Episode Report Card Alex Richmond: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Under Pressure
By Alex Richmond | Season 7 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.10.2002
Chandler...Hampton is back. His sermon is on the evils of money. Just a little thing he wrote for the New York Times op-ed section that he's re-working. The two boobs look at him like, Noo York Ti-yums? The noos-paper? Hoo-doggie, that's for city folk!
Cop car. Parked on the side of a green, wholesome-looking street. Kevin returns to the car, having written a ticket. Roxanne says she's "bored...ready for some action." Simon cocks an enormous eyebrow at her. Yes, threeway in the squad car. That'll happen. Roxanne continues; see, when she broke up with her boyfriend, "whenever it's quiet like this," she thinks about how much she wants a boyfriend. What? I hate everyone on this show. And she broke up with her last stupid boyfriend because he was jealous of Kevin, even though Kevin is supposedly going to get married to Lucy. "He said that when a guy is getting married is most likely when he'll put himself to the test." There's a test? Oh, fidelity. Kevin asks snippily if "Stanley" ever knew that she went out with Robbie. Roxanne says she just wanted to "have a little fun." What? You mean that time they went to church, off-screen? Who ever has any fun on this show? Simon is all, if you're just telling me this so I'll tell Lucy...Roxanne says sharply that she ASSYUMES anything said in the squad car stays in the squad car. That may be true if someone farted in the squad car. That would stay in the squad car. But anything else I'd consider "out there" and therefore possible to leave the squad car. Are there any other rules on what can and cannot happen in the squad car? I'd really like to know. Kevin says to Roxanne, you're starting to scare me. "Starting"?
Yasmin watches as Ruthie powders her ugly face to a dull sheen. She says, shimmying her shoulders a bit, that she's "impressed." She's never seen any twelve-year-old with such make-upping prowess. Well, Ruthie is really, really ugly. She'd better practice now. Yasmin asks if "all that make-up" has "paid off." Ruthie says, "Have you seen Kevin?" Yes. Am I supposed to believe Kevin is hot? You can beat me over the head with a giant tube of lipstick and smother me in powder, but I'll never buy that. The twins, playing robotically by the foot of the bed, ask for a snack. Ruthie tells them to hold on for a minute, then asks Yasmin if she should apply "sparkly stuff." It's Lucy's, but it "goes with all the other stuff [she's] used." The twins wheedlingly ask for a snack again. Yasmin, eager to assume her non-sexual gender role, offers to get the twins a snack. The Borg unit like this idea. "Yasmin will get us a snack." Do not resist us. Serve us. Ruthie drops her head so her chin is on her chest and tells them through closed teeth that she's almost. Done. Yasmin, in a huge hurry to escape the hell that is the CamPound, says she can wait for her mom outside. Ruthie says that's cool, and when she walks Yasmin down, she can fix the twins something to eat. Yes, because feeding young children should only be done when it's convenient. Yasmin asks why she's wearing those ugly high-heeled leather clogs, and what will happen when her dad comes home and sees her with a face full of make-up. Ruthie says she'll just say she's playing dress-up (an admitted half-truth), and if it makes the crazy Muslim feel better, she'll wash her face after the twins are fed. Yasmin says that would make her feel better. Ruthie, in an incredible display of insensitivity, says she doesn't think Yasmin understands Ruthie and "her culture" any better than she understands Yasmin and her culture. Yasmin, wiser than any other child alive, headscarf or no, says she "understand[s] that there isn't a culture where children are allowed to do whatever they want." She doesn't want Ruthie to get in trouble, see? Ruthis says evilly that Yasmin "worries too much." Shut up, Ruthie. They collect the twins and go downstairs.