Elizabeth Zott is a mother. Like most things in her life, it’s not easy. There’s the assembly line of women on the brink of childbirth that would make anyone just a little bit terrified over what’s about to happen. There’s expensive anesthesia that Elizabeth would have just made herself had she known, thank you very much. And there is an overwhelming air of misogyny wafting in from the waiting room and beyond that doesn’t help, either. And then there is Calvin. When the nurse gives Elizabeth a little hit of the good stuff free of charge, our brokenhearted chemist sees Calvin standing in front of her instead of her doctor. “We’ll do this together, I promise,†Calvin tells her. But it’s not a promise he can keep.
Listen, I’m so happy to see Calvin’s face again throughout the episode, even if he’s just in Elizabeth’s head, but if we’re being honest, it might make the devastation even worse? Don’t remind me of what we lost, show! I’m too fragile. “I’m so glad you’re here. I need you,†Elizabeth tells Calvin in the hospital just before she gives birth to their daughter, Mad — hey, the nurse said to name her whatever she was feeling in the moment — and it’s true. She needs her partner in life and lab, and instead, she’s left all alone, with dwindling funds and a baby who will not stop crying. Seeing Calvin show up to calm Elizabeth or calm Mad, to applaud her work finishing that lab in her kitchen, or playing with Harriet’s kids is a gut punch over and over. I mean, Elizabeth repeatedly trying to make sure Ghost Calvin knew she loved him? Forget it. The future the two of them were just beginning to imagine for themselves was tragically cut short, and that is hard to move on from (for all of us!). But over the course of “Primitive Instinct,†it becomes clear that the first three episodes of Lessons in Chemistry really function as a sort of prologue. They are set up and here, in episode four, the show takes the turn into the real meat of Elizabeth’s story — how she picks herself up and figures out how to make a life for herself and her daughter.
Again — it’s not easy. But as the episode flips back and forth between Elizabeth’s life with a newborn and seven years in the future in which we see that things aren’t perfect, but Elizabeth and Mad are doing pretty okay, we know Elizabeth figures it out. So what does she do? First, she worries. A lot. Like, she really freaks out. Ghost Calvin can calm her down, but what good does that do us? It just makes us sadder!
A more practical solution comes in the form of the friendship she strikes up with Harriet Sloane. After several days of Elizabeth not sleeping and Mad not eating, she arrives at her neighbor’s door in a real state. Thanks to a nice conversation with Harriet and some of her friends — oh, to hear what those ladies had to say about Elizabeth after she left — Elizabeth realizes that those feelings she’s having about wanting to give Mad back, that’s pretty normal. Motherhood isn’t all overflowing love and magical moments, it’s hard. It’s overflowing diapers and moments that break you. Elizabeth just needed to hear that she wasn’t the only one and that she isn’t alone in this. The woman hasn’t spoken to her own mother since she was 17 and she’s spent most of her time since in a lab — you don’t know what you don’t know!
Elizabeth and Harriet’s friendship is pretty much cemented from that conversation on. Harriet helps her when she blows a fuse setting up her lab. Elizabeth calls Harriet the moment Mad smiles for the first time — thanks to her impression of Calvin’s dancing — and she finally begins to feel connected to her daughter. Elizabeth and Harriet are part of each other’s lives now. See? Even geniuses need friends.
And what about Elizabeth’s money problem? Well, after being denied a second mortgage because of the freaking patriarchy, she starts a nice little off-the-books business charging the chemists at Hastings for helping them with their research since they are pretty much dumb-dumbs. Just a lab of dummies over there. It proves quite fruitful! It also alerts Elizabeth to the fact that Boryweitz lied right to her face when he told her that her and Calvin’s research had gone missing. She confronts both Boryweitz and Donatti at Hastings (in her old lab, I’m sobbing), and she learns not only did they steal her work but they also used it to get the Remsen Grant. She vows to keep working and beat them at their own game (it’s what inspires her to complete her kitchen lab). She’ll further the research and get any job at any lab she wants.
Of course, once we jump to seven years in the future, that doesn’t really seem to be the case. In the pilot episode, we saw Elizabeth as the host of Supper at Six, and now we get to see the start of what seems like a wild second act for the Elizabeth Zott we’ve come to know. Once she learns that a girl in Mad’s class named Amanda has been eating the lunches she packs for Mad, Elizabeth goes to visit Amanda’s father, who happens to be Walter, the man we saw producing Supper at Six. Elizabeth calls him out for not supplying his daughter with nutritious lunches and goes on a whole rant about how important food is not just for health but for community. Food is serious business, she tells him. And to give the poor guy — who has recently gone through a divorce — some assistance, she hands him her chicken pot pie recipe and a slice so he can really understand what the finished product should look like. It’s so good, Walter offers her a job hosting her own cooking show on the spot.
It’s an insane leap, yes, but also Walter’s boss — Rainn Wilson playing misogyny in a suit — is breathing down his neck to get some hit programming on the channel, preferably hit programming starring someone who is “maternal but fuckable,†so that’s nice. Elizabeth turns Walter down repeatedly because she’s not a psycho, but by the end of the episode, she’s catching glimpses of herself in the TV screen and clearly having second thoughts about her decision.
Lab Notes
• We learn a lot more about Harriet Sloane in this episode: She was in law school when she got pregnant, and her husband Charlie’s surgical residency was the priority, so she never ended up taking the bar. She doesn’t regret having kids, but she does regret not seeing this through.
• Charlie comes home from the Korean War! It’s quite the heartwarming return. Almost immediately, though, Charlie wants to get back to work in a hospital. Harriet seems disappointed — a friend offered her a job at his law firm if she passes the bar exam. How could they possibly do both? They’ll make it work, he says. I bet Charlie and Calvin got along.
• Elizabeth makes a few other friends too. Dr. Mason shows up again to expedite that prescription for rowing with him — he has an open seat in his boat and basically demands she join the team (but, like, in a nice, friendly way). At Charlie’s welcome-home party, Elizabeth also meets Reverend Wakely, the new pastor at Harriet’s church. Elizabeth isn’t into religion (her father was a preacher and it’s complicated, also science), but Wakely seems lovely.
• Okay, Harriet holding Mad and saying “That’s our girl†had me in tears. It’s like Calvin left a little gift for all the women in his life by connecting them. How are you NOT weeping at the thought?!
• I don’t understand the choice to do the ol’ bait-and-switch with Mad and Amanda. Leading the audience to believe Amanda was actually Mad Zott at first didn’t really add anything to the story. The reveal was … a big blob of nothingness. So strange!
• Despite Amanda eating Mad’s lunch every day, the two seem to be friendly. They bond when Mad tells a crying Amanda that she can’t complete her family tree either. Mad’s lost her dad and Amanda’s mom left town.
• Elizabeth mentions her dead brother to Ghost Calvin again, telling him how close they were. What happened to him?
• Why isn’t Apple selling a companion cookbook for this series? I want that blackberry pie recipe! Give us the merch!