Higgs

Even if Will had absolutely no current or past connection to Rachel/ND/WMHS, his total incompatibility with and eventual departure from VA were foreshadowed at the awkward, uncommunicative conclusion of his rehearsal. His problem is fundamental and insurmountable. Like the Warblers (and the vast majority of all organizations of every kind everywhere), VA operates on the basis of a long-standing performance tradition that is written in stone, and which perpetuates itself in the students who self-select to apply and the admittance criteria that enforce the required uniformity. ND works on exactly the opposite principle: their performance style is dictated by the collection of its members at any given time. Will's personal artistic talents and aesthetic vision are antithetical to those of VA, and he does not have the personality to enable him to change them. His misery there, as he evinced and Rachel observed, will only increase until Emma (and/or Rachel) recognizes the existential danger and rescues him. VA is, and always has been starting with "Rehab", a show choir parody, involving musically tone-deaf performances by a collection of over-age, conformist, joyless automatons. (At least the Warblers seem to be having campy, girl-friend-bearded fun.) Everything VA does is fake, right down to the ersatz romantic dance pairings and pasted-on smiles. If I were in Will's position, and everything else had failed, I wouldn't hesitate to tank a knock-out competition so as to shake up the institutionalized rigor mortis and establish grounds for a complete overhaul of the program. VA NEEDS a reconstituted ND, not merely to provide competitive incentives, but even more so as a role model. Lea's most emotionally powerful dialogue scenes and duets on Glee have been with the two men she slept with. Do they teach this at NYADA?

Google "Constellations Ruth Wilson" >> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/theater/constellations-with-jake-gyllenhaal-and-ruth-wilson-opens-on-broadway.html?_r=0 + a lot more "There's this hypothesis in theoretical physics that I used to love back at school, about time travel. About what would happen if you could travel back in time and make a different choice in your past, how that would affect your life in the future. So the theory goes that, um, your true life, your first life, continues as is, unchanged, but at the moment of decision, a new life splits off along a tangent into a parallel universe. So you could, in a way... live both lives. " http://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/132932268/a-physicist-explains-why-parallel-universes-may-exist http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse There will be a quiz next Monday.

For the umpteenth time:1. "Invitationals" isn't a competition. 2. There is no judging. 3. There are no awards. 4. There is no victory, and no defeat. 5. There is no bus to throw anyone under. 6. Nothing that happens in any of the performances is of lasting (i.e., more than 1 hour) significance. 7. It's extremely difficult to motivate a team when there is no competition. 8. Everyone associated with VA desperately needs ND to come together, for their own sakes. 9. No one on VA needs to perform less than their best or "to tank their performance". They just need to dump the triple back-flip routines by the 20+-year-olds. The ND soloists are better than VA's, and they both use the same choristers. 10. The main competition should ultimately be over which choir director first wins this: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/theater/theaterspecial/tony-award-for-teachers.html?ref=theater&_r=0

The rise and fall of their local heroine would have been an oft-told legend in Lima and its environs. Musically precocious youngsters would have had it as a bedtime story from helicopter parents. "The Ballad of Rachel Berry" would have been performed countless times in folk music coffeehouses all across northwestern Ohio, causing even world-weary baristas to weep. Will himself had watched the sitcom and had the video. Rachel had kept in close contact with Will throughout the lead-up to FG. He cried when she told him about a callback. He went to opening night. But here is where it gets complicated. Will is married, to a woman. Will had been married before, also to a woman. Will, therefore, is in a position of having the personal experience wherein he just may know a little something about women. So, unless he's a hopeless male jerk, he knows that women don't appreciate having their problems solved by know-it-all males who come bearing a list of things to do, or repeat back to them what they've already said they know, as though she were a child, an idiot, or both. They want emotional comfort, just as they are prone to offer it to another woman in trouble. Some, of course, will never be satisfied until "The Careericide of Rachel Berry (illustrated)" is available for sale on Amazon.

Nothing I write should be taken as a prediction of what will happen on Glee. I haven't the slightest idea what the writers think or intend. Everything that follows is my personal opinion. Most Broadway musicals are for philistine tourists, tweens, and children. Starring in a long-running Broadway musical is really hard work for all and a bore for many. I saw MM live in South Pacific. MM is the best male singer to ever perform on Glee. MM is the most artistically expresseive dancer to ever perform on Glee. Mark Salling's "No Surrender" was my favorite non-Lea solo ever performed on Glee. Hypnotizing Sam to fall in love with Rachel is analogous to the role of the love potion in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde". Karofsky's reappearance is analogous to the parable of the Prodigal Son. Blaine pairing up with Karofsky is analogous to Naya Rivera's behavior after being dumped.(http://www.tmz.com/2014/07/23/naya-rivera-wedding-married-ryan-dorsey-big-sean/) No real world Rachel or Mercedes would ever even think of being with a Sam. It doesn't matter in how many episodes Rachel is paired with someone; only the last ten minutes of the series finale matter. No one should be made an everlasting slave to their adolescent goals. Rachel's attitude toward whatever she ultimately chooses will be whatever the writers say it is. A great teacher does a lot more than live vicariously through her students. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Boulanger) Even a mediocre teacher can live a fulfilling life. (Read "Stoner", by John Williams) Small cities like Lima, OH have branches of major universities with music departments that produce musicals. (Ohio State University at Lima is real.) Teachers get two months off in the summer. Running a show choir isn't as time consuming as teaching AP History. Lima has an airport. Recording studios are not that far away in time. Oh, and in my parallel universe version of Glee, about halfway through LLM, sitting on the VA stage, Rachel and Will kiss. With tongue. Screw Emma, I'm a fan of "The Affair".

But, strictly speaking, there are no "competitors" in an "invitational" (or in a "showcase", Carmen), just participants with a passion in common. This is the sort of event that Glee should have been doing frequently all along to justify assigning a wider variety of ND's members as soloists in big formal numbers.I have no interest in Glee's harebrained plots, only in "real world" implications. Therefore, even as I only watch for Lea, the best thing that could happen to promote arts in the schools is for Rachel to turn down a big Broadway offer and stay with ND. (If they could find some rationale to have her feed a live Sue into a wood chipper, so much the better.) A teacher (like Will) who is remembered by their students throughout their lives is worth more than 100 Broadway stars.

Exactly.The portrayal of VA has never been anything less than dark, hyperbolic satire. In the real world, there is a great deal of camaraderie between the students and coaches of competing schools, especially in less popular activities. (Actually, show choir is not lacking in prestige in the schools that have it.) For reasons of both personal self-esteem and higher social status, it is in the interests of all participants to make their passion as widely practiced and popular as possible. They would want and actively encourage every school in the area to take up the activity and offer serious competition. So if Rachel feared an all-out VA performance might imperil the reconstitution of ND, and given her experience of once being spooked herself by VA and her familiarity with her own set of kids, any VA coach would likely respect her judgment and accede to her request. Will would not need to ask anyone to perform below their best. He could simply send in his second string soloists (perhaps by imposing an age cutoff of 22) or drop a spectacular acrobatic dance routine. (ND has now, and always has had, better soloists than VA. Both employ the same group of professional session vocalists.) If he were the coach of a powerful chess team, he would behave similarly in a non-elimination tournament if it meant encouraging another school in getting its chess program up and running, and his students would be completely on board with it. Refusing to help at all would be not merely OOC, but professionally unethical, if his professional responsibilities are understood to include respect for his subject throughout the entire community.

In praise of Ruth Wilson: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/15/in-praise-of-ruth-wilson http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/oct/01/features.review7 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1264274/Ruth-Wilson-Number-One.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2891004/First-look-Jake-Gyllenhaal-Ruth-Wilson-seen-romantic-Broadway-Constellations-putting-tactile-display-own.html British TV: "Suburban Shootout" NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW Do NOT hit play unless you, and everyone with you, is of age in whichever country you currently reside. http://youtu.be/kIsnREQnqhY (I did not intend the video to be visible and take up so much space, but I don't know how to show just the link.) "Similarly, the Alison character became a totally different person than what Treem originally envisioned." “Ruth is really, really strong,” Treem explains. “And Alison was written to be quite weak, actually. In the beginning, she is just in grief and incredibly passive and disassociated from her own life. And Ruth is the opposite of that. She is incredibly active and very aggressive even sometimes. That was helpful because then we got to kind of watch this character claim her power. To me, what is most exciting about Alison’s journey is that scene with Cole where he says, ‘Come on, let’s make this work.’ And she says, ‘I don’t want to anymore. It’s not worth it to me.’ To me, that was an act of real strength. It was exciting to get her character to a point where it could dovetail with the essence of Ruth. Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/12/the-affair-season-finale-interview

Yes, Noah was relieved when Helen threw him out, because it absolved him from having to choose. There was his "cowardice". By far the most significant effect of Noah's new-found success was on his own psyche. It gave him the grounds to hope that, despite being in love with Alison, he could "stick it out" with Helen, in service of his pride and parental responsibilities. Happiness can come in many forms*, and the money gave Noah the courage to now choose between two roads that diverged in a Brooklyn wood. Money is power, and power is, as famously claimed by that well-known war criminal Henry Kissinger, an aphrodisiac. Noah would have had good reason to believe that, as a successful novelist who could swim 50 laps (and looked like it), he was not limited to a choice "between a compromise marriage and a single middle aged life", but that he could have had half the female faculty at the top liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, and that's not including the straight, unmarried women. (So I'm jealous; sue me.) *http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2015/01/09/best-friends-forever/

(1) Divorce = personal failure, regardless of how or why, or even if it's only in the initial choice of mate. That Noah thinks first of Alison doesn't mean he doesn't care for Helen. With the apparent success of his novel, and all the money and fame it will bring him, he hopes it will produce a change in the power balance in his marriage and enable him to rescue it, and with that himself, Helen, and the children. (2) Noah's marital situation and psychology cannot be compared to Alison's. They are asymmetric. (3) I never considered any of that, yet I think it a completely valid possibility. It was a real eye-opener for me.

Sorry, Boundary, re "cowardice", I meant Helen. I don't understand why you think it so.Just as the detective doesn't believe in "accidents" when a mangled corpse is involved, I am hesitant to believe in "sealed" when a torn heart is. Too much flux, uncertainty, fear, and impulsive spontaneity are at play. The last thing Noah knew about Alison is thet she walked away from him AND Cole at the train station. The last thing Alison knew about Noah is that he had left Helen (as he had dissembled). Yet not only had neither contacted the other in the four months following, but Noah declined her cell call even after Helen had reverted to type (and beyond, by not undressing in front of him). If Whitney's bolting hadn't led to the ensuing dining room showdown, would Noah have eventually contacted Alison or would Alison have reached out to Noah after she left Cole? I believe both were highly probable, but not certain, and with Noah the more likely to call first.

The reason Noah went back to Alison was not cowardice, it was hope, the hope that the radically altered circumstances inherent in the success of his second novel, as they related to his finally achieving a psychological balance of power in the marriage (visually symbolized in his jarring assumption of a dominant position in the ensuing sex scene, with Helen exquisitly turned on), would enable him to stay the course. Noah did not know anything about Alison's availability at that time; he never attempted to contact her, even as he likely thought of her not just "every fucking day", but every fucking conscious minute. It was Helen's preemptive decision to go after Scotty, without discussion, and without considering Whitney's vehement objections, that sealed the marriage's doom. ( I expect Mrs. Butler to sue Dr. Gunderson for malpractice.) When, for apparently the first time ever, and only after she terminated the marriage, Alison voiced her anger at Cole for not paying sufficient attention to Gabriel in the water, and Cole retaliated by blaming Alison for not taking Gabriel to the hospital, it was not meant to reflect on either character individually, but on the catastrophic effect that their joint suppression of mutual resentment had had on their relationship. As the prison warden says in "Cool Hand Luke", what we have here in both marriages is "a failure to communicate".

One is NOT supposed to believe Alison and Noah are "soul mates". No one associated with the show, no character in the show, and no commenter on this board sympathetic to the couple, has ever, to my knowledge, suggested any such thing, even implicitly. The notion is a complete straw-man. Like all other couples "in love", Alison and Noah will love each other forever or until they don't, whichever comes first. Alison left both Cole and Noah standing at the train station. When she returned from her retreat with Athena, she offered Cole the house and left him cold, without Noah in the picture. That was selflessness and courage enough. Their marriage ended solely due to their shared tragedy. There is no blame to go around. The Helen/Noah marriage ended because of Helen's cluelessness and/or Noah's cowardice. There is plenty of blame to go around. Let's take a look at the way their marriage died, not with a bang, but a whimper. H: "But I can change. I can change. And I have been working with Dr. Gunderson two times a week, and I have new tools now." ...... H: "I'm gonna press charges. You can join me or not." N: "Did you just change in the bathroom?" H: "Yeah." N: "Why?" H: "I don't know, Noah." Did Helen mean that she recognized some specific aspect of her behavior needed to change (e.g., controlling, ignoring, manipulating), or that she would do whatever Noah asked, in general? If the latter, then Noah can be blamed for not having the intelligence/courage to speak up. If the former, Helen's prosecuting Scotty against Noah's wishes, and especially without further discussion, represented a relapse so severe that Noah can be forgiven for wanting to give up. By not fleshing out the meaning behind "I can change", which could have easily been done with a simple follow-up sentence, the writers abrogated their responsibility to provide the key psychological dynamics at the nexus of the plot.

truthaboutlove, you cannot imagine the deep regret I feel in not being able to disagree with a single word you wrote. As you suggested, the vast difference in assuredness between you, who have not yet seen the entire S1, and the last group,of posters, is that you are evaluating the predictive nature of what is shown in the first episodes, while our snotty little group are going back to understand why it ended the way it did. I look forward to your post-binge reevaluation. If it's truth about love that anyone might be interested in, especially as it concerns an "affair", I recommend without reservation, "Stoner", by John Williams, which I just finished reading. The characters and contexts are nothing like this show, but (most of) you will cry.

It was no coincidence alright, but it was much more, and worse, than that. What Cole did to Alison wasn't "rape", it was consensual role-playing*. What Noah did to Helen was declare and exert his new-found psychological power balance in their marriage. When Noah thought of anal with Alison, he didn't do it, he teased her and discussed it. These differences have profound implications, and are also not coincidences.Just to be clear, as far as I'm concerned, Ruth Wilson's transcendent performance makes me think of this show as "The Waitress". The only rooting I do is for Alison to find peace and contentment, and whether it's with Cole, Noah, me, or taking vows as a nun, is immaterial. *Ep.2: N: "Married people don't fuck like that." A: "Marriage means different things to different people."

Pilot (very early) Helen and Noah: Look at me. Open your eyes. Look at me. [breathing heavily] [Moaning] What? [Laughs] What? Nothing. Why are you laughing? It's... [Laughs] What? Nothing. What are you laughing at? Your face is a little funny, that's all. [Laughs] Sorry. I'm sorry. No, you're not. Come on. I am. Oh, come on! Don't. Are you pissed? A little. Don't be pissed. Come on. [Murmurs] Shh. You can't laugh. I know. I won't laugh anymore. I won't laugh. Come on. Ep 4 (last lines spoken) Noah: "Alison, I'm a grown man. I know what I want. .... Look at me. Look at me. Look at me." Watch Alison and Noah "look at" each other in their sex scenes, and it's all one needs to know. It's legitimate to argue that, of course, sex with a new partner is almost always more exciting than with any spouse of 25 years, maybe even more so because of its illicit nature. But what if the intense emotional connection that Noah achieved with Alison was much greater than what he ever had with Helen? We have not been given the answer to that question, but it should be obvious how I would bet, the only uncertainty being the odds I would offer.

I used "obliviousness" to characterize Helen's disregard of Whitney's screamed feelings in wanting to prosecute Scotty. I hereby retract that charge. I was wrong. Helen, as did Noah in his massively egotistical, guilt- and testosterone- fueled attack on Scotty, had heard Whitney's objections loud and clear, and didn't at all mind if she suffered. Somewhat vindictive, cruel, non-liberal parenting, maybe. Oblivious? Hardly.The one thing Helen did that mattered in regard to being oblivious was in not recognizing the impact her father's money had on Noah, and, hence, on their marriage. But Noah had accepted (sought out?) that bargain from the outset, and was too much of an emotional coward to ever complain. ("You know, you never gave me a chance. You never said, 'I'm different now. I want something else.'") Guilty and guilty. When Noah chose Alison in the Lockhart dining room, not only was he not being "oblivious" to anyone or anything, he had had a moment of revelatory clarity in which everything had snapped into sharp relief. (As they say, an impending execution can focus the mind.) He had felt his heart ache much more for Alison's peril than Helen's, and took the only honest path open to him.

It's been done, even later in life, and also by a NYC public high school teacher: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_McCourtWe have no idea what the book turned out to be about, although the final paragraph, which ain't half bad, can be read on Noah's computer screen in the "rubber room". It's certainly no worse than "Gone Girl". OTOH, everything about Cole and the gun felt out of character for both him, in particular, and the show, in general. He sh/c/would have just pulled Noah off of Scotty. You don't fire a gun in act 3 that hasn't been shown in act 1. Oh well, at least there wasn't a car chase.

Noah went to see Helen with a half mil in his pocket, and with the almost certain prospect of a lot more of that, plus fame, to come. He had no needs to which she was asked to, or had to, acquiesce, except one: to be needed. When she said that she did ("I miss you. I can't do this alone."), he stayed. Helen's insistence on prosecuting Scotty was completely, and deliberately on the part of the writers, out of character. It would have mortified and alienated Whitney. The insistence on harming an older man for having consensual sex with a much younger woman represented displaced rage at Noah's betrayal with Alison. Helen was entitled to her rage, but not to her obliviousness to the collateral damage it would have inflicted on her daughter. Does Dr. Gunderson know about this?

Noah and Alison make a reservation to spend the night after the party at "The End", to relive their tryst with destiny. (Sorry, Jawaharlal, I couldn't resist.) Scotty has arranged a drug sale with a tourist at "The End". On the road leading to the club, Scotty pulls off onto the shoulder, but, as fate would have it, not far enough. He gets out to pee/vomit/masturbate, any of which could have caused the lurching body spasm that discombobulated the somewhat inebriated driver of the oncoming car. The Solloway/Butler vehicle (Exhibit C, your honor) swerves, and not only strikes and kills Scotty in his last moment of relief on this Earth, but glances off his parked car. N&A immediately cancel their reservation, and head back to NYC, their car having suffered only minor damage. When the accident is discovered, the tow truck driver comes out to retrieve Scotty's car. Jeffries checks out the tow/body shop, arranges for the its driver to walk past just as Noah's leaving the police station. Noah, in a predictable panic imagining some tell-tale evidence had been spotted at the point of impact on Scotty's car, offers an incriminating bribe. Noah is arrested for vehicular manslaughter, only, absent a (fresh) motive for murder. When the news of the arrest gets out, the good people of Montauk suspect pre-meditation, and anonymous calls to Suffolk County Police ultimately reveal the Lockhart drug-dealing. And now the fun begins. Alison, regardless if she was the driver, has to decide whether or not she will take the fall, on the grounds she will get off much easier, due to her connection to the community, her tragedy, and her current motherhood. Oh, and let's not forget her love for Noah. Noah has to decide how far he'll go in letting Alison endanger herself in an effort to protect him. Helen, along with her parents, has to decide how much money she should kick in for Dershowitz-level lawyering/jury tampering/witness bribing/etc. to protect her children's father from Attica. Cole has to decide how far he'll go to protect Alison from being associated with the drug-dealing. Noah's publisher has to decide how big a party to throw now that Noah's scandal will vastly increase book sales and his impending incarceration will give him the time and solitude he has shown he so badly needs in order to create anything worth reading. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.* *But as anyone can see from the editing time, I haven't been sticking to it. Geez Louise (pace Sally Draper), you can't trust anyone these days to keep their promises or honor their vows. Something to think about, eh Noah?

Once upon a time I had the sufficiently good taste to fall in love with Maura Tierney, back in the day of "NewsRadio". I even watched a few episodes of "ER" to see her, which for me was an act of pure devotion. She is much more than "Good Friend"; she is Woman, Provider of Emotional Comfort. And so is Helen Butler, and that's Noah's problem. He needs to be needed (sing to me, Babs), and Helen insisted on a parent-backed lifestyle in which he wasn't needed enough.In Ep.10, Noah soothingly comforts two women, saying, in each instance, "It's okay, it's okay", with the psychological deadlock ultimately broken by the Marxist maxim of "to each according to his need". It was primarily Alison's need, visible in her "dark", that attracted him. Death hung over her, first of her child, then of her grandmother. But suddenly, on that station platform, irony hit, and Alison didn't need any man. So off Noah goes, spreading his Johnny's swimmingseed throughout the Boroughs of Gotham City, until, book advance in hand, he confronts the wife he has not missed, who, lo and behold, finally expresses a need for him: "I miss you. I can't do this alone." Because being needed is what he needs, he stays. Until...in the Lockhart dining room, when the non-Chekhovian gun was finally lowered, and unlike Alison on the station platform, Noah chose, his choice was the woman who needed him the most. Wilson's Alison as "will-o-the-wisp"? Only if a "will-o-the-wisp" can make grown men cry.

Jeffries reviews the accident report. He becomes suspicious because, let's say, tread marks indicate the vehicle that hit Scotty went well off the road onto the shoulder, and Scotty's nearby parked car was not disabled. Jefferies then begins to follow the money and/or sex by interviewing people who attended the same party earlier in the night. He learns about an affair, a destroyed marriage, an underage daughter's pregnancy. Someone connected to all this, now a hot-shot author, calls him an "asshole" to his face. Passionate man, that Mr. Solloway. Passionate men, those big city writers. (Where have you gone, Norman Mailer?) Passionate men murder, and think they can get away with murder, especially if they are rich. (Such men were meat and potatoes to Columbo.) Passionate men also blurt out lies when they want to stop any further inquiries. (Noah and Alison know things we and Jeffries do not.) A lie about anything is a red flag to an investigating detective, and a luscious dessert for a DA trying to up his conviction batting average. (Throw in a $20k bribe offer and he'll have Chateau d'Yquem to wash it down.) When the receptionist at "The Edge" has a body shop to suggest, it doesn't take Sherlock to close this sucker. Will it be manslaughter or first-degree, good men and women of the (Suffolk County) jury, o ye who have been so carefully chosen in voir dire[]/i] to ensure not the slightest trace of bias against adulterous, home-wrecking, "rubber room"-sentenced, rich, big city, hot-shot writers remains on the panel? Good luck with that, Mr. Solloway. We're (okay, only a few of us) are counting on you, Alison.

Treem said West was cast early on, Wilson at the very last minute, so there was no time to do a chemistry test. I don't root for or against anyone on this show. I watch it the way a cosmologist studies astronomical data, to understand the the effects of forces on matter, whether light or dark. Wilson and West made me believe their characters loved each other, except in the final scene before Jeffries showed up, which I thought was somehow off. After Ep.9, I wanted its final scene to have been the last of the season. I still do.

Looking at the entire season, I believe they found their way to each other at the hospital, that Alison abandoned both Noah and Cole in Ep.9, and they found their way back to each other in Ep.10. (Some of this is semantics.)In episodes in which they were being interrogated, I took their "stories" as memories that played in their minds as they were relating self-censored summaries to the detective. But without the questioning framework, I haven't the slightest idea when these memories occurred, whether it was the same night as the event, years later, or, in this particular instance, the very first time they related their own versions to each other.

Sarah Treem, David Simon, along with many other directors/producers, are not complete idiots. The vast majority of men who look anything like male romantic leads in serious dramas can, in fact, seduce a much larger number of women of all ages than the average schmuck. It's even more true of those with bodies that look like they could easily swim 50 laps. No suspension of disbelief is required to find Noah's (or McNulty's) sexual exploits to be fully plausible. It's not being insinuated that he is irresistible to ALL women. Noah: My father drove a truck. My mom was a waitress. I went to college on a swimming scholarship. Alison: A waitress? N: Mm-hmm. A: Wow. A lot has changed for you. N: Yeah, it has. It has and it hasn't. Helen didn't marry her mom, Noah married his. It's Oedipal. Are Alison and Noah married at the end? She wears a ring, he doesn't. Noah did tell Jeffries his "wife" expected him for dinner, but Jeffries asked for "Mr. Solloway" at the door, not "your husband". Their marital status at the time of Scotty's death could have consequences in terms of allowable trial testiony under rules regarding spousal privilege.