I Wonder Tangentially About Jeannie
Updated 2002-02-02 16:00:00
Fade up on the freakishly boring, robotic, glowing orb of a oh, dear God. There's no opening, pre-credits sequence at all, is there? We've just gone straight to the credits! And here's me, caught without even the vaguest notion of a wacky, anti-Dido opening credits quip! Damn. Wait, here's one: Shut up, bitch. Whew. Dodged a bullet there.
Fade up on a colorless split-level location shot on the corner of Pico and Fairfax (er, I mean "a charming adobe manse in the alien -- illegal and otherwise -- section of hipster downtown Roswell"). Isabel "Samantha Stevens" Evans opens the front door to discover Michael "Larry Tate" Guerin and Max "Tabitha Stevens" Evans bedecked in painting paraphernalia. Max holds buckets and rags, while Michael hauls in a ladder, brushes, rollers, more buckets, more rags, and an ostensible "painter's cap" that I believe he may well have picked up at the well-trafficked "French Lesbian Tennis Player In The '70s" tag sale going on near the farmer's market just around the corner. With mock wifely duty (for she is merely a mock wife), Isabel turns from the door and announces, "Honey, the painters are here!" Michael proclaims said wifely duty "funny" in a way that means, "I don't have time for your dumb cracks. At midnight, this hat turns back into Martina Navratilova and I can't be accountable for what kind of mood she'll be in." Max and Michael muscle past her, just as Jesse "Hi. My Name Is Jesse. This Is My Brother Darrin. And This Is My Other Brother Darrin" Ramirez enters the room and offers his help. Max offers that their painting the living room is "a housewarming gift from us to you," and Michael tacks on that it's also "a wedding gift. It's combined." Isabel laughs gamely before doing that [Insert Significant Landmark Day] Nazi thing she does so well, turning on Michael and deadpanning, "The wedding gift will be separate." Jesse confirms that "it's just very generous of you to take your Saturday out to paint our apartment," an essential recap of this episode's first eighteen seconds that confirms for us that Max and Michael are there to paint the apartment. Or else we would have had no indication, save for the brushes and rollers and lesbian hats and everyone already having said the word "painter" sixteen distinct times. I swear, if that Jesse didn't call me eighteen seconds into my morning each and every day and remind me, "Dan, wear pants," it's entirely possible I would just forget to wear pants. Thanks, Jesse. Now, back to the wait, what are they doing? Oh, that's right. Painting. Wait, what? Oh, that's right. Painting.