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Cesar has had it with Nancy detail, and calls in as replacement bodyguard the shockingly sucio Sucio. Silas and Andy return from their ill-advised adventures -- in Cleveland National Park and the Oakland Hills respectively -- and make Sucio's acquaintance, as well as that of his ever-present gun. A little bleeding, thanks to last week's violence, sends Andy and Nancy to the scary Mexican OB-GYN, where Andy gets a chip on his shoulder with Esteban. To everyone in the universe's dark amusement, Nancy is told to take it easy and avoid stress.
Celia, well on her way to running Rudolfo's revolucion from behind the scenes, eventually emasculates him past the point of no return with her gift for guerilla EQ, and ends up kidnapped and forcibly returned to the Texas border. And so Kevin Alejandro leaves us once again.
Silas's new plan is to open up a medical marijuana shoppe, eventually convincing Nancy to buy in (as long as he keeps Doug away from the stock); they're able to secure permits after accidentally entering a deal with a grifting policeman, so I guess that's their story this year. Jill Price-Gray brings Shane back to Ren-Mar, supposedly because he's creepy but really because she is addicted to El Andy. Nancy and her sister have a succession of desultory fights that are not actually fights but Xerox copies of the actual problem: Nancy's been running from grief since long before Judah, and left Jill holding the bag when their parents died. So now we know two things, total, about Nancy.
In the middle of this chaotic rapid recapitulation of her entire family drama, and everybody winging back toward her, Nancy comes suddenly and heavily to rely on Sucio (even though she -- like the rest of us -- really misses Cesar). Which makes it even sadder when Sucio is abruptly murdered off-screen. It's a random, non-Guillermo move that confuses and scares even Esteban, who suddenly becomes protective again. But why's Till back to stalking Nancy? (Was Sucio the one holding the belt-sander last year?)
week: The terrible idea that is Silas and Doug's new venture, Shane's ongoing teacher/dealer relationship with Hot Ginger, Celia and Till return to Nancy for yet more abuse, the boys meet Esteban, and Andy continues to be jealous of Esteban.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Cesar stares at Nancy hatefully across the kitchen table and she stares right back, tapping a hardboiled egg against the plate and refusing to blink. She's got ginger ale, yellow mustard and salt. I assume that means something, but I don't know what it is, because that combo just makes me want to hurl. She peels the egg without looking away, and puts mustard on it. When the doorbell dogs start barking, Cesar jumps to his feet: "I am through with you." She sends it right back at him, and he brings in Sucio: smaller, less adorable, and filthy. He's her new bodyguard and his name is what he is.
"Where's the dog?" asks Sucio. "Eating an egg," says Cesar, and she calls him pendejo. This is like the nastiest morning. Usually Sucio tortures -- Phil Schlatter, for starters, whose face he beltsanded off -- but now, because Cesar is done, it is Sucio who will be tortured, by Nancy. "Don't you have people to kill?" Nancy asks, hurting Cesar a little bit. Nancy gets her first whiff of Sucio, and almost barfs. "He's comfortable with his man smell," Cesar says, and tells her to live with it. Then Sucio scratches his nuts and smells his fingers. Oh damn, Sucio.
"Whatcha writin'?" asks Celia, pouring coffee for Rudolfo and still trying to worm her way into every part of his life. "Ransom notes," Rudolfo says, very serious about his work, trying to focus. She hands him his coffee and starts offering suggestions: he should type the note, he shouldn't use the word insist but instead demand everything -- he should listen, terrorism and demands are her stock in trade -- because after all, he doesn't have a list of "insists."
Rudolfo assures her he's been writing ransom notes since he was a young boy and bends to the task. "Who are we kidnapping?" she asks, and I think it's amazing at this point that we still don't know if he's the kind of revolutionary who actually does things, or if talking and thinking about doing things is the same thing as doing things. For as silly as this beat in the story is, it's deft: boys playing dress-up, boys playing at spies. He was Quinn's PoliSci teacher, talking about praxis and the revolution, before all of this started. He says they're going to kidnap the Minister of Commerce: "He has people willing to pay for him," Rudolfo says lightly, and she points out how cold it is to mention that.
Rudolfo smiles, and Celia takes the note away from him. "Some people aren't writers, some people are talkers. You talk, and I'll just write it down." Her aim is threefold: one, to actually help, two, to rewrite the note as she sees fit and thus more effectively abduct and ransom Mexico's Minister of Commerce, and three, to have a purpose. Specifically to Rudolfo's movement, but also in general. She calls him a "lost puppy," overbearing, fucking it up. "I am not a puppy, I am a man." Oh dear. Celia? Hit him. The only chance you have to stay in this shit is to hit him, right now.
Rudolfo complains that Celia's undermining him, she whines back, and they yank the note back and forth between them until a dude comes and asks who Rudolfo's sending out on patrol, "Rafael y Lopez," which Celia immediately shoots down. "No, Rafael used to pick on him at school, and that dynamic still hasn't changed. Send Gutierrez." Didn't you kind of know that she'd be great at this?
I mean, that's a go-to joke for me, "Blair Waldorf will end up running guns in South America," that kind of thing, but it's still beyond awesome to see somebody doing it, especially somebodyawesome like Celia Hodes. Rudolfo starts shaking, mad, but she doesn't notice: just slurps his coffee, rewrites his ransom note (which is in Spanish which she doesn't speak or write), machetes up top, administrates his life, undermines him, calls him a puppy, makes him one. His name is what he is.
Nancy's reading Parents magazine, a publication with which I'm only vaguely familiar, having encountered it years ago and only in the context of what was once a much more exciting read, namely Highlights magazine. I assume it contains helpful tips and things of this nature, and I'm all about babies these days, but I can't help thinking that Highlights would still be more interesting. Maybe it's just the logo of Parents magazine, which is so '70s/childhood-cathected it makes me feel like I just smoked salvia, or maybe... No, you know what it is? This amazing Goofus & Gallant slash fic I Google and read about once a year. It is Olympian, both in resonance and in sheer quality: "Gallant wonders whether Goofus is also a virgin/Goofus suspects he's landed a cherry" and "Gallant is circumcised/Goofus is not."
Anyway, she's reading this magazine when Andy returns from dropping Shane off at Jill's, and Sucio draws a gun on him, and she takes her sweet time explaining "no shooty" to Sucio, and introduces them. "Su-Su-Sucio," Andy immediately says, but gets nothing out of Sucio with this. He considers him for a bit, until Nancy asks after Shane, in the Oakland Hills. Shane must sleep in Scott's marathon trophy room, must share a bathroom with the Children of the Corn, but at least he's safer.
"How's my mature, responsible older sister?" Andy nods: She's looking hot, is how she's doing. Nancy stares at him and he nods: "Time's been kind to the Price sisters." She demands that he not lump them in together. She has no idea how far he's already gone, down that road; he's adorable, biting his thumb and marveling at how alike they are. She yells that they're not, and heads to the bathroom; Sucio tries to come in with her and she makes him stay outside. Andy babbles at him for awhile outside the bathroom -- "Su-Su-Sucio. Su-Su-Sucio? Really? Phil Collins?" -- until without looking he grabs Andy by the throat. "Okay, that cuts off my breathing," he grunts. "Payaso," Sucio says: Clown. His name is what he is. Nancy comes out bleeding.
Andy looks around the Mexican OB-GYN's office: "This place gives me the creeps." Nancy's hilarious: "Welcome to my pregnancy." He complains about the office, the usual litany -- no English, thirsty but can't drink the water, waiting room magazines are in Spanish -- and she expresses sympathy that life is so hard for him. He responds by smelling her hair.
Esteban enters and asks if she's been behaving recklessly, and she's like, "Maybe it's all the rough sex?" She introduces Andy to the father of her child, and Andy says he pictured Esteban taller. Esteban tells him to leave and he says he's staying, then urges Nancy to beg to differ on his behalf. Esteban laughs: "You talk like a clown. Payaso." Andy's like, "What is it with that word?"
When the doctor comes in, Andy proves it's not that off-base: "A Mexican gyno? If you're starting a mariachi band, yes, go Mexican. Down there, you want a Jew."
Nancy watches Esteban pace and stare at the screen, worried. The doctor asks her if she's cramping but no: just a little blood. No cocaine or amphetamines? She assures him she's been off cocaine and amphetamines for almost a week now, and then explains that this is a joke. The whole room like collectively sighs. The doctor addresses Esteban, as usual, saying that this is just a "warning," from the body of Nancy, saying to take it easy. No stress, no more strenuous activity. He nods, and she stares; he tells her not to get stressed, and she smiles sadly, and asks him to drive her home. Oh, Nance.
Esteban informs her that she's already disrupted his schedule enough, and that she needs to go home and relax. She's sad. If he hears that she's not relaxing, he says, there will be consequences. They're both grossed out; Andy's grossed out, but Esteban doesn't want any of his shit. "You're going to be such a great dad," Andy snarks, and holds out his hand for a firm shake, and Esteban leaves. "Psych," Andy says lamely, and his hand goes up to smooth his hair. In a world full of Goofus, Nancy wants desperately to nap. Gallant's dead and gone, and she never learned to be her own.
Back home, as Nancy's telling Sucio to take advantage of the outdoor shower whenever he feels like it, really, they notice the door's unlocked. He pats her A-Team style and draws his gun, heading inside. It's Silas, who freezes, and Nancy says it's her son. Then says it again -- his name is what he is -- and gets confused: it's her son, who's supposed to be in the forest, tending to his clones. Silas says only that they went down a bad road, and asks who Sucio is. "My bodyguard," she says breezily, pretending to be a princess again for a moment.
Sucio compliments Silas on his muy bonita set of teeth -- they really are -- and Silas just says "Hola" a bunch of times. In the kitchen, he offers his mother fresh coffee, but she just stares at him. He remembers she hasn't drunk coffee since like Season Three, and plays it off: "You don't even look pregnant! You look great! Gorgeous! Thin!" She grins at him and asks how much money he's after, and he sighs and says he wants to open a store, "an above-board and legit retail establishment." His smile and the ingratiating, obvious way he's buttering her up: he knows he's beautiful, he knows how to get what he wants, from anybody. And where did he learn that?
An above-board and legit retail establishment selling what, exactly? But Nancy already knows. Shane's becoming his mother in Season One, smalltime dealer; of course Silas is moving on to Season Two: medical marijuana this time. "Come on!" he squeals. "Obama's President!" She tells him he can't be sure they won't get busted, what, like he has contacts in the DOJ? Give him time. He says if it's legal in the state, they leave you alone; it's no risk.
There's always risk. "My exciting and death-defying adventures in the drug trade should have taught you this by now," she mumbles hilariously, back in her kitchen, back on top. Without even thinking, she mutely hands the peanut butter jar to Sucio; without thinking, he mutely opens it for her. Silas shows her his business plans: "You made this the family business," he unwisely points out: "At least I'm doing it legal." She attends to her sandwich, pointing out that opening any retail business in this economy is nuts, but Silas responds that weed is pretty much recession-proof, and Doug knows all this stuff. She laughs. "How reassuring! Just keep him away from the inventory." Silas's smile triples in size as she asks Sucio to hand her a banana. Gallantly, he does.
Sucio pulls his gun on Shane, the last of her men to come home. "Stop. Other son. Who's supposed to be in Oakland with my sister?" Jill comes in right after him, bitching, and Sucio pulls on her too. "That's my sister. You can shoot her if you want." They stare at her. "Not really." Shane explains that Jill banged Uncle Andy, and Nancy's jaw drops -- didn't she own him? Wasn't he her territory? -- and Jill gets petulant immediately: "I can do things!" Nancy is amazed, mind blown. "She's a screamer," Shane offers with a grin, delighting his brother; Jill screams at him to shut up, calls him a "weird little pervert," explains how Shane threatened to show Scott the pictures of her fucking Andy. Anything to get home.
Silas is impressed; Nancy not so much. "Shane, you're going back with Aunt Jill, and you will keep your mouth shut to her husband and her children about what a nasty whore their Mommy is." Jill shakes her head: "No. He's all yours. In so many ways." Silas's delight in chaos has been my favorite thing about him ever since he became a man and stopped popping holes in deaf girls' condoms. Silas leaves them alone together, taking Shane off to unpack.
"Your little monster is not coming back to my home," Jill opens, and Nancy grits her teeth. "Perfect Jill Price-Gray. Perfect husband, in her perfect house, can't do the only thing I've ever asked her, in my whole life." There's not room in Bubbie's house for all Jill's horror at this hypocrisy. "Would you, could you... Why do you think I stopped talking to you?" Because you're a self-righteous bitch, Nancy offers. It's not even really a fight, just the memory of a fight and the pattern of fighting that keeps them both standing up. If they didn't have each other to blame, they're saying, they'd both be dead by now, of grief. "You know what, I don't need this. I'm better. This was a slip. I've worked through my codependence and I'm done bailing you out every time you get into trouble..." Nancy tries to explain that lecturing is not helping, but gets distracted: "That's a cute necklace!"
Jill thanks her sister, and they forget the fight for a second, forget their various crises, in ecstasies of shopping. "I got it at Nordstrom. No, you know what? I think I got this online, at Etsy." (Drunk Etsying is the new drunk eBaying, which was once the new drunk Amazoning. Don't do it.) Nancy nods and asks again: "Shane's not safe here."
Which gives Jill permission to come in from another angle, and ask her sister if she's okay. "I'm fine! It's nothing, I'm just pregnant." And the father? "It's complicated." It always is, with Nancy, but Jill's not allowed to say that without activating that viper addict thing Nancy always hides so well: "You know what, Jill, if you're not going to help me, then fuck off." If the addicts had a parade that would be their Casey Scott flag, Once You Really Need It To Stop, They Ask You Why You Started, because the devilment of addiction is poor time management: I can't be bothered saving myself until it's too late, so why are you holding my past actions against me now? They are both right and they are both really wrong. Jill stares at Sucio, who is a powerful presence in many ways: "Is he the father?" Nancy gives a wonderfully offhand, exasperated "Sure."
"You really will sleep with anything," Jill marvels, and "Look who's talking," Nancy says, because the Andy thing still stings, and right on time he comes downstairs with some lamp he's trying to fix. Jill lights up from the inside in a truly terrifying way, and Nancy calls him an asshole. "Come on! Is it so out of character?" Everything he does is pointed toward the future, even following Jill up the stairs to fuck her, on her orders, he does with a regretful glance back at Nancy: please don't hold my actions against me while you are pregnant with somebody else's baby. It's a little triumphant. Nancy pats the sofa to her, and shares her sandwich with Sucio when he sits down. Even with all the men coming home from every direction, he's still like her only friend.
I'm Ingrid, Ask Me A Question! reads the placard on the old woman's desk; Ingrid's looking over Doug and Silas's application for something, some kind of permit I guess. Under "nature of business" they've only written "RETAIL." Doug smiles fakely, filling in the blank, but Silas turns on his Price/Botwin charm. "Potluck?" No, Doug corrects her: "Club. Pot Club." She jumps a little and Silas grins, correcting them both nervously: "No. Medical Marijuana Dispensary." Oh my, Ingrid says, and goes off to check with her manager while Doug goes through her desk with the munchies.
"Uptight bitch... I'm very high, and I'm not paranoid. So you, being not high, should be even more not paranoid. Unless you're high, are you high?" Goofus. Doug eats Ingrid's Sour Punch Bites, and when she returns with a tall skinny functionary, he tells them they need the signoff of a local law enforcement officer. Ingrid offers Doug some Sour Punch Bites. "Oh, no thank you," he says. "I have some of my own." Silas stares and sighs.
At dinner, Jill's drinking not her first glass of red wine and regaling the family with stories about Nancy's childhood. I wonder if they know as little about her as we do. Nancy's none too happy about this game, but Silas loves it. For example, Jill asks, did they know Nancy dated her math teacher in junior high? Shane's grossed out; Nancy informs the insensate and uninterested Sucio that this story is quote "total bullshit," but Andy's thrilled. In his imagination, she was a "heartbreaker," body "fully developed": "precocious, sophisticated," bored with all the kids her age. Basic Humbert stuff. Jill doesn't even know she's killing a dream when she grins at him, cockeyed: "Not really. Flat, cliquey. B average." More wine for Jill!
"So this whole Not Drinking thing sucks," Nancy grouses, and Jill goes on. "Anyway, his name was Mr. Schiff, and he threatened to stab himself in the heart with a geometry compass when she dumped him." Silas gets stars in his eyes about how fucked up that is. "First of all," Nancy explains to Sucio, "He was delusional. Second of all, I rejected all of his advances." This last said with hilarious self-evidence: "Third of all, I was getting all As in his class!"
Jill tells the end of the Schiff story: divorced, fired, crazy, camped out on the Price lawn until Daddy had him taken away, then still sent notes from the loony bin. Nancy shakes her head and asks why this is Jill's favorite story, but Silas knows: "BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME!"
Nancy's had enough. You want to talk about the differences between the Price Girls? She'll always win that one. "Ask Aunt Jill about the time that she missed the bus and was late for class. Thrilling tale. Screwed up her whole sense of right and wrong." That cuts, and they all know it: Nancy got to live, to leap, while Jill stayed grey; both of these are necessary. Goofus goes off gallivanting, Gallant getting grayer.
"Just once admit that you had sex with Mr. Schiff," Jill exclaims drunkenly, and Nancy turns her gaze on her sister like a knife: "Just once, admit that you had a crush on him, and you were bitter because he was more attracted to me than he was to you." Jill calls her a "raging narcissist," but at least Nancy didn't extend the truth all the way: Jill only would have wanted him once Nancy started getting attention.
Nancy turns to Sucio with a very salient point: "I don't even know why we're arguing about this. I was 13, the man was a pedophile." It wouldn't have mattered; they measure themselves against each other, and the guy doesn't matter. No matter how much he wishes he did: "Ladies please," Andy says, "This is Shabbas dinner." Nancy puts her fork down and says she'll be upstairs, throwing up; she doesn't even look at Sucio as he pulls out her chair. It's weird and sad, but not in the way that Jill thinks: "I don't mean to be judgy, but where did she meet that guy? Home Depot?" They are all quiet, because after this long lying about how desperate their lives actually are, nobody knows how to say the word "bodyguard" to Jill Price-Gray.
Celia's asleep on a jungle cot when a hand covers her mouth to a scary, driving beat. She's obviously not going to die, so I'm assuming she's going to get mailed back to Ren-Mar, maybe have some "No Man Is Pudding" experiences on the way. This season is already -- and will continue to be -- structured so weirdly that literally anything could happen, still, which is more exciting than I can be sad about losing Rudolfo to Southland after so brief a time. I guess the moral of the story is, you never call a man a puppy; especially not when that's what he is.
Sexy damn puppy, though. Meanwhile, this doughy blond cop guy is shaking his head at Silas and Doug. "to Molly's Pet Depot, where I got my first dog Scraggles, across from the Surfside Pancake Hut, you guys wanna sell drugs?" (It's so weird to think of California as a place that was invented earlier than yesterday afternoon. I moved around a whole lot, so it's probably just me, but when you talk about the place where you got your first pet it sends me straight to a Stars Hollow place.) Silas redirects him, calling it "compassionate care," and he reminds them Ren-Mar is a wholesome town, lived here his whole life, blah blah: "...So I'm going to want my cut." He offers them the choice of a fixed monthly payment, or a percentage of the sales, and Doug takes him aside ("We're a little new to this whole extortion thing") while Deputy Jones steps away to help an old lady across the street.
Back on the Agrestic City Council, Doug did the same thing to a guy who wanted to open a gay bar, unfortunately titled the White Swallow. He took the percentage, which was "a sucky choice," because the only "fruits" in Agrestic besides Josh (and that old dude he was fucking) grew on trees. If you're using your head, you know that he means it was sucky for Doug, not for this nameless guy, because obviously you would choose the percentage, because that means you're not stuck with the overhead of making the payment when business isn't great, and when it's booming the trickledown means you won't miss the percentage as much.
Silas is not using his head, so when Jones comes back over he immediately commits to monthly payments. Doug's too stoned to adequately correct Silas or his misunderstanding, but Jones is all "no backsies" and immediately signs off on their application. This will turn out poorly. He throws them a Hang Ten and claims to be "stoked," while Silas stalks off all pissed and dumb, and Doug tries to explain how that just went down, confusing himself more and more.
Nancy's on the couch in her cute PJs, reading What To Expect and being slightly freaked out by Sucio's Sucioness: he kills a mosquito or other insect by slapping it, and then scratches himself absentmindedly. It's pretty bleak. "Okay. Enough. I know your calling card is this whole rugged, unwashed thing. I can't take it anymore." She drags him toward the outdoor shower, ignoring his terrified protests: "Comprendo this."
"Soap. Jabon? Soap. Shampoo, don't really know the word for that. Towel. Don't know the word for that either. Lava. Lava. Sí?" He stares up at the shower; he stares it down. "Como se llama... Loofah?" She rolls her eyes and heads back inside; he snatches at her arm but she tells him to chill, and leaves him alone with the shower. He doesn't take his eyes off it, and very bravely removes his shirt.
Upstairs, Nancy can hear Andy and Jill fucking, and her eyes go wide. Jill says something about rarely coming by fucking, and they laugh, and do it, and Nancy's grossed out. She rolls her eyes, but gets creeped out as the sex gets more and more intense and loud, and eventually she fairly runs back to the porch, loofah in hand.
"Sucio? Sucio? I know you're naked..." She holds one arm out the door, smiling to herself with eyes turned away. "And maybe even clean! I know it's very scary for you. And new..." No response. Finally, she looks: "Sucio? Dónde está usted..." The Limited White People Spanish on this show is so awesome, it's so well-done. Sucio's clothes are piled neatly near the shower, with his cell phone and charger and pocket stuff on top. There's no Sucio, though: just a bit of blood. More than light spotting; definitely a warning.
Shane Botwin isn't in the Oakland Hills, safe, away from all this; he's feet from it, sitting downstairs while his aunt fucks his uncle upstairs and foul play is perpetrated on his drug-dealing mother's bodyguard on the back patio. He tells Nancy he hasn't seen Sucio, and she grabs him. She's still got the loofah in her hands as she drags him upstairs and tells him to stay away from Andy's door, which she opens. "Cover your ears and stay where I can see you," she tells the little pervert, who does neither, and then watches her brother fuck her sister. She waits, boredly, until they come. There they go.
"We gotta go. Now. Not safe." Jill gives her a huge WTF but she's like, "I waited until you came! Be grateful." She takes hugely grinning Shane downstairs, promising him when he's older and in therapy he'll somehow make sense of all this. As we do.
Celia wakes up to the prodding of a border agent, on a bus. "Where in the fuck am I?" she asks, and he even calls her ma'am when he tells her she's in Texas. She groans, sad and a little lonely, with a headache, and the bus drives off, leaving her on the Texas/Mexico border with tons of cute luggage, no pudding, and an outfit so seriously adorable it could be described as... revolutionary, with those culottes they all seem to favor when engaged in overthrow. She looks like a bajillion pesos, actually, considering all she's been through.
Nancy, in an adorable shapeless hat -- thin fabric, like the storytelling hat at the beginning of Labyrinth but not stripey, because Nancy only wears green and grey when it's like this -- that once again proves she can wear anything, has a new plan: take Jill to the airport, find Silas, and take her men somewhere safe that she hasn't thought of yet. "This is why you should have stayed with her," she hisses at Shane, who laughs. "At least with you I'll go quick. With her it's a slow death." Jill and Andy come moseying along and Jill admits her return flight was two hours ago.
Jill ignores Nancy flipping out about everything and just wants to fuck Andy more. Nancy's like, "The fuck with these women?" but Andy explains that he does "great and careful work" with the ladies. "Please get in the fucking car," she says like a hundred times, and when she gets out of the Prius she's pissed enough that it scares Andy, and he does a squirrely dance into the backseat.
Jill finally grasps that there's something beyond Nancy Drama happening here, and asks her for the story, no bullshit included. "What's going on is, I have fucked up my entire life. In ways you cannot even imagine. And I don't think I can get out of it this time." Jill asks what she's supposed to do with that little bombload, and Nancy tells her to board a plane and be grateful she's not Nancy. "Sorry," Jill says, "But I would fucking love to be you." (I so wish Nancy were applying eyeliner right now.) Andy gets out to try some kind of skeevy calming-the-ladies crap, and they both yell at him to get back in the car.
And then it... Starts. And it's not about Sucio, or Esteban, or anything but the fight they've never had. Nancy took off, and left Jill holding the bag. Nancy gives herself a pass for this because she was younger, but that's bullshit: Jill was only a year and a half older, that doesn't count. Nancy shakes her head: she just couldn't handle it, okay? "Guess fucking what! Neither could I!" What are they talking about? What did they share? How does this show work? What made Nancy so good at running and so bad at staying put? "What do you want me to say?"
"How about, 'Thank you for staying in the hospital with Mom, Jill. And doing it all over again with Dad, Jill, and for making funeral arrangements for both of them.' And, 'I'm sorry Jill, by the way, that I couldn't be there to help. I was off playing ballerina and getting laid while you were wiping shit and writing DNR orders.'"
(Which is, I mean to say, brilliant. First of all, you have this shadow figure we've heard about but never seen, the original carrier-of-Nancy's-shit who's just like Nancy in like every way, and without whom Nancy wouldn't be able to do have the obnoxious shit that she does, and who underscored for her this ridiculous sense of entitlement she has. This person, made out of whole cloth by a gifted actress, who illuminates so much we've always wondered about Nancy. The bear. And it does this without being an epiphany, like, "Oh, this is the secret answer that solves the mystery: orphans are fucked up." Because no, they're not, and no, that's not the point. The point is what crystallized around it, just like with Judah. And think about this motherfucker: Celia Hodes, Nancy's blonde almost-twin, beyond bitter, not a friend and not an enemy, Celia with her cancer, Celia the willing sidekick, Celia the whipping girl.
Which is just like a minor point right now, because then it connects the dots in a whole new way to how this story started: When Judah died, and Andy suggested selling drugs because she had no marketable skills... And Nancy thought that was a good idea. It's not like her character or the show's mission statement really needed bolstering like this, but it feels good to see it play out. She really has been a black box, in a lot of ways, because jumping into her story the way we did meant we were in her shoes from the start, and I for one never really questioned her until she started getting weird, right around U-Turn and Lacey, and realized there were nooks and crannies and places in there that I couldn't love.)
I do adore that movie Choke, because it tells a very basic addiction story, but does it without substances, so you're left without the usual props and Afterschool Special atmosphere. And even though this show is all about substances, Nancy's is the same kind of story. She's an addict in a way we don't really have a cultural narrative about; "codependent" is a good word for the beginning of that narrative, but it's not the whole thing.
Nancy acts like an addict. Nancy runs away from everything but most especially grief, because it's the bear and it's chased her since she was a child, and Nancy is okay with letting other people carry her shit. We knew that; God, how we knew that. What we didn't know for sure is that she's fully aware of that, and does it anyway. That it is not a part of her personality but the core of her personality, and she can't imagine surviving without it. Which makes her a lot harder to love, which makes me love her more.
It's the bear. "All right. I'm sorry," she says, being honest and looking deeply into Jill's unbelievably wounded eyes, "I'm sorry I am, and have been, such a disappointment. That's a lot to hang onto. And it must really suck." It's Mary Louise Parker that sells this, as always, and the sparks between them both, but it's the firm acknowledgment that Jill needs right now. And Nancy's backed high up enough into the corner, down at the rock-bottom area, that she can actually for once see that it's true. Jill nods. "Now," Nancy continues, "Will you please get in the fucking car."
Of course, you can't have a moment without some shit happening, so Esteban calls right then to remind Nancy to stay off her feet. "Oh," she laughs, "I'm on my feet. I'm fleeing." Jill whips around to stare at her. "What's going on?" he asks. "Where's Sucio?" Nancy nods, frustrated. "Missing. There was blood. And Guillermo told me if I ratted he'd kill me, so maybe his guys?" She falls into Team Nancy mode so easily it's amazing. Esteban's on the case, thinking hard alongside her, but still points out without a trace of emotion that if it was Guillermo she'd be the dead one. "Get yourself to a safe place and wait for my call."
Jill stares at her sister. "I realize you haven't decided whether or not to kill me after the baby comes, but... Could I have Cesar back for now?" He doesn't answer this, just tells her to wait for his call, and hangs up. "Still want to be me?" she grins hugely.
Yes. Forever. That's the price. The irresistible force and the immovable object: the one who ran, and the one who stayed. The one who refused to believe in grief, and the one who lives there always. Jealous as goddesses, each carrying the other's burden and letting it be carried. Dependent, co-dependent, splitting one twinned soul between them, ripped in half by grief. There's a reason the Gray Girls are twins, that Jill had to have her uncanny twin daughters, and it's this: the Price Girls will always want to be each other, forever, because they can't stand the idea of being themselves, and when they look at each other that's all they can see. U-Turn was a better bear, but Jill has seniority.
Jill and Nancy get into the car, together, and drive away with their men in the backseat, heading for safe places. And Captain Roy Till's just across the street, watching them drive away, having finally found his man.
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