Episode Report Card Wing Chun: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Fear Of Commitment
By Wing Chun | Season 7 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.02.2001
After a moment, Lisa walks over, holds up the suitcase, and says, "I brought some stuff from that motel room, and some stuff you left in my apartment." Sally thanks her. Lisa asks whether she knows where she's going, and Sally, still fidgeting with her hair, says that Mitchell gave her the name of a shelter, and that Sally's going to go there for a few days. Lisa chirps, "Okay." They regard each other warily for a moment, and then Lisa breaks the silence: "Good luck, Maggie. See you next time." Thinking she's just had the last word, Lisa turns to stomp off, but Sally quavers, "Next time?" Lisa, neither looking back nor stopping, wearily says, "Yeah -- whenever it is, wherever it is." Sally hesitantly calls, "Maybe there won't be a next time!" Lisa's at the ward door and is just about to get away clean, but she turns back and storms toward Sally, her face a rictus of impotent rage, and demands, "You're gonna walk out of here, on your own, one week after swallowing a pharmacy, as close to death as I see people get, and you think there's not going to be a next time?!" Sally looks terrified, and her hand jumps to her hair again as she falters, "I hope not! I don't know -- I promised myself I wouldn't make any promises." Lisa's brow furrows as she tries to maintain her composure, and fails, and she says, "You know, when I saw you, seizing on that table, I thought, 'This is it! This is it -- this is how it's all going to end. I am going to watch my mother die.'" Sally looks pained. Lisa bitterly continues, "And I still might not be wrong about that! It could still end that way -- and there's not one thing I can do about it. But I'll show up! Because you will always have that power over me. I will show up, and I will try to stop it." Sally lets out one sob. Lisa flaps her hands and chokes, "I love you, Mom!" She walks out, leaving Sally alone. Okay. First of all, Lisa? Therapy. Get you some. Because the steps alone aren't really getting the job done. Second, I have to say I admire the way the writers got these two episodes to fit together, because last week I was like Carter, all judging Lisa for being pissy to her mother when she could have had the local authorities intervene and get rid of Sally for her, but now this episode -- hackneyed court scenes aside -- has given us all that insight into Lisa, and exactly how her feelings of love and resentment aren't in opposition; instead, her love and her resentment exist at once and can't be separated. But all of that is conveyed not so much in the writing, but mostly in the very subtle job Maura Tierney's done in this episode and the last one, being brittle and concerned, bitter and terrified, all at once, and in silence. A lesser actress would have sunk scenes like this. Maura Tierney's very good.
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