Summer is over and Fall started, and as the leaves fall off the trees on the way to winter, the lives of the Salingers slowly start to fall apart one more time. The sadness streak took a small break since season 2 finale, but with Will and Griffin's departure, and this episode, the endless drama continues. Bailey meets Cooper, a college guy that introduces him to take shortcuts in tests and exams. Sarah tries to convince him of not cheating and to do things right, but he falls in the trap. Although for now all seems ok, meeting Cooper will lead Bailey to commit sins that then he will regret. Besides, he introduced him to the college life of partying and drinking, that Sarah will try to avoid. On the other hand, Julia decides to stop avoiding Justin (he thinks the same), and learns that he went to UK again and that his brother was born, Ben. She accepts to visit them and greet his mother. Later, Julia Justin and Sarah argue about going to college next year. Sarah seems to be the more qualified, and with one spot left in Stanford given to the winner of Garber award, the three write essays: Julia about her parents (by the way, her mother went to Stanford), Sarah about being adopted, and Justin uses Julia's miscarriage on his paper. She gets mad at him when she finds out, but he manages to calm her down, saying he did it to win the spot, just as she would have done. He says that he doesn't have to look after her anymore and she neither, still, says that if there were 2 spots for the award, he'd pick both of them. About this, I'm siding with Julia, it doesn't matter that they are not together anymore, Justin had no right to use it, because she suffered more than him for the miscarriage. Anyway, these two stories light up the most dramatic side of the episode.
Kirsten worked in her dissertation in season 1 and season 2, but with all the wedding plans, she delayed so she was rushed to deliver it the next months after the disaster. Since then, no one noticed what happened until now, when a visiting fellow read the dissertation and showed Dr. Kass his concerns. Sadly, she was very depressed in December 1995, so she took antidepressants for two months and in that time the plagiarism passed. This revelation implies that in 2x12, when Charlie and Kirsten spent a few days together in january, she was still on medication, so that's why she could handle seeing him, smile, go to dinner, even laugh together. And for what was shown in those episodes, and for what will be said in 3x06, seems that first she went alone to see Dr Leto (while she was retrieving her stuff from the house in 2x10), he made the prescription, and then her parents took care of her during December in Chicago. Then, she surely convinced her parents that after being 6 weeks on medication, she was doing better, so they allowed her to return San Francisco alone, in 2x11. I guess she went to see Dr Leto again for a new prescription, and in late january, she stopped. Anyway, back to present, now Dr. Kass calls her. She was so happy about the job at Seaside, that she babbled talking about one of her students, Penny, who does her make up and stuff while she lectures on class. Kass is glad she's doing great at the job, but then he shows her what they found in her dissertation, so now she faces losing everything what she worked for the past years, including the job. All the scenes with Charlie, when he finds out all this, when he tries to comfort her and help her, were outstanding. He was talking to Claudia when Kirsten came home and both thought that her dissertation was going to be used for some book, so she told what the college found. Charlie thinks it's a mistake because he saw how much she worked in seasons 1-2, mentioning how late she stood up writing, even in weekends, but she admits she did it, without knowing how. Later, he searches notes, file cards, books inside her boxes in the basement while Claudia goes to do laundry. He asks her if she saw Kirsten around, implying he's already worried about her. She says no and leaves, and then he finds in a book the medical prescription. Then, after finding her in the house's porch, where Kirsten was standing staring at the landscape, Claudia tries to bond with her telling a story about the time she wrote a song without knowing it was from Julia, but Kirsten, aware that's not nearly the same, says that she can't do this with her and returns to the house. Claudia feels bad because she knows she can't make her feel better, and she usually gets upset when the family doesn't think she's big enough to understand certain things. But now, the theme is so sensitive, so delicate, that she should understand she must give space to her "adoptive parents". Seemingly Kirsten goes out somewhere else to think and when she returns, Charlie confronts her, having realized that she took antidepressants after calling the drug store to ask. She can't believe he went to her stuff, she didn't want him to know. She swears she's fine and that she's not taking them, but admits that she did the next 2 months after the canceled wedding and that she saw a shrink, Dr Leto. Finally realizing how much she suffered, he hugs her and she explains that the college pushed her to deliver but she was in bed all day, feeling like "the fog when it cames in the morning", and now she doesn't even remember writing those copied paragraphs. Charlie is full of guilt, so from now on, he makes his personal mission to protect, take care, help, have, hold and comfort Kirsten in everyway possible, and against anyone who disturbs her, even his siblings. In the night, he can't sleep and when she notices this, he tells her that she has to tell Dr Kass what happened, but she doesn't want to. He sees it from the outside and thinks the college will care because what happened was a special situation, a 0,0001 % case (yes, those are the odds of 2x09 happening in reality). When he says he'll talk to Dr Kass, she reacts and firmly refuses (surely because she doesn't want anyone else to know), so he says he'll go with her, she'll tell them and he'll wait for her outside the meeting. He says he loves her, promises that they'll get through it together, so, comforted, she says "alright", and they continue sleeping, holding each other. These last two scenes were excellent, emotional and really tearful. Showed once again how much and how deeply they love each other, and that he'd do anything in the world to help her. In the morning, the younger siblings talk about it, and Julia helps Owen with daycare homework (Claudia mentions that Kirsten usually helps him): Bailey defends Kirsten, aware of college's demands and guessing she must have had a reason (he knows her references, proffesional experience since Pilot, so he knows how Kirsten is), but Julia and Claudia are not so compassive. Julia thinks she has no excuses, that she could have asked for an extension, and Claudia, probably upset because Kirsten didn't listen her in the porch, criticizes her because her students will think she's smart, but they can't trust her. Claudia leaves the dinning room and Charlie surprises her, and she seems fearful to learn that he heard what she said about Kirsten. He tells her that she should be mad at him, not at Kirsten, but she doesn't understand. He doesn't say why and lets her leave (really touching scene). Later, after the meeting with the committee, Kirsten tells him that is over and they revoked her Phd, but she didn't say what happened because there's no way to defend it. She feels all these years wasted, and Charlie feels so much guilt and such hard need of help her that he tries hardly to talk to Dr. Kass, he wants to look for him at his office, but Kirsten stops him, assuming the college won't care, and saying that she did it, not him, blaming only herself. She starts feeling trapped, without air so he follows her outside to take care of her and not leave her alone. I know that's truth, in most of cases, college people don't care about personal crisis. Later, while changing TV channels, she tells him that under the circumstances, she lost her job at the school in Monterey. He thinks she could take a semester off and regroup, but she doesn't want him to make her feel better, and keeps changing faster with the remote. She starts to repeat over and over that she did the mistake and deserves what happened, so Charlie decides not to work in the restaurant in the day. He wants to go to Seaside to pick up her stuff from the apartment, she says she'll go, so he tells that he'll take her. With the TV turned off by him, still feeling guilty, she leaves the room and Claudia sees this, and how concerned is her older brother. In the last scene, they are shown returning in the truck to the house with the stuff packed and he tells Kirsten that they're home, as she was distracted. He asks her to go inside while he get his siblings help, but she prefers to stay in the truck for a little time, sadly staring at the window. Still worried, he goes upstairs quickly, looking at her. Charlie is still the Man of the House, the Father and the Husband, and now he faces one of his biggest challenges. Here, he acted as a caring and loving husband, always taking care of his wife in these moments of sorrow.
I praise Paula's work in this episode, also Matthew's, and the soundtrack, was very well used in the dramatic scenes. Then, a nice detail to highlight: during all these episodes (and the next ones, even 3x12), Kirsten is seen wearing a plain gold ring on her right ring finger. I'm not sure of the meaning, but could be considered a promise ring, which symbolizes the devotion between Charlie and Kirsten. To finish, here was told a big part of Kirsten's story with depression, and some symptoms already started to appear. This is a relapse of the depression triggered by the failed wedding, but now the cause is different. For all this and for what's next, the story today was perfectly written.
0 out of 1 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
