On Today's Episode

Abstract

Today's episode will feature six dances, five embraces, nine kisses (thirty-three percent of them furtive), five coffee shop scenes and as many in the night club, two car chases, four close-calls of various sorts, one case of amnesia and two fatal car accidents. Each accident involves twins in some fashion, the more serious of the two because it takes place on the new tollroad at seventy-plus miles per hour between a pair of twin brothers, the additional cruel irony here being that the twins' father was both the mastermind and driving force behind the pro-tollroad campaign that convinced the electorate to pass the referendum that issued the municipal bonds that funded the contractors that hired the subcontractors that paid the construction crew that built the tollroad that resulted in the fiery, wee-hours-of-the-- morning deaths of his beloved twin boys, Cable and Cord. The other accident on today's episode is between a man and a woman who each have twins themselves but luckily are not accompanied by their twins today. Someone has to be there to grieve. The case of amnesia is also notable for involving twins, though this is a case of a woman forgetting that she has a twin, but then she forgets everything, so that stands to reason. On today's episode expect three corporate takeovers (two will fail, the third will succeed but at a great, unforeseen price). On today's episode a mansion will go up in flames, and the new whom nobody had a complaint in the world about and some even found kind of, well, cute-for a butler, I mean-will turn out to be well-versed in all the necessary evacuation techniques. Best of all he will know CPR! Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is not unlikely! Everyone in the mansion, the whole extended-family lot of them, will be spared. But their possessions! Their clothes! Their priceless collection of Ming silverware and Ping wall-coverings and Sing knickknacks will be lost to the fire. What sick person set this fire (because of course it is arson, we can expect that much from today's plot)? Who? Who? unfortunately is not a question to be answered today. But back to the plot, and the butler. In addition to his fire-fighting acumen (on this score we can expect to see him posed shirtless fighting the fire with a garden hose taken out of the startled hands of the gardener, Juan Luis, of whom more later) we will also learn that the is someone from the past. He is in other words the butler and not the butler. The butler is not the we think he is. Neither is the in-house nurse at the other mansion in this affluent community on Long Island, New York, New York, New York a certified in-house nurse. This family living in this second mansion also employs Juan Luis, a gardener and all-purpose groundskeeper and general observer of all bad things that pass. Also employed here is Carmen, the housekeeper. Carmen we know is really Kimberly, the youngest daughter of the family, and one thought to have disappeared under, shall we say, inappropriate circumstances. Remember the scandal of discovered drugs, a period of yelling, the pictures (never shown) of her naked in a skin magazine called Skin, another period of yelling, the rash of neighborhood burglaries up and down the street all pointing back to this mansion and Kimberly's upstairs bedroom, the equally suspicious and attention-raising string of high-priced sales of Ming silverware, some of it actually counterfeit Mings, on Ebay, the Internet auction community, yet another period of yelling, and how she was last seen in the company of a rodeo clown transporting what we thought was a truckload of hoof and tail shampoo many friends swear makes a good hand cream for humans that in fact turned out to be an illegal arms shipment? Remember that? Now she is back in the mansion as Carmen, waiting for the right moment to reveal herself to her family, testify to her reformed ways and new, righteously substance-free, lifestyle, and then fall into a joyous hugging mess of them. …