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(Recap) A Million Little Things: Episode 8 "Fight or Flight"

Welcome back, everyone!  We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.  It's been a couple of weeks since we saw this crew, and all of their problems were solved during the break!  Just kidding, they're a mess as this week's episode of A Million Little Things touches on the anguish people sometimes face when they feel helpless to stop the loss of a loved one.  Let's discuss...

Warning: Spoilers ahead

 

Observations:

  • We start with Maggie pretty clearly dreaming as she's facing a plane crash with a guy named "Chad," who's drinking while he's flying the aircraft.  The Cure's "Lovesong" plays in the background, giving us a hint that Chad must be someone important.  Guess we'll find out who he is later.

 

  • Gary is already back on dating apps after breaking up with Maggie?  We know he's got commitment issues, and the breakup is complicated, but that seems sketchy.  On the other hand, who needs to listen to a lecture from Eddie, who remains our least favorite of the guys?

 

  • Colin the dog needs more airtime, effective immediately.

 

  • We're still obsessing over how blue this show is.  The sets are blue, the wardrobe is blue, somehow the outside looks blue.  What do you think, is the show trying to invoke feelings of loyalty/strength/and trust, or is it more a death motif?

 

  • Maggie is packing up her life.  She's locked in on choosing flight over fight.

 

  • Is it romantic or a little creepy that Gary flies to Chicago to try to convince Tom to come back with him to talk to Maggie again?  We're leaning towards creepy.  Also, Gary's comment to Maggie that he won't care about her life if she won't, doesn't feel like it came from a good place.   Gary's stock is taking a tumble this week.

 

  • Our biggest gripe with the show remains the formatting/editing, and we've got two examples of it this week.  First, the conversation Maggie has with Regina about why she can't see Rome anymore starts to build a little bit of tension, and then Maggie blurts out that she's dying, and...we cut to some Christmas commercial.  That immediately eliminates most of the impact of Maggie's reveal, and we've moved on to a new scene when we return.  Let that conversation breathe more! 

 

  • Second, Rome tells Maggie that she may not have saved Chad, but she saved him, which is moving, and...is then immediately neutered by another commercial.  The show continually hits the top talking point and then bounces to the next scene.  There's much more material to mine here, but it feels like the writers have ADD.

 

  • On the flip side:  The scene where Maggie explains to Rome who Chad was is longer than those other two scenes we just discussed, and it carries much more of a punch.  The cast chemistry is the strongest part of this show.  Trust this group to handle a bigger load.

 

  • It turns out that Chad was Maggie's alcoholic brother who died in a drunk driving accident, and suddenly her refusal to try to save her own life makes a little more sense.  She's wrapped up in her inability to save Chad, and she doesn't want to put anyone else through that pain.  We also see that Gary's obsession with getting her to change her mind is largely driven by his own inability to do anything for John before he took his own life.  That guilt can be awful, but the hard reality at the end of the day is that we don't have the power to keep people from taking their own lives.  What we can do is offer support (as Delilah, Rome and Regina do for Maggie) and hope they'll change their minds, but it's still always going to be that person's final decision.

 

  • So Eddie is upset that Katherine brought a date to the tasting, but not so much, because he really just wants to be with Delilah?  Eddie's got a lot to figure out in his life.

 

  • It takes Gary all of about five minutes to hop into bed with Ashley after his fight with Maggie, so we're hoping Maggie decides to go through with the chemo and then realizes she can find a better guy.  Rome keeps his #1 spot, and then it's a good drop down to Gary and then another tumble to Eddie.

 

Final Thoughts:

This was not Gary's best week, but the point about survivor's guilt is an important one that we'd like to see the show explore further.  We'd also like to go back to John's story, and it looks like some of that might be coming next week, so we'll see you then!

 

A Million Little Things Episode 8 November 29 2018Gary could have handled all of this better.  (pic via tvline.com)

 

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