Episode Report Card Deborah: A | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT "But What's Puzzling You / Is The Nature Of My Game"
By Deborah | Season 2 | Episode 22 | Aired on 04.21.2005
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.