Girls' locker room. Girls are in various stages of undress. Joan arrives at her locker and starts to open it. She proceeds to undress, and pays little attention to anyone around her. A couple of pretty girls -- wait, are they Scylla and Charybdis? It's been so long since they were on the show I can't remember. No, I just looked it up; it's not them. Just some other barely distinguishable, snotty, popular girls. Anyway, they're yapping about the new camera phone that Angela's father bought her. Joan takes vague note of this, rolling her eyes. Angela's friend, who's sort of a Poor Man's Erika Christensen (tm Gustave), tells her friend to take a picture of her. Angela says she's still trying to figure it out. PMEC sits on the bench near Joan, squashing, in the process, the slightly funky hat of another classmate who's also sitting on the bench. Hat Girl: "Hey, get off!" PMEC: "Sorry, Dr. Seuss! Don't get all Grinchy on me!" PMEC fluffs the hat back up and plops it on her head, asking Angela, "How do I look?" Angela: "Unpopular." Hat Girl: "Excuse me..." PMEC: "Come on, snap me!" Angela is befuddled by the buttons. You know, Frink just gave me a digital camera for my birthday and I figured out how to take a picture in about three seconds, though I'd never used one before. Hat Girl wants her chapeau back, but PMEC snots, "Why, are your superpowers, like, leaking away?" Joan says mildly, "Come on, give it a rest, you guys." She grabs the hat off PMEC and gives it to Hat Girl. PMEC bitches that "everybody's Grinchy." She asks Joan, "What's wrong, did you and your biker chick break up?" Angela squeals, "Hey, I think I got it!" Joan seems to sense that this is not a good thing, because she makes a move toward Angela just as Angela snaps a picture of Joan in her underpants and a tank top. She cackles and then shows it to PMEC, who also cackles. Joan looks apprehensive. Angela holds it up to Joan, asking, "For your girlfriend's wallet?" Joan: "Cute. Now hand it over." Angela and PMEC run out of the locker room giggling. Joan gives chase, and quickly finds herself in the sparsely populated hallway in her underwear. She stops short and backs into the locker room while some dope wolf-whistles.
Over breakfast at the Girardis', Helen tells the family that she's going to be exhibiting some of her acrylics at a show at the Franklin Gallery. Joan's less than thrilled to hear it: "First teaching, now gallery shows? Why don't you just put me on display and sell tickets?" Kevin wheels in and commends her on her selflessness. Helen's unsure about showing her work; she's only been dabbling in this medium for a few months, and she thinks her compositions are unbalanced: "And forget about the negative and positive space." I'll try. Will's all for her showing her work. The opening is tomorrow. Joan flips out: "Great! Maybe you should include nude portraits of the whole family! Or better yet, a series of paintings entitled My Daughter's Life: A Retrospective in Humiliation!" Her family stares at her as Helen asks, "Are you okay, Joan?" She replies, "No. Yes." She pauses. "Just...the usual." She goes up the kitchen stairs, muttering to herself. I notice she's wearing an off-white top and cardigan, which is kind of unusual for her. I like it.
“ Joan just pulls her jacket around her and folds her arms tightly, her face scrunched up with annoyance. Girlfriend desperately needs to learn how to flip the bird. I'd be happy to teach her the fine points. ”
As Grace and Joan are walking to their lockers, Grace comments, "Can I just say, I sort of pictured you [as] the matching bra and panties type?" You can say anything you want about it as long as you stop saying "panties," which is a word I hate. But otherwise, please elaborate. Joan: "You picture me in my panties?" Stop it, now. Really. Grace: "Not 'til I saw the photo." Yeah, right. She adds, "And my advice? Stay in school." What's that supposed to mean? That she can't get a job as a bikini model? As if Grace would approve of anything like that, anyway. She'd pitch a fit and a half. Joan wants to know how Grace saw the picture. Grace says it was "spam email." See, now lots of you are sorry you rashly deleted all that spam when you could have been scoping cute pictures of Amber Tamblyn. Joan groans and says she made a huge mistake when she didn't hurl that phone into a shower stall.
As they arrive at their lockers, Grace says, "You have to nip this in the bud. People who use smiley faces in their email do not deserve that much power." Adam and Iris are hanging out near his locker. Iris is standing two inches from Adam, sketching a bad picture of him. Her hair's sort of wavy and pulled back. I guess it's an improvement. (The hair, not the sketching. I still think she's a barnacle.) Adam overhears Grace's comment. He asks, "Are you talking about the panty shot?" I think if anything, I hate the phrase "panty shot" more than I hate the word "panties." Why? Why are they doing this to me on my birthday? I've been nice, haven't I? Joan throws her hands up and bangs her head against her locker. Grace glares at Adam. Iris gives him a look, too. Adam: "I deleted it, like, immediately!" I totally didn't buy that at first, then I remembered his eidetic memory, and I figured he's for real -- since it makes no difference. Joan reels a bit, saying that this is a nightmare. She notices two chumps leering at her and talking about her, and adds, "An actual nightmare, that I've had in my sleep!" Adam asks why they hate her so much. Joan: "They were picking on this pathetic Hat Girl in the locker room." Two more cretins walk by, leering. She adds, "I should have just kept my mouth shut." Grace: "And your clothes on." Geez, she was in gym. It's not like she went to the prom and did a drunken strip show. Iris: "You stuck up for someone in gym? That's like the front lines. Kudos. Rave on." Joan looks irritated and disgusted as she asks Iris, "Is English, like, a second language for you?" Adam: "Chill, Jane." Grace asks what she's going to do. Joan makes a joke about going into a witness protection program. Adam: "It'll blow over." Iris, like the little barnacle she is: "Definite blowage." Shut. Up. You, of all people, are not allowed to speak on my birthday. Grace announces stridently, "That is not the point. An act of retaliation is in order here. And peaceful protest went out with Gandhi." Adam: "He went around naked, and he's, like, an icon." The three girls just look at him, puzzled and/or incredulous. He says he's just trying to help. Iris grabs him and drags him off. Grace leaves Joan standing at her locker, pissed off. Somebody calls out to Joan, "Hey, you got any videos?" Joan just pulls her jacket around her and folds her arms tightly, her face scrunched up with annoyance. Girlfriend desperately needs to learn how to flip the bird. I'd be happy to teach her the fine points.
“ Frink: 'Just promise me John Wells isn't going to take over this show, too.' Me: 'Do I look like I have any say in the matter? You think I wanted The West Wing to be any shittier than it already was?' ”
Will and Toni are at the hospital. Some elderly guy has driven his car right into a farmer's market, injuring a bunch of people, several fatally so. The ER is a busy, bloody mess. It's jammed with victims, families, and health-care workers. Will speaks to a guy we'll call Poor Man's John Carter. Frink: "Just promise me John Wells isn't going to take over this show, too." Me: "Do I look like I have any say in the matter? You think I wanted The West Wing to be any shittier than it already was?" Will can't believe all these people were involved in twenty seconds. PMJC says the farmer's market draws a large crowd. Will and Toni want blood, urine, and breathalyzer results as soon as possible. PMJC says the guy is seventy-two. Yeah? So? Once you're behind the wheel of the car, there are no excuses. PMJC wants to make sure he's okay. Will doesn't much care at the moment. We see the guy being attended to; PMJC asks them to give him a second. Will, surveying the carnage, remarks, "Shrink finally gives me the green light to get back on the street and this is the first thing I see." Toni wonders if he's okay. Will: "No. I'm horrified. And kinda pissed off." Just then some angry guy busts in and starts shouting at the grey menace about how he killed his wife and left his three kids motherless. Cops tackle him and drag him out, crying and shouting. Will orders PMJC to get Old Guy upstairs. He forgets to say, "Stat!" though, so I don't know if PMJC will comply.
Joan's opening her locker, and manages to fling it open, startling the girl who's messing around in the locker to hers. Joan: "Sorry. I didn't see you." The girl replies, with a heavy accent, "That's all right. In my country we are accustomed to centuries of tribal warfare." Huh? What a weird response. Joan asks if she's an exchange student. The girl replies, "You might say I'm in charge of the exchange program." She raises her eyebrows slightly at Joan, who realizes who it is. She replies, "That was, like, the worst German accent I ever heard." God: "Slavic, Joan. You've heard of the Balkan states?" Joan: "No, not really. Is every day like Hallowe'en for you, or..." Balkan Girl God shrugs: "I'm amused by harmless pagan rituals. Not so much by bloodletting." Uh-huh. So where does that leave you with Christianity? No shortage of bloodletting there. Interestingly, the closed-captioning says "Balkan pagan rituals," not "harmless pagan rituals." Joan rolls her eyes: "Pace, pace. We're burning daylight here." Balkan Girl God: "Repeating myself is part of the job." Suddenly she has much less accent: "Vengeance is mine...saith me." Heh. Joan starts walking: "Okay, to be fair: you never went to high school." Balkan Girl God: "You never went to the Crusades." Oooh! Burn. "It's time for you to round out your curriculum, Joan. You know, for college." Joan asks, "Who can think about college at a time like this?" Balkan Girl God assures her, "High school will end. Doesn't that cheer you up? Band rehearsal coincides with study hall. Easy excuse slip." Joan: "Band?" Balkan Girl God: "They're always hurting for percussionists." Joan: "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Am I being punished or something? I haven't even fought back yet." Balkan Girl God: "Hitting a drum...feels pretty good." She saunters off. Joan: "Oh, thanks, Ringo!" Balkan Girl God goes up the stairs, doing the Godwave, but switching it up with a peace sign.
“ Joan smiles and puts the music on her stand. Upside-down. Alice notices and rights the page. Come on, Joan's not a complete moron -- I think she'd know which way is up for a piece of sheet music. ”
The day, Joan's hanging out in the band room when the teacher arrives and asks if he can help her. She wants to sign up. He wants to know what she plays. Joan says, "I play percussion...ism...ist." Man, the teachers in this school must be about ready to start a twelve-step recovery group: Joan Girardi Anonymous. The teacher, slightly distracted, thinks that's excellent: "We need someone on drums. You will pound the skins, driving the beat into our piece, like the drummers of old, who called the warriors into battle, with their fierce, pounding rhythms." He's not as emphatic as Lischak, but he's just as loopy. He's a young, mild-mannered, sweater-vest-wearing type. Joan laughs nervously: "Okay. Um...do you have the...hitting things?" The teacher is inexplicably unfazed by her lack of familiarity with the terminology, and hands her some drumsticks. He tells the students, who've been arriving and warming up, that they have three weeks until Marchapalooza. Is that a real shebangamathon (tm someone on my site), or is that a made-up thing? I should probably just warn you all now that I have no experience with band -- zero, zilch -- so the annoying errors and inconsistencies that bugged many of you self-described band geeks in this storyline pretty much washed right over me. I did marvel that she was allowed to start without an audition.
He asks, "Are we going to rock?" There's weak murmuring from the class. He repeats the question, obtaining a slightly more enthusiastic but still incredibly limp response. Pathetic Hat Girl is sitting in front of Joan, by the way, playing the French horn (I think -- I'm a little vague on brass instruments). I thought she had sort of a Molly Ringwaldish vibe about her, without the buck teeth and annoying tics, but someone on the forums pointed out it was more a combination of Ringwald and Clea Duvall. Anyway, her name's Alice. As the teacher says, "Okay, let's take a crack at the new one. I think this has the Herkies spirit you'll all be down for," Alice hands Joan a piece of music: Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk." Joan whispers, "Fleetwood Mac?" Alice: "No, not when he gets through with it." Joan smiles and puts the music on her stand. Upside-down. Alice notices and rights the page. Come on, Joan's not a complete moron -- I think she'd know which way is up for a piece of sheet music. As Alice turns the sheet around, Joan's eyes widen, realizing once again how far in she's over her head. She thanks Alice. The band starts playing. Joan plays badly, and out of sync, but with some gusto. Not that anyone else is that much better. If I hadn't been told this was supposed to be "Tusk," I honestly wouldn't have had a clue. The band teacher takes note of her crappiness and stops everyone, asking, "Is there an echo in here?" She apologizes and says, "I'm warming up." The band teacher suggests they try it again: "Together." Before anyone can start playing, Joan hits the edge of the drum and breaks the stick, sending it flying toward the chalkboard. Joan's pretty surprised. The teacher says, "Percussion...that was commendably fierce but rhythmically challenged. Take a moment to listen to the horns...find a beat -- any beat -- and, uh, no flying debris. That's easy." Joan nods. The band starts playing. Joan shakes her broken drumstick angrily heavenward.