Episode Report Card Deborah: A | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Nor Yet Canst Thou Kill Me, Yo
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.06.2003
Helen's on the sofa reading On Death and Dying when Will comes home. She doesn't bother to hide the book this time. He says, loosening his tie, "Welcome to the longest week in my life." Helen says it didn't fly by for her, either. He sits down and she says, "I was proud of you today." He asks, "What you reading?" She shows him the cover and he asks, "Why?" Helen: "Because for me, sometimes, it's like Kevin died, and I need to deal with that." She's not smiling, so that's progress. Will says, "Helen..." She replies: "I know. I'm the one who's always preaching gratitude and moving on, and I was clinging to that so hard, and then it stopped working for me. I felt alone, and I, um...I talked to a priest..." To his slightly baffled look, she says, "I didn't want to bother you." Will: "That was the deal we made a long time ago. You get to bother me. You don't have to do anything alone." She apologizes for lying about the priest, and explains that's who she was having lunch with. Will puts his arm around her and says, "You come to me...not some stranger." Frink starts doing Godfather dialogue, but I shush him. Will: "Promise me." Helen's crumbling. After a moment, she whispers, "Our beautiful boy, Will." He wells up, too. "Our perfect, beautiful boy." They both cry as they embrace tightly.
A bus drives along a dark street. Cute Guy God gets on. Frink: "Hey! He didn't pay his fare! Scofflaw." I'm like, "Dude, never mind that. Did you notice he seems to have boarded the bus while it's still moving?" Joan's sitting near the front of the bus, brooding -- and crying a bit, it looks like. Cute Guy God sits in a seat perpendicular to hers and asks, "Remember me?" Well, I should hope she does. Joan asks, "Why all the familiar looks? Doing the greatest hits? Starting to get a little pleased with yourself?" He says, "You see me the way you want to see me, Joan. Like right now, you're mad at me. Maybe you feel safer to be mad at me when I look like this." Joan sticks her foot in that door of permission he just opened: "You have a lot to answer for, buddy. Nobody asked to be born." He just looks at her. She continues, "So we all get to die. And then everybody we love dies." Cute Guy God: "Yeah." Joan, getting angrier: "And that's -- that's good for you?" He says, "Joan, there's nothing I could say about that that would make sense to you." ["Pardon me for interrupting again, but…what a perfect, gracefully turned answer to that question. I have to give the writing staff on this show giant props for how they handle God's dialogue when it comes to the big issues; it's bold but not presumptuous. Excellent handling of difficult terrain." -- Sars] Joan: "A lot of what happens here really sucks. So much for your...'perfect system.' Can you see me being really mad at you right now?" He replies, "Yes." She asks why it has to be so hard. Cute Guy God: "What, specifically?" She says, "Being alive. Let's start there." He asks, "You wish you weren't alive?" Joan: "No, I -- I don't know. I wish it didn't hurt so much." He explains, "It hurts because you feel it, Joan -- because you're alive. You love people. That generates a lot of power, a lot of energy. The same kind of energy that binds atoms together -- and we've all seen what happens when you try to pry them apart." Joan figures the answer is to not get attached to people. She might be able to drum up more support for the way of non-attachment if she were talking to a Buddhist, but Cute Guy God says, "No, it's in your nature to get attached to people. I put that in the recipe. It's when you guys try to ignore that, when you try to go it alone, that's when it gets ugly. It's hell." Joan: "It's hell? Like, the hell?"