5-4 “Just My Bill”

There are so many wonderful things about this episode. It addresses impostor syndrome and self-confidence, without letting anyone off the hook for shitty behavior. It contains a general message to enjoy people for who they are rather than what you think they should be and what you think they think you should be. It has a blip that’s a sign of its time; let’s just be grateful that we’ve come forward.

As we start the episode, it appears that Jo is doing rather well.

Yep, Jo has a new boyfriend, and he’s important enough for her to wear her hair down for him. He’s a generically attractive 80s white man whom I, of course, think is super hot. In fact, I only just realized that he played the alien I had a crush on in the V miniseries.

His name is Bill, and Jo likes him because he’s different from the other guys at Langley, whom she sees as “empty, snobby sons of millionaires.” Chekhov’s empty, snobby sons of millionaires? Regardless, she likes him a lot.

As he leaves, he reminds Jo that they have a dinner date tomorrow night. Chekhov’s dinner date? Am I overdoing it with the Chekhov’s gun references?

In the morning, Blair and Jo work together at the shop while Blair tries to goad Jo into joining her at that evening’s pep rally. Jo is not interested, and Blair accuses Jo of hiding out in the library because she’s afraid of being rejected. Little does she know. Little do we know yet.

Blair tells Jo she has no reason to be afraid anymore, because she’s no longer a “psychopathic ragamuffin.” I like that. I shall add that to my insult arsenal. Instead, she’s just “antisocial and a little messy,” and I can relate.

Enter, for the very first time, tiny little Pamela Adlon, who interrupts Blair and Jo’s bickering by attempting to steal a jar of escargot.

In five episodes, we’ll learn more about little baby Pam’s weird gourmet food shoplifting habit. For now, it’s a vehicle for Blair to point out how much more civilized Jo has become, since instead of putting the girl’s head in a blender and putting it on puree, Jo merely told her to be under the next bus, which comes in fifteen minutes. Blair continues to plead with Jo that if she won’t date, she should at least come to the pep rally. Tootie and Natalie enter and Blair whines to them that Jo has become a library hermit and she can’t stand it.

But Jo should know by now that no one can get anything past Natalie.

Natalie noticed that Jo didn’t get back last night until midnight – two hours after the library closed. Her further sleuthing led her to this telltale piece of popcorn, which resembles the type commonly sold at the movie theater and was found in the pocket of Jo’s “good blazer,” which Jo wore last night. To the library.

Natalie: “Now spill it. Who’s the man behind the popcorn?”
Jo: “All right, I’ll tell you. Orville Redenbacher.”

Natalie and Tootie are too busy interrogating Jo to notice the very attractive generic white man who just walked in. As he approaches the service counter, they get indignant with Jo’s nonresponsiveness and stalk into the kitchen, leaving Bill and Jo alone.

Natalie and Tootie return from the kitchen and nearly interrupt them, but not quite. Mrs. G returns from her aerobics class and sees Bill and Jo at the counter.

“Oh hi you two! Did you enjoy the movie last night?”

Of course this is bait that Natalie and Tootie absolutely cannot resist. As Mrs. G continues to innocently out Jo and Bill, Tootie and Natalie grow more interested. Also, Bill is really attractive. Totally my type.

Jo tries to play it off, but she’s busted. She finally relents and introduces the girls and Mrs. G to her “friend” Bill, who is friendly and lovely and gracious and fit right in to the girls’ goofiness and seems like such a great dude. He reminds me of this absolute delight of a man that I met at a retreat I went to this past weekend who, yes, also looked like that.

Ooooh, Bill has come to tell Jo that his parents are unexpectedly coming to town and she doesn’t have to come to dinner if it will be too boring for her. Jo says she’d love to meet them. Natalie approves.

Bill has to pick up his parents at the train station, so he asks Jo to meet them at Le Petit Moulin. There are currently many restaurants called “Le Petit Moulin” in France, but none in Peekskill.

Blair returns to the shop just as Bill heads out the door.

Blair: “Wasn’t that Bill Smith?”
Me: Seriously, “Bill Smith?”

Blair learns that Jo is dating John Doe Bill Smith.

It turns out that “Bill Smith” is “William Ogden Smith the Fourth, son of…”

Tootie: “William Ogden Smith the Third.”

Indeed, Bill’s father is a multi-millionaire. While Jo is troubled that Bill didn’t tell her about this, Tootie and Natalie are happy to add that Jo is having dinner with Bill’s parents that very evening.

Blair: “You’re dining with Ambassador and Justice Smith?”

Note that it is highly unlikely that Bill’s parents are lifetime public servants; there’s no way they became millionaires in that line of work. But I find it interesting that they couldn’t just be millionaire CEOs or law partners; they also had to have impressive titles. It’s weird that the titles of public servants have so much status when the positions themselves are often disrespected.

Jo has no room for any of it.

I once had a boyfriend who went vegan for a while after we started dating. He was still telling me he was vegan when I went to a party and discovered he’d been eating chicken wings. Later, when he was turning wings down in front of me and hyping up his supposed veganness, I told him that he didn’t have to pretend anymore; I knew he’d been eating wings and I didn’t judge him for it. He continued to deny having eaten any wings. This caused a huge fight between us, and I never really could get him to understand that it wasn’t that he ate wings, it was that he lied to my face about it.

So, to that extent, I understand Jo’s frustration that Bill didn’t mention these relevant details.

And here comes Jo’s impostor syndrome as she doubts her ability to have dinner with millionaire ambassadors/judges. Instead of reassuring her that she is great and Bill likes her for her, Blair says Jo has nothing to worry about because Blair will give her clothes and fix her hair and “make you me.”

Yikes.

Though Mrs. G acknowledges that Jo doesn’t look like herself, she and the girls all trip over themselves blithering about how great she looks. I think the fact that she is so obviously uncomfortable makes it impossible for her to look “great.” There’s nothing at all wrong with enjoying this look, but she doesn’t, and she shouldn’t pretend to. I’m particularly sensitive to this because I have been allowing a third party to unreasonably influence my appearance for far too long.

Thank goodness Mrs. G’s fawning over Jo’s appearance is temporary. She quickly contradicts Blair’s assertion that Jo needs instruction and transformation in order to go to dinner with “a millionaire and his multi-millionaire parents,” and tells Jo that all she has to do to make a good impression is be herself and have fun. No kidding.

With that, Mrs. G, Natalie, and Tootie are off to an auction so Mrs. G can bid on antique milk bottles, leaving Jo alone with horrible influence Blair. Jo reasonably says that she doesn’t feel right about it and doesn’t even know why she’s doing it. Blair insists that she looks Park Avenue instead of the Bronx, and that’s what Bill’s parents want to see. Before flitting off to the pep rally, Blair advises that if Bill’s parents ask for Jo’s life details, Jo should give them Blair’s.

Jo does end up concluding that she shouldn’t put on this charade. Instead, she decides to put on a different one.

Jo loudly and rudely demands service and gets into an argument with the maitre d’ in an exaggerated New York accent before Bill comes to the front to collect her. She chews him out for not telling her about his parents’ status (Bill: “I said they were white collar!”), and angrily announces that she’s just going to be herself. Instead, though, she goes out of her way to be shocking and impolite. Highlights include:

“So, I hear you people have more money than God.”
“I’m from the Bronx. You know the Bronx. It’s that slum you rich folks drive through on your way to the airport.”
“Who do you have to know around here to get some chow?”

Bill’s parents try to be good sports at first, but Jo’s behavior embarrasses us all. Fortunately we are spared any more of Jo’s ridiculous act when we fade to the next day at the shop.

Natalie tries to pressure Tootie to ask Jo how the date went, and when Tootie says hell no, Natalie appeals to Blair. Blair, who found her taffeta dress in knots under her pillow that morning, is not interested in inquiring. Jo comes in from the kitchen and cuts them off with a firm “I don’t want to talk about last night!”

The door chime rings.

Bill has dropped by to say, “Cheerio” and “pip pip!” Jo sarcastically asks if the Vanderbilts invited him for tea, and Blair corrects that Bill’s is a morning outfit. We learned that after we left them last night, Jo explained to Bill’s father that he was personally responsible for the hostage crisis and lit a cigar at the table after dinner.

Jo declares that she doesn’t need this BS and she stalks out of the room. Mrs. G orders Bill to stay before she follows Jo into the lounge.

Mrs. G tells Jo that what she heard doesn’t sound like Jo, and they all know perfectly well that she could have done just fine at that dinner without anybody’s help. She encourages Jo to soften up and give Bill the benefit of the doubt.

They return to the kitchen, where Mrs. G puts the other girls to work so that Jo and Bill can talk in the corner of the shop. The lounge would have been a much better place for this conversation to happen.

Bill explains that all his life people have liked him not for being his lovely self, but for being “William Ogden Smith the Fourth.” Jo protests that she’s not like that, and an opening credits shot is born.

Bill: “No, you’re worse! You know, you’re very prejudiced against people who are not as poor as you are!”

So, while I know the message that this episode is going for, and I think it’s generally good, that quotation does it no favors. It’s a sign of the times that nothing was thought of having the rich white cis straight man splain the dynamics of oppression to low-income woman.

Natalie, along with most of the store’s customers, have now stopped what they were doing to watch what Natalie calls “a summit between Fred Astaire and Fidel Castro.” I’m impressed that the network didn’t go all batshit about a reference to Fidel Castro in the early ’80s.

Finally realizing that the middle of a busy gourmet food shop is not the best place for a heavy, private conversation, Jo and Bill agree to go someplace else to talk. Bill, that fine model of a man, jokes that he’ll buy Jo a cigar. I swoon. The credits roll.

I am so sad to tell you that we never see or hear from Bill again. He joins Eddie Brennan and Kristy the Teenage Prostitute as guest characters I would have loved to follow. It’s at times like this that I think about writing fanfic.