Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Liar, Liar
By Cate | Season 4 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.07.2000
Over at Dopey's swinging bachelor pad, John is watching some politician on TV. He starts ranting to Dopey about cultural appropriation, claiming the Caucasian politician is misquoting Harriet Tubman. But really, it's all about Dopey. He starts bitching about the new orderly, whose name is Elizabeth. Dopey is annoyed that she keeps following him around and "taking notes on everything [he does]." He insists that she likes him, though John tries to argue that maybe Elizabeth just wants to learn how to do her job right. He says Matt shouldn't be so selfish, adding, "Isn't that what we're all here for, to learn from each other?" Dopey asks if John's dating Harriet Tubman. John just looks at him as if to say, "Dopey, you're a freakin' moron." Dopey says, "No, I know, no longer living -- but a lot of your dates are like that." Why do I get the feeling that, while I'm laughing pretty hard right now, it's not at the part of the sentence that's supposed to be funny?
RevCam's reading in bed while Annie flits around the bedroom, dusting stuff, in case the newspaper photographer wants to take pictures of their bedroom. RevCam adopts something of a "whatever" attitude toward that notion, and for once I agree, although I don't think it's very nice of him to imply that SuperMom is crazy. The CamRents discuss the fact that the kids have been running back and forth between each other's rooms all evening. Annie theorizes that it's to plan nice things to say to the reporter about RevCam. Hey, do you think that might be some foreshadowing of the fact that, really, they're not?
Well, hot diggity dog, I was right! The kids are making each other promise not to tell the interviewer about all their shameful, sordid secrets: the abortions, the drug rehab, the felony convictions -- you know. Or at least they're telling each other to keep mum about things like Mary toilet-papering the gym, Simon pretending to try smoking, Ruthie cutting her friend's hair, and Lucy going on dates with actual boys! Yeah, you know, I'd want my siblings to keep quiet about stuff like that too, so that nobody would find out how fucking LAME I was. There's even more uncomic filler as SuperMom makes the kids promise to play nice during their interviews.
At the hospital, the Dopester notices that Elizabeth was about to take a patient out in a wheelchair with a faulty brake, so he gives her a mini-lecture on wheelchair safety and advises her to swap out the chair for another one. Then he runs off down the hall -- carrying scissors. Heh, I wish. Sharon the supervisor comes along and suspiciously notes that she thought Elizabeth was supposed to be taking a patient somewhere. Elizabeth gets all wide-eyed innocent and blames Matt for wanting to use a wheelchair with a faulty brake -- until Elizabeth stopped him, of course. It's a piss-poor acting job, but Sharon buys it and commends Elizabeth, while promising to have a little chat with Dopey. Then Elizabeth completely oversteps her bounds by telling Sharon that Dopey has a bad temper and has been working too many hours. Okay, now we have a possible reason for Elizabeth's shenanigans: she wants to work some of Dopey's hours. But again, we never find out her real motivation anyway, so who cares?