In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
Nancy spends the episode deciding whether to kill Captain Roy Till or Bodyguard #3, Ignacio aka Sanjay's crush. About which ethical conundrum, don't ask. It actually does make sense, but it's a whole thing. There's a taser, and maybe Till wants to kill Nancy or something, and there's a whole metaphorical Mutually Assured Destruction thing between the two of them because of Till's boyfriend's belt-sanded face, the possibly scrip-related disappearance of Sucio, and the general awesomeness of Ignacio, and like three or four people piss themselves, and it's just a big old mess.
The boys meet Esteban, and Shane brats out in a sort of amazing way while Andy's continuing breakdown for love of Nancy puts him in Shane's corner. I'm guessing one or both of the boys is going to end up coming around to Esteban's corner, but I'm at a loss as to which. Shane -- whom Andy acknowledges as the broken ethical compass for the family, which has been replaced by an essentially random but wholly literal Magic Eight Ball -- sells four grand worth of weed to that sweet ginger English teacher, who stiffs him at the last second. (Shoulda known, considering he starts the episode by Missing The Bear once again, this time in a claw machine.) Silas and Doug continue their dealings with that scary cop guy, who kills a mean lady's cat. (Related: Celia comes knocking on Nancy's door, and Nancy literally tries to set her on fire.)
So eventually Nancy falls apart -- or at least into an understandable sort of cowboy boot-wearing, mascara-applying, Magic Eight Ball-consulting existential crisis -- and decides to call Esteban in to make the call. Which is how Till got capped, Nancy got her Magic Eight Ball taken away, and Esteban gets to pretend for at least another week that any of this is appropriate. They go for a stroll on the beach, and Esteban gets all creepy-romantic Your Belly Is My Secret Garden all over her, and she manages not to barf.
Most interesting of all -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- is Andy's bizarro journey through this episode, which begins with him pumping iron to compete with Ignacio's heady masculinity and finding an old bank account of Judah's that Bubbeh has been adding to for thirty years and is now close to two hundred grand. He dresses up in a cardigan and hornrims and pretends to be Judah, but it turns out the lady knew and was in love with Judah from when they were all growing up in Ren-Mar. So now, in order to get the cash (and avoid the death tax), the lady makes Andy continue to be Judah for her sexual closure, and date her... Meanwhile at home, he's dressing like Fake Judah on purpose, and smoothly making the house ready for Nancy's baby.
So in effect, and stay with me here: Andy's pretending to be the thing he was pretending to be for reasons he's tried to avoid, by pretending to be the thing he's pretending to be for really good reasons -- but then simultaneously applying his Andy-as-Judah affections that Nancy won't accept to this random new lady, while he continues trying to be Judah-as-Andy for Nancy's sons... Just like he's been doing for four seasons. I mean, deal with that.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, Till's boyfriend got his face sanded off, the tunnel got shut down, Nancy made out with Andy for fake but he screwed Jill for real, Shane started dealing to his teachers, Esteban got more and more controlling, and Sucio disappeared, leaving Nancy and the boys on the run.
(The credits screen is furiously, unbelievably detailed, being a pinball machine with many pot leaves everywhere, Nancy in Guillermo-fucking cowboy boots and a "Yo ♥ Mexico" tattoo and a tight t-shirt commemorating Chris, who died for your sins. A tiger licks a good shit lollipop, there's a WHORE ball and a pierced dick, a "Save The Dirt Shrew" sign held by a dirt shrew, that drug-free sasquatch, the blue butterfly that always shows up, a U-Turn sign, and probably a million other things I'm not recognizing. Man.)
Now, spooky-eyed Nancy's shooting at us, at the camera rather, or more correctly yet an old-school arcade videogame. Andy asks her what they're even doing here, and she snorts, irritated, "Big Buffalo Blastin'! It says so right on the thing!" He means, of course, how long they'll be sojourning at Ye Olde Family Fun Bowl-A-Rama, to which all his tokens have gone and at which he has bowled seven games and been recruited into a league. He wants to go home. She shoots two bunnies and an owl before returning to the buffalo. No bears, though.
When Esteban calls is when they can go home, where Andy can plant his "sisterfucking ass" on the couch, he can get high, and schedule a post-sisterfucking jerk session the better to relive all the many pleasures of fucking her sister. (While only about two-thirds of the smartassy lines of dialogue in this episode actually work, that's counterbalanced by the fact that it's the first funny episode since God knows when, and there are only one or two really unforgivable lines.) Andy gets all smug and starts leading the conversation to some kind of feelings Nancy may or may not have for him, and she gets grossed out, and he brings up the border patrol kiss, and she reminds him that she was also about to pee her pants -- you will do insane things if you're about to pee your pants, even beg to be killed, watch -- but he won't let it go.
Andy tries, once again, to force them into some amazing movie of love where she's in love with him and is scared to show it, or maybe doesn't even need to show it, so all it takes is one fabulous sort of Moment and then all our problems go away, so he's like, "Fine, kiss me." Which in the When Andy Met Nancy movie that's constantly playing in his head -- at least when she's directly in front of him -- would be the moment that she would, just to prove him wrong, but the kiss would get all amazing and shit, and then it would turn out that she was wrong, and she would love him and care for him and he would finally be a man or something and so, knowing this, she looks deeply into his eyes and says the exact right kind of thing to break down those stupid macho boy fantasies right in the dirty chum water where they grow: "Baby, Andy. Baby. Baby. Another man's baby." He drops it, and she starts shooting the bunnies as fast as they can come, pointing and firing, pointing and firing, and never blinking.
Shane hopes aloud that their mother falls down a flight of stairs, while Silas watches him play a claw game for a bear, which he then loses. Silas consoles him that he didn't want the pink bear anyway, but at least Shane has realized the entire point: "Fuck the bear, I want to win!" There's no older brother wisdom that can compete with the elegant beauty of that, so thank goodness Nancy appears and says they're going home. Esteban called. "So we get to meet babydaddy," Silas grins, and she tells them both to either be nice, or say nothing.
They choose nothing. Andy sits in a comfy Bubbeh chair that mirrors Nancy's, ignoring all of this, and Esteban stands between them awkwardly. Finally he offers the boys mayoral campaign t-shirts in the colors of the flag, with him giving a thumbs up. It's all fairly bleak. Andy's like, "Those are awesome shirts. I wish you'd brought three!" Silas is like, "So you're the mayor of Mexico or something?" Something. "And you stuck your penis inside my mother," Shane offers, and Nancy wishes her younger son a pleasant sleep. He doesn't go anywhere, and points out he doesn't feel safe anyhow.
Silas asks where Sucio went, and Esteban improvises a lie about him mixing up his medications and wandering off. Nancy's impressed by the lie, but she wants to believe it, too. Andy is reminded of a time he confused Benadryl and Tegretol, and ended up guessing weights for three days at the Iowa State Fair. "Got crabs, and a tattoo. Of a... Crab." Where does he come up with this stuff? So Nancy's like, "You're saying Sucio wandered off, naked. And bleeding." And apparently, this has happened before. "In that case, thanks for giving him a gun!" she quips, "And the keys to our house!"
Esteban asks her to move into his house, then, and they're all shocked. She can't quite believe it, but from the evidence it would seem that Esteban just asked her to move in with him. Andy scoffs that in the TJ, even the donkeys are scared -- "And that's a fun place to be a donkey," he says to Silas, I guess because Doug's not there -- but Esteban clarifies: he has a home north of the border, in Santa Playa. Andy makes a super-ugly, hilarious face that basically translates as, "You have many houses and I have zero houses, but you are a stupidhead, so suck it."
Nancy actually manages to be a bit charmed by Esteban's newfound fervor and sweetness, almost like the old days, maybe better than the old days, as he's making promises about how there's room for the boys, even for Andy. The boys are totally not interested, of course, and Shane follows up Silas's politeness with a notification that Esteban is "not the mayor of US," and that the t-shirts are lame. He then starts to front, so Silas takes "Tough Guy" upstairs, after shaking Esteban's hand like a man.
Nancy tries to explain to Esteban that this is their home, and Esteban goes, "Where is our home?" Tired of revisiting the whole rough sex/landfill thing for the eighteenth time, she just asks him where the hell this newest weird behavior is coming from. She watches him carefully for an answer, any answer other than the obvious, but of course it's the obvious: the test results came back. She's sad. "I see. 'Your' boy." There's grief in her eyes.
It takes balls to make a story in which "If my babydaddy doesn't marry me, I'll just die" is literally true.
Don't fool yourself
Into thinking you're more than a man
Or you'll probably end up dead
While Andy continues making any kind of nuisance of himself that he can, to break the icky spell these two have woven around each other, Esteban calls in Ignacio (the hot one, with the beard). He brings in the Now & Zen Baby Swing, while Andy protests that he can watch just as well as Ignacio, he's excellent at watching. "Right," Esteban laughs, still not even looking at him. "You and your crabs."
Andy's horrified as Esteban first presents the swing as proudly as a king, then moves to touch her belly. She shivers at his touch, and laughs that she's not even showing yet. "I can feel him," Esteban says, and kisses the top of her head tenderly just as her entire body attempts to climb up through the top of that selfsame head. Mind, blown. Andy runs circles yipping around Ignacio about how he's just a thug, he's no match for El Andy: "Take away the muscles and the fiery eyes, and the cold heart of a killer, what does he have that I don't?" A taser. A taser is the answer to that question, which causes Andy to fall on the floor burbling and groaning and sort of whistling. "I call him Mr. Zappy" Ignacio says, stupidly enough.
"Oh great, now he's wet himself," says Nancy. Not what the manchild on the floor needs to hear right now. All that good behavior and taking care of the family, pissed away. Ignacio laughs at him and goes to get a towel. Esteban returns to talking about "our boy," and every time he says it her back stiffens, and she says it back to him, unable to believe what he's pulling now. He holds her tightly, and she relaxes into it finally, looking over at the swing, with its fat little Buddha.
"Nothing is exactly as it seems," she says into his shoulder. "Nor is it otherwise." Says so right on the box, sure as Big Buffalo Blastin's what you do .
Shane congratulates Mr. Sandusky on smoking in the eco-garden, and then Sandusky blows his mind by offering him three or four grand for more pot. "Unions really are ruining this country," Shane says, which is fine to think but trust me when I tell you never say that shit out loud. Sandusky says he'll meet up with him after fifth period, Choosing Chastity. Shane scoffs at "that Abstinence-Only bullshit," and tells him to blow it off, but he can't, because if he leaves before the movie's over, the hamsters get raped with Sharpies. And here I thought I'd heard of, or imagined, every possible negative outcome of an abstinence-only education (or lifestyle). I wasn't even thinking of the hamsters.
...Now I can't stop thinking about the hamsters. That is some sick shit, and you know, it's totally true. Not like actual hamster rape is an epidemic, but it's so true that demonizing a natural thing like that makes you ten times creepier and weirder about it than if you just got raised right. Don't think about the elephant. And actually I was thinking about it from the other direction, the other day -- and maybe this applies to Shane, in a way -- about how we came up in the age of Madonna and "Justify My Love" and that SEX book and Blue Velvet and Udo Kier sitting on a bullet thinking of power and all that stuff, right. And of course this was all very self-actualized submission-is-power 1990s stuff, reacting to the nastiness of the 1980s and pushing the edges of sex, and being very proud of themselves.
But between that and Rocky Horror, all I can really remember of sex in high school, besides having it, I mean, like as a topic, was this immense pressure to be terribly interesting. It took me a long time to realize that no, everybody doesn't have fifty fetishes and a bunch of accoutrements stashed all over the place. I would wager that 99.9% of grown adults, much less high school students, who claim to have an "oral fixation" have neither an oral fixation nor the body of knowledge necessary to explain what that is. Dress a girl up as Lara Croft or a naughty dominatrix or whatever's clichéd, throw her in the middle of a bunch of arrested-latency nerds who don't actually care, and half of them will lie about their crazy boners and they won't even really know why they're doing it.
Most people just like to have sex, because sex is awesome. Seems simple, and in fact I wager that it is. I believe that in our hearts of hearts, the majority of us mostly don't really need a whole routine. But we assume everybody else has these Byzantine rituals and trapdoors and surprise parties, because the '90s re-centered sex, just like the SATs when an 800 became a 600, and we had no idea that what we were learning was normal was in fact previously thought of as pretty left of center. It was just that the people making the entertainment had become so incredibly boring that they needed to get tied up and peed on in order to get a job done that, frankly, animals can accomplish with little to no fuss.
But who's going to explain that to us? It's where all the information came from anyway. It's like thinking Seventies Bush is something you have to like cultivate, because all you ever saw in Hustler were landing strips, or how a thousand years from now all the gay guys will be flying around with jetpacks still convincing each other that Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand are significant. So anyway, that's why Star Trek TNG people are always tying each other up and wifeswapping, and that's also what being Shane Botwin is like, I think, all the time. Tremendous pressure to be as weird as everybody he knows. And it's working.
Silas comes downstairs looking dapper in a jacket/jeans combo, looking like a million basically, the same way mommy would, and grins at Nancy fussing with the swing. "Nesting phase." He worries that he's showing race bias before asking if this is, in fact, a new Mexican bodyguard, and she's like, "Brand new!" Silas says hi/hola, and Ignacio -- from the table where he's watching a laptop -- informs him, with much mirth, that "The cat is Milo, the dog is Otis. The cat is crazy! And the little dog just follows..." Ignacio laughs, and Silas cocks his head, but at least it reminds Nancy to ask where Andy is. In the garage, and with a cute grin Silas adds, "Working out?" Go, little dog! Ignacio says. Go!
She's wearing those cowboy boots, he's pumping iron in the tiniest little shorts you ever did see. "Hey, just in time to spot me!" says Otis, and she asks if this is all about him pissing himself last night. Three answers to that one (No. Yes. He cheated.), and she asks for his help with her "Zen Baby Erector Set." Man, those shorts are tiny. Not in a good way. He pulls on that chest thing with the springs, and says he can feel a High Noon coming, and he wants to be ready. Where did this crap come from?
"This is my stuff," Andy nods. "My athlete stuff." He shoves a Thighmaster into his armpit and goes to town. "It's Judah's," he admits. Judah, who was good at sports, while Andy was good at fleeing. She laughs, honestly, more brightly than she's been in a long time. "I have a bodyguard? I don't need you to crush my foes in your armpit." So then what, being given his tenuous opening, does she need from him? She smiles, because he's got game whether it's working or not, but Ignacio appears: the doorbell's barking. He grins widely at Andy: "You look like Jamie Lee Curtis in Perfect," he says, squinting, and Nancy laughs from her belly. So normal! So real! I forgot she could laugh. "That's what I was going for," Andy grumples, as Nancy and Ignacio take off, still laughing. He pounds one fist into the other, wearing a boxing glove, and comes out with a little, wizened bank book and a shitload of wacky tinkling impending-caper piano.
"Celia. What a wonderful surprise." Really? "Nooo. Not wonderful. Not a surprise..." Celia shoves past Nancy and into the house, growling at Ignacio. She's like the herpes, he spits. Keeps popping up. Nancy doesn't waste much time telling Celia to GTFO, which frustrates Celia terribly because she's got a whole canned speech planned that Nancy won't let her say. "I was kidnapped!" She thanks Nancy for the ransom, and explains further that they were going to sell her gall bladder to the Japanese, but "fortunately, my body is a toxic pit." Nancy doesn't know what to do with that. "Then, I escaped. Heroically! And now I am homeless."
"Celia, I am pregnant." She stares at Nancy. "With a baby?" Her face goes soft, and open wide, like this is still Agrestic and there's a baby, like her friend Nancy is having a baby. "Which means I need quiet and calm and -- thank you," Nancy says, regarding Celia's ever-so-quiet and calm steepled prayer hands, "...And happy thoughts around me, as much as possible." And this whole time, Celia's been creeping, lofting, sort of floating toward Nancy with this beatific not-quite-smile on her face, as though she's going to force them both into some amazing movie of love where they're friends and she's just scared to show it, to be the one that gives in first and stops being mad, or maybe doesn't even need to show it, so all it takes is one fabulous sort of Moment and then all our problems go away.
"You, Celia," Nancy says, pushing her back, "Are not quiet. Not calm." Celia nods, she knows these things, she agrees: "You are so terribly, miserably thoroughly, unhappy that if I pricked your finger, you'd bleed a fucking raincloud." Celia leans forward and asks, not quite conspiratorially, whether it's Andy's baby.
Cut to Celia, and her luggage, being thrown onto the lawn, by a spirited Ignacio; and pull further back, to Roy Till watching the house still, holding a 2005 photo of himself as Swayze and his dead "partner" dressed as a terrifying Jennifer Grey, with "Very Dirty Dancing!" scrawled across the bottom, and then he says something so unutterably retarded, writing of such badness that I can't even believe it, and refuse to recap it. Fucking try harder. That shit shouldn't have made it out of the first draft, and maybe the only reason it did is it got lost in the 75 other lead balloons this script keeps sending up.
Here's one now, a mean Asian lady showing Silas and Doug a drycleaners that they hope to rent for their pot club, once they -- as Doug says -- "Jew these folks down." Silas likes it, and says he'll take it, and responds to her question that it will be a Compassionate Care Club. She's like, "Oh. Gym for fat ladies?" and he shakes his head, because no. Medical marijuana. She starts freaking out about how the Feds will take away her building, and Doug responds that
she eats dogs, and she tells him to "Get the fuck out," calling him an "asswhore," and Silas thinks about that but doesn't reply.
(I sure am glad they didn't rent that space! I'd hate to see one more empty stereotype that exists solely for cheap laughs on a show that once prided itself on skewering stereotypes and now just seems to enjoy them. That would really suck. Maybe Clinique can come be a fat-assed illiterate black whore on the corner outside the chinky old bitch's drycleaning service and she can say everything with the "izzle" in it while the old bitch keeps replacing her /r/ and /l/ phonemes and calling assholes asswhores and actual ass whores, like Clinique, she can call them assholes. Or Clinique could turn that faggot bottom babydaddy out, and he could be both! He'd love it, too, you know, because he craves having all kinds of things in his rectum, almost as much as he loves talking about it. That would be so fucking funny, I'd really get a kick out of it. And oh, so edgy.
I love the show enough that I keep jumping back to feeling like there's something I'm not getting, but here's the deal: if the characters do it, that's one thing, because you're saying something about the characters. Silas worries that all Mexicans look alike to him, so he asks for clarification: that's funny, and sweet. But this isn't the characters doing it, it's the show doing it. This isn't Doug's idea about what other people are like: this is the show creating stereotypical characters in order to laugh about and at them, and for no other real reason. And then somehow Doug's racism on top of that makes it okay? It doesn't. It's gross. Go back to Sarah Silverman School, and actually fucking pay attention this time, Lampanelli. There is a difference.)
Whatever, so Nancy can't force the "plastic demon from hell" to snap into place; ironically, the script can't get "the 'X demon from hell' joke from 1992" to snap into place either. WTF, guys. Seriously. For such a great episode, this sure is a shitty episode. The swing stares at her, zenning calmly, and she lies back on the floor in her cute cowboy boots and stares at the ceiling. "Mommy... Needs to get drunk," she whines, which would be funnier if she, um, hadn't done that like yesterday, and then Ignacio drags Roy Till's unconscious form past her, in the front door and through the house.
"He looks little! He's heavier than a sea turtle!" She sits down on her bed, upstairs, looking at Till's prone form while Ignacio breathes heavily. Apparently Till was looking in the window, presumably trying to find Nancy. She laughs and asks what the hell he'd be arresting her for now, after all she's done for him, and Ignacio laughs because obviously Roy Till is coming to kill her: "Pistola. Cuchillo. Puño de hierro," he says, pulling them one by one off Till. And dripping from the last? "Sangre de hombre muerto!" Sorry, Sucio.
Ignacio, I guess not figuring out whose blood it is, licks the brass knuckles, which freaks Nancy and all of us, and then tosses his wallet and the Dirty Dancing photo on the bed beside her. "No badge. Today he's no cop, today he's Rambo." He nudges Till awake joyfully, the better to tase him again, and tosses the taser to Nancy too. What's he going to do now? "Put him in the tub!" Ignacio giggles. "Oh, because he peed his pants. Right." Yes, but that's not all: Ignacio burbles sweetly that he will also be burning Till's clothes, draining his blood, and most exciting of all, melting Till's bones with acid. "Oh, right..." she says vaguely, and then tases Ignacio too. "Not in my tub," she says quietly.
"What's that thing supposed to be?" Shane asks about the swing, and Andy mournfully tells him. "Domestic bliss." It does, indeed, look like someone shit out a Tilt-A-Whirl. Andy asks him, as the moral center of the family, if he should impersonate his dead brother and "pseudo-steal" the money, "for the greater good of the family." (And you know, I think he means that part.) Shoving headcheese sandwiches into his bag, Shane nods and says all Judah's passwords are up in his sock drawer, and tells Andy to wear a hat due to their filial resemblance being somewhat thin. (There's a whole dark/light thing here, with the siblings, but you can't say that was really planned. Well, maybe Jill was the latest one on purpose.)
Andy's happy for the direction the moral center provides, and asks what Shane's up to with all the pot he's ganking. Why, selling it to his English teacher, and if it pleases Andy to assume this is for "the good of the family" -- the family, of course, that recently tried to ship his ass to Oakland -- he's welcome to do so. Andy is alarmed, dismayed, fearful that Silas will kill Shane, but mostly he's regretful that Shane's "true north" is no more. "What can I say? I'm a Botwin. We're not responsible for anything we do." (In the parlance of the day this is called being "on the nose," and it is both fulfilling and irritating sometimes.) Shane spins a piece of the baby swing like a compass gone mad, and leaves Andy to his thoughts.
Ignacio and Till are tied to the bedpost, sitting on the floor opposite Nancy, who's all but applying eyeliner on a sofa against the wall. Till pretty much orders Nancy to untie him, and Ignacio says he'll be the first to die. "You have no badge, Roy," Nancy says quietly, and he barks that he's undercover. And Sucio? The "dirty Mexican," she clarifies, with apologies ("It's true, he stinks like pigshit," Ignacio replies). Well, he killed Roy's partner. Sad that the obvious lie about the medication is now absolutely positively a lie, she asks if he's going to hurt her too, and there's no answer.
Last time we saw Till I thought a lot about how, to an addict, therapists are like cops: they exist to help you, to fix the problem, but when they do it can really suck. And the threat of Till for Nancy always seemed to mirror the threat of rehab for Celia. But when the addiction is the game, itself, those two jobs are even closer. Till says the things you don't want to hear, and enforces the rules you think you're beyond. He's like a moral compass too.
"He's a killer!" Ignacio says, in contrast to himself, who will kill Till in a moment if she lets him, and they can go watch Milo & Otis. They start kick-fighting, hands chained above their heads, and Nancy yells at them to settle down. "I'll make you pee your pants again!" she shouts, and they chill a bit. Till asks whose side she's on, and caught up in the fight, Ignacio yells that she's on his side: having a baby with his boss, in fact. She shoots Ignacio a hurt, annoyed look that is almost worse than the taser, and he's contrite. "What's it like, fucking a monster?" asks Till, and she nearly starts crying, but kicks him viciously instead, over and over, biting down on it.
So the choice is who to free, because they can't both be there forever, but whoever she frees they're going to kill the other one. Go with the good guy, he'll kill you and the bad guy and probably your family. Go with the bad guy, and he'll kill the good guy, and you will no longer be a good guy. So, by the additive property, the choices are: be the bad guy, or be the dead guy. As per usual. Of course, Celia chooses this moment to let herself in downstairs, and the kick-fighting starts again until Ignacio notices that Till's getting a hardon. Hilariously, Roy chins that it's a "perfectly normal reaction to the adrenaline of combat," and keeps kicking at him, but Ignacio, in a hurt tone, whines that he doesn't want to fight with Roy anymore. It's pretty darling, the whole thing.
The door was open. Well, it was ajar. Well basically, it was unlocked. Nancy stares at her, hatefully exasperated, and somehow summons within herself the ability to put down the taser. Well, using it would just make more of a mess, in more ways than one. Celia's plan is a doozy: she realizes that, due to being utterly despised at this point by Nancy, she can't live in the house proper, but she's willing to compromise and stay on the couch in the balmy screened-in porch out back. Nancy responds by lighting a match and throwing it at her. "Hey," Celia yips. "That's fire!"
Nancy stalks her, walking backwards, to the door, tossing match after match as her delirious monologue gets ever more delicious. She points at her head ("Okay, Final Net Extra Hold?") and her clothes: "This is cotton! I am highly flammable right now!" Finally she just can't take it anymore and starts screaming, even as she's still backing away: "You know what? You are crazy! You are fucking crazy, and I HATE YOU." She stares at Nancy and remembers she has nothing. "We'll talk later." Nancy puts the last match in her mouth, and spits fire at her.
Judah's bank account: $186,437.96. Andy dressed as "Judah," with slicked-down hair and ridiculous hornrims and a soft cardigan sweater: priceless. He looks like a million bucks, actually. Judah was hot, hotter than Andy, but Fake Judah might be hottest of all. And not just for the mirroring with Jill/Nancy going on here, either: When Nancy ran away, Jill's life went to hell, but when Judah's life ended so did everybody else's. All we want to be is the opposite of what we are, until we're big enough for both: "Nothing is exactly as it seems, nor is it otherwise."
"Call me Judah," and all that, and Andy spins a tale about Uncle Yitzhak locking himself accidentally in a freezer chest and dying of the first and still only case of hypothermia in Woodland Hills. "Judah" saved his, but his idiot brother "Andy" spent it on a van one summer when he needed a place to live. This whole "I am a suck-ass and Judah was a prince" thing goes on for a while, but the associate at the bank finally tells him that the growth is pretty average on this account: it's just that Bubbeh's been adding to it for, oh, thirty years or so. "THAT BITCH!" he screams, and then fake-pulls it together about how sad is favoritism.
Andy asks the crazy-eyed lady about the hold she's placed on the account, and she leans forward with the real deal, all "I don't know what bullshit he's pulling, but you tell Judah he has to come talk to me before he sees a penny of this, because I've been waiting a long time to say my piece to Judah Botwin and by God I'm gonna" whatever, whatever, Andy takes off his glasses and soberly fesses up that Judah's dead. And in the time it takes to blink she's catapulted herself into Crazytown, ripping out her hair and banging her head on the desk and crying to the tunefully wacky piano.
"Fast cars, rodent rape, summers off," Shane says in the parking lot, to hottie Sandusky. "Wow, to be you." Sandusky says everything's hilarious to a punk like Shane, but his parents had dreams one day too, and Shane heads for the nose again: "Nothing shits on my mom's dreams -- least of all me! -- and my dad's dead. But nice try." He tosses the gym bag of pot in the trunk, and Sandusky offers him a ride home after they settle up, then adroitly locks the doors and drives off, leaving Shane staring and holding no bag whatsoever. For a moment he looks his age again.
Nancy begs Till to just, hypothetically, walk away: go home and forget the whole thing. Of course, he's high drama about how he has nothing to go home to anymore, and Nancy -- because of all the people on this earth the one person who should be offering grief counseling is Nancy fucking Botwin -- gives him a hilariously insincere, "I know it's soon, but what about dating?" Is she still talking to him, though: "He wouldn't be who you had, but..." And if not, who's she talking about? Ignacio nods helpfully. "My ugly cousin Paolo made himself a fuckdoll from a tire!"
Never let it be said that I stopped loving Cesar -- or Sucio's agreeable grossness, for that matter -- but this Ignacio, he has a certain something. He has that Sir Didymus kind of hyperactive, super-destructive charm that suits me even better than Cesar's malevolent-yet-darling ennui. All that time sitting on the tunnel, and he could have been telling us about Milo & Otis and fuckdolls. Nancy nods: out there for Roy Till, there is someone. Someone, or something. Maybe a tire.
"You have to choose, Nancy." Between Till and Esteban, there is no choice. There was a point where she chose the law over chaos, and went to Till. And he almost saved her, but then he didn't. And thanks to the baby, she had Esteban to keep her safe. Except she didn't really pick him and he didn't really save her. His comfort and safety mean nothing except a long tunnel with death at the end. But thanks to Sucio and a certain belt-sander, the other option's tainted now too: Till's comfort and safety are now nonexistent, a much shorter tunnel with death at the end. She has sufficiently pissed off justice to the point where there's none. She has no shelter: just two men who hold her in the palm of their hands.
"I can't have it either way," she tries to explain, but he's not having it. These are the hard choices, he's saying: "Mommy, you have to pick your favorite!" Because she's right: he'll kill Ignacio, that's the only reason he's alive. On the other hand, Ignacio will kill him without a second thought, and go watch movies and eat a sandwich. "That's true too," Ignacio says agreeably. The people she associates with.
"CHOOSE!" Till shouts, and the force of it sends her sideways, lying on the couch, with a Magic Eight Ball in her hands. If there's no shelter in law, and damnation in the opposition, then we don't even need a moral compass anymore. It's all random, now. Kind of Zen in a way. "I can't. I'm bringing a child into the world. I'm not ready to... sit here and play Buddha and be fucking Zen about who lives or dies. So we'll ask the magic ball." She wipes away a tear and stares up. "Tell me, Magic Ball. Can these two men part in peace? To live to kill another day?" She's playing with them, but not like a cat, not like Milo: she's playing with them because that's what she does. There are a multitude of random options. There aren't any options at all.
"Go on," he hisses. "Shake your magic ball. Tell yourself you're so noble because we're both still breathing. You've got blood on your hands!" Na
ncy stares.
Silas and Doug sign the lease; the old lady wants it month-to-month, three months down, but their cop buddy gets twelve months with two months down, because he beat up her cat. "I like your style!" says Doug, and the three of them sign, cheering. "Partners!" they yell. "Faggots!" she yells. They are bemused.
Judah was Margaret's first love, first boyfriend, first... You know. Then he left, and her life became a bucket of shit. Andy can identify.
They sit quietly for a while, and she praises him for the scam: no estate tax, no probate. He asks if she couldn't help him out, and she considers it. On the one hand, she could get fired. On the other, the bank's closing anyway. "You sorta look like him," she says. The same kind eyes. "Tell me more about my eyes," he says in some kind of sultry voice, and she breathes like Zoey would. "Here's the deal. Go out with me, and I'll get you into that account." He lies transparently that he was going to ask her out anyway, and she corrects him: "Only it has to be as Judah. You're Judah, and I'm me. And you have to love me, and treat me nice." There's a long pause while he puts his eyeballs back in their sockets, and then he smiles. "Well, there's nothing weird about that!" He calls her Margaret, and she goes very still and serious. "Mags. Judah calls me Mags." He nods, terrified, and she laughs again.
Nancy's in the upstairs hallway when Esteban approaches, and when he asks if she's okay she stares blankly at nothing. "As I see it, yes. It is certain. It is decidedly so. Most likely. Outlook good. Signs point to yes... Reply hazy, better not tell you now, don't count on it... My reply is no. My sources say no. Outlook not so good." She sighs. "Very doubtful." If she speaks, she'll break. He stands up, looking down, and she shakes her head, with the sound of the waves breaking far away. He heads for the door, and stops, turning. He knows her well.
"What's going to happen in there is not right or wrong. It's not good or bad: It is. It's what happens ," he says, looking into her eyes. She finally looks back. "We chose," he says. "You and I. When we came together, we chose. A life. This life. For you, for me, for our son. There is nothing I will not do to protect that life." Everything seems so simple for him. She stares at him, almost angry: how easy this is, and how insane. He heads into the bedroom, and she sits in the sun.
And later, downstairs, turning the Magic Ball in her hands, Nancy sits. Having listened, you see? Having heard. He pats Ignacio goodbye, and stands behind her where she stares at the ball. She barely jerks when he caresses her arm, her shoulder, comforting her. They go walking on the beach, and she stares at the ball, barely standing, begging it for answers, until he takes it from her hands and throws it over the waves. She watches it go. He holds her tightly and kisses her, first her neck and then her mouth. She likes it, it feels good; she loves him, she hates herself. He drops to his knees, kissing her belly even more passionately, and for a moment she's jealous. Then she just holds onto him, to keep standing. He rests his head against her. Out in the harbor, there are little boats.
All alone in Bubbeh's house, Andy's still wearing the cardigan. His hair is still slicked back. He fixes the last piece of the swing: a safe place, for the baby's head. It's easier as Judah, to make things snap into place. "You're Judah, and I'm me. And you have to love me, and treat me nice." Then it's perfectly assembled: Domestic bliss. And Andy sits, alone, in the middle of it, unmoving.