The episode opens inside Tara's head, with Bryce strapped to a gurney with a hood over his head. As he sings "The Logical Song" by Supertramp, Tara turns a wheel and ducks his head into a tub of filthy water. Waterboarding vs. Supertramp? I can't decide who's getting tortured worse.

Oh wait, yes I can, it's me. I hate that song, although knowing that it includes the "tackled" sound effect from an early handheld electronic football game once won me 25 bucks in a radio trivia contest.

Tara screams that she has a life to lead and Bryce mocks her about how badly her life is going. In a line clearly meant to foreshadow the Season Four we'll never get, Bryce says that Tara has "no idea how much crazy is bouncing around that lopsided skull of yours." Following a remark about Tara's nether regions far too vile for me to repeat here, Tara drowns Bryce.

Thank God, no more listening to Toni Collette's bizarre voice characterization. Her Bryce reminds me of Dan Aykroyd's Doctor Detroit. It's meant to sound all sinister and foreboding and it comes off sounding ludicrous instead.

With Bryce dead, Max busts through a door in Tara's head and we smear wipe out to the real world, where Max and Tara are sitting on the bridge from which Tara jumped last episode, trying to sell a state trooper on the ridiculous cover story that they were just going for a swim. As the skeptical trooper checks them out on his cruiser's computer, Tara begs Max to keep it together so she won't get sent to a state mental facility.

She not only doesn't want to wind up in the state snake pit, now she doesn't want to go to the institution where she and Max were headed. Instead she wants to go to Boston to see the specialist that Dr. Hatter(r)as recommended.

Back at Casa Gregson Tara tries to convince her doubting family that the Boston option, three months in-patient with outpatient follow-up care, is the best choice. And at this point I want to know who the insurance provider for Ogrelawn is because I want to sign up. I used to work in health insurance and I've never once seen a policy that would cover three months in-patient.

Marshall asks Max if the Boston option is what he wants. Max begins yelling, with many droppings of F-bombs and flippings of birds, that what he wants is to get the Hell Out.

Sadly, Max's most honest scene to date is all in his head, as what he really says is that yes it is. Among the details that need sorting before Max and Tara leave is what to do about Marshall. They nix the idea of his staying at home alone, which is ridiculous since Moosh is the only one in that family I'd trust on his own for three months, They also emphatically shoot down the idea that he move in with Grandma Sandi. Like he did one episode ago when they had no problem with it. Because this show is all about consistency.

Tara wants the whole family to prepare and eat one last family dinner together before she leaves, which would also give her the chance to meet Evan (although the family is united in opposition to bringing along Hellboy, AKA Monty). She asks Marshall to be her "chef de cuisine" to which a clearly over-it Marshall replies "That's an excellent idea, seeing that less than 24 hours ago you punched me in the face."

Tara starts to apologize but Moosh cuts her off with maximum snark, agreeing to be at the dinner and then walking off.

Down in the basement later, Neal brings over a bottle and he and Max wonder why they never opened that combination strip club/pancake house they once dreamed of before Neal offers to take Marshall with him and Charmaine to Houston while Tara and Max are away. I went to school in Texas for a couple of years. Now admittedly it was in Fort Worth and a not particularly nice part of Fort Worth, but as far as I'm concerned sending a gay teenager to live in Texas constitutes child abuse.

However, Max doesn't see it that way and is touched by the offer.

Up in Marshall's room Tara cajoles Marshall to give her another chance while Marshall assiduously ignores her. She yammers about how much fun she is, demonstrating this by flicking water at him with her fingers, because that's always hilarious. She tells him that she'll keep working on him for the next 36 hours until she leaves, which I would take as a cue to start my exciting new career as a teenage runaway.

Neal's taking pictures of Charmaine in lingerie holding a short stack (of pancakes, you pervs) and when she rightly declares it creepy and refuses to continue, he broaches the subject of taking Marshall with them to Houston.

Wait, so you suggest it to the boy's father before you clear it with or even mention it to Charmaine? That's some fantastic relationship skills there, Neal. Lucky for him Char thinks it's a great idea but she tries to parlay it into not moving to Houston. One of her stupid mommy friends has been filling her head with talk of Mexican drug cartels and people eating their own legs, and it's quite possibly the stupidest dialogue in the history of cable television.

Neal calls her out on her nonsense and then leaves the room with the pancakes, one can only hope intending to eat them and nothing else more sordid.

Kate and Marshall are picking herbs in the garden when Kate broaches the subject of Houston. But it's not really about Houston. It's about Tara, because everything is about Tara. Marshall says he wants to shoot himself at the thought of her trying to make up for years of pain and disappointment with token gestures like hugs or family dinners.

And he's also finding it hard to care about Tara at all. He's completely numb and I totally get it. I have someone who's had every bad thing in the world happen to them over the last few years. I used to be supportive and I want to be supportive still, but I'm at the point where I dread the idea of any contact because there are only so many times I can listen to the same litany over and over again. Communicating in this case means drowning in someone else's problems.

Kate tells Marshall that people are dropping off mementos and flowers at the site of Lionel's crash and asks if he'd like to go. He says no and departs, leaving us free to segue through to Evan being grilled about his failed marriage by Tara and Charmaine in the living room. Tara justifies the inquisition by spewing about seven thousand lines of dialogue in 20 seconds. All of which make my head hurt, until Evan shuts her up by suggesting that Kate move to St. Louis.

This prompts a conversation in the kitchen between Tara, Kate and Char which starts out about Kate's situation and following a weird swerve into feminist theory, turns into Charmaine griping some more about moving to Texas. She calls it a horrible state and says that it's only known for two things.

Sorry Louis Gossett Jr and Lee Ermey, she doesn't say "steers and queers" like 90% of the viewing audience is thinking; she says "stupid presidents and the people who kill them." And I must protest. He may have been a devious, conniving son of a bitch, but LBJ was not stupid. Tara unleashes another headache-inducing torrent of dialogue, the upshot of which is that Charmaine needs to suck it up and move to Texas.

Marshall comes in with some groceries and Tara asks him if he wants to help tie up the turducken, which only sounds like a euphemism for masturbation. Marshall snarks that she should just order a pizza, and I never thought I'd say it, but shut up, Marshall. We get it, you're pissed off beyond the ken of mortal beings, stop being such a pill about it.

Gay neighbor Ted is in the living room snapping green beans and chattering at Max about how brave he and the family are while Neal complains that Ted's talking is interfering with his enjoyment of the football game on TV. Why is gay neighbor Ted invited to the family dinner? When did he suddenly become so close?

I know he went with the family to Lionel's funeral but I assumed that was because he knew Lionel and wanted to offer Marshall some moral support. It almost feels like he's an example of the "extra man," the single homosexual males who used to be prized so highly by society matrons because they would balance out their dinner parties, but that seems a little high-concept for this show.

I would rather have seen Noah in this scene, but given Marshall's attitude toward the event I understand why he isn't there. But I am wondering who's baby-sitting "Wheels."

Anyway, as he's chattering away, Max suddenly leaps from his chair and begins throttling him, speaking for the nation when he says he's sick of hearing Ted's voice. It's another tease, as the strangling only took place inside Max's head. Someone scores a touchdown and mercifully the scene ends before Ted begins wondering aloud whether the new uniforms are grape or aubergine.

At the dinner table, Evan apologizes to Marshall for something that I think ended up on the cutting room floor but apparently had something to do with Lionel since Evan starts talking about his father's death. He explains that for a month he felt nothing, then he started finding all these unresolved feelings that didn't start getting better until he found a way to say the things to his dad that he couldn't say while he was alive. Marshall agrees with him but explains how he can't visit Lionel's roadside shrine. Evan tells him he'll go when he's ready.

I think this is my favorite scene of the episode. I love how respectful Evan is of Marshall's feelings and how well he navigated through some emotionally fragile territory, and I loved how it showed Evan beginning to integrate into the family unit in a way that none of Kate's other boyfriends did. Amazingly I think this scene might have made me stop disliking Kate because had there been another season, I would really have looked forward to seeing more of her and Evan's relationship.

Ted brings in the turducken and following a little post-bringing-in-the-turducken chatter (Tara's graduating despite missing the last three weeks of class and all of her finals, as if) the family calls upon Max for a toast. Max rises to his feet and Loses. His. Shit.

It is magnificent. He screams at God, demanding to know why He's so determined to pile so much on him and his wife and children, He rants. He raves. He punches the turducken, repeatedly. He vents everything that he's been denying for the last three seasons, culminating in the ripping off of a turkey leg and the hurling of the rest of the turducken across the dining room into a wall. The entire time this scene was running, I was chanting "please be really happening... please be really happening" and it was really happening! Finally!

Later Tara is packing up a box of things in Marshall's room when Marshall walks in. She apologizes again, explaining that she never meant to imply that she could fix things with a single dinner or over a single weekend. She knows it will take time. Marshall softens a little but he's still very guarded when he says "It'll be what it's supposed to be."

Neither of them are going to be able to sleep, so they drive to Lionel's shrine. The thing is huge, with signs covering some seven or eight sections of chain link fence and a huge swath of ground littered with flowers and mementos all the way up to the curb. My favorite is "WE ♡ U LIONEL" spelled out in what looks like soda cans jammed through the links of the fence. It's absurd.

I can't say as I understand the impulse to build these shrines. I've never lost anyone in a car crash but if I did, I can't imagine I'd want to be reminded of it every time I drove past the spot. I think I'd probably remember the spot just fine on my own without needing a pile of rained-on teddy bears and half-burned candles in jars.

I also wonder, was Lionel really this popular when he was alive? He didn't seem like he had many friends. How much of this is real outpourings of grief and how much is manufactured? Or am I just too cynical?

As they approach the shrine, Marshall says that there's a lot of stuff that he never got to say to Lionel, so from now on if he has something to say to Tara he's just going to say it. Tara's all right with that, and they sit on the curb together. It's a perfect scene.

Back at Casa Gregson, Max cranks his amp and jams on Chastity Stargazer as Ted looks on. Charmaine proposes to Neal and he accepts. Kate tells Evan that she needs to stay in Overland Park and look after Marshall while her parents are away. A neighbor tells Max to knock off the guitar playing and Ted launches a rant back at the neighbor which, had it not been in the same episode as Max's awe-inspiring catharsis, might have been amazing but pales to nothing in comparison. Tara packs up her toiletries and opens the medicine cabinets so she has three reflections because it's arty and symbolic.

The next morning Max and Evan pack up the truck as Tara says her goodbyes. When she comes to Marshall he tells her, "When you get to Boston, don't let them pull out all the good parts." Tara replies, "You guys are my good parts."

As she walks to the truck, she sees T, Alice and Buck, battered and bruised but apparently still "alive," sitting in the bed. Tara gets in the truck and she and Max drive away.

So that's it, our last visit to the United States of Tara. I know the series has been of interest to AfterElton readers for the most part because of Marshall, and he's been an amazing character portrayed by an amazing actor. I will regret not having the chance to continue watching Marshall grow and evolve, but I will also miss a lot of aspects of the show along with the great performances from Toni Collette, John Corbett and many others.

Thank you to everyone who's read these recaps over the last few months and especially to everyone who's commented on them. I've appreciated your support and encouragement and I hope to continue getting opportunities to contribute to the conversation.