Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Never Let Me Go
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 06.08.2009
y answers. It's Cesar, with an address and a time.Shane's selling drugs at the school library while those terrible girls look on; he's got a book in his hands. "Get to the anal rape scene yet?" The gothier one hisses at her. "Thanks for ruining it for me!" OMG these girls are so real. "Don't worry, there's two," the skankier one says, but they spot a teacher coming and grab hands, running away together. Maybe forever. A hot ginger teacher sticks his head through the shelf at Shane and asks if he's reading the book. "Did you actually read The Kite Runner before you assigned it?" The teacher assures Shane he thought they could handle it. Especially Shane, little multitasker that he is.
"Shane. I have twenty-three papers to grade tonight. They're all on Anne Frank. Do you know how depressing that is?" Shane agrees that he picks some really sad books. "Which is why I need some pot. Plus you people can't write for shit, that's even sadder." Shane asks if that shouldn't be "more sad," stalling for time, and the teacher threatens him with confiscation. "What would we find?" Shane hands him a baggie: "A cure for depression?" I don't care how cute you are, buying weed from a freshman, much less your own student, is weak sauce. I swear Shane has the worst effing luck with teachers.
Sanjay: is a gay homosexual queer. Till tries to get more information out of him about the tunnel, but Sanjay's too faggy to be of help. Then there's a call from Mexico, which excites Till until he finds Rudolfo on the other end, asking for Celia's ransom money, and tells him to fuck himself. He hangs up, and Sanjay proceeds to be gay some more. I'd tell you more, but that's actually the whole joke.
Silas pulls out the map of the forest: six hour hike, no roads. Andy is out of it, hugging laundry and freaking out about love and babies and all that mess. Doug's phone rings -- "Who? Celia? That cunt can lick my balls. Tell her I said hi!" -- and he hangs up, begging Silas to be included in this. Not only because he's apparently "good at" whatever he thinks is going to be happening, but also because he's bored and lonely for chat now that Andy's gone catatonic. Silas gets a management headache.
Andy's phone rings. "Yeah, I know Celia. ...Well, we're all gonna die. Life is cheap. People die, and people have babies every day. What's with that, women in their forties having babies? What? No, I'm not paying a ransom. Hello?" He puts his head back down on the pile of towels he's got his arms around. "Rude." Silas stares down at him, the only adult on this entire show for the second season running: "Andy. Who's having a baby."
Celia's horrified: they've gotten to the Z's in her phone, and nobody's even slightly interested in her fate. Rudolfo asks if she has a Facebook, some friends there, and she spits. "Clearly, that would be a waste of time!" Rudolfo laughs. She asks him what they say, when he calls, and he says mostly they mention the bad economy and say they haven't talked to her in a while, but to say hi. "You're just trying to be nice. Everybody hates me." He nods and sits. "Very much."
Rudolfo rubs at the scratches Quinn's put on the side of his face, and Celia jumps at the chance to connect and/or play mindgames, asking if he's put Neosporin or something on there. He swears he's okay, and she jumps in there with both hands, both feet, and all the Pop Psych 101 she can muster. "Why do you let her do that to you. She's abusive! Roberto, you do not have to take this." He reminds her, again, that his name is Rudolfo, and she gamely carries on. "And how often does she hit you, Rudolfo?" He starts into some battered shit about how she doesn't mean to hurt him, he just makes her mad sometimes, which is funny when it's a guy saying it -- I guess? -- but honestly not very funny no matter who's saying it, and of course Quinn comes in screaming before he's finished a sentence.
Rudolfo explains to Quinn how nobody's going to be paying the ransom, and Quinn... It's like her hair is on fire, or snakes. I don't know how she does it. "Fuck it! We'll kill her and sell her organs! Okay! Let's go have sex!" Rudolfo grins and nods at Celia, who shakes her head in disgust.
Me too. There was a time not so long ago that I would have put some thought into this, about how Celia's sins are not only coming back in the narrative but also in all the connections between herself and her daughter, the parallels between Dean and Rudolfo and their abusive SOs, the whole student/teacher thing mirroring Nancy's relationships with her betters in the drug trade, the S&M that seems to be encroaching all the time on this show for no real reason, the full-circle nature of Celia's tiny little addiction cycle, but you know what? These people are fucking cartoons. The jokes are lame, or mean, or both, and there's not any subtext to get to: Celia's a fucking crazy bitch, everybody on the show hates her and it's hilarious, same joke ten times, Quinn's a fucking crazy bitch because Celia's a fucking crazy bitch, Rudolfo is a pussy who wouldn't know praxis if it fucked him in his revolutionary ass, and this show is chock-full of fascinating characters played by awesome actors who may or may not be called upon to do anything interesting ever again. Call me next week, because remember when Celia was an interesting, complex person? Remember the Coke bottles? "I have cancer"? That was a long fucking time ago. On the other hand, I just remembered that the rest of this episode is golden, so I should shut my gob.
The doctor's office is white and buzzy and silent and hard. Nancy doesn't look so good, on the table. Esteban finally comes in with the doctors, talking about who knows what. No subtitles. They discuss her baby, and her body; a nurse shoves a thermometer in her mouth and wraps a cuff around her arm. She understands nothing; words jump out but they don't mean anything. Imagine coming through the tunnel, your first day in America. What it would feel like, the moment you realize you're just another one of those little boxes. To be filled. To be just a body, and not the person inside.
Esteban asks Cesar's opinion about something, and he gives it; Nancy stares. The doctor talks to the nurse; Nancy stares. Finally she begs them to tell her what's going on, but they don't. Esteban hands her forms for a procedure she doesn't recognize, because her last pregnancy was Shane, and Shane's in high school now. She stands up, beyond frustrated, still thinking she has choices. Esteban shoots Cesar a look, and he ushers them out: they call her Sra. Gonzales, and she shivers. She tells Esteban she feels like she's been abducted by aliens and is now in their craft, being probed. "You have no idea, do you?" he asks, shoving her down onto the table a second time.
She nods, tries to be conciliatory. Tries to remember loving him, and being loved. She says that yes, it's his baby, and she understands if he wants to know all about it, if he needs proof. But they should make an appointment with a doctor in Ren-Mar, who speaks English and addresses her like she's a human being. They can even have lunch together, afterward. How about that?
Esteban shoves her down, hard, pushes her up the table; he shoves her feet roughly into the stirrups. "How about that? How about: You are Lazarus, risen from the dead." She's not getting it and he's getting tired of her not getting it. He runs his hands across her womb; it's not the touch of love. The love has left the room. She will lay on the table and submit to the probes and prove to him that there is a baby, that it is male, and that it is his. And if she wants to go home, in the midst of these very clear requirements, then Cesar will take her.
Nancy smiles; she finally gets it. This is not a reprieve, she's just become a different kind of problem, that will be solved in a different way. He searches her face, and she finally lies back; she's a tiger in a cage. She's full of grace. A box to be filled: it's not a trump card, it's the opposite. It makes her less human, not more. Not to him, n