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Oh, hey, speaking of Pride, Bette's wearing her Pride costume: it's a big black triangle pretending to be a cape/coat/jacket/whatever. How festive!

Tina says hi to Melvin. He doesn't want the flowers.

Melvin: "Take those home. You can put flowers on my grave."
Bette: "Aren't you gonna say hello to Tina, daddy?"
Melvin: "Hello, Miss Kennard."
[Bette and Kit exchange looks]
Tina: "How are you feeling?"
Melvin: "How do you think I'm feeling?"
Bette: "Daddy, did you see how pregnant Tina is?"
Tina: "Would you like to feel the baby?"
Melvin: "That would be highly inappropriate."

Help, help, I'm so conflicted! I'm laughing at Melvin's cantankerosity, and growling at his bigotry, and sympathizing with Bette's exasperation — and above all, imagining Tina standing on a platform on the sidewalk, offering passersby a free belly feel. They should make a season 2 Tina doll, complete with shawl and bouquet — and when you press the button on its back, it lifts up its maternity muumuu and says "Would you like to feel the baby?" in an endless robotic loop. The deluxe model includes a companion soulless British stalker doll that falls to its knees and licks its lips when you say "exhibitionism" or "stretch mark."

Introspection via intrusion — Shane is watching Mark's tapes, including the one where Carmen says "stupid, Shane." Haha. Meanwhile, Jenny is playing with paper dolls — rather, she's working on a family herstory project collage thingie. She has cut up a family photo, and is now pushing the cut-out of herself into the mouth of a scary clown face. She puts some other cut-outs in a carnival big top while she whispers the hamotzi, and then pushes cut-out Jenny into some sort of whirlpool or vortex or maelstrom or whatever you want to call a dark swirly sucking thing — maybe "Jenny's brain" is the best name for it.

Carnvials and cut-outs and maelstroms, oh my! Follow the scary art road.

Shane figures that the tears and the whispering in Hebrew probably mean "I'm not really doing much of anything," so she interrupts. Sheesh. Look, even wannabe writers like me and Jenny know that sometimes you just have to let your mind wander and do weird things, but it doesn't mean you're not busy. Or, as Gertrude Stein said, "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing." Except of course we're not talking about geniuses here.

At least Shane has the courtesy to pretend to ask what Jenny's doing.

Jenny: "I just keep on having these nightmares, and I'm just trying to work it all out."

Oh. So it's not in the service of her art; it's in the service of her psychosis. Well, then go ahead and interrupt. I don't wanna see it anymore.

Anyway, Shane wants to talk about the Carmen thing.

Shane: "This is my home, Jenny. And... I don't know... for the first time, I actually have a room of my own. That's a huge thing for me. And I'm sorry... I am. I am sorry about what you saw on that tape. But I like living with you... I love it. I think we have a great time. Right? It's just, I don't... I just don't want to lose it."
Jenny: "Yeah." [pause] "What are you gonna do about Carmen?"
Shane: "Nothin'."
Jenny: "I think the two of you should be together."
Shane: "What about you?"
Jenny: "I think, uh... I think that it was a very important step for me, and now I'm on to other things."
Shane: "Is that why you're pushing me and Carmen together?"
Jenny: "No. Because you're great together."

Then Shane says she wants to show Jenny something. Great, more sharing. When did this become an encounter group? What happened to them just hanging out together and having chicks over and having fun? Oh, right — that was on my imaginary show, not this one. Or at least it wasn't on this one for long.

Shane shows Jenny some of Mark's tapes of her. We see Shane eating cereal and smoking pot and having sex and talking about what she wants, and I guess it's all supposed to reveal that she's kind of empty. What it really reveals is that the writers ran out of ideas and this is their way of doing a flashback show.

But nah, okay, it's sort of interesting. It's certainly freaking Shane out. But Jenny's there to talk her down. Jenny kisses Shane's hand and says "you're not scary, and Carmen is not gonna get herself involved with something she can't handle."

Shane pulls Jenny close and they just hold each other for a minute. I like these two as friends, really a lot. They seem to get each other, just like Alice and I do. Um, Alice and Dana. I meant Alice and Dana.

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