So, remember that time I recapped the first episode of Heading Out and said Shelley Conn would never be on it again and then she totally was? Ha! Ha! Ha! Er. *coughs* *nervous laugh* Sorry for being a doof? My statement was due to some apparently poor research, for which I apologize. But I am also 100% happy I screwed up, because Shelley Conn! She’s without a doubt the most natural character on this show, a show that I’ve determined became distinctively weirder with our second episode.
Now, I normally like weird things, so I don’t necessarily mean that to be detrimental. Although I still feel uncertain as to whether this particular weird is good weird or bad weird. On my second watching of this episode, I was leaning just slightly more towards good weird. Perhaps you can weigh in. Let’s stick with just weird for now.
And to make up for my Shelley Conn screw up, I’ll just include a gratuitous amount of screen caps of her face! She graces our screens right away as she stops by Sara’s vet to both bring in her dog and cheekily ask her out on a date. Sara’s having a bit of a There’s Something About Mary moment with her hair, albeit with the styling goods being from an unneutered tomcat as opposed to Ben Stiller. I have to say that I never really found it funny with Ben Stiller and I don’t think it’s funny here, but more just cute, as Sara is being very bumbling over Eve and I like Sara’s face, too. After Eve takes off, Sara has a consultation with a kooky rich blonde lady who’s getting a divorce and asks Sara for some legal help; she just needs Sara to say that their dog is more attached to her than to her husband. I have to say that so far, while I still love the vet office and its props, I’ve found the vet dialogues and storylines to be the least interesting of anything else on the show. Which is sad, as I love animals–I know, really breaking the lesbian mold there–and as my wife is a vet tech, I was really looking forward to that part of the show. Perhaps it’ll improve, but I’d be happy with just spending all of our time focusing on the rest of the stuff instead.
And when I say “the rest of the stuff,” I mean Sara hanging out with her friends, who I do love, and which she in fact does momentarily, as Jamie and Justine are waiting for her when she gets off work to take her to her first life coach session with Toria. Toria explains she’ll use a number of methods to help Sara harness her issues about coming out to her parents, one of which is hypnosis. While Sara has been rolling her eyes pretty much the entire time, Justine is sitting through the session with her, as well, and as Toria begins her hypnosis spiel, she suddenly stands up and begins to do the most elegant of all dances: the chicken dance. Toria says that she must have gone through some prior hypnosis that was triggered, and that there was no way of knowing how to snap her out of it.
Also, Toria’s living room is full of dildos. The session ends there, which is sad, because I think Toria is my other favorite part of the show. Played perfectly by Joanna Scanlan, her character is the right amount of ridiculousness, laughing outlandishly at her own bad jokes, full of exaggerated facial expressions, that it just comically works. Plus, I would like to see what she actually brings out in Sara during these sessions, whether funny or serious or simply plot-moving, so hopefully they’ll be more productive in future episodes.
Let’s also discuss Justine’s chicken dance, as it keeps coming back throughout the episode. When their weekly netball session is canceled, all the friends head into the muddy woods for a game of paintball instead, which is entertaining just for the combo of Rambo wannabee Daniel–I really do love Daniel–alongside mega-OCD Jamie–and I really do love Jamie. On their van ride back to town, however, something has caused Justine to fall back into the wicked chicken dance vortex. Sara and Jamie start tossing possible key words and phrases at her to snap her out of it, but nothing helps. While the look of concentration on Justine’s face along with the crazy grunting way she sings the chicken dance song make me smile, whenever she has to do the hip shaking down towards the ground part, I just descend into an intense secondhand embarrassment. Which perhaps is what’s meant to happen, but I feel they should have chosen maybe a less typical dance. Like, say, The Macarena. 1990s throwbacks are always funny! Well, okay, that probably would’ve been awkward too. They probably all would’ve been awkward. They probably should’ve chosen a different bit altogether. But, bless Nicola Walker anyway.
Sara and company also end up spending quite a bit of time with that blonde lady for whom Sara’s doing the legal dog consulting. When Sara shows up at her house to check out her dog situation, blonde woman invites Sara and her friends to a party with one of her action movie star friends, and later picks up Sara to go out shopping, as well. As they head out of the fancy shop, divorcing dog lady says, “I got you something!” This is, of course, exactly when Eve walks up, who proceeds to give a glorious, not-so-casual peck on the cheek to Sara, while casting cautious glances towards the other woman. The divorcing cat lady responds by giving Sara a punch on the arm, and the three of them share a few minutes of awkward conversation. Eve asks how they know each other; divorcing cat lady says that Sara was looking into dog stuff for her; Eve responds, “That’s how it starts, isn’t it?” and promptly proceeds to give Sara a pointed look while walking away. I must admit that I feel a little confused about what this blonde lady means to Sara or to this episode. Is Sara flirting with her? Or is the self-conscious funny talk the way she simply converses with everyone? Is the blonde lady flirting with her, and if so, why? If anything is supposed to be flirty, I’m not quite sure why, since blonde lady is apparently straight and Sara has Shelley freaking Conn waiting for her. And as Shelley freaking Conn walks away and Sara realizes what this all looks like, she squeezes her eyes shut and sighs, and we can practically see her own feet kicking herself inside her head. But instead of running after Eve, Sara simply takes a second before returning to self-deprecating jokes with the blonde lady. Is she simply flattered that a rich fancy woman would want to hang out with her? Her face lit up each time the woman invited her to an outing, a marked difference and a surprise from the reluctant cynicism that she seems to take with everything else in her life, and which seems especially strange when this woman is clearly vapid and un-Sara-like.
Jamie had made a comment earlier in the episode about Sara being into rich girls, that she’s scared of them, yet fascinated by them. While Sara called it rubbish, it becomes clear that it isn’t. This is shown when she not only accepts the ridiculous leopard dress, but wears it to the party with that action movie star. When Justine shows up, she asks, “Why are you dressed like a woman?” and reaches out to touch Sara’s cleavage. Jamie has the same reaction, and when he finds out who Sara’s “new friend” is, he’s appalled; it’s the same woman who’s been giving him a hard time at work. “How can you be friends with her? She’s evil.” She insists he has the wrong person; he insists that he doesn’t. Later in the bathroom, straight out of a scene from everyone’s high school nightmares, Sara’s stuck in a stall while the blonde woman and one of her friends barge in to fix up their make up and talk loudly about what a loser Sara is. Friend quips that she can barely look at her, as she looks like “one of the Pretenders in drag.” Blonde girl admits that she doesn’t even want the damn dog anyway, she’s just pretending to be nice to Sara because she doesn’t want her husband to get it, and also she’s a big fat meanie. So just like high school, then: even when it should be clear who’s awful and who’s not, we still inexplicably want the cool kids to like us. Except that most of us are able to figure out who the cool kids actually are by this age. But then again, sometimes not; sometimes high school follows us everywhere, even when we don’t want to admit it. If only Toria were here to give Sara another big-breasted hug.
Meanwhile, Justine is getting to meet her favorite action star hero, Kip, which results in what I think is the funniest part of the episode. He’s discussing his daily routine, which involves working out a lot, “And then, I have a ham. If I’m training, I might have maybe two ham.” He continues:
Kip: Let me tell you something. When you lift 120, 130 pounds, to me, it is a truly spiritual experience. Justine: 120, 130 pounds…How much is that in animal? Kip: I don’t understand– Justine: Is it an otter? Kip: I don’t know what that is. Justine: A large badger? Kip: It’s about like a kangaroo. Yeah, a kangaroo, about exactly. Justine: Do you think you could lift me? Kip: Oh, easy. Actually, you’re slightly less than a kangaroo. More like a snow leopard. [Sara enters] Justine: Hi. This is Kip. He eats ham, and lifts kangaroos.In the end, Jamie comforts the feeling-very-stupid Sara and tells her she has to tell the courts the truth that the dog doesn’t belong with the mean blonde lady, and they finally cure Justine of her chicken dance infliction by uttering the magic words: pork chop. What were your favorite (or least favorite) moments of the second episode?
