Episode 316--"her cup runneth over"

AKA "the thief" Writer Winnie Holzman Director Timothy Busfield Air Date 2/20/90

Felicity la Fortune as Valerie; Mya Akerling as Christie; Brian Smiar as therapist

Jeffrey leaves Valerie and moves in with Ellyn, bringing his daughter and their dog along.

Jeffrey and Ellyn ostensibly meet for lunch and end up having each other instead, making up stories for why he'll be late. Ellyn pressures him to tell Valerie that he's leaving and he says that he will that very day. Ellyn vents to her therapist about the frustrations of seeing a married man.

While Melissa is over at Hope and Michael's, spazzing out about being Janey's guardian, Valerie Milgrom shows up with more papers (and a horrible perm), falling apart because Jeffrey is leaving. While Jeffrey is trying to sign into the hotel with luggage and child hanging off him, Ellyn keeps asking how it went. Just as things are getting settled, Christie realizes that she has forgotten a school project at home and Jeffrey has to go back for it, leaving Ellyn and Christie alone.

Ellyn mumbles through everything to her therapist. On the way home from school, Christie compliments Ellyn on her bracelet and Ellyn lets her wear it. Things get a little strange at dinner in a restaurant and everyone keeps trading dinners until Christie is happy. Jeffrey spends the rest of the evening looking for Ellyn's bracelet, which Christie has lost. Jeffrey is a little bewildered without his home. Ellyn gives Hope a set of place card holders as a pretext for coming over to tell Hope that Jeffrey had left Valerie. Ellyn interprets Hope's lack of surprise (not knowing that Valerie had been over earlier) as some kind of sign that the relationship makes sense and that it could work out.

While waiting in the car outside the law office to pick up Jeffrey, Ellyn shares with Christie that her own parents just split up this year. Time passes, Ellyn sends Christie upstairs, and eventually Ellyn follows to discover an extremely nasty fight between Valerie and Jeffrey. Since Valerie has put a lien on the funds, Ellyn has to take in both Jeffrey and Christie.

At the therapist's, Ellyn continues to sort through the episode of when she was young and stole a copy of True Confessions magazine which her mother found and disposed of. Returning home, Ellyn finds that Christie has overfilled the bathtub and everything is in chaos. They talk it through and Ellyn is frustrated with the way that Jeffrey is raising Christie.

The next morning, Valerie shows up and drops the dog on Ellyn's doorstep and somehow Ellyn gets locked out, in her underwear, with the dog. At the therapist, Ellyn continues the story of the magazine, how her mother knew that she was looking for it in the drawers but acted as if she didn't notice. (This all involves some kind of revelation about Ellyn doubting her mother's love for her, but I didn't get it.)

Ellyn is, for some reason, quite broken up that Christie has left her notebook lying around. Ellyn goes to see Christie after school and returns the notebook while confessing that even though she doesn't like the kid very much, she loves her. In the mean time, Lucy the dog has destroyed Ellyn's apartment. All three of them end up taking Lucy for a walk, Ellyn laughing and embracing Jeffrey.

Hope and Michael's kitchen is done

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse is invoked

Ellyn's apartment "number" is C

Ellyn's cat Sophie is around and not happy about the new dog

"If I'm a total stranger, why are you screaming at me in your underwear?" --Ellyn to Jeffrey

• [4/23/99] From Alicia, regarding my pet theory about Tim Busfield directed episodes and the amount of female nudity contained therein:

Ok, this may be too much analyzing for everyone, but here's my take on Ellyn showing so much skin in that episode. . .

On thing that I find exceptional about Thirtysomething was the subtle way they often handled issues and topics without hitting us on top of the head with the message we were supposed to be getting - like there was no judgement or "right way" of feeling or doing and we get to see all kinds of angles and sides and perspectives.   And so, I wonder if these big issues they are tackling - adultery, children in the middle of broken relationships, Ellyn's willingness to be with Jeffrey even though he's married, the hysteria of Valerie trying to get Hope and Michael to agree that it's a betrayal of all of them - have something to do with how Ellyn is personified.   She is representing to Jeffrey something he doesn't have in his marriage - and a representation of the fact she doesn't have any inhibitions in having this relationship with him could be why they are showing her without/with less clothes.   When Val brings her the dog and accuses her of being a selfish thief, its kind of perfect that she's only in a t-shirt and underwear. . .its exactly the way a wife would expect her husband's lover to be dressed.  And Ellyn trying to yell back at Valerie to stop doing what she's doing for Christie's sake - doesn't it make Ellyn even more vulnerable in this situation to be almost naked while she's screaming at her lover's wife?

Like I said, TS made a point of showing the affect all of this is having on Christie, giving us a closeup of her in her hotel room, looking sad and lost - showing us Christie dropping and scattering her pens after having to hear Val and Jeffrey fighting and showing us Christie following far behind Ellyn and Jeffrey.   They also show us Christie being irritating and irresponsible.   And they show us Jeffrey being defensive about her behavior and Ellyn being critical of it and Jeffrey and Ellyn fighting about it as well as showing that Ellyn and Jeffrey do care about each other.   These are very complex issues and TS does an amazing job of trying to be real about them and I think maybe Ellyn's clothing could be part of the symbolism of the episode. . .

Maybe I'm way off base here and it's just Tim Busfield directing and asking for more skin, but I'd like to think it was more than that. . .
 
 

• And from T.J. Lynch, on the same matter:

ANOTHER-REAL-LIFE-THIRTYSOMETHING-MOMENT: Some fifteen years ago, as I left the apartment of a lady who was & remains very dear to me, her crazed Siamese cat made a run for it and scampered down the hallway. I ran after the cat, the girl ran after me, and her steel apartment door slammed itself shut on all of us. And yes, she was wearing only a tee-shirt, panties, and socks (fortunately her ensemble covered her more thoroughly than Ellyn's). So she had to wait in the hallway, clinging to her cat, while I found the building's super to let us back in. This was just one of the things that made me a little uneasy about thirtysomething when it first ran; I kept looking over my shoulder expecting to see a cast member scribbling in a notebook.
     Now I am male, darn it, and I hope I don't sound too swinish here, but besides my almost scary sense of deja vu, I always thought the scene with Ellyn locked out of her apartment was very effective. It's comic, sure, but it's also supposed to be painfully embarassing, even horrific. It's not just that she's scantily clad, but she's scantily clad with a huge, beastly dog that she's never seen before, and now she's doubly vulnerable. Would the scene be as memorable if she wore floppy pajamas, or was given a toy poodle for that matter?
     This was not the only time Ellyn's body was shown off: I seem to recall a lot of shots of her in a wet swimsuit in "once a mermaid" (directed by Ellen Pressman). There were a number of steamy scenes between her and Billy, as well as Jeffrey (if memory serves, didn't she share a bathtub with Woodman, and even shave her legs while he was in there? ee-yuch!) My point is that one important facet of Ellyn's character was, that of all the 30s women, Ellyn was the sexual adventuress, the one most likely to run across the room and leap into a lover's arms and totally abandon herself to the encounter, consequences be damned (and there would be consequences!). All this in spite of her business suits and briefcases and her responsible number crunching job. Maybe in another life Ellyn and Elliot should have paired off--Ellyn would certainly have worn the silly underwear that Nancy refused to wear.
      Again I hope I don't sound too piggish. I always seem to be defending Tim Busfield the director, but redheaded guys named Tim gotta stick together.
 
• [4/15/98] Mary Welty-Havens sheds some light on the theft of the magazine:


"I have seen this episode named 'the thief'.. I believe I saw it more than once. Maybe someone else has too. If I find the list I copied from TV Guide (originals) I'll scan it to you. This gives a clearer meaning to the piece. She tells her therapist that the magazine was the only thing besides Jeffrey she ever stole...but she feels guilty for stealing Jeffrey, just as she did the magazine."

• I must've completely missed the boat on the significance of the True Confessions episode. So Ellyn stole a magazine, her mother took it back, but never brought it up--what is this saying to us? I think Ellyn is intimating that what was needed was a discussion, an overt demonstration of discipline and love. This would tie in with what Christie is certainly not receiving in her unstable household. Still, it's all a little shaky.

• Timothy Busfield directed the episode and there was a decent bit of Ellyn in various stages of underwear and undress. This trend continues later in his other episodes.

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