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Photo Credit: KC Bailey |
Difficult People, Episode 304 "Rabbitversary"
Released by Hulu: August 15, 2017
**This recap contains spoilers so read at your own peril. Your best bet is to watch the episode first, then come back here. **
Get ready, boys and girls because the guest stars just keep coming in
this one, each one as good as the last!
Episode 4 opens on Julie and Billy playing out a scene where she’s
screaming at him, “Of all the people, you f*cked my mother!?” Billy responds
incredulously in a thick New York goomba accent (no offense to the NY goombas),
“Hey, somebody had to!”
They’re improvising the scene for a bus full of tourists and their tour
guide Rita (the indomitable Amy Sedaris). As Julie and Billy wave to the
tourists and take their bows, they mutter to themselves how miserable they are,
“I f*cking hate my life,” and how much they hate the tourists, “Trump voters,”
and “Pieces of s*it” and “Racists,” and “Sarah Palin is their beauty icon.” No
lie, I could watch 30 minutes of just them doing this exact thing. But I
suppose there’s a story or two to be told here. So let’s move on.
After the bus pulls away, Billy tells Julie he’s going to get free headshots
done later. She tells him she’s going to curl up with her “snack blankets” and
watch the Lifetime channel’s male reboot of Thelma
and Louise. Another tour bus pulls up so Billy and Julie have to improvise
another scene.
At Julie and Arthur’s apartment, Julie watches the movie that she deems
“not good for women,” when Arthur strolls in carrying a giant wrench and
informs her he successfully installed her SodaStream showerhead. Fishing for a
thank you, or any acknowledgment of any kind really, Arthur goes on and on
about how difficult it was to install. He’s feeling taken for granted.
He tests her to see if she’s listening, “Don’t you feel the new Rocky Horror is so much better than the
old one? The one with Laverne Cox? They’re deleting the original. Did you know
that?” Not listening, clearly, she answers, “Yeah, yeah, great.” If she had
been listening, I can promise you with 100% certainty, she would’ve lost her
mind because all due respect to Laverne, no one will ever outdo Tim Curry.
At the café, Billy shows Nate his new, free headshots. Nate wants one
autographed to hang on the wall in case Billy ever makes it big. Matthew throws
a few burns at Billy, and piles on one of them with this amazing line, “Snap, snap Joe Papp, Public Theatre, water tap, if he hollers let
him go, Laurie Metcalf, Margaret Cho.” I rewound that twice to get
the whole thing. You’re welcome.
Nate adds Billy’s headshot to a huge pile of unhung headshots in a
drawer. Awww.
At Marilyn’s, she’s treating a patient, Alexis, whose mother is selfish
(touché). The patient’s mom is a big
time book editor who just closed a deal with Steve Bannon for his sci-fi
novel set out of Yeshiva. As Alexis relives the terrible car accident she had
outside Marilyn’s office, Marilyn hijacks the therapy session to make it all
about her. She could’ve been the one in that accident! She could’ve been
killed. “What is my legacy?” she asks herself, and definitely not Alexis.
At Arthur and Julie’s, Julie has dressed up the dogs as the Blues
Brothers. And Arthur is dressed up because they have reservations for dinner.
Julie claims he didn’t tell her. He claims they’re celebrating the first time
she referred to him as her boyfriend. Julie’d rather take a bath in some “hot
seltzer.” Arthur gets upset and storms out.
Back out on the street, Billy and Julie are improvising as New York
bike messenger buying a hot dog and New York food cart vendor selling said hot
dog for another tour bus full of Trump chumps (#sorrynotsorry).
As the tour bus pulls away, Julie notices Billy’s face on a giant
electronic billboard. It’s his “free headshot” next to the words “No One Asked
Me To Have My Penis Mutilated. Say No To Circumcision.” The photographer asked
Billy for his autograph in case he ever made it big one day, so he obviously
signed a waiver. “I’m and idiot,” he screams.
The photographer sold Billy’s photo to an ad agency. So Billy trots
over to the ad agency to sort this mess out. He meets with Todd Ross (John Cho– who I’ve crushed on since BEFORE his Harold and Kumar days),
VP of Creative Services. From here on, I will refer to him as Hot Toddy because
he is and I want to.
Billy explains to him how this billboard could hurt his burgeoning
career. Hot Toddy has a Yale pennant hanging on the wall behind him. Billy asks
if he went to Yale, yes, he did. Hot Toddy asks, “Did you?” And Billy says, “I
did.” Oh what a tangled web, Billy.
Hot Toddy gives Billy a phone so he can call a lawyer to try and help him
get out of his contract, “but good luck, cause that s*it is air tight.” Hot Toddy
and Billy get into a heated argument and Billy storms out screaming, “This
isn’t over!”
At the café, Billy sets up a fake Facebook page with Hot Toddy’s pic
called “Recovery Group for Yale Sex Offenders” to get back at him. Nate advises
him to go high, not low. Todd comments on the page that Billy is out of his
depth. Uh oh.
At Julie’s place, her “Chore Rabbit” errand runner arrives (Chris
Elliott) to help her clean the apartment and re-install her shower head. Also
she wants him to do her laundry. Seeing as she’s also hungry, she wants to know
if she can order more than one rabbit. He creepily replies, “Push multiply on
the app. We’re here to serve ONLY you.” No one plays creepy better than Chris
Elliott.
Marilyn meets with Veronica (Lucy Liu) in her overly-bright office, who
is inverted because she “starts every day upside down.” Veronica, turns out, is
Marilyn’s patient Alexis’ self-absorbed book editor mother.
Marilyn slides her book proposal over the desk to Veronica. But
Veronica only sells catchy-titled books by the buzz-worthy. Veronica admires
Marilyn’s tenacity so she offers her some free advice, “Every famous shrink has
a catch-phrase.” Marilyn lies and tells her at the end of every therapy
session, she says, “That’s amore,” which Veronica hates. She advises her to
come up with a better one, and she’ll give her a book deal.
At the café, Nate asks if Billy’s Facebook revenge worked on Hot Toddy.
He thinks it did. Then a truck with
Billy’s face plastered on the side of it drives by, “The Face of Syphilis,” it
reads.
Matthew takes off down the street to try and get a selfie with the
truck ad.
At Julie’s, her place is overrun with Chore Rabbits. Julie realizes
Arthur usually does the work of ALL of them combined, “He’s like Justin
Timberlake, without having to constantly prove that he’s funny.”
At the ad agency, four aggressive tweakers are waiting to see Hot
Toddy. They’re there because they answered his ad. “What ad?” he asks. This
one:
Oh, Billy!
In therapy again, Alexis tells Marilyn she’s afraid to drive since her
car accident. Marilyn tests catch phrases on her. None of which land.
At Julie’s, from her bedroom she summons her Chore Rabbit, but he wants
her to meet him in the living room for some snacks he’s laid out for her. He’s
on the floor, on all fours, with a tray of snacks on his back. He wants her to
come and put her feet up on him and he calls her “Rabbit Mistress.” And he
wails.
On the street in front of a bookstore, Marilyn tries to come up with
more catch phrases. A group of circumcision protestors walk by chanting “No One
Asked Me.” Marilyn has her catch phrase!
Also on the street, Billy runs into Hot Toddy where they argue with
each other again. Hot Toddy says, “I am over you hot actor types thinking the
world owes you something.” Billy replies, “Wait. You think I’m a hot actor
type?”
They Facebook stalked each other, and realize they’re both “really
f*cked up.” So they kiss. A tour bus full of homophobic-flyover-state mouth-breathers
boo loudly. But we don’t care (we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams).
Back at Julie’s, Chore Rabbit has her tied to a chair in her snack
blanket, the sweet one, not the savory one, while he force feeds her a hot dog.
Arthur comes home just in time! Chore Rabbit gets shooed out the door.
Julie apologizes to Arthur, to his relief. She wants to make today
their anniversary because she feels safe with Arthur.
On the train, Billy happily tells Julie he’s going to see Hot Toddy
again because, “he’s the worst.” He looks up to see both his circumcision ad
and his syphilis ad on the wall of the train. People move away from him as
Julie and Billy berate them for moving away. As Rita the tour guide would say,
“And in New York, that’s considered pillow talk.”
Awesome nicknames Arthur calls
Julie in this episode:
Signature cocktail
America runs on Dunkin’
Rental agreement
Clickbait
Throwaway jokes I loved:
- Billy: As I’ve said to many a first date, welcome to the bottom.
- Veronica: I have to think about plane crashes to achieve orgasm.
- Arthur to the Chore Rabbit: Get away from my girlfriend, rabbit, or
I’ll treat you respectfully and insist on paying you for your time.
Did I leave anything out? Let me know. Until next week....
Speaking of next week, per Hulu, here's what we can look forward to:
After cut-rate facial filler leaves Julie’s face frozen into a smile, she savors the unexpected benefits. Billy has the opportunity to teach acting after running into his favorite school teacher, and Marilyn wants Julie to freeze her eggs.
*All photos courtesy of Hulu, unless otherwise noted.
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