Any Tool's a Weapon if You Hold It Right | Weeds 6-3 'A Yippity Sippity' recap by Jacob | TWoP | p1:
The Newmen take a good look around Seattle and see a picket line. Although crossing picket lines stands against everything Andy Botwin's ever stood for, older son Mike wonders what, then, would be "broke-ass Randy Newman's take."
*If you cross the picket line and toss out even your tiny little moral set, turn to page 54. If you take the unimaginably revolutionary option of actually working for your living, turn the channel to some other show because that is not how we roll.*
Randy is with Nathalie, so they head on across the picket line and into the hotel. They are scabs! Which, after you've sold out everybody you know to everybody else you know
everyone I love is married to everyone else [--movie 'the thing called love'] at least once, and personally gotten numerous DEA agents shot to death or with their faces sanded off, and managed to traffic in child prostitutes completely by accident, is probably not as big a deal as to you or I, who have hopefully done none of these things.
Mike is entirely unsure that even this Newman life is sustainable, but Nathalie has hope. "This is who we are now. This is us." But as Michelle once said to Romy,
But okay, if those things were so easy to get, wouldn't we already have them?"What if you'd have gotten a real job after Dad died, and we could have skipped all this shit?" Nathalie explains that she would have had to sell the house, they'd have gone to a different zip code --the horror!-- and the boys would have gone to even lousier public schools. The way she says it, you can hear the way Nancy's been telling herself this, every second, for the last six years. She nearly sounds bored, she's heard this speech so much.
*If you can accept the lot of a million other widows just like yourself, turn back to page one. If you're a Daredevil Girl looking for your next hit, turn to page 420.*
But Mike's asking the wrong questions, he didn't go back far enough; he's missing the bear.
mmm. all the way back to-
[pilot epsd: 'You can't miss the bear.' and later th writing v impressed me, re weeds 4-8 'I am the table': Every second that goes by that you want your fix or get it: that's the tunnel down; every second that goes by that you don't feed the bear, that's the tunnel up.]
It's not about Nancy selling weed, it's about Judah dying. Nancy would have gone crazy either way, become Lacey, become Nathalie, just like she did when her parents got sick and she ran off to Paris. Maybe it would have gone even worse. I cannot say for certain that she would have ended up in this horrific junkie whore wig. The wig might actually be due to drug dealing.
.. | Maid Nathalie comes into a room where a heavyset careerman is cuffed, facedown, in what soon becomes clear is a quickly drying puddle of urine. "Did you at any point think who might have to clean this up?" The irony, it escapes Nathalie more often than Nancy escapes fate. But lest we think that this is about sisterhood or the underclass or the fact that drug dealing arises naturally from the need for shadow economies when women and minorities are denied entrée into exactly the realm this guy is the master of: "You're not exactly in the power position, so I suggest you be a little more respectful to me, the fucking maid." Not maids in general, no, just this one pretty white lady one, who broke a picket line to get here. | ..
p7] Nancy takes off her nasty wig and lets her pretty Nancy hair out to play, sitting at the bar with a glass of white wine and staring into the middle distance. Dude appears. "What do I do?" Nathalie stalls, going dark for just a second. "I own my own business. A dance studio. I studied in Paris." They discuss Paris in some easy-reader Français and before she knows it, Nathalie starts telling the truth. It's about a dead woman, and in some ways a lie, but it's still true. Her eyes light up. "9th Arrondissement. It was great. It was so great. Um. But then New York beckoned..."
And then Seattle. Little bit of a lacuna, then Seattle.Nathalie, for a second, was a terrific idea. She just got lost in the narrative.
Mike will be reading in his underwear. And socks, and a little bellhop hat. Pretty specific, altogether, but we can't say we're immune to the overall effect. Randy is all over it --fifty bucks a page, I don't see the dilemma-- and gives Mike some very good advice. "Wear boxers. Preferably ones that don't gape. Read fast, and skip paragraphs."
*If you're secure enough in your identity that you know you can't catch gay, turn to page 48.*
This is the smartest thing Randy Newman ever said: [Is it gay?] "Not if he pays you. Or if it's underwater." And the whole What Happened To Andy In Alaska concept just keeps getting more interesting. Besides, Randy says, maybe it'll be such a great book he'll "get lost in the narrative."
Randy complains about Chef Wagner and Mike dicks with him and Randy goes, "Back off, Reading Rainbow."
Which is layered, which is appreciated, especially at the end of a long work day.Nathalie's outside and Randy asks how her day went and she goes, "I'm no better than the whore who pees on people." Randy of course immediately tosses that one to Mike --"Silas, I think Mommy has a story, too!"-- which makes him 3 for 3, and then goes looking for a joint. The piano bar piano man who played over Nathalie's flirtation with Vince comes out and, crestfallen, explains that their usual weed guy, Nigel the valet, went on strike and won't sell to scabs. Meaning there's not a single source in the hotel.
*If you know already without looking the exact look that just crossed Nathalie's face, pat yourself on the back. If you honestly thought she meant any of this normal life shit for one second, go back to the beginning because you are lost in her narrative.*
If Nancy hadn't turned to drug dealing, things would have been pathetic and horrible, right? She would have had to sell the house and do Normal Things that depressing Normal People Do.
*You gotta turn to page 603, because she
tried it their way, the Normal Newman way, and it was
worse than she ever could have imagined.*
Cut smash jerk to the next scene, in which Nathalie attempts to start the whole motherfucker over again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.. and who is sitting on the couch being her usual muscled eerie self but Original Sarah Connor herself, Linda Hamilton. I like that she's back. I like nothing quite so much as when they come back to us. Like who knew Margot Kidder and Anne Heche would come zooming home from Crazytown, so perfectly lovely and unscathed? And now Linda Hamilton is having her moment -- still so gorgeous and intense and never really that crazy in the first place -- and Anne Heche looks better than she's ever looked, which is just so important.
Back on the show, things suddenly flare back up into that long-ago brilliance that used to define it.
Every second is glorious after this point.
"Fiona! The seitan is burning! And save the oil! Fuels our van." (Trans. We are actual liberals, and gays, and ladies! Three things Nancy Botwin cannot handle but Nathalie Newman will try and schmooze anyway!) Nathalie notices that the Providers don't keep the trimmings from their plants--a couple other, less Caucasian ladies sit at a table stuffing them into garbage bags--and gorgeous lover Fiona explains that you can't compost them because they are bad for the beetroot as well as anybody who eats the beetroot. I don't know what beetroot is but I'm sure it tastes all kinds of vegan. Their adorable five-year-old comes running through the room with golden locks flowing and Nathalie manages to call him "her" and "she" about sixty times before Linda rears up on the couch: "We need to cut his hair. You're gonna make him a fag!"
Fiona shows a bit of mommy steel, hissing, "Hey. He's good!" before grabbing the boy--"Kish"-- and needling him about how the improvised Barbie gun he's created "better be shooting peace rays!" And I mean, for a show that doesn't always do gay that well, you have nailed it. Well fucking played. For being such cartoons these are the least cartoonish gay ladies I've ever seen on TV. First of all, little boys do this. Everything is a gun. A bitten bite out of a slice of bread makes it into a gun made of bread. ("Any [Every] tool is a weapon if you hold it right," said sister Ani. She was talking about IQ, but then lesbian vegetarian mommies wield that weapon better than anybody.) It's not about violence, it's about penises, which explains why even super gay little kids will still improvise guns. So the fact that he's doing this with a Barbie doll in the house of a thousand mommies is just a brilliant, tiny little detail that's metonymic for the whole thing.
But it also reinforces the idea that even if Nancy had been the perfect mother --which the only thing better than one mother is two mommies and science will back me up on this-- there would still be violence, because it's also about violence. Case in point: Kish fully rips the head off the Barbie gun just as they're clarifying his gender. Fiona sends Kish to the Contemplation Corner, which is more-lesbian-than-lesbian for Time Out, and he goes cheerfully and sweetly.
