Episode Report Card Niki: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Two Makes a Home
By Niki | Season 3 | Episode 16 | Aired on 03.24.2002
Cut to Lily moving dreamlike across the front yard toward Mr. Miller's car. She taps on the window and asks to sit with him for a minute. She sighs and looks at him, trying to choose her words. "Well?" he finally asks. "Aaron's assaulted by his feelings. It's almost as if his own emotions are toxic to him, somehow," she begins. "God knows, he's very emotional about your daughter." Mr. Miller chuckles ruefully, and agrees. Lily says that's why she's been trying to stop them "from plunging into something they couldn't handle." Lily says that if Aaron gets his heart broken again, it could kill him, literally. "So, we're in agreement, then," Mr. Miller says. Lily breaks it to them that they're not. She says she's finally realized that Aaron is never going to get better, "so there's nothing to protect since he suffers so much already." She wonders, then, if he shouldn't be allowed to have something "beautiful, even if it's only temporary." Mr. Miller reiterates that he's a cop, and that part of his job is accepting people for who they are. He states his conviction that Miriam cannot handle things on her own. Lily gently disagrees, saying that she was just watching them on the sofa, and she realized, "All I've been asking myself is 'Are they gonna hurt each other? Are they gonna get robbed and killed or who knows what?' But it never occurred to me to ask if she loves him. I never thought they were capable of it. She really, really loves him, Mr. Miller." He registers her words, but says that for thirty-five years, all he's dealt with are phone calls saying Miriam had injured herself, or that her medication had to be changed, and he just doesn't know how to hope anymore. Lily says she understands where he's coming from, but points out that it's not really about them "anymore." "Let 'em move in together and be a disaster?" he asks dubiously. "Yeah. Or just less of a disaster. Or maybe, god willing, just a big mess," she says. Mr. Miller warns Lily that Miriam will "drive [Aaron] insane." Lily chuckles and says Phil would have said something like that. She tells him about the restaurant Phil had, and Mr. Miller says, "We loved Phil's." Well, that settles it, then. Lily reaches out her hand and invites him inside. "All right," he says, and the twangs of Donovan's "Catch the Wind" kick up.
The song carries us to Soliloquy Lily, who earnestly looks into the camera, wanting to say something. She can't yet.
The tune carries us over to Aaron's apartment, where he carries Miriam over the threshold, with everyone following behind. There's a montage of them moving in a pile of stuff.