It’s 28 days after being checked into the mental hospital and Alan is going home, but not before roommate Gary Busey gives him a hug and says “I love you.”
Jake picks up Alan and drops the first bomb: Megan is pregnant. She’s not showing, because she’s in her first semester. Jake was drunk, and that’s why all the talks about protection proved to be futile. It’s okay, because Alan now has the tools to live life on life’s terms. He can get through this, even if Jake’s plan is to quit school, go into advertising, and teach the baby to talk so it can be in E-Trade commercials.
Walden welcomes Alan home in a whispery voice: it’s how normal people talk to crazy people. Jake tells Walden that he’s going to be a dad, and Walden refers to Alan as “grandpa.” Walden can’t decide if it’s Jake or Alan that should have used a condom. If the baby is a boy, Jake reveals that they’re going to name it Frodo. Better get the little guy a ring.
Berta welcomes Alan back from the looney bin (“stress clinic”) and asks Walden if he’s going to tell Alan his news. He says it can wait.
Sorting through his mail from the past month, Alan comes across his tax refund and Jake wants to set some aside for Frodo’s headshots. Turns out it’s not a refund, and the second bomb is dropped by the tax collectors: Alan is getting audited.
Jake wants Alan to tell his mom about the pregnancy, so they call a family meeting with Judith and Herb. As soon as Alan says that Jake and Megan have news, Judith knows what it is. They are about to decide to handle it in a calm, responsible way, until Walden comes out of the kitchen with Judith and Herb’s daughter. “Is it just me, or does Herb and Judith’s kid look a lot like Alan?” Herb begins to see the resemblance, so Judith and Alan start freaking out on Jake to create a distraction.
Alan’s tax audit was like “a brutal prison rape with a number 2 pencil.” He owes $80,000. The good news is that if they take everything he owns, they will get $4. It’s okay, he has the tools to cope with this. That is until Walden comes downstairs with Lyndsey (Courtney Thorne-Smith). Third bomb dropped. Walden apologizes that Alan had to find out that way, and Alan wonders how he would have liked him to find out. Twitter? I’m not sure if Walden and Twitter are getting along these days.
Since it would be weird for Alan to live in the same house with Walden and Lyndsey, they took the opportunity to pack up his stuff, move it to a storage facility and pay for the first month’s rent. How nice. Walden hopes that someday they can laugh about it. Why wait? Alan starts laughing like a mad man, and decides he’s had enough. He refuses to continue to be a doormat, so he’s going to run his car in the garage until he induces carbon monoxide poisoning. They’ll be sorry. Just as he thinks he’s found a way out, his car dies. Even suicide can’t be easy for Alan.
A last attempt to find a bed for the night, Alan shows up at his mom’s place in the pouring rain. Despite explaining all his troubles, his mom pretends she’s someone else who speaks another language and can’t understand him. Giving up, Alan heads to the storage unit to settle in for the night. Just when the night is rivalling Alan’s worst, a beautiful woman shows up at his storage unit to ask for a flashlight and then invites him to join her for wine. Things are looking up until Alan turns around to see Herb standing there. He did a DNA test on his daughter and found out that she’s actually Alan’s daughter. Herb pulls out a gun and shoots Alan. The final bomb.
This bomb woke Alan up. He’s still in the hospital. “Oh thank God I’m still in the looney bin.”
The most important part was real: Gary Busey is his roommate, and he clarifies that it’s not a looney bin, it’s a stress clinic.
Alan is really out of the hospital this time, and Jake does pick him up and does have something to tell him about Megan. She’s not pregnant–she wants to see other people and Jake doesn’t. He wants to be monogamous, and they’ve never had sex.
Arriving home, Walden does have a secret, but it has nothing to do with Lyndsey: the house renovations are complete! Everything is sleek and uses voice commands. Walden’s voice commands. Not being able to turn lights on, get ice from the fridge, or use the gigantic television seem like small problems compared to the ones in Alan’s dream. Alan realizes that the house is not his to be in. Not only is Charlie gone, but now all of his things are gone. He shares his thoughts with Walden, but quickly clarifies that he’s not moving; he’s just letting Walden know that he’s aware of the absurdity of the situation. They hug-dance to voice-commanded music in front of the new TV.
Usually, dream episodes make me feel like I’ve wasted a portion of my life to something that isn’t canon to the story, but this was a fun episode. The dream events were just crazy enough that they could have been true, until Herb pulled the gun on Alan.
Final thought: I love the house renovations. They are a dulled down representation of Walden’s personality, and it’s nice to see the set get a refresh.
Follow Us
this episode was pretty awesome, i like how they redo the whole house it alot different thogh