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Je n'aime pas dans les vieux films américains quand les conducteurs ne regardent pas la route. Et de ratage en ratage, on s'habitue à ne jamais dépasser le stade du brouillon. La vie n'est que l'interminable répétition d'une représentation qui n'aura jamais lieu.

Picket Fences: Bad Moons Rising!

A local woman is in the midst of messy divorce proceedings with her husband, but that isn’t getting him exed soon enough, so she exes him out herself with a steamroller.  Her legal defense?  Guilty by reason of menopause.  Yes, next on the list of “topics you absolutely should not make a prime time TV show about in 1994” is menopause.  And then the Brocks’ oldest boy, Matthew, starts having . . . interesting dreams.  “I think my penis is broken,” he muses worriedly at the breakfast table.  Does Tom Skerritt absolutely nail his double take?  You know it.  The dreams Matthew is having tend to involve Max in her underwear/bikini/hockey gear (don’t ask), so this episode has achieved about the most notoriety of any Picket Fences episode thanks to repeated scenes of Lauren Holly in said outfits.  The theme here is obvious: the changing body and the mystery surrounding it.  The treatment of menopause is witty, but also surprisingly serious.  Ann Guilbert has a great scene as Wambaugh’s wife; their discussion about menopause and the cloud of mystery that surrounds it even in the medical community is fantastic.  I didn’t care for the ending however, which kind of throws the rest of the episode under the bus.  Still, an interesting episode.  3 stars.

tl;dr – the mysteries of menopause & puberty all in one episode, so it must be Picket Fences; interesting, surprisingly serious episode, but the ending is extremely disappointing.  3 stars.

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