Props to legendary film director The Great Blair Treu. Smoke the one for me, you beautiful, beautiful wo/man. Donatello!
The Naked Light Bulb Of Garishly Illuminated Lost Innocence shines harshly down on a hand holding a needle in a close-up so intense even Judith Light skin care infomercials are like, "Right. Epidermis. Check. Jesus. Yank it back, Asimov. It's not freakin' Innerspace." A grunty shot of the grunty face of "The Cancellation Death Knell Of" J. A"lfred" Prufrock indicates that he's been under some duress lo these last nine or so TV seconds, and SkinCam rounds Jim's face and moves to a tight shot of his increasingly Rorschach-like upper back. The tattoo guy we met last week (did he have a name? It's too bad there isn't some kind of central resource where someone records the details of each episode in painstaking detail so that…ah, forget it) stands behind Jim, shirtless except for an elaborate scarf wrapped around his neck, because he's hurting inside and he never had a puppy. He inks in an outline on Jim's back as Jim grimaces and sweats and goes through the natural emotions of one experiencing illicit desert manlove (er, I mean, "legitimate artistic body decoration") while bent over a chair and begging for mercy. Okay, I change my vote back to "illicit desert manlove." Buffalo Bill The Tattoo Shill wins first line privilege this week, though if this episode is anything like last week's, I suspect that the first and all subsequent lines will resemble something along the screenwriting patois of, "Remember that one x-variable thing of shady origin and failed resolution that happened to either us or one of the other characters at some point last week? That was cool." Let's go see! Bill mumbles the pearl, "Pain is the Miracle-Gro of life." Right. And "love springs forth like the Chia-Pet of our dreams." I mean, as long as we're all quoting from the All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In KinderGardening coffee table book Bill has clearly left open to Page Gay somewhere just off-camera. And, I mean, I don't even see a coffee table in that place!
Buffalo Bill The Name-Brand Compost Shill admires his work through gritted teeth that hold a cigarette in place, as I lunge to close my window (my community has a neighborhood watch program for kinky naked bondage porn, and I'm about to have the amber light turned in my direction) and check my closed captioning (because what? WHAT?) on his incomprehensible line, "This is looking good." Jim hazards some conversation, asking, "You ever do any serpents?" Bill doesn't miss a beat before volleying back, "I did a lawyer once." Oh! Rimshot! If you will. Is that a punch line from the "Kidsday Joke Page" Sunday insert of the Push Times, as submitted by the students of Push Elementary's second graders? Because if so, I think I've got a pretty good idea where that 400-pound gorilla is gonna sleep, don't you, Bill? Don't you just? Just plain ungimpy enough for his fetish needs, Bill hands Jim a belt and insists, "Bite this. It helps." Man, if I had a nickel. I could give you the million myself and we could turn this off and all go out for pizza and body art. Jim voluntarily places the belt in his own mouth and resumes the third-degree (Kelvin, I'm just unbored enough to report) softball questions: "I mean, any serpent tattoos? On people? Did you ever draw a tattoo like that on a man?" Bill confirms that he has indeed, and Jim follows up by asking that man's name, causing Bill to get trapped in the emotional spin cycle and tilt his "unbalanced load" light on, answering harshly, "I don't answer questions while I work." Not unless there's a wacky lawyer quip to be made at the other end of it, eh, Bill? Hey, Bill? What do you call a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand? Not enough sand! How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb? What did the lawyer say to the blonde? To the Polack? To the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman? Oh, here's one: a lawyer, a tattoo artist, and an IRS agent walk into the unemployment office…
Jim, a pointy object plunged in his back and a strap of leather cinched across his vocal cords, continues multitasking: "This belt tastes funny." "Funnier'n a lawyer joke?" Bill's eyes seem to ask. But he cops to why the culinary bouquet might be different than those of the other belts Jim is accustomed to eating, reasoning, "It's laced with peyote." Bill is soon to deem the squirming Jim "a real chatty Cathy," which is a pretty dangerous-sounding threat coming from a crazed recluse who, if Jim doesn't tread lightly with the questioning, is going to burst forth with the even more slicing epithet, "Mind your own beeswax, Mister Looky-Loo." Nonsensical banter indicating that Affleck was poised to leave the monkeys with the typewriters to finish off the script until he remembered that he was the monkey at the end of this book ensues, Bill asking if his trailer is a library and then telling Jim he's not allowed to talk in there anyway. He tells Jim, "Settle down…what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." And the look of resignation that passes over Jim's face communicates the message as well as the shoddy direction will allow, "And if all else fails, I'll just come back and have him change it to 'Wino Forever.'"
From an egregiously self-conscious close-up (an "EXTREME CLOSE-UP," if you will) and a studied lack of elegance in segueing into a dream sequence (something starting with Madonna and ending with the unfortunate "Look at the unit on that guy," I'm afraid), every trick in the Wayne's World Guide To Cinematography Tricks has been laid bare here. And we do indeed move into the blue-tinged past, the hand of a young mulleted boy we quickly guess is Young Jim Prufrock sitting in the passenger seat of his father's car, removing the cigarette lighter from the dashboard. The man to him -- the father -- warns Jim in his best I'm-a-dad-when-dads-were-called-pappies-and-pappies-knew-best voice, "That's plenty hot. Don't get too close to the flame." Young Jim Prufrock touches his finger to the tip of the lighter anyway, discovering -- wait for it -- that it's hot! Jim Senior licks a handkerchief (all part of that same parental canon of entitlement, like my mother licking her thumb and rubbing it against a smudge on my face and for some reason deeming that "clean," or shoving her hand inside a new pair of suit pants in the middle of a crowded department store and announcing, "What do you mean? There's plenty of extra room in here!") and wraps it around Jim's finger, announcing, "You're a brave boy, son." No, he's an idiot. "We Prufrocks have always been able to handle the heat." Dude. If Jim is twenty-nine in 2002, this sequence would technically be happening sometime in the early '80s. So why does "the generic past" have to include Jim's father talking like "News on the March" and telling his foolhardy son that, consarnit, if he don't behave like a proper gentlemen, see, the whole country'll go to pot, the railroad'll never get out to the California Territories, the Whigs'll stop supporting the gold standard, and this radio show that's on about aliens attacking could just turn out to be the real McCoy after all! Anyway, the plotkerchief Jim's father wraps around his hand has the monogram "AMP" on it. And probably tons of snot as well.
A repeated we're-coming-out-the-dream-sequence-just-in-case-you-didn't-hear-me-click-my-heels-three-times-and-look-at-the-unit-on-that-guy echo of "handle the heat, handle the heat" brings us to the previously-seen previouslys of the four things that have happened up until now that warrant such a deliriously repeated set of previouslys: Fire. Taudrey. Bodnick telling Jim that the heat could kill a man in four hours. Bodnick repeating that. Faxes. Bodnick getting stabbed. Demonhead Flats. Serpent tattoo. Circling vultures sitting on a tree branch, waiting patiently to swoop down and pick over the rotting carcass of the whole idea of ABC's Thursday night line-up. And those birds look ready for it, too; you know you're in some trouble in the early going of an episode when the most believable lines of dialogue you've been able to foster so far are "caw" and "caw."
A voice-over comes out of the morass and informs Jim in the voice of Bill, "The man you seek, his name is Oswald Wilkes, and his soul is as twisted as the serpent on his arm." Jim wakes up in his bed at Martha's Quirk 'n' Go with a start, gives a quick "…and it was only a dream!" sigh, sits up, and looks back at his sheets to notice the words "Death & Taxes" written in backwards Spinal Tap font on the bed sheets. "Htaed" and "Sexat" caused redrum! Because that's the cliché about the only things we can be sure of in life. Death and taxes. Hee. "Sexat." A quick pan to Jim's back displays a huge and bloody tattoo with the two words (and that one accusatory ampersand) splashed from shoulder to shoulder, and the director of Memento fills out his tax forms, ticking the boxes for "Caucasian" and "insanely rich one-trick pony" before perusing the sheet, quietly muttering in a delightfully twee British accent, "Now, where's the box you tick if you'd like to sue?"
Opening credits: Yeah. This show. Speaking of things people "write off."
A title card reading "The Color Of…" appears on screen, floating on top of a big bowl of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. We fade into a never-before-seen shot of bleached (no!) desert (stop it!) sunshine (why, Djb, must you turn this recap into a house of lies?), the accompanying soundtrack being the Ezekiel 25:17 Bible radio station we've heard in episodes past. Anyone have a read on what passage that really is? Is it significant in solving the mystery? Or has that cash already been reallocated to form the financial base of the production staff's severance pay? Fuck the clue, "the color of…" is clearly pink, for the slips that paper LivePlanet's hallways tonight. Right. Anyway, some clever irising (check me out with the D.W. Griffith School Of Legit Film Knowledge diploma…where have you gone, Mary Pickford? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you!) reshapes my screen into the aspect of one staring through binoculars at a lonely desert street. Into the binoculars' range walks a crazy hairy homeless loony (or at least an actor convincingly portraying one), pushing a cart of Loony Tools for to befit his Loony Yearnings.
We cut to the holder of the binoculars, which turns out to be the lead man of The Three Product-Placed Ross-Dress-For-Less Suit-Wearers Of The Apocalypse, who we'll call Huey for a more hyphen-less point of reference. While Dewey and Louie waste the whole day swimming through vast piles of cash with their Uncle Scrooge in the room with all the loose swimming money in it, Huey shows up and works an honest day, goddammit. That's why he gets to be first. And in the end, the only thing you even have to gain from that whole damn tangent is having the Duck Tales theme song stuck in your head for the rest of the week. Sorry. Oh, and "whoo-oo."
Bird-watching, if his primary goal is tracking the mysterious movements of the rare and elusive Loony Bird, Huey narrates for our benefit: "Shadrack, picking up cans." Shhh! You'll scare him away! The Loony Bird is so beautiful in its natural environment, isn't it? We cut to another shot of Dewey and Louie (oh, never mind the money-swimming theory…they're all there) responding, "A destitute simpleton. Inconsequential." Dewey or Louie (whatever. They were stupid nicknames anyway) takes a slug of what appears to be vitamin water of some kind and thinks about giving someone that damn bullshit electrolytes speech about how it's better for you than water. But he saves himself from the wrath of a considerable beverage rage I didn't know I had in me by announcing into his cell phone, "What do you say we grab some Coronas?" Corona LLC cuts a check, and it's not enough to cover the cost of building a whole casino set for a show that's getting axed tomorrow. And the juice flavor is fucking orange and we fucking get it.
Three shiny black cars drive past Shadrack, who pushes his Loony Bin off the street and into a sandy nook. He grabs a shovel and starts digging. In fast diggy motion! This camera work has blown my mind! I think I'm seeing double! Good thing I'm playing the role of Guy From The Past who was cryogenically frozen five minutes before TV was invented and woke up just in time for this episode of Push, Nevada to start. Good thing for that. Inside a bag inside Shadrack's Loony Bin, we suddenly spy ourselves a dusty copy of The Holy Bible -- signed by the author -- which Shadrack peers at nervously. He peers around. He peers at the Bible. Let's try a mating call and see if we can get his attention. Hey, Loony Bird! Caw! Caw!
I have lost my mind.
Jim's Vintagemobile lumbers into town, Jim stating definitively into his cell phone, "Oswald Wilkes." He spells it, because no one with a fourth-grade education has the faintest idea of how to spell the last name shared by a man who assassinated a standing president. "Pull up his 1040s for the past five years and check with the Department of Justice for any criminal history." Like the whole president-killing thing, for example. But there's more multitasking to be done, Jim adding, "As a matter of fact, do the same for Silas Bodnick." He doesn't spell it, so that must be the name of the guy who did in McKinley. Wait. Was McKinley assassinated? Maybe if we wait around long enough, we can ask Jim's dad, as flashbacks indicate he was alive during that long-gone period of American history. ["Or we can wait for a character named Sirhan Czolgosz to show up." -- Sars] He threatens to wrap up his call once more, but just at this moment he sees Taudrey walk past his car, and he mumbles, "Mary." Odd, with a name like Taudrey, but a man in love can sure do some crazy things. She's wearing black sunglasses and wearing a strappy black sundress (is there such a thing as that?), and Jim continues on, "Mary…forget it, I don't have a full name." No last name, eh? Of course you do. It's "Horne."
Back in the Department Of Wasted Tertiary Characters Who Are So Far Above This Crap That They Need Space Suits And External Oxygen Supplies, Grace stands behind Jim's desk moving files around and asks him, "Are you still not coming back here? Your inbox is filling up." Oh, man. Tell it to my boss. Or just read about it in The New Yorker (long story. Email me…I'll tell you). Jim responds that he's at Silas Bodnick's funeral, and Grace responds with her level voice which is equal parts apathy and lots more apathy, advising, "You may want to call Mr. Glassman." Jim knows CPA Schnook must be mad enough to eat a hoof, but defends himself that "something's happening here." Grace changes tacks by telling Jim that his ex-wife called again (okay, wait. I'm not kidding for a second. Is this last week's episode? Maybe I just forgot to tape the new one. I'm totally not kidding). Jim's the only person surprised that she called again, and I mean, why would he be? The outgoing IRS central voicemail message must be, "If you're Jim's ex-wife, please leave a message after the tone. Everyone else, shut up and go buy Quicken." I know it's not April and all, but it's a bit ridiculous. No one files quarterly in Nevada? Grace goes on to explain that his ex-wife called requesting the key to Jim's house. Jim asks how she sounded, and Grace ponders before volleying back, "Sober." Another few lines of this stilted dialogue, and she's going to be the only one. Me, I'm going out with the suit guys for Coronas.
Jim ends the call and gets out of the car. A transition shot of the bright, blaring sun (aren't we only supposed to be looking at that with, like, a shoebox and a pinhole?) dissolves into the exterior of a pristine funeral home. The whole cast of characters saunters into the parking lot, including the truck driver named "B.R.B" we met in Episode One, accompanying a bawling bit of trash we recognize as the woman from the Polaroids inside the man's truck. Jim interrupts this private moment between hick and trash to offer the woman a monogrammed handkerchief, and dabbing behind her H&M sunglasses, she repeatedly says, "Thank you. Thank you so very much." She advances the plot in a sentence (because, when in doubt, throw new characters at the…oh, we've discussed all this), asking Jim, "Will you be coming to the burial?" God, what were they, brothers? Jim asks when it is, and Hick elaborates, "Looks like tomorrow, now. Seems they're having a little trouble getting Caleb Moore to burn. Boys have been too busy to dig ol' Silas's grave." A quick cut to an outdoor funeral pyre shows two men staring in at a flaming room, one of them observing, "Damn. That boy is cold." Y'all know what's even funnier than that little-known comedy genre called "cremation humor"? Actual death.
Taudrey stands alone at the outskirts of funeraldom, Jim approaching and bidding her a good morning. Isn't it, though? She's distraught. She asks him if might happen to have another handkerchief, and he produces a twin monogrammed hankie and makes the loaded observation, "I didn't know you and Silas were close." Taudrey overenunciates each and every letter of her one line, "It's a small town. One gets to know most everyone." Jim asks once after Oswald Wilkes. Oh, wait! Oswald killed Kennedy! Wilkes killed Lincoln! Has this already hit the forums? If not, I'm the smartest. And Bodnick killed McKinley. There you go. A Brief History Of America. Either way, Taudrey ignores his question completely and poses one of her own: "Do you always carry two handkerchiefs?" Jim's got his answer at the ready: "Three, actually." Wow. That's a lot of snot, right there. But he explains his reasoning -- "my father taught me…always monogrammed, always pressed" -- and we cut back to a Ye Olde Dad flashback in the car, Ye Olde Dad himself explaining, "Sign of a gentleman. And you can never tell when one might come back to you." Back in the present, Taudrey attempts to return it to Jim because, in reality, other people's handkerchiefs suffer from the drawback of being filled with other people's snot, but he declines to take it. He keeps digging: "You never told me your last name." Coy, this one is. She doesn't take the bait, turning on the line, "I'll see you around, Jim Prufrock." He turns orange with embarrassment. Shadrack pushes his Loony Bin into the frame for no reason. Jim walks to his car and finds a flat. He gazes at the trunk and visualizes a zany, red-drenched shot of a spare tire inside it. But his reverie of his one Goodyear is broken by the blaring horn of Hick's truck (I told y'all last week, they just loooove pulling on that damn cord-chain thing), who pulls up and asks if Jim has a spare. Jim lies, apparently, and says he does not, hopping in the truck because the script says it's time for him to do so.
Truck, interior. Jim sits in the passenger seat, Trash sitting on his lap because there's no room to sit somewhere over the other fourteen wheels somewhere. She asks Jim if he likes the pictures, and he explains that he saw them the last time his car broke down in the desert. As Hick vamps about how the heat "will kill a man," Jim's eyes wander around the dashboard and come to rest on a handwritten sheet of truck deliveries, followed by dollar figures. Each of the deliveries is listed to "Versailles." Oh, my God. Do you think it's possible the casino might be involved in this crazy, mixed-up plot somehow? Speechless!
Currying favor once more with the fine folks at local law enforcement, we find Jim banging his head up against the walls of justice, standing at the front desk of the sheriff's station and barking, "Oswald Wilkes!" Why would he even go back there? Sheriff Relaxo sits with his feet up, cross-examining where Jim could have come across this information. He doesn't think some tattoo artist is a reliable source of information, but Jim rather begs to differ: "You now have a witness to the murder and a positive identification of the murderer. It is a start." Sheriff Relaxo gets up and does that now-where-do-you-think-you're-going-in-such-a-hurry-junior fat-cop swagger around the room, passing behind Jim and explaining that the tattoo artist is "not really a central figure in the community," turning on Jim when he sees the tattoo sweating through his button-down. He vamps, "Laid some ink on you, did he?" Is that tattoo artist lingo? If so, they should probably confine their instances of using such expressions to their in-house newsletter, and maybe when they get together every year for TattooCon in Vegas. Me, I don't want to hear a thing more about it. Jim wants to know why such adventures in, uh, ink-laying should be germane to the investigation, and Sheriff Relaxo is temporarily not as dumb as he looks, asking, "He still use peyote to cut the pain?" Jim freaks that two people have been murdered and no one seems to care, and the fight with Sheriff Relaxo escalates to where the cop leans across the desk and bellows, "I have an eyewitness account from a known drug addict. That's you. And I have a name from one of the few miscreants we have here in this community." Ouch. Jim explains his job again and paints himself as a noble public servant, and he leaves in a huff as Liz Vassey gets off her one line: "Regis is on." Shut up, cross-pollinating free advertising. At least this channel doesn't have The Other Half.
Jim hits the parking lot and his cell phone rings. It's Grace, and the news is not good: "I couldn't find either of their 1040s." Jim's not overly surprised, rationalizing, "Criminals frequently don't file." But wait! There's more! "I also did something else. I went to the federal database, and I did a 7C search on the entire town." Jim really clunkily explains away this development and reminds us just how "about math" this show continues to be, sounding alarmed: "That's the most exhaustive search we have, and only for the most serious issues we face. I've certainly never done one. I don't think anyone in our office has ever done one." He thinks on it: "Ira okayed it?" No. She asks if he wants to know what she discovered and please sweet baby Jesus get on with it. Grace: "No one in Push, Nevada has filed an income tax return in seventeen years." The camera pulls back and leaves Jim standing alone on the sand, holding his phone all dumbfounded. If anyone's looking for me, I'll be doing a 7C search on this episode's script, looking for trace elements of interesting dialogue that might have accidentally blown off a nearby Sopranos script that shared a table at Coffee Bean.
Nah. It's clear. Good thing for that test, though.
A qu-qu-qu-quick shot of the two men at Pyre For Hire watching C-C-C-Caleb M-M-M-Moore not b-b-b-burning dissolves to a cock-eyed shot of a people-less room where a funeral service recently seems to have taken place. We're dumped finally back outside, where Shadrack The Entertainer wanders, pushing his Loony Bin. He is soon to be accosted by Pyre For Hire, who get right in his face and ask, "What you got in the bags?" Um, chicken bones and an empty flask? People, he's homeless and crazy. Stop wasting your time. Shadrack The Entertainer cracks open a bag, and the Bible from the first act goes off in the second. With a shaking hand, he brandishes it at Pyre For Hire, speaking just at a mutter but not quite at a mumble, "Behold the Word of the Lord." Pyre For Hire exchange glances as if to say, "Who knew this hairy, homeless, wandering wastrel was going to turn out so crazy!"
The Three Product-Placed Ross-Dress-For-Less Suit-Wearers Of The Apocalypse sit in more or less the same position on folding chairs in a typically chrome-drenched room. A fourth man, sitting at a computer, authoritatively turns and informs the men, "There is nothing in the master database that makes any reference to a Bible. Nothing." Guy #1 (very original, I know, but I told you the other one was a stupid nickname, okay? Jeez. Stop looking at me, swan) doesn't bother to pause before asking the computer guy, "Where'd you go to school?" Tech Guy reels off his dossier like he's been aching to tell someone all day: "Yale. And then Wharton." Woo hoo! Yale! I heard on NPR the other morning that they have, like, really kick-ass a cappella groups. Did anyone else hear that? I wonder if this guy did a cappella. Sadly, though, that's not their question for him, as they third-degree on, "How long you been with us?" Ten months. Guy #1 has it figured all out, instructing Tech Guy to stop filling his mind with Yale a cappella and "play the Bodnick intercept we pulled from the car." On the recording, Bodnick and a woman I'm sure is Taudrey exchange words which ends with Bodnick barking, "Baby, I think this book is more than insurance. It could be a mother lode." Guy #1 gets homosexually close to Tech Guy's ear and whispers patronizingly, "A book that could be the mother lode. Book. Bible. Book. Bible." I'm sure Tech Guy really appreciates this 3-2-1 Contact approach to on-the-job training. Guy #1: "It's a simple connection, Wharton." First, step off the nicknames, Guy #1. And, second, c'mon. He could have been talking about any book. Who's to say it wasn't the latest issue of Archie Comic Digest? Or a copy of Learning to Fly: The Autobiography of Posh Spice that might have been the so-called mother lode? Wait. How sad is it that I just looked around my room for examples of books that aren't the Lord's word and those are the first two I saw? If you get near my head and listen really closely, you can actually hear my brain slowly rotting. But seriously. Poor Posh. She's been through everything.
Jim's back at the microfiche again, poring over articles from Push Times, including one that showed up in the credits tonight that flatly states in the headline, "Oranges Everywhere." Cut. Move. Micro. Fiche. Jim stares in at a photo including a man with -- sing it with me if you've got the refrain memorized -- a serpent tattoo on his forearm. Ta-da!
We cut to the blazing sun shot again, Jim wandering beneath it and not looking his best. Suddenly, he's inside of One-Eyed Sloman's, the red couches and upright-bass soundtrack begging for at least one line of the "that chewing gum you like is going to come back in style" variety that says, unironically and in no uncertain terms, "David Lynch, I'm stealing from you." It's a small request, and I think it would make all of us feel so much better. Jim walks to the bar and orders a glass of water from the bartender, who's all, "Is this the Gus Van Sant shot-by-shot remake of The Shining? 'Cause if so, I'm already dressed." Jim then asks to speak with Mr. Sloman himself, and is told, "Afraid he ain't here." Jim knocks back his devil's poison, and the bartender informs him, "You don't look so good. Maybe you should go home." Yeah. Maybe you should. But then again, the reason he's been having so much car trouble is because every time someone tells him to go home, he drives his car to the outskirts of town and makes that U-turn all over again. The wear-and-tear is terrible. Jim asks if Mary is there, and the bartender gives a pithy little speech I'm frankly not sure is that good for business: "All you heartbroken suckers come in here, thinking you made some kind of friendship, some kind of special relationship. Blind to the fact that it's her job." Jim's all, "Do you think he's talking about me?" asking instead if Mary had a boyfriend. When the bartender responds by making a strange "zzzzzz" sound, I assume he's just gone and fallen asleep like the rest of us, but he's merely pluralizing the word "boyfriend," outlining for Jim, "Start with Silas, work your way down." Eh? "Silas. Job. Some wimpy government fella from out of town. Or so I heard." Do you think he's talking about Jim? The bartender has an opinion on whores like Taudrey, though, passed down from his own pappy and without the fey matching handkerchiefs: "Son, don't trust nothing that bleeds for seven days and don't die." Yup. I heard that joke in college for the twelve millionth time from a guy who reminded me quite a bit of Affleck, actually. It wasn't at my college, though. It was a weekend away. At Dartmouth. It's an inexcusable line no matter what I'm supposed to think of the character who delivered it. I mean, I defend his Constitutional right to say it and all, but it's still the moment at which I'm allowed to truly say that I now think I might kind of hate this show a little. Is that wrong?
Right. It's hot. Jim's infection seems to be worsening and his skin slightly more reflective, but he stops near the outside of the Versailles when he sees Hick dropping off a number of parcels at the casino. Cut to Martha's Quick 'n' Go, where Jim enters his room to find Martha sitting on his bed with a bowl of vinegar and water (oh, my God, she came there to douche him, didn't she?), informing him, "I'm gonna take care of that back." Cut to The Least Erotic Sponge Bath Since Misery, Martha sterilizing the wound a bit as Jim winces in pain. She explains that she was never much a fan of tattoos, and she and Jim have a quick bonding laugh over it all. Jim notes, "My father would roll over in his grave," and Martha asked when he died. "1986," we learn, when Jim was twelve. And the Mets won the World Series in seven harrowing games against the devastated Boston Red Sox. Sigh. Good times, good times. Oh, and also something about Jim's dead daddy. When he informs Martha that it happened when he was twelve, we follow Jim to another flashback of the red-soaked shot of the tire. Martha asks if they were close, and Jim waxes like he's on the clock and on the couch: "Yes and no. He was somewhere else a lot of the time, and even when he was home, he was still somewhere else." Martha indicates with The Excess Conviction Of Awkward Foreshadowing that Jim's dad did indeed love his son. Just then, Martha insists that Jim "lay down now," leaning over him and insisting he try and get some sleep. She grabs his one remaining "JAP" handkerchief out from his clenched hand and holds it up to one she produces with the initials of "AMP." She tears up slightly and whispers, "Never know when one of them will come back to you." Dude. It's been nine seconds. He's not even kind of asleep.
Red. Tinged. Tire. Memory. This is like a reading comprehension quiz, and I feel like I have to take out the word that doesn't fit with the other three, like I'm studying for the GREs even though I'm not, thank God. Jim's cell phone rings, and he wakes up in a stupor. That also happened last week. It's Schnooky McParve, the desert southwest's most cliché CPA. Jim explains to Ira that he was sleeping because he's been dealing with an infection, and Ira laughs it off that he was expecting Jim in the office today, and that "Ramon at Arby's was expecting us." But he was not expecting you to order a glass of milk to wash down your hamburger with, was he, Goody-Goody Allen? Ira sounds relieved when Jim explains that he's been under the weather, but Jim heads Ira off when he explains that his illness isn't the reason he hasn't left Push: "Being sick is not the only reason that I'm here, Ira. We discussed this. Something substantial is happening here, Ira. Something substantial and sinister. Ira, no one in Push, Nevada has filed a 1040 in over seventeen years. Grace did some research…" And she's going to have to answer to that, Ira indicates, spreading the red tape (even though the password is "orange") and filling out his TPS reports and generally getting consternated with Jim, telling him, "A 7C! That rang the bells all the way up to Provo. Some say even Washington. And, worse yet, she was mistaken. She performed the search incorrectly, and queried the wrong database." Ira wigs now, and tells Jim that this investigation "has never been approved by my office." He insists that Jim come home and take his days in Push as his personal days. Then he tells him to "buckle up on the drive home," and hangs up to regard the backs of the dark-suited men who have watched him on the phone and oh my God that whole scene already happened nine times.
Beige Leisure Suit Of Wholly Non-Leisurely Justice-Seeking back on, Jim wanders the night, walking first up to Job's place. Job, standing outside and, um, sweeping the desert, I think, tells Jim, "You look like hell." He retreats to the office, ostensibly to get Jim's keys, and Jim takes this moment to make an after-hours call just to chat with his assistant on his cell phone, which could drive you mad. Mad! Grace picks up, and Jim immediately tells her that Ira "wasn't happy" and "was threatening to fire" him. While Grace explains that she knows she acted outside of procedure but also knows that she performed the search correctly, from back in Job's office a hand inserts a bullet into a gun and begins pointing it in Jim's general direction. Jim explains again that he feels "a bit under the weather." A hand cocks the gun. Jim asks where Grace is (none of your business, Bossy the Bossman), and she tells him that she's at Jim's house with ex-wife Darlene. The cocked gun points at Jim's head. Darlene takes the phone and bids Jim hello. Meanwhile, The Three Product-Placed Ross-Dress-For-Less Suit-Wearers Of The Apocalypse show up at One-Eyed Sloman's and tell a man at the bar to call off the assassination, as Jim has already contacted federal law enforcement regarding the facts surrounding Silas Bodnick's death, and for him to disappear now would look vaguely suspicious. Jim talks to Darlene, who is Renee Zellweger never waking up from her Nurse Betty coma. Gun pointing. Talking. Trigger pulling. Phone inside Job's ringing. Answering, "This is Oswald." Death called off. Whew. I love how that entire scene existed to highlight that even in life we are in death, and that even the most trivial activities can be hyped up by someone almost pulling a trigger. The fault in that structure, of course, is that every other scene in this episode so far has been that scene (talking on cell phones about math) without the threat of imminent death. This road to cancellation is paved with scenes about people talking on cell phones about math. I'm 6,009 words in…do you think it got cancelled while I was writing? Let's go check.
Damn. Tick tock, Eisner. I've got a life to lead here.
So Jim drives again, heeding the smooth radio sounds of Ezekiel 25:17 explaining to him that "gambling is a mortal sin" and other pearls of non-Push-sanctioned wisdom. We flash back to the Versailles, which he enters on surveillance camera through the front door. The Three Product-Placed Ross-Dress-For-Less Suit-Wearers Of The Apocalypse watch intently as Jim stands near the tables, doing nothing more than loitering. He reaches into his lapel pocket and unearths a pencil and a notebook, which might be warning signs for the people spying on him. Kill him now! What about now? Well, then how about…oh, never mind. You can't just take the pencil out of his hands, at least? Jim finally turns around and tells the non-French-adept concierge I quite enjoy that he wants to speak to someone's boss. And there's Evil Ed in a flash, ushering Jim into a back room in front of another surveillance camera recording the conversation.
Jim explains to Evil Ed that he spent the evening counting cards, and discovered through a series of mathematical discoveries that "your casino pays out sixty-two percent of the time." Up in Chrome Heaven, Guy #1 observes, "He knows." Guy #2 continues, "Who's gonna make the call?" So mysterious! Jim explains that casinos make money by paying out less than fifty percent of the time, and Evil Ed tries to counter that the Versailles is just having a bad night, but Jim is ready with his Chinatown scowl, sneering, "It's going to get worse." Jim shows all his cards, saying that Bodnick was murdered and the sheriff won't help, reasoning, "There's something going on in this town. It is very crooked, very dark, and very difficult to understand. So here's your chance. Prove to me that you have the intelligence, strength of character, and self-preservation skills to rise above this morass and tell me the truth." Push hangs in the balance while The Three Product-Placed Ross-Dress-For-Less Suit-Wearers Of The Apocalypse watch from Chrome Heaven and Jim stares and stares. Much to the non-surprise of people who hate shows where stuff ever happens, Evil Ed smiles broadly and suggests, "Maybe we could arrange for you to come back when you feel better and have a go at the tables with some house chips. Say, five large?" Jim responds with defeat. His job and marriage are in trouble. But the Versailles hasn't seen the last of him, and he ends his speech directly to the camera that's watching him: "You tell whoever it is that you work for that I'm going to take this town apart number by number, ledger by ledger, brick by brick." Go, Norma Rae Prufrock. For screwing with the fun of tax cheats and gamblers everywhere. As he leaves the casino, he drives past a hiding Taudrey, who doesn't get a line because somewhere something had to go right.
Jim fake-leaves Push as he so often does, getting right to the town border (one stoplight away, I thought, instead of these ninety dramatic mile markers back into the desert) before making his Big Discovery and figuring that he needs to just turn and go back after all. For the third time. In as many weeks. This time, he flips open the glove compartment to find his monogrammed handkerchief with a map hand-drawn on it. The map indicates Demonhead Flats, a riverbed, a number of paces, and a big red X. He's going to find treasure! But first he's going to have to dig through a positively not-drawn-to-scale amount of unseemly desert snot. Or so it indicates there on the map.
Jim drives straight for Pyre For Hire, pulling up in front and asking the two men if he can borrow one of their shovels for "government business." He flashes the badge, and one man tells the other to "check on Caleb." A squat man -- possessing an interesting Polito-esque quality himself, which seems to be going around -- puts his face against the window that peers into Polito 2.0's final burning place. Jim's face appears to it, and in Spanish -- with subtitles -- the man explains that "there are certain aboriginal tribes who believe we remain conscious in our bodies when we die." Fire? Walk with me.
Being an offensive and insensitive white man in a way that could be made only worse by Jim slamming the man over the head with his own shovel and yelling, "I Hopi one day your story will end" and then busting for his car, Jim grabs one of the shovels and bails. He makes for Demonhead Flats once more, digging furiously while the previouslys (Bodnick, Polito 2.0, Taudrey) sear his mind yet again. He digs and digs, but is suddenly stopped by the voice of Sheriff Relaxo coming from above the hole, bidding him greeting with, "Hello, Taxman. Find something? I heard you been stealing shovels." Jim, stuck in the hole, keeps digging until -- oops -- he finds a dead body with a serpent tattooed across its forearm. Cut instantly to Jim having a dream that he's in the pyre himself, and he comes to in a prison cell that looks like he's going to tap the walls for amusement before busting out in a whimsical musical number starring Björk and Peter Stormare. I'll give anything for that not to happen. Again. Dawn sits above him in the cell, reading him his rights in a very cutesy fashion. He asks what the charge is, and we mutter it with her: "Well, murder, of course." He groggily tries to explain that he was digging for, "I think, money." Dawn thinks that silly, asking, "If there were any money, where did it come from? And more importantly, where is it now?" Cut to Bodnick's casket being lowered into a hole in the ground. Oh, puh-leeze. Bodnick is alive, the money is in the coffin, the tattoo is ripped off from Memento, and, in the true spirit of that movie and the ideas stolen herein, Oswald Wilkes raped and murdered my wife.