Sheila gets weird with Frank some more about how he's taking Monica to the City (actually the County but they keep saying City) Clerk's office for the settlement thing, which issue is why it matters that Monica keeps going this way and that, because as usual Frank's agenda is the thing messing everything up for everybody. So every scene, things change, but you never know why or what is happening because Monica is such a nonentity and because the line readings are so fucked up in so many places and the emphases keep being on the wrong syllables of these already totally unmusical sentences, which is kind of the writer's fault and kind of the actors' faults, but mostly it's the whole point of having a director, but no dice here because in this case, the director would prefer to be tone-deaf and lazy until the end, and then throw some guitars at your head and pretend we're in Dillon TX instead of generating any kind of emotion or story on his or her own.

But really, the lost opportunities here are myriad: Number one you've got Debbie's divided loyalties, which don't ever come up but should be central, considering she's the little general in charge of Liam and Frank both; you've got Frank's ambivalence about Monica, which comes up only a couple of times and is mostly nonverbal but could have provided the center of the entire storyline; you've got Karen's pretty incredible journey in this episode which expresses the themes of the kids better than their own storyline but there's no attempt at drawing that parallel whatsoever; and you've got Fiona's very real claims and complaints, which only come up as a conversational drive-by when in fact they're the heart of the show.

And I mean, that's pretty much everything. And you know what, I'm actually thrilled to have that many complaints because it means I do love this show, and not just because it's my job to think about this show, which is how it usually happens, but because if I'd stuck with it this long on my own -- of which there is no guarantee -- I would know, now, that I had come to love it.

Anyhow, instead of addressing any of those pretty glaring, 101-type issues, let's have this conversation we just had between Monica and Bob, where they are still interested in taking the baby after the DNA results, just like we just talked about. There's some more of that icky -- but fairly insightful -- thing about Bob convincing Monica that she is walking wounded and an emotional cripple, but it's written in such shorthand that it's mostly the actors doing it, which is nice of them but shouldn't be the case in an instance like this. Monica says X and Bob smothers her in her big old arms and says Y, and nobody's hearing anybody else, but not in a way that seems intentional.