Marietta walks into the mayor’s office.
Marietta: Last work day of the year, girls!
Henrietta: Oh my god, really? Where has this year gone?
Marietta: You think it went quick? That was the longest campaign of my life!
Amy: Oh, come on! You ran against a guy who paid for hookers, surely the race against me was tougher on you.
Marietta: I was always ahead in that one.
Amy: Well, merry Christmas to me.
Marietta: I wasn’t dragging you! I was just being honest. I thought I was going to lose this one.
Tammy: You kinda thought you were going to lose to Amy, too.
Amy: Thank you, Tammy. What an amazing Christmas gift.
Tammy: Oh, speaking of Christmas gifts! Marietta, my gift for you just arrived in the mail yesterday. It is perfect, you’re going to flip when you see it.
Marietta: We said we weren’t going to go crazy with the presents this year! Just simple things!
Tammy: That’s just something someone goes along with to be polite when it’s suggested to them. What am I going to say? “No, you have to spend more money on me than you were planning to!” I don’t think so.
Amy: Well let me be the first to make it clear I did not get you anything extravagant. I listen.
Tammy: Oh, now she’s going to use it to drag me? Disgusting!
Amy: You ignored her wishes, you should be dragged.
Tammy: Can we get to work please?
Marietta: I can’t focus on work, not with this looming Christmas present scandal!
Tammy: Not everything is a scandal!
Marietta: Okay, the looming Christmas present debacle.
Tammy: I don’t care if you just got me something small, it’s the thought that counts.
Marietta: I don’t want the gift quality tote so uneven. You deserve a good gift.
Tammy: I was First Lady. I promise you, I want for nothing. I have a hankering for a boba tea, I can have a Secret Service guy go get me one!
Henrietta: Don't you decline Secret Service protection?
Tammy: That’s what I want you to think!
Later that night, at Martin and Patty Lynn’s…
Marietta: I have to go out Christmas shopping tomorrow.
Martin: Tomorrow? That’s Christmas Eve. You didn’t seriously procrastinate until Christmas Eve again…
Kathleen: I know damn well your wacky mother didn’t raise you to be that way!
Marietta: No! I didn’t! It’s just, Tammy -
Kathleen: What did she do now? Did she forget the mulled wine? Don’t cover for her just because she was the FLOTUS, let her get it herself.
Marietta: It’s not that. She just let it slip that she got me something really great, when I just got her something small.
Kathleen: So?
Marietta: She gave me something thoughtful, I can’t just give her a gift card.
Patty Lynn: A gift card? I raised you to be more thoughtful than that!
Marietta: I know! I’m sorry! I’ll try to make it up to you!
Patty Lynn: I can forgive. I’ll never forget.
Marietta: I understand.
Kathleen: So what’s this grand gift you’re getting her now?
Marietta: Therein lies my problem.
Kathleen: You don’t know?
Marietta: I don’t know.
Martin: You don’t have much time to figure it out, do you?
Marietta: Thanks a lot, captain obvious!
Martin: I was just making conversation, no need to be snippy. Have a little Christmas spirit!
Marietta: I’m sorry, I’m stressed. Here, have a gingerbread. It’s my festive olive branch.
Martin: I’m not allowed.
Marietta: You’re not allowed?
Martin: She won’t let me spoil my dinner.
Marietta: Is mom your boss?
Patty Lynn: Yes. And I’m yours, too. Stop sassing me and get to work on finding that gift for Tammy!
Marietta: All right, I guess I earned that. I’m gonna go call Mitch and see if he’s got any ideas. He knows her best.
Marietta steps aside and calls Mitch.
Mitch: What’s going on? Couldn’t you get ahold of Tammy on her cell?
Marietta: No, I actually meant to call you!
Mitch: Oh! Why?
Marietta: I need some Christmas gift advice.
Mitch: Gift cards, for everyone. It’s the perfect gift!
Marietta: Gonna need something a bit more personal than that. Something you need to put a bit of thought into.
Mitch: I’m not really the greatest gift giver, if I’m being honest.
Marietta: Tammy’s always raving about how great the gifts you give her are!
Mitch: Okay. I have to fess up to something.
Marietta: If this is an admission of a crime, I don’t want to hear it. I’m not spending Christmas in cuffs.
Mitch: I don’t want to hear what you do in your bedroom, that’s your own business!
Marietta: Get your mind out of the gutter! I mean I don’t want to be made an accessory to a crime!
Mitch: Ah, got it! No, it’s only criminal in my wife’s eyes.
Marietta: That could be worse. She’s my best friend.
Mitch: I’m telling you anyway.
Marietta: Merry Christmas to me!
Mitch: My assistant picks out all my gifts for Tammy.
Marietta gasps.
Mitch: Don’t do that.
Marietta: It’s shocking!
Mitch: Is it really? I was president, I can’t go to a store without an elite team of agents tailing me. Do you know how many thousands of dollars a run to CVS costs the American taxpayer?
Marietta: Do you think we buy Christmas presents at CVS?
Mitch: It was just an example of how costly a simple store run can be.
Marietta: You know, we can buy things online now.
Mitch: I don’t know how to do that!
Marietta: Anyway, you’re free to cheat to buy Tammy’s gifts all you want, but I want something from the heart. Do you have any idea of what she would genuinely want?
Mitch: I don’t know, what’s she always wearing? Rings? Maybe a purse?
Marietta: Have you ever met your wife?
Mitch: Unfortunately for both of us, yes!
Marietta: How do you have no clue what she’d want?
Mitch: She’s a complicated woman. Very modern, very enlig-
Marietta: Don’t go feminist on me! You just named the most stereotypical gifts you could get a woman when I asked for personal gift ideas!
Mitch: I’m sorry, Marietta! I told you. I’m not great at this.
Marietta: I’ll say!
Mitch: I’ll tell you what, I always worked better when not put on the spot. I’ll sit on the question for a while, and I’ll call you if I get any inspiration.
Marietta: Mitch… Christmas is in two days.
Mitch: Now you’r putting me on the spot, it won’t come now.
Marietta: It was never going to!
Mitch: Am I still invited to Christmas?
Marietta: Of course you are, it’s still the holidays, it’s a season of love and giving and peace and serenity and all that crap.
Mitch: Okay then, see you tomorrow, and good luck!
Marietta: Yeah, thanks.
Marietta hangs up.
Sarah: Any lucky?
Marietta: You be quiet.
Sarah: I hope my gift is good if you’re putting all this time into getting something perfect for Tammy. We’re family!
Kathleen: You’ll be lucky to even get one at this rate. Your aunt’s going to be asking you how returns work on Amazon by the end of the night.
Sarah: I barely said anything! And it’s Christmas!
Patty Lynn: So you better watch out, you better not pout!
Sarah: Santa isn’t real!
Patty Lynn: Those that don’t believe get socks for Christmas!
Sarah: With my whole heart, I believe Santa will be squeezing his fat white ass down that chimney tomorrow night, where he’ll find the jolliest bunch of a-
Martin: Who let her watch Christmas Vacation?
Sarah: I’m an adult! I watched it myself.
Marietta: But also with me.
Martin: Oy.
Patty Lynn: So I take it the call you made didn’t help?
Marietta: That man knows nothing about his wife! Dad, was he this bad at being President? You saw it up close!
Martin: He was a good President. Didn’t pay the most attention to detail, though. I’m not shocked he had no good ideas for you. Maybe try Kate or Ellie.
Marietta: Ellie? The most self-centered woman I know?
Martin: She’s not that bad!
Kathleen: She’s pretty bad.
Marietta: She’s my dear friend, I love her. Thoughtfulness… not her strong suit. She got me a plastic bag holder for Christmas one year.
Martin: A what?
Marietta: A bag to store the plastic bags you get at the grocery store so you can reuse them later.
Patty Lynn: We have one!
Martin: Okay, call Kate.
Marietta: That may prove fruitful.
Kathleen: Fruitful? You’ve bene hanging out with Amy too much.
Martin: Amy! You could always ask her!
Marietta: Absolutely not. First, she’d sabotage me. Second, even if she did have a good idea, she’d never tell me because she’d want to use it for herself. It’s going to be Kate.
Patty Lynn: Okay, but hurry on the phone, dinner’s just about ready. I made a pot roast!
Marietta: You can eat without me, you know.
Patty Lynn: I don’t want to! It’s family time!
Marietta: I’m never even plan to eat here to begin with, I come here to pick Sarah up and then you always tell me to just stay for dinner, and I’m too scared of you to say “no.”
Patty Lynn: And you should be! Now, go call Kate so you don’t delay our dinner!
Marietta: Okay, going!
Marietta steps away and calls Kate.
Kate: Oh my god, what’s up? I’m just about to get on the plane!
Ellie: I’m here, too!
Marietta: You always are.
Ellie: What’s that supposed to mean?
Marietta: You spend more time with one another than most couples.
Ellie: And you and Tammy don’t?
Marietta: Shut up!
Ellie: You’re going to be on the naughty list, talking like that!
Marietta: Oh no, I’m so scared!
Ellie: You should be!
Kate: So what’s going on? We’re on our way to NOLA right now, so try not to rile her up too much, okay?
Marietta: Speaking of our Christmas celebration, that’s why I’m calling.
Ellie: Oh my god, are you canceling? I told off my entire family -
Marietta: You did what?
Ellie: just so I could come, and now you cancel? I’m still coming! Ho ho ho!
Kate: Don’t call yourself that.
Ellie: Bitch.
Kate: You can call yourself that.
Marietta: You told off your family? Why?
Ellie: They’re like “Oh, why are you going away for Christmas again?” and I’m like “because it’s fun down there! I like fun!” Now I’m homeless for Christmas! Thanks a lot!
Kate: She’s so overdramatic.
Marietta: We’re still doing Christmas!
Ellie: Ah, thank god! Never doubted it!
Kate: Yes you did! You were hyperventilating!
Ellie: Well, I thought I wasted my money! You know, in Delphy’s economy…
Kate: Stop talking. Let Marietta talk before we have to get on this damn plane!
Marietta: I need gift advice for Tammy!
Kate: Oh, honey… waiting until December 23rd?
Marietta: I already got her a gift card, it’s just that I don’t think that’s right now. She put a lot of thought into my gift.
Kate: She gave you your present already? Is she starting to lose it? She thinks it’s December 25th?
Marietta: No, she’s just bragging about how great it is. I don’t want to feel stupid when she gives me something great and I give a fifty dollar gift card for Starbucks!
Ellie: Yeah, that only buys you like five coffees these days. We have to impeach Delphy.
Kate: Oh my god, why is she like this?
Marietta: It’s not like she’s gotten any more unserious lately, I don’t know why this behavior is surprising you. But, that’s not my point. Do you guys, specifically Kate, have any ideas for what Tammy wants for Christmas. I can’t ask her, not so close to Christmas.
Ellie: I take offense to the “specifically Kate” line there.
Kate: I don’t.
Marietta: No ideas?
Kate: There was one thing.
Marietta: I like to hear that!
Kate: It’s something I couldn’t get her, because I couldn’t travel with it.
Marietta: I’m not getting her a gun. I’m a Democrat!
Ellie: So are all of us, you’re not!
Kate: You think she’d want a gun? Tammy? She’s afraid of having knifes in her house because she thinks someone could use it to kill her.
Marietta: You said you can’t travel with it!
Kate: Because it’s super breakable.
Marietta: So what is it?
Kate: When Tammy visited DC a couple of months ago, we were at a shop, it’s called, uh…
Ellie: Francello’s
Kate: Yes. It’s a family-owned shop, it’s got a bunch of expensive jewelry and hand-crafted household items. There was a snow globe there, she said it reminds her of the mountains in New York where she grew up.
Marietta: She grew up in Westchester!
Kate: They went to her grandparents’ place in the Catskills for Christmas.
Marietta: Okay. So it’s a snow globe from a small shop in DC. How am I going to get that?
Kate: I don’t know, that why I didn’t get it. It’s the only idea I have, though.
Marietta: Uh, what did you get her, if you don’t mind my asking?
Kate: Nice try! See you tomorrow, and good luck!
The next day…
Eliza: This might be the eggnog talking -
Elena: She is trashed, I so sorry. She didn’t know it was spiked.
Sarah: It was spiked?
Kathleen: Yule only live once!
Sarah: Am I going to jail?
Kathleen: Just don’t tell your father.
Milton: Tell him what?
Kathleen: Nothing! Was that good, Sarah?
Sarah: Great.
Kathleen: Don’t y’all just love Christmas? I love Christmas! God bless Jesus!
Eliza: Can I talk?
Elena: Babe, don’t be a belligerent drunk. It’s Christmas.
Eliza: It’s what?
Elena: Now you’re just playing it up.
Eliza: Seriously, though, where is Marietta? She’s not here, right?
Patty Lynn: She’s running slightly late, no one needs to panic. She’ll be here soon!
Amy: She’s never showing up.
Moira: Hey, Milton and I just got here. Give her time.
Amy: Yeah, he came from DC.
Milton: Do you think I flew in today? No, I was late because Sarah pokes around.
Sarah: It’s a lie.
Milton: You smell like alcohol.
Sarah: Not true!
Eliza: How much alcohol was in that nog?
Milton: There’s alcohol in the eggnog?
Eliza: No! Never!
Patty Lynn: Ah, you people. Love you all, but Jesus…
Moira: It is his birthday, yes.
Tammy: I’m just so excited to give Marietta her gift!
Kate: Isn’t that, like, a tomorrow thing?
Tammy: Come on, you know we all open one present on Christmas Eve.
Kate: What makes you think she’ll pick yours?
Tammy: Positive thoughts.
Marietta rushes through the door.
Marietta: Oh, god, I’m sorry I’m late. I almost tripped over the wire for that inflatable Frosty!
Martin: I told you that was a hazard.
Milton: She didn’t care when I literally face-planted because of it, she won’t care now.
Patty Lynn: The family is all here! Finally!
Moira: And Amy’s here, too!
Amy: You know what…
Moira: It’s all in good fun!
Henrietta: Marietta, just a warning, the eggnog is spiced. Good thing I’m not breastfeeding anymore.
Elena: Your mother is, so that’ll be fun for the twins.
Ellie: Everyone deserves a good buzz on Christmas!
Marietta: I feel like I’m having Christmas with the Griswolds.
Martin: We’re worse.
Kathleen: Food’s better!
Moira: So you didn’t steam-dry a turkey and put some cat food in a jello mold? Damn shame.
Patty Lynn: Marietta, you can take your overnight bag up to your room. Your Christmas pajamas are waiting for you on the bed.
Marietta: Thanks, mom!
Patty Lynn It is time for dinner, though, so hurry up.
Marietta: I hear that daily, it never works on me then, either.
The next morning…
Patty Lynn: All right, the kids are done with their presents, and they’re distracted, so I guess it’s time to rush through the adult gifts.
Mitch: Can we put some real music on? This treacly nons-
Patty Lynn: It’s Christmas. We listen to Bing Crosby, we listen to Frank Sinatra, we listen to Darlene Love. Don’t like it, don’t come.
Kate: She told you!
Henrietta: I would like to request that I go last. I am tired and need a nap.
Patty Lynn: Ugh, fine.
Milton: She is so strict on Christmas, she’s practically a war criminal.
Martin: Milton, don’t talk about your mother that way. It’s true, but it makes her angry, and that ruins the day for all of us.
Tammy: I want to give Marietta her gift first!
Marietta: Nope! You’re opening yours first.
Tammy: Okay, I’ll open the gift you said you weren’t getting me. I’m sure it’s not a gift card, it never is!
Marietta: You’re. Gonna love it. Dad, can you hand it over? Be careful, it’s fragile.
Milton: It’s pronounced “fra-gee-lay.”
Marietta: Sure.
Moira: Aww, honey, I got your reference.
Milton: Thank you.
Tammy: Wow, it is heavy. What’d you get me, a paper weight?
Marietta: Just wait and see?
Kate: Did you…?
Marietta: Uh-huh.
Kate: How?
Marietta: Christmas magic.
Ellie: I’m lost.
Million: When are you not?
Ellie: Rude.
Tammy: Oh my god! You didn’t! How did you get this?
Milton: What is it? It looks like a -
Tammy: It’s the snow globe I wanted!
Marietta: My elf gave me a tip-off that you wanted it, and I had it flown here first-class, using a bit of political influence to get it here on time.
Amy: Oh god, not another scandal.
Marietta: I’m not running again, who cares?
Moira: I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that when the impeachment vote takes place.
Tammy: I feel so stupid.
Marietta: What? Why?
Tammy: You got me such a thoughtful gift!
Marietta: You said you got me one, too. That’s why I upped my game.
Tammy: I was expecting another gift card, I just got you… you’ll see.
Milton: This’ll be good.
Eliza: Is there any of that nog left? I feel like I’m gonna need it!
Marietta: Uh… Tammy… what is this?
Tammy: It’s a link. I’m so embarrassed!
Marietta: Did you buy me a website?
Tammy: It’s a video. A Cameo video. It’s from a special guy.
Milton: Not me! No one bought any Cameos from me, I had to shut my page down.
Marietta: Who is it from?
Tammy: You know the congressman they expelled for corruption that you think is funny?
Marietta: Oh my god! Of course!
Tammy: Yeah, him.
Marietta: You are the best friend in the world!
Tammy: Really?
Marietta: I talked about how funny he is all the time! This is perfect! Anyone can get a candle, or towels, or garbage form Kohl’s -
Kathleen: Hey! I’m retired, I’m on a budget.
Marietta: This is a special gift.
Patty Lynn: And you can watch it later. Christmas must continue forward!
Marietta: It really is a magical day, isn’t it?
What did you think of this episode of Marietta? Let us know in the comments and make sure to read the Raymond Island holiday special next Monday! Marietta will return with new episodes in January!
