Episode Report Card Keckler: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Vulcan's Tale
By Keckler | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.24.2002
There's the break, and it looks like Local may beat Mestral, but no, Mestral makes the comeback to back all comebacks. In fact, he even calls his final anvil. "The number eight ball in that pocket," he says, pointing with his cue. T'Nana and Mestral walk off into the sunset with four bags of groceries. "Cryogenics," Mestral says, displaying one of the frozen dinners in his bag. No, not T'Nana's -- actual dinners. And NOT Ted Williams, either. And by the way, for those of you out there who still believe the fable that Walt is a Disney Pop? Hate to burst your bubble, but Grandpa Keckler went to the funeral and read the eulogy, and though the man may have been cold, he wasn't pricing real estate in meat lockers, okay? Mestral wonders if the humans have "experimented" with replicators. T'Nana acidly tells him that he should have asked the shopkeeper, since he's so eager to interact with all the humans in town. She stomps off ahead of him as fast as her little Easy Spirits can carry her.
"I think that wine's gone to your head," Trip tells me. Or maybe it was T'Pol he was addressing. I don't know, because the wine has gone to my head. T'Pol asks what he's implying. "Two Vulcans stroll into a bar --" "Wait! I think I know this one, the punch line is 'But the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has got to go!'" Mathra crows, Groucho-ing his eyebrows. Trip continues that he doesn't buy two Vulcans hustling some locals in pool so they can go out and buy TV dinners. "It sounds like an old episode of the Twilight Zone," Trip yuks. Man, there's a lot of sediment in this glass of Wednesday night line-up anvil. T'Pol's about to flounce off in a snit, but Quantum persuades her to keep on Scheherezading them.
"They realized they couldn't rely on gambling, so they took whatever employment they could find, " T'Pol VOs, as we see T'Nana sweeping up the bar floor, and T'Left Behind At Crash Site struggling to repair a dripping sink. He gets frustrated, so he pulls out some non-Depression-era Vulcan tool and aims it at the leaky pipe. Mestral is shown working in the mines, and T'Pol VOs that as time went on, it seemed unlikely the Vulcans had ever received their distress call. "And it became more difficult for them to avoid the humans," T'Pol finishes, as we get a view of an old television set reporting the testing of a nuclear bomb in New Mexico. "Nothing like an atomic test to make your day," Bar Mom (formerly "Bar Cusack") comments, switching off the television. Mestral, who is sitting at the bar, asks her, "Doesn't it concern you?" Bar Mom tells him it "scares the hell out of [her]." "I'd hate to see humanity destroy itself," Mestral says gravely. Bar Mom couldn't agree more, as Precocious Teen walks up and asks if he and Mestral can play a game of pool. "Ja-ack," Bar Mom says, reprovingly. "I've got a geometry midterm next week, it's good practice," Jack states matter-of-factly. Savvy Bar Mom tells him there are better ways to study math. Mestral asks Jack if he is interested in the maths. Jack says, "It's what I want to study at college -- Mechanical Engineering, if I get to go." "You will," Bar Mom says, and turns to Mestral. "He got a scholarship." Jack hastens to add that it's not a full scholarship. "It's still a scholarship and you worked hard for it," Bar Mom says. She rattles a gallon jar full of change on the bar and tells Mestral that everyone is pitching in to send him to college. So, is this kid the first of their Cripple Creek tribe to go to college? Mestral takes this all in. Bar Mom, softened by her pride in her phenom son, tells him he can shoot one rack with the Vulcan before he gets to his homework.