6/3/09

p 27-31

Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad [2003] April 1
place near Enfield/Boston
no narration

synopsis:

The episode is entirely dialog with no narrator. Hal at age 10 [he'll be 11 in June] has been sent by his father to 'converse' with an unnamed 'professional conversationalist' [PC]. Hal's patience is tried by the PC, whom he sees as his intellectual inferior. When the PC asks Hal if he knows the meaning of 'implore' Hal impatiently quotes the OED definition verbatim, and says that he tends to get beat up for that. Hal gets annoyed when PC looks at his watch, reminding him that Himself has paid for the time. When the PC tries to one-up him with a dictionary quotation, Hal shreds him for using Webster's 7th, which is inferior to the OED and is also out of date. He reveals the nicknames of Himself [as in the man Himself] for his father, and the Moms [which he credits his brother Orin with] for his mother. He says that Himself is having a hallucination that Hal never speaks. The PC reveals that he has done some research on Hal, and knows of his interest in Byzantine erotica, and has researched his connection with the 'intra-Provincial crisis in southern Quebec' and his family's 'sordid liaison with the Pan-Canadian Resistance's notorious M. duPlessis and his malevolent but allegedly irresistible amanuensis-cum-operative Luria P------'. Hal asks if he has mixed up his calendar, reminding him that he is the 10 year old tennis prodigy whose mother is a prescriptive grammarian and his father is an avant-garde filmmaker who single handedly founded ETA. The PC continues rambling about how leaked photos of the liaison have caused deaths, and that his mother has had affairs with a bisexual bassoonist and over 30 Near Eastern medical attaches. His mother has introduced esoteric steroids, which are chemically similar to the formula used in both Hal's complimentary tennis racquet, and the cartridge implanted in Himself's cerebrum. At around this point Hal comes to realize that his father is pulling an April Fool's hoax, and has rented the office and the face, in order to have a conversation with his son that doesn't end like all the others, with Hal staring and Himself swallowing. Which this one apparently does.

notes
This scene is clearly crucial in setting up the family's connections to duPlessis, as well as the mysterious steroid/narcotic trade

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