Butt News Movie Club #35: While You Were Sleeping

The Famous Valentine's Day Movie

Poinsettia, the famous Valentine’s Day flower

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Request for feedback: I’m considering leaving Meta platforms and focusing all my work here on Substack and over at my very popular podcast, Text Me Back. It’s not even the Zuck of it all so much as that I simply cannot look at any more content! I’m wasting my life! If you have any opinions about that, I’d love to hear them! Ideally it would mean more frequent Butt Newses and less of the algorithm serving me videos of abused dogs. I’m struggling to find a downside.

Also, a couple other things: I’m back on CAMEO! You can hire me to delight (or HORRIFY) your wife! I’m also teaching an online master class for the next three weeks called “How to Be Funny When You’re Sad,” if you have any aspiring memoirists in your life. FYI, the sign-up page says that the first class was on February 6th, but I had to postpone it because my power was out due to a snowstorm, so now the class is February 13, 20, and 27! So you still have a week to join!

Also I’ll be at On Air Fest in Brooklyn with my podcast co-host Meagan Hatcher-Mays on February 21, debating the age-old question “John Travolta vs. Nicolas Cage?” on Pop Culture Debate Club with Ronald Young Jr. The full line-up is crazy!

AND FINALLY I’m performing my one-woman show Every Castle, Ranked at the Reser Center in Beaverton, OR on March 6, which is three days before MY BIRTHDAY, which means it’s illegal for you not to come!! Okay, that’s everything!]

Accountability Corner: Yes, I intended to do this movie for Christmas and borderline promised it to you and then did not get it done, HOWEVER, once I actually re-watched the film I realized it actually takes place mostly after Christmas. Did you know that, hot shot? It’s more of a New Year’s movie if anything! Now, did I get it done by New Year’s? No. Did I get it done by Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in honor of him famously having a dream while HE were sleeping? Also no. HOWEVER, get off my back!!! Life doesn’t always turn out like you want! Did it ever occur to you that While You Were Sleeping is also a movie about love and so it actually makes the most sense to do it in time for Valentine’s Day??? And did I accomplish that? It remains to be seen. [Ed.: She did! Eat shit, haters!]

Here is what happens in the movie While You Were Sleeping: Little Sandra Bullock grew up in Chicago and took special father-daughter trips with her dad to Milwaukee all the time. Once she asked her dad about the moment he knew that he truly loved her mom and he said, “Lucy, your mother gave me a special gift. [HER BOOBS.] She gave me the world.” Then Sandy B clarifies, “Actually, it was a globe with a light in it, but for the romantic he was, it might as well have been [HER BOOBS WITH A LIGHT IN IT].”

Eventually, Sandy B becomes an adult and notices that no adequate man has shown up to ask for her light-up globe[s] in marriage and that’s how she finds out “life doesn’t always turn out like you want.” Instead of 24/7 romantic globe-play, she has to live in a toll booth at the train station wearing neutral-toned natural fibers and not one single solitary commuter ever, ever, ever asks her out or sexually harasses her even a little bit. YEAH RIGHT, EVERY SANDRA BULLOCK MOVIE THAT STARTS LIKE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hello? 911? Can you please send a fact-checker to the 1990s??

There is but one bright spot in Lucy’s/Sandy’s daily grind. Between 8:01 and 8:15 am, Monday through Friday, Peter Gallagher comes through the toll booth and she gets to “take” his “token.” (I made it sound like a sexy euphemism but she just takes his token in the regular way. :( Sorry.) Instead of asking Peter Gallagher out, Sandy B retreats inward, enshrining his sacred eyebrows in her mind-garden so she can fondle them each night in Tel'aran'rhiod without fear of spying eyes!!!!!

Instead of all that, here’s my suggestion for a 100% foolproof line for Sandra Bullock to pick up literally any man:

Sandra Bullock (in the style of Seinfeld’s Newman): “HELLO, JERREHHHH! [snorts line of brain worm eggs] [eyes begin to bleed, from the worms] [dies] [comes back to life but not quite right] [trips and falls on your PS5, wrecking it] [farts like crazy] [there’s poop in the fart] [there’s worms in the poop] [still in the style of Newman from Seinfeld] Did I do thaaaaaaaat???”

Men: “You make me want to be a better man.”

But apparently Sandy B hasn’t read my pick-up artist manual yet (e-book 3% off on Truth Social!), so instead we cut to Lucy at her lonely loser apartment where she’s hoisting a Christmas tree up through her window on a rope, a.k.a. classic loser behavior. “Ooh, I should have gotten the blue spruce, they’re lighter,” she says to her cat, the embarrassed child of a loser. (Also, is that even true? What is she, a tree scientist??)

There’s a crashing noise and from somewhere below Lucy’s window her landlord yells “LUCY!!!!!!” and you’re like oh shit she’s cooked but then the landlord tells her it’s fine, she doesn’t have to pay for his broken window, which is the first realistic thing I’ve seen all movie, a.k.a. thin privilege. Hot people never have to pay for their crimes!!!

In fact, Lucy is REWARDED for wrecking the building, because just then the landlord’s son, Joe Jr., shows up to lustily tell her she’s got a nice sweater! WOW. I did NOT remember that we get Joe Jr. this early in the movie!!!!! Explain to me why Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood and the Eagles got Kennedy Center Honorses but Joseph Fusco Jr. can’t even get shortlisted for the BUPKIS AWARD? When I was a kid I loved this movie for the romance but now that I’m an adult I can see that the romance is deranged and it’s the comedy that carries the day, and it’s Joe Jr.’s furry shoulders that carry the comedy! Capische?

Lucy rebuffs Joe Jr.’s advances for some reason?? (brain worms) and goes to get her customary hot dog and a Coke for breakfast. She runs into her boss from the transit authority who appears to use the bench next to the hot dog stand as his office. Hot dog bench: the original WeWork? That crazy WeWork lady owes Jerry from the CTA some royalties! Jerry says he’s recommending Lucy for Employee of the Month because she’s never tardy and she always works holidays even if she already worked the previous holiday and that’s soooooooooo brave of her. Sniff sniff! Lucy smells a rat! Jerry admits that Employee of the Month was JUST A PLOY to get her to work on Christmas because she’s a loser with no life and no family and that means she’s obligated to work every holiday so that the Real Americans who’ve done their heterosexual Christian coitus duty can have their figgy puddings (sexual) (for procreation only) uninterrupted! I feel like this paradigm is going to become even more intense in Elon Musk’s CyberTradmericaX, so allow me to enter into the official record that that is NOT ACTUALLY TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!! Jerry’s on the take from Big Birth! Single people and people without kids deserve rest, comfort, joy, days off, lying down, Smartfood popcorn, satsumas, glad tidings, and figgy puddings (sexual) (RECREATIONAL) as much as parents do!

Lucy goes home and decorates her Christmas tree with a thousand individual tinsel strings. A nightmare! Can you still buy those? How many vacuum cleaners were throttled by this metal spaghetti? How many cats needed surgery??

The next day it’s Christmas and Lucy is at work in the booth, miserable, when Peter Gallagher (workaholic much??) comes through! “Merry Christmas!” he says. Unfortunately, Lucy STILL hasn’t read my e-book so she totally beefs it. Peter Gallagher leaves, bonerless. But then, as she watches him amble handsomely along the platform, he is menaced by some children!

Child: “Hey, yuppie! Nice coat!”

The youths are so enraged by Peter Gallagher’s coat that push him on to the tracks for class revenge. Lucy leaps into action to rescue the man/eyebrows/coat she loves. She climbs down on to the tracks to save Peter Gallagher’s life, pauses to moan, “oh, god, you smell good” (tell him LATER), and rolls him out of the way just before the train hits them and turns them into flat juice.

Peter Gallagher opens his eyes for one brief moment and looks into Lucy’s eyes with an unbridled lust that says, “who are you and why are you on me,” but then lapses into a coma, I’m not sure why.

Lucy then abandons the token booth (!!!?!?!?????!?), presumably bringing this major urban core metropolitan train station to a grinding halt, and follows Peter Gallagher’s ambulance to the hospital (!!!!!!?!!!?!!!!?????????). But the mean hospital employees won’t let her in to see him because she’s not family and in fact is literally just some psycho! Justice for the hospital security! They were right!!!

As they wheel Peter Gallagher away, a dejected Lucy mutters under her breath, “Oh, I was going to marry him,” which she means rhetorically, i.e. in Tel'aran'rhiod ONLY. Lucky/unlucky for her, a real Captain Save-A-Hoe of a nurse overhears and takes it literally and assumes Lucy is Peter’s real fiancee and sneaks her into the room where Peter Gallagher, A STRANGER, is fighting for his LIFE and presumably NAKED and CATHETERIZED under his WHISPER THIN BLANKETS. (To be fair, I too would do literally anything to make Sandra Bullock happy.)

let me put it to you this way: on the left is you and on the right is a random lady that works at the train station

Nurse: “Let him hear your voice, honey.”

Cop (who probably should be taking Lucy’s statement right now????): “Is that the woman that saved his life?”

Nurse: “Yeah! It gets even better than that. She’s his fiancee.”

Then Peter Gallagher’s whole family comes in and holy moly stromboli WHAT A CAST. Peter Boyle, Jack Warden, the mom from Mary Poppins #VotesForWomen #WhatsAllThis, AND Abby Morgan #RestInPowerQueen???? Name a more iconic polycule!

The nurse tells the family that Lucy is Peter’s fiancee and they’re like HUH??? But then the mom is immediately like, wow, we haven’t seen him in a while, I guess he was living a secret life, no biggie, “I’m so glad he found a girl like you.” A girl like her in what way?? You just met her! She could be a grifting stalker invading your family to have her way (sexual) with your braindead son’s eyebrows!

Grandma Elsie (#FLAPLIKEABIRDIE #STEPINTIME) gets so excited that her heart starts palpitating. Someone explains that she has heart problems and she needs her nitro glycerine and oh by the way the doctor says it’s instant death if god forbid she is surprised and/or disappointed by a fake granddaughter. With a sinking feeling Lucy realizes that the stakes of this scam are high. Winifred Banks’s life is on the line! If she dies then WHOM’N’ST will chain themselves to the Prime Minister’s carriage?

Lucy confesses her identity theft to the nurse but explains that she doesn’t know how to come clean because Peter’s mom hugged her soooooooo tight. The nurse is like wow thank you for committing fraud and putting my job in jeopardy and then asking ME for advice about how to fix YOUR shitted bed. With no solution forthcoming, Lucy goes back into the hospital room where Grandma Elsie asks Lucy to tell how she met Peter Gallagher and confirm whether or not she stole him from that bitch Ashley Bartlett Bacon. Lucy is like… yes?

Grandma Elsie: “What was it about him that first struck you?”

Lucy: “It was his smile.”

Peter Boyle, narc: “They’re caps! Six hundred bucks a tooth!”

Lucy finally goes home from the hospital and Joe Jr. greets her with Icecapades tickets and she is soooooo annoyed about it. YOU SHOULD GO WITH HIM! THE THING YOU ARE DOING INSTEAD IS INSANE! This man is the future BOSS of the DiMeo crime family!

a comedy god AND a drama god????

Instead of Icecapades, Lucy goes back to the hospital to stare at a man she doesn’t know as he floats on spidersilk wings through the intimate darkness between life and death.

Lucy: “Bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here in the middle of the night, huh?.. Your family thinks we’re engaged.”

If it turned out he could actually hear her this would be impossible information to process.

Lucy: “What I actually came here to tell you is I didn’t mean for this to happen. I don’t know what to do…I never met anybody that I could laugh with, you know? Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Okay, lady, calm down.

She explains that when she first saw Peter Gallagher she knew that if he just got to know her well enough he would dump Ashley Bartlett Bacon to laugh with her, which is exactly what the guy who shot Ronald Reagan thought about Jodie Foster!

Grandpa Jack Warden overhears all this but he is NOT a narc like Peter Boyle. He’s just like “hmm” and files it away for later. Sorry, but I feel like you would say something! Your chillness is an illness! Unaware that her cover has been blown, Lucy stays there all night by accident and wakes up in the morning, drooling, surrounded by the whole family who seem to think this is cute. Peter Boyle invites her to do-over Christmas, since they didn’t get to celebrate on the actual day on account of Peter Gallagher getting hate-crimed for being a yuppie.

Peter Boyle explains to Lucy, without prompting, that the family business is selling dead people’s furniture. She doesn’t care. An orderly runs up to Lucy and gives her a box of Peter Gallagher’s items. She KEEPS THEM even though she could just as easily hand them off to his real family? Maybe she’s worried they would sell them. Peter Gallagher’s not dead yet!!!

Then, in a wild non-sequitur, Peter Gallagher’s colleague Dalton Clark stops by the hospital to tell Lucy, a woman he just met, that he didn’t mean to stab Peter Gallagher in the nuts with a pencil during pick-up basketball. Over/under on this info coming back later?? Chekov’s Dalton Clark?????

Lucy tells her boss about her sticky situation and he says to just go with it. He is not good at advice!

Lucy: “What if he doesn’t come out of his coma?”

Boss: “Well then who’s to know?”

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHO’S TO KNOW? IS SHE SUPPOSED TO JUST STAY FAKE MARRIED TO A GUY IN A COMA FOREVER?? OR BE A FAKE WIDOW AND GRIFT ACTUAL MOURNERS OUT OF REAL SYMPATHY? ARE YOU GUYS CRAZY? The boss explains that when his mom found out he was getting married “her intestines exploded,” so Lucy better keep up this charade because that can actually happen to any mom.

Lucy goes completely off the deep end at this point and decides to attend Christmas with these people she doesn’t know. She sits outside the house with Gramps Jack Warden while he smokes a cigar, and he explains that he’s not Gramps, he’s actually Peter’s godfather who lives next door. Okay, so he’s not part of the family, he’s just their friend who’s always around? Shout out to platonic intimacy, I guess? Can someone tell Lucy that you can just have friends—you don’t have to trick a family into adopting you?

Lucy explains that she has no family because her mom died when she was young and her dad got sick and they moved from Indiana to Chicago so he could go to a research hospital and then he died.

Not-Gramps: “Research, a medical term for very expensive.”

In the year of our lord 2025 I have truly lost all track of whether this is a progressive or regressive critique.

They go inside and drink Elsie’s disgusting egg nog and then they make Lucy be in the family photo and she just goes with it (lunacy). Someone offers Elsie a taste of her own egg nog, and she says, “I don’t drink anymore. I don’t drink any less, either!” which is a bit my dad used to do!!! Here is a recording of him saying it (really!) at around 1:58:

Now it’s time for the family to open their presents and Lucy should probably leave, but no—they GOT HER A PRESENT???? They made her a CUSTOM STOCKING??????????? WHEN DID THEY HAVE TIME TO DO THAT??

it’s full of loose egg nog

Meanwhile, at Peter Gallagher’s empty apartment, Ashley Bartlett Bacon is leaving a message on his answering machine. She’s calling from Lisbon and she says hey, what the heck, she WILL marry him after all! Unclear what inspired this change! Tchau!

Over at the Callahan house, Bill Pullman arrives late for Christmas because he was busy ferrying the armoires of the dead across the River Styx and I hope you’re wearing your SAFETY GOGGLES because the chemistry is about to be OFF THE CHARTS. Lucy is asleep on the couch???? She’s staying overnight? Bill Pullman is like hey seems like there’s a female unhoused neighbor asleep on our couch and Abby Morgan whispers that she’s actually Peter’s fiancee and he’s like um no she definitely isn’t but nobody listens to him.

In the morning, the paperboy eats shit on the icy street outside. DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THE PAPERBOY IS OKAY? That has to be an unscripted fall that they kept in—there’s no way they got a stunt child to do that! Insurance would never cover it!

nobody makes wallpaper of a fancy lad preening in an octagon anymore

Lucy wakes up and finally realizes it’s time to go home and leave these people alone. She tries to sneak out but Bill Pullman is creepily lurking on the stairs. He ruthlessly does call-out culture on her.

Bill Pullman: “I don’t remember meeting you.”

Lucy: “That’s probably because we’ve never met.”

Close one. He almost got you!

Lucy leaves and the rest of the family goes to mass to pray for Peter Gallagher to get better. In the pews, Bill Pullman is doing strong detective work like a male woman-Matlock.

Bill Pullman: “So who’s this Lucy?”

Peter Boyle: “She’s your brother’s fiancee.”

Bill Pullman: “So why’d she sneak out this morning?”

Look, man, give it up! They don’t want to hear it!! They decided that this weirdo is their NEW DAUGHTER and there’s nothing you can do about it. Peter Boyle makes Bill Pullman talk business during mass, which the baby Jesus hates, especially considering their business is about which dead people’s furniture they get to plunder.

what if this is Peter Gallagher’s actual wallet

Lucy decides it’s a good time to dig through Peter Gallagher’s bag of stuff. His wallet is wall-to-wall 2” x 3”s of himself playing various yuppie sports, which is actually disordered and even Patrick Bateman would never. Then she finds a can of cat food and realizes—OH NO—she let a cat starve to death while she was at the hospital defrauding these poor Catholics!!!

After church, Bill Pullman heads to Lucy’s apartment to snoop on her some more (don’t you have a JOB? you couldn’t make it to Christmas on time but you can do THIS?) and runs into Joe Jr. (LUCKY!!!).

Joe Jr.: “I own the place.”

Bill Pullman: “Well, then you would know the woman who lives in 201.”

Joe Jr.: “Know her? I’m dating her!”

Look, if it was anyone but Joe Jr. I’d call that toxic male entitlement, but yeah! I’m inconsistent in my values!!! So sue me, woman-Matlock!

it’s okay for ME to have this picture on my piano, but not him!!

Lucy goes to Peter Gallagher’s apartment to feed his dying cat. He lives in a tall wiggly high-rise, a contrast to her building, which is humble. This man has SO MANY FRAMED PHOTOS OF HIMSELF, a contrast to Joe Jr., who’s actually so humble he’s never even seen his image in a mirror because he is too busy being working class!!!!!!

Lucy: “Kitty? Rich kitty?”

Bill Pullman shows up and she hits him in the face with the door. He asks what she’s doing there and she says she’s feeding the cat and he says “Peter doesn’t have a cat.” Oh no! Lucy is burnt! She misinterpreted the cat food in Peter’s bag—it’s not for an actual cat, it must be what Peter eats for lunch to sigma-maxx his business efficiency (see chapter 7 of my e-book)!

But just when Lucy’s about to give up the goose, A CAT STRUTS INTO THE ROOM, corroborating her story and, by extension, her alleged engagement to Peter Gallagher. That cat is a real one! I guess there’s a lot Bill Pullman doesn’t know about Peter Gallagher!

And that cat? Is Joe Jr. in a little suit.

No, it’s just a regular cat. But if the technology existed to make a grown man look like a little cat, Joe Jr. WOULD have shown up to save her ass! I know he would!

Lucy is startled when the landline rings. Bill Pullman answers and says it’s for her—it’s the hospital calling to ask them to come donate blood. Do hospitals normally call grieving families and demand their blood? Idk, maybe. They go down to the parking garage and Bill Pullman tests Lucy yet again to see if she can recognize Peter’s car (he STILL doesn’t believe her?), but luckily this luxury vehicle has a clicker that makes it say chirp chirp. Saved again. That technology was probably only invented five minutes ago! Good thing Peter Gallagher is an early adopter!

At the hospital Peter Boyle is complaining about needless expenditure: “What the hell’s he got a TV for? He’s in a coma for Christ’s sake!” Fun story: that’s also verbatim the text of a new DOGE policy!

Bill Pullman is full-on grilling Lucy in a way that is actually pretty psycho at this point. Pump the brakes, my man! There’s a non-zero chance that this is your comatose brother’s REAL traumatized fiancee!

He asks Lucy to name Peter’s favorite ice cream. She says “Baskin-Robbins” because she saw some in the freezer at his apartment, and everyone acts like that’s a normal answer. It’s not! It’s like asking someone what their favorite animal is and they say “mammal”!!! Call the police! Then Bill Pullman asks what Peter’s favorite song is and Lucy is about to say “music” but her ass is yet again saved by someone else (teacher’s pet) yelling out, “Puff the Magic Dragon!” And it’s a good thing they did, because, conservatively, I’m not sure that would crack the top 99 billion guesses.

“Puff the Magic Dragon”??? This man is a psychopath!

Finally the mom steps in and is like, “Why are you asking her all these questions?” and Bill Pullman says, “Don’t ask me, ask her BOYFRIEND.” The mom immediately starts to cry, because, as far as she knows, “Lucy’s boyfriend” is her son who is currently in a coma AND dead AND a psycho whose Spotify Wrapped is 100% “Puff the Magic Dragon” and she thinks her other son is bullying her about it.

Bill Pullman: “Not this boyfriend. Joe Fusco!”

Everyone: ??????????

Bill Pullman: “Mr. Joe Fusco Jr.! He said you were intimate!”

Lucy: “He also said he invented aluminum foil.”

Yeah, if I invented aluminum foil I’d brag about it too!!!!!

In order to prove her innocence, Lucy reveals that she possesses a secret knowledge, which is that she knows Peter only has one testicle due to the basketball stabbing. Shout out to Dalton Clark! Bill Pullman counters that this only proves she has seen Peter’s testicles, not that she DIDN’T also see Joe Jr.’s testicles in an adulterous manner! The mom lifts the blanket and inspects Peter’s testicle area to confirm Lucy’s story and it seems like they shouldn’t let you do that even if you are a person’s mother. Everyone except Bill Pullman seems satisfied that this means Lucy is not cheating on Peter Gallagher, even though he’s right and it doesn’t.

Elsie: “Well, look on the bright side—he’s got more room in his jockey shorts!”

A famous thing that we all need!

Lucy goes home and Joe Jr. comes over to confront her, rightfully, about ghosting him on the Icecapades. But then Saul (that’s Jack Warden) shows up so she makes Joe Jr. hide in the closet like a classic farce.

me when people say they don’t want to frolic in the autumn mist (sexual) with Joe Jr.

Saul: “You two-timing Joe Jr.?”

Lucy: “I’m not two-timing—I never one-timed!”

Saul tells Lucy that he heard everything because he eavesdropped outside the hospital door. She says she’ll come clean to the family, but he says don’t do it! “They need you, Lucy, just like you need them!”

DO THEY????????

Saul asks Lucy about how she knew about the testicle and then he says, “You know something? I don’t want to know.”

ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW?

Saul leaves and Lucy finds Joe Jr. in the closet trying on her shoes. I think technically the movie is being homophobic/transphobic here, but I’m going to retcon it and say that Joe Jr. is on a journey of self-discovery and considers Lucy one of the few safe people with whom he can be truly vulnerable! Beautiful!

Then, like Lucy needs another headache, Bill Pullman stops by with an engagement present. Surprise! It’s furniture. Lucy says they should take it to Peter’s apartment instead and she departs with him, leaving Joe Jr. in the closet.

Bill Pullman opens the back of the truck and Lucy sees a beautiful chair. He says 2 bad so sad because ur present is actually this ugly couch. But THEN he says he actually made the chair! She asks if she can sit in it. And (implied) sit ON IT (SEXUAL)!!!!!!

Bill Pullman says it’s too tricky to go into his own furniture-making business because Peter Gallagher already abandoned the family furniture-selling business to be a lawyer and it hurt Peter Boyle’s furniture feelings. Now Bill Pullman has no choice but to work unhappily in dead people furniture full-time until he dies and his furniture is resorbed into the dead people furniture food chain.

They move the couch into Peter’s apartment where it does not vibe at all.

At first it won’t go through the door, and then Bill Pullman makes this good joke:

Bill Pullman: “Why don’t you step back a little bit, i’m going to try an old trick.”

Lucy: “What’s the trick?”

Bill Pullman: “Push it really hard.”

They break the doorframe and knock over an ugly vase full of dyed-blue water. WHY IS THE WATER DYED BLUE? Then they just leave without cleaning anything up.

Bill Pullman insists on walking Lucy home. Can’t they take the train? Surely she gets a free pass! They walk by the river and they’re both cold so the conversation turns to coats. She’s wearing her dad’s coat (NON-YUPPIE), and explains that he died last year.

BP: “What was he like?”

Luch: “He was a lot like me—dark hair, flat chest.”

GREAT JOKE.

Lucy says their dream was to go to Florence but they only ever got to go to Milwaukee over and over. Now she carries her passport with her at all times just in case the opportunity to go to Florence pops up. Bill Pullman looks in the passport and points out, rudely, that there aren’t any stamps in there. Yeah! She knows!

Lucy says he reminds her of her dad, a very intense thing to say to a guy who hates your guts and thinks you are scamming his whole family.

BP: “So he was a classy guy, always a gentleman, a working man.”

Lucy: “Who just stepped in doggy poopy.”

I do not like the phrase “doggy poopy” but Sandra Bullock can do as she pleases!

what haircuts are these

They walk all the way to Lucy’s apartment and then they slip on the ice and fall down and embrace romantically while laughing. Bill Pullman falls/laughs/boners so hard (the holy trinity) that splits his pants.

Bill Pullman: “You have an extra pair of pants in your apartment?”

Lucy: “If you fit into my pants I will kill myself.”

I love to be a child of the 90s! I have no self esteem problems!

Bill Pullman walks her to her door and says goodbye. Now he has to walk back all by himself to the truck? At Peter’s apartment? That sucks!

Joe Jr., in the stairwell: “Lucy, it’s me or him.”

Lucy: “Him.”

Bad choice!

Through the window, Lucy watches Bill Pullman walk away with his EXTREMELY FULL jockey shorts showing through his pants.

The next day Lucy goes to talk to Jerry in his usual spot, standing by the hot dog bench on the bridge with a clipboard. Is that a job at every transit authority? Stand on a bridge with a clipboard eating a hot dog? Do I have to pass a background check? Lucy confesses that she’s having an emotional affair with Bill Pullman (kind of an overstatement, but okay!) and Jerry advises her to “pull the plug” on Peter Gallagher.

Lucy: “You’re sick.”

Jerry: “I’m sick? You’re cheating on a vegetable.”

She’s actually not, because she is NOT dating him and she is also NOT having any kind of affair with Bill Pullman! At the hospital, Bill Pullman is playing poker with the unconscious Peter Gallagher and monologuing to him about how Peter is “lucky in love,” and how when Bill Pullman used to get in trouble at school for fleecing other children at poker the principal would say, “Why can’t you be more like your brother Peter?” But even then he was never envious of anything that Peter had, until now when he has Sandra Bullock, which is legit.

Bill Pullman: “I’ll cut the deck, high card gets Lucy.”

Watch out! Peter Gallagher’s a lawyer, which makes this a binding oral contract and actually how all marriage will work under #DOGElaw.

Lucy goes to dinner at the Callahans’ again and the mom asks if Lucy can find a girlfriend for Bill Pullman, which makes them both uncomfortable.

Bill Pullman: “I like blondes, chubby ones.”

Not fair to say that if it’s not true!

When Lucy and Bill Pullman are putting on their boots to leave, Abby Morgan points out that they’re standing under the mistletoe.

Elsie (horny): “Come on, idiot, kiss her!”

SO THEY DO KISS! AND THEY LOVE IT! ANTOINE LAVOISIER, THE FATHER OF CHEMISTRY, WISHES!!!!!!!!!!!

Abby Morgan goes to visit Lucy at the toll booth and tells Lucy’s boothmate Celeste, “Lucy is going to marry my brother,” and Celeste is like HOLY SHIT WHAT??

Celeste: “Girl, are you pregnant?”

Lucy (sarcastic): “Yeah I’m pregnant.”

Abby Morgan’s friend overhears and thinks the pregnancy is real!!!!!!!!!!!! Lucy, no offense, but I’m thinking that irony isn’t for you. It never works out!

Abby Morgan gets back to the house where Saul is lamenting that “nobody plays the clarinet anymore” (finally a true bipartisan issue), and she announces to everyone that Lucy’s pregnant. The family is jazzed.

Meanwhile, at Lucy’s apartment, Joe Jr. comes to the door to give her a horse wreath that he found on the ground. She starts to reject him again, but he interrupts and says that he noticed how she looks at Bill Pullman, like she just seen her first Trans-Am. So now he is officially going to leave her alone, right after he crowns her the winner of the Belmont Stakes.

Bill Pullman, lurking outside her building as usual, sees her talking to Joe Jr. and gets the wrong idea AGAIN. I didn’t write down the context, but according to my notes, at this point Joe Jr. yells, “I love black underwears!” and if my family is reading this that’s what I want on my tombstone.

Celeste is having a New Year’s party, so Bill Pullman drives Lucy there for some reason, and she invites him in, also for some reason. You don’t know him AND he is your enemy! Bill Pullman scolds her for drinking the spiked punch because “it’s not good for the baby!” and everybody gets quiet and hears. Lucy is embarrassed and they leave.

Now Bill Pullman accuses her of not just being impregnated but also leaning at Joe Jr. when she was talking to him in the hallway. She says WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT so he demonstrates leaning and how it involves wanting and accepting and it’s hot I think? Even though they’re in a fight?

Joe Jr. pops out of nowhere and is like, “Is this guy bothering you? Are you sure? Cuz it looks like he’s leaning.” Somebody call Detective Monk from the TV show Monk because this scene has been STOLEN!

Lucy is absolutely fed up at this point, and tells Bill Pullman that Abby Morgan is a fucking LIARRRRR and she’s not pregnant at all. She says that he thinks the only reason Peter would marry someone like her is if she was pregnant.

Bill Pullman: “Fact is, you’re not really Peter’s type.”

Lucy: “Whose type am I?”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A HOT QUESTION, THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT.

Lucy tells Bill Pullman she had a shitty Christmas and now he ruined her New Year’s too, and if anyone ever said that to me I would evolve gills and move to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Bill Pullman says he just wants her to be happy and she says OH SO YOU’RE THE HAPPINESS GURU and calls him out for being too scared to leave the family furniture business and then HE SAYS, “Would your father be happy knowing you’re sitting in a token booth planning vacations that you aren’t taking?” which is an INSANE thing for a successful furniture salesman with his own box truck to say to someone who scrapes buy on minimum wage.

Lucy: “You have no idea what it’s like to be alone.”

Bill Pullman: “You have Peter.”

Lucy: “I don’t have anybody.”

Joe Jr.: “IS THE DON’T-HAVE-ANYBODY IN THE ROOM WITH US RIGHT NOW?”

Lucy closes the door and now it’s the New Year’s countdown. Meanwhile, at the hospital, Peter wakes up! It’s all happening!

Peter Gallagher: “Who are you?”

Peter Boyle: “My god, he’s got amnesia.”

Lucy tries to come clean to the family but she doesn’t get a chance. (Did you really try, though?) She asks Saul what she should do and he says, “Let me handle it. I’m too old a friend and too old a person for them to kill.” But then he ditches her and hides in the bathroom! A certified fink!

mfw they say Joe Jr. is washing the car with no top on

In the hospital room they tell Peter Gallagher that he’s engaged to Lucy and he’s like exqueese me? But he can’t even remember if he likes Jell-O or not, so he accepts this as fact.

Bill Pullman drives Lucy home in the furniture truck and they have a soft talk. They are not in a fight anymore. Lucy says that starting tomorrow things are probably going to be kind of different now that Peter Gallagher isn’t comatose and she wants Bill Pullman to know that he’s become a really good friend in the six days she’s known him (lol). He says he’s sorry for accusing her of sleeping with Joe Jr. and telling all her friends she’s pregnant and splitting his pants and he didn’t mean what he said and he thinks she and Peter will make a terrific couple and he’s really glad she won’t be alone anymore. He drives away and she goes home.

Bill Pullman brings Peter Boyle some Dunkin and they commiserate about what a fucked up week it’s been.

Peter Boyle: “Life is a pain in the ass.”

Agree!

Bill Pullman finally confesses to his father that he wants to go into the making-his-own-chairs business instead of the selling-dead-people’s-chairs business, because a good time to hurt your dad’s feelings is when his other son has recently woken up from a coma with amnesia.

Peter Boyle: “That’s a good side business.”

Bill Pullman: “It’s not a side business, it’s good business.”

PB: “Wait a second, you don’t want my business?”

BP: “No, I don’t.”

PB: “How long have you felt this way”

BP: “Long time.”

PB: “Well why didn’t you say something sooner? I could have sold the whole thing to Uncle Eddie for twice its value! I could have taken your mother on a cruise with Kathie Lee Gifford!”

See? Peter Boyle is fine with it. That’s why you should always tell Peter Boyle the truth BEFORE the Kathie Lee Gifford cruise!

Back at the hospital, Peter Gallagher knows all his numbers and letters, but he still doesn’t remember Lucy. I cannot believe she’s putting this poor man through this.

Saul asks everyone to leave so he can talk to Peter Gallagher alone. He says he’s known Peter every day of his life, from the day he was born to Cub Scouts to the day he discovered hair on his schmeckel. Unfortunately, Saul says, Peter is a putz for not being madly in love with Lucy and sharing his no doubt prodigious schmeckel hair with her.

Saul: “She’s not just your fiancee, she’s your guardian angel.”

He says Peter needs to look into Lucy’s eyes for two minutes and if he doesn’t feel anything he can break up with her and go back to being a putz, but otherwise he needs to propose to her again before she has the chance to escape.

Saul: “If I was 40 years younger I’d marry her myself.”

Okay, big guy. That’s enough.

Lucy brings Peter his box of stuff and he says he wishes he had his own clothes. She says she likes his double breasted blue pinstripe and he says that’s his favorite too! Maybe she really is his girlfriend! Yeah, Peter, or maybe she is a big stinky creep who has been watching you every day on a daily basis and memorizing your life!

Peter Gallagher tells Lucy that she’s a hero for saving him. He chased a purse-snatcher once but then he pretended to pull a hamstring and gave up. A wild thing to admit. Lucy says that he IS a hero, actually, because “you give up your seat every day on the train” (HOW WOULD SHE KNOW THAT), and “you always gave me something to look forward to every day.”

Ding-dong!!! UH OH, IT’S ASHLEY BARTLETT BACON! She’s back in town, and Lucy’s situation is about to get NON-KOSHER!

Peter Gallagher gets moved to a new room and Bill Pullman brings him some Baskin-Robbins and they have a brother-on-brother chit-chat. Peter Gallagher says that Lucy is terrific and he’s so glad that she’s definitely his real fiancee. Then he starts confessing all of his sins—he says he’s never been faithful to a woman, he doesn’t even know what his secretary got their parents for Christmas, he always brags about saving some baby squirrels but he only saved them after he knocked them out of the nest first. Bill Pullman is like wow you’re an absolute nightmare and somehow I didn’t know that even though we’ve been brothers for 30 years minimum.

He asks what Peter likes about Lucy and Peter can’t name ANYTHING. But Bill Pullman has a whole list of weird shit!

1. “She gets under your skin as soon as you meet her.”

2. “She drives you so nuts you don’t know whether to hug her or arm wrestle her.”

3. “She would go all the way to Europe just to get a stamp in her passport.” (NOT AT ALL WHAT SHE SAID)

4. “I don’t know if that amounts to insanity or just being really really likable.”

I’m leaning toward insanity because it doesn’t sound like you like her at all!

Lucy is mad because Saul hasn’t told the Callahans about her fraud yet, so she fires him. She’ll do it herself. She and Bacon unwittingly end up in the hospital elevator together, both going to visit Peter Gallagher, and Bacon is NOT HAPPY. Lucy goes to the wrong floor because she doesn’t know he got moved, so Peter and Bacon have some precious moments alone together. Bacon says she’s ready to get married now. Honestly, they should!

Peter: “You said no. We broke up.”

Bacon: “No, I was confused. We stepped back.”

Peter: “You moved to Portugal.”

Bacon: “I want my stuff back.”

Peter: “Fine, then I want my stuff back!”

Bacon: “What stuff?”

Peter: “Your nose.”

Peter’s roommate cannot believe this incredible convo. Then Lucy arrives. Peter says that even though he has a perfect rich life including court-side tix to the Bulls, a robust investment portfolio, and an apartment in Paris, “it took a coma to wake me up.” He’s ready to marry Lucy now because “my family loves you, I might as well love you.” Aww! The least romantic thing I’ve ever heard! Lucy I am sorry to inform you but this guy fucking sucks!

Lucy is trying on her wedding dress at her apartment (what is the timeline here??) when Bill Pullman knocks on the door. She thinks it’s Joe Jr. so she yells that she doesn’t want any flowers and she isn’t wearing black underwear and she doesn’t want to move in together.

BILL PULLMAN SAYS HE WOULDN’T MIND SEEING HER BLACK UNDERWEAR! An appropriate thing to say to one’s brother’s fiancee on the eve of their wedding!

Lucy: “I thought you were Joe Jr.”

Bill Pullman: “I get that a lot.” (LUCKY!!!!!!)

He gives her a snow globe of Florence as a present. This is way better than what Peter Gallagher gave her, which was NOTHING. He leaves and she chases him out into the stairwell.

Lucy: “Hey [Bill Pullman]?”

Bill Pullman: “Yeah?”

Lucy: “Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t marry your brother?”

Bill Pullman: “I can’t.”

I actually find that hard to believe because Peter Gallagher sucks obvious ass. I feel like the movie needed to pick—is Peter Gallagher perfect or does he suck ass? He sucks ass! Don’t marry him because he sucks ass!

Lucy gives her boss a wedding invitation and he’s like, “The coma guy? Are you insane?” and she says, “Yes, Jerry, I’m insane. Every day I go to work and I sit in a booth like a veal.”

LIKE A VEAL.

Oh btw the wedding is TOMORROW. Traditionally the day you hand out the invitations for sure! Lucy says she wishes the wedding was yesterday because then today she’d be on her honeymoon and she’d have a stamp in her passport that says Italy on it.

Jerry: “What happened to the other guy?”

Lucy: “He didn’t want me.”

Not what happened, actually! You have to say words to people if you want them to know how you feel!

the three genders?

Now it’s time for the wedding and, sorry, the wedding is AT THE HOSPITAL? Peter Gallagher is still on an IV, but they’re leaving for their honeymoon tomorrow???

The priest starts talking but immediately Lucy is like, “I object.” Incredible timing. No other date or time you could have done this.

Bill Pullman: “I object too.”

Peter Boyle: “What the hell is going on?”

Lucy: “I’m in love with your son.”

PB: “I know!”

Lucy: “Not that one, that one.” (points to Bill Pullman)

Lucy tells it all on the altar at the hospital church. She was never engaged to Peter but she didn’t want to tell the truth “because the truth was that I fell in love with you.”

Peter Boyle: “You fell in love with me?”

LOL. YES.

Lucy says she fell in love with the whole family and she saved Peter’s life but really he saved hers by giving her a real family for one week. Then Ashley Barlett Bacon shows up and then everyone screams at each other until Lucy sneaks out.

And a nurse is playing the organ? What is happening? Are patients dying because the whole hospital staff is at this wedding?

Lucy is taking down her Christmas tree when there’s a knock at the door. It’s Joe Jr. He says he’s sorry she’s sad but she shouldn’t start eating cookies and cakes because she’ll blow up like his aunt Roberta and she deserves better than that. Again, I love to be born in 1982 and receive this message at age 13.

Lucy asks Joe Jr. how things are going with the lady he’s dating on the 3rd floor and he starts crying and asks for cookies. Lucy says, “You know what, you can try on some of my shoes,” and once again I am going to receive this in a positive light.

Cut to Lucy at work—it’s her last day. She’s finally moving forward with her life! But then what comes through the slot???? It’s not a token—it’s an engagement ring! That’s not accepted legal tender for the train! This guy is NOT getting through that turnstile!

I’m sorry I keep calling her “the mom”—her name is Micole Mercurio and she’s in Flashdance among many other things!

But then—whaaaaat??—it’s Bill Pullman and his whole family (except Peter, lol) and they’re there to collectively propose to her??? The polycule DID get more iconic! She lets Bill Pullman into the booth but not before he pays a token (that’s right!) and then he proposes officially and they kiss and then they FUCK in the token booth and get married on the train and he takes her to Florence for their honeymoon and he “stamps” her “passport” (sexual).

Lucy: “Peter once asked me when I fell in love with [Bill Pullman] and I told him: it was while you were sleeping.”

YEAH, HE KNOWS THAT.