Episode Report Card Djb: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Real Slim Shady
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 07.10.2004
Sitting at the kitchen table while Keith tends to some eggs at the stove, David notes, "I hope she's married. That way I won't have to feel so guilty for wasting almost two years of her life." Pipe down, David. How are you supposed to enjoy your eggs if you're so gorged on all that tasty, delicious backstory? Keith chooses to respond in the global sense because if he can't speak for the totality of the gay experience, he's just a dead-end character with a dead-end job in a dead-end plotline, telling David, "Every woman needs to go through falling in love with a gay man. It's a female rite of passage." And for every grieving female done wrong by her ex-boyfriend's emergent sexuality, there's a boy still trying to wash off the grody sins of prom night. The emotional pain of this works two ways here, okay? By example, Keith notes, "I mean, what about Claire and What's-His-Face?" Ew, let's not remind any of us of What's-His-Face, particularly of What's-His-Face's face, with its recent mustachioed addition, like he should be tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks and insisting to poverty-stricken country lasses that they "must pay the rent." David warns Keith against mentioning anything about that to Claire, and Keith continues his ideologue, sermonizing from the pulpit of Our Drag Queen Of No Mercy Church, "Just like every gay man needs to go through a period where he tries to be straight." David notes that he doesn't think that's a requirement anymore in this day and age, and Keith counters , "What about Claire and What's-His-Face?" Ack! The Stepford Keith-bot is broken and needs to be decommissioned right away. Let's test it by seeing if it spews the same answer to every question posed of it. Ahem: Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? I'm just talking Claire and What's-His-Face. Shut yo mouth!
Keith finally makes it over to the table with the eggs, sitting down across from David and indicating that changes in blocking must beget changes in conversational flow. Without being asked -- because it wasn't exactly on my list of talking points either -- Keith volunteers, "So, I'm back on Celeste duty today." He continues that it's "some rehearsal for some charity tomorrow," and asks David what he should wear. David suggests an outfit tantamount to showing up at work wearing pride-striped briefs exposed by ass-less chaps, a Village People concert t-shirt, and a perfectly-folded pink triangle-shaped pirate hat. And for any of you who quote that outfit out of context on your Keith fetish fanfic sites, please note that I intend to prosecute you and crappy fashion sense to the fullest extent the law provides. Keith swipes back that his job requires him to project "an image," provoking David to shoot back, "Are you not out on the job?" Keith tries to pretend that no one has asked him, and David reminds him that they broke up the first time because David wasn't out. "To your family," Keith yells, adding, "It's not like I expect you to come out to every person who walks through the funeral home..." David shoots back that he doesn't expect Keith to come out to every client, "whether it's Celeste or Cameron Diaz or Ian fucking McKellen. But the people you work with?" David? If it puts me on a higher moral plane, I'd be happy to come out to Ian fucking McKellen, so long as he promises to tell his boy lover from the Oscars that one year all about it, if he felt like congratulating me also. I'm just saying. That I'm very, very brave and noble. Either way, Keith seeks to defuse the fight with a soft tone and an objectionable use of terminology, reminding David, "Calm down. I'm not the enemy. I'm your lover." And if that word isn't followed up immediately by the words "She told me I was her forever lover, y'know don't you remember," and then after that with "Well she said after lovin' me, she could never love another," followed by Paul McCartney getting carried away, "I don't belieeeeeve it!" on the fade, I have absolutely no use for it at all and wish they'd stop saying it right away. You know who probably used to call each other "lovers" in order to subvert the male-female societal roles expected of them in an ostensibly monogamous relationship? Say it with me if you're running as fast as the running gag: what about Claire and What's-His-Face?
"Thanks, Barb," says "A One World State As Human" Nate Fisher as he carries Maya down the steps of Fisher & Diaz and engages in conversation with Lisa's small, prickly sister. Barb can't believe that Maya has never been to Lego Land, but Nate says she's been too small to go until now, and when she asks a question as controversial as whether Maya enjoys playing with Legos, Nate reminds her, "Too young, small parts, choking?" Because this is totally just a fight about Legos, Barb takes this moment to remember, "She's still that orally fixated? No wonder. She was still breastfeeding." Just as Nate seems poised to tell Barb which part of him she can suck on for her own nutritional fortitude, they reach the Barb-family minivan. The door opens to reveal Mr. Barb in the driver's seat, and I take a moment to quietly thank HBO -- even though I know from the "We Invented Water And Unicorns!" Sunday night promos that no one loves HBO quite so much as HBO loves HBO, so they don't really need my love -- for being a network that would read "boisterous and out-of-touch" in the description of a father driving a minivan and not automatically pick up the phone and insist, "Get me Tom Arnold right away." I know it sounds like simple math, but think of the number of times Hollywood has not thought to avoid Tom Arnold in situations such as that one. And he would say yes. He's not programmed for a "no." In the first row of passenger seats (I don't know if the rows have names. I don't know that much about minivans. I don't think I've ever been in a minivan) are the two boys we saw last at Lisa's funeral, who are playing some kind of non-union, south-of-the-border Game Boy knockoffs (muchacho del juego?) and patently ignoring their elders. I Can't Believe It's Not Tom Arnold -- and again I must really give HBO props for providing this lower-fat alternative -- calls from the front seat, "Hey! She just keeps gettin' bigger every day!" Nate, always the straight man sidekick, Schwarzeneggers his response, "Yeah, kids kinda do that," which inspires I Can't Believe It's Not Tom Arnold to laugh raucously and call out, "Yeah, you got me!" What a simpleton, this minivan-driving father of three who provides for his family and takes them on vacation! Let's mock him until he collapses under the full weight of his misguided suburban satisfaction!