1×05 Just Say No

….. by TeeJay

Helen catches Joan late at night on the phone with Adam, noting that she’s talking to him a lot. Helen says he’s an interesting boy—if he and Joan are just friends. Less interesting if there is more to it than that. It’s the mother thing. A mother gets concerned when her 16-year-old girl starts having an interest in boys. Who can blame her? Joan assures her it’s just school stuff. But is it?

At school, some guy we’ve never seen before basically jumps Adam from behind, in a jocular way. “Yo, Adam Rove, checked out your stuff. Digging.” And he hands Adam a CD. Joan says she thought Adam wasn’t into music anymore. Grace tells her he samples nature sounds. Crickets having sex. And Adam has this painful, agonized and confused look on his face as he watches the guy hit on Joan, and Joan liking it. Not only is he wounded now, Adam is also aware that Clay Fisher is just making fun of him. And Joan totally doesn’t get it. “He seems sincere,” she tells Adam. “Rockin’ insight, Jane.”

Grace has to spell it out to Joan that Clay Fisher just flirted with her and that Adam is all about her. And of course Joan is enjoying all the flattery and attention.

There’s this one cute scene in AP Chem where Miss Lischak is going on about DNA and RNA and Joan gets called to Mr. Price’s office in the middle of the lesson. And Adam (scribbling away at some of his sketches, dressed in a really cool stripy shirt, may I add) leans over and tells her, “I’ll tell you later what’s fun about nucleic acids.”

Back to AP Chem (and please tell me, why is it that on TV shows liquid chemicals always have to be colored—very few liquid chemicals actually are), where Grace leaves to tell Lischak about their wigging out Bunsen burner, leaving Joan and Adam alone at the workbench. Adam very openly inquires about Joan’s boyfriend—who, she insists, is not her boyfriend. Clay came to see her at her yard sale (another God thing) after which he kept pretending to be with the police and busting kids for smoking with a fake police badge. And Adam tells her that it’s not a fake badge. “It’s the genuine article. Chief of Police stamped right on it.” Joan’s face falls. “Sorry to break it to you,” Adam sympathetically says. And the way he’s looking at her, you can just imagine he’s thinking about how much he’d like to kiss her right then. Joan doesn’t see it that way though. She thinks Adam enjoyed telling her that Clay is a creep.