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Directed by: Tom Vaughan
Written by: Alix Lambert
Synopsis
Cass wakes up to a hard drive full of video footage she has no idea what to do with, so she spends the morning procrastinating. After downing shots from the mini-bar, ordering room service, even straightening picture frames, she throws herself onto the bed in frustration.
Cissy, on the other hand, confronts her problems head-on, harping at Mitch over the phone about Tina's conspicuously-timed appearance in Imperial Beach. "Every degenerate in America jerks off to his mother's videos, and she only showed up to make money off Shaunie's being in the papers," she says. Shaun, lying in bed listening to her tirade, can't take any more and, plopping one of Tina's shrink-wrapped films in front of his grandmother, takes off on his skateboard. "You hurt my feelings," he tells her. "You did." Later, Cissy goes looking for him at the surf shop, explaining to Kai what happened and recruiting her help. Kai leaves to search for Shaun at a skate park, but not before telling Cissy he's probably upset because he didn't get to see his mother when she came to the house. "Whoever you don't drive away runs away on his own," Kai points out.
John goes "behind the wire" into Vietnam Joe's camp, stepping into the sights of the vet's sidearm. "Good way to get another fatal injury, Frat Boy," Joe tells him. John explains that justice must be served to the "Vato" who stabbed him and tells Joe the police should be involved, which leads the pair to Bill's house. John has developed a habit of narrating Joe's thoughts aloud as they surface in the vet's mind, but when he starts channeling Bill's wife, Lois, the ex-cop balks. Starting to weep as he converses with her through John, Bill agrees to help find John's attacker, but he orders his visitors to leave while he composes himself.
Back at the Snug Harbor, a party is in the making. Butchie helps Dickstein pound stakes and hang string to block off a shuffleboard court, but the lawyer – too uptight to risk Butchie's mistakes – sends him away. Butchie wanders around while Barry gives Freddy a plant for his room (actually prompting near-appreciation) and Palaka cleans the pool with Ramon. Dr. Smith arrives on his bicycle, asking Butchie about his family before taking Palaka to finally get his wrist X-rayed, at Freddy's threatening insistence.
Cissy pulls into the parking lot and herds Butchie into his room. "I want Tina to see Shaun," she tells him, feeling guilty about her outburst that morning. After she leaves, Butchie calls Tina, who has already left I.B. Unfamiliar with acting like a parent and riled by his own abrasive mother, he's dying to get high and blows up on Tina in a fit of worry and frustration. "Where the f**k have you been? I've been calling for 20 minutes!" She hangs up. Calling back, he apologizes in an equally harried tone and begs her to come back to see Shaun. After she agrees, he throws the phone and begins to cry.
Joe drives John and Bill to the road where he found John stabbed and abandoned, scouring the area through binoculars in search of his assailant. John holds his hands to his eyes, peering through imaginary lenses. At the same time, Cissy lets herself into Kai's trailer and recovers her gun from beneath the mattress before heading home. Back in the van, Joe directs John's attention toward an illegal in a field, handing him the real glasses. John takes a look, but says to himself, "Better she tries to kill me and fails than tries to kill herself," before abruptly passing out. Standing in front of her kitchen window with the gun in her hand, Cissy is startled to notice John standing in her backyard.
In a television infomercial voice, John asks, "Are you sitting in your kitchen on Seventh Street thinking of blowing off your head with your gun you got back from Kai's trailer?" As Cissy slowly breaks down, John asks her about the time she was tripping on LSD and caught 13-year-old Butchie masturbating. "You said, 'Let me show you how to do that,'" John says, making the gesture in the air until Cissy can't take anymore and fires the gun at him ...Click. Kai's removed the bullets, and Cissy can do nothing but listen to John explain how she pushes her family away because of her shame. "Hold the gun under the spigot and turn the water on," John tells her. "Spare Shaun finding you dead in the kitchen." She complies, looking up afterward to notice John is gone.
Dickstein joins his fiancée, Daphne, at a café for lunch, and she warns him against working for a psychopath. He explains that Barry is paying him more than he's ever made, and besides, "Psychopath is harsh." After telling Dickstein she wants to meet his "new friends," Daphne's attention is drawn to the waitress, a girl named Jerri, and an irritated customer, Dwayne, who's using the café's internet service to update his Yost web site. Dwayne says the site has received 10,000 hits because of Shaun's injury, but Jerri is more interested in pestering him, sticking her wet finger in his ear and pulling her shirt over his face. Daphne isn't amused, but when Dickstein walks out behind her, he leaves an appreciative tip on the table.
Butchie calls Kai, who's found Shaun at the skate park but refuses to take him anywhere until she knows whether Tina is coming to meet him. Still straining to fix the whole situation, Butchie convinces her to approach him, but Shaun says he doesn't want to go to Cissy's house for the meeting. "Who financed your video Shaunie, with her own money," Kai asks. "Who's been there for you every f**king minute of your life?" Shaun takes off his helmet and follows Kai to the car. Butchie, with one task complete, sees his next hurdle appear in the Snug Harbor in the form of Tina's red Mustang. He tells her Shaun will meet her at Cissy's, and calls his mother to ask her to "host a lunch. Lay out some tuna fish or whatever." Cissy wants to know where Tina came up with that idea, but agrees to "leave the f**king stuff." It's close enough to a family meal to satisfy Butchie.
When Tina arrives at the house, the strained peace manages to hold. Cissy gives the porn star her tuna salad recipe – through clenched teeth – then retreats to Mitch's clubhouse to smoke cigarettes and peek through the windows. When Shaun enters the kitchen, conversation between him and his mother is sparse. He asks whether she'll be in I.B. long, and she doesn't have an answer for him. But, when Shaun asks if she'll make a sandwich for Cissy, she agrees.
Now that they've put Shaun and Tina together, Kai gives Butchie a ride back to the Snug Harbor, where all the day's preparations have culminated in a barbecue of impressive proportions. Dickstein and Daphne sit among the rest of the misfits while Ramon mans the grill. John appears at Cass's hotel to bring her – and her camera – saying to Linc as he passes, "It's time to get back in the game, Linc Stark." Linc follows. Once everyone is gathered at the Snug Harbor, enjoying each other's company in groups of two or three, John begins to proselytize. In vague, puzzling statements, John talks about his new friends, but he's also getting at something else: "The man at the wall makes a word on the wall from the circle and line. The word on the wall hears my Father. The zeroes and ones make the Word in Cass's camera." [for the complete text of John's speech, see JFC writer Steve Hawk's blog].
Everyone congregates around John, some more aware of him than others, as Bill arrives in his truck with a harmonica. He climbs to the top of his spiral staircase – inexplicably transported to the Snug Harbor's yard – and plays a tune with Freddy accompanying on saxophone. John ends his message with, "You will not note my Father's Word, nor remember Cass's camera – but you will not forget what we did here."
Back in Joe's van, still parked by the border road, John wakes up. Bill and Joe are both sleeping in their seats, so John rouses them with, "Hit the floor troopers." Bill, rubbing his jaw, swears he feels like he'd just been playing his harp. "Well, this was time well spent," Joe says, turning the key in the ignition.
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"His Visit: Day Five"
