Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Let's Spend The Night Together
By Niki | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 09.27.1999
Laughing, B/W Rick says the first time he brought a girl back to his apartment was three weeks after he moved out of the house. He was "so excited." Well, duh.
Eli returns with his head hung in shame. Rick accuses him of lying earlier, but Eli insists that he and Jennifer haven't had sex. "But you were going to," Rick says. Eli tells him that Jennifer "wanted to. She wanted me to make it happen." And I'll bet she had to twist your...arm...really hard, right?
B/W Rick continues the reverie: "Afterward, all I could think was 'When is she going to leave?' And then she was gone, and it finally hit me: I'm really alone." From here, it seems like a fairly obvious thing to realize, but I see what he's saying.
Rick tells Eli that he's not upset about him having sex. He just doesn't want him to feel he has to lie about it. Eli points out that he's caught in a bit of a catch-22: It's okay for him to have sex, but it's not as though Rick would allow him to do it openly. He asks what Rick would have said if he'd asked to bring Jennifer there expressly to shamboogie. Rick has no answer.
We next see Rick in his room, dialing the cordless phone. He calls Lindsey, who sounds utterly thrilled to hear his voice. She asks whether he missed her, and he slides her a smooth "absolutely." He starts to say that they need to talk, but she interrupts, blithering excitedly about a new swing-dance place they should check out. Rick is saved by the beep. He puts Lindsey on hold to take the other call which, of course is from Lily. Rick flips back to Lindsey, blowing her off with an excuse about his daughter and her homework. Returning to Lily, he tosses her the same line. They commiserate over how tough it's been to get together and how, when they have hooked up, they haven't been able to be alone. Rick's phone beeps again. Since he's already gotten rid of Lindsey, and Lily's still on the line, it can only be Karen, the other woman in his life. She's looking for Eli, who never came home. Rick puts her on hold so he can put Lily off, telling her, "There's a domestic situation here." Getting back to Karen, he tells her that he was on the other line with David, trying to sort out a building crisis. Karen cuts right to it: "Just tell me that Eli wasn't over there having sex," she begs. Rick silently lets his head drop onto his bed, defeated.
B/W Lily talks about her problem with "people pulling away." She knows that it may very well be for legitimate reasons, but she can't avoid taking it personally. We hear her ask, "Am I sixteen again?" Save your breath; she's not looking for our input. She's suddenly in the bookstore, discussing her romantic issues with Judy. She tells Judy that she "agonized" over calling Rick. "You didn't call him?" Judy gasps in dismay. Lily admits her weakness, and tells Judy that something about the conversation "wasn't right." She asks whether she messed up by calling, but Judy can't make a snap decision on something of this magnitude. She needs to weigh all the facts against her knowledge of The Rules before she can determine whether Lily made a tactical error. "How many dates?" she inquires with the stern precision of a surgeon evaluating a patient. Lily worries that she wasn't "supposed" to call him yet, and Judy sagely imparts a dash of her acquired dating wisdom: "Men say they like it when women call. They're lying." Bitter much?