The New Adventures of Old Christine: 3.2 ‘Beauty Is Only Spanx Deep’ Recap

February 13, 2008 by Chandra

Recap
Original Air Date: February 11, 2008

Old and New CHRISTINE, DANIEL, and RICHARD go on a double dinner date to a restaurant where the waitstaff consistently ignore Old Christine and Richard while lavishing attention on New Christine and Daniel. A waitress eventually reveals why — they assumed that Old Christine and Richard were actually New Christine’s parents, out escorting their daughter on her date with Daniel.

When Christine gets home afterwards, she whines to MATTHEW, who’s just decided he’s going to put his one year of medical school to use as a therapist, about how difficult it is for her to transform herself from a six into a nine to be with a man like Daniel, a ten who immediately attracts all the attention whenever he enters a room.

Now convinced that they’re both dating out of their league, Christine and Richard respond very differently. While Richard calls New Christine on the phone incessantly to check up on her and then panics more and more when she doesn’t answer, Christine watches the Surgery Channel and sets up a consultation with a plastic surgeon for breast work.

Richard drops by the next day and admits to Christine that he proposed to new Christine on the phone and now needs to undo it. Christine also shares that although she’s a feminist, she set up an appointment with a DR. GURWICH to look into having breast augmentation work. The fact that Richard might marry New Christine also persuades her to go back to using her maiden name, Kimble, to avoid confusion with two women having identical names.

At the plastic surgeon’s office, Christine Kimble-Campbell bumps into STAN (Guest Star Andy Richter), who likes to hang out in the waiting room to pick up hot women with low self-esteem. Her former temporary lover convinces Christine that the reason why she’s hot is because she’s always herself, but when the doctor identifies her as a feminist — which he calls “befores,” referring to those before and after pictures in doctors’ offices — and shows her a computer graphic of what she could look like with surgery, Christine seems ready to move forward with artificial enhancements.

Meanwhile, Richard finally catches up with New Christine at her job. Although her cellphone broke the night before, which explains why she didn’t return his calls, she did hear the message with his proposal. Luckily for Richard, New Christine wants to wait before getting married.

At home, Matthew is completely unimpressed with Christine’s consideration of getting a boob job, and he informs her point blank that no, a so-called feminist can’t have breast augmentation and integrity, too. After telling her son all his life that he should be himself, Matthew wonders how she’ll explain that form of plastic surgery to Ritchie.

And, then there’s also the fact that their mother had her first face lift around the same age Christine is now. Matthew’s reservations and refusal to go along with what Christine is considering finally gets through, and she decides to not get surgery after all.