S01.E07: The Boy from 6B

[sistermagpie]

On 9/28/2021 at 2:10 AM, grandmabegum said:

I don't know if Oscar took the fall or if Tim told the cops it was him. Clearly Theo didn't like Oscar cause of the way he treated Zoe and perhaps this is a weird revenge? I don't like the word revenge.

 

Did Oscar treat Zoe badly? I can't remember their relationship from earlier flashbacks but here she was saying it was like dating the help. I assumed Theo just wouldn't like him because he was Zoe's boyfriend that she seemed to be cheating on as well as looking down on.

[ProudMary]

On 9/30/2021 at 9:04 AM, Milburn Stone said:

That said...that was some low parapet on that rooftop.

^^^This!

That detail took me right out of the episode. While the building might have been constructed that way originally, there's no way that rooftop wouldn't have been guard railed to the heavens by the mid-20th Century at the latest.

[shapeshifter]

2 hours ago, ProudMary said:

^^^This!

That detail took me right out of the episode. While the building might have been constructed that way originally, there's no way that rooftop wouldn't have been guard railed to the heavens by the mid-20th Century at the latest.

Hmmm...good point. Clue, or plot hole? 
 

[AuxArx]

Since my sisters and I are the last of one side of our family, we’ve had the “honor” of arranging funerals for both my mother and her sister, my aunt. I think my mother was buried with her wedding and engagement rings and a watch (and also a Troy Aikman beanie, but that’s another story). I don’t recall having any jewelry returned to us and we probably didn’t expect it since we were new to the funeral biz.

And…Theo is a Gray Roger!!? What a shocker!

[dovegrey]

I wonder if anything will come from Dr. Stanley/the therapist complaining to Lester about "it sounds like someone is shoveling snow over my head." It was a complete throwaway moment...or was it?

He lives on the sixth floor, the same floor as Teddy Dimas (per Episode 2). Someone crawling through the vents? I don't know what else it would be, if it's anything at all.

Edited October 13, 2021 by dovegrey
too many the's

[mledawn]

After seeing all the jewelry in the urns, I was reminded of the engagement ring at the beginning of the show. Did we learn what the story was with that? I was thinking that Tavo's photo would have been of that ring, but it was the emerald ring instead. So was the engagement ring just a throwaway plot, or did I miss something?

Edited November 4, 2021 by mledawn
The engagement ring was from the beginning of the show.

[aradia22]

So much love to this show for actually casting a deaf actor as Theo and (from what I can tell) writing the episode empathetically from his POV without tricks to make it more palatable to a hearing audience. It also wasn't a gimmick to have everything be silent for some story reason. It seemed entirely motivated by giving us Theo's perspective.

Caverly's performance as Theo in this episode is fantastic. He rises to the occasion and portrays so many sides to Theo. Whatever happens for the character, I hope the actor gets more work outside of this show.

I love secret rooms!

I don't know how good he is but I love the expressive way Nathan Lane signs. He was a good pairing for James Caverly as Theo. 

lol, the Scrabble flirting was so cute. I really hope Jan isn't involved in anything and we can just have something nice

I'm sad that 

Spoiler

Theo was involved in Zoe's death but glad that at least he wasn't a "murderer." It was an accident.

There was so much tension in this episode. They really ramped up the excitement.

[aradia22]

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I am not sure why Tim Kono would lock his phone with that password. Was it done by someone else?

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When did Oliver get to text 78 messages to Charles? And why would Tim's password be Theo? Do people really use significant words and dates as their passwords in real life or is that just a tv thing? I've always only used random words and numbers and even then I'll spell the words phonetically with some 1337 mixed through it. I'm aware that nothing is ever completely secure but nobody would ever be able to crack my password just by guessing. But for 30 years now, I've been watching tv characters guess people's passwords as they just use the usual spelling of a significant word or a significant date.

It was worth a shot but it does seem a little silly. Like, I don't think Bruce Wayne locks his phone with "Joker." 

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Wow.  That was fantastic.  Some great dialogue, too. 

Wikipedia says this episode was written by Madeleine George and Kim Rosenstock. Really impressive.

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It seems more unrealistic that Oscar's dad kept his job as the building super. And that so many people seem to have forgotten about Zoey's death and the super's kid going to prison for it. I know it's a big building, but that's pretty yikes.

Well, Charles was going through his prednisone phase... 🙄😄

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Zoe is turning out to be exactly the character I thought she was, between her "might as well be dating the help" to Oscar and her contemptuous "the way the pity flows" to Theo.

It really does seem like they imported a random character from Gossip Girl. 

[aradia22]

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(I still don’t get why Tim was carrying around the trash bag in episode 1. Was it really full of practice suicide notes?)

Was there anything else in that garbage bag that connected it to Tim? We just assumed that one was his because of all the fragmented notes but maybe his real garbage bag was still in the bin and they stopped searching when they thought they found the right one. (I may be overthinking this.)

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Why did Teddy have all those urns in the hidden closet?  Wouldn't the families of the deceased want them?

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Yes. Sort of like the hollowed out Hardy Boys books, except the books make sense being where they are (Tim was part of the "Hardy Boys" gang and actually read the books as a kid) whereas how does one explain having all those peoples' urns? Not easily, that's for sure!

I assumed the urns were a way of transporting the jewelry from the funeral home without making it obvious but then we saw Teddy just take jewelry out of a normal envelope and put it in the urn. Maybe the urns and jewelry go somewhere else after the secret store room? I guess if someone has found the secret passage behind your bookcase, worrying about how it looks to have a bunch of urns is the last thing you're thinking about. 

[Zonk]

On 9/28/2021 at 6:46 PM, Snapdragon said:

I don't even know how Oscar would have been convicted for her death.

She was a rich girl who's family owned an entire floor of the building and he isn't exactly rich or white... So I can totally buy it.

[paramitch]

I loved this episode, although it was odd and interesting to me that what was visibly an accident was turned into something that harmed so many other people needlessly. I was bummed that Theo, who seemed so smart, shy and sweet, was willing to lie, cheat, and kidnap following Zoey's death just to avoid accountability for something he never would have been blamed for.

And yes, to echo @Milburn Stone, that parapet was WAY too low. No railing? Really? Unless something manipulated or removed it, I don't get it.

This was a lot of fun though overall, and I think the show really takes so many interesting creative chances. There is this sense of loneliness and melancholy threaded into this show that, added to the mystery, suspense, silly shenanigans, and pratfalls, give it this occasionally poetic quality. This episode (like the one where Oliver fell and "bounced back up" magically in relief and joy in his mind) had that sense of poetry very strongly.

I was a little frustrated with Zoey as a character. I liked her so much in the middle of the episode where she showed some actual depth (loved that she spoke ASL, loved her flirtation with Theo through the peephole)... then she had to revert to tired Mean Girl cliche in her final scene. (I had similar issues with Lilly Kane in "Veronica Mars," but that's a story for another day.

On 9/30/2021 at 8:45 PM, SlovakPrincess said:

Yes, and the great tragedy of that scene in Carousel is that Bill is so excited and has such high expectations for the baby -- but he also has an overbearing, abusive side (which the audience can just imagine being inflicted on this child, under pressure to be the perfect son or daughter) ... and further, the song ends with him deciding to commit a robbery in a misguided attempt to get money for the new baby.  

Teddy, like Bill, smothers and bullies the people he loves, engages in criminal behavior he justifies as helping his family, and ends up dragging his child into the misery of his terrible choices.  Anyway, I found the song and the scene with the headphones to be a very interesting choice.  Poor little kid version of Theo.  

Despite some lovely songs, I kind of hate Carousel, but what's also interesting about "Soliloquy" is that it's filled with all that irony and expectation that is guaranteed to end in disappointment. So I liked the subtext there and Teddy's desperation (as a famous producer of musicals) just for his son to hear something, to hear the music he loves so much. And it turning into abuse without him meaning for it to (which seems to be the entire core of their relationship -- Teddy's love is just sort of toxically presented in lots of ways). 

On 10/13/2021 at 12:59 PM, dovegrey said:

I wonder if anything will come from Dr. Stanley/the therapist complaining to Lester about "it sounds like someone is shoveling snow over my head." It was a complete throwaway moment...or was it?

He lives on the sixth floor, the same floor as Teddy Dimas (per Episode 2). Someone crawling through the vents? I don't know what else it would be, if it's anything at all.

This was a great point! I wondered about that too!

On 11/30/2021 at 10:30 AM, aradia22 said:

So much love to this show for actually casting a deaf actor as Theo and (from what I can tell) writing the episode empathetically from his POV without tricks to make it more palatable to a hearing audience. It also wasn't a gimmick to have everything be silent for some story reason. It seemed entirely motivated by giving us Theo's perspective.

Caverly's performance as Theo in this episode is fantastic. He rises to the occasion and portrays so many sides to Theo. Whatever happens for the character, I hope the actor gets more work outside of this show.

I echo the kudos for actor James Caverly (and to the show for hiring a Deaf actor), who did a wonderful and expressive job with a complex character here as Theo. And he has so much natural familial chemistry with Nathan Lane -- they are very believable as father and son.

I'm hard of hearing and grew up practicing some Amslan (now ASL) and fingerspelling with friends who were Deaf, so I have enough knowledge of ASL that I'd say that Nathan Lane is sort of a mixed bag -- he's very good and natural on some stuff, but his signing to me seemed a bit muddy and indistinct -- I'm not sure a Deaf person would think his ASL was very good.

But for me as a semi-speaker, I did love his expressiveness and fluidity and it makes sense that Teddy wouldn't be the most fantastic ASL speaker since he didn't do it for all of Theo's life but only learned it later on.

This article has a great interview with director Cherien Dabis and actor James Caverly about the episode:

https://www.insider.com/only-murders-in-the-building-deaf-non-verbal-episode-2021-9

 

On 11/30/2021 at 11:31 AM, aradia22 said:

I assumed the urns were a way of transporting the jewelry from the funeral home without making it obvious but then we saw Teddy just take jewelry out of a normal envelope and put it in the urn. Maybe the urns and jewelry go somewhere else after the secret store room? I guess if someone has found the secret passage behind your bookcase, worrying about how it looks to have a bunch of urns is the last thing you're thinking about. 

The urns still seem so odd to me and I can't figure out why they're used at all, except as a clear signal to the audience that yes, these are funeral urns, so yes, they are graverobbers.

But also, funeral urns wouldn't all match like that. Am I missing something? Funeral urns come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. And if the urns -- which are engraved with the dead people's names -- are in Teddy's closet, doesn't that mean they are missing from whatever niche or memorial site they should be displayed at? Wouldn't that be a visible absence? Why in the world would he KEEP the urns themselves after the fact?

Am I missing something here? I don't get that aspect at all.

It's not a huge deal for me -- I love the show and it's great, and it's a lot of fun. But there are a few little illogical aspects that are bugging me from time to time, and the urns is another big one for me.

[LuvMyShows]

I'm late to the party and only just started watching the series, so I don't know if anyone is even reading this anymore, but here goes anyway!

Really enjoying the series. Agree that Selena Gomez's portrayal fits right in with the character and seems quite appropriate.  I like all the casting, except Oscar.  He seems too puppy-dog-ish and youthful for that character and it seems like he's acting, whereas the other actors seem to inhabit their characters.  Regarding the reveal that Lucy had been a child, I figured that from the start because the young male neighbor who initially mentioned her, seemed to be talking about her as a peer. 

One of the interviews mentioned earlier in this episode's forum, said that the actor playing Theo (a deaf actor) worked with the director to ensure that in the scene where he discovers Oliver and Mabel hiding in the mortuary, his character is tipped off by a visual cue rather than "a feeling" that "could be misinterpreted as hearing something," the actor said.  But I remember not being able to tell in that scene what had tipped him off. to Mabel and Oliver's presence..did anyone catch whatever it was that Theo saw?

On 9/28/2021 at 11:59 PM, dovegrey said:

I think Tim wanted the bassoonist to stop playing with her window open and she killed him. And poisoned Evelyn the cat who liked to explore open windows. And then cozied up to Charles after the podcast went live (right?)…by meeting in elevators that are apparently on the opposite side of where she lives. 

Good point!  Wonder if that was a writer oversight or will become a plot point?

On 1/10/2022 at 9:36 PM, paramitch said:

And if the urns -- which are engraved with the dead people's names -- are in Teddy's closet, doesn't that mean they are missing from whatever niche or memorial site they should be displayed at? Wouldn't that be a visible absence? Why in the world would he KEEP the urns themselves after the fact?

I thought they were generic urns not 'used' urns and that we only saw the name of the funeral company on the bottom, not the name of the person in the urn.

On 1/10/2022 at 9:36 PM, paramitch said:

And yes, to echo @Milburn Stone, that parapet was WAY too low. No railing? Really? Unless something manipulated or removed it, I don't get it.

I would think that even a bad court-appointed attorney could have used that to their advantage in Oscar's case.

On 9/28/2021 at 10:17 PM, dovegrey said:

Oscar and Zoey were heard and/or seen arguing shortly before Zoey died, and he was the last reported person to be seen with her before she died.

On 9/28/2021 at 2:24 AM, thuganomics85 said:

That said, it wasn't all just for show and we get another big reveal: at least when it comes to Zoe's death.  So, after her fight with Oscar, she had also got into a fight with Theo as well, but this time it ended with her falling off the building to her death. 

So what makes no sense to me is why anyone would have said that Oscar was the last reported person to be seen with Zoey before she died.  For the people at the party, they would have noticed the fight between Zoey and Oscar, and then been even more attuned to continue watching her and seeing what happened next.  They would have then seen her talking to Theo, and seen that get animated as well, and then seen exactly what happened when she fell.  Tim would not have been the only one to see that, although he could have been the only one that Theo specifically saw watching.

[oohboo]

11 hours ago, LuvMyShows said:

I'm late to the party and only just started watching the series, so I don't know if anyone is even reading this anymore, but here goes anyway!

Really enjoying the series. Agree that Selena Gomez's portrayal fits right in with the character and seems quite appropriate.  I like all the casting, except Oscar.  He seems too puppy-dog-ish and youthful for that character and it seems like he's acting, whereas the other actors seem to inhabit their characters.  Regarding the reveal that Lucy had been a child, I figured that from the start because the young male neighbor who initially mentioned her, seemed to be talking about her as a peer. 

One of the interviews mentioned earlier in this episode's forum, said that the actor playing Theo (a deaf actor) worked with the director to ensure that in the scene where he discovers Oliver and Mabel hiding in the mortuary, his character is tipped off by a visual cue rather than "a feeling" that "could be misinterpreted as hearing something," the actor said.  But I remember not being able to tell in that scene what had tipped him off. to Mabel and Oliver's presence..did anyone catch whatever it was that Theo saw?

Theo saw one of their shadows. 

[Lovecat]

I'm late to the party, too, and reading/posting here as I finish episodes, so I'm not sure if this will mean anything later on, but in the opening credits there are Scrabble tiles in Mabel's window:  E N S L E I C.  LICENSE?

[shapeshifter]

On 6/14/2022 at 4:43 PM, Lovecat said:

I'm late to the party, too, and reading/posting here as I finish episodes,

Cool. Maybe you can answer a question for me about this episode.
I was just reading through the episode descriptions on Wikipedia to refresh my memory without rewatching. 
The only thing I am wondering about happens to be from this episode, "The Boy From 6B."
Wikipedia says:

• ". . . Theo accidentally pushes Zoe off the roof. Tim is the only witness, but an implied death threat from Teddy silences him. . . ."

I thought Teddy's implied death threat to Tim included Mabel's life being at risk if Tim reported Theo (not Oscar) was at fault.
Did you see anything about Tim thinking he was protecting Mabel from harm by his silence, @Lovecat?

Edited June 15, 2022 by shapeshifter

[Blissfool]

On 6/14/2022 at 3:43 PM, Lovecat said:

I'm late to the party, too, and reading/posting here as I finish episodes, so I'm not sure if this will mean anything later on, but in the opening credits there are Scrabble tiles in Mabel's window:  E N S L E I C.  LICENSE?

SILENCE

(I, too, just started watching this and I'm loving it.)

On 6/14/2022 at 6:27 PM, shapeshifter said:

Cool. Maybe you can answer a question for me about this episode.
I was just reading through the episode descriptions on Wikipedia to refresh my memory without rewatching. 
The only thing I am wondering about happens to be from this episode, "The Boy From 6B."
Wikipedia says:

• ". . . Theo accidentally pushes Zoe off the roof. Tim is the only witness, but an implied death threat from Teddy silences him. . . ." 

I thought Teddy's implied death threat to Tim included Mabel's life being at risk if Tim reported Theo (not Oscar) was at fault.
Did you see anything about Tim thinking he was protecting Mabel from harm by his silence, @Lovecat?

Yes, Teddy implied that Tim better stay quiet or else he and/or Mabel would....get offed.

Is anyone else getting confused with all these "T" names?....Tim, Teddy, Theo, and then there was Tavo. I literally have to pause and think about which character is being discussed. It also happens to me with Oliver and Oscar.

[Lovecat]

13 hours ago, Blissfool said:

SILENCE

Well that makes *much* more sense than LICENSE, considering this episode was mostly silent.  Duh. ::smacks forehead::

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 7/6/2022 at 8:09 PM, Blissfool said:

Is anyone else getting confused with all these "T" names?....Tim, Teddy, Theo, and then there was Tavo. I literally have to pause and think about which character is being discussed. It also happens to me with Oliver and Oscar.

"Theo" is likely short for Theodore Jr., with "Teddy" being short for "Theodore", so it makes sense they are confusing. Could have been worse: Ted and Teddy, for example.

[christie]

On 8/22/2022 at 5:12 PM, ItCouldBeWorse said:

"Theo" is likely short for Theodore Jr., with "Teddy" being short for "Theodore", so it makes sense they are confusing. Could have been worse: Ted and Teddy, for example.

I only just started watching this. It never occurred to me that Teddy might be short for Theodore. They're supposed to be Greek; Greeks usually name the kids after the grandparents and not their parents. 

[ItCouldBeWorse]

4 hours ago, christie said:

I only just started watching this. It never occurred to me that Teddy might be short for Theodore. They're supposed to be Greek; Greeks usually name the kids after the grandparents and not their parents. 

That's true, but the writers might not have known this and Nathan Lane isn't Greek. Teddy is generally short for either Theodore or Edward, and only the first is a Greek name.

[shapeshifter]

17 hours ago, christie said:

Greeks usually name the kids after the grandparents and not their parents. 

Could Teddy be named for his grandfather, and Theo be named for his mother's father, as in, Teddy's wife's father also being named Theordore?

[christie]

20 hours ago, ItCouldBeWorse said:

That's true, but the writers might not have known this and Nathan Lane isn't Greek. Teddy is generally short for either Theodore or Edward, and only the first is a Greek name.

True. Because of the mention of Teddy's grandmother escaping the persecution of Greeks by the Turks I assumed that someone Greek was involved (either in the production or one of the writers) since this isn't something that would be taught in an American school.

7 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Could Teddy be named for his grandfather, and Theo be named for his mother's father, as in, Teddy's wife's father also being named Theordore?

Possible though not likely. I only know of one such case: an actor who was named after his father and his mother used the fact that her father had the same name in order to justify naming her son after her husband. 

[Quilt Fairy]

Scrabble is now officially banned in Florida.

[kirklandia]

" I assumed that someone Greek was involved (either in the production or one of the writers)"

Someone like Elizabeth Stamatina Fey?  Tina is half-Greek on her mother's side.

My son is half Greek - on his father's side. His father is named Thomas Alexander, grandfather was Alexander Thomas, great grandfather was Thomas Alexander.

My son is not named Alexander Thomas.   I do have a grandson named Alexander Atlas.

(Late to the party.   Just watching the show now that it's airing on ABC.)

Edited January 20 by kirklandia