Belle Fleures

From my perspective, it looked like Jamie was still within her during that scene, from the body positions and Jamie's strategically placed arm to shield the view.

Rainn Wilson is so incredible; I've loved him since his very first appearance in "Mom." After last night, I'm hoping Trevor and Marjorie become a couple, or at the very least a friendship blossoms between them.

Considering how much the Big Three worship Saint Jack, Randall really bit down when he told Kevin that their father died being utterly ashamed of him. My jaw hit the floor at that point. That was such a low blow, and such a blatant LIE, that Kevin responded in kind -- though not with a lie, but with a truth deep in his heart that had never been spoken until this point.

I've never really been a fan of Carly, so I didn't like she and Shawn being together as a couple. I liked Lea. She's fun and a "seize the moment" kind of girl, very outgoing, and she's good for Shawn. She gets him to break out of his rigidness and experience life in a broader sense than he has, and it's exhilerating, and he loves it, while he, when they're together, has a way of balancing out all that wildness that she exudes. I thought that they completed each other. However, Lea has been shown toying with Shawn. For his part, Shawn didn't see things until others pointed them out to him. Morgan saw Lea being possessive of Shawn, and Carly saw that Lea, as well as Shawn, had feelings for each other. Lea really is very selfish and immature. She clearly has feelings for Shawn but she doesn't feel he is worth the trouble of dealing with her own issues or changing her bad habits to enter a romantic relationship with him. Yet, despite that, she still behaves like a dog marking a fire hydrant every time she comes in contact with him. Everyone wants to say that it's simply Shawn's fault that he can't take 'no' for an answer, but fail to address that Lea had been sending him mixed signals for a while. Being autistic, he has a harder time processing these complexities. Now he's hurting, and it makes perfect sense that he should be allowed to tell the person who did the hurting exactly how he feels about it -- sans baseball hat, of course. I no longer want Lea and Shawn to be a couple but, since season 1, have seen Shawn and Claire being romantically involved as a possibility. In fact, what if after all this, they both realise after all their failed relationships, that they were always meant to be together? The fact that Claire was the only one to go see Shawn after he'd been missing work to give him the "enough is enough" speech and nudge him back into life tells me a lot. Or when he was fired previously and Claire was the only friend to have his back. Just friends? Maybe, but there's definitely room for something more. Claire, oftentimes, "gets" him. She's not only beautiful but sympathetic, patient, kind, and has a great capacity for understanding people.

A freshman in college is a young adult, certainly old enough to start thinking seriously about love and the future of marriage. Dressing right, gifting flowers, and taking someone to a quality restaurant instead of a McDonald's parking lot is not so much a "grand gesture" as it is having class.

I know it hasn't been easy this season. We're seeing darker facets of the Pearson family, and it's uncomfortable, not so "feel good." We'd love to just see the good, sweet characteristics of the people in that family. But they're human, and complex as we all are. Honestly, I haven't liked this season very much. I am especially disliking Rebecca (she never tells her family to respect Miguel, and is always bringing up Jack around him, making it very clear that he'll never be good enough for her) and Beth, and Toby a little too (talk about grabbing the rotting, low-hanging fruit with that joke at Miguel's expense, when he was doing nothing but being supportive and trying to take their minds off of Kate's pregnancy drama). Despite all that, though, I started watching this show to follow the lives of a human, flawed, basically good family and will stick around for next season. That said, I am Team Randall. TeenRandall went all-in his date with Beth, and one can tell he was raised correctly. The suit, the flowers, the fancy restaurant -- he was showing Beth that he was a young gentleman with true feelings for her, and that she, in his mind, deserved to be treated right, likd a queen. That she, in return, showed up in sweats and belittled his actions, demonstrates to me that she was still mentally an immature child. I don't think that has changed much, noting how she guilted Randall in a previous episode about not getting to her recital in time to hear the name-drop/praise. Randall peppering their relationship over seven years with proposals was, I think, a result of his anxiety, that constant fear that he might lose someone precious to him if he didn't secure her with marriage. She said she wanted them to be equals, yet it seemed she had all the power to dictate the when and how of a proposal with no compromise. Her passive-aggressiveness is insufferable. I didn't see Randall tenderly kissing her, telling her to go on her 24-hour vacation, and asking which episode she was going to watch as manipulative or guilting; I saw it as he understood and was just trying to lighten the mood/air -- if Beth felt guilty and swayed to cancel her break, that's totally on her. Rebecca was right: Beth is NOT a wallflower; she's fiery and opinionated and has no problem arguing and demanding what she wants. She has the claws of a cat and knows how to dig -- her catty line to Randall after he insisted he needed her to keep her promise and come to the dinner to support him proves that. If Beth wants us to believe she's been nothing but meek and submissive for 20 years in this marriage, she's going to have to work harder on convincing me. When she made that low-blow about "between which of your anxiety attacks" to Randall, I said out-loud right then, "Okay, that makes you both even," but I agree with a previous comment that Beth went even lower than Randall had. As someone who struggles with anxiety, I can say that we despise our anxiety and how it mars our lives and it's not something that can just be blown away like a pile of dandelion fluff. Randall insulted her career, but she insulted the weakness of his person, hating on him. Also, I think Randall was completely justified in wanting to come home, sleep in his own home, and finish the fight then and there. The house is just as much Randall's as it is Beth's, it's big enough for the both of them, and Beth is not entitled to be the queen in the castle while she sends her king to sleep among the peasants. If she wants them to be equals, as she says, then it doesn't work like that. All said, I think they can get through this with counseling and open communication. They're two very different types of people, but then I think that's what attracted them to each other in the first place.