I was a little worried about doing the recaplet for this episode, since this season has not been doing it for me, but I actually thought this one was quite good. As a shout-out to your regular recapper, I was going to borrow Joe R's American Idol recaplet structure, dividing it into the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but…it was all good, pretty much. So:
The big plot is that Robert and Kitty are planning a shotgun wedding, with Nora as the point planning person. Kitty also hires Danny Glover (named Isaac), who's some sort of retired political strategist and who owes her a favor from a long time ago. He tells her that she's got to get married yesterday, or, barring getting hold of a time machine, at City Hall ASAP. Kitty's down with that, but Nora is most decidedly not, so they compromise: wedding at the Walker Manse! I had momentary visions of a reprisal of last season's finale, which would have been awesome. But first! Robert thinks Isaac's Liddy-esque manner of getting things done is beneath him, and tells Kitty that getting him involved is a signal to their opponents that they're in crisis. Kitty gets him to back off, but he's still unpsyched about Isaac. Isaac tells him that one of his opponents has a disabled son on the down-low, which conflicts with his voting record -- he's cut funds to special ed and the like, so they'll break the story right after the quickie wedding, which will throw off any unwanted attention from it. However, it turns out that Isaac employed that same deflecting tactic ten years ago -- and the victim was Jason, whom Isaac outed just as Robert's candidacy for something or other was starting to take off. Isaac is unapologetic and tells Robert if he's above this sort of thing, he shouldn't be running for president.
The episode turns, however, when Kitty has her first sonogram, sans Robert -- and discovers the pregnancy isn't viable. Ooh, I didn't see that one coming. Kitty's kind of a rock about it at first, and Robert insists on accompanying her for the D and C procedure. Isaac warns Robert that if anyone finds out, there will be speculation that Kitty had an abortion with Robert's approval, and counsels Robert to prepare himself in case the story is leaked; Robert, in turn, confesses that he didn't want the kid in the first place, which: THANK YOU, show, for giving him a believable and relatable flaw. Isaac does tell Robert that when things calm down, if he needs any more help, he'll be there, so we probably haven't seen the last of Mr. Glover.
Paige is acting out at school, seemingly because of the new custody arrangements (…although, doesn't Sarah still have the kids every other weekend?) so Kitty asks her to be her flower girl, which cheers her up -- until she finds out about the wedding being postponed. Paige lays into Sarah and then runs away, and Joe's a complete ass about the whole thing at first. But Paige just runs to Nora and spends the night (after Nora tells Sarah and Joe she's there) and Sarah and Joe admit to each other that the custody arrangements aren't working. When Paige returns, she tells Joe and Sarah she doesn't want them to get a divorce, and while they tell her that's not going to happen, Joe cedes half custody to Sarah, thankfully.
Scotty's got money troubles, and as such got evicted from his apartment and is "between homes," as he calls it. Kevin invites Scotty to stay with him, and they're super-cute about it. Kevin is still holding strong onto his feelings for Jason, but has a hard time getting hold of him this episode, because Jason is still traumatized from Viva Laughlin. Scotty makes Kevin feel better, as a friend, which is nice and I hope continues but doesn't escalate.
Okay, there was like thirty seconds of bad with Tommy and Lena -- they're still screwing around, and she invites him to spend the night, but he doesn't. Meanwhile, Holly thinks Rebecca is getting too involved in the Walkers' lives. When Rebecca decides to meet Lena for a drink, Justin invites himself along; Rebecca kind of feels left out, and when she goes to get a drink, Lena bums a pill off him, and sees that the prescription isn't his. Justin initiates a make-out session with her, which Lena stops, but not before Rebecca sees them and bails. The next day, Rebecca chews Justin out for using and awesomely brushes aside his rationalizations on her way back to Holly's. Justin bonds with Paige, of all people, over their self-destructive streaks, but the thing is, Justin, Paige is…ten.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: Kitty got pregnant, which made her happy but which made Robert angry for weird and imprecise reasons; Tommy and Lena decided to end their flirtation so they could begin their adultery in earnest; Joe wrested custody of Paige and Cooper away from Sarah; and Rebecca was worried about Justin getting hooked on drugs again via his pain meds. Which...he kind of did. Also, props and thanks and all good things to the Couch Baron, who was such a peach to cover the recaplet for me this week while I was home to see my sister and her friends be such amazing and wonderful queerballs in Godspell. Happy birthday, Em!
We open in Lena's dorm room of infidelity -- or at least it looks like a dorm room, what with all the clutter and futon sexing. She and Tommy just Did It, see, and she's begging him to stick around for a while. She tries to play cute by offering to make her "world famous French toast," which is really just her going across the street for take-out, but I've officially fallen out of potential like with Lena. Now she's just an asshole like Tommy who is, at the moment, blowing her off to go sleep in his own bed, where he can stretch both arms out in all directions and not knock over a stack of Chinese food cartons.
Sarah's at home, on the phone, reading Goodnight Moon to Cooper. When he hands the phone to Paige, though, she glumly says she doesn't feel like a story. This despite the fact that Sarah is clearly reading her Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Clearly, Paige has lost her capacity for joy. Or maybe she's just mad that Cooper gets to use the fancy pink phone that her mom gave to her. Either way, Sarah looks concerned as she hangs up the phone.
Also on the phone are Robert and Kitty. She's at campaign headquarters working late; he's on an airplane headed to his next glad-handing destination. She says she's doing "great" aside from the near-constant exhaustion and nausea. She also has an update on "Operation Puppy," a name to which Robert renews his objection, causing Kitty to note that "'Operation Shotgun Wedding Because the Condom Broke' doesn't have the same ring to it." Speak for yourself, Kitty. Anyway, Kitty says she found some help for the event: "cheap, efficient...Mom." Robert could have figured as much. There's some nonspecific shop talk about the media strategy and how they agreed to "divide and conquer," i.e., Robert campaigns while Kitty works on spinning the bun in her oven. Just then, there's a knock at Kitty's door and in walks a gray-haired Danny Glover. Danny Glover always used to freak me out on account of Witness, but now that he's gone all grandfatherly gray and been in The Royal Tenenbaums, he's really turned a corner. Kitty, for her part, is overjoyed to see him and she hastily hangs up on her fiancé. She greets Danny Glover as "Isaac," and clearly they used to work together in some capacity. He smiles at her and exposits that she's "collecting" on some unspecified quid pro quo debt that he owes her, even though he's apparently retired from politics. She invites him to have a seat and then, stammering like she's never stammered before, explains to him exactly why she needs his help: she's pregnant. Danny laughs genially and says he was worried, given Kitty's buildup, that Rob was busted "playing footsies with a state trooper in an airport bathroom." Oh, like anyone would be quite that stupid. That being said, Isaac does think this is something to worry about, what with fundie Christians being out of their minds and eager to vote and all. She says they have moved the wedding date up a month, but Isaac is like, "A month? Try this weekend. At City Hall. Buy flowers if you have time." I'm not sure that such an obviously rushed wedding (and one held outside of a church, no less) would be of any help to them with the demographics they're concerned about anyway, but I'm not a highly regarded political operative, am I? So Kitty sets up the rest of this week's episode thusly: "You're telling me I have to get married in two days?" Good thing she's got a mother just crazy enough to pull something like that off.
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