Episode Report Card Heathen: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Falling In Place
By Heathen | Season 3 | Episode 13 | Aired on 03.03.2002
Evidently, though, Jessie made it to class either with or without Eli's help. She's sitting there now, listening to her teacher ask people to connect Manifest Destiny to the current political climate. He's figuring this will contextualize the long-ago-coined term, but he's made one fatal mistake: he assumes these kids pay attention to such things as "the news" and "politics" and "climate." The teacher picks on Jessie, who looks like she's about to muster up something halfway intelligent until she spies her pal Katie watching her from the hallway. Why isn't Katie in class? Jessie chokes back whatever original thought she'd formed and instead says she has no opinion on this whatsoever. The teacher understands. "I know you're going through a situation," he says kindly, which doesn't explain why he bothered asking her in the first place. Oh, I think it's because Homework is Mandatory, which is the ballad her history teacher is singing right now. As Jessie looks vaguely embarrassed that he brought her personal trauma into the classroom, the bell rings.
Jessie escapes into Katie's hungry arms. Well, that's the way it happens in Katie's head, anyway. "That was so uncalled for," Katie gripes supportively. "No, I'm an idiot," Jessie demurs. Katie encourages Jessie to ditch the rest of the day; the Ass-Pole Gene tells Jessie to stay where she is and learn things and educate herself, but unfortunately, Jessie also has Rick's Liquid Spine chromosome and it trumps Ass-Pole like rock to scissors. Jessie and Katie scamper outside.
Judy grins her way into Karen's hospital room, toting some munchies and a modest bouquet of flowers, which is dwarfed by the growing garden of blossoms in the room. It'd be nice to see whom some of them are from. Where's Leo in all this? Off making movies, I suppose. Karen immediately thanks her profusely for taking a chance on Eli. "I know it's only a few days, but it's great," Karen beams. Judy says it could end up being more than that, because so far, so good. Karen's relief is tangible. But InnerKaren's as vexed as ever. "When Eli was sixteen months old, he knew a hundred words," she remembers dreamily. "I was convinced he was a genius." Then InnerKaren sighs sadly. "He was my first-born. He was my hero," she whispers with feeling. "And I just couldn't understand [it] when things started to go wrong." She stares morosely into space, volumes of pain and confusion clouding her eyes. Susanna Thompson has mastered that expression. She's so wasted in dreck like Kevin Costner's Dragonfly, which I don't need to see to know that the material is beneath her. Back to the scene: Karen stares blankly at Judy, unable to pay attention to her friend's conversation because she's preoccupied inside. InnerKaren continues, "I blamed it on school, and Rick, and myself. Truth is, I just keep thinking he's going to turn it all around."