Episode Report Card Deborah: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Maybe He's Born With It...Maybe It's Maybelline
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.06.2004
Will arrives home to find Helen in the kitchen, both of them anxious to tell each other their big news. Okay, wait: weren't the brothel bust and the painting/gallery owner thing all the same day, the day of Joan's first makeup class? But she's already been to a second class -- in different clothes, and so shouldn't Will and Helen have been having this conversation yesterday? Helen starts: "You are not gonna believe what happened?" Will's too full of his own triumph to hear her: "Did you hear the news?" She doesn't know what he's talking about. Will: "Come on, you missed my headline bust? 'Detective breaks underage prostitution ring using his Spidey-sense.'" Helen's balloon duly burst, she starts clearing the table and says, "Oh. You busted a prostitution ring?" He admits it was a fluke, and that he stumbled on it. He adds that it included seven girls, all seventeen or under: "And…Channel Five wants to interview me tomorrow." He grabs her and sort of dances with her, saying, "Your man is a hero!" Helen wriggles free and says, "Why don't I fix you a plate? You must be starving." Finally noticing her apathy, he asks, "What, tough day?" She says it's nothing. Without looking at Frink, I can feel him rolling his eyes. He hates that answer. Mind you, he's not nearly as oblivious as Will, so I don't have much occasion to go into that mode. She insists it's nothing; Will reminds her he has Spidey-sense. Not as much as you think you do, pal. She tells him, "This morning, when I showed you my painting, I guess I was a little disappointed that you didn't seem to really see it." Will: "I did. I looked. I said I liked it. Didn't I?" Yeah, the same way a man learns to automatically say, "No," when someone asks him, "Do these pants make me look fat?" Helen replies: "Yeah, like you would tell a child his drawing was nice. This is my work, Will. That painting is a part of me, and you just dismissed it. What does that say about our relationship?" Will's baffled: "Our relationship? How did we make that leap from a painting?" She asserts it's not just a painting. She sighs, and says she had Ken Thompson from the Franklin Gallery look at it. The guy's name makes me smile, since there's an astonishingly rich guy in Canada named Ken Thomson -- actually, he's considered the richest guy in the country -- who collects art. She tells him what Ken thought and his offer to sell a series of such paintings. Will thinks that's terrific. Helen: "Yeah! I had to go to a stranger to get what I wanted to get from you." He apologizes, saying he's an idiot about art, and adding, "There's stuff about my job you don't get…" Helen wants to know what's not to get about busting an underage prostitution ring: "It's noble! It's newsworthy! And oh, my man's a hero! What can you say about my work after that?" Will wants to know what she wants. Helen: "I don't want to have to tell you when I need support. I want -- just forget it. You know what? I'm just tired." She leaves the kitchen and hustles up the stairs, saying, "Congratulations on the big bust!" Frink: "Man, do I ever feel for him right now." Me: "What, you don't have any empathy for her?" Frink: "I have all kinds of empathy for her; I just also have lots for him."
Upstairs, Joan is tearing her room apart, pulling clothes out of everywhere and tossing them on the floor in a pile. She's wearing a plain long-sleeved t-shirt, dark jeans, and her hair's in a sloppy ponytail. She's not wearing any makeup. Kevin comes to her door and asks what happened. Joan says she's spring cleaning: "Did Mom send you up here to make sure I'm not nuts?" Kevin: "No, I don't think there's any doubt about that." He wants to know why Beth is all over him, and asks if Beth has talked to Joan. As Joan empties a drawer of cosmetics into a paper bag, she wonders why Beth would talk to her. Kevin says she's snooping around, talking to their mother. Joan: "Maybe she just wants to be your friend. Pretty cool of her, considering." Kevin responds angrily: "Considering what? She never came to see me after the accident, and now she's feeling guilty?" Joan looks surprised, and says Beth came to the hospital every day to see how he was doing: "She wasn't allowed in the ICU. When she knew you were okay, she kinda took off." Even if Kevin's memory of this time is fuzzy or nonexistent, which isn't hard to believe at all, wouldn't his family have told him, "Beth's here, but she can't come in?" Kevin is pretty stunned. Joan: "You didn't know that?" Kevin says he didn't, and takes off to contemplate his own jackassedness.