"Okay, you know something, Norbert? I need money." So says a doddering overweight thirtysomething gentleman who went to the prom with his cousin and has a tendency to dangerously overuse the letters "IRL." He pads around a cluttered apartment that the set decorators found a template for in an old file marked "Bomber, Una" that features scattered papers, books about how pick up loose women, and lots of those make-them-yourself plain white boxes from Staples designed for the storage of papers, books, and, in this gentleman's case, I'm guessing, at least one human head. Okay. Maybe just a doll head. But does that make it any less weird?
We pan around the place to note the presence of old computer equipment -- maybe this portly gentleman is just upset because he has finally obtained a warrant to arrest Nick Brunch and can't afford to buy a plane ticket to Oslo -- and past that a series of age-appropriate (for a five-year-old) figurines of the comic-book variety. Though there's another word I learned in my childhood to describe toys such as those, and the word sticks in my mind because I wasn't allowed to play with them, even though I'm sure I asked. And that word is "dolls."
As we continue our episode of Cribs: Unabomber, we swing past some vintage-looking videotapes and an open box of Alpha-Bits, which are delicious and educational. Comic Book Guy speaks into a cordless phone no doubt modeled on early wireless communication used aboard the Enterprise, telling Norbert, "My rent is three weeks overdue and you're not helping." Norbert suggests that his fat, nameless, near-death friend "sell something," and I can only hope he's suggesting something akin to the totally awesome Radioactive Man design he made on his Lite-Brite and not anything to do with his sperm, blood, clothing, or plasma, because if the rest of the human gene pool is sullied with the intimate matter of this man, the aliens have already won. And that's precisely the excuse he gives to his parents whenever they ask him why he doesn't have a girlfriend. In response to Norbert's suggestion, Comic Book Guy crassly shoots back, "How about you just loan me some cashola from your trust fund instead?" Oh. A mooch. Who makes other people feel guilty about the fact that they have money. Who uses words like "cashola." The mortal coil is really gonna miss this guy.
Norbert won't have any of it. He realizes that if you give a man Fish Boy, Lost Prince of Atlantis, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man Fish Boy, Lost Prince of Atlantis, you feed him for a lifetime. So he suggests, "You could sell me your entire Justice League Of America Versus The Aliens series. A guy on Ebay sold one last week for $500." eBay jokes? That's very "dork culture 1997" of them. Everyone uses eBay now. I saw it in the commercials where delightfully suburban white people sing to the tunes of classics from the '50s through '70s.
Our first close-up glimpse of almost-dead guy shows us a man with terrible hair, enormous black-framed glasses -- which must have led to quite a debate among the production staff as to whether it would have been more or less realistic to have added a piece of masking tape around the middle or if that would have been too Meatballs of them -- and an open flannel shirt that his cooler, well-meaning cousin bought for him from Aeropostale in 1992. "Wanna know what you could sell that would pay for rent for, like, the three months?" Norbert asks. Just do the vintage comic-book thing. We know you're on your way there anyway. Spare us the drama if you have any decency at all and let's get The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Norbert out of the way already. "Blue Twister. 1941, Issue #1." But Glenn Shadix won't have any of it, responding with conviction, "No fucking way. Can't do it." Norbert plot-develops that "it's worth three grand, easy," but Dead Man Climbing takes this moment to grab onto a rickety bookshelf and start feeling around on the top shelf. An aerial shot reveals that the aforementioned "Blue Twister" sits on the very top of the bookcase, and Dead Guy announces, "I'm never selling it. In fact, I'm gonna be buried with it. It's in my will." Look out, Fallout Boy! Just as he says that line, the bookshelf gives way and collapses on top of him. He lets out a gasp of air and dies, and we fade to white to discover that Lawrence Tuttle made it from 1969-2004 without so much as one feel of a lady's soft bosom. As the character that launched a thousand tired imitators whose existence is owed to conversations such as that one might say: Worst. Death. Ever.
Rico "An Affair To Remember" Diaz sits at the Fisher kitchen table slurping Apology-Os out off of his spoon of sadness. He looks up to find George "There Go The Brides" Sibley staring down his nose (roughly a distance of sixteen miles) at him. George picks up his newspaper and begins reading earnestly from the Stuff No One Cares About (in my house, that section is helpfully labeled "Automobiles") section, but is soon interrupted by the entrance of Nate "Hair Of The Dog" Fisher. Nate offers an unusually chipper, "Mornin', fellas!" because he can only be happy when other people are sad, in an emotionally parasitic fashion that George could probably describe in terms of the actual parasite Nate resembles, right down to its thorax. Nate asks Rico if he had a "rough night," and Rico responds, "A little rough. I miss sleeping in my own bed. I miss the boys. I miss Vanessa." Yeah, but how was the blowjob? No one on this show ever focuses on the positive. And at least you don't have the dreaded lupus. On the other side of the table, George feels fine, just fine, juxtaposing, "Not me. Slept like a baby." I'm sure there was a ton in common between sleeping George and a sleeping child. Ssssssh! They're so cute when they're only thrice-divorced! Nate explains that he "dropped Maya off over at Bettina's with Mom," so I guess Patricia Clarkson had a shooting schedule for a twee movie about love and talking about maybe New Jersey that precluded her from living in her own house this week. George asks how she is, and Nate enters in his own name on the "Name Of Fisher Girl Not In Room" on his Mad Libs entitled, "Fisher Women: Can't Live With 'Em." He answers, "Maya's fine. If you want to know how my mother is, she suggested that you call her and ask her yourself." And again, I'm torn. Because on the one hand, this really is a pretty desperate ploy to grab some attention from the emotionally distant man you thought you could trust enough to marry. But, on the other hand, George's craggy face is too long by half. So they both have their credits and debits, is all I'm saying. And, by the way, Maya is not fine. That girl was never right to begin with.
George returns his eyes to the newspaper because Nate isn't made of rocks and is therefore a topic of little interest to George, but Rico keeps on topic out of respect for the moderators, asking, "When's she coming back?" George responds that he lacks even the slightest idea, subtly editorializing, "Apparently, she still needs some space." Nate asks George whether he wants Ruth to come back, and George sneers, "Of course I do." At which Nate decides to dabble in a little marriage counseling, because if priests can do it without anyone being all, "wha?" about it, I guess so can Nate: "Well, with all due respect, why don't you just get off your ass, go over there, eat as much crow as you have to, and bring her back home?" Rather than lapse into a lengthy diatribe about the origin of the expression "eat crow" (people, don't tell me he wouldn't), George tells Nate that he won't be engaging in that kind of behavior, asserting, "I'm not playing that game." Yeah, if he were to lower himself to that kind of manipulative fence-mending, he could end up -- what's that one old expression? Oh, yes -- "married fewer than seven times." Rico concurs with George, picking up his spoon and pointing and using it as a pointer as he agrees, "Yeah. Yeah, that's the way I play it." Awwwwwwwww. It's not Rico's fault. He grew up learning from the movies that all hookers were good, deep down inside. Nate regards them both and smiles, telling them, "You guys are more pathetic than I am." Tied for last is still last.
"Woke up in the middle of the night and you weren't there," Keith "Security Tard" Charles tells David "David Fisher" Fisher. "You were out here watching television again." They're sitting on the living-room couch eating cereal. Man, when Keith chews, his head is like a living biology lesson. His whole head gets involved with that shit. You can practically see his brain sending his taste bud receptors the message that he enjoys crunchy flakes and just a touch of golden honey. David tells Keith that he was using his time wisely, explaining, "I watched Jaws 3." No, David. You watched Jaws 3-D, the 1983 genre-busting misfire in the ilk of "Smell-o-Vision" or "movies about talking babies" that pretty much ended the 3-D craze and early-'80s promotional push when you'd get those half-red, half-blue glasses at 7-11 for free with a purchase of ANYTHING. Also? Sidebar? Jaws 3-D was directed by visionary failure Joe Alves. Whose credits involve work on a movie entitled Sarge. Which is good that I provided a segue into the topic, because they certainly didn't do it for me. David starts it off: "I am so glad we're not doing that whole open-relationship thing anymore." Keith agrees that he is too, but David asks him in fourteen different ways if he really is happy about it. Here's one of them: "You're not just saying that because I'm glad?" Keith chews and thinks and thinks and chews and burns so many calories on account of his chewing that it's no wonder he's so built because the more he eats, the more he burns. Keith taps the spoon on the bottom the bowl and his biceps bulge until each arm is the size of an average teenager. He thinks and his brain gets bigger. He speaks: "David, I have to come clean with you about something. I had sex with someone after we decided not to sleep with anyone outside the relationship." David asks him who it was, casually asking if it was Javier because one line of dialogue before he's threatened by women, the show needs to go out of its way to prove how not threatened David is by men. Keith: "Celeste." David laughs and calls bullshit, noting, "Celeste is a woman. Isn't she?" But it's the fact that she's not quite a boy (not yet a woman) that seems to be touching a nerve with David, as he continues on, "You haven't secretly decided to switch teams, have you?" Keith tries to brush off the whole thing by promising David that it was "an accident," which he meets with the rejoinder, "You were walking by and you just happened to fall into her vagina?" Yeah, that seems like a pretty fair representation of how gay men picture a woman's reproductive system. I know he was engaged for two years and all that, but let's just say I went to two proms with the same girl and still think the scenario David described could happen. And then we'll move on. David offers a simple "Wow, but okay," and I worry for a minute that David might be the one switching teams, because if she's really as much of a gay icon as they've been making her out to be, I'd imagine David would want many more details than that.
Claire "Lesbi...friends! Psych!" Fisher knocks on the door of an apartment in a seedy hallway that looks like it got caught on the SFU set trying to escape from the set of The Wire. Anita is soon to come to the door, inspiring from Claire the question "What are you doing here?" Anita introduces herself, "Hello, I'm Edie's friend, Anita." Claire gives her a look that's like, "Oh, sorry, I don't usually hear your name, since I usually lose interest during its preceding title of 'Dilettante Crazy Art Bitch' and think about having you killed" and asks if Mena Suvari is available to come out and play vagina hockey. Anita tells Claire, "She doesn't want to talk to you," and steps outside the apartment to add, "She's just kind of over you for the moment." Claire asks why that might be, and Anita has even more knowledge at the ready: "Because you were a lesbian for about two whole minutes. And then, suddenly, you weren't." An underdirected Claire wanders around in the hallway gesticulating a lot, so Anita fills with words what Claire refused to fill with her tongue, vamping, "On top of that, she said you got all, like, grossed out by her pussy. That is totally not cool." Claire tries to defend herself, basically saying that it's not like she didn't enjoy trying on Edie's rabbit fur muff, but it just didn't fit the way it looked like it might when she saw it in the store: "I was not grossed out by her pussy, okay? Pussy, per se, does not gross me out." What an awkward series of lines they put in that poor girl's mouth here. "Pussy per se" ? It sounds like the dominatrix villain of an ancient James Bond movie filmed entirely in Latin. Dr. Haudquaquam, perhaps? When Claire finishes explaining herself and her relationship to Edie's 'nads with an impassioned, "I didn't know what to do with it," an unimpressed Anita promises, "I'll pass that along." Did you know that there's a direct correlation between the decline of Spirographs and the rise in gang activity? Think about it. I will. No, you won't.
"No, we weren't related," explains a large-statured gentleman to David and Nate in spelling out his relationship to the deceased. Though it they were related, they'd have been Siamese twins connected by the lie about having a girlfriend who lives in Canada. Nate and David sit in the Sad Room across from the aforementioned large-statured gentleman and another, small, pipsqueak-y guy who I'd nickname "Dilton" from the Archie comic if it wouldn't cause that guy to give me a rambling, twenty-minute speech about how Archie isn't a real comic book like The Red Car Battery or The Spinning Spinster or Vita-man! Who Wants Justice For All People From A To Zinc! or whatever. The Dilton character offers that they knew Lawrence from "Hi De Ho," where they used to work. Nate asks if it's a grocery store, even though it sounds more like a cowboy-themed restaurant where all of the tables are named after Gene Autry. Dilton corrects him: "It's a comic-book store in Santa Monica." And it is. The biggest, dorkiest comic book store in the world, just mere blocks away from the biggest, dorkiest video store, where walking in and requesting 13 Going on 30 is greeted with the same level of contempt as if you walked in and yelled, "Do you sell babies? Because I haven't eaten a baby in almost an hour, and, make no mistake, I love to eat the babies." ["But if you go in there and happen to rent Tod Browning's Freaks, you will instantly make five new best friends and never, never shake them no matter how hard you try." -- Wing Chun]
David asks if Lawrence had a family, and Dilton says that they were "pretty much it," and the other fat guy (can we just call him "Living Lawrence"?) further explains, "We were all in the West-Co Blue Twister Society together." Nate has heard of the comic, noting, "That's the guy who can turn into a human tornado." Dilton is clearly treading on more firm conversational ground here, sitting up in his chair and all but knocking off his own black-framed glasses that look nothing like mine, thanks, and continues on, "Or shoot smaller tornadoes from his fingertips, with the strength of an F5. That's the strongest tornado there is." Living Lawrence and Dilton animatedly bang though the mythos behind the Blue Tornado (scientist works faulty machine, nuclear power jargon gets involved, the phrase "horribly awry" gets mixed in somewhere, and there's your Blue Tornado. And, come to think of it, there's your every other comic-book trope ever as well), which inspires an impressed Nate to note, "I had no idea he had a society." Dilton unearths Issue #1 of Blue Twister, the cover of which shows the most super of heroes laying the smackdown on a swastika-clad member of the German Army. Dilton reminds Nate and David that "the last thing [Lawrence] said before the bookshelf fell on top of him is that he wanted to be buried with it." Dilton then does a little impersonation of the gurgling noise Lawrence made right before he died, to which David can only respond, "We're very sorry for your loss." I think we've all learned a valuable lesson today. Dorks are hilarious. Even when they're dead.
Bettina fields a phone call while Ruth folds laundry on the couch nearby. Ruth asks Maya if she'd like to help Ruth to fold laundry, and an overdubbed response comes from a too-far-from-the-camera- to-see-she's-not-really-talking Maya, who answers, "No." Awwwwwww! Kids and their saying of the darndest things! Bettina suggests that they "get out and do something today," and Ruth suggests the park. "You've been here for two weeks. We've been to the park almost every single day," Bettina tells her. Ruth considers Bettina for a second and asks, "We're getting on your nerves, aren't we?" Kathy Bates sighs a perfectly deadpan "Yeah," but assures Ruth, "If I wanted you to leave, you'd know it." Bettina tells her to "think big" regarding their afternoon plans, and before Ruth has the chance to suggest "What about a really big park?" Bettina charges on: "I'm tired of coming up with all the ideas in this marriage." Ruth reminds her that this is not a marriage, and Bettina says, "It's starting to feel like one." A cartoon light bulb goes ping over Ruth's head -- or at least if would have if she were the title character in the comic book Super Passive-Aggressive Wife, a.k.a. The Beige Crusader -- and she suggests, "What if I told Nate to take Maya back to day care for the couple of days?" I would say that it means the promises everyone in that family makes about babysitting that child so that Nate can go out and have a life are a total lie. Bettina perks up at the idea, so Ruth continues, "George is always talking about his travels. I thought we'd have adventures together, but so far he hasn't taken me anywhere." He took you to the fossils and you blew it, lady. And you took him to a seedy hotel room to have a contract-violating, cappuccino-drenched meeting with his poo-slinging son, which wasn't exactly in the latest AAA guide to America's hottest tourist destinations. Ruth clarifies, "Let's go on a road trip." Rooooooooad triiiiiiiiiiip! I can't hear those two words without hearing immediately after a loud splashing sound, followed by the sound of teenagers making a sound like this one: "Woooooooo!" Knowing what we know about Kathy Bates and her lack of decorum in hot tubs, I fear that the impending road trip will have way too much of the first element and way too little of the second.
Anyone for sex with Brenda? Everyone for sex with Brenda! Nate shows up because it beats working, and their time on the sex bed abruptly ends with Brenda's declaration, "God, I love you." Nate keeps going for a second in hopes she's talking about the actual deity and her feelings of passion for His word, because you know about people in recovery and the whole "higher power" hoodoo. But she means "god" as an exclamation and Nate as a lover, but instead he chooses "fighter" and God chooses, "Y'all, I'll be over here, hoping my name is getting left out of this shit from now on." Nate rolls off Brenda, because evil anti-heroine Pussy Per Se found the one thing that makes her power utterly useless...love! She asks Nate, "What, you can't handle that?" He tells her, "You're right. I can't handle this right now." But they can still be friends, right? They lie in silence for a while, Brenda breaking it by asking, "I need to know what you feel for me, Nate," because that is just so LIKE a woman. Nate tries the excuse that he spent a year grieving, which is a burden he really shouldered in silence, because, man, I hardly even noticed. Brenda notes, "But you want me to be available for sex," and Nate cuts her off with a shouted, "I don't want anything, okay? It's just too fucking intense for me now. I have a daughter." Brenda tells him that it's "lame" to use that as an excuse, but Nate's already getting dressed and marching out the door. She tries to tell him, "I could be part..." but he cuts her off again with the somewhat final "No, you couldn't." He tries to apologize, but she insists that he just "go," and he leaves the room without his shirt on. Don't worry, Nate. The newspaper that runs the "Angry Monkey Escapes From Chenowith House; Wearing Pants, Terrified Residents Report" story will totally run a little correction later.
While the former Lawrence Tuttle sleeps the sleep of permanence (that's where he's a Viking! And I'll bet he had the .wav file and the screensaver to prove it), Rico dials his cell phone in the Fisher basement. Vanessa picks up and Rico tries to sound positive, saying, "Hey, Vanessa, it's me!" She tells him to hold on and puts Julio on the phone, and with forced jollity that would make me feel really bad for him if he hasn't ruined his marriage by fucking a hooker, he tells his son he wasn't done talking to his mother. "She doesn't want to talk to you," Julio says over the phone, and Rico has to respond like his son just said, "Free cotton candy for all!" Which sucks for him as a father. But, again, fucked a hooker, so. Julio asks when Rico is coming home and tells him he loves him, an emotion which will last exactly as long as Vanessa can hold out before she can work the sentence "You wanna know what your papi did wrong?" into a conversation in the very near future.
David sits on the couch in pajamas watching television, and Keith enters the room soon after and does what the old lady advice columns refer to as "initiating." He unbuttons (oh, I'm sorry...unsnaps) David's pajama top, and David looks down to note he's got a big ol' pair of tits. And, objectively speaking, I can understand almost every fetish. But chicks with dicks just ain't one of them. Neither is anything having to do with animals, the dead, or poo. Or family members, vast disparities in age, or food. Also, no hard drugs, no public places, nothing involving weird dirty talk, and if you "read it in Maxim," the answer it no. Outside of that, I think we're talking free swim. Meh. Let's just stay home and watch cartoons, okay? David's eyes register horror at his titties, and he wakes up in bed because it was just a dream. He punches a sleeping Keith on the shoulder and lies back down. Who has a dream that he's sitting on the couch watching television?
George is an inveterate womanizer who is emotionally unavailable to those who dare to try to love him, but Ruth is cheating on him with Mapquest. See how it's impossible to truly commit to taking sides with these two? Ruth and Bettina carry bags to a waiting van -- whose van is that? Why do these people keep having different cars? What about that big-ass town car they took to church last week? What happened to Claire's hearse? Is it actually the funeral home's responsibility to provide the hearse for the trip from the home to the ceremony? If so, who drives it? If so, how many phone books does Rico require -- as Bettina asks where they're off to. "Rosarito Beach!" Ruth answers excitedly. She starts to get into the passenger seat, but Bettina tells her, "Your trip. You're driving." Ruth agrees, telling Bettina that that makes her "the navigator." She unearths a few papers folded in her purse, telling her, "I got a map on the internet. And a list of all the haciendas. And I made us a reservation. It's the off-season and everything is reduced." Man. So much clunky foreshadowing in that sentence that I can't believe, in retrospect, that it didn't end with Ruth just shouting out for seemingly no reason, "And this paper here says I won't kill any Mexican horses!" before driving off into the sunset.
Brenda sits at a table in a small room on the shiny, reflective side of a one-way mirror. I'm sorry. That's as well as I can describe it. It's like the room on a cop show where the officer enters all self-righteously and slams a gun down on the table in front of the perp and is all, "We found this under the front seat of your car!" And then he throws down a bag of white powder and adds, "And this!" The he walks slowly around the table with his arms tightly folded across his chest, and he lowers his voice a little and adds, "Now, Mr. Innocent, perhaps you'd like to give us a new alibi for where you were on Thursday night!" If that kid keeps up the hard work, he's gonna make lieutenant one day!
Brenda sits across the table from a nervous-looking man who grabs the arms of his chair and explains, "It's not like I have to cross a bridge every day. I never have to cross bridges. But I think about crossing them constantly." Brenda asks the gentleman if he's speaking metaphorically, and he tells her, "No, I'm talking about literal bridges." I sure hope this is their first session. She asks him if anything bad has ever happened to him or anyone he knows on a bridge, and he laughs and tells her, "They collapse all the time. If you Google 'bridge collapses,' you get, like, a thousand hits." You get exactly 6,050 hits. And if you Google "struck by lightning," you get 121,000. "Eaten by a bear" yields 2,210. "Smoking-related illness" nets only 6,750, and "died laughing" will give you 15,900. I'm just saying Google searches might not be the most reliable barometer of life and death. It wouldn't benefit insurance companies to come up with their premiums this way, is all. But don't even make me tell you how many hits you get when you enter "woman drivers." Don't check now. Keep your eyes on the road!
While I've been throwing the recapping thread off of Tangent Bridge, Brenda has come to her official diagnosis of her patient: "That's a phobia, Byron." I'd be much more nervous about walking the streets with the name "Byron" unless my first name were "Lord" and this century were some other century. Byronmoves a glass abruptly across the table to show that he has OCD. Brenda tells him to imagine that he's walking down a street and comes to a bridge. She guides him across it, and tells him that it doesn't collapse, ending, "Now you're on the other side, safe and sound." He fact-checks that conclusion, correcting her, "No, I'm not. Halfway across, I jumped off." Well, now, "jumped off a bridge" is going to take a whole other Google search. Just hold on a sec while I...ah, never mind. I'll just have Ruth do it.
Brenda turns the conversation to whether Lord Byron is taking any medication, and he tells her that he's on "forty milligrams of Prozac." She takes this moment to check in with her supervisor, a woman on the other side of the glass ["MamaLane!" -- Wing Chun] who tells Brenda that they should up his Prozac, and scoffs at Brenda's radical notion that they "address his behavior." The doctor responds that Lord Byron may never get over his phobia, and Brenda asks the tough question of why he's in therapy to begin with, then. The doctor tells her, "Maybe that's the one thing that keeps him from jumping off a bridge." Brenda asserts, "I think we do better than that." Pretty much, I think this whole scene could have done better than that.
This feels like one of those episodes that they were in the middle of shooting when they discovered that it was going to end up waaaaaaaaaaay too short so they added a stage direction that read "and then they banter, or whatever" for five lines in every scene. Here, particularly, you can almost feel the actors peering off-screen and seeing the director doing that international sign for "pulling taffy," when five sets of fingertips meet in the middle and then pull outward indicating, "Longer, more, keep going, this is gold, people, I'm telling you it's gold." Claire walks through a hallway at LAC Arts, where she spots Russell. This is their exact conversation:
Claire: Hey.
Russell: Hey. Did you hear?
Claire: Hear what?
Russell: Professor Pope just got in a car accident.
Claire: She's dead?
Russell: No. No, she just suffered internal injuries. But she's gonna be out for at least a month.
Claire: But she's gonna be okay?
Russell: Yeah. Well, I mean, that depends on your definition of "serious internal injuries."
I mean, it's not awful, as filler dialogue goes, but SHUT UP. They do not shut up. Instead, Russell vamps on about the uselessness of the gall bladder, hoping it wasn't Pope's lungs that got punctured: "What if it was her labia? Wouldn't that be totally tragic for her?" They share a frozen moment, which Russell breaks with the question, "Why are you looking at me like some kind of retard?" Claire tells him, "I swear, Russell, sometimes you are. And for your information, labia are not internal organs." Man. You think about licking one pussy and all of a sudden you're Doctor Vagina. Which is totally Keith's superhero name. While we're playing.
Claire turns around in disgust and makes toward the classroom. What Claire needs is a real man. An older man. A man she really understands, and who understands her. Someone who doesn't mock her sexual awakening. Someone who isn't in her rapidly-dissolving clique. Preferably someone who's spent a whole bunch of time in a mental institution. Hey, there's one! Claire walks into the class to discover that her substitute teacher is good ol' Billy Chenowith. Their lock eyes. They smile. My college also had a furlough program where former inmates of insane asylums were left to preside over classes of ten to fifteen college students. It's why I found myself so often constructing sentences during my college education with sentiments such as, "Though I agree with the contention that the late Victorians excoriated Oscar Wilde on account of his subversive literary leanings, I find it somewhat unlikely having read De Profundis that he would have been so shabbily treated by those who consumed his plays if he hadn't also lived a subversive life outside of the strictures of that work, which is why I argue that historical contextualization of any work is as essential of a hermeneutical reading of the text itself. I hope that answers your question, Professor Dahmer." Man, I hated having that class right before lunch wakka wakka.
It's just a dream, so don't get excited. Dream Brenda arrives at her dream home to find dream Nate sitting on the couch with his dream head in his dream hands. She sits down on the table and he cries about how guilty he feels about being alive. Nate admits that he wanted Lisa "out of [his] life," which, if I'm not mistaken, was a shot they included in last week's "week on," which is totally cheating. Nate adds, "It should have been me." Brenda tells him how many people need him, ending with "I need you. I need you so much." Nate looks up with pinched crying face, but it evaporates in a second when he barks, "That's the problem! You're so full of holes. You're this gaping, bottomless pit of need." With which Joe's voice adds to the mix when Nate screams at the top of his lungs, "You neurotic, tedious, self-absorbed bitch!" Which is so weird that that's what Joe said, except it's not because it's a dream and Brenda's at a light and someone behind her is honking. Google tried to tell us about women drivers. Did we listen? Did YOU?
George sits at a table in the living room reading while Maya is plopped down across the room in front of what looks like a television special about oil. George takes off his glasses and stares at Maya for a second, and then commences in sitting at the table and sobbing. See? You don't feel the slightest bit bad for him and his broken life at all? Maya knocks over her sippy-cup and mutters a meaningful "Uh-oh," which I actually believe was my niece's first word, spoken in a similarly dire circumstance. George walks over, still crying, and mops up the water or the juice or the Sunny D or the purple stuff or whatever, explaining through the tears, "Life is a series of accidents. One after another." Maya just smiles blandly. Isn't silly Grandpa so existential? Isn't he? Isn't he? That's a good girl.
David places the plastic-wrapped Blue Tornado book on poor Lawrence Tuttle's ample frame. He then picks it up to take a closer look, gingerly removing it from its plastic in full recognition of the fact that nothing makes a vintage comic book plummet in value faster than worm bites. He opens it up as tinny superhero music begins to play. David flips through page after colorful page, coming to rest on an ad for amazing 3-D spectacles (a real 3-D buff David is becoming in this episode!) on the inside back cover. The "X-Ray Spectacles" were made by a real live scientician, and the drawing depicts a man in a zoot suit with slicked-back hair wearing enormous glasses (because they have to make them big to stuff in all three dimensions) and speaking the word "Amazing!" while staring at a drawing of a comely brunette with a waist I could make an "okay" sign around and extraordinarily pointy tits hiding under that tight dress. This is not for children! The '40s were perverted! We need to return to a time in this country when values and morals were pure, except we can't because there wasn't one, so everyone calm down about the Super Bowl it was seven months ago for Chrissakes. David zeroes in on the pointy tits, and a sound effect that starts on a high note and then veers an octave above and then back down kicks up. It's the exact same sound effect as the one we hear every time Uma Thurman is about to kill in Kill Bill. David puts the magazine back in its plastic and back in the coffin with a troubled look on his face because he really saw something of Keith in the pencil sketch drawing of that man from The Past. What's he so worried about? Doesn't he know there weren't any black people in this country in the '40s? Hello? David, get your facts straight.
Ruth wears every ugly article of clothing under the bright Mexico sun -- a plaid shirt, giant sunglasses, and a sun-blocking hat I think belonged to Powder -- as she and Bettina stumble into their new home at a real-live Rosarito Beach hacienda. It's shitty. Bettina calls it "a dump," and Ruth is soon to break down: "I made a terrible decision and brought us to a horrible place." Bettina gets all Bettina-y and promises Ruth, "Horrible and terrible are two of the most underrated qualities when traveling in a foreign country. Horrible and terrible often lead to fun and adventure." Good! Now even more folksy, if possible: "You know the saying that you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit?" Ruth responds that, no, she's never heard that expression, and Bettina barrels on: "Well, I'm here to tell you, you can. And I have." Well, the mood is looking up. But the picnic is probably cancelled.
"So, I was in Patagonia for a while," Billy explains to Claire. Wasn't he in a mental institution? "And then I got amoebic dysentery." Wasn't he in a mental institution? "My grant money finally ran out." Wasn't he in a mental institution? They sit in the LAC Arts cafeteria, Billy offering Claire a piece of muffin and Claire asking, "How's Brenda?" Billy says that he hasn't seen her in almost a year, explaining, "We are officially estranged." Oh, God. Just ask us how she is. We see her ALL the time. Billy makes that cardinal conversational error in judgment -- asking the Fishers how they're doing -- and Claire responds in no non-long-winded terms, "I don't know. I guess I'm depressed. I don't think it's clinical, but I just can't seem to have a normal, healthy relationship with another person." Billy tells her to "get in line" (to go to the mental institution?), and says he thinks the best plan is to "pick someone slightly less crazy than you are." The caveat? IT CAN'T BE YOUR SISTER. Claire picks this moment to speak about life and love and the greater meaning of It All when she continues on, "Society propagates this vision of people hooking up and staying together forever. In reality, how often does that actually happen?" Not that often, Claire. Just ask your stepdad. I really like referring to George as her "stepdad."
George serves dinner to Rico and Nate, as Maya sits on Nate's lap soaking in the dysfunction of it all. Rico asks, "These are mushrooms?" Uh, you're welcome, Rico. George explains that they're "giant Portobellos. The filet mignon of fungi," and Rico childishly follows up, "If you wanted a filet mignon, why not just eat a filet mignon?" But he kind of adds a "g" at the end of the word both times he says it, like it's the gerund form of steak. And besides, hating George was so two, three, and four episodes ago. He cried, and now we like him, right? Anyway, George explains that the meat industry and other agribusiness is unsustainable in this country, and Nate jumps in to agree, "Meat isn't the problem. It's how far away from the table the food, whatever it is, is produced. If it's produced locally, it's not just fresher, it's less wasteful." Hippie check! You fail. George looks on approvingly because despite our surface differences, deep down we're all the same. In other news, I've not yet once had cause to use the word "agribusiness" in any of my America's Top Model recaps. So you really do learn something from watching this, don't you? Does this qualify as our kitchen-table political statement of the week? Rico keeps it going, saying he heard that "mushrooms are grown in dung." George notes that "everything organic is grown in dung." Like your son's dislike for you? That seemed to be pretty organic. David enters then and they invite him to stay for dinner, but he announces, "I'm going home. To my husband." Hee. "I'm gonna go home and sleep with my wife!" Name that movie. It's a good one.
Some weird dude I don't think we've ever seen before is talking on the phone, pitching a movie about William Howard Taft, while another guy smokes pot on the couch. This is a scenario that only the presence of Brenda could tie together. And there she is. Brenda is there to buy weed, so when the gentleman goes to retrieve it for her, the dude on the couch silently offers Brenda the bong. She takes a huge hit and exhales because if she didn't she wouldn't smell anything lot pot later.
David arrives home to find Keith on the couch, watching basketball, eating pizza, drinking a beer, and thinking, "Ew, cock." David asks all angrily, "We don't eat dinner together anymore?" Keith says that he thought David was working late and apologizes for having eaten "the last piece." He ate the whole pizza? No wonder he looks so thin. Jaw working overtime. He stands up and asks David if he can fix him something, but David snipes back, "I think I'll go to Fatburger. Alone." Dude, he offered to cook you dinner. Jeez. At least go to In-N-Out. It's where your boyfriend went with Celeste.
George, wearing a small purple finger puppet, asks Rico and Nate if they want to play some bridge. Coming off an upward inflection, Maya responds first, answering, "No." Heh. I really like that. Rico says he's going to turn in and Nate says he's going to give Maya her bath (whatever you do, Nate, just don't ask permission). But their middling, George-level hum of conversational sameness grids to a halt moments later, when they hear a crash coming from another room of the house. Even the dead are trying to run away from playing cards with George.
The three amigos enter the room with Larry's casket and note a smashed vase on the floor and a pair of Converse one-stars barely visible on someone hiding behind a curtain. Converse aren't for dorks. Trey wore Converse. Sniff. Thank you, Trey. Rico yells, "We've got a gun," and Nate almost starts laughing when he grabs his cell phone and adds, "And a phone!" Two black-clad men emerge from behind the curtain with their arms up. One is Living Lawrence, but I can't tell if the other one is Dilton. I think that it is not. They beg for their lives as George walks down to join them. As Nate turns to ask where Maya is, Living Lawrence yells, "Run for it," and the superhero music kicks up again. But as they run by George, he puts a leg out and Living Lawrence trips, and Rico brandishes a frying pan that he uses to smack the shit out of the other guy's arm. Nate leans down over Living Lawrence and asks him what the fuck he's doing there, with which Living Lawrence takes the Blue Tornado from his pocket and hands it to Nate. Don't they know how little it'll be worth now that David had his gay fingers all over it? It's dirty with the gay! Nate tells him that the dude's last wish was to be buried with it, "and that's what we're going to do." They make Living Lawrence put it back in the casket, and then tell them to hit the road. That doesn't make any sense. With four lines rewritten, the stakes could have been upped wildly, with the dead guy being the one who HAD the money AND the comic book, and telling his friend on the other end of the phone that he wouldn't lend him money or ever sell the comic book, though the poor friend had begged him to sell it to help cover his friend's debt. That way, we understood the financial stakes of these guys popping in. And the superhero leitmotif with the music and the bravery is making me assume my alter ego of Super Grating On My Last Nerve, uh, Man.
Brenda is all high with her two new friends, and they sit on the couch in silence until they speak the language of sex. The middle guy starts kissing her, and the other one sits up on the couch in hopes that he may become involved as well. But Brenda picks this moment to ride a moral high horse instead of everything else she's been riding lately, and she leaves without so much as taking her small pot bag with her. I'll take it! Just kidding. That's illegal.
Ruth and Bettina sit in their hacienda hot tub, Ruth observing, "This water isn't very hot," and Bettina agreeing, "It's a lukewarm tub." Bettina offers Ruth a swig from a simply enormous bottle of tequila, and when Ruth tries to decline, Bettina takes the hard line: "You know that cold, rubbery lobster dinner we just ate? It's probably seething with bacteria. A couple of swigs of this and we won't be fighting all night over who gets to ride the porcelain bus." Man, peer pressure sure becomes a lot more nuanced when the "peer" in question is also staring down the barrel of sixty. Not to mention the fact that they're both engulfed in cold water in Mexico. Buy a ticket for that bus, ladies. It's leaving with you on it.
Ruth tells us that it's been ten minutes and the hot tub isn't getting any hotter. She tells Bettina that she's going to complain to the manager, and we cut to a sopping Ruth padding into the hacienda lobby wearing slippers and a robe. A lovely Mexican chica emerges eventually, and Ruth slowly explains in a HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING OUR COUNTRY SO FAR fashion, "The heater doesn't seem to be working very well." The woman apologizes, explaining, "We turn it off after sunset during the off-season." Ruth says that she's a paying guest and doesn't care if it's the off-season, and threatens to stop payment on her credit card if the establishment doesn't turn the heater back on. The woman sneers in Ruth's direction and finally relents, "I will turn the heater on in the Jacuzzi. But only for one half-hour." Ruth thanks her and leaves, and when she returns to the hot tub, there's so much steam I hardly have to worry about seeing any more of Kathy Bates than I absolutely have to. I know we were supposed to get something really deep and wonderful out of that conversation about Ruth not being a shrinking violet, but they're going to have to do better than having her complain about a trifling maintenance issue at a crappy hotel. It's coming across on paper like a conversation two people would have in a learn-Spanish-on-tape correspondence class. Excuse me, but the Jacuzzi does not seem to be working. Apologies, I shall turn it on right away. Thank you. Are you going to the beach tomorrow with Suzanne? No, I will stay here in the hot tub. Goodbye, Mario. Goodbye, Rosario.
Claire is in her house, making a model house. It looks like a Barbie house, and she's putting stuff in it. I think it's her house. Nate comes in and sits down. And, well, it's time for a heart-to-heart. And Nate's there. So it's time for a heart-to-heart about dogs. "I just remember the first time I ever realized what Dad did in this house. I had this dog, Yippee." Fag. "I found him underneath my bed, and he was already dead, so I wrapped him up in a blanket and brought him downstairs to the prep room. I thought maybe Dad could fix him. Bring him back, somehow." Claire points out figurines of herself and Nate, and Nate asks, "Where's Dad?" Claire answers, "He's not here." He was in the credits, though, so...he's coming.
Brenda is a sex addict. Some guy talks about how he's replaced hookers with Krispy Kreme, which is a perfectly good tradeoff, if you want my unvarnished opinion. A buttoned-up woman near Brenda stands up and complains, "Someone here tonight reeks of marijuana." Brenda waits a second and whispers, "It's not AA." But the other woman speeches her that it's "against the rules. I think you should leave and come back when you're straight or sober." Brenda pauses again because, y'know, this episode was too short, before explaining that she's "afraid" of what will happen to her if she leaves, begging, "Don't make me leave." Oh, fine. One blowjob and I'll let you stay.
Remember that movie Session 9? It was set inside an abandoned mental hospital and it was supposed to be a horror movie, when in reality the only really, truly scary thing about it was that it starred Daaaaaaaaaaaavid Caruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuso. Anyway, this dream sequence looks a lot like that movie, with the scary underground shots and the really slowly-moving tracking shots and the fact that, really, it's kind of a little dumb. I'm sorry. But it is.
Dream Nate enters the basement carrying his dead dog wrapped in a blanket. His father welcomes him with a "Hey, buddy boy," and Nathaniel, smoking a cigarette, tells Nate that they can't fix him, but they "can give him a real nice sendoff." Late Nate unearths a small dog casket and places the dog inside, telling Nate that they need something to put inside with him. Late Nate suggests, "I know. Why don't you climb in with him? That way he'll never be lonely." Nate takes off and runs up the steps, and the door he goes through...is the same room he was just in! Lisa sits on one of the prep tables holding Maya, saying, "I'm sorry, but I have to take something with me. Being alone for all eternity sucks like you wouldn't believe...I've decided it should be Maya." Nate utters a terrified "No." Ruth, Claire, Brenda are soon to enter wearing white dresses, David in a blue shirt but wishing for the dress. They're all holding suitcases, and David explains, "You know what Dad used to say. 'We all have to go some time.'" A gust of wind and a lightning bolt later, Late Nate enters wearing a makeshift superhero costume with the tights and the whole mishegoss and holding a scythe. Nate asks, "Who are you supposed to be?" Late Nate fires back, "Death Man. I wanted to be the Grim Reaper, but the folks at Marvel already had a copyright on it, so..." Oh, har har har. Late Nate insists, "You're all coming with me." They all walk past Late Nate and off the set, except Brenda, who offers, "I could stay if you want me to." Nate wants her now because she is, finally, the last woman on earth. But Brenda disappears, and Late Nate tells him, "Nobody stays. Including you." The scythe sparks blue, and Late Nate points it in his son's direction, but Nate takes off and runs up the steps, and the door he goes through...is the same room he was just in! Now Late Nate wears a suit, Lisa wears a wedding dress, and the dog is alive. A sheet lies over a body, and Late Nate pulls it off to reveal Nate himself, dead and in a suit. Lisa observes, "There's the man I married," and Late Nate sharpens a knife and asks, "Who wants the end piece?" as he cuts into Nate's body's leg. Dream Nate sits down across from them and puts a napkin on his lap, because it's totally like the Treehouse of Horror where Homer keeps seeing the different realities of how the world would change when he keeps going back in time via his magic toaster. This is the one Nate decides to stick with. Because it's a dream, it has to mean something. Even though I know it doesn't.
Lawrence Tuttle's funeral. Dilton reads the eulogy, as David and Nate stand at the back of the room. David calls the attendees "alienated," but Nate notes, "They're a community. This is who they are." And then he starts to cry. David tells him he's acting like "a serious freak," and Nate laughs and says, "Maybe I am a serious freak. I don't know what the hell is going on with me." Then he cracks up and then he cries again. Then the laughter is taken over by Bettina and Ruth riding Mexican horses.
Wait. What the fuck did I just write?
We're back in Mexico and Bettina and Ruth are riding horses.
Rico and George fold laundry because this is totally a buddy comedy about a womanizing geologist and the down-and-out undertaker who comes to live with him. Rocks and a Hard Place, perhaps? George tells Rico that he should just move on from Vanessa, noting, "I know a lot of mammals mate for life, but most primates don't." Rico responds that he's a human being and not a primate. Why say something to George if you're not a fan of facts? Here are some now! "We share 98.8% of DNA with a chimpanzee. We're more closely related to them than they are to gorillas." Is that true? George's ear hair indicates yes. Anita enters just then and finds Rico holding a pair of her underwear, and she tells Rico, "Oh, my God. You guys folded my undies. That is so fucking sweet." With which she takes her unmentionables and leaves. Rico asks, "Is she still living here?" George responds, "Evidently."
Which is why she's not at the park. Claire, Russell, and The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts sit around the park talking about crap. "This sucks," says Russell. "Wanna go see a movie?" "Not really." "Wanna get something to eat?" "I'm not hungry." "Yeah, me neither." Who said each of these lines? WHO CARES? They're Vulture #1, #2, and #3 from The Jungle Book. Russell suggests that they check out an art exhibit, and The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts suggests that he just go, then. He goes, then, and once alone, The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts tells Claire, "I heard something." Claire asks what she heard, and we learn that Mena Suvari did a piece at the coffeehouse entitled, "A Straight Girl Wanted To Eat My Pussy, But Then She Changed Her Mind." That's so in-your-face, man. Claire freaks, but The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts assures her, "It was kinda cool." The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts asks her if it's true that she's never had an orgasm, and tells Claire, "Most of the women that I've been with have had a hard time." Because you suck in bed? "But I heard about this, like, new technique, and I've been looking forward to trying it out. Would you like me to try it out with you?" How romantic.
Keith watches some television show or music video or something that has girls with titties. David walks over and turns it off, and Keith asks, "Are you trying to pick a fight with me?" David says that maybe he is, and says that he's not really "digesting" the whole Celeste thing. Keith fires back "Take a Tums, then," which is possibly the worst line ever featured on this show, and David goes for the jugular: "I fucked Sarge." The intensity of that line is tampered somewhat by Keith's reply: "Who?" David reminds him: "The veiny guy from La Habra." David says that he only did it because he knows he can do it without its meaning anything, and Keith tries for free sex and reconciliation when he explains, "I wouldn't do it if it meant anything because I love you." Keith tells him, "I fucked Celeste. You fucked veiny guy from La Habra. Tit for tat. We're even." And then, the line that makes this subplot almost worth it: "You don't get to say the word 'tit' to me, ever." David goes upstairs and says he's taking a shower, and Keith calls after him, "Yeah, well, don't blow anybody while you're in there."
Claire lies in bed and whispers, "Oh, my God," because she had an orgasm. The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts tells her that the technique he used has a name, and that it's "grinding the corn." In Colonial times it was called "grinding the maize."
Brenda sits in a yogic position of some kind on her floor, and responds to a knock on the door. It's Nate, and he has Maya. He had a dream and she had no sex with a stranger, and now they're all very healed.
"Is he going to be okay?" Ruth asks. Her horse has been downed for some reason, and she walks slowly away from it as a strange Mexican man takes a gun from somewhere behind his back. Ruth's about an inch away when the gun goes off. Dude. Wait until the tourists are off the beach, for crying out loud. Ruth tells Bettina, "I think I'd like to go home now." They shoot metaphors, don't they?