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The Lamb boys are all off on separate plotlines this week, so I like to think they all hooked up back at the ranch afterwards to share tales of their exploits. Let's start with Dixon: He's hanging out at a hotel pool ogling asses underwater (seriously) and is fortunately around to save a woman from drowning. She turns out to be a famous member of a family act called the Teentastics, and he's about to be on his merry way when it turns out she was poisoned. The suspects range from a stalker comedian to her father (played by Melrose Place Matt) -- upset that his outwardly wholesome daughter is drinking and "smoking reefer" and other such things that might mar the family image -- but it turns out that she poisoned herself accidentally, trying to get to her older sister, who is refusing to let go of the prime spot in the Teentastics despite being a twenty-year-old geezer. So Dixon winds up having to arrest her, but not, fortunately for him, before sleeping with her first.
Katherine' source of info in Laura has dried up with Laura's disappearance, so she squeezes Mr. Jones (and good GOD, how is it that it has taken until now for me to realize he's Dewey from Justified?) for info on Savino. He agrees in exchange for dental work -- his teeth having been loosened in prison fights -- and then he uses a wire from his new braces to pick the lock on his handcuffs, shoot a couple of guards and escape. This seems to warrant just Ralph and Katherine tracking him, which they eventually do, although he escapes again, but not before endangering the life of a boy in the backseat of a car he steals. Getting shot at by Jones seems to have Katherine ready to throw herself even more at Ralph.
Jack is tricked into a trap by Rizzo, who plans to kill him for banging Mia after torturing him to find out what info Mia has been passing to the feds. Since she hasn't been doing that, Jack can't help him, but he does alibi Mia on a couple of the times in the affidavit, since he was naturally with her at the time. Rizzo checks out his alibi, and realizes Savino set him up. Not that he's not still going to kill Jack, who gets free with the help of Rizzo's accomplice and winds up shooting Rizzo in the stomach. Given that we've established Rizzo now knows Savino set him up, I don't believe he's dead.
As for Savino, he heads out on a road trip with Cota and Red, mainly because he's upset at Laura apparently cutting him off from their kids. They're picking up a shipment of hot newfangled electronic slot machines, and the trip goes horribly wrong, what with the running out of the gas, the run-in with the hilarious motorcycle toughs and meeting a girl who reminds Savino of his own daughters. In the end, the slot machines -- being French -- are useless, but on their way back to Vegas, they rather implausibly run across the hitch-hiking Mr. Jones, beat the shit out of him, and force him to work for them now. So the trip wasn't a total writeoff (although some of the airing of grievances that happened when the three of them thought they were going to die might cause some trouble down the road).
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. You're telling me three guys in Vegas went on a road trip and didn't bring any beer?
Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Dixon is "playing hooky" from work -- you know, the job that he shows up to hours late every morning because he's so tired from banging housewives -- at a pool where he jumps in and ogles underwater asses. You know, the kind of behavior that he would normally arrest people for. The good news is he's on hand to help rescue a drowning girl, who is floating face down in the water.
Katherine -- concerned since Laura has disappeared -- is meeting with Mr. Jones (much to the consternation of Ralph, who is a little look-here-little-lady over Katherine doing her job) to gather information on Savino, in exchange for life in prison (instead of the gas chamber). Being as eccentric -- excessively formal, quoting C.S. Lewis -- as ever, Jones agrees, in exchange for dental work on his teeth, damaged in prison fights. "Some inmates mistook me for prey," he explains. The scene is a little tense, with Jones' request for Katherine to come closer and then shake her hand. It wasn't a given he wouldn't attack her.
Meanwhile, Jack has just finished putting a restaurant out of business by taking advantage of a restaurant's all-you-can-eat brunch offer, but it's because, he lets us all know, that he worked up an appetite banging Mia all morning. And she has to fight him off from spending more time at that because she's got a job interview at the Stardust.
Outside the Savoy, Vinnie's on the phone arguing with his kids' cello teacher because he wants to speak to his kids, which he hasn't done in a week. While he's on hold -- that's one brave cello teacher -- Cota and Red show up to get the news they're headed into the middle of the desert to pick up a trailer of hot newfangled electronic slot machines. Cota's plea to get some sun cream to prevent lobsterface is ignored, and after Savino realizes Laura's given instructions for the cello teacher to not let the kids talk to their father, he decides to accompany Cota and Red on the road trip. Spotting Jack across the street, he uses the opportunity to warn him -- masking it by first yelling at him for not solving more crimes of vandalism in the Savoy parking lot -- that someone's gunning for him. Jack gets the picture, but not why Savino would warn him. "Dead cops are bad for business," explains Savino.
Dixon, who I guess has nothing better to do (like show up for work) visits the hospital room of the girl he saved from drowning and introduces himself to XXXXX Binder, her father, who introduces the rest of his impossibly good-looking family, and Dixon realizes he's in the presence of family act The Teentastics. He asks Mr. Binder to let him know how Fay is doing, but before he can go, the doctor strolls in and announces that drowning may have saved Fay's life, since the water intake diluted the toxins in her system. "It is my belief your daughter was intentionally poisoned," he says.
Meanwhile, the sun's going down in the desert and our gangster heroes are whiling away the time by discussing which disagreeable old women from home they'd prefer to have sex. Currently up for debate: old lady Spinelli vs. Sister Dorothy. Savino says he'd rather blow his brains out, which assumes either one of those dignified women would have anything to do with him.
And then, to no one's surprise (except the guys in the car), the car breaks down because Red apparently forgot to top up the radiator. Savino starts hoofing it since they're not going to get thirty miles sitting around on the hood of the car.
Ralph and Dixon arrive at the hotel to catch the Teentastics singing "To Know Him is to Love Him," and talk to the family afterward. Wait, how much later is this? She's back on stage after almost drowning and having her stomach pumped already? Fay gives Dixon a big hug upon finding out he's the one who saved her, but she doesn't remember anything other than having a bite of food and then going for a dip. thing she knew, she was waking up in the hospital. Jack shows up to share with Dixon and Ralph the lab reports on her stomach contents: trace amounts of rat poison. He talked to the hotel's kitchen manager, who said there was a sketchy guy hanging around under the guise of looking for a job but who disappeared when the manager left to get an application form. He's a husky brown-haired guy with glasses, so Ralph and Jack will try to track him down while Dixonwill gallantly walk-through the day with Fay to try to "jog her memory," i.e. "get her naked."
It's night in the desert and the gangsters are blistered, hungry and thirsty and about to get cold. Cota at least is trying to start a fire with sticks -- "The Boy Scouts are full of crap," he complains -- but Red is firing into the dark at a coyote and Savino is blaming him -- because he couldn't do the job -- for the reason Savino is stuck in Vegas in the first place. Cota gives up on the fire and suggests they bundle up together for warmth, like he saw on an adventure show one time, but the looks on Red's and Savino's faces prompt him to give the fire another try.
Savino, realizing he may have gone too far in blaming Red for, you know, not being able to talk to his daughters, tells a story about his grandfather explaining fluid dynamics to him, the basis for the Roman aqueducts. He never had a formal education, but he was smart as a jackal, says Savino, adding, regretfully, that his grandfather wanted him to be an engineer. "He did it," says Red -- but he's talking about Cota getting the fire started. "I forgot I had my lighter!" says Cota, with absolutely zero shame. Ha!
Fay takes Dixon through the hotel kitchen, saying she came in to check on the family's food order. Dixon asks if she saw a husky fellow with glasses, but she doesn't recall, and then tosses a peanut or something in the air and catches it in her mouth. Dixon, glancing at her ass, calls it impressive. "You should see what I can do with a cherry stem," she says, glancing at his crotch. And then it's off to a pool party with drinking and smoking and wacky '60s kids jumping into the pool with their clothes on, all to thank Dixon for saving her life.
Katherine's at the prison signing Jones out to bring him out to the courthouse, and he's complaining about his new braces being too tight. But that's a cover so he can fiddle with them enough to pull out a wire and then -- not exactly sneakily -- picking the lock on his handcuffs. It's then that she hears the gunshots outside, and she races outside in time for Jones to shoot at her -- and her fire back -- and drive off in a prison truck. So we have two dead deputies and Ralph swooping in, wanting Katherine to get herself checked out while he handles it from here, and you can imagine how receptive Katherine is to that.
And while Jones is fishing coins out of a fountain by a roadside motel for the bus, the gangsters are flagging down a farmer and his adolescent daughter driving a horse trailer. The farmer appears at least a little suspicious about what these three strange suits are doing heading out to the desert, but his politeness overrules his suspicion and he gives them sweet tea to drink and lets them ride -- in the horse trailer. It's funny because of all the shit!
My god, it must be frustrating to be a deputy who ISN'T related to the sheriff in this office because you're expected to be on time. Dixon is, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found, so Jack shrewdly calls the hotel and asks for Fay Binder's room. She answers, passes the phone to Dixon, currently passed out on her chest. "Didn't think you'd be dumb enough to sleep with a crime victim," Jack snaps at him. Good god, if there's anyone not in a position to judge the appropriateness of others' sexual partners, it's Jack, although his line about how Fay has now been "victimized twice" is pretty funny. He tells his nephew not to screw up the case, which he needs to handle on his own because Ralph is working the prison break and Jack has to visit the mayor's cousin, who called about a vagrant skulking around. Asked for Jack personally, having met him at a fundraiser. You'd think Jack would be a little more suspicious given the warning he just received from Vincent, but nope! Then an order of flowers arrives from one of Fay's admirers, a Robbie Reuben, who fits the description of the weirdo seen in the kitchen, and I guess if Dixon's dick is going to put him in a position to pick up clues then I suppose he's not going to have much reason to change his behavior.
Meanwhile, Ralph and Katherine -- apparently the ONLY ONES ON THE HUNT FOR JONES -- have tracked him to a diner, where he stole a car and is likely headed for the Mexican border. Lucky for them, it was leaking oil so it should seize up before he gets there. Time for Ralph and Katherine to have a heart-to-heart; Ralph cluelessly thinks Katherine is shaken up because she was shot at, but she's of course blaming herself for the fact two deputies are dead, and she's got to make this right by finding him. Ralph is totally turned on by her toughness, which she chalks up to "ranch living and beef jerky."
So the farmer and the gangsters have stopped to gas up, with the daughter reading To Kill a Mockingbird -- "This totally new book that just came out, doesn't that blow your mind I'm reading a stone-cold classic that's brand new?" she basically says. This reminds Savino of his own bookworm daughters, but he then comes up short when asked what kind of books they like to read.
He heads inside to find Red and Cota are having a wacky gangsters-try-on-cowboy-clothes moment. Cota has a dorky cowboy hat on, although his face is already blistered to the point that he should just check into the oncology wing whenever they get back.
Outside, motorcycle toughs straight out of Central Casting are harassing the farmer and his daughter for not paying the toll, with the leader -- looking kind of adorably clean-cut to, say, anyone from SAMCRO -- suggesting he take it out in trade. The gangsters come out and start shooting their guns at the ground to scare off the toughs, and then seem rather surprised that this has scared the farmer and his daughter as well. "What business are you men in, exactly?" asks the farmer. His daughter is so traumatized she won't take the necklace Savino bought her in the shop. "We just need to get where we're going, and you'll never see us again," a chastened Savino quietly tells the farmer.
At the station, Dixon is questioning Robbie Reuben, Fay's hack comic stalker, who is too harmless -- we hope, given how creepily excited he is to have a program from Fay's first on-stage appearance, age SEVEN in his collection of memorabilia. The collection also includes a copy of the Teentastics' most recent contract, which Dixon, fortunately spends enough time looking at to realize has no signature line for Fay. "It appears that Fay is about to begin her solo career," says Reuben.
Then Jack shows up at the house with the hobo alert. And really, even if he didn't know Rizzo is gunning for him, you'd think he'd have sent another deputy in his place, especially since none of them are needed to investigate a poisoning or a prison break. But it is what it is, and Jack walks into the darkened house and gets a gun pointed at the back of his head. "You messed with the wrong girl's father, deputy," says Rizzo.
Katherine and Ralph find the car Jones stole at a produce farm that has trucks heading to Mexico, and luckily there's just one on the road to the border right now.
Elsewhere, Jack is tied to a chair, with Rizzo wanting to know what Mia spilled to the ADA. Jack doesn't know what he's talking about, of course, but Rizzo doesn't believe him. The mayor's cousin -- or, more likely, the woman pretending to be the mayor's cousin -- interrupts to demand from Rizzo the stuff he promised her. He gives her a syringe, and she shoots up right there. "The rest of the stuff I promised you, you're not going to need it," he says, just as she collapses on to the coffee table, smashing it. "Say hello to Diane Desmond for me," he says coldly, and then turns his attention back to Jack, this time with a cattle prod.
On the road, the farmer pulls over because the road the gangsters need to go on was never finished, and where they need to go is five miles east over the brush. The truck is too heavy and might get stuck he says. So they're hoofing it again, but the daughter catches up to Savino and gives him her finished copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for his daughters, putting him back into a semi-good mood.
At the hotel, Dixon shows up to confront Fay's father about cutting her out of the act, which is news to her, even if her father doesn't think it should be: "Family acts don't drink, smoke reefer and run around with every Tom, Dick and deputy who crosses her path," he says. Aw, he couldn't have said "the reefer"? Just for me? Fay accuses him of being a hypocrite for having a different waitress in every hotel, while Mom's got more pills in her than a damn pharmacy. The rest of the family doesn't seem particularly shocked by the accusations, but Dixon might want to rethink the "Holy shit, this is awesome" look on his face.
Dixon says it's convenient that Fay is poisoned just as Mr. Binder wants her out of the group, and the father is all, Yeah, I don't NEED to poison her because I CAN KICK HER OUT OF THE GROUP, YOU IDIOT. "Now, Junior, run along. I think it's a school night," he says. Snicker.
While the rest of the family takes their meals, Fay mopes at the bar. Dixon suggests she take hers too and they'll go sit outside. "That's a chef's salad. I hate eggs," she says, and leaves to go mope alone. That's probably a clue, right? I swear, this show is like an hour-long Encyclopedia Brown mystery sometimes.
Over the last five miles in the brush, their lives presumably flashing before their lives, Red decides to admit he slept with Cota's sister. Twice. Cota's much too feeble to respond with anything more than a tired "you son of a bitch" but then everyone's energy is restored when they spot the trailer, and start running.
The guy they meet there is none too happy about them being a day late, since he slept in his car, but Savino is livid when it turns out the stolen machines are French ones that take francs and even have the wrong plugs. "What am I, an electrician?" says the connection, rather ill-advisedly. Even more ill-advised is his attempt to leave with the money. Instead, the three gangsters take his car and leave him stranded out there. He's probably dead now.
Katherine and Ralph catch up with produce truck and Ralph turns on the siren. Jones hops out, and hauls the driver out of another stopped car, and peels out again. Ralph's about to start shooting when the driver frantically stops him: His son is in the back seat. Look, if you cared about the kid, he'd have his seatbelt on!
After the commercial break Jones abandons the car on the edge of cliff, and runs off, dodging shots from Katherine shoots. Ralph's preoccupied with rescuing the kid from the back of the car, which is teetering precariously, and he pulls him out, with a rope, just before the car tumbles over and over on its way to the bottom of the valley.
Over in Rizzo's torture chamber, the cattle prod is leaving marks on Jack's skin but of course he can't tell Rizzo anything. Rizzo shows him the affidavit that lists all the times Mia met "that bitch lawyer." Jack's brain hasn't been prodded too much for him to recognize one of those times as the same time he was nailing Mia at a motel, and tells Rizzo to call and check the guest book.
We're running out the clock, so whoever's with Dixon must be the poisoner, right? He's having dinner with Fay, who's going to hire a lawyer to fight her ousting. He says she seems like the kind of person who'll do anything to make it. Like poison, right? He was confused why there was mayo in her stomach since she hates eggs, but figured out she put poison in her sister's Monte Cristo -- damn, that creepy stalker has come in handy! -- but she accidentally had a couple of bites of what she thought was her ham and cheese. After protesting her innocence at first, Fay comes clean but says she just wanted to make Ginny sick enough to miss the rest of the tour, since her dad was getting rid of her and she still wanted time to prove herself before a solo career. And then Jack arrests her, even though he'd probably be better off getting some backup from someone who hasn't slept with her.
It's dark as the gangsters drive back, silently, although Cota for one is willing to look at the bright side: "At least we got out of the casino for a while. My asthma's cleared up." And hey, they're better off than this poor hitch-hiking bastard, who turns out to be Jones, who is such a master criminal that he's apparently out in the open and just begging to be picked up by the police. The gangsters screech to a halt, and get out with guns up. "Guess I'm not going home empty-handed after all," says Savino.
Sheriff's office. Ralph pours Katherine a stiff belt and tells her what happened wasn't her fault: She's one of the smartest, kindest, hardest-working people he knows, he tells her, and Jones ought to be worried about crossing paths with her again. She confesses that when Jones was shooting at her, she thought she was good as gone, and she thought about regrets: "Things I'd done, things I haven't done." Clearly Ralph falls into that second category, but she's leaving so they're going to drag out the sexual tension here a little while longer.
Over on Fremont Street, Red and Cota are working Jones over right there for everyone to see, but Jones -- his dental work is presumably going to need to be fixed again -- says he won't beg for his life. "The good news is you get to live. Better news is you work for me now. I own you," Savino tells him.
Rizzo's on the phone confirming Mia's alibi, and comes back to Jack to tell him his story checks out. "So this little meeting must be the handiwork of Mr. Savino, who I will deal with in my own way. But right now, I gotta deal with you." Jack tries telling him he doesn't have to do this, but never let it be said that Rizzo doesn't put that special effort into his work. "I'm just going to lift my gun and hold it there for a ridiculously long time," Rizzo says. This gives the OD victim time to come back to life long after she took a hotshot and died, and take a shard of glass from the broken coffee table without Rizzo noticing and sneak up on him and plunge it into his neck. Rizzo writhes in pain and the woman frees Jack, but then gets a bullet in the back as she tries to leave. Rizzo and Jack struggle, with Jack eventually getting the drop on Rizzo -- who draws anyway, and Jack shoots him. Rizzo looks dead, but until that's confirmed I'm not sure I'll buy it, given that Rizzo just learned that Savino set him up.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Is not killing Jones going to turn out to be the dumbest thing Savino has done yet? Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.