Difficult People, Episode 304 "Rabbitversary"

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.