Do Right, Vote White
Quite a bit of heartbreak this week!
Election day comes up quick and Mo is down in the polls by a huge margin. Any campaign director found is pretty much gone. Frank has hitched his pocketbook to Mo and barrels ahead while ignoring the mountain of evidence that keeps piling up that Mo is a pedophile. Frank has always been motivated mostly by greed so his actions aren’t too surprising. Fiona has her business suit on and plans on stumping the neighborhood for the candidate who’s the most pro-business. This rubs Ford the wrong way who does his best to keep his mouth shut and let Fiona make up her own mind. Present day Fiona is a different woman from years ago and she now looks to get the advantages she needs to keep succeeding, even if it’s mostly a 180 from how she was brought up and where she’s from. Butting heads with Ford and the locals makes her second guess her motives and wonders if she’s a traitor. Then she comes head to head with Frank’s intimidation scheme at the voting station at the local elementary school. An all out riot breaks out and a beaten up Frank retreats back home to discover that Mo actually won. Once again back in politics, Mo swears to again, do nothing as a Senator. And get paid for it.
Liam’s school protection is going well. He lets his bodyguard cheat off of him and it’s basically free sailing to the end of the school year. He is so far advanced from his classmates that his test scores quickly grab the attention of the school administration. Next year, Liam is being moved up a few years to 6th grade. He’s not going to be in any classes with his bodyguard so that protection is going to be gone.
Deb is a mess. Ian’s assertation that Deb isn’t gay comes home to roost. While Deb is having a heart to heart with Alex, she candidly talks in a way that points this truth out to Alex. So faced with falling in love with another straight girl, Alex knows there is no future with Deb and breaks up. This whole relationship rose and fell in about a week, so when Deb moves back in crying of a broken heart, her siblings give her no empathy as they didn’t know she had moved out or who Alex is. Another relationship turned to dust it’s hard to see where Deb will go from here. Odds are she’ll swear off men and women until she stumbles into someone who gives her enough attention.
Ian is at a crossroads too. Disenfranchised from being Gay Jesus and running for his life from a group of homophobes, he has no direction. Does anything he do have any meaning or impact? If he stays with or drops the Gay Jesus movement, does it matter? Is there a point? His biggest problem is his upcoming court date. His lawyers says if he doesn’t cop to a plea deal, he runs the risk of doing 10-15 years. How much he is willing to fight is the question.
Carl gets called out on stealing the recommendation to West Point and gets challenged to a duel by a very irate preppy. Surprised by such a confrontation (the kid wants to fight to the death), Carl has some thinking to do. Ian questions Carl’s “killer instinct,” after all he’s harboring old dogs in the basement. If he can’t euthanize a dog, what’s he going to West Point for? His future isn’t going to be teaching marching drills but sending out kids who look just like him into war zones. So Ian throws more doubt into Carl’s head so he seeks out another source of advice: a well-known vet who served in Afganistan that lives, gun at the ready, in the neighborhood. Carl gets the inspiration he needs.
Xan’s mother comes back out of nowhere and Lip is pushed up against the wall. He cares for Xan like his own and knows that Xan will probably be ditched in a matter of weeks once more by her mother if he lets her go. He follows the mother around long enough to see that she’s hooking. Brad says he has no choice but to let go of Xan but Lip struggles with the facts. Yes, it’s her mother, yes he has no legal rights in the matter, but he’s afraid of the trauma he’d be sending her into. So Lip sells his project motorcycle for a heavy profit and offers the mother $10k to walk away and sign over her parental rights to him. This was shocked at the offer but from his perspective, it makes sense. The anger from the mom quickly fell to the side when she sees the envelope of cash. He had the official documents with him too. All of it seemed to be swaying her until Xan, who followed Lip out of the house when he suspiciously left at dinner, sees her mother. A tearful reunion, Lip knows he does have no choice. Xan wants nothing more than to be with her mother. I’m sure a lot of Lip’s old hopes with his mother came back to him at this moment. When Lip leaves the money for them and leaves, I like to think that Lip is considering that if she needs to in the future, Xan can find him. He’ll be her backup.
Kev and V’s hard work to de-grossify The Alibi pays off. They get revisited by the author of the newspaper report and the bar is taken off the list and women start coming into the bar. This leads to a knock on effect they never thought of: with their success, they’ve become an authority on how to turn things around. The owner of the bar who is now number 1 on the “rapeist” list asks them for help. A new business is born!