. You know, that website that Donna started that became a smash the second it went live with no promotion whatsoever? It's just no trouble at all to set these things up and have them picked up by the search sites within hours when you're an earnest teen who knows HTML coding.

But what Harrison reacts to here is not the hamster stench and otherwise hammy attempts to appear concerned; he's angry that they haven't provided him with a "Clarence" hamster. "Right," says Harrison. "He's gone. And instantly forgotten. When people die it's like they were never here." Dude, he was a guest star. Chill.

Sam's hair is not much of an issue tonight, as it's simply peeking straight down out of her fuchsia ski cap -- one of the same caps, I believe, as the one she wore when she "ran away" last year and had to look "street." She's all, "Harrison, we are so sorry. We are going to run out right now and buy you a Clarence." Like he needs a ninth hamster. Whatever. Harrison wants to be alone. The girls leave, and some Lilith reject sings a Christmas-themed ballad.

Before you can say, "Teen suicide (don't do it)!" Harrison is on the roof of the hospital, looking down at the long distance to the busy traffic on the ground. He's about to jump when Clarence appears to him. Damn, does Clarence look fine with hair. Harrison thinks he's hallucinating, but Clarence insists that he's his guardian angel. But he's in training, and he doesn't get his wings unless he saves Harrison blah blah blah. He begs Harrison not to jump. Harrison explains that he's causing so much trouble by upsetting his friends and bankrupting his mom, and he just wants to "cut to the inevitable." Clarence offers to buy him a hamster to cheer him up. C'mon, Harrison, say it. We know it's coming. Just say it.

"I wish I'd never been born," says Harrison.

POV camera stunt of Harrison falling to the ground, and then a shot of Harrison lying on the sidewalk, and I swear to God he or someone on the crew spent a few minutes making sure he was lying in some position that would show off his firm protruding buttocks in the best possible way, because I have never noticed Harrison's butt before this moment. It's snowing. Clarence pulls up on a Razor scooter. Harrison wakes up. "Where am I?" he asks. Clarence points to a sign above them that says, "Tunaville." Then they show a lot of people in retro costume stumbling around a la Edward Scissorhands.

Okay, remember the set from "Fall On Your Knees"? The Edwardian town at night with all those snow flurries? Okay, we're back there. Harrison can't believe he's back in Los Angeles. "It never snows in Los Angeles," says Harrison. "It does now," says Clarence. Harrison tries to find Lily's Buddha beads in his robe pocket to prove that he exists. He can't find them. "Trust me on this," says Clarence. "You never happened." Harrison looks around and realizes that he's in a place that used to be called "Christmas Land." Clarence explains that April Tuna bought it and turned it into a fish market. Harrison can't believe that Harrison-less Tuna is a successful business owner. April Tuna enters and starts being cruel to her workers. Harrison asks Clarence how she got that way. Clarence explains that April's ruthless ambition was quenched when she became president -- and she only became president because Harrison pulled out of the race. The Harrison-less April Tuna has never known acceptance, so she takes out her frustrations on everyone around her.

we see Nicole and Mary Cherry. They're both whores with mullets. This is because a Harrison-less Mary Cherry would have never known the love of Harrison, or any other touch of human kindness for that matter. She would have become a prostitute, having never known the sanctity of her sexuality. They're cheap whores, too. They only charge a penny. They don't recognize Harrison, and they come on to him and tease him about having the last name of "John." Sugar Daddy is their pimp. He comes out and fails to recognize Harrison as well. Harrison asks about Nicole. Clarence asserts that Nicole would have turned out that way anyway. Heh! Not to mention that it's about the time they addressed the fact that the Harrison/Mary Cherry thing ever happened.

April Tuna enters again and chases Mary Cherry and Nicole off, claiming that there are "no whores in Tunaville." She mentions that they will not be welcome at the Kennedy High ten-year reunion that night. Harrison asks Clarence about the reunion. "Seek and ye shall find," says Clarence, bringing him back to Kennedy.

The first people to enter the reunion are Josh and Lily. Lily is a big-haired fundamentalist, and Josh is a Republican senator from California. Lily reminisces over the Young Republican meetings she attended while at Kennedy. She checks out her old locker and finds a bong inside. Whether the bong is one of her old bongs or whether future Kennedy youth of a Harrison-less world smoke lots of marijuana, I cannot say. They praise Jesus. Oh, and they also have a really horrible kid named Missy Dawn who looks like Bad Seed girl. Missy Dawn tells Lily that Josh was watching porn on pay-per-view. Josh explains that he did it once, "and then I prayed." Lily stomps off to go graze at the buffet.

Clarence explains that when Harrison and Lily didn't have sex that time last season, that proved to Lily that sex was sacred. In a Harrison-less world, she didn't learn that lesson and had a baby with Josh at eighteen, became his wife, and started wearing fur due to her bitter discontent at her lot in life. Whatever. I'd think Lily would know to use condoms or something the first time she had sex. I mean, she made a big stink about being allowed to pass them out last year. Anyway, this bitter discontent makes Lily into one of those Lady Macbeth types who subvert their own ambitions and drive their husbands to become ruthlessly successful.

They take a time-travel detour for no good reason, and Clarence shows him what happens ten years later when Josh has been elected president and he blows up the world. I'm not going to bother going into how dumb this scene is. The only thing redeeming about it is that Tamara Mello has brought her Pomeranian Ashby on as a guest star. That dog is so cute. It should totally make more guest appearances. I could live with the loss of Delta Burke if we had that dog every other week. They even put him in the cutest pink outfit.

They come out of that fantasy and back to the reunion. Sam enters the hallway with her husband Jimmy, who seems like the perfect husband. And we all know what people who seem like perfect husbands always turn into, especially in a dystopian fantasy sequence, don't we? "She got married," says Harrison. "And not to me." Uh, Harrison? Aren't you listening? You don't exist. Of course she didn't marry you. Harrison complains nevertheless, and makes a crack about Brooke organizing the wedding and being the maid of honor. "Brooke wasn't in the wedding," says Clarence. "Brooke is dead!"

They go into another fantasy sequence and show Brooke's wake, which occurred while the Kennedy kids were still in high school. Her Glamazon-uniform-clad body was laid out in Chemistry class. "She wanted it that way," says Clarence, not explaining any further. I guess they just didn't have the budget to rent a church, or at least a funeral home. Mary Cherry drops by the casket and moans that Brooke is finally thinner than her. Sam comes by the casket, stoned out of her gourd. Harrison protests that Sam and Brooke were too strong to have given into to their pain like that. He doesn't want to see anymore, so he runs out of the room.

Clarence explains that there's no escaping the "consequences of falling," and Harrison finds himself in his hospital room, witnessing a scene that took place between Brooke and her father while Harrison was passed out from one of his chemo treatments and Brooke was still at the eating-disorder clinic down the hall. Okay, I thought that Harrison didn't exist? What are they doing having a fantasy sequence where he does exist? Clarence explains that this all happened three weeks before Harrison "fell." Anyway, Brooke tells her father that she doesn't think Harrison is going to live. Mike, appearing only momentarily in an otherwise parent-free episode, asks Brooke if she thinks Harrison wants to live. Brooke is all, "Of course he wants to live. Everyone wants to live." Mike is all, "Do you?"