Back in Putnam, Samantha faces off with her parents. Mr. Cavanaugh is angry that Samantha is falling for someone like Kelley, while Mrs. Cavanaugh is upset to find out that Samantha didn't tell them about her next appointment with Dr. Falco. Samantha refuses to see Dr. Falco and storms out of the house.

Mr. Cavanaugh stops by Kelley's room to ask about Samantha, but Kelley offers no information regarding her whereabouts.

Later, Kelley finds Samantha at her favorite spot by the river. Samantha challenges Kelley to a race, and sprints through the forest until finally collapsing on the ground, clutching her knee and crying. Kelley carries Samantha home and she is taken to a hospital, where a doctor identifies her disease as osteosarcoma, which has spread to her liver.

Before Kelley and Samantha get back to Putnam, this clip begins with a revealing shot depicting the lovers next to each other on the Greyhound, Samantha looking at Kelley while he gazes sulkily in the other direction. In a film as artistic as Here On Earth, silence can say it all. In this case, the silence says that this movie is such a rip-off of Love Story, even the characters have seen it too many times; obviously, Kelley has taken the line "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry" to heart, and as usual, doesn't feel the need to apologize for involving Samantha in his embarrassing family drama (especially when she had no pants on).

Samantha's fight with her parents represents her big opportunity to defend her relationship with Kelley. Notably, Samantha opts not to argue Kelley's virtues, but angrily insists that her parents simply don't know Kelley well enough to say he's a bad guy. To be sure, the information available to Mr. and Mrs. Cavanaugh includes the following:

• A Rallston boy impregnated and abandoned their other daughter, Jen
• Kelley blew up Mable's Table and insulted Mr. Cavanaugh immediately afterward
• Yesterday, Kelley kidnapped and deflowered Samantha

Nevertheless, after her father predicts that Kelley will disappear at the end of the summer, Samantha insists, "Maybe he's different... Maybe he loves me!" She is saved from elaborating on this unlikely scenario when Mrs. Cavanaugh brings up Samantha's appointment with Dr. Falco. Perhaps as further proof of their closeness, Samantha exhibits Kelley-like behavior when she deals with her problems by hastily vacating the premises.

As a concerned parent, it is only natural that Mr. Cavanaugh is able to set aside his differences with Kelley and civilly ask for help in locating his lost daughter. As a character who has allegedly done some maturing over the summer, however, it is rather surprising that Kelley can't be bothered to keep Samantha's dad in the loop when he knows exactly where she is. Of course, Kelley's silence is in sharp contrast to Samantha's deep thoughts:

Maybe we go through life collecting people and places we love, and they become in our heaven. And that's where your mom is, she's in her heaven surrounded by everything that she loves... including you.

Initially, these statements seem to contain an intriguing set of revelations: (1) Kelley has been dead this whole time, (2) Samantha is actually his mother, and (3) Here On Earth is a groundbreaking cross between The Sixth Sense and Oedipus Rex. As it turns out, however, the most shocking disclosure in this scene is the fact that Samantha believes she's going anywhere near heaven when she bites the dust.

-- Leelee Sobieski about to fire her dialect coach