Episode Report Card Deborah: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Maternal Instincts
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.23.2003
Once he leaves, she smacks her hand down and says to her father, "That was humiliating!" Helen: "Clay Fisher is a friend of yours?" Joan: "Why don't you just bring out the naked baby pictures?" Will hoists the crate of records and takes off for the gym. Joan's almost speechless: "This is a nightmare!" She stomps away, and Helen follows, carrying on about not knowing she and Clay were friends. Okay, we've got that. Try to keep up, Helen. Joan: "Do not ask the next question!" A customer calls out, "Does this footbath work?" Joan says she'll be right with him. Helen: "He's a very charming boy." Joan knows. Helen adds, "And you always have to be a little wary of charm, that's all I'm saying. Well, the fire drill thing gets old with the faculty." Joan: "Mom, I like him and he likes me. If I waited around for you to approve someone I liked, then I'd never have a date, so just back off!" Man, Helen and Will sure are patient. And easygoing. I might have spoken to my mother like this, but the next words out of my mother's mouth wouldn't have been Helen's: "I think you're special. I think you deserve to be with someone that's worthy of you, and I'm not saying that..." Suddenly she gets an unhappy look on her face about something she can see over Joan's shoulder. Someone's looking at one of her paintings. She takes the painting out of the customer's hand. Joan says, "You said you didn't want them!" Helen didn't want her to sell them to strangers, either. She grabs the other one and takes them into the house. On the front step, she pauses to tell Joan, on the verge of tears, "These are mine. You don't know what they mean. You don't...have any idea." She goes into the house just as Clay's coming out. He asks Joan, "What happened?" Joan, bewildered, says, "I have no idea."
Joan and Helen are sitting at the kitchen table, not talking to each other. Joan seems to be reading a textbook; Helen's doing a crossword. Will comes in asking how he can be running late already, and wondering where his badge is. He asks, "What happened to Sunday?" Helen: "It was devoured by football games." Hmm. That wouldn't explain where my Sundays go. They have what I'm fairly sure is a blackboard from IKEA on a wall, but it looks like it's been painted, as I think it's only available in a wood stain. I sort of thought about getting that, because I really want a blackboard, but I want to try to find an old one, preferably of real slate. Sorry, sorry. This isn't Trading Spaces. Will approaches Joan, asking, "Honey, you didn't sell my badge, did you?" She studiously ignores him. Will asks Helen, "Are we gonna hang meat in here later?" Hee! Joan turns a page in those most petulant way possible. He wonders if this is about the records. Helen says, "No. This particular sulk has my name on it." Joan says, "Keep the paintings, don't keep the paintings. Who cares? The point is, you acted like a freak in front of my boyfriend!" Helen says she didn't know he was her boyfriend. Joan flings her book shut and snaps, "Well, he probably isn't anymore!" She stomps out.