Citizen Shame
Updated 2000-10-05 17:00:00
No Room at the Inn, the motel where Sam and Jane live. No really, it's called that. There's a knock at the door. Sam comes out of the bathroom to answer it, her hair wrapped in a towel, causing the viewers at home to lean into their television sets, all anxiously pondering the same question: will her hair suck tonight or won't it? And this towel is delaying our gratification. She answers the door and it's Penny, the cute neighbor with all the sassy lines from upstairs played by a twelve-year-old Janet Jackson. Oh wait, it's Carmen. And no sassy lines, or any sassiness whatsoever. She needs a place to stay. "My house is a war zone," she explains. Her parents are fighting. As she takes off her jacket, she's got a tank top on underneath, and there's a bruise on her arm that she hides just before Sam can turn around and see it -- in the unlikely event of Sam actually noticing something happening to someone else. But then it's hard to say that even Sam could miss the bruise on Carmen's arm with that wide-eyed look Carmen gives herself in the mirror and that serious synthesizer music building in the background. Oh yeah, and I thought I'd mention that there is this seriously cool mural on the motel room wall.
Jane is in a hospital gown in a doctor's office, and I really couldn't care less about her health. Actually, I do care about her health -- which is to say that I want her to die really soon, hopefully in an accident that that Mike is killed in as well. Oh, and it would be perfection if the funeral were held that very episode so the writers could get their existence out of the way really really fast. Damn. Jane doesn't have cancer but she's pregnant. Now those parents are never going to die. Jane is really upset that she's with child and gets to do a little "desperate single woman of a certain age" comedy about it. I can't blame her. Look who popped out last time this happened.
Credits.
The Palace kitchen. Brooke makes breakfast for her father, but Brooke can't cook so they do a little stock domestic comedy of their own. Brooke asks Mike if she can call Jane and ask her to come over and make breakfast. Dude, it's just breakfast, grab a bagel at a diner or something. "No!" shouts Mike, as if Jane, having just caught him doing it with Peggy Lipton, is just dying to come over and serve him a hot breakfast. "I miss her!" says Brooke. Mike reminds her that she forgot all about her while Peggy Lipton was in town. "I'm late," says Brooke, flinging her nasty-looking Burberry plaid backpack over her shoulder and doing the Brooke stomp out of there. "It's only seven-thirty," says Mike. "I'm taking a prep seminar for the S.A.T.," says Brooke. "I really hope they don't have any questions about family on it because clearly I don't know how they work." They fight some more and she stomps off. End this plot line, now!