Episode Report Card Niki: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT If You Love Something, Let It Run Free
By Niki | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.03.2001
"She's not getting better," Karen tells Dr. Wise-Ass. She and Rick are seated in the good doctor's office, as far from each other on the couch as they can get. Karen's arms are clenched across her chest, and her foot jiggles in agitation. Rick is absolutely sprawled out in comparison. Dr. Wise-Ass asks Karen what she means. Karen's foot shakes furiously as she says that she can't know whether this fainting spell was "an isolated incident" and declares that Jessie's not making progress; "she's not eating." Dr. Wise-Ass asks Rick what he thinks. Rick glances at Karen and says, "I actually think she's doing better." He says that when Jessie's at his house, she's eating more. "Junk food," Karen grates, looking off angrily to the side and in serious danger of launching her foot right off her ankle. Rick quickly protests that it's not junk food. Karen swings her head to level him with a glare, demanding, "Are you saying she's eating with you and not with me?" Rick tries to placate her while at the same time making it clear he thinks she's overreacting.
Karen hops on the Soliloquy Stool to share, "Rick's parenting? Has always been so...casual." As proof, she offers, "When the kids were small, they'd be teetering at the top of a jungle gym, ready to fall flat on their face, and he'd hold me back and say, 'Let them fall. So they break a bone -- once.'" Or they knock themselves into a coma -- once. Karen's disdain for this approach is obvious.
Rick hops up on the Stool to launch his own attack: "Karen approaches parenthood like it's a trial. You have the evidence, the arguments, uh, the verdict...And if it's not all just right, [sneering] you're in contempt." I think it's pretty obvious who's holding whom in contempt here.
Back in the doctor's office, Karen's fuming to Rick, "She moves her food around on her plate. It only looks like she's eating." Rick snarks, "I think I can tell when she's eating." Of course you can. That's why she had two grody pieces of pizza moldering away in her desk a few weeks back. These two are so fucking dysfunctional, locked locked in this parental tug-of-war. I don't know how Dr. Wise-Ass manages to stay as calm and cool as he does. But I guess that's why he gets the big bucks, and I'm just an armchair analyst. He earns his paycheck one more time by gently interrupting their volley: "Guys, look. She still has a problem. And she's going to have this problem for a while." Karen's not thrilled to hear this. "So, what?" she demands. "We're supposed to just sit here and watch her not eat and then rag on her 'til she screams at me and basically become the food nazi?" Dr. Wise-Ass just nods sagely and utters, "Basically." Karen makes it clear that she's not impressed with the approach, and she's "not interested" in it any longer. Dr. Wise-Ass -- who I'm now convinced is a master of Zen -- soothingly reminds her that "this profession has yet to become an exact science. If you tell me our way is not working, I believe you. There are other ways." He tells them about a new approach he's been reading; "it sounds like an old approach," but "it's basically behavior mod. You set up a few rules, and this becomes Jessie's job. In order to earn her keep, a certain amount has to be eaten." Karen glances at Rick while the doctor searches his desk for the file with the information. The doctor elaborates that if Jessie keeps up her end of things, she gets to keep up her life: phone privileges, trips to the mall, martial arts. If she doesn't, she loses them: "Not as a punishment, just as part of the deal. She didn't earn it that week." Dr. Wise-Ass specifies that the most important part is they do not discuss it: there is no "cajoling" or "arguing." Rick looks less and less thrilled as the doctor speaks. He tells the doc it "sounds like training a dog." Dr. Wise-Ass makes a crack about a rolled-up newspaper, and tells them this approach is a lot harder than it sounds: "For some reason, nobody in our generation wants to be the, uh, bad guy. In other words, parents. This makes kids really uneasy, because the truth is, they really want parents. Even if it means parents they get to hate sometimes." Karen flinches. She shakes her head, unconvinced. He holds out the folder and tells them to take a look at the articles and tell him what they think. The two of them just stare at the folder like it's a severed hand.