Episode Report Card Maggie: C- | 3 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT I'm Going to Kansas City -- Kansas City, Here I Come
By Maggie | Season 3 | Episode 17 | Aired on 05.22.2001
Elena is reading Tracy's letter in the kitchen. Teal Thompson's "No Better Heaven" plays in the background. Molly "Exposition Girl" Bitplayer is sitting at the counter musing that "James would do exactly the same thing. Y'know, I'd just be on the brink of gettin' over him and he'd show up and the whole thing would start over again." Comparing Tracy and James is like comparing apples to homicidal crackheads. It's Scare Boy versus Prayer Boy. Cripes! I hardly think that the relationship a drug-addled, obsessive boyfriend has with his codependent gun-Molly is anything like the one Tracy and Elena had. Elena sharply says, "The whole thing is not starting over again." Molly thinks that Elena must be "way stronger" than she is. Robert Downey Jr. is way stronger than Molly is. Elena says she's not going to "go through it again," because Tracy lied to her. Molly solemnly whispers, "I know." Elena admits that she did the same thing to Tracy when she cheated with Finn, "but it was just too painful finding out about him and Rose." Elena mutters that Tracy wants to meet her the next day, but she won't be going. Molly just stares with her too-tight pigtails and sky-high eyebrows.
In his bedroom at the loft, Ben is lying to someone on the phone about having to look after his sick aunt. He's holding the same letter that he'd stuffed into his pocket when Felicity came over to the loft with the camping gear. Felicity walks in and overhears some of the conversation. She asks him what is wrong with his aunt, and he replies that it's nothing; he was just trying to "get out of something." She babbles about getting a water purifier for their trip and then asks what he was trying to get of doing. He says, "Nothing," and she says she won't ask again if he doesn't want to talk about it. He says, "Okay," and she leaves the room. Her resolve lasts about five seconds before she comes back in and announces that she really wants to know what is going on. Ben hems and haws for a while, and then confesses that after seeing Avery revived by the paramedics, he applied to take an EMT training course for the summer in Kansas City, and he was accepted. Felicity excitedly asks, "You want to train to be a paramedic?" Ben mumbles some more about not really wanting to take the course. She pressures him to explain why he doesn't want to do it, and he says he has to come back to New York to take a test. She burbles that "it's amazing" that he got in. Nonetheless, he insists that he's not going because it's an intensive, three-month, eighteen-hour-a-day program, and they'd have to live in a bungalow. Besides, he states that they'd never get to see each other. She asks whether he's sure; he says he is, and reminds her that it's their "last summer," and he just wants to spend it with her. She says, "Okay," and smiles at him.