Episode Report Card Deborah: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Medium and the Message
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.09.2003
She goes down to the basement, past a stack of chairs that are almost exactly what I want for my dining room chairs, except in a black finish. It's deserted, and she tries a couple of doors until she opens one where a bunch of chess nerds are gathered around tables, heads bent over their chess boards. The teacher, in a navy sweater vest over a plum shirt and tie, asks if she's looking for the chess club. When Joan reluctantly admits she is, she's asked for the secret password, which is "The Picard Manoeuvre." Like she has any chance of guessing that. I kid. He just smiles and invites her in, saying they can always use another "wood-pusher." Is that, like, actual chess lingo?
After the commercials, Joan's in the cafeteria line with Charybdis and Scylla. She asks if she can sit with them. If you're really friends with someone, you don't need to ask that. Charybdis snots, "I don't know...'is it anybody's business?'" Joan says she asked, and Grace didn't tell. Scylla's all "whatever." They're sitting at a table when a tall blonde siren with ironed hair, wearing a powder blue, cable-knit sweater, comes up to them and asks, "Joan Girardi?" Charybdis and Scylla look at Joan. The siren asks if Joan knows her, and introduces herself as Lynnie Carmichael. Joan: "I guess I do now." Lynnie announces, "I am going to cut you off at the knees. I will rip your hair out, one root at a time." Charybdis and Scylla say nothing. Joan says, "Ow...seems like we just met." Lynnie: "You do not mess with my boyfriend." Joan tries to find out who her boyfriend is, so she can avoid messing with him. Lynnie says, "Nice try. Consider yourself warned." Okay, so far the only girl in this school other than Joan who isn't a stereotyped, two-dimensional, flat-out beeyotch is Grace. Lynnie flounces off, and Joan asks her "friends" who her boyfriend is. Charybdis: "Dax Hibbing." Scylla: "You hit on Dax Hibbing?" Joan says she doesn't know him. Scylla: "Are you insane? They are such a unit. You can't get in there!" Joan insists that she doesn't know the guy. Scylla: "You are either a complete freak...or my hero." She and Charybdis look at each other and nod slightly in unison. Oy. Please dump these two, as soon as humanly possible.
Will, Daghlian, and Charlotte are at the park with the parents. Will and Lt. Daghlian walk around the park as Will bitches about taxpayers' money being used for this charade, while Charlotte talks to the parents. Daghlian wonders why it bothers him so much: "It's just an exercise." Will says: "Because she's wasting our time and she's exploiting those people's pain." Mrs. Reinemann comes running over to Will and says, "He's alive! Charlotte says he's alive. But we don't have much time." Her husband tells him that Charlotte got the image of a car. Charlotte describes a small, white, beat-up car; she sees the numbers 2 and 4 on the license plate. Neither of the cops reacts much, and she suggests, "You might want to write that down." Will sarcastically asks if she happened to zone in on an address. Charlotte says it doesn't work that way. The father volunteers that she said it was a man, and adds that he lured Eric away with a puppy. The mother exhorts her, "Tell him about the barn." Charlotte's gotten a flash of a red barn, somewhere in the country. There's a farm, and some hay. Do tell. Charlotte asks to speak to Will alone. She asks, "What is your problem?" He's glad she asked. He complains about the waste of time and how he wants to be doing regular police work, like gathering evidence, interviewing and evaluating witnesses, slogging through the tip line: "We've actually found missing kids this way!" She reminds him that they haven't found this one.