"Previously on Mike  Molly..." "Well, for eight intense weeks," "I was surrounded by brilliant novelists and poets and playwrights." "Sounds wonderful." "No, it was awful." "They hated my writing." " Aw, honey, I'm sorry." " No, don't be." "The more they hated it, the more it drove me." "I dug deep, I found my voice." "I bet you have a beautiful voice." "No, turns out my voice has the mouth of a sailor." "Ooh, that's a spicy blurb." "That's what the publisher said... when he bought my book." "Oh!" "What did you do?" "I bought us... (using announcer voice):" "a brand new car!" "This Dodge Challenger comes fully equipped with a heated steering wheel and illuminated cup holders." "What?" "(hammering)" "What are you doing?" "Writing." "I mean, you know, obviously not at this exact second." "But I was trying to write, and the drip under the sink was driving me crazy, so I had to get a wrench out of the junk drawer, which is organized." "You're welcome." "Turns out that drip was masking, like, a humming, like a high-pitched brain-piercing hum, which actually is not coming from the fuse box, which is now labeled." "You're welcome." "Turns out it was behind this thing, which is now all cleaned out and color-coded." "You're welcome." "Still doesn't get us to the shoe." "Oh." "Well, I think that's pretty obvious." "The shoe is a, um... it's a cry for help." "Oh, Mol." "I don't know what I'm supposed to do." "I've got a publisher breathing down my neck, and I haven't written more than a couple of words since I got home." "Sweetie, you got to write." "You're our meal ticket." "What can we do to help?" "Nothing, unless you have enough dirty sex stories to fill half a book." "Okay, you'd better make a fresh pot of coffee." "Oh, God." "We're gonna be here a while." "♪ La, la-ba-dee-da ♪" "♪ La, la-ba-dee-da ♪" "♪ For the first time in my life ♪" "♪ I see love ♪" "♪ I see love ♪" "♪ For the first time in my life ♪" "♪ I see love ♪" "(phone rings)" "MOLLY:" "Don't answer it!" "Don't answer it!" "Don't answer it!" "Don't answer it!" "No!" "Whoa!" "God, why not?" "'Cause it's my publisher." "And he wants the book." "Do you have a book to give him?" "'Cause I sure as hell don't." "(sighs) Thank God." "Yeah, she's here." "Don't." "No, no." "No." "Wait, scratch that." "I am mistaken." "Ms. Flynn is not here." "That was my reflection in the mirror." "She has stepped out and won't be back for..." "Two..." "Three-three." "No, two." "You know, I'm gonna have to put you on hold for a second." "♪ Ba-da-da-da-da da-da-da ♪" "♪ Ba-da-da-da-da ♪" "♪ Da-da-da ♪ A week, give me a week." "♪ Ba-da-da-da-da da-da. ♪" "Thanks for holding." "Ms. Flynn should be back in a week." "All right." "You, too." "Thank you." "My pleasure." "I've dodged many a phone call in my day." "ATT and Rent-A-Center both think I drowned on a white-water rafting trip." "A week." "What am I supposed to do with a week?" "I don't know, write a book." "Really?" "What?" "I just don't understand the process." "The process is..." "if I don't finish this book, they're gonna want the advance back." "Which, if you remember, we blew on a muscle car." "You blew." "Really?" "You want to finger-point right now?" "Okay, all right, I'm sorry." "Listen." "I think I know what you need." "Flynn!" "Get your butt in that seat and your fingers on that keyboard!" "I am sick of hearing your whiney-ass excuses!" "I want results, not reasons, so shut your mouth and don't get up until you have typed "The End"!" "Do I make myself clear?" "!" "Oh, no, no, no." "No, no, no, no, no." "No." "No." "I should have been the understanding husband." "I'm sorry." "It's okay." "You yelled at me!" "And-and now we know that doesn't work." "(crying)" "I wish I could help Molly with her writing, but it's beyond my skill set." "I'm more of a "take out the trash and kill the spiders" type of husband." "You're scared of spiders." "I said "type."" "All right, when was the last time Molly wrote something?" "At her writers' workshop." "She came up with all that kinky stuff in only two months?" "My, the circus orgy alone was very intricate." "Yeah." "The sword-swallower, the contortionist, you know?" "All those clowns coming out of that Murphy bed." "There was a lot of moving parts." "Wait." "You read her book?" "Page by page." "Every night," "Victoria picks a section, and we try to come as close as we can to doing what the characters are doing." "Have you no decency?" "No, I do not." "Oh." "Uh, I also have no shame, no inhibitions, and from the belly button down, no body hair." "So that looks like..." "Ah, never mind." "Let me ask you something." "Since she's returned, have you and Molly been having regular relations?" "In what world do you think I'm gonna answer that?" "Well, since she's been back, he's been ordering cottage cheese, so someone's seeing him naked." "Yeah, seems to me she was writing a lot when she wasn't getting any." "Now that she's back, you got her off track, 'cause now she's getting plenty." "Really, Dr. Seuss?" "Is that your diagnosis?" "Well, think about it." "Why do boxers abstain before a big fight?" "Because it's hard to pleasure themselves with those big gloves?" "It's 'cause sex saps their strength, all right?" "A little self-denial keeps 'em focused, sharp, on their game." "Molly's not a boxer." "She's a writer." "Who hasn't written a word ever since she got home and started workin' your heavy bag." "Please." "You're just talking out of your shaved ass." "Well, he may have a point." "In Africa, I had an uncle who was an artist." "When starting a new painting, he'd go off into the mountains by himself, leaving his many wives at home." "When he returned, he'd have a beautiful canvas." "See?" "'Cause he didn't have sex." "Well, we were never really sure." "A lot of the paintings were of frightened sheep." "(whistling)" "(sighs)" "Ooh." "(indistinct voices and cheering on TV)" "MOLLY:" "No!" "No!" "No!" "No!" "God!" "I'm trying to write in there." "Are you kidding?" "Last time I was in the kitchen, you were bleaching the grout." "Well, that's my process, okay?" "So no TV!" "Just because you can't buckle down and write your dirty book, we all got to live like Mennonites?" "Yes." "So, what am I supposed to do?" "I don't care!" "Go outside and play." "There's nobody to play with." "Can't you just go play by yourself?" "I played with myself yesterday." "I can't do it again." "I'm 60." "Maybe I'll go ask if the old guy across the street wants to go throw rocks off a bridge." "(groans)" "What did I tell you about leaving your hemorrhoid pillow laying around?" "I'm in a flare-up." "It's like I'm trying to pass a Chinese throwing star." "Ew!" "Wow!" "I bet we couldn't do that again." "Okay." "Okay, we're gonna give this one a 12 for difficulty." "If we get this one, we're champions of the world." "Shh." "When you talk, the plunger moves." "Sorry." "Sorry, I'm nervous." "(sighs)" "(whoops) U.S.A.!" "BOTH:" "U.S.A.!" "U.S.A.!" "U.S.A.!" "U.S.A.!" "(Vince whoops) What the hell's going on here?" "She turned off the TV." "Hey, look at you." "Hold on." "Just finishing up." "(printer whirring)" "How many pages you get done?" "Just the one." "This is a letter to your publisher." "It's a proposal to turn my novel into a novella." "(laughs) What's a novella?" "Oh, it's a novel." "Just, you know, one with, uh... (mumbles) ...64 pages." "You know, that way, I can just slap a "The End"" "on this sucker and be done with it." "So it would just end in the middle of the story?" "Well, do you have a better idea?" "Because I don't." "You know why?" "'Cause I don't have ideas anymore." "I haven't written a single word since I got back." "I'm..." "That's it!" "I'm done!" "I'm tapped!" "No, you're not." "You have me." "And together, we will do, or not do, whatever it takes to get you writing again." "Really?" "You can count on it." "I'm in your corner, champ." "I'm not gonna shake your hand." "I love you." "I love you, too." "(laughs)" "S-Sweetie, what-what are you doing down there?" "Aren't-aren't you supposed to be working on your book?" "Oh, I am." "I'm just tweaking the ending." "(whoops loudly) Molly!" "(laughs)" "Come on!" "No!" "I need a little something to clear my head." "No, no!" "You need to keep working, because Oh." "I'm-I'm..." "I'm not in the mood." "What?" "You are always in the mood." "You tried to get my bra off while we were watching Hotel Rwanda." "You'd already seen it." "Mike." "No." "You know you want to." "No, not tonight." "(laughing)" "I am..." "I am so gassy." "I'm gassy." "(singsongy):" "If you're trying to repulse me, it's not working." "(laughing):" "Molly, no." "No." "Oh, maybe." "No!" "No!" "Now, no means no!" "Now, you call me when you want to cuddle." "Well, I did it." "I didn't do it." "What?" "At 8:55 P.M. last night, for the first time in his life," "Mike Biggs turned down sex." "Well, I know it was hard." "Literally." "But mark my words, this is gonna work." "That's what I'm afraid of." "Molly's able to write again, and instead of having sex," "I'm stuck playing hemorrhoid ring toss with Vince." "You know, you could just take a cold shower." "Okay." "Plus, there are a lot of other things besides sex that can keep a couple together." "Just look at us, huh?" "We're not intimate, yet we still care deeply about each other." "You know?" "Concerned about the other's wants and needs." "Finish each other's..." "I'm not saying that." "Come on!" "Don't be a..." "Jackass!" "See?" "Till death do us part." "(doorbell ringing)" "What do you want?" "I need somewhere to write, Peggy." "No distractions, no one to talk to, no Internet." "Just a place where fun comes to die." "Welcome." "Thank you." "Ooh." "It even smells like solitary confinement." "No need to butter me up." "I said you could stay." "Can I just set up over in here?" "Doesn't matter to me." "You're in the way wherever you are." "You want to bounce anything off me, just let me know." "Uh, I-I'm good." "No bouncing, just writing." "Understood." "I'm probably your target audience." "Who cares what I think?" "This book isn't exactly for the churchgoing crowd." "Are you kidding?" "Have you ever read the Bible?" "Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot sleeping with his daughters." "That book is chock-full of spilled seed." "Wow." "No wonder you're always going to church." "For that, and to see who died." "In a way, the holy scriptures were my gateway to my shelves of sin." "What-what are you talking about, your "shelves of sin"?" "(Molly laughs)" "Oh, my God!" "This whole wall is X-rated." "I-I've never noticed it." "I mean, I just assumed these were all Westerns." "Oh, some of 'em got horses in 'em." "Personally, I prefer..." "a raunchy bodice-ripper." "A good romp in the barouche." "I don't even know what that means." "Classic erotica." "Your Lady Chatterley's, Story of O, Candy." ""Banned in Paris."" "That's all I needed to hear." "Those Frenchies are les pigs." "Peggy, I had no idea." "Oh, yeah." "I've been alone for a long time." "If I didn't have some release, I'd be a pretty angry woman." "So, these were just out the whole time Mike was a kid?" "I knew he wouldn't get into 'em." "Books were as safe as celery in this house." "(whistles)" "She got more than 50% off." "I shouldn't be doing this." "It's like watching Ace of Cakes when I'm on a diet." "That's not right." "Still works." "Hey!" "Hey!" "Where you been all day?" "At your mother's, trying to write." "I thought that was where fun went to die. (laughs)" "Well, now, it's where I go to write, because I wrote 15 of the best pages" "I have ever written." "Isn't it great?" "Yeah!" "Because that means you're gonna be done soon, right?" "Oh, no, no, no." "These new pages have opened up, like, a whole new subplot." "I think I'm on to a trilogy." "I can't hold out for a trilogy." "What are you talking about?" "Oh, nothing." "I mean, just don't get ahead of yourself, you know?" "Finish the first one, then take a little break." "Maybe, like, a year or two." "You know, just whatever it takes to recharge the engine." "I don't know." "I'm just so happy to be writing again." "What do you say we celebrate all my hard work by going upstairs and making up for last night?" "Right now?" "Mm-hmm." "Molly, a guy likes a little foreplay." "Okay." "I'll go up ahead of you." "You can do that grabby thing." "Come on." "You do that grabby thing." "I love that." "No." "Look, I can't just turn it on like that, okay?" "Yeah, you can." "Come on." "I'm starting to take this personally." "Oh, God." "Are you not attracted to me anymore?" "Oh, no." "Of course I am." "You're beautiful, you're sexy, you got the cutest little dimples, but" "I can't." "You know what?" "I got enough things destroying my confidence." "I don't need you to be one of 'em." "Molly, wait." "I'm doing this to help you." "How is this helping me?" "Okay, well..." "How can I put this?" "You're like a boxer." "Because I want to punch you in the face?" "No." "Because writing is like fighting." "You got to stay focused." "And when we have sex, well, it... it saps your strength." "What?" "!" "Why do you think you got so much writing done in Iowa?" "Because I wasn't there to tempt you." "So, you put all your pent-up desires onto the page." "Where did you get such a dopey idea?" "Carl." "Carl." "Yeah." "Really?" "!" "Well, look," "I don't like that he's right, either, but now we have proof." "15 pages of people doing all sorts of nasty things that we didn't get to do last night." "You're listening to Carl." "I just..." "I need you to hear that." "Let..." "let that sink in!" "Well, the man's been wrong his entire life." "You got to figure he's due." "No!" "No, you don't." "No, you don't, and especially not when it's about us." "Okay?" "Our love is strong and healthy, and it has nothing to do with my work." "What we have is special, and we're not gonna let some stupid superstition ruin that." "You're right." "Carl's an idiot." "Get upstairs." "(giggling)" "I'm getting close." "Son of a bitch!" "(cheering, whistle blows on TV, door closes)" "MAN (on TV):" "Incomplete." "(indistinct shouting on TV)" "Aw, no!" "God," "I knew I should have held back last night." "That second one was just greedy." "Well, we don't know that what we did last night is responsible for what I didn't do today." "Oh, don't be naive." "Face the facts!" "We run too hot, and that's no good!" "Well, what are we gonna do?" "What can we do?" "You got to finish this book!" "Well, I'm not picking the book over us." "Yes, you are." "'Cause you have a husband that believes in you, and more importantly, wants the money." "Ah!" "So do I. Is that bad?" "No." "I've been without sex, and I've been without money." "Right now, I choose money." "Oh." "That's why we're so good together!" "Okay, okay, okay." "From now on, until you finish that book, this house is officially a sex-free zone." "Okay." "What about the rewrite?" "We will cross that cold and lonely bridge when we get to it." "I love you!" "I love you, too." "(grunts)" "Hey, how's it going today?" "It's amazing." "Since we stopped having sex, this thing writes itself." "That's great, honey." "Hey, can I read you something?" "I'm not sure if it works or not." "Sure." "Okay." "(sighs)" ""Slowly, she stepped from the bath," ""knowing his eye was pressed greedily at the keyhole." ""She placed one leg on the tub, flesh glistening." ""A bead of water wove its way to the place he had only dreamed of touching."" "Yeah, that works!"