We open with Mickey, Sabrina, and Chip visiting Christopher and Poodle in prison. (Christopher has hilariously terrifying new teeth; they tilt the scale back toward “terrifying” when you remember how he lost his original ones.) They announce they’re getting a divorce, which has a bizarrely profound impact on Chip– although not as much as Poodle telling him something Christopher hinted at previously: He’s not Chip’s real father; a wealthy outdoor-goods magnate named Howard Buckley is.
Chip’s world is, of course, turned upside down… until he researches Buckley and realizes he’s legitimately wealthy (which of course he lords over Sabrina: “He made his money! He didn’t inherit it and then cheat people!”), at which point he decides to go meet him. Of course, instead of introducing himself as his son, he decides to piss next to Howard (earning the nickname “Urinal Boy”) and pass himself off as an intern… which leads to him getting asked to chaperone his own half-sister to a concert. Back to that in a second…
The divorce starts to get in Jimmy and Mickey’s heads; Mickey comes to talk to him about their relationship in Jimmy’s room, but naturally walks in on him masturbating. (A scene that hilariously replays in reverse later, except that Mickey is totally unabashed about it, and even drowns Jimmy out with her vibrator at one point.) They decide to go on a date to try to rekindle the fire. Alba’s chaperoning Chip and Kelly (I have no idea if this is an intentional reference to UCLA’s new football coach). And Sabrina, in one of the great runners of the evening, get stuck explaining everything to Ben that he’s ever wanted to know. It starts with Ben walking in on Sabrina, Mickey and Alba at breakfast talking about the divorce; Ben asks “What’s divorce?” and Mickey and Alba ghost, leaving Sabrina to answer. Next we see them, it looks like she’s done a great job (Ben: “So they still love us, but they’re just not going to be together anymore?”) but then Jimmy approaches, and Ben worries he and Mickey are going to divorce:
BEN: Why are you fighting?
JIMMY: Because your aunt just walked in on me in the middle of… reading the news.
SABRINA: She caught you masturbating? Gross.
JIMMY: No.
BEN: What’s that?
JIMMY: *walks away* Have fun with that one.
SABRINA: No, I don’t want to!
BEN: Please tell me! I have to know! What are the rules? Who’s the master? Can I be the master? Teach me everything!
Sabrina’s facial expressions here kill me. After this, she later gets stuck explaining incest to Ben, and finally gives in to the inevitable: “I’ll explain everything you want to know, but tonight only. After that, no more questions.”
It turns out Kelly doesn’t want to go to a concert after all, but she wants Chip to drop her off at a guy’s house. When they’re pushing too close to the midnight deadline Howard has set, Chip goes to eavesdrop, and overhears him calling up another girl before telling Kelly she has to go. Chip calls him out and confronts him, and gets his ass kicked for it… which leads into Kelly finding some affection for him… which leads into Chip saying it isn’t right… which leads into Kelly insisting… which leads into Chip giving in… which leads into Alba honking repeatedly from the car and yelling “CHIP, NO!”… which leads to Chip telling Kelly the truth… which leads to Kelly kicking Chip in the nuts.
Chip goes to the Buckley house and tells Howard the truth. (Kelly followed through on her threat to tell her dad that Chip whipped it out.) Howard tells him “Stay away from my family.”
And he might not get as bad a time of it as Jimmy. Jimmy and Mickey’s date is a beautiful disaster in a way only they can be. They go to a dive bar and get hammered because they can’t make conversation; when they try to order another round, the bartender tells them to slow down and finish the one they’re on first. Mickey takes this as a challenge, chugs her beer, then promptly vomits back into her glass. Their insistent denial that that’s not what happened leads Jimmy to chug the vomit (with a classic moment of Kaitlin Olson retching) before vomiting all over the bar, and getting them both kicked out.
Energized by their mayhem, they decide to have sex– Mickey suggests an alley, which is a bit uncomfortable and leads a couple of passersby to mistakenly (but not unreasonably) conclude Jimmy is assaulting Mickey. They kick his ass, pretty badly, and call the cops; even when Mickey is trying to explain what happened to them, she still can’t call Jimmy her boyfriend, and that as much as anything probably says why they come to the conclusion they do. Their relationship isn’t healthy and neither one of them believes in it that strongly. They had a good run, as Jimmy says, but that run might be over.
It’s a surprisingly melancholy finish to what’s a pretty great and funny episode on the whole. The new developments between Jimmy and Mickey as well as Chip’s parentage will, I imagine, factor into the second half of the season. Having read some behind-the-scenes news, [spoiler title=’casting related spoilers to follow’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’]It seems like Jimmy and Mickey’s breakup is serious, and we shouldn’t expect Jimmy on the show anymore. That’s a real shame; Scott MacArthur killed in the role. However, we can expect more of Howard Buckley, and, funnily enough, Jennie Garth will be playing a parent who is coincidentally named Jennie Garth.[/spoiler]
STRAY QUESTIONS FROM BEN
- I don’t really have any this week, other than to say that since Superstore aired an episode unexpectedly on Tuesday, and there’s no review space up for it, if you want to discuss that show, you can do it here too. Post your favorite quotes as well; going back to look them up for accuracy is time-consuming and I don’t want to do it.
- If grades are important to you, give this one an A-. If they aren’t, continue to ignore them.