Subscribe
Previous Post
Original Air Date: February 4, 2008
Yes! It’s so good to have Old Christine back.
The third-season premiere opens with CHRISTINE and her man DANIEL HARRIS (recurring guest star Blair Underwood) on the phone. Daniel tries to get Christine to engage in a little phone sex, but she has to decline because it’s gotten her fired in the past. Although she told him earlier that she wanted to wait until they knew each other better before having sex, she’s now pretty sure she’s ready to do the deed right now. So, the couple set a date for the next night since Christine needs a little prep time and will wake up RITCHIE if she turns on the heavy machinery right then and there.
The next day, Christine, MATTHEW, and RICHARD accompany Ritchie to his school’s book fair, where the adults bump into meanie moms MARLY and LINDSAY. The stuck-up women heap loads of pity on Christine, who they claim is poor and has no social life, and she retaliates by showing them pictures of Daniel on her cellphone in order to throw her two-month relationship with him in their faces.
Her strategy doesn’t work as planned, however, since she’s not the only woman with pictures of the handsome teacher on her cellphone. As M&L inform her while whipping out their cellphones as proof, all of the moms at the school do, including them, such as Lindsay’s snap that shows Mr. Harris thinking he hears someone outside his window. Even Richard joins in the show-and-tell with his pictures of Mr. Harris on his cellphone.
Later at the gym, Christine explains to a disbelieving BARB (recurring cast member Wanda Sykes) how she — the woman whom her best friend calls a slut with no remorse — managed to prevent herself from having sex with Mr. Harris for an entire two months: an entire two months of not shaving. The growth is so dense, Christine says, she had to go up a size in pants. Barb is only disgusted, not impressed, and she assures Christine that she’s setting herself up for a major letdown by avoiding sex with Mr. Harris for so long; if it’s not great after all the buildup and pressure, the results could be disastrous.
While Barb and Richard give Christine their opinions about her outfit for that night later on, the discussion somehow turns to the two best friends’ brief bout with lesbianism during a Women’s Studies party in college. Matthew picks then to burst through the door with weird news about the cadaver he was assigned to dissect in anatomy class at medical school that night. No, the cadaver wasn’t still alive, though Christine swears they take people before they’re dead all the time, which is why she doesn’t sign the back of her driver’s license. Instead, Matthew thinks the corpse might be Mr. Prawler, an old neighbor, and he wants Christine to come to his school to confirm it.
Convinced now that she’s not good enough in bed and will only disappoint Daniel when they finally get it on, Christine uses her brother’s situation as an excuse to back out of the date when the teacher arrives. All is not lost for everyone, however, because Barb and Richard manage to save the night for themselves when they both snap a photo of Daniel on their cellphones. He leaves, exasperated, while they compare their unexpected windfall.
At the morgue, Christine identifies Matthew’s cadaver as Mr. Prawler, which gets her brother to thinking about how he hates medical school and sick people. Life is too short to waste, he claims, so he should do something he loves. Christine agrees, and since she loves Mr. Harris, she decides she should do him. Matthew, on the other hand, just decides to quit medical school.
So, after Christine and Matthew go back to her house, where Richard and Barb have just determined that Christine’s sex style is frantic and rigid, she heads back out the door to go see Daniel. Soon after she leaves, Daniel shows up at her house again with a sympathy card for Mr. Prawler’s death, and then he heads back home, too, when Matthew tells him that’s where Christine went. But, she returns home shortly afterwards, upset that Daniel wasn’t home when she got there, and when Matthew tells her about just missing the teacher, she heads right back over to his apartment.
Finally, Christine and Daniel are alone at his place, and she throws herself on him the moment he opens the door. Yet, she suddenly pulls back while they’re kissing to comment he smells like chocolate, and then she immediately asks if that’s racist because Daniel is, like, black and she, like, isn’t. He tells her the smell is from some cookies near the couch, which Christine becomes fixated on while they get started with business.
Soon enough, she’s completely distracted by the cookies because it turns out they’re the same kind the dead neighbor used to order from her when she was younger and then never pay for. So, of course, Christine gets hysterical and starts crying, which puts a damper on things, until Daniel eventually admits he’s feeling pressure about the big event, too. Knowing she’s not alone helps Christine calm down and — voilà — she’s ready to get to back to business.
The next day while Christine and Barb are exercising at her gym, Christine brags about how good the night before was. It was just like a film festival, she claims — perfect, romantic, sad, and she even got angry at one point. But, Barb, ever ready to stick a sharp pin in Christine’s big bubbles of fleeting neurotic happiness, works in a parting shot when she notes that since the first time was so good, now the second time will come with even more pressure.
RESOURCES
