Robbie comes over to the house to make up (and make out) with Mary.

RevCam and SuperMom have brought Charles to see Nancy, the friendly and sensitive gerontologist, because she sees a lot of patients with Alzheimer's. Like, I'm so sure Glenoak has better doctors than Phoenix does. Nancy gives a long, and fairly detailed, account of what Charles can expect when his disease progresses. While the writers do a pretty good job with this, I won't transcribe it here. If you can navigate the Internet well enough to be reading this sentence, I'm sure you can find good information on Alzheimer's, should you require it.

I'm not ashamed to admit, however, that all that Alzheimer's information made me a trifle weepy. In fact, I'm so down right now that I almost don't feel like making fun of the show anymore -- almost. Annie and Charles are looking through a photo album. Annie holds up a picture of her mother and comments on how beautiful she was. Charles says that he used to call her "The Pink Clown." Unfortunately, I was having a sip of my "yay, we're almost at the end of the episode!" glass of wine when I heard that, and now I'm hacking up a lung while trying to wipe Verdicchio off my computer monitor. I rewind the tape (remember, I'm watching this one under less-than-ideal conditions) and listen again. Oh, he's saying "Pink Cloud!" You know, that's just as bad, though, because it has something to do with her wearing a big, floofy pink dress to dances and twirling around like a, um, pink cloud. Okay, it's mean, but I'm still laughing pretty hard, and I can't even blame the wine, because it's my first glass. Then Charles talks about how nervous he was when Annie was born, and how, when the nurse put her in his arms, all his fears just evaporated. He says, "You did that. You made everything better." Okay, that was pretty sweet. He tells her he'd like to "rest" his eyes for a bit before dinner. Annie kisses him on the cheek and leaves. Charles does close his eyes, and we see a montage of old family photos, which is quite nicely done, provided you hit the mute button to block out the treacly background song.

And so ends another episode. I won't be recapping again until "the millennium," as Ruthie would say. But thanks to her little friend Ben, I now know what to expect. Since the stoves will stop working, I'll be the one toasting marshmallows over my hard drive when all the computers spontaneously combust at 12:00 AM on January 1st. Cheers!