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Holy shit that was good. I haven't been this hyped for the installment since we were still selling edibles, and it's just only barely because of the massive cliffhanger. Just unbelievably, crystal-clear good, from beginning to end. Showtime's official announcement of Season Seven today just got that much sweeter.
Okay, so the cliffhanger from last week -- cops outside the lesbian hash supplier -- is taken care of pretty easily, in a sparkling scene that recalls the best of the show's early seasons. However, the van is now no longer useful, and will soon lead the cops to realize that the Botwins are hiding in Seattle. Meanwhile, God saves Doug -- thanks a lot -- by tossing Cesar and Ignacio enough coincidental hints that they get all the way to the motel. That's two groups closing in.
Luckily, Nancy's already working on leaving town, planning to stiff her hash customers and flee with the extra cash. Several problems arise with this plan, as follows: (1) Silas has decided to stay in Seattle for school and activism, (2) Shane's got those Lunch Mommies on his case and calling CPS, (3) Andy's having a major freakout about his life choices, and that (4) awesome hotel maid, Latrice, is onto her scheme.
One short (offscreen) fistfight later, Latrice is out for blood (5), Nancy notices Doug tied up in the back of Cesar's car and realizes (6) Mexico has gotten closer than ever, the Mommies have the sheriff and a deaf CPS agent outside (7), there's a random crossbow and naked Andy making them all look insane (8), Latrice's backup has a warrant (9) so they're both going crazy, and Shane just got kidnapped by Cesar (10). It is at this point that Nancy locks herself in a strange bathroom and goes into a sort of crazy rage fugue.
And that's just the awesome plot. The rest of it is all witty Stee dialogue and gorgeous relationship mechanics: About a hundred dearly awaited moments between Nancy and Andy, including acknowledgment that she has been playing him this entire time and has every intention of continuing to do so; a pretty moving moment when Silas realizes once again she'll never actually let him go; Andy's reexamination of his desire to have a normal life v. his desire to have crazy fucking Nancy; the semiotics of Toblerone bars and the bald women that love them; and best of all, the fact that with 15 different enemies banging down the door, Nancy's only thought is still to get her boys as far out of danger as possible.
This sense of momentum can be as fleeting as it is delicious, so I don't want to say that the season is ramping the fuck up heading into its middle week, but that long-ago feeling that absolutely anything could happen on this show, that feeling we lost somewhere in Mexico? Way back. This episode felt about two hours long; here's hoping it's a sign of things to come. Good work. Excellent work.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The cops yelling at Randy and Nathalie are not, of course, yelling about the weed trimmings. I wish every cop on TV were Louis CK, so much so that in my head I was expecting Louis CK this week. Instead of him it's this, like, Every Gay Person On TV. The other one doesn't speak, because white men in cop uniforms are more intimidating than black men in cop uniforms, because that's like white-squared.
Anyway, the reason the cops are yelling is that the Audra Van has been booted, because it has more than six grand in tickets and the plates don't match anyway. So whoever Silas got the plates from was not good at parking legally, and now there is trouble. But this scene is about more than just putting Nancy back on the road and grounding her without transport: It's also about hilarious talking.
Randy, under his breath, tells Nathalie to run, run fast and she goes, "Whut. I. Van." That's her gift of gab a-workin'. Then she and Randy go into this hilarious attempt at being from Seattle: "That suburban minivan? No. Ew. Totally. We're cool people. Urbanites. It's sort of our identity?" Gay Cop isn't buying it, and so Randy tries to help: "Silly, we know, these days. When gonorrhea is becoming drug-resistant. When Iran is teetering. Turducken..."
"The hell are you babbling about?" asks the cop, and Nathalie jumps into a whole speech: "Those are just a statement of defeat, like, I'm just gonna buy into the whole thing.Or maybe you're trying to impress someone, by being something you're not, when in truth, you don't love this person and you never really did. And maybe they're just really judgy, with weird limp hair... For example..." Talking shit about Alanis Morissette's anything is like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, in my opinion, but if the overconditioned Canadian winter fits...
Randy is getting so steamed he forgets where they are and makes a succession of hilarious pouting faces while Nathalie explains this weird lie to the Gay Cop about how they aren't on a stroll, just taking out their lawn trimmings, and Randy locates their recycling bins, and Nathalie's like backathehouse backathehouse backathehouse and the cop stops them because they put it in the wrong bins, and it's very tense and whatever, and Randy says he's colorblind, and supports the police in their "current funding fight with the city," and then nervously and weirdly Nathalie explains, over her shoulder, "Sometimes we use the back door..." It's just aching with awkward. Back of the house, she pounds Randy's shoulder instead of screaming bloody murder at how bad that almost got.
Over at Mommy Park Rebekah is questioning if Avi's baby mama was even in the Army, and Shawn -- with catlike reflexes -- responds that the military-industrial complex would never let the truth get out. Rebekah demands Cheryl's phone, and the reflexes kick in again. "Great! And maybe I'll tell them about Allison's little prescription friends. Not supposed to be driving with a child in the vehicle on those, are you Ally? And Cheryl, I'm not sure how they'd feel about a woman who still lets her five-year-old breastfeed." Everybody about barfs.
"And Rebekah, you don't need anyone looking into the visa status of your housekeeper, do you? What is she, Honduran? Guatemalan?" Not just blackmail, but CPS-related blackmail. Kid's a ninja. If killing international bad guys makes you this great, no wonder I'm so obsessed with General Petraeus. (Nickname: "Peaches." For real!) The mommies stare at each other and think about what gross Celias they all are and Shawn takes off with Avi, a hardcore Don't fuck with me, bitches tossed back over his tiny shoulder. (Peaches!)
Why did the boot on the van happen? Randy says it's payback, the titular boomerang of karma: "Of course the plates Silas and I stole would be from a felon-level scofflaw." We didn't see that go down, but then neither did Nathalie. "Where was I?" Andy (now) says the most insightful thing anybody's said in a while, now: "Not where: Who." Because Daredevil Girl isn't a place, she has no territory: She's a sovereign nation. Eminent domain. Imminent for sure. Immanent, even:
"You're 'Nancy Botwin,' and since it didn't directly affect you you didn't fucking notice." While Andy fights the boot, Nancy stares around and feels entitled for a sec before asking why he's so mad at her all of a sudden. "Judgy"? She practically snorts, because whatevs. "Weird hair"? "Limp hair"? Nancy pretends to be a human person: "I don't have any idea where that came from. I suppose I had thoughts. They chose that moment to come out."
This is the awesome thing Andy -- as he's taking an ill-advised blowtorch to the boot -- says: "Not thoughts, you had feelings." Which is the part of the territory Nancy still hasn't figured out: The fact that they are different things. It's not that she represses her emotions, it's that she doesn't really have them. She doesn't believe in them, anyway. Ask a person that lives in their head, a Thinking type, how they're feeling and it'll take them an hour to pull it up, from the gut.
It's called Weeds because she's in mourning, but the actual mourning is happening on another channel, somewhere far down the dial, that she can watch happen and watch the consequences and never actually feel anything, because that's not something she does. Ask a Ravenclaw if something's good or bad, and they'll ask you for hard numbers because they cannot make that call; try telling a dog about the color red and see how fast he gets bored. On the other hand, ask a Hufflepuff to think and they'll just get mad at you. You're driving east, and the destination is west. (This is also why evangelical atheists and evangelical Christians are so equally irritating, and in identical ways: They're both trying to drive east, to get somewhere north of here.)
"Your real feelings. Which you hoarded like a chipmunk, in your cheeks." Andy continues in this vein, with the chipmunk cheeks bulging, and how Audra could see the lying nuts of feelings and he could see the lying nuts and that was the wedge. Nancy points out that he was the one that actually, you know, left her, but he's not done: "Girls know these things, Nance. Because they're more in tune with the subtleties of interpersonal kissy stuff flying around. And also because, in the end, you're all petty, jealous, daddy-issue everything-ruiners. You're like the dog on the bridge that wants both bones. That's you, you want all the bones."
Dog looks down at the river, sees a dog with a bone. Opens his mouth to growl and attack, so he can have two bones, drops the first bone -- which is really the only bone -- so he ends up with no bones. But that's not Nancy, that's Andy: Nancy just wants to jump off the fucking bridge.
They yell and talk over each other -- lots of that this week -- and eventually Andy blows up the tire with the blowtorch, as Nancy has been warning him about. She growls a scary little Dammit and Andy explains the rest of the facts to us: How the VIN's going to eventually hit the right database, find them "living in Fucked City, USA," and bring everybody running. Because, see, the van was registered under Shane's name because, for reasons Andy and Nancy cutely agree she doesn't want to know, it was the only SSN Andy knew by heart. Nancy grabs the trashbags and goes whining off toward a bus stop, all "Goodbye, Seattle" and "It never even rained!" and, as a last little nihilistic joke, Andy presses the button so the back door will slide shut. Meanwhile, OnStar is like, "Mr. Botwin, our sensors indicate that you've experienced a sudden loss of tire pressure..." You think it's a tiny joke, but this episode is so awesome that it's both.
Silas, rhapsodizing: "Why didn't anybody tell me how awesome college is?" Because he was never going to go, Shane explains: "It would just be mean, like telling a blind person how awesome colors are." Silas gets defensive about his intelligence, pointing out how he started his own business and even reads books now. "To old dudes in your underwear," Shane snarks, and Silas shakes a pickle at him. "That's it, you're going down!" Five, four... "Is that what the old man said?"
Silas hurls the pickle at his brother and he bats it away. "Catlike reflexes!" he giggles, and Silas says it's fine, since Shane's a pussy. "Tell that to Pilar," Shane says. Yikes. But maybe that has something to do with his willingness to take on the Mommies? Like, once he realized you can just fuck up any old lady that tries to control you, it's a short jump to just assuming that you should. Lot easier than taking any of it out on his mom, no matter how well-deserved. Nothing more insidious than heroism.
Not that far away, but apparently just beyond the reach of Shane's catlike senses, the Mommies stare and whisper. The dumb one, Cheryl, assumes that they are doing it, because she's weird, after Rebekah pish-poshes the notion of them being brothers. "Whatever their relationship is, they are clearly not equipped to raise a baby... Oh my God, they just spilled croutons on his blankie. What if he's gluten-intolerant?" Cheryl's like, "What's gluten?" and Rebekah tells her to shut up before nearly knocking the dinner roll out of her hand: "NO BREAD." I miss Old Christine too.
Shane says that stealing video cameras and knocking up his deaf girlfriend, while "gangsta," is nothing compared to the rest of the family. "Face it, Silas. We're hardcore and you're PG-13. You're the blond sheep of this family." Not into winks at the fans generally, but even so, we're hitting a few of these pretty hard this year, aren't we? (Especially considering that the Silas gene pretty obviously occurred in Andy too, considering he looks the same almost-nothing-like Judah that Silas does the other ones? I sometimes/often/usually forget that my imaginary explanations are not the actual explanations. Carry on.) Additionally, Silas will not be returning to the hotel for work, because he is now a full-time pretend college student, taking a full pretend load and auditing even tiny little lectures without anybody noticing.
Oh good, Doug digging his own grave. In an episode full of highlights, this is but one. Usually I would be hanging my hat on the image, but not this time. And praying, Doug is praying, and crying. "I tried to read the Bible, I did, but it always felt like a much less awesome Lord Of The Rings..." Doug even hits a little of the old coffee table mindmeld with Andy about how he wants to believe in karma. " I would like to go to heaven, have drinks with cool people I never got to meet. Mom, James Dean, Harriet Tubman, Dad, Patrick Swayze. I can't die like this. I always wanted to be buried with my banjo, and snacks, and heartbroken women and dogs throwing themselves on my grave."
Meanwhile, Cesar is carving his wife's initials into a tree, which sort of bothers Ignacio because he loves kitties and birdies and trees, but advantage Cesar: "I carved our names on our first date, and I do it still." Everything he says is amazing, there's just something about him that I admire. Meanwhile Ignacio's all, "I once loved a girl from the neighborhood named Rosa Galindo. I carved her name, too. Into Manuel Gonzalez's thigh." You can always see what Shane saw in him. They decide to kill him already, as he continues to babble and dig, and when he starts screaming in prayer they call him a waster. Finally, God steps in: OnStar, calling for Mr. Shane Botwin. God's got a sick sense of humor if he'd rather have Doug around over... Well, anybody. Pilar Zuazo.
Nancy comes to Andy at the bust stop with a sad little McDonald's latte and Andy, even though he said he didn't want anything, starts to whinin'. "You could have got me something. A fish sandwich of contrition? Penance fries? An I'm Sorry I Ruined Your New Career McMuffin?" Nancy, having already had a shitty day and now about to take a bag of drugs onto the muni bus, decides to start a little shit. She points out that, history being our guide, Andy would have fucked up with Chef Stormare in a week anyway, which shocks him as usual, in this way like she's leveling with him, like, we both know this, come on, we're all adults here: "You don't actually want what you can have. That's why you want me. Because you can't have me." It is vicious and it can only lead to fucked-up wonderful places.
Meanwhile, Angela Chase's dream teacher sits on a backward-turned chair with two buttons buttoned and a silver magnet bracelet and says some collegiate bullshit that you gotta hear him say to understand how spot-on it is. "None of you give a shit. Not really. And I get it. Why learn about the world when within seven seconds of opening your MacBook you could be in a photo-realistic grenade battle with an 8-year-old in Saginaw, or watching underaged Hungarian gangbang videos? But let's make a deal. One hour twice a week, we're gonna be engaged. Fight me. Call me a liberal elitist latte-sipping socialist scumbag. Just care about something. Because when you're done whatevering your life away, the world will absolutely blow your fucking minds."
Because he has never seen a dorky teacher embrace the cliché like this, because he never went to college and thus never met the freshcrawling 8/10 of all teachers who embrace the cliché like this, Silas about pees. He and the vajazzled girl hold hands and little beams of Jesus come rocketing out of their skulls because eventually the prime of Miss Jean Brodie comes to us all and this is where essentially all fascism comes from. "Let's begin," says the teacher, and frankly I've never been so happy to get out of a scene in my life. Ugh. I mean, everything that he said was good, sure, but it was also like karaoke to hear out loud. Like watching somebody take off their skin and turn it inside out and then pretend there's nothing weird going on.
Andy keeps hopping back and forth between his bench and Nancy's, at the bus stop. Finally he just begs her to say they'll "never." "Just say we'll never." Nancy nods; after all, she likes him too much to give him the curse of death that always follows her love life. "Holy cow, you're right! They do all die. Your pussy's a death sentence. A penis flytrap. You're Dr. Kavagian!" Points for penis flytrap, even if you ended weak. Then Andy points out that Esteban's not dead and she curls her lip, like, whatevering his life away: "Um, not yet." I love how even Nancy has noticed these things and just didn't feel like bringing them up before. she's going to be like, "Did it ever occur to you that my whole life is about running from grief in whatever form it takes, and really I'm just pretending to be an adrenaline junkie because I miss the bear?"
Andy says this is proof of something: "So by not loving me, you're actually saving me?" Nancy wouldn't say that, but also let's correct your grammar: "By not sleeping with you I'm probably saving you, yeah." (My emph., not hers. Her tone doesn't really modulate, as is usual when she's talking through the latte straw and pretending to be bored.) Finally he gets all hormonal and starts wringing his hands and having stupid epiphanies again about how she has to "release" him and "let him go" so that he can spread his wings and whatever, whatever. I'm glad Nancy finds it as hilarious as I do: "Nance. This is the moment. Right now, waiting for the number 43 bus!"
Nancy, biting the shit out of that latte straw now, grits that she actually cannot do that. Say those words. And when he asks why -- her feelings, not her thoughts -- they come out like they're in crayon. "...I can't. I'm afraid." And he knows damn well why, but he wants her to say it. This part's for her, not him. This is like the bathtub. Candles everywhere. What's she afraid of? "That you'll leave me. Us."
Andy rejoices, because that means he's got all the power. "Not you," he clarifies, making her smile. Like she cares about power, like it functions independent of her. Like it's something you do. It's not about him making the choice, or taking the power: It's about seeing who he is and knowing that he won't make the choice. It's about knowing him so well that you never do anything to send him away, even talking about the rules of the game as you're playing the game, if necessary.
Because going meta is the best way to fuck with boys, because they think about what's in front of them and they think it's real. They privilege their experience over anything you could possibly say: "I am going to break your heart," you say, looking them right in the eye, and they're like, "Sure you are." Works every time. "I am never going to love you," you say, "The way that you want me to." And they nod. And you say, "I mean it. I am being perfectly honest with you." And they nod. There is no center to this Tootsie Roll Pop.
But it's not just about a boy and a girl, because it's Nancy: It's about doors. He's asking Nancy to voluntarily close a door, when she's never closed a door in her life. Nancy is defined by leaving doors open, because she always knows where the exits are. So when they've jumped enough levels to actually talk about what they're talking about, it still comes down to Andy asking her to do the one thing that she cannot ever, ever do. Willingly chuck a resource; give up some of that domain. That's how get caught, pinned down. Dead. And letting him think he has the "power," whatever the fuck that means, is charming and indulgent and also completely irrelevant to the question.
She lets him talk about the power until the bus comes, but she just can't resist. Daredevil Girl glints around her latte straw. "...That said, you never know what could happen in the future." She grins, nastily and lovingly, and he slaps the coffee out of her hands. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that," he says, eliciting cheers, and she blows the rest of it through the straw and into his face, and that's détente for now: We can pretend the bone exists or not, but I'm never dropping the one I've got.
Back in the motel Andy is extravagantly bitter, tossing himself around the room like a kindergartener in need of a nap. "Your mom won't release me," he not-really-explains to Shane, and then Nancy starts packing up. Why are they leaving? Well, according to Uncle Andy, it's because he was "starting to find his own thing," and she had to ruin it. And secondly, because Silas fucked up the plates. "We're on the run now, honey. It's what we do." It's what they've always done. Exits exist for eminent egress.
At the door are the Mommies, suddenly; Nancy answers with a confused smile and when they ask if she's "the grandma," Shane busts loose. "You cunts followed me?"
Nancy excuses herself and holds the door closed, staring Shane down. "We don't use that word." Grandma? "No, cunt. Or grandma. We don't use either. Can you deal with whatever this is?" That funny little Nancy move as she heads back to her frenzied packing, those hands like birds. Andy reminds her that he has the Power again and she nearly laughs out loud. "I know you do," she grins, like Kish just notified her he pees standing up.
Heading out again, to get more money and a new car from that mysterious place she always pulls these things when she has to. "Or to take a train to some quaint New England seaside village and leave you all for good. I haven't decided which." One of the Mommies, at the door, tries to be helpful -- "I drink too, sometimes" -- and Nancy just rolls her eyes, directing them to Randy and the Power.
Joe the awful concierge makes fun of her thinking that the gay ice-dancer's dad would ever give her an advance, and hisses: "Here's an idea. If you need money, make your fucking drops. You got more stuff, right?" And just like that, ass-pull complete. Little envelopes of cash all over the hotel, just waiting for her to snag and bag them for her escape. She heads out to find them, like a demented Easter bonnet, but they're missing and she can't raise Joe on the walkies. It's tense and kind of confusing for a second, but then she gets to the fourth one and there's Latrice, grinning madly, tucking cash into her apron.
Nancy babbles for a bit and Latrice gives her that look and finally she just winds down and asks -- just blatantly asks -- for the money. Latrice grins frighteningly and Nancy shouts about the boomerang. "Joe ain't have to tell me shit. Changing the schedule last minute? Nathalie has to clean this room, Nathalie has to clean that room... I'm thinking this bitch must be bad off, fucking a mini-heeb for better shifts. Then I discovered your little packages." Latrice mocks her as a "baller-ass drug dealer" and Nancy swears she was just on her way out, no longer a baller-ass anything.
Speaking of things somebody really should have told Nancy by now, which this episode is full of to a clear-the-decks degree, Latrice points out that the worst thing about finding out your quasi-friend at work is a dealer: "I feel like an idiot for playing by the rules this whole time. Fuck you. Making me feel like a sucker for trying to stay correct." I always wondered about the percentage of that, in the rage that comes up about this stuff. Do we just hate secret crime because assumed our own limitations?
Nancy tells Latrice she can take over the whole operation, if she wants, but just begs her to hand over the cash from today so she can disappear. There's a door and Latrice is standing in front of it. Latrice is wearing long feather earrings that look totally amazing, with her shaved head. I love this actress so much, I wish she was in everything. This is the first time I've seen her play like an average, sexy lady and not a forest witch or a secret tranny murderer.
Latrice grabs a giant Toblerone and a beer from the minibar and considers her life as a lawbreaker. "I could have bought one of these any time. Toblerone. They always felt like something somebody like me ain't supposed to eat. 'Girl, it's for white people. Better get your black ass to the store and buy a Kit Kat.'" Something about that rings very true. I can't think of an example -- like, that thing where your money makes more money just by being money somehow, that seems like an advanced white people thing; apparently it involves having multiple "dads" from various socioeconomic levels, but possibly this is also code for something -- but yeah, you only see Toblerone in hotels and Target, and in both cases the margin of price between it and a Kit-Kat seems nonsensical and, in and of itself, very Caucasian. On the other hand, I don't even really like candy and I would still wreck shop on a Toblerone if presented with one and left to my own devices.
Latrice will not be handing over the money. She will also be collecting the drugs which, she notes in an extortionist's tone, Nancy was planning on leaving in rooms 812, 315, and 1401. Nancy admits she has no drugs, and Latrice is nearly impressed. "So you was gonna take the money and leave these fools nothing? You're worse than I thought!"
Well, Nancy doesn't want to hear that, at all. She sort of loses it at this point. "Fuck you, Latrice! Really! Fuck you!" I love when being a hot white lady doesn't work out for her. Not because I have anything against Nancy -- I love her more every year -- but because it short-circuits her so fucking fast. She just cannot believe it, first of all, and she pushes up against it and pushes and then it pops and she just goes APESHIT. "Whaaaaat?"
She stalks to the door, because fuck Latrice and now she's got to figure out something new, hopefully before she hits the parking lot, but then Latrice makes the mistake of chuckling at her expense. "You really ain't good at shit," says she. And Nancy's eyes go black as night, because if she's not hot shit and she doesn't get shit done, then what have the last six years been about? Door: Slammed. Ass-kicking: Administered.
Out in the hall, a bloodied crack-looking Nancy hands one former earring feather over to Joe, and tells him to get somebody to clean up the room. "I left a mess in there," she says airily, and then drops that nasty wig at his feet. "Could you take that? Thank you." You can't see a latte straw between her teeth, but it is there in spirit. Actually, more, I think. She's not been this disconnected in a long time: She's taking a U-Turn. You can tell by the way stuff melts as she walks by it.
Rebekah, stoned and alone with Andy at the motel, babbles about how much she loves her babies and how they are so connected, and meanwhile Andy's whining about how he was supposed to have baby/wife but because his Power is an illusion, he ended up in Seattle with Nancy. "Sexless. Sexless in Seattle... I have no power. I have no wife. I have no bond." Rebekah admits that her husband didn't even leave her for a younger girl, he just left her to get away from her, and she thinks the cheater story is less embarrassing.
Then she climbs onto Andy's face. In between kissing madly, she's asking about celiac in the family, galactosemia, cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and he's like, "Um..."
Andy protests the idea of reproducing right there in Seattle, and she gets intense. "Come on, shithead! Give me your sperm! It doesn't cost you anything!" He shoves her away, but then he thinks about it for a second and, Andy style, decides to go for it. But, you know, God and his sense of humor. The phone rings.
"Will you promise to never leave us?" He does. "Okay, then. I release you." From what? "From...Whatever it is you say I..." No, he nearly smiles. "No. Repeat. 'I release you from all hopes that we will ever be together.'" She does. "And I admit... I've been leading you on, sexually and emotionally, in order to keep you close." She does, quickly and without really caring one way or the other, because saying it out loud doesn't change anything, which is the secret he still doesn't get and for Nancy was never a secret. "Happy?"
"I'm not sure. I think you might be full of shit." She admits it's a distinct possibility; he can hear her smiling over the phone, and he gives. She won't ever close the door, because that means one less exit. She'll never drop the bone. "You're an evil succubus," he says lovingly, and in his tone makes sure she knows it's okay: "I'll see you soon." Then he kicks Rebekah out: "Wrong number. You have to go now, Crazy Clock."
Over on campus, things have gotten political. No, they aren't doing an obscene literary magazine like usual: They are Taking Back Streaking. You see, the "naked run" is "an empty ritual" that must be deconstructed and revisited actively as an undetermined Foucaultian state thereby disrupting the binary opposition between politics and the body which is after all the opposition from which all law and by extension all government derives its power: "If we make it about something, we can preserve the ritual, but also save the world!" (!) Even more awesome, though, is the chalkboard Fanboy's writing on:
CONSENSUAL IS SENSUAL
MY BODY IS MY WONDERLAND
DATE RAPE IS HATE RAPE
YOU MAKE SEAGULLS SAD
And two others I can't read, something about "Texas Tea." Fanboy's all about using their bodies as protest signs, he explains to the school paper reporter, who of course asks what it is that they are protesting, exactly. Oh, you know, what's big and scary and timely that can be the bowl that holds the soup of what they're actually protesting?
...Offshore drilling, of course. Also the perennial, the universal, the constant and unending date rape. Both. College kids are like this, but sometimes they're also like this, you know? It's kind of cute. Especially when it's Adam of Arcadia, who is growing into quite a young man: "Don't drill oil. Or your date." They love it! They love it because it is dirty and because the bowl that holds the soup is not as important as the naughty soup of protesting authority in all its forms, they love it because it has a pun.
The journalist asks what they even like think they're going to accomplish with running around naked, like in any way, and in that moment he joins the Man. Journalist Soup. They yell at him and call him "news fatty" and accuse him of biases and trying to keep them -- oh, the adoration I feel at this moment -- "silent and complacent," and finally, despite him pointing out that it's just a dumb college paper, like, "I don't really care either way," he says, and then Silas throws J-School physically out the room and Kimmi's like, "You're so passionate, Mike!"
And Mike Newman throws down, and kisses Kimmi like the rough-hewn heavy-thewed pulp hero of some Barsoomian tale, and this right here is what is amazing, and right, and good, about college kids, about the soup of revolution: For one second, he is. But you know God...
Silas's heart sinks into his chest and he's crying by the time he gets off the phone, just shouting no no no to the ended call, and then -- grossed out by himself, or by the dilemma, or maybe he's just already enough like Nancy to know where the exits are -- asks to borrow Kimmi's car.
As Cesar and Ignacio pore over the abandoned minivan for clues to the Botwins' current whereabouts, Anointed Doug whines and begs for food. Finally, he finds a french fry on the floor, and as he munches it -- grossing Ignacio right out -- he muses. "A minivan. Andy was really gonna do it, huh? The kids, the family, the whole bit? I once had kids. I once had a home, kids, 500 CD changer. Now I'm eating floor fries. Well, at least God wants me alive. That's something." Yeah, it's something all right. Meanwhile, Ignacio and Cesar are hating on God for letting this happen, and then they find a pen from the selfsame Paradise Motel where Crack Mommy and her boisterous brood are holed up.
Speaking of, here comes Nancy now, wearing a shoulderless long-sleeve knit shirt under a crocheted spiderwebby vest and still the blood spot under her nose where Latrice punched her. Instead of looking like an able drug dealer, she looks like a very sad drug user. And she doesn't seem to care. She's also rocking a trash bag and a large hobo bag, jorts, and oddly specific belt, and nearly knee-high boots. She looks insane. I didn't notice it until this part, but she just looks cracked right out.
So Silas drives up to the motel and she's all, "You are the hero of this family!" and he explains that it's not really what it looks like: He has borrowed Kimmi's car to say goodbye. Nancy's like, "Come on, open the trunk so we can all run away in this girl's car. I'll give you a Toblerone." There's a very tense moment where she's just nakedly begging and he's pretty clearly having an internal crisis of hurricane proportion, but it's nothing we haven't seen before, even just looking at this season. (Ha! Remember this? "I won't give you your tooth back. I keep your tooth, and drill a tiny hole in it. Wear it on my neck. I become your God.") I mean, it's nice to see them separately and together melting down, and nice to see her actively laying wasp eggs in people's brains, and I must admit I thought for just one second that he might split. But no. He just sort of hates himself and pulls around so they can load up, just like Crack Mommy wants.
Nancy, she's observant even on a bad day like today, even at a time like right now where her immediate needs, simply defined -- Kimmi's car, money she physically beat a woman to steal -- have somehow been met, once again, so she immediately recognizes Doug in the back of Cesar's car -- duct taped mouth, hands tied -- and is like, "Fuck. What the fuck are you doing here?" He indicates not much in the way of hard data, but enough that our observant heroine notices Cesar beating up the front desk attendant for information.
Meanwhile, Silas is hanging out in the car, blissfully unaware, reclining a couple spaces away from Doug getting a facefull of Ignacio's fist, having this unbearable conversation: "I like your dreamcatcher." "It brought me you." Gone, long gone, are the days when her Kimmi's bejeweled vagina was the worst part about Kimmi. It brought my gorge.
Run to the motel room! Cesar getting closer! Bloody-nosed Nancy spares a moment to check out Andy's equipment in the shower -- which, anybody who says they don't is hiding something way worse -- before getting the 411. Cesar's like three doors away. She almost has a fight with the door. Shane is at the vending machines ("For fleeing snacks") not answering his phone ("You must be old if you're not texting, so leave a message, Mom"), Silas is in the parking lot with the dreamcatcher, Andy's in the shower and in charge of Stevie, and Nancy is running in circles, going crazy like a crazy person. She screams at Shane's voicemail to HIDE, locks Andy in the bathroom with Stevie, and then calls Silas: "Drive away. Danger."
Then Nancy paces around the room going, literally this is what happens, Danger danger danger danger danger, which is sort of brilliant and puts you in a serious position of having to feel as nervous or nervouser, watching it all go down. Nancy like grabs the crossbow and aims it at the door and opens it... Only to be wrestled to the floor by a very angry Latrice, who not only was mugged by this lady but also had her feather earring torn out in the process, to wit: "Now I can't wear earrings. When you ain't got no hair, that's your flair!"
Latrice's helpful friend Quenton points out that "bitch have ear flaps now," and but before Nancy can even get up off the floor -- having shot a bolt into the bathroom door -- they start knocking on the door, louder and louder. Who is they? Oh, the Sheriff's Department.
Quenton runs off into the adjoining suite, because he has warrants, and Latrice -- still in costume -- pretends to angrily clean the motel room, and Nancy puts the crossbow in the Yippity! Dragon, hidden by a blanket. The deputy is joined by Rebekah of the Mommies, a deaf CPS lady, and her interpreter. Nancy's cracked-out look and nosebleed continue contributing to the awesomeness. Rebekah is still bitching about getting sperm from Randy, who walks out into the room naked and holding Stevie, giggling: "He peed on my pee! We crossed streams!" CPS clearly realizes she has not in fact seen it all, before today. Andy cups himself and acknowledges the weirdness, and there is much staring. Nobody knows what to do in this situation because there has never been this situation.
Shane's phone calls Nancy's phone, and she asks poor naked child-molesting Uncle Andy to somehow deal with the cops while she ducks into the adjoining suite -- where Quenton is crouching behind the TV -- so she can take the call. Latrice joins her so she can bitch him out in greater detail ("You have ruined something beautiful, you dumb motherfucker!") before moving on to yell at Nancy. Nancy screams a near-indecipherable FUCK OFF and locks herself in the adjoining suite's bathroom, where Shane -- tied up in Cesar's backseat now, with Doug -- admits the fuckers got him.
Latrice banging on the door, in the suite adjoining, to a room where her naked brother-in-law is talking to the cops, outside of which two Mexican gangsters have just kidnapped her son. It's the middle of an onion, the center of a maze. She always knows where the exits are, does Nancy, she never closes a door, and suddenly she's in the middle of just a thrillingly dense system of doors, closing all around her, each one manned by somebody she can't control. Not even by telling them she's in control. And her sons are on the other side of those doors. I'm sure she'll get out of it, she always does, but it's nice to wonder how. (Who's still in play? Silas, and that's it. Right?) And maybe then it's okay that just this once, still bleeding, Nancy can slide down to the floor in a dirty motel, back to the world, terrified and confused and about to pass out, and wait for the thing to happen.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what vlogger Sean Crespo thinks of Weeds when he has No Prior Knowledge, below!
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