We begin in a jazzier, swinging-ier time – 1947. A cab drops off a smartly dressed young woman to the house, which is home and business to a dentist. The woman, stunt-casted by Mena Suvari, is in need of a filling (ahem) and has no money to pay for it aside from what Joni Mitchell would have called “being a good cook – I’m sitting on my groceries.” The good doctor takes her up on the offer, mentioning that the flower in her hair is a dahlia. The next morning, a woman and her daughter find the gruesome remains of the young woman’s body in a field; she’s been cut up, torso severed from the rest of her, with a Glasgow smile cut into her. The house finally gets a real celebrity murder – our gal was The Black Dahlia.
It's hard to make a joke about disfiguring girls funny, really.
Act I! Sexy Moira and her ass are making the bed and coming on to Ben. Ben actually turns it down for once but she insists that with Ben, the spirit is willing (heh), so it’s just a matter of time until he gives in. Next door, Constance is painting something straight out of Hieronymus Bosch and boozing herself silly, upsetting her Boytoy. He leaves and encounters Hayden, just chilling at the house next door. It takes all of two minutes before Hayden’s sexing him down in the basement. He promises not to tell Constance about the two of them, but Hayden insists that he should since sex is the only weapon he has. Later, Ben is interrupted by Hayden’s sister, who insists that something has happened to her. It looks like we’re going to get another gazebo joke when suddenly Hayden walks into the kitchen and is all, “oh hey guys. ‘Sup?” The sister leaves, apparently satisfied Ben didn’t kill anyone (double heh) and Ben tries to kick Hayden out. I no longer can tell if Ben believes that Hayden is living or dead. Seems like he should be a little more freaked out by seeing her around. Anyway, the Black Dahlia is in the living room, asking to see Ben because she needs a shrink. Finally, a patient Ben can’t make any worse than she already is. Ben asks her about payment and we’re right back where we started. Ben again uncharacteristically denies her advances, but daydreams pretty graphically about accepting. Ben’s actually come a long way from voyering and then cry-jerking himself back in the Pilot. A phone call from Vivien’s doctor brings news – Vivien’s twins actually have two fathers. OMG I TOTALLY CALLED IT, YOU GUYS!!!
Act II! Constance believes Violet has been sexing the boytoy but Old Moira says fat chance, she loves Tate and isn’t that going to be awkward when she finds out Tate is the father of one of her future brothers. The news of Tate’s fatherhood is not welcome for Constance, who finds Tate in the basement and beats the ghostly tar out of him, saying he’s risked everything. Upstairs, Ben encounters Sexy Moira getting physical with the Dahlia and despite being massively turned on, leaves. Dahlia is confused, saying that was “supposed to work”, but Hayden is suddenly on the scene and disagrees. Dahlia tells Hayden she only ever wanted to be famous and Hayden has to let her in on the uncomfortable fact that she kind of is. Flashback to 1947, the dentist used ether on her, having sex with her body before realizing he accidently killed her via overdose. How to fix this problem? Let ghostly Dr. Montgomery and his trigger-happy surgical scalpel help! Doc Montgomery carves her up, but at least doesn’t graft any animal parts on. In the modern day, Vivien has been kept sedated in the mental ward. Ben visits and tells her that he has no intention of helping her get out of there now that he knows she has been unfaithful to him. This may sound like hypocrisy, but given that Vivien gave him no end of pain for his indiscretion and Ben doesn’t know the ghostly side I can see why he’d be so righteous.
Act III! Ben and Hayden remember starting their affair back in Boston. Hayden is convinced they were destined to be together, but Ben, sensibly, sees it differently – he was just lonely and sad in his marriage. Who is this Ben who suddenly makes cogent arguments and demonstrates insight? In her house, Constance apologizes to boytoy and asks him to marry her. She says there will be a baby soon and that baby’s going to need a proper father. It’s a sign of how unhinged the news of her expectant grandmotherhood has made her that she thinks boytoy with his nonexistent underwear modeling career is the right man for the job. When he denies that he wants to be a father with her, she brings this up and mentions that it was her dream to be beautiful and famous once too then chases him out of the house and back to Hayden for some angry basement hate sex. Hayden wants to go for round two, but boytoy makes a sudden about-face and decides maybe fatherhood would be kind of cool actually. Never talk sense to Hayden. She accepts the news by burying a knife into boytoy’s back several times.
Act IV! Boytoy (I guess I have to start him calling Travis since it looks like he’s going to be around), Hayden, the Dahlia and Dr. Montgomery consider how to get rid of the body. Hayden says someone owes her a favor – cut to Burning Man dumping boytoy’s Dahlia-esque dismembered body in vacant lot. God, I would have killed to have heard that phone call between the two of them. “What’s up?” “Not Much. Remember how you killed me? You owe me, dude…” In the hospital, Constance visits Vivien who and says the babies are growing very fast. Constance says she’ll be there for her.
Duplicitous, psychotic Avon calling!
Back home, Ben confronts Security Guard Luke about his affair with Vivien, but Luke says not only has he not done anything, he’s sterile and can’t have children. Later Ben contemplates the gimp mask (why the hell is that thing still in the house?) and tells Sexy Moira that maybe Vivien was actually attacked like she claimed. Then the Big Moment happens – Moira finally quits the cheesy porn dialogue and suddenly Ben sees her in her older form. Moira tells him he’s finally learning to see the truth of things. This plot development, btw, was BADLY needed and actually really exciting. Next door, Constance listens to the medium tell a story about how whenever a new Pope is chosen, he is taken to the Room of Tears and given a box that tells the precise nature of the Antichrist, a child born of human and spirit in a perversion of the conception of Jesus. Gasp!
Next week – the jig, she is starting to be up.
3 comments:
Just a couple comments:
--the icky dentist: TOTALLY WILL BAILEY (from West Wing). Blew my mind, that did.
--Black Dhalia = LAME. Also, I think Mena Suvari is weird looking. Hey, Black Dahlia, why so serious?
--Who would have thought BEN would be the voice of reason in all this? I like it.
The Black Dahlia seemed particularly shoehorned in, even more than usual for this show. I really hope, with only a few more episodes left for this season, that we can get more to what all these ghosts are about rather than introducing more and more of them.
I seriously have no idea what's going on in Ben's head. it's not very clear if he knows Hayden is dead, but how could he not? He was big with the shoveling and gazebo-building action. But if he does, then why does Vivien's claims about being attacked by a man in rubber who wasn't really there seem so unbelievable to him?
I'm going to try to trust that the writers have a plan for all this. And I totally agree: we have more than enough ghosts. That house is just getting way too full. I expect Danny Tanner to pop in next with some tinkly piano music and a life lesson. Or Uncle Jesse to show up in full Elvis regalia.
Post a Comment