*Season 3 arc spoilers.*
This episode is pretty good, maybe my favorite of season 3 so far. While kind of busy—there are a lot of plots going on, and not all of them get their due—things come together nicely on the whole and I like some of the developments we see here.
Hope’s latest initiative is school uniforms, which almost everyone hates, naturally. Jean is back together with Jakob (she discovered after their breakup that she was pregnant, and they decided to make a go at being a family,) and he and Olla have moved in, which Otis does not adjust well to. Maeve has a tough but important encounter with her mom. Otis and Ruby go on a double date with Eric and Adam, which is unexpected all around. Jackson gets closer with new student Cal.
The biggest detractor to this episode is that there’s just so much happening. Each of the plots mentioned above have at least one or two subplots attached to them, and several storylines bleed into one another. As such, there isn’t really a clear theme or direction for the episode, even though there are a couple stabs at one.
But while the whole is messy, there’s plenty of good stuff to be found in the individual stories and scenes. I appreciate that Olla’s perspective isn’t lost in the shuffle of the big move—she gets important scenes with both Jean and Otis concerning it, we have another reference to her friendship with Adam, and there’s a strong scene where we see Lily getting too distracted to really be there for her girlfriend. In Maeve’s storyline, there’s an excellent confrontation between her and her mom in which Maeve acknowledges the complicated factors at play here. Despite the many ways her mom has let her down, she recognizes that addiction is an illness, saying, “I know it’s not your fault and I know you’re trying, but you haven’t beaten it yet, and you might not for a really long time. That doesn’t mean I won’t always love you.”
I haven’t mentioned Cal yet, though they’ve been present since the start of this season. This is their first chance to really get highlighted, though. Jackson and Cal have been circling each other a bit since he first noticed the new kid, and today, both give each other support while they’re having a tough time. Jackson opens up about his struggles with anxiety, and Cal, as a nonbinary person, feels very uncomfortable in the new uniforms—Hope relents to Cal’s desire not to wear a skirt but insists that their jacket and trousers be too fitted for their comfort. I welcome this new character and always appreciate storylines for Jackson, but I do worry that the budding relationship between these two will be somewhat at the expense of Jackson’s friendship with Viv. (And they do appear to decidedly be friends at this point, which I find a little surprising. I would’ve bet money after season 2 that they were going to get together.)
The moment Eric texted Otis about looking forward to their double date, my eyes about bugged out of my head. Otis/Ruby and Eric/Adam? It seemed a trainwreck in the making, which is of course the reason this plotline is happening. And to be sure, the story is full of unexpected turns. Ruby shows Otis parts of her life that he’s never seen before, Adam drops a couple of wild bombshells, and even the very idea of Otis taking Ruby to a bowling alley is surprising. This storyline has fun, sweetness, and a little drama.
One issue that’s coming up this season is that, so far, Eric and Adam’s relationship seems to be more about Adam than it is about Eric. Although Eric reacts to and wrestles with things, Adam is the main mover in their plots: Adam needs to come to terms with being bi, Adam needs to work on his communication skills, can Adam make nice with Otis and Ruby? This puts Eric/Ncuti Gatwa in a less dynamic position, frequently playing second fiddle to Adam in their storylines, even as Eric’s personality is certainly more out-front than his. Given that I was relatively pleased early in the series to see how much agency and plot focus Eric had as Otis’s Black/gay best friend, it’s disappointing to see him kind of take a backseat to his white, more masculine boyfriend.
Don’t get me wrong—Gatwa still does well with what he has. I get a kick out of Eric voguing as he gets ready for his date, and he has a delightful reaction to a wild situation with Adam’s mom. And he has fantastic non-verbal acting in a scene where Adam’s mom is introducing him to someone. As she defers to Adam about the nature of their relationship (it’s been established that she most likely knows they’re boyfriends, but Adam hasn’t come out to her,) Eric’s smile fades to hear Adam call him a “friend,” and then he has to quickly pull himself together to pretend it doesn’t bother him. A devastating moment, beautifully played.
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