Maggie has another Joel dream. This time it’s a very on-the-nose Garden of Eden fantasy, complete with a snake and the two of them sharing an apple before sharing a naked kiss.
[Cue moose strutting to funky jazz music.]
Chris narrates over footage of dripping icicles and slushy streets. The weather is getting warmer. The days are getting longer. The ice is thawing. Spring is, uh, springing. “Persephone is coming back” Chris says, before letting out a primal howl.
Joel eagerly runs into Ruth-Anne’s to pick up his mail, including a lingerie catalog, which he insists he ordered to buy his mother a robe. (Ah, the days before the internet.) Ruth-Anne, wise to his “onanistic” intentions, gives him a Playboy. An embarrassed Joel accepts, pretending it’s for the articles. Ruth-Anne’s cool, though. She tells him everyone’s a little crazy this time of year and even offers something “a little more racy” from the back room. Maggie shows up at the most inopportune time for either of them, with him hiding his magazines and her hiding her movie rentals, which include Bambi and Death in Venice Beefcake Bingo.
Joel goes outside to hear a monstrous growl from the ice, soon to break, and he finds his radio stolen from his pickup truck. Maurice of all people brushes off this crime. The annual melt seems to come with a temporary “criminal insanity.” The year before, it was hairdryers. Joel is perplexed to learn Cicely has no police force to file a report with. In NYC “You get ripped off, you hit 911, and sooner or later the cops show up. They may not do anything, but at least they exist.”
Spring fever is affecting others as well. Holling is strutting around, bully-like, looking for a fight. Shelly is a total bookworm. “White people” says Marilyn, “they get crazy.”
Joel dreams he’s the lead man in this classic music video:
It ends with him, uh, “consummating an erotic dream” for the first time in his life. But Joel ultimately takes little satisfaction from it. At The Brick, Shelly reads an excerpt from D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, confused as to why she can’t seem to put it down. The poetic descriptions of sex go over her head. Maurice barges into the bar, fuming because someone has stolen his CD player/boom box. He’s no longer taking a chill attitude towards the crime spree now that he’s become a victim of it.
Ed, never one to knock, walks in on Joel just as he’s about to call a 1-900 number. (This episode is a serious blast from the past, technology-wise.) Detective Ed is trying to get to the bottom of the radio thefts, but Joel is too pent up and antsy to have any patience for him. Ed insists he knows a girl Joel might be interested in, but Joel dismisses this proposal.
A state trooper comes to town after Maurice pulls some strings, and Maurice is surprised to see the cop he ordered is a woman. He seems impressed by her, but Sergeant Semanski is not enthusiastic about driving 500 miles to investigate some smalltown minor crime wave at the behest of a guy who happens to have powerful friends.
The town throws a small celebration (to let off some steam, I guess), and while the normally gentle Holling is still trying to pick a fight and Shelly has her nose buried in her book, Joel and Maggie nag at one another. It’s pretty typical Joel and Maggie behavior, until they suddenly stop fighting and start making out. The will they/won’t they very nearly becomes a they do, but they catch themselves, stop, apologize to one another, and decide to go find a man and woman to more appropriately find release with. Maggie has Rick, and Joel, uh…
Officer Semanski dutifully investigates the thefts–or tries to, anyway. Maurice pesters her with kindness, offering her tea and cookies. This seems to be kind of an inverse of the Holling situation. Instead of a normally kind and gentle soul being a jerk, the jerk is being kind and gentle. Officer Semanski is unimpressed, until she finds Maurice’s weight room. He convinces her to let loose a little and pump some iron.
Ed takes a nervous Joel to meet his date. She’s a beautiful Inuit woman who lives in an igloo and doesn’t speak English. She also looks exactly like Maggie with long, dark hair. They sip root beer, which she ices with chips taken off the wall of her house. She ultimately passes on Joel, who “looks like a chipmunk.” And then Joel wakes up. This scene was so bizarre, I was relieved it turned out to be a dream. In my defense, it gets harder and harder to tell as the show gets more unabashedly
Back at The Brick, the officer continues her investigation, interviewing Chris about the recent thefts and any suspicious behavior he may have witnessed. She is annoyed by Ed, who has TV-inspired follow-ups to all her questions, and by Maurice, who showers her with compliments. Holling, overhearing talk of her feats of strength and impressive boxing record, politely asks if she will fight him. She agrees. Maurice irons her uniform as she trains in his gym.
Joel is so lost in a Maggie fantasy he doesn’t see Ed in his office, there to reassure Dr. Fleischman that he’s closing in on the radio thief. He’s discovered a pattern: scattered randomness. “It’s a random pattern. That’s the pattern.” Joel just wants the ice to break and end the madness. Not that he believes in that kind of thing.
The fight commences, and the two pugilists are trading blows when the ice finally cracks. Holling is suddenly himself again and scoffs at the idea of fighting a woman. Officer Semanski, not understanding the situation, knocks him out cold.
Chris announces on the radio that things are back to normal, but reminds the men of Cicely that tomorrow is the annual “Running of the Bulls.” Ed comes by with a box containing the stolen radios and other items from previous years’ crimewaves. Ed has actually cracked the case. His smoking gun? A number 2 pencil with Chris’ characteristic teeth marks and particular angle of wear on the eraser. Also he saw Chris stealing a radio. Chris claims he stole to remind people of the wildness and chaos that rules the world and because “sometimes you just gotta do something bad just to know you’re alive.”
And there it is: The kind of Chris Stevens pseudo-philosophy I roll my eyes at.
Maurice expresses an interest in Sergeant Semanski outside of her capacity as an officer of the law, but she has no interest in a man who made her tea and did her ironing. Maurice tries to explain what happened. He’s not a “pantywaist new man,” dammit. He had 15 kills over Pusan! But she’s not from Cicely. She doesn’t get it.
Joel makes a frantic visit to the home of an equally frantic Maggie. The ice breaking has not cured either of them of their sexual frustrations. They finally speak openly about their attraction to one another–of their dreams and fantasies–and, having finally cleared the air, they feel a little relief.
The next morning, Joel learns that Cicely’s Running of the Bulls involves all the men taking off every stitch of clothing and running down Main Street completely nude. Joel says “What the hell?” and joins them.
Miscellaneous notes, quotes, and anecdotes:
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