Maggie Gets Her Gossip Shipped To Her Overnight On Playing House

As great as it is to watch as Emma, to quote Maggie, gets her best friend "into all sorts of scrapes" -- and really, there's hardly anything better -- it's also a pleasure to get a peek at what Maggie's life was before Emma moved in with her. Having grown up together in the same small town, Emma and Maggie have a lot of shared history and experiences. But then Emma moved to China, while Maggie stayed, making adult relationships and becoming part of other people's big events and little dramas. And while Emma is still Maggie's #1 best girl, she's not Maggie's only girl, and it's always fun to see Emma realize there are huge swaths of Maggie's life that Emma's not part of, and to get bent out of shape about it while not wanting to admit that she's jealous of anyone who gets to occupy space in Maggie's heart that Emma thinks should belong to her. Too bad you were the one who got caught in the middle this time, Rod Rockemoore -- though even Emma might grudgingly credit you for your supporting role in setting this episode's biggest shocker into motion.

Rod Rockemoore is a brown shorts-wearing delivery driver for UPS P&P, but he's so much more: when we meet him, he's posted up at Maggie's, gleefully telling her the latest about an apparently tragic Pinebrookian on his route -- and it's evident this isn't the first time she's been hashed out in this very sunroom.

Rod: I had a drop-off at Shirley Lambert's house.

Maggie: I saw she had another wreath up on her door.

Rod: Another week, another wreath!

Maggie: This one is just a bunch of dirty flip-flops hot-glued in a circle: excuse me, what holiday is that?

Rod: Geeeeshk! [both laugh] Aaaanyways, she goes, "Do you want a Diet Coke?" So of course I said, "Excuse me?" Because, you know--

Maggie: You can't--

Both: -- say no to a Diet Coke!

Rod: So I'm sitting in her kitchen, and what do you know, but Shirley Lambert walks in, stark. Naked.

Maggie: Rod, no!

Rod: Maggie, yes!

Rod and Maggie have barely had a chance to be scandalized together when Emma enters to break things up, herself scandalized that Maggie has invited a delivery person into their home to chat. (And to be fair to Emma, Rod doesn't really endear himself to her with his greeting: "Ooh, so great to see that bleaching system you ordered is working out! You can hardly see any dark hairs at...ah. Hm.") As soon as he's left, Emma declares Maggie's friendship with him "inappropriate"...

...which is convenient in that it can be used as a parable during a talking-to directed at one of the episode's other inappropriate friends. In an effort to continue the good work they started in the season premiere by trying to be friends with Tina, Maggie and Emma have agreed to join her in a women's woodworking class, even though (a) they don't want to and (b) Maggie definitely doesn't need anyone to teach her to make a birdhouse -- particularly not this goon.

In their first class, it seems as though this instructor, Buck Finch, is paying special attention to Tina, and when Emma and Maggie show up early for the next one, they walk in on a scene much more inappropriate than the one Emma caught Maggie in with Rod.

Since Tina seems to be too naïve to understand what's happening, Maggie and Emma are forced to take her out for lunch and try to talk around the question of inappropriate relationships -- you know, like Maggie has with Rod. "I think I understand," chirps Birdbones. "It's like you and Mark!"

Maggie realizes the indirect approach isn't working and lays it out: "Buck Finch is trying to sex you." Tina claims he just likes her birdhouse, which Maggie thinks is preposterous, since Buck had no interest in Maggie's clearly superior model...and it's a credit to her commitment to keeping Tina and Mark's marriage from danger that she doesn't write off Tina for eternity once Tina delivers her own verdict on Maggie's work:

But no: Maggie takes her suspicions back to her old friend Rod, who's basically a Buck Finch dossier. She reports her findings to Emma: "He's broken up eleven marriages in this county alone, and four in the Philippines!" Everything comes to a head at a local dive bar where Buck's spinning oldies. While Maggie tries to keep Buck and Tina apart by dancing between them, Emma sees that Mark has actually taken her advice and shown some interest in Tina's activities, and he shows up at the best/worst time.

In the parking lot, Tina and Mark agree that they've stopped really trying and that their marriage is over, and Mark's real friends join him with an invitation for fro-yo.

Mark: Can we go to Fixins & Mixins?

Maggie: Yeah, okay.

Emma: Maybe not Fixins & Mixins -- 'cause the Mixins are [whispering] covered in germs....They did a Shame On You segment about it on Channel 4!

And as Mark embarks on his new post-Tina life, Maggie decides she also has to tell Rod it's over between them too. Why she decides Emma was right about this when Emma's wrong, almost all the time, about practically everything else, is not really clear: as Rod says when Maggie asks whether he thinks maybe they might be too gossipy, "My gammy says gossip is God's friendship glue!" and I have to say, I have found that to be true. I would have also thought that Maggie enjoyed having Rod as an outlet: spending almost all her time making sure Emma doesn't mortally offend everyone they know forces Maggie into being the strict mom of their relationship (in addition to being the actual mom); if she has to be a good example to Emma, it must have been a relief to have her sunroom chats with Rod, because they were the only time she really got to be (victimlessly) mean. Anyway, Rod doesn't dwell on their friend-breakup, and he probably doesn't need to, since he can just go on to the next lady on his route and tell her all about what Maggie's been doing. "Maggie," he says, in lieu of a last farewell, "just promise me this: when October rolls around, and the leaves start to fall, and Shirley Lambert picks up the ugliest, driest ones and glues them on a wreath -- promise you'll think of me?" "You know I will," Maggie assures him. It may not be as dramatic a split as Tina and Mark's, but it's every bit as heartfelt.

(And if we don't eventually meet crazy Shirley Lambert, the hideous wreath-making kitchen nude, then it will only be because The Mindy Project wouldn't grant the necessary time off to Beth Grant.)