Episode Report Card Daniel: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Soldier Boy
By Daniel | Season 8 | Episode 14 | Aired on 01.25.2004
And then Ruthie and Asslee wander in, so you just know we're in for some fine acting. I don't think there's any doubt that Ashley is Jessica's sister; I've never seen someone who looked like they had to concentrate so hard at walking as she does. Once she hits her mark, she asks if there's anything they can do. Annie says she thought they were playing a game or doing something with the twins. Either or, I guess. Ruthie says she has homework. "So what are you doing down here?" Annie asks, and Ruthie waits about five hours to deliver her line, which is that Peter and Martin are playing a game with the twins, which somehow makes it impossible for her to do her homework. Annie doesn't challenge that; she just points out that the twins really wanted to do something with Ruthie ("because you haven't paid attention to them all week [Annie should talk] and they want to be with you [proof of the twins' diminished mental faculties, I'd wager]"), and that she thought Ruthie wanted to have her homework done before Peter came over. "I thought so too. But I didn't," says Ruthie, and I can't even imagine trying to pull shit like this on my mom when I was Ruthie's age. Perhaps Ruthie has gleaned that if her mom is too beaten down by life in the Campound to even wash her hair, she ain't going to be cracking the homework whip. Annie just looks at Asslee, who tells "Miss Camden" not to worry, since her homework is done. Suckup.
And I guess Ruthie didn't mean that Peter and Martin were playing a game with the twins so much as she meant Peter and Martin were playing a game with each other (Battleship) while the twins sit around watching. Martin takes great pleasure in beating the much younger Peter, who waits five hours after the game ends to complain that he's never played before. "So, that's your excuse?" says Martin. One of the twins says he's bored ("bow-ad"), and the other chimes in to say that he is too, so maybe they're smarter than everyone gives them credit for. Having claimed that his inexperience at Battleship was not meant to be an excuse, Peter then takes it up a notch by saying he didn't have a dad around to teach him how to play Battleship, and I can't say I remember my dad ever sitting me down and relaying to me the intricacies of Battleship, and I still managed to win a game or two. And you'd think everyone else would know not to talk about their fathers around Martin, since he goes on to point out that his dad wasn't always around, what with his being a Marine. But he can't even say "he's a Marine," without Peter's finishing the sentence for him, and reminding Martin that he met Martin's father. "You got a problem with my dad?" says Martin, like RELAX. Martin needs to lay off the crack if it's going to make him this paranoid. Peter says -- oh, I forget. It's not important. Something about how his dad could beat up Martin's dad. "In your dreams," says Martin, who strangely forgets to add that his dad is a Marine.