Episode Report Card Alex Richmond: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Ally's a Mom, John Is Gone
By Alex Richmond | Season 5 | Episode 12 | Aired on 02.10.2002
After one completely useless commuter montage (doesn't Ally walk everywhere? We've never seen her in a train or in a car, ever! The sidewalk is her mode of transportation!), we land back at Ally's house. JBJ comes down the stairs, and says Kid came home early, because "her playmates canceled." So, JBJ paged her? Kid tells JBJ what's what before she tells her genetic mother? This makes no sense. Ally runs up the stairs, after checking with JBJ that it's all right to do so.
Kid sits on the floor in front of her bed. Ally joins her, with stories about her fucked-up childhood. Kid says she doesn't want Ally's pity; she just wants to get even. Ally asks if Kid wants to stoop to their level. Kid does! She wants to stoop! Ally advises Maddie take the kids' books and draw pictures of naked men inside, then tattle to teacher, who will suspend them. Maddie says, "You are so awesome." Not so, really. JBJ eavesdrops disapprovingly, and then ahems. He's all, "Got a second? I'd like to discuss some...plumbing." Best line all episode. Even he didn't believe it!
Kitchen. JBJ is all, are you nuts. YES! YES, Ally is nuts! Run, JBJ. Run toward another '80s nostalgia tour; another movie with Whoopi Goldberg that has you up on a ladder most of the time, "painting"; toward an all-New Jersey episode of Cribs -- just RUN AWAY! Run fast, run far. Anyway, JBJ says Ally's revenge advice is fucked, and she's all, "Did I ask for your advice?" She fires him on the spot. Oh, that's great. You're hot for the guy, and he's totally helping with your kid, and you can him the one time he opens his mouth? He rattles off some BS-sounding state code saying it's unlawful to discharge a plumber before he's completed his job. So, as soon as she's done, she wants him gone. Fine. Fine! Fine! Fine.
Corretta confers with AIDS Woman. She doesn't want to settle for $300,000, even though "it's more money than [she] can spend in [her] lifetime." Of two years? You can't spend three hundred thousand dollars in two years, AIDS Woman? Let me go shopping with you, just once. Or maybe you can come over to the house one day and see all the things that need fixing, AIDS Woman. We can put a dent in that $300,000. Anyway, she wants to fight. Fight fight fight!
Okay, I flipped over to the dog show to see them honor the dogs that worked at Ground Zero and at the Pentagon, and the closed captioning just called the dog's efforts "empressure rabble," instead of immeasurable. That is so funny.