THE LATTER WITH LASSITUDE

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

The Taillights problem is becoming acute. Unless an extension of the terms is sought, this next week, the season four finale, marks the last episode that Frank is compelled to wait to watch with his wife Gloria, neither viewing it in real time without her or surreptitiously accessing the taped program on his own. This agreement has been in place since midway through the show’s first season, and Frank has only obtained special dispensation once, when Gloria was out of town visiting her sister the week that the second season’s famed “Back from the Dead” cliffhanger was to be resolved and Frank heard a rumor at work that the episode was so spectacular that even if he held off watching it he was certain to hear chatter about it from others unable to contain themselves. He called Gloria in the afternoon and she called him back in the evening, at which time she released him from his obligation for that episode alone. By the time of the season three premiere she had returned to her previous stance. “I have seen Taillights with Frank at home, and I have seen it with others in other locations,” she wrote. “The former arrangement fills me with elation; the latter with lassitude.” The expiration of the agreement has resulted in Gloria exhibiting what one of her closest friends has described as “a mix of sadness and rage that might look like regulation if you had no idea what kind of person she was.” It is Gloria’s express wish to preserve her favorite show to home, and consequently most observers believe that she will extend the terms of the agreement, though the thinking is that she is strategically delaying action until Frank feels less constrained by her other demands: that he wait for her to get coffee each morning, that he not eat at Two Eyes Diner without her, that he can only go to bed before her on nights when they have had sex in the morning. It is still likely to the point of certainty that the Taillights desideratum will be back in place before the start of the fifth season, when the mystery of Susan’s illness will be addressed and Robbie will begin to exhibit the fruits of his intelligence training.