kili

Sophie was coming from Berlin where she was working. That's a long flight.

As others have pointed out, laws dictate how long drycleaners must keep your clothes and that they can dispose of your unclaimed clothes as they wish (just like how those storage places can auction off the contents of your locker if you stop paying). They can't be required to keep abandoned stuff forever. Given this drycleaner is in a resort town with a big winery venue (and it is not the only winery in the area), I could see people coming to town for a wedding with just such garments, getting them dry-cleaned after the big event and forgetting to pick them up (and it not be worth it to drive/fly back to get them). This might even not be the first person who has had to grab a last minute dress or perhaps the owner keeps the nicer stuff to sell at consignment stores.

Every time I've lost my luggage, the airline has delivered my luggage to my hotel even if the hotel is in a different city than the airport. I assumed she reported it as missing and this is what the airline delivered to the resort. You fill out a description of the luggage (brand, colour, size, flights) and they try to find it. If she was coming from Berlin via New York, she would have cleared customs and immigration in New York. At that time, she could have noticed her bags were missing (rules are forever changing, but you sometimes have to retrieve your bag and then recheck it in your first port of entry) or she could have reported it missing at her local airport. Quick or changing connections are usually what send my luggage on a different vacation than me. Pink floofy bag owner is hopefully at home wondering when their luggage will arrive. If they are on vacation moving about, good luck. As for why she packed her clothes - perhaps she used her carry-on allotment for a breakable wedding present and her laptop.

Although Rebecca's condition in this episode was...not great...they did mention that she had just started mistaking Kevin for Jack in the last couple of days. Maybe she had been doing okay and then all the disruption to her schedule, the excitement of the wedding and the stress of the performance through her out of whack? If I'm being charitable, she wanted to perform at the wedding and all was going well (music tends to help Alzheimer patients), but her turn for the worse had everybody second guessing that? Still, they did say that she had reached the point where people should stop correcting her because it just leads to her being distressed. Nicky and Edie are such a great couple. It's amazing how the actors have made them believable in the few scenes they've had to do it in. Nicky has ended up being a calming and supporting presence in the family. I think Sophie's concerned looks at Kevin was because she knew about all the problems Kevin was having mentally with Rebecca mistaking him for Jack. As a nurse, she probably had some experience with late stage Alzheimer patients. I wonder if Kevin and Miguel looked so devastated because Rebecca tried to sleep in "Jack's" room the night before the wedding. Perhaps Sophie helped them guide her back to her correct room. If Phillip was helping Rebecca practice for the last year, does that mean she still lives in LA and the family compound is empty? It's nice to see that Cassidy is smiling again. It was a warm smile. In the current time, she rarely smiles and when she does, it's usually a grim or brittle smile. Such a great way to show us she is healing without having to tell us.

I think the marriage was over when she got to the top of the hill. That was her real turning point. Toby was no longer the Toby she fell in love with and she was no longer the woman that Toby fell in love with. They were both married broken people who grew during the marriage. Kate didn't work as hard at the marriage because, for her, it was already over. She may not have realized it, but it's obvious she was. I almost suspect that Toby was over it too. He just didn't want to start over again. He was in love with being married and not with Kate. Toby was so happy at his job and his fit life-style. He loves his kids. Where does he say he still loves Kate? Everything he says about her is negative (except when faking it for the therapist). Maybe he's right, but if he has nothing positive to say about her, why stay married? If Kate had quit her job and left behind her family/friends to move to SF, it's entirely possible that she would have been just as bitter as Toby was about having to leave SF. Would she snipe rude things about his job at the kid's birthday party when he glowed as he said how happy he was with his job like he did in this episode? Probably. Would he end up having to self-edit himself to a "fine" when asked about his day at work at their "parent date night" like Kate did at their actual one because she knew if she said "it was wonderful, we did blah-blah-blah" she knew he'd get bitter? Probably. Would he have been late to the sessions because he had to take another work call? If work calls interrupted picking up Kate, having sex with Kate and trying to convince Kate to move to SF...Yes. So, either way they were doomed. They didn't love each other anymore because the broken person they married was dead. Toby even mentioned it was the last time he would kiss "his wife". Not Kate. "his wife". Toby was working to save his marriage, not his relationship with Kate. Kate now has a healthier relationship with her dead Dad. When Toby met Kate, she was still watching football with her dead Dad. She couldn't get a dog because her dog was the reason her Dad was dead. Their entire wedding was about her dad (it was at his cabin, the urn was meant to be beside the guest book, she was going to sew his old shirt to her dress and freaked out that it wasn't there, she tried to serve his favourite ice cream at the wedding, she freaked out when all her Jack plans were falling apart and ran off, and she hallucinated him. Her entire pregnancy was about her Dad because she needed a baby to carry a piece of him on (her dad, not her husband). Then she had baby Jack and he had a disability and that was FINALLY the kick in the butt she needed to move on from dad Jack. She couldn't be the little girl he held in the pool and protected her from all. She needed to be the adult and do the protecting and nurturing. Toby was lost. He couldn't deal with baby Jack's disability and felt like he was left out in the cold because Kate was changing as she was just dealing with it. That was the kick in the butt he needed to stop being a man-child and start to grow up. He started taking care of his health and when he got fired, he got a new, better job he loved. He wasn't the class clown anymore and started dressing better. They both grew. They were no longer the people they married. Kate's second marriage will work because Phillip is marrying a fully grown Kate who still loves her father, but whose life does not revolve around him. Phillip has known Kate for at least two or three years before the bar scene with Toby and has no clue how important football is to Kate because it isn't important to Kate anymore. Kate has found her own things to be important in her life.

I don't think Kate was ever Kate Damon. She appears to have kept her maiden name. When she signed the police report when Rebecca had an episode and ended up lost from the cabin, she signed the report "Kate Pearson". Jack's name is Jack Pearson Damon. It's possible she won't take Phillip's last name either.

There maybe no filter, but they can do it with CGI. That's what they did to get "skinny Steve" in "Captain America", "starving Tony Stark" in "Endgame and tortured Peeta in "The Hunger Games". It's not healthy to yo-yo people's weight so they don't ask actors to do unhealthy weight loss anymore for roles. Some method actors still do it, though. 2020-2022 has taught me that a not insignificant number of people might go to them for advice.

Pet Peeve: If college professors can be replaced by a book, they should be replaced by a book and the course fees adjusted accordingly (and I used differential equations as an example because we did have to learn from the book our prof was so bad and then he raged at us for being mean when we filled out our course evaluations - all he ever did were the examples from the book and if you asked a question - he told us to read the book. Useless). And some people are natural teachers and some teachers who have gone through all the school couldn't teach a duck to swim. Kate's a natural teacher. It happens. Just like some profs can actually teach. This year, one of my relatives ended up with a useless prof so he ended up auditing another class with a great teacher. When the university went in-class starting in Feb, his assigned class was empty, but people were sitting on the steps in the class with the good teacher. The good teacher was totally confused as to how his class was so over-subscribed and concerned how they could write exams. The auditors just went back to their usual class to sit exams. I totally find it believable that somebody could be a natural teacher because I've seen it in action. Is it a little suspicious that the Pearsons (except for Kevin) are naturals at everything? Totally.

Ironically, college/university professors don't go to teaching school. Get a PhD and do some decent research and you too could teach the next generation how to do differential equations. Some profs are actually good at teaching. Some are not. One of the local universities had a scandal when one of their profs in the education department was such a bad teacher, students asked to switch teachers and she publicly doxed them in revenge. Then all the details about her horrible teaching style came out and it was pretty impressive how bad she was. The show tells us Kate is good at teaching/connecting with students, so I guess it's true. Just like how Jack was a natural at home design without going to architect school and Randall is a natural at everything. Kevin appears to be the only Pearson who required a decade of acting classes and lesser roles before becoming a jokey success in his chosen field as "The Nanny".

Piano. Earlier this season, in the episode "Heart and Soul" we learn that one thing Rebecca and Kate have always connected with is the piano. Rebecca first taught Kate to play and by the end of the episode starts to teach Jack. Back in season 4, Randall has a mystery present for Kate and by the end, we learn he has paid to ship his mother's old piano to her (the one that Miguel bought, not the one that burnt up in the fire - there was a limit to what Jack could carry out of that house). The garage studio from "Clouds" last year also featured Kate playing keyboard (and later playing with young Jack).

And Toby will cut down working extra hours so that she can do her homework? When the SF job first came up, I was all in favour of Kate moving. Now that Toby has made it clear that his job comes first before anybody, I'm not in favour of Kate uprooting her life. The scraps of time he's willing to dole out to his family means he's moved on. If he can't put down the phone for one Saturday when he's trying to convince her to move, how much worse will he be when Kate is stuck in SF?

If it is a miracle that she got the teaching job with no credentials in LA why will there be plenty of jobs at special needs schools in San Francisco? Sometimes one gets lucky and somebody gets to know you and takes a chance on you like what happened with her current job. She might not be able to count on that luck twice. Maybe if she gets Sheila's job and gets a few years of experience she can transfer those credentials to SF schools. If we are being real, she's not going to get the same kind of job she loves in SF. Toby isn't going to cut back to normal work hours and stop being the Work Hero so that he can be more at home and she can go to school to get the credentials. So, moving to SF means Kate giving up her career dreams until the kids are out of the house while Toby is more married to his job than her.

I'm not saying that people who work outside of the home value work over family. It's the context that matters. They had just finished agreeing that they were getting by (just not saving) with Kate's current job (past investments helped?), but he felt compelled to take the job in San Francisco, away from his family, because he needed the validation of work. He has proceeded to put the company first by working on weekends and evenings. On the weekend that he is trying to convince his wife to move to SF, he doesn't pick her up from the airport (she is arriving at what should have been after work), he pencils in twenty minutes for sex before taking another work call, he takes work calls while touring her around the city and takes her to a work party. That's four work intrusions into family time in less than 24 hours when he is trying to convince her to throw away everything she has worked for and built in LA and move to another city where she knows nobody. It is unlikely he would work less when the family gets up there. While some jobs do take a lot of effort, unless you are barely making ends meet, you are absolutely choosing work/money over family if your work/life balance is as skewed as Toby's. If it is a short-term thing - fine. If it goes on for months and is part of the position, then Toby is making a choice. Surely there is a less demanding job that Toby could do that will allow them to make ends meet and Toby could see his kids once and a while. There is. It's in LA. Toby works long hours, spends hours at the gym, goes for daily 5 km jogs, and has numerous work parties to attend. That doesn't leave a lot of time for Kate or the kids. And until Kate rebuilds a support system in SF, she won't have any downtime (while he gets his gym, jogs, work parties and validation from work - in the past, he lied about working to get the gym/jog free time, so we have no evidence he will cut down on those). I'm not saying Toby is a bad guy - I'm just saying he's so blinded by getting everything he ever wanted, that he's not noticing he's demanding his wife gives of everything just as she too was finally finding herself. Both could compromise more, but I think that Toby could find a fulfilling job in LA if he just gives it a bit of time. It's not like she's demanding they live in a one-horse company town.

He's come pretty close. This is what he said in the finale: "I want to go back to work, Kate. I need to... emotionally, mentally. Staying at home is just... All right, I love our children, but..." If Kate won the lottery and money was no longer a concern, Toby still wouldn't want to be a SAHD. He needs to work. This job gives him such positive feedback, that he's working all the time. He doesn't want the LA job because he loves the positive feedback of his current job. That's great that he loves his job. Everybody should love their jobs. He should strive for a better work/life balance, though. Kate also loves her job and gets lots of positive feedback too. One of them has to give up their currently happy position for the other or continue to live apart. Unfortunately, as the couple has grown apart, neither wants to sacrifice their happiness for a marriage that is already circling the drain. I think that this marriage has passed the tipping point. If either quits their dream job to move to the other location, the marriage is still likely to fail because the underlying issues will still be there. So, they can keep their dream jobs and living close to their support systems, but their marriage will be doomed OR one of them can give up their dream job, move to a different city, hold down the homefront while their spouse works all the time and still have the marriage fail.

Slab-on-grade is popular in Southern areas where one doesn't have to worry about frost. It was also thought they make houses more stable during earthquakes. Pipes in ceilings are not unusual in LA. I don't live in LA, but it is so common here that it seemed natural to me for there to be pipes in the ceiling. They always had issues. Kate and Toby really started pulling apart when Jack was born. Kate pulled up her socks and decided to make the best life she could for her son. Toby had trouble adjusting and that made him feel guilty. He pulled away from Kate and Jack because he couldn't deal with Jack's disability and he didn't want to face that he couldn't deal. Should Kate have noticed and got him into therapy? Perhaps, but she was dealing with a lot on her own already. Toby is an adult and can put his own self into therapy as well. One of the ways that Toby dealt with the feeling of helplessness was throwing himself into getting fit. He couldn't control Jack's disability, but he could hyper-control himself. Getting fit is always a good idea, but it does create issues when you are using it as an avoidance mechanism. If you are going to the gym for two hours everyday so that you don't have to go home and face the fact that you have a disabled child, that's not mentally healthy for you, your child or your spouse. Kate was hurt by his weight loss not only because he succeeded where she failed, but he kept it a secret and he was spending long hours out of the house to do it. She's at home trying to learn how to parent a disabled child while he's spending several hours doing something for himself. Where was her two hours every day where she got to do nothing but something for herself? And why was he avoiding coming home? Now, Toby is working very hard to support his family which is a good thing, but he's taken it too far again. When you need to schedule sex into the twenty minutes between weekend work-calls, you are probably working too hard. If he's buying a house in SF which is subject to a bidding war, then he's making a LOT of money. Maybe make slightly less money and put the phone down and be present. Sure, Toby could be focusing on vices instead of virtues, but even virtues can be taken too far.