Episode Report Card Niki: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Acting Out
By Niki | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.18.2001
Cut to the kitchen, where they are, in fact, getting food. Just before Judy urgently grabs at Sam's midsection, that is. Lily comes barging in at that moment, trailed by Rick. "Sam? Did you find everything you wanted?" she asks, overly sweet. He says he did. She pointedly reaches between Sam and Judy to grab a bottle of wine. "Good. Let me know when you're ready for dessert," she says, tossing a knowing glance over her shoulder. Alone again, Sam and Judy look like a couple of schoolkids who got caught passing notes.
Upstairs, Jessie wanders into the bathroom and finds Grace brushing her teeth. Grace is as cold as her Icy Mint Crest. Nervously, Jessie says, "You know I didn't --" "Didn't what?" Grace demands, wiping her face on a towel. "That I didn't want the part of Rosalind. That I auditioned for Phoebe," Jessie says in a small voice. Grace senses weakness: "So what are you saying? You're not going to do it?" She's trying to remain nonchalant. Jessie falters, "I don't...I don't know." Grace parts her lips in a semblance of a smile and grits, "So what? So we're up for the same part? It's no big deal." I'd be more likely to believe her if she didn't slam her toothbrush into the holder before blowing out of the bathroom. Jessie shivers with the sudden temperature drop, then sets about brushing her teeth.
Cut to Lily's and Rick's bedroom, where she's working herself into a lather. Rick's calmly clipping his toenails on the bed. Dude, that's disgusting. Toenail bits and that crusty shit that gets under them? Not meant to be slept on. Rick's trying to watch television, where some guy's complaining that his wife's always on him about his weight, but Lily's too riled up about Sam and Judy to let him watch in peace. She wonders, "What do you think they were going to do?" Rick doesn't know who she's talking about. "Sam and Judy! Do you think they were just going to do it right there on my butcher block?" she demands, flinging the throw cushions to the floor. "Our butcher block, you mean?" Rick corrects her. Lily fumes that Judy's just trying to "provoke" her. Rick sarcastically mutters, "Oh, there's no question." Lily storms around the bed, saying, "I really liked Will Gluck." Hey, get in line, sister. Rick, only half interested, says, "That's because you really liked Will Gluck." Lily clarifies that it's not that she doesn't like Sam; it's that "it doesn't seem right." Lily seems to have forgotten the days when she was separated and sleeping with Rick. And that they did the horizontal polka all over Judy's floor. Lily bullishly asks Rick whether he agrees. He wisely says he doesn't want to be involved. He adds that, in some ways, he can see how Sam and Judy would be good for one another, adding, "but ultimately, I think they'll destroy each other." Lily and Rick climb under the covers as Lily angrily forecasts, "If I know Judy, she'll be devastated, and I'll have to pick up the pieces." Ah-ha! There's that old Lily we all know and love. Figuratively speaking, that is. Rick mutters, "If I know Sam, he'll rebound with a twenty-three-year-old." Lily shoots him the stink-eye, and Rick quickly says that he was just kidding. Under her scrutinizing glare, he confesses that Sam could do that. He begs not to be involved. Wordlessly, Lily turns her back on him and opens her book, Nickel and Dimed (which was written by Barbara Ehrenreich, who lived undercover as an unskilled worker for several months to find out just how impossible it is to get by on minimum wage). Love that intertextuality. Anyway, Rick turns up the volume on the TV as a woman says, "Now, tell me what you mean by 'walking on eggshells for twenty years.'" Heh.