Episode Report Card Deborah: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Paranoid Schizophrenic With A Miscellaneous Complex
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.20.2003
AP Chem. The class is doing various experiments. Luke's team manages to elicit a small explosion with whatever they're doing. At Joan's desk, Grace is playing with a glove blown up like a balloon. Adam is hiding under his hood with his heading resting on his hand and his face turned away from Joan. He looks utterly miserable. Joan asks, like nothing much is wrong, "Okay, Adam, what's the formula for calculating the molar volume of carbon dioxide gas?" He doesn't react or respond at all. Joan says, "Hello, Adam? It's Jane, speaking words of English." Grace asks, "Hey, yo, did your photographic memory run out of film?" Joan: "Adam, I told you I was sorry for trashing your sculpture. I am. I am very, very sorry. You don't know how sorry I am." Grace: "Oh, stop pouting. Get back on the blowtorch and fix the dumb thing." Even though Grace doesn't understand the reasons for Adam's art, I'd have thought she would be somewhat more sympathetic to Adam and a little more pissed at Joan, especially since she was already pissed at Joan when it happened. Price sticks his head in and asks Joan to come with him. Joan loses her grip on the blown-up glove she's been holding onto, and it expels all its air into her face with the requisite farty sound. She gives Adam a sad look before leaving. He hasn't moved a muscle.
In Price's office, Joan is told that the highest score she ever got on a history test was a C-. She laughs weakly, saying she sucks at facts. Dreisbach's there, too, as Price holds up her test and says, "Then explain an A+." Joan's eyes widen and she looks at Price, saying, "Wow." Price: "Yeah. Wow. How did you do it?" Joan says she studied. Price: "From zero to sixty in a blink." Well, she wasn't quite at zero. Joan looks pleased, and says with a big smile, "Yeah! I studied." Dreisbach says Zakheim, his best student, got three wrong. Joan asks, "Are you saying I cheated? Because I don't cheat." Her teacher says they want her to take the test again. Joan: "What? Why should I?" Dreisbach says, "Because we're asking you to." Joan stands up, asking, "Agreeing to retake the test, aren't I admitting that I'm a cheater? I'm not going to admit to that because I'm not!" Wait -- while I agree that Price and Dreisbach aren't going about this the right way, wouldn't taking the test again quickly prove whether or not she cheated? But then we wouldn't have this story. ["And it's never made clear whether she has to take the same test, in which case it proves nothing -- depending on the method of cheating they think she used, which is also never made clear, because if she wrote the answers on her hand…eh, forget it." -- Sars] Price tells her to retake the test. She's outraged: "Mr. Price! No!" She hands it to him and storms out to where her mother is, tearfully telling her, "Mom! They want me to say I cheated when I didn't! I'm not a cheater!" Helen tells her to calm down as Price and Dreisbach come out of the office. Joan insists she didn't cheat, as Price says he'll give her until Friday to decide. Helen: "Decide what?" Joan explains they want her to take the test again: "Which is like saying I cheated!" Helen says no one's saying that: "Are you saying that?" Price says they just want her to take the test again: "That should restore the equilibrium." Helen says her daughter doesn't cheat: "So you know what you can do with your equilibrium." Heh. Not too worried about her job, obviously. Price says his request is reasonable. Joan declares she's not taking the test again: "Sometimes you have to take a stand, and this is me, doing that!" She flounces out, while her mother looks tired and dismayed.