Episode Report Card Shack: D+ | 14 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT The Known Soldier
By Shack | Season 6 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.05.2002
After Ruthie runs back upstairs, Annie just stands there, staring at the stairwell like an idiot. Eventually, RevCam comes in and walks up behind an oblivious Annie. She's startled when she finally notices him there, because she's an idiot. Eric just returned home from dropping Dopey and Plot Contrivance at the airport. They're on their way to New York to visit Columbia and to look for apartments. Insert hysterical laughter here. Eric asks Annie why she's staring at the stairs. She asks Eric if he knew about Ruthie's Marine pen pal. He didn't. Do these two ever have actual conversations with their children, or do they just lecture and stalk? Annie is concerned. I know you might be thinking that, because of the way Ruthie was dressed and the whole anonymous nature of the internet, Annie is perhaps worried that Ruthie might actually be talking to somebody with rather inappropriate designs on her, like some child pornographer or Roman Polanski or something. But no, that's not it. She's worried that Ruthie is telling this Marine embarrassing stories about the Camdens. How is it that I, a single gay man, have better parenting instincts than these two? Annie asks Eric why they can't ask Ruthie to let them read her emails. Eric manages to say, with a completely straight face, "Because she has the privilege of privacy in our home and we don't read her mail, coming or going, unless she asks us to?" The best part is Stephen Collins's delivery. He says it as though Eric has never said those words in that order in his entire life. And he probably hasn't. Annie says that the need to convince Ruthie to tell them what's in her emails. RevCam declines to participate in Annie's latest nosy plan, so she stomps off by herself to make sure that Ruthie isn't embarrassing them all by telling Sgt. Morgan how her brother is pretending that he hasn't married some woman and how her older sisters share a brain.
After she leaves, Robbie wanders in, and Eric asks him if he knows about Ruthie's pen pal. Robbie does, for some reason. Whatever. He tosses out more exposition about Morgan being twenty-four years old and married, just in case RevCam was worried about Ruthie having a crush. Wait till he sees her in that miniskirt. RevCam wonders why Robbie knows all this and he doesn't. Because you suck, that's why. Robbie explains that Ruthie trusts him. Ooh, burn. Eric stomps off glumly at that insult to his fathering skills as Mary and Lucy enter in tandem. I don't believe that either of them get more than four feet away from each other this entire episode. I think they need to be close to each other for the brain-sharing to work. They wonder why SuperMom isn't being all super and cooking dinner for them like she's supposed to, what with them having no hands and all. Robbie figures it has something to do with Ruthie and Sgt. Morgan and pours redundant exposition all over the place, and I'm annoyed because I know this is going to happen about fifteen more times in the next two minutes. It's like the telephone game, except neither funny nor entertaining. Robbie wanders off upstairs as Lucy and Mary worry about what Ruthie is saying about them. They'll never be able to land themselves good husbands if Ruthie goes around telling everybody that they're dumber than a box full of Dismissed contestants.