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It's a bittersweet but intriguing act-break as Andy finally convinces Nancy to leave the country. Avi's weird poo sends Nathalie and Randy off to a pediatrician, who diagnoses Nat with a serious case of bad parenting that scares her enough that she nearly turns herself over to the FBI. (This on the tails of a total Amber Alert broadcasting that awful wedding dress everywhere, a final insult.)
Sister Jill Price is the interviewee this week, and she's not doing well: Divorced, raising twins, high on something and making endless ceramic vaginas. We do get some info on the Price Girls, which is always interesting: Dad worked for Ford, Mom was a drunk, they were not well off. So, the pieces continue coming together as slowly as Pangaea drifted apart, but it really seems like it's headed somewhere this time.
Reconsidering Stevie's health and Andy's place in her life, not to mention the fact that she's managed to ignore this son even more completely than the other two, she finally gives in to the pressure -- but only after a final drive-by of her childhood home in Detroit. We'll see if they make it off the continent, between Andy's description of Copenhagen as "cozy," linking it to the childhood home, and Nathalie's dream job of "skydiver." Not to mention the reemergence of the mermaid image, which is never a good sign.
While Doug romances the groupies of a children's TV show band -- a sequence that involves a penguin costume, a hookah named "Medusa" and a threesome with a bunny rabbit -- Silas and Shane sell their hash to bored parents. Silas takes this opportunity to put Shane through his drug-dealing paces, sabotaging him at every turn and eventually making him siphon gas to prove the point that he's a good murderer but a bad drug dealer. It seems really shady but then you think, this is still more active parenting than Nancy has ever exhibited.
week: No fucking clue. This season rocks.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!On the run from Trailer America is not really on the run from anything, it's just about being rootless. The second she thought about putting down roots, the roots came with bullshit and angry wives and whatever, so running, and now we're in Colorado. Andy and Silas are doing this crosstalk shell game with another dispensary grower, all about how they're going from state to state selling "gooey baked messages of hope" to sick children and glaucoma patients and the like. People in other states, "less progressively minded than Colorado." When they've wound down the dude is like, "So essentially you're drug dealers? Whatever." And that's the difference between Trailer America and Colorado.
They've been picking up shot glasses from every state they visit, I believe, and Shane plays with them while Nancy tries that whole "home schooling" thing they talked about. With sad, funny results: "Nebraska. Only state with a unicameral legislature. The birthplace of Kool-Aid." She yells at him that he spent six days there and surely must have actually experienced the state in something other than a "read about it on Wikipedia" sense. Shane saw: "A nun driving a pickup truck." That'll have to do. "Better. Keep observing. Let the road be your school. Watch, listen."
Also, smell. What is that smell? That's Stevie, who needs a change. When Nancy sends Shane to take care of it, he's like, "Have you noticed I always do that?" Nancy tries desperately to remember the last time she changed Stevie, can't come up with much, and rolls her eyes, off to be a mom for a second: Does she even know what size diapers he's on these days? "I'll figure it out," she grins.
Doug's arm is all scratched from a fight with a raccoon in a Port-A-Potty ("Punched him out," he says proudly) and then Nancy comes back out mystified by the contents of Stevie's diaper -- "It's, like, radioactive. With gross stringy things in it?" -- but Shane, who is fully driving the GOD IS AWESOME LOVE this whole time, admits he just thought that was normal. Nancy asks if maybe Andy fed the baby hash, and chillingly they wonder if that's somehow a possibility.
Nancy, remembering Botwin diapers of yore, decides she wants to take Stevie to a pediatrician. Andy starts to bitch but she takes the words out of his mouth -- too risky, ride it out, insurance forms, their shitty fake ID's -- and finally tells him to take a look in the diaper for himself. I think it was Trotsky that said you never teach anybody, you just establish an environment wherein the person can teach himself. In this case, that environment is radioactive and stringy. "Okay we need to see a doctor," Andy says, and nearly crosses himself.
Quick stop at the Colorado Amphitheatre for gas money: Shane and Silas will sell some hash, and Doug will stay in a tent and away from humans, while Andy and Nancy take the baby in for maintenance. Nancy tells Silas like eleven times that he's in charge today, sort of as a goodwill gesture but also because Shane's total insanity is now in play and part of all discussions. Luckily, they've happened upon "So Many Vibes" (heh), or what Shane terms the All-You-Can-Smoke Festival: "Phish, Dave Matthews, OAR, a Widespread Panic tribute band called Run Squirrel Run." More like the Hell Is A Place In Colorado Festival. But right then, they change the sign for the day: It's the Zoobie Woobies in concert.
Momentary hiccup, but then you remember that nothing is more horrible than children's entertainment. I mean, everybody loves Yo Gabba Gabba, because it's only incidentally for children, but as somebody who has lived through Wiggles Live I can tell you that it's a lot harder to make it through that shit when they're too far away to have weird sex fantasies about. I'm not trying to be creepy, I'm just saying close your eyes and think about Steve from Blue's Clues and count how long it takes. It's the same principle that says all Fox News anchors have to look like librarian cheerleaders: Your brain needs something, or somebody, to do while your body waits for the four o'clock Gilmore Girls rerun, i.e., I'm still not sure how I feel about Joe Scarborough's (he's on MSNBC, but go with me) politics but I'm pretty sure they're three hours' worth of sexy.
So you got some annoying kid screeching about the annoying bubble machine and the annoying kid's mom is dreading absolutely the entire thing, and she's like, "Gimme that shit?" Silas tells her to enjoy; across the lot, Silas is shaking down a dad and when the dad balks, Shane tells him to fuck off. Silas says this is the third time, so Shane's benched for a second. Shane complains that Silas is only in charge because he's older, and Silas is like, "Well, also because I'm more responsible and have better interpersonal skills." Like for example I don't solve my problems with croquet mallets, be they metaphoric or clunkingly concrete: "You freak people out."
Shane, still high on the whole Nancy-as-Mom/Nancy-as-Peer love-circle overlap, relates to Silas his epiphany that you don't actually have to do everything Nancy says. What he means is, there are no rules and no limits and it has very little to do with Nancy, and that's the unspoken thing he's answering, with the power of pragmatism: Fine, existential whosit, but then where does the gas money actually come from? "I don't care. I want to drink beer and eat stadium food. You're not my boss."
In other words, fuck everything. Which is where Silas used to live, so he knows how this will play out: We got ourselves a situation that won't respond to logic or traditional therapies. Plus, he doesn't care to be anybody's boss anyway -- he just wants everybody to be okay -- so he shrugs and puts Shane in the lead.
Then, of course, Silas steals the plastic cup with all their cash when Shane's not looking. I would say this is about 60% wanting to be the favorite, 30% annoyance with Shane's constant cockblocking and newfound independence from consequences, and 10% attempting to do the right thing by teaching Shane a little lesson about responsibility.
Andy is troubled by going on the grid, especially considering the pediatrician isn't even Jewish or Asian, but Nancy lets him whine. She's more weirded out by the fact that she's back in a pediatrician's office after all these years. (In Mexicali it was so easy: You paid the doctor to come to you, in your locked up Rosemary's Baby Suite.) Point is, they let you pay cash.
Filling out the forms with lies takes a sudden turn into weird conversational gambits. Andy immediately criticizes her choices, changing "Avi" to the much more interesting "Clovis Ludwig McKenzie-Newman," and when she clucks he makes fun of her for losing her mischievous streak. Nancy used to be, he says, "Like a minx." Well, my kid's sick. And having just realized I have a baby, I'm all about that today.
Luckily, the question is all about Nancy, which is her favorite topic, so she puts down "Skydiver" as her occupation. It's not wrong, exactly. Andy jokes about putting down "Homewrecker" instead, and she blows it off. For dad's occupation, Andy gets very wiggly and excited. "Scrappy do-gooder. Or hunky alpha male. Roving sex god!" Nancy writes down "Dead," because that's how she feels and how she will always feel, but her explanation is that it's easier to do it that way.
Why that is, is because he called her out for not being fun, and so she did something fun to get his approval back, so now he has to eat twice as much shit and she has to demonstrate that he still doesn't have any power or anything separate from her: Okay, yes, we can have fun on this form, but not so very much fun that you think we're teammates. This is a sidekicks-only gig. Daredevil Girl works alone.
"Easier than what, saying I'm alive?" Well, point being this isn't about Andy, who is not the dad. Andy's confused by that, because he thought it was already established that he was the dad in their made-up wonderful wonderful, and she's like, "Sure, you're the dad for now," but this is playtime anyway. He yells and she changes it to "Randy Newman, Diplomat/Cultural Attaché," but he goes back to whining.
About what? About his place in Nancy's life, where are they going, who is he to her, etc. The difference is that this time, it's allowing for the trap she's got him in, the assumption of no sex they've agreed to keep hypothetical forever, his sorta jealousy about Mark-Paul last week, and the fact that they've switched it up again: Now he's asking for commitment and she's the one telling him everything is temporary. Same argument, different vector, because instead of wanting to hear she'll never fuck him, now Andy wants to hear that he'll never be irrelevant.
Because sex or not, all men are disposable, and being the fake husband -- in every sense -- still guarantees him nothing. Maybe less. But mostly it's the Gosselaar thing: Once you get a look at that magic you could really start to question your fundamentals. She was willing to put down temporary roots for that, which means she opened the door to putting down roots at all, and Andy knows he needs in on the groundfloor of that possibly giant change. The possible sea change.
Nancy's always chosen security on a faulty foundation (dealing in Agrestic, killing her mother-in-law for the house in Ren-Mar, the gunmen in the baby store, Mexico under Pilar's watch) because it's the mix of crazy and safe -- the flux of both at once -- that started this show in the first place. She's declared she's sick of the RV and the deep outlaw shit, but she's also been pretty clear about permanently running from Esteban. And the idea of kink with Jack, in a shantytown that was only ever a pretend world for somebody else's dreams, was the perfect fantasy of stasis/isolation and mobility.
If Nancy's about to drag them all down into some new quasi-permanent situation, that's either very good for Andy or very bad for Andy. Because at the same time, Audra was his Mark-Paul Gosselaar, in that she made Andy think about home as a place you can actually be, which is why he's been trying to grow up even harder than Shane or Silas all season. Stasis is Nancy's preferred state, mobility is the spice that makes it workable. For Andy, it's the opposite: He's a man-child who loves running, and off-the-grid, but the fantasy of home, heimlich hygge coziness, is just as mesmerizing for him. She's Daredevil Girl, the skydiver, but he's Grownup Guy.
The question is always: Is Clark Kent the costume that Superman puts on, or is Superman just a costume that Clark Kent puts on? Is Minivan Andy the thing he's turning into, or the thing he's stuck reaching for? Is Daredevil Girl a mask Nancy needs to cover up her cowardice, or is Nancy Botwin just the cage she lives in? Who knows. The answer is usually "All of the above." A face for all the faces that you meet.
But look at the boys: Silas already is the man that Andy is becoming/trying to become. Shane already is the beast that Nancy is avoiding/trying to avoid. And they are both doing really well, this season. Maybe in part because they're not trying to be anything. They are at peace in a way their grownups can't be, because their grownups are so stuck on how they think their lives should work. Silas and Shane, though, have no experience of what that could possibly be like. They are formed by their experiences, where Nancy and Andy are formed by their fantasies. (And then you've got the third pair, Doug/Stevie: Is that a Tao-of-Pooh peace? Or are you just shitting your diaper?)
So either the boys are telling us the truth about their grownups, or are diametrically opposed to their grownups: Either way, they're embodying one half of their respective dynamics. If anything, I would say the balance will shift back the other way: Andy will try more than ever to be like Silas, and Nancy will end up more like Shane than ever. And then it'll shift back the other way, because the answer is still and will always be "All of the above," because that's what being a grownup is actually like.
Chilling in a tent with a huge hookah, as the band starts up onstage, Doug introduces the hookah, Medusa, to a giant penguin. Awkwardly, the penguin shoves a gardenhose into his beak and gets to it.
Now Andy wants to know what they're going to tell Clovis Ludwig. Is he the uncle? What is he? Nancy's like, "See above re: we'll get there when we get there. Isolation and mobility." But he's onto her: In this yet-to-be-determined "there," will he get to have a wife? What will it look like? Will he get to have a Danish lover named Famke, living with them in a polyamorous free-love situation? Will it be joint custody, with Andy taking the kid on weekends and the Sabbath and major US holidays?
The more he tries to nail her down, the less interested she gets; the more vague the future gets. She likes that; he's giving her the opportunity to play the vague card as much as she wants and he's feeling too desperate to stop it. "It's all totally possible. Except for the polygamy thing." Polyamory, he says, but honestly, call it what you want, it's all badly complected Star Trek geeks playing Settlers Of Cataan instead of fucking anyway.
"I'm confused about the rules here," he says, and Shane speaks through his mother's mouth: "There aren't any rules." There isn't a boss, there isn't a reason to ever do anything but jump off the highest thing. Andy points out that, no, that isn't strictly true. She sabotages his relationships, but straps on every sexy bartender they come across. She's like, "Fucking fuck anybody you want. I don't care. And by not caring, I win." He still hasn't figured that one out, because it's like those little finger-cuff things where even not trying is still trying. They have a fake fight -- leaving those little blanks you leave when you don't wanna say "fuck" in front of kids -- about "Fine!" "Yeah, fine!" But really it's just back to the same old stalemate.
Okay, but wait. What? Famke, now? "Danish lover. Yeah. Because the women in Denmark are Danish? And the men, too, and I'm gonna live in Denmark some day, as long as I'm not in some American jail for aiding and abetting." He says this with arms crossed, like only an idiot doesn't know about this Danish fantasy life of his that existed as much as three seconds ago, post-Audra and pre-tomorrow.
Boys like Andy have a million possibles and it's why we love them and why they are awful, too. He can say in all confidence that living in Denmark has been his plan "since forever," because the thought has occurred to him off and on since he was Shane's age, and now that you brought it up you can say yes. It's cute and it can make actual things happen if you push on it hard enough, but it still grosses me out because it's basically the same as that one girl in your circle who just happens to have always been in love with every single guy, in the world, which means no matter who you sleep with she'll end up crying at the end of the night and every childish thing she pulls is totally justified, because of luuuuv. I fucking hate that girl. In some ways it is totally true, which is really sad and makes everything complicated, but in other ways -- truer ways -- she's never really been in love. Not once. Which means it's in everybody's best interest, including hers, if you disregard her feelings entirely and openly until she gets the point, which is that we are not supporting characters in her movie.
Denmark is Andy's Moscow, his Shangri-La, his Pittsburgh, his Candy Mountain. As of now. He says it like it's sad she doesn't know that. "Have you never read any Russian literature, you uneducated woman? Dance major..." She shoves him and thinks about what he's saying, which is dangerous. "I figure five, ten years tops... Before I start my real life. Unless, I guess, I'm raising Stevie. Am I?"
It's a valid question. Much more valid than Denmark. Nancy's like, "Um, yes, as stated previously, you are. Right now. We'll figure it out. When we need to." Andy translates this, not incorrectly but not correctly either, as: "When I find Husband #4 and I don't need you anymore." That one slices, because it's like the one concession she's ever given him: She does need him, she does want him in the family. It wasn't her that put him out in the yard during the Esteban time, that was Esteban and that was Andy and that was a bunch of boy bullshit and anyway, that was not too long before the Audra time either.
"I'm not a substitute teacher," he says. "I'm invested, I need to be a part of this conversation," he says. "Because I'm already a part of this kid's life," he says. He's not an understudy penguin, he's an actual goddamn penguin. But she stopped listening a couple miles back. Not because he's freaking her out or talking circles around her, but because there she is, in her awful wedding dress, on the TV, with a kidnapping alert. He's so high on the truth of this, and she's not hearing him at all, and she has to physically turn his head, finally, shivering and talking so nightmare-whispery that you can barely hear her, and then he whispers back: "Grab Stevie. We can get to the door in less than ten seconds." Which is when the nurse appears, calling for Nathalie Newman. She heads for the door and they stare at each other; she bears her teeth and jerks the TV cord out of the wall as she sleepwalks past.
Onstage the opening band is like, "Ba-ba-ba-ba-banana! Ki-ki-ki-kiwi!" The penguin -- who has been joined by a headless bunny rabbit -- is an understudy of the headliners, whose lead singer is taking a "personal week" to deal with his hepatitis. Doug points out that the openers suck ba-ba-ba-balls and the understudy penguin gets wonderfully righteous: "Tell me about it! A song about fruit salad? Eff that stuff sideways. Eat a papaya does not rhyme with join the choir, okay?" Doug asks what the ZW's sing about, by way of contrast, and he's awesome some more: "Animals! Morality!"
(Niiice. Imagine Steve from Blue's Clues wearing a penguin suit and yelling at you about teaching children morals. Chills. I cannot believe I'm alone on this. Ultimate fantasy. That is my Denmark.)
"My Grandpop used to sing songs about this lamb," Doug relates, "Who offed his dad and shtupped his mom. And in the end, the lamb throws himself from an overpass to escape his sins." (Beat.) "Kind of like my Grandpop." Underpenguin is like, "Your backstory and Nancy's could be completely switched and it would make no difference, down to the jumping off overpasses. How come we now know more about you, Doug who barely qualifies as a person much less a series lead, than we do about the most beautiful woman in Puppetland?" Also: "The fuck kind of song is that."
Just kidding, the underpenguin says that this tale of Oedipal sheep is exactly the kind of morality he's talking about, and offers Doug a tiny pretzel. They are very stoned at this point, and very adorable in their stonedness, which is rare: "I like to lick the salt off a pretzel then I put them back in the bag and people eat them, they don't know I licked the salt off," Doug mutters and giggles, and the underpenguin is like, "People are stupid!" Like that's the cutest thing he ever heard. And somehow, given Nealon's otherworldly talents at making Doug somehow slightly more than the Masuka of this show, it kind of was.
Nancy waits for the doctor and calls Andy to process the WTF of everything. An old lady turns the TV back on and he tries to calm her down with his tone of voice, telling her the coast is clear without telling her: "Yeah, it's all good out here. Jovial atmosphere. I've made three friends, all bitten by the same spider. They're convinced they're gonna turn into superheroes. I haven't had the heart to tell them about sepsis." Inside, Nancy worries, but notes how small the picture was and hopes that it wasn't a national program.
In a brilliant show of multitasking capabilities, Andy hands the remote to a nosepicker kid and tells him to find some cartoons, while simultaneously ganking the kid's drawing so he can write down the Missing Persons number on it: A bizarre child figure with no hands and kaleidoscope eyes and the amazing, best-thing-of-the-episode caption, "RIDDELIN MAKES SPRINKLES IN MY BRANE." (Possibly there's also a word coming out of the figure's mouth that says "DISFUNKTION" or something similar, also.) This show could be like this all the time.
Anyway, Nancy is as usual freaked out by doctor's offices, and the doctor finally comes into the room; meanwhile Silas is getting beer with his fake ID and Shane offers to buy him some peanuts too, since he's buying, since he's in charge. Altogether it's $20, which of course Shane doesn't have because Silas stole it, and then there's an ugly scene of shame and where's the money and every teenage feeling you can have and finally the beardy running the cart goes, "Look, little dude. Pay for the popcorn, or I will blow this rape whistle. And then punch you." Silas pays the guy, so now Shane owes Silas $20 and Nancy $400, making for a grand total of $420.
If you ever find yourself dealing with Stevie's diapers, the medical professional is here to tell you that "your danger colors" are red and white (yikes and double-yikes), but green's not so terribly bad. Nancy breathes a sigh of relief. However, Stevie's weight isn't so great. Nancy points out he was tiny when he was born under the radar and without a birth certificate, but the doctor says that no, the problem is that his mother is a drug dealer and a terrible mother and that he goes to bed generally sometime between 7 and 10 at night, which is how you make a baby shit green apparently.
The doctor is sympathetic to Nancy's carnivalesque lifestyle -- "I skydive myself, once a year on my birthday" -- and she's like, "What? Yeah, right. Good for you, old man." She's not breastfeeding, check, and as for his mood, well, she would characterize it as vaguely positive. "He's generally alert, responding to your face, smiling?" She tries to remember, gets nothing, more vagueness. Finally the doctor just says they're going to catch Stevie up on his vaccines -- which, how would they know where he falls, for that? -- and prescribe a high-calorie formula so that he won't just wither and die.
Her heart is broken. Just terrible to watch her fall apart during this scene, the camera doesn't move off her face and you can barely hear his voice echoing as he goes on and on and she stares at her son and realizes she is literally killing her child. It's not that she's a bad parent, it's that she's a bad drug dealer, which makes her a bad parent. It's maybe the saddest I've ever felt for her, trying to figure out how to seduce gravity and still knowing that gravity is finally winning, for once. That Clark Kent can't actually fly at all.
The doctor further recommends more regular hours for bedtime and feeding, regularity and routine being "essential," and at some point it stops being medical advice and starts being a total indictment of Nancy as a person, a drug dealer, a mother, a woman, and an adult: "The key is eliminating anything that can be stressful for the baby right now. Loud noises, or instability, or domestic issues. Babies can sense these things. And, of course, there's the larger lifestyle choices..."
Ugly, We don't need to hear this. But it's so key to how this whole show works, like, Celia was always the banner carrier for this idea that the right thing is one of a number of suggestions, but once people start saying you have to do the right thing, suddenly that's just being Mean. Total addict mindset: The psychiatrist is the same thing as the cops, because they're coming for you. Like it's gravity's fault the ground is rushing up toward your face, like that's down to the patriarchy that it does that. And
this whole other voice inside your head saying, "Some things are black and white. Some objects are immovable no matter how irresistible you are." Human voices wake you, and you drown.
And now it's this doctor -- this "stupid old-man doctor" -- not criticizing her but just pointing out in theoretical terms that Nancy is terrible in every way. To her credit, she knows it's bullshit to be mad about this almost seconds after she gets mad about it, but there's not a lot of time to be pissed off about the oppression of gravity (very Shane, this, also) because they have to run like hell. But her broken heart isn't going anywhere, even as a cute little Downs kid starts screaming at her, grinning wildly and pointing at the TV screen, where she has reappeared. Andy pops a lollipop in his mouth and pats him on the head like a blessing, and they take off.
Silas tortures Shane at length, sending him into a garbage bin and taunting him with beer. Shane offers him a garbage panini and Silas is like, "Maybe the money's under that dead bird!" Shane threatens to tell Nancy about Silas's college plans -- which Batkid has deduced based on the fact that Silas, of all people, is reading "Huck Finn." Silas defends himself that it's just a contingency, "in case mom decides to drive us in circles for the rest of our lives," and asks if Shane himself hasn't thought about a backup plan for the rest of their lives. If Clark Kent really is just a lie, for all of them.
"The road is my school now," Shane says, quoting Nance directly at this point. "This dumpster's my classroom. I'm learning from this wasted Panini!" Irresistible force. "You follow your path, I'll follow mine," Silas says, finally showing a little compassion, but then they still need gas, that was the point today, the "Soviet Beast" Awesome Love Shane's driving gets 4 MPG, and that's not Mark-Paul Gosselaar's, so now Shane's going to have to find some gas some other way. Same as the Seattle thing, essentially: When you're working so hard to live that it's work that starts killing you, check out how the other half lives. The ones who aren't so superspecial that dealing drugs is not even their fallback.
Like the thing that always drove me nuts -- with anxiety, not irritation -- about stuff like Amazing Race is how they made do in other countries. Dancing for pennies or whatever. And like, the whole reason I'm scared to travel is because what happens if something happens? I certainly couldn't put out a hat and do a little jig, I'd die of embarrassment. Just roll over and die rather than helping myself to succeed, because it's too weird. But if you're on a TV show and you know that secretly the hand of TV is going to catch you when you fall, it's okay to do those things you'd rather die usually than do. She would never be a hotel maid for money, but if Hotel Maid were just a costume she was putting on, over her drug dealer costume, then she could do anything. Because really nobody could see her at all.
Nobody can see Nancy at all, at the payphone, calling the Missing Persons number. Not from the paper that Andy wrote it down on, but a piece of paper she herself wrote it down on, because I think they both wrote down the number in secret. Because they didn't want to tell each other their contingency plans, or admit they might not be able to do this. That the moment back there in the waiting room didn't feel a whole lot like Wile E. Coyote standing on nothing, knowing he won't fall unless he looks down and admits it.
"Hi. Uh...I'm calling in response to one of your, uh, posts? I think I... I saw someone, maybe. Botwin? Nancy? Uh... Long hair, brownish, I forget the other one's name. It was, um... It was a baby?" The lady transfers Nancy to the FBI, immediately, and she hangs up immediately. Our FBI guy knows it was her, even though she hung up immediately. It could have been simple and anonymous, she could have left the kid at a fire station or something, but the voice of the man saying FBI, a man she recognizes: Way too real. Good instinct, first, and then good instinct hanging up, too. Because with that guy on the phone it stops being about Stevie and starts being about Pilar, Esteban -- Shane -- and that's when gravity really does win.
Nancy lies back in the SS Awesome Love and stares at the ceiling and admits this plan is over with. Andy agrees -- "Love the road, no place for a baby" -- but then what, settle down and play house? Not an option "because oops, I've got a fucking Amber Alert out on me." She links today's advice to the "everybody" up her ass: "Now I got this fucking doctor telling me Stevie needs check-ups and shots and I just... I'm so done with this country." It was the idea, it was the thing that could happen. She listens to him thinking this out, and they negotiate.
Nancy loves the idea of going somewhere the opposite of America, and maybe that means Capri but Andy knows it's Copenhagen: "Either you can hitch your wagon to the Andy-and-Famke train, or, uh, you can raise Stevie alone, on the run." This sounds suspiciously like an ultimatum, but that's not really exactly what it is. They've hit the juncture, which means they all have to make decisions -- "your path, I'll take mine" -- and after the Audra time, that means for Andy Copenhagen. Sounds like she's agreeing, and he hasn't stopped thinking of it since the doctor's office, which is when it became the thing he always wanted.
"Hear me out. Nordic people: Very peaceful. Extremely low crime rate. High quality of life. Universal healthcare. Open-faced sandwiches. Bikes everywhere. I've done Google Street View, it's like Santa's Village. I even got a neighborhood picked out. I don't know how to pronounce it, it starts with an R. Their core value -- get this -- hygge. It means coziness. As in relaxed, sedate, stress-free."
Even with that last thing, which on the one hand sounds like no fun and on the other hand sounds infinitely frangible, his words work their magic. She stops rolling her eyes and stops getting ready for disappointment, and lets him pull her into the village, just a little bit. His wonderful wonderful. The last time he said all this she couldn't hear it, because she still loved Esteban enough -- Remember? She lied and made Andy think she was going to leave Reyes a note but the note ended up being for Andy instead -- but now she can't hear anything else. It starts to sound good for everybody at once, in the love-circle overlap.
Into planning mode: Passports, money. Not selling lots of drugs -- Stevie -- but doing one big amazing sale of drugs, and then they go. He asks, they hate that he has to ask, if she's even serious. She responds with all the words that add up to it. "Moscow. Elsa, Famke, whatever. It's a wonderful wonderful."
When you say "romance" it gets complicated fast because that word means almost anything but I like it best when it describes a state of mind in which anything can happen, where wishes are closer to the reality than usual. Not like romance novels, not that (500) Days Of Summer bullshit substitution for the real thing; romance like King Arthur, romance like The Red Pony, Paulina and Perdita, Our Town, romance like a personal magical realism where sometimes magic can actually happen and for just one little grin of a moment your feet come off the floor and you don't need more than that.
There's a little bit of romance in her voice, a little hint about the truth -- that without Andy there is no hope because what keeps him alive is hope and what keeps her alive is him -- but he pretends he doesn't remember saying it. And they smile at each other. Andy doesn't turn around or anything, and Nancy doesn't look at him in the mirror or anything, but separately, they are smiling together. Each to each. It is a greatest moment among greatest moments
and it's the closest thing to home we've ever seen. For a moment it's quiet, in the Awesome Love.
Onstage, too, they're singing about "speakin' my language." Moms dropping left and right, Silas grabs a hose from the Medusa. Doug's making out with a mom or groupie, and the bunny rabbit keeps creeping up on that, but Doug's not that high. The underpenguin, though, it seems he probably would be. I was so into the other thing I didn't even think about the furry aspect to all this, and now having thought of it must quickly shove it back into the hat before it gets loose.
Silas takes the hose out to Shane, and starts talking him up to siphon some gas. The actual reality, the gravity that underlies their lives, is that when you can't find another way or life has knocked you down one too many times today, you should be willing to get on your knees and suck just like everybody else. Silas pushes and pushes and pumps him up and peps him out and finally Shane gags, and whines, and does it. His joy when the gas starts coming out -- "I'm a hero!" -- it makes Silas love him more than anything.
Doug thanks the groupie-mom for the blowjob with a big hug, now wearing the penguin suit himself -- understudy to an understudy -- and Nancy grins and checks Shane's breath for beer. "Nice, somebody had a good time," she grins, and he smiles back at her dopily. "I'll deal with that later..." Shane starts to admit he lost the take, and when Silas produces it Shane realizes just how badly he got had today. Silas isn't worried, because as it turns out it was exactly the right thing. Nobody gets out of this episode the same as when they came into it. Sometimes things get better for a second.
So now what, Silas asks. Another ill-starred concert? Another pretend Western city from a movie? She stares at him, proud because it's closer to what he wants, if also further away, and he gets worried again. She smiles at Andy, and he tells: "Copenhagen." But, Nancy says, sucking on a Diet Coke, they just need to make one more stop.
Jill Price-Grey, now back to Price again I guess, is drunk at 8 AM, making wall after wall of ceramic vaginas -- works in progress, "like me" -- in her little studio. Divorced, kids gone, horny. She's not surprised the FBI is looking for her sister; she's more interested in sleeping with the interviewer. Finally they get her to talk about Michigan, the scene of the first crime. The one that started everything else, when Daredevil Girl got too scared and took to the air for the first time: Strapped on her cape and flew all the way to France, danced across the sky, and by the time she made it back she was an orphan.
"Michigan. Right, right. Michigan's boring... Um, Dad worked for Ford, just like everyone else within a thirty-mile radius of Detroit. Uh... Mom drank. A lot. They're both dead... The house? Was a total shitbox, really. But, um, I don't know. I liked it. Uh, it was cozy..." As in relaxed, sedate, stress-free. "Uh, there was this, um, mermaid mailbox, that my Dad made..." Her smile falls and she laughs back tears, thinking of him. He made things, like Jill. Like Judah. Like Silas.
Mom destroyed things.
A drive from Colorado to Dearborn, and there it is: The mermaid mailbox, sliding past. Nancy looks at it, forever, smiling. The Awesome Love passes it, on the right; she says goodbye to the scene of the crime.
Mermaids. They are a funny thing; like anything with breasts, a lot gets lost in the noise and you have to think harder. She seems harmless enough but she calls you out into the depths, puts her songs in your ears, kisses you goodnight, and you drown. She exists because sailors sometime disappear, and nobody knows why. She's the embodiment of sex, but if you got close enough you'd see she's self-sufficient down there: Nothing to touch, nothing to fuck. She's a mirage, first and foremost; she's all promise and no follow-through. Always fucking, never coming. She puts eggs in your head; she know it's sex will bring you back. All promise, no relief.
Mermaids sometimes come to the surface, pretend to be human. See what that's like. She walks upright, but balanced on knives, and that's a pain you'll never see. All she wants to do is find the nearest bridge and jump off it, down into the depths below; all she wants to do is taste life, up here, for a second. Womanhood is just a mask she wears, it's the cage she lives in, but the sea and the smell and the water are calling to her, all the time, louder than you think. When she sings, she isn't singing to you. She's singing for herself.
She comes to the surface and you think she's there for you: Saw you passing by, stopped combing her hair with table utensils long enough to sing a song, scrambled up onto the rocks. This is the lie men tell themselves about all women, but most of all about the mermaid. That Clark Kent is the truth and before you, mermaid was the best she could do on her own. But she's not here for you. Clark Kent is a lie, a cover business: You're here for her. Forget it and drown.
Even if you survive, even if you live to be a hundred on the hard dry surface, you'll still never forget the song you heard her singing.