A welcome change is on the horizon for Mary Jane Paul. When Sheldon calls while she’s microwaving cordon bleu (of course she lies and says she was cooking it), the two have one of those early “getting to know you” sessions where people ask each other all kinds of questions, like, “Malcolm or Martin?” Sheldon goes in too deep with “So, inquiring minds want to know: Are you barren or not?” Good thing M.J. knows how to hold her own.
During this chat, M.J. adds adjectives to her pro-vs.-con list for him, and this is why she can’t ever have nice things. They haven’t even gone on their first official date and she already has the man mapped out on a list.
While M.J. crosses t’s and dots i’s, Mark is going through it. He got the call everyone with a recent ex dreads: His ex has a new man and they have a kid. M.J. knows this hurt all too well. Speaking of exes, Kara’s ex husband calls to ask for more money for their two boys, since he has custody. Kara says to take them out of private school. Voilà! Money problem solved.
More ex drama: Patrick finds his daughter Deja in the house by herself because his ex, Tracy, has left without telling anybody. Drug use is suspected. This brotha can’t catch a break. His car breaks down. While he’s on the side of the road across the street from his daughter’s school, the police bother him because, hello, a grown black man sitting in his car reading across from a school just screams danger.
Patrick is frustrated that he’s being questioned by the officer for no reason, but he shuts up when the officer tells him to, for obvious reasons. In the end the cop cuts him some slack. (But slack for what? He wasn’t doing anything wrong.) Apparently there was a school shooting in Virginia that had the officer on the lookout.
M.J. checks on her brother to see how he’s handling everything, with Tracy being MIA. She doesn’t understand how a mother can abandon her daughter. Ummm, kinda the same way some men do every single day.
Sheldon is calling to invite M.J. to a shindig at his house so she can meet his friends in lieu of their scheduled first date. M.J. is pissed. She rips him a new one about how rescheduling, canceling and changing plans doesn’t work for her. Here is the second time in the episode you want to cover M.J.’s mouth so she can stop getting in her own way. Let this man like you, girl! Luckily Sheldon understands and has the patience of a monk.
This Virginia school shooting has everyone in their feelings. Something about seeing a mother on live TV find out that her daughter was one of the children killed by the gunman will soften even the hardest of hearts, meaning Kara. Kara calls Gael and … wait for it … speaks in Spanish. She needs to get her mind off everything, so the two make last-minute movie-date plans.
After the movie, the two make small talk about it. Gael sees right through the Great Wall of China that Kara has put up to protect herself. He’d prefer that she show more feelings: “You use irony and humor as a defensive shield. Doesn’t that become exhausting?” Read her, Gael! Kara breaks down because the reality has set in that all she knows is work. Gael comforts her and tells her she just hasn’t found her cause yet. Kara and Gael finally have sex; I’m happier for Gael than for Kara because he hung in there when Kara was pretty awful to him.
M.J. was going to skip the party, but loneliness sets in. Mark is down for a night of getting drunk out of their minds. At Sheldon’s party, Mark flirts with a random guy, which later leads to rebound sex. M.J. lets Sheldon know that she doesn’t want to rush into anything. Sheldon doesn’t mind at all. In the meantime, he tells her to feel free to get wasted and he’ll have a car service take her home if necessary. Quite the gentleman.
M.J. doesn’t keep her word and call Sheldon to let him know that she made it home safely, so he calls her. One last question for the soon-to-be lovers (if M.J. plays her cards right): “Godfather I or II?” One question turns into three. And it’s just like eighth grade again when you stay on the phone into the wee hours of the morning with your crush.