Ruth is in her bathroom in her nightgown, running the water in the sink and looking at herself in the mirror. For about ten minutes. That's some good recappin', right there. She comes out of the bathroom and joins shirtless George in bed. Man, life sucks when the Walk of Shame takes you right back to the bed you just got out of. "That was lovely," George says. "Wasn't it?" Ruth lies. George lifts up on one elbow to make a proposal, to "close this distance between us." He blows past Ruth's disingenuous "What distance?" to suggest they travel together, now that he's feeling better. Where? Wherever. I think that sounds like an excellent idea. Trash's and my plan for retirement is to buy an RV and drive all over the country sponging off all of the friends and family we've somehow got scattered coast to coast. The only tricky part will be starting late enough that M. Tiny is M. Grown-Up, but soon enough that our friends won't have started dying off yet. Ruth puts off the discussion for now, and turns out the light.

They must have done it pretty early in the morning, because there's no fade to white/overnight transition. Instead, we cut right to the Fisher/Chenowith breakfast table, where family bonding time consists of Nate reading a newspaper, Brenda reading a book, and Maya doing some kind of chair dance. Nate suggests they invite Maggie over for dinner some time, and Brenda asks why. So Nate can hit on her in the bedroom while Brenda's busy in the kitchen? Actually, Nate's stated reason is that Maggie is new in town, she doesn't know many people, and Brenda would like her. But it's really so he can hit on her in the bedroom while Brenda's busy in the kitchen. "Okay," Brenda says agreeably. I guess they resolved their fight since last week. Maya announces that she has to go potty, and Nate says that since he's running late, "Mommy'll take you, okay?" It's rude enough that he doesn't even bother to show any signs of being in a hurry, but the fact that he just assumes without asking that Brenda will step in is worse. So it's not entirely unprovoked when Brenda leans forward and asks, "Maya, do you remember your other mommy?" It's shitty, yes, but not entirely unprovoked. "What are you doing?" Nate snaps. Brenda yammers smugly about "honesty" and the importance of Maya growing up with "a coherent narrative; that she knows where she came from and how [Brenda] came into the picture." Nate says he's all for that, but they have to pick the right time. And here's where I first notice a recurring motif in this episode: the gratuitous extreme close-up. It's like the director's trying to make everything more intense by jamming the camera right up into everyone's face from a low angle. Or maybe he was trying to justify the nose-hair-trimming line item on the budget. I didn't notice it during the Corpse of the Week scene, because it's not unusual there, but the overuse of it throughout the episode gets a little surreal. Since it's used variously to convey tension, pensiveness, humor, doubt, hunger, and nausea, it's inevitable that it's going to suffer in at least one of those functions. "I need to go potty!" Maya repeats impatiently. "What better time than the present?" Brenda says, scooping up her stepdaughter. Nate: "How about after she makes potty, for starters?" Brenda sighs her agreement and takes Maya to make potty. Nate picks up the book Brenda's been reading -- a tome called The Coherent Parent -- and examines the dust jacket. Yeah, Nate. Women and books, man. No good can come of that shit. But here's a tip, my hirsute friend: it gets really dangerous when they actually open the cover.