Actually, Maddie Hayes Got Married a few episodes back, but the viewers didn't get see it. Maddie dropped the bomb at the end of Tracks of my Tears, and David has been very calm about the situation ever since. Until now, when The David Strikes Back.
David arrives at the office and finds everyone madly cleaning and scrubbing the office. Agnes tells him that lunch reservations have been set and that they are hoping that "he" (Walter) will be coming in to pick Maddie up for lunch.
The entire staff is excited, with the exception of Bert, who is too busy feeling outraged at Maddie's marriage to have anything but contempt for Walter Bishop before ever laying eyes on the man. David calms Bert, tells him that everything is fine and that, since Maddie has married this man, the Blue Moon family will accept and welcome him.
He then marches into Maddie's office and, over her objections, invites Walter to come up to the office personally to meet Maddie for lunch. After meeting Walter, however, David can't help but laugh. The man Maddie married is no threat to David's ego. No threat to David in any way at all, actually. He denies having any intimate relationship with Maddie, welcomes Walter and puts Maddie immediately on the defensive.
And she should be. When Maddie returns, she comes into David's office and the sparks begin to fly. Now completely convinced that Maddie chose this man deliberately to spite him, David refuses to allow his feathers to be ruffled. He challenges Maddie about her feelings for Walter, which she defends to the hilt. He accuses her of being embarrassed about Walter and ashamed of him, and Maddie rises to the challenge, declaring that she wished that she had held a huge wedding to declare her love for Walter to the world. Check and mate, as David announces to the staff that he is throwing a big church wedding for Maddie and her man.
Maddie sees through it, of course, and she and Walter have an argument nearly as entertaining as the ones she always had with David about the whole idea. In one of the best lines Maddie ever had, she tells Walter "You see this as a benign gesture, but it isn't. David is making mock. And David makes mock like the Swiss make cuckoo clocks."
She couldn't be more right. David's mockery of Maddie's wedded bliss is every bit as intricate, elaborate, and detail-oriented as the most complicated of Swiss timepieces.
Bert and MacGillicuddy plan a bachelor party as David makes the arrangements for the ceremony and asks Terry if she will accompany him. In a very sweet moment, he breaks the news to her that Maddie is getting married and that he doesn't think he can face the whole thing without Terry. It's the first hint that the mocking, devilish David is hiding the real pain boiling within.
The bachelor party shows another facet of David's complexity as he comes upon Walter sitting all alone. David seems to realize for a moment that he is not the only victim in this situation. The scenes of David sitting with Walter and drinking with him, smoking cigars with him, forming the Royal Order of the Yellow Napkin Heads with him (you have to see the scene – it's one of the all time highlights of the series) are both funny and achingly poignant. Beneath the hoopla and the high jinks is a very real sense that these two men are both in pain and that they are, in a strange way, brothers in it.
The wedding itself (and the level of David's ornate mockery defies description – again, it must be seen to be believed) is interrupted when Terry goes into labor. Maddie and Walter follow David and Terry to the hospital and the cards are all put on the table for our protagonists and their two innocent victims.
Synopsis written by Don Gow.
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