Episode Report Card Niki: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Reefer Madness
By Niki | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.27.2001
Luckily, this little drug summit is interrupted when the junkie -- I mean, "Eli" -- and Rick come home. Everybody stares at the jailbird with pitiful eyes. "Well, I'm starved. Anything to eat?" he asks, ambling over to the stove. Don't they see the signs? They're all there! The boy's been "using" pot again! Any minute now, he'll grab a knife and carve up every last one of them!
Later that night, Lily slides into bed next to Rick, who reaches immediately for the strap of her tank top. She shoots him down with, "I don't know if I can have sex with you. You raised a drug addict." Rick retorts, "And your daughter is his dealer." Huh? Lily decides this deserves a kiss for some reason. There's a sound of feet thumping down the hallway, and Lily breaks the kiss to wearily count off, "One...two..." Their bedroom door flies open, with a fed-up Zoe attached to the doorknob. What, she doesn't even knock anymore? I'd be locking that door, pronto. "Mom!" Zoe whines. With deadbolts.
Cut to Eli sitting at the dining-room table the next morning. He's staring at the yellow pages, pen in hand. Lily, in a skin-tight tank top, approaches with an armload of laundry -- all the better to show off those deltoids she grew during hiatus. She asks Eli how it's going. He asks how he's supposed to know where to start. Lily closes her eyes, waves her finger around, and plunks it down on the page. "Exactly," Eli says with a grin in his voice. He tosses down the pen and mutters that he didn't want to be a waiter, anyway. "What do you want?" Lily asks earnestly. Eli says he wants to play music, "but they won't let [him]." Lily suggests a job in the music business. "Like...?" Eli asks. "Like working at a guitar store. Or for a music publisher. Or a recording studio." Eli's intrigued. "A recording studio?" he asks, waiting for the catch. Lily says, "Well, sure, they must need some young people to exploit." Eli starts thumbing through the yellow pages. I can only hope he's looking for "R." Lily turns to head for the laundry room. Her sweat pants have a star on the ass. Right in the middle, like a bull's-eye. She might as well have a flashing neon arrow directing your eyes there, too. It's weird. Eli asks if he can borrow her car later, and she pauses to say she'll take him wherever he needs to go. Vroom, baby, vroom! Eli turns his attention back to the yellow pages and starts rifling through the book like a man with a mission.
Cut to Lily sitting in her truck. The camera pans over to Eli, hands in pockets, shuffling out of a recording studio. Lily asks how it went, apparently overlooking the dejected expression on Eli's face. He sighs that the woman said she'd call. And that she looked at him "like [he] was a snail." Lily jokes that "they teach them that at reception school." She asks when they're making their decision. "Was I supposed to ask that?" Eli asks, pitifully. She gives him a sympathetic smile before glancing toward a big black truck. Men are hauling music equipment out of the back of it, and Lily's wheels are turning. "Come with me," she says. Eli asks where. "Just...come with me," she says with a little grin. She's clad in yet another little tank top, her bra straps prominently displayed. Now, I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with how Lily's dressed. I don't care that she's over forty and shops in the junior's department. I just think it's odd that she went from Land's End to Delia's, got a flippy new shag, and turned hip over the summer, and there's no explanation for it. It's like we all know that Lily's missing, and there's this strange new fembot in her place, but no one else is noticing. It's eerie. And distracting, obviously. Sorry.