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“South of Nowhere” Recap: Episode 3.15 “Taking Seconds”

If he ain’t broke, don’t fix him – It’s a good thing Kyla didn’t take that doomed motorcycle ride with Aiden. Although, as it turns out, he’s just fine!

Not much of a cliff-hanger when we don’t even get to see him patched up in the ER or hallucinating in the netherworld between life and death ala Tony Soprano. Paula brings him back to the Carlin’s until his parents are home to take care of him. We’re told he has “just a bump on the head.”

I think Arthur’s kind of excited it happened because it gives him a reason to hug Aiden

Aiden hears Paula say she doesn’t know why Aiden doesn’t even have a scratch on him.

What, are they trying to lead up to a big Unbreakable reveal?

Paula says that the only explanation for his condition “isn’t medical.” I know Paula is a devoutly religious woman, but if it were up to me, I’d prefer that my emergency room doctor put her faith in science when putting me back together.

Paula reminds Arthur that last season year, Aiden was shot through the heart and tonight he landed on his head after being hit by a car. She keeps saying that it’s a “miracle” he survived. Is Aiden The One? And if so, does that make her Morpheus?

Sing, sing a song – Across town, Ashley has taken the stage at a gorgeously lit open mic event “Amps and Eggs” at Ego-centric. Since when did coffee houses get professional stage lighting?

She tells the audience that Aiden’s accident reminded her to “do things before I can’t,” then she begins strumming what sounds like the intro to “Sister Golden Hair.” I really wish it was “Sister Golden Hair,” because I love that song. And it would totally make sense in terms of Spencer. Or Paula.

But we never find out what the song was, or if she sang it well, because we cut away to something of much greater urgency and importance.

It’s gonna take a miracle – Kyla is scrubbing down countertops at the food bank when Aiden stops by for their big post-accident reunion scene. When she sees him, the first thing Kyla says is “and not a scratch on you!” Teflon-boy tells her he’s fine, he just wants to take her out for a meal. She doesn’t want to ride his motorcycle anymore, which is maybe the only smart thing I’ve ever heard Kyla say (especially this season).

But Aiden tells her that getting her on the back of his bike is the only way he can get her arms around her. Even if that’s true, it’s lame to say so.

She warns him that it won’t be that easy for them to be a couple again, the “second time around,” but he reminds her that it wasn’t that easy the first time anyway. And if by being “easy” they mean “necessary” or “believable,” then I totally agree with them.

He tells Kyla that he feels invincible because Paula thinks he’s a miracle. He thinks the concept of danger may no longer apply to him.

They continue their inane conversation at the Farmer’s Market. I’ve eaten at that Cajun restaurant that flashed by on the screen, and the food was pretty good (especially their sweet potato salad), but overall the Market is kind of dingy and I always want to douse myself with anti-bacterial soap after I go there. I did see Patrica Arquette there once. That was cool.

Kyla: You really were lucky.

Aiden: What if it’s more than that?

Kyla: Come on Aiden!

Aiden: No, you come on! Something’s going on with me. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it. You know, like nothing can hurt me.

He tells her that maybe there’s nothing too crazy or dangerous for him to try, and she tells him to knock it off because she’s getting freaked out. He furrows his brow like the weight of all humanity is resting on his perfectly sculpted shoulders. Does he think he should be rescuing people from burning buildings? Or maybe he just wants to jump the Grand Canyon on his battered crotch-rocket?

In that moment, Aiden looks like Superman.

That’s it! I think Aiden is going to take on an alter-ego superhero identity. I can see the cape and tights now. It’s Girlyman!

It’s complicated – Spencer shows up at Ashley’s place, only to find new tenant Carmen there folding up some clothes. Carmen tells her that her “grumpy other half” left awhile ago. Spencer starts to leave but Carmen tells her to stay, that Ashley will be back after lunch.

For some reason, Spencer does stay. Spencer’s ass hasn’t even fully hit the sofa cushion before Carmen leers, “Finally got you in my bed.”

Carmen is creepy, and Spencer is only nice to her because she was raised to be polite. Spencer, in twenty years you will look back at this moment and wish you had taken off your earrings and whooped her.

Spencer is skeeved out enough to move across the room and sit in a different chair. She fondles her video camera, provoking Carmen to ask what her movie is about. Spencer tells her it’s about “everyone’s futures” and Carmen snorts, “futures are overrated.”

Carmen does not have the ability to carry a conversation. She can only react snarkily to other people’s comments.

Carmen: I plan as far as today. If I know that tomorrow won’t be a total disaster, then that’s icing. I can crash here for a few days and that’s nice. But sleeping in my car, waking up next to the beach, that’s not so bad either.

Spencer captures her little soliloquy on tape before Carmen catches on. Spencer, are you getting signed release forms for this movie? A lawsuit could get Carmen first and last month’s rent in a sweet little bungalow in Venice!

Carmen admits that she’s surprised that Spencer’s talking to her at all after how they left things (you know, with Spencer bruised and her perfect blonde hair all messed up). Carmen tells her that Kyla has been nice to her and Ashley’s been “stoic.”

She figures that this means Spencer never told them about how Carmen roughed her up. Spencer says, “It never came up.” Carmen tells her “that night” was the biggest reason she left her mother’s house, because living there made her the kind of person that could shove her. She asks Spencer to give her another chance.

Naturally, Spencer forgives her. Just as she does, Ashley bursts in full of excitement because she played at Ego to screams of “Encore” and “Order up!” She tells Spencer, “I was amazing!” It gave her the courage to call music producer Ethan, who, instead of screening her out, offered to meet with her the following day.

Spencer’s hurt that Ashley didn’t even invite her to the show, and Ash tells her that she would have but that she couldn’t bear the thought of chickening out in front of Spencer and The Camera (I’m guessing, however, that it’s mostly about the camera). Spencer says she would have left the camera at home, but Ashley tells her, “I know how much this little project means to you.”

Little project? Oh HELL NO.

Or in Spencer’s language, “Little project? I’m graduating in a few weeks and I just have to get this done. It’s as important to me as your music is to you.”

Ash awkwardly puts her hands on Spencer’s arms and does some really half-assed backtracking. Spencer tells her, “No, not fine.” Then she asks Carmen to give them some privacy.

This is Spencer-speak for, “Oh, it’s ON!”

Attempting to throw focus from her own jerky behavior, Ash tries to pick a fight with Carmen as she leaves the room. She notes that Carmen’s blouse looks a little too familiar.

Ash: Whoa, house-sponge. Is that Kyla’s outfit?

Spencer: Ashley, be nice!

Ash: I’m being so nice. I’ve opened up my loft to a complete weirdo, doodling ex-girlfriend…

Carmen: OK…I’m actually still in the room!

Ha. A rare moment of actual comedy on South of Nowhere! Carmen gets out while she can and Spencer lowers the big boom

Spencer: Look, I just wanted to see you perform. I am your girlfriend.

Spencer just needs to calm down and count to ten. Those L.A. anger management classes taught by Shannen Doherty have been absolutely useless!

Ash says that she understands, but she needed to do it on her own. Spencer quietly gathers her things and says that she’s off to work on “that little project” on her own.

Oh snap!

She writes the songs – Ashley and Ethan are looking over some of her songs at a restaurant. She points to one of the papers and says, “And that one’s about my dead dog, Butters. It doesn’t have to be the single or anything.”

What? More comedy? Who has infiltrated the writing room at SON? They’re killing me!

Another one, she points out, was “written in Cabo.” Watch your back, Jimmy Buffet!

Ethan tells her that he didn’t expect her to have so many songs and that she’s a great songwriter. (The one about Butters must have put her over the top.) Performed by a singer with some “buzz,” the songs could be hits!

Ashley is crestfallen. Someone else singing about her dead dog?

Ethan breaks it down for her. “Ash, hear me out. They want the next Pussycat Doll. Badass but commercial.”

This is an outrage! Ashley wears trashy clothes, too much make-up and occasionally sings on-key. She is a Pussycat Doll.

He continues, “They want the whole package. Voice, looks, rock-solid dance moves. I’ve got this girl, she’s great. With her out front and your songs backing her up…Trust me, you’re gonna love her.”

And maybe she would, except that the girl in question is Madison.

Madison makes her entrance and Ashley glares at her in disbelief.

Ashley: Am I being Punk’d?

Madison: Like anyone cares enough to “Punk” you! No offense…

Ashley: Oh and like you’re the next big thing? I thought JT didn’t want your “sexyback” back.

Madison: Look Ashley, I’m sorry your trip to New York was such a fiasco, but I’m not sure I want to be your next rag sheet gal-pal.

Ashley: Why? You afraid someone will think we kissed behind the bleachers?

Madison: No. Concerned that your joke of a reputation will do damage to mine.

Ethan looks on in helpless horror. He has opened the seventh seal of bitchdom.

Ashley tells him she can’t believe he wants to give her songs to someone who, not so long ago, “didn’t even dance without a pom-pon.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with it.)

Madison agrees. She tells Ethan, “This is not what we are looking for. I don’t want songs from someone who stopped reading in the fifth grade.”

Huh? I missed that episode. Did SON do a PSA about literacy and homophobia?

Ashley: You wouldn’t understand them anyway. They’re about people. With feelings …

Madison: You know it’s really cute that you’re an artist and everything, but I live in the real world and not in my dollhouse loft, and I’m actually serious about making it.

Madison storms away and Ethan immediately applies some spin. “A little contempt can do wonders for the creative process.”

Ever the level-headed one, Ashley snaps at the producer who wants to buy her songs and turn them into hits, “Lose my number!”

Walking on the sun – Elsewhere, if the music and melting heat are any indication, Aiden appears to be doing some manual labor in Baghdad.

He’s sweeping debris from atop a roof, and stops for a moment to take a sip of his cold beverage and contemplate the terrifying 10-foot drop below. He inches his feet close to the edge. Should he jump? Can he fly? Is he drinking Diet Mountain Dew? I know it always makes me feel both refreshed and invincible.

He drops his bottle off the side of the building and it bounces and breaks. This emboldens him and he looks like he’s about to find out if he can bounce without breaking when Kyla runs out of the building and looks up at him. (I guess he’s in L.A. afterall.)

She can tell he’s up to some delusional shenanigans and tells him to come down from the roof. He tells her he’s wondering what will happen if he jumps. She tells him that he will break his neck.

Aiden looks at her suspiciously, but agrees to come down from the roof.

King of the road – Spencer is interviewing Carmen about the finer points of dumpster-diving for her documentary. Carmen tells her that you can find some interesting things in the trash as long as you don’t mind the coffee grounds and cigarette butts that come along with them.

Spencer remembers that Carmen originally told her that doing sketches of the general public was enough to keep her in food and gas for her car. Carmen admits she was just trying to make things more dramatic for the sake of Spencer’s movie.

She snaps, “I ate fast food, okay? Is that cinéma vérité enough for you?”

Dropping a dime – Back at home, Spencer is making a full confession about Carmen to Arthur. He is appropriately horrified to learn that his daughter was in an abusive relationship, and even more concerned that Carmen is still in the picture now that she’s living at Ashley and Kyla’s house. He agrees to “make some calls” to get Carmen some help. When he says it, he actually means he’s going to call up some local shelters and government agencies to see if they can lend a hand.

If Spencer was telling this to Paula and Paula wanted to “make some calls,” I think we all know that Carmen would find herself strapped to a gurney at the morgue in Paula’s hospital. Don’t mess with Mother Superior!

Speak of the she-devil, Paula enters the room holding an official-looking envelope. It’s from Worthington College. Spencer rips it open and finds out that she’s off the waiting list, and she’s been accepted! Yay!

Arthur hugs her and congratulates her on getting into such a “great school,” while Paula reminds her that if she goes to UCLA she can continue to live at home. Forever.

Oh please! Go to a fictional university in Boston and live in the dorms with Audrey and Joey (and Suri), or go to a real school close to your girlfriend and the Arclight Cinemas with their fancy reserved seating?

It’s a no-brainer.

Spencer hesitates to tell Ashley about Worthington, as it always seems to make her upset when they talk about college (and a long-distance relationship). Paula says it will be a good reminder to Ashley that she should be thinking about her future too.

In fact, maybe it will be an inspiration to write a new song, called “You Used Up All My Minutes, Beyotch.”

19th Nervous Breakdown – Spencer arrives at Ashley’s place, only to find her current girlfriend being comforted by her former girlfriend. Lesbians are weird.

Ashley tells Carmen, “It was naïve to think he would want to produce some finger-picking acoustic album with me.”

Are you kidding? In a world where one of your friend’s graduates from high school and goes to work with Spike Lee, another drops out to be a back-up dancer for Justin Timberlake, and you get plucked from obscurity to “sing” your songs on national television, anything is truly possible. In fact, anything less than having songs about your dead dog made into a Grammy-winning, blockbuster CD would sort of be an underachievement in this crowd.

Just go over to Sports Time and ask Glen, he’ll tell you!

Ashley thinks Ethan doesn’t believe she has the talent to make it one her own. Spencer enters the room as Ashley says this, puts on her sad face (it’s become a requirement every time she leaves her happy life to come visit Ashley’s pity party du jour) and asks if Ash would like her to beat up Ethan.

Now that would be good television.

Ashley apologizes for being so “mean” (i.e. a selfish, spoiled brat) the day before, and Spencer apologizes for … nothing really. She’s just being nice because Ashley is crying in her lap.

Spencer tells her that she understands how terrifying it is to be a performer spilling your guts in front of strangers.

And because she’s Spencer, she encourages Ashley to look on the bright side. She tells her that what Ethan is proposing is actually “awesome.” And she’s right. Willie Nelson’s first claim to fame was a songwriter, then as a performer. And aside for a couple of minor scrapes he’s done just fine for himself!

Ashley protests, “He wants Madison to sing my songs! That’s like JLo singing Tori Amos!” Well, she’s half right. Plus, what’s wrong with JLo? Just think about what she could do with “Cornflake Girl”!

Ashley whines that the songs are hers to slaughter, and Carmen agrees, adding that it would be like if someone bought her paintings and then tried to say they had painted them.

Spencer, irritated, tells her no, it’s actually not like that at all. She reminds Ashley that if her prime directive is to get her music “out there” then having another artist (or, for that matter, Madison) record them would accomplish that goal.

If, however, her goal is just to be famous, well then that’s a different matter. (Spencer didn’t say that, I did.)

Keep your enemies closer – A little too quickly (we’ve only got one more episode left, right?) Madison shows up at Ashley’s house to apologize for being a raving bitch at their last meeting. She admits that’s she feeling insecure about working with Ethan.

Ashley assures her that Ethan is not sleazy and Madison gushes about how awesome Ethan thinks Ashley is.

I miss the good old days when these two were pulling one another’s hair out by the clump and slapping the snot out of each other in the locker room. All of this civility is tedious.

Madison tells her that she listened to her demo and really likes Ashley’s songs, but that they just need a little added bass to pump them up. Naturally, Ashley likes them just the way they are.

Just as Madison is about to storm out, Ashley adds that she’s been writing a song specifically for Madison. She tells her it’s tentatively titled, “Life’s A Bitch and So Am I.” They have a laugh and proceed into Ashley’s room to play some music.

This could be one of the most ill-conceived musical pairings of all time.

Curb your enthusiasm – Aiden and Kyla are walking near a busy intersection talking about Aiden’s possible immortality. She threatens to stage an intervention, he cites all of Paula’s “miracle” references as evidence of his invulnerability to physical harm.

He threatens to step off the curb and Kyla slaps him to remind him that he does feel pain. That gets his attention.

She tells him to stop being frivolous with his life and that he is a miracle for her. Then they make out, with the sting of her slap still pulsing on his cheek. Ooh, kinky.

We are family – Spencer shows up at Ashley’s and finds Carmen there doing some chores. Spencer tells her that Arthur has found a place for her to go, and Carmen wants to know if it’s a foster home.

Before Spencer can even reply, Carmen politely declines, saying that she’s planning to kick it for awhile at Ashley’s place.

Before she can explain, Ashley and Madison clomp in on their hoochie heels and announce that they are going to make “the best album ever and that Carmen is going to do the cover art, as she already has “mad sketches.” (Yes, we all know that Carmen is an angry girl, but that’s not what they mean in this case.)

Madison, Kyla, and Ashley all look ecstatic. Spencer drops her head and tries to polish her shoes with her own gaze. If she feels left out now, she won’t for much longer. Worthington (and Suri) are calling.

Next time on South of Nowhere – It’s the series finale, and Ashley wants to know if she’s just a high school fling for Spencer, or if their love is forever, ever, ever.

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