Episode Report Card Niki: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT My Brilliant Career
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 20 | Aired on 04.09.2000
Cut to Jake answering the phone at the restaurant. Grace throws him her best pitch, and when it looks like she's got him, BWace busts in, carrying a chair. Why isn't she just sitting down in the first place, like usual? What, she got caught off-guard by her conscience, or internal monologue, or whatever these damn things are? Anyway, she makes herself comfortable and then lets us know that she's pretty much got Jake wrapped. Thanks for the update. She fights to wipe the smug little smirk off her face, because she knows what she just said isn't very nice.
When Jake agrees to let Grace go, she launches into an almost-convincing Little Princess routine (in all fairness, I don't think it's meant to be all that convincing), saying "Thank you, thank you, thank you" and telling Jake that he's "like, the perfect dad." She clinches it by telling him she loves him.
BWace: "I know how to do it." She punctuates her statement with a look that says she knows it's bitchy, all right, but, like, so what?
Meanwhile, Jake is looking all smug and strutting around the restaurant, bragging that "She says [he's] the perfect dad." The camera pans to reveal that he isn't, in fact, talking to himself. He's talking to a young, very young, like shouldn't-she-be-in-school?-young girl named Tiffany. Feel free to call her Lolita. She makes some slobbery ass-kissing reply and then they kiss. Let me assure you that Jake does not appear to be suffering from the same doubts and hang-ups that torment Karen about her younger beau.
Cut to Crusty all suited up for a workout. She's sporting pigtails again, but don't let them fool you this time. We know now that she's hiding a pair of horns somewhere under there. Lily is STILL addressing t-shirts. Crusty comes over to inspect her handiwork, and examining one of the labels, demands, "Is this a six or a zero?" Lily tells her it's a six. "Oh, I see," says Crusty, her tongue dripping acid, "It's twisted on its side." Then she oh-so-subtly asks Lily if her arm's getting tired, and Lily assures her that she's fine. Crusty then opens the hand-held organizer with which she's so in love and starts poking at the buttons. Her frustration is palpable. She wants to know what's wrong with her precious machine. The phone rings and Lily scrambles to answer it. In the background, Crusty seethes: "I think you've erased, like, a month of my life." Jake's on the phone, and Lily tells him she'll talk to him later. She then reaches for the hand-held and assures Crusty she can get it back. Crusty looks like she's about to scratch or bite or both, though, and tells Lily just to forget about it. She doesn't want her to touch it at all. She sets it down beyond Lily's reach and launches into deep-knee bends. She asks who Jake is, with a sarcastic smile. "It's a trap!" I yell, but it's too late. Lily's wrapped in Crusty's cloud of evil. She's powerless to resist trying to please her. Crusty asks if she can say something. Then she proceeds to tell Lily that she's a little "claustrophobic and right now [she's] starting to feel like [she's] sharing her office with [Lily's] ex-husband, kids, and boyfriend. And it's getting a little crowded." Lily apologizes, and by way of that, describes a little of what's happening in her life. "STOP!" snaps Crusty: "Okay? I don't need to know the details. I just need you to handle it." Trying to save some grace, Lily says she'll stay and finish up the t-shirts. Crusty's neither surprised nor impressed. She flatly tells Lily "that's good" and informs her they need to be messengered that night. She reminds Lily that her job is all about flexibility. By "flexibility," I think she means "shit-eating." Crusty heads off to her "grunt-kick" class, which I'm going to interpret to mean "kickboxing," but before she leaves, she gives Lily some more remedial instructions about what to do if Esther Dyson calls back. She says "Esther" extra slow and loud, because Lily is an idiot.