Bubbles

He works one day a year. All the children of the world should miss Christmas because Santa has the sniffles? Suck it up, do your job and then enjoy your 364 day vacation.

Really annoyed with Regina's change of heart but pretty much expected it after the childhood abuse reveal. Women on TV are rarely allowed to not want kids simply because they don't want them, it has to be because they're broken in some way that can later get fixed to allow them to accept their lady destiny. That, or they get knocked up accidentally and just accept it like they have no options. The PJ stuff was all way too melodramatic, and the "the hair wasn't Jon's" twist was ridiculously obvious.

I thought the resolution between Sutton and Richard was overly simplistic and cutesy. As a board member he likely has a fiduciary duty, so there may very well be things she tells him about work that he can't ethically just pretend not to know. Jane and Pinstripe have good chemistry, but I hate the "reformed player" trope so much. Also, I call shenanigans on him being Mr. Perfect Boyfriend. Relationship skills take some practice, and dude was a player until like five minutes ago.

Not really an other role per se, but Yanic Truesdale is one of the panelists on Canada Reads this year. For the non-Canadians, Canada Reads is an annual "battle of the books" on the radio in which five Canadian celebrities each champion a book by a Canadian author. Over the course of a week they debate the books and each day they vote to eliminate one until one book is declared the winner.

The narrator at the beginning says that it's the day before Christmas, and the whole story takes place that same day. He refers to the snow as "Christmas snow" in that same intro, so it's clearly meant to be broader than just Christmas Day. Karen gets on the train saying her Mom probably won't mind as long as she's home by Christmas, and the animals in the forest are waiting for Santa to come, which also points to Christmas Eve.

According to TVLine we'll be getting more of Richard's backstory and family next season. I'm not sure why they think anyone is clamouring for that.

And of course Jacqueline was also Jan on The Office.

The part I found most unrealistic about it in this episode was that a band of 20-something dude-bros knew how to play that song. I'm really not a fan of where they're going with Pinstripe. The whole "cad reformed by the love of a good woman" trope is so tired and toxic. It was so refreshing earlier in the season when Jane acknowledged that going back to Pinstripe was pointless even though they had great chemistry because they weren't looking for the same thing, but now they seem pretty intent on undoing that. I don't know, I feel like last season the show did a better job in general of steering around the obvious tropes and cliches. Athough, points for not going down the road of having one of the explicit photos Kat was showing off to the girls at the start of the episode accidentally wind up on the new Scarlet site.

As others have said, I guess it's just as well that Jane is back at Scarlet because we all knew it would happen, but I'm kind of disappointed that they didn't address the award in that at all. You'd think Jane would have at least considered the possibility that it was a cynical move by Scarlet to get the award-winning writer back on staff to better capitalize on the win. She also didn't seem to give much thought to other doors the award could open, even after seeing the boost she got just from the nomination. The show rushed from her struggling as a freelancer to doing well almost overnight, and I wish they had taken a bit more time to establish that in the end she's coming back because she wants to, not because she needs to.

You mean like the science that shows that a single-minded emphasis on weight as the most important determinant of health tends to result in worse health outcomes for fat people, and that programs that focus on taking steps to be healthier regardless of size can actually be more effective for weight loss than those where weight loss is the primary goal? I watched the episode a while ago and don't really remember the specifics of their conversation, but it came across to me as pretty much "I'm a huge supporter of body positivity when it means telling thin white women to accept their tiny imperfections but I draw the line at telling fat people they shouldn't hate themselves".

I assume it's a budget issue. By keeping everyone separate it's easier to mix and match which fraction of the main cast is in each episode. But yeah, it's weird to be keeping everyone apart in the final stretch of episodes. I had kind of assumed they'd reunite Gunnar and Scarlett in the end but I don't see how that's possible when they're never in the same room.

I think the storyline with the new board member has potential. I'm intrigued by the idea of Jacqueline, a powerful woman who legitimately supports and empowers other women, having to deal with someone who pays lip service to "girl power" and "women looking out for each other" while actually acting in kind of backstabby and anti-feminist ways. It's also nice that they're giving Jacqueline something to do other than be the ridiculously perfect boss.

That kid is also old enough that I have a hard time understanding why the idea of him testifying at a custody hearing was a complete nonstarter for her without even having a conversation with him about it. He clearly doesn't like spending time with his dad and feels like he has no control over his situation, so he might welcome the opportunity to have his feelings taken into consideration.

Juliette's storyline felt really disjointed. Last time we saw her she was fully indoctrinated into the cult and telling Avery she didn't want to see him anymore, and this episode started with her criticizing the leadership and wanting to leave. We're clearly supposed to infer that realizing she was pregnant changed her outlook on the situation, but I wish they had actually taken the time to show us that. And the pregnancy makes it pretty clear she and Avery are endgame- it's the only conceivable way Avery could possibly come back to her in the time remaining. The cast feels less cohesive in general this season. Characters have always had their own arcs, individually or in small groups, but there used to be way more cross-over interaction, like at the Bluebird or the Highway 65 office. Scarlett is pretty much entirely off on her own, and there are fairly distinct groupings of Will-Avery-Gunnar and Deacon-Maddie-Daphne with very little mixing happening otherwise.

I didn't mind Dove Cameron so much before this episode because I thought Ruby was supposed to be flat and robotic, but man, her performance tonight was painful.