Episode Report Card Deborah: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Grace Under Pressure
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.05.2004
Price has something else to worry about: the art teacher, Ms. Jankow, has suddenly decided to quit. Her red crocheted beret at a jaunty angle, she seems a somewhat fragile (flaky/loopy) sort: "First there were those faculty meetings, and then the politics, then the forms for the supplies, and now this." Yeah, those first three are really unusual for a teaching position. She adds, "I'm not teaching art in a war zone." Joan and Adam are watching this with concern. Ms. Jankow declares, "I have a degree from Parsons. I studied with Judy Chicago." Price, naturally, has no idea who Judy Chicago is, and if he did, he wouldn't like her. (I, on the other hand, was pretty taken with The Dinner Party when I saw it in the early 1980s. ["My mom still has several large framed posters of it." -- Wing Chun]) Ms. Jankow marches out through the detector, setting it off and dropping some stuff. Adam helps her and she tells him, "Adam...you're really talented, but I...I'm sorry." Adam doesn't say anything; he just looks hurt.
Joan looks sad for Adam as she marches through the detector. Some security guy motions her aside and she complains, since she didn't set off the alarm. He starts wanding her as she says, "So unless you want to sentence me to death for possession of Gummi Bears, I would like to go to class." I like the skirt she's wearing. It's funny that she mentions Gummi Bears, since apparently some Japanese cryptographer has figured out how you can use the kind of gelatin found in Gummi Bears to create a fake finger good enough to fool fingerprint detectors 80% of the time. Security guy: "You seem very upset, Joan. Take a breath." Joan leans in and asks, "Fascist God? That's nice." Oy. Talk about your overreaction. The security measures may be repressive and even oppressive but God, it bugs my ass when people refer to everything they don't agree with or don't like as "fascism" or "Nazism." Those words shouldn't be thrown around carelessly. She says she hopes he's pleased with his work here: "You're being cursed by the entire student body, you know." Security God: "I didn't do this. I merely provide choices." Joan: "Adam was just starting to do his art again and now the teacher jets out of here. This totally sucks!" Security God: "'Suck' is a relative term, Joan. Things could be much worse than this." Joan: "Or much better." Security God says she's catching on: "It all depends...." Joan puts her hands to her head in exasperation and says, "On our choices. Yes, I know. But we don't know how things are gonna turn out until after we choose and then it's too late! This is not a good system." Security God trots out a favourite cant: "It's a perfect system, Joan. But very well argued. You'll be an excellent addition to the debate team." Joan can't believe it: "I'm already a subdefective. You want me to devolve into a toad?" Security God: "What? A lively exchange of ideas in search of the truth?" Isn't that what the internet was supposed to be? I'm not hopeful, here. ["It's definitely full of both subdefectives and toads, in my experience." -- Wing Chun] Security God asks, "Who wouldn't love that?" Joan: "Um, me." He just stares at her as he shouts, "Next!" Joan grabs her bag and stalks off.