Raymond Island Season 4 Episode 7 - Happy Anna-Versary (Midseason Premiere)

Raymond Island Season 4, Episode 7
Happy Anna-Versary

Gretchen walks into the meeting room.

Gretchen: Carol, where is the speaker of the house?

Carol: I don’t know.

Gretchen: And the majority leader?

Carol: Also unclear.

Gretchen: The meeting was on the books for today, correct?

Carol: It sure was.

Gretchen: Am I really so non-intimidating that the assembly leaders feel they can just blow me off?

Susana: It’s only five after one. Maybe they’re just running late.

Gretchen: What, they run into traffic on the way down the stairs? Get caught up in a riveting Twitter thread?

Susana: I wouldn’t know, I left Twitter. The space guy ruined it.

Gretchen: You afraid he was gonna try and send you up to colonize Mars?

Susana: That, and I’m tired of having to see his tweets. He’s just so annoying.

Samantha: I can think of a few people I feel that way about.

Gretchen: Ah! Voldemort!

Samantha: Come on, you gotta give that grudge up after all I’ve done to help you.

Gretchen: But it’s so much more fun to hate you!

Samantha: I know, most people say that.

Carol: Are you aware of why Jeanne and Hank are not here yet? You’ve made it here and you weren’t even invited.

Samantha: I don’t know their current whereabouts, just because none of us like you doesn’t mean we’re attached at the hip. I saw a meeting in progress and figured the LG should be involved in it. You know, for the sake of Rhode Islanders. I have a responsibility to represent their best interests.

Gretchen: You think it’s in the best interest of Rhode Islanders that their governor conduct meetings while actively being annoyed by someone.

Samantha: You’re annoyed by everybody!

Gretchen: That is true.

Susana: Even me?

Gretchen: You less than most people.

Susana: It’s good to bee appreciated.

Samantha: What’s today’s meeting about? I see you have lots of papers that I assume I should be privy to but am not.

Gretchen: Gubernatorial duties. You wouldn’t know about those.

Carol: She sure tried though, didn’t she? Give her a hand, everyone!

Samantha: I don’t appreciate being mocked.

Gretchen: I know, you’d never mock anyone, I shouldn’t mock you.

Samantha: I never claimed to be innocent of mocking. Just that I don’t like when it happens to me.

Gretchen: You know what, you can stay for the meeting. You made it here before Jeanne or Hank, so your nosiness is finally getting rewarded. You can sit in that little spare chair in the corner.

Samantha: I beat them here, why don’t I get a swivel chair?

Gretchen: You’re not the one that I have to butter up in order to pass my agenda.

Samantha: This is why people hate politicians.

Susana: Oh, look, there they come.

Carol: Skipping and holding hands?

Susana: Close enough.

Carol: The friendship these two have is so bizarre to me.

Samantha: Is it the idea of actually having a friend that leaves you dumbfounded or -

Gretchen: I wish they would both like me like one tenth as much as they liked the other, my life would be so much easier.

Carol: I would settle for them liking Rhode Island that much, maybe then they’d at least be open to negotiating instead of leaving us in a stalemate.

Gretchen: No, no. Rhode Island re-elected me just to cut ribbons on businesses and make nice speeches for the entire first four months of my term, they want nothing to get done.
Samantha: Don’t tell them I said this, but they’re in the wrong here. Blocking everything you want done is horrible for this state, we can’t be in constant gridlock. We’re not Washington, even though that is where you wish you were right now.

Gretchen: Like you’d turn down an offer for the vice presidency.

Hank: Sorry we’re late!

Jeanne: How we’re not interrupting anything!

Gretchen: Nope, we were just killing some time waiting for your arrival.

Jeanne: This must be a big meeting if you brought in a third reinforcement. Shocked that it’s Pratt, though. I didn’t realize you were so close.

Gretchen: You couldn’t possibly know. This is the first time you’ve both agreed to sit down with me since I was sworn in for my second term.

Jeanne: It’s been a very busy few months.

Hank: Yeah, a lot of small businesses for you to appear at the opening of.

Gretchen: I’ve been asking for a meeting, you both know that. Nevertheless, I’m here open to any deal you’re willing to make to get things passed. We, collectively, have a lot to prove to Rhode Island.

Hank: You have anything in mind?

Jeanne: Something realistic, please.

Gretchen: We brought papers. Bill outlines and such.

Carol: Care to see them?

Hank: These better be realistic, I mean it. I don’t want my time wasted.

Gretchen: We’re open to negotiation on anything in that pile. We just want to get good things passed for our state.

Hank and Jeanne start rummaging through the papers with Gretchen’s plans on them.

Jeanne: All right, well this isn’t feasible.

Hank: Non-starter in the house.

Jeanne: I’d never back this one.

Hank: Who do you think you are trying to get this done?

Jeanne: This one works.

Gretchen: Great to hear!

Hank: Not for me.

Gretchen: Oh…

Susana: Listen! We’ve brought you in here with the goal of getting something done for this state and you are NOT going to shut us down. So either pick something from that pile to work with us on or offer up an idea of your own, because none of us are about to stand for this. This state deserves better, goddammit!

Jeanne: Wow! Never knew she had it in her! I’m impressed.

Susana: Wish I could say the same about you two sad sacks! You proud that you’re stopping any and all progress in this state? Who pays you off?

Jeanne: Okay, you’re going a bit far now.

Susana: Find something! Give us the approval for literally anything. 

Carol: Or we’re going to the press.

Susana: And Gretchen is going to start signing executive orders like no one’s business. No more Mrs. Nice Gov!

Samantha: I think we can all find a compromise here that doesn’t involve going haywire, right everyone?

Hank: Stay out of this one, Pratt, you chose your side.

Samantha: I am neutral! I’m our Switzerland!

Hank: In that case, go fetch me a Swiss Miss.

Jeanne: I think this would work for me, I can get the senate to back this.

Hank: Lemme see.

Gretchen: My god, we could have a winner!

Hank: Yeah, fine. I’ll go with that. It works.

Gretchen: Moment of truth! Let’s see what it is!

Carol: Oh, this one. Okay…

Gretchen: Oh my god! This one wasn’t even supposed to b win the pile, this was an executive order. Why would I need assembly approval for this?

Hank: Establishing a new state holiday is a big deal, hasn’t happened since 2014!

Gretchen: I haven’t signed a single piece of legislation into law all year and you want my first to be to establish May 12 as Anna Bradford Shaw Day?

Jeanne: It’s brilliant, because it truly can not possibly hurt anyone. It’s the best type of legislation to pass to shut someone up that’s whining about us not letting her pass anything.

Samantha: Who even is Anna Bradford Shaw?

Gretchen: She’s a poet, she wrote Rhode Island at Winter.

Samantha: Never heard of it.

Jeanne: I learned it in school. Never cared much for it, but I do recognize it as being part of our history.

Gretchen: So this is really all you’re willing to give me?

Jeanne: We have to pass a budget soon, maybe you can work some of this nonsense into that.

Gretchen: And you’ll let it stay in?

Jeanne: Never said that.

Carol: Come on, Gretchen. Let’s go and do, uh, whatever it is we do after your entire agenda was rejected by the only two people with the power to pass it.

Jeanne: Hey, Raymond! Better send that bill to me by tomorrow before I change my mind!

Later that night, when Gretchen returns home…

Anthony: Look who’s home! Productive day today?

Gretchen: I want to die.

Lucinda: Finally realize you’re the governor of Rhode Island and that nothing you do all day matters because no one lives here?

Gretchen: Not quite, but I am feeling like I don’t matter much. Jeanne and Hank are blocking all of the things i wanted to pass, I feel like this state would be better off with someone else as governor.

Lucinda: Who could’ve ever given you that idea?

Christina: Gee, I wonder.

Anthony: Honey, you are the best governor this state could ever want.

Lucinda: Laying it on a bit thick, no?

Anthony: It’s Jeanne and Hank that the state would be better without. Those two have always been absolutely no good. They only care about their own priorities, not what the state wants.

Christina: How did either of them even get elected after all that they’ve pulled?

Gretchen: I just have bad luck.

Lucinda: So there’s nothing that they agreed to from all those plans you came up with?

Gretchen: There was one.

Lucinda: You should have led with that! You had me thinking you were a complete failure!

Christina: What was it that they agreed to pass?

Gretchen: I don’t want to talk about it.

Anthony: Don’t want to jinx the big bill before it’s officially passed?

Gretchen: I don’t think anyone would really care if this one failed, including me.

Lucinda: You have the shot at passing the first bill all year and you’re not bending over backwards to pass it?

Gretchen: It’s a bill to make a state holiday dedicated to the poet Anna Bradford Shaw.

Lucinda: Really? I love her work!

Christina: You love a poet?

Anthony: You feel love for something?

Lucinda: Her poetry is extremely moving. She had such a way with words.

Christina: But did they make an Apple TV+ show loosely inspired by her life starring the actress from Bumblebee? Nope, that was Emily Dickinson.

Lucinda: No, that sounds stupid.

Christina: It is not! Susana and I binged the whole thing together during the campaign.

Lucinda: Gretchen, I can’t believe you’re giving her a holiday. A book of her poetry that my parents bought me was one of the seminal works of my childhood.

Anthony: So her poems make people mean and bitter? I don’t think that’s a reason to give someone a holiday.

Gretchen: One of her most famous works is about Rhode Island, she’s actually one of the most famous people from our state.

Anthony: More famous than beloved Today anchor Meredith Vieira?

Gretchen: No, no one is Vieira-level famous.

Lucinda: Did you introduce this new holiday for my sake? Because let me tell you, I am very impressed with you.

Anthony: Are you even proud of her?

Lucinda: I sure am!

Gretchen: It wasn’t entirely for you, but I do think that you discussing her probably brought her to the forefront of my mind. The beauty of this mess with Jeanne and Hank is that this was only supposed to be an executive order that I did for a bit of positive PR, and now I have to spin it as a major legislative accomplishment.

Lucinda: This is your greatest accomplishment, over your entire career.

Christine: Grandma is reacting to Anna Bradshaw Day -

Lucinda: Anna Bradford Shaw Day -

Christine: She’s reacting to Anna Bradford Shaw Day like how I’d react to mom declaring it Kate Bush Day.

Anthony: At least Kate Bush ran up that hill, I still don’t know why Anna Bradford Shaw is making your grandmother react like she’s about to meet BTS.

Lucinda: She was a major part of my childhood, and I feel nostalgic for her. Is that now why you pretend to enjoy watching repeats of Friends?

Anthony: It’s timeless!

Lucinda: No, it is not! They had Kathleen Turner play a transgender woman and kept calling her. a man!

Christina: Will you two knock it off with the fighting?

Gretchen: You know what? Keep it up, I’ve still accomplished more today than I did at work.

The next day, in Gretchen’s office…

Carol: Hey, don’t look now, but you’re a leading topic on the news today!

Gretchen: I need more context, that could be good or bad for us with how fickle the news is.

Carol: They just mentioned what stories are coming up, so we don’t know the full context of the stories are just yet.

Susana: The one is about your meeting with Hank and Jeanne, and they didn’t editorialize too much. The other is about the announcement of Anna Bradford Shaw Day, they said they were going to talk to their in-house Rhode Island historian about it.

Gretchen: Wow, they see this as an actual history event! Years down the line, kids will be getting May 12th off from school and they’ll be able to thank good ole’ governor Raymond for that, even long after I’m gone.

Carol: Do the kids tend to know what governor signed holidays into law?

Susana: Quick, which president signed MLK Day into law?

Gretchen: Enough of the gotcha questions! This is big. Did we send the bill off to Jeanne and Hank yet for passage in the assembly?

Susana: I sent it off last night, stayed up specifically to finish it.

Carol: And she made me stay up with her so I could proofread her draft. I didn’t get to be until ten!

Gretchen: Wow, you poor thing.

Carol: I appreciate the sympathy. It was truly traumatic.

Gretchen: I have to say, this holiday was given to me to pass just to keep me off Hank and Jeanne’s back, but I think it’s really working out for us. We’re getting a lot of good press and everyone loves a good holiday. This will just make the public more sympathetic to me, thinking about what i could do if I were ever allowed to

Three hours later…

Carol: That damn historian has ruined my day! Was it necessary for him to say what he said?

Gretchen: Say what? That Rhode Island’s new proposed holiday is centered on a Californian coastal elite who has never visited Rhode Island and made comments about enslaving all men?

Susana: She was a militant feminist, this is just a right-wing hit job.

Gretchen: You know why she stopped writing poems?

Susana: The patriarchy?

Gretchen: She was committed to an asylum for trying to stab her mailman.

Susana: The revolution is bloody.

Gretchen: Ae you enjoying this?

Susana: So much.

Carol: So what are we going to do about this?

Gretchen: I think we should push it through, that’ll be a big win for us.

Carol: Was there any reason we didn’t look into her before we decided to put her on a pedestal and give this woman n entire holdiay?

Gretchen: We figured she couldn’t be any worse than Columbus!

Susana: Well, she still isn’t, but maybe put the breaks on the holiday.

Gretchen: Why do they teach this woman’s work in schools if she was so unhinged?

Carol: It’s extremely rare for Rhode Island to be mentioned anywhere, they just jumped at the chance here.

Susana: They don’t teach Family Guy in school!

Carol: They should.

Gretchen: How did this lady even know what Rhode Island was like bad in those days if she never came here?

Carol: Well, her poem did call it “tropical” and “an island,” both of which were jpretty big warning signs in hindsight.

Gretchen: You know what? We’ll scrap Shaw Day altogether and apologize for not investigating her properly. We’ll make a Bake Your Heart Out Day instead to commemorate the day they started filming TV’s #1 show here. That can’t backfire.

Carol: Is the Bake Your Heart Out well not a little dry? I mean, it you you the vice presidential slot and a re-election, can we really try to get another press cycle out of it?

Gretchen: At least it actually films here!

Carol: Or does it?

Susana: You think Jeanne knew about Bradford Shaw’s past when she approved this?

Carol: Of course she did. Everything about her is calculated. That’s why I call her “Texas Instruments.” You know, like the calculator?

Gretchen: Why is my life like this?

Carol: Someone’s gotta draw the short end of the stick?

Later that night…

Gretchen: Mom, I got some bad news.

Lucinda: What else is new?

Gretchen: We had to scrap Anna Bradford Shaw Day.

Christina: Oh no. Take cover, everyone!

Gretchen: Are you mad, mom?

Lucinda: I’m just confused. I shouldn’t be, I should be used to you letting me down. I am, though.

Gretchen: She’s not from Rhode Island, and had some very interesting ideas on the enslavement of all men.

Lucinda: It was a different time.

Christina: Was it a normal belief then?

Anthony: If anyone would know, it’s Lucinda.

Gretchen: She tried to kill a mailman.

Christina: Was she part dog?

Lucinda: This generation is too soft. Try to kill one mailman, you don’t get your own holiday.

Gretchen: Don’t worry, mom. I need a new holiday to sign into law for PR purposes. Thinking maybe OJ Simpson this time.

Lucinda: Do you try to hurt me?

Gretchen: No, it’s just the one and only perk of the job.

What did you think of the midseason premiere of Raymond Island? Let us know in the comments, and make sure to read the new episode next week!

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