TWW: 4.13 The Long Goodbye
Aug. 10th, 2022 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI think I had decided to watch just this episode before setting out to do so because of my circumstances of that particular night, and after rewatching it, I was fine with just that.
Aww, CJ. I felt a little more ambivalent than I expected, while moved. In part, it’s because it’s an unusual personal story, with the device of her being invited to give a speech at a high school reunion meaning that the had to confront her father’s Alzheimer’s.
It was particularly heartbreaking to see such an articulate, intelligent person hit by this, on top of all our investment in the daughter witnessing it (Allison Janney, everyone.) There was a touch of frustration because they were making it worse by not naming it, by his not being willing to accept the masses more help that he needed.
However, I spent the whole episode going, ‘Doesn’t CJ have at least one brother? Why isn’t she calling him? Or is this because everyone, including CJ, assumes that the single daughter is the one to take care of a parent in this situation, even though she’s got a truly important job and, as was shown in the episode, they need her?’
I enjoyed the writing, although I found the stuff about time a tad overdone. I wouldn’t say the episode was theatrical, exactly, but when I listened to the podcast and properly grasped that it had been written by a playwright who wasn’t Aaron Sorkin for his first television gig and that he’d been thinking about it as a one-act play, that made a lot of sense. The podcast episode focused on the continuity wins – CJ’s Catholicism, the inadvertent use of ‘what’s next’ that must have come from watching a lot of episodes in preparation. It was moving to hear the writer recall as he was interviewed on the podcast how personal experience had informed the writing, but that he’d blocked that afterwards until that point.
I did give out a howl of ‘No, don’t’ as someone with no medical background from 2022 when the doctor suggested anti-depressants for Alzheimer’s. Isn’t that a no no, now?
The combination of seeing peers at the reunion and taking stock of everything, while CJ came home to find things worse than the situation she’d been avoiding, while interacting with people who had known her since childhood or youth, not professionally, was potent.
I found the actress playing the stepmother a slightly weak link. I didn’t love her performance in her big scene, especially the start of it, although I was touched by the whole story of those quiet lunches and not acting on their feelings until after various spouses had fallen away, as a corrective to CJ’s almost petulant, but understandable ‘my latest stepmother was my English teacher’ stance. CJ somewhat enjoyed being self-righteous about Molly abandoning her father. I did feel that at least she could have informed CJ and her brother(s?).
I welcomed the romantic subplot in the midst of all that. As they said on the podcast, CJ has had so many frustrations romantically. I liked all his backstory, I liked that there were moments of real vulnerability and comfort and trust there. That description of how he remembered CJ at high school was very compelling.
I loved the beginnings of CJ’s speech too, and enjoyed Josh being too craven to face the press – with good reason, as we’ve seen previously - and Toby also not being that good at it, proving that CJ is a class act.
[Edited for typos 29/1/25.]
Aww, CJ. I felt a little more ambivalent than I expected, while moved. In part, it’s because it’s an unusual personal story, with the device of her being invited to give a speech at a high school reunion meaning that the had to confront her father’s Alzheimer’s.
It was particularly heartbreaking to see such an articulate, intelligent person hit by this, on top of all our investment in the daughter witnessing it (Allison Janney, everyone.) There was a touch of frustration because they were making it worse by not naming it, by his not being willing to accept the masses more help that he needed.
However, I spent the whole episode going, ‘Doesn’t CJ have at least one brother? Why isn’t she calling him? Or is this because everyone, including CJ, assumes that the single daughter is the one to take care of a parent in this situation, even though she’s got a truly important job and, as was shown in the episode, they need her?’
I enjoyed the writing, although I found the stuff about time a tad overdone. I wouldn’t say the episode was theatrical, exactly, but when I listened to the podcast and properly grasped that it had been written by a playwright who wasn’t Aaron Sorkin for his first television gig and that he’d been thinking about it as a one-act play, that made a lot of sense. The podcast episode focused on the continuity wins – CJ’s Catholicism, the inadvertent use of ‘what’s next’ that must have come from watching a lot of episodes in preparation. It was moving to hear the writer recall as he was interviewed on the podcast how personal experience had informed the writing, but that he’d blocked that afterwards until that point.
I did give out a howl of ‘No, don’t’ as someone with no medical background from 2022 when the doctor suggested anti-depressants for Alzheimer’s. Isn’t that a no no, now?
The combination of seeing peers at the reunion and taking stock of everything, while CJ came home to find things worse than the situation she’d been avoiding, while interacting with people who had known her since childhood or youth, not professionally, was potent.
I found the actress playing the stepmother a slightly weak link. I didn’t love her performance in her big scene, especially the start of it, although I was touched by the whole story of those quiet lunches and not acting on their feelings until after various spouses had fallen away, as a corrective to CJ’s almost petulant, but understandable ‘my latest stepmother was my English teacher’ stance. CJ somewhat enjoyed being self-righteous about Molly abandoning her father. I did feel that at least she could have informed CJ and her brother(s?).
I welcomed the romantic subplot in the midst of all that. As they said on the podcast, CJ has had so many frustrations romantically. I liked all his backstory, I liked that there were moments of real vulnerability and comfort and trust there. That description of how he remembered CJ at high school was very compelling.
I loved the beginnings of CJ’s speech too, and enjoyed Josh being too craven to face the press – with good reason, as we’ve seen previously - and Toby also not being that good at it, proving that CJ is a class act.
[Edited for typos 29/1/25.]
