Props to Stee...these sloppy seconds are delicious!
Okay, so here's what happened: I got a copy of this show by extremely sketchy methods quite some time ago, and I recapped it in a period of time one might call "The Past." I just watched the episode again when it aired and then read the entire recap again, and it doesn't look like they changed anything, with the possible exception, I think, of the word "dickly" to "prickly." Which, in my opinion, makes it a totally different show. But should you see one or two shots recapped that make you say, "Not so much," well, there might have been a few changes. So if you need someone to blame, blame Fox at that time of day when you're already blaming them for the downfall of all culture on the planet, okay? Thanks. I look forward to working with all of you.
It's a smoggy, lane-changing, Bruckheimer-produced afternoon in downtown Los Angeles, the director's tattered copy of The Training Day Guide To Directing Debased, Bleached-Out Urban Sprawl flipped to its opening page, "Chapter 1: Making Traffic Patterns Look Super-Gritty." We pan around in a (gritty) helicopter, dollying over twisting metaphors for the human condition (er, I mean "highways"...er, I mean "gritty highways"), coming to rest on a shot of a car-radio dial tuning to 810 AM. Lucky for us, we've tuned into Backstory Radio: You Give Us Twenty-Two Minutes, We'll Give You Everything That's Happened Until Now, Ever. Luckily again, Backstory Radio also seems to have a television affiliate, as we cut to a shot of KPFW-12 News broadcasting a picture of a little girl named "Elizabeth Daniels, age 8." Backstory TV: You Scratch Our Backstory, We'll Scratch Yours. As a soaring helicopter flies over L.A. and the middle three hours of Goodfellas are all "Hey, give us that shot back!" we're caught up on Ms. Daniels and why she gets to be famous on the Backstory Show: "Eight-year-old Elizabeth Daniels of West Los Angeles was taken from her bedroom last night." ["Poor timing on the part of Fox, since that actually had just happened in north Toronto the day this episode aired." -- Wing Chun] Cut to a shot of a billboard displaying the young girl's face, along with the Amber Alert logo and a phone number of 1-800-555-0136, in case anyone has more information and a desire to be an anonymous tipster to one of those distracting, fake TV phone numbers that take you out of the action and remind you that there's no need to cry for Elizabeth Daniels...for she is already dead.
Whoa! Look at the D.A.'s hair. Backstory has a big bouffant on. The voice-overswitches to a male news reporter telling us, "District Attorney Thomas Roam vowing to stamp out violence against children." A quick cut (for, on Fox, is there really any other kind?) to a suited, officious-looking man, standing in front of a number of news cameras and microphones, who tells the crews amidst the cutting, "My office has one concern and one concern only." To ensure that his overachieving yet rebellious totally hot son doesn't become romantically inclined toward the sole daughter of the city's richest porn kingpin, who himself is about to be implicated in heinous crimes that will bring him directly at odds with the personal ideology and political agenda of the aforementioned District Attorney, forcing said porn kingpin and said public official to prohibit their respective children from seeing each other outside of prescribed school functions, chaperoned parties, and mercilessly strained references to The Shakespeare Play That Dare Not Speak Its Name? Is that his concern and one concern only? Because if it is, it sure looks like somebody remembered that Foreshadowing didn't get one of those fake-ass 555 numbers that's keeping us from getting to know our good friend Abducted Backstory.
L.A. skyline! Cut! Billboard! Cut! Roam from the side! Cut! Roam from the top! Cut! Roam built in a day! Cut! Ack! I'm bleeding from all the cuts! Oh, by the way, Roam's only concern is "to keep our children safe." But it looks secretly like it might be "where my industrial-sized vat of Dippity-Do is coming from."
A nighttime skyline shot means it's dark and dirty and time for the Sex News. Over on 780 AM -- when was L.A. finally bought over by vast AM Radio lobby, and when these blood-soaked, tabloid items are over, do we get to kick back with the latest episode of The Shadow? -- we learn from "KCEX, L.A.'s best rock" that "negotiations are heating up between DirecTV and noted adult-entertainment mogul Larry Goldman" Shot of the Goldman HQ. Shot of a stock ticker. Shot of a cheesy stock-footage satellite orbiting the earth, absent its usual follow-up shot of an astronaut jamming an American flag on the moon and Martha Quinn telling us which Bangles video we're about to watch . Shot of porn. Shot of porn. Shot of coitus-implying head thrown back by porn-y, painted harlot. Shot of Ron Silver. Oh, now that's just not fair. I'm not saying Ron Silver hasn't ever been naked in his life, but I don't want my passive entertainment (even the kind that pays me to watch it) fusing the dual images of "something that is naked" and "something that is Ron Silver" anywhere near each other to confuse my brain again, ever. It's what makes a show problematic right from the start, and what already makes this Ron Silver effort more difficult to stomach than the rumored unaired third season of Veronica's Closet. Silver overarticulates every syllable because that's ACTING, letting an as-yet-unseen audience know, "Goldman International produces the finest and highest-quality adult entertainment on the planet." For all of his wide-mouthed, speech-y tics, it still sounds like he's saying "Golden." Ticker. Porn. Ticker. Porn. Shot of Goldman with his wife, I guess, because he's really a responsible family man and not a sleazy smut peddler, I guess. "If Goldman succeeds, this will be the largest acquisition of adult programming in corporate history." I actually think that the largest acquisition of adult programming in corporate history was me, at twelve, holding down three channels on the cable box in my mom's bedroom, tilting my head sideways, trying to see through the scramble, and then deciding years later, "Y'know, I wasn't really into that anyway." The fun was really more in the search, as it turned out. But it was a pretty big acquisition at the time.
But wait! Every local market hasn't weighed in yet: "K-JIVE! All talk, all the time!" Yes, hurry up and articulate the C-story as well before the title card even shows up, because we wouldn't want viewers to be alienated by all of that "organic unfolding of action," causing them to flip stations to the place where their attention spans will never be challenged, their yen for casual nudity and teens making out will be satisfied, and their Rupert-owned souls can slide back into the couch and cram their minds full of flesh-baring escapist dramas and soul-depleting reality dating shows. Oh, but wait. We already are watching Fox. Okay, then: "Tonight, we're talking about kids after dark. What happens when the lights go down? Is L.A.'s teen party scene out of control?" Before I have time to consider the shrewdness of any news outlet avoiding culpability for implicating an entire demographic as "out of control" simply by phrasing its allegations in question form ("Does Ron Silver's beard house the lair of Satan himself?"), we're kicked to the title card, the word "Skin" written the font Porny Sans Bold, spinning around in an I-know-Powerpoint-thiiiiiiiiiis-well animation effect, changing from a steely silver to a solid gold, and then finally blowing away completely. Like sands through the hourglass, this is...Skin.
The previously-defamed entirety of L.A.'s youth kicks it on one balcony hanging over the intersection of I-Liked-It-Better- When-It-Was-Called-Go Street and Secretly-They're-All- Kind-Of-Thirty Boulevard. Through the throngs of "teens" assembled in fair Verona (where we lay our scene) walk two gentlemen, an African-American boy with a cut-off tank top (it sounds worse than it is, and when you see it on him, all is somehow forgiven) and a punk of mixed descent we'll just say is from "Foreignia," the amalgam of all ethnic groups that don't fit under the comfy TV umbrella of "black" or "blond." He's wearing a white button-down over a white wifebeater, looking like the rest of his tux ran off with the bride that jilted him and all he can do is scowl meaningfully and wonder after the status of his cummerbund. Oh, and jeans. He's pensive. He's brooding. And he wants. To go home: "All right, let's blow outta here." The Quickest Minority Sidekick In History establishes more of a character for himself than a few people poised on the brink of becoming series regulars, volleying back, "Are you crazy? 'Cause this puts my fantasy life to shame, and I got a pretty rich fantasy life." The foreign chap with the exceedingly defined cheekbones cuts glass with his cheekbones and goes in for the retort: "Every one of these girls is rich, white, and completely out of our league." The Quickest Minority Sidekick In History stares at him in an it-could-be-worse- they-could-have- killed-me-off- and-then-you'd- REALLY-never-see-me-again- though-I-have- a-sneaking-suspicion- you-probably-won't-anyway fashion, going out of his way to make his mark with, "What you need is affectionate female companionship." Foreignia Frank (he doesn't have a name, so the least I could do was make him a Garbage Pail Kid, right?) shoots back, "What are you, my psychiatrist, now?" I'm sorry, but which chapter of Running with Scissors is he in that the first person he'd think of is a psychiatrist in this totally non sequitur context? If so much as one mental health professional on the planet were to prescribe rampant casual sex as a cure-all for what illed me, I wouldn't have told my mom that I didn't want to see the school counselor when I was thirteen and still wetting my...er, this happened to a friend of mine. The Quickest Minority Sidekick In History finishes up his RX, insisting, "Be a player" with a chaser of "Go forth and mingle." "Go forth"? Taking the Shakespeare allegory a little far, Quickest Minority Sidekick In Histories, Comedies, and Tragedies?
Foreignia Frank takes his friend's "go forth and mingle" advice. I guess The Quickest Minority Sidekick In History decided to couch his advice as his friend's best interest, whereas what he really meant was "Stop crowding my game so I can beg drunk strangers for pity sex." Foreignia Frank wanders alone (is this a bar? Is this a party? If this is a party, how'd they get in? If it's a bar, how'd they get served?), dangling some Zima-esque beverage noncommittally between two fingers. His POV is soon to turn to a couple sitting inside of a red, poolside, half-egg (shut up, all y'all...YOU want a shot at describing Los Angeles pop architecture, you come over here and be my guest). The male of the couple is wasted, turning to the girl (amidst other, practically-mating couples) and slurringly telling her, "I've got a treasure map with your name on it. X marks the spot." The girl of the couple is a hottie TV blonde, wearing a frilly white blouse-y top purchased at great expense in the Vestal Virgin Department of Nordstrom's (shut up...it's right to shoes). She tells him that she's "on a natural high, thanks," so the guy turns to his move of trying to get right on into those Vestal Virgin Brand pants of hers. He must not have seen the label. She stands up in a huff, telling this "Brian" that she "just wants to go home," demanding, "Give me the keys. You're too wasted to drive." You know what Brian really hated? Driver's Ed. He stands up all incredulously and taunts, "You want 'em? You want 'em?" She wants 'em. He doesn't want her to have 'em. In a slow-motion shot so overwrought it should be reserved for (a) the final death throes of a tragic hero or (b) the Clovers finally winning the national cheerleading finals, FINALLY, the man she calls "Brian" tosses the keys past her. They swoop through the air with a meaningful shoosh and also a shoosh and a shoosh, ending with a plunk as they hit the conveniently-located swimming pool and fall in. Shot of them floating. Shot of them hitting the bottom. Before Frank can break his own slo-mo trance to reflect upon being one of the star-crossed lovers about to make civil hands unclean, Blondie (isn't that a clever nickname? I'm running woefully low) busts past him and plunges into the deep and chlorine-y. For some undoubtedly contextual reason that eludes me even now, pretty much everybody at the party/bar leaps in after them. But it's the two foes who already feel the aching of their fatal loins even now who get there first, as Blondie locks eyes with Frank down below. They crackle with...well, the disintegrating of Blondie's contacts, at least.
Back on the surface (not that any of the characters or any of the actions on this show really threaten to go that far below the surface), The One She Calls Brian is suddenly totally sober. I guess watching someone get water splashed in her face sobers you up on this show. Does watching somebody else drink black coffee make you no longer drunk? Anyway, The One She Calls Brian has his threat-y at the ready, demanding, "Give me the keys, Jewel." "Jewel," eh? Could that name mean something deeper than just her name? Could it be representative of a whole other Shakespeare-esque mythos, an entirely different character than just that of herself? Let's see...Jewel. Jewel. Jewel. Wait a sec. If that bitch writes one poem while she's living in a van in Alaska with her mom, I'm so out of here. Fair warned. I'm just saying.
Jewel tosses the keys to her new, underwater friend (Romey, perhaps?), taunting back at The One She Calls Brian, "Finders keepers." Oh, yeah. These characters are totally believably capable of non-fourth-grade love. The One She Calls Brian isn't ready to up the maturity ante at all, cringing through the line, "You wanna play keepaway? How about you start by keeping away from my girlfriend." Eef. Even the Bruckheimer ScriptMaker 2000 couldn't knock the kinks out of that line. But Jewel -- thinking that if she could tell the world just one thing that it would be "we're all okay" -- grabs the keys back and snipes at The One She Calls Brian, "Hey, Brian." 'Cause, see, she calls him Brian. "You want your keys?" She throws them in the other direction, and off the rooftop they go. Follow, lemmings, like you did into the pool!
But no. As KeyCam captures the inciting incident of the entire series plunging down from the tallest building in all of Los Angeles County (three stories and not an inch higher), the assemblage of party guests, for the most part, actually jump back into the pool, for some reason. Oh, it's because Romey pushed him in. Madness. As The One She Calls Brian climbs out, Romey and Jewel are pursued down the stairs by the four revelers not left in the pool, who also happen to comprise the cabal of The One She Calls Brian supporters who will protect his honor and his girlfriend and his keys. One even has the scriptastic inclination to yell a helpful "get 'em!" But the couple makes it downstairs and to the keys first, and Jewel roars the engine as Romey hops in the passenger's seat. The One She Calls Brian makes it downstairs just in time to watch the car pull off, and stands between his cronies (all totally sober, amazingly), saying, "Beautiful." He's ironic. Or talking about Romey's cheekbones. Which is fine, because the line I actually remember him saying is, "My Porsche!" No lie.
Speeding off through the L.A. night on the well-trod thoroughfare of Exposition Boulevard, Romey develops, "I can't believe you're stealing your boyfriend's car." Jewel corrects him: "He's not my boyfriend." Romey wants to know if The One She Calls Brian knows that. She's all "star-cross this, asshole" with her wailing cry of freedom: "He does now." My Porsche!
Mel's! It's not the Mel's I usually go to on Sunset where I have a table and a chair I'm inclined to sit at, but the one in Hollywood where I've only been once. And I think Kathy Griffin was there, which should stem any talk of the "well how come you've never been back there?" variety. Nevertheless, there's the happy couple, parking My Porsche! and offering doe-eyed stares. Jewel starts right in: "Are you sure you don't want me to take you home?" Romey says this is not what he would like to do. "I think you should always jump in a pool before you steal a car and go out for coffee. The whole half-wet, half-dry thing works for me." Totally. Jewel looks like Aimee Mann. Romey looks...completely dry. In short order, Jewel offers what they in Shakespearean times called a "soliloquy," leaping in unincited, "I don't know what you've heard about me, but if you think this night is gonna end with us getting busy in the back seat somewhere, then you should probably do yourself a favor and split right now." I guess it's not that many words, really, but I have a suspicion it will be the longest line of dialogue in the entire run of the show. Romey cleverly rebuts, "I don't think this car has a back seat." Heh. He also doesn't know anything about her. He doesn't know her name. She replies, "It's Jewel. And I'm starving." We're going to Mel's! I'll have the Taco Salad with no tomatoes and I'll be there in ten minutes. And tell Griffin to stay the hell offa my turf.
Inside, Jewel and Romey enjoy coffee and breakfast and falling in love amongst the neon. They banter two words about The One She Calls Brian, and his plotline is effectively resolved and, apropos of not so much, Jewel asks, "You know how when you go out with someone for the first time, there's this overwhelming feeling of...." She trails off. Of what? Of WHAT? Of nausea? Of wondering if you could have acted differently to have made your ex-boyfriend stay? Of a hateful disappointment in using Friendster and its limited uses as a dating service? (All of these happened to a friend of mine.) OF WHAT? "Hope, I guess." That was actually the LAST thing I would have said. "Vague whiff of desperation"? More likely. But Romey's right there with her, because this is what it feels like to fall in love and finish each other's...sentences. He responds in kind, "It's like buying a CD. You know, 'cause you like the cover, and then you hope that when you listen to it, it'll be..." She finishes it off for him: "Perfect." Did they really just fall in love to the "don't judge a book by its cover" cautionary tale, updated to...what, 1987? But Jewel's got it all figured out: "I think I'm just gonna take a vow of chastity and live like a nun." She takes a bit of what I wish were bacon, considering her immediate follow-up: "A Jewish nun." And from that day forward, she was known through the land as "Jew-liet."
Montage. The happier couple gestures with food as 311 tells the story of their burgeoning love and a subtitle reading "THIS IS WHERE ALL OF THE CLEVER DIALOGUE SHOULD BE" should appear at the bottom of the screen. And I guess this is kind of a good falling-in-love-in-a-diner song, but is the repeated refrain of "Amber is the color of your energy" really appropriate when this episode started out with the evoking of the Amber Alert? Because I'm pretty sure they didn't actually do that on purpose.
Jewel doesn't like school because she thinks people there don't like her. Romey's half Mexican, half Irish, and "all Catholic." He takes out a cross. She's Jewish. He has to get straight A's. He likes to draw. He draws her. They laugh at jokes we don't get to hear. They hold hands by accident. They exchange phone numbers.
At the end of the scene, they are in love.
Romey all but causes the 311 needle to screeeeech off the record when he looks up at a neon clock and becomes concerned: "Please tell me it's not 3:15. I was supposed to be home three hours ago." THREE HOURS? I can understand really liking someone and all and I can TOTALLY understand really liking Mel's, but as great a diner as it is, it doesn't actually exist inside a hole in the time-space continuum. And three hours is pretty freakin' late. Jewel offers to take him home, but he rushes out in a hurry, her concerned face caught so luminously in close-up I half expect her face to iris out in an ever-smaller circle. It's just that old time-y. Before he gets out the door, though, Romey turns around and tells her, "It was really nice meeting you, Jewel." She thinks so too. I don't think he paid. For any of it.
Romey takes the bus home. Awwww, L.A. is so totally adorable when it pretends to have public transportation, isn't it? Jew-liet, meanwhile, takes the Juxtaposition Express to the front of her gated house, driving the fancy car up a fancy driveway and fancy fancy blee blah. She's fancy. Whoa-oh. Amber is the color of her energy. I'm gonna have this song stuck in my head until I DIE.
Up about six thousand steps because most porn kingpins' daughters live at the top of Aztec temples or Egyptian pyramids, Jew-liet makes it to the top floor of her manse to be greeted by the sounds of raucous laughter. Laughter and 311 -- the former wholesome, the latter fading. FINALLY. She pushes open a large door and enters what I'll call the Conservatory (but then, I get all of my references about rooms in big, fancy houses from the board game and corresponding movie Clue, so...) to find Ron Silver with his arms around a blonde in formalwear. Police, stop horrible Ron Silver from...oh, it's his wife, I guess. I suppose that means she must like this. She looks just like her daughter in the fact that she's blonde, and her hair is pulled severely back off of her face. She smiles when she sees Jew-liet, because she's an adult and they don't judge her. Silver tells her that Ma Silver dragged him to some terrible society party that he didn't enjoy. And I'm just saying that if he wants to avoid scrapes with John Q. Law, this porn magnate had better lay off the taupe sportjacket and black turtleneck underneath, because that is like THE official outfit of the creepy child molester on the prowl. Ma Silver tells Jew-liet that Ron Silver had "way too many martinis," and he banters that he only had two, charmingly telling us, "Martinis are like breasts. One is not enough, two is just right, and..." "Three is too many," Ma Silver interrupts, and they all laugh. Ha...ha? Ron Silver asks how Jew-liet's party was, and she tells them that she had a "great time." Ma Silver makes with the noncommittal parenting, "Well, I should hope so. It's 4 in the morning." Ron Silver calls her off, telling anyone who will listen, "Leave her alone, she's a good kid." Jew-liet corrects him: "I'm a great kid." Kisses and affection are shared in spades, because Ron Silver is a great dad and every day is Christmas. Y'know, if I had to choose a porn magnate family to be a part of, real or fictional, I'd surely choose...nah, I'd still go for one that didn't have Ron Silver in it.
Juxtaposition Police, arrest this whole sequence. On the other side of fair Verona, Romey (do we get his name ever, you think?) runs across a modest lawn and enters surreptitiously into a perfectly respectable-looking middle-class house. I'll guess she's in Bel-Air and he's...I don't know, wherever buses go. I'm freaked out just thinking about it. He shuts the door quietly and begins his ginger journey across the floor. It's very little time before he hears an unimpressed, "Nice try." All things considered, not that nice a try. The speaker stands in shadow, adding that Romey could have at least called, and Romey responds that he went out to dinner with a friend and lost track of time. Now wait just a sec. It suddenly occurs to me that the man in shadow is the bouffanted man speaking to the press in the opening sequence about protecting our children. And his son was just making falling-in-love-to-311-eyes with a girl who went home to her own father, the porn magnate who certainly doesn't protect children as part of his everyday vocation. Now what could be developing here? A woman walks down the steps of the house in a bathrobe, calling Romey "Adam..." Oh, finally. "We're a public family. If you get in trouble, if you get arrested." She looks in his eyes and smells his breath because she's the mommy, and then shepherds Adam upstairs and tells her husband, the bouffant, the D.A.: "We'll talk about this in the morning." Still dressed and holding a highball glass (a highball glass and a loosened tie? Where'd they get this guy, The Eisenhower Administration Cliché 1950s Casting Agency?), he introspects (this is what they in Shakespearean times called an "aside"), "It is morning." Fie!
But really, it is morning. And I guess that guy's very public job is to be the official Sun Caller, because day dawns on his cue and the sun comes up over L.A. After the obligatory we-get-it-L.A.-has-highways montage, we land at a small dilapidated house on the wrong side of what would be "the tracks" if Los Angeles actually had any public transportation. As it stands now, the cues that we're in a really bad place are synonymous with "dead child," from a shot of an empty swing on an empty jungle gym to news vans talking about a child who disappeared from her own bedroom. Hey, like from the opening! Amber is the color of her color-coded warning system signaling her disappearance. Bouffant Authority Dad shows up on the scene, and a group of reporters ask him what's what with the Elizabeth Daniels case, but I can't hear them over the sound of this case being ripped from the headlines. Bouffant Authority Dad tells the newsfolk that the police are holding someone named "Prewitt," and takes off. They ask him if he thinks Elizabeth Daniels is still alive, and he considers the question gravely before musing from over his shoulder, "I hope so." Oh, yeah. Totally dead.
Another guy in a suit tells "Tom" (okay, then, let's just call him "Tom") that he's twenty minutes behind the press and running late. Tom concernedly tells his friend that he wants to wrap the investigation up: "I need a conviction this time." Investigator friend tells him that the guy is "guilty as sin," pointing at a computer monitor and telling Tom, "Got kids with kids, kids with adults, kids with animals." Fantastic. Thank you, Fox Network, for ensuring that a Google search for the words "kids with animals" grouped with "Djb" will bring the reader right here. That's just great. Tom backstories, "Seven abductions in the last eighteen months, and every one of these creeps has access to the same sick porn." Ooooh. "Creeps." Language, Tom. It's still the family hour. The naked family hour, as this scene would have us believe. Tom wants to know why Investigator Friend hasn't done a thing about the sick horrible blah-di-blee-di-ola, and I.F. tells him, "Because I'm not wasting the police department's time on a wild goose chase." Kids with geese? But quiet now, for Tom is on an integrity bender: "Some scumbag sick son of a bitch is making a profit off this; I'd like to know who and I'd like it to stop." I.F. tells him to use his own people, then, and this is suddenly an alarmingly boring police show. Replete with jargon. But Tom stares at the computer monitor, horrified, scoffing. He's going to lone-wolf it and make it a crusade. Whom will this smut lead back to? WHOM? The entirety of drama for the remainder of this episode rests on not yet knowing who. So, zzzzzzzzzzz.
Meanwhile, back at Goldman International HQ (you don't think...nah), Ron Silver sits in a boardroom with one business associate of his own and two visitors. This must be that DirecTV meeting I heard about last night on AM Radio. Ron Silver tells them, "If you're serious about growing your subscriber base, you're going to have to step up to the plate." He writes down a number on a piece of paper and slides it over the DirecTV guys, who, why the hell would they want their company name used on this show? It seems totally insane to me. Anyway, the number is $2 billion, and the two gentlemen laugh and laugh at Ron Silver. A small fight ensues, ending with Ron Silver's associate telling them, "We can always make a deal with DirecTV." You guys, this is most definitively NOT the DirecTV meeting I heard about on the news. Never mind. Anyway, the two guys from -- well, let's say Adelphia...they're bankrupt, right? -- start to piss off, but Ron Silver sits them back down and is all calm, putting a finger on his phone and asking, "Why don't you invite in the entire calendar." And, in a flash, the door opens and many leggy ladies enter the room as Ron Silver offers the least sexy introduction possible: "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce this seaons's Golden Girls." And if you threw a party. Invited everyone you knew. You would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say: "Thank you for making me picture Rue McClanahan naked. Screw you, Fox Network. Screw you right in the ear." Either way, a procession of really whore-y, '80s-y models walk into the room and onto the table, launching into a many-shot, multi-angled striptease. The men loosen their ties and sweat nervously, because this is the Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of the "Cold-Hearted Snake" video, and at the end, the dancers laugh. Business haggling nets Ron Silver exactly $2 billion, after Ron Silver tells them that if they fail to meet his demands, he'll buy their company and fire them both. But then again, DirecTV has commercials featuring Andy Garcia, so they're made some unsavvy decisions as well, haven't they?
Oh, yeah. Lovebirds. Adam (it feels more comfortable just continuing to call him Romey at this point, actually) is on a payphone -- awwww, L.A. is so totally adorable when it pretends to have payphones, isn't it? -- telling Jew-liet, "If I didn't, I wouldn't be calling you five times a day." She's on her cell phone (because, rich) in the library (because, good kid), and they arrange to meet later at "The Pier."
Later. The Pier. They hold hands and talk about Adam's father. "He works for the city," Adam lies-without-lying. She assumes he works for the "Street Department." Wait, is that actually what she said? I don't know. She says that that's a "cool" job, and Adam agrees: "I'm proud of my dad. I just wish he was proud of me." Oh, a whiner? Dump him. You're welcome. Love, me.
West Wing-style walk-and-talk, Tom strolling along with a pretty lady and a squat bald man. Pretty Lady fills him in: "It turns out the main kiddie-porn site that our suspect logged on to is owned by a subsidiary company out in Van Nuys called Goldman International LLP." If Ron Silver is really as rich and influential as we've been hearing, everyone would already know what that is, right? There's a reason the tallest building in Beverly Hills has the name Flynt tattooed across its side. They enter an office room with two other people in it, one of whom is a chattery hummingbird who pounces on Tom: "This porn thing could be a key talking point in your re-election campaign...it's playing like wildfire in the press." Tom essentially tells this "Cynthia" to fucking can it, and Pretty Lady (don't these nicknames grow more and more inspired by the moment?), along with Squat Man, brings Tom up to speed on Goldman's ownership properties: eight hundred internet sites, a magazine, a strip club, an herbal-supplements business, and a cruise line. Tom learns that he's also one of the mayor's largest contributors, but he's going it alone, so he decides, "I don't care if he pays the mayor's mortgage. Let's take him down." He does pay the mayor's mortgage. And "ooooooooh."
In the middle of a lot of other action, an executive secretary of some age and repute tells Goldman, "Vincent Cordone is on the phone again." Uh oh. The sound of one plot thickening. Goldman tells her to tell him that he's "out of the country." Goldman is on his way home to "a charity event." OF DOOM!
Meanwhile, Tom tells his staff, "Get me a warrant for Goldman. Let's bust his rich ass."
Goldman gives a man in black-tie a check.
Adam and Jew-liet run on the beach.
A police car pulls up at the Goldman house.
Tom looks smug somewhere.
Goldman donates $10 million to the development of woefully underdeveloped plotlines.
The police enter the house.
Adam and Jew-liet kiss and frolic.
Goldman is arrested.
People ruzzah and ruzzah.
Romey and Jew-liet, in fair Verona, more than just lay the scene. If you know what I mean and I think you do.
"Larry Goldman is a pornographer," Tom the D.A. tells a group of reporters. Meanwhile, steps away, Jew-liet and As-Yet-Underdeveloped-Maternal-Character walk down a hallway flanked by one lawyer, As-Yet-Underdeveloped-Maternal-Character professing to be "sickened" by her family's involvement in this. The lawyer tells Jew-liet that "Larry is the scapegoat." Kids with goats? As-Yet-Underdeveloped-Maternal-Character tells the lawyer that Jew-liet ought not be exposed to this, but Jew-liet tells her mother, "I want them to know Daddy has kids of his own." Kids with Silver? Gah, this is much worse than even they had anticipated.
Court proceedings based on other court proceedings that television "writers" have seen before writing this scene. Other than that, utter fucking realism. Inside the courtroom, Goldman's lawyer argues vehemently, "Charging my client with distributing child pornography is ludicrous." Oooh, this is all so cutting-edge and completely muddled insofar as genre. Tom the D.A. argues back that Goldman maintains an "empire of sleaze and filth," causing Goldman's lawyer to rebut with...actual facts? "A website is like rental property, your honor," says Goldman's lawyer. She goes on to explain that the internet has many layers, like an onion! She almost, ALMOST makes the entire enterprise of online communications sound not entirely unlike a pyramid scheme. All of which brings her to her final point in the argument sure to win her case and win her plaudits: Yahoo! doesn't even know we're here, do they? ["Shhhhhhh!" -- Wing Chun]
Tom the D.A. is now angry: "Your honor, Larry Goldman is flagrantly profiting from the victimization of children!" The presiding Judge Miller bears down on Tom the D.A., insisting, "Mr. Roam" (who? Oh, yeah), "don't conduct your re-election campaign in my courtroom." Stammer stammer. Judge Miller throws the case out of court with a warning to Tom the D.A. not to bug him with this...well, I guess you'd call it "child's play," again. All of which brings to mind two very important points: (a) considering the inherent bureaucracy of the legal system, this case got to court absurdly quickly. Oh, and (b) District Attorneys are elected?
Mrs. Tom the D.A. walks alongside Cynthia the Campaign Manager, Mrs. Tom the D.A. sniping, "How the hell could you let him take a case like that to court with that judge?" Cynthia argues that she's only his campaign manager, not his legal adviser, and Mrs. Tom the D.A. blah-blahs that that's precisely why Cynthia needs to protect him. Cynthia adds that it was "Tommy's" (oh, they're SO sleeping together) idea to file the charges, and Mrs. Tom the D.A. warns, "Tom is a public servant, not a puppet for whatever issues of the week are going to get him re-elected." Sing it with me if you know the words, people: kids with puppets! Mrs. Tom the D.A. tells Cynthia to call her if anything like this happens again: "You call me and you work it out with me." She walks away, and Cynthia calls at her back, "For the record, Judge Roam, I think he did the right thing today. And I think the public will too." So Mrs. Tom the D.A. is some kind of a judge. And Cynthia appears to be some sort of a small garden gnome.
Ron Silver is not happy with his internet manager. At ALL. "I trusted you to manage my internet business," he screams at a confused-looking man in his office. His associates -- whom we'll call Fired.com -- argues, "There are eight-hundred websites!" Shouldn't that number be much, much higher? I've been sitting at my computer for twelve hours today (I know...sad, isn't it?), and I think I've been to almost eight hundred websites during that time. And not all of them even entirely pornography-related! Ron Silver goes mad, screaming that Fired.com publicly embarrassed him and his family. When Fired.com tries to argue, he gets an actual slap in the face. And then -- eyes glowing with hatred, voice thick with tremors, teeth clenched -- Ron Silver utters by far the most egregious line of dialogue this far in this show's short history: "I hate kiddie porn. There's a reason we call it adult entertainment." Oof. I don't know about that line, folks. But he certainly put the full extent of his Veronica's-Closet-gleaned acting acumen behind it, so, y'know, E for effort and all that. Anyway, Silver physically removes Fired.com form his office. Oh, yes, and fires him.
And now, the meek and vulnerable. In her bedroom, The Phresh Princess Of Bel-Air is on her own computer, IMing with a friend. Oh, fine. I'm getting up, walking over to the television, and looking at their IM names. For you, I bleed. His is something involving "Adam" and "2000," and I think hers is along the lines of "CrownJewel Something Something." And I'm not recapping their IM conversation. I'm just not. He's grounded. She's sad. He flirty. She's flirty. They are both utterly expressive in a way that people just aren't when IMing. Lost in her search for an emoticon representing "ancient grudge break to new mutiny," she hardly notices her little (well, in a manner of speaking) brother enter the room. They do the whole "don't you knock!" routine because they are a real family, and Small Brother asks if he can watch TV in her room. No. Mom won't let him watch downstairs because she doesn't want him to see the news: "I know dad makes pornos. I think it's cool." Jew-liet gets mad. "You are so clueless." That's what happens when your mom won't let you watch the news.
Tom the D.A. is being countersued. When did episodic television become so episodic?
Sandy beach playground outside thing sundown. Romey and Jew-liet hold hands and stroll. She misses him, but he's only grounded for another few days, and then they'll live happily ever after. She tells him that she can "come to the East Side" and "crawl through his window." He tells her that his parents would love that, and she cuts to the wah-wah, "At least your parents are normal." She adds that her parents are "great," but that they're "more like the Osbournes than Ozzie & Harriet." In about three more years, that sentence is going to make as much sense to the Fox viewing demographic as the words "Yahoo Serious Film Festival" did to Lisa Simpson. Careful with the tired references. I'm just saying.
"I don't do girl/girl," says a woman in a yellow leather dress reclining on a couch. Silver tries to sweet-talk her, but she proclaims herself "strictly prickly." I think this is supposed to be shocking and cutting-edge. But "prickly"? Not even a word. ["It is in the sense of 'covered in prickles.' Also, since I'm already here, I doubt that a porn magnate billionaire really ever visits the set of a movie his company makes." -- Wing Chun] Maybe if she had called herself "nuts about nuts." Or, Christ, even "cocksure" wouldn't have killed her. But "strictly prickly"? What kind of retarded Wordy Gurdy gone wrong is that? The door to whatever the hell room they're in swings open, and the selfsame secretary from earlier enters, carrying a message that "Vincent Cordone is in the lobby again. And he's refusing to leave." This time, Silver takes the meeting, greeting two shady-looking characters in the lobby and telling them, "I told you never to come here." The guy I'll guess is Cordone is a slow talker: "I call. And I call. But you do not return." Return...the call? Silver seethes "you don't call me, I'll call you" and turns his back. Things were really going well for him the other night, and now not so much.
"I don't give a damn if Goldman's enterprises appear to be legal or not!" Tom the D.A. bellows to his staff. For a public servant, this guy doesn't seem to give a damn about any number of things. An advisor warns that going after Goldman is "political suicide," but Tom the D.A. wants to place Silver under constant surveillance in an attempt to "find the dirt, people. Find a weak link and go after it." Well, all they have to do is look in the scene or the last scene. People, the answers lie just beyond the fourth wall.
And then, the thing that's supposed to be the cornerstone of all action in this episode unfolds in exactly sixteen seconds. And it doesn't entirely work. Unarticulated-Character-Mom walks into Jew-liet's room (why?) to find Small Brother sitting at Jew-liet's computer, and he asks her (his name is Jake), "Guess who Jewel's been mailing love letters to." Mom does her laissez-faire thing for exactly one-billionth of a second, but curiosity overcomes her and she's confronted with the name "Adam Roam" for the first time. I'll bet you twelve dollars that they invented the character of the meddling, snooping little brother just because they had no other way for the mother to find out about Tom the D.A.'s son. Now they're going to have to use him until he outlives his cute factor and pull Leonardo DiCaprio off the street as the character of an orphaned street urchin who makes the family see how lucky they really are to have each other. Well, it's worked before.
Downstairs, Ron Silver licks his chops and takes a bite outta the pretty, pretty scenery that makes up his lovely Bel-Air home. He asks Jew-liet, "How could you do this to me?" Jew-liet holds onto the hope that it's a different family, cracking, "Adam's father works for the Street Department." Ron Silver corrects her: "His father is the District Attorney. He cleans up the streets, all right." Unarticulated-Character-Mom approaches her daughter and asks, "You don't think you're in love with him, do you?" Ron Silver tells her that that's "ridiculous." Unarticulated-Character-Mom asks if they're sleeping together, and Jew-liet tells Ron Silver that he can't tell Jew-liet not to see Adam. "Sometimes I hate being your daughter," she tells him. "Well, I love you more than breathing, but I'll be damned [if] I'll allow you to date the son of the son of a bitch who just put me on trial."
Cut to Jew-liet telling Adam she can't see him anymore, calling him out on his lying. In the library. Which is why they get shushed, for some reason. She tells him that she trusted him and he ruined everything, but he wins her back with an impassioned speech: "I met this incredible girl at a party. And I wanted her to like me so much, not because of him, but because of who I am, you know? Can you understand that?" In fact, she can. What's important is how they feel. "You still should have told me the truth." They hug. "Let's get out of here." Oh, so now it's the library's fault.
The Midas Touch. Because, see, "Gold"man? Right. Pole dancers do their pole dance that they do so well inside of a strip club that would be damn seedy if only if were any brighter in there. This place is totally the Great Northern of Skin, except for the part where it's about to totally blow up in six seconds. Ron Silver sits inside with Cordone, telling him and his associate, "My business dealings are completely above-board, and I intend to keep them that way." A microphone underneath the table sends this non-implicating conversation to a van parked outside. They speak of an ambiguous past of illegal business dealings, however, and the silent associate of Cordone busts in for no reason to ask if he can be in one of Goldman's movies. Either because there is no actual conversation about anything being had right now, or because of some kind of union rules I wasn't aware of. Aaaaaaaanyway, he can't be in one of Goldman's movies. This isn't over yet? Goldman tells him, "The history between us is just that." Just WHAT? "History." Well, thank goodness he finished THAT thought.
Meanwhile, back at the D.A.'s office, Team Personal Vendetta mulls over strategy. We learn that Cordone is a drug dealer and has a history of money-laundering. Which, I mean, I'm never entirely sure of what that is. Adviser #11B reminds the confab, "I want to emphasize that Mr. Goldman did nothing illegal during this meeting." Cordone asked Ron Silver to launder money, and Ron Silver said no. But Tom the D.A. wants to go back into their criminal past, which he's sure includes some laundering history between them back in the day. Does Cordone have a kid one of them could accidentally start dating?
Cordone's business associate places an explosive device in the bathroom of The Midas Touch, and Ron Silver's phone rings. He answers it "Goldman," which is how I'm going to start answering my phone. Not with my own last name, but actually saying "Goldman." Anyway¸ the caller is that guy who always hangs around with Ron Silver at the office. He lets Ron Silver know that the club is gone. And because Ron Silver is just that nice a guy, his first question is after the safety of his esteemed staff. He's told that one girl is dead. Which sucks. Because I was totally dating her dad.
Tom the D.A. calls Ron Silver at home to tell him that he wants "to call a truce meeting." Silver warns that his phones are tapped, but Tom the D.A. (who, I suspect, already knows that) suggests that they meet in person. Alone. Which, as the generation supercedes the , already had that idea, as...
...we cut to Romey and Jew-liet under a sheer white sheet at an empty beach house that her parents apparently own. She's trying to get him to stay, telling him she wants to run away because she's "so sick of [their] parents running our lives." She opens up to him that everyone at school "think [she's] this brainless little slut. You should hear what they say." So they don't go to the same school, then? But they...frequent the same library? There's a lot not adding up here. Someone must have sent the central tenets of logic out for laundering, because there's a bit of confusion in the math at the moment. No matter, there are more interesting revelations afoot: "And the lamest part is...I'm still a virgin." And so is Adam. "It's not like I'm a virgin on principle," she tells us like she read it in one of her father's magazines. "I just want to wait until I fall in love." Awwww.
Oooh, the not-at-all-strained-metaphor of the gathering storm. On a dark and stormy night (in L.A...ten minutes later), Ron Silver skulks up to Tom the D.A. at some gate behind a burned-out glass-replacement store or some such thing. I guess all that inclement weather must have extinguished the flaming barrels that usually give warmth to the mutant mole people who live in the area. Seriously, where the hell are they? This isn't even an address you could tell someone to meet you at. Anyway, Ron Silver walks up with the line, "I don't appreciate you running for office on my reputation." Tom the D.A. volleys back, "With all due respect, Mr. Goldman..." And together: "What reputation?" Oh, ha. Ron Silver delivers perhaps the most strained line of dialogue delivered on television since "And the Emmy goes to The Wayne Brady Show" as the two square off in a war of Bartlett's. Ron Silver: "To quote Benjamin Franklin, 'Those who would sacrifice liberty in the name of safety deserve neither.'" Tom the D.A. is ready with a retort: "John Kennedy said, 'If the law cannot help the helpless, then it cannot help the few who are rich.'" And I'm going to quote this bit in its entirety, so we can all wonder after its relevance together: "John Kennedy also screwed Marilyn Monroe. See, that was Clinton's problem. He went for the homely girls. If he'd have banged Cindy Crawford, he'd have been on Mount Rushmore." Not a lick of sense did that make. True, probably, but not so applicable. Anyway, Goldman insists that his business is entirely legal, but Tom the D.A. says that there's a body count now, and that he wants Goldman to wear a wire and help bring down Cordone. I have NO IDEA what is going on with this whacked-out show. Goldman agrees to cooperate on one condition: "You tell your son to keep his filthy hands off my daughter." See, now, that probably wasn't the best thing to say.
Fight fight fight fight fight! Tom the D.A. finally confronts Adam about "the D.A.'s son and the pornographer's daughter," telling him that it would ruin all of them if the press got wind of it. I read the paper every day, and what the hell do I know about the private lives of the kids of the District Attorney? If I even knew my district, would you be able to tell me my attorney? I'm seriously lost in this. Blah blah big fight, ending with Adam telling his father to screw himself. Tom the D.A.: "Please, keep your hands off this girl. She's nothing but trouble!" Adam: "You don't know her." And so on. Adam starts up a flight of steps, turning back to his angry father and actually saying in utter seriousness, "You know how many politicians it takes to change a light bulb, dad? Just one. He holds onto the fixture while the world revolves beneath him." Knock knock. Who's there? Absolute radio fucking silence.
Kids with lightbulbs.
Everyone's playing everyone. Ron Silver is with his ambiguous advisor. He authorizes him to make a sizable contribution to Roam reelection campaign. To "poison our self-righteous D.A. with his own weakness?" Advisor guesses. I don't know what that means either. It sort of makes sense until you watch it again. And again. And again and again and again.
Ron Silver is wearing a wire and incredibly ugly sunglasses. He meets Cordone in a restaurant booth and I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M NOT DONE WITH THIS RECAP. It's about eleven seconds before Cordone starts with the chat about how he blew up the bar and how he wants his money laundered, and the cops move in and take down Cordone. Kids with Cordone.
Adam's mom weighs in that Adam can't see this girl anymore. But she does it a little more nicely. Adam storms back up the steps, sparing her a light-bulb joke in the process. I think it would go something like this: How many judges does it take to screw in a light bulb. One. The jury would rule that the light went out, and the judge would, um, judge it.
That's it. This show is already trying to kill me.
The place where "the perp" is often to be found. Tom the D.A. tells him that he's looking at the death penalty. Cordone tells him, "I know you want Goldman. I can give him to you. On a gold platter." Cordone tells him that he can offer him "a half-dozen names" of people who have also "washed their laundry in dirty movies." Tell him week, okay?
Because WE GET IT, Jew-liet is actually standing at her balcony when Adam escapes from his house and goes to her.
In his bedroom, Tom the D.A. asks, "How did I drive my own son away?"
Back at the beach house, Romey loves Jew-liet and Jew-liet loves Romey.
Cordone learns that Goldman set him up: "I don't care what it costs. I don't care what it takes. The rich man's dead."
Meanwhile, Ron Silver wants the D.A. investigated: "Anyone this obsessed with porn must have a dark side."
Adam and Jewel make with the coitus on the final fade. Everyone is sad. Except for them, I guess. For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.