Episode Report Card Deborah: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Collision
By Deborah | Season 1 | Episode 19 | Aired on 04.01.2004
Joan and Grace are rummaging through a closet at Joan's house, looking for Joan's old piano books. Joan wonders how she'll ever find it in all the crap, and mocks her mother for keeping the first baby garment she ever spit up on: "'Aw, vomit. How cute!'" Grace inquires, "What's up with the piano? Don't you have enough going on?" Joan agrees she has too much. Grace: "So you're going to pile more on?" Joan doesn't answer. Grace: "Trying to get your mind off Rove is making you goofy, dude." Joan claims she's not thinking about him, adding, "It's just this new disco look that got to me. I mean, how can he let Iris pick out his clothes?" She and Grace sit on the floor and start going through boxes. Grace: "She probably does it after they make out…you know, when he has no will of his own." She really loves taunting Joan with that. Joan: "Bad image. Very bad image." Grace: "It's the truth. Dangle even the most remote possibility of sex before a guy -- they're your slaves." Frink: "Especially in high school." Grace asks, "Didn't you ever see that movie, Queen of Outer Space with Zsa Zsa Gabor?" Joan: "Why would I?" Grace tells her to rent it: "Brilliant cautionary tale." She continues, "Now, if you were willing to…" Joan insists, "Adam and I are over." Grace: "Yeah…that's why you don't care what he wears, or uh…" Joan: "Don't you have a Hebrew class you should be at?" Grace: "Yeah. Why do you think I'm here?"
Joan finds some photos of her father. Grace grabs one and points out, "He looks about six in this picture and already he's dressed like a cop." Joan says it's because his dad was a cop. She finds another picture, from when her father was in high school. Oh, yeah: flares, and a fugly shirt of which Iris would probably approve, over a turtleneck. I think he's wearing aviator-style glasses with tinted lenses, and the hair's not really a true 'fro, but it's pretty poufy. I hope that really is Joe Mantegna. It probably is. Joan holds it up to Grace and tilts it from side to side, singing, "Afro! Afro!" Grace: "And Rove's shirt." Great minds do think alike. Joan finds a letter to Will from his father, who died when she was little. She reads aloud: "'Dear Will, I hope they are not working you too hard at the police academy. I have been missing you, and I'm sorry about everything with Richard. I understand how angry you are, but he's just a boy. Please don't blame him.'"
Suddenly Helen comes along and asks what they're doing. Joan tells her. Helen: "Piano?" Joan tells her not to worry about it, and asks, "So, who is this Richard and why was Grandpa worried that Dad would be mad at him?" Helen takes the letter and reads it. She kind of waves her hands and says, "Got me." Boy, is she a bad liar. She pulls Joan's piano exercise books out of a box. There's a little pink onesie stuck in the pages, and Joan tosses it back on the box with an "Ecch." Helen: "Hey! Now that is your little onesie! That is the first thing that you…" Joan: "We know. It's a real national treasure." Heh. Frink: "She is that kind of mom." Helen says she doesn't want the chicken to burn, and makes a getaway with the letter. Joan: "That was weird, huh?" Grace: "Total parental coverup. They all turn into fascists when they have kids." And that's all the Grace we get in this episode. Not nearly enough.