Episode Report Card Deborah: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT God Is My Co-Pilot
By Deborah | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.03.2005
Joan's at the bookstore shutting things down when GodFella comes zipping out from behind a shelf: "Hey there, Joanie." She jumps a bit, but doesn't scream, which I probably would have. Joan complains that she's still waiting to find out why she was put through "all this." She thinks nothing happened and nothing added up. GodFella says things happened. Joan: "Where? When?" GodFella: "Are you doubting me?" Joan says, "Before, when you'd tell me what to do, maybe I'd screw up and stuff…" "Maybe"? "But by the end I would see something." GodFella: "So you think you had no effect?" She does. GodFella asks if she remembers Emily Dickinson. Joan clears her throat: "Yeah, you can sing all of her poems to 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.'" It seems to be the first GodFella's heard of it. I wish it was the first I'd heard of it. No, wait, I wish I'd never heard of it, but not as much as I wish Joan didn't immediately go on to demonstrate by Yellow-Rose-of-Texas-ing the first two lines of "Because I could not stop for Death." I wish I'd had fast enough reflexes to mute that, because now it's stuck in my head. I've also heard that one can inflict the same brutality upon Dickinson's work with the theme to Gilligan's Island and other such musical dreck. GodFella looks like there's a bad smell in the room. I'm with him.
GodFella opens the book he's holding. Frink: "What are the chances God would open the book to the right page?" Me: "Really, really, really, really good?" GodFella begins reading: "Faith -- is the Pierless Bridge / Supporting what We see / Unto the Scene that We do not -- / Too slender for the eye." Joan: "I don't think that goes with 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.'" Indeed it does not, and don't let me ever catch you brutalizing her poetry like that again. GodFella: "Seeing the results of your actions is not important. Only the actions are. Like a recluse who wrote poems she never published…and here they are, touching people, [a] hundred years later." Joan looks mildly rebuked as he hands her the book, telling her, "Your work is out there, Joanie. You just gotta have faith." And he walks out as John Hiatt's "Have A Little Faith In Me" starts playing. That's…not the most subtle musical selection, is it?
And we drift into a montage. The first part is Grace leading a blindfolded Luke into Don Thornberry's -- a reasonably classy-looking joint, at odds with the cheeseball t-shirt Friedman was sporting. Frink: "What? What's she going to eat there?" I don't think it's actually been established that she's a vegetarian, though if she were, it would surprise exactly no one. When she gets him inside, she removes the blindfold (which is black with white skulls all over it -- hee) and Luke quickly puts on his glasses, reaching over to put his hand on Grace's cheek and pull her face gently against his shoulder. It's a really lovely gesture.