Episode Report Card Daniel: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Love conquers all
By Daniel | Season 8 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.11.2004
Opening credits. I'm sorry. I really hope I don't go over too many things that have been covered in past recaps, but this is the theme song? It sounds like a Saturday Night Live parody. "And Happy as 'Happy'?" This show has to be the work of Satan.
The commercial where the crying baby is soothed by the internet pictures of Elle MacPherson, who turns out to be his mom, is kind of cute, but come on. Dude, if you're married to Elle MacPherson and you have to turn to the internet for video of her? That's just sad.
RevCam. Dozing off in front of computer at home. Jaunty harp plucking, or whatever, as RevCam fights a losing battle against sleep; he nods off, snoring, while Ruthie watches creepily from the doorway. After he falls asleep, she walks towards him, and he wakes up again. She says she just wanted to say "good night," but the weird way she was watching him and the way her eyes widen as she delivers her line? I swear RevCam came this close to having a letter opener plunged into the back of his neck. Too bad, too. I was ready with an A-plus for this episode had that happened. But he says good night and he loves her, and she says she loves him too, and that's why she's hoping he'll talk to Peter, who sounded really angry on the phone with her tonight. Get used to it, is what RevCam should say, but doesn't. Ruthie also knows RevCam met with Paris today. "And you know my counseling sessions are private matters that I don't share," says RevCam. "Oh, so it was a counseling session! Not just, say, a friendly meeting!" says Ruthie. Yes, well played, Ruthie. Well played. RevCam gives her a pointed "good night," but before Ruthie goes, she innocently says that she hopes Paris doesn't say "no" to Chandler, and hopes that possibility isn't what's upsetting Peter. RevCam's all, "say 'no' to Chandler?" but Ruthie sweetly says, "good night!" and skips on out of there. RevCam totally makes "that little bitch!" faces. Eight-figure salary or not, Stephen Collins is losing it.
Peter and Kevin are going for a walk or something, and Kevin right away asks Peter what's wrong, even though we haven't had the chance to see for ourselves that anything is wrong. No matter. Peter says he hates his mother, and Kevin says everyone hates their mother at one time or another. "Restrict you?" says Kevin. Nope. "Take away something?" he says. Nope. "Talk in maddening sentence fragments like these?" says Kevin. That's it, that's the one. Honest to god, if you didn't see this episode, you have no idea just how long Kevin grilled Peter on all the possible reasons why he could be mad. It was about 35 seconds, but it felt like hours. Finally Peter says his mom met up with his dad on her business trip and they're discussing being a family again. Kevin, who is some kind of moron, asks how Peter feels about that, and Peter busts on him for such a stupid question. "I don't want to see my dad. I don't want to talk to him. I wish he were dead," says Peter, and Kevin quietly points out that his own dad is dead, so maybe Peter should lay his daddy-death fantasies on someone else. It's like when someone writes to Ann Landers and complains about her husband's snoring, and then someone else writes in to say, "My husband's snoring used to get on my nerves, and THEN HE DIED, and how I wish he were snoring beside me right now." So Peter backs off and says, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you," like, this kid sounds like no other twelve-year-old I've ever met, and he explains that his father was a mean drunk, and things were starting to go well for him and his mother. "We were going to marry Chandler," he says, but now Vic has shown up and ruined things. "Marry Chandler?" says Kevin.