Episode Report Card Wing Chun: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Scribbling Rivalry
By Wing Chun | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 01.16.2001
At lunch, Lily recaps the situation for "Block That" Rick Sammler, adding the detail that Artie is "the webmaster." I didn't realize sites still used that title; I thought the actual tech head of the site was the producer. Whatever. Rick and his heavy eye makeup muse, "I bet you that job pays nothing. I bet you people take that job just so they can say, 'I'm a webmaster. What do you do?'" Oh, Rick. Jealous? Lily brings it on home: "Can you believe I say words like 'sticky eyeballs' and 'webmaster'?" I can. Because you're lame. She adds, "I might as well go out and get my tongue pierced." I just typed that line and I'm trying to think of a way to express the way I'm sitting here, looking at my monitor, reading that line, and still rolling my eyes. Oh, I know: Shut up, Lily. She playfully sticks her tongue out at him to punctuate her lame remarks. He asks if they're still on for tonight: "I'll pick you up in my Webmastermobile." Lily flirtatiously asks, "Will you be wearing your webmaster cape?" Oh man, they are so old and lame! GOD! Rick jokes that he will be wearing said cape, and not much else, and they giggle, because the kids today are funny, and they're old fogies who don't get what the kids are blah blah webmaster blah whatever. She says she wants to go out, but... "The kids?" he asks, and she says that Zoe and Grace were fighting like three-year-olds the night before, and that they've totally regressed, and that it's because of her job, and that she's probably ruining their lives. Rick tells her she shouldn't think like that, "especially since it's true." She smacks him and says that she should be home to prevent... "Well, it's not fratricide -- what is it when sisters kill each other? Sistercide?" Yeah. "Sistercide." And you want to be an editor, too. Well, you're at least as good an example as Crusty. Lily dons her coat to go back to work, and remarks that she hopes no one's carrying automatic weapons. "Yeah, well," Rick intones, "we're in a world of pierced tongues and disgruntled employees on a rampage." Their server sets the cheque in front of them and wishes them a nice day; the camera cuts to her as she backs away, smiling and sticking out her (of course) pierced tongue at them. Rick laughs in delighted surprise. He's cute when he smiles. But he looks like Elizabeth Taylor with that eyeliner.
With Lily literally at her right hand, Crusty holds a staff meeting for the decimated staff. Some guy asks her, "So the financing was on the condition that you do all these layoffs?" "In effect," Crusty hedges. "'In effect'?" Artie repeats, clearly not buying it. Crusty moans, "This is the hardest thing I've done since we started. By far. I saved as many jobs as I could." Artie sarcastically raises a hand and snipes, "Sending stealth emails -- 'Thanks for all the hard work; you're history' -- that's not exactly being in it together." Crusty admonishes him not to bring up in the meeting what's obviously on everyone's minds; he argues that this is the appropriate forum to discuss it, and with a steely edge in her voice, Crusty tells him to come to her office after the meeting, and they can discuss it then. Artie smiles bitterly, and wanders off. Crusty asks the group for ideas for new features, and Lily pipes up that she has one. Crusty makes a face like she smells something bad, slowly turns toward Lily, and tolerantly says, "Okay." Lily says, "Well, the site needs to be stickier, right? We need sticky eyeballs." Ugh. Whatever. Some guy says, "Go, Lily," like, "Way to pick up on two jargon words we use and slap them together to produce a phrase no one uses." ,"Oh, come on Wing. You know you hate it because it hits so close to home. All we do all day is figure out how to get more 'sticky eyeballs.'" -- Niki] She chuckles modestly at his approval and goes on, "I've been thinking about what makes people hang out -- what builds a community. We have the discussion threads, which are good, but it's pretty random who shows up. So my idea is, we assign people to online families of about twenty people each. Has anyone read Kurt Vonnegut's book, Slapstick: [Or] Lonesome No More!?" Some blonde chick says she has. Crusty looks like she's sitting on a prickly pear. Lily explains, "In the book, on Earth, everyone gets assigned to about one of twenty families, so that people aren't so lonely." The camera pans around the faces in the meeting, including Crusty's; she seems to be warming up to the idea. Lily's on a roll: "So we say, 'Come to PagesAlive, and we'll put you in a family for a month.' And you'll get to know them, and argue, and do activities, and they're people you never would have gotten to know if we hadn't forced you to. Like a real family." The "go, Lily" guy asks how they'd match people up, and Lily suggests asking them a revealing question. Like, what's your favourite book? Huh. Where have I heard something like this before? Crusty suggests, "Like, what's the one thing you would save if your house was on fire." She chuckles at herself, and then quietly adds, "Right?" quickly glancing around for the approval of the room. Nice touch by Jennifer Crystal, there. Lily says, "Or something quirkier, like, 'if your soul was on fire.'" First of all, funny that you're talking about fire, because, BURN. Second, Lily, that didn't make any sense at all and is a stupid question. Sorry, Crusty's is better. Anyway, Lily, having blown her load, stops talking, and Crusty curtly says, "Wow. That's interesting. You spent a lot of time on that. Let's keep that in the file. Anybody else?" Stung, Lily fidgets with her pen. No one says anything. Crusty notes that it's been a tough day and suggests that they all get back to work. Because you know what I like to do in the middle of a tough day at work? More work. ["Right after she's finished whipping me, that is." -- Niki] Lily catches Artie's eye; he raises his eyebrows and smiles, as if to say, "Don't worry about it; Crusty sucks." Lily flicks her head slightly as if to say, "Word." The meeting disperses, and Crusty leans over to assure Lily that she liked her idea (despite all evidence to the contrary), and that "there will be a light at the end of the tunnel." Uh. Okay. Lily sits in her chair for a while, applying aloe to the burn Crusty left on 80% of her body.