Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Future Shock
By Sars | Season 6 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.13.2003
Hospital. Jack paces the hall. A door opens and Grams, accompanied by a doctor, steps out into the hall, sniffling. She spots Jack and they walk toward each other; Grams shakes her head and sobs. Jack hugs her. The doctor stands by, looking useless and failing to earn his SAG card.
Jen's hospital room. Jen's arms are crossed over her chest in a posture befitting her vague and Victorian malady. Jack enters. Careful, Jack! If you aren't properly anointed with Balsam's Specific Tincture, you also might contract a case of Galloping Rickets, or Whooping Gout, or (God forbid) Splenetic Vapors! Jen sighs loudly as Jack enters, and exhales, "Hey, you." Kerr Smith tries to look sad. Jen asks what he's doing there, since it's so late: "Doesn't this hospital have visitation hours?" Jack says he flirted with the nurse to bend the rules, and that Jack can be charming when he wants to be. That remains to be seen. Jen asks what happens when the nurse finds out that Jack's gay. Jack distractedly tells her that it was a male nurse. Jen: "Cute?" Jack gets up on the bed and huskily says, "I would love nothing more than to engage in our patented, meaningless, good-humoured, Jack/Jen fag hag banter, but first I was kind of wondering -- I mean, since you're lying here in this hospital bed and you're hooked up to all these machines -- how come? How come you didn't tell me, 'cause I thought I was your best friend." Jen's only been dying for about four hours and she's already mastered the philosophical, fond smile of The Bravely Dying Woman Who Knows The End Is Nigh And Thus Speaks Only Profound Truth. She replies, "Because I didn't want you to be worried. I was already worried enough. Because I thought that if I pretended it didn't exist, it would just go away. Because I like it -- I like our patented, meaningless, fag hag banter. And because I was scared if I said it out loud it would be true -- because I was just...I was just scared. 'Cause I was an idiot." Jack agrees that she is an idiot, and tells her he could have handled the news, and helped her handle it. Jen murmurs that she needs Jack. Yeah -- she needs him to run up and down the hall when she finally conks out, screaming, "I don't understand why she has to have this pain. All she has to do is hold out until ten, and IT'S PAST TEN! My fag hag is in pain, can't you understand that! GIVE MY FAG HAG THE SHOT!"
Jack asks her, "straight up" (God knows that's how he prefers to get all his news), how bad her condition is. Jen carefully enunciates, "Decreased left ventricular systolic function. It's a hole, blood not pumping right to my heart; it's causing a lot of problems in my lungs. It's called pulmonary congestion." I could look this stuff up and see if it's a real thing and how fatal and untreatable it is, but the writers didn't care enough to make it seem legit, so why should I help their asses? Jack asks what can be done to fix Jen's bad heart, like treatment or surgery. But, like I said, Jen's got a Victorian bad heart, and surgery is just a gleam in a barber's eye, I guess. Jen says there's nothing to be done: "I have been doing everything. And at first, the odds were good. But you know me and odds." What? Jack asks about a specialist. Jen says she's seen specialists, and that she's sorry to lay all this on him like this, but that she thought she could get to Capeside and back "in one piece." The glycerin is flowing freely down Jack's cheeks by now, and he leans down, clutching Jen's hand. Jen gasps, "I've been trying to get okay with this, but I can't do it alone anymore. 'Cause I am gonna die, Jack." She says it like her dying is something he's been waiting impatiently for, and she's finally about to get around to it, like, "I am going to take out the garbage and die, just get off my back!" Jack sniffles. To her Declaration Of Intent To Die, Jen adds, "And like everything else in my life, I don't really know how to do that. But I'd like to not screw it up. I'd like it to be something that I get right for once." Well, it's good that, since the writers have had Jen screw up every relationship she's ever had, her education (as far as we know), her career (probably), her ability to please her parents and grandparent, and GALE'S WEDDING, dying is the one thing Jen's going to get to do as a total pro. Jeez. Jack murmurs that he's there to do anything she wants him to do. Jen says that, right now, she wants him to get into bed with her, tell her about the cute nurse, and make her forget everything she just told him. She feebly raises an arm as an ovary -- not subtly, as tradition dictates -- whines, "Say goodnight, not goodbye." Jack gets into bed and LEANS HIS GIANT HEAD ON BAD HEART GIRL'S CHEST as he sniffles, "His name is Max." Jen, gazing over Jack's head: "I like 'Max.'" Jack: "He has a goatee." Jen, bemused: "Hmm. We can work on that."
Oh, sweet montage. No one can carry me painlessly into the commercial -- and the end of the episode -- like you. Give it to me. Oh yeah. Pacey drinks at the Icehouse. Jack walks up and shakes his head.