S02.E08: No Exit

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

While the friends are at an escape room for a fun evening, Wade has an embarrassing slip of the tongue that creates an uncomfortable situation for Shannon.

Original air date: 2/11/21

[paigow]

How could anyone think being LOCKED in a room with Delia is the definition of fun?

[ShortyMac]

The slip of the tongue was very predictable. Very obvious what it would be.

I laughed at Wade's daughters losing their Internet privileges, and Grace being so bored that she made brownies, and did chores. lol

[Kiddvideo]

Not my favorite episode. Too much drama over nothing. Wade’s daughters were the highlight for me.

[ProudMary]

After an episode's reprieve, Shannon's back. Boo.  Not only do I not like her character; I've actually grown to dislike Wade when he's with Shannon.  
Then there's Delia, who was over-the-top unbearable tonight.  Thank goodness for Michelle and Ben, who act like normal people! What is happening to the writing on this show? I liked this series a lot in its first season. I'm terribly disappointed and hope they can turn it around.

Grace and Natalie are always enjoyable. More of them would have been appreciated.

[Harvey]

Um...that was not nothing. Calling the current lover by an Ex's name is a huge deal (think of Ross calling Emily Rachel during their wedding ceremony in Friends), especially when it's your dead wife the new girlfriend can never really live up to. They are obviously building up to something with the Jill-related friction like it happened 2 episodes ago as well with the apron and keeping the vanilla in the fridge.  I'm curious to see where it will go.

[Kiddvideo]

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

Um...that was not nothing. Calling the current lover by an Ex's name is a huge deal (think of Ross calling Emily Rachel during their wedding ceremony in Friends), especially when it's your dead wife the new girlfriend can never really live up to. They are obviously building up to something with the Jill-related friction like it happened 2 episodes ago as well with the apron and keeping the vanilla in the fridge.  I'm curious to see where it will go.

A dead spouse = ex? Maybe she gets reclassified as “first wife” if he remarries, but she’s hardly an ex. Plus Wade had been primed to have Jill top-of-mind by the clerk who confused Shannon and Wade for being married. Which also brought on a completely ridiculous reaction over nothing. Calling her his wife’s name deserved a simple apology, but that’s not the way they’ve written Shannon’s character or her and Wade’s relationship.

[Harvey]

2 hours ago, Kiddvideo said:

A dead spouse = ex? Maybe she gets reclassified as “first wife” if he remarries, but she’s hardly an ex. Plus Wade had been primed to have Jill top-of-mind by the clerk who confused Shannon and Wade for being married. Which also brought on a completely ridiculous reaction over nothing. Calling her his wife’s name deserved a simple apology, but that’s not the way they’ve written Shannon’s character or her and Wade’s relationship.

A dead spouse is even worse. After all, the thought is always there: if Jill was still alive, Wade wouldn't want to be with Shannon. And everybody knows it.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

The character I sympathized with the most this week was Jared.

[UsernameFatigue]

9 hours ago, ProudMary said:

After an episode's reprieve, Shannon's back. Boo.  Not only do I not like her character; I've actually grown to dislike Wade when he's with Shannon.  
Then there's Delia, who was over-the-top unbearable tonight.  Thank goodness for Michelle and Ben, who act like normal people! What is happening to the writing on this show? I liked this series a lot in its first season. I'm terribly disappointed and hope they can turn it around.

Grace and Natalie are always enjoyable. More of them would have been appreciated.

I am still wondering what Wade sees in Shannon. Her, and their, OTT reaction to Jared assuming they were married was ridiculous. As was Shannon's reaction to Wade calling her Jill. Personally, if I were Shannon I would have taken it as a compliment. They have not been together long, and Wade was in a situation where he was with his 4 best friends and someone who he was very comfortable with, much like he would have been with Jill when she was alive. Now if that were to happen several months down the road it might be more jarring, but for a new relationship I hardly think it is the big deal that Shannon made it out to be. Shannon and Wade, as they are being written, are not a good fit. 

Many years ago my now husband and I were in a restaurant waiting to be seated. At that time we were not even dating, just friends as we had been for many years. One of the other people waiting pointed to us and said "Look, newlyweds". I have no idea why that person said that, as we were not even sitting close together, and were just talking waiting for our table. We laughed and said that no, we were just friends. We did not freak out, we thought it was kind of funny. At that point it would be several years before we actually started dating, and several more before we would marry. I often wondered if that person had some kind of psychic ability to see something that we did not, as at the time it happened dating my now husband was not something that had crossed my mind. We lived several hours away from each other and had different goals, different lives. Anyhoo as I said, we were not even dating and didn't take offence, so why Shannon and Wade freaked out is beyond me. 

The writers seem to have taken the annoying parts of the characters, and written them as caricatures this season. Especially Forrest and Delia. This isn't unusual (I found that in Modern Family, and Life in Pieces to name just a couple) but it usually doesn't happen this soon in a series. 

[meep.meep]

The question now is:  if you can only take one person to do an Escape Room, should it be Michelle or Alexis Rose?

I had a kid who would always try to watch the movie rather than just read the book, so I'm totally Team Wade on that.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

1 hour ago, meep.meep said:

The question now is:  if you can only take one person to do an Escape Room, should it be Michelle or Alexis Rose?

I had a kid who would always try to watch the movie rather than just read the book, so I'm totally Team Wade on that.

Definitely Alexis Rose (no offense, Michelle, but I could probably figure out the logical stuff so I need Alexis for the wacky stuff).

I was surprised that Natalie decided to spend 90 minutes watching the entire movie when she could have just read the book or movie synopsis on Wikipedia in less than a minute.

I love reading (and 99% of the time, the book is better than the movie) but there was ONE time when I watched the movie instead. We had just been assigned East of Eden. Coincidentally, the old miniseries was scheduled to reair the night before our first reading assignment so my boyfriend (who had read the book the year before) told me to just watch the first episode after dinner. I was reluctant because (1) you never know how much has been changed for an adaptation and (2) I didn't know where my reading assignment (I think it was only the first four chapters) would end in the episode. I watched it but then I ended up reading the four chapters afterward.

[UsernameFatigue]

1 hour ago, meep.meep said:

The question now is:  if you can only take one person to do an Escape Room, should it be Michelle or Alexis Rose?

I had a kid who would always try to watch the movie rather than just read the book, so I'm totally Team Wade on that.

Alexis Rose, because I would choose any one of the Rose family to spend time with, above pretty much any other fictional family/person. 

[DavidWeis1]

They’ve taken what I thought was a somewhat cerebral show and turned it into juvenile hi-jinks. It’s become painful to watch. Interestingly, like a few others above said, the best thing (and best performers) last night were the teenagers.
 

I realize calling your new date by your former’s name is uncomfortable, but c’mon the way it was played was way over the top. Honestly, IMO, from the adult actors there was no one who sold me on the story or their characters. All of them are quickly becoming caricatures. This show needs to go bye-bye.

[tennisgurl]

I suppose Sartre was right, hell truly is other people. Or at least being locked in a room with Delia for an hour is. 

Grace and Natalie really were the highlight, although I mostly liked the episode, slightly contrived drama aside. Baking brownies...like a pioneer woman. 

[juno]

There is just no chemistry with Wade and Shannon and I realized after watching this episode that they never give her any funny lines or give her any of her own plotlines.

She remains an outsider on this show. We could have some stories at the restaurant or her own family added but so far she is just Wade's girlfriend and remains a part of the cast member's storylines.

Delia was so shrill I had to hit mute and Michelle having to give this baby a win was all sorts of childish.

I could watch a show with Ben and Michelle with Noah with guest star Forest but that would be it.

[possibilities]

I loved Wade's parenting in this episode. He goofed by giving her the security code without asking more questions first, but after that he was great.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

9 hours ago, possibilities said:

I loved Wade's parenting in this episode. He goofed by giving her the security code without asking more questions first, but after that he was great.

I think there was a combination of reasons why he gave her the code so quickly without asking questions: (1) she said she needed something for school (2) both his kids are generally trustworthy and honest (3) he wanted to get off the phone quickly because Jared was yelling at him. I personally would have asked what she was buying before I handed over the code, Jared be damned, but I get that he was flustered and had no reason to suspect she was trying to pull something like that. I totally loved that after that first mistake, he was like okay, here are your consequences! I felt a little bit bad that Grace lost her internet too since she had nothing to do with Natalie's attempt to get out of reading the assigned book but I get why Wade was like nope, the whole house is without the internet!

[needschocolate]

My problem with Shannon is that everything about the character seems very forced.  

[ElectricBoogaloo]

15 hours ago, needschocolate said:

My problem with Shannon is that everything about the character seems very forced.  

My issue is that they haven't been dating very long. Shannon said in this episode that they were having sex in the garage two weeks ago (which was the dinner episode) and before that, she and Wade had just started seeing each other. So at most, they've known each other, maybe two months? This seems like a lot of drama for such a new relationship. Like calm down, both of you!

[seacliffsal]

It seemed like they took some of the characters' worst traits and ramped them up.  I could not believe that Forest asked Michelle to let Delia solve the puzzle.  What kind of friendship is that?  Michelle was having fun and finding out that she was good at puzzles.  They are giving way too much screen time to Delia-a little of her goes a loooonnnng way.  In real life, I could not be a close firend to someone like that (casual friend, yes).  As for the story, they took it from The Middle when Sue was supposed to be so great at puzzles and Axel was the one able to solve the puzzles with the exception of the last one that Sue solved.  Alexis Rose remains the most impressive solver of Escape Rooms (IMO).

The writers also brought too much of Wade's sincerity.  Once Shannon told him to talk about it later, he should have left it at that.  They were supposed to be in a group activity which is NOT the time to solve personal issues.  If I was Michelle, I would never want to participate in a group activity again.

And Wade, let the kids just figure things out for a few minutes without adding family drama to the experience.  None of the other parents took calls from their kids.  None of the calls constituted an emergency.