[I do believe that there are only two bedrooms in the penthouse, Lucille's and Buster's, though sometimes Annyong and Oscar also lived there for months, so I think there must be at least one extra bed available somewhere. Yes, Oscar slept with Lucille, but she tried to keep Buster from knowing about the affair, so she had to pretend that Oscar was at least sleeping on the couch. I also think Lucille would give Annyong his own bed to make Buster jealous and make it seem like the adoption was permanent. (Earlier in my story, Buster and Oscar didn't offer any spare bed to Gob in Chapter 5 or to Michael in Chapter 14, but let's just say that Buster wanted privacy when he took the roomba into his bedroom.)
On the show, no explanation is given for why Sally Sitwell changed her mind and agreed to date Michael in season 2. She rejected him at the bachelorette auction, Michael chickened out of asking her for a date later, then we skip to Michael and Sally on their eighth date. I'm going to try to fill in some of the blanks here.]
When Steve arrived at the penthouse with all his stuff, he was surprised to learn that there were only two bedrooms. He had assumed that the penthouse would be spacious and have enough bedrooms for him, Buster, and Oscar. After all, Lindsay had said that he shouldn't settle for the room with bunk beds at the model home. "Where am I gonna stay?"
Buster explained, "Oh you can share with me, Steve. There's still an extra bed, from when Annyong used to live here." He went into a closet to pull out a spare bed. "You can keep the doves in my room too."
Steve was disappointed. "But what if I want to bring my date Sue here, and we want to be alone?" He turned to Oscar, who had already claimed the master bedroom. "Can I borrow your room instead?"
Oscar said, "That's fine with me, but what about when Lucille comes home? At least I hope she'll be transferred back here for house arrest soon. If she does, then I don't think she'll like being displaced."
"Oh!" Steve hadn't realized that Lucille might return to the penthouse before her trial. Lindsay hadn't mentioned that possibility, and now Steve felt insecure. Maybe Lindsay didn't really accept Steve in the family and was pushing him away like Gob often did. "Well, um, maybe I shouldn't move in, then." Maybe he should go rent an apartment instead.
"No, no!" Buster said. "If you want to spend the night with Sue, then you can use my bedroom. I'll just ask Lucille 2 if I can sleep across the hall then, that's all." The widow Austero already let Buster stay the night in her spare bedroom when Oscar got high with all his hippie friends.
"You sure that's all right?"
"Yes, it's fine. Come on, I want you to stay here, Steve. We can have fun together." Buster also wanted to be able to consult Steve for romantic advice so he could figure out how to win back Lupe while keeping it a secret from his mother, who might fire her again.
With a shrug, Steve Holt moved in and got the doves settled into Buster's room. Then he got ready for his date and went to pick up Sue Hsu in his car. They drove out of town to a romantic spot, and he told her all about the Magician's Alliance. She was very impressed that he got an autograph from Tony Wonder and might even be on a DVD with him and Gob.
She asked, "If you have a show at the Gothic Castle, can I come?"
"Sure!" Then they went to a movie and shared popcorn.
They had a great time, and she agreed to go back to the penthouse with him. Buster and Oscar greeted Sue with hugs that awkwardly turned into shoulder rubs.
Sue backed off a little and tried a polite handshake instead. "Nice to see you again," she said, because she mistook Oscar for George.
"No, this is my uncle/father Oscar. That was my father/uncle Dad at the party."
She looked confused, and Steve worried that Sue would think that the Bluths were weird, and that maybe the scandal about them was true.
So Steve went out on the balcony with her for privacy and he explained about Oscar being Buster's biological father, though for years everyone thought his twin brother George was the father. She understood now, and she did like the view from the penthouse. They got romantic and made out again.
Counting this as their second date, after Sitwell's party last night, they decided to sleep together, and Buster did go across the hall as he had promised. Sue was amused when she heard the doves cooing in their cage, and she didn't mind Steve staying in Buster's room.
"It's like me having to share a dorm room at college," she said generously, though the room seemed more like a little kid's room. She had sympathy for Buster losing his hand, though, and was glad that Steve was friends with his uncle.
Steve felt hopeful that living at the penthouse would work out after all, and he stopped worrying about why Lindsay made him leave the model home.
At dinner, Sally kept talking about her and Maeby's plans to trash Lindsay in the movie, and Tony just sat there eating. Then he remembered what Gob told him at lunch about Michael, so when Sally paused for more wine, he finally interrupted.
Tony told her what Gob said, that Michael was not in love with Lindsay. He only pretended to want to sleep with her, and she ran away from him. He was not crazy after all, and was actually a good brother to Gob.
Sally raised an eyebrow and shook her head. "No, he isn't. They fight all the time." She had witnessed some of their petty fights herself, as well as hearing about many other fights over the years.
Tony said, "Yeah, I remember you showing me the Boyfight video, Sally. But they're not kids anymore and things are better now. Michael once caught Gob with his boyfriend and-" He hesitated and realized that he shouldn't tell Sally that Gob's secret boyfriend was a maritime lawyer and a college friend of Michael's. Better that she not know such details if the police questioned her after they broke Michael out of prison.
"And what?" Sally asked.
Tony finished lamely, "And, um, he realized that Gob was bisexual, but hiding it from their homophobic parents. Michael accepted him and didn't try to out him to the rest of the family. He was loyal and kept Gob's secret."
Sally didn't buy that story. "That doesn't sound like Michael at all. He and Gob once had lunch with me and my dad at the country club, and they kept fighting childishly the whole time. See, Gob was dating Lucille Austero, but he didn't want to admit it-I guess because Buster dated her before, and she's an old friend of their mother."
"What, really? Buster too?" Tony had already heard from Sally that Gob used to date Stan Sitwell's current girlfriend, but he was surprised to hear about Buster too.
"Yeah." She shrugged it off. "Oedipal issues, I guess. Anyway, Michael kept teasing Gob and trying to out them as a couple, while Gob denied it. Hmph." Just like Michael would later deny that Sally was his girlfriend. If only she had realized sooner that Michael was a hypocritical Bluth, just as awful as anybody else in his family.
"Are you sure?" Tony was confused.
"Yes," she answered. "Lucille Austero got mad at Gob for being a coward, and Michael didn't care about getting him into trouble. Plus my dad tried flirting with Lucille too! Trust me, those guys didn't stop Boyfighting just because they grew up."
Tony said, "But that's just one awkward lunch, and maybe Michael was just upset on Buster's behalf and wanted Gob to go tell him the truth." Conflict involving multiple brothers could be complicated.
"No, no! That wasn't it." To give him more examples, Sally told Tony about newspaper articles she'd read about Michael and Gob fighting publicly, once at a ribbon cutting ceremony when the fake house fell apart, and more recently when they competed with two different banana stands. "They also fought in front of the courthouse a couple of times. I think once was about Michael stealing Gob's girlfriend Marta."
Tony was disappointed in Michael as a brother, and he wanted to ask Gob about that later. For now he excused it with, "Well, it's probably 'cause their dad manipulated them somehow, pitting them against each other. Gob's dad is just like my dad. I couldn't help fighting with my brothers, even though I knew better, and I slept with my brother's widow for revenge." That had been fucked up, especially since he already had a girlfriend Tiagra at the time.
Sally said, "That's my point. Michael and Gob fight all the time. They can't help themselves."
Tony insisted, "But Michael came through for Gob and his boyfriend. Remember, nobody else in the family knew that Gob was bisexual, and he told Tobias to keep it a secret."
"But didn't he say, not to tell Michael?" Sally asked, remembering when Tony told her the story before. "See, Michael didn't know already."
Tony explained, "No, um, he did know. Gob just didn't want Tobias to tell him about us kissing. Michael might think that Gob was cheating on his boyfriend and tell him."
"Exactly. To get him into trouble," Sally said.
Tony frowned and felt undermined. But he tried to get back on track. "The point is, Gob said that Michael's not crazy. When Lindsay found out she was adopted, she wanted to divorce her gay husband and marry Michael, and he told her no. But that just made her want him more, and he had to pretend to want to sleep with her, to scare her into running away."
Sally folded her arms skeptically. "And how does Gob know all this? Was he there?"
"Um, I don't know."
Sally said, "Besides, even if Michael hypothetically said no to marriage, it doesn't mean that he doesn't want to sleep with her. Who'd wanna marry her and be stuck to her for life? Michael could have just been worried that his son wouldn't approve. That was what he always said to me when he was keeping us a secret!"
Tony nodded and sighed, because she often complained about that.
Sally continued, "But as for sleeping with her in private, where nobody would know..." She shrugged and made a face of disgust.
Tony said, "You weren't there either. You don't know what happened."
"But Lindsay told everything to Lucille Austero, who told my dad." She shrugged. "I guess Lindsay could be lying, but Michael could be lying to Gob too about the whole thing. He wants Gob to give him the job and to testify for him at the trial."
"But why would Gob believe him then? Why would he protect Michael, if he's always a lying jerk to him?"
"I don't know. Gob's kind of gullible and dumb sometimes."
"Sally!" Tony was getting mad at her again, for insulting his friend.
She quickly said, "I just mean that he's got a weakness with his family. He's needy and always wants their approval. It's like you and your dad."
Tony frowned and nodded sadly. "I keep thinking... hoping that he might finally like me and be impressed by my magic career." It was a futile hope, though. Tony's father didn't care about his fame and success as a magician; he cared about duty and tradition.
Sally patted his hand sympathetically. "So maybe Gob can't see that Michael's manipulating him? Maybe he's hoping they can be friends at last?"
Tony thought about it and remembered that Gob said they would have fun in South America and go camping together. Did Michael make empty promises to him, just to get Gob to help him? But what about Gob's boyfriend the maritime lawyer? Surely he would defend Gob and make sure that Michael was trustworthy? If only Tony could meet him.
Sally insisted, "Michael is definitely crazy! I told you how he got about Maggie Lizer, and her stupid fake pregnancy. He knew she was a liar, but he still let her mind games get to him. And even before I dumped him, Michael was always looking for things to get between us. Always saying that Gob would hit on me, so we shouldn't tell anybody we were dating. Always saying that his son wouldn't be okay with us, so we should meet at my place. He wouldn't ever let me come over to the model home unless we sneaked up the staircar to his balcony." That was how Michael smuggled Beth Baerly into his room too. "We were sneaking into his bedroom like guilty teenagers! And then he wouldn't take his shirt off during sex. What the hell was wrong with him?"
Tony shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe he's a nevernude like Tobias."
She chuckled a little, but frowned and felt depressed. "No, he was probably wishing I was freaking Lindsay the whole time. Ugh!"
Tony remained puzzled. "But you didn't think he was using you for a substitute back then. He never said her name in bed or anything?"
"No. Not during sex. But he talked a lot about all his family during our dates. Like complaining about Gob being President at work, or Lindsay and Tobias having an open marriage, or his son having a girlfriend and not wanting to go to Legoland with him." Sally had sympathized at first and used the opportunity to vent about her father to Michael, but she often got the impression that Michael wasn't listening to her. He was so self-involved, a trait which had only been useful with respect to hiding her alopecia.
Tony asked, "If he's so crazy, then how come Michael didn't look for you at Lindsay's birthday party? He didn't ask about you at all backstage at my show."
She shrugged. "Maybe my dad scared him off and told him that Ice was my bodyguard and not just my date. My dad's always interfering like that. I mean, he even tried to set us up at the bachelorette auction. If only I had stuck to my first instincts and not dated Michael! But my horrible father had to guilt me into it. I gave Michael a chance, and he fucked it up!"
Then Sally angrily told the whole story of her dating Michael again, and Tony tried not to roll his eyes. He poured himself some more red wine.
In 2005, Sally ran into Michael working at the banana stand, filling in for his son. Gob showed up on his Segway and squirted her with lighter fluid. He called her "Sally Stickwell" and teased Michael about loving her in high school. Later, she and her father ran into Michael at the country club, where he was wearing a jacket too big for him. Sally went into detail about the awkward lunch, when Gob and Lucille Austero joined them. She really rubbed in how much Michael and Gob were fighting, so Tony would see that Michael was a terrible brother.
Tony tried to interrupt, saying that maybe Michael was embarrassed and getting revenge for Gob teasing him earlier at the banana stand.
Sally shook her head skeptically. "Then in a parking lot, I ran into Michael at a car fire, and the ambulance took him away. I went to see him in the hospital, but his insurance card was declined and I felt sorry for him. I was going to come back and check on him later to see if his family came to help him. But then he surprised me at the bachelorette auction and bid $15,000 on me. But it turned out that my dad gave him the money to buy his car. So manipulative!"
"Your dad or Michael?"
"My dad. And I shouldn't have fallen for his manipulation later, but I totally did! I should never have listened to him, but I couldn't help myself."
After Sally said no to Michael, she left the auction. Stan Sitwell also left in disappointment at not winning a date with Lucille Austero.
Disappointed and desperate for money, Michael called Stan Sitwell that night to say that Sally rejected him. "But I still have to pay the country club my bid, sir. So since the car deal's off, would you be interested in buying my date gift basket that I'm not going to use? I'll throw in some Bluth Company shares if you want."
"What? No, no, Michael. Our deal still stands." Sitwell said he would buy the Corvette anyway. "I still need that car, after mine got blown up. Just, um, drop off the car here. I'm so sorry for Sally's behavior."
"What? Really? Oh thank you so much, sir." He got in the Corvette and drove to Stan Sitwell's house. (This was the modest house that Sitwell owned before Lucille 2 encouraged him to buy an extravagant estate.) As he handed over the car keys, Michael asked, "Is Sally here, sir? Could I speak to her?"
Sitwell sighed and explained, "No, I'm afraid she's at her own home. She was supposed to come over tonight to discuss some business at our company, but she canceled at the last minute. I assumed it was so she could see you, but it must be because she's avoiding me again." Sitwell gave Michael a check for the car, then patted his shoulder paternally. "Don't worry about Sally, Michael. I'll speak to her myself."
"If you could tell her that you don't approve of me at all, that would really help me." Then Michael called for a cab and left with his check.
Sitwell sighed and shook his head sadly. Back inside the house, he phoned his daughter and lectured her about her horrible behavior at the bachelorette auction. "It was for charity!"
"It was for a new golf course!"
"It doesn't matter! If you didn't like the charity, then you shouldn't have signed up for the auction! When you signed up, you promised to go on a date with whoever made the winning bid. For you to back out on a whim was unethical, uncharitable, and unacceptable!"
That stung. She always felt that her father was comparing her to Lindsay, even when Lindsay supported the stupidest causes, including the fake disease "T.B.A." that was featured at the Bluth Foundation gala for two years.
Stan argued, "The only way the date is optional is if the guy behaves horribly, like he's dangerous." He shrugged. "Or if the bidder is a family member." They had seen Michael bid on Lindsay at last year's auction out of pity.
Sally had enjoyed Lindsay's public humiliation, both from her awful Wetlands appearance, and from having to be rescued by her brother. It reminded her of unpopular kids in high school who had to take a cousin to a dance. "Well he did behave horribly. He said he bought me."
"It was a figure of speech." Stan insisted, "Besides, it was rude and selfish to leave Michael in the lurch like that, after we saw his credit card get declined at the country club! If I don't buy his Corvette, he would still have to pay $15,000 to the country club. You want him to go into debt because of you?"
Sally remembered Michael actually telling her that he couldn't afford the $15,000 bid, and felt bad. But she said, "I figured he could withdraw the bid and the next highest bidder would win. It's not my fault that Michael couldn't afford it."
"He could afford it because I bought his car."
"Because you wanted to set us up! Look, I'm not going out with him, Dad! I told you to stop interfering in who I date."
He countered, "Well, you shouldn't interfere in me buying a car! That's not up to you. My car got blown up, and I need a new one."
"That was your car on fire?" Sally hadn't known that, but the fiery explosion did make it unrecognizable.
"Yes. Didn't you see me arrive in a cab?"
"No, I was late from seeing Michael in the hospital. But come on, Dad, you can't drive a convertible!"
"I can if I don't put the top down!" he said, while self-consciously adjusting his wig. "Anyway, I wasn't going to keep Michael's car for long. The insurance rates would be outrageous. I just wanted to drive it for a while to impress my date if I won." (He didn't realize that the Corvette would trigger Lucille 2's vertigo.) "Whenever my insurance claim gets paid on my destroyed car, then I'll just donate the Corvette to a charity and get a less expensive car. But that's my business, Sally. I made the deal. You don't make Michael back out of it!"
"Dad!" Sally was upset, and felt he was being so unfair.
"Fine, don't go on the date, but at least apologize to him, or you'll give us a bad reputation with the local charities."
"What, Michael's going to complain? With his awful family?" She pointed out that Lindsay was spotted at a local NRA rally recently, and was wearing a fur coat while flirting with the actor Moses Taylor, TV's Frank Wrench.
Stan said, "And didn't she get shot with a tranquilizer? She was probably making a point about the cruelty of hunting animals. It was a dramatic reenactment or parody. Her actor husband probably talked her into it. In fact she was so committed to the cause that she did it the same night as the auction."
Sally was so frustrated that her father always gave Lindsay a pass.
"As for Michael. I bought the car from him anyway, so I guess he can use the gift basket for someone else, who's not so rude and capricious. If you don't want to apologize to him, let that be on your own conscience. I thought we raised you better."
"Arghh!" Sally hung up and called her mother to vent about her awful father. It was one of their worst fights ever, and she considered resigning from Sitwell Housing altogether, until her mother calmed her down and said she worked so hard to become Vice President. Why quit over something unrelated to the business? Besides, Sally needed to stay in town to see the specialist doctor for alopecia. "But you can always visit me, if you need a vacation."
So Sally she left town to visit her mother for two weeks.
Not knowing this, Michael came to Sitwell Housing with the gift basket from the auction. He hoped that Sally might change her mind if her father had said he didn't approve of him. But the secretary said Sally wasn't in, and Sitwell was trying on a long wig in the office. Michael mistook the back of Sitwell's head for Sally and thought she was avoiding him, so he left.
After Sally returned to town, she found out that her father was dating Lucille 2 now, having stolen her from Gob. Her father was being all lovey dovey with the widow Austero, and was too busy to interfere in her life. Sally felt a little sorry for Gob, but it was his own fault for being a coward at the country club and making Lucille Austero mad. Thinking of the awkward lunch at the country club, Sally started to reconsider dating Michael. He and Gob did fight childishly, but Sally remembered feeling sorry for Michael, wearing a jacket too big for him and getting his credit card declined.
She decided to go see Michael at the Bluth Company one day. His office/storage room made her feel sorry for him again.
He was embarrassed by the office, but glad for her to at least see that he wasn't working at the banana stand. Michael asked why she left town so abruptly, having only heard about it when Sitwell called him to say he was sorry for Sally leaving without apologizing.
Sally said she had a fight with her father, who was so overbearing.
Michael didn't think that Stan Sitwell was so bad, compared to his own father.
"Oh yeah?" Sally challenged, complaining that her father compared her to Lindsay all the time. "He thinks she's so great even though she dropped out of college, and all her businesses failed. Everything about her is so fake."
Michael responded with the Boyfights that George put him and Gob through. "At least your rivalry wasn't caught on tape and sold internationally."
Sally conceded, "True. But my dad drives me crazy at work too. I constantly have to win his approval, but all of the sudden he hires Gob at our company, just for the stupid softball game. Even after that, my dad let Gob waste a lot of time talking about Fuck City at meetings before he fired him."
Michael hadn't realized that Sally would feel threatened by that. He knew the feeling of being displaced by Gob at work too. "How do you think I feel, with Gob being President, and me in this office?"
She realized that they had a lot in common, having to work for fathers who were impossible to please. "At least your father's not around. I mean, he's alive, but a fugitive somewhere far away, so he can't bother you." Sally had heard that George Sr. faked his death and escaped.
"Uh, yeah. I'm so lucky." Michael wished that his father really had fled the country, instead of staying in the attic. It was stressful having to keep the secret from the rest of his family.
Feeling more friendly, Sally took his hand and said maybe they should start fresh, and forget about what their fathers thought.
"I'd love that, but..." Michael awkwardly confessed that he had already given away his gift basket from the bachelorette auction to Tobias.
"That's okay." Sally asked to treat him to lunch at the country club instead.
He looked embarrassed and protested, "I have money. My credit card was just-"
"Michael, it's all right. I see you now in your business suit that fits you. You were just having some kind of cashflow problem because of your fancy Corvette, weren't you?"
"Yeah, that's it. Just a temporary thing." Michael couldn't tell her that George Sr. had charged a hot tub on his card, and that he returned it, so he could bid on Sally at the auction. But he unwisely offered to help Tobias, who bid on Lindsay with the whole $5,000. That was why Michael needed Stan Sitwell's money later.
Sally pointed out, "And you're not a golf member of the country club, so it makes sense for me to pay so that we can dine inside. You're not one of those guys who are too macho to let a woman pay, are you?"
"No, um, no." It did bother Michael a little, but he knew better than to start a fight now that Sally was warming up to him again.
"Great. I'll make us reservations." So they finally left together and had a good meal at the country club with no interruptions.
When she brought up the golf cart ride that they never went on, Michael confessed that he did like Sally then, even though he ran away from her. "The reason why I never went after you before was that my father was always pushing me into it."
Sally's eyes lit up. "So you didn't want to date me after you knew that your father approved." She smiled and realized that they were the same.
Michael nodded and took her hand.
Sally decided that it wouldn't be so bad to date Michael after all.
So they went on several dates and bonded over their work and their crazy families. They talked about how silly the Bluth/Sitwell feud was, and Sally felt that Michael understood her. She even thought keeping their relationship a secret was fun and exciting for a while.
But he was uptight in bed, and didn't want to take his shirt off. He said nervously that he hadn't dated in a while, and he wasn't sure of the current fashion in male grooming.
At the mention of body hair, Sally became self-conscious about her alopecia, but soon discovered that he was oblivious to her symptoms, given the right distraction.
When Michael still didn't take off his shirt after a few nights together, Sally wondered if he just couldn't relax at her place. So she suggested going over to the model home next time, but he insisted that his family should not find out they were dating.
"Come on, Michael. Your son won't mind. I'll talk to him, and he'll understand."
"No the last woman to talk to him was that publicist Jessie, who said he was getting in the way of my happiness." Michael let Lindsay kick Jessie's ass for that.
Sally insisted that she would not say something awful like that, but Michael remained wary. "He loved his mother very much." He only relented as far as sneaking into the house the way he had with Beth Baerly once, and only after his family was asleep. Even then, Michael put away his son's picture in the drawer, and he wouldn't take off his shirt.
Sally should have seen the signs that Michael was not really committed to her, and was a terrible boyfriend, but she kept hoping that he would improve with time. That he would become more loving and devoted, like he had been with his wife Tracey. Sally had sometimes seen them together in the 1990s and thought they looked happy. Michael was not a womanizer and cheater like his father or brother, after all.
On their eighth date, the couple had Sunday brunch at Skip Church's bistro, and Michael was willing to imagine a hypothetical where they got together in high school and had a completely different child from George Michael.
But then they ran into George Michael and Maeby, and everything went to hell.
Michael introduced them awkwardly, and also criticized his son for skipping work at the banana stand.
When George Michael asked if Sally was his girlfriend, Michael said no. He only corrected himself slightly and acted ashamed.
Sally got annoyed and left them alone, so that Michael would admit the truth and stop being so cowardly. She talked to him a few minutes later, and he assured her that he did tell his son about them. George Michael was fine with it, and Michael promised that he would tell the rest of his family now. Sally had hoped that they were past the whole thing and that Michael might finally relax in bed on their next date.
But Michael soon went crazy over Maggie Lizer's fake baby, and that was the last straw for Sally, who dumped him.
Sally told Tony Wonder, "Michael was so neurotic and fucked up the whole time. He just couldn't be happy at all, and it was like Jessie was totally right in her article, that Michael uses his son as an excuse to keep women from getting too close. If Michael's not crazy about Lindsay, then what other explanation is there for his horrible behavior?"
"I don't know."
"Anyway, don't listen to Gob about Michael. He's wrong."
Tony frowned, "Well, if Gob's wrong, then I better talk to him so his brother won't fool him anymore." He better try to talk to Gob's boyfriend too.
Sally shrugged. "I guess so."
Tony felt unhappy and decided to clean up after dinner. He wasn't sure that he was in the mood for sex anymore.
Fortunately, Sally understood that he was upset, because she was angry at Michael all over again. She lit a cigarette and decided to go home. "I have to get up early tomorrow to mail my package to Maeby anyway. Goodnight." She kissed Tony, then left.