Episode Report Card Deborah: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Show Of Hands
By Deborah | Season 2 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.06.2005
Joan and Adam are walking across the Dawson State campus, talking about the interview process and his strategy for getting the most money from the best school. He tells her she should try to set up an interview while she's there. She claims she's committed to interior design, and PMJS told her that there are millions of schools in California: "What with earthquakes, things fall down, you have to redecorate them…" Adam says he kind of likes the idea of them at college together. "And Tuchman's such a…wart, you know? No, I mean, he's old, and has an earring. He called me 'rocker' once." Joan says he went to Brown. Is it my imagination, or is Adam getting cuter with each new episode? He replies, "So? All that means is he's smart enough to put a spell on you." She says she's not under spell, and not to worry about her: "I know what I'm doing." She kisses him: "Go get your scholarship." He leaves and she sits down, looking at the campus activity all around her: people postering, a happy couple playing Frisbee together…Joan drifts into a daydream, seeing herself and Adam as the Frisbee-playing couple, wearing their matching red Dawson State sweatshirts, laughing and frolicking and wrestling on the grass in slo-mo…I can just picture Adam trying to hold back the puke if he could witness this little reverie. He's already scared of her propensity for romantic idealization. Hell, I'm scared and I'm not dating her. Frink: "Aw, it's just like a Newport cigarettes ad." Her fantasy is interrupted by some guy handing out flyers: "Midterm fire sale: Sweet deals on the Mongol invasion, Byzantine Empire, M-brane theory…" Joan looks at him: "Selling tests? That's kind of gross. I could be some kind of narc." The guy looks so much like Jeremy London (or whichever London boy was on Party of Five -- can't remember anymore, don't care) that I'm fairly convinced it is him all through the show, although there's some Brendan Fraser mixed in there. It's actually Mark Matkevich, probably best known as Drue Valentine on Dawson's Creek. Except I stopped watching that show in late 1999, which was before he started on the show, so I had no idea about this until I read the forums later. But it makes the name "Dawson State" a little funnier.
He explains he's not selling tests, he's a tutor: "You good with all your classes?" She says she doesn't go there; she's still a junior in high school. She explains that she's going to interior design school. Jeremy/Brendan/Drue is wearing a jacket with the name "Ernest" on it. Jeremy/Brendan/Drue/Ernest nods, "Grades suck?" Watch it, buddy. Maybe you'd like to take it up with interior designer Vern Yip, with his four degrees (bachelor's in economics and chemistry, an MBA, and a master's in architecture). Not to mention that he started out pursuing a career in medicine, and moved on to interior design. There's more to interior design than picking out pillowcases. So, uh, shut it, Jeremy/Brendan/Drue/Ernest/whatever your name is. Joan replies, "Shouldn't you be moving along, Ernest?" He says his name's actually Roger: "This jacket's just a fashion statement." And that statement would be, "I'm still living in the mid-nineties, when it was cool and trendy to buy thrift-shop clothes with other people's names on them." He sits down next to Joan, asking, "And you are?" The needle on my Skeeve-o-Meter is fluttering. All you need to know, buddy, is that her name is J. Girardi and the J stands for "jailbait." But she tells him her name and shakes his hand. He says if grades are the only problem, he can help: "Getting into college is a process, all a big game. You just have to be coached." She shrugs that it's just not her game. He presses a flyer on her, saying if she changes her mind, to call him. He tells her she'd be a nice addition to the campus, and gives her a big smile. She just looks at him, and he kind of sucks in some wind between his teeth and says, "Yeah." The Skeeve-o-Meter needle's on Creepy.