Poor Twin and Andrea
When we last left them, Andrea Roth was in her Vengeful Caftan, drizzling pills on top of a drugged Poor Twin, who -- unbeknownst to Andrea -- dropped the Phone of Guilt under a nearby chair. I do cherish Andrea's flair for the dramatic, but honey, any lady hell-bent on pilling herself to death isn't going to leave a pharmaceutical breadcrumb trail.
Note
She MIGHT, however, leave a note, so Andrea fakes one that implies "Rich Twin" offed herself because of the shame of Ioan's company scandal and their impending poverty. Sadly, Andrea falls prey to the pitfalls of fake TV typing, and neglects to use the space bar (from what I could see). The biggest offender was always J.Lo.Hew on Ghost Whisperer, who would sit down to Pentium (fake Google) and drum her fingertips across the asdfjk; line a few times and then we'd cut to a screen shot with a complete and correctly punctuated phrase full of letters she did not push. But seriously, people, if all else fails, just type your name over and over so that at least you're using the space bar. THE KEY IS THE SPACE BAR. ACT YOURSELF TO THE SPACE BAR. Also that's going to be the name of the club I invent someday. All the tables will have stools that are keys, and then one space bar seat. So, you know... a bench-shaped bench. It will be the most boring bar in America and we will go out of business within a month, but hey, at least all our wait staffers will be in Vengeful Caftans. Which will inspire me to open The Vengeful Caftan...
Andrea
Ahem. Next up, Andrea practices her surprised-and-grieving faces in front of the mirror while applying lipstick. They range rather hilariously from "Rich Twin burned dinner?" to "Rich Twin got stuck in an elevator?" to "Wow, Rich Twin would look GREAT falling down an elevator shaft," and then finally, "I'm going to cover my mouth so that at least only 20 percent of my face needs to act like it cares about Rich Twin," and eventually she shrugs, all, "Eh, I don't care," because she actually totally wouldn't.
Rich Twin and Andrea
We flash back to a time eight months ago -- I can't keep up with this show's timeline, at this point, but I'm going to assume this is supposed to be not that long before the show started, which seems sort of nutso because when Andrea showed up in town earlier it was treated like she hadn't been around for a long time -- when Rich Twin flaunted that she convinced Ioan to sell Andrea's Miami house out from under her. She said, and I quote as directly as memory allows, "We all know you're just one disgusting sex act away from finding yourself a new sugar daddy," which is a great line and perfectly delivered by SMG. Like she's savoring a really good truffle. She also looks fantastic from the shoulders up -- per usual on this show, actually -- and perhaps a bit... overly layered the rest of the way. Maybe Rich Twin just really liked having a napkin built into her gowns.
Andrea and Poor Twin
So then Andrea dumps Poor Twin in a bathtub and starts to fill it, all while gazing affectionately upon the murder she is committing, because she is hilarious. She recalls Rich Twin telling her that she's an embarrassing lush, or whatever, and essentially cackles, "Yes, lush LIKE A FOX."
Note 2
This was her alibi note, which I find very entertaining as well, given that everything she did in the apartment was her ACTUAL therapy.
But of course, Andrea notices too late that she forgot the phone of doom, so she runs back upstairs. And that is when her best laid plan gets doused in Welsh Rarebit.
Ioan and Andrea
Ioan comes home and notices she's acting really cagey, especially when he wants to change his tie -- presumably he misspoke and meant, 'Find my pocket square, for without it I am but a shell of a man, a grdd without its uffu" -- and then he the water running, and GRUFFS into the bedroom. Just when Andrea thinks he's going to bust her, he ffurgs with hot genius, "You were going to.... TAKE A BATH IN OUR TUB AGAIN, WEREN'T YOU?!?!?!"
Andrea
And Andrea is like, "Are you shitting me? Um, I mean, yes. YOU GOT ME."
Poor Twin
Poor Twin is now in the act of drowning, but Andrea isn't able to get rid of Ioan fast enough, so he notices her casting glances at the water now seeping out from the direction of the bathroom. Ioan storms in and fishes Poor Twin out of the tub, presumably drawing from his past experience playing a lifeboat captain in Titanic. Full circle!
Andrea, Ioan, and Poor Twin
Andrea is none too pleased that he did that, and he gruffudds all the way down the barrel of her gun. It must be noted that you KNOW he is a good husband by the fact that he smoothed her hair into a workable style as he resuscitated her. As if he knew Rich Twin's main mandate in life would be, "Die hot."
HSS and Rich Twin
Blah blah blah stop messing with the case against me snore placid-sack.
FBI ARA
Shall we check on FBI Agent Richard Alpert? He's having a rough day. He got arrested for... something? I don't even know. He was in a hotel parking garage trying to get off to Rich Twin's place to save her, and the cops hauled him in, and then his boss told him he was on the next plane back to Wyoming, to either... be suspended someplace else, or just be doing grunt work, or be in custody... nobody cares. Because he will win the day eventually. In fact, he offers proof that Rich Twin was in danger from Andrea and asks his boss to send agents to the penthouse. Powerless against Lashes McYes, his boss agrees.
Ioan
Ioan is now trying to use the fforce on Andrea's hand. It isn't working.
Andrea
So while Andrea books tickets for her and Ioan on an afternoon flight to Mexico, she bleats that the plan is to stage it so that it looks like "Rich Twin" walked in on the exes cavorting and planning to flee together, killed Ioan, wounded Andrea, then killed herself. Poor Twin thinks this is cracked. "It's called IMPROVISING, bitch," she barks at Poor Twin. That's the episode title. I love this show so much.
Except: the phone rings, and at the end of the last hour, they went to great pains to show that Andrea had unplugged the phone in the living room so that FBI ARA's phone call never went through. I am pretty sure she wouldn't have JUST unplugged the one in the living room, or else those other phones WOULD have rung and then Poor Twin would've been like, "Bitch, what's the deal," and then gotten her clock cleaned in an ironically messier way. *** Edited to add that someone pointed out that she plugged at least one of the phones back in before she left the house originally, to make it all look normal. So she wins. There are always at least three things I miss while I'm figuring out where to take pictures.
Ioan
It's the feds. They interview Ioan and he tells them Andrea just left for a trip to Mexico, trying to arrange his face in the most soothing dduffurg he can possibly muster. They then call Poor Twin, who -- at gunpoint, in the closet -- answers and insists she's at Pilates, ignoring their cue to use a day of the week in a sentence if she's in secret danger. I feel like I would have done it, but maybe she thought Andrea could hear what they were asking. Then again, if she could hear it from the ROOM, then surely that means they could have heard Poor Twin talking; if she heard it through the phone, then iPhone needs to work on its audio privacy issues.
Ioan and Poor Twin
Andrea figures out that Ioan nearly double-crossed her and gets very annoyed with him. He turns on his ffurg light and blitzes her with an uffudd gruff the likes of which would torch most mortal flesh but which just glances off Andrea because she's got a shield of crazy. But she can't be THAT unpleasant a captor, because she allowed Poor Twin to put her hear in a comely and convenient bun. When she SHOULD have forced her to leave it down and air dry it without hair products, while also possibly forcing her to lie down with it wet. THAT is torture to a UES snob, Andrea.
Andrea, Juliet
And of course, Juliet arrives home. We saw Andrea encourage her to go get gelato with a friend that Juliet KNOWS she hates, so Juliet got suspicious something was wrong. I just love this idea of, "You WANT me to get dessert? With HER? YOU MUST BE OFF YOUR MEDS." And she was right. Andrea never knew gelato, sweet gelato, would betray her.
So THEN, Andrea goes off the rails and decides to call her lover for help and soothing.
Olivia
AND LO. Olivia is on the other end of the phone.
Sexy Time
We flash back to the night Ioan gruff'd money in Andrea's face to get her out of the apartment -- a night, mind you, in which Andrea was in the middle of the Fake Harrassment scandale with Juliet and was therefore currently sleeping with Logan Echolls and could have gone to his place, but whatever. Andrea CLAIMS to Olivia she had nowhere else to go, and this appears to have been sincere on her part so perhaps she just forgot about her other storyline in this moment, and this of course ends in them drinking wine and falling into each other's genitals.
Andrea, Juliet, Ioan
Andrea is like, "BABY I F'ED UP," and Olivia is horrified and hangs up on her. Juliet is all, "My mom has a GIRLFRIEND?" and Ioan is like, "Is it wrong that my gruff just udded its duff? IT IS. STAY STRONG, OLD FRIEND. By staying WEAK."
FBI ARA
FBI ARA is also listening with interest, because while Andrea's back was turned, Poor Twin had Juliet fish the phone out from under the couch (she and Ioan are tied up with duct tape) and she dialed FBI ARA's number from memory -- Ioan was presumably too busy willing his red dragon into submission to wonder why she knew all that. Taming the Welsh national beast is a full-time mental job.
Ioan and Andrea and Poor Twin OH MY
So Ioan and Poor Twin start this awesomely obvious -- yet not, because Andrea is distracted by her mascara trail and active mental break -- effort at extracting specific information about Olivia's whereabouts, all while FBI ARA listens. It's classic. Ioan's like, "You don't know where Olivia even IS," and Andrea's all, "YES I DO, that is why I STASHED HER at my SISTER'S VACATION HOUSE," and Ioan all but says, "The one at 111 Obvious Street in Port Transparency, next to the shop that sells giant neon arrows and across from the Vengeful Caftan dealer?" And she's like, "YES, THAT'S THE ONE."
And then she leans over to hiss something into Poor Twin's ear, but fails to notice the open phone only half-hidden on the couch. An unhinged tizzy makes blind men out of us all.
Andrea and Olivia
Another flashback, this time of Andrea admitting to Olivia that she'd put a hit on Rich Twin but that it hadn't worked out, and that her contact told her Rich Twin had an incriminating phone. Olivia doesn't totally approve but doesn't tell her to back off, either, and puts the idea in her head of stealing back the phone. Andrea is, in real time, frantically trying to get Olivia to answer her calls, but Olivia is too spooked that her lover has gone and created a hostage situation. For some people I guess that is a dealbreaker. Autocorrect wants me to change that to "windbreaker," but although saying "For some people, a hostage situation is a windbreaker" is very poetic, it's not really true, and I hate when Autocorrect wants to make a liar out of me.
Maid and Rich Twin
Meanwhile, Rich Twin corners the chambermaid, and realizes she didn't take the bribe because Rich Twin underbid, because the lady is also a rich call girl and the maid job is her legit front. (Russian Chambermaid anagrams to "A Drachma Erbiums Sin," which is CLEARLY Latin for, "Don't try to pay off the Russian chambermaid who let you into a dead man's room," so I'm not sure why Anagram Twin didn't see this coming.) Conveniently, Rich Twin has visited Perconte again and gotten three fake passports with the chambermaid's picture on them, so she threatens the woman with an INS scandal. It's so NICE to have a forger on your revenge team. Forgers are my windbreakers.
Trapped In The Closet
Of course, one of the strumpet's suitors comes by, so she shoves Rich Twin in a closet. Rich Twin is none too pleased to be acting out one of R. Kelly's songs, and thus makes no motion to put her phone on viiiiiiiibrate, nor does she bust out of there and threaten to shoot people if they don't stop what they're doing and explain their lives to her, nor does she suggest that, in the face of strange and surprising information, the best balm for her mental confusion is to shoot somebody of her random choosing. And so the hooker and her john snort cocaine and live out a whole other R. Kelly song while SMG makes funny disgusted faces.
Rich Twin
One of which turns into this face, because apparently, being stuck in the closet of a coked-up Russian call girl is enough to induce labor. I'm sure those poor babies were like, "Seriously, WE DON'T WANT TO WATCH THIS EITHER, so WE ARE OUT." My own preemie twins made their entrance after I spent a week learning Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano. I think they were just desperate to shut me up.
Hooker
And then, oops. Hooker go boom.
Andrea Roth
Meanwhile, Ioan is tired of being a penthoustage. So he puts a paperweight in his bound hands and then lies to Andrea that he wants to discuss things with her in another room. She is totally onto him, though, all, "Girl, please, put down your paperweight." Then she continues to panic, because Olivia isn't calling her back, her makeup is a terror, and she's probably going to regret wearing mustard on her last day as a relatively sane person.
Ioan and PT
Ioan is ffurg'd and so uddly gruff'd that his plan was as terrible as his investment team. But then Olivia calls Andrea and sings a rousing chorus of "My Love Is Your Windbreaker," and coaxes her into coming to the house, immediately, no looking back. Andrea doesn't see how that will work, with the cops looking for her at the airport and all over the city, so Poor Twin offers to go with her as a hostage. She figures this keeps Ioan and Juliet safe, although it certainly doesn't turn them invisible as they try to leave the building, so I'm not sure why it's such a valid idea. Unless the Vengeful Caftan is an invisibility cloak.
FBI ARA
Aha, but FBI ARA has gotten to Olivia, and will be lying in wait for Andrea, whose hopes for a threesome will be quickly dashed by the non-euphemistic pistol in his hand. Olivia doesn't think this will work because he is underestimating his opponent: "You don't know [Andrea Roth]."
Andrea and PT
But no, in fact, he knows her just fine. Because Andrea shows up, goes screechy postal when she discovers the betrayal, and raises the gun. So Poor Twin just smacks it out of her hand, and poof, it's gone, game over. So as it turns out, Andrea Roth was really just one slap away from disarmament. The Andrea Roth I imagine would've had a teeny pistol built into her purse for just such an occasion, so I'm disappointed.
HSS
Oh, and Rich Twin fled the scene after the john did, and got a cab to the hospital. WHAT hospital, I don't know, especially since both twins have been AT various hospitals lately and one of them was demonstrably not pregnant with twins. You'd think someone would notice that on her chart it noted the time she came in and had an ultrasound and there was no baby in there. Henry Ineffectual-Sack looks longingly at her as she's whisked in for an emergency C-section. They won't let him in with her. Really? I had one of those, early and rushed and while in full labor and everything, and if they pulled some "Kevin we don't have time to let you in there" act you would have seen some serious pregnant-lady ninja shit up in there.
HSS
HSS also gets a text from his peeps that the maid is dead. So, after her traumatic solo flight through the OR and a C-section, Rich Twin wakes up to see Henry peering up her nostrils and asking if she knows anything about a dead Russian maid. Rich Twin says no, because even through the haze of painkillers she is a cool liar.
HSS
Henry Suspicious-Sack, though, has other ideas. He asks the doctor for a paternity test, and she jots it down as if it's the most normal thing in the world for a dude to ask, although perhaps she too was suspicious when the baby girls were born without power cords and with a potent Welsh fondness for extra consonants.
FBI ARA and Andrea
Back at Vengeance Manor, Poor Twin chases Andrea Roth outside and makes her freeze at gunpoint. There's some weird malarkey about how Poor Twin doesn't have it in her to shoot Andrea, and FBI ARA jumps out and is all, "BUT I DO," except she wasn't armed at this point so why would ANYONE be needing to pull the trigger? It would've just been an execution at that point, not self-defense. Besides, then FBI ARA wouldn't have gotten any handcuff play.
As he drags Andrea away -- which, isn't this basically a citizen's arrest at this point? -- Andrea spits at "Rich Twin" that RIch Twin STOLE her LIFE and how PATHETIC and DEPRESSING is your REGULAR LIFE if you can only be HAPPY by THIEVING someone ELSE'S and DO YOU GET IT YET?
Poor Twin
That's right: Poor Twin clearly hears the ring of truth, and it's not just a raging case of tinnitus. She thinks, "Man, I hope I bought something really hideous for my big reveal, so that I can go out with a blaze of fugly glory." Amen. I will bring my windbreaker.