The 'C' Stands For 'Crafts'
When Cathy (Laura Linney) decides to move into hospice care, did she realize how much of it would revolve around crafting? And if she did, was that...the reason she decided to go? So that she could wheel around a mobile painkiller unit and give herself a hit whenever she wants, take as many naps as she needs, and make crafty messes the orderlies will have to clean up? All of this kind of sounds like a day spa with morphine -- in other words, not so bad.
Giving her fellow patients hand-crafted photo tags they can wear around their necks, to show each other and the staff what they looked like when they were young and healthy, not only serves as a hospice time-killer (as it were); it also gives her the chance to lord her disease over the center's staffers and make them feel bad for referring to the patients by their room numbers. Not only might this be one of Cathy's last chances to make a serviceperson feel guilty, but presumably all the punched-out paper holes and ribbon scraps were right there on the table when she wheeled herself away to distribute the tags. Win-win-spite!
Cathy is not the only crafter hanging around the hospice: her roommate Nan (Dana Ivey) is dying of heart disease under a canopy of paper cranes folded by her husband Hiro (Les J.N. Mau), in the belief -- or maybe just the hope -- that if he can make 1000, his wish for her recovery will come true. Nan is not so sure he's right (and, indeed, has died well before the episode ends), but the cranes do cheer up her side of the room...
...kind of like the restoration of Cathy's bedroom-ceiling collage by Adam (Gabriel Basso) does hers.
Meanwhile, at design school, Andrea (Gabourey Sidibe) has finally earned the approval of visiting Professor Isaac Mizrahi (as himself) for her Egyptian-inspired commission, which is to be Cathy's coffin dress.
And though Mizrahi instructs Andrea to pin the hell out of it when she has to fit it for a Size 2 waif at the end-of-semester fashion show, it turns out she doesn't actually need to.
We start the episode with Cathy's last drive; presumably, this will be her last supermodel sashay. And if pregnant ladies and cancer patients with one dead leg can rock a pair of heels, I guess I don't have any excuse to complain about the rare instances when I have to wear them myself. Dammit.