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Directed by: Mark Tinker
Written by: Ted Mann
Synopsis
Bill steps out of Shaun's hospital room, announcing to the beleaguered family – with Mitch conspicuously absent – that Shaun has made a full recovery. As Dr. Smith rushes to inspect a boy who was brain-dead 30 seconds earlier, Bill tells the others, "I had Zippy kiss him. Thought I'd take a shot." Dr. Smith tests Shaun for responsiveness and removes his breathing tube before pulling Cissy and Butchie aside to talk. "If he stays, what will happen here will be in the hospital's interest and of no benefit to him," the doctor tells Cissy, who asks if the family should take him home. "As a physician," he replies, "I can't say that to you."
Outside, Freddy sits in his rental car, mumbling to himself about the reporters crowding the hospital entrance while he watches Mitch come outside with Cass. When she asks Mitch about his grandson, he tells her the boy is going to die. Cass offers Mitch a ride home, and as they leave, Freddy's henchman, Palaka, pulls up beside his boss. Beckoning Palaka into the car, Freddy promptly smashes the man's hand against the dashboard, breaking his wrist. "I may need a reason to find out what's going on in there," Freddy says. "Take you in as an injured friend." No sooner does he concoct this plan, than the Yosts render Palaka's fracture meaningless by bursting from the hospital's back door with Shaun in tow. Improvising, Freddy orders Palaka to distract the reporters, which he accomplishes by waving his injured hand yelling, "Help! I was attacked ..."
Instead of driving Mitch home, Cass takes him to the beach, where he espouses his guilt over Shaun's accident and complains about competitive surfing: "Watching him milk a closed-out section to impress a bunch of judges? That's not surfing." Cass interrupts his rant to take a call from Linc, pretending to talk about film with her assistant. The moment she hangs up, Mitch continues, eventually transitioning to the rocky state of his marriage. Cass suggests a walk on the beach and, stroking his ego as they stroll, asks him to come back to her hotel room.
Shaun, safely at home but confined to his bed, checks the Huntington competition results on his laptop and discovers that he won. Butchie, Bill, John and Kai linger around the kitchen, while Cissy tries to reach Mitch on his cell phone. Bill steps outside to disperse the throng of reporters and surf fans gathered in the driveway, giving Kai an opportunity to make her own exit. Dragging John, she leaves to help him find a board at the shop. John responds to this by telling Butchie he's going to "bone" Kai. "Make her see God," Butchie replies, recognizing his own crass words coming from John.
After they leave, Cissy tells Butchie about the fight she had with Mitch at the hospital. He awkwardly reassures her and goes into his son's room, where Shaun has escaped the bed and sits reading a surf magazine. "You got better," Butchie says. "But before that, they didn't think you could." When Shaun alludes to the connection between Zippy's resurrection and his own recovery, Butchie backs out of the discussion. This is fine by Shaun, who just wants to ride his half-pipe in the backyard, which Butchie consents to as long as Shaun treads carefully around his grandmother. But Cissy has passed the point of being disarmed. When Shaun interrupts her cigarette with his board and helmet, the day's stress ignites a meltdown. Chasing Shaun back inside, she explodes on Butchie, condemning him for suddenly choosing to be a father when he couldn't even show up to help build the ramp. Butchie walks out, stopping on his way home to score some dope.
Kai takes John back to her trailer, amused that he obviously fails to understand what "boning" means despite mentioning it repeatedly. She lays out the particulars for him, but it still doesn't seem to stick, prompting her to ask, "Anyone ever call you ‘slow' or ‘challenged?'" John can't answer that one either, but he responds with a gentle imperative: "See God, Kai." Her eyes roll into her head, and she falls backward in a faint. At the same moment, Vietnam Joe clutches his leg in the crowd outside the Yosts' house, and Butchie drops an untapped syringe to grab his head as trails of smoke rise from his hair. When Kai wakes up, her hands go to her breasts, and she tells John, "I'm f**king dizzy, and my piercings feel like they were in a furnace."
Mitch and Cass – en route to her hotel – change course after another call from her "assistant" informs them of Shaun's homecoming. Arriving at the house, Mitch pushes through the crowd of reporters in his driveway. Once inside, he apologizes to Cissy for abandoning her at the hospital, but it doesn't take long for the olive branch to wither into another argument about his self-serving rationalizations. Mitch leaves without seeing Shaun, hopping over the back fence to dodge the press. When Butchie takes the same path to return to the house, he finds Mitch curled over the fence, terrified to move with a nail gouged into the back of his knee. Butchie lifts him down as his father protests, "Get away, I don't want the artery to tear." Freed from the fence, as well as his paranoia, Mitch leaves as Butchie springs over into the yard.
Dr. Smith comes to check on Shaun, asking him to perform what looks like a sobriety test. "This sucks," Shaun says, before asking, "So was I dead or something?" The doctor sidesteps the question, telling Shaun he looked pretty banged up, but finds himself forced to lie when asked if he'd expected Shaun to die. "No Sir," he tells the boy. "I did not." Naturally, Shaun asks if it's ok to ride the half-pipe, to which Dr. Smith responds wisely: "Whatever's ok with your grandmother." The conversation ends with a cough from Butchie, who's been eavesdropping from the backyard and wants to talk to Dr. Smith.
The two of them sit on the half-pipe, and Butchie recounts the searing pain that boiled around two steel implants in his head – a remnant of "aerials" he wore on the circuit to mock old-school surfers. Dr. Smith explains that the sensation could stem from IV drug use – pointing out Butchie's tracked arms – but he says it could also be paranormal, especially considering what happened with Shaun. When Butchie unloads the stories of spontaneous levitation, vanishing dope-sickness and mysterious platinum cards, Dr. Smith rests his head in his hands. "I'm just so happy," he says to Butchie. Shaun returns with his skateboard – and Cissy's permission – to end his strange day on the half-pipe, where the flashes of reporters' cameras soon follow him.
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"His Visit: Day Two Continued"
