S03.E12: Trent?!

[Barlowe]

On 2/10/2018 at 3:07 PM, DianeDobbler said:

The show has become incredibly dumbed down, and also the trope with Nathaniel and Rebecca? I am holding out hope he is not her true love end game, but it's fading. This was a logical episode to do without him, but GOD FORBID. The idea continues to feel like a huge betrayal. The show plays as if it's imitating itself, and things that would just be tossed off in the past are belabored now (such as the extended exposition of what happened to Trent after the wedding). It feels paint by numbers and mechanical - oh right, we do this type of commentary in the middle of this type of plot.

I do not like Rebecca at the moment. I don't see how she's healthier or evolved. Maybe I would if they'd bothered to show how her bi polar condition was treated, but CEG decided to skip that. 

A subtext with the show is what happened with Josh. CEG seems bent on having him be oh so obviously the OMG SO wrong guy for Rebecca, I guess to make the point that she's so much better now, and him being as silly as he is just points up how sick she was before. But that notwithstanding, she lied her ass off to him, interfered in his relationship, and lastly, but not least, acted like a maniac in the run up to the wedding. If she'd confronted that, I'd focus more on Josh's failure to face up to Rebecca instead of just running out on her. But, you know, she ran out on Greg. Josh didn't do anything to her she hasn't done to others, but I feel as if the show is papering over everything she did to him, including stalk him, terrorize him, and, most of all, cause him to lose his job so he now has all these childish jobs. She's never apologized - in fact, he came and thanked her.  I recently read an article calling the show out on this. Imagine if a man did to Rebecca what she did to Josh, including causing her to lose HER job, and terrorizing her via stalking, and then she came to the guy and thanked him, even though nothing was fixed. She was still out of the job she lost, etc. There's the vibe here that it's ok because it's just stupid Josh.

I don't see wacky hijinks as the real show. I see the real show as HAVING this darker undercurrent. Since CEG isn't interested in her therapy, CEG has lost the anchor that, yes, Rebecca's anxiety, depression and obsession used to provide. So now she's just a douchebag. Did she go to the dark web because she was still sick with borderline disorder? Wouldn't her therapist be able to mediate if she confessed? Or was she just being willful and obsessed, but not sick? Her lying to Paula that Trent also had stuff on Paula was also obnoxious. It's not funny, IMO, it's entitled, it's obnoxious, and I still can't believe the Nathaniel shit. I'm absolutely stunned. I thought they needed a guy to play against her therapy, and Greg is gone, and obviously it can't be Josh. But this is not what CEG is doing. It's playing everything as an obstacle and failure to communicate thwarting the meant-to-be love match of Nathaniel and Rebecca. And whoever said it upthread, that this stuff is annoying enough when you want the couple together - it's doubly so when you don't.

P.S. - another sign of a decline in quality is the unexplained one-note writing for characters that previously were not written as cliche. Valencia now has one note - and furthermore, the two cat store women had more relationship development than Valencia and Beth initially had. Josh has one note (he's dumb). It's lazy.

The cat song was ok, but I was kind of pissed at the line about "in her lonely walk up apartment." Maybe the walk up part. I know a million people who live in walk-ups. It's probably me being oversensitive. I don't even live in a walk up, so it's not about me. But it's just the automatic idea that, well, a woman living alone in a walk-up - boy that is so sad. Screw that, show.

 

I loved the cat song and specifically the explicit version but i've seen a few people get sensitive about the song lyrics.  But what I liked about the ending of the cat song was that the two cat lovers bonded over their love and decided to try dating and in fact weren't lonely and instead Rebecca was just deluding herself on an exaggerated stereotype. 

On 2/10/2018 at 3:11 PM, tennisgurl said:

The cat puppet song just killed me, it was this show nailing the song in a way it hasn't the last few weeks. I do wonder why it is that cats are so attached to lonely single women. As the cats say, if you want someone to pay attention to you, get a dog. Cats a better if you want a pet who can be more independent. In general I mean, I know plenty of very social cats and independent dogs, but still. Of course, Rebecca should get neither, because I cant imagine her being a very good pet owner. 

It was nice to see Valencia and Josh get a plot, and it was cute seeing them get to a better place. I do wonder why, if Valencia hates West Covina, she hasn't left? I do love when they both get to dance though! 

I dont mind seeing Trent again, especially if this is his ending. He works as a lens to Rebecca, especially when she is getting closer to falling into bad behavior, like lying Paula to get her to join her plan/montage. Trent is usually more...extreme than Rebecca, but you can easily see how Rebecca could fall down his creepier path if she doesn't get help and stop making bad, selfish choices. Of course, as far as we know, Trent never burned down a persons house or put a hit on someone in the dark web...

I love the running gag of White Josh being completely baffled as to why all his friends fall in love with Rebecca. 

"Even his choice of Ramen is unsettling" 

Cats are attached to a steady meal in an indoor space where they can do whatever they want and occasionally get affection and they tend to be good as emotional support companions.

 

The two facts I always remember about cats are that they smell death and often congregate near people who are dying in care homes and that early cats ancestors cohabited with humans because it was an easy way to follow and find prey since humans were always attracting them with their food and messes.

Edited February 13, 2018 by Lilacly

[DianeDobbler]

Quote

I loved the cat song and specifically the explicit version but i've seen a few people get sensitive about the song lyrics.  But what I liked about the ending of the cat song was that the two cat lovers bonded over their love and decided to try dating and in fact weren't lonely and instead Rebecca was just deluding herself on an exaggerated stereotype. 

I got the opposite message. Two lonely cat ladies lucky to find each other after each living stereotypically lonely lives.

[DianeDobbler]

4 hours ago, angora said:

The key word there is "bisexuality" - if she's attracted to both men and women, there's no reason that she wouldn't have enthusiastic sex with Josh when they were dating.

I do get that, but it still plays to me as something they invented on the fly to throw Valencia a bone and rack up more cred.

[Barlowe]

42 minutes ago, DianeDobbler said:

I got the opposite message. Two lonely cat ladies lucky to find each other after each living stereotypically lonely lives.

The way they played it was that Rebecca was left alone and confused as to why they weren't lonely. It seems more likely that were contrasting Rebecca's song by showing that it's merely a stereotype and not a commonality. 

[lavenderblue]

2 hours ago, DianeDobbler said:

I do get that, but it still plays to me as something they invented on the fly to throw Valencia a bone and rack up more cred.

Particularly that bit here about how now, she apparently used to never want Josh to touch her, but Beth doesn't have that problem. Kind of retcon-y.

I loved the puppets in the cat song but had deeply mixed feelings as a cat person born into a cat person family.

[DianeDobbler]

12 hours ago, Lilacly said:

The way they played it was that Rebecca was left alone and confused as to why they weren't lonely. It seems more likely that were contrasting Rebecca's song by showing that it's merely a stereotype and not a commonality. 

The dialogue was actually "OMG it's so nice to connect with someone. I feel so much less alone now." So before they showed each other their cat photos, they were each stereotypically lonely cat ladies. They were sparked into a bond just at that moment by sharing photos of their cats. 

Bigger picture - in the past, when Rebecca would sing something like "Buttload of cats" I saw it as the lens of a woman who used romantic tropes to manage her emotions. Romantic love was the biggest validation. Remember Dream Ghost, when Dr. Akopian showed Rebecca that she did have love in her life, and Rebecca totally hand-waved it and said, "No, I mean kissy kissy, love I love you love!" During that same episode, I believe, Dr. Akopian said something like "Why is it always about guys!" While Rebecca was undiagnosed and untreated, she was always going to see her life that way - romantic love would cure everything. Now she's been in therapy for over eight months, and been cleared to go back to Dr. Akopian. She presumably has a different perspective on her life, even if she's not always able to live it. So I'm looking at "Buttload of cats" through the lens of a more evolved Rebecca, and that's why I disliked it, because it was still hammering obnoxious lonely lady tropes, and it's not clear we were meant to understand this as a distortion. Comedic hyperbole, yes, but a distortion? Not sure. If you don't find a romantic partner and you're female you're going to not only be lonely and pathetic, your life will be dingy (Why would a single woman necessarily live in a sad walk-up apartment - and why are walk-ups sad, blah blah).

Then there was her treatment of Trent. I've never seen her be that contemptuous before. She accused him of "Ruining my wedding, which led to a suicide attempt." I thought she'd realized "Josh is irrelevant", since that was her pretty damn fundamental post-overdose insight. By now, I'd expect her to be able to articulate healthy stuff, even as her living it remained a work in progress. In this episode, she had a lot of dialogue that came off as if she didn't even have the talking points.

CEG has not been as clear about framing and context as it has been. In the past it wouldn't even do Greg and Rebecca meeting at the bridge without cutting in a voice over of Dr. Akopian framing this as the WRONG thing to do, versus a rom com happily ever after. Now we're more or less left to our own devices and I'm not sure why. Lately when I read stuff about CEG, I wonder if it was always written on the fly (which can be great if there's a strong arc underpinning it) or some of the ad hoc stuff is new. They changed the title of the male stripper song to "Fit Hot Guys" when at the last minute they decided to include Vinnie. To me that's, "Oh here's a place where we can fit Vinnie in." because they didn't previously have much of a plan for him this season besides placeholding. And Aline Brosh McKenna described changing the tone of "Back in Action" because she thought the episode was too much about how things affected Rebecca's love life and not enough about her overall journey. I wonder if she's realized the entire back half of this season has appeared to be about Nathaniel/Rebecca. Yet even that remains underwritten, because, while I disliked Greg, I can think of a million scenes between them that weren't "Are they going to fuck." and the same goes to Josh. Nathaniel "knows her really well." but what have they actually experienced together besides doing it in storage closets or bragging about how great the sex is? I haven't seen it.

Edited February 13, 2018 by DianeDobbler

[SomeTameGazelle]

8 hours ago, Lilacly said:

The way they played it was that Rebecca was left alone and confused as to why they weren't lonely. It seems more likely that were contrasting Rebecca's song by showing that it's merely a stereotype and not a commonality. 

I would love to buy into this interpretation, but it is kind of undercut by the fact that at least one of them said something about having been lonely. At least they are clearly not giving up their cats now that they have found each other.

[seacliffsal]

So, I was just thinking that the characters tend to think that Rebecca is a good person.  Nathaniel explicitly said it during this episode and others have said it in previous episodes.  My thought is that she isn't nice and that's the root of much of the story lines.  Everything that she has done has been to further her plans and objectives.  She may claim girl power and solidarity, but when her friends have needed her, she is not available whether physically or emotionally.  Both Paula and Heather have stated that they needed her but she was unavailable to them as she was pursuing and interest of her own.  Giving Daryl an egg may be the only thing she has done without it helping her to her own end-game.  

I'm going to give this some more thought, but maybe we aren't supposed to be rooting for Rebecca.

[Ms Lark]

On 2/12/2018 at 10:47 AM, DianeDobbler said:

Sort of petty, but I disliked the "Explicit" version of Buttload of Cats. To be clear, I think the explicit version of JAP Battle Rap is a 1,000x funnier than the network version, and I think the "fucks" in "I go to the zoo" sound more natural than the "hells" on network. So that said, "Fuckton" just isn't funny, and actually doesn't express the sentiment in the song as well, so it seems pointless. Buttload, in my head, is just the right amount of cats to make the point (even though I didn't like the song nor the tropes it reinforced). Fuckton is just "Saying fuck is always funnier than not saying fuck" and I don't agree.

I totally agree. Buttload of cats is funnier than fuckton.

[AfterwardsTV]

The back half of this season being the Nathaniel show has definitely made it far weaker than the first half. I get they wanted a relapse story but it's definitely felt like that relapse has been with a piece of cardboard. "Nathaniel Is Irrelevant" so I know that Nathaniel and Mona are a set thing (Nathaniel's intimacy issues have been at his core and we're to believe Mona can relate) and not an obstacle. But yes the show did kind of dawdle into filler and the only way to fix it is to have Nathaniel leave the series like Greg did. If he doesn't move away from the law firm, I want the finale twist to be Rebecca entering an entirely new setting.

The absolute disdain and nastiness to Trent comes off as Rebecca having loads of venomous self-hate left in her. Which reiterated as a theme in final office scene. She doesn't like to hear it, but Trent's right. She used him as a rebound and as a partner in one of her lie crimes. His idea of blackmail was all night board games. He's a harmless puppy but he represents everything Rebecca is uncomfortable with about her identity. We can only hope there's an episode in Season 4 where she apologizes to Trent. She of all people should be sympathetic to him, she could've said at least one encouraging thing besides "love kernels aren't real" to help him get on a therapeutic path. Hopefully Trent's next/last appearance will symbolically represent her self-acceptance.

[theatremouse]

18 hours ago, lavenderblue said:

Particularly that bit here about how now, she apparently used to never want Josh to touch her, but Beth doesn't have that problem. Kind of retcon-y.

I didn't think the implication was she never wanted Josh to touch her, just that sometimes when she was feeling snippy, she'd react with the "don't touch me" (which I think we've seen her do to Josh before?) So I think the implication is more just that her relationship with Josh was not good for a number of reasons. He was irritating her a ton this episode, and it wasn't all townie-shame-projecting. I think it took Valencia years to realize she just plain doesn't actually like Josh. And that's OK. She doesn't have to, and it doesn't mean he's a horrible person or that she is. 

6 hours ago, seacliffsal said:

So, I was just thinking that the characters tend to think that Rebecca is a good person.  Nathaniel explicitly said it during this episode and others have said it in previous episodes.

My take on this is that when Nathaniel (or the others) say she's a good person what they really mean is "I love you, and I'm not a bad person, and I don't think I'd love a bad person, ergo you must be a good person and I consider you as such." It's not based on anything objective. It also may or may not be some sort of unconscious desire to tell her she can be a good person even after all the bad stuff they all already know she's done. But it just comes out as "are".

[DianeDobbler]

AfterwardsTV, :) I agree with most of your post. Rachel *has* said Rebecca shouldn't be a lawyer, so maybe Rebecca will move onto something else. I'd like to believe that "Nathaniel is irrelevant" has the same meaning it did w/Josh, but man the show has been unclear - they've lapsed into filler and doing stuff like "Remember when we did this before? We're doing it again here!" - w/out bothering to earn it. I think Scott Michael Thomas is a good actor, and a decent fit w/CEG, but I'm not buying Rebecca/Nathaniel. I wonder if part of it is that the "Raging Waters" loving part of Rebecca is always more convincing to me than whatever the hell the dynamic is supposed to be with Nathaniel. Don't know how to pin it down, but I believed completely she had a good time hanging out with Paula's dad, while I can barely imagine her and Nathaniel's pillow talk. Also looking back, as crazy as Ping Pong Girl was as a song and a conceit, that's kind of her.

Have Nathaniel and Rebecca shared any real experiences that weren't sexual? Any memorable conversations besides the aborted plot to kill Josh's family? He's had more sincerely grounded conversations with WiJo. Also, Nathaniel isn't convincing me that he really wants to do the emotionally expressive thing. Vulnerable and emotionally honest, sure, why not, but Rebecca's exuberance seems like it would exhaust him on the regular. Just the vibe. He's not that guy. Not to mention a flaw in the concept - if you want to do the emotionally honest thing, Rebecca is not your woman. Again, it seems to me CEG is sort of confusing "dramatic" and even the occasional bout of emotional terrorism with emotional availability.

I'm not sure that the people around her like Rebecca because they love her and think of themselves as good people, so therefore the person they love must be good. I think she was more endearing in the past. She put up a front, but even the lamest at Whitefeather could see through it at times. How often things blew up in her face, and how she persevered. Now she's pretty nasty. It's hard to make an argument for a stalker like Trent, but in the world of CEG, she was not just mean and brutal, she dripped with contempt. I guess I can see it as a manifestation of her self-loathing, but I was still taken aback when she said him ruining her wedding ruined her life.

[KingOfHearts]

Rebecca's questionable choices were more tolerable in the first two seasons. Now that's she been in eight months of therapy and the therapists seem to think she's made a lot of progress, there must be some change that I'm not seeing. She isn't acting all that different, except maybe she feels bad about making bad choices. I get that it's realistic for her not to be perfect, and repeat some past mistakes, but her antics aren't as entertaining because they're regression for the purpose of stringing the plot along. The dark web and blackmailing Trent seemed out of place from what this season's been trying so hard to achieve.

I enjoy the crazy shenanigans, don't get me wrong. They're partially why I liked this show in the first place. There just doesn't seem to be much a goal right now. In S1, it was "get Josh". In S2, it was "marry Josh". In S3, it started out as "get revenge on Josh", then the second half became "get well", with a substantial Nathaniel detour.

Edited February 14, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[dubbel zout]

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rebecca's questionable choices were more tolerable in the first two seasons. Now that's she been in eight months of therapy and the therapists seem to think she's made a lot of progress, there must be some change that I'm not seeing. She isn't acting all that different, except maybe she feels bad about making bad choices.

I agree and disagree with this. Eight months of therapy isn't that much time, and I think the big breakthrough at the moment is Rebecca realizing her patterns and struggling to break them. So, as you said, some backsliding is natural and expected. But I agree that a lot of what we're seeing is Rebecca backsliding for the sake of keeping the plot going. I think it's a tricky balance to show improvement without it seeming improbably quick yet keeping the point that Rebecca's mental health is something needing constant tending.

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

I agree and disagree with this. Eight months of therapy isn't that much time, and I think the big breakthrough at the moment is Rebecca realizing her patterns and struggling to break them. So, as you said, some backsliding is natural and expected. But I agree that a lot of what we're seeing is Rebecca backsliding for the sake of keeping the plot going. I think it's a tricky balance to show improvement without it seeming improbably quick yet keeping the point that Rebecca's mental health is something needing constant tending.

It's probably more of an issue with the time jump itself, since it seems its only purpose was to speed along the pregnancy.

[DianeDobbler]

21 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Rebecca's questionable choices were more tolerable in the first two seasons. Now that's she been in eight months of therapy and the therapists seem to think she's made a lot of progress, there must be some change that I'm not seeing.

 

I'll say. I think CEG did an impeccable job up to her diagnosis. It was such a relief to Rebecca to have a diagnosis, as her song expressed, and she entered therapy with great relief. Also tried to overachieve, because that's her. But, after that one insight where she realized she was doing w/Nathaniel what she did w/Josh, it's more than backsliding. It's as if her suicide attempt and her breakthrough never happened. Whenever we see her in therapy she's not taking it seriously, she's dismissing it right in front of the therapist! Which was basically what she did before her o.d. I mean Dr. Akopian can't possibly be fooled or enabling because we've seen Rebecca in therapy and she's all "Bunch and Akopes!" and fast talking her way past any concerns Dr. Akopian brings up. She's obviously not taking group therapy seriously either, from what we're shown. So all of this is, to me, negating the story they told before, since her breakthrough is a big joke. There should be a tension between Rebecca's new awareness and the drives / habits she has yet to fully manage. I'm sure she doesn't want to o.d. again, and if that episode was truly as serious as it was presented, she remembers it - she won't trivialize it. However, we have seen her trivialize it, w/George. I'd accept that as black humor - I think people actually do that - except that there's no other sign she takes her so-called diagnosis seriously.

Yet, she must have made some authentic progress in eight months - we are told she did, and that was a good program. I refuse to believe she's so clever she fooled a program that knows all about borderlines like her.

I don't see Rebecca recognizing her patterns and struggling to break through much at all. She felt guilty about Paula, as she should, but that was it, and nothing she wouldn't have felt guilty about pre-therapy. I do think if CEG is actually telling a story and not stringing us along that it should incorporate the framework - this is a post-diagnosis Rebecca w/more information than before, who survived a suicide attempt and deep depression.  She's no different in therapy than she was before, and that's the one place we were outright informed she had progressed.

[quangtran]

Reeeally disagree with this notion that Rebecca hasn't made progress. How could I not when I find the show a bit less interesting now that she's more stable and less "crazy" than the earlier season? Dr. Akopian doesn't need to tell us she's doing better, she really has come a long way since Dr. Akopian found her stuck in that doggie door. She's now actually engaging in therapy (something they've hammered home several times), she's gained actual self-awareness, she has a far better balance between her work and personal life (something she was never able to accomplish in New York or her first few years in LA), and now she can objectively say that she has all the friends. Re-watching early episodes and seeing her break down at even the slightest case of Chan-itis made me think how different the show is since then. Sure, Rebecca still makes questionable decisions, but she'll do that until the series end and there are no more dramatic story-lines to tell.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

On 2/14/2018 at 10:01 PM, quangtran said:

Reeeally disagree with this notion that Rebecca hasn't made progress.

Same here. I think it would be very unrealistic to depict Rebecca as totally cured in eight months (for the record, I know there is no actual cure for BPD). That's not how therapy works. It's a long process and even when progress is made, people backslide. If you look at how Rebecca behaved in S1 and S2, she has changed a lot. The biggest thing is that she has a lot more self awareness. She knows what her triggers are. She has methods for coping. She recognizes when she's doing something wrong.

Yes, she sometimes still makes bad choices, but even people without BPD make bad choices knowing that they're bad choices. How many people have gotten behind the wheel after drinking at a party and thought it was okay to drive home because they were only a little bit tipsy? Who has eaten that extra slice of pizza knowing that it would give them heartburn? Who has stayed up way too late binge watching something even though they had to be at work early in the morning? That doesn't mean we're all stuck in our bad behavior forever. It just means we made a dumb decision, despite knowing that we shouldn't do it.

She made a terrible decision when she lied to Paula about Trent including her in the blackmail scheme. She knew she was making a bad choice. It was written all over her face before she turned around and lied to Paula's face. That was definitely a backslide, but S1 Rebecca would have blithely lied without hesitation and without a smidge of guilt.

One of the biggest signs of growth in this episode was at the end when Nathaniel said he saw her new boyfriend and then mentioned that he'd gotten back together with Mona. It would have been easy to tell him the truth - that Trent was her ex and that she wasn't dating him - but instead she kept it to herself so that he could move on from her and be happy with Mona. She could have been selfish and tried to get him back somehow, but she didn't. S1 Rebecca wouldn't have done that.

I think that we have seen a reasonable amount of progress from Rebecca after her eight months of therapy. She is still a mess, but she's trying and she's slightly less messy but she obviously still needs more therapy. To me, that's realistic.

[possibilities]

I think if they'd limited her backsliding to things other than taking out a hit on someone, it would be much easier for me to accept. But to me that was a huge escalation and way worse than anything she'd ever done before. It was even worse than how she was early in the season when she was horrified that Nathanial was going to hurt Josh's family.

[dingochick]

Those puppet cats know their stuff....”yes, we read that article in The Atlantic.....and then we peed on The Atlantic.” ROTFLMAO.

[Maricopa]

Lemme preface this by saying that I think Rachel is an immense talent -- and she did manage to get this unlikeliest of show produced and won a Globe for it! 

But I am finding her acting (and Paula's) just dreadful. She seems to have only one face, the bulging-eyes one, and Paula is 24/7 histrionic (although she has a gorgeous voice). It's difficult to watch. Many of the other actors are terrific, however, especially the pregnant character with the purple hair.

And of course one has to suspend disbelief for a TV show, but it's become so extreme that any law firm would employ an attorney who behaves like Rebecca. Or that her character hasn't been disbarred by now. Also, any attorney knows not to incriminate themselves -- pretty much ANYONE knows that -- while being arrested for attempted murder, so her blathering on was very distracting. Perhaps better would have been saying some things that would negate what she actually did.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Maricopa

[SmithW6079]

On 2/12/2018 at 10:54 PM, DianeDobbler said:

I got the opposite message. Two lonely cat ladies lucky to find each other after each living stereotypically lonely lives.

 

On 2/12/2018 at 11:48 PM, Lilacly said:

The way they played it was that Rebecca was left alone and confused as to why they weren't lonely. It seems more likely that were contrasting Rebecca's song by showing that it's merely a stereotype and not a commonality. 

 

On 2/13/2018 at 10:35 AM, SomeTameGazelle said:

I would love to buy into this interpretation, but it is kind of undercut by the fact that at least one of them said something about having been lonely. At least they are clearly not giving up their cats now that they have found each other.

People get lonely all the time. If two lonely people find a common interest and bond, then maybe they won't be so lonely anymore. I don't see anything wrong with how the two cat ladies were portrayed, nor how their "story" ended. Stereotypes exist because there is truth in them.

Count me as a Trent fan. He serves the purpose for which he was created: to be the creepy person, obsessed with another individual with whom he imagines he's in love or will build a life with -- just like Rebecca was (is). I think he's funny, plus the actor's dimples are adorable.

[aradia22]

Trent wasn't that fun this time. And I like Trent. I think part of the problem is the character has outlived his usefulness. His first appearance was great when he was a foil to Rebecca. And I don't even mind him coming back like when he inspired Josh to call off the wedding. He can be a plot device when needed. But bringing him back this time... Trent (at least now) is more aggressive that Rebecca (except when she was at her craziest and kidnapping Mrs. Chan, etc.). Rebecca was always trying to trick people into liking her while Trent resorts to outright blackmail. And it doesn't make sense to try and make us feel sympathy for a character who is written as such a joke and who has largely caused his own problems.

It's not that I'm desperate for Nathaniel/Rebecca to work out but I'm not interested in him and Mona. It feels like wasted time to focus on their relationship when there are other characters to develop. Nathaniel is interesting with Rebecca or when his character is more fleshed out so we have more insight into their potential relationship. Whereas characters like Heather and Valencia have the potential to be interesting on their own, separate from Rebecca. 

They really have no idea what to do with Valencia. Beth reminds me of Nicole Parker impersonating Ellen Degeneres. 

It felt like a lot of filler to just leave Rebecca guilty about lying to Paula. And there weren't really enjoyable songs this episode. I don't know. I don't think they needed to spend a whole episode on this.

[aradia22]

Quote

I'm not sure what's behind Valencia's snotty attitude. I don't remember her having this kind of disdain for West Covina back in S1 so is it mainly due to wanting bigger and better clients in LA? 

I feel like she was snobby in season 1 but relatively happy to be in West Covina. I don't remember if she and Josh talked about moving away. But I got the impression she was happy to be queen of West Covina, big fish in a small pond. Though I do kind of have the feeling that both she and Josh expected that things would start happening for them after that. I think she wanted to open a yoga studio? I also feel like Valencia was living more of an LA life just in West Covina in season 1. But now that they spend so much time at Home Base (I mean the show in general) the characters seem to be feeling more trapped. 

Quote

I don't see wacky hijinks as the real show. I see the real show as HAVING this darker undercurrent. Since CEG isn't interested in her therapy, CEG has lost the anchor that, yes, Rebecca's anxiety, depression and obsession used to provide. So now she's just a douchebag. 

This is a good point. I don't know why they haven't explored her mental health and recovery more thoroughly. This was the time. This was the time to finally do it. But since Rebecca's meltdown I feel like the show has repeatedly avoided doing the hard work. 

Also, if we're ever going to get a pointless subplot, I'd like to check in on the two Dr. Akopians. I know there's doctor/patient confidentiality but I imagine they have to know something about the Nathaniel/Mona/Rebecca situation and how they're in the middle of it because they're treating two vertices of the triangle.