Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Teenage Guide to Popularity
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.23.2011
kes me want to do a murder on myself.) Anyway, Karen grabs her and shushes her and pulls her back inside, and it's super sad and well-done.Frank of course grabs the shopping money and heads out the door without the shopping list, because he is grossgusting, and Karen knows better but he's too fast for her, snatching his bagged-up shoes and taking his old lady-looking self out the door. "You do something for me later, like bail me out of jail, or stop me from having sex with some ugly chick." What is it like to be Karen. Gods. It's like, how bad does it have to get to where the clown-obsessed Jesus Freak starts looking like your best option?
Fiona, bad show. Somehow the gas bill is up to $587 minimum to get it turned back on. I don't know if peak oil happened already or what, but here in Austin that's like five years' worth of gas. Anyway, everybody turns out their pockets and they think they can make it, or Fiona will hardscrabble her lot somehow; Debbie on the computer pipes up, "We can get an extra $200 a month from the state if we say Carl's retarded," but like they don't even consider the worth of that plan.
Steve offers to get the gas turned back on -- "Unless you want to get it from Tony the Cop," he snits unproductively -- and that she doesn't even really need to pay him back because money is not an issue and never should be, but she just ignores him because that's embarrassing to contemplate. Kev razzes Steve about that, asking for money and not paying it back, and Steve's finally like, "Does he know the only reason you fucked him was to get back at me?" Oh, Steve. Lip's like Duuuude.
Round 1: Tony. For which not even Fiona is rooting, so quit it.
Everybody takes off and Kev says something very sweet to Fiona about her oatmeal, which makes him okay for a while, and then Frank shows up to do Sheila's "shopping," which means stealing food from Fiona's kitchen. He talks about how she pays for the food with food stamps, for which he indirectly pays through taxes, which he does not pay, and it's OTT and all the usual Frank shit, and then poor Tony shows up and Kev does some lewd shit to him and it's back on. Veronica deserves much better, I'm sorry. He's not even cute.
Fiona digs the flowers out of the garbage, and he goes I had a really good time last night and I like you, Fiona and I've waited a long time for last night to happen, and she is a whiz of deflection: "Coach of the Year's a big deal!" He explains a few times that last night was his First Time, and she resists beyond the telling of it understanding that he's saying what he's saying, and then boom cut to sitting in the parlor with Veronica, feeling weird about it.
"Holy shit! You popped his cherry!" She admits he wasn't half bad, and when Veronica asks if he cried afterward Fiona defends him and his whole sweet doggie thing as usual. Immediately Veronica calls her out for the Steve aspect of all this, and Fiona can barely defend against it at this point because it's so obvious. "You never looked at the other 95 guys that way," she laughs, and Fiona just tokes the joint and grins, "Don't exaggerate: 94."
See, slutty is better: Just own it and you can have it all, anything you want. You're so novel! You can keep your time to yourself! You don't need date insurance! You can go out with whoever you want to! Every boy! Every boy in the whole world could be yours! Veronica starts talking about how Steve's awesome and Fiona's doing him dirty and when you say "kidnapped my father to a foreign country" you're stacking the deck, because Canada is hardly a foreign country. Except for horrible Quebec.
There's an awkward scene in which point A is this conversation and point B is Fiona opening the door while laughing, but instead of writing a funny conversation to get from A to B, they've decided to just wing it. Essentially Fiona likes the part of Tony where he's not "getting all in my family's business," because that's the problem with Steve, and then they talk about Tony's insane mother and how "the neighborhood bitches" have probably already told her about the fucking in the car, and so his crazy mother probably will come shoot Fiona with a gun.
I mean, once/if we meet Tony's mom this conversation probably will be funny, but since we haven't the peals of laughter just come off forced and weird. I think if you write in your script that the people laugh uproariously you better make sure you've earned it, because otherwise you're just laughing at your own joke, which you only wrote so the people would have a reason to laugh, and so now you've done your actors two separate disservices. And this has happened every week on this show so far, and it's cringe-y every time.
But, to the stoned laughter isn't coming Tony's mom, but in fact Abby Ruggiero, Inspector General, who is visiting to meet with Virginia Louise Gallagher, Frank's Aunt Ginger, in whose house we all live and whom, we believe, lives in a nursing home in Wisconsin. Since her address was changed from this house to a Mailboxes, Etc. twelve years ago, they suspect Social Security fraud. Paging Frank Gallagher; I don't know why Fiona even thinks about any of this. But she does believe Aunt Ginger is real, so her confusion is a bit more justified. Anyway, mean Abby Ruggiero waves the neck check in Fiona's face and says she'll be by at ten the next morning to deliver it personally.
Did you hear about how in China they had the oldest people in the world, until it turned out that those people were all dead a long time ago and the people were just still getting their Commie checks for them and covering it up? People are dicks.
Mandy's brothers, especially Mickey who is going to be very important, show up at the Kash & Grab to perpetrate on Ian. Apparently Mandy told them an untruth involving her virtue, and they are there for honor reasons. He hides in the office and Kash tells them he's escaped through there into the alley, and they wait for the Milkoviches to leave. They do, but before he can lock the door and get tender on Ian, Mickey comes back in and steals some food and acts beastly some more. Finally Ian comes out all, "I promise that girl's virtue was not on the menu" and Kash is like, "Of course it wasn't, you queer little nugget."
Karen is I guess now acting as Lip's pimp, being posher by half, and hooking him up with various PSAT people who need his brilliant brain to get them into National Merit. Also, she has raised Lip's rates. I hope K-Momma's getting a cut, especially now that Frank's going to be there weirding things out. She says she'll see him in three hours, and he says it'll only take two. I like this little touch, being as how the SAT thing is the obvious choice but the PSAT thing actually, for Lip's purposes, makes more sense. Even though there's no such thing as the "National Merit Society" and also it's a timed test, you can't leave early, but whatever, it's cute. Karen and Lip, Lip and Karen. The only stable people.
Today's jumble: E-O-R-K-J. Frank can't figure it out, Kev can't figure it out, Fiona calls it the second she walks into the Alibi -- "It's JOKER, where the hell is Aunt Ginger?" -- and there's a whole cat-and-mouse with Frank's bullshit and Kev teasing her about Tony some more, and it's all very annoying and frustrating, and Frank does not tell what should be very obvious, and finally Fiona's like, "Great, so felony."
So now Frank has to find a replacement Ginger, and he goes to shelters and things and gets yelled at by a verger for some shit he pulled as a Santa bell-ringer for Homelessville last year and finally he's just like, "Just let me borrow an old lady for a few hours!" That works out well. Eventually he kidnaps a crazy homeless person and puts him in a dress, which was pretty much the only thing Frank's ever done that is cool.
Ian tracks down Mandy, but it doesn't go well. He hurt her feelings!
Steve tracks down Fiona, but it doesn't go well. He kidnapped her awful father!
He points out that getting rid of Frank was actually an awesome idea, but she's just using it as her excuse anyway, so he points out that she's only making such a huge deal out of everything because she's totally into him and when she says he knows nothing about her he Seth Cohens out: "Then teach me! Teach me!" And I guess that does it, because she starts to soften here, because what if a guy actually thought you were a person and not an object.
1:54 and Lip's out of the PSAT and pleased as punch with himself... Until the Milkoviches appear. Mickey's friendly at first, and they're both wary, and you can smell Guy Stuff heavy in the air like they're about to Chicken Run, and almost sadly Mickey finally changes the subject like this: "So, Ian messed with Mandy..." Lip just about cracks up at that one, because no he did not, but he can't say so without blowing Ian's spot -- at which point things become certainly unbearable -- so he just promises Mandy's wrong about it. The way they play this scene is so great, menacing and tentative and friendly and superseding Law of the Jungle. Mickey rules, and Lip is maybe the best one on this show.
"The problem is that Ian's been avoiding us all day, and, uh, someone's got to get a beatdown 'til we find him." No exceptions, sadly, and Lip just kind of throws his shoulders back and smiles, and even before he says what he's going to say, Karen grins and moves out of the way, because it's going to be like this: "Maybe Mandy's confusing Ian with any one of the other 400 dudes in the tenth grade she's already blown?"
Quite the St. Crispin's way to go out, bro. But I mean: Mickey Maguire, man. I don't even know how you make Mickey Maguire make sense as an American. (If you ever do, won't you send him the fuck my way.) And is that Noel Fisher from The Riches? Where do I know this kid from? This whole show is great with that; tonight we also got out-and-proud Jillian Armenante, aka the screaming lady from the time Christina Ricci blew up Meredith Grey, and also the foster home lady from when Cameron turned back into Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Next