SusanSunflower

This felt like a shift back to center. Teddy, imho, somehow became the more interesting character and I felt like Daniel regained at least parity this episode, although Bad Teddy has some psycho aspects that make me a bit fearful. Screw him for burglarizing Tawney's home while she was at work. Screw him for abandoning the tire store when he knew that his father and Janet were on-the-road. (Both happening BEFORE Bobby Dean's visit and the info he provides). Teddy -- who hasn't been in prison for 20 years -- seems to be having his own problems adjusting to "real life" and change. We've seen Ted as the strong silent and patient type of husband, and now have to wonder how much he has been "putting up with" and resenting all along. I also wonder what Janet might have hoped for at her high school graduation. Did she just want to get married and have kids and a nice home? Her life (and Amantha's) also got frozen by the need to "be there" showing constancy of love and faith while Daniel was on death row. Did she and Ted "have to marry" i.e. was Jared an accident? (even if a happy accident)

oh, I just remembered Leslie coming into the kitchen with two turkey-like or pheasant-like birds ... which surprised me by their size since he had been hunting and they had been eating rather small rabbits (which often don't have a lot of meat on them). I hadn't thought he was "poaching" someone else's livestock, but that in many places, like England or here in Colorado, the right to hunt and kill wild animals is regulated so the greedy don't kill them all, for sport or for food. In the next episode Leslie got arrested for poaching ... (and I left that story after his mom bailed him out after a night in prison -- which he had rather enjoyed). Since they didn't have any money, and there was mention about paying for a lawyer (maybe) or fines (maybe), I wondered how it had been resolved other than by paying compensation to the birds' owner, since Leslie had killed at least two of his turkeys. All sorts of such embarrassments and inconveniences (like Larry's appendectomy) are so much easier when you have m.o.n.e.y. -- but since they had no money I wondered how Leslie was walking around free. What became of his "bad influence" semi-criminal friends he was living with?

The big laugh for me was Louisa being all friendly and sympathetic with Laura about wanting to go back to England and then revealing she meant for Laura to go back to England -- minus Larry -- and Laura's very quick but suppressed outrage and hatred toward Louisa, quickly followed by even deeper hatred and mistrust when Louisa suggested Larry might not be done with his exploratory phase. And Laura is still stuck living in that house with Larry AND Laura until she can arrange her escape. And Louisa utterly unrepentant about trashing this relationship (IRL, wasn't that a marriage, even if a too-young starter marriage?). The accordian was both hokey and exotic -- lame and square -- when I was a kid, but I didn't grow up with polka fests and other celebrations with accordian music as background. Similarly "ethnic" I also considered Mariachi bands hokey and exotic, lame and square (tourist fare) until I discovered they aren't (remotely) considered to be lame in Mexico. I didn't learn to actually enjoy Mariachi music until high school, through my music loving dad, who listened to the Mexican radio stations in the car ... alternating with jazz. Did I miss the end of Louisa's employment with the doctor's wife? I've walked away before the end of several episodes so I'm not sure how the turkey poaching was resolved or how/if the money panic was solved. The doctor's wife's critical POV wrt Louisa has always amused me, although I confess part of my problem with the show is that I really would like to "like" Louisa more and/or find some heroic virtue in her. No.such.luck. Oh, for the person who wondered about Larry's sexuality and the "we"... I think he was talking about "we, men" and no, he was married many times to women. I don't think his seuxality was "closeted" or gay, but ... ya never know.

It's interesting because they all physically changed (not just their characters, the actors) quite a lot over this very short season ... even Gerry stopped being quite so winsome, Larry learned to stand reasonably straight, Leslie stopped wincing, and Margo evolved from a scrunch-faced adolescent into a pretty young woman ... Louisa's looks varied in these last two episodes, sometimes 10 years younger than her "old self", other times strangely thinned, exhausted and older. (Larry's girlfriend, Anna, looked so gorgeously cosmopolitanly dewy, it sort of threw everyone into relief). Did no one mention Louisa (always the self-less mother) warning Anna that she "thought" Larry had not lost his interest in other women ... jesus .. whatta mom.

I don't think we have any timeframe wrt the "offer" so Teddy's livelihood is not in jeopardy and he knows as much as anyone ... the site may not in fact be the one finally selected. As I mentioned earlier, there's no reason the store couldn't relocate to a less "prime/traffic" location. If it's doing return/fleet business, it doesn't need the visibility. It just needs some bays and some hoists In the south, without snow, it likely doesn't even need central heating (I live where winter with snow is 7-8 months long). I think Janet didn't want to be pushed into anything and only wanted to avoid that by not immediately telling Teddy, who is such a worrywart. She would have known he'd be contingency planning and strategizing. I don't think she or Ted want to change anything, but there's no harm in hearing the offer. My guess is that Teddy will declare that this is a "once in a lifetime" chance (which it likely is), and that they should seize it, because $$$$. So, in fact, my guess is that whether they consult him or not he'd be the one pushing for them to go forward (but I may not be remembering everything he said to Tawney at the diner).

The irony was that Sven believed he could swing both ways and/or leave the attraction to men behind (or at least was eager to try) .... while Louisa was telling him what-was-what about his sexuality... because she had already decided that his attraction to men was a deal-breaker (not because she was all free-thinking fashion and "accepted homosexuality") ... She didn't care about what he wanted. She was actually was so horrified it was NOT really up for discussion with him. Like the accordian, which might be as welcome a musical instrument as any in a land without electricity ... yes, a grand piano might be more "pleasing" but it was music. I wonder if it was Louisa's English snobbery towards middle Europeans ... when I was a child they were considered hopelessly old-country and square ... I Remember Mama almost kitch ... now, I'm curious.

Oh, I linked a Daily Mail article (with lots of info on the what became of the family after) early in this show's thread. Nothing amusing unfortunately.

I'm a bit curious about the Sven and Louisa real story too. The whole "born that way" ethos is very modern. Many gay and bisexual men married women and led split lives ... only some were tortured, although their wives often suffered from emotional abandonment and sometime absolute desertion (when they found their one-true-love elsewhere, on the down-low and divorce was out of the question). Louisa could not have "not known" this. Larry may (or may not) have been in-with-the-in-crowd wrt Freud, Jung and Reich, but Louisa most of the time seems much too conventional and dull to be on that libertine cutting edge. I'm almost inclined to think that Louisa may wlel have been much more interesting than the character-as-written. The suggestion that Louisa would reject Sven because she needed her sex and she suspected he'd be bad in bed ... sigh. Personally, my guess is that she discovered "everyone knew" and was laughing at her behind her back ... like Larry and her children ...

It is funny because one of the things -- that I think I'm not alone in liking -- is that they have avoided moving that relationship to a new level, avoiding the so-call "Moonlighting effect" ... maybe it's another "generational" thing ;-) See also Benson/Stabler on L&O: SUV -- eventually, there's only room in this show for one of 'em

just struck me as rather amusing that Amantha is working at the crappy job for low pay and now, reluctantly, living at home... while Daniels is living a barebones existence in a half-way/transition house with an equally going-nowhere job, while Teddy is still working at his apparently very good job at the tire store, living temporarily in Amantha's rental (a generous swap on her part, which he tried to get for cheap) while Tawney is miserably living in the townhome and working her butt of between her unglamorous job at the nursing home and school ... Teddy is still in the catbird's seat, in many ways, the "best off", and he can't see it.

I think -- no, I can't prove it -- that Ted's lack of attachment to the store is because he was an employee (rather than an owner) for all those years, because the store's ability to provide him a steady job and Janet with the house and comfort she is accustomed to, was the fruit of Mr. Holden's connections who got them the state (?) contract for their Fleet of vehicles. (Which was a necessary explanation as to how that tiny tire store in that podunk town, whose lobby is usually empty, can employ Teddy full times for a salary that paid for his townhome and new pickup truck, Tawney's car also new, and the carefully curated interior, etc. etc.) Teddy's apparent affluence** suggested he was well paid. The Holden home is large and beautifully furnished. IMHO, for Ted, it was a job for however good-long-time before Mr. Holden got sick. It's still a money-maker, but nobody asked him what he'd rather be doing. Ted is a very very decent man. He accepts that Janet has not added him as co-owner. He accepted that Janet would not let him exile Daniel even after Daniel assaulted Teddy. We probably won't see much about what's up with Ted., but my guess is that he's in a horrible position. He accepted Janet's grief and depression for years while Daniel was in prison. Now he's out of prison and things are -- miraculously -- worse and there is no "golden ring" or miracle (like Daniel's release) that's going to fix anything. If this were real life, someone should get Janet to a headshrinker and on some anti-depressants. Group therapy and volunteering to follow. She literally has no reason to get out of bed. ** that loan/mortgage he took out to pay for the rim sideline vanished as an issue.

I think it came up with Amantha talking about the interval in which, after Daniel went to prison, her father got sick and died and how Ted was a great support to Janet ... then to how Amantha had little time or use (as a high schooler) for Teddy when they moved in. My impression was that Ted was a long-time acquaintance (and employee although I can't remember anything specific) who helped Janet at the shop by shouldering more responsibility as Mr. Holden got sick and died and then provided emotional support to Janet after he died. I hadn't thought about their their relationship until he so pointed "confessed" to Teddy about being emotionally unfaithful, excessively invested in someone else and very deliberately did not name or identify that person ... it was an "oh, of course, that would be Janet" moment. He didn't name Janet because he didn't want Teddy to blame Janet for his parent's divorce. Janet did the books at the tire shop, so she would have interacted with and leaned on Ted on a nearly-daily basis during Mr. Holden's illness. I don't think either Janet or Ted were "unfaithful" to their spouses and, any romance likely waited until a suitable mourning period had passed. I also wondered ... with subsequent mentions of Janet's past (apparently severe) depression(s?), how bad it got after her husband's death. If she "fell apart" with only Amantha as company -- Daniel in prison -- Amantha's gratitude to (without particular affection for) Ted is explained, imho. Amantha likes Ted well-enough and is grateful for him "begin there" for her mother, but I'm not sure there's a lot of warmth or closeness. Hasve we ever seen her share "what's going on with me" with Ted, her dilemmas about where to live, work, do? There wasn't a particularly long interval encompassing Daniel going to prison, Mr. Holden getting sick and dying, Ted and Teddy as a 12 or so year old moving in, and Amantha as a high schooler, and Jared getting born ... I'm not sure how many years. I can't recall specifics but my impression is that Daniel, in prison, knew and was comfortable with there being a relationship between Ted and his mother. That's all I can tell you. Snippets. Mostly involving Teddy's odd feelings of being not-a-real member of the family. Which came first, the jealousy or the sense of being lesser. How much of it is projection? I don't know. If Janet's relationship to Jared is any indication, Teddy has nothing to complain about, IYKWIM. Plenty of step-kids resent their step-parents. Teddy seems to have been resenting his "lesser" status from the get-go. IDK. eta: I wondered if Teddy's sense of inferiority was his transferring his sense of lack of worth from his mother's abandonment onto Janet and the Holdens. For him, Daniel and Amantha were "important" and he paled in comparison (when in fact -- for Janet in particular -- they were her older children and had been through the significant shared ordeals of Daniel's "wrongful" conviction and the death of their father). Totally reasonable for adolescent Teddy to feel unfairly eclipsed.

I think Teddy is seeing a once in a lifetime pile of money ... it's not for the "business" ... it's for the property and there's no reason the business could not relocate somewhere else, particularly since it's big source of "customers" are state or county contracts that go back to Janet's husband's connections/management. That's part of the issue with the inventory. I'm surprised relocating to a rental shop was't mentioned. Ted and Janet are old enough that they could semi-retire and set Teddy up as proprietor of his own tire shop (with Ted helping out) ... the offer is because it's a good location / setting for a big-box franchise. Teddy either sees them with money to invest in him or with him. Teddy got slapped down pretty hard... it was a non-offer offer, the "deposit" did not guarantee as sale and -- his "friend" who ran the numbers was woefully wrong, and everyone thought he was being an jerk. How can he keep forgetting that Janet really doesn't like that greedy -- seeing dollar signs -- side of him. After the rental rim fiasco, why would anyone trust his business sense? (I still haven't gotten over my younger brother "falling" for an Amway like marketing scheme) I had wondered about the nuclear Ted, Teddy and Margaret household and how much of an improvement in circumstances hooking up with the owner's wife made to Teddy's quality of life and social standing. His dad was previously just an employee, with his little family. The Holden family home is enormous and gorgeous. I'm guessing Teddy moved into a better neighborhood and better schools when that transition occurred. (I do not get a sense he felt guilty about this -- kids can -- but the "my mom doesn't love me enough to care" must have been intense). IMHO, Teddy always believed that Tawney was a throw-away child with no family that he rescued (demonstrating his big heart and humility, because he might have done "better"). Because Teddy reminds me of my younger brother, I also suspect that he could feel superior in 1000 ways to innocent, passive, dumb Tawney. I don't see him very interested in her, her school, her job. He talks about himself, then he lets her talk about herself, your turn, my turn. He says he's glad when it's appropriate, but I get the feeling that for him when the "loving marriage" facade broke, something "magic" was lost and that's not coming back. He's just going through the motions, because he doesn't have any better options (and community property $$$, if any). He knows he's supposed to "fight for" his marriage.... so he can't go wrong doing the "right thing"

yes, I wondered a few weeks ago what became of that wheeling-dealing ambitious Teddy. I have a vague memory of Tawney and him once either planning to leave or actually leaving Paulie for some bigger pond, with little success ... leading to the rims rental sideline ... I think he smelled a big pot of money and all the potential that might mean "for the right individual" with the right advice. His denigration of his dad seems to include a "lack of ambition" and marrying the boss's widow . This suggests some masculinity-insecurity in Teddy (that I don't see in Ted), and reflects in his controlling of Tawney and his perfectionism and witheringly judgmental personality. Again, it was a long time ago, but wasn't it that Ted told Teddy basically that his mother walked-out on them (pretty much never looking back, except when she "wanted something" $$$ only to find out as an adult that she left brokenhearted because she couldn't compete with Janet for Ted's affection and her substance use had spiraled out of control . I can't remember if she voluntarily "walked out" or if Ted "convinced her" i.e. forced her out. These episodes are so dense, I can't even find Teddy's mom mentioned in the synopsis.

IMDB isn't helpful -- Could Roger be Roger Rabbit, iow, Who framed Roger Rabbit? -- absolute guess -- never saw that movie ...

I thought Teddy was crying because he was so terribly lonely -- unfortunately he hates everyone he knows (except maybe Jared). He really exemplifies the "hungry ghost" of Buddhism, insatiably surveying the landscape for what he does not have, finding something else to crave. He might be excited by the possibilities for his dad and Janet to retire or whatever "his share" of this windfall (if any) ... yet he's consumed with premature fear of change and loss. He's the teenager who has already spent this windfall 6 different ways, and it's not even his. I'm not sure what he thinks he wants from Tawney. I think he knows things aren't going to magically go back to how they were, but he's still angry that that illusion of a happy marriage has been "spoiled" and is out of reach -- "if only Tawney would just ...." FWIW, Tawney seems to have lost her sparkle and become dulled (as if it had been longer than days since last season). If Teddy is pacing his/Amantha's apartment like a angry caged animal, I suspect Tawney is crying herself to sleep, feeling like she is being punished. Married but single, and perpetually treated like a child even as she proves she can live independent and make her own choices.

Suspect Teddy's issues with his father's "weakness" are projections of his own self-esteem issue wrt being all grown up but still working for his dad (who's arguably working for his wife at her dead husband's successful tire store) or not. On the other hand Ted seems to chaff at his "impotence" and need to defer to Janet's ownership, so he may have in fact set Janet with Teddy as the "witch" standing in the way of what Teddy thinks should happen, the parents good cop/bad cop, "I'd like to say yes, but your mom..."

Have we ever understood why Teddy so despises his father and considers him "weak" wrt to Janet? Does this go back to Ted tolerating (iirc) Teddy's substance abusing mother? or that Ted emotionally cheated on his mother with Janet? (memory is fuzzy) and then took Teddy and "abandoned her" as far as Teddy knew (only to learn more as an adult). Or is this just Teddy's usual "poor me" belief that everyone lets him down.

do we know who roger is?

Chloe obviously has serious boundary issues and so the whole relationship rings false to me. Daniel is not a teenager ... that was 20 years ago. Chloe isn't a teenager and she is a pregnant (I think) 30-something woman ... she seems too world weary and shopworn to be under 30, for all her ultra-casual affectations. Except maybe for some trust-funder, who is that laid back about letting a stranger into their life? No one I have ever met, certainly not a single woman with a man she hardly knows. I may break my TV if it turns out she reminds Daniel of dear-departed Hanna (whose trust seems to have ended in gang rape and her murder) ... feh. I'm also not really feeling it with Amantha and what's his name ... and I'm not caring. Ugh -- Teddy with Tawny, because Teddy is all about Teddy except when it serves him to demonstrate otherwise. His performance at the "meeting" (and pre-meeting meeting) again ... so presumptuous, entitled, bossy and -- yes -- obviously greedy, covetous -- he's one of those perpetually jealous and dissatisfied with his share. Ugh, spying on his neighbors.

I think it's his ability to suggest an inner life, unique to the character he's playing, which makes him interesting, very interesting ... and that makes him hot.

Yes, I was thinking about first-season Teddy and his exuding-success-driven public persona (and his ambition to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond than his dad achieved or aspired to be) .. part of his control-freak macho dominance of trophy-wife Tawney. Her loyalty to him measured by her submission, particularly publicly, and his world rocked by her obvious interest in and sympathy for loser-excon-Daniel. What would people think? He's really been knocked down to size (and then some).

You can't really get angry at someone as depressed as Janet ... Sorry. I wasn't specific. It's very frustrating to be in marriage when your partner is not-gonna-bother to get-out-of-bed-today depressed, hiding on the landing, going back to bed, to avoid breakfast socializing (am I remembering correctly?)

Some people really really like shows that they have to (get to) watch 3 times to fully appreciate ... I like shows worth re-watching, but I don't like feeling so confused and disoriented that I have to watch a second time, and then a third time to make sure that my impression (after the second watching) was accurate ... I feel like the show is demanding to much from me, particularly (I'm talking to You Mark Gattis) when I feel like ambiguities and confusions may be deliberate cognitive "cliff-hangers" of nonlinear narrative variety. I'm there for the story ... sometimes I can be partially mollified by great or fun acting and gorgeous production values, but in the end, I know if I got a decent story or not.

Hard to know if Teddy could have realized in therapy just how his insane "sibling rivalry" with Daniel was responsible for destroying his marriage (granted it just "tipped" the balance) and by extension upsetting the balance in his Dad's happy second marriage as well, when events led to a "don't make me chose" moment for both Janet and Big Ted (Daniel's assault) and Ted banishing Daniel. -- all preceded by Teddy's territorial hostility and menace toward Daniel. Teddy was chip off the old block, in the cat birds' seat, wanting to do big things and even leave Paulie for bigger things. It's normal enough to get jealous ... Jealousy of dead siblings you've never known is not uncommon. Then you get over it. Teddy had the world on a string, and Daniel had nothing and now has less. What AA calls "stinking thinking" ... that roiling indugence of resentment and "poor me" that is the beginning of a slippery slope to bad act. Ted and Janet are both unhappy, as is their marriage ... Teddy'd rather not be a witness, let Amantha be a dutiful daughter ... she's innocent. Both Teds doubtless thought it would be so nice if things could go back to how they were ... before. I'd guess Ted Sr. is probably frustrated as hell that Janet can't just accept things, her baby is out of jail, starting a new life ... nothing to be miserable about.