*Author’s Note*: Due to a personal family emergency this week, I had to delay the recap until now. I apologize for all those who waited for this recap, and I hope that this delay wasn’t an inconvenience for anyone.
What can I say about the latest installment of Men of a Certain Age? Sad, hilarious fun… at the expense of Joe of course. Let me just get right to it.
The Set Up
The first shot of the night is of a woman (guest star Sarah Clarke) putting back on her blouse and knocking on a door. She calls to Joe, who’s in the bathroom checking out a fresh shiner under his eye.
WTF?!
Credits….
Neurotic Joe and The Story of the Black Eye
***To avoid confusion (and frustration) I will recap this story through the eyes of Joe. I won’t include all the interjections (as
funny as hell as they were) because I am trying to write a concise and clean cut recap without making people scratch their head saying, “Huh?!?” every five seconds. So Joe’s story will be told in italics while the much needed interjections will be in regular font. Get it? Got it? GREAT!!!
So Joe, sporting shades, waits for the guys at Norm’s Diner the day after his first date in 20 years. Owen is the first to show up and immediately notices Joe’s new look. After Joe takes off the shades, Owen laughs it off and thinks the black eye came from another male suitor of the woman, but it actually came from the woman… Hmm. Joe says that Terry told him that the woman was “fun” and Owen immediately picks up what I am thinking, “Was she a Terry hand me down?”
According to Joe, she wasn’t. He begins to tell his tale.
Part One
Joe asks Terry about the woman, whose name is Dori, and she is Terry’s dentist. Terry tells a worried Joe to trust him and to “go with the flow”, but this is Joe’s first date in 20 years so he should be able to answer questions. Terry reveals that Dori is “fun, beautiful, and single” and that’s all that Joe should know.
Owen thinks Terry still slept with Dori, but Joe admits that he thinks Terry is telling the truth in that department. This amazes Owen and me.
Joe starts to get anxious and obsesses over whether or not he should contact Dori. He eventually sends her an emailm but fusses over the closing of it and changes it a couple of times. Maria, his employee from last week, comes into his office with a CD she thinks Joe should listen to to help get over the pain of his split with Sonia. Maria says the CD helped her get over her girlfriend. The CD is soooo not Joe’s taste (it sounded like a emo ballad or something…), but Joe tells Maria he will listen to it. Whatever…
Owen asks if Maria has a “daddy crush”, but Joe says she’s just intense. Terry shows up, sees the “black eye” and winces. He asks Joe if the date was really bad or really good, but Joe tells them that he’s getting there and to just give him a chance. He then returns to his story.
The shop has closed and Joe is gambling again (he tells the guys he was paying bills. HA!). An IM pops up from Dori, who received his email earlier, asking if Joe wants to go out tomorrow. Joe begins a convo with her and they chat for a while. They make plans, but Joe asks Dori what is she wearing, but meant what would she be wearing when they meet. But it’s too late. Dori first gives the “whoa!” signal, but then reveals that she was wearing next to nothing. Mmmkay… Joe says that he is fully clothed, which Dori thinks is not fair. Joe then types that he took them off, but Dori calls his bluff so Joe then actually pulls down his pants. In his office. But Dori still thinks he’s lying and logs off saying they will talk later. Instead of pulling his pants back up, Joe just sits there for a sec. Then Maria walks into his office unexpectedly scaring the crap out of Joe, who is still pants-less. Maria came back for her CD and when she walks to pick it up, Joe panics and throws it, hitting Maria smack in the face. Sweet Lord… Maria takes the CD and leaves, but still in a little pain. Joe finally pulls his pants up. Idiot…
Part Two
The guys say that Joe shouldn’t have technically pulled his pants down, but Joe has found a new problem to obsess over.
Manfred has come to pick up some bookings from Joe, who wants to know if Manfred can see Joe’s pant from where he is standing. Just imagine Manfred’s face as he processes this request for a second, will you?
The next day, Joe arrives to the store and tries to see if Maria saw anything the night before, but he doesn’t get any answer. When he starts to recant what happened the night before, Joe mentions the first date he’s about to go on, which makes Maria run to her truck to get him her first date CD. Joe’s attempt at probing Maria’s mind has failed again. But why bother?
Joe procrastinates with the story which makes Owen a little restless, but Terry suggests that Maria is Joe’s Schrodinger’s Cat experiment, which would take me all day to explain… But the jist is that for Joe to find out if Maria saw his pants down, he has to tell her that his pants were down. Um… Ok! But Joe is nowhere through with his story…
Later that day, Joe attended a baseball game of Albert’s when Dori called. Joe thinks about calling the date off, but Albert starts to panic and calls for Joe. Because he has tend to Albert, Joe doesn’t get a chance to call the date off with Dori, who puts him on hold. While on hold, Joe talks the coach out of sending Albert to bat. (I’m sorry, but if Albert is going to constantly have panic attacks, then why join sport teams? I am sorry to anyone who has went through or has kids who are going through this, but I just need an explanation as to why allow the child to do that to themselves over and over again? In the end, they will be the butt of jokes and maybe not make it to the team roster next year. Just saying. Rant over.)
Dori comes back on the phone and confirms the details of their date. It is now do or die for Joe.
Owen feels that Joe is lying about the black eye and thinks that Joe bored himself to death telling the story and knocked himself out. Joe continues the story which involves Joe going grocery shopping with Terry and they have a convo involving condoms.
Terry tells Joe to bring condoms to help him last longer, because Terry has a method that keeps him from… you know. Terry explains that he slows down by stopping and looking into the woman’s eyes to get his soldiers in gear if you know what I mean… Moving on…
Joe returns to the store and is told by JJ that Maria was looking for him. She enters and wants to ask Joe something, but doesn’t want to do so in front of JJ. Uh-oh…
Joe sends JJ away and prepares for the worse. But Maria only wanted to know if she could get a discount on some party supplies for her family. Whew! Joe tells her of course she can.
The guys think Joe bought her off, but Owen thinks its all sad. Then he digs at Joe’s sense of dress…
Part Three
Joe has his clothes at Owen’s house and goes to pick up his suede blazer that he told Dori he would be wearing. Melissa says he looks like he is trying too hard and tells him to lose his wedding ring and the blazer. Joe can’t believe that he is about to date after 20 yrs and feels like he is past his prime. Melissa tells him that with a head full of hair, no gut, and his own business that Joe is actually on top of his game. Of course, this is a slap in the face for Owen, who is the complete opposite. Later, Joe drives to the restaurant and before exiting his truck, he takes off his wedding ring and leaves it behind.
Joe enters the restaurant and we see Dori fully for the first time. And she is that Nina Myers from 24. But seriously, she’s gorgeous. The conversation flowed easily for Joe and Nina Dori, even when they discussed how Terry described them to each other there were no hang ups. Until Joe started to think… and we know how that isn’t all that good. The conversation turns to honesty in relationships, which Joe tries summarizing with imagery of mushrooms and fungi. But the bottom line is that Dori thinks honesty is key in a relationship, which makes Joe uneasy since his marriage ended in dishonesty. So Joe decides to be honest and tells Dori about taking his pants down during their chat. She laughs it off and feels bad for getting him to do that. It is a light hearted moment until her phone rings.
Terry exclaims how he hates that she answered the phone, and is the reason why he doesn’t have one. Uh huh, sure, Terry. But Joe says the phone turned out to be a good thing.
Dori explains to Joe that the phone call was her “out” and she declined. Joe, like me, doesn’t get what this means, so Dori reveals that the “out” is actually a friend, who calls to check in on you to see if the date is going well. If the date isn’t going well then you can use the call as an escape. Wow! Thanks for THAT piece of insight!!! Turns out that Dori’s out was in the restaurant the entire time and she thinks Joe is a cute catch for Dori. The friend leaves, which means that Dori needs a ride home. Joe keeps the jokes flowing and Dori laughing, which is a good thing.
Later as Joe walks Dori to her door, he overanalyzes in his head how he should end the date. He notices that there is a basketball on the porch and asks if she has any kids or a live in boyfriend. Dori explains that the ball belongs to her. Really? Hmm… Then the two engage in some midnight basketball!!!! After of hours of fun, Joe makes a bet with himself that if he makes his final shot, then he will have to kiss Dori goodnight. He misses the shot. He then asks Dori if he should kiss her or not, because he really wants to kiss her. She gives him the greenlight and offers him some Gatorade. Hmmm…
The guys wait for Joe to continue, but he is trying to figure out if he should tell the rest of the story. He decides to. (Thank God…)
As the two drink wine and look at pictures, Joe and Dori began to kiss again and then things get hot and heavy. Joe narrates that everything felt right. He wasn’t self-conscious, his mind wasn’t on his wife or anything else. He was there. In the moment. After 20 years. Extremely…excited. So excited that he has to stop and look into Dori’s eyes, like Terry told him to if he gets too excited.
Owen is dumbfounded that Joe would listen to any stupid advice of Terry’s. Joe then remarks to Terry that looking into the eye of a beautiful woman during sex would heighten the excitement, not subside it. But Terry says that you are supposed to look through the woman. Ummm… in short, it didn’t work.
So Joe can’t stop the inevitable from happening. He tosses Dori to the side, screams “LEG CRAMP!”, runs for the bathroom and on the way there, conks his eye on a lamp. He then locks the bathroom door when he gets there.
Terry starts to giggle, while Owen looks on in amusement. Me? I am over here HOWLING!!!!! Owen orders more coffee.
Dori talks to Joe through the door and asks him if he is fine. Joe lies that he got a leg cramp and that they run in the family. Dori can sense the lie, but Joe sticks with it. She calls his behavior eccentric, which is how Terry described Joe to Dori. She then remarks about how much fun she had with Joe and how flattered she is that Joe actually got super excited because of her. Dori continues by saying that Joe calmed her nerves of dating and she enjoyed that. Joe finally opens the door and lets Dori tend to his eye. He then goes on about how he is not a two-minute man and that he is trying to be honest. The two then go for round two…
Which the guys don’t believe. Joe claims that Dori actually took more sex from him and that his average lasting time went to 14 minutes. Okay… Moving on! Joe claims that he won’t date again.
Joe gets to the store and finds that Dori is there waiting for him. The two flirt and joke about the previous night while Maria, Carlos and JJ watch. JJ says how glad he is that their boss is getting back on the saddle. But Maria, in Spanish, says, “Thank God. Maybe now he won’t have to jerk off in his office…”
ROFLMBAO!!!!!!!!!!!
I have no thoughts as the characters spoke them for me this week. Remember that Men of a Certain Age returns on January 25th. I will see you all till then!!!
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