Episode Overview: Cissy has a change of heart and agrees to let Tina see Shaun. John enlists Joe and Bill on a justice ride, but John zones out and...spiritually teleports himself to stop Cissy from killing herself. Then things get really crazy.
On tonight's
John from Cincinnati, the last line of the episode is from Vietnam Joe, who sarcastically says, "Well, that was time well spent." He's both right and wrong, because it the trippiest, weirdest episode of the unusual HBO series yet, and if you understand anything that John says in the last 15 minutes of the episode, please let us know.
Before logic and reason fly out the window, however, Cissy (Rebecca DeMornay) is still reeling over the visit from her grandson's mom, a porn star named Tina. It turns out Shaun is all to familiar withhis mom's works, even dropping a DVD on the table titled
Moist Thighs, Pink Bottoms. Classy. But Shaun is an understanding 13-year-old who doesn't mind that all his friends pleasure themselves to his mom, because he's more angry with his grams about keeping Tina away. Cissy, naturally, bottoms out.
To make things right, she seeks out Butchie and demands he get Tina back to see her son, because Cissy is not about to lose even more members of her family. Butchie obliges in an awkward phone call in which he is simultaneously shown to be a racist, misogynist and blasphemer. It's the ha trick of obscenity! Despite the constant insults, he convinces Tina to come back for a sit-down with her son.
Elsewhere, John (Austin Nichols) is recruiting Vietnam Joe and Bill (Ed O'Neill) for this week's message from God: "Justice must be served." Justice comes by way of a stakeout to track down the guy who stabbed John last episode. Bill's dementia is furthered when John starts channeling his dead wife, and by John's constant parroting in the car. Particularly annoying is a cheesey carpet store radio ad that John mimics to a tee.
In the world of misfit boys, the motel is this week's hot spot for all the odd little hangers-on to the Yost family. Freddie unveils the hidden talent of playing the sax, Palaka agrees to let Dr, Smith give him a cast, Ramon (Luis Guzman) teaches Barry (Matt Winston) the finer points of raking, and Attorney Dickstein (Willie Garson) has a fiancee. Their goal of renovating the motel hopefully has some larger purpose, because right now, watching guys scrub an empty pool is not my idea of must-see TV.
Then, about halfway through the episode, things go from strange to WTF. While on the stakeout, John has a flash, then lapses into a coma. Next wee see him magically transported to the Yost's backyard, looking in at Cissy, who is preparing to shoot herself. John adopts the speaking style of the radio ad and offers up plenty of insights into Cissy's background. It's all great, but the key point is this: Cissy is so messed up because, when Butchie was 13-years-old and Mitch was an absentee father, she walked in on her son masturbating, then offered to help show him how to do it properly. The proper reaction to this news is disgust, though I'd also except "creeped out," <shudder>, or just "ewwwwwwwww." Luckily, John's magic works and Cissy puts the gun down. But Cissy still won't be a part of the Tina-Shaun meeting, so she flees and leaves some tuna fish out for Tina to make for her son.
Now we go into thw truly bizarre. John, apparently still on his magical mystery teleportation visits the motel and wanders around, sight unseen, delivering the world's most confusing monologue. I'll do my best to explain: he's talking a lot about things that have happened or will happen. He constantly refers to "my father" and the things he's capable of, and in case you're just joining us, his father is clearly God. He talks about how the past has repeated itself, with Cissy's mistakes with Butchie recurring with Shaun. There's plenty of mentions of Cass' camera, and the wonderful things it sees or doesn't see. Also repeated quite often is the phrase "the word on the wall," and some stuff about circles and lines and the line on the circle in the word on the wall and the word of the circle in the line on the wall. It's either childish gibberish plagiarized from Dr, Seuss, or maybe it's the pure, unadulterated genius of creator David Milch.
In the end, that whole scene and narration is a lot like abstract art or the works of Jackson Pollock. Either you love it and you think it's absolute genius, or it just looks like some kid dropped some paint on a canvas and the critic pretend that it has meaning. We may never know the truth, but fans of
Deadwood must remember that David Milch is no dummy. The season is halfway done, and maybe, hopefully, there will be some sort of explanation for this insane show. Maybe it's like religion, and you can't question it, you just need to have faith that this show has a point.
Well, that was time well spent.
-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image courtesy of HBO)