Chapter Twenty-Eight

The hallway outside the dungeon. Apparently, a rave is going on. Techno is playing, students are dancingthis is inside the school, people, in the hallway. I mean, it's near the dungeon, but still. Anyway, Dick Teachie comes down the stairs into the middle of the fray, not that any students react, or take notice, or seem to care. He pulls some people apart, and gently smacks some people around. He finds Brooke Harper gettin' freaky with some dude, and says, "Your father would be proud." Finally, he gets the music turned off, and notices some kid twitching on the floor. At first, he seems to think that this is some sort of dance move, but actually, no, the kid is having a dangerous drug reaction. This becomes clear when we see that the kid who played the stand-in on Grosse Pointe is nearby. He's always near drugs! He's also playing a character named Ferris. Dick Teachie's all, "He's burnin' up. You wanna tell me what he's on? He took something, we both know it, you wanna tell me or you wanna let him die?" Ferris reveals that Randy, the twitching boy, took X. Not to be confused with X, the woman to whom Steven used to be.

The un-geon. Ronnie is relating some anecdote to her class about how her favorite two quotes are from Arthur Miller and her mother, respectively. Arthur Miller said, "America is against the artist, because the artist stands for individuality, and creativity is un-American." Her mother said, "Oh, grow up." I don't understand the story either. Her mother said that in reference to what? To an Arthur Miller quote? Why? Anyway, now that she's killed some time, the cops come in. "We're looking for Marshall Fulton." They find him, and place him under arrest for sex with a minor. Ronnie folds her arms, perturbed. Marshall folds his arms behind his back, bound by handcuffs.

Delineation Alley. Dick Teachie does the alongside-gurney run that so many teachers on this show are familiar with, assuring Randy that he's gonna be okay. When the gurney's gone, Steven approaches and asks Teachie what Randy took, and Teachie says he doesn't know, because he is from the Harry Senate school of teaching -- when on probation, continue to lie, even when there's no reason to do so. Meanwhile, the cops walk past leading Marshall Fulton, who is saying, "I told you, it wasn't like that." In response to what? Did one of the cops say, "Soyou raped somebody, eh?" Steven and Teachie have no more lines, so they hesitate for a moment, then walk off in opposite directions, clearing the way for Scott to appear with Harvey, who is leading him somewhere to see something: "I can't describe it, Scott. But it looks like some kind of a big cartoon. And even if I could describe it, I could never do it justice." They enter a classroom to see a cardboard cutout of Scott (easy to come by, of course) with the missing hook stuck up hisumso anyway, Scott grabs the hook and storms down the hall. He then storms into what is presumably the current events class from whence it was stolen. But this, of course, makes no sense, because isn't this the same day? And so isn't that class over? Why is it meeting again, on the same day? Guh? Anyhow, The Nub Lady is writing on the board, and Scott walks in, slams the hook down on the table, and glares at the room: "Everybody on your feet at once." They stand. Then he walks around, going, "Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit" until only seven are standing. "You are my suspects. You are the ones with disciplinary records. I had it down to seven in thirty seconds, I'll have it down to one by the end of the day. The only way to save yourself from expulsion is to come forward before I catch you. Whoever you are: I will get you."

Back in the hallway, Ronnie is walking along and runs into Scott on his way out of the class. She blocks his way because she wants to jaw with him about the whole arresting-people-in-class thing, which she somehow gathered was his idea. He's all, "This is not a good time." And she's all, "Oh, but I think it is." She explains that Marshall Fulton is an at-risk student, but he's not having it. "He doesn't need to be humiliated for the purpose of exalting school policy." I don't think David Kelley knows what "exalting" means. He misused it in the pilot, too. Anyway, just as Scott says, "You have picked such a wrong day to mess with me," and prepares to sever Ronnie's head with his eyes, Harry appears to rescue her, drag her off to the side, and deliver his line for the week: "Here's the thing to know about Scott Guber. Nine days out of ten, you can speak your mind. He'll even enjoy the contention. This is the tenth day."

Sanctum Stevenorium. The Exposition Fairy comes in. "Did you see today's column? I admitted my identity and apologized to the entire school." Steven's all, "Mm-hm." She says, "I can't take us not talking, Steven. We always talk." Buh? Last week, she was all, "All I do is tell you who's waiting." Now we've invented a convenient backstory that did not previously exist. Anyway, Steven says, "Can we talk without you crying?" HA HA HA HA! Oh, that stupid crying secretary. He says, "Nobody believes more than I do in the need for sex education. There were many ways you could have gone about addressing the issue. You picked fraud." Wait, didn't we, um, what's the wordSEE THIS ALREADY? Yes, we did. Last. Week. She says she never would have been allowed to participate, being a secretary, and he's all, "Well, the fact that you would choose deceit as a means of bolstering your self-worth" She insists that it wasn't about that, but he's got a point. If she just wanted the information out there, then why does it matter whether she's involved or not? Insisting on her own involvement does smack of ego. But then he goes a bit too far: "And now I see we can add denial to your psychological wreckage." She says, "You don't get to talk to me like that." And then he's like, "Is honesty out of bounds?" And she's like, "No, but cruelty is." Zing! Sorry, got a little carried away by the snappy dialogue. "I was trying to help. And if I was misguidedfine. Don't call me psychological wreckage." Well, technically, he said that she HAS psychological wreckage. And who doesn't, really? Mine is in a bag in my closet, but it's there. Steven tells her she needs to get counseling, "and if this job doesn't make you happy, you need to move on." She asks how he can be so cold, and he says, "Because I care about you. And if I didn't talk to you this way now, twenty years down the road, you'd hate me for it."

Vice-office. Scott, hard at work as per usual. The Nub Lady enters. "I don't know whether to be angry with you for making such a scene, or to be grateful for the way you stuck up for me." He notes that she is still not wearing her hook, and she says she can't even look at it right now, and isn't sure why. "Maybe it just remind me that I'm" He says, "You're not a freak." She says, "Um. I was going to say, 'That I'm a very wonderful person,' but thanks, jerk." No, actually, she says, "I guess I just miss my hand. Sometimes I forget, and I go to grab something, or I have dreams that I have both my hands and I'm knitting" Blah blah blah monologue-cakes. Ending with: "But it's not there. It's in Jeremy's room, in a jar." Heh. Scott says, "I think, perhaps, we should continue with our therapy." That sounds sweet, but I don't know exactly how that's a response to what she said. I'd get "continue with YOUR therapy," but I don't know why he needs therapy about her lost hand.

Sanctum. Scott is asking Steven for some time off in the middle of the day. Steven's all, "Scott, I have no problem with you going to therapy, but during school hours?" Scott says he's trying to get weekend appointments. That had a point. Then Ronnie storms in. "Marshall Fulton has been an extremely tough case." Yeah, she's been sweating tears of blood for the three and a half minutes she's been teaching him. Anyway, "he didn't do any assignments for the first two weeks. He basically thought of high school as a holding pen until he could go stand in a welfare line. His parents are divorced, and there's not a lot of support at home, and I have done a pretty good job, believe it or not, of convincing him to have a modicum of self-esteem. That was yesterday. Today he feels like criminal." Steven points out that it's a crime, Ronnie points out that Marshall is being selectively prosecuted, and Steven points out that that's because he got caught. And that it's a huge problem at Winslow: "We've got seniors thinking it's cool to sleep with freshmen." Hey, no amount of arrests is going to change that. Anyway, Ronnie thinks it's a huge mistake to single out this boy. "Marshall Fulton needs to feel that he is something." Um, well, now he feels that he's a rapist. "And by that, I don't mean a rapist." Oh. She has persuaded Steven, anyway, who says that if she can convince the parents to relent, "the D.A. will probably kick it. But you never heard me say that." But wait -- if the D.A. kicks it then it'll never go to court! What kind of legal show is this? Oh, right, it's a show about a school, I think.

Dick Teachie's class. On the board, there's an assignment for reading some chapters in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. He's explaining to his students that Randy is not going to die, but he almost did. "Is it worth it?" he asks Ferris, who is magically now in this class, for the sake of convenience. Ferris is all, "Why look at me? I don't take X." Dick Teachie's like, oh yeah, well, I bet you don't go to raves either. "Raves aren't illegal." Oh, yeah, says Dick Teachie, but the drugs you buy at them are. Um, okay, but he just said he doesn't do drugs. I mean, he was lying, but that still doesn't mean you caught him in some clever web of logic. Then he explains that Randy didn't actually take X at all, but rather something much stronger that someone told him was X. This will become important later, to the extent that anything is ever "important" on this show. Talk Time tries to explain why people go to raves. (I love, by the way, how the students in this school are teacher-specific: Talk Time ONLY has Dick Teachie; Lionel is ALWAYS in Harvey's class; The Hook Lady's current events class meets ALL DAY.) She says, "For the dancing. To hook up. Not to do drugs." So why the X? "To roll. It's a good drug if you're quiet or shy. Not that I am." Brooke "Mini-Stee" Harper is now magically in this class, too, and is all, "It's not like we're talking about crack, or heroin, or anything serious." Wow, she bugs. Also, what part of "Randy almost died" is not serious to her? I guess the "Randy" part. Anyway, Dick Teachie's main point seems to be that it's especially dumb to put something into your body if you don't know what it is. Words to live by, kids. "Randy almost died, okay?" he says. "Is that sinking in?" Brooke has a look like, "Randy? Almost? Died? I hear the words, and yetI mean, we're not talking about anything serious."

Teacher's lounge. "Do you guys see me as psychological wreckage?" asks The Psychological Wreckage Fairy of Marla and some blonde woman. I think her name is "Lauren Davis," but I can't really remember. They say of course not. "You know when your student left to go on tour? Kara? It destroyed me. That's what I was gonna do, when I was in high school. I was gonna be a singer. In a band?" Lauren says, so, start a band. Ah, pragmatism. The watchword of Winslow High. Oh, no, wait -- that's the watchword of a different place. Far away. Marla says they should start a band, because she can sing too, and they can do the charity show. The Exposition Fairy expositions that they're doing Our Town instead this year. I bet that will become important in a later episode. Anyhow, Louisa points out that girl bands always come in threes. Like the Spice Girls, and Eve's Crush, and the Lady Marmalade super-group. And *NSync. Lauren declines to join, but suggests Marilyn for the third, saying, "The person who dubs over her singing voice is really good." No, she says, "I don't sing. But Marilyn does." They all grin at each other.

Therapist McMustache's Office. Scott and The Nub Lady, on the couch. "The problem is," McMustache is saying, "you've never mourned for your hand." Honestly, if I'd known he was going to recur so often, I'd have come up with a better nickname. She's incredulous, but he says, "It's a considerable loss, Meredith." Scott points out that an Orthodox Jew would go so far as to have a funeral for the hand. McMustache says that this is not a terrible idea. "It strikes me," says The Nub Lady, "as slightly perverse." But she says this like it's a very, very good thing. She looks at her remaining hand thoughtfully.

Ronnie's classroom, that night. Marshall and his underage girlfriend, Non-Consensual-ita, are talking to Ronnie. Marshall is saying that he's got a public defender and a court date and so on. Non-Consensual-ita asks, "Can you make it go away?" If only she'd asked that question LAST night, no one would be in this mess. Ronnie says it depends on the girl's parents, and she says she's working on them. Marshall still can't believe he's going to have a record as a rapist, so Ronnie reminds him that he did, in fact, break the law. "All right, before I do anything: this was consensual, right?" She says of course, we love each other, we'd marry each other, blah dee blah. Ronnie says she needs to think about what to do , and sends them off, probably to screw or something.

Rave New World. A warehouse. Colored lights, techno beats, arms waving in the air like the people to whom the arms are attached just don't care. The Harper Image is here, dancing, and she runs into two girlfriends, and they have one of those shouted party-conversations: "HEY!" "HEY! WHO WAS THAT GUY YOU WERE DANCING WITH!?" And so on. Anyhow, one of the girls has a little plastic baggie with some little pills in it. Brooke's like, "WHERE'D YOU GET THAT???" "SOME GUY!!! DOES IT MATTER???" She's like, whatever, no.

Sanctum. "You wanna run that by me again?" Scott is asking Steven to come to The Nub Lady's hand-funeral. "Steven, look. Meredith is a very lonely person. If nobody attends, I'm afraid it will only exacerbate her sense of isolation." Steven is reluctant, but Scott is gently persistent, which is a good tack for him. "She asked me to invite a few people who I'm close to. See, I'm supposed to be mourning the loss as well." I'll bet he is. "It's important to her. And, by extension, to me. I don't ask much." Yeah, just time off during school, and latitude for his administrative whims, but whatever -- Steven agrees. Just then, Daughter of Harper comes in, accompanied by two cops. One of them says, "Your daughter committed statutory rape." Well, no, but that would be way funnier. Really, they found a drug-testing kit on her when a car she was in ran a stop sign -- the kind that kids use to text X, apparently. "There was nobody at her home, and she had us bring her here." The cops leave. Steven says, "Scott, could you leave us alone for a moment." The Heartbeat Of Impending Confrontation takes us into commercial. I think it always does, actually, by the second commercial break, right?

After the commercial, we're right back here. "I was at a party! I have friends! I was just looking out for them. Mr. Hanson said it was stupid to take drugs unless you knew what they were, and I agreed. Then he told us about some kits you could use to test the stuff out, so I got one." Steven wonders if he has heard her correctly. Uh oh. Dick Teachie's in trouble. "He wasn't saying that drugs were okay, so don't be going off on him." Oh, that's going to work. Thanks, Brooke. Steven asks if X knows about the X, and Brooke says that X is on a business trip. Got it?

Music room. Marla, Marilyn, and The Exposition Fairy sing together in sweet, sweet harmony. Marilyn accuses somebody of being flat. They argue over who was flat. Scott and The Nub Lady come in, and compliment them on the singing. When Scott then tries to leave, The Nub Lady hesitates, and then goes up to Marla and invites her to the hand-burial. Marla hesitates, but agrees. Scott sighs in the background. The Nub Lady is happy.

Delineation Alley, the day. Steven flags down Dick Teachie and yells at him. "Since when do we teach drug paraphernalia in the classroom?" He explains the situation with Brooke. Teachie counters, "Look, I never condoned drug usage. My message was prevention." Steven is not having the equivocation. "Then your message got lost! You will not. Ever. Recommend drug paraphernalia. Is that understood?" Teachie agrees. That out of the way, Steven asks, "Son, is it your opinionthat Brooke is using?" Dick Teachie says no, that is not his opinion, and Steven nods with cautious relief.

"You called us in here to defend Marshall Fulton?" asks Hysteri-Dad, some incredulity creeping into his inflection. His wife sits by him silently as Ronnie addresses them both. "We can sanction him. Action short of a criminal conviction. Again, I am not condoning statutory rape. But sometimes we need to exercise a little discretion." Hysteri-Dad interrupts to point out that statutory laws exist specifically to prevent the exercise of discretion. Because EVERYONE'S A LAWYER. Then he says, "You know, when my emotions had calmed down, I said to myself I think precisely what you're feeling. This is overkill. Let his parents deal with him, just as we dealt with Sarah. Let the school deal with it. But after talking to both his parents, and the school, I see that nobody is dealing with it! Everybody shrugs, and says, aw, come on, kids today, teenagers will be teenagers. Sarah is fifteen. He is eighteen. One of the reasons she had sex with him? Everybody else is doing it. That was her response. Ms. Cooke, nobody is really dealing with it. So, I've decided to push this." Ronnie says, okay, fine, but she's going to fight for Marshall. Hysteri-Dad gets up to go, with Silent Wife in tow, and says that there's nothing Ronnie can do. Ronnie, THE LAWYER, says that, in fact, the laws that govern consent are under review, or whatever, and the case could be made that a fifteen-year-old actually can consent to sex, or something, and blah dee blah, and IF YOU WANT TO WRITE ANOTHER SHOW ABOUT THE LAW, JUST DO IT -- STOP MASQUERADING AS SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO WRITE ABOUT TEACHERS! "With a challenge comes publicityI'm not sure that you want to put Sarah through that." Hysteri-Dad is all, "You're threatening us? What about the publicity for a teacher who takes the side of a statutory rapist?" She's all, "It's an enormous professional risk, but I can always fall back on the law career." She wants them to focus on helping Sarah, not punishing Marshall. "The two are not mutually exclusive!" "I'm warning you that they may very well be!" "This IS a threat then!" "I'm fighting for Marshall!" FFFFRRAAAARRR. Silent Wife says, "Awkward pause."

Sanctum. Steven and X -- that is, the X, not X -- are yelling at each other. "Brooke doesn't do drugs!" (That is, X.) "She goes to raves! She told me you know she goes to raves!" "Not on weekdays!" "But you let her go on weekends!?" "The place she goes, there's chaperones, and security, not alcohol" "But drugs!?" "Not supposed to be!" "But there are!" ENOUGH WITH THE YELLING! Phew. "She had a kit to help her friends detect X." "I will talk to her about that." "From where, Pittsburgh? That's where you were last night!" "And I'll bet you were right here!" "You know what --?" "I do! I'm leaving!" X tries to head for the door, but Brooke comes in first, trapping them all in the room together. In fact, Brooke says she wants to talk here, not later at home. "I want to have a conversation with all of us in the same room. Is it too much to ask that all of us be in the same room, Daddy?" Her parents fall in line, so The Harper Image gives a little speech: "I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I'm sorry I went partying last night, but you know what? It was my idea. Ty didn't even want to go. I had to beg her to sneak out because II hate staying over at friends' houses. You know why? When I'm at a home where the parents are together, and it'sit's a home! And it's, it's torture, I can'tI actually seek out friends whose parents are divorced. And I'll tell you something else. Sometimes, I think about doing drugs. Or getting arrested. Or when I stole that stupid goatpart of it? Was to get caught, get in trouble, force you two to be in the same room to deal, and I'm sorry for that. But sometimes I hate you guys for being apart." Brooke gets all teary. X gets teary. Steven says, "Honey, I'm sorry. I think we all need to talk more often about stuff like this." Brooke says she doesn't, like, expect them to, like, get back together, or anything, but "if we could just do something as a family once in a while. If we could just do anything."

Vice-office. Scott is interrogating one of his hook-nabbing suspects, but cannot crack him. He sends the kid back to class. Steven comes in. "Anything?" "Nothing." "You'll get the culprit, Scott, I have faith in you." Scott asks if he's losing "credibility" for going along with the hand-funeral. Umcredibility with whom? The students? The faculty? I mean, I love you, Scott, but not a lot to lose there. Unless we're to believe that popularity award thing from last year, which was clearly just a parting gift from Cheryl Holt. Anyway, Steven is very supportive: "You care about this woman. And you're helping her deal with a traumatic event. We should all act so silly."

Ronnie's room. Hysteri-Dad comes in. He talked to the D.A. and learned that Ronnie was right, that she might actually be able to force a messy public trial. "So I'm going to relent. But my rage" Blah blah, turning a blind eye, the school is guilty, yadda blah bleh blooooooooooooooodoes anybody care about this shmoe? Dude. Talk to your fucking daughter about responsible sex and stop attacking everybody else. But no, instead he says, "While I am not going to come after the boyI may decide to come after you." He turns and walks out, passing Marshall, who is on his way in to thank Ronnie. "Not sure why you fought for me. Didn't even think we liked each other that much." She tells him that what he does with his second chance is up to him. Maybe he should learn how to use the first words of sentences.

Delineation Alley. "A band?" Steven asks incredulously. It seems The Exposition Fairy has just told him about DaveKelley's Child, so he's trying to be supportive of her new outlet by mocking it. She's all, "Don't worry, I don't plan to go on tour." X appears and flags Steven down, saying they need to talk to Brooke again. He says he'll pull her out of class, but X is all, "Actually, I was thinking, maybe we could all get dinner tonight." Steven's all, "Oh. Am I reading anything else into this?" He's asking her? I think he means, "Should I read anything else into this?" She's like, "No, I just thought it might be nice to take that walk she spoke of." X walks away, and Steven smiles.

The lounge. Harry Senate comes in. Maybe it's because Jeri Ryan is in the foreground but, seriously, he looks like an elf. I never realized how small he is until right now. Anyway, since his role on the show is now to give Ronnie advice, he grabs a soda from the fridge, and says, "It's not the parents who are the enemy. It's just that sometimes they can be." Thanks, Confucius. That's supposed to be wisdom? ("Sometimes you get the bearon the times that you get him." "The apple never fallsunless overcome by the force of gravity." "Don't count your chickenswithout a reliable numbering system.") Anyway, Harry supports what Ronnie did today. They share a silent teacher-solidarity moment.

And now: hand-funeral time. Scott, Therapist McMustache, Marla, Steven, Jeremy, and of course The Nub Lady herself are all in attendance. Jeremy gives a hilarious speech: "I, of course, held my mother's hand many times while it was still attached to her. I've been disciplined by it, caressed by it. A mother's lovebut, mostly, my mother and Iour relationship deteriorated to the point that I locked her in the basement, and in an effort to escape she accidentally cut the hand off. I feel responsible. But as a result of this tragedy, we both went into therapy. We repaired our relationship. And I like to think that, with this hand, we bury our troubled past." What's especially funny is the look on Steven's face, since I think much of this is news to him, and he probably also regrets all those times he told Marilyn she was crazy. Also, it kind of makes no sense that Marilyn has dropped totally out of The Hook Lady arc, given how it started. I mean, yeah, sure, her pregnancy and so on, but still -- for the character, I mean. Meanwhile, Jeremy is still talking: "I love you. And I'm sorry for what I've done. And I love you." Now, the hand is placed into the ground in accordance with Orthodox Jewish tradition, and the Therapist, who is, in a not at all inappropriate dual role, acting as the minister or something, asks if anyone else would like to speak. Steven and Marla demur. Scott steps forward. The gist? We love you, Hook Lady, and we're your friends. And we will be there for you. We're your friends. Several people get moist around the eyes.