"United States of Tara" Recap 304: Who Wants to Have a Threeway?

Hmm, what are they discussing?

Three is a magic number on this week's episode of United States of Tara! Why? Because without the word “three” you can’t have the word “threesome” and without the word “threesome,” we wouldn’t have this week’s gay storyline!

Marshall, Lionel and new gay Noah are drinking schnapps and talking babies in Kate’s room in Charmaine’s house. Marshall is vehemently opposed to babies, labeling them "incontinent extensions of the adult desire to rewrite history." Lionel calls his observation both pretentious and stupid, but he uses an "I" statement so it's OK. Marshall goes on to call out all the "random people [who] mash together and then chunk out kids instead of dealing with the fact they should never have been together in the first place."

We wouldn't be talking about any random people in particular, would we Moosh? Mom and Dad, perhaps?

Lionel's bored with the baby drama, and who can blame him, so he shifts the conversation to "best threesomes in movies." Marshall throws out Jules et Jim which prompts Lionel to trash all of French cinema, and all I can say is, "preach it, Lionel!" That which gave the world Gerard Depardieu is evil and it must be destroyed.

By the way, my choices for best threesome in a movie would be either Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger and Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein or Tim Kramer, Jim Bentley and Steve Kolis in the 1984 porn classic Heroes. How about yours?

But back to the gay! Still in Kate’s room, Lionel kisses Marshall, then turns and kisses Noah. He wants the two of them to kiss but Moosh balks, since it is Kate's room and all. Lionel tells him not to be such a "fag" and at the risk of starting up that debate again, I really find the use of the word here gratuitous.

The writer could have used "wimp" or "chickenshit" or any number of other possibilities and while I support his right to choose whatever word he wants, its use here adds nothing to the scene. Anyway, rant over, since Marshall is still hesitant Lionel declares that he'll be "Lucky Pierre" and has them both kiss him. He guides Marshall and Noah's faces toward each other, but before their lips meet Marshall asks Lionel to turn out the lights.

The scene ends there so we don't know for sure that a threeway happened, although Neil later comments that the house "smells like ass and semen." Which makes me wonder how Neil happens to know that smell and then realize that I do. Not. Want. To. Know.

According to sides (script pages) that AfterElton.com obtained last year, this scene was supposed to happen two weeks ago in the episode in which Noah was introduced. I think the delay was a good choice because I don't believe that Marshall would jump into a threesome with someone he'd just met. Marshall's a romantic.

Now for the rest of this week’s storylines! For those of you that are still interested…

We pick up just after where we left off, with Charmaine and Tara in an ambulance, Charmaine because she's in labor and Tara for the injuries she suffered in the car crash. Charmaine rants to the cute paramedics about how Tara's ruined her life, running through Tara's Greatest Hits: Chicken disrupting Charmaine's wedding; Gimme rampaging at the spa; and Buck picking her up after her breast reconstruction.

Me, I'd have gone with Gimme painting a vulgar word on Charmaine's boss's wall and getting Charmaine fired back in Season One, because as I recall, Charmaine had a pretty decent time with Buck as her "boobie buddy." Then Charmaine blames Tara for sending her into labor which is totally not fair because T never even touched her with that Volkswagen.

When they arrive at the hospital, Charmaine begs the staff to keep the crazy person away from her. No doubt the staff had some trouble determining whether Charmaine was talking about herself or not.