511/The Recital

Show Outline

Fran invites Paul and Jamie to a recital in which Ryan (Fran and Mark's son) is playing. Jamie tries to get out of it by claiming she and Paul have a "thing" to go to with Paul's parents, but Paul doesn't get what Jamie is trying to say and they're trapped. Then Jamie really upsets Fran when she says that Ryan's violin playing gives her a headache. She makes things even worse when she goes over to apologize to Fran and yells out (while Ryan is playing and walking into the room) that Ryan shouldn't even be in the same room with a violin. So Jamie not only has to smooth things over with Fran, but also Ryan. She manages to do so by telling Ryan that she really doesn't hate his playing and that she's going to his recital. Also, Paul and Jamie learn, from Fran, that they're paying 20 dollars more for their therapy sessions than Fran. Paul is mad about this and is determined to say something. He misses several opportunities, but when he finally gets up the nerve and follows through with it, it ends up costing him even more.

Commentary

This episode does to me kind of the same thing Ryan's playing does to Jamie - it tends to give me a headache. That's an exaggeration, but not by much. Actually I also have to give credit to some of my feelings on this episode to Ryan's playing. It really is horrible. So this episode is actually not too bad, but it helps if you can ignore the screeching violin. But even though I can blame some of my feelings for this episode on Ryan's playing, I must also give some of the credit to the overall mood of this episode. It seems as though everyone is frustrated by everyone else in this one. After a while I got tired of the tension and was ready to move on. A side complaint would be that the sound on this episode was not up to par. It seemed to echo at times and be flat at others. Now I'm nitpicking, but this just wasn't the best episode of Mad About You I've seen. It falls all the way to a 5 on my scale.