After Richard (Sam Richardson) and Amy (Anna Chlumsky) tell Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) that she won't be getting a library but should instead donate her archives to American University's library (blech), she falls into a dark depression. Amy attempts to make her feel better by saying her father also felt depressed after his heart attack. Naturally, Selina responds by telling Amy it’s likely her father’s depression wasn't due to his heart attack, but rather to Amy. Yikes.
To make matters worse, Selina's Madame Tussauds wax figure has been unveiled and it's propped right next to fellow "half-term wonder" Gerald Ford. While Gary (Tony Hale) tries to get her moved next to someone more noteworthy, Selina decides she's so fed up with her life that she no longer has the desire to carry her own coat or purse...which is fine because Gary typically handles those anyway.
While Selina implodes, Jonah (Timothy Simons) attends an event with Sherman Tanz (Jonathan Hadary). Because Jonah is Jonah, he promptly insults Tanz's daughter, Shawnee (Mary Holland), and simultaneously hits on his wife. Kent (Gary Cole) and Ben (Kevin Dunn) order Jonah to make nice and he does...by sleeping with Shawnee. When she asks Congressman Ryan why he brought her back to his office instead of his home, he says they are one and the same. "D.C. rents are insane," he adds. Despite the fact that she's bedded an adult baby, Shawnee says she'll be back for round two at 7:30 that night.
Back at Debbie Downer Headquarters, Mike (Matt Walsh) channels Selina's depression into working on her memoir. They stay up all night looking at photos and Gary feels a little left out. He shows Mike Selina's new wax figure, which people are now posing behind lewdly.
Meanwhile, Catherine (Sarah Sutherland) and Marjorie (Clea DuVall) have finally settled on a sperm donor: Richard. He's excited about his new foray into fatherhood, but there's one little problem...he's not sure how to get his progeny into a cup or ("self-husband" as he calls it). Oh, sweet Richard.
Mike enters dangerous territory when he cites some irregularities in Selina's stories about her father. He suggests they meet with Selina's Uncle George (Brian Doyle-Murray). Uncle George informs a horrified Selina that her father sold her beloved horse, Chicklet; the snow globes he always brought home after business trips were actually purchased by his secretary and that he died in the family barn on top of said secretary. Devastated, she grabs a bottle of scotch and drives off to her childhood home with Mike. They destroy the barn like Uncle George destroyed Selina's pristine memory of her father. The former POTUS even drives her car through the barn and then blames it on Mike.
Having processed her mélange of anger, Selina decides she'll turn her late mother's home into the new “Selina Meyer Presidential Birthplace and Library”...despite Catherine and Marjorie plans to raise their forthcoming child there. When Catherine tries to remind her mother of this, and also tell her about their new sperm donor, she is quickly shut down. Sherman Tanz is "all in" on the Selina Meyer birthplace/library endeavor and that's final.
In other news: Dan's (Reid Scott) alleged affair with CBS co-star Jane McCabe (Margaret Colin) continues to pop up in Page Six. When he confronts Jane, she tells him she planted the rumor so she'd seem sexually desirable and thus more likely to keep her job as the show's host. Back in painfully awkward Jonah Ryan land, Shawnee takes the reins over Jonah, orders him to stop wearing glasses, start wearing bow ties and vote the opposite way of Kent and Ben’s advisement. Finally, Selina's wax figurine goes through two more iterations—one where she's seated on a bench with FDR (her outstretched hand proves too tempting to tourist genitalia) and a second where she's finally safe in a glass box high up on a balcony.
Until next week...
