Episode Report Card Cate: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Seven Is Enough
By Cate | Season 1 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.02.1997
In Simon's room, he and Ruthie The Younger are sitting in a cardboard box, pretending it's a car. They make sounds which the closed captioning describes as, "Vroom, vroom!" George interrupts this annoyingness by saying, "If I feel like going out for a drive, I take a real car." Ooh, such a bad-ass! He claims that he knows how to hotwire a car, "foreign or domestic." Simon challenges him to prove it. I'm sure wacky hijinks are not far off!
In the upstairs hallway, Lucy apologizes to her grandparents for "bugging" them at the hardware store. They just stare at her rudely while she stammers and then runs off. Honestly, at this point I don't know whether to feel sorry for her or for her grandparents. Maybe I should feel sorry for all of them. Or maybe I should just feel sorry for myself, which I often do while recapping. As Lucy leaves, Ruth turns to her husband in bewilderment and says, "I wish I knew what she wanted from us." The Colonel just furrows his brow.
Lucy eavesdrops while the Colonel asks the CamRents to borrow a car to go to the hardware store. What a strange request. I can't imagine going across the country to visit someone and then wanting to check out their local hardware store. Even if that were something that interested me, hardware stores are just not all that different from each other. Buffalo's full of hardware stores! And what kind of hardware could they possibly have in Glenoak that they wouldn't have in Buffalo? Maybe the writers were stoned when they wrote this scene.
Dopey and Mary walk into the kitchen. They're both distraught because Mary scratched the van on a mailbox. Dopey thinks their parents may never notice. He and Mary continue discussing this, even though Mr. and Mrs. Colonel are walking into the kitchen and are less than two feet away. There's no way the Colonel could miss this conversation, but he does. So much for his super-duper powers of observation. He asks the kids, "Can we drop you somewhere?" Looking at Dopey, he adds, "Like maybe at the barber?" Dopey takes this dig at his hair in stride, claiming he just got his shapeless hair cut two days ago. I'm still snickering at the Colonel's "barber" question, but when he calls Dopey's haircut "pretty," I just about lose it.
Annie tries to comfort Lucy, who is sad because she thinks her grandparents don't like her very much. SuperMom says, "That's not true. They love you very much." Really? Because they've sure been giving the impression that it's, you know, the not-liking-Lucy-very-much thing. Still, Lucy allows herself to be comforted by Annie. All is happy until Lucy says, "I'm glad you're getting your rings back." Lucy adds that she assumes this is why her grandparents were going to the hardware store. Annie panics and runs out of the room, calling for Eric. She explains the situation to him, and they all run off.