Episode Report Card Heathen: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Falling In Place
By Heathen | Season 3 | Episode 13 | Aired on 03.03.2002
Black-and-white Karen -- who I'm going to call InnerKaren because she exists only to give speeches from Karen's soul -- swivels around on the Soliloquy Stool and says, "I don't remember it happening, exactly. I only remember what I was thinking right before it happened." She peers upward, and we see Regis and Kelly bickering on the TV screen. She was thinking about daytime television? No wonder a car mowed her down.
No, wait, the television is in Karen's hospital room. She's stiffly rubbing her head. A perky African-American man in blue scrubs bounds into the room and flicks on the light, which causes Karen to recoil slightly. "Karen Sammler?" he asks. She huskily confirms this. He cheerfully ignores her plea to turn off the light and exclaims in pleasure when he sees Live With Regis and Kelly. Within two seconds, Karen has switched it off. Hee. Her inner bitch at least survived the accident. There's an uncomfortable part where Karen mistakes her visitor for an orderly, but he shrugs it off and introduces himself as Henry, her physical therapist. Karen eyes him warily. "I didn't know I had one," she croaks through her cracked, bloodied lips. She's not moving, but you can see in her face that she's shrinking away from him. "Hi," Henry smiles. "Hi," Karen mocks, as if to say, "Yes, please, keep right on bothering me." Henry notices how banged up she is. "What did you do, get hit by a truck or something?" he wonders. Her reproachful look tells him everything. Either he's the world's most ill-informed physical therapist, or he's reading her worse than an illiterate cow tackling War and Peace. Henry lifts up her blanket while Karen tenses as much as she possibly can; he grabs her wounded left leg, which isn't in a cast like the right one is. This is evidently their first session together, which is odd considering she didn't even know she had a therapist. You'd think they would introduce her to the idea first, rather than having him show up unannounced and get grabby with her legs. Karen protests worriedly that she thought the prescription was for bed rest. "Are you giving up on me already?" he demands perkily. Karen's just staring at him, unable to believe that things could've gotten worse, and yet sadly aware that they have. She desperately wants him to piss off and let her wallow. But he can't, so she lets Henry grab her foot and bend her knee by the merest fraction. Karen shrieks in pain. "I can't...can't do this...right now," she pants, wheezing in agony. "But Karen, you have a long road ahead. The sooner you get started and focused on what we need to do, the easier it's going to be," Henry lectures. Isn't it a bit soon to drop the You Can Do It, Karen, If You Believe In Yourself speech? I mean, the ass-pole is still in traction. "Not today," Karen mumbles, looking morosely at the wall. Henry vows to return. "Great," she lies. InnerKaren appears, looking very vulnerable, shot from above and standing barefoot in the Soliloquy Salon. "For the first time in a long time, I was thinking..." she begins. Karen calls after Henry to turn off the light. "...starting to feel like things could get better," InnerKaren finishes. As Henry darkens the hospital room, the spotlight turns off, cloaking InnerKaren in shadowy darkness. This is in case anyone doubted that Henry would be the one to turn the light of her soul back on.