By Cate
Great, my very first 7th Heaven ever, and it has to start with Ruthie. She's checking the mail. At first I think that all of Mr. Stupidhead's exhortations for Ruthie to shut up have somehow robbed her of her natural speaking voice, because she's meowing. Oh, wait, my mistake. The meowing is coming from a cat, a very brave cat who's not afraid to be picked up by Ruthie. She cuddles the poor kitty, who doesn't know what he's in for, and thanks someone -- God, I presume.
Lucy walks into the kitchen, and Annie asks her how she's enjoying being "Glenoak's newest licensed driver." Lucy finds it exhilarating to drive with the wind in her hair, though Simon points out that "you can't feel the wind when you're only going five miles an hour." Lucy claims she was driving so slowly because Mary was sticking her feet out the window. Mary says, "Hey, I gotta give my dogs some air!" I pray that they'll leave that topic alone, but to no avail. Annie tells Mary to keep her "dogs" inside from now on, and Simon says the "dogs" are more like "horses." Viewers everywhere unite to get a court injunction prohibiting the writers from EVER using the word "dogs" again unless expressly referring to canines.
Annie must be the only person who cares where Ruthie is, because she asks. When Lucy says Ruthie's checking the mail, Annie says, "Oh, no, I already got it," like it's some major issue that she had already picked up the mail. She hands Lucy an envelope from the DMV, and it's cute that Lucy's naive enough to be excited about the prospect of seeing her new driver's license photo. She'll learn. The photo is bad, but not nearly as bad as mine, which has been known to make surly club bouncers break out giggling. Mary and Simon start laughing, and even Annie has to leave the room. Lucy retaliates by telling Mary, "You have big feet!" Hmm, maybe this show has potential after all.
Annie finds Ruthie and apologizes for getting the mail, since this is apparently Ruthie's job. Whatever. Ruthie says she doesn't mind about the mail, which leads Annie to comment, somewhat suspiciously, that Ruthie's in a good mood. In order to throw her mom off the trail, Ruthie launches into some of her patented Adorable Demon Urchin shtick, claiming that she loves school and that she's hurrying upstairs to do her homework because she "loves homework almost as much as [she] loves school." Spare me. Is it even remotely a surprise to anyone that Ruthie is carrying the cat in her knapsack to hide it from the family? No, I didn't think so. ["Even the fact that the cat looks just like my own beloved feline couldn't redeem this subplot." -- Sars]