TV Show Meme: Episode that makes you happy #1
So it might make more sense to do the entry about Without a Trace in general but a single episode recap is just quicker…Anyway it’s your average crime shows where pretty much every character scores 7-9/10 on the ‘How screwed up is your life/childhood/relationship with your family?’-scale.
It slightly differs from other crimeshows rest because it’s not a homicide team but the FBI Missing Persons unit. So the question isn’t ‘Who put this body there?’ but ‘Why did this person disappear and will we find them alive?’
This episode is called Check Your Head and I still can't quite believe that this an actual episode that was written and produced and not a crackfic
As so many crime-shows do, it starts with the victim:
Rachel. The agony aunt of a newspaper. While we slowly zoom in on her apartment ‘That’s Amore’ plays in the background.
Rachel sits in her apartment and writes her column. Then the doorbell rings and a visibly uneasy Rachel looks through the peephole and…disappears.
(The 'disappearing into thin air is just what WaT does to illustrate a disappearance...we're not supposed to think magic was involved btw)
We have a case!
Next we’re in her flat with the team…well two of them:
Vivian
And Sam
(Full name: Samantha Spade…no really)
Sam knows and likes Rachel’s columns but when she hears that she’s only been missing for five hours she tells Vivian that perhaps they should all wait till Rachel is back from her visit to the cinema. Viv explains: nope Rachel is an agoraphobic who hasn’t left her apartment for two years so, that fact that she isn’t here is worrying. Sam is unhappy about missing her lunch but agrees.
Vivian and Sam question Rachel’s assistant Bianca.
Bianca has an alibi (talking to her ex-girlfriend) but she remembers an occasion where she came over, saw Rachel with some flowers and Rachel somehow totally freaked out about those flowers and refused to talk about them or from whom she got them. We get a flashback to that scene because WaT loves flashbacks just as much as Cold Case does.
Bianca also explains that she intended to quit her job with Rachel because being the assistant to an agoraphobic was just getting too much for her.
Meanwhile in the office:
Jack is the boss of the team and usually very serious and depressed but right now he's talking to his girlfriend on the phone and sounds like a lovesick teenager while wondering which tie he should wear to their date.
Elena comes in:
And then he kind of reacts like a lovesick teenager caught by his parent... Elena then randomly teases him in Spanish about his love for striped ties but has to translate it in English for him to really get it.
We learn from Elena that somebody from a prison has called Rachel a couple of times. She’s still in the process of finding out who exactly.
For some reason the investigation requires cutting out Rachel’s columns:
Don’t ask why. If you’re already starting with they why you’ll never make it through this episode.
That vital part of the investigation is done by Danny.
Danny and Elena flirt-tease each other. Approximately 80% of their interaction is flirt-teasing. The other 20% is in Spanish and probably also flirt-teasing, I just don’t understand it…
Next: Martin appears. And he has a box.
Threat-letters Rachel received.
Which brings me to the question: Does the FBI have a box labeled ‘Unstable Individuals’ which they carry round to fetch threat-letters? Or was the newspaper already collecting them in that box, just in case their columnist disappears one day and they need to give those to the police?
Next they talk with Rachel’s editor. He explains that Rachel had been battling anxiety and a less severe form of agoraphobia since he’s known her but then, two years ago, he came to her flat and saw a guy banging at her door, demanding she’s let him in. The guy took off once he asked him what was going on but Rachel was inside, having a panic-attack and since then she hasn’t been outside.
Meanwhile Sam and Martin have found a kid in the apartment-building who has seen a guy grabbing Rachel and dragging her outside. Poor Rachel.
Back in the office the team also has found out two things:
a) Rachel sent the flowers to herself
b) They found the convict who was calling Rachel. His nickname is Pookie Bear. He did 5 years for assault and got out last week
Meet Pookie Bear
What now follows is
. I swear. A serious script-writer wrote this.
Jack: Why did you call Rachel?
Pookie: To say thank you
Jack: For how her tax-dollars provided you with such a nice accommodation?
Pookie: Your cynicism is making me uncomfortable
Jack: I’m really sorry Pookie
Pookie explains that Rachel helped him how to be a better father. Because when he was in prison “I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to process my true feelings”
(Same Viv)
So Rachel had also been writing to him outside of the column and helped him with his emotional vocabulary. To say thank you he visited her after he came out and made her pie.
Rachel really liked the pies. However she also asked him to get her a gun. Pookie was worried about this but like a good upstanding citizen with a good emotional vocabulary…he got her one. He asked her why she needed it but she just mumbled about having to go outside and the outside world being scary.
The team begins to question in what kind of troubles you can get if you don’t leave your house for two years.
Also they have this whiteboard where they make notes about the timeline of events leading up to the disappearance
This is a srs FBI-investigation
Meanwhile Sam and Martin are waiting in front of Rachel’s house in case the mysterious man who dragged her out appears again.
While they wait Sam shares stories about her childhood-fear of tomatoes. (I feel you Sam). Martin doesn’t share anything about any fears because in his family they don’t talk about emotions of any kind. (Also I guess his greatest childhood-fear was disappointing his dad and that’s still his fear…Martin is the 4th most screwed up character in this show btw).
Eventually the guy turns up and they question him (after some really cringeworthy ‘your name is pronounced how’-jokes)
He swears he’s just the laundry delivery guy and Rachel paid him $50 to drag him out of her flat because she said she couldn’t do it on her own. Since that also matches Pookie’s story about Rachel needing to do something outside and a plot-convenient timed witness appears who has seen Rachel outside and unharmed he’s in the clear.
Meanwhile, back at the office they have identified the guy who had been banging on Rachel’s door two years earlier and triggered the worst phase of her agoraphobia. He’s called Peter Hills and he’s also an avid letter-writer who has written her over and over again. Letters in which he apologized for causing the fear in the first place.
Peter claims he wasn’t harassing Rachel. He slurs his speech a bit while doing that.
Jack: Are you drunk?
Peter: It’s after work. And this is my living room.
Peter: I was in my living-room.
Peter: This is a free country and I can have a drink
Jack: Where is Rachel?
Peter denies stalking Rachel. He says that she and him were best friends in High School.
Jack: You’re a stalker. You’re the principal suspect in a kidnapping case. You’ve written her God-knows-how many letters. You’re a drunk and apparently you are also an idiot.
Peter: I’m not a drunk
Jack looks like he is currently questioning all his life-choices that lead him to this moment where he is talking to this suspect.
Anyway Peter explains that when they were both 14 they broke into his uncle’s bowling alley together. Something they’d done many times before. To…bowl. Because what else? However, Peter decided to go back home to get some beer from his parents. Only his mom caught him and stopped him from going back again. The next day Rachel didn’t talk to him anymore and hasn't since. He has no clue what happened in the bowling alley that night.
While this is not that helpful, he mentions that Rachel’s high school-nickname was Stitch. That gives Elena, who is a frequent reader of Rachel’s columns a lightbulb-moment.
In one of her columns Rachel had been talking about ‘her friend’ Stitch who was desperately in love with a coworker but no idea how to approach said coworker. Since Rachel is Stitch and she has really only one coworker with whom she is in frequent contact…
So the flowers were for Bianca, only she lost the nerve when she came back earlier than expected.
Awwwwwwww.
Bianca denies that she had anything to do with Rachel’s disappearance. She says she was also in love with Rachel, only she thought it was unrequited and that’s why she quit (Imagine your OTP).
Awwwwwww.
By now they have also found out that once Rachel was in the scary world outside she took a cab to Cedar Grove and they ask Bianca if she has any clue what Rachel might want there.
Bianca explains that’s where her parents live. And that a few weeks back she had a little breakdown.
See, Bianca’s parents didn’t take her coming out that well and she hasn’t talked to them in six years. Now, with her father’s birthday coming up she got a present for him and called her mum. Only mum still thought Bianca coming round would be a bad idea and her dad still wouldn’t want to see her.
There is a very cute flashback in which Rachel comforts Bianca and tries to persuade her to send the gift but Bianca doesn’t want to.
They now assume Rachel took the gift to Bianca’s father.
Viv: You were leaving so she wanted to win you back.
Awwwwwwwwww.
So far, so cute. Remember how Rachel felt the need to ask Pookie for a gun? Was that just the scary outside world or was there more?
Bianca explains that she’s changed her last name and that it used to be Marcello.
An Italian name. What could that mean?
Viv: As in Boss Sal Marcello?
Bianca: He prefers Don Sal Marcello. He thinks Boss is a little white collar.
Viv: I’ll bear that in mind.
Viv, Elena and Sam visit Don Sal Marcello’s Olive Oil business. Usually only two team members go together but here they’re making an exception. Either because of Don Sal Marcello or because this way Marcell's watch dog could ask if they're Charlie’s Angels when they come in.
Marcelo’s watch-dog: You got a warrant in your pocket?
Viv: You got an unlicensed firearm in your jacket?
Watch-dog: Well let’s all frisk each other and see what we find.
Surprisingly Marcello doesn’t mind talking to them. He is even willing to talk to them about Rachel (once he has taken their coffee-orders. No I am not making that up).
Rachel did drop by during lunch time to hand him Bianca’s present.
Don Marcello fondly remembers the fishing-trips with his daughter. She was more talented than any of her brothers. Too sad she left.
Because he claims that Bianca just announced she was a lesbian, took off and never talked to him again. And he even tried to understand her (by…listening to lesbian pop-country singers…again I am not making that up) but Bianca just didn’t want any contact. Rachel points out that Bianca remembers it slightly differently. She also tells the mafia-boss to just swallow his pride and call her if he misses her that much. Really. I am not making this up.
Don points out that he knows about Rachel’s agoraphobia and asks if she and Bianca are a couple. And that he doesn’t want his daughter to bang a woman who only leaves the house on special occasions. Which I guess is more open-minded than not wanting his daughter to bang another woman.
He also swears Rachel was fine when she left. And that she mentioned something about wanting to go to a bowling alley
Don: I assume that means something to you nice ladies
Sam: It does. I’m not sure what exactly but it does.
They keep being unsure about it until they get a call from the police that there is a woman in one of the lanes of a bowling centre
Jack and Danny check it out.
Danny: What do you mean in? Asleep? Drunk? Dead?
Cop: None of the above. She’s just lying there and when we came she told us to leave.
Something is dawning on Jack and Danny and they play rock paper scissors to decide who is going to talk to Rachel. I am not making this up. Jack loses and Danny has to explain the cop that this is totally a serious FBI investigation. For some reason the cop isn't that convinced.
Jack goes to the lane and Rachel is in fact just lying there:
Rachel insists that she needs to lie there another 6 hours and then she’ll be cured.
Jack asks what happened the night Peter left. Rachel is surprised he knows about Peter.
Jack: Yes I know. I know about everything. I know about the convict, the laundry guy and the mobster. And for someone who has been locked away in their appartment for two years your life is a hell of a lot more interesting than mine.
(Jack has clearly forgotten the previous season-finales/episodes leading up to the finales because Without a Trace loves things going bang…literally and emotionally…so we’re just in season 4 but we already had Jack’s arch-nemesis going free because when arresting him Jack was more worried about finding the boy he abducted than abiding the rules, Sam being taken hostage and getting shot, Jack being taken hostage and talking about his feelings, Danny’s brother going missing, Jack getting divorced, Viv having major heart-surgery, Martin getting shot and Jack having to deal with his boss/Martin’s dad.
So it’s not like your life is that boring Jack)
Rachel: And you don’t know half of it
Jack: Then fill me in, I still have to do the paperwork.
Anyway, what happened back then was that she was bowling and one of the bowling balls got stuck. She tried to dislodge it and managed but in the process she got somehow pushed into the area behind the alley.
She was stuck there until the next morning when somebody saved her. So she spent 8 hours in there which I guess is a good reason to be scared of the world.
Jack remembers that he still has a date with his gf in the evening and he really wants to wrap this case up.
Jack: Enough! Out! You’re tresspassing!
Rachel: What is wrong with you?
Jack: We don’t have enough time to discuss that subject.
(That’s right…there are in fact two whole episodes dedicated to ‘what is wrong with Jack?’…and that half episode where he talked with the hostage-taker about his feelings)
It’s not the only time this show hangs lampshades on its character’s screwed-upness but it is one of the most beautiful ones.
Jack: What is wrong with you?
Rachel: I’m an agoraphobic!
Jack: You live 15 miles away from here. You gotta be the world’s worst agoraphobic.
Rachel has to admit that Jack has a point here.
Jack: Look. The only reason you’re in here is because you don’t know how to tell your girlfriend that you like her.
(Surprisingly sound relationship advice from the divorced guy who had an affair with a coworker)
Rachel: I’ve never been a lesbian. I don’t know what to do.
Jack: I’ve never been a lesbian either. Though I did have that dream once…but that was a different thing.
He eventually persuades Rachel to get out. And guess who’s waiting outside!
Bianca can’t believe that Rachel left her apartment for her.
Awwwwwwwww.
Somebody else is there, too.
There are more hugs
Danny explains that unless something really bad is happening to somebody it just doesn’t feel like a proper day at the office. Jack explains that deep down he's an eternal optimist. (That's why he always looks that cheerful)
Jack starts the ancient music box and lets it play…That’s Amore. But that’s not enough
They sing along. I am not making this up. Somebody wrote this episode.
There are kisses. There are happy lesbians. Living, cured-of-agoraphobia-mafia lesbians.
Everybody is happy.
Even Jack is happy.
(For a few more episodes till his pregnant girlfriend gets kidnapped…that’s what you get for complaining your life is too boring).
It slightly differs from other crimeshows rest because it’s not a homicide team but the FBI Missing Persons unit. So the question isn’t ‘Who put this body there?’ but ‘Why did this person disappear and will we find them alive?’
This episode is called Check Your Head and I still can't quite believe that this an actual episode that was written and produced and not a crackfic
As so many crime-shows do, it starts with the victim:
Rachel. The agony aunt of a newspaper. While we slowly zoom in on her apartment ‘That’s Amore’ plays in the background.
Rachel sits in her apartment and writes her column. Then the doorbell rings and a visibly uneasy Rachel looks through the peephole and…disappears.
(The 'disappearing into thin air is just what WaT does to illustrate a disappearance...we're not supposed to think magic was involved btw)
We have a case!
Next we’re in her flat with the team…well two of them:
Vivian
And Sam
(Full name: Samantha Spade…no really)
Sam knows and likes Rachel’s columns but when she hears that she’s only been missing for five hours she tells Vivian that perhaps they should all wait till Rachel is back from her visit to the cinema. Viv explains: nope Rachel is an agoraphobic who hasn’t left her apartment for two years so, that fact that she isn’t here is worrying. Sam is unhappy about missing her lunch but agrees.
Vivian and Sam question Rachel’s assistant Bianca.
Bianca has an alibi (talking to her ex-girlfriend) but she remembers an occasion where she came over, saw Rachel with some flowers and Rachel somehow totally freaked out about those flowers and refused to talk about them or from whom she got them. We get a flashback to that scene because WaT loves flashbacks just as much as Cold Case does.
Bianca also explains that she intended to quit her job with Rachel because being the assistant to an agoraphobic was just getting too much for her.
Meanwhile in the office:
Jack is the boss of the team and usually very serious and depressed but right now he's talking to his girlfriend on the phone and sounds like a lovesick teenager while wondering which tie he should wear to their date.
Elena comes in:
And then he kind of reacts like a lovesick teenager caught by his parent... Elena then randomly teases him in Spanish about his love for striped ties but has to translate it in English for him to really get it.
We learn from Elena that somebody from a prison has called Rachel a couple of times. She’s still in the process of finding out who exactly.
For some reason the investigation requires cutting out Rachel’s columns:
Don’t ask why. If you’re already starting with they why you’ll never make it through this episode.
That vital part of the investigation is done by Danny.
Danny and Elena flirt-tease each other. Approximately 80% of their interaction is flirt-teasing. The other 20% is in Spanish and probably also flirt-teasing, I just don’t understand it…
Next: Martin appears. And he has a box.
Threat-letters Rachel received.
Which brings me to the question: Does the FBI have a box labeled ‘Unstable Individuals’ which they carry round to fetch threat-letters? Or was the newspaper already collecting them in that box, just in case their columnist disappears one day and they need to give those to the police?
Next they talk with Rachel’s editor. He explains that Rachel had been battling anxiety and a less severe form of agoraphobia since he’s known her but then, two years ago, he came to her flat and saw a guy banging at her door, demanding she’s let him in. The guy took off once he asked him what was going on but Rachel was inside, having a panic-attack and since then she hasn’t been outside.
Meanwhile Sam and Martin have found a kid in the apartment-building who has seen a guy grabbing Rachel and dragging her outside. Poor Rachel.
Back in the office the team also has found out two things:
a) Rachel sent the flowers to herself
b) They found the convict who was calling Rachel. His nickname is Pookie Bear. He did 5 years for assault and got out last week
Meet Pookie Bear
What now follows is
. I swear. A serious script-writer wrote this.
Jack: Why did you call Rachel?
Pookie: To say thank you
Jack: For how her tax-dollars provided you with such a nice accommodation?
Pookie: Your cynicism is making me uncomfortable
Jack: I’m really sorry Pookie
Pookie explains that Rachel helped him how to be a better father. Because when he was in prison “I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to process my true feelings”
(Same Viv)
So Rachel had also been writing to him outside of the column and helped him with his emotional vocabulary. To say thank you he visited her after he came out and made her pie.
Rachel really liked the pies. However she also asked him to get her a gun. Pookie was worried about this but like a good upstanding citizen with a good emotional vocabulary…he got her one. He asked her why she needed it but she just mumbled about having to go outside and the outside world being scary.
The team begins to question in what kind of troubles you can get if you don’t leave your house for two years.
Also they have this whiteboard where they make notes about the timeline of events leading up to the disappearance
This is a srs FBI-investigation
Meanwhile Sam and Martin are waiting in front of Rachel’s house in case the mysterious man who dragged her out appears again.
While they wait Sam shares stories about her childhood-fear of tomatoes. (I feel you Sam). Martin doesn’t share anything about any fears because in his family they don’t talk about emotions of any kind. (Also I guess his greatest childhood-fear was disappointing his dad and that’s still his fear…Martin is the 4th most screwed up character in this show btw).
Eventually the guy turns up and they question him (after some really cringeworthy ‘your name is pronounced how’-jokes)
He swears he’s just the laundry delivery guy and Rachel paid him $50 to drag him out of her flat because she said she couldn’t do it on her own. Since that also matches Pookie’s story about Rachel needing to do something outside and a plot-convenient timed witness appears who has seen Rachel outside and unharmed he’s in the clear.
Meanwhile, back at the office they have identified the guy who had been banging on Rachel’s door two years earlier and triggered the worst phase of her agoraphobia. He’s called Peter Hills and he’s also an avid letter-writer who has written her over and over again. Letters in which he apologized for causing the fear in the first place.
Peter claims he wasn’t harassing Rachel. He slurs his speech a bit while doing that.
Jack: Are you drunk?
Peter: It’s after work. And this is my living room.
Peter: I was in my living-room.
Peter: This is a free country and I can have a drink
Jack: Where is Rachel?
Peter denies stalking Rachel. He says that she and him were best friends in High School.
Jack: You’re a stalker. You’re the principal suspect in a kidnapping case. You’ve written her God-knows-how many letters. You’re a drunk and apparently you are also an idiot.
Peter: I’m not a drunk
Jack looks like he is currently questioning all his life-choices that lead him to this moment where he is talking to this suspect.
Anyway Peter explains that when they were both 14 they broke into his uncle’s bowling alley together. Something they’d done many times before. To…bowl. Because what else? However, Peter decided to go back home to get some beer from his parents. Only his mom caught him and stopped him from going back again. The next day Rachel didn’t talk to him anymore and hasn't since. He has no clue what happened in the bowling alley that night.
While this is not that helpful, he mentions that Rachel’s high school-nickname was Stitch. That gives Elena, who is a frequent reader of Rachel’s columns a lightbulb-moment.
In one of her columns Rachel had been talking about ‘her friend’ Stitch who was desperately in love with a coworker but no idea how to approach said coworker. Since Rachel is Stitch and she has really only one coworker with whom she is in frequent contact…
So the flowers were for Bianca, only she lost the nerve when she came back earlier than expected.
Awwwwwwww.
Bianca denies that she had anything to do with Rachel’s disappearance. She says she was also in love with Rachel, only she thought it was unrequited and that’s why she quit (Imagine your OTP).
Awwwwwww.
By now they have also found out that once Rachel was in the scary world outside she took a cab to Cedar Grove and they ask Bianca if she has any clue what Rachel might want there.
Bianca explains that’s where her parents live. And that a few weeks back she had a little breakdown.
See, Bianca’s parents didn’t take her coming out that well and she hasn’t talked to them in six years. Now, with her father’s birthday coming up she got a present for him and called her mum. Only mum still thought Bianca coming round would be a bad idea and her dad still wouldn’t want to see her.
There is a very cute flashback in which Rachel comforts Bianca and tries to persuade her to send the gift but Bianca doesn’t want to.
They now assume Rachel took the gift to Bianca’s father.
Viv: You were leaving so she wanted to win you back.
Awwwwwwwwww.
So far, so cute. Remember how Rachel felt the need to ask Pookie for a gun? Was that just the scary outside world or was there more?
Bianca explains that she’s changed her last name and that it used to be Marcello.
An Italian name. What could that mean?
Viv: As in Boss Sal Marcello?
Bianca: He prefers Don Sal Marcello. He thinks Boss is a little white collar.
Viv: I’ll bear that in mind.
Viv, Elena and Sam visit Don Sal Marcello’s Olive Oil business. Usually only two team members go together but here they’re making an exception. Either because of Don Sal Marcello or because this way Marcell's watch dog could ask if they're Charlie’s Angels when they come in.
Marcelo’s watch-dog: You got a warrant in your pocket?
Viv: You got an unlicensed firearm in your jacket?
Watch-dog: Well let’s all frisk each other and see what we find.
Surprisingly Marcello doesn’t mind talking to them. He is even willing to talk to them about Rachel (once he has taken their coffee-orders. No I am not making that up).
Rachel did drop by during lunch time to hand him Bianca’s present.
Don Marcello fondly remembers the fishing-trips with his daughter. She was more talented than any of her brothers. Too sad she left.
Because he claims that Bianca just announced she was a lesbian, took off and never talked to him again. And he even tried to understand her (by…listening to lesbian pop-country singers…again I am not making that up) but Bianca just didn’t want any contact. Rachel points out that Bianca remembers it slightly differently. She also tells the mafia-boss to just swallow his pride and call her if he misses her that much. Really. I am not making this up.
Don points out that he knows about Rachel’s agoraphobia and asks if she and Bianca are a couple. And that he doesn’t want his daughter to bang a woman who only leaves the house on special occasions. Which I guess is more open-minded than not wanting his daughter to bang another woman.
He also swears Rachel was fine when she left. And that she mentioned something about wanting to go to a bowling alley
Don: I assume that means something to you nice ladies
Sam: It does. I’m not sure what exactly but it does.
They keep being unsure about it until they get a call from the police that there is a woman in one of the lanes of a bowling centre
Jack and Danny check it out.
Danny: What do you mean in? Asleep? Drunk? Dead?
Cop: None of the above. She’s just lying there and when we came she told us to leave.
Something is dawning on Jack and Danny and they play rock paper scissors to decide who is going to talk to Rachel. I am not making this up. Jack loses and Danny has to explain the cop that this is totally a serious FBI investigation. For some reason the cop isn't that convinced.
Jack goes to the lane and Rachel is in fact just lying there:
Rachel insists that she needs to lie there another 6 hours and then she’ll be cured.
Jack asks what happened the night Peter left. Rachel is surprised he knows about Peter.
Jack: Yes I know. I know about everything. I know about the convict, the laundry guy and the mobster. And for someone who has been locked away in their appartment for two years your life is a hell of a lot more interesting than mine.
(Jack has clearly forgotten the previous season-finales/episodes leading up to the finales because Without a Trace loves things going bang…literally and emotionally…so we’re just in season 4 but we already had Jack’s arch-nemesis going free because when arresting him Jack was more worried about finding the boy he abducted than abiding the rules, Sam being taken hostage and getting shot, Jack being taken hostage and talking about his feelings, Danny’s brother going missing, Jack getting divorced, Viv having major heart-surgery, Martin getting shot and Jack having to deal with his boss/Martin’s dad.
So it’s not like your life is that boring Jack)
Rachel: And you don’t know half of it
Jack: Then fill me in, I still have to do the paperwork.
Anyway, what happened back then was that she was bowling and one of the bowling balls got stuck. She tried to dislodge it and managed but in the process she got somehow pushed into the area behind the alley.
She was stuck there until the next morning when somebody saved her. So she spent 8 hours in there which I guess is a good reason to be scared of the world.
Jack remembers that he still has a date with his gf in the evening and he really wants to wrap this case up.
Jack: Enough! Out! You’re tresspassing!
Rachel: What is wrong with you?
Jack: We don’t have enough time to discuss that subject.
(That’s right…there are in fact two whole episodes dedicated to ‘what is wrong with Jack?’…and that half episode where he talked with the hostage-taker about his feelings)
It’s not the only time this show hangs lampshades on its character’s screwed-upness but it is one of the most beautiful ones.
Jack: What is wrong with you?
Rachel: I’m an agoraphobic!
Jack: You live 15 miles away from here. You gotta be the world’s worst agoraphobic.
Rachel has to admit that Jack has a point here.
Jack: Look. The only reason you’re in here is because you don’t know how to tell your girlfriend that you like her.
(Surprisingly sound relationship advice from the divorced guy who had an affair with a coworker)
Rachel: I’ve never been a lesbian. I don’t know what to do.
Jack: I’ve never been a lesbian either. Though I did have that dream once…but that was a different thing.
He eventually persuades Rachel to get out. And guess who’s waiting outside!
Bianca can’t believe that Rachel left her apartment for her.
Awwwwwwwww.
Somebody else is there, too.
There are more hugs
Danny explains that unless something really bad is happening to somebody it just doesn’t feel like a proper day at the office. Jack explains that deep down he's an eternal optimist. (That's why he always looks that cheerful)
Jack starts the ancient music box and lets it play…That’s Amore. But that’s not enough
They sing along. I am not making this up. Somebody wrote this episode.
There are kisses. There are happy lesbians. Living, cured-of-agoraphobia-mafia lesbians.
Everybody is happy.
Even Jack is happy.
(For a few more episodes till his pregnant girlfriend gets kidnapped…that’s what you get for complaining your life is too boring).