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
Anyway. Grace stage-whispers to Joan, "Could you maybe do this with a bag over your head?" Joan comes over and declares, "I'm gonna change things around here, Grace." She notices Judith chomping away and asks, indignant, "Are you eating a Lars Bar?" Judith: "Keep your hair on. I'm only eating it for the chocolate. And the possibility of meaningless groping of the candidate." Joan notices Luke and Friedman walking nearby, and tries to get Luke to take a mission statement. Luke protests, saying, "Joan, you've already given me, like --" Joan snarls, "Take the damn thing! I'm creating a groundswell." Friedman: "'Methinks the lady doth protest too much.'" He glances significantly in Judith's direction. She says, "Friedman, tell me you're not actually memorizing Hamlet." Luke says he told Friedman that Judith was just joking about the date. See, I don't think she was joking; I don't think she knew him well enough to realize that he would totally try to do it. Friedman: "'In jest, truth is found, and found in truth, jest.'" You know, whether he does or doesn't manage the whole play, and whether she does or doesn't make good on her insane promise, one of the very real side effects of this whole thing is that for the rest of Friedman's life, everyone who deals with him is going to be subject to quotations from the play at every turn. And, you know, it could be worse, he could be quoting Howard the Duck or something, but it's still gonna grate. Friedman and Luke take off Judith tilts her head back and bangs it gently against her locker. Grace takes off with an unsympathetic glance.
As Luke and Friedman walk down the hall, Friedman says, "Act 2, Scene 3. Fire up those lips, baby." Grace has caught up with them now, and she says to Luke, "Talk to the freak, dude. This is humiliating, even for him." Luke: "Apparently I no longer have the language for it." Grace: "What exactly do you think Judith is gonna do when you've memorized Hamlet?" Ugh -- I just ate; do we have to hear the details of his seedy little imagination? Friedman: "'More things in heaven and earth,' Gracey-o, 'than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'" Just then one of Lars's buttheads snatches the mission statement out of Luke's hands and starts mocking it. Luke puts his head down and starts walking quickly, just like someone who's been through this a few times would. Moron #1 says, "Carrying this might not be too good for your health…" Grace lights into him: "You can't possibly be this much of a nimrod, right?" Luke pulls her by the arm and says, "Leave it alone, Grace." Moron #2 mocks him in a high-pitched voice: "'Leave it alone, Grace!'" Grace wrests her arm away from Luke and says, "They're not gonna do anything -- these losers have some archaic code where they'd never hit a girl." Moron #2, who just morphed into Asshole #2, snaps, "Yeah, as if you're a girl!" He pushes Grace into the wall -- hard. I'm all, "Holy shit!" Luke loses it and pushes Asshole #2 into the opposite wall as hard as he can, prompting Asshole #1 to throw Luke into the wall, where he falls down beside Grace, who stayed on the floor where she fell. The assholes take off and Luke sits there looking humiliated -- but not unaccustomed to the feeling. Grace, on the other hand, exhales, and lets her hand and knee fall against Luke's torso, and she says, smiling, "That was beautiful, dude." Luke laughs nervously and Grace giggles.