Quilty Pleasures

*Season 1,* *Episode 1a*

**"Quilty Pleasures"** is the first segment of the first episode (and the first story overall) of *Close Enough.*

## Synopsis

While working on Candice's class quilt, Josh and Emily get trapped in the underbelly of the L.A. fabric district while Alex and Bridgette prove to be incompetent babysitters.

## Plot

Josh films Candice riding on a homemade skate park inside the house, which goes well until she cracks open the A/C system, causing her and the roommates to be caught in its pull, before Emily comes in a shuts it off. Josh pulls out his phone an realizes he left it on photo mode instead of video mode.

While picking up Candice from Chamomile Elementary, her teacher stops them and voices his concern that Candice hasn't turned in her family tree quilt project that's needed for a school event the following day, else he will fail her. Josh and Emily resolve to do the project, though not before unintentionally teaching Candice a new swear word.

After "dropping off" Candice with their roommates (forcing them to babysit her so they don't do disgusting stuff), the couple head to the Fashion District, a run down swap-meet. The two split up to find the required materials. Josh can't understand Spanish from a saleswoman that (ironically) sells thread and is distracted by a churro cart. Emily haggles in Spanish to a salesman to get cloth cheaper. Josh ends up getting fitted for a zoot suit before purchasing a bird modeled after him (and does not take a liking to him).

Meanwhile, back at their house, Alex and Bridgette noticed Candice is missing and they go to look for her. It shows that Candice goes to the landlord Pearl's house for dinner where she finds her son Randy struggling to make a scrapbook, and she helps him by simply pasting 2 pieces of paper and draws a heart around it, much to his delight.

Back at the Fashion District, the shops are all closed and the couple have done nothing to progress their project. Josh got distracted by many things and ended up getting his wallet stolen, while Emily failed to successfully haggle for a bargain. After sending his bird out to get thread, he encounters the boy that stole his wallet and tracks him down to an abandoned building, where he is surrounded by other children, who rather than attack him, beg him to do something with them. Emily catches up with Josh, and the children mistake her for their mom. Through a musical montage, the children gather materials and battle sewer rats to make the quilt, which looks stunning to them. After tucking them in, the couple reconcile for their errors before having sex, Scrod watching them from a grate.

Waking up to Scrod beside them, the pair find out that the "British children" were really street urchins. Making a run for it, the urchins were about to trap them but Bird Josh knocks them out of the way, giving them time to break for Emily's car, but not before witnessing the urchins' own bird slice Bird Josh's head off. While mourning him, Scrod launches himself onto the windshield, but Emily shakes him off into a mailbox, killing him.

After arriving at the school, they find that Candice has done her own (highly inappropriate) quilt. After the teacher passes her for doing the project herself, since he revealed that most parents at the school actually do their kids projects instead of letting them do it themselves. Emily orders Josh to get rid of of the quilt they made.

## Characters

* Josh Singleton
* Emily Ramirez
* Candice
* Alex Dorpenberger
* Bridgette Yoshida
* Timothy Campbell (debut)
* Alley merchants (debut for all)
	+ Bright Thread Fred vendor
	+ Pajaro Pals vendor
	+ Consuela (no real lines)
* Bird Josh (debut/death)
* Alley speaker system announcer (voice only)
* Elderly Urchins (debut for all)
	+ Calamari
	+ Scrod (death)
	+ Walleye
	+ Tilapia (no lines)
	+ Troutface (no lines)
* Pearle Watson
* Randy Watson
* Giant rat (debut; no real lines)
* Calamari's falcon (debut; no real lines)

## Trivia

* This episode, along with "The Perfect House", was briefly released early on June 29, 2020 on the HBO Max website under the title "Season 1, Episode 1A".
* The cast did a table read of a portion of this episode at their 2020 Comic Con Panel.
	+ John Early was unable to participate, so Calvin Wong, the supervising producer for the show, read for Timothy Campbell.
* When Calamari introduces her friends, there are five urchins surrounding her, but only four of them get introduced.

### Pop culture references

* Two of the stuffed animals in Candice's classroom somewhat resemble Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.
	+ However, it is unclear if this resemblance was intentional.
* One of the stores in the fashion district is called "Bright Thread Fred", a reference to the band Right Said Fred.

### Censorship

* On Netflix, the word "shit" is bleeped out. Josh and Emily saying the word by spelling it, the letter "I" was bleeped out. Candice saying the full word was bleeped out, changing it to this.

**Emily:** Make those other kids' patches look like S-H-(BLEEP)-T!

**Josh:** Total S-H-(BLEEP)-T!

**Candice:** Are you guys spelling "(BLEEP)"?

**Emily:** Damn it, those teachers are too good!