Ted has by now absented himself to call Rebecca, who had texted to say she had “info.” Its precise nature, however, was apparently revealed to Ted while we were Beatling with Beard and Henry. The most we hear from Rebecca is, “But seriously, who gives a flying [expletive] if Michelle gets engaged,” which is suggestive but not dispositive.
Is the omission deliberate and, if so, what is it intended to accomplish? Time will tell. But the tug that Henry exerts on his father’s heart, while scarcely new, is ever more evident — in particular during the goodbyes that close the episode, when Ted can scarcely let go of Henry’s backpack.
Nate
When we first run across Nate this episode, he is in bed in the morning. Moreover, he is not alone but with Jade, our favorite hostess at Nate’s favorite Greek restaurant. Upon waking, she quickly determines that, charmingly, Nate had already gotten up, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth and gotten back into bed. Alas, love-struck boy that he is, he quickly falls into the trap of trying to “label” the “relationship” while claiming he’s trying to do no such thing. Slow down, tiger.
I confess I feel somewhat disappointed that we went directly from Jade not standing Nate up at dinner to the two comfortably ensconced in bed for what is evidently not the first time. (Indeed, in a later scene, she accedes to the label “boyfriend.”) We have not yet seen a single real conversation between the two, a glimpse of why it is they enjoy each other’s company. We’ve gone straight from romantic tension to romantic fulfillment without witnessing the romantic journey at all, at least so far.
Which is perhaps part of the reason Nate’s most moving relationship is still his complicated one with Ted. I noted last episode that even as we watched Good Nate’s re-emergence from Bad Nate, it had been some time since we’d seen him at work at West Ham. Could Good Nate survive in the malignant shadow of Rupert?
Smitten, he evidently can, even if only briefly and only with Rupert absent. Nate gathers a couple of subordinates together for a meeting of the “Love Hounds,” a shameless rip-off of …well, I hardly need to tell you. It goes about as well as one might expect, which is to say that the drop-off from the “Diamond Dogs” — I told you we’d get here — is comparable to that between Alvy Singer’s first and second lobster dates in “Annie Hall.” Does the awkward fiasco remind Nate of what made his time at Richmond with Ted special? Oh yes, it most assuredly does.
Christopher Orr
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