Religious Male Congressional Witnesses: We do not want the compromise in which insurance companies pay for contraceptive coverage at their own expense because, even though religious institutions would not be paying for it, we do not want the female employees or students at religious institutions to have the option of having dirty bad sex without making babies.

Sandra Fluke: I wish to explain that hormonal contraception is used for a variety of medical reasons, and that such prescriptions often have nothing to do with sex or babies at all.

Rush Limbaugh: SLUT!

I’m one of three co-writers, with Andy Cobb and Michael Damanskis.

 

As of this afternoon, I have my first report, via Twitter, from the Midwest: Based on a sample size of two (2) cats, we have a 50% rate of unusual floofiness.

That’s about on-pace with the West Coast, and way ahead of the East Coast, which does not seem to be unusually furry. However, we’re in single-digit numbers all around, so the scores can still really change.

No matter where you live, I want YOU (you) to participate in the Unscientific Cat Coat Survey. Living outside the United States? On another continent entirely? Hanging out in a hemisphere that is distinctly summery at the moment? I don’t care! We are on to something here, people! Every bit of information helps.

Just leave your floofiness report, geographic area, and the most shame-inducing song that’s still in rotation in your music collection (optional) in the comments of the main Unscientific Cat Coat Survey post or, if you’re really lazy, in the comments for this post.

Together we will bring the weather-predicting world to its knees.

And then we will be complete pains in the butt until it opens a can of tuna.

First off: I know this is not science. We all agree on that.

But it could be interesting, which is one of my favorite excuses for doing things.

It came up because I noticed a month or two ago that my cat Mae, whom I have owned/been the personal assistant to for 15 years now, grew a winter undercoat like I’ve never seen this year. She’s a short-haired cat, and for the first time I’m having to comb and even cut mats out of her fur. (You would be correct in guessing that neither of us is happy with this development.)

Anecdotally, I’ve heard that a cat’s undercoat can be predictive of the severity of winter weather, but Mae (and I) lived in Chicago for eight years and she never grew a coat like this. And we’re in Los Angeles now.

I should not that there’s only a 50% rate of unusual undercoating at my place. My other cat, Grendel, is quite sleek. However, he’s half Siamese, a breed not generally known for getting all floofy, and he’s only six months old. What the hell does he know? He can barely deal with seeing rain.

After another session of trying to get all the fur tufts out of Mae’s butt, I tweeted about her new coat and quickly got notes back from two fellow cat owners, one also in California and one in Oregon, whose charges had also gotten crazy huge for winter – and to a degree that the owners hadn’t seen before.

So I’m curious. In the interest of, well, not science, but of anecdotal information that could one day lead to science, or at least something interesting, please tell me:

Is your cat unusually furry this winter?

If not, how’s the fur situation relative to previous years?

Where in the world are you?

What is a song that you love, love, love, but hope no one finds in your music collection?

Wait, are you lying about any significant part of this?

Please leave your response in the comments on this post, right below there, for ease of information gathering and to avoid duplications from Twitter and Facebook and stuff.

I am totally serious about collecting this information into a Feline Fur Index.

Together we will bring important knowledge to the world. Or at least unimportant speculation that could lead to something-or-other. Which is, as I have mentioned, totally worth it.

Thank you.

This Saturday was the “Thanksgiving Family Forum,” a Republican debate minus Mormons Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, who wanted to avoid the very real possibility of the incredibly far-right audience – and maybe one or two of the candidates – screeching “EEEEEK Satan Cult! Satan Cult! Not real Christians!”

(On a side note, let’s remember that the Mormon church leaders spent tens of millions of dollars to stop gay marriage in California and other states, at least in part as an attempt to gain street cred with far-right Evangelical churches. It must hurt to be subjected to so much garden-variety fear and bigotry when they put so much effort into spreading slightly different garden-variety fear and bigotry. No, those aren’t tears of joyous laughter. I have something in my eye.)

The forum was sponsored by The Family Leader, Focus on the Family, and the National Organization for Marriage, so everyone already knew it would be a Who Hates the Gays the Most Derby. But, perhaps more important, it started at 5 p.m. Eastern time on a Saturday and was only broadcast on the Internet. Even journalists weren’t watching this thing. The tally on my livestream never got above 20,000 people.

So instead of the usual dogwhistle far-right pandering, the candidates felt free to really cut loose. Here’s the most terrifying stuff you may have missed.

1. They’re not even pretending it’s about abortion anymore. It’s about personhood.

Radical anti-choicers used to hide behind abortion as a principled stand in favor of life. But they’ve won enough battles there – making abortion effectively illegal or impossible to obtain in great swathes of the country – that they’re pushing it a step forward. They’re also giving the game away, but it seems like they feel confident in doing that.

Personhood laws are not about abortion. They are about outlawing many forms of birth control. The IUD and most forms of the pill would be illegal in any areas where these laws pass, as would, arguably, chemotherapy for pregnant women with cancer.

If there is one thing to be clear on, it is this: The personhood movement is not about stopping abortions or saving lives.

They are trying to take away your control of your own fertility. Even if you are part of a married, straight couple, these people want to take away your right to decide how many children you will have and when.

You want to put your financial resources and time into raising two kids as well as you can and within your means? Too bad. Michele Bachmann, the personhood movement, and, apparently, Jesus want you to keep having them until you are cast into poverty and/or the mother dies in childbirth.

And if you don’t like those options, they want you to just stop having sex. Again, not dirty, bad premarital sex or even scarier, dirty same-sex sex. They want to control what married, straight couples can do in the privacy of their own homes. They want to force a choice between years of abstinence or kids until you’re broken.

Nice folks, huh?

Speaking of which…

2. They hate and fear members of the LGBT community even more than they usually let on.

I can’t even begin to chronicle how much they blamed on the LGBT community and how much they want us disappeared, or at least penned into some sort of offshore island. Long story short, we are physically ripping apart the fabric of all that is good and America itself.

Well, at least we know now that the huge increase in low-level earthquakes isn’t from fracking.

Rick Santorum has been savvy enough lately to start using a take on this in which (surprise!) he is the real victim here. He says he doesn’t hate The Gays – He loves them! Loves them so much! – it’s just that he has sincere religious beliefs that he is entitled to write into the law for all of us. And to accuse him (or Bachmann, or Paul, or Newt, or Cain, or Perry, or Romney, or the sponsors of the Thanksgiving Family Forum) of bigotry is actually evidence that you, the accuser, are the real bigot here.

Oh, really? Try saying the things they say routinely, in public, as though they are matters of not just common sense but vital national interest, about any other group.

“People of Belgian descent should not be allowed to marry each other, and the government should not force me as a Christian to tolerate that.”

“We cannot allow anyone under 5′ 8″ to adopt children.”

“Children need to have two parents who are college-educated. Allowing people who don’t have at least a four-year bachelor’s degree to raise kids is akin to abuse. Those kids are better off in the foster care system.”

Those statements clearly carry animosity. They are prejudiced and hateful. So you don’t get to claim they aren’t if you’re just popping new subjects into the same templates.

Just because it makes Santorum, Bachmann et al get a case of the sads when you point out that they are vicious bigots who are actively spreading hate and fear does not mean that it isn’t true.

The current crop of GOP candidates, with the exception of Huntsman, is in favor of incorporating open bigotry into our national policy. Huntsman is widely seen as having no chance whatsoever. Largely because he refuses to participate in the open bigotry.

Conservatives claim they are the party of personal responsibility. They should take responsibility for the cupcakes iced with bile that they’ve been handing out.

3. These supposed Constitution fetishists want to destroy the judicial branch of our government.

Even though they were clearly pandering to the event sponsors, I was astonished at how hard all the candidates came out against the third branch of our government.

I honestly couldn’t tell if it’s because they don’t know how the government is supposed to work – Bachmann said, for real, “Why is it that the big decisions always get made by the Supreme Court?” – or if they know but want to pander to the stupid and people who are angry enough that they just don’t care.

In this case, I think I was actually giving them too much credit as decent human beings by assuming, at first, that they were that ignorant about the basic makeup of  government they hoped to lead.

But look at those first two items again. These candidates, collectively if not individually, know exactly what they’re doing.

Our government was set up with checks and balances to stop legislators from overstepping and trampling on people’s rights.

But trampling on people’s rights is what’s on the agenda here. It is the main thrust of the current GOP platform – we didn’t even get to the part where they want to legalize stopping brown people on the street for looking too foreign in more states than they already have.

For today’s GOP, trampling rights is second in importance only to protecting multimillionaires from taxation. It even ranks above constant, bloody, macho-boosting warfare!

The radical right, which has become the mainsteam GOP, wants to try to legislate gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people out of existence – or, failing that, into the closet, and out of the workplace. They want to stop any woman – any couple – from choosing whether or not to have children, and when, and how many. They want to stop even married, straight couples from having nonprocreative sex.

You’d better believe they hate judges. Judges are there to hold the line. The judges are the ones who are supposed to tell them no, you cannot legislate discrimination; no, you cannot control the sex lives of consenting adults; no, your narrow interpretation of a single religion cannot be imposed as everyone’s law.

And this crop of candidates wants to stop that. They know what judges do: Judges thwart the far right’s cruelest instincts, and the far right cannot stand it.

They talked about term limits for Supreme Court justices – because what we need is for that institution to become even more politicized and subject to the whims of the moment – and actually talked about allowing Congress to eliminate entire courts that are “unnecessary,” by which they mean courts that stand in the way by producing rulings the Bigot Brigade doesn’t like.

Gingrich even talked about eliminating a specific judge whose ruling Newt didn’t like. Attempting to intimidate a judge is a felony… Unless you do so as a part of your presidential campaign.

These candidates will shred anything that stands in their way, including the Constitution, and, if you’re not careful, including you.

Even if you’re a white, straight, conservative, married, native-born Christian, don’t get cocky. Romney and Huntsman didn’t skip the Thanksgiving Family Forum because it was impossible to attend it and look like adults. They skipped it because they knew that one false move could get them, the wrong kind of Christians, thrown under the steamroller.

And you never know where that steamroller will point next.

Chapter 7 – The Morning After

This chapter has been poorly named. It’s the morning after the trial, but still clearly the same morning where we just were. So it’s still just that first morning after, and not the morning after that.

In fact, people are still standing around staring at Wheedle’s abandoned uniform! I’m hoping someone will pour water on his clothes to see if they’ll spring to life like sea monkeys.

Abby arrives and stares at Bob’s stuff too, even though she, it turns out, can break this case wide open. She’s stunned by the news of the shooting in Boston, and judges it comparable in strangeness to seeing Bob Wheedle sitting in the road staring at the Pine place, which she did just now.

Mystery solved! For the love of all that is good, everyone please stop staring at the clothes now!

Back at the Pine place, Bob puts his blanket around Sarah and the baby and hey! What happened to all the snow from earlier? It’s… Actually really green and leafy out there. I’m going to put it down to symbolism.

There is also something in the background that looks disconcertingly like a saguaro cactus, but I’m going to let it go.

Bob tells Sarah that deserters from the British army get shot. Again, something he could have thought about before.

Bob tells Sarah that he didn’t worry about death before, because he used to be dead inside, but now he does understand death, because Sarah made him alive once, which he only just realized last night when she walked away, when he must have been sort of undead.

Give him some room; it’s a complex thesis.

Whatever it means, Sarah gets it.

Wheedle gets down on one knee and proposes while Aunt Pine awesomely faints in the background. I guess she also noticed the cactus.

Loudmouth Abby, who was just at the inn, runs back to the inn again, explaining to Rhodes that she just ran back to the Pines’ to see what was up, but now she’s running back here, and oh, she can’t believe it, and she grabs the pastor and tells him to come on running back to the Pines’ again, and Silas says “Abby, you had better tell us!” like he still can’t guess what’s up. What the hell did they put in Silas’s suckling pig this morning? He’s a mess.

Sarah and Bob get married!

Then they turn and Bob asks what’s out yonder in the wilderness. It’s Vermont! And it’s full of danger, resources, and potential, just like another state I can think of to the West.

Back at the inn, Silas notes that Bob seems to be deserting. Which, frankly, is pretty tacky, since he mentions it to Reddish, who is duty-bound to hunt Wheedle down and shoot him.

Reddish says he’ll maybe conduct a more leisurely manhunt, right after breakfast.

And, secure in the knowledge that Bob, Sarah, and Baby Wheedle have one meal’s worth of time to escape into the wilderness, we’re done.

I hope you learned some important concepts from Courage: New Hampshire. I know I did.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go stare at someone until we form a lifelong bond.

Chapter 6 – Verdict

Time for some awesome. The liberal justice who earlier was randomly and unproductively concerned with educating the natives the Colonists have been pushing out of their homeland is at it again. He’s now saying he won’t apologize for considering the Governor’s needs in this case. Elitist.

Rhodes admonishes him sharply. “Frederick Stokes! The Governor will not be there at the great white throne to unsoil your breeches!”

And then Rhodes walks off like a boss.

I stand by my assessment of this show as really, really slow moving and boring, but if Riley starts dropping in more platinum nuggets of dialogue like this, I will totally throw parties to watch future episodes. I imagine there will be quite a few breeches that require unsoiling.

The three judges walk into the courthouse, with Rhodes looking pissed. Uh oh. It’s possible that we may not see justice done here.

Trapp smiles a terrifically oily smile, and a wistful Bob stares at Sarah as he’s unshackled. The courthouse empties in slow motion, but Bob can’t get to Sarah. Sad music.

Rhodes chats with Reddish about how corrupt the justice of man can get and wishes that God would lend a little smackdown occasionally.

Sergeant Tim admits that he’s going to be getting short-sheeted a lot when he gets back to the regiment for testifying, but what can you do? Then he asks Rhodes to have one of his bazillion kids wake Bob so they can hit the trail. They have a wacky moment where each thinks Bob was sleeping in a different place – one of them apparently thought he was less than five feet away – and then they realize Bob pulled the old blankets-over-stuff-to-make-the-bed-look-full trick. He’s no longer a prisoner, so I don’t see the point, but why pass up a perfectly good ruse?

We cut to a blanketed and slouch-hatted figure walking up the road to the Pine place. (Hint: It’s Bob.)

Bob sits down and stares at the Pine place, looking like young, confused Gandalf.

I used to wonder what, other than God, brought those two crazy kids together, but now I see that it’s a love of creepy courtship. I can only imagine what that romantic day and night in the barn must have been like – staring unblinkingly at each other, carving each others’ likenesses into corncob dolls, suddenly revealing bits of information about each other that they could have only known if they’d been obsessively digging around on each others’ FaceCarvedTreeTrunk accounts… Magical.

Back at the inn, Silas and Reddish are still staring dumbly at Bob’s stuff that was under the blankets, confirming for skeptics that the term “Rhodes scholar” did not originate in Courage.

Suddenly, Fox bursts in! The troops in Boston fired on the town and a number were killed!

Silas asks, “Troops killed?” and Fox is forced to clarify “No, the town! The soldiers fired on the town!” Rhodes is being so slow in this scene that I was afraid he’d ask, “Buildings killed?” but he seems to get it.

Everyone stands around openmouthed – literally openmouthed – as they take in this new information.

Back to the Pine Farm! Why did we bother to do that cutting back and forth? We’ll never know. Aunt and Uncle Pine see Wheedle sitting all sadly on their property and go get Sarah and Prop Baby.

Next up: Chapter 7 – The Morning After (Yes, I know that makes no sense. Quit being a Mr. Trapp and just roll with it.)

Chapter 5 – Trial 2

That’s right: more trial!

The midwife and Aunt Pine recount their stories that Sarah named Bob Wheedle as the father of her child and then inexplicably swore them to secrecy, and others confirm Sarah’s good, too honest, too trusting character. Uncle Pine has the trickiest moment, when he confirms that Wheedle deserved to be locked up like an animal but then admits that he totally gave the winner of the 1769 Miss Naively Trusting Pageant a key.

Oh, lord. Simeon Trapp calls laborer Braxton Cage to the stand. Have you ever been to an amateur production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? This actor is the guy who plays Bottom in all of them.

He is here to falsely besmirch Sarah’s name, which would be a huge shock if the Trudge Mob hadn’t told us during their completely pointless scene that this very thing would be happening. Way to spoiler, Mob.

Cage says that he heard Sarah and one of her Nameless Friends “carrying on” and ogling the British troops one afternoon. Scandal! He insists on characterizing what Sarah says as a “sermon,” and then puts on his Sexy Face and elaborates:

“Ruth and Boaz… Isaac and Rebecca… The Song of Solomon.”

Because when young girls are swooning over dashing soldiers, the first two things they think of are a marriage between a 40-year-old widow and a kind elderly man and an arranged marriage between two total strangers. Well done, O Prince of Innuendo.

But with The Song of Solomon, we get it: Sounds like those young Colonial chippies were hot to trudge! And Cage claims that they’d have gone with any of those soldiers! The courtroom audience explodes into a frenzy of scandalized rhubarbing, hubbubbing, and peas-and-carrotsing.

The ladies scream that those are outrageous lies, and then Sarah makes eye contact with a perturbed Bob and sends over a Category 5 Guiltstorm.

Mr. Fox leaps up to save the day by revealing that on the day in question, Braxton Cage was thrown out of the tavern for excessive drunkenness.

Worst. False witness. Ever.

The defense has no further witnesses, but the prosecution has a surprise! One of the justices behind Rhodes points out that this is “most irregular,” but Rhodes hears him anyway because the witness had to travel a long way, and what the hell, we’re all on Sarah’s side.

Not that Rhodes is an activist judge or anything.

We learn that the new witness is a Redcoat named Timothy Reddish.

In case any of you had money riding on it, the calling of said witness was the moment where I reached the limit of my tolerance for symbolic last names and put my fist through the window.

I lost some finger mobility, but the searing pain distracted me enough to carry on and finish this recap, so it was worth it. I am very much looking forward to the next episode of Courage: New Hampshire, in which we’ll meet Robert Taxhikingcommunist and James Patrioticjobcreator.

Everyone is shocked to see sergeant Reddish, who testifies that Wheedle was all torn up about leaving Courage (and, by implication, Sarah). Reddish also explains that he and Wheedle came from similar low origins and owe everything they are now to the King and the King’s army. The actor playing Reddish has picked out and sticks to a plausible accent for this origin story, for which he wins a thousand bonus points and some soft, grateful weeping.

It would be nice if, given their similar backgrounds, Bob Wheedle and Tim Reddish also spoke in similar dialects.

But much like vital infrastructure spending, we can’t always get everything we want, even if it would really help hold things together.

Sergeant Reddish opens up and says that Bob was in love with Sarah. And why is he doing this? Because he, Reddish, knows what it is to be called a bastard! Sarah, awash with emotion, cuddles her completely stiff prop baby bundle.

Dang. Reddish is clearly a stand-up guy with a good conscience, but I’m concerned about all this empathy he’s throwing around. Glenn Beck told me that too much empathy is what drove the Nazis.

Fortunately, it’s met with an immediate counterpush: Outside at deliberations, Nameless Justice #2 prods Rhodes about setting up a new college for the natives and Silas shuts him down because they are in the middle of considering their verdict, for crying out loud.

Liberals. Always trying to drag in entitlements.

Everyone waits for the verdict. The Pines sit at a booth with tankards. Reddish and Wheedle have a private chat and Wheedle says that he doesn’t want to take a wife back with him because Sarah would be in real physical danger from someone like that “fatcat” officer they both remember.

Which, maybe something you could have thought of earlier, Bob? Or are consequences too much like contraception, and best kept out of the equation? I have so much to learn.

The justices are still deliberating. Silas Rhodes is on the side of Right, but there’s still so much actual law to consider.

Fox and Trapp also have a meal together. We know that Fox is a smart one because he has a book again. Try not to hold it against him. Remember, it’s probably a Bible.

Trapp says Fox shouldn’t hold the stunt with the drunk against him, because after all, he’s just “greasing the Governor’s carriage wheels.” Ew.

Sarah weeps because she realizes she was wrong in a way too. Not for foolishly continuing to chase a coward and a jerk who was willing to abandon her and then lie about it, but for wanting to leap into becoming a wife and a mother before God was truly ready for her to do so. Now she knows to be content wherever she is until the Big Guy makes it clear.

Only her baby has no father! What will she do if the court doesn’t order Bob to marry her? I mean, yes, she seems to have been pretty cool with it for a year or so, but now she’s really upset!

When, oh, when will we get that verdict?

Coming up: Chapter 6 – Verdict

(On a sad note, we’re done with Braxton. Here’s one last glimpse to help you carry on.)

Chapter 4 – Trial 1

A torch-carrying mob!

Well, actually more of a polite, trudging mob. But still. They show up at the inn concerned that the visiting lawyer is going to try to besmirch poor Sarah Pine’s name. Because if there’s one thing that kept Colonial New Englanders up at night, it was making sure that no one talked smack about unwed mothers.

The mob has heard that Lawyer Trapp has lined up some ne’er-do-well to make claims about Sarah, and they want to run Trapp out of town.

Rhodes talks them out of mob violence, on the grounds that it would just prove the King’s men right. Or something. And so the mob politely trudges away. Phew!

Morning! Bob Wheedle and Mean Simeon Trapp are walking to the trial. Wheedle seems vaguely concerned about Sarah Pine’s reputation, but Trapp shuts him down. No mercy! He will sully this young woman’s reputation if that’s what it takes.

(On a side note, please, please do not mistake these conflicting needs and desires for an actual buildup of dramatic tension.)

With the exception of the multifaceted weaseling of Mr. Trapp, (and for that I raise my tankard to Basil Hoffman, by far my favorite actor in the production), every character delivers his or her lines in a dutiful fashion and then seemingly resigns himself or herself to whatever is going on as the scene ends. There is no inchoate longing, no delicious anticipation. Just a sense of “That’s that, then.” and maybe a sigh. Perhaps it’s a secretly ingenious way of showing the influence of a fatalistic Puritan worldview. Or something.

Anyway, trial!

It’s being held in the Darkest Meeting Hall in all New Hampshire.

Personal note to Writer/Producer/Actor/Director James Patrick Riley: I know that Colonial meeting halls probably were exactly this dark, so points for authenticity there, yes. However, you are making a TV show, one about a put-upon unwed mother and the laws of God, and sensitive viewers may need to be reassured that this is not about to turn into a horror flick.

What I’m saying is that you are allowed to discreetly hang some klieg lights up in the rafters so we can see.

Michele Bachmann fought hard for your lightbublular freedoms, sir. Don’t toss them aside so lightly.

(Though, having said all that, I would totally watch Goodwife Carrie or Rosemary’s Colonial Baby. Get on it, film industry!)

OK, for real this time: The trial! Did I mention it’s just the teeniest bit boring?

Mr. Fox, Sarah’s attorney, goes into his case, finally fully explaining the whole deserters/kidnappers thing from half an hour ago: The King’s 29^th captured some deserters, but since they were ordered (By whom?) to dress in plainclothes while doing so, the townspeople of Courage thought the soldiers were really kidnappers and mistakenly – but totally understandably – arrested them.

So while Bob Wheedle was temporarily imprisoned in the Pines’ barn while everything got sorted out, he seduced young Sarah.

Which, you’ll notice, still makes no damned sense.

I’ve been puzzling about why this torturous plot point has to be in there at all, but it makes sense if you work from the point of view that Saintly Sarah has to be really truly unassailably pure and good. Which means she can’t have just gotten to know Bob Wheedle while he was stationed in town over a long period of time because then she would have been brazenly talking with Redcoats.

This way, when Bob is temporarily imprisoned in the Pine barn, he and Sarah are thrown together, because what you do when you have a possible kidnapper tied up in the barn is send your naïve niece out to feed him and make sure he has enough freedom of movement for some sweet sweet loving should she happen to decide that God wants them to be married.

I’m pretty sure that method of confinement is recommended in Poor Richard’s Almanack somewhere.

The weird kidnapper/soldier in disguise thing allows Sarah to be in close quarters with a man but saves her from falling in love with an actual criminal, and really, once you think about it, the whole thing could not be more neat and tidy. I don’t know why I even brought it up.

Sarah Pine comes to the stand and for some reason has picked out some long scarlet gloves with a matching bonnet ribbon. Evidently Mr. Fox isn’t a master of trial prep.

I realize that we’re meant to feel a sort of resonance with Hester Prynne here, what with the scarlet and the affair and the secrecy, but, again, this pushes us into difficult territory. It’s as though Writer/Director/Actor/Producer/Dreamweaver Riley hasn’t noticed that a heavy portion of the Tea Party membership would be firmly on the side of the Puritan bluenoses if not for one notable hiccup during the 2008 presidential campaign.

But since that hiccup did happen, and many people on the Tea Party side came to the sudden realization that every woman lives in a difficult and unique web of circumstances and choices when it comes to her sexuality and it’s wrong to rush to judgment, maybe we could ease up on single mothers a bit? Perhaps even stop being such hard-liners when it comes to getting reliable contraception? Maybe that’s where Riley is secretly leading us? No? Just checking.

Sarah seems pretty chipper about the whole thing – she clearly sees this as the “cute meeting” story she’ll tell on her anniversaries.

Sarah elaborates that she cared for Bob while he recovered his strength and by the next evening he was telling her stories, which means that on a small, busy working farm she was apparently allowed to spend hours at a time with the prisoner in the barn and no one noticed.

This whole pregnancy thing may have been a blessing in disguise. It was only a matter of time until the Pine clan had Sarah take their life savings to Atlantic City to find a good investment.

Mr. Fox asks if Wheedle offered her his friendship and she replies, “I would say he offered considerable more than that.”

Too much information, Miss Pine!

The whole courtroom is embarrassed until we clarify that Bob offered a marriage proposal – or at least what Sarah took as one. For some reason we never quite resolve that point.

Mr. Fox asks Sarah to confirm that her romantic prisoner/fiancé-in-the-barn encounter is her one and only, which, duh, it’s what every girl dreams of for her First Time, and she’s finally done testifying.

No, wait! She isn’t! It’s Mean Lawyer Trapp’s turn!

Trapp intends to – oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Trick? Snare? Entangle? I’ll think of it one day. Anyway, he intends to ambush and box in the innocent Sarah Pine.

Trapp sure does have a lot of fancy words… Only we don’t hear any of them. Instead we get a montage of shots of Trapp talking while Sarah looks beleaguered. None of her answering him, mind you. Just him apparently haranguing the court.

This is another ingenious sidestep.

You might think that in an episode entitled “The Travail of Sarah Pine,” the part with the actual travail in it would be the centerpiece. Perhaps she’d engage the Godless Trapp in a firey back-and-forth of villainy vs. righteousness, or at least some “You can’t handle the truth!”–style dramatic screaming.

…But such a thing would require thinking of new ways to talk about the pretty basic facts we’ve already gone over. And, more important, such a thing might require Simeon Trapp to say a few things out loud that – even though we’d all agree such things would be truly wrong to say – our writer/producer/director/glue that holds this Colonial community together would rather people didn’t connect with Sarah Pine or her invisible companion character, Brittle Pine.

So instead we get a Montage of Implied Lawyerly Jerkishness. And it works just swell except for the part where you don’t get any of that exciting dramatic tension, and it’s mostly done in long shots so Sarah looks like she’s less beaten down and despairing than sort of annoyed by the whole thing.

After five or six shots of montage, Rhodes steps in and tells Trapp to knock it off.

So Trapp asks poor Sarah a question out loud: If they were married(ish), why did Sarah hightail it back to her room instead of spending the night in her straw-covered marriage bed?

She doesn’t have a great answer for that, saying it didn’t seem proper. Trapp notes that her propriety instincts kicked in at an odd time and the whole courtroom goes wild with umbrage!

Rhodes adjourns court until the next day and takes Trapp outside for a stern talking-to. Not that he’s an activist judge or anything. Trapp points out that he’s just pursuing his case and Rhodes says that if people lose faith in the king’s justice they’ll make their own, and then essentially threatens Trapp with the wrath of the Politely Trudging Mob if he doesn’t shape up.

You’re on Colonial tenterhooks, aren’t you?

Next up: Chapter 5 – More trial!

[Bewildered? Catch up on chapters 1, 2, and 3!]