So between the fake cast, the Real Blood, and her stitched-up lip, all of which are completely making her day, Fiona is no match for her well-meaning teacher, who assumes -- especially once she explains excitedly about how all of these procedures were done at home -- that something truly dreadful is going on at home. Of course, there is something dreadful going on at home, but not this particular thing he thinks. Thank God they sent Gracie to the special school, or else he could just take one look at her hooded living-bummer eyes and assume they were being kept in cardboard boxes labeled Sylvia Likens & A Boy Called It.

Teach calls Kevin with a quickness, and he gets very itchy and sounds, if rational, a bit on the defensive. Which is exactly what you would be, if somebody called about your daughter's fake broken arm and asked for a sensible explanation. She wanted the cast for Show & Tell, her mother is in fact a nurse, and how about we all sit down for a confab before anybody starts throwing government-agency words around. Firstly, that's good, because my reaction would have been to laugh weirdly and then start talking in a crazy British accent, because horrible possibilities are way worse than horrible certainties and I'm only good under certain kinds of stress. But honestly, you would think that being Fiona's teacher you would've at least learned the basics of Fiona, which is: Whatever the weirdest most morbid reasoning might be, bingo that's your answer.

Lots going on in this episode. For an act-break it's fairly nice, the busy-bee calm before whatever storm is coming, but frankly it's the power of the guest stars and not their roles that makes the difference here. Because all I'm getting from where I'm sitting is a rather hackneyed Patients Are People Too sort of parallel structure, in which both major cases exist to make a point that doesn't really need to be made. And in pursuit of that, you have one story that works -- by relating to the actual people of the show, namely Jackie -- and one story that works only because Harvey Fierstein is a national treasure, but gets there by pulling out every single hoary cliché in the book to do so, from Terms Of Endearment screeching to the kind of strident morality you'd expect from a Hallmark Hall Of Fame Blue Ribbon Special Presentation. Nobody even really does anything bad or inexplicable to him, but there's not a moment he's not squealing like Ronald Reagan himself just threw Ed Koch at his head.