Episode Report Card Niki: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Can you say "anticlimactic"?
By Niki | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 03.06.2001
He pops out the door and almost gets a SWAT rifle to the gut. Again, the call of "hold your fire" circles the parking lot as Jake strides away from the door with his hands half raised. The negotiator asks him to move next to her, and he turns to see more SWAT team members crowding around the door. The captain asks if there's anyone else inside. "No, just Benny." Grace cries, "Daddy!" Jake says to the captain, "What are you gonna do? He's just a kid." Grace shrieks, "Daddy!" again. Jake takes a few more steps and embraces her while Lily puts her hands over her mouth and watches, relieved. Tears stream down her face. The captain takes to the bullhorn again, ordering Benny to put down his gun and come out. The camera pans the crowd watching the door expectantly. Rick holds Lily tight. A gunshot pops, and Lily jumps. The captain closes his eyes and hangs his head, defeated. Grace covers her mouth and sobs, while Jake hugs her and Tiffany to his side.
The reporters' competing, converging voices overtake things again, spewing their trite summations of the outcome and showing us how sadly inadequate our "experience" is of these situations. The camera pans back as the voices chatter on, taking us farther and farther away.
The scene of swirling lights and cop cars and embracing victims slowly fades to a shot of the empty parking lot, where the police tape flaps in the wind before snapping and blowing away. Jake sits inside the nearly dark restaurant, surrounded by mops, buckets, and other cleaning stuff, and nurses a bottle of Jack Daniels. He looks up as a silhouette appears in front of him. It's Tiffany. She approaches him hesitantly. "Are you okay?" he asks, looking shell-shocked. She says she is and then asks, "What's that?" He says it's a present from Grace. She picks up the card and reads it aloud: "Dear Dad, What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding? Love Grace." He laughs sadly at the irony of it all and then exhales loudly. "You're a real hero," Tiffany says, looking up from the card. His eyes well up, and he shakes his head a little. "I don't know why I ever thought I could make this place work," he says. Tiffany looks around, saying, "But you did make it work." "You think people are going to come back here after this? 'Oh yeah! Yeah, that's that place where the busboy blew his brains out.'" He chuckles ruefully. Tiffany looks concerned. He throws his head back, then jerks it forward again, sighing, "In one day. Just like that...there's nothing left." Tiffany looks at him, closes her eyes briefly as if gathering nerve, then looks at him again and says, "There's me." She rubs her thumb uncertainly on the table. He jerks his head around to look at her gratefully, and there are tears in his eyes. He slowly reaches out to her and pulls her close to him, her tummy level with his face. He plants a kiss on her belly, which totally gets to her, and then wraps his arms around her. He sobs as he clings to her.
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