In Plain Sight (season 3)

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In Plain Sight (2008–2012) is an American drama television series, airing on the USA Network, about a Deputy United States Marshal attached to the Albuquerque, New Mexico, office of the Federal Witness Security Program (WITSEC), more commonly known as the Federal Witness Protection Program, who must find ways to balance her professional life of protecting witnesses, her professional relationship with her work partner, and her problematic personal life.

Father Goes West [3.01] edit

Doctor: How are you feeling?
Mary: Good. Better. Because if I say anything else I'm not getting out of here, so great!
Doctor: How's your memory?
Mary: Fantastic! [under her breath] ...if I was shot by a smudge.
Doctor: I told you it might come back slowly or in pieces. Or—
Mary: Not at all, which means no matter what happens you get to be right. You're not letting me out, are you? I'm going to be here another week, I knew it!
Doctor: Promise me you'll take it slow.
Mary: Wait. Is that condescending doctor talk for I can go?

[Mary looks at and strokes her new granite countertop]
Rafael: Do you like it?
Mary: Are you kidding? I want to get drunk and do it.

Marshall: Liar liar status?
Mary: Pants fully on fire.

Mary: [voice over] I have this weird tendency to remember almost everything. Big, small, five minutes ago, thirty years ago; it doesn't matter. If I saw it and if it happened on a day that mattered, I knew it forever. I always thought of it as kind of a curse. I mean, do I really need to remember what I had for breakfast May 11, 2007 just because I met a guy in a diner that I'm now gonna marry; denver omlette, extra cheese, or what shirt my dad was wearing two days before my seventh birthday when he walked out the door and never came back? White button down, navy pinstripe. No. But I do. I remember almost everything, except the one thing I have to.

Gang Member: What is it with you?
Marshall: [Is back in the neighborhood where Mary got shot] I have the right to drink my coffee and eat my danish anywhere I want. And that's the wonderous high wire balancing act of democracy. [Takes a bite of his danish] Did you know that the first danish was raspberry with almond flakes? The cheese danish actually came later. Cheese is, in my opinion, the bolder breakfast choice. Like, crack. [Notices a car driving up. Marshall holds out his WITSEC badge and the person in the car who is coming to buy drugs, drives off] Once again, my daily visit causes the revenue in to take an icy plunge. [Offers the gang member coffee] Black, four sugars? Right?
Gang Member: I don't take nothing. I don't give nothing. Ever.

Mary: [is being wheeled out of the hospital and is talking to the nurse pushing the chair] You are so sweet.
Marshall: This won't last.
Mary: Family just couldn't be bothered, right? What? Mom and sis getting two belly rings? Fiancee giving how to be gorgeous lessons to underprivileged models? Why am I in such a hurry to get home to those people and leave the place where I can pee lying down?
Marshall: And she's back.

Mary: [to fleeing suspect] I swear to God, if I popped a stitch, I'm going to shove that dog up your ass and let him bark his way up your throat.

Mary: [Voice over] We forget sometimes how much the world can hurt. It can hurt people we love, people we don't, people caught in the middle, even people who would give anything if they could just never ever get hurt again, but sometimes the hurt can't be avoided. It's just coming at us and can't be stopped. It's in us and can't be seen, or it's lying next to us in the dark, waiting but sometimes it doesn't come at all. Sometimes we get this other thing that flutters down out of nowhere and stays just long enough to give us hope. Sometimes rarely, barely, but just when we need it the most and expect it the least, we get a break.

Marshall: This is like a trailer for a movie called "Geriatric Marshal."

Marshall: [to the gang member from earlier in the episode] You're like a crossword puzzle with B.O.

When Mary Met Marshall [3.02] edit

Mary: [voiceover] There's a researcher who claims he can tell if a couple is going to break up based on how they talk to each other. An ability I've had since I was five, without NIH funding. I just looked up at my parents and thought "nope." It took a six figure gambling debt, an alcoholic spiral and an FBI manhunt before they finally came to the same conclusion. It can take many forms but the worst are the ones who should have known better. The ones who rushed in, got hitched and now they don't know how to get out of it. They look like marmots, trapped in a cage.

Mary: Carson Miller, last spotted in Bolivia. Baltimore FBI thinks he's still the boss, running things from down there. Wow, gone seven years, ruling by pure fear from another hemisphere. I'd love to have power like that some day.
Marshall: But wouldn't you rather that power came from love, not from fear?
Mary: I don't even understand the question.

Mary: Wow, Stan. Opening day at Ascot?
Stan: I have a meeting with Allison Pearson.
[Mary shakes her head in confusion]
Marshall: The newly appointed U.S. Marshall for our district.
Mary: Right! Right, the political hack who licked D.C. butt like a creamsicle so she could tell actual marshals how to do a job she can't comprehend, let alone be in charge of. That Allison Pearson.
[Marshall nods in confirmation]
Stan: You two are going to be gone all day, right?
Marshall: No, but it's okay. I think your meeting with Allison is tomorrow.
Stan: Is it?
Mary: Oops. That's good! It gives you time to buy the top hat and monocle.

[2003 ]

Marshall: [to Mary] Were you drunk when they covered witness protection at the academy?

Marshall: [Mary and Marshall were interviewing a suspect who made a remark about keeping a DVR he stole. Mary turns around and tries to draw her gun] No, you can't shoot him.

Mary: This is so stupid!
Marshall: Okay, let's take a moment here and think this through. Henry set it all up, had Lebowski there break in, steal everything and the box of photos to intentionally create a security breach so that we would what, be forced to move them. Why?
Mary: I have no idea. Here's what I do know: I don't care! I'm sick of it! I'm sick of needy, crazy, stupid liars. Seriously, I can't take it anymore! I grew up with them, I live with them, I work with them, and no matter how fast I run or far I go, they breed and come after me! It's like a zombie movie, except the only scary part is that it never ends!
Marshall: How'd that feel?
Mary: Really good!
Marshall: Anything else?
Mary: No, I think I hit it all.
Marshall: Ready?
Mary: Ready. Thanks!
Marshall: De nada.

[2003 ]

Marshall: I like driving at night.
Mary: Me too.
Marshall: I remember being with my dad when I was six, seven. He'd bundle us all up at bedtime and take off for someplace. My brothers and I in the back, half asleep, mom and dad up front. Nobody talking. Just the sound of the road in the dark. Aren't you going to say something funny and mean that'll blow holes in me?
Mary: It sounds nice. My dad had this sweet tooth. Kicked in sometimes late at night. My mom would be getting sloshed, gearing up for a fight, and we'd slip out. Go to this all night place for ice cream. Mostly to get away from her. That and I think he liked being with me. Just the two of us, driving around in the dark singing to the radio.
Marshall: I'll bet he did. I cannot imagine you were a dull child.

[2003 ]

Claudia: Mary, are you going back east?
Mary: No, this has been such a wonderful, life changing experience, I'm going to derail my whole career and join WITSEC in Albuquerque. Please.
Marshall: Freud said there are no jokes.
Mary: What?
Marshall: You were using sarcasm to express your true feelings.
Mary: There's something weird about the air here.
Marshall: That's the lack of pollution.
Mary: What, it's like this all the time? I don't know, might be worth sticking around to see these two break up. Should be in about a week.

[2003 ]

Marshall: Stan, I'm telling you, snap her up.
Stan: Is this some kind of Stockholm syndrome?

Mary: [voiceover] I pride myself on being able to tell when a relationship won't work, and normally I love being right more than anything. More than Blue Moon beer, Exxon on Main Street, food smothered in mole sauce, but sometimes it's good to be wrong.

Coma Chameleon [3.03] edit

Mary: [voiceover] My dad once said time kills everything; hope, health, dreams, even love. He told me this on my birthday. I'd just turned six. Then he gave me my present, a pet rock, which I later used in an incident I'd regret. I'm not sure I got it at the time, but I get it now: everything we love is eventually murdered by the hands of time.

Marshall: Everything okay with you?
Mary: Besides a witness who --
Marshall: I mean is everything okay with you.
Mary: [looks at him for a while] Everything with Rafe is really good, so --
Marshall: So?
Mary: I should be happy about that.
Marshall: And what are you?
Mary: Scared. Pissed. Guilty. And happy. Happy's in there.
Marshall: Somewhere?
Mary: Happy's under a bit of a pile.
Marshall: How come?
Mary: I think I want something that just doesn't exist. I want something that's just right. No argument or doubt, which is insane, right? Because there's always argument, there's always doubt. So, I guess what I'm after here is the insane goal of an insane person.
Marshall: I would say it's the ideal goal of someone who has somehow managed to protect the purest part of her heart, which does not seem insane to anyone who really knows you.
Mary: Which would be you and you.

Wade Trimble: Look, without Krista, there's no point in anything.
Mary: Wade, I know it seems impossible now, but you might meet someone else, someone you love just as much, maybe more.
Wade Trimble: You've never really been in love. If you had, you'd understand.
Mary: I have... I am.
Wade Trimble: Did it happen with one look? Because everything you need is right there in that first second of that first look. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was... in line buying a belt. Turned to pay, and there she was. She looked up and... sunk a hook in my heart. It'll be there till the day I die. You got a story like that about you and your boyfriend?
Mary: Well... we met at a diner.
Wade Trimble: And?
Mary: And he asked me out, and I said no. Ran into him again, I asked him out, he said no. I really can't talk about this.
Wade Trimble: You need love.

Mary: [voiceover] Some say love is the only thing we have that is real. Some say life would be a whole lot better without it. For me, the jury's still out. I loved that pet rock my dad gave me because it was from him. Then I threw it at Robert Kwame. Hit him right in the temple. He went down like a Christmas tree in January. I loved Robert, I just wanted to make sure he knew it. I think he did. He ended up being my first kiss.

Rafael: I think we need to have a talk.
Mary: Okay.
Rafael: I don't think we should get married in July. Or at all.
Mary: [sighs] I knew it when Rita hugged me.
Rafael: You've said it before. I didn't listen. You and I, we don't work.
Mary: It's been hard from the start. [Rafe nods in agreement] I don't know why it isn't easier.
Rafael: Life isn't short. It's long and honestly, I don't know if you love me enough to make this work.
Mary: I do love you.
Rafael: But enough? Maybe that's why it's been so difficult. If I'm wrong you'll say something before I get out of here, okay?
Mary: Okay.
[Rafael leaves without Mary stopping him]

Whistle Stop [3.04] edit

Mary: What is that?
Marshall: My first work of origami. Notes?
Mary: Stop now or you will never get laid again.

Mary: [voiceover] Help: the absolute worst of the four letter words and the one I know best. A six year old on tip-toes peering into Brandi's crib, my mother on the bedroom floor, scrounging for the booze, that word coming out of their mouths as a gasp. Like destiny. Help. I've learned over time help doesn't mean grab the other paint roller or hold the ladder still. It means, hey, I screwed up, now what are we gonna do? Help, more than anything, is the not so subtle herald of the appearance of we. Don't even get me started on happy to help.

Mary: No silence. I can't take silence right now.
Marshall: Okay. Why aren't you wearing your engagement ring?
Mary: Raph and I broke up. [long pause] I said no silence.
Marshall: Right. So.
Mary: Oh, my God, Marshall. You're killing me.
Marshall: I really don't know what to say.
Mary: Now? Now you don't know what to say? Seven years I get a combo geyser of Wikipedia, Jeopardy, Star Trek, Dead Poet's Society, Carnac the Magnificent and now, the one time I need a steady stream of useless numbing babble I get car sounds!
Marshall: When did you two break up?
Mary: No, no, no! No questions! Anyone can do questions. I want pointless quotes! Useless trivia! The downpour of idiocy you practically patented! Come on! It's a twenty minute car trip. I don't want to think about my life, okay? Amaze me, annoy me, distract me. Is that so much to ask?
Marshall: This is so weird. I got nothing.
Mary: Oh, my God. You're verbally impotent.
Marshall: I swear, this has never happened before.

Marshall: I guess I'll have to return the ice cream maker I got for your engagement gift. French style, highly aerated ice cream in twenty five minutes. You know, the history of ice cream is as fascinating as it is long. Let us begin at the beginning. In ancient Greece --
Mary: Marshall. I'm good.
Marshall: Sorry I choked before.
Mary: It happens.
Marshall: Not to me.
Mary: I'm sure you'll be great next time.
Marshall: Maybe we can just talk?
Mary: [laughs] Sure.
Marshall: So, why did you and Raph break up?
Mary: Because he's a beautiful, sweet, sensitive man who adored me.
Marshall: Yeah, who wants that?
Mary: Exactly.

Mary: [voiceover, as Marshall fields a call from Faber for her without her knowing] Help, every now and then, is something more than a four letter word. Sometimes it's just a baby crying for her sister from the confines of a crib. And sometimes, if you're lucky, help comes without asking, because somewhere nearby is someone who'd rather keep you from falling than help you up after you do.

Fish or Cut Betta [3.05] edit

Mary: [voiceover] I like the sound of three word phrases. Fools rush in. Greed is good. Character is destiny. That one comes up a lot when a witness stares down the barrel of a whole new life. Documents, jewelry, snapshots; we take it all, and as much as I preach to them about a chance to start over fresh, I keep a stash of letters from a father who left and never came back. Witnesses can't hang onto a stash of anything. They're lucky we let them keep their secrets.

Marshall: He's sure been a model witness the last three months.
Mary: Oh, yeah. Nice, quiet, cooperative contract killer.
Marshall: I almost admire your resistance to the idea that people grow.
Mary: I think people grow. Worse.

Marshall: Okay, what?
Mary: What what?
Marshall: There's something else.
Mary: No there's not.
Marshall: Yes, there is.
Mary: Like what?!
Marshall: I don't know. There's something you're not telling me.
Mary: Stop. It's like you rent a room in my head.
Marshall: And somewhere in mine you occupy a small pied-à-terre --
Mary: [makes a face] Don't say pied-à-terre.
Marshall: -- and we're allowed to close the doors now and then, so to speak, but it can't last. You won't be able to hold out. You're just going to blurt it out at some point. I'm giving you the chance now to blurt!
Mary: Nothing happened! No blurting.

Marshall: Whatever you want to do here, I'll back you.
Mary: No, because what I'm going to do here will probably get me fired, and if you get fired, too, I'll have no one to move in with and mooch off of.
Marshall: Lucky for you my interests are varied and my career options infinite. If this whole thing goes horribly pear shaped, whatever's next for me, my coattails are always there for you.
Mary: Oh, yeah? What's origami pay these days?

Mary: [voiceover] Character is destiny. For the chronic do-gooder, the happy-go-lucky sociopath, the dysfunctional family, under the gun everyone reverts to who they are. We may hunger to map out a new course, but for most of us the lines have been drawn since we were five.

No Clemency for Old Men [3.06] edit

Mary: [voiceover] We moved on Christmas Eve the year that I turned six. Jinx got us some used 45s, a yard sale Big Wheel, and a patch of grass out back. She told me if I pedaled good and slow I could go anywhere I want. Anywhere extended only as far as our back yard, but still, it was freedom. A six year old's version of the open road. That was probably the last vehicle I got really attached to. Until now.

[Shopping inside a large box discount store (like SAM's or Costco)]
Mary: You're going to work me with some sob story, try and hustle up a shinny new deal?
Frank: I don't do sob stories. You come up with more dough, great. If not, I'll get by.
Mary: [picks up an iPhone-like electronic device] In the mean time, here's a cost effective way of becoming completely self involved, oblivious to everyone and everything, a total pro at useless games and a genius at accessing the pointless.

[Leaving Brandi, who has been missing for several episodes now, a message on her cell phone]
Mary: Hey Brandi, this is the last message I'm leaving you. If you don't call me back in 24 hours, I'm telling the police you died, having your funeral, selling everything you own and if you ever show up again, I'm having you arrested for identity theft.

Mary: Give me a break, Marshall, honestly.
Marshall: One break coming up. [pulls out a box of donuts and coffee]
Mary: The Donut Hut? What did you do?
Marshall: Eat first.
Mary: Don't sugar-manage me.
Marshall: You should have no problem remaining surly as you masticate. Lois Turner stopped by after your house call. She wants a divorce.
Mary: She's not married, and don't say masticate.

Mary: Hey!
Frank: Jesus! It's like being haunted. How in the hell did you find me?
Mary: ESP. All the ladies have it these days. A lot's changed since you went in, Frank. Now women have the power to read men's thoughts.
Frank: [chuckles] Always did. Everybody was always just too polite to talk about it.

Mary: [voiceover] We love what we love. For some people it's a first grade crush. For others it's a Big Wheel, the wrong guy, or the New York Mets. For some of us, it's something unreachable, something we've maybe never had before, and we know that even if we reach it, even if we pull it close and make it ours, it won't last. It can't. But we keep on, because it doesn't matter if it's a Big Wheel, wrong guy, or the New York Mets, it doesn't matter what we reach for, what matters is the reaching.

Love's Faber Lost [3.07] edit

Mary: [voiceover] When I was seventeen it was a not so very good year. I married a guy named Mark who was twenty-two. The whole thing lasted thirty-six hours. Seventeen, twenty-two, thirty-six. It didn't add up. It's hard to believe there was a version of me capable of diving head first into the shallow end like that. These days a guy buying me a drink kicks off an internal debate long enough to put my thirty-six hour marriage, however redundantly, to shame. After which, he's moved on to someone else. Someone who is both presumably sane and thirsty.

Stan: FBI just snagged a big fish: Natalie Vickers, key player and co-conspirator in an interstate mortgage scam.
Mary: Oh, interstate mortgages. That gets me seriously hot. Say it again. Slower.

Marshall: You going to be okay?
Mary: Yeah, fine. It's fine. Go!
Marshall: You sure?
Mary: Yes! Marshall, whatever little stupid Nora Ephron you have playing in your head about me and Faber's snappy workplace love connection, you can.
Marshall: It's less Nora Ephron and more Leni Riefenstahl.
Mary: Whatever. Hit the off switch.
Marshall: Well, this is where normal people say goodbye, I'll call you, be careful.
Mary: You owe me nine dollars for lunch last week, so don't get shot and die.
Marshall: [smiles] I'll do my best.

Mary: Okay, here's the thing, Natalie. Sooner or later this case falls apart because of you, and when it does all those Russians you turned on will be back on the street with nothing between you and them but a motel door and their urge to kick it in. And when they kill you it will have zero impact on my day. Sleep tight.

Mary: [voiceover] I think about my short, impulsive teenage marriage more than I care to admit. When I was with Raph it would run on a loop, mocking me in bed every now and then. At the moment right when the lights go out. A continual reminder that when it comes to what Pat Benatar aptly called a battlefield, I should probably be locked in a cage during off hours, for my own good and that of unsuspecting suitors bearing gifts.

Son of Mann [3.08] edit

Mary: [voiceover] "Father Figure" is a phrase as potent as "Mother Nature". Say that out loud and the image flow from having a catch on the side of the yard, the screen doors slamming behind the deadbeat dad. For every "father knows best", in Atticus Finch, there's a Great Santini bouncing a ball at the head of his teenage son. One thing for sure the father figure, in your face or out the door, would make his presence felt. Like it or not.

Marshall: Everything matters. Everything you think, feel, but most of all every thing you do it all counts.

Marshall: I find your almost girlish delight disturbing on many levels.
Mary: Come on! It's five days without your standard, whiney, moping witness crap. It's back to basics: hunt, bust, cuff, haul! Then there's the icing on the cake: him. [looks at Marshall's father, Deputy Marshal Seth Mann]
Marshall: You've now crossed over to sadistic glee.
Mary: Are you nervous?
Marshall: No!
Mary: You should be. I'm about to find out so many embarrassing hilarious new secrets, I'm going to have to alphabetize them.
Marshall: I honestly fear for the state of your soul. [stands as his dad approaches]
Seth: Marshall.
Marshall: Dad.
Mary: [sighs] Heaven.

Seth: So, you seeing anyone?
Marshall: There are a few prospects.
Mary: [laughs]
Marshall: Mary doesn't know about them because I try not to subject people I care about to what I euphemistically refer to as her winning abrasiveness.
Mary: Look, Seth, Marshall's social life is a contradiction in terms, unless you count putting a bookstore clerk in a headlock and telling her about Nietzschean themes in Wagnerian opera.
Marshall: She was interested!
Mary: [pats his shoulder] Shhh. [to Seth] There's so much I want to know. Who was Marshall's first celebrity crush? How old was he when he went to his first Star Trek convention? And when did he start using a curling iron?

Mary: How old were you when you first wondered if you were adopted?
Marshall: Four. I did the saliva strip test at eight. Sadly...[shakes head]

Marshall: I wish I had had you in high school.
Mary: High school me would have eaten high school you alive.

Mary: [voiceover] For most kids, the scariest thing you can hear is, "Wait till your father gets home." For some, there's no fear of that or hope for it. I'm still waiting. Not like a puppy, head tilting at footballs on the porch or a key in the lock, I go about my days, every so often, aware of his absence. And telling myself that the heart, old adage aside, does not grow fonder. Except it does. It really, really does.

Death Becomes Her [3.09] edit

Mary: [voiceover] Friendship, it's been said, is God's way of apologizing for your family. I don't really subscribe to the God part, but if I did apologizing for family seems like the least he could do.

Mary: What's that?
Marshall: That would be a painting.
Mary: Oh, God, no. You're not going to try to drag me to another art show, are you? Last time I got cornered by some freak wearing a kilt with a tattoo inside his bottom lip that said "yeah." He showed it to me twice while I was eating!
Marshall: [smiles] No. This is about my witness, Patrick Hill. It might be nothing. How's Mia?
Mary: Level-headed, funny, smart, no trouble whatsoever. She's just— [sighs] I'm sorry I couldn't tell you.
Marshall: Your talent for keeping a confidence is one of your most admirable qualities. Along with the ability to shoot accurately while downing a Big Gulp. Could I help you find something?
Mary: Yeah. There was this witness a while back, a case where the guy was shot and died and they videoed his testimony.
Marshall: U.S. versus Carlton Marchai, first degree felony kidnapping. I'm sending you the link.
Mary: Oh, praise Jesus you have no life!

[Marshall has just learned Patrick brought his boyfriend into WitSec without telling anyone]
Patrick: I'm sorry! I shouldn't have misled you. I should have told you about us. But I... I just couldn't. My family, they'd never understand.
Marshall: Patrick, I don't mean to be glib, but if ever there was an opportunity to let go of what your family thinks, it's in Witness Protection, where you will never see them again!
Bob: [to Marshall] You see? This is what I'm dealing with!

Marshall: You leaving early?
Mary: I thought I'd go check on Mia, see if she feels like hanging out tonight.
Marshall: Ah.
Mary: What? What's that mean?
Marshall: It implies understanding.
Mary: No, it implies you think you know something; something even I don't know. "Ah" is Marshall speak for arrogant.
Marshall: You like her.
Mary: I don't hate her.
Marshall: Which for you is tantamount to eternal fealty. Would you go so far as to say under different circumstances you might be, dare I say, friends?
Mary: What's your point?
Marshall: No matter what you do or feel for her, she's not going to be here long and that you can't change.
Mary: Yeah, well, what I can do is make it better. Thanks, sunshine.
Marshall: I know that you can make it better, just don't make it worse for yourself.
Mary: I love when you talk to me in greeting card.
Marshall: I'm serious, Mary. That's why you're so lucky to have me.
Mary: Where I'm smart, you're an idiot.
Marshall: Symbiosis personified.

Mary: [voiceover] I can count the witnesses I've admired on a hand and a half. The ones I liked, fewer still. When it comes to those I was truly friends with I can't put a number on it. I don't need to. It's just Mia. Someone who wouldn't be around very long. I know somewhere a therapist's couch beckons. Mia lived forty-two years. All she wanted in the end was to have made a difference in one life. She did. She absolutely did. I know what she'd say if she heard all this: "Oh, shut up." Her version of rest in peace.

Her Days Are Numbered [3.10] edit

Brandi: Scott invited me to come to his Gamblers Anonymous meeting. You want to come with?
Mary: No, I'm running late, and shoot me first.

Mary: Holy mother, what is that smell?!
Marshall: Homemade empanadas.
Mary: What kind?
Marshall: [protects the plate] Mine, that's what kind.
Mary: Why do you get the witnesses that cook you food, and I get the ones who can multiply very large numbers in their head?
Marshall: It is commonly referred to as karma.
Mary: [grabs an empanada from the plate] Tu empanadas es mi empanadas.
Marshall: Actually, it would be "tus empanadas son mis empanadas".
Mary: So, in high school, who didn't hate you?
Marshall: Actually, I was both well-liked and widely admired.

Mary: [voiceover] Trusting anything, your family, your instincts, the dim-witted anchor on the ten o'clock news, its all a gamble, with plenty of promises and no guarantees, but I'm finding the longer I live, no matter how often I fall on my face, that folding is for losers. That winners take hits. Call it going all in, call it rolling the dice. Screw hedging your bets, bluff, raise, call, stand, again and again and again...

The Born Identity [3.11] edit

Mary: [voiceover] I once dated a guy who loved the independence of living on his own; chugging from the carton in the middle of the night. He said the isolation was a trade-off he could live with. I thought I'd hit the mother lode. Then he told me he was going to clown camp.

Marshall: The paperwork has your IQ at 142. That's a notch above that of the average itinerant. What's your story?
Walter: I read a biography of Paul Erdős when I was ten. It hooked me. [to Mary] Erdős was a homeless Hungarian mathemetician.
Marshall: Who never settled down. Just roamed the world...
Mary: Terrific. Dueling Marshall's.
Marshall: Helping people with their math problems. He did a lot of work in set theory.
Mary: Hey, look! A dime!

Mary: So, long lost mom is a Sherry Greer from Modesto, California.
Marshall: With her social it won't take long to track down where she is.
Mary: Oh, goody.
Marshall: It's possible a positive reunion with Walter's birth mother could heal his primal wound.
Mary: Don't say primal wound.
Marshall: That's what it's called.
Mary: Seriously, I'll give you a hundred dollars if you'll stop.
Marshall: That's what they call many adoptees suffer when taken from their mothers at birth.
Mary: So, what? He's homeless because he's adopted?
Marshall: Maybe unable to bond properly with his adopted family, yes.
Mary: No. I'm a firm believer in ignorant bliss, especially when it comes to family members taking off.
Marshall: Ah, a parallel. How could I have missed it?
Mary: All right, okay. Just don't be surprised when Walter's mom turns out to be something less than Carol Brady.
Marshall: Found her! Sherry's gone back to good, old Modesto. Hmm.
Mary: Hmm, what?
Marshall: She's on husband number four.
Mary: Happy now? Carol Brady's a slut!

Marshall: I'll bet I know what you're thinking. Do you want me to tell you?
Mary: Do I ever?
Marshall: Your father's out there somewhere. You know more than you ever have. We can at least try.
Mary: I don't want to try.
Marshall: Sorry, those words coming out of your mouth are disorienting. You don't want answers?
Mary: There's no happy ending to that story, John Boy. Not even the one in my head.

Mary: Holy Mary! Have you tried this potato salad? It's the mustard kind!

WITSEC Stepmother [3.12] edit

Mary: [voiceover] Split apart, reunited or adjusted for new conditions on the ground, family is a double edged sowrd. They are the best of times, the worst of times, your keys to the kingdom and the skeletons in your closet. If only we didn't have to eat dinner with them.

Mary: [voiceover] Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government... except for all the others. The same goes for family. Or as we'd say on our side of the pond, nobody picks on my brother but me.

Mary: [Mary is threatening Brian about Sabrina] I'm gonna break it down for you. If you touch, talk or so much as accidentally glance at Sabrina, I will find you. I will hunt you down like a lioness looking for dinner. I will haunt you in your dreams til you wake up in your little race car bed with your Transformer sheets soaked through.

Mary: [voiceover] People say "you can't chose your family." What you can do is look deeper than the dinner table, beyond the DNA and redefine the word. No one knows that better than I do.

Mary: [to Stan, after he assigned Marshall to a case he didn't want] I'm taking Sabrina to Chicago to see her mother today. How am I supposed to revel in Marshall's misery from 1,000 miles away?
Marshall: Sorry to blow your weekend.

Brian: [to Sabrina] Who's the foxy Gen X-er, Breen? Your sister or your stepmom?
Mary: Too soon to tell. Her dad and I just started Facebook poking.

Mary: Okay, now I get to tell you where we're going. Chicago. Exciting, right? Cubs, Second City, deep-dish pizza.
Sabrina: I hate baseball, I don't know what that second thing is, and I'm lactose intolerant. So.
Mary: But we have your sunny disposition. So there's that...

Marshall: What are you doing here?
Mary: Well, Sabrina's mom screwed the pooch; showed up four hours late and cut the weekend short. So sad for them. So sweet for me. Free food; fights; food fights.
Marshall: You're actually hoping for violence.
Mary: I'm not hoping. Rooting.

A Priest Walks Into A Bar [3.13] edit

Mary: [to a priest turned bartender] I'm just saying. Maybe all you've done is gone from offering counsel and absolution to offering counsel and Absolut.
Gabe: Been sitting on that awhile?
Mary: Weeks.

Mary: I don't know, maybe I should just pick a bar, down some shots and do some cowboy.
Marshall: Uh huh.
Mary: What? What's uh huh?
Marshall: If you feel like you need to get something out of your system. If you need to go do some cowboy.
Mary: What?
Marshall: You've done the cowboy. And when you weren't doing the cowboy, you were the cowboy, like with Raph. You don't need to let off steam, what you need is I get that you don't like messy, but maybe messy is what you need. Maybe instead of just anyone you should be looking for someone. Someone who challenges you, who calls you on your BS and gets in your face and makes you think. [pauses] What?
Mary: What? I'm thinking.

Mary: I've got a going away present for the priest. I've got the gift of Gabe!
Marshall: Hilarious. You know, giving gifts to witnesses isn't really allowed.
Mary: Yeah. A) No kidding, B) Gabe opted out of WitSec, and C) What's it like for a pussycat to walk around in people clothes?

[Father Gabe has opted out of WITSEC]
Gabe: I should be going. I've got to work this weekend. My new parish needs me.
Mary: Of course they need you. A church in Vegas? God knows what those derelicts have been up to.
Gabe: He does, indeed.
Mary: I don't like you opting out of WITSEC. A courtroom full of guilty doesn't make you safe. Even Flora knows that.
Gabe: I'm glad she's coming into the program, but my mind's made up. I've got a new parish, a new city, one last name change. Only the calling's the same. To quote one of the all time great philosophers...
Mary: Please don't.
Gabe: (imitating Popeye) "I am what I am."
Mary: (laughs) Amen to that. Hey, I got you a little something. Just something.
Gabe: Whoa! Should I open it?
Mary: Uh, in the car. It's a sign. Not your kind. My kind. A sign. You can hang it on your wall.
Gabe: Ah!
Mary: So...
Gabe: Bless you, Mary.
Mary: Take a hike, Father. Oh! Hey, I owe you a punch line.
Gabe: That you do. Let's hear it.
Mary: A priest, a stripper, and a cop walk into a bar. Bartender looks at them and says... "What is this? Some kind of joke?"

Mary: [voiceover] I am what many would call, often as accusation, a non believer. It's a charge I consider unfair, because all of us, no matter the connection we feel or don't, when sitting under the stars, or feeling the world closing in, doing what comes naturally or rearranging the furniture, all of us believe in something. I believe in many things. I believe in first impressions, and second chances. For strippers, priests, and hopeless, hapless sisters. I believe in telling the truth to the people you love at every possible turn. And lying, just a little, at what seems the appropriate time. I believe in finding people you'd run through a brick wall for, and making sure they know it, if not in so many words. But mostly, I believe in justice... sweet, street and otherwise. Justice. That's my church.