Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.23.1999
Lighthouse. Sparkly water. Alterna-twanging. Dawson "How Now Brow Cow" Leery, clad in his usual XXXL long-sleeved t-shirt, meanders through Estrangement Estates and into the kitchen, where he sees Mitch "The Flash" Leery hunched in an armchair in the living room, yelling instructions at a televised football game, and Gale "The Faithless Hussy" Leery taking a pie out of the oven. Gale asks Dawson's opinion on her pumpkin pie, and Dawson takes a look and compliments it, and Gale starts the oyster stuffing; Dawson asks, "So how goes the apartment search?" Gale says, "Oh, it's, it's coming," and asks Dawson if he minds her staying in the guest room. Weird -- where I come from, the parent who pays the bulk of the mortgage on the house doesn't generally defer to the wishes of the dependent child living therein, but perhaps they do things differently in Massachusetts. Anyway, as Mitch loudly celebrates a touchdown, Dawson mutters something about the scene seeming "oddly familiar," and Gale asks rather acidly what Dawson finds familiar, "your father watching football and me in my apron?" Gale's hair has improved about four hundred percent from past seasons, I must say. The Flash barges in to inform Dawson that he's "missing a great game in there," notices the pies, and prepares to taste-test them, but Gail waves a mean-looking knife in his direction and tells him to forget it, because she can't take "half-eaten baked goods" to Grams's. The Flash mock-fumes that it hardly seems fair for Gale to invade their house, fill the kitchen with the scent of pie, and then refuse them access to said pie, and again I have to wonder who exactly owns the house, because as I recall, The Flash didn't have a job of any kind for ages, and now he pulls down a paltry substitute-teacher's salary, and Dawson's on-again-off-again video store job obviously isn't covering the balloon payments, so it seems to me that Gale , the only member of the family with a substantial income, probably owns the house, and maybe the Leery men could stop referring to Estrangement Estates as "their house," since for all intents and purposes it's Gale's house, and she can tell them to sleep in the lawn chairs outside if she wants. And she should. Gale basically tells The Flash to shut up. Dawson remarks that he suddenly feels "like I'm stuck in an episode of The Waltons." The Flash and Gale exchange a look, and Gale suggests that Dawson "go change."
Jen barrels through the front door of The Ryan Home For Wayward Granddaughters And Alternatively Lifestyled Boys with her arms full of groceries. She tells Grams "Jesus Fixed My Size Nines" Ryan that Sam The Deli Guy says hello. Grams sort of rolls her eyes as Jen rambles on about Sam's various unattractive attributes, then tries to interrupt her because she has to tell Jen something. Jen cuts her off, promising to behave herself for Thanksgiving, but Grams didn't mean that, exactly, and she tries again to talk to Jen, but Jen tells her to relax, "it's only a meal." Grams says meaningfully, "It's a meal with a long history." Jen makes a "whatever" face and says she has to go get ready, and Grams follows her, reminding her that Thanksgiving has a history of bringing people with differences together as Jen, not really listening, heads upstairs. Long story short, Grams tries to tell Jen that Jen's mother has come for Thanksgiving, but she can't get a word in edgewise, and Jen comes into her room mid-snark and sees her mother, Helen "Hope" Lindley, holding a collection doll. "Mom," Jen says. "Hello, Jen," Helen says gently.
In the kitchen of Bessie's Bed And Breakfast, Bessie "My Kingdom For A Subplot" Potter, who exhibits every sign of having just taken a massive bong hit, complains that she forgot to put the gizzard bag into the turkey. Joey "It's A Hard-Knock Life" Potter looks vaguely disgusted, before theorizing that, had their mother lived, she would have had her own cooking show by now. Bessie fumbles a potholder (geddit? potholder?) and says she's glad they're doing Thanksgiving at Grams's, and Joey agrees; then Joey says that she keeps expecting their mother to walk through the door and order them out of the kitchen, and Bessie chuckles, and Joey looks pensive.