Episode Report Card Niki: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Experience Is The Teacher
By Niki | Season 3 | Episode 17 | Aired on 03.31.2002
Out in the hallway, Grace falls into Jake's arms. He asks what was decided, and Lily says, "He's out." Jake is relieved, but still wants a piece of Creepitri. Rick talks him out of it and ushers him toward the parking lot. Lily and Grace are about to follow, when Grace sees Creepitri emerge from the office. She stares after him, and glances sidelong at Lily, waiting to be released from her leash. Lily relents, and tells her to go say goodbye.
Grace finds Creepitri in his classroom, packing up the rest of his things. She tries to convince him that the school will have to let him back, because all the students will protest when they hear what happened. Resolved, he says he's not coming back. She tries to argue, but he says he's decided. He launches into a speech about what a fraud he's been, telling her to send out her writing while he hasn't been doing anything himself. "I've been scared. In a way, I guess I used you," he adds. Urgently, Grace tells him not to say that. He sighs, "Come on, let's be honest here. Of course I did. Some part of me knew that something like this might happen, but I needed my life to change. And I used you to change it. Which doesn't mean I won't miss you." Anyone else thinking back to Grace's story, and his contempt for "disowning" an experience, and thinking he's a hypocrite? While some part of him may have been passively-aggressively using Grace to give himself a kick in the ass, I seriously doubt that's all there was to it. Anyway, Grace lets him off the hook with a soft "okay." He starts to walk out, and she asks him to wait, not wanting this to be it. She asks if she can still send him her story, if she ever figures out the ending. He smiles and says, "Read 'On Love.' It's in that book I gave you. Read it. More than once." She's like an eager puppy, asking, "Why? Why? I mean, is there a message in it? You know, about you and me?" He chuckles and says, "No. I'm saying, it's important for you read it as a writer." Lily walks up to the doorway, slapping down her heel to make her presence known. Creepitri glances at her, then turns back to Grace, saying, "Don't worry. You'll figure out your ending." He approaches the doorway and hesitates, saying, "Mrs. Sammler --" "I don't want to hear it," she grits, refusing to look at him. Go Lily. He heads out, and Lily moves to put her arm around Grace.
Soliloquy Grace reads aloud a passage from the story: "'And with a burning pain in my heart, I realized how needless and petty and deceptive were all those things which had kept us from loving one another. I came to realize that when you were in love, then in all your judgments about love, you should start from something higher and more important than happiness or unhappiness, virtue and sin and all their accepted meanings, or you should make no judgment at all.'" She chokes up and closes the book, stroking the cover.