Showtime’s Web Therapy #302 “Who Doesn’t Love Musicals”

by Catherine Giordano

The Way It Was

Lisa Kudrow as Fiona
Click here to get the DVD from amazon

Really, People, you have to believe me—this is the best show that you are not watching. If you like smart comedy, watch Showtime’s Web Therapy with Lisa Kudrow—a new episode debuts every Tuesday night at 11 pm. If you missed the previous two seasons get the dvd or order them from NetFlix. or itunes, or amazon or whatever.

This is the way it was on the second episode of season three.

Steve Carell is back as Jackson Pickett, Fiona’s one-night stand who has fallen in love with her. They are both back at their respective homes and having a little video chat.  Fiona puts it as delicately as possible, which is not very delicately, the he “should not aspire to the likes of her.”   “Go find a waitress or a shop clerk,” she tells him.  Also, oh so delicately, she accuses him of stealing her Rolex watch.”  Jackson declares his love in response to the former and his innocence with respect to the latter.

Pickett? Pickett? Where have I heard that name before? Oh, yes, T. Boone Pickett.  Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Jackson is the billionaire’s son or grandson? We see Jackson sitting in a very spacious well-appointed office during his video chat with Fiona indicating that he may be a wealthy successful person.   (Perhaps that is why he laughed when Fiona accused him of stealing her watch.) P.S. Fiona finds her missing watch on her desk right after she ends the chat with Jackson.

Jackson claims to have memories of the future so he knows that Fiona is actually in love with him. He claims that her call was just an excuse to stay in touch with him. He knows that is the way it was.

Fiona’s next chat is with her gay almost ex-husband and his lover Ben. They live in New Mexico now and are big supporters of the NRA. Fiona says that the NRA slogan is “Guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people.”  The conversation is hilarious as Kip and Ben try to correct her, but Fiona, who knows that she is always right, continues to insist that “people with guns kill people.” (And really, isn’t she right?) Eventually the conversation moves on. It seems that Fiona mis-used some campaign funds when Kip was running for Congress (before running away with Ben) and the feds are closing in on her.

Alarmed, Fiona calls Richard who used to handle the campaign finances.  She is trying to get the records. Richard claims that he has shredded them. Fiona becomes increasingly desperate. 

Next Fiona chats with Jerome, her former assistant who had left to run her mother’s rival business, Net Therapy, which was a knock off of her own business, Web Therapy.  Richard is not as he was on the last episode. He looks a mess. It seems that Putsy has sold Net Therapy for mega bucks to a British company and Richard was not part of the package. He is now desperate for work. Fiona plays him into agreeing to work for her again, but at minimum wage with no benefits.  And one other thing—Fiona insists, as a condition of his employment, that Jerome steal Putsy’s client list. Lastly, in “the-push-for-maximum-advantage” moment of the week, she tells Jerome to give her some of the items from his house, a bronze horse from his mantle and a large urn that was sitting on the floor across the room. Fiona doesn’t need this stuff, but she just can’t help herself—when she has someone within her grip she has to squeeze every last ounce from them.

Fiona has a little chat with Franny, the composer/lyricist who is doing the songs for the musical Fiona, a show that will portray Fiona as a very bad person. She evidently took Franny out for drinks and since Franny is a lush anyway, got her very drunk.  Fiona then substituted her own compositions for Franny’s. By the way, the Franny/Fiona’s show tunes satirize show tunes and the whole thing is hilarious.

During the video chat she works on convincing Franny that she actually wrote those new songs.  At first, Franny is dubious because they are very bad songs, but Fiona succeeds in convincing her that this is the way it was—Franny wrote the new songs while drunk the previous night. 

Franny, aided and abetted by Fiona, has a sudden epiphany—she was writing hateful songs about Fiona because she actually hated herself.  It seems, for the moment, that Fiona has been successful in changing her characterization in the musical from bad person to good person.  But she is in push-for maximum-advantage mode, so she plants a seed in Franny’s mind that she should quit the show. Fiona obviously hopes that if Franny quits the whole project will be cancelled.

And that is the way it was on Tuesday July 30^th, 2013 at 11pm on Showtime.

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