"Cutting It Close" picks up the thread Tara left dangling three episodes ago: what does the visa process actually look like once the job offer is real? The short answer is that it works. The longer answer is a month of Tara’s life she’d like back.

Her husband's Talent Passport application covers the whole family, which sounds simple until you try to book three people through a third-party scheduling contractor that only shows availability one person at a time. After three failed attempts to find appointments close enough together, they land in the Los Angeles area — a city Tara and her husband used to call home — and turn the trip into a farewell vacation, complete with a genuinely unbelievable reunion with an old waiter.

Then the real countdown starts. Her husband's passport and visa clear first, which tells them almost nothing about Tara's and Miss Tween's applications, still sitting untouched in a queue. With the flight days away and no confirmation in hand, Tara moves their departure back — a decision made on math, not information — and gives up the settling-in time the family had been protecting since June. The passports arrive with about a day to spare.

Tara also closes out one of the show's oldest open threads: the dogs. They did make it to France — just not with the rest of the family. She walks through why, and through the actual rules for bringing a pet from the US into France (there's no quarantine, but there is a 21-day clock most people never hear about until it's too late).

Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/albert-behar/djangos-night-out