An important thing to note about this next scene at Bette 2020 HQ is that Bette and Dani are wearing the same colors — but reversed.
Secondly, Dani’s a real think-two-steps-ahead girl and she’s gone ahead and set up a mediation session with Felicity to get out ahead of the story and, hopefully, let all of us here at home into the story. Pierce spars, Bette bows to Dani’s superior wisdom and requests Angie be removed from the premises prior to Felicity’s arrival.
Dani asks what else in Bette’s past might come up throughout her campaign. Oh boy.
Bette: Well, I spent a night in jail. Civil disobedience, the charges were dropped. (Throwback #8: S1)
Dani: Okay.
Bette: I cheated on my ex-wife. (Throwback #9: S1)
Dani: Does she know you were unfaithful?
Bette: [laughs] Yes, she knows.
It is TRULY as if nobody in this office has read or seen Lez Girls!
And now it’s time, my friends. It’s time for the line that broke my heart and directly attacked my soul. After seeing this screener, I waited approximately 45 seconds before spilling the beans to everybody who answered affirmatively to CAN I TELL U A THING FROM GEN Q EVEN THOUGH IT’S A SPOILER?? Here we go:
Dani: Anything else?
Bette: A friend of mine died by suicide on my property. She drowned in my pool. (Throwback #10: S6)
Dani: Her name?
Bette: Jenny Schecter. S-C-H-E-C-T-E-R.
Wow, I hate this!!! I understand why they’re doing it but I wanted Season Six to be ignored because it was terrible and didn’t make sense! My feelings about the ridiculousness of Season Six and the Who Killed Jenny storyline are MANY and well-documented, but I’m as unconvinced that Jenny killed herself as I was that any of these women could’ve been her murderer. But! maybe it was an accident ’cause the railing hadn’t been built yet and they declared it suicide to avoid a lawsuit from Warren and Margot Kidder? I’m grasping for soggy cardboard straws here.
Back at The Aloce Show, Drew’s just here to help and Sophie doesn’t give a fuck about him or anything that he does! Finley directs him to his office, but in the wrong direction. Hopefully he’ll fall down a garbage chute and land in a bucket of pudding.
Sophie ignores Dani’s call and expresses a need for alcohol. Finley eagerly offers herself because she loves alcohol but Sophie is like nah I’m gonna ask my sister.
“No worries,” replies Finley with all the affability of a Boston Terrier. “I’ll hydrate. all good here.”
Dashing through the house, on a one-horsed desert sleigh, this kid’s about to puke and apparently every toilet and garbage can has been airlifted from set and all Alice can find is a crock pot and they’re screaming all the way!
Eli barfs in the crock pot. Eli wants his Mommy and Alice wants her Mommi. Shane, historically Very Good With Kids, delivers reassurances to Eli that Alice goes ahead and repeats. Shane’s like, Alice stop it. She’s like, I do not know what I am doing with this child! Thus they bundle him up on the couch where he can vomit all over his favorite blanket.
Alice is like, how do you do this. Shane’s like, kids are just people. Alice says they’re not, they’re too small. Alice says Shane should’ve reproduced with her wife Quinara and she’s surprised that Quinara didn’t convince Shane to have a Little Baby Pickle and/or Shay. Shane’s generally been pretty easily convinced to do things she doesn’t wanna do by her partners, although Shane also generally has agreed to said things and then found a way out of them, like wanting to marry Carmen and then leaving Carmen at the altar and wanting to move in with Paige and then fucking a real estate agent on the wall-to-wall carpet of their prospective future home. Maybe this is the New Shane: just saying no instead of saying yes and then doing something terrible.
The feeling of waiting for someone you’ve got an unyielding crush on AND complicated feelings about is intense. It’s like there’s something soft battling something hard in your gut but nobody’s winning and it’s just complete full-body agony. You know what I mean? Bette knows what I mean.
Because that is how Bette looks like she feels when Felicity walks by her glass house while she’s on the phone with Alice talking about putting babies in crock pots and creative solutions to vomit problems.
Meanwhile, Dani’s adorable family has come over to drink wine and eat dinner and laugh and scream and exude generally radiant love-type feelings. So this is Sophie’s Mom, Nana (Laura Patalano) and her sisters Virginia (Sofie Calderón) and Maribel (Jillian Mercado). Jillian Mercado, who uses a wheelchair, is a really incredible model/activist who came out as queer this weekend and this is her first acting role!
The fam has lots of questions: Is she gonna wear a white suit? What’s she gonna do with her hair? What’s everybody gonna do with their hair? Sophie can’t think about her hair or the suit her family wants her to get or what Maribel is gonna do with her hair or what Tia Nancy wore to her wedding ’cause she’s scared Dani’s gonna keep making decisions without her.
Her sisters, who are VERY excited about the wedding she’s about to have with a Certified Rich Person, suggest she waits ’til after the wedding to sort out decision-making. If it doesn’t work, she can always get divorced! Then she’ll be a divorced person, which is better than being a single person, because a divorced person has a KitchenAid mixer and a single person never got one. I guess that depends on who got to keep the KitchenAid mixer. We all die alone in the end.
Finley’s been building furniture in Shane’s absence!
Also, Finley stole them some toilet paper from work and wants Shane to go out and get drinks with her. “I’ll buy,” says Finley before clarifying that she will absolutely under no condition actually buy.
Shane’s definitely a no on going out ’til she notices the envelope on the counter that Finley helpfully signed for (“so technically that’s two ways I’m contributing”). She opens it and finds divorce papers tucked inside like a hot dog in a bun. On second thought: a drink sounds great! Finley needs to change into her nice pants but is THRILLED just like my dog Carol gets when it’s time for her to go out and I want to put her in her Adidog pants.