Well, at least I’m not the only one fed up with Joyce Prigger’s “me, me, me†attitude. In this week’s episode of Minx, Shelly gives her kid sis the old what-for on an eye-opening trip to Vassar (which is also a leg-opening trip), where Joyce is forced to reckon with the fact that she isn’t the center of the entire universe.
The sisters are off to Joyce’s alma mater because she has (surely not unselfishly) endowed a scholarship for women who want to get into print media. They’re fêting her, and she’s taking Shelly along to show her the sights that the elder sister only ever really got to see through her mind’s eye while reading Joyce’s letters home. Shelly’s also there because she’s been trying to get some one-on-one time with Joyce to talk about what’s going on out in San Marino in her very real, very sexy life, but of course Joyce just blows her off in favor of acclaim, fancy academics, and stern coeds.
As we learn while the sisters are flying very poshly off to Vassar, part of the reason for Joyce’s trip back to her old stomping grounds is that Joyce wants to enlist her favorite professor to write the prologue to her very boring-sounding book. After all, Professor Merim was the one who told Joyce to fall in love with her own unique voice and Lord knows she has.
When the sisters get to Joyce’s reception, though, she doesn’t see her professor. When she finds Shelly after the presentation, the big sister is chatting with “Doreen,†who just so happens to be said educator. (“If my eldest would just ejaculate into one dedicated sock instead of anything nearby, I’d save years on laundry!â€) They met at the bar and bonded over petits fours, and while Joyce seems eager to dig into her old prof’s memories of their time together, it quickly becomes clear that Doreen doesn’t really have any. Doreen tries to engage Shelly in conversation, and Joyce continually cuts her off, making assumptions and assertions about her sister that aren’t true.
For instance, Joyce says that Shelly married Lenny right out of high school, but that’s not true. The elder sister actually did a semester at UC Berkeley before being forced to drop out and come home to raise Joyce after their mother left. Doreen suggests that their story might be a good idea for a book, “sisters forced to navigate the sexual revolution without a mother,†but Joyce shoots the idea down, saying “I’m not sure anyone cares.†Like any of us care about whatever she’s working on about recontextualizing the Brontë sisters. That’s clearly not the book that Joyce’s publishers would like from the scion of sex positivity, and the only person who doesn’t seem to know that is Joyce.
Anyway, after Joyce stomps off, she goes and does whatever while leaving Shelly with Doreen. That turns out to be a boon to Shelly, who we next see in flagrante, legs akimbo and getting head from Joyce’s old idol. Joyce walks in on them together, and once Shelly’s dressed and calmed enough to address the issue, she tells Joyce that she and Lenny have a very mature, adult relationship, at which point the closed-minded Minx editor realizes her older sister has actually been Bella LaRoux all the time. (Duh.) Shelly tears into her sister even more, telling her, “This isn’t about you for once. I’m sick of you paying zero attention to anyone but Joyce Prigger.†Joyce has never once told Shelly “thank you†for staying home with her and forgoing college, even when she heard the tale earlier that evening. “I let go of my dreams to take care of you,†Shelly says. “You got to be whoever you wanted. Why can’t it be my turn?†With Joyce stunned into silence, Shelly turns on her heel and heads back in for more fun with Doreen.
When next we see the sisters, it’s morning and Joyce has brought some peacemaking scones. She tells Shelly that she’s sure they both said some things they regret, and Shelly tells her that, nope, she absolutely believes and meant everything she said. She’s decided to hang around Vassar for a little longer, too, exploring her connection with Doreen and leaving Lenny at home to tend to the kids. Maybe, Shelly says, if Joyce spends some time with herself instead of seeking out other people’s praise, she’ll actually be able to get somewhere on her book.
Really, this whole episode of Minx was about finding time for yourself and discovering who you really are. For Richie and Bambi, that meant taking MDMA and Purple Nurples, doing drag makeup, and coming to the realization that they’re “friends who work together†rather than family. Richie ends up taking a beautiful self-portrait of himself for his portfolio, while Bambi (hopefully) learns that she needs to find her own future.
Doug and Tina’s drama is even more pronounced, with Doug planning to propose before he zips off to Europe to run Minx International. (He actually isn’t getting that job, but more on that in a second.) Tina is the first person Doug wants to tell all his news, and he can’t imagine his life without her.
Unfortunately, Tina very much can imagine her life without Doug — and her family, who they see at her mom’s retirement party, doesn’t even realize that Doug is still in the picture. They refer to Doug as Tina’s supervisor, practically spitting venom when he enters the party, and eventually he’s relegated to the kids’ table. It’s there that he gets a little advice from one of Tina’s little nephews, who says that the way into the family’s good graces is through Tina’s brother, Marvin, who Tina’s mom really depends on. Doug then chats up Marvin over a couple of White Russians, and he thinks it all went great until Marvin stands up to announce that, actually, he won’t be taking over the stationary store from his mom. Instead, he’s following his passions and getting into long-haul trucking.
The family is furious, of course, and there’s a whole argument about duty and the nightmare that is the stationary store. Mom tells Doug that Tina was supposed to run the store and “would never have just walked away,†saying that he must have hypnotized her. She also implies that Tina is still Doug’s secretary, to which Tina announces that, actually, she hasn’t been a secretary for over a year and, in fact, she’s the new head of Minx International and she’s moving to Europe. Doug seems taken aback, and we learn later in the car that he had no idea. He asks Tina why she keeps things like Europe and business school from him, and it’s quickly evident that they’re in very different places in their relationship. That’s made clearer when, the next morning, Tina finds the ring in Doug’s jacket and gets a stark and panicked look on her face. Sorry, Doug. You’ll find love someday, good buddy.
We end the episode on Joyce, who has a meet-cute with a guy on the plane who seemingly doesn’t know who she is — at least at first. After they have a quickie in the airplane bathroom, he tells her that “the guys in the office are going to freak out†about the fact that he had sex with Joyce Prigger and asks her to sign her cover of Rolling Stone. That’s gross as hell, and if I were Joyce, I would probably have slapped him straight up, but also you’re on an airplane at that point, so where do you even go, other than to another seat? That’s weird vibes all around.
Reflections of Desire
• I love that Tina’s mom has a “bachelor companion.â€
• Shelly tells the Vassar intelligentsia that Bella LaRoux is equal parts Madame Bovary, the Marquis de Sade, and Donna Reed. After one prof exclaims, “Fuck! That sounds good,†she tells Shelly she’s going to include her stories on her syllabus next quarter. Validation must feel good.
• I loved the little kid who Doug chatted up: His line, “So, you sell magazines about vaginas,†to his assertion that hiding nudie mags under the mattress is amateurish, is great stuff. He’s got a place under the floorboards of his family’s kitchen, he says, and no one will ever find his stash there. He successfully gets Doug to give him a free year’s subscription to Minx — with back issues — which Doug agrees to only after finding out the kid is 13. It’s such sensible dirtbag shit, and that’s why you’ve got to love not only Doug as a character but also Jake Johnson, who’s one of the few actors who could pull that patter off without seeming like a total creep.