Episode Report Card Niki: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Flirting with Disaster
By Niki | Season 2 | Episode 12 | Aired on 02.06.2001
The show opens with a view of a televised hockey game, and it looks as though Chicago is playing the Blue Jackets. The camera pans back as a player zooms toward the net, and we can hear a man's voice shouting, "Oh...yes yes yes yes yes!" as the puck finds its home just as the buzzer sounds. The voice belongs to Rick. A hockey fan? He just scored some points with my Canadian ass. Lily observes, "Men always sound like they're having sex when they watch sports." She took the words right out of my mouth. She flicks a kernel of popcorn at Rick and quips, "Slap shot!" Rick tugs at her arm, pulling her onto the couch with him, and Lily tells him to stop distracting her -- she has work to do. He gamely agrees and offers to leave. She begs him not to, but he insists that he, too, has work to do, and that he has to do it on his computer. They banter a bit and that, of course, segues into canoodling. Mercifully, the grope fest is short-lived, as Rick gets hold of himself and asks, "Okay, so who's winning as we enter the second period: Christy or Graham?" Oh, I wish he hadn't couched that in hockey terms. Anyway, Lily answers that it's odd to see Crusty behaving so oddly, "totally contorting herself." What, did Crusty join the circus? She'd make one bad-ass scary clown. But no; Lily's referring to her paranoia about Graham and her fear that he may actually be right at times. She says that Graham just tries to be "so cool, like there's not a pit bull clamped to his hand, slowly tearing it off." Crusty as a pit bull? It works, doesn't it? Rick says that guys always try to play it cool, just as he tosses popcorn at his mouth and misses. Lily informs him that he and Graham have nothing in common, and Rick, suddenly ten, retorts that they both like her. Lily argues that Graham doesn't like her, and those sound like famous last words to me. Rick insists that he has to leave immediately or he never will. Lily pulls him backward, plants a kiss on him, and then hoofs him in the ass, telling him to get out of there.
Jessie, dressed in a schmancy little black dress, falls face-first onto Karen's bed with a killer sigh. Karen begs, "Help me out here. I can't tell you you look beautiful, because as your mother, I have zero credibility here." Jessie tells her that she can say whatever she wants, as long as she doesn't say "looks don't count." Karen claims that she was only going to say that some of the girls are going as a group. Jessie says, "That's okay. I'm not." I'm guessing she doesn't have a date for whatever thing they're referring to. Karen lays into the guilt saying that a while ago, Jessie said she might want to go, and Karen took her out and got a dress that she thought Jessie liked. Jessie's immune to the guilt trip, though, because the humiliation of going somewhere solo far outweighs any emotional manipulation her mother can pull off. She says she changed her mind and asks if that's allowed. Wearily, Karen agrees that it is. Jessie hops off the bed and announces that she'll start her homework, then.