Episode Report Card Niki: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT There Be Dragons
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.18.1999
Cut to Lily's kitchen, where she's chopping away at some vegetables when Zoe, Grace, and Jake come through the back door. After the girls head upstairs, Jake looks at her for a second and then says, "Well, I'll see ya." He's almost out the door when Lily tells him to wait.
B/W Lily's back to tell us even more things we never wanted to know. Such as, "Jake always wanted me. Day or night. When we were fighting. Even when we weren't speaking, he wanted me." I see many, many sleep aids in my future.
Lily asks Jake if he's just going to act like nothing happened. "Why? What happened?" he wants to know. Um, duh-- "You kissed me, remember?" Lily says. She then tells him that he "can't just kiss people like that and expect to get away with it." Sadly, she doesn't launch into an ass-kicking series of flips and jumps à la Mission Impossible. Then again, this isn't a Sprint commercial. Instead she just stands there looking indignant. Jake tells her he's always been attracted to her (okay, except maybe when he was in the midst of it with that other young thing named Tiffany), and he still is. He asks if that's so terrible. "YES!" I scream, but no one's listening. Jake just goes on, slickly apologizing for being attracted to her, and asking, "Is that better?" She tells him he has "no right, and [he knows] it." Jake replies that, "All [he] knows is what [he] feels." He doesn't actually say "baby" out loud, but you know it's implied.
B/W Lily offers her support, saying that Jake "never really wanted [her], the [person she] really was." She finally figured out that, the more she talked, the more things fell apart, and the less he wanted her.
Lily tells Jake that he never considers who his "feelings" are liable to hurt. He looks at her with an acidic smile, saying, "You're going to throw it in my face for the rest of my life, aren't you?" "You bet," she retorts. "We're not done, yet. You know it, and I know it." What is that, a threat? They're taking this whole secret agent/villain thing a little far, aren't they? I'm half expecting him to tie her up and throw her into the shark tank. But he just leaves.
The next morning, Rick spots Lily dropping off Grace at school, and he hops in her truck. They talk about what happened on Saturday, and Rick realizes that Jessie's been harboring a secret hope that he and Karen would get back together. Of course, "meeting [Lily] blew that right out of the water." Lily tells him Jake's going through exactly the same thing after meeting Rick. "But he's not twelve," Rick says. Drum roll, please..."Really?" Ba-dum-dum. When the hilarity wears off, the situation begins to impact on Rick. "He wants you back?" he asks. "For the moment, which is all he lives in," Lily replies. While she prattles on about it, Rick's face falls lower and lower until it acquires that hang-dog quality of which everyone's so fond. Lily notices that he's troubled and apologizes. He says it's all right, he knows what it's like. She asks if he and Karen were able to break it off neatly, and he says no. "I'm sorry," she says again, touching his face lightly. Maybe you should try telling him he's got nothing to worry about? Instead, she steers the subject back to Jessie. With tears in his eyes, he tells her that, according to Karen, Jessie doesn't want to talk about it with him. "Oh, yes she does," Lily says, "Girls always want to talk about it, trust me."