It began with a bearded Canadian gentleman playing a guitar, but that was last night's episode of The City's only resemblance to Rust Never Sleeps.

The Canadian guy is "Duncan" and he is Erin's dorky Canadian boyfriend, from Canada, but now he is in New York, staying with Erin, his mysterious American girlfriend. Erin kinda looks like someone we went to college with, and is therefore marginally relatable, as a human being. Meanwhile Olivia looks like a Virtua Fighter and Whitney like Mac Tonight so Erin's got a leg up, precisely until she says "teach me a choahrad." Girls should teach themselves chords. Did Bikini Kill in vain?

(The weird boyfriend is Canadian, and so we can feel superior to him because we pay so much less for our magazines and harcover books.)

Then Whitney materializes! "You must really like Erin," Whitney says to Duncan McKenzie. Duncan says: "....." Roll credits!

Oh, so Erin hopes Whitney finds an apartment soon, because her friend with the incorrect impression of what bacon is will be staying there for a while, and they don't want Whitney hovering, wordlessly, while they watch movies and make passionate l-word. Whitney has been has been searching for an apartment, tirelessly, we are assured. She looked under the couch, she looked in a tree, she looked in a cloud.

Now we're at "work!" For a second or two. Diane von Furstenberg tells Whitney to dress a model in a different pair of Osh Kosh overalls, or something, so a blurry Asian takes care of this while Whitney answers a call from Jay. Jay found an apartment for Whitney, but Whitney is "at work," but then work ends so she can go see her apartment, we think. Diane goes upstairs. Olivia and Whitney stare into space for a moment and then Olivia says "go, see your apartment," icily. Olivia will cover for her and sprinkle the sawdust on the floor and put herself back in her crate.

Cut to a big white empty soulless void with pristine wood floors. It's touring an apartment. (HEY-OH!) The apartment is on the millionth floor of a terrible blocky new building somewhere in Murray Hill maybe. Whitney loves it! Because the producers have already set up a shot from an adjoining building! And also she doesn't love it!

"I kinda envisioned myself when I moved here," Whitney says, "living in one of those lower brick buildings." But she is not a Ghostbuster and cannot live in an abandoned firehouse, so here she is stuck.

"It's a good area," Jay explains, because the height will protect Whitney from Tasmanian Tigers and boxing kangaroos. "Erin lives two block away." Oh, good. We wouldn't want to lose touch with Erin.

During the commercial break we became baffled and confused and had to lay down for a bit. Pretty much we only ever watch Lifetime Movie Network (before The City we watched a fantastic film called Her Only Child about a psycho mom who keeps hiring thugs to beat up the oldest daughter from The Nanny's boyfriends because they're going to take away her daughter with their rugged Lifetime Movie Network good looks), and we found ourselves missing Vince Offer for SLAP CHOP, and whatever "Sam-E' is (it is something that will help you if your Sam-E Levels are out of whack) and we didn't learn anything at all, during this MTV commercial break, about GLUCOSAMINE AND CHONDROITIN.

Whitney is moving next weekend, and Jay will help her, and then Olivia and Whitney say "Jay's big muscles" a couple times and attempt laughter...? "You have to be independent," Olivia explains. "I hope you're not relying too much on Jay." We too would advise not relying on Jay at all, for anything, besides croc-hunting.

Oh, god, the Canadian and Erin, at Brass Monkey, why? Is it weird for the Canadian to be in our land? Where cars drive on the right side? "By weird do you mean awesome?" Duncan asks. Some of our police officers ride on horses, here in New York, so he feels right at home.

"What is wrong with you?" Erin asks, "how is there nothing wrong with you?"

Duncan answers, unconvincingly, "I got my secrets." LOOK OUT ERIN HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FOOT THING.

More with the talking of these two watercolors. "You totally read my mind," Duncan says after Erin says something utterly impossible to parse. His mind is, apparently, a pile of alphabet blocks.

Then we all move into Whitney's apartment and talk about love because Duncan and Erin both said "love" to each other, last night, "love," they said, blessed pure Canadian-American long-distance relationship love! Jay doesn't believe in "love." Love with Canadians.

Then Erin accidentally, briefly, achieves some form of sentience: "If I were you and you were me I'd be like, you're crazy."

(Does Olivia have an English-speaking foreign boyfriend too? Is he... Scottish? We will never watch this show again to find out.)

Now Erin and Whitney are wandering around the reservoir in Central Park. Jay is sending Whitney mixed signals, she reports. The signals are a mix of "I'd like my shitty band to be on TV" and "you're a remarkably easily manipulable moron." Or... is she? (Is she?)

Then their conversation dissolves into bird calls. "It seems like we're totally figuring everything out in New York," says Erin, "except the boys, gobble gobble." They couldn't find their way from the Jackie O reservoir back to their depressing apartments without town cars. If they tried it on foot they'd both end up falling through the ice of the Wollman Rink.

We kinda got distracted here for a minute, and then Erin said something like "that, street meat, blog and a taxi." We may have misheard that but really what difference can it make because everything Erin says is just a list of words.

Oh god, "Nevan." Nevan got a ticket for spitting in the subway station but he wasn't detained for a weekend in The Tombs so there is no justice, impeach Bloomberg.

Jay and Whitney are hovering in a vacuum in the LES, drinking root beers, talkin' 'bout life. "It doesn't have to be like, Whitney's my girlfriend, Jay's my boyfriend," one of them says.

Jay wants to get to know Whitney better, and Whitney looked blank, and Jay looked insincere, and then then Sasha Fierce showed up and the show ended, forever.

But look, Jay fucking "found" Whitney an apartment and then everyone gave him shit because he wouldn't say to his reality show castmate that he loves her, after they've hung out, on camera, in dark shitholes, like four times? Jesus H we would date that terrible Australian and let him fuck around on us with similarly blank-faced morons as much as he wanted if he found us an apartment without us having to do any work at all.

Next week: what is a social? Also maybe KISSING.