Darkly dawns the hand-off.

Of course, before we can get to the whole thing wherein Elly spends years on end running around screaming about a girl she never speaks to or gets to know because doing so would be a humiliation that would destroy her credibility forever and always, we have to wrap up the template to mindless panic about a non-threat by saying an on-screen goodbye to Dirk Dagger.

This, of course, is because when Lynn decided to hector Aaron about who he should and should not like, she'd realized that it didn't make much sense for Connie to stand around fretting about how she'd be blamed for the ugly grandchildren that Molly and Dirk would have when it was far more sensible to have Elly stand around body-shaming a girl she despised because Mike didn't want his ultra-uncool and super-embarrassing cluck of a mother breathing down his damned neck when he was with his little sweetie.

This means that we make a lateral move from Connie being a catastrophically inept step-parent who'd let Molly date Ted Bundy because he was so charming and handsome to Elly not admitting that she blames Martha for a decision Mike made for a reason that she doesn't want to admit to. It's not that she's a meddlesome nag that can't keep her fat trap shut when something is harmless or that she has her head up her arse when she should be paying attention, it's that some girl with dangerous body language has somehow bewitched Michael. Getting to know the person behind the threat would, as I said, mean having to admit to committing an injustice for a stupid reason so never happened.