Episode Report Card Niki: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Unfinished Business
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on 03.05.2000
Cut to Jake, sitting alone on a waiting room couch. His elbows are on his knees, his head is hanging down, and he is looking utterly forlorn. I don't care what anybody says, at this moment I actually feel bad for the guy. He's been there for all of them throughout the whole ordeal and he just got crapped on by Judy for his efforts. Of course, her crapping on him was also an understandable reaction to overwhelming fear and anger over her father's situation. Man, I am wiped out with all this sympathizing. Judy walks over to him, and he turns his face away slightly, his chin wobbling because he's about to cry. In a silent gesture of apology, Judy places her hand over his. He breaks down. Me too.
Cut to Lily sitting alone in a hospital corridor. Grace joins her and says she just saw Phil. Lily says Phil really loved Grace, who responds by rolling her eyes, smiling, and saying "Yeah. That was kind of hard to miss." Grace asks how Lily's doing, and Lily admits she's "not so great." Grace says when she saw Phil, it wasn't him anymore. Phil always had "this look in his eye" and "you always knew what he was thinking." His skin was always rosy, too, but now it's all gone, and she realized "that's what they were talking about all those times in Sunday School. About people having souls." After seeing her grandpa, she knows that a soul is an actual thing, and Phil's is gone, she can just feel it. Something clicks for Lily, and she nods slowly. They head back to join the others in the waiting room. Lily and Judy both know what they have to do, but Judy asks if she can stay in the waiting room while Lily goes. Lily says no way, and they wonder how they're going to tell Mom.
Cut to Mom coming out of Phil's room, still looking vacant and dry-eyed. Judy and Lily approach her and she tells them she told the doctor to stop the life support. Judy is in awe that she was strong enough to do it alone. With a stiff upper lip, Mom tells them she was married to Phil for forty-three years, it was only right that she be the one to do it. The three go in to sit with Phil.
We fade to black-and-white Phil telling us what he wants from retirement -- it's the usual stuff: To sit in the sun with his wife, children, and grandchildren. The kicker? He adds that what he wants is "time, it's all anybody wants. Time to do the really important things." We're left with the silent image of him on his stool, looking jolly like crazy as he laughs and throws his hands up like "what are ya gonna do?" His image fades and we're left with a shot of an empty hospital corridor in fading light.