Luke gets caught up in Joan’s next assignment, as they both try out for the diving team.
Welcome back, Joan! We missed you last week!
Just checking in, 'cause I know you miss me when I’m not here.
Whoa, people, what’s going on? We’re not losing interest are we? Hello? Is this thing on?
That said, I didn’t figure out Joan’s fear was not diving but seeing Judith’s grave until I saw Judith on the diving board.
I like the beginning of Beth and Kevin again, although I want them to explore how and why Kevin cheated on her. And by cheating, do we mean fooling around or actually sleeping with someone? Beth seemed a bit apprehensive after the kiss, trying to figure out how the wheelchair was going to figure into things.
Luke in a Speedo…mmmmm. Although I cannot believe that all the wannabe divers are that bad. And why was Glynnis trying out? I also want to see more Captain Tommy…he seems like a self-important jock, and I want to see him fall on his face.
Helen and Will seemed to be drifting apart, and when she told him she couldn’t talk to him about why she was scared I cringed. No, sweetie, you do not want to do that when your husband has a perky redhead at work. Speaking of which, is it not the height of unprofessionalism to admit to your employee you pulled him out of a dangerous situation because you have the hots for him? Go away, Lucyfer. Go far far far away.
I’m also getting a bit tired of Joan’s treatment of Adam. She’s so self-involved sometimes I want to slap her. He wanted to go see Judith’s grave AND visit his mother at the cemetary, and she blew him off. Granted, she came around at the end, but still. A pretty crappy way to treat your boyfriend. (You too, Grace, even if you did sort of apologize later.)
Where IS everyone??
Okay, I’m a day late, but I’m here! I am also wondering how much of Grace’s attitude Luke is going to put up with. It must be tiring.
I missed the episode where Judith died, so I still don’t know what God ever said to Joan about it.
Amber Tamblyn did a great job in the cemetery scene.
Helen is right to be concerned. This family has been under a tremendous strain, and there was that ep. where Helen nearly went off with an old flame. She didn’t, but she thought about it. Things are starting to crack.
I’m kinda bored with the whole police arc, but of course I will watch every minute of this show.
I still read weekly, for what it’s worth. Just waiting on the leg to heal so I can start getting tapes from **viva ** and watching again is all.
They should have ended the show with Joan walking to the cemetary not her speech there. It was overwrought and melodramatic rather than moving.
The Annie Potts storyline is absurd. I hope they don’t make her have an affair with Joan’s dad.
I liked several other things about this episode. The opening scene with the teenagers being sarcastic to their parents rang very true to life. The look on Kevin’s girlfriend’s face when his wheelchair was facing her. The way Joan’s mom called her spiritual advisor annoying.
But overall this was more in the B territory instead of the A they often get.
I think it would be fascinating and kind of trippy if Judith were to become another avatar of God, right up there in the rotation with Cute Boy God and Dog Walker God.
Took swimming in high school and that episode had the WORST diving coach I have ever heard of. Most kids start off diving from the side of the pool, then the lower diving board, etc. Sorry for the nitpick.
I agree and hope Annie Potts is not supposed to be a love interest for dad.
I liked the very quick scene of (Robin from General Hospital fame) looking at Kevin’s back of his wheel chair and you could see on her face how she realized he was not the boy she once loved and knew. It was brief, but said volumes. She was a good actress on GH (as well as Amber, BTW) but that scene was really brilliant.
Don’t you feel that they missed a very key scene with Grace just mentioning, “I had a talk with my mother” about her drinking and not letting us see that? I donno…just seemed like that would have been more important than just a brief drive-by fact.
I agree completely. When I’ve complained about this, some people have quipped, “Weren’t you ever sixteen?” Well, yeah, but I wasn’t utterly clueless and incapable of learning lessons and reading people. I love this show (and especially its theology), but it’s time for the show to move on. We should be past the point of Joan being submarined every time God gives her a task. She should know certain things by now: (1) the task is not about the task; (2) it isn’t necessarily she who will benefit but someone else; and (3) God actually exists, and so therefore everything is going to be okay and death is not the end. In fact, it’s way past time that she told Adam what’s going on — what’s really going on, that the Lyme disease thing was separate from her God experiences, and so on. He would believe her, and understand. I guess what I’m getting at is that Joan isn’t growing, and that just doesn’t seem realistic to me, even at sixteen.
I didn’t think much of this episode.
I’m the daughter of an alcoholic (well, of two alcoholics, actually), and I loved the way they handled this – that this whole incredibly heavy thing happened, and Grace deals with it as an aside to the boyfriend who’s been going through all this stuff with her. That felt far truer to life than any voyeuristic portrayal of the actual conversation would be.
Totally agree. It seemed so contrived and fake, unlike most Joan episodes. Very disappointing.
Okay, perhaps I just read way too much into the scene, but when Kevin turned away from Beth, I thought she was looking at his backpack, which would (I’m assuming, since they’ve never covered it) contain his lines to his cath and all the assorted bottles he needs. I saw the scene as kind of a panic moment for her, an “I suddenly find myself in way over my head, here… how does this work?” thought that (from my experience talking to people who have been in such a situation) a lot of people who have never had intimate relations with a paraplegic have in that moment.
Though y’all could be right too. 
And what twickster said about Grace’s conversation with her mom.
Nitpicking-- I had two problems with this episode.
When Luke got onto the diving borad he kept his glasses on and only took them off when he got to the top of the ladder. Doesn’t make sense if your going to jump into the pool.
When Jane (Joan) and Adam go to the cemetary-- where Adam has been planning to go from the beginning-- he waits while Joan goes up to the grave. Great blocking to add emotional intensity, but, again, it didn’t make sense.
Adam had already been to the grave. He went that Thursday when the stone was placed. He had asked Joan to go, but she waived him off, saying that she had diving practice.
Whew, people. You had me worried there for a bit.
I don’t think Judith will be an avatar. I think it’s being established that God takes over bodies momentarily to have a chat with Joan. Remember during Joan’s deposition, when the stenographer was briefly God? Well, during this episode, as Cute Guy God walks up to Joan, a couple of girls walk behind them, looking at him and giggling as only teenaged girls can. So, can I assume that they are seeing a Cute Guy, and not realizing it is God?
She told him this was “something she needed to do on her own” and so he waited just out of camera range for her. He had gone with Helen to see Judith’s grave and (presumably) his mother’s while Joan was off trying to follow God’s directions, so it’s not like he hadn’t already been and she was denying him his chance for goodbyes.
As to papa Giardi and Lucyfer - we did see in the flashback to the night of Kevin’s accident episode that the Girardi’s marriage was kind of rough around the edges. Maybe the schock of Kevin’s accident and all that was required caused a brief rally that is now coming unraveled. As we were reminded by vivalostwages that Helen even toyed with the idea of seeing an old flame. I had forgotten about that. What disturbs me a little is that last season they portrayed them as such a strong, loving couple. I really liked that, especially in the face of all that had happened to them as a family. Very often a tragedy like that would tear a family apart, not bring them together. So, for them to show them coming apart at the seams now seems a little disingenuous to me.
I like what Twickster said about Grace’s line to Luke. I think for her to have the talk and to say so to Luke is a huge step for Grace and I am sure she is freaked and trying to downplay it in her own mind. I thought it was well handled.
Ivylass, I don’t think it works quite that way — God possessing people temporarily. I think the people are just God (sort of Jesus’ “the least of these my brothers”). The court reporter was God the whole time. She just didn’t speak up until it was time. I saw where someone back then thought that Steno-God had frozen time or something, but I don’t think that’s what happened. The lawyers hadn’t really been paying attention to Joan anyway, and it was during one of their arguments over some minute point of law that God and Joan conversed. And without inside knowledge, the conversation was rather unremarkable anyway. I think the lawyers just thought it beneath their attention. The series seems to present law in general as somewhat antithetical to Godliness — there’s Will, the atheist, for example, a cop; Lucyfer, his boss and potential homewrecker; the pervasive grayness of the whole police station and everyone in it, and so on. Anyway, that’s how I see it for what it’s worth.