"...one of the things I kept saying to him was because you're so naturally tough and gruff and masculine and Joel, the more you can show me a scared, sad, frightened kid inside of you, the more I will connect with you and feel everything else." Craig Mazin on directing Pedro Pascal early on in The Last of Us (from the official podcast for Episode 1).
Joel's microexpressions that float across his face in this moment—when he sees a girl in Jackson that looks so much like his long-deceased daughter—absolutely broke my heart. I was immediately transported to this moment I giffed of Pedro's raw performance as Ricky Hauk in Touched by an Angel? Joel's repressed "inner child" and emotions that have been buried under all the unresolved trauma and sheer horror of the reality he now lives in, how it's this expression that he accesses in this moment of the most poignant, overwhelming grief? How it's so muted, so subtle, all these many years later, in such a broken man? My heart?
The way that grief never truly leaves you? Something about the echoes and contrasts between the two performances hits me in the feels? Seeing echoes of sweet larval-stage bby Pedro in 50-something Joel is so fkn sad? 🥺
And then, look at how his expression shifts in each scene...his eyebrows morph back down to that furrowed baseline, back to his hardened shell? It's incredibly subtle in his younger self, obvious in his older self, and heartrending in each.
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it's interesting you read it as kendall trying to comfort roman! to me, it did read as cutting, like ken going logan mode and saying what logan would've said in that situation to roman. but following it up with "it's ok" is very kendall, not logan. hm i don't think i fully agree with your take but i see it! also kendall immediately standing up for rome with mencken... he is such a big brother
I think a lot of people read it as cutting or Logan-esque, anon! Which I find pretty fascinating because I can't really see Logan as ever saying something like you fucked it, it's okay, look, it happens, especially not with a level tone of voice, haha.
I don't know, the fact that it echoed exactly what Roman said to him in 3.09 felt really pointed to me, and the fact that Kendall circled back around to making it about him needing Roman still, while self-serving, sure, also felt like the exact sort of comfort that Kendall himself usually clings to (after all, if Dad didn't need him, he wouldn't know what he'd be for).
I do think there was probably other feelings at play too - the show's never dealt in pure comfort after all, and there was, I imagine, a degree of relief at Roman crumbling in front of Mencken when Kendall was rattled by their closeness in the last episode. I also feel like it kind of echoed in some ways Kendall's handling of Sophie this season. While the circumstances are, of course, very different, it feels to me like a reflection of Kendall's broken social skills and his difficulties with relating to people with any sort of emotional honesty.
I mentioned in a reply a while ago that I think one of the biggest differences between Roman and Kendall is that Roman can be honest without being vulnerable, and Kendall can be vulnerable without being honest, and the ways that tends to inform their relationships with others. This season, I think, has in many ways doubled down on that, and especially as Kendall seems to be incapable of meeting either his daughter, Rava, Roman or (albeit to a lesser extent) Shiv, where they need him to meet them. Instead, he sifts through his own experiences and finds moments that gave him a modicum of comfort and tries to mirror them back at people in a way that doesn't work. He tries to keep Sophie tucked away and then buries her in security like his father did to him after Shiv's wedding, he tries to hug Shiv like she hugged him at his lowest, and now he parrots Roman's own comforts back at him too.
I don't think it's malicious, I just think it's another way a life of abuse has manifested in these four children. They were raised without empathy, so the ways they try to show it are mangled and sometimes cruel. It's just all that they know how to do.
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Bridgerton Season 2 is shockingly so much better than Season 1. It's incredible how far getting rid off one horrible character (DAPHNE) can elevate your story.
Now, if only Eloise would just disappear off the face of the Earth, I wouldn't even call it a guilty pleasure show but simply a good one.
Honestly though, I don't care if she drowns in the river, just write her off, before I have to hear another monolouge on her self-importance and just how feminist and clever she is (not like the other girls 😘), because she reads (*gasps*).
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