4-8 “Daddy’s Girl”

“There’s a Facts of Life episode about that.”

That’s a phrase I say a lot, because there always is. This week, the news broke that the president’s fortune was in fact not self-made but rather a result of a lot of financial/taxation hocus pocus from his father (which should have surprised no one). My first thought was, “Hey! Blair’s dad did that!”

And so he did. But Blair doesn’t know it yet, as she assists Mrs. G and the other girls in taking inventory. She brings the tiniest little box into the kitchen and, as she breathes a deep sigh, says that she can now feel for people doing hard physical labor.

Blair’s wealth and privilege cluelessness is further brought to the forefront when she comments that “the more you make, the less ketchup you use,” which, considering 45’s well-known affection for fucking up his food with ketchup, is hilarious under the circumstances.

A-ha: Mrs. Garrett has a sneaky plan. She has no intention of ordering ketchup. She’s going to lie about needing to order ketchup and use that money for fresh vegetables and fruit instead, because the board will give her all the ketchup she needs, but they think veggies and fruit are too expensive. Fucking bureaucracy. As the school dietitian, Mrs. G should have total control over her budget to order whatever she wants.

And also it disturbs me that this thought that vegetables and fruit are expensive still persists. Sure, oyster mushrooms are twenty bucks a pound, but do you know how many oyster mushrooms it takes to make a pound? A hell of a lot, that’s how many. An all-produce grocery basket will be the cheapest checkout you’ve ever had.

But the headmaster straight up negated Mrs. G’s request for more money for fresh food, so she’s “juggling the budget.”

Jo wants to hurry because she has plans to go to a ball game with her dad. Blair thinks “another ball game” sounds dull. I think we can safely call this Chekhov’s Ball Game.

Blair announces that she has to change to meet a visitor she’s expecting; someone from the IRS is coming to ask some questions about her tax return. Upon the rest of the cast’s incredulity that Blair, a high school senior with no apparent job, has filed a tax return, Blair explains that she just signs it after her father’s people prepare it for her. Besides, Blair says, she has a job!

Blair: “Daddy lists me as fashion consultant for his company. He’s such a brilliant businessman. That way my allowance is tax-deductible. In our circles it’s done practically every day.”
Jo: “Whenever they can get time off from crushing and oppressing.”

Nice one, Jo. And oh shit, Blair. This is starting to sound very timely.

Mrs. Garrett laughs off the idea of bothering to write off Blair’s allowance, until they learn that her “allowance” is ten thousand dollars per month.

Having recovered from the shock, Mrs. G exhorts Blair to take this IRS visit seriously. Blair says that she hasn’t even talked to her father, who is in Nigeria at the moment, and she pooh-pooh’s Mrs. G’s concern and insists that she can handle “one little tax man.”

Enter the Tax Man, Mr. Garfield, played by Kenneth Tigar, a character actor who has been in absolutely everything.

Mrs. G hustles the other girls out of the room so Blair can face the firing squad interview.

After Blair chit-chats and small talks and charms her way through explaining what a “fashion consultant” does, Mr. Garfield asks if she has the receipts for the substantial clothing expenses she’s deducted.

Blair manages to bluff her way through that question. She doesn’t do so well with the question about “miscellaneous equipment,” including a television, copy machine, telex, and computer terminal.

Blair tries valiantly to bullshit her way through this one too, but it’s no good, particularly when the Tax Man points out that according to her tax return, she leased the equipment to her father’s corporation with an option to purchase while sharing depreciation.

Oh, he’s not done. What about the irregularities in her Keogh plan, her stock losses, and her foreign tax credit, and by the way, can she explain the dredging equipment?

Mr. Garfield finally stops twisting the knife, pointing out the obvious truths that Blair knows nothing about what’s in her tax return, and her father gave her a title just to dodge taxes. No kiddin’.

He announces that he’ll be returning on Monday, and he hopes that by then she and her father have given serious consideration to amending her return.

Blair: “I want my daddy!”
Tax Man: “So do we.”

Back from commercial, Mrs. G, Tootie, and Natalie help Blair review the giant stack of pages from her tax return. Other questionable items include the pig farm in Arkansas and the cannery in Guam.

Jo returns from her trip to the Yankees game with her father. I told you it was Chekhov’s ball game! Blair trying to figure out what the hell her father has done with her name juxatposes with Jo wholesomely reveling in a baseball afternoon with hers. It’s poignant. Jo tells a story about how they had box seats behind home plate which were great until the guy who bought them showed up. That reminds me of when I became a minor celebrity on Houston sports radio because I refused to be thrown out of a seat that wasn’t mine when the Astros were losing by nine runs in the eighth and there were about a dozen people left in the Astrodome. I only mentioned Jo’s throwaway joke so I could tell my story.

Blair is testy about Jo’s lighthearted banter with Natalie. Tootie and Mrs. G catch Jo up on Blair’s audit experience, which just pisses Blair off more. Then Natalie discovers that Blair’s Christmas trip to Barbados with her father is also deducted in the return, written off as a business trip.

Blair insists that that was their vacation, and her look of hurt is so sad. She tries to laugh it off as a simple mistake, a position that is no longer tenable when Natalie points out that he also apparently wrote off trips with Blair to Geneva, Rome, and Madrid. Jo scoffs and judges. Natalie comments on its illegality and the girls muse about the possibility of Blair’s father going to jail.

Jo: “People like Blair’s father don’t go to jail! They go to fenced-in dude ranches with tennis courts and gourmet food.”

She’s not wrong.

Jo and Blair get into it about what Jo sees as cheating the government and Blair sees as “business.” Blair compares it to Mrs. G’s “juggling the budget,” and she’s not entirely off base, but the scale at which and the reasons why Mrs. G does creative accounting is way different. Jo joins me in defending Mrs. G, but that saint of a lady falls on her sword and says what she is doing is wrong – just as wrong as what Mr. Warner is doing. She hurries off to the kitchen to correct her order to the God’s honest truth. This has the desired effect of making Blair feel even shittier.

Natalie, who left to answer the phone a minute earlier, returns to tell Blair that the call was from her father; he’s on his way up to Eastland and she shouldn’t worry about anything. Blair is relieved, Jo is annoyed.

Blair: “You just don’t understand him.”
Jo: “You’re right. I don’t. The way I see it, you don’t put family in a spot over a few lousy bucks.”

Enter David Warner. Blair greets her “daddy” and he greets his “princess.” I make a mental note to call my father and thank him for not being icky.

Watching David Warner richsplain that someone must have made a mistake and his attorneys will sort it all out and Blair shouldn’t worry her pretty little head about it makes me physically ill. He keeps trying to make light of it, but to her credit, Blair isn’t taking any bullshit. She demands to know why he didn’t tell her anything and he insists that he didn’t want her to get mixed up with the details, like the cannery she owns in Guam which apparently is a terrific investment because it loses fifty thousand dollars a year and that’s really handy when it comes to taxes.

And now we get to hear David Warner boo hoo that in his tax bracket he has to make ten dollars just to keep one, which is bullshit because there’s been no 90% tax bracket since the early 60s. Furthermore, when that “one dollar” represents several million of them, I got no time for you.

Blair pleads that there must be another way, because she doesn’t want this to ever happen again. Her tone-deaf father responds: “Don’t worry, honey, it won’t. I’m making you a corporation.”

Blair: “I don’t want to be a corporation. I just want to be your daughter!”
Mr. Warner: “Well what do you want me to do? Take everything out of your name?”

It’s just business, he continues to protest. It’s a complicated structure that has taken years to build, he says. A few more “I did it for you”s, “what do you want from me”s, and “am I really such a bad father”s later, Mr. Warner insists that he’d do anything for her. Blair plaintively asks him if he’ll take her to a baseball game so they can sit together on the fifty-yard line.

He corrects her, and she adorably explains that she doesn’t care, just as long as it’s something they can do together. He promises to take her to the Super Bowl. When he explains that he can’t take her to the Super Bowl next week, she asks for something – anything – next week.

Next week is no good, he’s too busy, and the week after that he’ll be in Geneva, and the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon. Blair’s no fool. But hey! Dad brought a check which he hands over right before he has to rush back to the office!

And so Blair used her ill-gotten fortune to build a brand that would proceed to bankrupt over a dozen companies, rip off countless laborers, and launch her to a career as a con-artist. Oh wait, no – Blair bought Eastland and became its headmistress. It was that other guy that did all that evil shit.