Episode Report Card Cate: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Pathetic
By Cate | Season 6 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.13.2002
Ruthie is down at school for a meeting with Ms. Riddle, who explains to the girl that she used to be a very angry person who took her anger out on others. Ruthie wants to know who she was angry with. Ms. Riddle tells her that it was her fiancé, whom she'd dated all through high school and college. Hmm -- I feel I've already heard this story somewhere else in the episode. Wait a second. She's not going to say she was supposed to marry hunky firefighter Ben, is she? No, Ms. Riddle's guy ended up running off with her sister, and as far as we know, Ben's not married. So Ms. Riddle started a career in teaching, but she was hampered by low self-esteem. Oh, come on, we know how to cure that. Obviously she just needed a man to complete herself! Well, after some anger-management classes, she found a man, the principal at Ruthie's old school. Now that she and the principal are getting married, one of them had to transfer to another school, which is one of the reasons she ended up at Eleanor Roosevelt. She cites the other reason, which is that she wanted to patch things up with Ruthie, but that's so preposterous that I think we can just ignore it. Ruthie asks if Ms. Riddle kept her engagement ring from the first fiancé. Well, what do you know -- she did! She finally mailed it back to him recently, because she'd learned to let go. Yeah, yeah, letting go of the past. Okay, we get it.
Lucy and foul Ronald are making out on "their" couch (I assume) when Mary walks in and asks if Lucy's ready to go. Lucy explains that she'll be back soon, but she has to go to the post office now. Ronald doesn't think this is weird at all. In fact, he wants Lucy to pick him up some stamps. Lucy doesn't think that is weird at all. I wonder whose room Ronald will wander into during Lucy's absence. It would serve him right if he walked in on the CamRents getting it on upstairs. He'd probably just sit down on their bed, though, and try to engage them in conversation, or start singing his stupid Lucy-inspired ditties. Mary has addressed a couple of envelopes so that she and Lucy can send their engagement rings back to their respective owners. See, they're letting go of -- okay, I know. You get it. As they put the ring boxes into the envelopes, Lucy finally wields the theme mallet by saying, "We're really kind of pathetic." Mary seems to be racking her brain to recall what "pathetic" means, but she does figure it out and says, "Yeah, but we don't have to keep being pathetic." Yeah, but you know what? I'll bet you will.