Falsettos Passover Headcanons
So I figure that Jasonâs baseball game was in April 1981 (Baseball is a spring sport but April can still be kinda cold, hence Trinaâs long sleeves and Mendelâs sweater). If we assume that Marvin and Whizzer got together again THAT DAY, they would be a couple during Passover, because Passover was late that year. So the TKF was all together! Yay!
Marvin, Trina and Mendel all argue over what haggadah to use. Marvinâs family has used the Maxwell House Haggadah for years, Trinaâs parents always had to wing it because her father is Ashkenazi and her mother is Sephardi and they compromised by creating their own haggadah together but Trina doesnât want to go all the way out to Westchester to get copies of it, and Mendel wrote a version of the haggadah with the Jewish student union at Columbia when he was an undergrad and itâs full of typos and Whizzer is like âwhat is this hippie shit?â and Mendelâs like âoh, please, your grandmotherâs name is Mary Kate Catherine McCatholic, donât come after me about my haggadah.â
They decide to compromise: theyâll use Mendelâs haggadah, theyâll serve the foods that Trinaâs family had at their seders when she was growing up, and Marvin gets to read all his favorite parts.
Cordelia is super interested in all things Jewish, and asks Jason a ton of questions about the holiday. Because Jasonâs still studying for his bar mitzvah at this point, heâs in hardcore Jewish Mode and tries his best to answer the questions so he can tell Trina heâs doing something Jewish but still avoid having to learn his Torah portion. Cordelia finds out that itâs another one of those âthey tried to kill us, we survived, letâs eatâ holidays and offers to help Trina cook. Because most Passover food is pretty narsty even before Cordeliaâs influence, Trina doesnât notice how atrocious Cordeliaâs attempt at Jewish cuisine is until after the holiday, which is why Trina hires her for the bar mitzvah.
Trina and Marvin also argue about matzah ball soup. Marvin likes his matzah balls light and fluffy, Mendel and Trina like theirs heavy and dense, Jason prefers to have multiple small matzah balls that he can launch across the room with a spoon into the dogâs mouth, and Charlotte is very confused by the idea of matzah balls in general.
Charlotte has a bunch of medical books and Jason decides itâs appropriate to show everyone what boils look like when they get to the âPlaguesâ part of the seder. Nobody wants to eat after that.
Whizzer makes a lot of constipation jokes. He is in charge of dessert and brings those gross kosher-for-Passover rainbow cookies, and Marvinâs like âthatâs too gay, even for me,â and Jason refuses to eat them after Trina tells him that they wonât make his poop rainbow.
Jason is in charge of the after dinner entertainment. He subjects all six of his parents to a two hour long stuffed-animal reenactment of the Exodus story, complete with musical numbers. At the end, he gives out autographed copies of the script and it is revealed that he and Whizzer have been working on it together for six months over the phone (Jason dictates because Whizzer is a much faster typer).
The dog finds the afikomen before Jason does. Jasonâs not even mad because the image of the dog running around with a big sheet of matzah in his mouth is so funny. Itâs less funny when the dog tries to bury the matzah in Jasonâs bed and Jason spends the next three months finding crumbs everywhere.
Charlotte has a lot of Jewish friends, but this is the first seder that sheâs been to and she reads everything as itâs written, figuring that any typos she sees are just Hebrew words she doesnât know. Marvin has to correct her and be like âno, thatâs a typo, itâs âboils,â not âbolis,â and thatâs salt water, not 'slat water,â Mendelâs just a sloppy typer.â
Whizzer smiles through the whole seder, and Jasonâs happy because he thinks itâs because Whizzer and Marvin are back together, but really Whizzer is just trying to hold back laughter at the various ways Cordelia pronounces âCharoset.â
Jason is sick of always having to be the one reciting the four questions, so Cordelia asks if thereâs anything she could do to make it better for him. He says yes, and thatâs why she beatboxes while he recites them.
Charlotte reads Ms. Magazine and passes her old copies on to Trina. Trina discovers a âWomenâs Haggadahâ in a 1976 issue and decides that sheâll have a âlady sederâ one year if she and Mendel have a daughter together (my headcanon is that they eventually have several).