HappyBerry

I love how this show just really leans into the awkward. I really loved Genevive and Oscar and capturing that early relationship energy, especially when you are young. I do love the conversation between Nicholas and Drea. I think it was really good way to help grow them as characters, but also a good primer for people that don't really understand asexuality. And, it was a nice little reminder that as self-centered as Nicholas can be he also gave up his life and career/research to come help raise his half-sisters I am especially interested in the way they treat relationships on this show. I'm still not sure if Alex is happy with Nicholas or not....he doesn't seem to be, but also doesn't want to break up with him and I hope we learn more about why. And poor Drea, doing what makes her uncomfortable and sad so that Matilda will be happy and love her. They do such a good job of showing complications and people being selfish and hurting others without making anyone the bad guy. Josh Thomas is just so damn good at what he does!

Seriously though! When I first saw her I was like "Is that Janeane Garafalo?! Nah, looks like they got a discount Janeane Garafalo....", then I realized they got the real deal and just did her dirty.

I believe he is what The Youths call "an adorable cinnamon roll". And I think he's my favorite too.

I hadn't realized how much we keep seeing her sad, or even happy with that underpining of sad, until we saw her in that moment of pure silly joy and I love it. I know Mary is indisputably the worst singer and dancer on the show, but she sells it with such enthusiasm and joy. I don't think that will be the case, just because no one seemed surprised by her lack of empathy, even people that have known her for years, like her family. And the implication that Max knew her dad before the diagnosis.

Has anyone else read the Josh Thomas story in the New Yorker about his autism diagnosis. There is something I really enjoy about the "hmmmm, I sure am interested in making stories about characters with XYZ....hey, wait a second....." narrative.

I think at the start Matilda was 17 and Genevive was 15, so probably around 18 and 16 now? Were there any birthday's last season, I don't remember. (guess maybe I'll have to rewatch....darn) I enjoyed these episodes. I think what I'm looking forward to most is learning more about Alex. I can't tell if he's happy or not...and if he's not then why he sticks around, as he told us, he could easily find a richer boyfriend. It's just a bunch of interesting questions around him and I like it.

Between him refusing to call it a vision board, and his truth telling I too had a moment of "oh, so that's what it would feel like to like Luca". I was sad to see Jazz and Doug break-up. But also am still so frustrated at him pretending he was waiting for her when we'd seen him or trying to pick up women the episode before. I can see where he was confused or disappointed, she did put them on a break to focus on training. But don't like him making her feel bad about it and acting like he was waiting for her. So are we supposed to believe that Aaron broke up with Rochelle off-screen or is that still going to be an annoying drama to deal with next season. At least she is lucky to get out of that messy situation. I did laugh at Doug and Vivek assuming Zoey would be a selfish lover, because...Yeah, same. When the previews showed Vivek getting pulled over, and then early in the episode he mentioned he was getting out, I was hoping they wouldn't go with that cliché. Like, he'd get pulled over and be relieved he was out. But nope, they had to go with it.... So are they going to have to move out of the house? They wrre only in it because of Vivek's very profitable activities. Him getting out of the game or him getting sent to jail both seem to have the same outcome for living situation.

I know they had to make up something for her to leave her job. Especially something like that, that would disappear fairly quickly as long as she didn't do anything else that looked "bad". And, she had to know that it didn't look good. If one of her friends came creeping in the door at 3 am and said she was over at a guy's house that late because they were "just friends", that Zoey wouldn't assume something else is going on? Like, it's probably not completely fair for people make assumptions like that. But, they didn't exactly harass her or drive her out. I figured there would at least be an accusation of her sleeping her way into her job or something. They gave her looks, not even particularly judging looks...just the kind of looks you'd give someone that was leaving the trailer of a man known for sleeping with members of the team at 3 am after a night of drinking.

We've got breweries here that do that. They have partnered with nearby restaurants for delivery or have a food truck. But, in those situations they don't have to have any staff or other overhead to deal with it and they accept no responsibility. At MaxiMo, they have to have staff to place the orders, plate the orders, serve the orders. But, they have entirely given up control over the quality and speed of the food. If the restaurant they order from is late or gets the order wrong or whatever, they will likely get at least partial blame, even if it isn't their fault. After all, the premise of the place seems to be that they'll take care of the logistics of all the delivery and so failure of that is their problem, even if it was due to things outside their control. It just seems like a high risk concept. I'm sure in-show universe it will be a great success, but IRL I see it failing after the novelty wears off.

Dear Doug, yeah you may not have slept with anyone else, but do you really think if any of the women you hit on last week hadn't been tossing major red flags last week, you wouldn't have hit that? He can't exactly pretend he's been zjust sitting around waiting for Jazz, it sure seems more like lack of opportunity than lack of desire.... Also I feel bad about the amusement I felt about Zoey not getting to participate in field day, honey you are the one that decided you were too cool for school...you don't get to decide to just drop in a play student for a day. I think the show is doing a good job of decentering her and her idea that the world revolves around her and people will move on without her.

I can see that. I think it's a tricky needle to thread to give the "we are talking about my problem right now, not yours" emphasis without going into "sexism is over because you had a female mentor" type feeling. I think their relationship makes it even trickier, because their initial bonding was over shared experience and bonding with father death. So I can see Zoey going "here is further shared experience to bond over" while being unaware of the bigger issues at play.

I think that was the only part of the episode that bothered me. Like, I understand where they were going with it, that Zoey doesn't know exactly what Simon's experience is like. But, just as she doesn't know what it's like to be in the office at night and be accused by the security guard of trespassing, he doesn't know what it's like to worry that security guard is going to sexually assault you. And yes, Zoey had Joan, but it's not like she had a string of mentors up until that point. She was still the only woman as a coder and I'm sure the only or one of few in her classes in college. I don't think using racism to dismiss sexism was the best move in this episode. I did think using Tobin was a good move. First, I like seeing more depth from him. But, in the tech world, as an Indian man he'd often be seen as "the model minority". So, it was good to see the discussion of how there is still racism involved in that, with people expecting him to have an accent or still being the butt of jokes even if people don't recognize the problem, like the Slumdog nickname. This episode had the potential to veer into Very Special Episode territory, and I suppose technically it did. But, I think it did a good job of going into the issue in a powerful way and appreciated them making it clear at the end that this doesn't mean racism is over, change is just getting started. And Max.... Just take the damn money! When someone is casually offering you a few million for your business, don't say $150,000. Get that extra money! That gives you more time to get established, make adjustments as needed, and increase the chance you'll succeed. As DMD pointed out, most restaurants fail anyway, why start out on a ridiculously narrow margin when you could have had a comfortable safety net?

Ana just joined a cult, right? And I didn't even notice that Zoey wasn't in the episode until about 2/3 of the way through..And it didn't suffer at all for that. In fact, as annoying as she's been lately, I think it benefitted from it. I'm okay with her just narrating for a bit and letting us see what everyone is up to.

I agree with basically your whole post! I've got friends that are outside the Bay Area and their daycare runs them about $20,000 and that's with a discount because my friend works for the university the daycare is at. I can see it costing significantly more actually in San Francisco, plus I'm sure they would want him in a "fancy" daycare and the fact that he's a baby is going to cost more than if he was a toddler or older child. As a public defender, I'm guessing David probably doesn't make that much more than a day care would cost, especially when you consider things like commuting costs, those little lunch purchases and such that have a way of adding up, etc. The whole firing thing seemed weird anyway, like why did Leif know before she did? But then I got extra confused about her firing someone in HR... that made no sense. I feel like the writers need to spend a week in a "real" office to learn how things actually work. And Jenna is growing on me. I found her still pretty annoying last episode, but I really liked in in this one where she is not only helping Maggie through her grief, but also helping her remember who she is without Mitch. Maggie will always mourn him, but it is great seeing her genuinely laughing and finding who she is outside of that wife/caretaker role she's been in.

I see what you did there.... 😉 Yeah, there is a chance she's into Simon, there seemed to be some flirting there. But out of the business partners, she only called one of them "a vision". I'm interested to se where that goes. Mo mentions "chatting her up", but I wasn't 100% sure if it was in a "I'm interested too" way or a "getting publicity for the restaurant" way. And I'm still not sure I quite understand this restaurant. Will the food be delivery from other places, but then they serve their own drinks? Are they going to do any plating, or is it going to be "here is your clam shell of pasta and here is your paper box of fried rice. Now please enjoy it with this fancy cocktail".

Yep. My first reaction when they decided to pause things was "so, is she going to hook up with Simon next episode, or are they going to wait for two". If/when she does, it will be interesting to see how they show it. Will it be shown as her being self-destructive and turning to relationships to avoid having to deal with other things? (it's kind of where I thought they were going in episode 2 when she called Max a 'grief vacation') Or will they try to show it as some romantic thing. I wanted to yell at Max so much at that point. Like dude, she's dealing with the death of a father, helping her grieving mother, and just got a bunch of new responsibilities at work....and you want to make this all about you?!? Skylar Astin is charming and I really want to like Max, but between his Nice Guy behavior last season and things like this, dude just is just fling up red flags all over the place! I saw "attractive older man" and immediately wondered when they were going to start trying to put Maggie in a new relationship. Fortunately, he mentioned knowing her husband just died....but I also saw signs they might decide to go there. I work on a pretty small team of 20 people within a smallish 200 person company. And even our team has an admin assistant to deal with all that kind of stuff for just our team, in addition to a team of office managers plus their team of hourly employees that deal with some of the bigger company wide stuff. There is no way they'd drop "getting signed up for softball league" on someone that is manager for multiple teams. Same. I think she was just trying to figure out how to deal with her own feelings and Max coming at her like that, and then he started getting so pushy about it that she tried to get out of the situation...and instead it just escalated it. I think if she'd actually heard a song it would have been more of her going "I don't know the song, something about you being mad", not refusing to share any details about it. That's been my thought the whole time with Simon. I actually rather like him, but right now he needs to deal with all this baggage he's been carrying around before jumping into another relationship. Like, having a supportive partner is good, but also girlfriend =/= therapist.

I hope this is the end of the love triangle (I know it isn't....they need that drama), especially since out of the two I prefer Max. I don't even dislike Simon, I just think that he needs a good therapist more than he needs a girlfriend. Really though, it just made me wish polyamory was an option in network television. Zoey is into both guys, both guys are into Zoey, and the guys have figured out how to open communicate with each other. It seems like the basis for a healthy poly relationship if they were willing to go there. I'm interested to see if George ends up being sweet and endearing or annoying and a little creepy. I did appreciate him asking if a hug was okay rather than just going for it. It's not a perfect show, but I'm looking forward to having this fun bit of fluff back on my TV.

I'm working my way through it and have found it fascinating and it makes me want to go eat everything! I just watched the episode on Chinese food and was a little confused why she kept talking about chop suey as if it was A Current Thing. I absolutely know why it was brought up, since it was the food that allowed Chinese restaurants to make their way into American culture. But, I feel like it kept being treated as if that was still the main thing Americans ordered when they went to a Chinese restaurant and I didn't quite understand why she kept asking all these Chinese chefs and people she was interviewing it they ate. If you were interviewing my grandma, maybe...but now it seems like the question should be about anything you find on the Panda Express menu, something like orange chicken or General Tso chicken. The Persian food one was so interesting to me, because I never thought of so many of them trying to learn, but potentially never being allowed to go back. With the other cultures, the Mexican cooks can go back to Mexico, the Chinese to China, Indigenous can seek out their elders. I hadn't really thought about the fact that they don't all have that option available to them.

I think she was comparing her son to her husband. Basically useless....but if he's a good lover and least he might be able to find a wealthy wife to support him.

After reading that article, I see that less as arranged marriage and more "asking your friends and family to set you up". I think of an arranged marriage more as it is shown in the show, where basically as long as Prahsant's parents approved of her and the two of them couldn't come up with a better reason than "I'm just not in love with him", that marriage was pretty much a foregone conclusion (well, at least until Kamala and Prashant were like "hey, I like you, but let's slow this thing down a little before agreeing to get married).

If this were real life/tv fantasy mash-up, the end game should be "Devi and Ben realize that right now is not the right time for them. Devi dates Paxton...he's the hot "bad boy", so can have experienced that, and while he appreciates her intelligence, I think he would also just let her be a normal teenager sometimes, which someone like her needs when everyone around her is pushing. Then, in a few years, Devi and Ben reconnect at their 10 year reunion. They have their PhD/passed the bar...whatever. That's when they can go on and be a power cuouple.

Yeah. That was the one big problem I had with this show. We have all these complex, complete characters and then there is the "haha, fat kid that likes food". I really hope we get to learn more about him and that there is more to him than a fat joke.

Yeah, I'm sad for the family at the loss of Mitch. But, I'm sad for me personally as a viewer at the loss of Howie. I want to learn more about him!

Ugh Simon. I know we are supposed to like him, but he just reminds me of so many dudes that have no idea how to be on their own and need a woman around to do all the emotional work for them. His dad died and he was with Jessica and rather than therapy or whatever, he just gets upset she doesn't 100% get what he's dealing with... Even though he isn't telling her. Then Zoey shows up, he gets to use her as an emotional dump, decides it's love and wants to jump right into a relationship with her the day after he breaks up with his fiancée. I want to see him take 3 months off from dating, work through his grief over the death of his father, loss of a bug relationship, mom's remarriage, etc. Then, maybe I won't help so ugh about the idea of him with Zoey.

She was pretty great! One of the great disappointments of my life is she died when I was 16, so I never really got the chance to know her as an adult.