Episode Report Card Niki: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Unity of Effect
By Niki | Season 2 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.30.2001
Speaking of the beast, she's perched on the counter, thumbing through files that Lily's brought home from work. Carla asks, "What happens here at dinner? Does somebody, like, make it?" Clearly, fishing for an invite. Grace answers that, with Lily working full-time, dinner's usually an afterthought. Lily overhears as she enters, and says that Grace is exaggerating. She greets Wannabe while gently removing the file from her hands. Wow, that's restraint. I probably would've smacked the nosy little wank with it. Grace shows off for Wannabe by making fun of Lily, imitating her "shocked" reaction every night when she realizes it's dinnertime. Wannabe grunts her approval. Lily says they're avoiding that problem tonight, since they've been invited to Rick's for dinner. Wannabe glances at Grace and widens her eyes. Grace looks at Lily, then back at Wannabe and nods her head like, "No problem." Lily's blathering away about how nice it will all be, and mentions that Grace will finally get to see where Rick lives. "So you've never seen where Rick lives?" Wannabe sarcastically asks Grace. She and Grace make faces at each other. Lily asks whether there's somewhere Wannabe would like them to drop her. I volunteer a list of fifty, starting with "on her head" and ending with "the dumpster behind Seaman Jack's Fish House." Grace protests by whining, "Mo-om!" and looking completely mortified. She asks to speak privately with Lily, and proceeds to nag Lily about bringing Wannabe to Rick's. Lily, protecting the appetites of all involved, won't budge, insisting that "it's just [their] two families," and promising that Wannabe can eat with them another time. She finally loses patience with Grace and orders her to put her shoes on. Heading back to the kitchen, she overhears Wannabe on the phone with someone, sounding impatient. Lily hides on the other side of the door and continues listening as Wannabe lies to the person on the other end -- stepfather? Mother's boyfriend? Whatever. It's clear from her end of the conversation that they're not exactly close, and she doesn't want to tell him too much. She says she had dinner at a friend's and then asks to speak to her mother, without any luck. Frustrated, she whips a gum wrapper on the floor. Lily sees this, and has to check her impulse to immediately pick it up. On a side note, I thought Wannabe said she lived with her father? Then again, I tune out half of the crap she spouts, so I could have misunderstood her.
We cut to Rick's dining room, where everyone's gathered around the table eating pizza. Lily's in the foreground, tossing a salad in the kitchen. Rick creeps in to mumble that "this isn't as nightmarish as usual." Lily makes a crack about Monopoly, then adds that she'd like everyone to go to an actual restaurant for her birthday. Panicked, Rick asks when her birthday is. She tells him "the end of the month," and he's visibly relieved. Lily notices and laughs at him, saying he shouldn't look "stricken -- [she's] not expecting anything." Right. "Much," she adds. Well, at least she's honest. She carries the salad into the dining room just as Jessie emerges, asking Rick whether she may be excused to start her homework. Rick is surprised that she wants to leave already, and she assures him that she had "two gigantic pieces of pizza." "You did?" he asks, sounding dubious. She insists that she did, and good-naturedly tells him to do the math with the slices; Rick lets her off the hook. He asks if she likes that pizza "better than Angelo's." Jessie falters for a second, and then says it's much better. She grabs her knapsack and invites Grace to come to her room. Grace looks panicked and says she will once she's done.
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