Episode Report Card Niki: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Daddy's Girl
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.13.2000
Jake whines on about how she never trusted him and she asks, "Do you know why?" But he's not interested in hearing it, saying, "It doesn't matter anymore." Lily plows ahead anyway, telling him that it's because he lied -- he sat there at the mediator's and lied that there was no money. He lied as easily about money as he did about everything in their marriage, Lily tells him through gritted teeth. "I did it for us!" he bellows and Lily reminds him, "there is no us." Lily's dad comes down the stairs to see what the hell the commotion is about, but Lily tries to keep him out of it. He insists that if it's about the restaurant he has a right to know what's going on. He admits that he knows that Jake can't pay off the loan, which surprises Lily. It appears that her Dad has been kept in the loop about things more than she has. She reminds her dad that it's his life savings on the line, but he insists that the restaurant will work out and that everything will be fine. Lily pauses for a second before saying, "To hell with the restaurant." After a split second, she adds that Jake and her father can go to hell too, and then she storms upstairs.
The next morning, Rick is standing outside Lily's front door holding a little bag covered with hearts. "Happy Valentine's Day!" he exclaims when she opens the door. D'oh! She completely blanked out about Valentine's Day, she says apologetically. They sit on the bench in the foyer and he hands her the bag. She tells him she didn't get him anything and then, in a particularly callous attempt at a joke says, "I actually didn't think you'd want any more surprises from me." Nice one. Why don't you just poke him in the eye and kick him in the shins while you're at it? Astonishingly, Rick takes it in stride and recaps the situation: It's Valentine's Day but they're not going out because she has to go to her ex's opening. Is he the most impossibly patient person on the planet, or what? He doesn't seem the least bit upset as he goes on to describe an epiphany he had that day. He now understands why guys his age go out with younger women -- "aside from the obvious." Life is just so much less complicated with them. Lily then opens her gift and squeals when she looks into the box. It's not a squeal of delight, however, but something closer to horror. It turns out there's a cricket inside the box. "Yes, it's alive," Rick explains, describing a Chinese custom of keeping a cricket in the house for good luck. He says he knows she'll be going places -- difficult places -- in the next while, and he won't always be able to go with her, so the cricket is a way of keeping him close and protecting her. Beats the hell out of roses, if you ask me. Lily says she wishes her life weren't so complicated, and Rick says, "If everything works out the way I want, life's going to get even more complicated." Hmm. When Lily registers this, she says it's very sweet and they kiss for a while. Cue the cricket.