Episode Report Card Jessica: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All The Right Moves
By Jessica | Season 6 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.21.2003
Tour Bus Of Doom. Marcel The Enabler offers Audrey a drink. She stays on the wagon…for about five minutes. Then she takes some mysterious drugs from Marcel and starts boozing it up again. Yawn. Like anyone really cares about Audrey's descent into drugs and madness anymore, anyway. She's not even an original character! Give Jen a plot, y'all! I mean, Busy Philipps is fine, but she's really best in small, sassy doses. Too much Busy is just, well, too much.
Liberty Hell's Kitchen. Joey stomps about, ignoring Oliver entirely. He begs her to stop freezing him out. And so she says nothing, but allows Flip-Flops to pop into the frame to yelp about the delightful Buffalo wings served by the fine waitstaff at Liberty Hell's Kitchen. Mmm, Buffalo wings. They're on the menu for my Superbowl Sunday spread. Love me some wings. Right. Where were we? Ah, yes -- Joey wonders why Flip-Flops isn't at home, punishing his daughter. Flip-Flops grins that he is punishing her, simply by forcing her to eat a meal with her father. And they need more root beer. Joey stalks off to get them some refreshing, cold soda. While she's gone, Flip-Flops thanks Oliver for driving Harley home. Oliver shrugs. "But do me a favor," Flip-Flops says. "Next time my daughter visits you in the gutter, shut the door, slither away and leave her the hell alone." With this, he stalks away. My God, is Worchester really that bad?
So, Flip-Flops runs off, and Oliver and Joey get to have their little confrontation. "So, that's it?" Oliver asks. "You're just not going to talk to me." Joey says she doesn't really have anything to say to him. "Joey," Oliver says, all concerned. "I'm here because…I know. I want to help you deal with this. I mean, it's my problem, too." Joey looks perplexed. "I know. It's okay. I know," Oliver says. "About the pregnancy." Joey covers her face with her hands. She explains that she's not pregnant, that Harley concocted that lie to force him to come back to Boston. "So, you're not…you're not pregnant," Oliver parrots. "No!" Joey says. "Even if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell Harley." Oliver is suitably relieved, at least until he notices his short stories on the table and gets all worked up about Joey invading his privacy or something. Joey snidely tells him that she can't see why he's so upset: they're just another piece of his life that he left behind for someone else to clean up. And then he gets all defensive, and she gets all snippy and…you know, whatever. Oliver finally tells her that he's upset about the way "things ended" between them. Joey right points out that nothing officially ended; he just up and left. But now that she knows he isn't dead in a ditch, she says, he can go. Oliver sputters that he left for her own good. "Are you dying, [Oliver]?" Joey snaps. "Were you protecting government secrets? Were you kidnapped by international jewel thieves, was that it?" Please, let one of those theories be the truth! That, at last, would be something interesting. But, no…it is not to be. Instead, Oliver just announces that leaving Joey was "the hardest thing [he's] ever done." And now he's just going to leave. "Fine!" "Fine!" "Fine!" And he stomps out. Joey stomps after him.