Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Let's Spend The Night Together
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.27.1999
Cut to Rick and Eli in a back room, where Rick is stammering and stumbling around his attempt to discuss sex with the kid. Just as I suspected.
B/W Rick cuts in to say he doesn't think he knew what sex was before he met Karen. I'll take his word on that, but I have to admit I'm having trouble believing Karen in the role of sexual liberator.
Rick continues trying to talk about sex, asking Eli if he knows about "AIDS...and...condoms...and all that -- stuff." Eli takes mercy on his father and quickly puts an end to his misery by saying shortly, "We haven't had sex yet." He then asks whether Karen put Rick up to the talk because he knows she "worries a lot about this sort of thing." Rick explains that girls see sex differently than boys do, and that Eli shouldn't push his girlfriend into anything if she isn't ready. Eli doesn't need any lessons on how to treat the ladies, though, since he's had "classes in sexual correctness since the sixth grade." Where do they teach "sexual correctness" and does the Religious Right know this kind of debauchery is going on?
B/W Rick keeps on going, telling us way more than we ever needed or wanted to know. He describes how he and Karen stayed in bed for "weeks at a time" and that it was like "being drunk on another person." Mmm hmm, you can just stop right there, and I certainly won't mind.
Cut to Rick and Lily having dinner in a candlelit restaurant. "My sister's bookstore," she says, and over the next minute or two it becomes clear that she's referring to the bookstore she owns with her sister. It has the unlikely name of My Sister's Bookstore. She tells Rick about the business -- how her father came up with the name and wanted Lily to be Judy's partner because he always saw Judy as a flake. "Unfairly," Lily adds. Lily had wanted to go into teaching, but her father convinced her she'd make more money with the bookstore and have more time to spend with her kids. "Wrong on both counts," Lily dryly notes. They laugh heartily, leading me to believe they're both still nervous with one another, 'cause it ain't that funny. After the merriment fades, Lily leans forward and fetchingly props her chin on her hands. "What does it mean to be an architect?" she asks and practically bats her eyelashes. Rick says that it entails a bunch of boring things like "charming building inspectors, stopping clients from making mistakes, drumming up new business and, once in a while, actually designing a new building." What does Lily think of all this? Let's ask her black-and-white self to find out: "I kept thinking he has such nice hands." I'll let it slide because she already seems sufficiently embarrassed by the remark.