No, seriously. We get it, Opening Death Sequence. We know that you're all about the big fake-out, the zig when we think you're going to zag, the observation that even our own fragile mortalities are most entertainingly ripped away from us to the sound of the grim reaper pulling his hand away from what seemed an inevitable handshake but instead becomes the reaper smoothing the hair on the side of his head and yelling, "PSYCH!" We know that even the most precarious series of activities (hot tub, tequila, fat man sex, etc.) will eventually undercut our expectations for the scene. We know we know we know. So you don't have to pull the rug out from under us every week, okay? I look forward to this opening segment finally cannibalizing itself to the point where one caricature looks at another and observes among a series of unlikely near-death moments, "Man, this whole thing is turning into, like, a bad Six Feet Under opening." At which point, I will rise from my couch, stride over to my window, and leap through it, leaving an exact silhouette shape of myself behind, Looney Tunes-style. My fall will be broken by a woman wheeling a grocery cart, who will collapse to the ground below me, surprised but unharmed. The two of us will attract the attention of a passing motorist, who will watch us enacting our slapstick stunt and take his eyes momentarily off the road. When he looks back, we will note that he is about to strike a squirrel who has wandered in front of his car, so he'll swerve madly and barely miss hitting a crossing guard and a group of second graders who are just beginning to cross the street. Once safely on the other side of the street, one of the second graders will drop his lunch. Another child will pick it up and hand it to the crossing guard, who will instantly lapse into anaphylactic shock and die from a peanut allergy. The fucking end.
Anyway, on to the actual show.
A young girl pets an adorable kitten. From seeming nowhere, an axe hurls itself into the frame and lodges itself in the child's back.
No, I'm kidding again. But don't tell me it's not possible.
The sounds of it's-not-murder screaming come from somewhere off-camera as we pan across a large outdoor swimming pool. Because this show is not to be taken the slightest bit seriously anymore ever, the crew must have found it simply hilarious that the prop department found a tiny floating life preserver coaster and placed a mixed drink in a plastic cup floating on top of it. The sound of screaming (my screaming, their screaming, everyone screaming for ice cream-ing) grows louder as we pan toward the origin of the sound. Inside an adjoining hot tub, we find dirty, dirty coitus. A large bottle of what I guess is moonshine (because it has no label) or caramel (because, fat guy) sits on the ledge of the hot tub, while inside it said gentleman grunts on top of a shrieking female. Lucky, we've checked in right near the end -- OF HER LIFE! -- and also or their dirty, godless love. He rolls off of her and she slaps her tingling legs awake again, while he breathes heavily -- BECAUSE HE'S ABOUT TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK! -- and tells her, "You went a little Showgirls on me there. Not that I'm complaining." Why, is there some kind of hot tub ombudsman who we can lodge formal complaints to on behalf of the searing pain currently jetting around my cornea? Because I'd be interested in writing some kind of strongly worded letter, if possible, provided I didn't slip on the pencil and accidentally jab it into my wrist, causing me to die of lead poisoning before I even got to the post office.
The man, a balding Gandolfini-ish type but with much, much less HBO screen time -- let's call him Tony Alto -- kisses the woman -- let's call her "toast" -- and she plot-develops, "Happy anniversary, baby." They dirty talk about how she wants him "all over [her]," which is scantly a challenge, seeing as he's pretty much all over me right now, too, and he and I aren't even in the same state. She climbs out of the hot tub with a coy "Let's go shower," and he leans back -- BECAUSE HE'S ABOUT TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK! -- and tells her, "Give me a minute." She grabs a towel and runs toward the house as he seemingly begins falling asleep, a common problem that has plagued all people who...KEE-RASH. Tony Alto wakes up with a start when he hears a scream and said crashing sound from inside the house, and he looks up with concern, asking, "Annie?" He jumps out of the hot tub and begins running across the grass, his big flabby ass momentarily driving out my continuing belief that he was going to slip on the grass and that she was going to walk out of the kitchen and be all, "Honey? Tony? I...aaaaaah!" But just when you're convinced they're going to zag, they zug. Tony reaches the house with increasingly concerned shouts of, "Annie?" He runs through the back door because his wife just died in a scenario that hasn't been played out so dramatically since I saw it in Final Destination, and with one final scream of, "Oh, my god, Annie!" we fade to white and learn that Anne Marie Thornton made it from 1966-2004 without ever having the chance to tell anyone she couldn't goddamn stand it when people called her "Annie."
Keith "Celeste Is More" Charles sits at the kitchen table with David "It's Been A Bad Day/ Please Don't Take A Picture" Fisher, enjoying a big, steaming bowl of Clunky-Exposition-O's, the nutritional cornerstone of every identical Keith and David scene that always comes at this exact point in the episode, when most viewers probably find themselves asking, "Yes, but what do the resident dysfunctional gays think of all this?" Wait no longer, fair viewer! David tells Keith how much he's going to miss him, which at least means that Keith is going far, far away. Yes, but for how long? "Three months is a long time," answers David. Only three months? With the length of time that seemed to elapse during my first viewing of this episode, by my calculation Keith will be back in L.A. fifteen minutes before this episode even ends. But we won't know it. And why not? BECAUSE WE'LL BE HIGH ON CRACK. Keith rises from the table and stage-directs his way to the sink, David fretting, "You're gonna get hit on by hot guys in every city." And while I myself have never been a hot, gay security guard -- well, once in college on this night I shouldn't talk about in case this is the week my parents finally figure out the name of the site I've been working at for the past five years -- but it seems like you have to get pretty low down on the entourage chain of command before you're all, "Someday my Safeguard Protection Agency situation defusing professional will come." Of course, I could be wrong. I usually just hedge my bets and make a beeline for the bassist.
Keith seems to agree with my line of thinking entirely, reminding us how the thinking man's gay man toooooooooootally transcends bullshit relationship hegemony such as monogamy or liking one another when he tells David, "It's been okay for both of us to have an occasional random fuck here. What's gonna be so different?" Well, they totally make 'em hotter in Cleveland then they do in L.A., for one thing. David frets on, "You're gonna meet some cooler, smarter, hotter guy who's a lot easier to get along with than I am." David, dude, he could do that without leaving L.A. Keith: "I could do that here." Mind meld with Keith! Well, something had to keep this episode from the tanking "F" grade it spends its latter half begging for. Keith reassures David that the money he's going to make on tour will be enough for them to buy a house "with a pool and a hot tub and a steam shower" -- even though we just learned from the opening that people don't kill people, pools and hot tubs and steam showers do -- "and room for kids." Keith's spoken-word version of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" has the needle scratched off the gaily-rollicking LP by David's return to self-flagellating reality, as he responds, "All of which you'll be sharing with a cooler, smarter, hotter guy you're going to meet on tour." And y'know...I could be with someone who is hard to get along with. And I could be with someone who is a funeral director. And I could be with someone who makes a living guarding the world from Michelle Trachtenberg, and, in many ways, guards Michelle Trachtenberg from us. But I'm sorry. It's over the first time someone pronounces the word "tour" with two syllables. Shut up, David.
Keith wants David to shut up: "Don't you know that I ain't looking?" -- oh, he just loves you when you talk all street -- "I'm settled down. I found what I want." Keith begs him not to be insecure, and David must be on the crack pipe (oooooh, a little in-recap foreshadowing, for those fans of unflinching Aristotelian dramatic structure) if he honestly believes his own reply: "I'm not insecure." Keith plows on by telling David, "If you want me not to do anything while I'm gone, just ask me." David tells him to "be safe," insisting, "even with blowjobs, you have to use a condom." Keith laughs, like, "Ah, that old wives' tale again!" and thinks about those red, white, and blue pops you could buy from the ice cream man and how they were really only a refreshing bit of summer fun if you took the plastic wrapping off of it before you ate it, and how if you didn't, it would just kind of melt away and there'd be nothing left under it and after a while you'd just throw it away all unsatisfied and be like, "What the eff did I even bother with all that for?" Anyway, that's a totally unrelated story that has nothing to do with this scene.
The apartment buzzer, um, buzzes, and Keith straightens his jacket and asks, "How do I look?" David drools a puddle so sizable it would surely kill someone in the opening credits and sighs, "So fucking hot it's ridiculous." And I've said it before and I'll say it again. I just don't see it. They kiss much more chastely than one would expect of a couple about to part for three months -- and it's not even like I'm all jonesing for some hot man/man action between David and Keith, but it is weird that this show does sometimes default to Dick-Van-Dyke-and- Mary-Tyler-Moore-sleeping-in-two-twin-beds mixed signals during moments of all-male intimacy. They stand and stare for a minute, David telling Keith he thinks he's going to cry (a little crack always fixes that problem for me), and the sound of the buzzer breaks the mood and sends Keith storming out of the room with, "All right, bitch. Calm down!" How romantic!
I totally didn't hear this line the first line around! Nate "Go Ahead With Your Own Wife, Leave Me Alone" Fisher sits at the Fisher family kitchen table, reading the paper. He mumbles, "Bush just lies and no one cares" to my endless amusement, in a sparkling pearl of partisan dialogue that is like a gorgeous flower popping up through so much manure. That has been sent to the house. In a decorative box. Maya lies motionless in Nate's arms while Claire "Picture Imperfect" Fisher pours some coffee and Ruth "No Shit, Sherlock" Fisher idles at the sink doing things that ladies do in the kitchen. Wow. Three of-age Fishers voluntarily sharing space in the kitchen at the same time. That's gotta be a record of some kind. Claire turns back toward the table and notes that some of her faaaahncy art has food on it, and she freaks out and runs over, screaming, "You got fucking oatmeal on my prints!" Don't curse in front of the child! For good measure, Claire tacks on a directionless and muttered "asshole" just to make sure that whatever watchdog group that had already red-flagged this scene -- y'know, the one with the words "Family" and "Council" somewhere in its title -- will instead charge the network a billion dollars, shoot the canister containing this scene into space, and somehow find a way to blame the whole thing on Howard Stern. Ruth defends Claire and leans in with a motherly "Yes, Nate, they're for Claire's crit." Claire tells her mother, "Don't say 'crit.' It sounds weird coming from you." And I totally want to school Claire in the whole "respect for elders" arena, but then I'd have to take back everything I said through the tears of uproarious laughter the one time my mother unadvisedly decided to use the word "dis" at a family dinner.
Nate regards Claire's photos, which we see some quick shots of. One is of Claire sitting outside in a white, flow-y gown, because if you're looking to break new ground as a ahhhhhhhtist, the best way to do it is by cribbing the aesthetic tenets laid out in the video for Céline Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me." Nate asks her if she's trying to be some kind of a model, and when she sneers that she's not selling anything, Nate Nates out in a Nate-ish kind of way, "Isn't that what you should be doing? Trying to figure out how to sell out to the highest bidder as fast as you can before your life blows up in your face? Because it will." Yeah. I'm gonna have to go ahead and call "leading the witness on that one." Claire ignores him and walks over to the sink, while Maya's head lolls around on its axis because she's sinking into advanced states of unconsciousness on account of not facing in the direction THAT THE AIR CAN BE FOUND.
Before MoveOn.org can give this scene its official endorsement, Nate throws down his copy of the I Guess Some Shows Really Do Have A Liberal Bias Gazette and asks his mother plaintively, "It just doesn't stop, does it?" Ruth promises that "it gets better," and then suggests that Nate try and meet someone new. Nate doesn't want to be in a relationship. "Well, what if it's just sex, then? Sex can be very healing." Claire looks up from her Honey Bunches Of Art over at the sink and tells her mother, "It's okay for us to be celibate if we want to." But Ruth wants to get all of her mothering for the entire year out of the way right now before she returns to mothering the estranged and the just plain strangers, suggesting to Nate that maybe he should look for a job. He tells her he's been trying, which I'm not believing at all, and that he wants to know who is going to take care of Maya if he goes to work. They bicker about the fact that Ruth has time to look after Maya and what's important is that her father be "unlikely to jam an ice pick between his eyes" over and above just being "present." Ruth heads over to a drawer and pulls out a leaflet (insert "Famous Jewish Sports Stars" joke here, if you know one) and hands it to Nate. He regards it and asks, "A bereavement group? Mom, I was a professional grief counselor for three years. I know what a load of crap this was." He continues by asking Ruth why she didn't go when her husband died if it's so great, and she responds, "I did...I went once a week for several months." Claire asks why she never told anyone she was going, using this development to storm out of the room with the reminder, "Why is this family is so repressed?" Ruth tells him he needs to grieve and Nate volleys back that he's done "big grieving," but he feels there's something holding him back. Maybe it's the fact that his daughter's turning blue from asphyxiation and Nate's about to start the grieving process all over again. But if Nate could have found a way to somehow shoehorn in the line, "Yeah, but what about our weapons of mass destruction?" something could have recommended the rest of this episode after all. Then again, after MoveOn made me see The Day After Tomorrow, all bets are off. And they'd probably also caution me against eating those red, white, and blue pops. Because Democrats hate freedom.
"It just doesn't make sense," Tony Alto tells David and Rico in The Room Where People Are Sad. "Something as stupid as that." While I ready "It just doesn't make sense. Something as stupid as that" as my index page blurb for this entire episode, Tony Alto goes on to explain what happened to his wife: "Falling in the shower." He blames only himself, telling David and Rico that it was their anniversary and that he dragged her out to the hot tub and made her drink tequila. He adds that he was a good husband and that he took care of her, and he doesn't understand why God would punish him. And then he starts to cry. And then the actor playing him goes back to the Olive Garden for his shift, because his wife has gone off to The Great No Funeral In The Sky.
Have we ever seen this woman before? ["I don't think so. I'd remember someone in a sweater like that. (Who wasn't Ruth.)" -- Wing Chun] Ruth bids a woman named "Betsy" hello. Betsy seems to work at some kind of yarn, sewing, something something supply store. Ruth tells her that she's there buying fabric for pajamas for George, and then asks after a "Hakim." Betsy tells her that he "got back together with his wife," and after Ruth tells her how sorry she is, Betsy chirps, "I'm not. I left a bag of burning dog shit on his porch as a little parting gift." Which will hopefully be second only in size to the bigger, flamier bag Mr. Hakim's wife should be leaving on Betsy's doorstep for nearly breaking up a man's marriage, continuing the cycle of shit indefinitely. You know in the Southern Hemisphere, the cycle of shit actually spins in the other direction. But lo! For this has given Ruth a horribly misguided idea! She regards the newly-emergent Betsy and thinks about how much this slightly tweaked Molly Shannon character has in common with other random characters who have come soaring out of nowhere recently and distracted us from realizing that the central core of characters are becoming increasingly unable to generate any organic drama on their own anymore. ["Organic matter, on the other hand...." -- Wing Chun] Ruth tells Betsy, "You know, George has a son." She sketches out the vaguest details of her ad hoc stepson's personal dossier, leaving out only the part where he is a mentally deranged sociopath: he's forty. He's independently wealthy. He's not a mentally deranged sociopath. Betsy asks if he has a moustache, and I think I'm totally on the same page as her because I often find facial hair to be kind of deal breaker as well, but she adds hopefully, "I like a moustache." Well, then, good luck in your burgeoning relationship with Dynamite Magazine 1983 cover model Tom Selleck, because dating in the millennium might require a little bit of flexibility with the moustache thing. Because, I mean, Ned Flanders is the only other person I can think of. Betsy asks why Kyle is still single, and Ruth suffices it to say that he's "a very complex man." Betsy is intrigued, confiding in Ruth, "I like a man who can keep me guessing." Mmm-hmmm. Guessing how your head ended up in a hatbox.
LAC Arts by the shining light of intellectual superiority. Anita and Russell share a positive comment each regarding Claire's photographs, and then Anita digs a little deeper, asking if perhaps they're "too staged." Professor Probably A Lesbian (she has a PhD in the "Foreshadowing Arts," people) asks Claire if they're staged, and Claire tells them, "It's kind of hard to take a candid self-portrait." Anita clarifies: "Stagy." And here we get our first full-on glance of the shots. And the word they were all groping for and kept overshooting, I think, is "bad." They're wildly pretentious pictures of Claire crouching meaningfully in various background locations. Claire crouching meaningfully in a lonely yard. Claire crouching meaningfully in an alley. Claire crouching meaningfully on a blanket. Claire crouching meaningfully in a box. Claire crouching meaningfully with a fox. I do not like that Claire's a sham. I do not like it, Sam I Am. A girl we've never seen speak before shares with the class that she finds the pictures "dead," and Professor Probably A Lesbian shares that she finds them less "dead" and more "empty." Again, professor, I think you mean "bad." Claire says that she wasn't going for "empty" at all, but was instead out to capture "the stillness I sometimes feel." Professor Probably A Lesbian points at one in particular and asks Claire what she was thinking in that picture, and asks Claire, "Do you really want to perpetuate the idea of 'woman as a vacant vessel'?" The girl who thought Claire was dead asks the professor, "Is this more lesbian stuff?" in the same blazingly ignorant way she will one day ask, "I mean, is there any place on earth that's better to live than Williamsburg?" Professor Probably A Lesbian shoots back, "Yes, I have to meet my quota so I get my toaster oven." Oooh, good one! Better than a Home Depot line, at any rate.
Ruth sweeps the indoor steps of the house, probably only to spite the steps after they asked to be left alone. The doorbell rings and Infinity enters. She had to leave her pole in the car, probably, to avoid getting stuck on her way in, the way they put the poles on supermarket shopping carts to keep people from stealing them. Yes. This is exactly like that. She meets Ruth's eyes and tells her she's looking for Rico. Ruth asks, "Federico?" No, Ruth. Rick O., funeral home partner and singer of the garage rock punk trio, The No No Nos. Despite her own surfeit of names, Infinity seems perplexed by Ruth's question, and after grabbing a mint from a nearby table and sticking it in her mouth (you'll notice that there is no plastic on it, for maximum enjoyment), all but shouts, "Rico Rico." Ruth scoffs slightly; maybe she would have been more willing to welcome Infinity into the family had the hooker with the minty breath filled the bowl with human excrement.
And now, you'll forgive me for all lack of comprehension in this recap going forward, for it is hard to concentrate on typing what with the sounds of the moorings of Hell beginning to rip loose and team brimstone down on all God's children. David is driving the van from where I guess he's gone to pick up Mrs. Tony Alto. His cell phone rings and I guess hands-free isn't a law in California yet (probably to satiate the healthy lobby of "Hang up and drive!" bumper sticker makers who seem to reside in great numbers in the area of Los Angeles and surrounding environs), so he picks up the phone to discover Keith on the other end. Keith is on a private jet using one of those fancy phones, and yet the reception remains stellar because no one is as yet HIGH ON CRACK. David tells him how glad he is that Keith has called, worrying that he feels "awkward" about how they left things. Did they? It seemed fine. It was a very, very, very long time ago. But Keith has just called to remind David to "pay the cable bill," which is a call I'm sure could have waited until it didn't cost $15 a second from the air. David complains that he's having an awful day, and Keith tells him, "Honey, forget about it. You're just feeling needy right now." David asks when Keith has ever called him "honey," indicating that if he wants to make everyone around him think he's not talking to a guy, "Why don't you just call me 'Darlene'?" That's awesome. And a total drag queen name as well, like the most David could ever envision himself as a female would be with him wearing the same hairstyle, the button-down shirt and tie, and fishnets. Darlene Fisher: her outfit's half-ass but she's double the class! Her legs may be hairy but your loved ones she'll bury! I could go on all day. Okay. One more. It's a fake-looking rack, but you won't care when you're HIGH ON CRACK. Oh, by the way. In the time it took them to have that conversation, I'll guesstimate David drove past three hundred and forty-seven ATMs. Just saying.
Awwww, Rico can just about jump out of my television and fit into the palm of my hand, is what Rico can do! He walks into the office and finds Infinity sitting at the computer playing a rousing game of The Sims, but all she's done so far is built a plywood wall and a crying child. I wonder why she's clapping her hands together and gleefully exclaiming, "This is one baby daddy away from being better than real life!" No, that totally never happened. She gets up from the computer and gives him a big hug, draping herself all over him and telling him that someone's taking care of Nicole and that she wants to go to "Magic Mountain." As soon as he doesn't have her daughter, oddly. Unless "Magic Mountain" means something in her parlance that's totally inappropriate for children, now that I think about it. He asks her if she's stoned and she is, and he pushes her away when she tells him that she bought a new short dress for him. She tells him how much she likes him and that he makes her life better, and he starts to fold again when he tells her he can try and get off (ew, not like that) work early. But just then Nate walks into the room, apologizing languidly for interrupting. Rico all but yells, "You aren't interrupting anything!" He introduces the two of them in as awkward a fashion as possible and asks Nate if he needs anything. "I was just gonna play some Doom," he responds, as the, like, two gaming dorks I know laugh knowingly, and I feel again like I did when I came home from a year abroad in college and I thought everyone was playing this huge, campus-wide practical joke on me when they kept telling me there was this amazing computer game called Snood. Nate makes for the computer and Infinity kisses Rico on the check. After she departs, Rico tells Nate, "It's not what you think," and Nate just laughs it off with a "Rico, I don't care." Nate? The line to not care forms this way.
From the Frank Stanton Studios in Los Angeles, this is Shark Jumping! David is listening to NPR on the radio. Awwww, I totally love the Marketplace theme song. It's not nearly as catchy and wonderful as the Fresh Air theme (which I'm actually sitting at my desk and singing out loud right now), but it's still filled with a certain reedy drive that allows me to listen to it with much gusto and then tune the hell out as soon as the stock news starts. Our top story today: David gets violently abused for an absurd period of hours. First, the news.
David drives by a red -- what is that, a Camaro? -- parked under a bridge. Standing to it is a gentleman of as-yet-indeterminate age, who doesn't even have the human decency to hold up the international thumb of hitchhiking, which clearly means he loves crack. David drives by with a long look at the guy, and when he sees the young gentlemen flash a peace sign in his rearview mirror, he thinks, "The dude loves peace! And everybody knows that blowjobs are peaceful, so maybe he loves those, too!" He clicks on his right blinker as any self-respecting NPR listening, dead-cargo-toting, Angeleno would, and pulls over. The guy grabs a bag off the top of the car and runs toward the van, and it fazes me that, considering David's usual gift for exceedingly obvious foreshadowing this season, this would actually be as good a time as any for him to start thinking about escaping.
The gentleman reaches the car, and he's totally Jimmy Fallon. Except shorter. And not quite as pretty. And probably funnier than Jimmy Fallon in real life. He's...Jimmy Felon? How do we feel about that nickname? Let's figure it out and see how it works going forward. David cranks down the passenger-side window -- man, that thing NEEDS to be stolen so he can upgrade -- and Jimmy thanks him for stopping, explaining, "Ran out of gas. I know. So lame." The lameness has not yet even begun, young doppelganger. David sympathizes that "it's happened to all of us at least once." It has never happened to me, and I've had my license for ten years and I've driven cross-country eight times. Gas is actually measured by a gauge that, if you are a sighted person, you cannot NOT see when you look at your dashboard. When that gauge is low...I usually just fill up, using gas. Or risk hearing my mother's advice from the day I got my license: "The first thing is: don't try and beat any big trucks. The second thing is: if you run out of gas, you're an idiot." Thanks, Mom.
Usually the best lie is the simplest lie, so Jimmy Felon starts to undo his case right away when he explains to David, "It's a funny story. I had written the paper on my friend's computer. And then I tried to email it to myself!" I don't know. He starts rambling about how his aged grandmother has to move a couch or something, but he ends with the pivotal line, "It's just one of those days." David's all, "Believe me, I know what that's like." Awww, look at that! Kindred spirits who are having one of those days and are about to love crack. He asks David for a lift to the gas station, and I kind of expect a lame visual joke like the one in that Steve Martin movie about California, where he tells his neighbor he'll be right over and then gets in his car and drives four feet to the house. It's Los Angeles. Make a joke about how you'll drive until you find a house built before 1940 or how you'll drive until you find an agent with a soul. Don't go for the one about the time you couldn't find a gas station in Los Angeles, because by the time you start to tell it, you're probably driving past one.
Anyway, young Jimmy climbs into the van and introduces himself as Jake, but clearly his name is Jimmy.
"That's Doctor" Brenda Chenowith "To You" carries a tray and walks to her mother at an outdoor cafeteria area. Ma Chenowith celebrates the fact that she hasn't been on a campus in years, ogling boys and talking too loudly and being all of the things that make me appreciate seeing Brenda finally having a scene with somebody besides Justin Ther-neaux. Ma Chenowith walks past a younger gentleman and basically announces, "Let's wrap him up and take him home!" which causes Brenda to thera-speak, "You are being wildly inappropriate, as usual. And, as usual, I am feeling irritated and resentful." They sit down at a table while Ma Chenowith chides, "Well, that's your shit." They prepare their lunches accordingly, Brenda unearthing a salad and a bottle of water, and Ma Chenowith hilariously managing to have traipsed onto a college campus and found a place where she could buy wine in a mini-bottle. After filling an actual wine glass she probably carries around in her purse, Ma Chenowith picks up a flyer sitting on the table and asks about a certain professor who Brenda has for cognitive science, noting, "He has the most unusually shiny penis." In the absolute only moment of directorial discretion in this entire episode, Brenda does not respond to this observation with a spit take. Brenda tells her mother she thinks Professor Shiny Happy Penis is a very good educator, and Ma Chenowith refutes her with the counterpoint, "He's an exhibitionist. And an idiot." Brenda volleys that maybe her mother should teach the class herself, and Ma Chenowith shares, "I'm not that desperate." Brenda snipes back that it's an excellent program, and Ma Chenowith tells Brenda she'll be an excellent therapist, making sure to end her little speech about Brenda's keen knowledge of interpersonal relationships: "You just have a problem applying the principles to your own life."
Brenda wondered when the insult was going to come, so she changes the subject to something she thinks will be slightly less horrifying for her. She is WRONG. She asks how things are with Olivier, and Ma Chenowith shoots back with discussion about how passionate he is, adding, "And he's completely supportive of my decision to have vaginal rejuvenation surgery." At which point I looked in horror at my friend sitting to me on the couch, who simply mouthed the words, "I'll tell you later," and then, thankfully, didn't. Brenda predictably recoils, but her mother barrels on, explaining that she's had a couple of kids and that "nobody wants to fuck a glass of water, if you know what I'm saying." Watching the level of water increase radically in Brenda's glass from the time she's seen holding it to the time she puts it down allows me to concentrate on something else besides crying. Ma Chenowith leans in and asks, "Speaking of children, are you still thinking of having one?" She is. And still with Joe, I'm sad to report. Ma Chenowith asks how the sex is, and Brenda tells her, "It's creative," which compels Ma Chenowith to insist that Brenda dump him immediately. Listen to your mother, Brenda! Has she steered you wrong before? It's not like you're institutionalized! And your bipolar brother hasn't hit on you! Er, lately! But Brenda defends herself by using her mother's own words against her, reminding her, "Last month when I brought him to dinner, you said he was the one." LAST MONTH? So three months between the first and second episode. A month between the fourth and fifth episodes. Watch out for a random lapse of fifty years between two episodes before this season is out, where the RicoBot 5000 is doing the embalming and Claire is a grizzled art teacher at a lesbian commune in Washington state and Nate is still being really, really annoying about Lisa. Brenda pulls back and reevaluates her mother, glaring her down and whispering, "I hate your new hair." It's true. She looks like she needs Jack-o-Lantern rejuvenation surgery.
Very, very old people are in a bereavement group in the room where Dr. Evil once told Carrie Fisher his father invented the question mark. One of them tells a story about her husband Walter, and adds that she has so many memories with her husband she can hardly remember them all. The leader of the group tells her, "Memories are nice, aren't they, Helen?" Nate looks down guiltily because, really, he hated his wife a lot.
Jimmy Felon walks out of the gas station at 3160 This Street Does Not Exist In Los Angeles Street and tells David -- who has smartly taken this opportunity to gas up the van in advance of an upcoming drive to Long Beach -- that the ATM is broken. See, this is murky. Because you don't go to a gas station to buy loose gas in a container. You go to a gas station to find someone who will tow your car to the gas station. Can you even just wander into a gas station in L.A. and buy gas without putting it into your car anymore? Jimmy explains that he tried to use his credit card to buy some gas but that the card was over its limit, and that the guy who worked here just laughed in his face. "How humiliating is that?" he asks. "I must have been, like, a serious asshole in a life." David responds, "I don't think it works that way," because they're trying to drive home some nebulous point about punishment and the arbitrary will of God that was broached in the scene with Tony Alto, but I didn't get it before and I'm feeling pretty "meh" about my attempts to contemplate it now. David comforts on, "I think it just happens." It totally does happen. If you don't pay your credit-card bill. Jimmy takes out a pack of gum and celebrates, "At least I stole a pack of gum." He gives David a piece and tells him, "Now you're my accomplice." And, with a segue whose timing is whatever the opposite of immaculate is, Jimmy pauses for a horribly awkward second and then remembers, "My poor grandma is still waiting for me." David volunteers to buy the gas and the gas can, and Jimmy tells him that he'll only allow it if "you take me to an ATM so I can pay you back." David breezily agrees, "Okay!" before hopping into the store, chewing his gum all the way. Because no little cinnamon gum freshens breath longer than Big Dead. So kiss a little longer/ Hold hands a little longer/ Fantasize about sex with your kidnapping sociopath a little longer/ Longer with Big Dead/ That Big Dead freshness never slacks/ Your fresh breath goes on and on even while you're smoking crack/ Get doused in gasoline a little longer/ Could this scene be any longer / Give your breath long lasting freshness with Big Dead.
George "That'll Do, Prig" Sibley is in this episode. And he's talking about "a hunk of crusty bread." He carries a snack over to the table and tells Ruth something really homespun about how good food tastes even better "when you cut it with your grandfather's pocket knife." Ruth so doesn't care either, sitting down at the table and immediately launching in: "I was thinking that we should invite Kyle over for dinner." George asks a simple, "Why?" Ruth don't play, and tells him that she wants to introduce Krazy Kyle to Head In A Hatbox Betsy. George accuses her of "meddling," which she is. You guys? She totally is! George reminds her that the only reason that he wanted Ruth to meet Kyle is to see how screwed up he was, closing up the argument with the ouchy "You deal with your messed up children and I'll deal with mine" and storming off after telling her, "I'm very disappointed in you, Ruth." Or is he the hunk of crusty bread? I am confused.
Back at The Good Grief Crisis Counseling Center, Nate pours himself some coffee and really looks like he's got a head of steam building on an upcoming soliloquy of some kind. He listens to the aged counselor sympathize with people who lose their loved ones after spending a lifetime together, busting in, "I don't have a lifetime of memories. We were just getting started." He edges his way back toward his seat and tells them he has a two-year-old daughter without a mother. He sits down and tells them, "Most of the time, I just feel numb. But then sometimes, I feel just terrified. And sometimes I feel so angry, but I don't want to be this bitter guy." Nate's sharing! He's sharing! He's...oh, crap. A loud buzzing sound cuts him right off, mid-sharing, and as they've evacuated into the parking lot. Nate sits, staring, because Nate got gonged while he was sharing.
I cannot BELIEVE that the sun is setting. And I cannot BELIEVE that the funeral for the woman whose body is in the back of the van seems to be listed as TBA on the Fisher & Diaz production schedule. Jimmy thanks David for being "the coolest guy I've ever met," and David looks around for an ATM, saying perplexedly, "They're usually all over." No. A Jamba Juice is hard to find when you're looking for one. And when you want a Coffee Bean, all you'll be able to find is a Starbucks. Carrot Top's star on the Walk of Fame? Never there when you're looking for it. But an ATM in the city of Los Angeles is right...there. Just stick to highly populated streets, which is all of them. Why not, oh, I don't know, drive back in the direction of your house, where you live, in L.A., and hit an ATM near there? It's not like David didn't grow up in the city. It's not like he suddenly looked out the window of the car and was all, "Oh, wait. We're not in Los Angeles at all! We're actually in Floss Angeles, which is totally the name of a made-up city in a brochure aimed at getting children to exercise proper dental hygiene! There are no ATMs here! Just tooth-related landmarks like 'Incisor & Out Burger' and 'The Plaque-itol Records Building.' And the upcoming Entourage, featuring a cameo by screen siren Ali Tartar!"
"Are you gay?" Jimmy asks. David tells him yes, and Jimmy tells him, "I thought so. You look gay." No, he doesn't. Jimmy tells him that "he's too cute not to" have a boyfriend, but asks if he could be his "guy on the side." He asks, "You want me to take my pants off?" But it's a dream sequence, you see. David snaps back to the only reality less disturbing than the one he just dipped into.
False alarm. Fire engines leaving. Nate leaving first.
NOTE: IT IS NOW NIGHTTIME. That's awesome. That means the ATM search took up at the very least an hour, and probably significantly more. They could have found an ATM by this point. In Vegas. And stayed for the "O" show, which Jimmy, in David's fantasy sequences, might really have enjoyed. Anyway, Jimmy rocks out to the No Doubt cover of "It's My Life," which was totally on my list of "You know what song really doesn't need another cover?" at #2, right after "Landslide," until I heard the "No Doubt" version and fell very deeply in love with it. Jimmy asks David if he grew up in L.A., and Jimmy tells a story about how he grew up in Bermuda because he was an Armed Forces brat. Blah blah blah dislocation and difficulty making friends, and Jimmy stares oddly at David for a second too long before David notices that there's an ATM right up ahead. Down an alley. In an abandoned parking lot. In the part of the city where light was never invented. With a wolf. And spiders. And a night in a haunted house.
David pulls in to the parking lot and kills the van's lights. Why is he getting out, too? No matter. As they walk up to the front door, Jimmy calls out a casual "hey," and David turns around to be met with a fresh punch in the mouth from Jimmy. David hits the bricks, and Jimmy meets him on the ground and pulls out a gun, explaining to David that they'll be walking into the store, getting as much money as David can out of the machine, and leaving. Jimmy -- were there another one of him, we could now commence in calling them "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny" -- adds that David is not to do anything drastic in the store. Jimmy plants the gun in David's back and they walk into the grocery store. The cowboy-hat-clad proprietor is too yokel-y to note any kind of security breach, so they waltz right past him and to the ATM in the back. David, bleeding profusely from his nose, puts in a figure that Jimmy doesn't like, telling him to withdraw $500 and not $300. Jimmy. The other $200 is the ATM fee at a backwater grocery store where people only go where they're a-boozin' or a-muggin'. Jimmy grabs a big pile of cash dispensed from the ATM and turns David around, directing him out of the store. As they pass the checkout desk, David tries to clear his throat really loudly, but Jimmy just laughs "Nice try" before grabbing a bottle of tequila and leading David back outside. So much for plugging his spine with full of lead if he didn't cooperate.
Jimmy is all genial again when they get back out to the parking lot, apologizing to David for punching him, laughing, "I didn't even know I was gonna do that! I just fucking...I just did it!" But Jimmy chides, "Hey, you're not gonna dump me after our first fight, are you? We're best friends forever. Now get in the van before I kick your motherfucking ass." David heads toward the van, unhitching his cell phone and putting it in his pocket in possibly the least proactive move he could have made at that point, except perhaps for an impromptu game of Twister. Right hand...dead.
Where are all of the other characters? It was probably at this point in the writing process that the writers started to think, "If we had to revisit any of the other characters and their suddenly, totally dropped plot lines, why not at least cut back to them wondering where David is? Nah. That's the problem with the characters. They're all so disconnected that no one even cares where David is. Let's just ignore them all, then." High fives followed this logic.
Back in the van, Jimmy cracks open his tequila and advises David to "Go, cowboy." David asks where, and Jimmy's all, "That way!" But first, he tells him to wipe his face for some symbolic reason I fail to understand because zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. David cranks up the van and no music plays. Huh. I guess the radio station playing "It's My Life" when they turned the car off went out of business the second that song was over. Or it got too friiiiiiiiiiiiiiightened of Jimmy Felon and turned itself off as a defensive maneuver. In either case...David? Your radio's broken.
David asks Jimmy if he should take him back to his car, and the plot adds tequila and shakes, not stirs, when Jimmy responds, "I don't have a car." Jimmy puts on his seatbelt because, y'know, safety first, as he explains to David, "Well, it's definitely party time." Jimmy at first suggests that they head down to Long Beach to hook themselves up with some meth, but instead changes his mind and sets course for "MacArthur Park." David offers the whole van to Jimmy, but Jimmy reminds him, "I'm drinking. Friends don't let friends drive drunk." That is true. Every catchphrase I learned in the '80s is true. My fresh breath does go on and on while I chew it. David starts to turn onto the freeway, but Jimmy freaks right out about that and says they won't be taking the freeway. A waver enters his voice when he explains, "I had an accident on the freeway. My father was killed. Right after we moved here." David apologizes and sympathizes, "My father died in a car accident." Yeah, this might not be time. Jimmy asks how old he was, and David tells him, "It was just three years ago." When this show kicked ass. Jimmy yells that "It's not the same. I was ten years old." Eep. Someone had better fart to break the tension.
David climbs around the inside of the van for a second, and all at once comes busting out of the back, knocking Jimmy over and sending his gun flying. He takes off to what looks like a truck parking lot of some kind, and hides behind one of eighteen wheels as he watches a police car pull up behind the van. The car idles for a minute, but just at that moment David's cell phone rings and he's tackled from behind by Jimmy. He makes David apologize for running away, but David takes this opportunity to burst into tears because he wants to join the chorus on my couch.
Nobody lives in L.A. Jimmy tries out his new "imagine the guy who finds her" material on David in regard to poor Annie, but David tells him that he doesn't find it funny at all, turning the topic to more personal matters and asking, "Why are you doing this to me? How can you be this way? Because your father died?" Jimmy cops to the fact that his father isn't dead at all, so David continues on the former tack, asking, "How can you be so completely disconnected from another human being." Geddit? Do you do you do you? Because I kind of...don't. Jimmy insists that instead of talking they just "get high and have some fun." Can't. Have to recap.
And up they pull to MacArthur Park, where David parks the van. Jimmy tells David he "could use some crack," and asks him if he's ever done it before. Turns out, no. He insists, "Come on. Let's go find us a crack dealer." Jimmy jumps out of the van. David makes no move to escape. And you know where you can't shoot someone? In a public park. With other people around. Because, apparently, all six people who live in L.A. have gone to the area surrounding MacArthur Park, where I can honestly say I've never been. I'm not even sure I knew it was a real place. They scope out potential crack dealers, and Jimmy walks up to one, asking him, "Couple of rocks. How much?" The gentlemen tells him that it's "forty each," and Jimmy decides to go with one. With which the drug man spits the aforementioned "rock" out of his mouth. And, even though the only part of the The Wire I've ever seen makes it look like it's a show about middle-aged men who stand near water and curse, I still believe this scene is the worst episode of The Wire I've never seen.
And now, I'm learning how to smoke crack. This guy definitely gets less and less cute the more he likes to smoke crack. Well, at least now we know what was in his bag: a lighter that emits a blue flame, a piece of tin foil, and a red straw. This is like a fucked-up game of "In My Grandmother's Attic." If your grandmother is Timothy Leary.
I believe this is what is known as "freebasing." Jimmy makes some orgasm noises and hands the drugs over to David, who tries to decline. "Or I could put a hole in your throat and blow the smoke in that way," Jimmy counters. I thought drugs were supposed to make you nicer. But what crack does do is make you HIGH ON CRACK. Escape now, David. Go go go! Or...smoke some crack. Y'know. Whatever. David takes the paraphernalia and dives right in, inhaling the smoke and holding it at Jimmy's urging. He blows it out and sits back hard against the seat, screaming, "I've never felt like this! How could I have never felt like this?" Jimmy asks if David can drive, and he responds, "I can do anything!" He takes off and the radio is back on because it's not afraid of Jimmy when he's on crack, and neither are we so just ESCAPE. David takes off at a million miles an hour, and Jimmy asks out of seeming nowhere, "You wanna have sex?" David asks if he's serious, and Jimmy expresses a strong interest to "suck dick" that lasts until we discover that this is, as well, a dream sequence. They're both asleep. I remember sleep.
A dude with a baseball bat smashes the front window of the van and I don't know why. He screams something about needing more money or them being on his turf or something, and David takes off and drives really, really fast. David stops at a light and lets out a long exhale, and when Jimmy points out, "Your windshield's broken," they both laugh uproariously. David asks if he can go now, but Jimmy still says that they need to go to Long Beach, reporting, "I need some meth." Good luck getting there without taking the freeway. But they're actually not going anywhere, yet, because first David has to get the shits in an alley. What? Kidding? Why would I be kidding?
What did David clean himself up with, a map of where all of the bank branches in Los Angeles aren't? Jimmy calls back that all David has to do is take him to Long Beach, and then Jimmy will let David go. And we may go as well? No, not to Long Beach, NOT TO LONG BEACH, NOT TO...awwww, crap. Now see what you've gone and made us do?
Long Beach. Home of CPK waitresses and blonde dating-show contestants. They drive around on empty streets because nobody lives in Long Beach, either, and David asks if they're almost there. But just as they start to bicker about directions, a dog runs in front of the car and Jimmy screams, "That's my dog!" David expresses some serious doubt that this is true, but Jimmy says that he used to live around here, and that this is definitely his dog. Jimmy brandishes the gun once more and tells David, "Help me get the dog and I will let you go."
David drives down a dark, dark alley and tussles with the dog for a spell, grabbing him and showing "Charlie" to Jimmy. But, upon closer inspection, Jimmy notes, "That's not my dog." Jimmy lets the dog go and a fight finally ensues, David pushing back. But Jimmy remains with the power of the Second Amendment firmly behind him, firing a warning shot into the corner and demanding of David, "Give me your wallet." David asks an incredulous "What?" But rather than go through the whole Jules Winnfield "What ain't no country I ever heard of" cleverness, Jimmy just punts David to the ground with a slam of the gun barrel to his face, repeating, "Give it." David hands him the wallet, and Jimmy explains that he took it "so they can't identify your body right away. That's right, you fucking faggot. You are so dead." He kicks the holy living shit out of David in a way I won't explain in too much detail on account of not wanting to watch it again. Jimmy returns to the van and comes back with the gas can, which is pretty excessive considering the gun, dousing David in it and observing that's it's "time to end this once and for all." David begs for his life, and Jimmy puts the gun on David's teeth and insists, "Suck it." David takes the gun all the way into his mouth and Jimmy tells him, "Close your eyes." He takes the gun out of David's mouth and tells him to close his eyes. He cocks the thing and, in appropriate TV form, David's life flashes before his eyes: he's young and frolicking in a sprinkler. He's with Keith. He's working on a dead body. Keith. Body. Something else. He opens his eyes to the screech of Jimmy pulling away in his van, and he's left alone and non-dead in the alley. A cut later, he's wandering the streets of Long Beach on which nobody lives, getting passed up for a ride by a passing car, and finally walking into the headlights of a police car that stops in front of his bloody-ass self. What about now? Think you can escape now?