Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Am Highly Flammable Right Now
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 4 | Aired on 06.29.2009
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 Shane -- whom Andy acknowledges as the broken ethical compass for the family, which has been replaced by an essentially random but wholly literal Magic Eight Ball -- sells four grand worth of weed to that sweet ginger English teacher, who stiffs him at the last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.