Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Personal
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 13 | Aired on 11.15.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Getting everybody to the airport on time is kind of a nightmare. You got Silas having paternity-related freakouts and making out with Andy and refusing to go to Copenhagen, Shane acting sociopathic and abusing Lars, Schiff is still bonkers... Oh, and Nancy's in the trunk of Guillermo and Esteban's car.
Almost two-thirds of the episode takes place in the airport, as everybody tries to get where they're supposed to be. Ignorant of Nancy's fate, Andy does various feats to get Shane, the baby and himself -- along with Schiff -- through security. Meanwhile, Nancy manages to score a cell-phone off a cleaning lady thanks to her bloody nose ("Remember when you used to hit me and it was sexy?" she asks Esteban at one point) and tells Andy to go to Plan C.
Managing to slip the guys at the terminal, Nancy joins her family at the gate and then has a meltdown when she learns that Andy left Silas behind with Lars, because obviously he's not safe either. Of course Andy starts crying immediately when he figures out Nancy has no intention of getting on the plane. She stays, they leave, there's just unbelievably hairy tension as Shane acknowledges the fact, but before he can find a way off the plane and back to his mother the cops show up for Schiff. Who confirms he was fucking Nancy since she was fourteen -- "I loved her and then she outgrew me" -- so hopefully he is subsequently raped to death by dogs that are on fire.
By this point, Esteban and Guillermo have shown up with Silas in tow, so she gets to have another heartwrenching goodbye scene with him, because that's the moneymaker on this show every time. Silas boards the plane, and the three Botwin boys take off into the sky, France-bound and Iceland-passported, and they cry their little hearts out. Except for Shane, who mostly bulges in the eye area and fondles Schiff's giant airplane pillow full of secret cash.
Stevie strapped to her chest, flanked by Esteban and Guillermo, staring into the eyes of every single person that passes, Nancy walks the green mile all the way out to the front of the building, where... Plan C is fully in effect. FBI and cops have the place surrounded, including half the people that were walking behind them on the concourse, so she puts her hands up in the air and says, "I killed Pilar Zuazo, please arrest me." So they do.
Hmm. After the whole confessional with Klosterman the last couple weeks, this seemed like the smartest thing she, and the show, could do. I wonder what Plan B was, and I wonder what they can even really pin on her, considering she didn't actually kill Pilar and has set fire to everything else she's ever done bad. I don't think a season in prison would be all that interesting, no matter how many times per episode you cut to a storyline about Doug shoving things up his butt or whatever. And the boys are all in France or Iceland or Copenhagen now, and while in theory it could be them there and her here, in practice that wouldn't work, because without Nancy-and-Andy there wouldn't be a show, and without her kids she's not a mom. Poor Esteban and poor Guillermo are probably already in a database, so hopefully she took them down too. For a woman who lives off the blood of men, she sure did just save everybody on the entire show. I hope her usual thing kicks in and she somehow gets out of it all scot-free, but I'm starting to wonder. Either way, best season in a long time.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously Nancy tried to get Guillermo to kill Pilar -- that didn't work out so well -- and then she got money for everybody from the reporter but he died, and then Schiff robbed the post office once again, and then she got caught in the reporter's motel room with poor Esteban and sad-face Guillermo about to kill her.
But what's interesting is how the fix is always the big problem. Not just immediately but spread out over the whole next season. Like, Stevie was the miracle fix two years ago and he was the big problem last year -- getting him born, staying alive and with him, keeping her other kids safe -- and a major one this year. And killing Pilar was the fix last year but that's been half the problem this year. A month in Seattle, a month on the road, a month in Dearborn: Pilar, then Stevie making sure they couldn't stay on the road forever, and then both at once combining into a major incrimination for Nancy's like entire life.
Which I like, because anything that is the fix stops being the fix the second it becomes the fix. Your brain wasn't designed to find one answer and stick with it, it was designed to find one answer and then find the next answer. So this episode is great, and very tense and very unlike everything last sad week, and it leads to a fix that clearly is going to be a big problem, but is also maybe the most exciting finale in a while.
She was a dancer, it's all she's ever doing. Even when she looks like she's falling, even when she's jumping, it's just another dance move. That was the first fix and that was the first problem. She dances herself into cages and then back out of them again.
So Esteban's playing that recording over and over: "Every time, I'm walking down that tunnel. Every time. And once I find out what's at the end, I'll figure it out then. But at least I'll know. I'll know. Why would you not want to know?"
She tells them both hola and congratulates them on getting back together. "Guess it's only fitting that, uh, since... Since I broke you up..." She doesn't really finish that thought because Guillermo chloroforms her at that point, with slidy-aroundy camera and slidy-aroundy music sliding all around.
Andy heads over to Lars Guinard's house with Silas's ticket and passport, even though he knows it is a fool's errand, and Silas is doing all this car-related busywork like a witness on Law & Order getting interviewed about a crime, and Andy incorrectly thinks Silas refusing to go with them is about being pissed about Nancy, so he gives a great speech with his eyes bugging out:
"Nancy, your mother -- who not only gave unto you her egg, but raised you and fed you and loved you and wiped your ass and provided a pretty great father for you, despite his early exit -- your mother wants us all together."
Silas is not interested in Nancy's wishes, he's interested in learning about his "spermdaddy," which is super weird and not to mention the fact that he has already learned all there is to know about simple, sweet, old-ass Lars Guinard, and then Shane comes in with a bit of speech of his own: "Hey faux uncle and half brother, we gotta go. Schiff's freaking out every time he sees the meter go up fifty cents."
I like how Schiff is the new Doug or Celia and just knowing he's alive makes watching this show feels so stressful and harrying, like, pretty soon he's going to be onscreen and I don't know if I can fucking take it, and that's exactly how they all feel too. I like that Shane never bonded with him, you know? Just made fun of him for being old and stupid. I like it when we're mean to child molesters.
Shane's like, "Fine, later" but Silas shoves him down and tells him to cut it out with the jaded "I'm dead inside" routine, because he's going to miss his brother hugely.
"I'm going to Europe. You're sitting here in Deershit, Michigan, in a garage."
The brotherly advice that Silas provides -- grabbing Shane by the hair and getting very serious -- is something we could all think about from time to time: "Please, please: Choose to not be a dick." Simple, beautiful, and most of all something we -- Nancy especially -- are not quite prepared yet to hear.
Everybody says larsguinard as many times as possible in the goodbye conversation, which starts when Larsguinard shows up confused by why his old math teacher is at the door, and Andy remembers the time Alanis Morissette gave him an F, and Silas calls attention to the differences between himself and Alanis Morissette -- which are admittedly legion -- like for example he and Andy, who are not actually blood related, never even got to first base.
So then they do.