Marietta, Tammy and Amy are in Marietta’s office.
Marietta: So, any news on the campaign?
Amy: Why would Tammy have any news? She doesn’t do anything!
Tammy: I am chief of staff AND campaign manager. You send out tweets and do newspaper interviews nobody reads.
Amy: People read them!
Tammy: Sure. We’ll say that.
Marietta: Tammy, if you are so busy, surely you have news to share?
Tammy: Tressa Mae Egerton -
Amy: There is no way that’s her full name.
Tammy: I promise you it is.
Amy: Unfortunate.
Tammy: Tressa called met personally plea for you to agree to a one-on-one debate with Kent.
Amy: She did? Do campaign managers usually do that?
Tammy: Sometimes. It wasn’t very professionally done, though. She didn’t have any network in mind, she just wanted us to go over to their house. She actually specified that we come “alone” and “don’t bring cops.”
Marietta: And how did you respond?
Tammy: I told her we would consider it and get back to her.
Marietta: Were you afraid she’d get mad if you said no right away?
Tammy: I didn’t want to provoke her.
There is a knock at the door.
Marietta: What is it, Henrietta?
Henrietta: Can I speak with Tammy?
Amy: I think you're in trouble, Tam.
Tammy: I’ll be right back girls.
Amy: What is that glare for, Henrietta?
Henrietta: Go easy on her, okay?
Tammy walks out of Marietta’s office
Henrietta: Tammy, I don’t know how to tell you this.
Tammy: It can’t be that bad, just say it. Is it about my lunch order?
Henrietta: Someone called your phone. I wouldn’t have picked up, but I saw it was from the hospital, so I felt like I had to. Tammy, I’m really sorry, but Mitch died. He had a heart attack, and he died.
Tammy’s needs buckle as she falls to the ground, slamming her head against the floor.
Tammy: Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!
Mitch: What is all this ruckus about?
Tammy: You’re alive?
Mitch: Yeah…?
Tammy: Why did Henrietta tell me you’d died?
Mitch: Honey, take a look at where you are.
Tammy: We are in bed.
Mitch: I’m fairly certain it was a dream, unless Henrietta snuck through the window. In that case, I’m guessing the Secret Service has shot her, so that’s a shame.
Tammy: Oh, a dream! Right! Duh!
Mitch: I gotta say, I am sort of honored to know you still dream of me. Thought we were past that point.
Tammy: Don’t be silly, I’ve still got the hots for you!
Mitch: You wanna go right now?
Tammy: Ah, no. Stress headache, sorry.
The next morning…
Amy: Tammy, are you all right? You look out of it.
Henrietta: Yeah, your hair looks a little, uh, slept on.
Tammy: I didn’t get a very good night’s sleep at all, thanks to you.
Henrietta: Thanks to me?
Tammy: Yeah, I had a dream about you.
Amy: Like an American Beauty dream? Oh no, you gotta keep that to yourself or HR will get you.
Tammy: It wasn’t that sort of dream! I’m not a lady pervert!
Amy: Aren’t they just called perverts?
Tammy: It was a death dream?
Henrietta: How’d I die? Skydiving accident? That’s how I always thought I’d go if I went early.
Tammy: You didn’t die. You were the one who told me that Mitch died.
Marietta: What are you girls talking about? Hopefully something relevant to the job.
Amy: Eh, Tammy had a bad dream last night.
Tammy: Dream where my husband died!
Marietta: He’s not dead, right?
Tammy: No! I’m here, aren’t I?
Amy: I’d come to work if Don died. We don’t have that sort of relationship.
Henrietta: What the hell?
Amy: I’m kidding! I’m lightening the mood! Nothing wrong with that!
Tammy: Henrietta, I need you to promise not to ever answer my phone.
Henrietta: Okay, I guess?
Tammy: Marietta, we’re never talking about the campaign, or about Tressa Mae Egerton, in your office again.
Marietta: Yeah, I’m good with that, seeing as it would be illegal to discuss campaign matters while on government duty.
Tammy: We’ve done it before.
Marietta: Shh! I’m already in deep enough crap because you don’t know how to manage campaign donations after 50 years in the industry!
Amy: Hold on. Tressa Mae?
Tammy: That’s her name, right?
Amy: That is soap.
Four hours later…
Marietta: Girls, I’m a little worried about Tammy.
Amy: Worried she might fall asleep on the job? I agree, she does look like she’s about to faint. Then again, she usually does.
Marietta: I’m being serious, Amy. She doesn’t seem well. She’s called Mitch eight times today to check on him.
Amy: It’s not Tammy’s fault she loves her husband.
Marietta: Loving your husband and being frighteningly obsessive about his potential death are two very different things. I called her in for a staff meeting and she said “Henrietta has to come, too, we all know what happens when it’s just the three of us in there.” No, I don’t know what happens! It wasn’t my dream!
Henrietta: This certainly seems to be consuming her. She’s not herself at all. I’m no psychologist, but it feels like that dream unlocked some sort of deep fear that she’s had all along that she’s now been forced to face head-on.
Marietta: I do get, though, that it’s not wholly unusually to worry. Tammy and Mitch are getting up in years. It’s only natural to get worried about yourself or your loved ones when they get older. I worry about her sometimes.
Amy: She never seemed all that worried before about Mitch. In fact, sometimes I forget he’s even still alive at all.
Marietta: I don’t know what’s up with her. What I do know is this can’t continue. She’s spiraling, and not in the pretty figure skating sort of way.
Henrietta: The dream just happened today. I know some dreams I have that stick with me all day, then they usually go away soon after that. Let’s give her a day or two.
Marietta; Okay, but if I see her call Mitch one more time, it might actually kill me.
Amy: And you’ll be so missed.
Tammy: Hey, what are you girls talking about in here without me?
Marietta: Oh, uh… The Bachelor.
Tammy: I thought you weren’t watching that this year because the Bachelor is too boring?
Marietta: We changed our minds. Nothing else on.
Amy: I like to watch Bob Hearts Abishola myself. Love their zany adventures.
Tammy: Well, I don’t watch The Bachelor anymore, so I’ll leave you be. I should go call Mitch, anyway.
Marietta: Have you heard anything back from the Egerton camp about a debate? I know we were supposed to try to schedule something.
Amy: I still think that you’re playing into his hands. Begging for a debate is one sure way to admit you’re losing.
Marietta: You were always asking for debates when you ran against me.
Amy: Yeah, and I lost, didn’t I?
Marietta: I still think there might have been some election fraud.
Tammy: I am not calling them about a debate. No way.
Marietta: I’m afraid to ask, but is this about the dream?
Tammy: You know it!
Marietta: Of course it is. Henrietta, you call.
Henrietta: Me? I’m just an assis-
Marietta: I include you in senior staff meetings. Lets face it, you’re going to be comms director when Amy goes to jail or chief of staff when Tammy’s put in the looney bin anyway. I trust you with this.
Henrietta: It’s an honor.
Amy: Wait, what’s this abut me going to jail?
Marietta: Come on, you’re flagrantly corrupt. Everyone knows it.
Amy: They do not, because I am not!
Marietta: You wanna have this argument right now?
Tammy: I’m gonna go call Mitch.
Marietta: So we’ve heard.
Three days later…
Marietta: Al right, everyone. Tammy is going to be here in a half-hour.
Milton: You don’t usually announce that, do you?
Sarah: No, she usually just shows up and we all sort of wonder how the former President and First Lady have so little on their plate that they want to attend the Landfield family dinner.
Kathleen: Face it, we’re extremely fun people. Sorry, couldn’t say it with a straight face. It’s just that you get less adventurous in your old age. We’re the safe option.
Patty Lynn: I think we’ve only gotten more adventurous. We just went on a road trip by ourselves for the third year in a row!
Kathleen: Fourth. And it was to New Hampshire, there is nothing adventurous about New Hampshire.
Patty Lynn: That’s not fair! We had to go through North Carolina, that’s a very exciting state!
Marietta: Hey! Everyone back on track! We have to fix Tammy.
Henrietta: The point of an interventi-
Eliza: Honey, shut up.
Elena: Yes, this group of deeply screwed-up individuals has to fix her in the span of one evening, or else… okay, what actually is wrong with Tammy?
Amy: She cares too much about her husband.
Elena: Well, I agree, that is a problem. No one should have a husband.
Eliza: Honey, don’t. We cant’ joke about spreading the gay agenda anymore, the Republicans actually believe it. The governor of Arkansas called RuPaul’s Drag Race “satanic!”
Marietta: We are drifting off topic again! We have to prepare for what we’re going to say to Tammy.
Sarah: “We’re so sorry to see you fall into a devastating prescription painkiller addiction, but we are here for you, and we love you, and we want to help get you through this.”
Marietta: Painkiller addiciton?
Sarah: Just guessing! She doesn’t seem like a boozer.
Martin: I knew a man named Boozer once.
Kathleen: Of course you did.
Marietta: Tammy has been obsessing about death. More precisely, about Martin’s death. She keeps calling him at work, over and over again, to make sure he’s not dead. All because of a dream she had!
Sarah: That’s fair. He is about ninety, no?
Martin: Seventy-five! That’s younger than me!
Sarah: Sorry to hear that, grandpa.
Milton: Isn’t this more of a thing for a psychiatrist to work on with her?
Patty Lynn: You don’t just send a drunk straight to rehab, Milton. You gotta make them aware of the problem first.
Milton: Then I think we need to just help her realize her obsession and tell her we’re here to help. Although, I do think it’s strange to make this a group thing when Marietta’s the one who noticed it. None of the rest of us did when we’ve around her.
Marietta: It just started a few days ago.
Amy: And, believe me, I’ve noticed. She calls Mitch more than a helicopter mom calls her kid’s daycare.
Marietta: Hell, she calls him more than mom cals me!
Patty Lynn: Why do you always say this? I don’t call you an inappropriate amount!
Milton: At least she calls you at all.
Patty Lynn: I call you! Come on!
Kathleen: Wow, you just can’t win today.
Milton: Hey, she’s doing better than Tammy. People think she has an addiction to painkillers thanks to Marietta
Marietta: I never implied anything of the sort!
Milton: And yet, quite a few of us thought she did. There was a messaging problem here.
Marietta: I hesitate to ask this, but are we all clear on what we’re supposed to say today?
Martin: Were we supposed to get scripts or do you just mean, do we understand what the general theme of the conversation is
Marietta: The latter.
Martin: Okay, good. I can’t memorize scripts anymore, not at my age.
Sarah: You’re not old, grandpa!
Martin: That’s not what you said earlier!
Marietta: Okay, everyone act normal when she first comes in, we’ll ease our way into this.
Sarah: This feels like we’re having a surprise party.
Milton: Yes, the world’s worst.
Thirty minutes later…
Tammy: Wow, Everyone else beat us here. That doesn’t happen very often.
Amy: Tammy, we gotta talk!
Marietta: I said ease it in!
Sarah: That’s what she said!
Milton: Honey! No!
Sarah: It’s an Office joke! It aired on something called “NBC.”
Milton: That doesn’t make it appropriate.
Amy: Marietta, she knew something was up anyway, we’re all staring at her like she’s a fish in an aquarium!
Tammy: Knew what was up?
Marietta: See, she’s clueless!
Tammy: I am not! But what’s going on?
Sarah: Maybe you should go call Mitch.
Tammy: Ah, is this what that’s about? You’re annoying with my productivity at work?
Marietta: I don’t care about your productivity, we barely do anything.
Milton: Amazing re-election message.
Tammy: Then what is this about?
Mitch: I think I have an idea.
Tammy: Now I’m intrigued!
Patty Lynn: Honey, we are worried about you.
Marietta: You’re obsessing about Mitch dying. Every day at work, you call him multiple times, it disrupts whatever work it is that you are attempting to do. Anything that occurred in that dream, you refuse to do.
Ellie: Hey! Can you hear me?
Kate: China can hear you!
Ellie: Oh, god, are they spying on me? I knew I shouldn’t have downloaded TikTok!
Patty Lynn: Where are those voices coming from? Am I losing it?
Kathleen: Yes.
Kate: We’re on the computer!
Patty Lynn: Oh!
Ellie: Tammy, I am so sorry to hear that you are struggling with alcohol addition. I’ve known many alcoholics in my day, it’s not easy to get through. I know that you have a great support team there with you, and I’m always here to help if you need a friend to lean on.
Tammy: I’m not an alcoholic!
Ellie: Sure, sweetie, that’s the right attitude to have!
Kate: No, she really isn’t.
Ellie: But we’re having an intervention?
Kate: About something else.
Ellie: That’s confusing.
Kate: It was in the email. Did you read the email?
Ellie: I skimmed it.
Kate: And you’re a US Senator?
Marietta: Kate and Ellie, everybody! Give ‘em a round of applause! They tried!
Marietta closes the laptop that was displaying Kate and Ellie’s Zoom calls.
Tammy: Are you really telling me I’m that bad about calling Mitch that this was all warranted?
Mitch: To be fair, everyone was going to be here for family dinner either way. We’re not all here only because you needed an intervention, it’s not quite that bad yet.
Tammy: There’s a relief!
Kathleen: In fact, most of us haven’t seen you since that dream, so we haven’t noticed anything at all.
Eliza: But we’re here for you anyway, since we all obviously know what it’s like to have a mental health struggle.
Sarah: Not me!
Milton: Be honest with yourself, kiddo.
Sarah: This is about how screwed up aunt Tammy is, not me.
Tammy: I’m not screwed up!
Mitch: Darling… it has been a concern of mine as well.
Tammy: A concern? Me caring about you is a problem?
Mitch: No, I love that you care. I don’t love that you seem to spend all day fretting and thinking about my death. Why did this dream hit you so hard? I had a dream Willie Nelson died, I’m not calling him ten times a day?
Tammy: You should call Willie up, he is a friend.
Patty Lynn: Get him here. Please! My birthday is J-
Henrietta: I think this dream unleaded a deep-down fear Tammy had about you dying. She may have thought about it in the past and now this dream happened and it felt so real that she now fears it’ll happen.
Tammy: Where did you study psychology?
Henrietta: Uh… watching Criminal Minds?
Marietta: She does have a point, Tammy, you have to admit it. You never talked about death before, not even when I did. Suddenly, you’re obsessed.
Tammy: It did screw with my head, okay? I’l admit that! But I’m going to get through it, I don’t need all of this. I appreciate that you all care, but it’s unnecessary. With time, I’ll move past it.
Marietta: My therapist, who did go to school and has a degree and all that junk, told me that sometimes when we obsess over things and think they need to be done a certain way or bad things will happen, the best thing to do is to not do them that way. That way, you can break that pattern and know that you don’t have to keep obsessing.
Tammy: So you want me to stop calling my husband?
Mitch: Please!
Tammy: I suppose I can try.
Marietta: I also think it may be wise to recreate that dream. The three of us will have a meeting along in my office, after you call the Egerton campaign, and then Henrietta will answer a call.
Tammy: I’m not tempting fate.
Amy: I think we should just accept Tammy’s offer to stop calling Mitch. That’s good enough.
Henrietta: But only if she also agrees to stop avoiding one-on-one conversations with me. I tried to ask her what she wanted for lunch and she screamed and ran away.
Tammy: I won’t do that anymore. I am fine!
Marietta: One more thing, Tam.
Tammy: What?
Marietta: You have to go see my therapist to talk this out. She will help you get past your fear of death, or at least manage it.
Sarah: Yeah, you have to get over that. It’s not like the eternal life potion from Death Becomes You is real, it’ll happen eventually. Pretty soon. I’ll be very sad. Although, if it was real, you and aunt Marietta would be definitely be the right choices to live together forever. You already act like Meryl and Goldie so as it is.
Tammy: Fine, I will go to therapy. I will get help. Now can we eat dinner?
Patty Lynn: Oh no! I knew I was forgetting something! I left dinner in the oven!
Kathleen: McDonald’s probably tastes better, anyway.
Mitch: Man, I am so hungry, I feel like I could starve to death.
Tammy: Not funny!
What did you think of this episode of Marietta? Let us know in the comments and make sure to read a new episode next week!
