I wrote
about Jaye and Aaron ages ago, and they remain my favorite Tyler sibling duo,
but Jaye and Sharon are pretty fun, too.
As with Jaye and her brother, the two sisters’ relationship is wildly
dysfunctional but, at the same time, oddly compelling. The character interactions on this show really
take it beyond a quirky curiosity about a young woman who hears inanimate
objects talk to her and make it real.
Jaye and Sharon are a prime example of that.
Jaye
and her sister don’t have what you’d call a warm relationship. They’re not close – Jaye tries to avoid
everyone in the family as a rule, but when she and Sharon are in the same
sphere, Jaye’s sarcasm starts working overtime.
As a type-A immigration lawyer, Sharon is light years past slacker Jaye
(a retail clerk) in terms of grown-up pursuits.
Sharon has worked hard to get where she is, and not just in her
professional life; she frequently casts herself in the martyr-ish role of the
family savior, the one who bends over backwards to accommodate the others and
cleans up the messes of more wayward members like Jaye. This career and familial pressure – and
extreme closetedness – have left Sharon tightly-wound, practically brittle.
Jaye,
meanwhile, has cultivated an “expectation-free zone” for herself. Unlike her family of overachievers, she
prefers to live well below her potential.
She enjoys the way she exasperates Sharon; however, there’s also a
little part of her that kind of resents how seemingly put-together Sharon is,
which complicates their interactions.
Although Jaye is determined to keep her life from moving forward, she
doesn’t like her sister looking down on her and wears her retail vest with a
surly chip on her shoulder.
Of
course, Jaye’s days of inaction are coming to a close. Everything changes when the inanimate objects
around her start pestering her to do things, and this is when Jaye and Sharon’s
relationship starts to soften, little by little. Some it comes from external prodding; it’s
one of Jaye’s tchotchke consciences who first urges Jaye to say “I love you,”
to her sister. The fact that Sharon is
accidentally outed to Jaye also plays a part in their relationship. While Aaron is the only one in the family who
learns Jaye’s secret, Jaye is the only one who knows Sharon is a lesbian. As self-involved as Jaye can be, I think
having a secret of her own allows her to empathize, at least a bit, with
Sharon’s situation. She’s supportive in
her own snarky Jaye way, and even though I daresay Sharon sometimes wishes Jaye
had never found out, it’s good for her to have someone in the know.
Even
though Sharon and Jaye continue to clash, sometimes enormously, Jaye pretty
consistently turns to Sharon when she needs help, and Sharon rarely
disappoints. Whether it’s a way out of a
legal jam or some coaching through a difficult conversation, Sharon is there
for her little sister (often complaining throughout and pointing out that she
can’t just drop everything because Jaye can’t sort her own crap out.) Aaron is more of an emotional support for
Jaye, trying to get her to open up about what’s going on with her, and Jaye and
Sharon definitely don’t have that
kind of relationship, but Sharon provides support in a different way, serving
as a reluctant-but-dependable protector/advisor/lifeguard. Though Jaye isn’t the best at reciprocating
(she usually needs a push to go out of her way for anyone,) she at least starts
to recognize all that her sister does on her behalf and begins to understand
why Sharon acts so uptight. Baby steps,
but considering where they are at the start of the series, not bad at all.
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