Episode Report Card Deborah: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT "The Lamps Are Different, But The Light Is The Same"
By Deborah | Season 2 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.23.2004
Anyway. Joan's sitting on a park bench, indifferently staring ahead. Some guys are tossing a football back and forth. Her hair is dyed a darker colour, about which I'm fairly undecided -- I think it makes her look too pale, which may be an effect they're going for -- but she's cut heavy, thick bangs into her hair, and the overall effect is pretty Emily the Strange mixed with some Winnie Cooper. It also looks to me like she's had her hair thinned all over to take the bulk out of it. It's weird, because at the beginning of last season, I had a strong preference for the shorter, lighter fringe she'd had when they did the publicity photos for Joan of Arcadia, and was disappointed when the show started because I wasn't sure I liked the bangless look, but it grew on me pretty quickly. I think Amber Tamblyn is very pretty no matter what, so this will probably grow on me. I don't think it's going to grow on Frink, though. He couldn't stop commenting on it throughout the show. It does make her look younger, less angelic, less approachable, and less sure of herself, so that may be what they're going for. As for the dress she's wearing, well…it's dreadful -- I hope deliberately so. I loved most of Joan's wardrobe last year. This is a droopy dress with a tiny black polka-dot pattern on an off-white background, with gathered cap sleeves and a gathered, almost smocked collar with thin floppy black ribbon trim around it. It's a noncommittal mid-calf length with a deep, limp ruffle around the bottom. It's got self-ties in the back and more thin black ribbon detail around the waist near the bottom of the ribs and the top of the hips, sectioning off one tight area around the middle that is in painful contrast to the Mary Ingalls-ness of the rest. It's awful. If Joan's trying to do "normal," she's got to try harder, because I'm pretty sure that Sylvia Plath wouldn't have worn that dress to clean the oven, never mind stick her head in it. Joan's still got deep red nails and her thick watchband, though. Okay, we've got most of the hair and wardrobe stuff out of the way. (Note to those dolts who write to me without Clue #1 of what the site is about and tell me to just recount every last thing that happens in the episode and keep my comments about hair, clothes and sets to myself: just stow it, because all that does is to incite me to make even more such comments.)
Adam approaches the bench tentatively and says, "Jane." She turns and gives him a brief, apprehensive look before plastering on what she thinks looks like the smile of a girl who is pleased to see her boyfriend. Adam: "Look, it's you." He seems genuinely happy to see her, but also a bit hesitant. Joan replies awkwardly, "And it's you." She gets up and walks toward him, clutching him quickly and giving him the kind of hug you'd give your brother, all firm pats on the back and sister-like. But you can tell from the way Adam closes his eyes that he's missed her badly, that it's been a lonely, confusing summer for him. He's carrying a load of books in his arms so he can't fully embrace her. She finishes her perfunctory hug and quickly returns the bench as Adam tries to say, "I've missed…" She interrupts, holding up some monstrosity: "I made this." By adding, "I did all the wiring," she conveys the general idea that it is a lamp. And it's a lamp fuglier than anything Dez ever came up with on Trading Spaces. It looks like it's made out of wire and…I don't know…goldenrod? I think I shot the wad of my descriptive powers on Joan. Trust me, it's hideous. Adam accepts it as he sits beside her. Thanking her, asks pleasantly, "Why?" Joan explains that's what they did "at camp" -- made crafts. "Very good for crazy people." Adam: "You're not crazy." Joan, as brightly as she can manage: "No, not anymore. How was your summer?" He's been working long shifts at the hotel: "What do you want to know about grout, plaster, or unclogging toilets? And don't get me started on caulk, because that's my passion." Uh…whuh? In my discombobulation over the taping problems, I only half-heard this dialogue (missing the line about grout, et cetera, completely) and I'm all, "What? What did he say about cock? What the hell is going on?" Joan laughs as warmly as she can, but boy does it feel hollow. Adam says he got her letters, but not enough of them. Joan explains she had to keep a journal and talk to her shrink every day: "I got really sick of myself." Adam was under the impression she was going to some kind of art camp. Joan titters: "Gentle Acres? No. Ha ha! Definitely a crazy camp." Frink: "Did she say 'Mental Acres'?" Me: "No, but that's what we're calling it from here on out." Joan says her roommate, Darlene, was a trichotillomaniac. Except Joan doesn't use the five-dollar word, she just says she was a compulsive hair-puller: "Not a good look." Adam: "But you had a disease." Joan: "Which made me see things that weren't there…which caused me to break from reality, and then I'd transfer all of my anxiety onto the hallucination and invest in my fractured perception or something like that." She does the little quotation marks gesture with her fingers, which I'll pretend I didn't see, because it bugs. Joan claims to be doing well now. She adds that her roommate looked like Vin Diesel.
She then asks about the pile of books Adam's carrying around, and he grabs one called Voices, Visions and Apparitions, explaining that he's been reading books over the summer to figure out how what happened to Joan might really have happened. She looks concerned as Adam says, "You know, seeing God…" She hushes him and looks around, and then reminds him that he's the only one who knows about that part. So she did she tell her therapist or not? Maybe she means the only one other than her shrink. "Everybody still thinks that I was just talking to people, okay? So let's drop the G-word." Adam starts citing documentation about people seeing God (how can you "document" that, really? All you can document are claims and behaviour), but Joan insists, "Adam, Adam, Adam: seeing him/her/it is a sure sign of crazy. It's, like, the über-sign." Adam: "Just because your therapist said so…" Joan says "Dr. Dan" never used the word "crazy." He preferred "impaired perception." She adds, "Which you knew was nuts, which is why you didn't believe me." Adam, softly: "But I believe you now." Joan doesn't want that anymore. Adam: "Why?" Joan: "Because I'm sane…and I made all these lamps." Of course, when Joan says she's sane, this is when the signal started acting up so everything's flickering and turning all kinds of colours and it really undermines her point in a hilariously cheesy way. Adam: "But what if it's possible?" Joan insists it's not: "Look, Adam, you've gotta get on board with this if we're going to hang." He's clearly not too comfortable with this, and after a pause, remarks, "You seem so different." Frink: "It's the hair, dude." Me: "Not to mention the threads from the vintage store next to the Asylum for the Terminally Dowdy." Joan: "Yeah…'cause I'm not crazy." You can tell Adam isn't nursing a fetish for the aggressively normal. She says she has to go and pecks him on the cheek, telling him to call her later. As she walks off, Adam calls, "Jane, wait…" At the same moment, a skateboarder zips past her on the path and says, "Watch it there, Jane." Jane? God calls her Jane? Joan stops short and the camera zooms in on her as she considers this. As she and the skateboarder move off in opposite directions, Skateboarding God gives her a Godwave she doesn't see. So I guess she didn't see God the whole time she was at Mental Acres? She tosses her hair and practices her "normal" expression.