Previously: We continue to be deprived of Conrad and Heylia. I mean, I get that Romany Malco is making the whole "movie star" bid....but they couldn't throw us even a little Tonye Patano? Currently: credits run across Bubbie's vitals screen and we open on Nancy wondering whether Bubbie's eyes follow her -- like one of those cartoon/novelty paintings -- as she moves around in front of her. Shane, reading Keats, attempts to slow down his straight descent-into-hell-by-association-with-these-people by remarking that Bubbie is "alone and palely loitering." Andy comes in wearing boxers and a fur-collared, three-quarter-length-sleeve coat. The coat is because Andy slept out on the porch; he tells Nancy that Bubbie's whole "I want to die" thing freaked him out. "Plus, it's like bunking with Darth Vader in here" (breathing noises). Nancy didn't know about Bubbie's Yiddish plea for deliverance. Len yells from the bathroom about all the long, dark hairs clogging his shower drain, Silas comes in (shamefully, wearing a robe like he's Amish or something) from the outdoor shower. Len marches into the room wearing a woman's nightgown -- neither he nor Andy remark on the cross-dressing family resemblance -- and hands Nancy a veritable bird's nest of nasty shower drain hair. Andy tries to confront his father about Bubbie's death wish, while Nancy wonders over all the hair in her hand. Silas: "You're under a lot of stress."
Back at the police station, Till asks Chola Celia whether chance or fate brings people together. Chola Celia is SO much less badass than PTA Celia and she sort of weepily mutters and just begs not to be put back in jail. Till tells her that he's giving her a chance to get out of jail if she hands him Nancy Botwin. She meekly asks if that will get her charges dropped and Till tells her that the better the information, the more leniency she'll get. He lets her know that who is really wants is Guillermo Garcia Gomez and Celia starts to get a gleam back in her eye. Till goes on about how Guillermo's the whale and he's Ahab, yadda yadda, and Celia, getting up to leave, gives Till her best flirty look. I mean, as best she can do with sideburn curli-cues taped down and Sharpie'd-in brows. Till tells her that he liked her blonde on her driver's license and she should think about "going there" again.
Guillermo and company watch the tape of Nancy royally fucking up on her first border run. Apparently the reasons she got stopped at the border are because she peed in a cup, went through just as the new, non-numbed-by-boredom border patrol guys came on shift, and also, Guillermo helpfully reminded us, wore that "technicolor, check-my-shit-out slut-suit in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday." Guillermo wants to know why she was calling attention to herself and advises her to get some J. Crew and blend in. Other advice: use beta blockers, don't flash a lot of cash, don't cross the border with only the mierda she bought at the crossing, have details (more than just "I wanted to buy some face cream") at hand for bullshitting. Guillermo tells her she's been thinking "East/West" her whole life, she needs to start thinking "North/South." Nancy wants to make another run, because she's not going to learn more just sitting in a warehouse, and Guillermo is just like, "Okay!" What a Coach Taylor, passing on the skills to the generation!
Outside Bubbie's house. Andy, Silas, and Shane are in the tin-foil paranoia van of herbage, discussing Bubbie's request. Silas calls Andy out: "You want to kill Bubbie?" and Andy apparently thinks of his moral compass as having foreground and background: he tells Silas that he's all "humane, merciful, dignified 'yes' in the foreground" and "sorrowful, deeply-felt-but-tinged-with-regret-about-the-big-fat-'yes'-thing way back there, a ways." After this cute little bit, however, the conversation goes rapidly downhill with all your standard "end with dignity" versus "kill her" semantics (Shane and Andy in the former camp, Silas in the latter). Silas sardonically declares that they should "kill" her because, "Sure, because life is just 'blah blah blah'." Well, Silas, when you're having standard high school Ethics debates over euthanasia on television, "blah, blah, blah" sort of sums it up. Andy is with me, except he sort of delivers his agreement in a weird manner a la that awful Stage Manager character from Our Town -- a monologue on how all life actually is is "blah." "You hope for it to be 'blah' [hopeful intonation], but usually it's just 'blah' [blank intonation]," and so on. Shane compliments Andy's monologue and Silas decides that they should "do this." The plan is that Shane is on Len-convincing duty, and Silas and Andy will hide out in the van.
Celia -- back to her blonde PTA self -- and Pam break into Dean's hotel room, Pam running interference with the maid in the hallway by shouting loudly about Celia's husband "the lovable gimp." Inside, the TV is on and Pam goes moth-to-flame with it, especially because her favorite local news dummy with the neat-haired Hewl Hauser is on it. Celia quickly finds Dean's cell phone and finds a text from Shane ("Gr8 Grdma dying. Weird house. Weird town") indicating where they're hiding out.
Tijuana. You know because of the Speedy Gonzalez noises happening on the soundtrack. Nancy is all three-quarter-sleeve pink button-down, 9-inch inseam khaki shorts, and golf visor, hanging around the garage from last week. The workers ask if she's going to the farmacia and she says she's going to stay and watch, and then puts her ear buds in to listen to a Spanish-language podcast. The old guy who's in charge of the operation looks at her intently, not sure he sized her up correctly the last time. Everyone gets to work stuffing bags of drugs inside the frame of her car, and she watches passively. Until she notices them stuffing a small man under the back seat . Nancy freaks out, they explain this is Lento and he's going to see his mother who's having gastric bypass surgery, Nancy continues to freak, but they screw him into place anyhow.
Shane approaches Len to talk about Bubbie. Shane tries to convince his grandfather that Bubbie is in a lot of pain. Len appreciates, he says, the Botwins coming in like "rays of sunshine and euthanasia" but insists that he knows more about Bubbie's medical condition than they do. Shane points out that she articulated her wishes and Len moves his grandson into a seat right to the weezing, ventilated Bubbie. Shane talks directly to Bubbie, saying that he thinks she has a right to choose whether she lives or dies. Len turns the tables and asks Shane what he'd do if that was his mother lying there. Shane says he'd let her go if she asked for it. Then Len just flips the damn table upside down and says that lying there is HIS mother, the woman who called him a loser, force-fed him liver and hung his dog (twice). Shane suggests that Len is having trouble letting go, and Len agrees. He points out where the ventilator is plugged in and tells Shane he can go ahead and do it if he wants. Surprisingly the "all eyeballs and elbows" young boy can't do it.
Border crossing. Cut immediately to a sign saying "Welcome to San Diego" and Nancy smiling wildly and asking the man trapped under her back seat how you say "I fucking did it!" in Spanish ("Yo hice chingado!" for the record). She keeps driving over potholes, causing him to curse her and then pretend he didn't, and then obviously not know where she's going: "Do you know how to get to Guillermo's drug warehouse?" Lento suggests she ask someone, but for once in her life, Nancy spots a bad idea on the first try. She pulls up to a warehouse, certain she's found it.
Nancy crawls under the half-closed door to find the whole place cleared out. She gets back into the car; Lento asks to be let out and Nancy goes into sedated suburban mom mode saying that she can't yet, because he's a criminal, and even though he's probably real nice and loves his mom, he might want to make a hat out of her kidney. So, he'll get out "soon...soonish."
Beach. Andy approaches his dad who's sitting there with a fishing pole stuck in the sand. And I'm not trying to be clever by saying that this conversation is basically "blah, blah, blah" but it is, with a little more of Len kicking Andy in the shins. Len finally admits that he does want this all to go away and then they argue a bit over who's going to do it. They settle on Nancy, Andy recalling, "Bubbie did say that bringing Not-Francie into the family would kill her."
Nancy pulls up in front of Bubbie's house in her drug-stuffed SUV. Lento wonders if they're at Limon Grove yet, and Nancy bangs on the steering wheel and tells him to shut up about Limon Grove. She tells him that if Guillermo doesn't call in twenty minutes, she'll get some tools to get him out. He pushes his head through what is supposed to be a stereo speaker and tells her he has to pee; "You go right ahead sweetie" and she puts the speaker cover back in place.
Inside, Andy immediately accosts Nancy and tells her they've decided to pull the plug on Bubbie, and that she's going to "do the honors." Nancy is speechless, but only for a minute because her cell phone rings and its Guillermo and he's outside the house.
She goes outside where Guillermo and Chewy are leaning against her car, explaining that they disappeared because of a "security breach." She wonders how they know where she lives and they clarify: "It's in your GPS, under 'Home'." Nancy tells them that she has to get back inside to go kill her dead husband's grandmother. Guillermo: "Been there." Nancy asks for her dinero and Guillermo circles around the car to approach her. Cut back a few hundred feet to find Celia fumbling with a disposable camera, trying to get it out of its packaging to get a shot of Guillermo and Nancy together. She can't get it in time, mainly because of the clicking wheel of endless film advancement -- a hilarious little "funny 'cuz it's true!' moment, like when Ben Stiller is stuck with that flight attendant endlessly punching the keys of her keyboard in Meet the Parents.
Dean's hotel room, Doug and Dean are watching one of Andy's foot porn movies, Dean wondering whether finding Andy's foot hot makes him gay. Someone knocks at the door and Doug answers. It's City Council Lady (forget her name) and she's freaking out about the insurance policies on the municipal buildings until she glances down and notices Doug has an erection. Doug, playing it real cool, acknowledges the sight must be upsetting to her -- "that is, unless you own a horse" -- and excuses himself to go put on some pants. He shuts the door, jumps in some pants and tells Dean to deal with her. He finds his "Armageddon bag" while Dean catatonically tells Doug to stay to fight them together. Doug throws a leg through the window and tells Dean that the foot thing makes him totally gay and then falls out the window with a flump.
Bubbie's house. Nancy holds a candle and attempts to pay respects to Bubbie, but gets a little distracted by the fact that she doesn't know anything about her, not even, really, her actual name. "Helen? I'm sure I'll read it in the paper, or on your grave." She gets going, though, and gives tribute to this woman who was loved dearly, telling her that she need not hold on because she left anything undone, because she didn't, and then saying that she prays that Bubbie will rest easy. Pause. Looking straight into the camera, she asks Bubbie not to be mad at her. The camera pulls back and we see that Nancy is standing, alone, over by the fuse box, while the rest of the blood Botwins are around Bubbie's bed. Something about that little speech Nancy gave reminded me of how Nancy used to be a character -- like with conflicted desires and sadness and relationships with other people. She flicks a fuse, but it isn't the one, and this end moment gets extended for a few chuckly moments as Nancy flicks the kitchen lights on and off, then the stairwell ones, before she gets to right one. Nancy walks over to join the family watching Bubbie, whose ventilator is now off, and who continues to breath. We linger on Nancy's contemplative face for a moment before cutting to an exterior shot, Shane voice-over observing "She's still breathing" and Nancy saying "Shane, get mommy a pillow." Oh, that line made me do the Mr. Burns finger trill. Love it!
Talk about this episode in our forums, or to see what other summer shows will be starting up soon, check out our Summer of Love and Hate!