While preparing dinner, Ali and Sarah talk about the sudden reappearance of Tammy. Ali asks if Sarah has told her husband, and provides the context that Sarah and Tammy spent four years “lezzing out together,” because so far this show, like so many others, is also set in a fictional parallel universe wherein the word “bisexuality” has not been invented. Sarah tries to downplay their relationship, and Ali says the two of them were even considering adopting a kid together. THE PLOT THICKENS, SARAH. The strong flannel presence really adds a solidly gay visual element to this scene. Good work, costuming department.
Maura is being aggressively nice, or at least I assume so — if anyone is actually this sweet and kind of a parent every single day, I am going to throw in the towel because there’s no way I can pull that off. She tells Sarah that “you always do such a good job getting the food, honey,” and if I made that much of a point saying something nice to someone it would probably be because I had spilled red wine all over their laptop keyboard, but we know it’s probably because Maura is so nervous and just wants everything to go smoothly, and it makes us hope in our little pink hearts that it will. Maura also mentions the family that she’s broken up with her latest girlfriend, but that it was a good thing.
In the other room, Josh and Ali swoon over an old Jim Croce album together; Josh says something about the recording industry but all I hear is white noise when he opens his mouth. Ali tried to marry Jim Croce when she was four years old, which isn’t quite as cute as when I tried to marry the cartoon Disney version of Robin Hood when I was seven, but nice try, Ali. You’ll get there someday.
At dinner, ribs are eaten, and Ali’s gluten intolerance is discussed. Everyone’s face and clothes are covered in rib juice, which makes the scene feel somehow very real and also opens it up for a lot of small tender moments, like when Sarah reaches across the table to wipe barbecue sauce from Maura’s face. Maura interrupts the chatter about Ali’s restless leg syndrome and whether you should wait til you’re done eating ribs to clean up or wipe as you go to say that everyone needs to listen for a second, because there’s some “big changes going on.” She pauses, covers her face with her hands, and whispers to herself for a moment about how much she loves her kids. This only supports the Cancer Theory, and the kids immediately begin discussing this — it quickly devolves from asking whether Maura has cancer to listing off everyone they’ve ever known who died of cancer while Maura stares down at the table looking stricken and sad, and it’s clear that none of these kids can stop talking about their own shit for long enough to pay attention to their own parent, who’s obviously got something important on her mind.
When she can finally get these assholes to shut up for a second — which Josh has the nerve to look petulant about! — she begins with “Okay! So!” and then immediately hides behind her water glass and announces she’s selling the house. Yup — she doesn’t tell them, even though she was clearly planning to. Who can blame her? At this point I feel like I wouldn’t tell these kids if they were on fire.
This is great for the kids, though, because it’s something they can make about themselves! Josh immediately announces that he’ll take it, because of course he does. Maura indicates that she was thinking about maybe giving the house to Sarah, since she has, you know, a full size family instead of just a house-sized amount of feelings like these other two, which creates consternation with Josh and Ali because they are literal infants. Josh is upset that Maura didn’t “talk to him about this privately before it turned into a free-for-all.” Josh is so entitled he thinks he deserves, essentially, insider trading over his own siblings, even though he appears to already live in the Cullens’ house from Twilight. I wonder what else Josh feels he’s entitled to? Any water they find on Mars? Credit for inventing the concept of fair-trade coffee? Naming rights for Daya’s baby? We’ll never find out, because Josh announces that he “has a show” he has to go to, and pouts his way off screen.
Ali asks Maura where she’s going to live as Sarah cleans up the dishes, and Maura is clearly very surprised that someone is asking a question about her life and/or wellbeing, which is fucking heartbreaking. A single tear drips down Maura’s face, which makes me want to call my own parents and apologize for existing. Somehow the fact that Ali and Maura both have barbecue sauce all over their faces makes it worse.
It also makes it worse that we immediately cut to Maura writing Ali a check! I’m not saying that love and support have to be bought from the kids in this family, but I’m also not NOT saying that. Maura asks Ali “what happened to The Price is Right money,” suggesting that some member of this family was on The Price Is Right? Stop everything, if we don’t get any flashbacks from that I’m going to write to my senator.
Maura takes Ali’s hand and tells her “You know, out of all my kids, you’re the one, you can see me most clearly.” Ali sort of chuckles awkwardly, and Maura adds “Boy, it is so hard when someone sees something you do not want them to see.” She kisses her daughter’s hand and they look at each other, and Maura is hoping so bad for some glimmer of real human connection with at least one of her kids tonight, for one of them to look at her and actually really see her. It’s really hard to watch, because of course it won’t happen. Ali’s eyes move all around the room, and she quickly excuses herself. “Well, thanks!” And that’s it; Maura’s alone in the house.
Maura calls someone on the phone to say “I couldn’t do it. My God, I had no idea it was going to be so hard.” She ends the phone call with “I love you too, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” Maybe the relationship isn’t broken off after all? Maybe she’s met someone new? I hope so. I hope they have a date to get frozen yogurt and we get to see that instead of watching Josh design his next tattoo. After the phone call, Maura relaxes with a magazine in bed, and we get to see how much more comfortable and able to be herself she is when her kids aren’t around.
Starsweep to my least favorite person in the entire world, Josh, who is not in fact at a show at all! Instead, he’s in an apartment that appears to be owned by your aunt who’s really into aromatherapy and keeps talking about taking Reiki classes. He lays on the floor, which is admittedly an unexpected move, while a woman we don’t know named Rita stands over him. She sits on the couch and it turns into a situation where he’s sort of intimately cuddling her thigh, and also we see more boobs. This is the most I’ve ever liked Josh, probably because he says almost nothing.
Over at Sarah’s house, she and her husband Len are recapping the dinner in the bathroom the next morning. Sarah says that it was just to announce the sale of the house, and Len points out that’s kind of a weird thing to make such a big deal out of given that everyone kind of already knew it, but Sarah isn’t really interested in applying critical thinking skills to this situation. Len is played by Rob Huebel, whom I always mix up with Ken Marino, and also Len keeps touching his nipples in the mirror. Seriously, he’s touching his nipples for this entire scene. Is he checking for lumps? Do men do that? Do Ken Marino and Rob Huebel kind of look alike or am I just way off base here? I have a lot of questions.
Sarah also slyly lays some groundwork and asks Len if it would be ok to have Tammy and her daughter Grace (the biter!) over for a playdate. Len asks why it might possibly not be ok, and she tells him that Tammy is “um, that lesbian that I went to Madison with.” Ooooh, Sarah has definitely not told Len that she spent YEARS OF HER LIFE with this person, and maybe not that she’s interested in women at all? Gonna be honest, not super pumped about what they’re doing so far with bisexuality, but we’ll roll with it for now. I am unable to fully focus on issues of bisexual representation because Ron Marino walks back into the frame, declares “I like lesbians,” and then walks off. He’s still shirtless. Am sort of at a loss for what to make of his character generally. Grace is still my favorite character that we haven’t seen and I hope she bites someone soon. Ideally Josh.
Ali is visiting with her Mom, presumably to beg for money but also to gossip about Maura. Her mother seems to have, at best, a negative attitude. She says not to “believe a word your father says.” Not a huge fan of referring to a trans woman character as a liar given how often trans women are perceived as deceitful. It’s confusing also because she seems to be characterizing Maura as a bad parent when so far we’ve only seen her be INCREDIBLY patient and selfless with her kids. We’ll see how it plays out. Everyone eats cantaloupe, and I believe I see a flat of Ensure strategically in the background just so that we’re clear we’re dealing with The Olds. We also learn that the grandfather has what seems to be dementia.
Over at The House of Blog and Sand, Josh’s Norwegian supermodel girlfriend is not pleased. She says she doesn’t understand why he would ask her to sleep over if he’s going to be late to meet her at his own house. We piece together that he likely told her to come over, but was late because he was nuzzling Rita’s inner thigh, and so she fell asleep without him and had to put off this fight until the morning. I feel for her because that’s the worst, when you’re mad but can’t fight about it at the time for logistical reasons and then have to bring it up in the morning before you’ve even had coffee.
Josh neatly sidesteps the conversation about what a bad boyfriend he is by saying “My dad’s going to sell my house.” Because she is a normal human person who does not assume that Josh owns things just because he has touched their perfect body with his mind like Leonard Cohen, the girlfriend asks “This house?” No, the house Josh thought he had put a down payment on via pouting. We find out that Maura got to keep the house when Josh’s parents divorced when Josh was 15, because they “weren’t in love anymore.” Josh has a look on his face like maybe he thinks of this as the tragic backstory that justifies all his actions. I want to put Josh in Litchfield for a month.
Starsweep to the local LGBT center, where Maura is at a weekly support group. She’s recounting being asked for ID at Target while buying batteries, and the terror of waiting while the cashier stared at her ID and eventually said “….Oh.” Maura says this “was a big victory,” and how determined she was not to cry in front of the cashier.
She also tells the group that although she had decided to come out to her kids that week, she didn’t, “because it just wasn’t time. But I will, and it will be soon. I promise you.” Maura looks almost directly into the camera for a long beat, and then says “They are so selfish.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “I don’t know how I raised three people who cannot see beyond themselves.”
Ali has arrived home in her apartment that she appears to live in all alone, because she starts stripping immediately upon coming through the door. Maybe if she had a roommate she’d still have some of that Price is Right money. She lays naked on her bed for a long time before getting up to stare at herself in the mirror, and finally put on some running shorts.
Back in the world of Suddenly Sarah, she’s chumming about with Tammy outside the daycare. She invites Tammy to come up to the family house and use “her eye,” as an interior designer, to… I don’t know, decide where the couch should go? This is a very transparent invitation to go fuck at her parent’s house. They decide to go do this home visit literally right at that very moment, because they have no other obligations. I am floored by this; if I ever decided to cheat on my partner with my college girlfriend I would need to plan it like six months in advance. I have 200 unanswered work emails and laundry to put away, you know?
We’re also really running down the checklist of Not Great Bisexual representation: college relationship that the person heavily downplays; lying to partners; cheating on partners with partners of a different gender. Granted, these siblings’ whole thing is making truly terrible decisions, and I get that, but it would be nice to see Sarah making terrible decisions that don’t play into tired stereotypes. She could take out a subprime mortgage or buy a fedora, you know? Maybe try to start a ska band. Ultimately, though, even more than my eye-rolling at the way this character is filling out the Bad Bisexual Bingo card, I am amazed and almost impressed at her efficiency with cheating. If I’m understanding the timeline of this show, she was re-acquainted with Tammy a few days ago, at most a week. And here we are making moves! Maybe it was watching Ken Huebel play with his nipples that was the last straw on the fidelity camel’s back.
