Elaine: "You made me wear a padded bra starting in sixth grade..."
Margaret: "...Those trashy Perdue twins were maturing early! I didn't want you to feel inferior..."
Elaine: "I didn't feel inferior until you told me I was."

More of this, half of it stuff Margaret never said or words she said that Elaine heard differently or words Elaine heard that Margaret remembers differently. Ugly, ugly. Matters of class, matters of attention-seeking; your mother was a Copa Girl and you married a Dukes Of Hazzard extra, and over all of this you had to become so hard and so bright and so inviolate, draw deep on so much conviction and cut off so much need that you look in the mirror and even you have to understand why they call you a bitch.

Elaine: "I asked you to hold the Bible for me when I was sworn in as Secretary of State!"
Margaret: "And then criticized my dress."
Elaine: "It was a sequined cocktail gown! In the middle of the afternoon!"
Margaret: "Uh, that Bob Mackie designed!"

Elaine starts screaming about her mother stealing her moment, finally -- finally -- hears herself and goes very cold indeed. "You know, this conversation ceased to be relevant as soon as it began." And -- this is a win, note; this is her winning -- Margaret, the old broad that she is, just sashays on out of there. "You stopped me. I was innocently getting a refill."

Getting the last word is what women do. The men make mistakes, they bumble around, they fuck around, and they throw up their hands and confess they never knew what they were doing. And then the women shake their heads, push back from the table, get the last edge in and they think this is power. This has always been the definition and the limit of women's power, for the same reason that you never win against an incumbent; it's a reason bitch is the only word we have.

Susan calls then, with the news. Shaw and Pike, the fig leaf and all the rest. The circus.

JUBAL LIVES

In a terrible place! A shack, or the shack adjoining a larger, scarier shack. Somehow Bud is just as excited about the fishing part of this fake fishing trip as he is about righting the wrongs of the past and overcoming Garcetti; perhaps he's just focusing on the ornaments of what he's about to do, which is to cross a bridge back toward a man -- at least one -- whose heart he broke.