Episode Report Card Deborah: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Are You There, God? It's Me, Joan
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.11.2004
Music: Five For Fighting's "100 Years." " I'm 15 for a moment / Caught in between 10 and 20 / And I'm just dreaming…" Joan's sitting on Grace's front steps, waiting and fidgeting, when Grace arrives home. Of course, Grace is pissed. She asks, "What are you doing here?" Joan: "I didn't want to bother your dad again -- he was eating." Does Grace have a mother, or what? I think two dead mothers between Grace, Adam, and Joan would be too much for one show, so I'm guessing maybe her parents are divorced. Grace complains, "How many times have I told you: do not speak to my family?" Joan knows, and she wouldn't have, but she really needed Luke's notebook. Grace: "Well, maybe if you showed up at the library like you said you would…" Joan apologizes for that, too. She cites the "million stupid errands" she had to do, none of which she wanted to do. Grace hands her Luke's notebook, saying, "Welcome to reality." She sits down next to Joan on the steps. Joan, who hardly ever knows when or how to leave well enough alone, ventures, "So, I take it you're not going to Hebrew class by choice." Grace: "What do you think?" She says she was supposed to do all this when she was thirteen, but refused. Isn't twelve the traditional age for bat mitzvahs, in recognition of the fact that girls mature earlier than boys? ["Where I grew up, everybody just did it at thirteen, girls and boys both, but I don't know that north Jersey is setting official policy there." -- Sars] Grace explains, "But now my dad's using my sick grandmother to guilt me into it." Joan: "Bummer." Grace: "You can't fight a rabbi when he breaks out the guilt. And the worst part? I finally gave in, thinking, I'll just cause a lot of trouble, you know?" Yes, we do. "Speak out for a Palestinian homeland, just to piss off the teacher." God, I love Grace. Joan laughs. Grace: "My dad loves it. He says I'm questioning the nature of God and the world, which is 'exactly in the spirit of the Talmudic scholarship.'" Joan: "That sucks." Grace: "Tell me about it. It's like there's no escaping it." Joan: "Yeah." They sigh in unison. "15, there's still time for you / Time to buy and time to choose / Hey 15, there's never a wish better than this / When you only got 100 years to live." The camera drifts away from them as they sit together in silence on the stoop and the song finishes. Wow. That really felt like a Joan of Arcadia final scene, but it's not! It's a fakeout, because we're only at the end of the third quarter.
Will arrives home to find Helen in the kitchen making lunches, or something. I comment, "Good God, that's quite a lot of vegetable matter." Frink thinks she's making her own V-8. Just what the overstressed working woman has time for. She says, sounding slightly grouchy, "You're home late." Will: "You didn't get my message?" She replies, "Of course not." She admits it hasn't been a good day. Tell him about it. The man was trapped in an elevator for about ten hours. He says, "Sorry," and kisses her. She hopes his day was better. He tells her about his day. She smiles a bit: "That must have been fun." He puts his hands on her waist and says, "Helen…what you did, having our children…" He kisses her passionately. She smiles and says, "I think you may have passed the statute of limitations on thanking me for giving birth." No shit. That would expire long before the first diaper's soiled. Will: "I just can't believe I missed going through that with you." Yeah, who knew you were such a wuss? He adds, "You must have felt so alone." Helen: "There were plenty of strangers…and painkillers." Will: "You ever think about having another?" Sure, buddy. Now you want to experience the miracle of birth. Helen: "Not today." I guess she never told him about suspecting she was pregnant.