The Casino
Episode 3

Episode Report Card
Jacob Clifton: C | Grade It Now!
All Bad Things

Jenn continues through the casino, drinking a drink. She jumps back in time to the beginning of the scene to show us that same footage of her playing with her cell phone while walking. I wonder if Ernie's going to notice her again and say the "blonde entourage" thing again? Because that was tight. Oh, he doesn't have to, because now that she's in the past she's changed things, like on Quantum Leap, and is now walking straight towards Ernie and the whores, instead of toward the overworked waitress lady who says "Ain't." "I like your corset," blurts one of the Brides as Jenn's walking by. Quick moment, if you please: if someone compliments your corset? And it is not the 1800s? And you are not at a club called, like, Elysium or Bloodflower, and it's not "Fetish Night" or "Latex Night" or whatever the kids get up to these days? Like, unless you're hearing either a harpsichord or the Sisters of Mercy? Do two things for me real quick: Don't talk to that person, and go home and change clothes immediately. Famke Janssen, I'm looking at you.

So this "I like your corset" lady is totally and obviously a prostitute, you know? Like, there should be a velvet rope line toward her vagina. Why is Jenn so stupid? "Thank you. You're wearing a corset too? Is it a dress?" What? "Oh, yeah. It's a dress." It's totally cool that they're able to carry on this conversation, because if they were relying on me they'd be screwed because that makes no sense to me. Ernie leans over to Bride 2 (the one not in a corset, who has not expressed an opinion on them even) and asks her to switch chairs with him so that he and Bride 1 can argue over who they gave head to first, while Corset Bride tells Jenn she's been in Vegas two and a half years. Which I guess means she was twenty when she moved here, because she looks about thirty-five now. Jenn lets the cat out of the bag that she arrived in town just today. Instead of screaming "cliché!" and pulling a fire alarm, which is what I would do, if I were a jaded prostitute and somebody told me that shit while prowling the casino floor dressed like a total hooker, she just fakes out, "Oh really?"

Lesbian dealer lady, several shots of bitter and impotent and several more of incredibly awesome, watches this tableau play itself out in disgust, as Bride 1 keeps Jenn occupied during the chair switch. Ernie, suddenly sitting next to Jenn as if by magic, asks about her plans, and she replies, "I'm just going to get whatever kind of job." He mulls this long enough that she gets ADD and starts looking around the club. Probably as her future boss this should infuriate Ernie into a bloody, crack-fueled rage. Don't you hate it when people don't look you directly in the eye the entire time you're speaking to them? Anything else is just...creepy, don't you think? Diverting from that line of sight to take in a busy room? Fuck that. I need people to stare right at my face the entire time I'm talking to them. Maybe that's just me. Or -- oh hey, maybe I'm an asshole. Anyway. Ernie finally remembers his line and pimps up, "Because that's what we do, in a sense -- we always try to take care of people." In the sense of not really connecting your words to the previous part of the conversation? In the sense of not respecting the dependent clause that the word "because" implies? Jenn asks half of the pertinent question in response to his abrupt and bizarre lead-in: "So what do you guys do?" And she had to ask, because with an opening that huge and needy-sounding, it would be rude not to do so. "Independent host. We have clients and stuff. We take care of them, look after them, make sure that they're happy. We always need people. It can be very lucrative." Cut to lesbian card dealer probably sixteen times in the time it takes for Ernie to spit this little speech -- which surely he's made a million times -- out. It's weird watching him do this so poorly -- like, did you just start being a pimp earlier today, Ernie? Actually, with this show, yes. That's a fair possibility. "Mr. Burnett, I've just met the loveliest man at the Hyundai dealership. His name is Ronald but I think if we give him some fake scars and shave his head and cover him in blonde whores, and change his name to 'Ernie,' he'll make an awesome pimp for that totally jacked-up fake Jenn Nelson story. Oh, by the way: have the scientists finished the Jenn Nelson mannequin-stripper-bot yet? Tick-tock, Mr. Burnett."

D'Hoffryn opines that Jenn, who "wants something different, wants something new, wants to be successful," is "pretty much in her most vulnerable state." Uuugh. He introduces her to Bride 3, or as he calls her, the "third girl in my trilogy" (and do we even need to talk about the lack of recreational reading this phrase implies?), with "the other girls that I've taken under my wing, and so to make a long story short they've all retired before they were twenty-five, okay?" Jenn's mind is blown. "Wow." Like, wow yourself, kid. That was, as usual, not so much a sentence or a meaningful statement as it was a pile of words he just threw at you. I'm not sure what the next thing is that he says, because his tongue and lips and speech impediment get in the way, but "she's done. She can do it anywhere she wants after that," is what the closed cap says. Whoa again. Lesbian dealer lady finally gets her close-up after burning eyeball-holes in Ernie's forehead throughout this entire scene. "This kind of guy is a vulture of sorts. He is preying on them. But then again, that is his job." Portentous, isn't it? LDL looks like Carrie Fisher but her butchness comes from within, not from the Philip Morris company. I love how Vegas that is: "I hate him, who he is and what he does, but hey. Everybody's got to make a living somehow." "Do you have a card or something?" asks Jenn. "I don't give it out that often," he smarms and lies and icks, "but I'll give it to you." Then he takes the language by the throat and once more commences to jigglin'. "Like I was saying, the way I like to do it is like, you come out and just hang with me, let me show you, you know, walk you through the casino, walking to places while we're there, and then you learn." I am...he has mastered me. His every word is a Zen koan. I think after a few months of that you don't even need a cigarette to the brain. I think you go Swiss-cheesy as a natural response. Like when a lizard's tail falls off. Jenn's great here because she just gives the CSR nod, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, even though she, and we, and he, have no idea. "That'd be really helpful right now," she extemporizes. "Call me, and we'll exchange after that." Seriously. Every line makes that much sense. Exchange what? Insurance information? Stories of childhood adversity? Fluids? Jenn picks up her drink, tells the pimp it was nice to meet him, and walks off -- playing with her cell phone! She is in a skinny route loop. This is like that one episode of Buffy where she just kept going and going and things never got any better.


The Casino




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