Episode Title: Secrets Cry Aloud
Season 05, Episode 14
Episode 089 of 344
Written by Diana Gould
Directed by Alexander Singer
Original Airdate: Thursday, December
29th, 1983
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Val tells
Lilimae she's pregnant, and Lilimae inadvertently tells Ben. Val admits to him
that the baby is Gary's, and Ben's upset. Cathy and Gary kiss, but Gary says he
won't cheat on Abby. Mack tells Greg he has
evidence on Wolfbridge. Mack's office and the MacKenzie home is ransacked. Laura
offers money to the Marcus', to buy their property on Lotus Point, but they
won't sell. Mark St. Claire goes to see Abby and says that he represents
Wolfbridge, and they will be her partners in Lotus Point. Abby refuses, and
Mark says she has no choice. If she doesn't cooperate, they will have her
variance revoked. Karen ransacks Val's bathroom looking for pills, and is so
out of it, she doesn't even notice her house has been trashed. Karen calls the
doctor and gets a refill. Mack finds Karen passed out in the shower with the
empty bottle of pills beside her.
Oh boy, get ready for a loaded
episode. Of all the eps we watched
upon our last visit (spanning I’ll Tell You No Lies through Forsaking All Others), this one has to be the most dense and rich, just packed with
excitement and drama from start to finish.
By the time it was over, I said to My Beloved Grammy that it almost felt
like it had been a two-hour episode, not meaning that it felt long or drawn out
in any way, but only that so goddamn much
happened in it. Let’s dive in.
Oh jeez, who to start with? All the characters are real busy this week,
but I think I’ll start with Gary and Cathy, since I’m really loving the shit
out of all the developments between the two characters. Why do I find this so fascinating? Hmmm, I think the main reason is that I’m in
legitimate awe of how KL can take a
story that’s so inherently silly and not only make it feel pretty realistic and
grounded, but also use it to say a lot about the characters and help us to
better understand them. I mean, it is ridiculous that Lisa Hartman can play
the character of Ciji, that character can be murdered, and then a handful of
eps later, Lisa Hartman can be back on the series as a new character named
Cathy (which is also such a wonderfully similar name) who just happens to look
exactly like Ciji (even if she claims, “I don’t see the resemblance”) and who
Abby just happened to stumble upon and then hire to pull a Vertigo type distraction on Gary.
With all that said, however, it never feels ridiculous on the series, and I’m still kinda trying to
figure out how the writers manage to pull that off.
Okay, so anyway, what are the
two up to this week? Well, we open on
the most fabulously ‘80s image I’ve ever seen, which is Cathy floating in the
Westfork pool on one of those big inflatable rafts while Gary talks to someone
on one of those gigantic cordless phones with the huge antenna that could
easily stab somebody’s eye out (in fact, I’m pretty sure I have an old Playboy
with an ad for that exact phone in it).
This image definitely reinforces that we’ve entered a new era for KL, and when I say “new,” I also mean
“better.” Yes, those early days of the
first three seasons and episodes about say, Michael’s A.D.D. problems (you all
remember that one? The writers sure
don’t) seem very far away as we watch Cathy float in the lavish pool and Gary
do his thing on his super sexy ‘80s phone.
After Gary hangs up, we learn
that he is going to have to drive out to the country somewhere to see a
horse. He’s considering buying a new
horse but the owner really wants to meet and get to know people before she
sells off her horses. Because of that,
he invites Cathy along and she agrees.
Not too long after, we have another
fabulous image that I really wanted to masturbate to, which is Abs relaxing
in the Westfork hot tub. It’s completely
impossible for me to see a hot tub now and not immediately think of Donna Mills in a swimsuit, just relishing the shit out of those hot jets massaging her
back, mmmmm. As she lounges, Cathy comes
and tells her about this impending trip to the country and asks how she should
handle it. Abs reinforces that Cathy’s
job is to keep Gary occupied, doing whatever it takes. There’s a little pause and then she says,
“Everything except for that,” and we
understand what is being implied. Is Abs worried about Cathy and
Gary? She sure doesn’t seem like it at
this point, but if she was paying a little more attention, she might notice
that the two are starting to act like more than friends, that they’ve really
taken a liking to each other that goes beyond the job Cathy was hired to do as
well as Gary’s own Jimmy Stewart obsessions.
You’d think that Abs would be a little more reticent to send Cathy off
to the country with Gary, but then again she is occupied with her own dramas,
which we shall explore shortly.
Gary and Abs go to visit this
ranch and meet the owner, a lovely old woman named Mercy who is played by Ann Doran (pictured below when she was much younger). A quick glance at this lady's
IMDb page proves very impressive, as she has been in a ton of stuff including Rebel Without a Cause and her first damn
acting credit goes all the way back to 1922!
I didn’t recognize a whole ton of stuff on her resume, but I’m just
impressed by how many years she was acting (all the way until 1988) and the
fact that she lived all the way until the year 2000. In this small role, she makes the most of
it. I found this character very warm and
full of life and rather memorable. This
could easily be a toss-off, just a plot necessity to get Gary and Cathy up to
this ranch, but instead she really fills this character with energy and I
believe her as a woman who really loves raising horses and really cares about
where her horses go when she sells them.
Gary impresses the lady when he tells her how he grew up on a ranch and
has been around horses and animals his whole life. We are really seeing the Gary who loves the
land (“Gary loved the laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand,” as Miss Ellie would say) at
this point in the series. Now that he’s
got his own ranch and is surrounded by nature all day, he is really in his
element.
Anywho,
due to some complications, by the time the old lady has agreed to sell the
horse, it’s real dark out and she insists that Gary and Cathy stay the night,
saying how they won’t get back to California until four in the morning and she
can’t have that on her conscious. She
also says how it’s nice to see a happy young couple like them, and of course
after scoring the horse, Gary doesn’t want to burst her bubble and tell her
that Cathy is just the reincarnation of a singer he knew and that he’s got a
different wife at home, so they let it slide and, of course, the next scene is them
awkwardly trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements. At first Gary says how he can sleep in the
chair, but Cathy won’t hear of it, so the two get into the sleeping attire (and
of course Gary just has to sleep
shirtless, which I would probably avoid if I was sleeping next to Lisa Hartman
and trying not to have sex with her) and settle in for the night. One very significant and very honest bit of
business occurs before the two drift to sleep, in which Cathy asks if Gary ever
had sex with Ciji (except she says, “Make love,” and I think we all know at
this point how I feel about that term), and Gary answers very candidly with, “I
don’t think so.” He explains how, during
his drinking days, he would often have blackouts and not remember what
occurred, and he says how sometimes he would sleep over at Ciji’s apartment and
not remember getting there or staying the night there, but he concludes by
saying that he’s fairly certain he didn’t do it.
The
two actually behave themselves very well all through the night, but then the
next morning comes and, well, there’s some kissing. This is another example of the thirty-second
preview at the start of the ep showing you something to lead your mind to make
one assumption, but then you are surprised by what actually winds up
occurring. See, the two do sorta start
to kiss and then make out a bit (and of course I’m watching this and thinking
about how, really, they would probably have bad morning breath and this
wouldn’t be too terribly romantic, but I digress), but then Gary puts a quick
halt to it. What follows is one of
Gary’s finest moments ever, in which he explains how, if he was still a
drinking man, he would probably go through with this, because if he felt any
guilt about it, he could take a drink and wash that guilt right out of his
head. However, he’s not a drinking man
anymore and he says how he married Abs and he must respect their marriage, no
matter how much he might like to be with Cathy. My
God, isn’t KL just so fucking good? I could go on for hours about this one scene
alone, but I’ll try to make it succinct and keep it to just a few thoughts so
we can move on to our other characters.
I love so much about this scene, and the first thing I love about it is
that the writers are, as always, putting character above drama. On any other nighttime soap, these two would
sleep together, just because it’s exciting and it makes for good drama. The other shows would care less about what
makes sense for the characters and more about what will be titillating to the
viewers. But with KL, they allow Gary to step back from the situation and get
introspective and explain why he can’t do this, and it shows us some tremendous
personal growth from him, which leads me to my second point.
I
don’t mean to sound like I’m always shitting on Dallas, because Dallas will
always occupy a special place in my heart and I'll always love it for its good seasons and for the memories of watching it with my brother, but it’s just that watching KL simply makes Dallas pale in comparison.
Over on that series, I felt like the characters weren’t really allowed
to grow or change. J.R. was pretty much
J.R. from start to finish, and while Hagman played him brilliantly in every
episode and is an iconic part of TV history, I felt like there wasn’t really
much room for growth with him, aside from perhaps softening up a bit and
becoming a smidge less wicked by the
end of the series. Same with Bobby, who
was generally the boringly heroic and good brother. One character who was allowed to grow and change was Sue Ellen, but it took forever.
It wasn’t until season ten
that she finally gave up drinking for good and started to fix her life (I know
she does that in season nine, but then that turns out to be a damned dream, so
you know, doesn’t really count). Over
here, the writers don’t rely on Gary’s alcoholism as some crutch they can
return to whenever they’re running dry on stories; instead, he had his big
bender in season four and now we have him really and truly committing to
changing his life and being a good person.
He hit his rock bottom and now he’s making his life good. Already I’m seeing tremendous growth and
evolution of Gary from the one we met in the Dallas interludes and the first season of KL.
Meanwhile,
Val’s still pregnant and this week two more characters get to find out this
news, one on purpose and one by sheer accident/misunderstanding. See, Val is taking a shower when Lilimae
comes into her bedroom to speak to her.
While Val gets dried up in the bathroom, Lilimae is sorta lying on Val’s
bed, flipping through some manuscript pages and telling Val how she’s thought
of some more stories that Val could incorporate into the book if she’s
interested. While looking through the
papers, what should she happen to find but a couple of pregnancy pamphlets. Now, at first I actually thought that Lilimae
was pulling an Abby move right here and purposefully going into Val’s room to
snoop for something. The reason I
thought this is because she seems remarkably calm when she sees the pamphlets,
so I thought perhaps she had entered the bedroom on a quest for them, but then
I talked with My Beloved Grammy and she pointed out how Lilimae looks casual
and relaxed, then she walks out of the bedroom and sorta pauses and gets this
look on her face that’s like, “Wait, what did I just see?” So really, I think Lilimae was just sorta
rifling through pages of Val’s book, found the pamphlets, and then it took a
minute for her to realize what that means.
Thank God My Beloved Grammy is here to discuss these plot points with
me, and it’s also a testament to how well crafted the show is that we are
always able to discuss what’s going on in a sorta open dialogue (we didn’t do
that as much with Dallas).
Okay,
so it’s not too long later that Val gets straight with Lilimae and tells her
that yes, she is pregnant. She leaves
out a few important details, such as that the baby is Gary’s because of a night
of unbridled passion back in …And Never Brought to Mind. She then tells
Lilimae to not tell anybody, and My Beloved Grammy shouted at the TV, “That
means don’t tell Ben!” Lilimae couldn’t
hear My Beloved Grammy through the TV screen, however, because a few scenes
later we see her heading up to Ben’s Plant House with some devil’s food cake,
ready to make peace with him and talk about this impending baby. Of course, at first Ben is a bit surprised to
see Lilimae being so nice to him, but then she starts to talk about plans for
the future, saying how she is a progressive mother and wouldn’t object if Ben
and Val decided to live in sin for awhile before getting married. Then she says how they shouldn’t kick her out
of the house, not just because she enjoys living rent-free on a nice cul-de-sac
with super interesting characters as her neighbors, but also because she would
make a great babysitter. When Ben hears
the word “babysitter,” he’s like, “Lilimae, don’t you think you’re jumping the
gun a little bit?” It’s at this moment
that Lilimae pretty much lets the cat out of the bag, and I gotta say I admire
the way Ben keeps his cool. Make no
mistake, he makes a face like, “Oh jeez, I’m kinda surprised,” but he doesn’t
admit to her that he was unaware of this news; he just sorta nods. Of course, at this point he is unaware that
the baby is not actually his, and how will he react when he finds this out?
We
don’t have to wait long to see, because a little bit later he and Val get
together and talk about this news. Now,
based on the uncomfortable face Ben made at the very start of our last episode,
Witness, when Val dropped that
frightening “love” word on him, My Beloved Grammy predicted that he wouldn’t be
excited about fatherhood. However, it’s
the exact opposite, as he gets all hyped up and says how he just can’t wait to
be a dad, and there’s all these cool things he wants to do with a kid, and oh
gee golly gosh he just can’t wait. Mere
seconds later, Val tells him the truth, and I really appreciated that for a
multitude of reasons. Again, this goes
right back to what I was saying about character coming before drama. Another series would probably have Val stay
hush hush about the real father for a ton of episodes and build a bunch of
drama out of that, but here, the writers know her character so well and they
know that she simply wouldn’t do that.
She is inherently decent and strives to always do the right thing and
she doesn’t lie, so she tells Ben right away that Gary is the father. Once he hears this, all of Ben’s excitement
deflates and he angrily storms out of the house.
I
have to say that all of this is playing as much richer and much more exciting
than it did upon first viewing. In fact,
I’m gonna make a really bizarre confession and say that I really don’t even remember any of this. I vividly recall all the shit that goes down
with Val and her babies next season, but all of these developments involving
the conception of the baby (babies, but we still don’t know that) and the way
she deals with it and how Ben reacts to it, well, for whatever reason all that
stuff fell clear out of my head. I was
drinking quite a lot more when I first watched the series, and would usually
pound back three or four martinis (or just straight vodka on the rocks with a twist of lime, which
was my favorite college drink) while watching, so perhaps that explains some of
my lapses in memory.
But
anyway, everything about this story is working 100% for me here, and that includes
Ben. Now, I want to make it clear that
while Ben is still probably my least favorite cast member out of the scrolling
squares (well, probably the still-absent Diana is my least favorite at this
precise moment, but let’s not split hairs), he’s already playing way better for
me than I remember. I remember him just
being dull, not Kenny or Ginger dull, but still pretty dull. Now, I’m really warming to him more, and I
admire that the writers were able to introduce him out of the blue at the start
of this season and already I feel investment in his feelings towards Val and
their relationship. Even just thinking
over the season thus far, they did a great job of establishing his past and
what he’s been up to (he didn’t mention Jean Hackney at all, but I suppose
we’ll get to that when the time
comes) and we get the sense that, after having some wild adventures and being
all over the world, he is ready to settle down.
Hence, it makes sense to me that he would be initially excited about Val
being pregnant, and it also makes sense that he would be upset that Gary is the
father. One thing worth noting is that
Val doesn’t get any time to explain to him how this happened, so for all Ben
knows, Gary and Val have been carrying on some ongoing affair behind his back. If he heard that it was just one night, that it was unplanned, that
it was spur of the moment, that it just happened, perhaps he could understand,
but he runs off on Val too fast for that to occur.
Ben
figures pretty heavily into the next episode story that I wish to talk about,
which is Mack and Wolfbridge. Early in
the ep, Mack comes by The Plant House and asks Ben to leak a story. Ben asks him what the story is about, and
Mack tells him he wants him to write something to the effect of, “An anonymous
source is currently conducting a serious investigation of the Wolfbridge
group.” He says how he wants to scare
them a little, ruffle some feathers, maybe get them to take some action against
him so that he can prove what an evil little powerhouse they are. Ben is amiable and says he will see what he
can do for leaking this story, but before he ever has a chance to, Mack returns
to his office to find it completely trashed.
What a fabulous little scene this was, and so well played by The
Dobsonator, because instead of being mad or shocked about his ruined office, he
grins. He knows that he’s scaring them
now, and that means he’s onto something with his investigations, much the same way that a certain sexual predator President-elect who shall remain nameless gets so nervous whenever the CIA starts talking about investigating Russian hacking and potential voter fraud.
A
little while later, Mack finds his car completely trashed, as well, and with
some sort of file missing from the front seat.
This time he doesn’t grin, but he also doesn’t seem terribly upset. This just provides more evidence that the
Wolfbridge group is getting nervous about his investigations. However, Mack is upset a little bit later when he comes home to find the entire
house trashed. Now things are getting
too personal, because now he may very well be putting Karen’s life at risk, or
even Michael’s! Can you imagine what the
world would be like if someone damaged that boy’s beautiful face and body or,
God forbid, murdered him when he is
just on the cusp of turning 18 and reaching the height of his sexual powers?! That would not be a world I could possibly
live in, and if someone were to damage the beautiful boy's body beyond repair, I would have no problem with that person being killed on the spot, no trial and no jury and nothing like that.
Okay,
now follow me along here, because the next part gets tricky. Again, my lack of drinking upon this viewing
and the help of My Beloved Grammy is making it a lot easier to follow some of
these plot points that zoomed straight over my head back in college. In this instance, the plot is really
thickening for Abs and Lotus Point. See,
since she wants to take all of Lotus Point and the beautiful beach property surrounding
it and turn it into some big hotel or whatever, that means all the people who
are living there currently need to be relocated. Now, most all of them have agreed to move
thanks to a very generous monetary settlement or whatever, but there is one old
couple that refuses to move and yes, the old lady is the gramma from Critters 2. As soon as I saw this woman onscreen, I was
like, “It’s Nana from Critters 2!” This makes the second Critters 2 alumni I’ve spotted in the span of just a few episodes
(remember that the gross old guy that the crites ate early in that movie showed
up to direct Gary on where to find Cathy a few episodes back). This sweet little actress is named Herta Ware (pictured below)
and, in addition to Critters 2, she
also has many movies on her resume that are not as good as Critters 2, including Cocoon and
Species. Herta Ware, ladies and gentlemen.
Her
husband, by the way, also has a rather impressive roster of credits to his
name. This actor’s name is Peter Hobbs
(pictured below) and he was in Sleeper (alongside Mark Graison!), The Andromeda Strain, and 9 to 5. But wait a minute, wait just one God damned
minute here, as I took a look at his IMDb I gasped aloud when I realized that
he is also a Tangled Knot and we have seen him once before already! Let’s flash back to early season three and
the episode Moving In. You’ll recall that as the episode where Lilimae
officially became a part of the cul-de-sac by agreeing to live with Val, and he
played the judge who was so, well, judgey towards Gary and Val and gave that
big sanctimonious speech about how we
must not abandon our senior citizens.
Well, now he’s back and he has morphed into this new character, a man
who refuses to sell his house that he’s lived in for like fifty years or
whatever.
Okay,
enough about that. The basic gist is
that Abs sends Laura out to try and sweet-talk the couple into selling their
house. Laura says something like,
“Doesn’t it bother you that a lot of people are going to be forced out of their
homes because of this?” and Abs replies with, “It’s the way the game is played;
if you don’t like it, you can get out.”
After that, we get a real good scene between Laura and the old couple in
which she tries to speak with them and they simply refuse. I love the fact that you can tell Laura
doesn’t want to do this, and when she tries to speak directly to them and say
how they really don’t have a choice, she means it as a sorta warning, but they
take it as more of a threat. Really,
Laura is just trying to say that this situation is out of her own control and
that they had better sell because, in the end, they won’t have the choice to
stay, but it’s easy to see how the old folks interpret it as her sending them a
threat. In any case, the scene ends with
the old couple still adamant in their refusal to leave.
Before
I continue with that plot point, let’s pause to talk about Laura for a minute. During the incredible opening credit scrolling
squares of one of the five eps we watched on our last visit, My Beloved Grammy
opined that she would like to see more of Laura’s personal life, pointing out
how we hardly ever see Laura at home or hanging out with her kids (you all
remember she had little baby Daniel back at the start of season four, right?),
that she’s mostly on the show connected with other people’s plotlines. Yes, this is true, I agree with her, and I
wish to address that a bit now. I
feel in many ways Laura has really blossomed this season. Without Richard around to degrade her and
make her feel bad, I feel she has really turned into that perfect Laura that I
know and love, the eye-rolling woman who is always ready with a sassy comment and
who has a certain still-waters-run-deep quality, always kinda hanging out in
the background and observing what’s going on around her, not necessarily making
a big deal out of it, but just sorta watching.
However, it’s definitely true that she’s not getting many of her own,
independent storylines at this point.
Rather, she is a part of the Gary/Abs story, and she’s functioning as
one aspect of this ever-expanding plotline.
Based on my memories, I think this remains something of a problem for
the rest of Laura’s time on the show.
She is always great, Constance always plays her perfectly, and I always
love her presence, but I remember her feeling a little bit like she existed to
form part of other character’s storylines.
A little later, we’ll see her get close to Sumner and that’s all very
wonderful, but even still, she’s a portion of his stories. So I’m agreeing
with My Beloved Grammy that I would enjoy seeing more of Laura’s personal life,
maybe some exciting stories of her own, maybe more in the vein of season two
when I felt like she was actively getting her own material to work with and
stories that were purely Laura, and that is probably really my only complaint
about the series at this exact point in the saga.
Okay,
now one of the BIG developments this week is that we finally meet Mark St.
Claire (pictured below), who is a delightfully campy James Bond villain kind of guy who is going
to be with us through the rest of the season and also into a teeny weeny bit of
season six. Now, I confess to a smidge
of confusion because, in two previous eps, we had Sumner having a covert
meeting with some white guy who had glasses on, and at first I thought that was
Mark St. Claire, but no, I was mistaken, for he is making his first appearance
right here. He comes strolling into
Abby’s palace office and says how he could help her out with her business, that
he runs some big company that has a lot of power and Bob Loblaw. To Abby’s credit, she does not believe or
trust this man and orders him out of her office. If I recall correctly, he makes some sort of
vague threat to her, but I can’t quite remember what it was. In any case, we have quite a few more eps
with this guy, often sitting in a dark, smoke filled room with random evil people
around him, making phonecalls full of threats to lots of characters. I guess this guy is like the head of
Wolfbridge, the big cheese, the Don Corleone of this outfit. We’ll have more time to explore him at
greater length as we move through the rest of the season.
The
last character to talk about is Karen, and it’s a doozy this week. She is slipping ever deeper into her pill
problem, acting like she is stoned all the time, unable to carry on simple
conversations, alienating her friends as they try to help her; it’s all very
bad. In this ep, she learns that she’s
expected to make some big speech at one of Greg’s political fundraiser
things. Now, I’m a little fuzzy on the
details here, because I couldn’t figure out if Karen clear forget to even write the speech, or if she already has
the speech written and has just forgotten that she’s expected to deliver it in
just one day. In
any case, we see her getting all stressed about this speech, pacing around her
room on the night of the rally and practicing the speech with M.F. Only problem is that she can barely get a
couple of words out before she has to ask M.F. for help with what comes
next. She concludes by saying how, if
she gets confused, she can look at her notes, and everyone heads off to the
rally, but we viewers should all be getting a sinking sensation in our guts at
this point, because we know nothing good can come of this. This feeling only grows worse when Karen
realizes she is out of pills, frantically searches her room and her medicine
cabinet for the sign of any only to find all the bottles totally empty, and
then has to head off to the rally all without the aid of any of her pills.
The
scene where Karen has to give her speech is legitimately painful to watch and I
felt awful for her while I was watching, but that’s a testament to how well
done the scene is. This isn’t supposed
to be fun to watch; it’s supposed to be sad and embarrassing. See, the big moment comes and some old lady
stands up and is like, “I’m not good at giving speeches, so let me introduce
you to Karen!” Karen stands up and it’s
just awful. She barely can get a word
out and she keeps stammering and stumbling over what she’s supposed to say, and
we get a really good visual flourish that helps us to understand her
perspective in which we have a head-on view of the entire crowd staring at her
and then the lens starts to get really super blurry and we realize that it’s
her vision we are seeing at this moment.
Then, to make it even worse, she picks up her notes to help her and ends
up dropping them all over the floor before finally Mack comes up to rescue her
and take her away from the rally, all while she just sorta stammers, “I’m
sorry,” over and over again. In all
truth, this scene probably doesn’t go on so long before Mack jumps in to get
her out of there, but it felt like absolutely forever, which is a testament to
how well done the scene is.
Next
up, we have Karen and Val together at Val’s house. Val is in the middle of trying to say
something when a super groggy Karen just gets up and says, “Excuse me,” before disappearing
out of the room. Then we cut to Karen
raiding Val’s medicine cabinet, which has to be one of her worst moments. At first, I wondered if Karen was just
looking for any pill that would give
her the fix she needs, but then I had a flashback to a few eps back (can’t
remember the exact specific one) in which Lilimae saw Karen taking a pill and
mentioned how the doctors gave her that pill in the sanitarium. So, naturally, Karen must be looking for
those specific pills, but then Val enters with a wise look on her face and
says, “They didn’t let Mama take those pills home.” Karen has been caught red-handed going
through her friend’s medicine cabinet looking for some pills so she can survive
the night.
I
might be going out of order here, but at some point Karen calls her doctor and
makes up a fib about how she knocked her pills down the sink or something and
she needs a refill on her prescription.
Some fabulous acting from Michele in this scene as she sorta paces the
room while trying to speak with the doctor.
I have always thought it must be interesting and hard to have to act as
a person talking on the phone when there’s really nobody on the other end to
talk to, and that was a random thought I had while watching this scene, because
I really believe she’s speaking with her doctor and I really believe that she’s
pausing so he can speak back and all that stuff. It’s a weird bit of acting that I note and I
appreciate even though probably nobody else cares. While
we’re on the subject of acting, by the way, I’m back on board with Karen and
with the way Michele plays her. I was
kinda critical of her earlier this season (“WHAT
IS AN A.P.B.?!”), but now I think she’s doing terrific work and is back on
the top of her game. I really believe
her as someone descending into a drug problem, yet I don’t feel judgmental and
don’t want to condemn the character because I love Karen and I love the way
Michele plays her. Watching this, I
really just feel a desire to see her get better, to get over these problems and
return to being the normal, fun, happy Karen that we all know and love.
The
big cliffhanger of this ep involves Mack rushing into the bathroom to find
Karen passed out in the shower with the bottle of pills beside her, a fabulous
closing image which, thank God, did not have to be the final thing My Beloved
Grammy and I saw upon our last visit, for we had one more glorious episode to
watch after this one. I say this a lot,
but I imagine if I was a viewer in 1983, I would just be beside myself for
having to wait an entire agonizing seven days to see what’s going to happen to
Karen after this, omigod.
Fuck
yeah, that episode was good, am I right?
Didn’t I tell you it was dense?
It’s so brimming with drama and excitement that it’s yet another of
those eps throughout the season that feels like it could easily serve as a
season finale. Every single character
has so much going on and, just sitting here and going through my notes, I
suddenly found myself able to write so much about even small scenes or
character moments. Of the five episodes
My Beloved Grammy and I watched, and all five of them were fabulous, this one
is absolutely the best one we saw. Start
to finish, it was rich, it was exciting, it never stopped moving, and I
couldn’t look away.
Next
up, we have the return of Bill “Cooke” Duke to the director’s chair as Karen
faces the horrors of a rehab center with our very first episode of 1984, Forsaking All Others.
"Martinis and KL" could be the name of my biography. Thankfully I have cleaned up my act.
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