Maria's house. Cooking ephemera sits all around the kitchen, Maria and Hal chopping and stirring and simmering because cooking = sex. Maria returns to the safe plot at hand, telling Hal, "I can't believe you're doing it. Moving to New York." He even specifies an area: "Greenwich Village." For a production team that spent a considerable amount of time butchering the topology of New York for much of last season, I'm impressed that Hal didn't go for the straight phonetic pronunciation of "Greenwich." Let's just hope he doesn't say that he's going to be living on "Houston Street," lest this show's Gotham credibility be threatened anew. Maria offers the Fodor's blurb of the Village, telling us that that's where the "seedy bars and coffee shops" are. Oh, that Village. The one that exists entirely on TV. In 1991. In Seattle. Maria asks what he plans to do about money, and he tells her, "As long as I make enough to get by, I'm fine, you know?" And now, the New York perspective: No. I don't know. And the first time you're standing on Bleecker paying nine bucks for a slice of pizza, neither will you and your Bohemian self. Because another starving artist is just exactly what New York needs right now. Go. Strum. Take the economy right on down with you. Bum. But Maria finds the whole idea "romantic," and Hal tells her that "even back then, you were pretty dead serious about music. I mean, you were the one who gave me the bug." Ew. Maria claims that music turned out to be just "a passing thing" with her, and Hal tells her he has trouble believing that. Then he helps her cook, which is suave and rude.