Since linear storytelling doesn't seem to be very important to David Milch, I'm not going to try for linear recapletting either. First, what's up with the Yosts: Cissy is leaving an angry message for a still-AWOL Mitch when Palaka stumbles into the store, shivering with fever. He's gotten a tattoo of a purple salamander (in honour of Freddy, aw), but maybe the instruments were not so clean, because now he has a grody infection. While she's looking him over, the hospital's lawyer gives her a form to sign, indemnifying the hospital for having removed Shaun against medical advice. Cissy tells him to get lost, and naturally decides to take Palaka to the motel, where Dr. Smith is summoned from somewhere to check him out. Dr. Smith sets up a little MASH unit in Freddy's room. Cissy gets Dickstein's advice on the form, and he tells her that the hospital's making Smith its scapegoat. Around this time, Freddy gets freaked out that Smith isn't taking Palaka to the hospital (which Smith himself privately mused might be due to his unwillingness to return to the hospital in disgrace), but Smith intuits that Freddy's sublimating his worry that he's to blame for Palaka's illness (by breaking his wrist) into suspicion over Dr. Smith's methods. Shaun is smoking a joint behind the shop when Butchie finds him, coming with an offer to let the weirdo we met last week build Shaun a website. Shaun thinks the guy looks like a tool (hard to argue), but Butchie smacks him on the back of the head for being rude. Shaun also asks Butchie to convince Tina to stay in town. Butchie takes off, and Shaun skates over to Bill's, where he sadly announces that he wishes Zippy hadn't kissed him. Bill calls Butchie, who comes right over, apologizes, and father and son head for the beach. Because did I mention this show now features actual surfing again? It does -- we kick off with Butchie in the water. Kai watches him for a while, and then goes to a friend's place to get back Butchie's boards. When she presents them to him later in the day, he figures out that she'd put them in storage long ago so that he couldn't sell them for drug money. In non-Yost news: Linc kind of has a meltdown at a Stinkweed meeting, whereupon his VP (Zack Morris) goes to Tina to try to get some information from her that he can use against Linc. Except then she goes to Linc, and the two of them double-cross Zack, and Linc agrees to walk away from Stinkweed for $65 million. And Cass spends the day continuing to pretend to work on her shitty movie, and is delighted at sunset when John comes back to distract her; she's giving him a big hug when he tells her that Shaun will soon be gone. And then he goes surfing with the Yosts. Mr. Sobell will fill in what I forgot when he delivers the recap.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, on John From Mount Healthy: John, Joe, and Bill went on a rather unproductive field trip. We learned about Cissy's discovery that acid and quality parenting don't always mix. Because of that, Cissy relented in her fierce anti-Tina campaign and allowed Tina and Shaun to bond over tuna fish sandwiches. Oh, and John stopped by the Snug Harbor motel to say a few words. Oh, you missed that and want to know what he said? Nothing important really.
Credits. And we'll have fun, fun, fun 'til that weirdo takes her camera away.
The show opens with Butchie in the ocean, engaged in this strange activity I haven't seen in a good, long while on this show. Let me see if I can summon up the proper vocabulary to explain it: He is on this long board, which he is using to paddle along the waves. When a particularly big wave comes along, he stands up on the board, and he rides the wave -- or the surf, if you will, back in to shore. Then he paddles back and repeats the process. I believe it is an activity best known as "Using a board to ride the ocean's surf in a pleasing manner." Someone really ought to create a show about these surf-ers -- it would be quite interesting.
All kidding aside, Butchie's surfing again, as opposed to, say, injecting himself with drugs. He's awfully good at this. Kai watches from the shore in quiet admiration; her body language suggests that she didn't arrive with Butchie but rather is opting to watch him from afar. Then she gets up and leaves -- almost as if she just got an idea in that pretty little bean of hers.
We're in Cass's hotel room now -- she's sleeping in the bed, and John is sitting on it, awfully close to her. In my Father's Word, there is no such thing as personal space. In my Father's Word, I am in defiance of several restraining orders. In My Father's Wo...OH GOD, THE CLEANSING STING OF MACE! "Some day yesterday, Cass," John observes to his sleepy roommate. "Yesterday was a three-ring circus. I'm going to be with my Father today." The close-up on John's face after he utters that last sentence suggests that he's not looking forward to his little visit. "My Father has more big and huge for me," he adds. Just stay out of Gesthemane, kid. And keep an eye peeled for Romans. "Without the zeroes and ones, Cass," John adds pointedly. "Big and huge won't mean dick." Which I gather is weirdo talk for "stop raiding the wetbar and make with the movie editing." Even though she's asleep, Cass seems to agree with my interpretation: "Work her," she says, sleepily tapping her chest. Would that he could -- but John is out the door.
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