S5E18 "Spaghetti Sauce and a Dumpster Fire"
The episode begins at the grocery store, where Christy hilariously gets irritated when Bonnie keeps telling her she's wrong when she correctly guesses the brands of the things she wants. Christy then sees Marjorie getting angry at the guy working at the deli counter. This is very unusual for Marjorie, but it doesn't stop there. Marjorie is cranky when the women go to coffee, and then later when they get foot massages because they have a groupon, Christy and Marjorie get into a heated argument. There is also a hilarious bit here where Marjorie, Christy, and later Wendy, attempt to hurry with slippery feet.
Christy decides to get another sponsor, since Marjorie can't very well be her sponsor when she doesn't want to speak with her. This is where Yvette Nicole Brown's character comes in. She is very funny, and has a presence that has some similarities to Marjorie's, but is certainly different. As Christy meets with her, Bonnie, Jill, and Wendy sit at a nearby table and listen in, then act like they aren't listening when they are noticed. After Christy goes on a date that she finds boring, her new sponsor offers some advice, sharing that her sponsor forced her to go on a second date with a guy she thought was boring, and they have now been married for eighteen years. It's nice to see someone else with a lot of life experience and full of stories to help Christy.
Bonnie goes to Marjorie's to check on her, commenting all along the way how unlike her this is. This is quite unlike the Bonnie we met when the series began, and how she pretends to be, but really, it has become clear that Bonnie truly cares about these women, even Marjorie, the one she always complains about. After the conversation with Bonnie, where she had many funny lines, Marjorie shared at the next AA meeting about how getting older has affected her, and how that lead to the behavior we have been seeing in this episode. This was rooted in sincerity, and it was wonderful. At the very end of the episode, Christy and Marjorie talk, and Marjorie apologizes. Here too, the other three keep an eye on the conversation to see how it is going, with the episode ending with them running off once spotted.
This was a wonderful episode that delivered both many funny moments (and not just from the queen of jokes, Allison Janney) and a serious, important story that was handled very well. It was also really interesting to get a story about Marjorie, since we don't get too many of those.
Score: 10/10
What did you think of "Spaghetti Sauce and a Dumpster Fire"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!