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.
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.
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.
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.
It's dusk. Cheesy electronic music plays at the art gallery where Helen's work is on display. Helen's wearing a gorgeous halter-style red dress with a robin's egg blue shawl. Mary Steenburgen wears red like nobody's business. Frink doesn't think the shawl goes with the dress, but I'm on the fence. I've always liked turquoise and blue-reds as a combination, but this is much paler than turquoise. Frink asks, "Is that a pashmina? Aren't pashminas out?" I'm so stunned by the idea that he even knows anything about pashminas that I don't know what to say. Will is looking at a series of horrendously bad paintings. The one he's focused on has a peach background for the top three-quarters of the painting; the bottom fourth is Barney purple. There's a big dark blue circle on the left half of the peach ground being pierced by a bright yellow scalene triangle...and bleeding. Yes, bleeding. It's really wretched. Boy, I hope that's not Helen's. Will comments, mostly to himself: "It's a triangle attacking a circle...oh, maybe the circle was rude." Helen: "It's beautifully composed. Daniel's work is very powerful." How drunk are you, woman? Will, who either has no confidence in his artistic judgment or long ago decided not to argue with his wife about such matters, just says, "Okay. Powerful." He notes Helen throwing back the wine and tells her to take it easy, calling her "Picasso." He adds that the ability to stand and converse is a requirement. She states that she's extremely nervous. She gets another cup of wine and notices that some of her students are there, and freaks a little. It's Adam and his outgrowth. Helen tells Will this was a really bad idea, as Andy Reese, a.k.a. Andy the Pissy Queen, comes up and introduces himself as the newspaper's style editor. He wants to interview her. Will tactfully ambles away. Helen nervously drinks a toast "to style."
Elsewhere in the gallery, Joan and Luke are looking at their mother's paintings. Joan's hair looks gorgeous -- loosely waved, with some wrapped around her head and fastened on one side with an interesting, possibly vintage, rhinestone pin. I don't think it's ever looked better. She's engrossed in a painting when Luke comes over and Joan asks, "Do you think that's me?" Luke: "Hey, guess what? Copernicus called and said the world doesn't revolve around you." Joan: "Oh, what a coincidence, because the dork police called and they said they want their leader back." Kevin wheels up and says, "It's official. I don't miss high school anymore." Luke and Kevin both take off. Joan stares at the painting for a bit until the disturbing sound of her mother's drunken, snorting laughter cuts through her self-absorption for a moment. We hear Helen telling Andy she took a break and had the kids: "Didn't paint at all...except with ketchup!" Joan hustles over to her father in a panic, asking, "You let her have red wine?" I must say, Drunk Helen? Not my favourite Helen. Will says he tried to steer her toward the white wine: "But I got distracted by all the arty people." Joan: "Well, fix it!" Helen notices them and waves. Joan: "She's starting to point us out." Joan skulks away, mortified. Helen keeps on beaming.
The morning, Helen wants to see the newspaper -- which Kevin's hiding -- so she can read the review of the show before she goes to a faculty meeting. Everyone's too quiet and apprehensive, and Helen gets the general idea that the review isn't good. Kevin finally produces the paper and Helen asks, "How bad?" Kevin: "Andy Reese is a pompous jerk, Mom." Helen says she's a big girl. She reads aloud, "'As for Helen Girardi, Arcadia High School's new art teacher, it is hard to imagine how this...neophyte...has the courage to display her work in public, no less shape the young artistic minds of Arcadia. She seems influenced by a bit of Dada and, of course, Cézanne, but in her callow hands, Dada turns to doo-doo and the most Cézanne left is...'" She breaks off, laughing weakly just before she breaks into tears, holding the paper up in front of her face. Kevin: "It's just one lame critic's lame opinion." Yeah, I'll bet Rebecca had a lot of qualms about publishing that after finding out about Kevin and Randie. Will: "Hey, you want me to shoot him? 'Cause I've got my gun back." Helen shrugs and holds out her hand: "Just give me your gun -- I'll shoot him myself." She suddenly remembers, "Oh, God, I teach class tomorrow -- my kids will have read this!" Joan insists they won't have: "High school kids only read under duress." Hmph. I was the sort of "high school kid" who lived to read and only did anything else under duress. Oh, you bet I was popular. Luke adds, "Yeah, and high school art students don't read at all." Helen sniffles and looks around at her loving, prevaricating family.
AP Chem. Ms. Lischak has some kind of glitzy yo-yo. She throws it out and yanks it back, saying, "Woo! It's a yo-yo! Yo!" Joan's throwing bits of paper at Friedman's 'fro. Lischak goes on about how easy it is to operate a yo-yo: "Nothing to do with chemistry, right? What have we been talking about for the past five months, people?" She whams the desk to Friedman. Where's Glynis? Lischak keeps prowling around with the yo-yo, yammering about energy: "Potential, kinetic. Potential, kinetic. Potential..." Friedman suddenly turns around, holding up a large print of the digital photo of Joan in her underwear. Joan: "Potential..." She throws a pencil at his head, adding, "Kinetic." Friedman frantically checks himself for blood as the bell rings. I'm a little confused here, as Joan's again wearing the brown pants and off-white sweater she was wearing a couple of days ago.
With Friedman's arm around his neck, Luke helps Friedman down the stairs, probably to the nurse's office (and if she's attractive, Friedman will no doubt try to hit on her). What a dork. Joan, Grace, and Adam follow them down the stairs together as Joan says, "So much for nipping it in the bud. This has gone way beyond the bud." Grace: "No problem. We escalate. I vote for physical pain." Adam: "Violence begets violence, yo." Grace: "Back off, Siddhartha. You're out of their league, here. You have to go for their Achilles' heel: vanity." Joan: "What, like spike their cosmetics or something?" Grace suggests asking Luke what chemical cocktail would make their hair fall out. Now I'd think that'd be a homework problem Grace could really apply herself to. Joan: "Wouldn't that involve breaking and entering? My dad's a cop." So get him to teach you the fine points. Adam: "I could whip up a cartoon...kind of be, like, a social satire." Joan stops walking: "You'd do that for me?" He replies, "I'd even sign it." Grace: "Yeah, the soapheads are really going to get that. She's in her underwear, dude! Bad underwear." Joan winces and groans. I didn't think it was all that terrible. Some posters called them "granny panties," but they weren't nearly as bad as that, unless you think anything with more coverage than a thong constitutes granny...you-know-whats. I'm not typing it again. Picture the uproar if she'd been wearing a thong. Joan tells them, "The humiliation part is good...it has to be something doable. And very mean." Grace suggests they have a conference call tonight and work it out then.
Police station. Roy's getting some vending machine candy, telling Will that there were no skid marks at the scene of the accident and that the guy didn't even try to stop. Will suggests a lot of accidents happen because people hit the gas instead of the brake, and that this guy wasn't on a killing rampage. Apparently the vehicle passed a mechanical inspection. Roy says somebody's got to take the fall for this mess, and it's either the county or the old guy: "There has to be a reason. Maybe he was angry about the changes to Medicare, grieving the anniversary of his wife's death..." I don't get that -- there doesn't have to be some reason if the guy didn't do it on purpose. Will asks, "So if it's nothing more or less than human error, we can't allow for that?" Roy: "Not for a mess this big." Roy takes an emphatic bite out of the plastic packaging of his snack.
Angela and PMEC are leaning against some lockers, giggling over something on Angela's phone. Joan comes along, wearing a different outfit, so I guess this is a different day. As Joan reaches her locker, she asks, "Is that me, or some new life you're trying to ruin?" PMEC snots, "We just sent it to three people. We can't control where it goes from there." Save your BS, bitch. No one would have it at all if it weren't for you. Joan asks, "Is this some kind of sport for you, or more like ambition?" What a clunky line. Angela laughs, "Psycho!" PMEC: "Go bang your drum." They wander off. Joan calls out, "Hey! Yours is coming! It's only fair!" They're all, bring it on. Joan yells, "Ha! When you least expect it!" She turns back around, where a few lockers down, some maintenance guy is cutting a lock with bolt cutters. Just your garden-variety search and seizure, I guess. Speaking of which -- whatever happened to the metal detectors? Are they still around? The maintenance guy says, "The cornerstone of the practical joke. Who knew you guys would get so good at being mean?" Joan stops and looks at the guy: "The Devil?" Maintenance Guy God: "Go to the head of the class." He tells her to skip band practice this afternoon and go home and do the laundry: "Your mother's behind on laundry. Hence the bad underwear. This, you know." Joan points out that God ought to know that her mother is a total control freak about the laundry and none of them, except for her father (who likes to do his own), is allowed to touch the laundry. I'd tell Helen to get over that right quick, except I'm much the same way, so that'd be like the Tide calling the Cheer, uh...powdery. Maintenance Guy God: "Surprise her. She'll be grateful. Sometimes people need the choice taken out of their hands." Yeah, control freaks love that. Not that I'd know. Joan: "Isn't that your job?" He replies, "No. This afternoon it's yours. Do the laundry." He walks off with his bolt cutters and toolbox. Joan yells, "Ha! You're the one who made us ashamed to be naked!" Of course, he's more or less vanished, and everyone stares at her. Joan says to herself that she should stop doing that.
At home, the floor of the laundry room is covered with laundry. I think she's wearing the same thing she was when her mother read the review of the art show in the kitchen. But now at least we know there's a laundry situation. Joan clumsily starts shoving a big pile of it in the machine at random. She grabs one of those smallish boxes of ultra-concentrated powdered detergent and dumps the box in, all sloppy-like. I estimate there were at least three cups of detergent there. Frink: "Go, Curious George!" (Heh. That's one of our favourite Curious George stories, with the washing machine.) She looks at some softener but dismisses that. All that's convincing enough: the most common laundry mistakes are too much detergent; overstuffing the machine; mixing colours/fabrics incorrectly; and choosing the wrong cycle (hot water for woolens, et cetera). She perches herself up on the dryer and sticks one leg in the machine, jamming some clothes down. Luke happens along at this moment, commenting, "Oh, this is bad." He points out that their mother doesn't let people do laundry. Joan says she's taking the choice out of her hands. Luke: "Joan, you're standing in the washing machine." Joan: "I'm improvising. I can't be here all day." Luke doesn't think it looks safe. Joan laughs weakly, "Like laundry is not safe? Look, when I say go, I want you to hit the on button." Luke looks at the panel and asks what it looks like. I'm sorry, Boy Genius can't find the on button? The Credulity Strain-o-Meter is shaking. The button more likely says "Start" than "On," but still. Joan continues stuffing clothing in the machine as she says it should say "On." Luke says it doesn't: "It says 'Whites' or 'Colours.'" Joan: "Both." Luke: "There's not a 'Both' button." She tells him, "Well, hit something." Luke: "Joan, there's..." Suddenly the machine starts agitating and Joan falls backward, one leg in the machine, hanging upside down. She's yelping, and Luke's freaking; she tells him to hit "Stop." He says there isn't a stop button. She yells for him to call 911. Luke trips and falls on the laundry on his way to the phone, panicking in the doorway about which way to run. (Friggin' cordless phones. You never know where the hell they are.) We see suds bubbling up over the edge of the machine as the camera pulls away, with Joan hanging there, flailing and yelping.
There are so many things wrong with that scene I hardly know where to begin, but let's just start flinging them out: 1) Why are they making Joan more and more of a moron? She's sixteen years old, for God's sake. Even if she's never once done laundry, I'd expect more common sense than this. Just watching television, especially detergent commercials, should give most people a passing clue. 2) Luke being such an idiot, especially with something mechanical, is even less credible. 3) There was no water in the machine -- we never heard it being filled, and if it already had water in it, would Joan have put her leg in there? 4) Without water, the bubbles are completely ludicrous. 4a) Even if there were water in there and pounds of detergent, it takes more than ten seconds to generate mounds of fluffy lather. 5) The typical approach your modern washing machine takes is to fill the tub with water, not to start agitating instantly. What on earth would be the point of agitating a dry tub? 6) It's a washing machine, not a Mixmaster, for God's sake. Luke should have just helped her right herself and extract her leg. 7) Many machines won't agitate or spin with the lid up; they'll fill, but not agitate/spin. These machines will also stop if you open the lid during those cycles. Granted, they may not have that sort of machine, but I'm trying to cover the bases here. Anyway. Those are just some of my problems with this scene. I think Michael and Amber did as well as they could with such weak, sitcom-y material, but it certainly wasn't the thing of wonder that was the rail-gun gone awry. The needle on the Credulity Strain-o-Meter is flailing around more than Joan is, people. Not good. Look, I'm willing to buy that God's talking to this girl in numerous human forms. Isn't that enough? Let's not bitch-smack plausibility at every turn.
Joan's at the hospital, looking unhappy. A doctor returns an ice pack to Helen, which must have been for Joan's foot, but which Helen puts to her own head. Luke's there, too. The doctor says it's just a sprain, and tells her to stay on crutches for a couple of days. Joan: "Crutches?" The doctor says, "Unless you prefer hobbling." Helen says they'll take the crutches. He goes off to get them. Joan: "Great. I'm Tiny Tim." Helen starts lecturing them about not touching her washing machine. Joan says she was just trying to help: "It's bad enough to be called a bad artist." Helen: "I'm not a bad artist." Joan: "I'm just saying." Helen: "Okay, Luke, what was your involvement?" Luke: "I hit a button. It was scientifically unsound." I'll say. Joan makes a little "hmph" sound. Helen: "I don't want you people in my laundry room!" Joan points to her foot: "Mom, too little, too late!" Helen: "No, I feel I've been clear on this issue." Joan suggests meeting them in the lobby. They leave. The doctor comes back with the crutches, asking, "You know how to use these?" I guess it's a fair question for someone who'd put her leg in the washing machine. Joan replies, "I know how to make electricity from sugar." And yet, you can't figure out laundry. The doctor replies, as he starts wrapping her foot with a tensor bandage, "No, you don't. You just memorized it for the test." Joan raises her eyebrow: "Why are you punishing me? I haven't even done anything yet!" Doctor God: "'Yet.'" Joan: "Oh, wow. So thoughts really do count." Doctor God: "Thoughts are things, Joan. And I don't punish people. You punish yourselves. You're so good at it I could almost retire." Heh. Joan: "Well...why don't you?" Doctor God says he likes his work: "You know, it might help to think of these things as distractions." Joan: "From what?" Doctor God: "Yourself, ways you've been wronged." Joan sighs, "Well, somebody has to take care of it." Doctor God: "Yes, perhaps someone who knows better than to stand in a washing machine." Joan laughs a fake laugh and says, "You know, the more I get to know you, the less I like you." He comments, "Oh, that is seriously screwed up." He tells her to take ibuprofen 3: "The directions on the bottle are wrong." Uh...and will you be informing us as to the correct directions? Apparently not. He advises her to learn to avoid unnecessary pain. He walks out as Joan sputters uselessly, finally coming up with: "You should really...learn how to...pick on a supreme being your own size."
Will and Toni bring a very pregnant woman into an interview room. They apologize for her having to be there, but they have to interview everyone. She's fine with it; she's anxious to put the grey menace away. She tells the story of being at the farmer's market with her daughters, one three-year-old and one who just started talking. She starts to tear up but refuses the Kleenex Toni offers. She heard the screeching of tires and didn't have time to get out of the way. She had her older daughter's hand, but the stroller carrying the younger one tipped over. She sobs, "I tried to pull it but it tipped. And he ran over her! He didn't even slow down! He ran right over my baby!" Will turns off the tape recorder. This scene is superficially sad and yet somehow curiously unmoving. I don't get it. I'll bawl over most anything. This whole storyline isn't working for me. ["The entire episode felt that way to me -- disjointed. I think key scenes must have gotten cut that we didn't see." -- Sars]
It's night and it's raining. Helen's at home in the living room with paintings leaning up everywhere. She's making notes. Will arrives home, and she asks if he wants her to heat up some dinner for him. He doesn't: "I ate something chicken-related at the station." He sits to her on the sofa and touches her sweater, wondering what's on it. Helen looks down and removes a sticker, saying she gave blood: "They put a sticker on you. You forget to take it off. It looks like you're cracking." Will says that was good of her. She doesn't seem to take the opportunity to tell him about Joan. Maybe he already knows. She asks, "Any more casualties?" As Will gets up to fix a drink, he says, "Six isn't enough?" As he wanders to the liquor, he says, "Oh, I hate the ones where there's no bad guy." Helen's surprised to hear there isn't one. Will: "Good citizen. Conscientious objector. Sat out Korea on principle. Married forty years. He hit the wrong pedal." Helen says the guy shouldn't have been driving. Will: "Andy Baker shouldn't have been driving." That's the kid who paralyzed Kevin. Will adds, "You're the one who said, 'We're not going to sue a kid for making a stupid mistake.'" Well, you sue his insurance company. Isn't that what they're allegedly there for? Helen: "I wasn't wrong." Will: "I'm just sayin'." She walks over to him and says softly, "Brings it all up again, doesn't it?" He agrees as he hands her a drink: "Yeah. It travels all two inches above the surface." Heh. Good line. Helen: "The thing is, Kevin's still here, and he's doing okay." Will says that's just luck. Helen says she doesn't believe in luck. Will: "That's all I believe in." Helen: "What are you, Chinese?" Huh? That seems like an odd remark. I really don't know what to make of that. Will: "I'm a man with a paralyzed son." She says, "Gee...what am I?" Will: "You're a woman. We don't understand what makes you tick." Helen: "The heart, stupid. You understand anatomy." Whatever.
Art class. Kids are goofing off and horsing around. Adam is shoving something -- Koosh balls? -- into his toque near his ears. Iris is twirling markers around each other like propellers. Helen arrives and greets everyone. The class falls into an awkward silence. She suggests five minutes of free drawing. I guess this is the first class after the review appeared, though it seems all screwed up timeline-wise. It seems like two or three days have passed since then. Spunky Booster pipes up, "Slammin' show, Mrs. Girardi." Pipes up? Sucks up is more like it. Helen thanks her. Iris kinda shrugs at Adam, as if to prompt him to say something. He does: "That critic is a wipe, yo." Helen smiles weakly and looks around: "So...you read the review?" Students nod sympathetically. Helen: "Well, he's just doing his job, I guess." Adam: "He wrote that Rossetti was an Impressionist." Iris: "Which is like saying Monet was a Pre-Raphaelite." Oh, good one, "I"! Except not. Shut up. Helen brightens up: "Really? He wrote that?" Adam: "Chah. He's a total poser, Mrs. G. The establishment press is totally wack." Iris: "Look at Manet, Lautrec, van Gogh..." I suppose it's good of Iris to be supportive after the way Helen's treated her. Still, I'm not cutting her much slack. She's too annoying. Adam: "Yeah, critics have this, like, great tradition of being totally clueless." Watch it, bub. Helen agrees, "That's true, isn't it?" Their efforts to cheer her remind me of this quotation I like from author Jean Kerr: "Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review, it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumour that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism, does he write, 'I had a fun time'? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don't know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing." Helen adds, "But...our job as artists is to press on. Continue creating, 'cause that's who we are. Um...even if some critic does squash you like a bug." She shrugs and smiles: "That's who we are." She and Adam smile at each other.
Joan (wearing a baseball cap -- not her best look) hobbles her way down to a step, to sit with Adam, Iris, and Grace, who are already sitting on the stairs. She struggles with the crutches, which Adam puts his hands out to steady, as she more or less falls to a sitting position. Grace is holding a meeting on the retaliation plan. She says that she asked Friedman to put his nerd cells to use -- wait, she asked Friedman for something? Rather than Luke? Man. She must really not want to talk to Luke. Either that, or it's something she thinks Luke wouldn't be willing to do. Adam says Friedman's going to hack in and destroy the photo. Um, so what? It's not the Rosetta Stone. It's a digital photo, and there must be ninety thousand copies of it floating around by now. Grace: "He knows how to replace your body with Christie Brinkley's." Joan tries to put her injured foot over Grace's shoulder, but Grace pushes it off. Iris adds, "Pre-babies, like early '80s." Joan hoists her foot onto Adam's knee instead. Heh. Iris looks slightly unhappy about it, but decides not to make an issue of it, I guess. Grace says, "Now, all we have to do is narrow down our course of action. Rove is against physical violence but I overrode him." Rove: "Yeah, apparently it's like the UN: her vote counts for more." Grace: "Here are my ideas, in order of inspiration: a) Whoopee cushion. Not evolved, but always effective. b) Water balloons on the morning bus. Bad hair all day. c) The classic trip-and-fall with trays in the cafeteria. d) Gum in the seat..." Come on, this is penny-ante stuff. Grace would have better ideas than this. Someone climbs over them to get down the stairs. Joan says that Grace is losing her. Grace: "Retribution: the oldest profession." Huh? Joan says she thought that was farming. Wrong again. Grace: "Listen to me. Don't wimp." Joan: "Hey, I'm injured, I'm tired, and I don't know if I can pull this off." Iris says, "But the beauty part, Joan, is that your friends do it for you." Joan: "I'm your friend?" Iris: "You're A's friend. I'm about A." Gah. I don't know how many more weeks I can listen to her call him that. Also, she's eating and talking at the same time and frankly, I don't need to see that, either. Joan wonders, with her finger in her ear, "Do you have to talk? Is there, like, an off switch?" Heh. I'd think that's a big old shout-out, except that I'm sure this episode must have been taped before Iris's first episode aired. Adam tells Iris she's joking. Iris: "Yeah. Ring, ring! That's my life calling." She leaves. I hope that's a long phone call. Joan says to Adam, "It's just...her voice..." Grace says, "Yeah, good luck with that," as Adam leaves without a word. Well, it is awful. Grace gets up as Joan insists, "It is!" Grace: "Right." What happened to "Kill it, Girardi"? Joan sits on the stairs, trying to cross her bad leg over her good one and arrange herself comfortably.
Band practice. They're doing "Tusk" again, and Joan's sitting at her drum kit, pretending to play but not actually hitting the drums. The teacher eventually notices that he can't hear her and points at her, so she starts whaling on them, out of sync as always. He watches her flailing, the noise becoming more evident as everyone else stops playing. He comes back to speak to her: "Let's be honest, now. Have you ever played drums before?" She admits she hasn't. He wants to know why she's there. Joan: "I really want to be in the band." She smiles and blinks at him.
After practice, Joan hobbles along with Alice, Pathetic Hat Girl, and asks what she's doing after school. Alice says she has to practice with her other band, some vague alterna-rock group. Joan: "So you play music for fun?" Alice: "Is there another way to do it?" Joan: "Yeah, but two bands? I mean, I can't even do one load of laundry." Alice: "Well, you know, it's pretty easy when you're the school piñata. Getting dumped on is like fossil fuel. I can't hit back so I play music." Joan: "Why can't you hit back?" Alice explains, "I'm not allowed. I'm Quaker." Joan: "Oh. Wait, like oatmeal?" Alice: "Like...weird outfits...like Richard Nixon." Okay, I can't imagine how this would explain squat to Joan, whose first association with the word "Quaker" is "oatmeal." And the weird outfits thing doesn't seem all that prevalent among Quakers; from what I understand, most of them don't adhere to the "plain dress" tradition -- certainly not to the degree that many Mennonites, Amish, et cetera continue to do. Also, surely a person who seems proud to consider herself a Quaker could and would come up with more illustrious examples of famous Quakers than Richard Nixon, for criminy's sake. How about William Penn? Brad Whitford? Or Miss Alli? Bonnie Raitt? Judi Dench? Ben Kingsley? Dave Matthews? (Okay, we know Joan's not a Dave Matthews fan, but at least he's not Nixon.) I'm just saying. How about briefly mentioning some of the values of Quakerism? I think I'm going to start a religion based on eye-rolling and derisive snorting. Who's with me? Joan asks, "Is God in that?" I think our Joanie needs a comparative religion course, stat. Alice: "Su-u-u-re..." She's probably wondering if Joan stuck her head in the washing machine, too. Joan: "So God kinda tells you you can't hit back?" Alice: "Yeah. I don't...I don't always understand why he wants me to do the things that he wants, but...yeah." They stop walking, and Joan works up the nerve to ask, "Have you ever seen him?" Alice: "No." She laughs: "Have you? What are you, Catholic?" Joan says she's not: "My parents are. I was baptized but -- but I'm nothing." Alice: "But you've seen God?" Joan: "I didn't say that." Alice: "Um, any -- any time you want to talk about --" Joan: "Oh, I don't." Alice says okay, and tells Joan she'll see her later. Joan doesn't prolong the parting. Got her fingers a little too close to the fire there, obviously.
Will comes back to the hospital, where the old guy seems to be waiting in a room to go home. As Will enters the room, he notices an empty wheelchair by the door. That seemed unnecessary. He says, "Looks like you're all set to go." The old man, sitting in a chair facing the window, says nothing and doesn't turn around. Will says, "Mr. Hansen?" The old man says, "How can I just leave?" Will says they're not pressing charges at this time. Hansen: "I know you did. I'm not senile, for God's sake. All I can say is, how can I go home after what I did?" Will: "You feel bad. I understand. It would be simple if that was enough. But six people are dead, their families changed forever. And no amount of remorse or apology can change that. Now all you can do is walk out of here, and try to face the rest of your life." The old man starts crying. What was the point of that, exactly? Again, I feel like I'm supposed to be moved, and I'm not.
Joan's hobbling along at school (a different day now) when Adam runs up to her saying, "Jane! There's something you should know." Joan mutters, "Yeah, yeah, I know all about Baby Voice. Yeah, I get it, okay? I swear on my honour to tolerate it, but only for you, okay?" Adam: "No, no, no. The act of revenge? It's big." Joan says she didn't do anything. Adam: "It's Friedman, okay? The hired hit? He hacked into Angela's diaries, spam email, now she's hunting him down like a wild animal, okay? He's hiding out in the cafeteria. Come on!" Yeah, she'll never find him there. Joan crutches her way to the cafeteria.
In the cafeteria, Friedman's eating listlessly. Where the heck is Luke in all this? He used to at least try to stand up for Joan. Is he too busy making out with Glynis? Adam comes in and sits at a table near the door with Iris. Grace is standing by the door frame like a sentry. Joan arrives. So does Angela, sniffing for Friedman. Grace says to Joan, "This is going to be better than a million love letters." Angela walks over to Friedman, demanding, "What is wrong with you? You made my personal and private thoughts a public spectacle." Friedman replies, "You mess with scientists, my friend, you're gonna get science." Angela gets up in his grill: "You freak! I want to kill you!" Friedman: "'Le petit mort.' The little death. I have some conversational French in my arsenal." PMEC breezes past and Angela stops her, asking, "Laurie, do you know what they did?" Laurie's real pissed: "I know you said my hair's dyed. It's not. It's highlighted." Oh, good grief. Iris suddenly stands up and says, "From the diary of Angela...Nobody." She reads as a larger crowd gathers: "'My breasts. I've obsessed about them...wanting them to grow enough to make a C-cup by prom.'" Everyone laughs. Angela cringes and tears up. Iris continues: "'But today I hate them. I hate my breasts. Because today my mom told me she has breast cancer.'" Adam, Grace, and Joan all stop smiling. As do most of the other students. For reasons surpassing understanding, Iris keeps reading: "'I'm so scared I can't...'" Joan snatches the paper away from her and says, "Stop! Just stop." Angela cries and runs out. Everyone looks stunned and remorseful. Come on. Would they really not have read whatever Iris planned to read? Do you people know what Credulity Strain-o-Meters cost these days?
Once again: this just isn't working for me. Are we supposed to excuse what Angela did to Joan because of the revelation that her mother has breast cancer? One's got nothing to do with the other. It smacks of the same kind of manipulative nonsense as Iris's piñata freak-out. Are we supposed to take from this the idea that vengeance and retaliation are bad, because we can't possibly mete out divine justice and we should just leave it to God? Is the point "always turn the other cheek"? And why does it seem that neither of Joan's parents knows about what happened? Luke must know; he'd have to be a saint to refrain from telling Kevin. And Kevin would never keep it to himself. How is it possible that Helen works in the school and hasn't heard tell of this? With a teacher and a cop for parents, I would think that a sexual harassment suit would not be far in the offing. Yes, we've learned the Girardis aren't the litigious type. Still, while Kevin's friend probably didn't intend to paralyze him (not that the lack of intention excuses any drunk driving, ever), Angela definitely intended to hurt and humiliate Joan. And I think Will and Helen would grasp that. And if this story is supposed to parallel that of the old guy, who is supposed to have made an honest mistake, I guess, then it doesn't. The episode's called "No Bad Guy." Maybe the old guy wasn't, but Angela definitely was. She might have taken the picture by accident, but everything she did after that was deliberate. And if we're dragging Andy into it, maybe he was really writing the truth as he saw it, and maybe he was just taking cheap shots at Helen to hurt Kevin. Feh. I'm getting worried. This show started off so well, but I think they've got too many writers, and not all of them are equally talented. We need Barbara Hall, Hart Hanson, and Tom Garrigus to write the rest of the season if it's going to get back on track. Plus that episode shuffling I discussed recently feels like it's really showing. I've given the show its first C grades this month -- during sweeps -- and that is not a good trend. If it weren't for the last scene, I think I would have actually given this episode a D -- the script is really a mess, with a ridiculous number of inconsistencies and plot holes. Get it together, people. You've got an awesome group of actors here. You've got to give them great stuff to work with. Don't turn into The West Wing on me already.
Raining again. Will's sitting on the bed, lost in thought. Helen comes in and says, "Ordinarily, I'd give you a back rub, but I'm afraid my callow hands might turn Dada into doo-doo." Wouldn't that have been funnier as "Dadda"? She sits on the bed with her back to him and starts applying hand lotion. Will: "So we've moved on from the review?" Helen: "Oh, yeah." Will says he did a bad thing today. Helen: "Tell me." Will: "I made that little old man feel guilty for killing people." Helen: "He didn't feel guilty enough?" Will: "Not for me." Helen: "You needed revenge?" Will replies, "For a baby in a stroller, I kinda did." Helen says that God forgives it. Will: "God?" Helen: "The universe, whatever." Will admits to needing to hurt the guy. Helen: "More than he was already hurt?" Will: "Yeah." He hesitates, then asks, "Am I going to hell?" She turns around toward him, reminding him he doesn't believe in hell. Will: "I believe in someplace...where you aren't." Frink: "You're gonna get laid tonight, buddy." She says, smiling, that there's no place like that. She strokes his face and he takes her hand in his.
Downstairs, Joan's in her pink pyjamas, making a sandwich so huge and elaborate you might need to be over nineteen to eat it legally. She's suddenly turned into Dagwood Bumstead. She's just tried to take the first bite when someone knocks at the door. Putting the sandwich down, she starts to crutch her way to the door, but quickly dumps the crutches, realizing she can hop faster. She opens the door without looking to see who it is -- I'm sorry, but who lives in a world like that? -- and it's Adam. She doesn't seem to be expecting him, and she tells him it's late. Adam: "It is?" She tells him to come in, and hops back to the kitchen. She asks if he's cold, and if he wants something to eat. Frink: "Of course he does. He's a guy, isn't he?" She sits down and puts her bad foot up on the table. He stands before her, saying he wants to talk. As Joan rubs her ankle, he asks if it hurts. She says it doesn't hurt so much anymore: "You get used to it." I know they're talking about the foot, but it feels like they're talking about Iris just as much. He asks if she knew about Angela's mother. Joan says she didn't. Adam says he didn't, either: "We're both behind this whole thing..." Joan: "No. Friedman was." Does that guy have a first name? I'm just wondering. Adam gives her a soft yet reproachful look: "Jane...we were." Joan finally acknowledges this and says, "We'll apologize. I mean, that's enough, right?" Adam doesn't know.
He wanders around the kitchen a bit and notices the sandwich: "Wow. This is the most awesome sandwich I have ever seen." Frink: "That sandwich does rock." Joan smiles: "Have it. I'm bored with it already. Too much chewing." Adam sits down with the sandwich, and then says, "I'm not hungry." Joan can't get worked up about it one way or another. She finally asks why he's there. Adam shrugs and looks adorable. Geez, Jane, do you need a reason? Does he? He eventually says, "Iris is a good person." Joan puts her head in her hand and whines, "I know." Then: "It -- ahem -- it's just that her voice...drives me crazy." Joan laughs nervously. Sing it, sister! Adam smiles and says, "It's her real voice." And it's real annoying. He confesses, "It drives me crazy, too." Man, I don't know how people can stand to be with someone whose voice they dislike. That's just too constant and basic a problem to overlook. Joan and Adam giggle about that. Beck's song "It's All in Your Mind" starts playing. Adam suddenly barely touches her ankle, and then gently removes her slipper and sets it on the table. Joan gets very quiet as she watches all this. He very delicately fiddles with the tensor bandage, ever so lightly peeling and stretching an edge. He's looking at her foot, but it's too bad he doesn't see the look she's giving him, because for a moment she's looking at him the way her mother looks at her father. "And I wanted to be / And I wanted to be / your good friend..." Then she looks slightly sad, remembering what they were talking about, and she asks, "But you love her?" Adam looks slightly surprised as he thinks about that: "I -- I like her a lot." Joan sighs, "And you want me to like her, too?" She doesn't look him in the eye. He looks up and catches her gaze: "No. But I want you to like me." Joan's not quite sure what to say. Her eyes are a bit watery, and she swallows slightly before replying, "Adam...I don't just like you..." Adam almost gasps, and then swallows too, and finally says, "Yeah. Yeah, me too." One part of me is all sayitsayitsayitsayit, but I know that it's actually better this way. Woo-hoo! Happy birthday to me! "Well, you're all scared and stiff / A sick stolen gift / And the people you're with / They're all scared and stiff..." Joan lets herself look at him, and he gently replaces her slipper. Frink: "Ooh! Prince Charming." I'm sure she's wondering just how long she'll have to wait before the time is right between them. He looks like he got more than he came for, and says, "Good night, Jane." He leaves, just before we see a tear run down the edge of her cheek as she turns her face toward the door. Out on the porch, he pauses, looking at the rain and pulling up his hood before taking off. Through the rainy window, we see Joan sitting alone at the table. "And I wanted to be / And I wanted to be / your good friend..."