As I’ve
already admitted, I ship Rebecca with Josh, but even though I hope those two
crazy kids can make it work after a lot
of personal growth on both of their parts, I can’t deny that Rebecca/Greg has
potential, too. This is an entirely
different relationship with its own strengths and set of issues, and I’m pretty
impressed at how engrossing the show makes Rebecca’s dynamics with both guys
(some spoilers.)
Like
with Rebecca/Josh, Rebecca/Greg don’t work at present. They’re two people with fairly similar
damage, and in their first go at it, that damage gets in the way big-time. Rebecca jumps into something with Greg when
she’s not ready (despite her claims to the contrary, she’s not over Josh,) but
even as she starts to really like him, he’s too gunshy from his previous
run-ins with her to let his guard down.
Naturally, neither of them are open about what’s going on, so she tries
to push him for something more, he feigns indifference out of a misguided
attempt to keep her around – he thinks she only likes him when he doesn’t show how much he cares – and the
situation just implodes.
In
order for Rebecca and Greg to get together for the long haul, they both need to
learn not to hurt one another with their own defense mechanisms. Both are pretty sensitive but very good at
pretending they’re not. Rebecca goes big
into denial and Greg can be darkly sarcastic, so when they’re respective backs
are up, she comes across like a dismissive liar to him, and she thinks he
enjoys criticizing/mocking her. Fear,
deflection, misunderstanding, anger, heartbreak, repeat – that’s the cycle they
have to break. If they’re going to work,
both have to let their guard down somewhat and trust that the other is there
for them. They have to talk about what
worries them, and they have to come with a plan to address those fears together
rather than retreating into their own destructive patterns.
But
then, of course, there’s the flipside.
What is it about Rebecca and Greg that would make people root for
them? Even though, again, I personally
don’t ship them, I can see plenty of reasons why others do. Really, they have a lot in common. Both are more on the
intellectual/sophisticated side, at least compared to a lot of their friends – while
she likes the beach, Rebecca is probably the only one in the friend group who
would get behind going to a museum with Greg.
Greg’s ambitions, wanting to go to business school and quit bartending,
seem compatible with Rebecca’s high-achieving career (that said, I do think they’d struggle to make it work
if Greg doesn’t see some positive movement on his career goals, because I think
having a long-term girlfriend who’s significantly more successful than he is
would get under his skin; Greg has some problems with his masculinity and how
he thinks he’s supposed to be.) They
like some of the same oddball things, and each has a fairly good understanding
of the other’s issues. Rebecca has a lot
of bright shininess about her, but there’s darkness, too, and I think Greg can
identify more with that latter side.
Because each has the other’s number when it comes to their personal
brands of self-sabotage, each can challenge the other. They can force each other to confront the
stuff they’d prefer to avoid, which is no small matter. And when all the struggles and insecurities
get out of the way for a minute or two, they do have fun together. Every
once in a while, the defenses come down, and they can just be.
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