Heels It has only gotten better with each episode due to the pace and order with which the writers have haggled over the backstories of these small-town fighting gods and goddesses. “House Show” turned the drips into a torrent, giving us the juicy details on what is shaping the characters' deepest relationship conflicts.
It turns out that Willie and Wild Bill's potential outbreak of friendship was just the latest chapter in their breakup story. A couple of decades ago, when Willie, Bill, and Tom Spade were building the DWL at Duffy, Willie was Bill's valet. She was also his girlfriend. But then the major league wrestling called Tom, Tom asked Willie to become his valet and she said yes. Now he feels it, especially when Bill, a vulnerable Bill we haven't seen yet, finally “consolidate[s] into a compelling thought ”how that made him feel, and how it changed him from a man capable of kindness to the Bill who threw a painful moment from his past in Willie's face. Bill admits that he loved Willie and that being thrown by Tom ruined him.
Willie admits his mistake and apologizes for it. But that doesn't excuse what Bill told him about the abortion he had so many years ago, especially when he brought him home when he seemed to have nowhere else to go. She was a "fucking oasis" when her world collapsed around her, and any what happened between them could justify her daughter getting involved in the conflict.
Bill says, "That's why I apologize."
It's fantastic writing and the absorbing performances of Mary McCormack and Chris Bauer in the best scene of the season so far. I feel like this kind of reconciliation is not the end of this relationship. Willie and Bill seem uneasy and excited, even after each says "I'm sorry." Also, Bill is unemployed at the moment, but we don't think he made it back to Duffy, Georgia, just to get a shot at the DWL championship belt at the Leaky Dome, right?
The trip to the past also reveals that Bill has been betrayed by his friend Tom, not only by asking Willie to join him, but also by driving Wild Bill away from the DWL. That certainly must have made Bill's mega success in the majors that much more satisfying. Bill also has a brief encounter with Jack, who tells him that he is unaware of the nuances of Bill's friendship with Tom. Again, as much as we learned from this episode, I think there's still a lot more to come on this front (which is just one of the reasons I'm eagerly awaiting a season two renewal announcement).
More truths were also shed about Papa Spade, particularly the destructive ways in which he pitted Jack against Ace as children and continues to wreak havoc on them, both individually and as siblings.
Ace remembers an old videotape of a birthday party when he appears to be in his early teens. Ace and his friends play soccer in Spade's backyard while Tom and a teenage Jack watch. "Dan Marino times two, Jackie Boy," says Tom, smoking a cigar as he talks about his youngest son. Not only is he playing at being a proud dad, but he's teasing Jack as much as he praises Ace, commenting on how Ace's instincts and footwork are better than Jack's.
Seeing the tape shocks Ace, whose sports dreams were related to soccer, not wrestling. Tom's dreams for Ace were for him to also play soccer at the highest levels. This must intensify Ace's anger at feeling compelled to get involved with the DWL and resentment towards Jack for luring him into the family business, turning him into a ruffian. That still weighs heavily on Ace, who takes advantage of the christening of Big Jim's baby, Shelby, to apologize to Bobby Pin for breaking his leg and to Crystal for being cruel to her. He tells her that she is special.
For Jack, the wounds inflicted by his father surely still feed him. That's why he's obsessed with being a better fighter than Tom - he writes all the scripts and keeps the championship belt around his waist, and he will apparently do anything to make the DWL more successful than Tom. Tom, after all, never had the DWL match in front of 10,000 fans, as Jack is scheduled to do at the South Georgia State Fair.
But if one of the Spade brothers is more involved in their father's troubles than the other, it's Jack, whose near-blind devotion to the DWL continues to push their marriage to the limit. The squirrels, the gerbil, having his cell phone to his ear, missing Staci's solo performance at Shelby's christening, refusing to practice cornhole or catch fireflies with Thomas ... Jack is participating in only part of his life which involves wrestling and trusts Staci to take care of the rest. She tells him, as she has done so many times, that she and Thomas need more, more than the "frazzled, frazzled you."
Jack always pretends he's listening to what she says and promises to do better, but if she keeps having these conversations, is he really listening? Can it ever really change?
• Jack is also on the verge of losing one of his best fighters, Rooster, who has given Jack one chance after another to talk about his future. After one last attempt ends with Rooster feeling disrespected once again, he calls Gully and tells him that he is ready to join Florida Wrestling Dystopia.
• Apocalypse hosts an AA meeting at the Dome. What he says to the group - "Be grateful for your regrets ... They are there to remind you to be a better version" - is a sentiment that could be the theme of the episode, if not the entire series.
• While standing in Tom's old office, thinking about how dejected he was over the state of the DWL, Willie stares at the Apocalypse meeting. Could it have something to do with those giant mugs and liquor-filled mugs that you always carry with you?
• The Heels Writers aren't stingy with lightness either, and my favorite example is "House Show." Bobby, Diego, and Apocalypse are in the Dome's locker room, and the conversation turns to Apocalypse's robe, made by Carol Spade, which is soft but sore on her nipples. That leads to a debate about why men even have nipples. Diego's theory is that maybe God thought women would one day be in charge of the workplace, so men would be at home with the children and need to feed the babies. All three are quite proud of this conclusion, which Rooster has been listening to them reach. "You all have to be the most brain damaged people I've ever met, and I've met some insane motherfuckers," he tells them. "I've dated insane people, helped insane people, and fought insane people, and if those insane people were here, they would rejoice knowing that there are many more insane people than they are." That's classic locker room talk, which, while it transcends sports cinema in many ways, Heels belongs a lot to.
