It's the who with the what time of year, now? We open this week with a collection of sun-dipped shots of Boston in the springtime, blooming crocuses in leafy fields, frolicking ducks gliding across placid blue lakes, their peanut-sized duck brains negating the memory of the cryogenic hell in which they have been frozen for the season's first sixteen episode-opening montages. And speaking of peanut-sized brains conveniently negating a somewhat rational floe -- er, I mean "flow," I'd like to hear how the continuity editors explained to the cast that the snow had all melted and the trees had all bloomed in the twenty-four hours since a raging blizzard which took place on this show's chronological version of a time long, long ago I like to call "yesterday." The confusion continues as out of the firehouse walk best friends Montana, Genesis, and Elka, who can practically hear the perennial summer sounds of Jamiroquai rage on as they "oooh" and "aaah" about the Firehouse in the Springtime soundstage in L.A. they've clearly wandered onto for the purposes of finally filming an entire scene outside.
Sunbathing in turtlenecks and windbreakers and other asbestos-lined necessities of Boston outdoor leisure time, the girls sit on blankets and direct their hey-isn't-this-topical comments right in the direction of the red blinking light and the guy holding the cue cards with the following words on them. Montana? Well, she'll go first, thanks: "It's upsetting to me. Like, I don't want to have a bad relationship with my mother. Like, I understand, too, like, a lot of how my mom is, considering she had me when she was seventeen and she had to be like, really strong. Like, she had to be so strong to the point of where it made her hard." Like, deep, man. And stuff. Genesis leaps in and offers that her mother "has never really been a mother figure, but she had problems of her own the didn't enable her to have the typical maternal type of relationship," like the one where her mom didn't name her daughter "Jack Daniels, straight up" and carry her around in a small flask, taking frequent sips of her in order to dull the pain of her everyday existence. Because if that had been the case, they would have gotten along great. Well, I guess that's all the time they could scare up for people with sad mom stories. I guess if anyone has anything else germane they'd like to add to this discussion, they're gonna have to take it to confessional.
And so Elka does: "I was feeling very sad because Mother's Day was the day" and, as you may remember, Elka's mother passed away two months before she left for Boston. Cut to back inside the firehouse (a show on a budget can only score that verdant "outdoor" set for so long, it seems), where Genesis and Elka share a simply-too-sad-to-make-fun-of scene that includes joyful-to-recap, tear-soaked statements including "I was there when she died, those last few hours I held her hand" and "she looked peaceful" and "I lied in the bed with her and I talked to her for a little while and I asked her to give me the strength to take care of my dad and to take care of my brother because she wasn't going to be able to anymore." She continues that she feels a lot of pressure in acting the mother figure to the rest of her family, and she doesn't want them to know that she worries, which they never possibly could unless she decided to air this dirty laundry to a room full of cameras with "Property of MTV" stickers emblazoned across the side to be broadcast a few months later on a high-rated reality special about what happens when people stop being polite and start being real. And she'd never go out and do something as silly as that, now, would she? Genesis makes it All About Her in thinking she's commiserating but really hogs the pathos all over again in asserting, "I don't know what I would do if I lost my mom, even though we're not totally close." Elka hugs Genesis and thanks her for being there to listen. Which, really, she hasn't so much been. This is too depressing to be on television, and too real to be on The Real World. And since there's really nothing funny to add to a scene containing this level of actual undiluted human misery, I'm just going to add that my own family thinks that it's scenes like this one that would prevent us from ever appearing on The Real World in the first place. Or, as my brother puts it, "I don't want to get a call from you with that arrow pointing at the phone and your name written to it and find out that there's been a death in the family while a Goo Goo Dolls song plays on the soundtrack to underscore my sadness." Freakin' word.
Genesis sits on the phone in the living room as a voice on the other end hopes that she's calling "to wish [her] a happy Mother's Day." Genesis confirms that that's exactly why she's calling, adding, "I only have, like, a buck, so I haven't, like, gotten to get you a card or anything." I don't mean to be all Earl of Etiquette or anything, but dude, how many moms do you have? Maybe you'd consider switching from the Camel Lights you're chain-smoking right now to the Merit Ultra Lights for, like, one day and splurge for a piece of cardboard with a Far Side cartoon on it and a stamp on the envelope. Scrounge up the pennies, man. Just do it. The lovely and talented Bride of Jim Beam tells her daughter that a call is better anyway, seeing as her blurred vision accounts for numerous untoward paper cuts in attempting to open a greeting card, whereas with the phone she can at least employ another sensory safety net in stumbling blindly toward a shrill, repetitive ringing sound. Actually, maybe you should forget The Far Side. Better make that Beetle Bailey, instead. And so Genesis and Beam's Bitch make with the small talk, Genesis's mother telling her daughter that she's had a headache "for two days." Genesis heaps as much contrived drama on the situation as possible in reacting that she's had a headache for two days, also! And why? "I was just talking about my trials and tribulations growing up." Bride of Beam registers a wary, "Uh-huh," as if to try and communicate, "There's no statute of limitations on the long arm of Child Protective Services, so perhaps we should talk about all this during a non-on-TV time." And yet, Genesis plows on, "You know, how we were broke, and didn't have any food. Like that." Beam of Light counters, "Well, you always had food. I would go without food so you could eat." Genesis registers more shock and snarks at her mother that she was hungry sometimes when she was growing up, and Jacqueline Daniels (at last, a nickname I can stick with) reports, "Genesis, I would have gone out on the street corner and sold my body to get you food," and Genesis actually responds with the wholly non-believable, "You were working hard enough." Tee hee. These are the most heartfelt tidings for a happy Mother's Day I know. I guess we, the audience, are precluded from making a decisive judgement about who's right here. I mean, Genesis doesn't exactly look like she'd been ravaged by the scourge of long-term starvation, but it's possible she looks as healthy and robust as she does due to the pounds and pounds of emotional baggage that cameras tend to add.
The "T" carries Montana and Elka to some indeterminate location as Elka informs Montana, "I'm going back to Brownsville" because "they're dedicating a style show to my mother." Montana: "What's a style show?" Apparently she is unable to discern the proper definition of the word in question, seeing as most of her face is blocked from style or even references therein considering the continuing omnipresence of her style-free bangs. Elka explains that it's like a fashion show, then continues on that she doesn't really want to go but feels she has to. Back in the firehouse, their discussion continues with Elka worrying that going back is going to call up the sad memories of her mother's death. But she has to go. Her father will be mad. Her family will be disappointed. Montana encourages family fracture in telling Elka that she doesn't have to go if she doesn't want to, and Elka counters, "I'm going to have to go home at some point, and it's going to hurt me anyway." An instrumental vamp of "Push" by Matchbox 20 underscores her sadness. Oh, the perfect choice. I'm sure they know just exactly how she feels.
The Cat of Vulnerability is rudely shuffled out of the way by Elka dragging numerous bags from her bedroom into the living room. She picks up the phone and dials for directory assistance, becoming frustrated when her request for "a cab company" lands her on hold, victimized by recorded "your call is important to us" messages for what the show would like us to believe is length of several reigns of British royalty. Sometime during the latter days of the Plantangenets, she slams the phone down and runs out onto the street, hailing a cab several blocks away and asking the driver to pull in front of the firehouse. She runs back and forth from the house retrieving bags one by one, and then stops the driver once more, yelling, "Oh, my God. I almost forgot something." She runs back into the house and grabs what looks like her dress, informing the driver that it was "the most important thing" she had to bring. The driver remembers to care. Where in the holy hell are her roommates to lend a little hand in all of this? I'm sure Genesis is passed out on the floor of the living room from the fumes emanating from the receiver, and since this is the touchy-feely Mother's Day episode there can be no shots of the boys, because, as everyone knows, all boys hate their mothers. Elka voice-overs, "I do think that going back to Brownsville is definitely going to ignite some old memories and old feelings and things." Oh, great. "Old feelings" and "things." I can just feel this recap getting more and more hilarious by the second.
The Southern Fried Rock of We Get it You're in Texas rages on the soundtrack as The Bumpkins sing, "So when I'm lonely and feeling down/I run back like a child to my little town, now/You can take me out of Texas, baby/But you ain't gonna take the Texas out of me." Original. As are the numerous establishing shots of the Lone Star flag, dry-looking stretches of uninhabited swampish land, and other general pollution-ridden, education-eschewing, death-row-advocating wrongs being perpetrated on unsuspecting citizens by the state's governor contemporary with the original airing of this episode. Oh, I'm sorry, was I editorializing? Well, it's either that or making fun of Elka's dead mom for twenty-two TV minutes, so save your emails, okay? Wow, thanks.
Elka steps into the Brownsville airport to find her friends dolled up in the we're-gonna-be-on-TV priss-wear they were saving for each other's upcoming deb balls but just had to wear right now. The Squiggly Hip Font of Character Introduction tells us that these folks are "Elka's friends," but then goes on to introduce them individually. Do you care? Okay: Aimee, Mauricia, Maria. The boy with the ponytail doesn't get a name, which is apparently MTV's version of fashion punishment for wearing a short-sleeved polo Izod on television in 1997. I think the proper punishment should have been "execution." Good thing we're in Texas! Apparently, Elka and Aimee are closer than close, as they hug big just as soon as Elka steps into the terminal. They grab her bags and they're off in someone's red Mercedes. Well, excuuuuuse me.
Elka voice-overs, "Being in Brownsville brought back so many memories about my mom" as they drive past a large billboard advertising, "42nd Annual St. Joseph Academy Style Show, March 21, 1997." A whole billboard. Amazing. What's also amazing was the clout it must have taken for Bunim-Murray to move Mother's Day from May to March just for the purposes of this plot arc. I was actually alive in 1997 and had a mother then as I continue to now, and I have to say I don't remember that Mother's Day was two months earlier than usual that year. Odd. But if MTV says it, it's gotta be true, right? ["I think it might be different in Texas. No, I don't. Stupid MTV." -- Wing Chun] Also on the billboard is a skyline of New York City and the words, "New York, New York," which is what the theme of the show is, I imagine. The show will be taking place at the Jacob Brown Auditorium. It's just too bad that no matter how fast Privileged Friend's peppy new Mercedes takes them there, they're already two months late.
Elka walks down the steps of her house wearing a lime-green remake of the dress Juliette Binoche wore to the Oscars™ the year she took home the prize that Fametracker will one day be asking her to return. If I have anything to say about it, which I totally don't. ["Who are you, again?" -- Wing Chun] She's clearly in a rush, telling an unnamed friend that she'll have to put her "earrings on in the car." Cut to a façade shot of the aforementioned Jacob Brown Auditorium, where Elka and her Unnamed Friend walk in and again hug the rest of their posse. Elka spots Captain Catholicism across the high-school auditorium which contains tables containing several hundred people, perhaps more. The Captain orders her around without many words of greeting, telling her to say hello to everyone at the table. Montage of Elka meeting and greeting, accompanied by the voice-over, "Things have just been really hectic since my mom passed away, and I really haven't had too much time to spend with my dad. I've always had a close relationship with my dad, but it's never been like the one I had with my mother." Maybe by "Mother's Day" she meant "Spring Equinox" or "Sars's Birthday Observed."
Arbitrary Guy in Suit stands at a podium making a speech as the style-show attendees sit at their tables thumbing through spiral-bound books containing photographs of Elka's mother, Yolanda. Guy in Suit tells us that "there are very few people who have the capability of touching so many of us" and Yolanda was one of those people and death-be-not-proud-or-funny-cakes. Guy in Suit continues that Elka's family is being presented with some kind of gift that will "make it possible for the family to preserve their best image of Yolanda." Wax statue? Rendering in velvet? Taxidermy gift certificate? I'm at a loss. Elka voice-overs that she knows her mom was looking down on her as she offers the pithy speech to the room, "On behalf of the family, I would like to say thank you very, very much." The fashion show begins at the distance of twelve million miles from the nearest MTV camera, and all that is recorded is Elka's facial expressions during it. She appears to be smiling. The Puffy Combs remake of "I'll Be Watching You" rages on to cue the home viewer into feeling sad, which doesn't minimize Elka's mourning even slightly in this shamelessly commodified pulling of the heartstrings kind of way. Because Sting -- and Puffy -- and B.I.G. himself -- all know just exactly how she feels. What. Ever.
Back in Boston, Genesis is again on the phone with her mother. Poor Genesis. No wonder she's such a mess. If this woman were my mother, I too would change Mother's Day to March. And then I'd throw myself off a bridge in February. Here's a sample:
Jacqueline Daniels: This is so sick.
Genesis: What?
Jacqueline Daniels: I haven't eaten in, like, a week. I'm gonna eat tonight.
Genesis: Why haven't you eaten in a week?
Jacqueline Daniels: Same old...I don't deserve to eat, though.
Genesis: What do you mean, you don't deserve to eat? [Glacial pause. The Victorian Era begins and ends] Hello?
Oh, for the love of all things. Genesis voice-overs that sometimes she feels like she's her mother's mother, and we cut back to the conversation to find her mother asking, "So, if I move to the Gulf Coast, you'll stay around?" Back in confessional, Genesis adds, "I take care of her. That's the way it always is, and it's the way it's probably always going to be." Back to the call, Genesis asks her mom point blank, "Have you been drinking? Your speech is slurred." And Jacqueline Daniels, who on her best day sounds like she's doing a half-assed impersonation of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel slowed down to 45RPMs and then played backwards, denies that she's been drankin' the moonshine. She adds, "I don't know why it's slurred." Yeah, me neither. Perhaps because I'm TOO DRUNK to remember. I'm just sayin'.
And over to the kitchen, where Genesis bitches to Kameelah (a very, very, very refreshing addition to this episode, I must add) that it will be really hard for her to be living in the same town as her mother again. Kameelah asks if Jacqueline Daniels would listen if Genesis could tell her, "Like, I know you're moving back to Gulfport, but I can't handle the drinking and you losing it, and I need you to be stable if you're gonna be there." Genesis responds to this foray into unsolicited playacting by telling Kameelah that she asked her mother if she was drunk, adding, "Maybe I'm thinking too much about this. Maybe I'm expecting the worst when the best might happen." Meanwhile, somewhere in the expansive trailer home communities of Mississippi, Jacqueline Daniels adds a substantial twist of foreshadowing to her otherwise straight-up shot.
Um, okay, producers? If I promise to remember to equate "Elka" with "Texas" for the rest of human existence, will you at least try to soften up on the slide guitar underscoring EVERY time she walks into the frame? Bunim? Murray? I ask for so little. Anyway, Elka and Captain Catholicism stroll into a restaurant advertising all things Italian, and we cut inside to a red tableclothed table for a "talk." Elka generalizes, "One of these days, you and I are going to Europe, I'm telling you." And if there's one thing I can say for Captain Catholicism, it's that he understands how narrowly drawn the characters on this show are and how each is boiled down to a set of a few prominent characteristics and plot lines, adding, "To see Walter?" Exactly. Elka volleys that she wants Walter to come to Brownsville and meet the Captain on his home soil, adding that Walter is "moving to the States." Captain Catholicism makes some sense: "I'm not against you having a relationship with somebody. But when that somebody is on the verge of taking my only daughter, I want to make sure that, if it's real serious to the point where there's discussion of marriage, I want to make sure that it's a lifetime commitment." A little wordy, but with a strong message. A man after my own heart. He continues on that he doesn't like "being Mr. Mom." Ew. I understand what it's like to grow up in a single-parent family and all, but references to the collective oeuvre of Michael Keaton movies are to be explicitly avoided. But, he continues, he understands that Elka should not be worrying about him and Brian. "Worry about you." Back to a confessional, Elka tells us that hearing that from her father made her feel like she's had a weight lifted off her shoulders. He hugs her way too tightly. Sad. Sigh.
Tour of the Elka House. She tells us that her mom touched all of the people at the style show, and that she feels it was important for herself to be come home. She ends a phone call on the basis that she wants "to run over to the gravesite before the sun goes down." Cut to a driving car, which pulls up in front of a large sign reading, "Buena Vista Funeral Home." The cameras catch it all as Elka comes upon her mother's grave, puts a grieving hand to her forehead, kneels down before the site, weeps inconsolably, rocks back and forth, clasps her hands together, and wails a prayer in Spanish. Ha ha. Wing? Help? ["I had to recap the episode where Holling died. And the episode where Lucy died. And the episode where Abby Morgan died. You're on your own." -- Wing Chun]
Rock music and funky, non-slide guitars are allowed to accompany Elka's entrance into the firehouse because she's no longer in Texas. Montana loudly asks how the style show was, because she's down with the terminology, and we cut to Montana and Elka's room, where Elka shows her roomie a rosary some of her mom's friends made from roses they pulled off her mom's casket at her funeral. Montana smells it and intones three times, "That's really powerful" as if doing so will conjure the earthbound manifestation of Elka's dead mom. Oh, damn. Michael Keaton movie cross-referencing. Sorry, Captain. That one was my bad.
Later. Or whatever. Genesis (by whose overexposure I should be completely exhausted, though her role as "automatic Sean repellent" keeps me from minding her presence entirely) is talking to Elka and -- thank you, Squiggly Hip Font of Character Introduction for again introducing us in a squiggly and hip fashion -- Adam. Genesis refers to Mississippi as "the Bermuda Triangle of the South" which it totally is, except without the water, mythology, or eventual prize of potentially making it to Bermuda. She's afraid she'll go home and never get back out. Adam comforts her thusly: "That's all right. Boston's the cesspool of the North." I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love this guy. Seconds later, the Contrivance Phone practically rings itself off the hook, and Genesis picks it up to hear a voice on the other end ask, "This is Genesis, right?" The caller calls himself her "brother." Edited speech. Genesis yells, "She's in the hospital?" She hangs up on this said "brother" with no name or pertinent information of any kind and weeps uncontrollably. Cut to a confessional, in which Genesis tells us, "I don't know the story on what happened, and I'll probably never know." Yeah, get in line.
Later again. Elka watches Jason and Genesis piss and moan about how they felt suicidal when they were growing up. Jason: "I would say I was suicidal for an entire year. Like really, clinically depressed." Oh, yeah? Which clinic was that, Jason? The Clinic of Hyperbolic Teen Angst, perhaps? Dude, it's called puberty. We were all depressed. Nirvana was big. Look it up. Genesis, however, has a martyred, embittered leg to stand on when she rationalizes "eyeballing the pills." She was all living in squalor in a studio apartment with her mom and no food and we already heard this. Elka walks over and puts her head on Genesis's shoulder. We learn in Genesis's ensuing confessional that that motion "meant more to me than anything that she could have ever said." Back in the living room, Genesis continues that she was jealous of The Smurfs on TV because she remembers them "baking blueberry muffins. And they had something to eat and I didn't." Fade to black. The end? Shudder. Smurfy, indeed.