Synopsis: As the
girls await phone calls from their kids before Mother's Day brunch,
they reminisce about previous Mother's Days.
Crazy Continuity
If Blanche’s
father is still living during Blanche’s flashback story, why
wouldn’t he be with his wife in the retirement home? And where the
heck is Virginia and Charmaine?
Here, in a flashback
to 1957 we see Sophia's mother as an elderly woman in a wheelchair,
but in a later season Dorothy says Sophia's mother died when Dorothy
was six.
Let’s Get
Political
Stan: “Here, Mama.
This is for you. Happy Mother's Day.”
Mother Zbornak: “Oh,
thank you, Stanley. 'The Artwork of Adolf Hitler.'”
Dorothy: “The
minute we saw it, we knew it was for you.”
St. Olaf Vocab
When traveling by
bus to St. Olaf, you have the option to take the Express or the
Yokel. On the Yokel a family of first cousins plays banjo music but
they don’t take requests.
Lewd Ladies
Blanche’s mother:
“Wasn’t Virginia the slut?”
Blanche: “No ma’am
that was me.”
Picture It
Sophia: “Picture
it: Brooklyn, 1957, the second Sunday in May. Dorothy had gone to
pickup my mother and I was getting the house ready which mostly meant
trying to get my Salvadore into a shirt with sleeves...”
Insult Watch
Anna: “Excuse me.
Are you waiting for the bus to Northern Falls?”
Rose: “No. St.
Olaf.”
Anna: “I've
visited there. Lovely little town.”
Rose: “Oh, yes.
Yes, it is.”
Anna: “Rolling
hills, charming homes.”
Rose: “Yes.”
Anna: “Full of
idiots.”
Zbornak Zingers
Stan: “It’s from
Dorothy too.”
Stan’s mother: “If
I had to thank her, I’d choke on the words.”
Dorothy: “Please
risk it.”
Tales from the Old
South
In her flashback,
Blanche recounts how when she was a senior in high school she ran off
to marry Deck Bovinglow, a man in his 40s. She fell for the old
reverse psychology and eventually decided against it once her mother
gave Blanche her blessing.
Back in St. Olaf
Rose: “So, when
was it you visited St. Olaf?”
Anna: “Oh, Lord,
it must be 50 years ago now. I went to a wedding. A distant cousin of
mine married a local St. Olaf girl... Sonja Yongen-”
Rose:
“Yongenfrauliksteinerbrau??”
Anna: “You know
her?”
Rose: “Know her? I
was flower girl at the wedding! Well, of course, there were no
flowers that year because of what happened to Old Man Smith. He was
our town florist. He was also our town's only blacksmith. Come to
think of it, he was our town's only black man. Anyway when he first
moved in, the town council decided to give him a traditional
Scandinavian welcome gathering on his front lawn and singing songs
and dressing up in bedsheets. 'Course, coming from Chattanooga, he
wasn't familiar with the custom. He had a heart attack. He spent most
of the summer in intensive care. After that, when somebody new moved
in, the town council just handed out peanut brittle and free passes
to the local movie house, which they hoped to build someday.”
Take Me Out to the
Ballgame, Stanley
Sophia “That's
Mama. She sees you looking like this, we'll never convince her to
move in with us. Get moving. Move! Move!”
Sal: “Oh, boy.
Boy, it's a dark day in Brooklyn today. The Dodgers are moving out,
and your mother's moving in!”
Literary
Intelligentsia
Blanche: “It's a
really sweet story, Rose.”
Sophia: “Yeah
right. So sell it to the 'Reader's Digest.' Let's get outta here!”
Reel References
Stan: “Would break
Mama's heart if she knew I was a failure. To her, I have the business
sense of a Rockefeller, the looks of a Gary Cooper, and the charm of
a Cary Grant.”
Dorothy: “I'm not
surprised. The woman drinks grain alcohol out of a measuring cup.”
Golden Quotes
Dorothy: “I’m
sure that you’ll be proud to know that the name Zbornak has become
synonymous with plastic vomit.”
Rose, on the phone: “Hey, everyone, it's Charlie Jr. Oh! Guess what. He says it's cold in Minnesota.”
Blanche: “Get outta here.”
Rose: “Charlie, is it cold enough that if you put your tongue on something metal, it'll stick? Sure. I'll hold.”
Critique: This is another one
of those flashback/vignette episodes that feature scenes we luckily
haven’t seen before and a couple of them are pretty decent. Going
for the heartstrings most of them are overly sentimental than
outright funny. The first one involving a visit to Stan's mother's
trailer is the best one and the twist that reveals Stan’s mother
actually hates her son and not Dorothy is a fun surprise. The second
involves Rose getting to know an elderly runaway who gives an
Emmy-nominated performance. The actress will show up again in Season
Four's “Not Another Monday” (And you may recognize her as the
grandmother from Poltergeist II). I’m still not quite sure where
Blanche’s father is in her flashback since he doesn’t die until
the fifth season but I digress. And of course we get another
flashback to Brooklyn with a young Sophia and Dorothy. These scenes
are always cute if not particularly laugh out loud funny. There’s a
somewhat of a dearth of really memorable lines in this one but is by
no means a terrible episode but, in the end, it feels sort of weak as
a season finale. GRADE: B