Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Full Moon Rising
By Sars | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 11.03.1998
Buddy Lee must die.
Fade up on Wilbur, lying disconsolate in the straw and waiting for Charlotte to -- oops, my bad, fade up on Jen sulking on the front steps of Casa Grams as Grams marches towards the camera, and already I feel a jubilant "go Grams" forming in my throat. Grams pushes open the screen door (number of actual people in Massachusetts who have not put in their storm doors by November, or December, or whatever damn month the writers have assigned to this episode: zero) and says, "I do not know what to do with you anymore, child." Jen pre-cries while biting her lower lip, "Please don't preach to me right now," and excuse me, but if an adult responsible for my welfare had come home to find my high-school self dry-humping a manual-laboring lawyer-wannabe ten years my senior on the kitchen table, I would have found my worldly belongings on the lawn and my ass sailing into next week, never mind pulling a don't-start-with-me attitude like Jen's and expecting to live, and Grams says, "Oh, there'll be no talk of God, I'll leave Him out of it -- this is between you and me. What I witnessed tonight is something I never want to see again." Jen says in her trembly pre-crying voice, "I had that situation under control, okay? You don't have to get upset at me," and I would not characterize a situation in which I invited a man I barely know into an empty house that doesn't belong to me and narrowly averted getting raped, on a surface people eat on, by telling him I can't vote yet as "under control," first of all, and second of all, does Jen view her living arrangement as roommate situation or something? Which part of the phrase "Grams's house, Grams's rules" DOESN'T SHE UNDERSTAND? Grams sits down next to Jen, saying, "Oh, I'm not upset, child -- I am sick," like, Grams, GET IN LINE, and Grams proceeds to read Jen the long-overdue riot act and punctuate it by shaking her fist, thundering, "I will not allow you to slide back into your reprehensible New York behavior, not while you're under my care. You will not disrespect me," and Jen interrupts, "Wait a minute, that's not --" but Grams, on a roll, cuts her off: "No, you wait a minute, Jennifer. This behavior will not be tolerated. You will treat me with respect, and you will act like a lady." Jen's face crumples in on itself as she tries not to cry but starts crying anyway, and Grams plants her espadrille dead in Jen's ass: "You will not degrade yourself, not under my roof, and not in my lifetime!" As Jen snuffles snot and feels sorry for herself, Grams hoists her righteous ass up and goes into the house, but not before asking, "Have you no respect for yourself?" and shuts the screen door behind her as Jen hiccups self-pityingly and hugs her knees and stares at the Full Moon Of Completely Unsubtle Portent and an owl hoots in the background. Final score after this encounter: Grams 7, Jen 0. Oh, and GO GRAMS.