Episode Report Card Deborah: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Arcadia the Beautiful
By Deborah | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.21.2004
Luke and Grace are putting up more posters elsewhere. Man, she is discombobulated, if she's taping up campaign posters. She really wants Lars to lose. Luke: "You know, statistically, this last campaign thrust has less than a 13% chance of success." Grace: "You realize I don't understand half of what you say." Hee! That is so me and Frink. Save your breath, Grace. Geeks figure if they keep talking you'll eventually understand. Luke sighs: "Right." He goes back to taping, while she decides -- here in the school hallway, which I find slightly surprising -- to open up some more: "When I was eleven, my friend Becky Coogan slept over. We went downstairs in the morning for breakfast. My mom was going to make us pancakes." She has Luke's complete attention as she continues, "She was still passed out on the kitchen floor from the night before. Becky never talked to me after that." Luke doesn't say anything. He's learning that the less he pushes, the more Grace trusts him. She adds, "Becky was cool." Heh. "You would've liked her." Luke doesn't say anything. They go back to postering.
"O beautiful Arcadia…" Oh God, help me. The insufferable Elizabeth and her straw-hatted mob of dweebs are singing away in the halls. Lars and Brian are campaigning heavily. It's election day. Joan and Judith are walking through the hall, disgusted by all the defaced posters for their candidate. Brian's having trouble getting anyone to pay any attention to him. Joan, Judith, and Luke all converge near Brian, as Luke shows his sister a defaced poster and asks, "Have you seen these?" Joan tells him to put new ones over the spoiled ones. He takes off. Brian asks if there's any news on "nuking Klosterman." Judith tells him, "The missiles are in the silos. We're just waiting for the launch codes." He wants to know what they found. Joan tells him "all in good time" and advises him to help Luke with the posters while she gets some pink paper from the art department.
Will comes into Lucy's office: "The picture of you with the Governor…very impressive." Lucy: "That was a long evening. That man can't talk about anything but himself." Will closes the door and tells her he's thought it over but he's just not comfortable with changing the stats: "And I'm prepared to take the consequences if you can't handle that." Lucy: "Even if the consequences are that Detective Carlisle will be laid off?" Oh, not Chewy! What about all the families who depend on the proceeds of the Arcadia Police Department vending machines? Will's all, "What?" Lucy says he has the least seniority and the force has serious cash flow problems. Will says every department does. Then she reminds him about some cop named Harriman who got shot and killed -- Will was the one who had to inform his wife -- and how they should have had another car available but they didn't: "This is not about buffing my image. I don't want to be like the other departments. I want the money. And if looking at the data a little differently helps us to get that…then I think we owe that to Harriman and Carlisle and everybody else we work with." Will nods: "You like dealing with things on your own terms, don't you?" Well, duh. Who doesn't? She smiles: "That's how I get things done. And that's what they pay me for, isn't it?" She has to take a call, so Will leaves. Frankly, I'm not entirely convinced he doesn't have at least a small problem with the fact that she's female. Also, I kind of like her, but I'm not sure whether to bother liking her, since what are the odds she'll last?