Props to last minute, Elizajoey, dazzy, shadowcrawler and StKatherine for assistance with technical matters. Props to Professor Frink for making me laugh even when this show didn't, and for putting up with another year of Friday nights at home. Please, CBS, move this thing to Sunday.
Joan's asleep in her bed, tossing and turning. She suddenly sits up and turns on the light; someone's in her room. It's Judith, sitting there with her feet up and headphones on, flipping through a copy of In Touch. Joan: "Judith?" But she can't hear Joan over whatever she's listening to. Joan moves a little closer and says her name more firmly. Judith takes off her headphones, commenting, "Man, you're a deep sleeper! I thought you'd never wake up." I think they missed a "you sleep like the dead" joke in here. Joan wearily mumbles, "I've had this dream before," and heads back to bed. Judith says she doesn't have much time and to listen up. Joan turns off the light: "How do you not have much time? You're dead." Judith: "Whatever. That's your perspective." She continues reading the magazine in the dark. Joan turns the light back on: "You're not dead?" Judith stands up and says, "Turns out, all that stuff Lischak was talking about is true." Judith's wearing a white prairie skirt and a tight white peasant blouse with tiny cap sleeves, accessorized with a long, thin red scarf, opaque white tights and short red cowboy-ish boots. It's not the…most flattering outfit she could wear. Which makes me wonder: is there fashion in the afterlife? Or are you stuck wearing what you died/were buried in, or at the very least, the fashions contemporaneous to your demise? Imagine spending eternity in double-knit polyester Sansabelt slacks. Or earth shoes. Or culottes. Or one of those ruffled Elizabethan collars -- I think they're called fraises. Or, God help you, a dickie. I'm warning you, Friedman. And speaking of post-mortem appearances…it appears Judith's going to be wearing her embalming makeup until Judgment Day. There are Kabuki actors watching this who are like, "Girl, ease up on the white pancake and the red lipstick."
Anyway, Judith continues, "You know: relativity, string theory, different dimensions…the human eye can only see a fragment of the electromagnetic spectrum. But that's not the point: you're about to be tested, so you need to get ready." Joan asks if she's talking about finals, and rambles about how she's bad with tests. That's our JoJo: though she communes with the Almighty, the Divine, the Lord of All the Worlds, she's painfully literal to the bitter end. Judith: "Here's what you need to remember: it's all true, and you're not alone." Joan rambles on about what skills she'll need for this test, wondering, "Are superpowers required? Because I don't have any." Judith: "Of course you do." Joan: "I knew it. God's behind this, isn't he?" Judith assures her he's behind everything. She sits on Joan's bed for a minute: "By the way: Adam and Cruella? That was so wrong." Joan's apparently not too sensitive about it at this point, because she just kind of rolls her eyes and asks, "Yeah. Can you believe it?" Judith says it's good she forgave Adam. Joan points out that he did almost freeze to death. They kind of chuckle over that. Judith says she likes Joan's hair. Joan: "Yeah? I want to cut it." Oh, dear. All this show needs, if it manages to nab a third season, is a Keri Russell-esque ruckus over Amber Tamblyn's hair. Don't cut too much. I'm just saying. Judith: "No way. It's hot!" Joan looks at Judith wistfully and finally says, "I really miss you." Judith: "I didn't go anywhere. I'm just hard to see sometimes." Joan: "But you're okay?" Judith nods, adding, "Be strong, JoJo." As she gets ready to leave, she tells Joan with a smirk, "Watch this." She strides in an exaggerated way toward the door, arms swinging, and then just as she reaches the door, twirls through it as if it weren't there, accompanied by CGI flashes and sound effects that Frink pronounces "very Star Trek." Joan looks surprised, and then Judith sticks her head back through the door, with CGI rays of light emanating all around her: "Cool, huh?" Joan smiles to herself as Judith disappears again. She turns off the light, and thinks for a moment. "Yeah, like I can go to sleep now." She puts the pillow over her face.
In the kitchen, Helen pours some hot water from her shiny chrome yellow kettle into her shiny chrome yellow mug. She turns toward the dining room to find Judith standing in the doorway. Judith smiles at her beneficently. Helen is mildly startled: "Judith?" Judith doesn't say anything, but just walks through the kitchen table lengthwise, and then through the desk and the wall, accompanied by the aforementioned sound and visual effects. Me: "Uh-huh." Professor Frink: "If you were undead, wouldn't you do that?" Me: "If I were undead, I'd go around smiting everybody who ever pissed me off, and I'd need eternity just to make a dent in the list." Helen walks over to the window and looks outside, completely unsure of what she just saw. And…theme song.
Commercials. Hands up, everyone who's tired of the Blue Man Group.
Will, dressed for work, leans over his sleeping wife and kisses her gently, telling Helen she slept through two snooze alarms. Amateur. I can sleep through nine. She sits up with a start as Will tells her all the kids are already up. Helen: "I had the strangest dream. I saw Judith. She was in our kitchen." Will tells her she's been working too hard. Helen says she was making tea and Judith just walked through the kitchen. She doesn't tell Will about Judith walking through solid objects. "I could have sworn I was awake." Will feels her forehead but Helen assures him she's not sick. He kisses her hand and takes off. Frink: "She turns around and finds the cup." She turns to get out of bed, and notices the shiny chrome yellow mug on her night table. She picks it up and looks slightly freaked.
Joan and the Misfit Posse enter the cafeteria as she bemoans physics. She swears she studied and got decent marks: "But it's like I never even saw this stuff before." Luke: "Physics is hard to retain. It's counterintuitive to the way we day-to-day perceive the world. I mean, we ignore the quantum and trust the Newtonian. It's habit." As they arrive at their table, Grace says, "I have no idea what you just said." Friedman: "That's because men understand science better. They've done studies." Both Grace and Glynis slap him in the head. Hee. He howls slightly, and adds, to Glynis: "Not you. You don't count." She smacks him again. Slow learner, this boy. Glynis is wearing an intensely peach-coloured T-shirt with some kind of rainbow picture on it. Oy. If this show comes back -- and this episode made me sincerely hope it does -- I would like to see Mageina Tovah get more to do, and I'd really like to see Glynis dress less like the girls I was in sixth grade with in the mid-seventies. All right, okay, I had a pink T-shirt with a sparkly unicorn ironed onto it. ["Me too. My mother has a few things to answer for in the wardrobing department." -- Sars] Look, I'm pretty sure everybody in the fashion industry was on cocaine. I have no other explanation. Luke rambles on: "See, we don't fundamentally believe in subatomic probability. I mean, I do, but you know, I'm a science stud." Grace: "'Science' and 'stud' do not go together, dude." Well…do I have to link to those pictures of Richard P. Feynman again? How about Brian Greene? Richard Dawkins? Alex Toker? João Magueijo ? A young Jacques Cousteau? How about Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes? I'm just saying. Glynis contributes, "Jonas Salk had a very sexy jawline." From where I'm sitting, the man had to no jawline, so I'm not sure what she's on about. Grace: "Why do you know that?" Glynis clearly wonders herself. Joan: "So you're all confident about the physics final?" Grace, whipping out a newspaper: "I don't study for finals. It's against the laws of anarchy." Adam: "How can there be laws of anarchy? I really need to update my portfolio so I can get an internship this summer, otherwise it's back to the hotel for me…a fate worse than death…" As Joan struggles with her juice container, she looks up and sees Rocky standing out in the hall just beyond in the doorway, in a white suit, glowing. There are wonky camera sound effects along with a vertigo shot of Joan and her freaked-outness. In the background, we can hear Grace saying she has to get a job, too, and that he father's threatening to make her work at the temple as a camp counsellor. Joan stands up, staring at Rocky, who turns and walks away. Sound back to normal, Grace asks, "Girardi…what's with the zombie look?" Like she's hypnotized, Joan replies, "I saw Rocky," and starts to walk out. Adam: "Wait, Rocky?" Luke: "Dead Rocky?" Grace: "Every year at this time, she breaks down. It's like her warranty's up."
She hustles down the hall looking for him. Rocky gets her attention as she's about to walk past him: "You looking for me, Joan?" She asks what he's doing there. He's not glowing anymore. He's wearing a red tie with his white suit. Apparently red and white are the favoured colours of the undead. Naturally, David Dorfman's aged a little in the last year and a half, and when you're barely into double digits, it's a bit more noticeable than when you're already an adult. Boy, if we continue aging after death, I dunno if I'm up for that. As they walk along, he says, "I wasn't sure you'd see me. Sometimes you don't." I presume if Joan can barely manage to see him, hardly anybody else can, and to others it must look like she's now walking down the hall talking to an invisible midget. Frink, on the other hand, wonders how she could have ever missed him, given that he's wearing a lighted white suit. She asks if he's around a lot. Rocky says he likes to check in. Joan: "What's going on? You and Judith don't know you're dead? I have to show you to the other side? Go to the light. That's my advice." Judging from his suit, he already is the light, Joan. He tells her she watches too many movies. Joan: "Why is this happening to me?" Rocky: "There's been a disturbance in your magnetic field. You'll understand it soon. I have to go now." He walks off into the trophy case, with all the sound and CGI effects. Joan: "Rocky! Rocky, wait." He just turns and gives her a kind of knowing look before disappearing into the ether. Joan walks up to the trophy case and pleads that she needs to know more. By this time, the Misfit Posse has caught up with her; they're all standing behind her looking either amused (Friedman) or concerned (everyone else). Joan turns around and giggles, saying, "I got you guys. I got you guys. Man, that was easy." They look unconvinced. What is Christopher Marquette wearing on his head? Someone's replaced his hair with the wig my mother used to wear in the early seventies when her hair wouldn't behave. Poor boy. He really has his share of bad hair days. Joan walks past them back to the cafeteria as Grace stares and says, "So not funny, dude."
At the police station, a uniformed officer with a lollipop tells Will there's someone here to see him. She says she pretended to be Will's assistant, which "[she] thought was kind of fun." Will: "Who is he?" Officer Lollipop says he's the new president of the citizen's watchdog committee. Will: "Oh, here we go." Officer Lollipop chides him, saying he promised to play nicely with the citizens. Will claims not to recall that. Officer Lollipop: "He's about twelve. Don't eat him alive." Will promises to cook him first. She introduces Ryan Hunter to him and takes off, probably to talk sugar addiction with Chewy. They shake hands and Will says, "Well, this is a surprise." Ryan says he meant to introduce himself in "this capacity" the night of Adam's rescue, "but I felt you had enough on your mind." As they walk to Will's office, he thanks Ryan again for saving his "daughter's friend," adding, "I suppose this automatically qualifies you as a good citizen?" Ryan: "Anyone would have done the same." Will asks what he can do for the citizens. Ryan exposits that the committee was formed in the wake of the numerous APD scandals, "Most of which you brought to light." Will gestures for Ryan to have a seat as he replies, "So you know it's my highest goal to keep the department clean and accountable to the committee." Ryan says their objective is to help him realize that goal. Will: "Out of curiosity, why would a young guy like you want this job?" Ryan laughs a little and explains, "I have the dubious distinction of being independently wealthy." Will: "I always meant to do that." Ryan: "I was just in the right dot-com place at the right time, and also had sense enough to get out. It's in my DNA to give back to the community." Once he made himself filthy rich, that is. Will: "You let me know what you need from us: police reports, stats, tickets to the pancake dinner..." Ryan states that it's mutual, and the committee means to help the police force any way it can. Will: "Well, this was painless. Hope it stays that way." They stand up and shake hands as Ryan says, "It's my hope as well." You know who Ryan reminds me of? Remember that guy from an early episode of The X-Files who could set things on fire with his fingers? Not physically so much -- I barely remember what that guy looks like -- just his whole vibe. Maybe it's just me.
Lily and Helen are walking to a coffee shop. Helen -- who's wearing a really dowdy, retro-fugly skirt I suspect she fished out of Joan's reject pile -- is explaining, "I don't know if this makes sense, but I see things that aren't there. Except they are. And then sometimes they happen." Lily: "Yes. We call that crazy." Helen tells her to listen, and tells her about seeing Judith: "Only I was not dreaming; I really did see her." Lily seems to accept this. Helen adds that last year when Joan got sick, she just knew somehow to go to the hospital. She also mentions the vision she had of Kevin lying on the ground just before the cops came. The two incidents with her children aren't too hard to chalk up to "mother's intuition" -- then again, maybe the spiritual gifts of women are all too likely to be attributed in a somewhat dismissive way. But coupled with the kinds of dreams Helen has, it does seem to amount to something of a gift. Helen asks Lily: "Is there anything this could be, other than 'I'm having a breakdown'?" As they reach the doors of the coffee shop, Lily says she could be possessed, "but, you know, usually there's more foaming from the mouth." Speaking of which: who wants a cappuccino? If Helen's possessed, will Father Ken have to do an exorcism? This show could take a really frightening turn. Even more frightening than the double-barrelled Duff assault. Helen says dryly that Lily's been a real comfort. You have to wonder what she was like as a nun. Lily relents a little, admitting, "There's such a thing as a charism, but it's rare." Helen doesn't know what that is. Lily explains, "It comes from the Greek word for 'gift,' and in theology, it's a divine spiritual talent given to people for the good of the community. There are all kinds: there's preaching, teaching, prophecy, and interpretation of tongues. The one you're describing is the discernment of spirits." Helen: "Why would I have this? Do you have this?" Lily: "No. I prayed for that charism my whole life, and if you've got it without even being confirmed, I'm extra pissed at God." Helen: "You can have mine. I don't know what to do with it." Lily tells her not to panic: "There's still a chance you're just losing it. I mean, after all, your kid went nuts." Helen: "Thanks, I'll cling to that." She orders a green tea.
Joan's walking along the street when she hears Little Girl God calling her from behind a fence, where she's bouncing up and down on a trampoline. When Joan sees her, she shakes her head slightly and mutters, "Oh, God." Little Girl God: "That's right! It's me." Frink looks at his watch: "I think it's been at least five minutes since they used that joke." Joan heads for the yard and opens the huge gate. Little Girl God shows off a little by doing the splits while jumping. She's wearing a short little skirt, and, I believe, some bicycle-shorts-type thing under it. Joan asks her to cut to the chase: "What's going on? Because I don't want to go back to crazy camp." Still bouncing, Little Girl God replies, "A lot of things are going on: gravity, inertia, entropy, electrodynamics, strong force, weak force…" Joan: "Oh, so we're being funny now, are we?" Little Girl God thought she'd be happy to see her friends. Joan: "Yes. Alive. That's how I like to see my friends." Little Girl God finally stops jumping and sits on the edge of the trampoline: "They were trying to illustrate a point. Matter is neither created nor destroyed." Joan says she gets that. Little Girl God: "I know you understand it, but you have to believe it, because it's going to be on the other test, which is unlike any test you've ever had." Joan asks for help studying, or an advance copy. Little Girl God: "Just start with the question." Joan: "What question?" Little Girl God: "The one you asked the first time you saw me. Think about it." She does a back flip and starts jumping again. Joan thinks: "'Why me?'" Jumping with her back to Joan, Little Girl God confirms, "That's the one."
Commercials. Please, Teri Hatcher, I will buy you a sandwich. I will buy you as many sandwiches as you want if you will promise to eat them. Frink and I spend the rest of the time reprising our perennial argument about whether we believe God creates avatars specifically for the purpose of communicating with Joan (me) or whether God inhabits existing people who later have no recollection of having been a PodGod (Frink).
Joan shuffles into the kitchen in her pyjamas. Kevin's doing some work at the table. She muses, "I'm thinking grease and salt. How about you?" Kevin: "Uh, I went with sugar and chemicals. I'm good." He puts something small and pink in his mouth; I think it's a cookie. As Joan opens up a big bag of chips, she asks why he's not with Lily: "[Did] she dump you?" Kevin pounds his fist lightly on his notepad and says, "You know, sometimes I do the dumping. I'm not always the dumpee." Joan: "Hm. Did you dump Lily?" Kevin: "Nobody got dumped! We both had to work." Sitting at the table, she replies, "Oh. So it's really just me that's all alone and pathetic." Kevin: "Pretty much." Joan: "What do you remember about me as a kid?" He remembers she once stuffed beans up her nose. Lord. My brother once shoved a Flintstone vitamin up his nose -- green, naturally. That was extra-charming once it started to dissolve and run down his face. I think my parents had to take him to the doctor to get it out. Joan: "Kev, seriously." He just chortles at the memory. She persists: "Was there anything special about me?" Kevin: "There was YaYa." Interesting. Frink and I thought of Yahweh right away, but also of Amber Tamblyn's upcoming part in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, an offshoot of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood empire. And we also thought of Yahya, which is the Arabic name for the prophet John the Baptist, although the pronunciation isn't identical; you need to aspirate the H in Yahya. Anyway, good name. Joan doesn't know what he's talking about. Kevin explains that she had an imaginary friend named YaYa: "You were always talking to him. Mom had to pretend to make sandwiches for him. No one was allowed to sit in his chair. We had to make room for him in the car. You were totally obsessed with it, and you got really mad if anyone said he wasn't real." He says "really mad" like he's talking to a toddler. Joan, trying to keep her expression neutral, asks, "What did he look like?" Kevin: "You said he always was different. And sometimes he was a girl." Joan takes that in as Kevin continues, "Then, one day, when you were four…four or five, you announced he was gone. You said, uh, 'I can't see YaYa anymore.' You weren't sad, just matter-of-fact. Kind of like a sociopath." Kevin smirks, but Joan just looks troubled and avoids his gaze. He offers to tell her about the time she puked spaghetti all over the babysitter. Joan declines and says goodnight. As she walks out, Kevin calls, "It was in her hair!"
Uh-oh. Looks like Helen's having another dream. She's sitting alone in a pew at Father Ken's church, wearing a sleeveless, fairly décolleté gown of pale pink, and giggling. Of course it's a dark and stormy night. There are two clowns standing behind a table bearing a large silver cross and two white candles in the foreground, juggling balloons. As Helen continues giggling inanely, the clowns suddenly lets the balloons drop, and they burst at their feet in explosions of paint: violet and red. Helen suddenly sobers up, and then Clown #1 suddenly flings a balloon full of bubblegum pink paint over his shoulder at the huge cross on the wall behind him. Helen frets, "What are you doing?" Evil cackling on the soundtrack. Clown #1 hurls a green paintball at a religious statue in a colonnade down the side of the church. They both start hurling paint balloons all over the place, vandalizing statues, crosses, sacred texts, everything. I am freaking out, because just about any desecration of holy places or objects upsets me, and it's somehow way worse because of the clowns. Also, given the recent death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I think Catholic feeling is running extremely high, and I'm imagining the shock running through the viewing audience. Helen cries, "Stop! You're making a mess!" Then they start knocking things over, in slo-mo and with wacky camera work. Helen is upset, but doesn't move from her pew; she just calls out, "That's not funny!" Then we see Goth God standing off to one side of the church, watching her with his arms crossed and a deadly serious expression. She turns and notices him: "Wow. Should God look weirder than they do?" So she can discern spirits -- at least in her dreams. He just shrugs. Helen: "Hey, do something." Goth God says, "It's not up to me." Helen looks around, and suddenly hears a phone ringing. There's a pay phone where Goth God had been. She walks toward it slowly and picks it up. She hears Will's voice saying, "Okay, got it. I'll be right there."
Cut to Will in bed, continuing, "Yeah, I know the place." He turns to Helen, who's sleeping, and says he has to go. Helen mumbles, "They're just clowns." Will, who doesn't have time for sleep-talking: "Right."
Cut to artificial light streaming through high stained glass windows. Sirens. The camera drifts down from the windows to the floor, where we can see that the vandalism and desecration of Helen's dream actually happened. Me: "Holy shit." Frink: "Well, yes." The actual damage looks even worse than in Helen's dream; textiles are in shreds, almost everything that could be easily broken or overturned is, and the place is an ungodly mess. There are cops and, I guess, firefighters everywhere, investigating. Father Ken, in sweatshirt and jeans, leads Will and Chewy in as Will asks if the damage is confined to this area. Father Ken says it is, adding, "And nothing is missing. Some of the icons are gold or silver. This is just vandalism." Chewy asks if there are any disgruntled parishioners. Father Ken refrains from cracking, "You mean apart from Will's wife?" Chewy adds, "Angry mail? Threats?" Father Ken: "Somebody's always disgruntled. And hate mail comes with the territory. But nothing unusual. Nothing too disturbing. I don't think it's kids. We've had that before." Chewy, who in deference to the gravity of the situation is actually not eating anything for once in his life, comments, "It's terrible, Father. You know, I'm not a religious guy, but…it's hard to look at a thing like this." Father Ken thanks him, saying he needs to go make some calls. Will assures him they're going to find the culprit(s). Father Ken takes off without saying anything.
Will walks a little distance away from Chewy, who mutters, "Sick bastard." Will looks at him. Chewy: "I mean the perp, not the Father." Uh, was there any doubt there? Will surveys the damage. Chewy: "You Catholic, boss?" Will: "Call Forensics." Chewy says he did, and they're en route. Will tells him to find out what's taking them so long. Chewy crunches off through the debris. Will stares at a large cross that looks kind of burnt. Propping his elbow on his other arm, he puts his hand over his mouth thoughtfully, and then surreptitiously crosses himself. Whoa! Wasn't expecting that. It's nice to see that this show can still surprise me sometimes. It's been…a while. I guess you can take the altar boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the altar boy.
Joan comes into a study room at school where Luke's poring over his textbooks. Joan greets him; without taking his eyes from his page, Luke responds with: "Studying. Ignoring you." Joan promises this won't take long. Luke: "I'm not gonna help you, okay? It's every physicist for himself." She asks him to explain the electromagnetic spectrum to her. He refuses. She says it's not for class; it's personal. He stares at her, letting the pencil fall out of his mouth: "You have personal issues with the electromagnetic spectrum?" She says she just wants to understand it a little better. He snorts. She offers to pay him ten bucks and clean his room. Luke: "Twenty, and that includes the fish tank." Joan rolls her eyes and looks defeated. Luke holds out his hand, slightly cupped, and says, "Chicken?" Joan brings her fingers together in a little beak shape and pretends to peck some feed out of his hand. Or something. What the hell is that about? I've never seen that before. Neither has Frink. ["I've seen it before, but used the same way as 'pinky swear,' which doesn't seem to be how they mean it here." -- Sars] Luke agrees and lines up some pencils and a highlighter in a straight line on the table, calling it the electromagnetic spectrum. He asks Joan for her ring, and puts it at about the halfway point, telling her it's what the human eye can see. He grabs his half-eaten Twinkie. Frink: "It's the seventy-fifth anniversary of Twinkies this year." Me: "Why do you know that?" Luke says the Twinkie represents "atoms, molecules, particles, magnetic fields, gravity, blahblahblah, stuff we can't see but which we can quantify with mathematical equations based on its behaviour. That is, we can construct a feasible metaphor." Joan, brow knitted, chewing her thumb, asks, "What's over here?" Luke: "Everything else." Joan doesn't know what he means. Luke: "Dimensions, time warps, time travel…stuff we haven't figured out how to do yet." Joan: "Ghosts." Luke: "Yeah, ghosts, UFOs, shape-shifting, whatever you like. Everything's possible that has not been defined." Joan rubs her fingers together thoughtfully: "So where's God?" Luke gathers up his writing implements and his snack cake and says, "No. I cannot get into God, because that's unified field theory, and that's my area, and I'm not giving you the edge." Never mind that: Joan, ask for your money back, and don't even think of touching that fish tank. I don't know how clueless Barbara Hall thinks her audience is about physics, but most of the stuff Luke mentioned has nothing to do with the electromagnetic spectrum, and if even I noticed that, I can only imagine how much it's pissing off the audience members who, unlike me, got through four or five years of high school science, never mind the ones who are actual physicists. Wait, I don't have to imagine it; the physicists post about it on my boards. It's basically a very clumsy attempt at conveying the two primary trajectories of theoretical physics in recent decades. That's one of the things that kept this episode from getting an A+. I really appreciate it when the relationship and connections between science and spirituality are explored on this show, but let's not make stuff up out of whole cloth. It cheapens the whole thing. Anyway. Joan tells Luke to breathe through his nose, and demonstrates for his benefit. She pats him on the back before leaving. Luke experiments by inhaling deeply through his nose.
Someone lifts the broken, paint-stained female head of a statue from the church floor; it's Lily. She regards it briefly before setting it carefully in large box. Beside her, Helen is putting the votive candle holders back into their rack. All around them, people are carrying out various clean-up tasks. Lily looks across the church, where Kevin's talking to Father Ken. She scoffs, "Look at him, badgering the priest." Helen points out that it is his job to report the story. Lily: "Whose side are you on?" Helen: "His?" Lily: Blood. Water. Figure it out. Helen gazes into the middle distance and says quietly to Lily: "I saw this. I knew this was gonna happen. I dreamt about it." Lily: "Don't." Helen: "No, I can't help it. It's true." Lily: "Well, did you happen to dream about who did it?" Helen: "Clowns." She nods to affirm this before Lily can even question it. Speaking of questions: why is "dream" both a noun and verb but "nightmare" is only a noun? Lily does anyway: "I don't think there's a charism for clowns." Helen reminds her that yesterday she took this seriously. Lily apologizes, saying, "I just get cranky when I'm picking up broken pieces of saints." Kevin wheels over and says that it looks like it could be related to another case of church vandalism in a town called Marston: "If that pans out, then it's a serial thing, and then it's a front page story." Lily: "Is that what this is to you? A byline?" Both Helen and Kevin look at her, surprised. Kevin replies, without becoming defensive at all, though I would totally understand if he did, "This is news. Printing the story is only gonna help catch the guy. Isn't that what you want?" There's a little catch in Lily's voice as she says, "I want it not to have happened." Kevin: "I think that's everyone's…first…choice." Lily: "People pray in here. Do you get that? They come in here with their insides all churned up, and their hearts hurting, and all of their dead relatives, and their hopes and dreams and failures and what keeps them awake at night, and they put it in here. And some creep comes in here and does this without even thinking about what it means." She's getting more emotional. Helen says softly, "Lily…" Lily: "No. You don't care. You just dabble in it." Whoa. That's out of line. To Kevin she says, "And you just want to write a story about it. But to me, this was everything." She gets up and walks off, leaving Kevin bewildered.
Joan's walking down the hallway at school when suddenly a giant red plastic bag gets shaken out in front of her face, surprising the heck out of her. Female Custodian God announces, "God's here!" Female Custodian God is wearing some kind of long metal thing hanging from her belt. Me: "What's that? A kirpan?" (Okay, I knew it was way too long and thin to be a kirpan, but it's what came to mind.) Frink: "Cattle prod." Female Custodian God guffaws as she walks along, asking Joan how it's going. Joan: "Why do you ask questions you know the answer to?" For God, are there any other kinds of questions? Female Custodian God says it's to give Joan the opportunity to respond. Joan: "Of course! Thanks for all the extra work at exam time." She tells Joan she's already done most of the work: "The last couple of years? Think of them as kind of a training ground, a spiritual boot camp. You're doing quite well. And I'm God. I should know." They walk outside. Joan says that whatever she's being prepared for, she's not ready. Female Custodian God: "You will be. Oh, look. There's Adam. Why don't you go say hi?" Adam's talking to someone who's leaning against a tree with his back to the camera. Three guesses who that someone is. Joan decides not to fight the mini-assignment and asks, "Were you YaYa?" Female Custodian God: "Why do you ask questions that you know the answer to?" Joan sighs and trudges off. Female Custodian God grabs her long metal thingy, which turns out to be some kind of garbage grabber, like a giant pickle picker, and starts picking up paper.
Joan walks over to Adam, who greets her just as she notices that it's Ryan he's talking to. Adam: "Hey, Jane! You remember Ryan, right?" Joan: "Sure." Ryan, in blue athletic gear, says it's good to see her again. Adam: "Get this: Ryan was just jogging by, and we ran into each other, totally random." He adds that he happened to mention that he's looking for an internship, and Ryan thinks he can arrange one for Adam at the Herald. Joan: "The paper? Where my brother works?" Adam: "He owns it." Ryan chortles a bit as Joan asks, "Owns the paper?" Hmm. Maybe that would explain Kevin's otherwise inexplicably rapid rise through the ranks there. Ryan says he's more like a silent partner. Joan: "So, what are you, like, rich?" Ryan, smugly: "I've been lucky." He turns to Adam and says he'll set up a meeting for week. He holds out his fist for Adam, who bumps his fist gently into Ryan's. Adam thanks him and says he has to "jet on [his] portfolio." He takes off.
Joan says to Ryan, "You've been really good to Adam. I think saving his life was probably enough." Ryan smirks, "Why don't you like me, Joan?" Well, you're decent-looking enough, and it turns out you're rich, but the lingering odour of brimstone is a bit of a deal-breaker. Joan, usually an unconvincing liar, lies unconvincingly, "I don't -- not -- like you. I don't know you." He tells her they have more in common than she realizes. Joan: "Oh, really? Besides Adam?" He lowers his voice: "I saw you talking to her." Joan: "Who?" He gestures with his chin, and Joan turns around to look at Female Custodian God, who's picking up garbage and looking in their direction with some disgruntlement. Joan, trying to be casual: "The…custodian?" Frink: "…of the universe?" Ryan cracks up: "Yeah. Nice metaphor." It's interesting that "custodian" has such a degraded connotation in our culture. I always have to suppress a small chuckle when I see King Fahd referred to, with great pomp and grandeur, as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and I picture him pushing a broom around the Ka'aba, sweeping up after hajj. I know I'm not the only Westerner in that boat, either; Muslim pilgrims from the West have been chortling to themselves about this for some time. Ryan: "Kind of relentless, isn't she? Or he? A little annoying. Omnipresent, and always right." Joan listens to all this with a growing sense of trepidation and disbelief: "You -- you can see…?" Ryan: "God. Since I was about your age." Joan doesn't know what to say. She finally meets someone else who shares this experience…and he's got that faint, creepy whiff of eau de Satan about him. What's that about? He tells her they'll have plenty of time to talk just before he wanders off. Joan watches him as he walks past Female Custodian God, with the wind machines working overtime. He makes a point of giving Female Custodian God a semi-threatening look as he passes; she just stands there, calm and dignified, her bright red garbage bag blowing like a wind sock near a Cessna landing. She walks past Joan in the other direction. Man, there's just a ridiculous amount of paper blowing around this schoolyard. I think I see some of Grace's poems. With all the janitorial Gods lurking around this place, you'd think there'd be a little less garbage blowing around. Maybe if God stopped hassling Joan and did a little work, there'd be less mess. Joan stands there, ruminating, while half a metric tonne of garbage blusters past her.
Joan's sitting on the floor of the bookstore, leaning against the end of a bookshelf, talking on the phone to Sammy -- which version is anyone's guess -- and complaining that the store's had no customers for two hours: "It's dead, Sammy. It's like there are plagues coming. Please, just let me close up. I have to study." Good grief. You've got a whole bookstore at your disposal and no one around to bug you. Why do you need to close? Just study there. Man, I would work in a bookstore in a minute -- never mind the dreadful pay -- if I just didn't have to deal with actual customers. Me, alone in a good bookstore? That's my idea of heaven. Joan hears the door open and says, "Oh, wait, there's a customer. Hasn't heard about the plagues. I'll call you back later." She gets up on her knees and twists around the end of the bookshelf, only to see it's Ryan. He just stands there with his hands in his pockets, grinning. Smug bastard. She says, "It's you…" as she gets to her feet, adding, "And it's me." He spreads his hands: "Here we are." He approaches her, asking if she has anything on how to run a newspaper. Joan: "You're kidding, right?" Ryan: "Not really. Just about everything I know was self-taught. All the information in the world, right here for the taking." I have to say, the creepy vibe this guy gives off is such that if I were just tuning into this show now, I'd think he's planning to rape her. So, uh, well done, I guess. He continues, "Most people don't know how to use it. That's to our advantage." Joan emits a small, nervous laugh: "That and the other thing." He agrees.
He wanders up one side of a bookcase with Joan on the other, as she asks, "So, when did it all start for you?" He says he was fourteen, describes himself as a "lonely, emotional kid" and when his parents got divorced, he needed someone to talk to: "So I made him up. And suddenly, he was real." Joan: "[Do] you know why you were chosen, and all that?" Ryan: "I don't really care." Joan: "Where do you think it's leading? I mean, there must be some kind of big plan, right? That's why we're meeting. It's all...coming together." She seems a little excited about the prospect of making more sense of this whole thing. One of the books on the top of the shelf in front of Ryan is Judaism for Dummies. Ryan: "Like I said, Joan: I just don't care." Joan: "What do you mean?" Ryan: "Well, he's master of the universe, he created everything…I'm supposed to be impressed? With this universe? You do watch the news occasionally?" Joan does. Ryan: "If he were really that divine, not to mention smart and merciful, he would have scrapped the free will idea. We would have been like computers: intelligent, capable, infallible even. But not free." Joan shakes her head, perplexed: "I don't get it." Ryan: "We don't have to be bossed around by some love-starved, egocentric deity. I didn't ask to be born. Now that I'm here, it's all up to me. I like it that way. My life is a gift? Okay, thanks. He can't ask for it back." Yeah, but if God is God, it can be taken away from you anyway, even if you choose not devote yourself to God. Ryan walks around Joan, and she turns around very slowly to face him again: "Does he know you feel this way?" Ryan: "We've talked about it. He enjoys the debate. He's a great conversationalist. Very well-informed." Well, I'd imagine. Joan wonders how Ryan can just say no, if he knows it's God? She says, "He's in charge." Ryan: "But he's not." Joan thinks about that for two seconds and comes back with, "But he will be." Ryan: "When it's over, it's over." He walks closely past her, adding, "That's a little something he left out of the story." Joan: "That's not true." He asks her how she knows. Joan says quietly, "I just know." Ryan humours her: "Hm." He pulls a book from the shelf: "Hegel. Haven't read him in a while. Do you know what his philosophy was? 'Life must be some kind of terrible mistake.' But the beautiful thing, Joan? It's not my mistake." Noticing Joan's troubled expression, he says, "Don't look at me like that. I'm a good guy. I saved Adam's life." He walks out the front door, whereupon the wind machine people down the street crank it up again and a small windstorm begins. Watching him go, Amber Tamblyn makes this great gesture that's exactly halfway between a shrug and a shudder.
Down the street (more or less), Kevin and Lily are having coffee at a sidewalk table of a café. Kevin's reading the newspaper: "Okay, so here's what we're looking at: Three Stooges film festival. If you say yes, it's true love." Lily's not really listening. She's just holding her mug up near her face and staring ahead of her. Kevin continues: "A Yugoslavian film I can't pronounce about, uh, people wearing bad clothes and being hungry. It's a quiet masterpiece." See, that would get my vote. "Or a tractor pull. Tractor pull's always good. Laser tag…" Lily suddenly says, "It makes me want to go back. What happened at the church." Kevin looks nervous: "You mean all the way? The full metal nun…back?" Frink and I: "So not ever getting any from her." Lily said she's been thinking about why she left, which was because she wasn't sure: "I had questions, I was angry, I didn't completely understand what God was up to…" Join the club, lady. I would argue that people who think they completely understand what God's up to have seriously misapprehended the nature of the entire matter. That's why they call it faith. She continues, "I was just a little confused, that's all. And so I threw away my whole vocation because I was a little confused." And your Mother Superior allowed that? I mean, from what I've read about convents and nuns, if you want to leave, you're usually given quite a lot of spiritual counselling and support in order to make sure it really is the right decision. I'd be pretty surprised if Lily just walked into the Mother Superior's office one day and said, "See ya, don't wanna be ya. Later, yo." Kevin asks, "That's the whole reason you left?" Lily admits that what she calls "the guy thing" had something to do with it: "I kept thinking about falling in love and how I would never get to do that. You're not really supposed to feel that way if you have a calling. So I thought maybe that I was hiding from life in here, and now that I'm out, I feel like I'm hiding from God." Hmm. Nicely expressed. Interesting that she speaks as if she's still in the convent: "In here." Kevin replies, "You're just…stuck. Psychological quicksand. I was like that after the accident. I didn't want to live. I didn't want to die…eventually one choice just comes into focus." Lily thinks about that and then smiles at Kevin. He waggles his head around, joking, "And you thought I was just handsome."
Joan's looking through a family photo album out in the garage. She picks up picture of Helen from a long time ago, with stringy hair and an ugly sweater, but that same beautiful smile. Then she holds one of Will, in his cop uniform, hair looking about a half inch long under his hat, probably the day he became a cop. As she studies them, thinking about how she got to be who she is, Judith suddenly pops up behind her and says, "Now you're getting warm, JoJo. A cop, and an artist. An avenger, and a visionary. What kind of kid did you think they'd have?" Joan: "Okay, can you stop showing up like that? I mean, I miss you, but…it freaks me out, because none of my other friends are dead." Judith's wearing the same outfit as before, which…man, if I have to wear the same outfit for eternity, I'm going to need to do some serious thinking about that. Pyjamas would be good for comfort, but who wants to slop around in pyjamas until the Day of Reckoning? Mental note: Do not die in spike heels. Judith: "Losers." Joan: "So it's meant to be? It's some kind of calling?" Judith: "Circumstances conspire. Energies converge, into powerful new forces. That's where you come in." She suddenly says, "You have to go," and walks out through the boat (which seems to me coming along nicely) and then the garage door. Frink wants them to stop with the Star Trek effects already. ["I agree. I thought it made it less creepy, and I'm generally in favor of more creep." -- Sars] Joan sits there, wondering what it all means.
In the house, Helen's fallen asleep by the fire. She's having another dream/nightmare. She sees herself in that pale pink gown again. She's outside somewhere, in a park, at night, twirling around slowly. Frink: "Okay, I hate absolutely anything that involves this kind of dancing." I tell him to simmer down, because it's just a dream. There's an overhead shot of Helen twirling as all around her, in a circle, sprinklers suddenly come on. The sound effect is tricky, because it sounds both like water and like crackling flame. Or maybe I just have an overactive imagination. She holds out her arms and basks in the fine showers of water that are soaking her. Smiling, she calls out to someone, "Come on in." We see Grace sitting on a park bench. Grace smiles back, but says she can't, almost bashfully. Helen: "Why not?" Grace, still smiling: "It's on fire." Helen: "No, it's only water!" Suddenly the sprinklers are shooting out fireworks and smoke instead of water; then those die down quickly, and are followed shortly by flames shooting up. She turns around nervously in her burning ring of fire, not nearly as freaked as I would be. As the flames get higher and higher, she looks at Grace, who stares back at her, looking dead serious but not panicky.
Cut to the flames in the fireplace in the den, and Helen waking up, breathing hard. Suddenly Joan comes in and stands in the doorway, telling her mother, "Something's wrong."
Sirens. Cut to flames raging out through the leading of a broken stained glass window in the shape of the Magan David. The synagogue's on fire. I actually feel my chest tighten. Will gets out of the car and looks around as the firefighters try to control the blaze. Chewy talks to someone and then tells Will, "They think they've got it contained; it won't affect the other structures." Will asks if anyone was hurt; Chewy says the synagogue was empty. Will: "Are we looking at the same guy?" Chewy: "Can't know yet. Rabbi's over here if you want to talk to him." Will: "What's his name?" Chewy: "Polonski." Will stops: "Polonski?" He turns his head and sees Grace and her father standing by a fire truck, watching the blaze in sadness and shock. It strikes me as slightly odd that he would know Grace's other family name, but not which synagogue he rabbis (I just made that verb up) at. Especially given she's dating his son and is best friends with his daughter. Grace's father is behind her, holding her shoulders tightly. Suddenly there's an explosion from inside, and Grace turns and her father kind of shields her; Will and Chewy similarly turn away. That could just have been something particularly combustible that just caught on fire inside, or it could have been explosives planted by an arsonist to take out firefighters and rescue personnel. It's followed by propulsive flaming from the broken window. As firefighters continue trying to drown the fire, one of them emerges from the synagogue, almost gingerly, carrying something. Even through all the smoke, and the less than momentary glimpse we get of him, I know he's carrying the Torah, and then I'm just a mess of tears. Rabbi Polonski looks up and sees the firefighter walking out (in slo-mo) with his precious cargo; Grace is still turned away. Even now, watching this for, like, the fifth time, I'm crying. This is actually the most heart-wrenching moment the show has given me all year -- and believe me, I've been waiting for one. I should have felt like this when Adam and Joan broke up, but they screwed that up royally. If they'd developed Judith more, I would have felt this way when she died; that was moving, but not as much as it should have been. I haven't felt anything like this for all of Season Two -- and now, in the last twenty minutes of the year, they manage it. Like I said before, I find desecration of sacred objects very upsetting. (Not to mention that Torah scrolls are very, very expensive -- they cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, and take twelve to eighteen months to produce.) And, whether it was intentional or not -- during the week of the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma bombing -- the image of the firefighter carrying the scroll was evocative of the most famous picture (scroll down) from that event, of firefighter Chris Fields carrying one-year-old Baylee Almon out of the wreckage. I just wish they had shown us Grace's reaction shot to seeing the Torah brought out.
Another explosion of fire, and Grace's dad shields her face from it when she looks up. You know, if I were at a four-alarm blaze and the fire were continuing to build in intensity and there were explosions coming from within…I think I'd move a little farther back. I'm just saying. There's another shot of the fire raging through the Magan David window, and it's more than a little suggestive of the Nazis' evil rampage through Europe. We get a close-up of Grace, her face pressed against her father's arm, trying not to cry, as her father pats her back gently. Well done. Frink: "Two down, one to go." Me: "Right, like there's going to be a mosque on this show." I actually had a nightmare just last night about a mosque being desecrated; I don't think I've ever dreamed that before. I woke up from this nightmare after only three and half hours of sleep and couldn't get back to sleep. This episode really affected me.
After the commercials, Will arrives home, finding Joan sitting on the stairs. He's surprised, given how late it is. She walks along with him as he asks how Grace is. (Note: apparently there was a scene, which was cut for time, involving Grace and father gathering in the Girardis' kitchen and discussing the attacks on houses of worship. Joan twigs that Ryan could be responsible. Grace's father talks about how his father built that synagogue; he and Will decide to go back there. Helen and Joan go to make up a room for Grace, and Grace bursts into tears when she's finally alone with Luke. If so, I'm really bummed that that was cut, and I think there could have been a little less time spent on shots of the wind machine effects that follow Ryan around. There actually isn't a lot of other fat in this episode to cut. I don't know if this was shot or only scripted, but if it was shot, I join many posters in the hope that it makes it onto the Season Two DVD. Thanks to HeadCase for this info.) Anyway. Joan tells Will that Grace is snoring, but her mind is obviously on something else. Will sighs, saying it's good that she can sleep. Joan is wearing some kind of baggy, dingy-looking pyjamas that suggest some kind of camo wear. They look like they what Ted Nugent would sleep in.
Joan tries to tell her father that she thinks Ryan might have been the one who torched the temple. Will looks very disturbed. She says she had the weirdest feeling about him that night, and she's seen him since, and they talked: "And he…has this thing…with God." Will: "He told you this?" Joan: "He thinks he's smarter than God. He thinks it's some kind of game. You just have to trust me on this." Will: "Joan, a lot of people think they're smarter than God. A lot of people have big problems in this area. I'm one of them. I don't burn down religious institutions." Joan insists Ryan is different: "I know it, and don't ask me how I know, I just do, so please, for once in our lives, trust that I might know something that you don't." You can see Will would like to believe her, and believe that his daughter isn't crazy, but he's also the sort of person who needs something more than "weird feelings" and unexplained insistence to go on. Will tells her about Ryan being on the citizen's watchdog committee and how he works with the police. And yet, even with twenty years as a cop, Will can be incredibly naïve. Did Lucyfer teach him nothing? Will puts his hands on her upper arms and says, "I appreciate you wanting to help, but…you need to leave this to me. Okay, sweetie?" He kisses her forehead. "You just take care of your friend." Joan says nothing to all this; she just looks troubled and dismayed that she's not believed. He tells her gently to go back to bed. Aw. So patronizingly sweet. She stands there, thinking about Ryan's game, and his strategy of insinuating himself into her life, gaining the trust of everyone she loves, one by one. How's she supposed to counter that?
At the church -- which is fabulously cleaned up and restored, I must say -- Lily's spreading a red cloth over one of the tables as Kevin wheels in, saying, "Place looks better." She doesn't say anything. Kevin tells her he's been thinking about what she said: "Um, I just wanted you to know…it's okay. Um, I can't compete with God. On the other hand, I don't feel so slighted, losing out to him." Lily doesn't say anything; she just keeps working at arranging the cloth. But she's clearly listening. Kevin: "I, uh…appreciate you…taking me seriously and giving me a chance." He swallows. "It could have been fun." Lily: "Father Ken said that if I think I somehow had something to do with the church getting destroyed, then I'm making myself too important and I have to pray for humility." Yeah, I wouldn't argue with that. She continues fussing with the cloth, not looking at Kevin: "He also says that I'm feeling this way because it's the first time I've really ever confronted the fact that I'm…that I could…" She starts to tear up. She looks at him: "That you are…" She looks down again, humiliated by her difficulty in expressing this. Kevin smiles patiently at her, but she doesn't see it. She tries again: "That we might…" Kevin smiles more, and kind of taps his torso, almost as if to keep himself from welling up. Lily: "You were the first guy who ever made me…" Kevin: "Speechless?" (Alternately: "Taller?" TM WolfDad.) Lily relents a little at that, and smiles. She walks slowly toward him, trying again: "So, because you make me feel so…whatever…I should probably figure out what this…whatever it is, because I can't hide from myself. Because according to Saint Augustine, 'to know yourself is to know God.'" Kevin: "I like this Augustine. And Father Ken." Lily chuckles, and then sits in Kevin's lap. Frink: "It's a pew for two." They look at each other like they want to kiss, and Kevin says, "It's wrong to make out in a church," but he says it like it really wouldn't be difficult to change his mind. Lily gives him a huge smile. Kevin: "Just checking." She suggests they get out of there, and they walk/roll down the aisle together, and it's hard not to picture them in wedding gear doing the same thing. Whoever's in charge of the money on this show needs to take it away from the CGI people and the wind machine people and use it to keep Constance Zimmer. (The overuse of cheesy effects is another reason this didn't get an A+.) I wonder if I can arrange with Ryan to make sure the pilot of her other show flops? (I mean, if this one's coming back. Otherwise, good luck to her. ["I just saw her in a short film over the weekend, and while the film was poorly written, she really did well with bad material. Free Constance!" -- Sars])
Grace and Joan are walking through the halls together. Grace says she's made a decision: "Since my father has enough on his mind with the synagogue being a pile of rubble and all, I can't afford to flunk physics. So for the first time in the history of final exams, I am going to study." She holds her fist in the air to affirm this. No response from Joan. Grace: "Hey…Coma Girl. Impromptu study group at lunch…you in?" Joan agrees indifferently, but her attention is grabbed by the sight and sound of her mother down the hall, laughing as she chats with Ryan. Distracted, she tells Grace she'll catch up with her. Grace: "Sure, why not…" She may be used to Joan's weirdness, but that doesn't mean she doesn't still find it suspicious.
Joan wanders toward them, just as Ryan touches Helen on the upper arm in a rather chummy way. Joan learns that Ryan just got elected to the school board. Helen says she's showing him what he got himself into. Joan: "You're on the school board." Ryan, ever the smug bastard: "Just trying to help out." The bell rings and Helen has to go. Ryan touches her on the arm again and says, "I think I've learned enough for one day. Thank you, Helen." I guess he's thoroughly charmed her. She leaves, and Joan remarks, "Well, you're just everywhere." Ryan: "I do what I can." He walks down the hall and Joan follows him, saying, "It's a brilliant idea: hiding in plain sight." He says he's not hiding. Joan: "I'm onto you." Ryan: "Beyond what we've discussed?" Joan: "Beyond that. Like vandalism. And arson." Ryan: "You don't know how lonely I've been all these years, Joan." I think she might have some idea. "And frustrated, knowing there had to be someone out there with a similar experience, wondering who it was, and if we'd meet, and when we did, if that person would be a worthy opponent." He stops. "I have to admit, I never pictured a sixteen-year-old girl." Joan: "Seventeen. With a working knowledge of physics." Uh, not if you're going with the blather you got from Luke, who should totally know better. "And a real bug up my ass about anyone who wants to hurt my friends." Ryan: "The point is, I'm impressed. And I'm excited. I think this is going to be a fair fight, don't you?" Joan's obviously scared but holds her ground: "I have a slight advantage. I have God on my side." Ryan: "Mmm. So far I have the cops, the newspaper, and the school board. He didn't stop any of that from happening. I think…this is going to be the challenge of a lifetime." Joan just stands there as he walks off. I think she'd be an even more worthy opponent in something other than a chartreuse cardie with little butterfly appliqués on it, but I suppose everyone doesn't have to dress like Trinity in The Matrix. I just think it couldn't hurt. (I'm kidding. Please don't turn this show into a comic book.)
Outside, the Misfit Posse (minus Adam) is having its impromptu study session. Glynis: "I personally feel violated that Lischak is including popular science on the exam. It's like the Maroon 5 of physics. Admittedly, they have a groove and the lead singer's kind of hot…" I have no idea what she's talking about. ["Recent Grammy winners. You're not missing anything. Carry on." -- Sars] Grace becomes impatient: "People, are we going to study, or are we going to revert back [sic] to hormones?" Joan comes along and sits down as Luke says, "Hormones are physics. I mean, at least the conversion of hormones can be construed that way. It's not an evolved form, of course." I have no idea what he's talking about, either. Adam comes along to share his exciting news: he got an internship at the newspaper. Joan: "The one Ryan set up for you?" Adam: "Yeah, he's a real godsend." Har. Joan: "Maybe it's not such a good idea for you to do that." Adam wonders why not. She whispers, "I don't like him, Adam." He thought she did. Joan: "No. No. Actually, it's the opposite. He's just…" Just then Goth God wanders by in the background. Adam: "He's what?" Joan notices Goth God and sighs. Adam: "He's what, Jane?" She says she'll be right back. Adam sits in her place and Friedman asks, "Is she spinning out again?" Grace: "Did she ever stop?"
Joan: "Okay, God, so what's the message here: Ryan is the adversary?" Goth God: "I told you before: he's a connection." Joan: "He's evil." Goth God tells her connections are mostly neutral: "Ryan is human, and every human, by virtue of free will, has the choice of how to direct his actions for good or evil." Joan thinks Ryan's made his intentions clear. Goth God reminds her, "He saved Adam. He got him a job." Joan: "He trashed churches and burned down a synagogue." Goth God doesn't confirm or deny this: "The universe is kinetic, Joan. Every day you have to make a choice: make it better or worse. Most people do a little bit of both. There are those powerful enough to overbalance the scales on either end." Joan: "So is this fancy talk for you expect me to save the world?" He tells her "counterbalance" is a better word. Joan: "You want me to fight back?" Goth God: "I expect you to fulfill your true nature. Same as it ever was." Joan insists she's not up to this. Goth God: "I think you are. Or else you wouldn't have met him." So much for all that "free will" hoo-hah, I guess. Joan sighs with exasperation: "This is seriously going to cut into my normal high school routine." He says she never liked high school that much. Nor has she ever had anything approaching a normal routine. Joan: "If you want me to do this, I get it, but I can't do it alone. My own father doesn't believe me! My ex-boyfriend is siding with the Devil! I have no weapons! Other people who have fought back, you know, the other Joan -- she had an army. Okay? I don't have anything like that! Where's my army?" He glances in the direction of the Misfit Posse. Hey! Turns out I named them well, then. We see a shot of them hassling with each other, and Grace saying, "Quit it, Friedman!" just before slapping him in the head. Joan looks at this and comments, "Yeah, so, basically, I'm on my own." Pretty much. I think Grace would be a kick-ass warrior, and Luke could be a real intellectual asset if he ever figures out the electromagnetic spectrum. But Friedman? Give me a burly Frenchman any day. Glynis: I have no idea if she could really face up to evil or not. And I'd like to believe it of Adam, but I just have too many doubts about him after that Bonnie nonsense.
Goth God tells her she has everything she needs, just before walking off with a little Godwave. We can hear Bruce Springsteen's song "Trapped" playing. "Good will conquer Evil / And the truth will set me free / And I know some day I will find the key / I know somewhere I will find the key." Okay, not the most subtle thing, but after "Sympathy for the Devil," I'll take what I can get. Joan stands there stressing about all this, and then Ryan, who lurks around this campus more than a schoolyard perv (and psst, Joan -- if you're ever ready to fight dirty, that's the tack I suggest), walks behind her in slow-motion, staring in her direction. She sees him and stares back. "Seems like I've been playing your game way too long / Seems the game I've played has made you strong / When the game is over / I won't walk out the loser / I know I'll walk out of here again / I know someday I'll walk out of here again." She watches him go, her ponytail blowing and skirt flapping in the gust of wind he leaves in his wake. Man. We get it. It's an ill wind that blows no God. Ryan throws a glance over his shoulder at her. Springsteen howls, " Well now I'm / Trapped / Ooh yeah / Trapped / Ooh yeah / Trapped." Joan stands there thinking, "If this is what I'm suiting up for, what was all that crap with the Duff girls?"
As I write this, it's not yet known whether there'll be a third season. The steady decline of this show over this season -- culminating in the Adam/Bonnie debacle -- made me hope there wouldn't be. (Hey! Don't hate on me just because I want the show to be as good as it once was.) But then they went and did these last two episodes, and while I'm pissed that so much time was wasted this season on Lucyfer, the Duffs, the lawsuit, police plots, et cetera, while meatier stories like Joan's friendship with Judith, her experiences at crazy camp, and her having told Adam about seeing God got relatively short shrift, I now hope there'll be a third season. (And Barbara Hall needs to write many more episodes than she did this year, or at least supervise the scripts much more closely. Unfortunately, I think Hart Hanson's gone for good.) But in case this is the end of the line: it's been fun (mostly), and I'd be disappointed not to see these excellent actors inhabiting these characters I've come to love. If the show doesn't come back, I hope they all find projects worthy of their considerable talents. (Somebody give Becky Wahlstrom her own show.) And many thanks to all my readers and posters, who've been, on the whole, engaging and intelligent and incisive. Special thanks to those who hung in during what we'll call the sophomore slump.