S01E20 - Mandated Joy

"Mandated Joy" is the twentieth episode of Season 1 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It falls in the two-day gap between the close of the Lynxley network investigation and the opening of the racketeering trial, when Chief Bogo orders the pack off the case entirely and their therapist puts rest in writing as a clinical requirement.

Synopsis

The Lynxley network takedowns are finished and the evidence board at Site Two has been stripped to bare cork. Dr. Silris Mawl's arraignment is set, and the financial team has matched him to a standing Lynxley retainer. The trial is two days away. Chief Bogo orders a mandatory forty-eight-hour stand-down, and therapist Dr. Fuzzby recommends the pack see Pawbert Lynxley into court rested. Nick Wilde proposes a matinee, and Luther drives the four of them to a Canyonlands cinema for a screening of Wonclaw, where Pawbert moves unrecognized through a crowd for the first time since his arrest and weeps at a scene between the title character and his mother. That evening, with prison ahead of him, Pawbert asks Luther to take their relationship further, and they have penetrative sex for the first time. Afterward Pawbert tells Luther he loves him; Luther says it back and admits he has felt it for weeks. Nick, who heard them through the thin safehouse walls, spends the next morning teasing them, and Judy concedes she heard it too. On the eve of the trial Fuzzby tells Pawbert he is ready to speak his own truth, and Luther promises to wait out his sentence.

Plot

Nearly two weeks after Pawbert's birthday, the evidence board on the main floor of Site Two has been stripped to cork and pushpins. Judy Hopps takes a call confirming that Dr. Silris Mawl's arraignment is set and that the financial team has matched him overnight to a standing Lynxley retainer carried under its own designation, Quietus; the charge sheet is being amended. Nick Wilde drops another file on the closed pile and accounts for the rest: of the fifty names that were once on the board, the dozen that mattered are in custody, and the remainder turned on each other or ran out of network to hide in once the money and the muscle were gone. Nobody on their side was killed. Luther comes in from a last perimeter check, and Judy tells him the investigation has been officially closed for an hour. The call was Chief Bogo, and the order attached to it is a mandatory forty-eight-hour stand-down: no casework, no surveillance runs, no digging through evidence, no strategy sessions. Trial starts in two days and he wants them rested. Dr. Fuzzby's written recommendation comes with it, arguing that a witness who arrives at trial emotionally depleted will testify badly, and instructing them to mandate joy. Nick declares this legally binding. Pawbert, still facing the empty board, says that if he stops moving he will remember what is coming.

Nick refuses to spend two days indoors and proposes going outside. Luther raises security immediately, and Nick argues it away: the network is dismantled, and every mammal who wanted Pawbert dead is either arrested or on the run. When Pawbert cannot remember the last time he saw a film in an actual theater, Nick drops the routine and makes the case plainly, that Pawbert is going to prison and should see a movie first. Luther agrees to drive them to a matinee at an old cinema in Canyonlands.

The streets outside are busy with ordinary traffic, mammals with strollers and shopping bags and corner conversations that have nothing to do with court dates. Pawbert steps onto the sidewalk and stops short. Nobody looks at him twice, and it is the first time since the arrest that he has moved through a public crowd as one more face in it. Luther parks with clear sight lines out of habit but leaves his weapon alone for the afternoon. They buy tickets from a teenage pig at the concession stand and take screen five, and Judy checks on Pawbert in the lobby, where he tells her the afternoon is neither good nor bad but new.

The film is Wonclaw, about a wolverine chocolatier whose shop is sabotaged and whose stock is stolen, and who keeps building anyway. Partway through, Pawbert laughs out loud without covering his mouth or checking whether he is allowed to. Then the film cuts to a flashback of a younger Wonclaw sitting with his mother while she tells him to hold on to his dreams, and Pawbert finds Luther's paw in the dark and grips it. He is smiling and crying by the credits, and he stays in his seat after the lights come up. He tells Nick that the wolverine kept choosing to make something good even after everything was taken from him, and Nick answers him without a joke.

That evening, back at the safehouse, Pawbert makes cocoa and cannot put the trial down. He names what is waiting: two days to testimony, then years away no matter how the testimony goes. Luther tells him the difference tonight is that he is choosing to be present instead of dissociating. Pawbert admits he is afraid of being too frightened to have Luther while he still can, and then asks for more than they have done. Luther asks whether he is sure. Pawbert says he has never been more sure of anything.

They sleep together for the first time in Luther's room, with Luther setting the terms before anything happens: Pawbert's pace, and they stop the moment anything is wrong. Afterward, tangled together in the dark, Pawbert tells Luther he loves him before he can think better of it, then spends a moment certain he has ruined everything. Luther says it back, and adds that he has felt it for weeks and did not want to put that weight on a mammal already carrying so much.

Nick is waiting directly outside the door in the morning, and has been for fifteen minutes. He reports that the safehouse walls are thin, that he has notes, and that he has already composed a retelling of the night in verse. He also tells Luther, seriously and briefly, that he did well. At breakfast Judy cannot look up from her coffee. She admits she put a pillow over her head and that it did not work, congratulates Pawbert, and asks for the orange juice, telling them the pack has all seen this coming for weeks and only objects to having heard it. The rest of the stand-down passes in a card game Pawbert loses six times before he works out that Nick is cheating, with Luther reading in the corner and looking up from the page every few paragraphs.

In the evening Fuzzby takes the last session before trial by tablet, under the fairy lights still strung from Pawbert's birthday, while Nick and Judy give them the room and rearrange dishes in the kitchen to cover the fact that they are listening. Pawbert tells her he is terrified and also ready, because he has good things to hold on to now for when they try to break him on the stand. She returns to their earlier work on guilt, and when he admits he is still waiting for permission to be revoked, she tells him that pleasure without guilt is allowed, and especially so on the eve of something difficult. She tells him he has come a long way from that first session in the holding cell, that he is ready, and that having proven he can choose to stay, he now has to prove he can speak his own truth rather than his family's.

On the last night before trial, Pawbert stands at the window over the distant city lights and says he is less frightened than he expected to be, which Luther puts down to his having stopped running. Pawbert asks what happens when he gets out. Luther tells him he will be there, and when Pawbert presses on how long that is, says he would wait. Later, lying in the dark with his head on Luther's chest, Pawbert confirms he meant what he said the night before and asks whether Luther did too. Luther tells him he has never meant anything more, and that it holds because of who Pawbert is becoming. Pawbert asks him to stay, and Luther answers "Always." The last thing Pawbert says before the trial is that he is glad he stayed.

Key Moments

• The Lynxley network investigation is formally closed, and the evidence board at Site Two is stripped to bare cork
• Dr. Silris Mawl's arraignment is set, and the financial team matches him to a standing Lynxley retainer carried under the designation Quietus
• Chief Bogo orders a mandatory forty-eight-hour stand-down before the trial, with Dr. Fuzzby's recommendation attached
• Nick argues the pack out of the safehouse for a matinee in Canyonlands
• Pawbert moves through a public crowd unrecognized for the first time since his arrest
• A scene between Wonclaw and his mother breaks him in the theater
• Pawbert asks Luther to take the relationship further, and they sleep together for the first time
• Pawbert and Luther exchange their first declarations of love
• Nick, who heard them through the thin safehouse walls, teases them through the morning, and Judy admits she heard it too
• Fuzzby's eve-of-trial session ends with her telling Pawbert he is ready to speak his own truth
• Luther promises to wait out whatever sentence the court hands down

Key Lines

Locations

• Site Two - safehouse; the stripped evidence board, the kitchen, and Luther's room
• Canyonlands - the district street outside the cinema
• Canyonlands Cinema - lobby and screen five

Items

• Green sweater - Worn at the stripped evidence board, and pulled on again the morning after
• Fairy lights - Still strung along the safehouse walls from Pawbert's birthday; Nick refuses to take them down

End Credit Song

"For a Moment" (From 'Wonka'), Calah Lane & Timothée Chalamet

In Wonka, "For a Moment" is Noodle's song. She catches the sadness lifting and immediately instructs herself to distrust it, to stay unattached, because nothing good has ever stayed. Willy sings nonsense over her, a silly thing made of her name, and her resolve fails anyway. Here the moment arrives as an order. Bogo pulls the pack off the case for forty-eight hours, and Fuzzby puts it in writing on the grounds that a witness who arrives at trial depleted will testify badly. They spend it on a matinee, a night Pawbert asks Luther for because there will not be many more, a card game Nick cheats at, and breakfast at a kitchen table. The cue also comes from the picture they sit through that afternoon, about a chocolatier who keeps making something good after losing everything.

Notes

• "Wonclaw" is a Zootopia-universe version of Wonka (2023).