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...And it's six months later. Nancy and Esteban have eased into a fairly straightforward romantic Eden, and Shane has taken on Ignacio as his new role model. Over in the old house, Celia's still living in the garage, Doug and Silas are floundering with their dispensary, and Andy has gone completely bugshit insane, growing out a crazy looking moonshiner beard and suddenly able to relate only to Ms. Pac-Man and the fifty thousand other stupid things he spent all Judah's money on.
And here we'd always sort of assumed Nancy was generating more crazy around her, but it turns out maybe her continual U-Turn craziness spiral had a point after all, because without her, everything falls apart. When Esteban proposes to Nancy, Doug decides he wants to become George Hamilton and gets a bizarre tan, Celia trades in her Foot Locker ("Super Sneakers") stripes for the Mary Kay ("You're Pretty!") cult, Shane starts cracking under the pressure of seeing what Ignacio's joyful destruction actually represents, Andy is already insane but decides to have a fencing match with Esteban, and Silas has to deal with the fact that Doug may have just killed their cop-grifting partner.
Nancy's still thinking she's got something to prove to Guillermo, but for once that's not the problem: At the last second, the mysterious and very ticked-off Pilar shows up with a bone to pick. Having that much español hurled at you without subtitles, like in the doctor's office/mothership, is supposed to be a little bit disconcerting for us, like Nancy. But from what I can tell, there is a problem having to do with the synecdochal eyes of all Mexico and their interpretation of Esteban's relationship with Nancy, such that our eightball-crossed lovers will not be getting married, and Nancy will be having her baby underground. Maybe literally, but most likely before going in that landfill after all.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's six months later in Esteban's beautiful house, and Nancy's huge in the shower while he reads What Not to Name Your Baby. He is particularly put off by "Percy," and by "Humphrey"; Nancy agrees that the romance of noir would be somewhat lessened were we to change every "Bogey & Bacall" to "Humphrey & Lauren." The romance of noir being, of course, such a valuable commodity.
Nancy sits down with him, in her robe, and modestly he produces a ring box, black velvet: "I've decided that we will get married," he says, and continues to flip through the book. She stares at the box, at him, and tries to fit this moment into the romance she's spent six months trying to construct around the simple fact that this child is the only thing keeping her safe and alive.
"That is a prized family heirloom," he says, noting her lack of enthusiasm. "Reyes means Kings," he explains, noting that Botwin doesn't seem to have a similarly grand etymology. AWESOMELY, "Botwin" is an Ashkenazi occupational name meaning greengrocer, somebody who sells leaves. Drop Botwin for Reyes and leave behind the greengrocer trade forever. She tries to explain in a way that isn't insulting that this proposal, in all its modesty, is not really how she "pictured this going down." Like most sentences these days, she ends it with a question mark; it doesn't help. He stands and leaves her there in the bathroom, and alone, she cracks the box: it's hideous, as big as a baby's fist, with a giant purple stone.
In the bedroom, he's naked on the bed and she laughs at him, realizing this was one of his jokes as he asks if she liked the ring. "Oh, it's hideous," she assures him, happy for a moment. He tells her it's the champion ring of a soccer team he owns, and she shrugs "That's a pretty good burn, Patrice"). They curl up in the bed together and she asks if he was serious. He laughs, and whispers yes, and parts her robe, caressing her belly, leaving a prettier ring behind. "Where was that?" she giggles. Don't ask.
"We're not children anymore, Nancy. We're not playing house. I ask that you give yourself to me." She smiles; she likes that. Complete abdication. "To be mine, forever. Mrs. Esteban Reyes." She asks if that would make him "Mr. Nancy Botwin," and he assures her it would not, so she jokingly says no before saying yes. They kiss, tenderly, and he puts the ring upon her finger.
That awful cop of Silas's wants to do some drugs, but Silas is being a good little Gallant (CP the Cop calls him "Boy Scout") and telling him they can't use up all the product. He takes it for himself, even as Silas is protesting that he and Blitt -- about whom, at this point, less said the better -- need to take inventory of what stock they've got left. CP says he's hurt, but he understands if Silas doesn't want to "get faded" with him right now, and walks away, then turns back like he just thought of something. "What really hurts," he explains, is how they've been light on their monthly payments a few times. He gets threatening, pulling a gun, but when he calls Silas a bitch-ass bitch you remember he'll be fine: he's his mother's son. Something will come up.
In the book of names, Shane learns, his name means "a feeling of guilt." He asks if he was an accident and Nancy says she can't remember, she was hammered. I don't know if she's kidding, she's in a really weird, scary mood. Like she says if he was allowed to pick his own name, at three he would have ended up Count Chocula Botwin, and they laugh, but then her eyes get wide and Adderally and she's all look at my riiing and he says he already talked to Esteban about it, which seems to tick her off. Or maybe it's the guzzling coffee and speaking in half-Spanish that's bugging her.
As for the coffee, he says that's an Ignacio thing -- puts hair on your chest -- and she actually gets kind of mad and gives him this pissy face about how spinach doesn't give you instant muscles and an anchor tattoo, and then won't even look up when Ignacio comes in. What do you think, is Ignacio's resemblance to Judah an actual plotpoint, or only in my head? I don't know. Ignacio congratulates her on the engagement and she spits fire, right up until Shane tells her that Andy's the only one who still doesn't know. Yikes.
Shane's all trying to learn bullshitty Celia Hodes bastard Spanish for summer school, like, "I would like to buy a Fresca with this credit card," and Ignacio is not feeling that, so first he tells him how to say, "Pay up, motherfucker, or I will crack your head open with an icepick," and then they decide to skive off, with a requisite "We don't need no stinkin' X," in this case X being equal to school. Everything Ignacio does, Shane finds charming. Me too! That's so weird.
Andy is still in Bubbeh's house with a crazy fake beard and some pot and beer weight 'round the middle. He looks like a better-bred Zach Galifianakas, or the gay dude on Lost when he had that fake-ass beard. What he is doing is playing Ms. Pac-Man, apparently for the last six months, while going crazier and crazier. Silas comes in to poke the crust of him, and I think it's only the ghostly menace of Ms. Pac-Man's ethereal antagonists that keeps him from going full-on "You're an errand boy sent by grocery clerks" and that whole thing. Silas is amazed. I just wonder what he smells like.
Andy gives a short, very scary intense speech about how Ms. Pac-Man truly understands him, and they're in the kind of sync that doesn't require words, and how with a gentle touch of his hand she responds, and the like, and Silas explains that he is in two kinds of trouble. First, Uncle Andy is going bughouse. Second, the cop who is extorting him is also going bughouse. He asks how much money Andy has left after his trip to Hobo Copenhagen, and Andy says like a couple grand. Because he had to buy a mannequin with a robot head, and Ms. Pac-Man, and a surfboard, and a foosball table, and whatever shit. And of course, the General Lee.
Which is now sharing the garage with Celia, who is either a fulltime soccer ref or a part-time employee of Foot Locker, which for obvious reasons we're not calling Foot Locker. She makes her way around the racist orange car and into the house, where Isabelle is spray-tanning a nearly nude Doug, who explains that she has to do it because she's the only one in the house that wouldn't get turned on by it. What house? The House That Nancy Built. And has now abandoned.
But at least -- and looking at these poor assholes right now, it's admittedly hard to justify -- at least she took the one in greatest crisis with her. Celia begs Doug for a ride to work, since Andy's in disturbia right now, but he can't smudge his fake-tan -- which looks like hell, just absolute hell -- or else people will know it's fake. Because normally people come in a pressboard walnut faux finish. Isabelle points out that her option is to enjoy the walk to the bus stop, which of course she can't do, because she wears designer heels with her striped uniform until she gets to work, and only then puts on the sneakers. Which sounds crazy until you hear Celia's explanation -- "Sneakers are the footwear of my corporate oppressor, Isabelle" -- and then just sounds retarded.
Well, and crazy. I can't wait to see what madness flowers bloomed in that wacky-ass head under Rudolfo's tutelage, and how that might interact with what seems to be her upcoming storyline. Something like when flesh hits acid, I'm thinking. So no, it's not comfortable for her to walk to work in heels, but it's no more comfortable for her to work at "Super Sneakers" in the first place, and the endgame is that Celia is suffering for her beliefs. Not, she explains -- with one million crucifixes around her neck! -- unlike Jesus. Whom Doug always thought wore Birkenstocks.
All alone, Andy's still moving in sync with Ms. Pac-Man, a modern woman who retains her independence as we all must do, by keeping her relationship status in doubt even as she takes her husband's name, because he understands her. He looks radically crazy at this point. The phone rings -- Oh! Andy has my phone! How neat for me! -- and it's Nancy, so he doesn't answer. She kicks down the door as it's going to voicemail, and enters the house, leaving a message as she walks closer and closer to him, begging him to turn and look at her.
"Yeah, hi Andy. It's me, Nancy. I thought maybe you'd pick up this time, but you're..." She steps closer, watching him play, "Probably really busy." She stands back-to-back with him, nearly touching him. "I think it sucks that you've been avoiding me, because I miss you." Nothing. "Despite what you might think. And I hoped that maybe by now you'd understand I'm doing the best I can? To deal with everything?" The tears spring up, but first the anger. Get it out. "Maybe that's asking too much. Oh yeah, guess what? Esteban asked me to marry him. I know, right? No more Nancy Botwin. Mrs. Esteban Reyes. Mrs. Somebody Somebodyelse." No response. She wavers, and finally says she'd normally be expecting jokes: outlaws/in-laws, or a fajita bar at the wedding. "Anyway. Call me? Come and see me. Hope you're good," she spits, feelings honestly hurt, and then pulls it together. Maybe humor.
"And... Please don't have a scraggly moonshiner beard. Unless you plan on starting a cult, in which case... go beard." This last almost silent, not a great exit, not a final line, not the drama she knows he needs, not the grand gesture. It's a gesture but it's not grand enough. Every avenue explored, she walks to the door, defeated, and waits just inside the door, for him to come. "Bye," she says then, out loud and to him directly for the first time, as she's leaving. And he stands at the game, hands gone slack, shaking, and looks at her as she's vanishing into the heat and the bright white sun, and he goes, "Fuck."
Silas finds Doug checking out his outrageously, cartoonishly fake tan in the mirror, and is then subjected to quite the speech about how George Hamilton is the key to life. Apparently Bubbeh or that awful father of theirs left a G-Ham autobiography in a john somewhere in the house, and Doug has discovered within it all the answers. Man, I have been on this Earth for a long time and I just looked him up on the internet and I still don't know jack about that guy. He has a fake tan and he's not that cute and he is or was a sleazeball, and for this he is remembered. Feh. So Doug's just totally in gay love with the idea of George Hamilton and wants to be like him, and for that he needs "the deep, dark, savage tan."
Doug agrees that CP is an issue, because nobody wants to buy in front of the "bacon" and that it skeezes people out, like midgets. Full-on orange mahogany, Doug says this. So when he hears about the gun, Doug decides that CP is a douche -- wearing a cravat and smoking out of a tobacco-type pipe, Doug says this -- and says that they have to "fight the power" and ask themselves WWGHD. Because the man slept with his stepmother, at age twelve, and thus can do anything.
Which is a thing I knew he said but forgot I knew he said, because who needs to know shit like that. LA, Hollywood, is like, what if you were teaching a fifth-grade class and one sunny Tuesday a student walked in carrying her arm in her mouth, bleeding, like this, between her teeth. And then instead of freaking the fuck out and getting her to a doctor, you and your students all started collectively thinking, "What would I look like with my severed arm in my mouth?"
Or up your ass. Or if you just left it at home, because who needs all that dead arm weight dragging you down all day. Anyway, Shane's Miss Pettigrew moment goes completely south at this point, as a lesson in random acts of senseless harassment -- toward a man at the golfing range who may or may not deserve it -- becomes abuse, becomes a whalloping shit-knocker of a throwdown, as he flips off the casually offensive Shane and Ignacio and earns a golf club to the face, nads and throat for his troubles. Shane finally realizes that Ignacio is a wild animal and scary as hell. I guess this is the first time they've hung out during the day.
Nancy comes to the jail to throw her wedding ring in Guillermo's face and make sure he understands that she's not Mizzzzzz Dead Puta Whore, but in fact now Mrs. Esteban Reyes, and she's thinking of hyphenating, to keep the old Nancy alive, as a modern woman. He compares her to a cat which, thrown off the porch, lands on her feet, but then points out that it's a different story when you throw her off the roof, and asks if she's inviting him to the wedding. Mad that he won't just give in already, she gets nasty and tells him that her fiancé -- who loves her, who has brioche made fresh every day for her, because it's her favorite -- loves her so much he would even kill for her.
The baby kicks and she smiles nastily, and he asks her if she had Till killed. He thanks her for that, and offers to thank her more personally once he's out of jail. Now that he's taken away what little power she was trying to get back in the first place -- by fleeing the house of men who know her secrets to a trapped man who will die knowing her secrets -- but ended up on top again by calling her out on her implication in Till's death, and followed up with a little threat of his own, she leans in close to the glass and tells him he's never getting out. Um, I think he is, and I think he is going to cut you open, Mrs. Reyes. It always upsets me when Guillermo gets sad, both because it makes me sad and also because it makes me shiver, because Guillermo Angry and Guillermo Hurt Feelings are the exact same terrifying face.
Jolly Ignacio comes looking for Shane -- and walking past a white maid, which is so awesome -- and asks if he wants to trade the driving range for the tennis courts today. Shane literally runs away without a word, and because Ignacio is a lunatic, he just shrugs and giggles and goes looking joyfully for candy.
Celia, hobbling, misses her bus and sits down, cursing her abusive shoes and staring into space. An air-conditioned vision of loveliness pulls up, in a red car airbrushed with, "You're Pretty!" The woman is reapplying her lipstick, wearing a scarf and shades, and smelling like Flowerbomb. Celia lusts after her with all the spirit she can muster, and the woman cocks an eyebrow before driving away, leaving Celia to confront her worthlessness once more. But wait! The woman puts it in reverse and comes back to compliment Celia on her shoes. "Thank you," Celia says with all the class she can muster, which I'm happy to say is a surprising amount. "I may work in casual, but my heart is in couture." The woman laughs, saying she's been there, and offers a business card. Raylene Reynolds, who has been there before but is now the regional sales director for You're Pretty. She offers Celia a ride, and so begins Act II.
Silas is feeling bitchy because CP is hanging out in this hangy-down Papasan bed-thing, like a swinger might have, and being a fat-ass might end up ripping it out of the ceiling and costing Silas his security deposit. I'm sort of totally bored by this whole dispensary thing right now, especially considering how hot that guy in the Cleveland National Park was, so whatever: the spirit of George Ha
milton ignites the power of Doug's douchiness to heretofore unknown flights, he decides that WWGHD means in this case to do "the dumbest thing possible," aka WWNBD, which is get yourself into trouble just for the sheer thrill of weaseling your way out of it again, and gets in CP's face, and tells him that he is all kinds of nasty things, and to Suck My Johnson, and things of this nature, and CP tries to punch him, and then falls down and probably knocks his head open and dies instead, I guess we'll see week.
Esteban and Nancy have a short conversation on the patio about having babies ("Again") and getting married ("Again. Again again, actually"), and her beauty, in which they try to convince her that she's ecstatic about everything, and she admits to a certain fear that Mrs. Esteban Reyes, like Lacey LaPlante before her, is going to end up trying to kill Nancy Botwin, and he's like, "Why do you always think somebody's trying to kill you?" and she looks at him, sort of hilarious and doleful at the same time, because: Dude. So he says that he loves her, and he's marrying her, and she can keep her name if she wants. He's still going to brand her, he jokes in his postfeminist way, and she laughs in hers, but she's still kind of amazed that Mr. Male & Mine is willing to give her that one, enough that she kisses his hand, and laughs as he goes off to fencing practice. "Have fun, D'Artagnan."
Andy appears as Esteban's finishing up his fencing match, and full of hilarious and loopy comments about the opulence -- the peacocks, for example, he figures are "probably roosting" -- before shit gets totally awkward. Esteban points out that he looks crazy nuts, and Andy replies, "Right on!" before picking up a fencing sword of some sort and playing light saber with it for awhile, to Esteban's irritated amusement. Finally he asks WTF Andy is even doing, and Andy makes some crack about how in Mexico they don't even have sound effects, and then suddenly they are fencing. And it goes on for awhile, but finally ends -- with Esteban's blade across Andy's esophagus -- just as Nancy wanders out toward the pool and asks what the hell. Andy's bashfully happy to see her, but when Esteban tells her Andy's there to give them his blessing, Nancy heads right inside.
In the kitchen, she admits it's true about the wedding, but when he says this is "sudden" she reminds him that he's missed out on a lot, avoiding her for six months. He says the note she left him told him all he needed to know, and tries to shame her about leaving him with just a note. He asks if this is really what she wants and then laughs and says of course it is, because she always gets what she wants.
And I mean, we're halfway through the season, stop addressing the viewers like we're fussy children and just tell your story. Yeah, Nancy's an entitled asshole, and everybody cleans up her mess, and Botwins have no accountability. We know. Stop telling us you know that we know, and just tell your story. The first time is flattering, the second time is annoying, and the third time isn't even pandering, it's just obnoxious. This is at least the sixth time. Eventually it's just lanterns all the way down, hung on nothing.
She laughs, because in Nancyworld you never get what you want. Like, she wanted Judah to outlive her. Does she want his blessing? She does, desperately, and she doesn't, just as desperately, and she doesn't want what it will cost him, and she doesn't want any finality, ever, on anything, in any way. But he does. "Great and careful work," he says tenderly, as though they are making love, and then -- surprisingly, beautifully -- gives her the Shehecheyanu:
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha-olam
shehecheyanu v'kiyimanu v'higi'anu laz'man hazeh
The Shehecheyanu is recited at the beginning of some holidays, and it's the blessing you say the first time you eat fruit after Rosh Hashanah, but it's also what you say when you buy a new suit of clothing to wear, or at the birth of a son. It's the blessing you say when you see a friend, after a long separation. "I know the God part. What's the rest?"
Blessed are you who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
Nancy's touched, enough to look up finally with tears in her eyes, and for the first time in a long time, the apologies start to spill out. But it's too late. She's ashamed, as he makes it ever clearer what she's done to him: When Esteban dies, which is probably given his lifestyle, and Nancy has become a widow for the third time, she shouldn't expect Uncle Andy to show up and make pizza eggs, because he won't: He'll send a note.
While Andy leaves, finally having pulled off one grand gesture, not that it'll last, and Nancy sits at Esteban's table, absorbing the hit from that, and Isabelle stares disbelieving at Doug trying to scrape the G-Ham off his face ("He can Love At First Bite Me!"), a car is driving up to Esteban's house. While it's simplest to suppose that this is somehow the real Mrs. Esteban Reyes, come to kill Nancy Botwin after all, that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Her name is Pilar, and that's all I know right now.
Except that for once, Nancy was choosing relative safety over Copenhagen insanity, and look where it got her. Which sucks, because love looks good on her, but sucks more because these were months of peace in which she flourished, and we'll never see them. Only their consequences for everybody else. Of all the times for this particular show, in its entire history, to expand rather than contract. Every moment of this show has been laid end-to-end, from one cliffhanger to the , since we met her. I would have liked to have seen more days like this one, not gone in the blink of an eye. She must feel the same way.
What the woman inside that car has to say to Esteban, I didn't catch much of, but when she leaves, it's with daggers in her eyes sharp enough that Nancy puts her hands over her belly instinctively, and whatever she says, it's sharp enough in turn that Esteban, with real sadness in his eyes, tells Nancy they can't be married after all. And then he retreats, leaving her against the door, all alone. Again. Again again, actually.
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