OK, it’s time for a second encounter with that oddball foursome of New Yorkers at the core of Weird Loners.
It’s the morning after the night before. As the second episode opens, a slumbering Stosh (Zachary Knighton) is just waking up. And, judging by all the boyhood pictures he’s seeing of his cousin, Eric (Nate Torrence), Stosh probably didn’t get to choke the sheriff. (OK, so you have see the Episode 1 recap for this to make sense.)
Anyway … Stosh is startled by Eric, who has been standing over the bed staring at him for about an hour. Eric apologizes and explains that he is used to come in to wake up his “Pop” every morning.
“He’d be laying right there, right where you are,” Eric recalls fondly, “scratching all over because of his skin thing. I’d tell him, ‘Pop, don’t scratch. You know, you gotta let that scab over.’ But, guess what? He’d keep digging.”
Overwhelmed by too much information, Stosh kicks off the covers and tells Eric he’s going to boil himself. Entering the bathroom, Stosh encounters all of the geriatric-oriented apparatus in there.
“Nice setup,” Stosh says. “What, do you clean deer in here?”
All of which makes Eric giggle with delight at how “crazy” his cousin’s sense of humor is.
As Stosh climbs in the shower, Eric explains how he used to sing to his dad while Pop was in there and asks if Stosh wants Eric to sing to him as well.
Stosh makes a reference to an old Polish tune, which prompts Eric to break into the song. Stosh chimes in briefly before breaking things up by asking Eric if he could get him a coffee.
All of which leads to the new, whittled-down opening credits for the show. There’s certainly not much time wasted there.
Next door, Zara (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) is chanting and sitting in the Lotus position on the floor when Caryn (Becki Newton) walks in and asks her “new roomie” what she is doing. When Zara reveals that it is a Buddhist prayer “that all beings should be happy and free of suffering,” Caryn says she loves that and asks if she can join in.
Caryn struggles a bit to assume the position, though, explaining that she is sore from her pole-dancing class. She also tries unsuccessfully to emulate Zara’s chant when her cell phone starts ringing. As Caryn eyes the phone, Zara tells her to just take the call.
It’s Caryn’s “Nana” (Renée Taylor) on the line. Nana declares that she can finally die happy. When Caryn asks why, Nana explains that Caryn’s mom told her Caryn is marrying “that doctor fella.”
Caryn realizes she forgot to tell her mother that she broke it off with Howard the night before. Nana then asks when Caryn is going to bring her man to Florida. “I need to meet him before I die,” she insists, “which, according to my latest CAT scan, should have been yesterday.”
Caryn tells Nana she’s going to call back and hangs up. She turns and tells Zara to “keeping going with the serenity thing” because she has to go and rip her mom “a new one.”
Cut to Caryn upstairs on the phone with her mom (Susie Essman), who is irate over the news of the breakup and asks Caryn if she is trying to kill her grandmother. When Caryn says she can’t marry Howard because there is no passion in their relationship, her mom offers up her own warped definition of marital passion – i.e., resisting the daily urge to push Caryn’s father in front of a subway train.
Meanwhile, back at Eric’s house, a panicky Eric rushes into the bathroom to interrupt Stosh, who is in the midst of shaving his chest in the shower, and to reveal that “some scary woman” is on their front stoop and is looking for “that lying bastard who won’t return my calls.”
When Eric asks if Stosh knows who that might be, Stosh asks if she has a crossbow. The answer is yes, which prompts Stosh to jump out of the shower and make his way up into the attic to escape. Stosh says he’ll be next door and instructs Eric to bring him his suit, shoes and other clothes.
The conversation between Caryn and her mom is still going on with her mom accusing Caryn of having her head in the clouds, waiting for the perfect guy “to just fall from the sky” – at which point Stosh, clad in only a towel, suddenly jumps down from the attic skylight behind Caryn. The startled Caryn turns and asks Stosh how he got in, while he asks her if she has any clothes he can borrow.
Juggling the conversations between Stosh and her mom, Caryn quickly tells Stosh that the “bottom drawer’s the fat drawer” and then asks her mother to call her grandmother and break the news.
Mom refuses, telling Caryn to get on a plane to Florida, rent a sensible car and go and rip her grandmother’s heart out in person.
Stosh emerges from a bedroom, wearing some of Caryn’s “fat clothes” as he makes his way down the hall. “I’m keeping these,” he declares, “until you get fat again.”
After the break, a frustrated Caryn is having difficulty making a plane reservation on the phone. Zara and Stosh are having coffee in Caryn’s kitchen when Eric arrives at the back door with Stosh’s clothes.
Eric suggests that he and Stosh hang out, but Stosh keeps making excuses, even though Stosh had promised to keep Eric company now that Eric’s dad is dead.
Meanwhile, Caryn is at her wit’s end over her upcoming trip, realizing that what her Nana thought would give her eternal peace and happiness “ain’t going to happen.” She wonders aloud if she should just marry Howard after all.
Naturally, that prompts Caryn to barge in on Howard (David Wain) at his office, while he is examining moles on a patient’s back. (He’s a dermatologist.) She tells Howard she wants him to come with her to Florida and tell her Nana that they are getting married.
An optimistic Howard asks Caryn if she has changed her mind and wants to get married.
“That is definitely an option,” Caryn replies, trying to talk Howard into other “options” she has in mind – including dating other people. Howard realizes that Caryn’s plan is nutty and asks her to leave.
Back on the home front, Eric is sitting on the front step of his place when Zara comes out from next door and asks him what he’s doing. He explains that he is killing time until his work shift starts. “In an hour,” he reveals, “it’ll be 13 hours to go.”
Clearly, Eric is missing his dad. Zara tries to console him and, when Eric says he wishes he could talk to his Pop one last time, Zara holds a séance inside, asking the spirit of Eric’s father to honor them with his presence. Eric thinks it’s dumb, but Zara says that his dad will speak to him through her.
Before long, the gullible Eric buys into the notion. A goofy exchange of dialogue follows and, when asked what the one thing is that Eric really wants to say to his father, Eric asks what shade of white his dad wanted to paint the laundry room.
Meanwhile, Stosh – who was fired from his job at a dental-supply firm in the opening episode – is sitting in the office of a competing firm, trying to get a new job. When his contact, Tony (Ben Giroux), emerges, Stosh follows him into the restroom, desperately trying to get hired. But Tony explains that word has spread that Stosh got fired for sleeping with the wives and girlfriends of his former bosses and co-workers.
“No one’s going to hire you, pal,” Tony declares as he exits. “It’s over. Finito.”
After Tony leaves, a frustrated Stosh mumbles that “apparently, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas,” and pilfers a bottle of mouthwash as he departs.
After the break, we find Eric and his “Pop” – who, Eric believes, is still inhabiting Zara’s body – in a hardware store, mulling over various shades of white paint. After Eric picks a color, Zara (as Pop) tries to make her exit, claiming that today is actually “Dead Persons’ Christmas.”
But Eric insists they hang out some more. And so, with the strains of My Boy Lollipop playing in the background, they do just that – spending time at a park swing, playing football on the street and even in a steam room filled with old geezers.
Back in Caryn’s living room, meanwhile, Caryn is ticked off by a weather report that says a massive storm is going to miss Florida. Just then, Stosh lets himself in the front door, looking for ties that he had left on Caryn’s couch. They begin bickering as Stosh grabs a beer from the fridge and complains that he has “a reputation for boning other guys’ wives and girlfriends” and says he can’t get a job.
When Caryn says she thought Stosh had a job, he sheepishly admits that he got fired “for boning a guy’s girlfriend.”
The bickering subsides as Caryn grabs a yogurt from the fridge and reveals that she has had a crappy day, too, because Howard turned down her offer to fly to Florida to lie to her grandmother about getting married.
“Who’d say no to something like that?” Stosh scoffs. OK. Sure.
Caryn explains that all her poor Nana ever wanted was to see Caryn be happy. After all, the old gal used to throw stale bagels at kids who used to tease Caryn about being adopted.
“Kids are such dicks,” Stock declares as he tries to comfort Caryn by telling her it makes him happy that someone was trying to take care of her. Not surprisingly, Stosh turns the moment in a different direction, making a move and planting a kiss on Caryn’s yogurt-filled mouth. She pushes him away and chastises him for trying to take advantage of her as she was trying to share her feelings with him. She storms off after telling him he is a “selfish, crass, womanizing pig” who doesn’t do anything nice for people unless there’s something in it for him. C’mon, girl, what did you expect from this dude?
After the break, Caryn arrives at her Nana’s nursing-home room in Florida. Nana declares that she is happy because Caryn “has finally found love with an appropriate man,” and when Nana asks where he is, Caryn awkwardly tries to explain the situation. Suddenly, in walks Stosh, pretending to be Howard, and proceeds to woo Nana with his charm.
Back at Eric’s place, Zara is still pretending to be Eric’s dad. But she is trapped in her ruse, forced to don a Mets jersey and watch a baseball doubleheader with Eric. When Eric won’t let “Pop” leave, Zara finally loses her cool and tells Eric that it’s “not healthy for a grown man to spend this much time with his dead father.”
Eric sheepishly admits he knows that, but he has enjoyed their time together and doesn’t want it to end. Still, he knows it’s time to say goodbye. And so, he does, with a big hug – a bit too much of a hug for Zara, who jumps up and announces that she is back.
Good timing, says Eric. The second game of the doubleheader is about to start, so he tells Zara to sit down and begins recounting his entire day to her.
Back in Florida, meanwhile, Stosh is continuing to impress Nana as “Howard.” He describes how he and Caryn have endured a pretty bumpy ride in their relationship, explaining how they sometimes bring out the worst in each other. He then pulls out his phone and starts playing When We Get Married – a song that, he says, they listen to and dance to when things get really rough.
And so, Stosh and Caryn begin to slow-dance. And, before long, Caryn is pulled into the bright light of Stosh’s charm as well. Nana wipes a tear from her eye as Stosh then softly says his goodbyes and leaves, telling Caryn he’ll be waiting in the hall.
Nana tells Caryn that her man is a “lovely boy” and then warns her: “Don’t screw it up.” So, Caryn runs after him out into the hall – but, alas, Stosh is gone.
Back home the next morning, Zara and Caryn are having breakfast on the back porch. Stosh comes out to read the paper next door and asks Caryn if she had a good trip back.
Caryn remarks how Stosh tore out of there before she had a chance to thank him. “It was a very kind and generous thing that you did,” she says. “And, I guess I had you wrong – so I am sorry.”
Just then, Eric emerges from the back door and asks Zara if she could contact his father one last time. Eric has received a credit-card bill and wants to ask his dad if he had bought, among other things, a first-class ticket to Miami, a luxury party-bus rental – and two gold watches.
A guilt-ridden Stosh gets up and tells Eric that the charges do sound like something Eric’s dad would have done.
“You know, you’re right,” Eric agrees as he begins to laugh. “Classic Pop! Still livin’ large, man!”
But Eric wonders quietly how he’s going to pay for all of it.
And, duh, Caryn realizes that she wasn’t so wrong about Stosh after all.
Weird Loners – Fox – Tuesdays
