Previously: Lots of stuff happened -- sometimes quite repetitively, but pretty much always amusingly -- and Djb rocked the house.

Brian and Nick emerge from an elevator, and as they quickly pedeconference, it's clear that they're in a courthouse on the way to the custody hearing, Nick telling Brian that these cases are seldom ruled in favor of the father. Brian: "Thanks! Never knew that." Heh. Nick has to add that they especially don't turn out so hot when the father forces the kid to pretend to be a Swedish orphan. Well, in all fairness to Brian, he would never have had to do that if he hadn't cheated on his wife. When they enter the courtroom, however, Nick is dismayed to find that the judge has already ruled in Andrea's favor, as the arbitrator -- who appears kind of smug -- blabbed about the bribery attempt. I have two questions here: One, what happened to that fat wad of cash? And two, given that the judge is Matt Parkman's dad, how did he get out of that shitty apartment? Brian gets hauled off in cuffs, but not before he bellows, "What are you gonna do about my son?" Start referring to him as his nephew, if I read the recaplet right.

Apparently after a night of the horizontal mambo, Sofia -- who may be playing Jeremy like an XBox but (a) seems a lot less like it after this episode, and (b) is far too annoying for me to care about one way or the other -- complains that they never get to go to his apartment, and the scene goes downhill from there as (a) Jeremy puts on his shirt, and (b) Sofia tells him there will be no more "pudding" until she gets to see his place. Where will Jeremy find an apartment that's (a) down-market enough to be believable as a valet's place, and (b) aesthetically pleasing enough to distract me from the use of "pudding" in that context?

Well, given the look on Jeremy's face when he realizes that badly-accented sex may be withheld, I'll give props for the subtle second layer of the establishing shot of an ambulance speeding by. In a hospital room, Ellen somewhat languidly asks Patrick where he is on a "pain chart" she's holding, and he tells her that he's at about a 3 with morphine, 8 or 9 if it wears off -- but, as he looks lovingly at the drug control mechanism in his hand, he adds, "We're not about to let that happen." He then is literally like, "So. You shot me in the leg." It's a bit more awkward that the standard discussion points of a married couple, I think, but no more so than "So. You have a transsexual mistress." Ellen does (somewhat breezily) apologize for that (the gunshot, not the mistress), but then sits on the bed and tells Patrick that they both know "[they]" can win the election, and that she's not going to let Patrick screw it up with his "childish indiscretions." So...she was trying to cut down on the potential scandal by shooting her husband. I'd ask her to pull the other one if I didn't think saying "pull" in her presence isn't the greatest idea. Long story short: she's not going to share Patrick, and if he doesn't want to deal with a campaign-killing divorce, he'll end things with Carmelita. Of course, this all forgets that Patrick claimed not to want to run in the first place, but then again, he's proven to have the backbone of a mollusk time and again, so I suppose it's consistent that he caves in two seconds flat here. Ellen kisses him, and out of frame, Patrick is hitting that morphine button like he's...well, Jeremy.