“Novelist Moody Found Guilty in Lolita Rape Case.” That’s the headline news Karen reads on her iMac after the jury read their verdict. Imagine! “Well, that happened,” Hank sighs, asking Abby, “What do we do now?” “Let’s go get shitfaced,” she replies. Next scene we’re back in Hank’s dream that started off the whole series four years ago: getting a blow job in church from a nun who advises him to drive off as fast as he can even if that means he has to steal a car. When he wakes up, he’s in bed with Abby. He tries sneaking out, but she stops him. They still don’t know what he’ll be facing: prison or probation. Instead of heading to Karen and Becca, he knocks on Charlie’s door, meeting his kinky real estate agent Peggy, who immediately whispers in Runkle’s ear she wants to play home invasion rape with Hank. When he finally picks up Becca from school, she blames him for being selfish, for always evading reality, and for being so proud to be cool. She’d rather have a boring, normal dad, who’d be there for her.
He drops her off and returns to his hotel lobby. There he spots an old acquaintance, hooker Trixie, with whom he finds some solace. Then he slips into another dream, in boring 1950’s black & white, of his live as a regular joe. Comes nighttime, he’s about to hit the highway in his newly purchased Porsche (with royalties for his novel Slowly We Rot – a reference to the debut album of Florida death metal act Obituary) – when Marcy calls with some bogus excuse to lure him over to Karen’s: Surprise! “We wanted to throw you a ‘Hank is Innocent’ party, but we had to work with what you gave us,” Runkle chuckles. They have the sweetest time, reminiscing how things were better once, in happier times, when the four of them were still two loving couples, and Becca wanted to grow up fast, because they made it look like so much fun. It’s a beautiful moment, and small wonder it takes up about a third of the episode, for it gives emotional depth to the story – and a nice reward for sitting through some of the flirty fluff and moral ambivalence: this scene gives the whole season a human heart.
He drops her off and returns to his hotel lobby. There he spots an old acquaintance, hooker Trixie, with whom he finds some solace. Then he slips into another dream, in boring 1950’s black & white, of his live as a regular joe. Comes nighttime, he’s about to hit the highway in his newly purchased Porsche (with royalties for his novel Slowly We Rot – a reference to the debut album of Florida death metal act Obituary) – when Marcy calls with some bogus excuse to lure him over to Karen’s: Surprise! “We wanted to throw you a ‘Hank is Innocent’ party, but we had to work with what you gave us,” Runkle chuckles. They have the sweetest time, reminiscing how things were better once, in happier times, when the four of them were still two loving couples, and Becca wanted to grow up fast, because they made it look like so much fun. It’s a beautiful moment, and small wonder it takes up about a third of the episode, for it gives emotional depth to the story – and a nice reward for sitting through some of the flirty fluff and moral ambivalence: this scene gives the whole season a human heart.
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