Episode Report Card 2 USERS: C YOU GRADE IT Nothing Was Fast as Lightning
By Alex Richmond | Season 5 | Episode 4 | Aired on 11.18.2001
Jenny is still kvetching about being hired for her freckles. She's "not a puppet." Ray says that's too bad, because then he can't put his hand up her...oh, he didn't finish his sentence. Dammit! Jenny expositionally says that bringing her in on the eve of trial seems weird, and didn't she sue the whole firm from which she was just fired? That was dismissed; it's just Ray now. And it's not just her freckles Ray likes. She's "girly, gangly, and adorable," and juries love that! I'm very annoyed, but I know better than to question the order. Besides, hasn't this storyline been used, like, a million times? Lawyer hired because of her looks, or his quirks? Yeah, so I thought. Jenny says that "this kind of flattery leaves [her] wet." Ignoring the obvious entendre, Ray goes in for the finish, holding her shoulders and saying he "needs" her. Jenny's head tilts slightly; her lips part, and the piano starts tinkling gently. She'll do him. I mean, "it." She'll do it.
The music gets cartoon-cat-burgular-y, as Fish stealthily enters John's secret room behind his bathroom stall and sees it's empty. Yup. John is really gone. Richard presses the remote, the secret panel slides away, and...Corretta leaps up and screams. She had just sat down on the bowl, it appears. Fish screams, too. It's chaos, but, you know, stupid. Nelle emerges from another stall to referee. Corretta screams that Richard is leaping out of walls, that sick so-and-so! Richard says that there's a room back there that was John's, and that John left him a note, so he wanted to check! Nelle is all, what do you mean John is leaving? Not "leaving" -- gone. John is gone.
Court. The woman who's suing Ray recites her long list of complaints: he called her "'sexy,' in open court." His hand "grazed [her] buttocks." He asked her "to tame his meat weasel." And he told her about a dream he had when they both did karaoke in the nude, and that she was good with the mic. Which, per the hooey of dream analysis, is "phallic." Wow, mentioning that things are phallic is so ridiculous. Except if you're talking about burritos, or actual penises. Not all of them are, you know. Jenny cringes at each admission, while Ray mildly shrugs. Ray also grabbed the plaintiff and kissed her. All of this made her self-conscious, rattled her, and caused her to lose the case and the long-term client. Damages. There you go.
Jenny confers with Ray in an off-court room, asking how the hell could he have done (and can still do) all these intrusive things. Ray says, "It's a boy's club." The world? Is a boy's club? Oh, fuck you, DEK. You and the horse you rode in on. Jenny says it isn't a "boy's club anymore," and still Ray acts like it is by hiring an adorable, freckly, chick lawyer. Jenny? It doesn't have to be all about you. Oh, listen to me, challenging the natural order of things. My bad! Ray is like, you're great, and trial lawyering is about button-pushing. And, once he saw his mom cry because men no longer considered her a sexual object, so women have to like being treated as one for at least part of the time. DEK? Go fuck yourself. Seriously. Fuck right off and die. Jenny takes off her hypothetical lawyer hat and dons her friend hat, informing Ray that he has a problem. The few thousand people watching this crap show say, "Duh!" The piano plays gently, and Ray stares at his adorable, freckled lawyer. Her lips are moving.