Falsettos Passover Headcanons
So I figure that Jason’s baseball game was in April 1981 (Baseball is a spring sport but April can still be kinda cold, hence Trina’s long sleeves and Mendel’s 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. Marvin’s family has used the Maxwell House Haggadah for years, Trina’s 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 doesn’t 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 it’s full of typos and Whizzer is like “what is this hippie shit?” and Mendel’s like “oh, please, your grandmother’s name is Mary Kate Catherine McCatholic, don’t come after me about my haggadah.”
They decide to compromise: they’ll use Mendel’s haggadah, they’ll serve the foods that Trina’s 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 Jason’s still studying for his bar mitzvah at this point, he’s in hardcore Jewish Mode and tries his best to answer the questions so he can tell Trina he’s doing something Jewish but still avoid having to learn his Torah portion. Cordelia finds out that it’s another one of those “they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat” holidays and offers to help Trina cook. Because most Passover food is pretty narsty even before Cordelia’s influence, Trina doesn’t notice how atrocious Cordelia’s 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 dog’s mouth, and Charlotte is very confused by the idea of matzah balls in general.
Charlotte has a bunch of medical books and Jason decides it’s appropriate to show everyone what boils look like when they get to the “Plagues” 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 Marvin’s like “that’s too gay, even for me,” and Jason refuses to eat them after Trina tells him that they won’t 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. Jason’s not even mad because the image of the dog running around with a big sheet of matzah in his mouth is so funny. It’s less funny when the dog tries to bury the matzah in Jason’s 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 she’s been to and she reads everything as it’s written, figuring that any typos she sees are just Hebrew words she doesn’t know. Marvin has to correct her and be like “no, that’s a typo, it’s ‘boils,’ not ‘bolis,’ and that’s salt water, not 'slat water,’ Mendel’s just a sloppy typer.”
Whizzer smiles through the whole seder, and Jason’s happy because he thinks it’s because Whizzer and Marvin are back together, but really Whizzer is just trying to hold back laughter at the various ways Cordelia pronounces “Charoset.”
Jason is sick of always having to be the one reciting the four questions, so Cordelia asks if there’s anything she could do to make it better for him. He says yes, and that’s why she beatboxes while he recites them.
Charlotte reads Ms. Magazine and passes her old copies on to Trina. Trina discovers a “Women’s Haggadah” in a 1976 issue and decides that she’ll have a “lady seder” one year if she and Mendel have a daughter together (my headcanon is that they eventually have several).