Bomb Girls 204 Recap: Something Gay In German

This week on Bomb Girls and arguably the best episode of the show thus far, we discover that Betty did not, in fact, get pickles, and Gladys can sing, too? Petition to change the direction of this show to a Josie and the Pussycats-esque dramedy, with Kate and Gladys doing vocals, Vera on bass, Betty on drums, and Lorna as beleaguered manager/tambourine player.

Gene is back and has brought with him yet another haircut for me to covet. Seriously, I don’t need any more excuses to go back to my barber and keep asking her to make me look like an early 20th century gangster. Lorna wants to give Gene the VIP treatment but he just wants to dance around in his underwear. They overhear that three German prisoners have escaped near Toronto and are on the lamm. Lamm is the German word for lamb. It took me about ten minutes to realize that German does not have feminine/masculine nouns.

Over at Ye Olde Ladies’ Locker Roome, Gladys is bummed that her man is gallivanting in London and not gallivanting in her pants. Betty is bummed because she has to make like me every time I go out in public in the Greater Philadelphia Area and hope she doesn’t run into her burnt-to-a-crisp ex, Ivan. Kate is bummed because everyone is complaining about their vagina issues and she is so not getting any in the history of ever.

Kate storms off and Betty gives a longing look in her direction that is capable of ripping hearts out of chests and then smashing them with hammers. You know what? I am putting Ali Liebert on watch. Because her face situation has done too much damage to my heart, and I’m done. I am going to start keeping track of the moments in which my body physically hurts from the way she looks at Kate, and those are going to start adding up. It’s for the good of all of our hearts, okay? I would rate that last look as an “oh god.”

Vera wrote an article on Veronica Lake because Vera is just really awesome and continually the wisest person on this show. Gladys’ Minion, or the Secretary Formerly Known As Carol, is being a super bitch about the article because she is the editor of the school newspaper and VicMu High is not the kind of school where nobodies get to become somebodies through choreographed dance numbers and tokenism!

Gene comes to give a talk to the ladies because Lorna is one of those moms who really likes to show off her kid. $20 says that if they’d had bumper stickers in the 1940s, Lorna would have had a “My Son Can Shoot The Nazi Kneecaps Off Your Honor Student” on her minivan. Mostly Gene talks about how he went to a burlesque show and they dropped a bomb on the square and he thought the girls should finish the show first. Gene is kind of a dickhole. Betty rolls her eyes so hard that the movement could be seen from the space station. Betty’s continued level of unimpressed with anything any male does on this show is EPIC.

Gladys thinks he’s an asshat,  but Kate is already singing “Someday My Prince Will Come” with a pair of talking birds. It’s okay, Kate. We all go through these confused stages where we think we’re supposed to want what society tells us to want, but then we realize that our prince has boobs. Maybe Kate is just reacting to the note from Leon that told her she should show at his choir practice, since she is in Rebellious Mode.

Marco introduces himself to Gene as That Guy Who Knocked Up Your Mom. Kidding! But Lorna’s face looks like Marco just challenged Gene to a Penis Sword Fight. That’s a thing people with penises do, right? I mean, that’s a thing I’d do if I had a penis.

Kate goes over to talk to Gene, and maybe flirts with him, but it’s hard to tell because Disney Princesses don’t flirt so much as sing their feelings while accompanied by woodland creatures. The reactions of the other girls to this flirting is priceless, especially Betty’s silent death wish upon seeing the love of her life try to hit on a dude.

The Secretary Formerly Known As Carol needs Gladys to help with the soldier relief party she is putting together, but Gladys is having poker night with the broskies and the brewskies. Vera says she’ll help, and Gladys said she forgot to mention it’s for Popular Girls Only. Vera is like, honey, let’s just say I’m popular with the boys.

Every time I see Carol, I just want to say:

Lorna is putting on an extremely intense dinner for Gene, but Gene doesn’t really seem to care. Gene, I can already tell you are a Grade A Buttface. Bob thinks maybe Lorna is going overboard but 1940s Version of a Helicopter Mom, okay? Also their neighbor Ellie is incredible and needs her own spinoff.

Vera shows up to the Popular Girls Relief Effort Party, which is being run by a MRS. BEAVERTON. You cannot make that shit up. If that was a shoutout for the lesbians in the audience: thank you, we got the message loud and clear, carry on.

Betty and Gladys are about to sit down to Bro Poker Night, but it’s probably about as freezing in their house as it is my house right now. I’ll give you a hint. I am wearing an electric blanket as a poncho and can see my breath when I’m in the kitchen.

Sheila brings her date to the dinner and surprise, it’s Dr. Ned Patel! Lorna is like, really, you brought the only other man who has seen my vagina.

WoopWoop! It’s the popo! Nope, it’s the Juggaloes. Nope, it’s a black-out drill because the escaped Nazis have reached the city. Betty’s outside stoking the furnace and getting her butch on but this noise does not bode well, especially because she’s being spied on by a Fairly Obvious Plot Device!

Over at Club Hot Mess, Gene is being a massive asshole in front of the guests. No one is really sure how to react to his bullshit, but I feel like Bob punching him in the face would really help. Gene says he’s gonna go check the streets for the guests who haven’t arrived yet. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Leon’s playing piano when Kate walks in. Leon thinks that having the choir would be really good for Kate, but Kate is using other routes to face her PTSD. Kate, your perfect Disney face continues to break my heart, and Bomb Girls Powers-That-Be, high five for handling a PTSD storyline so well. Leon tells her to be careful. Leon, you’re a really good guy.

Over at the Popular Girls’ Table, Vera says that the system they’ve established is a “cock-up.” Everyone goes silent because these are fancy ladies who do not have such vulgar vocabulary. Mrs. Beaverton also thinks they’ve got a lot of cock on their hands, and as someone with a name like Beaverton, she is all about removing as much cock from the situation as possible. She thinks Vera’s idea is just swell and Vera gives Carol the ol’ Suck It Bitch grin.

Betty and Gladys are in the middle of Bro Poker Night when they are disturbed by Giganticus Assholus, aka Gene, whose face I want to pummel into a cement wall. Turns out that not only did he ditch the dinner Lorna threw for him, but Kate invited him to crash Bro Poker Night. This guy is literally everything I hated about every single male I encountered during college parties.

Goddess bless you, Betty McRae, VicMu Resident Man-Hating Lesbian.

Back at Club Hot Mess, everyone is like “I wonder where Gene went” and then everyone is like “I wonder where all the whiskey went” and then everyone is like “I wonder if Gene and the whiskey went to the same place.” Sheila briefly reminds her mother that a) her brother is a Grade A Piece O’ Shit and b) in case no one has noticed, they haven’t fed her boyfriend yet.

Carol makes some classist remarks and Vera realizes she has way better things to do than listen to the popular girls bitch about how bad they are at stuffing things into bags. Beaverton, as her name noble would suggest, is a fair and sympathetic lady who thinks Carol is being a total shit.

Back at the Sudden Party, Kate is getting cozy with Dipshit Enormous. Betty and Gladys are in the corner guarding the throne, neither amused nor impressed. Betty in particular is making some faces that I would rate at an “oh god” level.

I wouldn’t have imagined those two together.

You and me both.

But then Kate asks Betty to go get some pickles and we all know what happens when Kate asks Betty to do something. You know, I make a lot of sad faces, cry at the laptop screen, all that stuff. Sargent Dickhole asks Kate to sing a duet with him, and when she has trouble singing because it’s a complex and serious issue, he’s like “haha rusty pipes.” Gladys’ face looks like she has a rusty pipe she’d like to bury somewhere in his face, but she quickly joins in to cover for Kate. To all of this I simply say: IS EVERYONE IN THE CAST THIS MULTITALENTED AND WHY HAS THERE NOT BEEN A MUSICAL EPISODE YET?

Down in the basement, Obvious Plot Device is armed and dangerous. He attacks Betty mid-pickle fetching and I gasped and freaked out a lot at the prospect of him hurting her. Betty is a fucking BEAST though, and wrestles the poker away from him so she can stab him with it. Moral of this story: do not get between Betty McRae and her girl’s pickles. Now Betty’s got a stabbed Pet Nazi and some issues to solve.

Pet Nazi starts speaking in German, and Betty understands him. He confronts her and she immediately denies that she is German, telling him to speak in English. Oh, I see. This is like that time I kissed a girl as a teenager and we both immediately denied that we were gay. Got it.

Dr. Ned has to run because he is doing important doctor things like saving people, not getting drunk in girls’ boarding house, just being a generally upstanding dude who maybe any parent would want with their daughter? Lorna is mostly scarred by the fact he doesn’t eat beef. Looks like no one has eaten yet because Lorna insists on Gene returning home. Sorry, but it appears Captain Douchnozzle is too busy being a piece of shit pie.

Lorna and Sheila are fighting in the kitchen because Sheila would just like to remind her mother that she is one of her children and also brought a nice dude to dinner and everyone treated him like shit. In Part Two of the Corbett Family Smacking People in the Face, Lorna smacks Sheila in the face.

Downstairs, Betty is treating the soldier’s wound because no one is gonna let her keep her new pet Nazi if they see she’s not a responsible pet owner. Pet Nazi tells her that she is hiding part of herself away. Clearly he has already happened upon her secret basement DVD collection with every season of The L Word. Unfortunately he is also still a traitorous Nazi and tries to kill her. She starts speaking in German (!!!) and kicks him off.

Turns out that Betty McRae is actually Betty Something German, and her family had to hide their German heritage during World War I as people were being attacked or rounded up in camps. As a result, she learned German from her grandmother along with a recipe for onion cake which I believe is the same thing as tarte flambée, which is what my people call Look We Made A Superior Version of Pizza.

Back at Sudden Party, Gene is enough of a skeezebag that he opens his flirtations with Gladys by saying that he ALREADY KNOWS SHE HAS A FIANCE and he is gonna try to get in there anyway. Seriously Lieutenant Shitballs, could you be a worse person? There is a fucking Nazi in the basement and I am actually enjoying his screentime more than yours. Kate stumbles on this situation and believes some actual shit is going down rather than Gladys rejecting the gigantic dildo. Kate just desperately wants to be normal, and it breaks my heart that this seemed like part of that journey to her.

Mr. Akins’ wife gets more plastered than a sophomore at a rugby social and this allows the remaining Corbetts to laugh away their troubles. Thank goddess, because those kids are in dire need of laughter and sunshine.

Gladys and Kate have a talk, and it rips my heart out a little bit. Gladys tells her that her father is gone, and there’s nothing left to fear. But it’s so much more complicated than that, because Kate is a survivor of abuse, which means that every day will be a little bit more of a struggle, and every decision will be that much harder, and everything she wants to forget will haunt her that much longer.

So what are you afraid of?

Everything.

Betty tells Pet Nazi he can go but then she tricks him because Betty is not about that shit. Gene comes out with his balls waving around and beats the shit out of Pet Nazi. This is the first time he’s ever seen his enemy up close, and it has an “important impact” on him. Betty tells the German that he’s wrong and she is not like him. Swoon, Betty Something German, you are such a magnificent champion of lesbians. Kate runs up to Betty and asks her what happens and in easily the best line of this entire series, Betty literally brushes the fucking dirt off her shoulders and says “I didn’t get pickles.”

I would also like to just say that while General Fuckwit and Gladys were processing things, this was going on in the background:

Upstairs, they make some incredibly intense faces and Ali Liebert let me just remind you that you are ON WATCH for this behavior.

He told me none of us can hide forever.

We do what we have to…to survive.

When we’re finally safe, it’s okay to stop fighting.

Now we get our end montage showing everyone getting their shit back together, including Gladys dealing with her Gay Boyfriend Feelings, Gene feeling dark and tortured about how shitty he is, and Kate singing in the choir, bless her beautiful Disney soul. Until next time, babes who drop bombs!