Chicken Wing

Part of the contract when Pat Robertson sold the original Family Channel. Apparently it's ironclad, they can't get rid of it.

It's almost kind of silly how this whole case, this whole misunderstanding could have been cleared up in five minutes if the girls had just had one conversation, if Kate had told the truth from the start about where exactly she saw Jeanette. The bike thing would have come out immediately. But since Kate couldn't say where she saw Jeanette without revealing the truth about where she herself was, I guess the only way this was ever going to happen was if her own story had gotten busted and she had no choice but to admit being in the living room.

It was June 21, 1994. I too wonder who called the cops to Martin's house, because I agree it seems unlikely it was Jeanette. On the one hand, if she wanted to do the right thing, calling an anonymous tip would avoid her having to admit that she found out by breaking into the man's house. On the other hand, her scared reaction in the first episode when she learned that Kate had been found alive didn't seem like that of a person who had initiated that rescue. I'm glad we got some explanations for things, though. Jeanette's reaction, for one. Now it makes sense why she seemed scared. She did know Kate was there, after all. She didn't see her, but she's terrified that maybe Kate found out that she had been there. Also, the single gunshot vs the media saying Martin was killed in a shootout. Since when does a shootout involving police have just one shot? I'm glad they addressed that and said the media just assumed that's what happened because he'd been shot and police were there. (Although realistically, I think that initial media report would have been cleared up by the police pretty straight away, but whatever, tv.)

Also, I'm not quite sure how the show expects me to feel about Jeanette getting back with the boy who punched her in the face.

Well played, show. Well played. Jeanette was right. She didn't see her that night ... but she did find out she was there. And she looked damn gleeful about it. She is a nutcase, isn't she? Love it.

Boom.

His tombstone said he was born in 1963 so he was 30 at the time, just turned 31 when he was killed.

Quick Wikipedia search -- he did four months for statutory rape. The actual legality of their relationship was never really in question. Everyone knew that it was illegal for this adult man to have sex with the teenage girl, and he rightfully did time for it. But Amy Fisher still got saddled with the "slutty other woman" label even though she was a victim of a predator. At any rate, I bring up the Amy Fisher situation just because this happened around the same time as the events of this story (early 1990s), and so I'm trying to remember what the prevailing attitudes about women and rape and consent were for that time. Buttafuoco was held accountable by the law, but Fisher was by and large not exactly treated as the preyed-upon victim of a sexual predator. At most, people sympathized with her as a troubled young girl who got involved in the wrong kind of relationship and made bad decisions -- the key being, she made her own decisions, had her own agency in the situation when the reality is that, because he was far from being her equal, she didn't. But people didn't really think about it that way and that may have been just how the attitudes were around consent for the time (and even now). Even though 16 and 17 are still below the age of consent in many states, some people kind of view that age as "old enough" to know better and know what they're doing, and therefore they still hold them responsible for their decisions even though they know that, technically, the law says they aren't. No one ever questions the culpability of a predator who takes advantage of an 11- or 12-year-old. That is a straight-up child. But a 16- or 17-year-old? The law says this is still a minor who can't give consent to an adult, but people view them differently. People think these minors are old enough to know what they're doing and it's only wrong because the law simply says it is. They don't view them as victims as easily as they do the 12-year-old. And (bringing the conversation back on topic) from what some have seen on other boards, it looks like people see 16-year-old Kate in this show in that same light -- a minor who is an old enough minor to know what she's doing and be in charge of her own decisions and therefore is a victim only of her own bad judgment.

But what was the attitude/understanding of consent between parties of unequal status? Was it understood that a relationship between a 30-year-old and an underage teenager was rape even if the teenager believed it to be a consensual romance, or did people still subscribe to the idea that rape was only when someone physically forced themselves on you while you kicked and screamed? Someone brought up Amy Fisher earlier in this thread or one of the other episode threads. That happened maybe the year before this story first takes place. Amy Fisher was underage, 17 I think, when she got into a relationship with grown-ass Joey Buttafuoco. People rarely talk about that as a rape situation, as a situation in which Buttafuoco took advantage of a minor who was not legally able to consent to a physical relationship with him. Fisher was branded as some kind of teenage hussy for screwing an older, married man. She kind of still carries that label with some people, I'm sure. And Buttafuoco went down in infamy much more for his role in manipulating Fisher into carrying out a plan to shoot his wife -- not that this part didn't deserve the bulk of the attention -- than about the fact that he manipulated an underage girl into sleeping with him. It was rape. But even by this time, this type of "relationship" still wasn't really considered that way in the public consciousness, even though the letter of the law said it was. People still only thought of rape as sex or a sexual act being forced on you even when you said no.

Well then someone needs to teach that girl about maximizing her luggage space. Why on earth would you pack a party dress and dress shoes to run away from home? (I say this as if there's supposed to be a logical reason instead of the wardrobe and props people just reusing whatever was already on the set.) It still begs to wonder if he bought her other clothes, though. Never leaving the house or not, it's unlikely she packed enough clothes to cycle through for a period of four months, although I guess it's not implausible to wear the same four or five outfits on repeat for months on end. And then there's the matter of toiletries. It's a pretty small town and for some reason everyone knows each other. It would have stood out if this supposedly single man was repeatedly buying feminine hygiene products.

Yes, for a criminal case you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the person had to have done the thing they are accused of. If defamation were a criminal case for some reason it would probably never even make it to trial -- there's no "there" there to either girl's arguments from a purely legal and evidentiary standpoint. It's pretty much a literal she said/she said. But this is a civil case, and here you only need to have a preponderance of evidence that the person simply more likely than not did the thing. Jeanette only needs to bring evidence that it is more likely than not that Kate is lying about her and the false accusation did harm to her reputation/livelihood/whatever. If Jeanette comes out with good proof of all the other things Kate lied about, it helps tip the scale for the jury that it's more likely than not that she is also lying about this. In a perfect world, the easiest way to prove that someone is lying when they said that you were present somewhere would be to prove that you in fact were not there. Obviously Jeanette can't use that, because she was there. She went there multiple times, including the night that Kate claims she saw her. Hard to prove that Kate is lying that she saw her if she was in fact there. With that off the table, Jeanette's only recourse to prove that Kate is lying is to simply prove that Kate is a liar.

Okay, so I rewatched the scene where Jeanette flees the house and Kate watches her leave. These kinds of shows, you really need to watch each episode at least twice to catch all the hints. I totally missed it the first time, but I think I found a major clue that might be It. I will put this in spoilers. The first part of what I'm about to say is just recapping what I more clearly saw after watching the scene again. The latter part is the light bulb that went off as to what is possibly The Answer -- pure speculation, but I will hide it in spoiler tags anyway.

Another thing that we still don't know that may or may not come up in the end and may or may not be important: I don't think we know how Martin ultimately got caught, how the police wound up descending on his house and rescuing Kate.

It was good that these scenes were interspersed with Kate’s therapist providing Cliffs Notes explanations for everything Kate was revealing/we were seeing — breaking down how this moment was Martin grooming her, this feeling was actually manipulated, this decision she thinks was her own was actually forced. I’m sure the younger audience gets the point of the overall story, but some of these scenes taken independently might not resonate with the appropriate understanding for more impressionable viewers who might miss some of the nuances of the predatory behavior. I hope the therapist explaining it all helps make things crystal clear.

I suppose. I mean, the argument isn't (or at least shouldn't be) necessarily about Kate not being a victim. The chatroom logs proving that Kate went to Martin's house willingly ... Kate living in the house and wandering around unguarded even while Martin was out... These all contradict Kate's statements to the police. If she is lying about what exactly happened to her, why should people assume she isn't also lying about Jeanette seeing her? I guess that's the case, but it runs the serious risk of discrediting Kate's entire experience as someone who was in fact held captive and victimized by Martin Harris. Kate lied about how she ended up at the house (do we know what she told the police/her parents about how she wound up there?) and how long she was actually held in the basement, but she did end up held in the basement. Martin did end up locking her in there and wouldn't let her leave. (And that's not even to talk about how none of her above-basement experience at the house was really consensual either.) If Jeanette isn't careful, this could end up with Kate being accused of literally making the whole thing up altogether, and timeline of events aside, she wasn't. Jeanette's case needs to be more "Kate lied about things, believe me when I say she's lying about me" and less "Kate wasn't really a victim, she lived there willingly and could have left anytime but didn't." But putting forth the truth about the things Kate lied about runs the risk of creating that second narrative whether they mean to or not.

But is it a defense for Jeanette? Kate actually being inside the main house and not in the basement as she claimed she was held all the time doesn't actually answer the question of whether or not Jeanette saw her in the house and failed to report it, and that's what's at stake in the Kate vs. Jeanette thing. Really all this revelation does is impugn Kate's testimony about what she says happened to her. Is Jeanette's defense really going to be about discrediting Kate's claim about being a victim, that she was not "trapped" and she could have walked out of that house anytime she wanted? Is that really how Jeanette and/or her lawyer want to prove Kate as a liar? That could serious bite her in the butt. And the thing is, Kate being upstairs in the house and not in the basement doesn't discount her being held there against her will.

Yes, I think this is correct. When he left that morning he told her he assumed she would walk to school by herself, and when he came home that evening after being confronted by Joy Wallis he was angry that she didn't leave his house like he thought, and she probably said, she would. Just part of what makes him so manipulative, really. Just about every one of their interactions is laden with subtle impropriety from an adult authority figure to a minor child, but every now and then he sprinkles in some normal, "responsible" adult responses that would make Kate think that he can't possibly be up to no good, then he's perfectly normal. Like when he told her that she really should call him Mr. Harris and not Martin ... at least when they're in school. And then pouring her a scotch and then "remembering" that she's underage and she shouldn't drink that ... but then immediately agreeing to play a drinking game with her. And pointing out correctly that it would look very bad if people found out that she stayed at his house last night and all day ... but especially bad for him, and does she want him to get in trouble? Creepy AF. Another interesting thing about this show is how all of Martin's behavior is very calculated and also not. Yes, he is grooming her, had been since the moment they met. He wanted to manipulate her into trusting him as a confidante, a friend, to make her come to him. And, of course, she did, in the end. But did he always intend for her to come willingly to his doorstep looking for a place to stay? If she hadn't, would he have grabbed her off the street, or manipulated her into going to his house and trapped her then? I don't know. As it happened, she just came to him, showed up at his house. And then he thought she would leave in the morning, but she didn't. And he told her to leave that night, and she wouldn't. And then it was like, he's got her, he was after her and he caught her and she's still here, still caught, staying caught, and he couldn't let her go. It was all on purpose, all predatory, all clearly a trap but also so subtle and seemingly coincidental that Kate couldn't possibly have even realized that she was in a snare the whole time.

This episode was creepy AF and probably also the best one of the season. I felt like I needed a shower the entire time. This show has been really interesting in holding back how Kate wound up in Martin's clutches and how long she was actually a prisoner. From the first episode, you would think he flat-out kidnapped her the night they met. But no, that wasn't it. And then you see how he grooms her and she falls into believing he is a trusted friend and you think, maybe she visited him on some occasion and then he locked her in the basement. But nope. Then we see that she ran away from home and went straight to his house looking for a place to hide, and you figure that, okay, that happened for a day or two but then he locked her away. Nope. He manipulated her into a relationship and she lived in the house, lived with him, upstairs, willingly (so she thinks) for months. Damn. Martin Harris is so, so, so creepy. I felt so bad for Kate the entire time. He brainwashed her so well. She really believed they were in some kind of star-crossed lovers romance that no one can understand and someday they can just run away and be together someplace where no one will judge them and barf. I can see how 1994 and 1995 Kate is so horribly traumatized by her ordeal -- not just because was she held against her will trapped in a basement for months, but because she undoubtedly blames herself for a lot of it. For going there. For staying there "willingly" for so long. For believing she was in love with Martin and, now that he's dead, probably feeling some grief over that and feeling guilty for grieving him. Obviously what happened wasn't her fault, no matter how it started, no matter how long things were "good" before they turned "bad." All that matters is how it ended. Even if she were a legal, consenting adult and she and Martin were just in some clandestine romance that was secret for no particular reason, once he wouldn't let her leave when she wanted to, he would still at that point be a kidnapper and she his victim and everything from that point on would still be a crime. Except this is even more of a crime, because she is not a consenting adult and she had no business being there from day one and he knew that she could not consent to being there and being with him because she's a minor and their entire "relationship" was a crime that he forced on her without her even realizing it. As for the Jeanette of it all: It makes sense now how Kate's accusation seemed so weak and seemingly deliberately vague and backed up by so little evidence. To admit how and where she saw Jeanette, Kate would have to admit that she wasn't actually trapped in the basement the whole time. She was in the living room, freely wandering about the house. Months after she disappeared. And she's no doubt terrified that she will be blamed -- that she is to blame -- for how it went down in the end starting Christmas night. That maybe people will doubt her whole story of what did happen to her after that point. Or that she asked for it. All the things victims find themselves feeling. And as for Jeanette seeing Kate or not ... we still don't know the answer to that one. It seems clear that Jeanette didn't see anything while she was standing in the house. She heard a noise from upstairs (a floor board creek, was it?) and bolted out the front door right away. Kate was still hiding behind the wall upstairs, very much out of view. But after she left, after Kate came back downstairs and turned off the light, Kate tripped over something and it made another, much louder noise. Loud enough that Jeanette might have heard it from the front yard. We see Kate go to the front window and look outside -- The Moment -- but we don't see Jeanette's perspective. We go from seeing Kate looking out the window to the lower part of Jeanette's bicycle as she begins to ride away. We don't see Jeanette herself. We don't see if Jeanette looked back at the house when she heard the loud noise. We don't know if she saw Kate. We still don't know the answer to the question. I'm inclined to think that Jeanette didn't. It still could be the case of both girls telling the truth -- Jeanette really didn't see anything, and Kate only thinks she saw her see her but she didn't. It was pitch black in the house after Kate turned out the light, and it was nighttime outside. In that type of "lighting" situation you typically can't see inside the house from the outside. It's possible Jeanette did look right back at Kate's direction, seemingly right in Kate's eyeline, but saw nothing but darkness. Or she did see her and didn't say anything. Or Kate is flat out lying. We just don't know yet. The snow globe and the answering machine message. Okay, we see where those all came in. It was Kate calling Jamie and the movie was playing in the background while Kate was breathing heavily as she panicked as to whether to actually say anything. Jeanette broke into Martin's house again and stole the snow globe because she's ... weird. But I'm still confused as to why Jeanette, in last week's episode, desperately wanted to recover the snow globe after she heard Jamie's recording of the message. I guess she recognized the snow globe music in the background and knew that it was The Snow Globe that she took, because she played it herself. Maybe this is her proof that Kate is lying about what happened to her? Because she knows the snow globe was in the living room, if it was Kate calling Jamie with the snow globe playing in the background that would mean that she was in the living room and therefore not trapped in the basement? Of course, that would force Jeanette to admit that she broke into Martin's house, but yeah. I don't know, I'm so confused. Is it next week yet?

If Alex were single ... if he were not MARRIED to Jo ... I would be fine with his send-off being this out-of-nowhere reunion with Izzie and their unknown-to-him children. I mean, it would still be cheesy soap opera garbage and an obviously hastily-thrown-together write-off for the character, but it would be semi-acceptable as such. But he isn't single. He was MARRIED. He cheated on his wife and left her for Izzie. And as much as I was the ultimate Alex-Izzie shipper back in the day, it was back in the day and I've moved on and HE'S moved on and we've spent the last, what, 7 seasons watching him create a life with Jo. And they got married. And they were married when he left to see Izzie and their kids. And they were still married when he stayed with Izzie and apparently rekindled their relationship and became a family of four. He got back with Izzie while. he. was. MARRIED. And then he told his wife, and left her (let's not even get into all the horrible crap she's had to deal with just recently, never mind in her life as a whole, all of which he's perfectly damn aware of), in a Dear Jo letter. There's just no part of this that doesn't make Alex come off like a complete heel. I hate that they did this to him.

The trial was at the end of the first half of the season, and Alex's letter says he only contacted Izzie then regarding letters on Meredith's behalf. The Jo stuff happened over summer break and the very beginning of the season.

I mean, really, am I supposed to be pleased with this ending for Alex? He left his wife to be with Izzie ... booooo -- but wait, wait! It's okay, it's more than that, because they have children and he left to be with his newly discovered family ... so he's been shacking up with Izzie, sleeping with Izzie, starting a whole new second life family with her while he was STILL MARRIED TO SOMEONE ELSE and lying to his WIFE about where he was for MONTHS and then tells her the truth FINALLY by just sending her a fucking LETTER and the signed divorce papers? This is his goodbye? I'm supposed to like this? This is supposed to be some kind of noble ending for him? What. The Fuck. Ever.

...And ten years later, Izzie continues to ruin everything. All I kept thinking was, at least that part is consistent.

I don't get the DeLuca hate that so many seem to have. I'm no fan, but I don't dislike him or find anything particularly dislike-worthy about him. He's kind of just bland and indifferent and I'm more or less just "eh, whatever" about his and Meredith's relationship. Yes, he's too young for her and too far below her level of life experience and understanding -- are they longterm potential? I'm not even trying to think that far ahead. I'm really just "whatever" about it. That said, I kind of liked his moment with Zola. And yeah, it would have been nicer if someone who actually knew and was close to Derek had been the one to relay a Derek story to Zola, but that wasn't the point. DeLuca is Zola's mom's boyfriend. He's around all the time, playing house with her and helping out with her kids. Any kid whose divorced or widowed parent started dating again can relate -- this new person is trying to replace my mom/dad. DeLuca is not trying to replace Derek (ha, like he could try!) but it can feel that way to a kid Zola's age, particularly when he unknowingly does little things that her dad specifically did like fixing her Halloween costume the way he did. It feels like he's taking her dad's place. So, yeah, it would be nice if Amelia or Bailey or whoever told Zola a "your dad was a hero" story because at least they actually knew him, but Amelia and Bailey are not, in Zola's mind, threatening to replace Derek as Zola's dad and erode her memory of him. So it made more sense for DeLuca, the one Zola sees as the threat to Derek's memory, to tell Zola a story about her dad to keep his memory alive for her and help her understand that, yes, he's with her mom now but her dad is still her dad and always will be and mom's new friend understands that and is perfectly happy to talk about him with her.

I don't know if Richard will/might cheat with Gemma. My first thought, about him going down the wrong path or whatever with her, was the two of them might fall off the wagon together. Yes, this. If Qadri feels g***** because her idol, whom she came here in the first place to work for, is now gone and now there's nothing great about this place anymore, fine. Understandable. But if you flat-out tell your manager something to the effect of "There's no reason for me to be here anymore" or worse, yell at them, you're going to be sent packing. You're basically begging them to fire you at that point.

In the broadest terms, at-will employment means your employer can fire you for any reason, or no reason at all -- as long as it isn't discriminatory. The implied contract at-will states sort of remove the "no reason at all" stipulation. They can fire employees for "just cause," as opposed to just firing them because they don't like them, or because they're bored and felt like firing somebody just because they could. (Which in other states, they could, because they don't need a reason to fire someone.) But in implied-contract at will employment, the employer could or should only fire someone as long as there is a reason (and a reasonable one at that) to justify it. Flagrant insubordination such as yelling at your manager in the workplace would probably qualify as just cause. Frankly, even if Qadri hadn't rudely yelled at Bailey in the hallway, seemingly oblivious that she's talking to her damn boss, what she was yelling about was more than enough reason to kick her to the curb anyway. If you go to your boss and say (or yell) that you only came to her workplace -- that she herself shed countless amounts of blood, sweat and tears over the years before finally making it to the top -- because you wanted to work this one person and now that that person is gone there's nothing left for you here ... do you really expect to still have a job?