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Let's just do this alphabetically, shall we? Beth: pissed at Cameron for refusing to have a baby, and then he brought one home anyway; she pretends not to care about the munchkin until he gets sick from substance withdrawal, and then her cover's blown. Cameron: gets Elisa to sign over the kid for now, at least until she goes through rehab, and doesn't dispute her accusation that his reputation on campus is deserved. Damien: bored with everything, takes Frankie on a lame date, and when she keeps blowing him off for her mom, he contemplates taking comfort in hotel spank-o-vision and Galina's tiny little shorts. Frankie: goes on lame date with Damien, blows him off twice for her mother. Galina: upon finding herself at a party full of lawyers, begins wondering how airtight that prenup with Damien really is. Kimberly: embarrassed about wanting to hold onto her share, even when Sunny, the woman claiming to have played her dollar, turns out to be a horrible, horrible person. Maggie: sets up her own speed-dating event, strikes out, and is thus vulnerable to the "charms" of a self-impressed waiter. Nina: the only one who stands by Kimberly; she responds to Peter's legitimate concerns by psychobabbling at him. Peter: finally resolves the whole dispute by proposing that each of the twenty real winners give Sunny a million dollars, which they agree to do. Sean: gets his stupid ass arrested, then enlists the help of Zoe's sister Tally to help find her. Sunny: still a horrible, horrible person. Tally: secretly packing a gun. Zoe: still missing, and with Sean on the case it doesn't look good for her at all. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Despite being a multimillionaire, Damien starts out the episode doing what any kid his age would be doing: lying on the floor, listening to his iPod, and reading a magazine. Aside from the hotel suite in which he's doing it, he could be any average teenager. Until, of course, his Russian underwear-model wife stands over him and announces, "Woman on TV say you stole from her." Damien reacts incredulously because he hasn't stolen anything in days.
Looks like we're picking up right where we left off. Frankie goes down to the living room, where Addie is "busy" getting a mani-pedi in her easy chair. Frankie's on her cell phone as she asks her mom whether they know Sunny, the chick who's claiming that Kimberly's share of the lottery winnings is actually hers. Addie does: "She always brings deviled eggs and flirts with every man in the room." Frankie turns on the TV, which is currently playing the crap-ass newscast from last episode. Frankie watches Addie watch the TV like this is her mom's fault or something. All Addie says is, "Oh, my God. What a --"
"Nightmare!" Maggie pronounces. She and Addie are walking around town together with unnecessarily small coffees in their hands. Also, they're in regular paper cups, when any self-respecting lottery winner would have the barista make their coffee in one of those nine-dollar go-cups, which they would pay for, take with them, and then throw away like the rest of us throw away the paper ones. Let's hope those coffees are at least, like Oreo-pecan-cluster-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-flavored or something. Maggie remarks of Sunny, "She does play. The thing about her is --"
"She could be telling the truth," Peter remarks to Maggie, who is now over at Peter and Nina's house. Nina insists that Sunny's lying, but Peter's not convinced, either because he is stupid or because this show needs to manufacture drama wherever possible. I'm prepared to split the difference. Peter says, "Either way, it's --"
"Complicated," Beth tells Peter, as she leads him through her and Cameron's house. "Frankly," she non-segues, "we've got bigger problems." To wit, they've just reached the living room, where Cameron is vainly (more vain than usual, I mean) trying to calm down a screeching tot. Peter is struck not only speechless, but expressionless. "My reaction exactly," Beth remarks.
And because that was already way too long for a show like Windfall to keep it up with the fancy editing, Peter's back home with Nina, remarking that she doesn't seem surprised that Cameron's taken in a baby that could be his. Nina half-truths that Cameron mentioned it during his phone call to Paris, but they weren't ready to tell people yet. "Even your husband?" Peter asks, looking hurt. Nina's saved from having to respond by a knock at the door. It's Kimberly. "Kimberly?" Peter says. Doesn't miss a trick, that guy.
Meanwhile, Sean is rifling through Zoe's bag in her trashed apartment, which is, of course, when the landlady or a neighbor appears in the open doorway and asks what the hell he's doing. To his credit, Sean realizes that this probably looks pretty bad, and asks the woman whether she has seen Zoe. The woman just shakes her head fearfully. Sean finds Zoe's cell phone and PDA (which are two separate devices, unlike on some other shows I recap), and heads out, brushing past the neighbor/landlady. "I'm calling the police," the woman announces, because she's hoping that Sean will come back and shoot her.
Outside, Sean sees that his car has been parked in by a rental moving truck and piles of furniture on the driveway. Wow, vacant apartments go fast in this town. He demands that they move the truck now, but the two guys and one girl (but no pizza place) tell him to chill for five minutes. Sean angrily says that he'll move the truck himself, but he's not so desperate and reckless that he goes straight up to the cab without first trying to pull down the back door. Safety first, you know. Of course, the guys try to stop him, and Sean naturally gets violent. Just in time for the cops to arrive and bust his stupid ass. "The guy that got [Zoe] got a real head start 'cause of you," Sean bitches as he gets bundled off to the squad car. Maybe that'll learn him to try to close other people's moving trucks before driving them.
Credits. Still in alphabetical order, so D.J. Cotrona (Sean) is first. Which is weird, because whether you go alphabetically or in order of importance, first billing should really go to 'Contrivance.'
Kimberly's sitting with Peter and Nina at their kitchen table, laying out what we already know from last week: Sunny claims to have a witness who saw her put her dollar in the can, while Kimberly has no one backing up her story. What a shame that Peter and Nina sent their two daughters off to boarding school in Sweden or something, because they could have backed up Kimberly. Instead, we neither see nor hear from them all episode. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. Kimberly continues, "Not to mention you all know [Sunny], so you probably think I'm lying." Nina says that she's the one who found Kimberly's dollar, so she believes her. Maybe she should have held on to it, is all I'm saying. Not that it was the smartest move on Kimberly's part to write her name and number on a bill she thought was going to be used to buy the ticket in the first place, but I think we've been over that. Kimberly turns to Peter, who says he doesn't know. Way to back up your wife there, dickface. He suggests that Kimberly split her share with Sunny, rather than risk losing everything. Annoyed Kimberly asks whether he would do the same, and adds, "Or are you afraid that if this thing goes to court she'll freeze your winnings too?" Nina says that's not it [Peter's expression: "That's totally it"], and offers to talk to Sunny to see if they can come up with some kind of compromise to make it go away. Kimberly isn't happy about it, but nobody else seems to have a better idea. Or any lines to end the scene with.
Damien and Galina are vegging out in front of some rap video. Well, at least Damien is trying to veg, but Galina's grilling him about the significance of "biotch" and "bling" and other such verbiage. Damien half-heartedly tries to explain it to her, but quickly shuts down the conversation, probably because he doesn't understand it much more than she does. The room service guy has Damien sign the check, calling them "Mr. and Mrs. Brunner," which is still cracking him up every time he hears it. He tells Galina that he might "go buy something" after lunch, because it's not like he has anything else to do. Galina trips over some expensive clutter littering the suite and asks, "What more can you buy?" Damien channel-surfs until he sees a race car, and grins stupidly. So clearly they aren't too worried about this Sunny thing.
Cameron and Beth are dealing with their "bigger problems;" they're having a meeting in their home with a social worker, who is already my favorite character because of how much she clearly hates Cameron on sight. He asks what happens to the kid after Elisa goes through rehab, and the worker says that the baby will be placed with a foster family. The kid starts fussing, and Cameron gets up to pick him up out of his play yard while Beth sits there on the couch, looking pinched and grumpy and like somebody stomped on her foot as hard as I want to. Cameron asks whether he can meet with said foster family, and the social worker says that's up to the mother. Cameron mentions the father. "I didn't think we had one," the social worker says, and Cameron asks, "What if he's me?" Beth shoots death-beams at him from her eyes as the social worker asks for proof. Cameron has none, of course, and gets all grumpy when the social worker says that a nurse will stop by tomorrow to check the kid out (as opposed to making the rich people take him to a clinic their own damn selves). Cameron imperiously grumps that that's a good idea, like the social worker is a customer service rep for the catalog he ordered the kid out of or something. The social worker gives Cameron until the day to get Elisa's approval for temporary custody in writing. A bit later, Cameron lets her out, saying that they'll talk tomorrow. He's left to face his pissy wife, who just stands there glaring at him. He says, "We have so much now. What are we supposed to do, just dump this kid in the system?" Cameron, the great humanitarian. Or maybe he's heard how babies are chick magnets and he wants to give it a try. He says that he understands why she's upset, and that they'll figure it out. She just goes upstairs by herself without saying another word, because figuring things out is not her bag, man.
At the high school parking lot, Damien's letting a friend of his test-drive a brand-new red Viper at high speed. Amazingly, the kid doesn't crunch into a parked bus or anything. He hops out and expresses his approval of the wheels, thanking Damien for the test drive. The bell rings and Damien watches all his old buddies head into the school building, because even though he wouldn't have gone car-shopping until "after lunch," it's still the middle of the school day. No wonder he dropped out. The only one left standing there with him is Frankie. He offers her a ride. "Promise you won't hurl?" he silver-tongues, and they tire-screech on out of there. Amazingly, Damien doesn't crunch into a parked bus either.
Sean's getting interrogated at the police station, in the nicest interrogation room I've ever seen on TV. The detectives aren't buying his story about Jeremy. They wonder if Zoe didn't just run away, or become Sean's victim. Before Sean can start digging himself into an even deeper hole with his big mouth, Zoe's lawyer buddy Dave bursts in, telling Sean to zip it. Dave knows that the detectives don't have anything they can actually charge Sean with (aside from beating up Zoe's new neighbors, of course), and he's a total prick to the detectives as he tells Sean it's time to go. Was he Sean's one phone call? Or does he just like busting in and being rude to cops on his lunch break?
Out in the hallway, Sean says that they need to talk, but Dave says to wait. He flags down some uniformed officer by name, and is equally bitchy to him as he demands Sean's personal effects be returned to him. As Sean's waiting for Dave to handle that (and the closed-captioning picks up Dave also blowing off the assault charges, which I can't hear at all), another officer introduces a new character to the detectives who were just interrogating Sean. It's Zoe's little sister Tally, who looks like a poor man's Lana Lang, complete with permanently gobsmacked expression. Sean overhears the introduction, but prefers to stand there loitering rather than making himself known as the detectives lead Tally into an office. Oddly enough, they don't introduce Tally to their prime suspect, because that might result in something interesting happening. Dave returns with a manila envelope for Sean, and as Sean's looking through the stuff -- which of course includes the PDA and the cell phone of the person he was arrested for kidnapping in the first place -- Tally busts back out into the hallway, freaking out that the police aren't technically considering Zoe a missing person yet. Sean wants to stick around and watch this little drama play out, but Dave tells him it's time to go. So they go. But something tells me we haven't seen the last of Tally. I think it's the sappy music.
Nina finds Sunny at the health club, beating the crap out of a heavy bag. Sunny pauses long enough to give Nina a gross sweaty hug, but her expression quickly shuts down when Nina says that she's there to talk about Kimberly. Nina's saying something about "he said, she said," but rather than wondering who the "he" is in this scenario, Sunny boasts that she has a witness. Nina points out that said witness is Sunny's best friend, who might have a little bias (and also a hankering for a 20% commission, although Nina doesn't mention that). Nina comes right out and accuses Sunny of lying. So Sunny comes right out and says, "Prove it." Nina says that she can't, but neither can Sunny, and asks her whether there's some number they can agree on. So Sunny goes into this whole pity party about all the lottery parties she hosted. In short, Sunny's "number" is 100%. Nina asks whether Sunny can compromise. "Why should I?" Sunny bitches. Nina's got a pretty good answer: "It's great that you hosted all those parties, Sunny, but those weeks, we didn't win. This week, we did." And she walks off, leaving Sunny to sock that heavy bag one more time in frustration. Sadly, the bag doesn't sock back. Shouldn't someone mention the fact that Sunny, of all people, should have known better than to contribute to the pot without signing the list? Help me out here, show.
So what does a millionaire teenager do when he wants to impress a girl and he's already bought an expensive red sports car? Apparently, we're to believe that he takes her to a skating rink and rents the whole place for them. As Frankie and Damien glide around the hardwood, Frankie comments on the lameness of the "date." She still doesn't quite get the fact that even though this is basically a show about a third of a billion dollars, it's relatively low-budget. There is "bantering," and it's mercifully cut short when Damien's cell phone rings. While trying to pull it out of his pants pocket, he of course topples to the floor, which makes me so very sad that cell phones weren't invented twenty years earlier. Frankie cackles cutely at him before asking if he's okay. It looks like he is, at least until he sees who's calling him.
There's another one of those mid-scene edits that this show is always dropping in for no reason, which I don't even mention half the time. It's just one of the many stylistic tics that Windfall incorporates that have no purpose but to irritate me. In this case, Damien's just finishing his phone conversation, telling Galina that they'll continue their conversation when he gets home. By the time he's done, Frankie's on her own cell phone, asking if the deposition she's giving tomorrow is for her mom's or her dad's side. "Okay, I'll be there," she chirps bravely, as Damien arrives at her side with bottled vending-machine waters for both of them. She finishes up her call, and Damien says that he suggested to Galina she get her own place, and she "kind of freaked out." Which doesn't explain why she called him, but whatever. He talks more about how the whole marriage is a "business," and Frankie skeptically says, "Right." Damien asks her whether she thinks it's weird. Frankie uses a whole lot of words to point out that since the money entered into her parents' already contentious divorce, and Addie's pretty much become an absentee mom: "Your weird makes mine feel normal." There's a continuum between "weird" and "normal," and I'd have to say these two both land out past "normal" and well into "boring."
Maggie arrives at some niece's extravagantly decorated party (which she probably paid for), loaded down with a stack of presents that she can barely see over. Anyway Maggie's sister mock-severely says, "You're spoiling my kids. Spoil someone your own age. Like me." She starts leading Maggie around and introducing her to people, without even letting her put down the mountain of gifts somewhere. "And," MaggieSis adds, "I've invited a special guest just for you." And about nine guys come pouring out of her back door and start swarming around the snack table to it, like the kitchen is a damn clown car or something. Maggie protests that she doesn't want some guy who picked her out of the paper, but her sister assures her that "it was your photo that sold it, not the money." "Oh, great," Maggie says. "So you're saying they're shallow, not greedy." Insisting that one of the guys could be great (which is true, if only because of the law of averages), her sister steers Maggie over to the herd. Which, since she's still loaded down with gifts, Maggie isn't in a position to resist. At least she won't have to shake anyone's hand.
Frankie and Damien are done skating, and now they're just lying flat on their backs on the floor, gazing up at the stars from the spinning disco ball. That's not something they normally let you do, so I can now totally understand why Damien dropped "three bills" on this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Frankie's psychoanalyzing Damien, which seems to be going well (not that it's hard), until she observes that since he became a millionaire, all he did was move into a hotel half a mile from his house. Awkwardness ensues, and Frankie tries desperately to backpedal without actually tripping over her own skates. Fortunately, she's saved when her cell phone rings with a text message from her mom, which reads, in its entirety, as follows: ":-( ". Amazing how this show keeps coming up with so many fresh new reasons for me to hate its characters. Anyway, Frankie has to go, even though Damien doesn't want her to. "At least she's actually home to notice I'm not," Frankie bright-sides. She kisses Damien on the cheek, then gets up and skates off. Is Damien driving her home, or is she going to skate the whole way?
Maggie meets one of her suitors at a mall, and he asks whether she's sure this is where she wants to eat, and she asks why. And he opens his big mouth: "Because this is a food court, and you're really rich." End of date. But not to worry, because Maggie has apparently told all the guys to meet her here, and so then she's able to hop from table to table like a one-woman speed-dating event. Appropriately, I will speed-recap: all the guys suck, KT Tunstall plays, and Maggie is a ham.
When Maggie sits down across from the last guy, she's clearly all ready to be unimpressed. But the jaded image is just an act, because five seconds of psychobabble from him is enough to bring down her defenses. He mentions her work as a nurse, but then totally blows it by mistakenly guessing that Maggie works at a sex clinic. And she is out of there. She's gone. She's done. Wait, Maggie, take me with you!
Cameron's at Elisa's place, which is completely new and much larger and nicer that where she was living last week, so I'm wondering if maybe it isn't in fact not her place at all and actually a rehab facility or a library or something. He's there so he can try to convince her to sign her kid over to him. Naturally she's pissed that he called Social Services on her, and that she's going to have to go to rehab. What's a little more confusing is her fear that she'll lose her baby, because that's exactly what she wanted to do last week. Whatever, I guess we're supposed to think that that was the drugs talking. Much as they do in this show's Writers' Room. Cameron says she has the choice of leaving the kid with some other family she doesn't know, but he thinks he's better off with Cameron and Beth. She scoffs at this: "Even if you're not the baby's father, you could have been. You have quite the reputation on campus, Professor, and not for nothing." Cameron doesn't bother to deny it; he just tells her to sign the paper, and that she'll get the baby back as soon as she's clean. "Don't mess with me," she threatens, "or I'll mess with you." Surprisingly, the multimillionaire college professor doesn't look too intimidated by the strung-out drug addict on her way to court-ordered rehab.
Apparently, Dave is quite the successful lawyer, because he rides around town in the back of a limousine. For a very long time, too, because it's dark now. He's also got Sean in the back with him, who's telling Dave to stay on top of the police and their investigation of Zoe's disappearance. Dave stops him right there: "I did this one thing for you, but I don't work for you. Now, I don't know what happened to Zoe. Wherever she is, she's gone because of you." This makes absolutely no sense. Why would Dave swoop in to rescue Sean, if not at Zoe's secret request? We know from last week that Dave's already suspicious of Sean, and if he's willing to go to the mat for a guy he has every reason to suspect is behind Zoe's disappearance in the first place, Zoe really needs new friends. Sean says that he plans to hire a private investigator. Dave wonders how he's going to do that, since Zoe hadn't finished setting up joint access to the winnings yet. He picks up the phone to tell the driver to pull over. Sean tries to process this bit of news: "So twenty million dollars is..." "All in her name," Dave answers. Sean looks out the window, wondering why the car is still moving.
morning at Peter and Nina's house, Peter is confronting his wife about a conversation he just had with the lawyer they had to hire "because of this Sunny thing." And he's pissed because Nina has apparently decided to lie under oath and say that she saw Kimberly put the dollar in the pot. Nina reminds Peter that Sunny is the liar, but Peter says he doesn't know that: "Now Sunny's suing the rest of us and everyone's money is frozen." Just like that. The justice system certainly works fast in this town, especially considering the fact that apparently nobody pays taxes. Nina stops carrying the laundry upstairs and says that they can wait a few months to get the prize, since they got along without the money before. That reminds me: any Parisian duds in that laundry basket, by the way? Peter argues, "People bought houses! They made promises and plans, things they can't take back just because you're pissed at Sunny." So Nina turns it around and says that Peter's worried about his bicycle business falling through: "You're always saying that those guys at the plant deserve more. And now you suddenly have it. A lot more. And it eats at you. You feel like you don't deserve it, right?" Peter's face tells us she's hit the nail on the head. She tells him, "It's a gift. It's luck. You can't earn it. But you try too hard and you can throw it all away." And the woman who's trying too hard and potentially throwing it all away ride her high horse right on up the stairs, because now that Sunny's frozen their assets, her husband can't even afford a spine.
Sean is on Jeremy's trail, and his first stop is the front desk at the ratty motel where Jeremy was last staying. And the manager isn't too pleased that Jeremy trashed the room and took off without paying: "If you find him, take a few teeth out for me." Sounds like he knows Sean pretty well.
Out in the parking lot, Sean decides that his move is to call Zoe's sister Tally on Zoe's cell phone (which, like any high-powered lawyer's cell phone, has three numbers stored on it. Shut up, show). He introduces himself simply as Sean, "a friend of Zoe's," which is enough for Tally. "You're the lottery guy," she says, ambiguously. He says that he's looking for Zoe. Tally asks how he got her number, because she doesn't have caller ID and doesn't realize it's Zoe's phone calling her until Sean tells her. That would have been quite the sharp little emotional rollercoaster for her, wouldn't it? He tells her that he wants to meet someplace where she'll feel safe. "I think we can help each other," he says. Convincing, really. He doesn't even pronounce "help" as "sex."
Yikes! At Cameron and Beth's house, the baby is up on the table in a baby chair. That's not the scary part; it looks perfectly stable. What's scary is that Beth is right up in the baby's face, smiling and cooing and being all sweet to him. The baby smiles back at her, because babies are stupid. Of course, when Beth hears Cameron come through the door, she gets the hell away from the kid and assumes her usual grim expression. Cameron enters the room, waving an envelope and announcing that Elisa signed the kid over to them. Beth sarcastically says that's great, and then tries to passive-aggressive out of the room. Cameron calls her (and her ugly blue sweater with the black elbow pads that she was wearing in the pilot, like, go back to Paris and don't come back until you've found something decent to wear, if at all) back, telling her to talk to him. Beth says that she already tried to talk to him: "I told you I wanted a child and you freaked out," says the woman who went to Paris the very second: "You said we had to have this huge discussion about it together. And then you went and did this alone." Cameron says that it was a decision in the moment, on which she calls bullshit: "Your head's always in the future. It's like you've got one foot in this marriage and the other's in the town or college, or the grand passion, whatever that is." This is quite enough talking for Cameron, so he says that he's off to get formula. Beth snaps that she already got some. Cameron picks up the fussy kid and asks Beth to hold him (the baby, not Cameron) while he heats up the formula. Beth refuses: "You decided to do this alone. Now deal with it alone." And she marches out. You know, I used to think Cameron was just an insufferable prick. Now I realize that these two deserve each other.
That night (or some night), all the winners are gathered out on Nina and Peter's front lawn again, peas-and-carrots-ing about the lawsuit and all the lawyers on the premises. Beth rolls up alone, and Peter greets her, asking where Cameron is. "He's on his own tonight," Beth non-euphemizes, and heads into the house while Peter and Nina exchange a glance. Damien and Galina get out of his new Viper, and clearly Galina went and bought some new clothes after selling them all last week; she's in a black cocktail dress and a white fur, which goes just smashingly with Damien's jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt. She notices that the house door to Peter and Nina's is actually Damien's. So they were -door neighbors? I'm pretty sure that wasn't made clear before, although it does explain how Nina and Damien knew each other. Maggie runs past a gauntlet of lawyers on the lawn who try to flag her down, and finds herself face-to-face with a flinchy Kimberly. "Man, this place is lousy with lawyers," Maggie observes, and Kimberly admits that it's probably her fault. "Yeah, because you want your $20 million," Maggie breezes. "Who could blame you? I don't." Kimberly looks relieved that there's at least one person besides Nina who doesn't hate her. And me. I don't hate her.
Inside, around the fancy hors d'oeuvres table (nice asset-freezing, Sunny), Galina comes up to Damien, who's busy making eyes at Frankie across the room. "I understand 'pig,'" Galina says, holding up an item. "But not blanket." Damien's not up for another round of the endless Perfect Strangers home game with his wife, who realizes again that Damien's interest lies elsewhere. She tells him to go ahead and get a drink, and looks a little hurt as she watches him approach Frankie. And then she overhears Addie talking to a lawyer about the difficulties she's having divorcing her husband, saying that she should have gotten a prenup. The lawyer tells her, "It wouldn't have made any difference. The average prenup has holes you can drive a Bentley through." Galina looks very interested by this conversation, and approaches the lawyer to ask, "What is Bentley?" No, really, she wants to talk about prenups. The lawyer asks her if she wants one. Galina: "I already have, but mine is from vending machine." Okay, heh. Also: Damien is a fucking idiot. The lawyer suggests that they talk about it afterwards. So I guess they're both pretty confident that this meeting is going to end with everybody rich again.
Peter calls the meeting, such as it is, to order, such as it is, in the living room. As Cameron wanders in to Beth with the baby in a Snugli® (and, damn, did they spend all their winnings at Babies "R" Us or what?), Peter starts out by saying that there are a lot of strong feelings in the room, but he thinks that they can keep things civil. Or at least he does, until Sunny barges into the house and stands right up front where everyone can see her. Peter tries to tell Sunny the meeting is only for "winners of record," but Sunny indicates Kimberly and says, "If she can be here, so can I." Some burly longhair says, "I don't want to look at that greedy cow. She froze all my money!" The geek with the money suit from last week (which he wisely left at home tonight), points out, "At least she didn't steal her share to begin with." Whatever the fuck that means. And then it gets ugly, with people blaming Nina and yelling at each other while Peter unsuccessfully tries to calm things down. Kimberly gets up from her spot on the couch to Maggie, who just shakes her head.
Tally sure has gotten dressed up in order to meet at night with the convicted felon who may have been involved with her sister's disappearance. Sean tells her what he knows: he figures that Jeremy is going to try to access the money, which means he has to be near a phone and a computer. Great, that narrows it down. He doesn't mention that he's also going to want to be near something sharp so he can carve chunks off of her. Tally wonders if Zoe maybe just left on her own, and Sean says that he's waiting to hear back from some people he and Jeremy both know in Buffalo. And so much for the theory that this show takes place in Buffalo. I'm still thinking upstate New York, though. Tally wonders why the cops aren't looking into Sean's "lead", and Sean admits that the cops think that they have it figured out. He's probably being shadowed right now (that's me saying that, not Sean). Tally just glares at him, and he realizes that the cops might not be alone in that. "You don't have a lot of fans around here," Tally sourly acknowledges. Sean says that he still doesn't want to tell anybody about the deal he made with Zoe, because he doesn't want her to get in trouble if and when she comes back. "Or lose the money, right?" Tally points out. Rather than denying it, Sean hands Tally Zoe's PDA and cell phone and asks her to try to figure out the email password to find clues to her sister's whereabouts. He says that his number and address are in there, and she should contact him if she finds anything, although he'll be out of town for a few days. He leaves, and Tally doesn't look all that relieved that Sean didn't kidnap and/or kill her, too.
Back at the winners' meeting, things are still blowing up. Kimberly's hiding out in the bathroom, but lets Nina in when she knocks. Nina tells Kimberly not to worry about it: "They're a bunch of idiots. They're so scared of losing that money." Kimberly admits that maybe she's scared of fighting for it. "What about Ethan?" Nina asks. Kimberly saints that even when they were poor, she thanked God every day for Ethan. "I feel like I have so much," she says weepily, "I'm afraid to ask for more." Okay, now I hate her. Christ, save it for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Tally's back in her apartment, browsing through photos on her computer. Most of them have Zoe and/or Tally in them, including one badly PhotoShopped specimen of the two of them standing side-by-side with their shoulders overlapping. Tally flips back to the picture of Zoe and a dog we've never seen before, and then her phone rings. It's one of the detectives calling from the police station. He tries to be all casual as he says that they "overlooked some housekeeping" when she was in earlier; specifically, they forgot to ask Tally for a DNA sample. You know, just in case. Tally isn't as dumb as she looks, and she realizes that this means they found blood in Zoe's apartment. The detective freezes on the other end of the phone, like, way to hold up under questioning, there, Sparky. He can dish it out but he can't take it. Tally freaks out, hangs up, and gets the hell out of there.
Beth's sitting out on Nina and Peter's porch by herself, averse as always to confrontation. Cameron comes out with the squalling baby attached to his chest, and says that the baby is having trouble breathing. Okay, when we learned that M. Small was allergic to carrots, it was because his reaction to them included having trouble breathing. So I know what an infant in respiratory distress sounds like. It most assuredly does not sound like an air raid siren. Beth puts her ear to the kid's mouth for some reason, like she's the one who needs to be struck deaf. Yeah, that's fair.
One ambulance transition shot later, Beth and Cameron are rushing into the Emergency Room behind paramedics and doctors. "Help him," Beth says. "He can't breathe." Like it just came up. They stand there looking worried as the docs go to work.
Back from commercials, Cameron asks what's wrong with the kid, and the doctor's initial diagnosis is "substance withdrawal." He goes back in to join the scrum of medical professionals, and no matter how crappy I think this show is -- and I do -- there's something heartbreaking about seeing all these doctors working on the kid, with no part of him visible except a tiny little hand waving a toy giraffe around. Shut up. I'm not made of stone, and I used to have a baby myself before he turned into a toddler.
Back at the party, the big fight has broken up into a bunch of little fights. Nina takes Peter aside and says that she doesn't want to "let Kimberly walk away from what's hers." Peter still thinks there are plenty of other ways that Kimberly's name could have ended up on the dollar. Yeah, maybe Sunny wrote it there. Shut up, Peter. Nina asks Peter why he's so eager to trust Sunny: "What is it about that girl that men never see her for what she is?" The fact that she's threatening to take away everyone's money? Peter accuses Nina of being jealous of Sunny, and Nina realizes what's going on: the money is bringing out the worst in everyone, including them. Thanks for the news flash.
Back out in the living room, the burly longhair is trying to intimidate Sunny and getting nowhere. Peter heads back in and a lawyer throws an arm around his shoulder, saying that this is starting to look like a twenty-way lawsuit, which is no way to start a new business. Addie says to nobody that either Kimberly or Sunny is lying, but either way she doesn't know what it has to do with them. From off-camera, some extra says that it's a shared win. Thanks for clearing that up, fifty-odd minutes in. Finally, Peter makes it to the front of the room and says that he's come up with a solution: "It's fair, it's quick, and it does it tonight." In short, he suggests that each winner give one twentieth of their share to Sunny. General consternation ensues. Peter says that it's only 5%, after which they'll close ranks. "Anybody makes a claim against one of us, they're making a claim against all of us." Uh, not unlike what's happening now? Most people don't want to give Sunny a dime, but Peter points out that it beats giving a third to the lawyers. Surprisingly, no lawyers object. He speechifies that the money has caused all manner of fighting among people who are supposed to be close: "Maybe none of you lay awake at night wondering what you did to deserve twenty million bucks, but I do.... If we're willing to go at each other like this over a piece of money that we don't even need? None of us deserves a dime." Nina's the first to smile. Amazingly, there is no slow-clap.
Later, everyone's leaving as Peter and Nina stand by the door saying their goodbyes. Money-Suit Geek mentions something to Peter about going to a baseball game, and Peter totally gives him the "maybe" blow-off. On Kimberly's way out, she thanks Nina, who hugs her when she gets all tongue-tied. "It was the least we could do," Peter adds. Shut up, Peter. Go have sex with Sunny or something. Kimberly hugs him anyway. Nina leaves them to it, and goes over to Sunny. "Are you happy?" Nina asks her. "You should be." Sunny's all, "I guess it's only a million less than I should have, but same with you." How magnanimous. I suppose the important thing is that she's learned her lesson. Also important is the fact that Peter basically ignores her when she walks out past him. Ooh, that's going to sting for at least a third of a second.
Maggie's in the kitchen, gathering some scraps. Some tall blond waiter comes in and mocks her for it, and she comes right back at him: "Just because I won the lottery, I'm a cheapskate because I don't waste food?" The waiter says that he's kidding, because Maggie could get him fired nine hundred times over. He then offers his congratulations/condolences, which gets her attention. "I'll take enough over too much any day," he smugs. Maggie is totally fished in by this, and asks for his number. She gets it, written on her hand. Whatever.
Damien's out in front of Frankie's house, throwing rocks at her bedroom window. I don't know whether he's been there before, or if he just picked a window at random. Too bad they both don't have cell phones, in any case, as we just saw they did about a half hour ago. Frankie comes out, wondering what he's doing at her house at 10:00 PM. Damien invites her for a drive, but she can't since she has school tomorrow. "Can't you call one of your friends?" she asks. Damien says that they all have the same problem. "It's an epidemic," he "cracks." He suggests a walk, but Frankie says that her mom's home and is going to Arizona the day. "So she totally ignores you unless she needs you for a deposition or you fit into her schedule?" Damien says, which is rather rude of him. He immediately apologizes, even though Frankie lets him off the hook. "She used to be a really good mom," Frankie says. "Before my dad left. And the money. It does weird things to people." Like Damien doesn't know. She asks him whether he ever thinks about going back home, and he flatly says no before leaving. "I ache for you," the soundtrack anvils as he slumps across her lawn to his sad, sad, bright red Viper that's almost two whole days old now.
The baby's been moved to Baby Intensive Care or whatever, and the doctor's telling Cameron and Beth that the narcotics in the baby's system should clear out in a few days. Beth asks how they got there in the first place, and the doctor guesses secondhand pipe smoke. "My God," Beth groans, and walks off, leaving Cameron to ask the doctor how best to help the baby now. The doctor doesn't really know anything, beyond saying that a lot of the kids just need to be held. Cameron looks back in through the glass at the baby, and sees where Beth's gone: She's actually entered the unit and is lifting the kid out of his bassinet, giving him snuggles and kisses. Cameron looks touched that his wife isn't the huge asshole she pretends to be, and the baby just looks back at him with his Mini-Cameron eyes like, This has been going on all day, you sucker. Soon, I bet she'll even know my name.
Frankie goes back into her house to find her mother crashed out on the sofa. Frankie spoons her, and gets one sleepy arm around the shoulder for her trouble. Enjoy Arizona, Addie.
Galina's back at Damien's suite, so either Damien dropped her off before he went to hassle his girlfriend, or she got a ride home from her new lawyer. She's sprawled on the couch in what passes for her PJs and watching a network-friendly version of hotel-room porn. When she hears the key in the door, she flips off the tube and hops up, looking guilty and holding a flimsy blanket in front of herself. Damien says that he doesn't care if she watches TV, but she heads into her bedroom anyway. Damien sits down in her place and turns the TV back on. It's still on the porn channel, so he turns it back off in alarm. And then he reconsiders. Galina watches from her bedroom as he deliberately turns it back on and sets down the remote. Satisfied, she turns and walks to her bed, dropping the blanket and giving Damien, should he be interested, a view of her green top and teeny-tiny white shorts, which she displays to maximum effect as she crawls up the length of her bed. Damien turns to watch her. Galina gets under the covers, looking sneaky. Damien looks helpless to resist. I was wondering how long it was going to take her to realize that the Balki Bartokomous routine was not only degrading and demeaning, but a waste of time. Whereas waving her ass in his face is probably not a waste of time.
Sean grabs a roll of bills out of his dresser drawer, and he's getting ready to go when there's a knock at his apartment door. It's Tally, of course, saying she "hacked" Zoe's password, which is a generous term for typing in Zoe's old dog's name. But the only clues Tally found were a reservation that Zoe made to Santiago for two: herself and Sean, she says. She also found the beginning of an email saying how wonderful Sean is. Sean pretends not to be happy to hear it, although you know he's relieved that Tally has a reason to trust him now. He says that he's going to Buffalo, since a friend of his there says that Jeremy's sister is acting weird. Tally says that she's going with him. Sean turns her back on her to get his bag, which is enough time for her to reach into her bag and show the camera the handgun she's got stashed in there. She puts it back in, and Sean ushers her out the door, none the wiser. So, now, does she buy Sean's story, and plan to shoot Jeremy when they find him? Or was she lying to him about the email she found, and she still thinks he did something to Zoe and she's hoping he'll lead her to her, whereupon she plans to shoot Sean? Or maybe Dave lied to Sean about not knowing where Zoe is. Or maybe the motel manager lied to Sean about not knowing where Jeremy is. So many variables at play here. And I could say I care, but I'd be lying.