B.A.

"Home Again"



Original Airdate: January 2, 2005

Patman

recap:

JJ nows works in a Marines recruitment office, signing up young men for the war effort. JJ has the nightsweats, and has anxiety about signing up the young men for the Marines. JJ has problems with being at places with flashy lights (a gathering with JJ's high friends and Beth at a local spot), causing him to re-live the difficult times in Viet Nam. JJ and Beth leave the gathering, and they go to Pete's place to re-connect. JJ's been living at Pete's place upon his return.

Helen is asked to help a conscientious war objector find a way to Canada. After seeing JJ having a hard time re-integrating back to life in Philly, she helps the war objector.

Jack gives Rox a talking to about her living conditions with Luke. This happens after Rox finagles Jack to help with some plumbing issues of Luke's sink. Jack gives Luke a toolbox to help him adjust to being "the man in the house".

Pete has Will do some snooping for him to find out what Chris's mom thinks of Pete. Pete likes what he hears, and becomes more into her. Pete appears to use his "in" with Shelly to get some phone bill records to build a case against Chris.

Patty wants to win a science fair project contest and is concerned that another girl with "help from a college boyfriend" is going to beat her, so Chris suggests that she do a little sabotage. Later, Patty's project goes without a hitch, but the other girl's project doesn't work anymore, but Patty finds out that the other girl actually knew what she was doing, and didn't help from her "boyfriend" which was also a rumor, as she didn't have one. From Patty's guilty look, her "getting to the science fair early" might have led to Patty's sabotage.

Chris wants Meg to move with him to LA for more peacenik stuff, Meg tells Rox that she was accepted to the local college. Jack isn't receptive to Meg going to college, but the deal they work out is that she stays and works at the store to help pay for college.

Pete tells Meg of the background check he ran on Chris, and he has been a naughty boy. She confronts him with his past, his involvement with the recruitment office, and he minimized his past, and still tries to spin that he tried to prevent the fire at the recruitment office.

Meg makes a visit to JJ's recruitment office, and they take a walk, and she asks JJ about how one knows another person is for them, and JJ didn't know, but he offered that if another person knows you better than yourself, it's a good sign.

Nathan gets help from Sam and his friends on the boat that was left for him. After cleaning it up, Nathan sells the boat and then offers the proceeds to Henry for Sam and Angela's future education plans, but Henry tells him that he should use the money for himself. Later, Nathan shows up with a delivery truck, and offers his delivery services to Jack because of Jack's current problem with the delivery outfit he was using for deliveries.

JJ asks Beth to marry him. She appears to have accepted, for a second time.

B.A.

I think my favorite storyline right now is Nathan's - his pretty damn good and humorous at times.

I'm annoyed w/ Meg and her stupidity in regards to Short-Round (isn't Milo in type-casting hell?). And I was disappointed Patty listened to the asshole's advice. I do like Uncle Pete's persistence in trying to nail the little bastard even though he's still dating the mom.

I like that Helen volunteered for the CPU, but of all the things she could have done as a volunteer why did she have to do that?

Good to see J.J. step up to the plate w/ Beth.

Nice to see Jack play Rox's surrogate father w/ her and Luke.

Red Dog

Nathan has always been one of the stronger characters.

I loved the cutting btwn Helen doing the paperwork to 'save' the draft dodger and JJ doing the paperwork sending the recruit to his 'death.'

Jadzia

It kind of freaked me out that actor who played Helen's priest also played the transsexual on "Nip/Tuck".

I may have missed something, but what was the letter that Meg crumpled up? Was that her college acceptance letter? I remember at one point she hid it from Patty and then at the end she threw it away before she went to see Chris/Jess so I wondered if that meant she was choosing him over college.

I was surprised to see Helen take an interest in the anti-war movement. At first I thought she disapproved of the woman's speech in church so it took me aback when she offered to help. It's odd,they have never really shown her talking to Meg much about the anti-war thing.

I liked how they contrasted JJ sending a boy off to war while Helen was sending a guy off to Canada to escape the war.

Why did they need Helen to get the kid a "ticket" to Canada? Wouldn't it have been easier to drive?

Red Dog

I believe at the time, they probably checked IDs against a list, particularly if wanted by the FBI. My guess is that if you were a ticketed passenger on a flight or train, they simply assumed the name on the ticket matched your identity.

It didn't surprise me at all to see Helen take an interest given that she knew just how close she was to losing JJ and after hearing Beth tell her that JJ wasn't right in the head.

Yes, I believe that Meg was choosing Chris over college by throwing the acceptance letter away. Of course, she still has no idea that he torched the recruitment center.

charlie bucket

Does anyone else think that JJ is trying too hard to get things back to normal by asking Beth to marry him again? I feel like he doesn't really love her anymore. Is he doing it just because he feels like it's the "right" thing to do???

Just a thought.

Jadzia

I probably mis-spoke; I am not surprised that Helen would turn against the war, but my surprise was that they didn't show her making that connection yet. Our first glimmer of Helen being against the war was when she came up and asked to help out the movement; I was just kind of surprised how quickly her character seemed to make that leap. In the past, she hadn't really defended Meg's protesting; I kind of wished the writers had hinted at her questioning the war before this.

Jadzia

I was wondering if that is *why* he is being so persistent. It would probably make it easier for him to date a single mom if her son was off in jail somewhere.

Red Dog

I don't think so. The son is 18 and while Pete ain't no genius, it doesn't take an Einstein to see that Chris is the kind of kid who would be out the door the minute after he graduates HS.

Easy

I don't think so. Pete has a lot of faults but I'm sure he loves his brother's kids and I think he's a pretty good cop so I think he has two reasons:
1. He wants to seperate Meg and Chris.
2. He wants to nail the little scumbag for the arson.
I feel sure he has true feelings for the mom but he's still trying to nail the kid for the fire. Remember he asked the mom for the phone bill with the calls to Boston she was complaining about on the pretext he had a friend in the phone company who could take care of it. The guys in the VW van who had been involved in the arson had returned to Boston. I see a connection and feel sure we'll hear about that phone bill again.

Thanks for mentioning the college acceptance letter. I couldn't figure out what she had thrown away.

Red Dog

Yeah - I was wondering about that. I couldn't remember the Boston connection, but just having the line in there about the $43 in calls to Boston and Pete offering to fix it seemed odd w/o some ulterior motive.

lwhy?

I just kept thinking Sophia Lopez everytime I saw Father Alejandro. I enjoyed the episode. This is a wonderful drama. I wish more people with Neilsen boxes would watch it.

Jadzia

That's a good point. I didn't even think of it, but those guys in Boston are obviously wanted by authorities for the arson charges. Pete is a cop and here he has a chance to track them down with their phone number. I wonder if him cracking a case like this could help get him promoted to Detective or something.