Episode Report Card Deborah: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune
By Deborah | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.14.2004
Just then, Adam and Joan come in with a cage full of feral cat. Adam puts it on the counter. Joan introduces "Larry the cat" as the newest Girardi. Helen: "You got a cat?" Man, the Girardis sure are easygoing. I spent most of my childhood pleading for a cat. If I'd brought one home without permission both of us would have been sent to the pound. Olive peers at it: "It's wild, isn't it?" Joan admits it is. Olive tells her to get rid of it: "They can't be tamed." Joan: "No, the pamphlet tells you how to domesticate them." Kevin: "Tell that to Siegfried." Luke: "I think it was Roy." And once again, Rocket Boy is right. Olive says, "In central China, they would cook it in a nice spicy Szechuan sauce." (For the record, cats aren't halal either.) Luke invites them, "Have a cricket. Good for sex." Helen whines, "Luke…" Olive offers some crickets to Adam, who decides, "I'm going in." Olive: "Oh! Good for you." Joan, predictably, is grossed out: "Ew! This is like Arcadia Fear Factor." As Olive lifts the cookie sheet off the cat's cage, she suddenly falters, grabbing the island for balance with one hand and dropping the cricket snacks out of the other. Helen: "Catch her!" Joan's already halfway there; she and Helen manage to get hold of her before she hits the ground. Helen tells the boys to call 911. Kevin's got his cell phone on his belt and makes the call as Helen and Joan try to rouse her from her sprawl on the floor, surrounded by spicy crickets. Theme song.
Will and Helen are waiting are the hospital, probably wondering just how much of their life together is going to be spent at hospitals with family members. Helen comments, "She was supposed to go to the Canary Islands next week for a Silbo language class. Will: "A what?" Helen explains that it's a language composed entirely of whistling sounds: "Apparently there are over 40,000 words." Will's already lost interest: "Forget it. There's nothing about her that's ever gonna make any sense to me." Luke: "Speaking of which, why would someone who has repeatedly claimed that she hates cats get a cat?" Joan, who's using Kevin's lap as a footstool, says they were going to kill it. Kevin: "But a cat?" Joan: "I'm a puzzle, okay?" Hee. A doctor (not Doctor God) comes out to tell them what's going on. He says she's stable and resting: "The stroke involved the middle cerebral artery." Helen: "Oh, no!" The doctor says, "The good news is that this kind of stroke doesn't affect mental acuity or speech. And she has certainly been talking. But she's temporarily paralyzed from the waist down." Kevin: "Temporarily? That is good news." The doctor continues, saying there may also be some right arm motor impairment, and that they're looking into nearby temporary care facilities "because, well, she doesn't seem too happy here."