Episode Report Card Deborah: C- | 1 USERS: D+ YOU GRADE IT Revenge Is Sour
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 02.26.2004
Joan's opening her locker, and manages to fling it open, startling the girl who's messing around in the locker next to hers. Joan: "Sorry. I didn't see you." The girl replies, with a heavy accent, "That's all right. In my country we are accustomed to centuries of tribal warfare." Huh? What a weird response. Joan asks if she's an exchange student. The girl replies, "You might say I'm in charge of the exchange program." She raises her eyebrows slightly at Joan, who realizes who it is. She replies, "That was, like, the worst German accent I ever heard." God: "Slavic, Joan. You've heard of the Balkan states?" Joan: "No, not really. Is every day like Hallowe'en for you, or..." Balkan Girl God shrugs: "I'm amused by harmless pagan rituals. Not so much by bloodletting." Uh-huh. So where does that leave you with Christianity? No shortage of bloodletting there. Interestingly, the closed-captioning says "Balkan pagan rituals," not "harmless pagan rituals." Joan rolls her eyes: "Pace, pace. We're burning daylight here." Balkan Girl God: "Repeating myself is part of the job." Suddenly she has much less accent: "Vengeance is mine...saith me." Heh. Joan starts walking: "Okay, to be fair: you never went to high school." Balkan Girl God: "You never went to the Crusades." Oooh! Burn. "It's time for you to round out your curriculum, Joan. You know, for college." Joan asks, "Who can think about college at a time like this?" Balkan Girl God assures her, "High school will end. Doesn't that cheer you up? Band rehearsal coincides with study hall. Easy excuse slip." Joan: "Band?" Balkan Girl God: "They're always hurting for percussionists." Joan: "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Am I being punished or something? I haven't even fought back yet." Balkan Girl God: "Hitting a drum...feels pretty good." She saunters off. Joan: "Oh, thanks, Ringo!" Balkan Girl God goes up the stairs, doing the Godwave, but switching it up with a peace sign.
The next day, Joan's hanging out in the band room when the teacher arrives and asks if he can help her. She wants to sign up. He wants to know what she plays. Joan says, "I play percussion...ism...ist." Man, the teachers in this school must be about ready to start a twelve-step recovery group: Joan Girardi Anonymous. The teacher, slightly distracted, thinks that's excellent: "We need someone on drums. You will pound the skins, driving the beat into our piece, like the drummers of old, who called the warriors into battle, with their fierce, pounding rhythms." He's not as emphatic as Lischak, but he's just as loopy. He's a young, mild-mannered, sweater-vest-wearing type. Joan laughs nervously: "Okay. Um...do you have the...hitting things?" The teacher is inexplicably unfazed by her lack of familiarity with the terminology, and hands her some drumsticks. He tells the students, who've been arriving and warming up, that they have three weeks until Marchapalooza. Is that a real shebangamathon (tm someone on my site), or is that a made-up thing? I should probably just warn you all now that I have no experience with band -- zero, zilch -- so the annoying errors and inconsistencies that bugged many of you self-described band geeks in this storyline pretty much washed right over me. I did marvel that she was allowed to start without an audition.