On the advice of one Miss Terry Hatcher’s blog, Penny decides to quit sugar cold-turkey, no matter what a stupid idiot this makes her seem to the rest of the gang. “My body is a temple; your bodies are stadium urinal troughs,” Penny snarls. Despite having just ordered a table keg for one, Alex quickly climbs aboard the health train too, a train which is almost certainly barreling toward tears and starvation and disaster. Oh, and then Mork stops by. Or is it Max? No one has seen him for awhile since he’s gotten so busy with his super serious boyfriend Grant, so it’s kind of hard to remember. “We’re sharing this cute toggle coat,” a shivering Max explains, before stopping and listening to the words that are coming out of his mouth. Max is still leery about settling down, despite the fact that Grant won two horses for him to hold, and anyone who will set you up for a great visual gag like that is definitely a keeper.
Meanwhile, Dave is turning his truck into a speakeasy, because as Brad points out, “seriously, Dave has a lot of stupid ideas.” Unlike inventing boxer thongs or changing his name to Dustin or proposing to Alex, however, running an old-timey gin joint out of what is essentially a car filled with sandwiches turns out to be a wild success. Whore’s Bath? “Yes, I did take a whore’s bath. I had a one night stand,” Penny declares to the group, defiantly. “Did I rub some dryer sheets on my pits and splash some water on my hush in the bathroom of an Au Bon Pain? Yes, I did.” Oh Penny, a Whore’s Bath is just a mixed drink. On a related note…dryer sheets? Au Bon Pain? Hush?
That night Jane and Brad settle down to sleep, only to be woken up by individual sex dreams about Dave. But…but…as Brad points out, you only have sex dreams about people you’re really attracted to! “Didn’t you have a sex dream about Fran Sinclair, the mom from Dinosaurs?,” Jane muses. What were the filthy details of Jane’s unconscious interlude with Dave? “It was like Varsity Blues,” she reveals. “Except instead of winning the State Championship, Dave had sex with me repeatedly.” Says Brad, “How is that like Varsity Blues?” Admits a humiliated Jane, “Jon Voight was coaching us the entire time.”
While Alex seems to be able to stick to the no-sugar diet with ease (other than accidentally confusing rat poison with her pirate cereal), Penny is…struggling. “Brad, be a dear, chew up a bite of a sandwich and blow it in my mouth,” she asks. Things only get worse from there. “You’re wearing pedicure flip-flops, pajama jeans and you’re on the verge of tears,” Alex observes gently. “They’re not pajama jeans,” Penny gasps, tearing off her sweatshirt. “They’re paj-overalls!” Eventually Penny breaks down, guzzling one of Dave’s drinks…which leads her to dream a dream involving of Dave’s white-hot sexuality. Well, it was more of a-surprise-proposal-in-a-romantic-cabin dream, but still. Unsettling. “Dave is Freddy Kruegering us in our dreams with sex,” Jane gasps. Not knowing about their dirty nighttime fantasies (“He made me keep my heels on,” Brad whispers), Dave begins to suspect that the gang is avoiding him do to his new-found success. He should have instead suspected they were driven away by his new celeb friend Colin Hanks, played by Colin Hanks as if Colin Hanks secretly hated Colin Hanks. Playing douchebag to the hilt, Colin’s gigantic diamond earring and obnoxious stories about hanging out with Justin Hoffman are only slightly less repulsive than his weaseling intern Beans. “Hi, I’m Beans,” he chirps excitedly. “Do you have any cocaine? Please?”
Eventually Penny, Brad and Jane realize it’s the secret ingredient in Dave’s drinks (turpentine) that is causing their brains to lust after his dream boners. Which means Penny should stop drinking them, right? It’s only a matter of time before we get the inevitable Penny-Dave-Alex love triangle, right? Max and Grant decide to go on a break, because that actor probably has some other job coming up. Oh, and because Max thinks he wants babies, while Grant is dead-set against them. My head broke a little when Max chimes in, “You don’t?” during their dissuasion about kids. I meant to type “heart” instead of “head,” but I’m going to keep the typo because it just makes that sentence more true. Also, and I don’t mean to overstate this, anyone who wouldn’t want to have babies with Max should definitely be crushed under the wheels of a garbage truck.
Riddled with guilt and flavors, Penny panics when Alex is about to discover her secretly eating waffles in her room, and hides them on top of her ceiling fan. I don’t have to tell you that fan gets switched on, do you? The non-stop waterfall of breakfast foods was perfectly timed. “Oh floor bacon!,” Max gasps. “Oh no, it’s just a loose moccasin.” Paul Scheer stops by as Alex’s abstinent yogi friend Avi, who informs a standoffish Penny, “Jealousy is not a pair of sweatpants that fits you well.” “Judgment is the gluten of thoughts,” Alex concurs, up until the moment she finds out her new health food buddies are actually some kind of vegan fuck cult. Having pounded back some drinks, Alex wakes from her very own sex dream with Dave…only to realize she, in fact, had a sexual reality with him, and he is still snoozing in her bed. Hoo boy, indeed.
Jane: “Remember New Year’s Eve? I was fall-down mopping.”
Alex: “I signed us up for a mini-triathalon, so if anyone asks, we’re dwarfs.”
Not a quote exactly, but an exhausted Jane using her stack of pancakes for a pillow was quality.
Max: “I know you, Penny. We’ve made love.”
Penny: “Ew.”
Max: “You mean ew-mazing!”
