Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Maternity Tests
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 12 | Aired on 11.08.2010
Schiff's in a postal uniform when he shows Hooman and Shane the secret room full of stolen mail. They need money, because Hooman's in hiding while his dick makes the rounds and he can't sell anymore Gummiberry Juice right now. The hostage murder set is still up in the corner. Schiff bitches about his customers -- once he got poop for Christmas -- and turns on the lights. It's full of stuff, mostly Skymall; he admits he's not great at postal servicing.
Daoud knows on sight that the dick in the jar isn't Hooman's, which is much smaller. He knows this because he saw his erstwhile son-in-law naked at the baths once. "That rude asshole never even took off his bluetooth." Andy swears the dick is just plumping from edema, but Daoud apparently knows more about this than we do. Which is a hell of a lot more than we did a second ago.
Q: Remember a second ago? When we didn't know about that?
Q: "I ask you to kill one worthless idiot and you try to deceive me?"
Like Daoud's got a leg to kvetch on. Just as Andy's gesturing around with the "Jaka cock," Daoud's hot daughter and wife come in yelling in their nighties. They are totally horrified that he had her boyfriend murdered! Daughter pours the cock and cock water and noodles over her dad's head, and maybe some more stuff happened but I sure as fuck wasn't looking.
"Even the Jews think that man is cheap," says the mom once Daoud's chased the daughter into the house, and Andy laughs like that's a funny joke, and she offers the passports: Only $5K now, so she can get a Birkin.
Q: I guess that means they need $2K now in addition to the airfare and stuff. Nancy better come correct.
Hooman and Schiff and Shane are opening up every grandma-scrawled envelope, piling the cash in the middle of the room while discussing things like Indian casinos and the puppetric wonders of Jeff Dunham. When Silas arrives, Shane is awesome: "We're stealing Christmas card money from the past!"
Q: Oh, and he has the paternity results too.
A:
Q: Why would you not want to know?
Hooman opens a letter Schiff stole that was addressed to him. "I GOT INTO COLLEGE?" Schiff stares mutely; Hooman makes a hilarious mad face that goes on way too long.
Nancy's been reduced to standing outside Vaughn's motel window, knocking like a meek Catherine Earnshaw, and Vaughn paces around in his tweedy mess of an outfit, still hating Nancy and, synecdochically, women. The other side of her particular coin. She's never tried so hard to get into a trap before.
Eventually he lets her in, and time passes, and she tells him her story now that she trusts him, and as they're wrapping up she apologizes for the camera. "You wait to publish, and you don't say where we're going." He has no idea where they're going, and when she gives her alias -- Celia Hodes -- he giggles more honestly than he's done anything else.
A: He might not be under her spell but he was never under any illusions about her capabilities: The exact kind of man she actually deserves, of course, but she can't even see him. Confession is a rollercoaster too. He turns off the recorder.
Q/A: "They'll find you. Pilar doesn't just disappear and nobody has to answer, she's a legitimate businesswoman. Someone has to answer. It's an open murder investigation, and not just the cops: FBI. Them. And if I'm coming to that conclusion -- Shane -- then others will too."
It's an unvarnished truth, a set of them lined up like shot glasses, but for some reason it seems almost more of an admission on Vaughn's part: The respect, in his voice and in what he's saying. The way he doesn't treat her like a goddess or a bitch, just another human being. He doesn't hate her, he doesn't love her. He likes her okay. He got over it. She's not a cunt, not a vampire, not a monster, not a bitch, not even sexy: Just a woman. Just the thing she keeps saying she is. The only truth the fourth estate has is truth, and the second that gun's not pointed at her she can look at it for what it is. She knows he's not wrong.
Nancy's eyes get a little shiny but she doesn't cry. The last of Vaughn's advance goes into her hands and he asks her where she pulled Fran Tarkenton from. She laughs and looks away and to the right, memory: Tells him the first honest story, without meaning to.
A: "Judah loved him. He had his signed rookie card, between two pieces of glass. Said we were going to buy our retirement house in Hawaii with it. I check online not so long ago? It's worth like... Seven hundred dollars. Ridiculous. I mean, can you imagine? I hate the sun. Judah was... So..."
She swallows. It's the most she's ever said about him. She swallows and clears her throat and apologizes again for the camera: "That was mean," she says.
What she means is "Thank you." For being her friend, for a second. For forcing her out, and letting her back in. For that cup of coffee they almost never had, and the way she could just remember the bear, for a second, without it hurting.
"Guess your word cloud was right," she says as she's going. "Who does that?" he asked, and the answer was "bitches." If you're a girl, "mean" and "bitch" are synonyms, which is why women are never cross or unpleasant or disagreeable. Until they are. And then they're just cunts.
Q: "Why didn't I know Josh was gay? Even as a baby he looked gay. Gay baby!"
Doug's got every piece of paper and photograph out, in the living room. Dana goes right on back to bed, because that is some classic fuckin' Doug to be mainlining, at any hour. Doug begs her to hash it out a little bit, a little truth and reconciliation: "Don't keep it in, you're gonna give yourself butt cancer."
Dana swears she's not angry: In fact, she's happy. I believe it. If we can get our asses on that plane without Doug, fuck it, I'll marry Wilfred. I'd marry Schiff to make that dream come true. "You married Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, that's an obvious cry for help."
Q: Why is Doug really there, all the way back to the little boxes, which Google tells me is at least a day and a half both ways without stopping, which is a ridiculous amount of time to leave Nancy unattended and assume she'll be where you left her.
A: Doug is home for his passport and needs Dana's key for the safety deposit box. She grabs it from a side table and throws it at him so that he will get the fuck, but Doug has changed his mind: Seeing Dana and their daughter (whose name he gets wrong) has completely transformed his perception and now he realizes that Jesus saved him from Ignacio for exactly the reason of ruining her happy marriage, right here in Agrestic.
"It's called Regrestic now," Dana says, which is fucking awesome, and yet somehow Doug tops it: "Well that's retarded!" For some reason that exchange made me miss Isabelle.
Dana explains that he is not relevant to this family -- "just the idiot man-baby who walked out on us" -- and that he doesn't have permission to ruin her life again. He pulls the whole "Are you as turned on as I am right now?" and she punches him. For some reason that exchange made me miss Celia.
Andy comes home to yell at Hooman about his dick and then tells Hooman to run to the Mahmoods and try one more time so that he won't end up alone and dead like Andy is clearly going to. Hooman waves his college acceptance letter in the air and then skinny-jeans himself off into a great new Botwin-free existence. Andy is tripping out on the dead people, like Daoud said he would eventually, and points out that the money they've amassed is not enough for anything they need.
"Guess Copenhagen's off," Andy whines, just as Nancy's returning. She looks like she's been crying; it's because she's been crying. She hands Andy the huge Vaughn wad, for the passports, and then Schiff runs off on some pathetic errand or another, to get money for the tickets. Nancy drops face-down on the bed, exhausted, and soon enough her men appear, one by one, to express themselves.
Andy cries about death. Schiff crows about get