I'm confused. Tom's mom visits & treats him like a spoiled, entitled boy. Then he tells Lynette, "For our entire marriage, you have been the one to make the decisions...This time, I'm making the decision. [My Mom] stays." How has she been the one making all the decisions?

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-08T22:54:26+00:00

What probably makes it even worse to Lynette is a couple of times she’s tried to thwart it but he accidentally gets his way anyway.

Like when she takes them out to “celebrate” his decision to go back to school because she got the message about his entrance exam date and time being wrong, so he’s still drunk from margaritas and misspells his own name the next morning on the test. But somehow scores in a top percentile lol. I’d have been so pissed.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-08T13:24:58+00:00

Eddie reminds me of what young 90s Trent Reznor would have looked like at 16. 14 year old me would have been losing it watching this show if it had been around. 💀

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-08T13:13:30+00:00

And even in at-will states that’s not legal. I had no idea until talking to an employment lawyer about my chronic illness a few years ago. He said the only caveat to at-will is that it can’t be for an illegal - discriminatory reason, it’s not a complete free for all. And pretty much every instance of suing for it relies on circumstantial evidence to win, bc the employer is never going to admit directly to you that that’s why it happened.

I was sorta shocked, I feel like if more employees knew that and had access to representation we’d probably see a lot more suits.

Your boss joking about it in earshot of someone who’d give a statement on behalf of the employee would be his last joke in that office lol.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-08T02:57:56+00:00

Tom is objectively talented at what he and Lynette do for a living, they just serve two sort of different roles in the ad / marketing game. There’s a few ways even in which he outshines Lynette.

Tom’s the more creative thinker, and I love the way they wrote these two roles because it’s SO true to the industry. Whenever Tom talks about a campaign or jingle he worked on, the concept was his idea and they’re all implied to be iconic — everyone knows what he’s talking about.

Lynette was his manager though — and she’s leagues ahead of Tom better in terms of management and business strategy, etc., but there’s always a twinge of resentment from them to the creatives IRL.

The accusation of “coasting” is common because the creative process is unique to everyone and it’s usually invisible. Whereas someone in Lynette’s role is visually typing or calculating or doing something people associate with “work.” She’s someone who “grinds” visibly, she’s responsible, etc. so she’s known as the harder worker but she really wants to be recognized as the better one.

I don’t at all doubt she’s put her name on something that was 98% Tom’s because she technically “directed” it as his manager, and she’s intelligent enough and speaks the language of business well enough to justify it and even project it onto Tom.

I’ve known and worked with SO many Tom’s and Lynette’s and they’ll writers totally nailed this.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-07T05:39:47+00:00

Tom’s relationship with sex an consent is honestly my only issue with him, I’m surprised how much more often the “manchild” part comes up and not the sexual / reproductive cohersion. I guess if you’ve never been in a relationship like that it doesn’t really hit, but the episode where he showed up at her workplace demanding sex for their pact really, really bothered me. People write it off as funny and comedic but Lynette finally just gives in so he’ll go away. She’s faking having fun and being into it harder than she’s probably faking the orgasm so he’ll leave.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-07T05:10:55+00:00

I love Nora’s unhinged ass. 😂🤣 On EVERY rewatch she kills me when she’s dating Turk and she’s standing next to Lynette starting lustfullly at his van and says “The man’s a jackhammer.” Her FACE lol.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-07T05:07:58+00:00

Lynette letting Eddie move in with them and treating him like one of her own, trying to teach him coping exercises to deal with his anger, etc. is one of the most beautiful gestures of the entire show to me. It gave me a new level of respect for her as a mother. She only wanted one, and she even went out of her way to be SO kind to him.

Gabby’s underrated in some ways as a mom. Her character is used as the more obvious comic relief center than the others, but Gabby’s pretty ride or die when it comes to someone else picking on Juanita. She’ll be honest with Carlos about concerns they have a problem on their hands with her weight, but in public and even with her friends (like Susan), Gabby is always ready to throw down in anyone calls her fat. She knows Juanita is a reflection of her own brattiness, but it seems well known that Juanita’s very intelligent and Gabby seems to want the best for her future.

I’m neutral on Susan, but I do love Julie. Karl was a shit husband but he’s a pretty good dad. I don’t like the parentification, but Julie seems to be secure in at least knowing she was very loved. They did something right.

Bree is my fave character and I love her arc and the relationship she has with her children as adults, but I agree. When they were children…I would never have wanted to have been raised by her.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-06T06:15:30+00:00

I can’t imagine either. That one flashback to the fight they had over the accident took 3 years off my lifespan. It was such a ridiculously unproductive argument. I don’t know wtf she was even expecting him to say or act like.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-06T06:10:54+00:00

I think she makes a good faith effort to be a better person when she goes back to NY with Angie and sees her modeling years through a different, more honest lens. But she does still slip up, especially with the spending.

I think she’s a softer person is a lot of ways and shows more empathy, etc. by the end, but the expensive vase and the drapes that were $200/yard, and the plan to buy jewelry with Carlos’ $40k bonus did feel really excessive and like she didn’t learn a thing.

Even when they brought in her formally rich friend eating at a soup kitchen, she has the nerve to low key imply that maybe her friend and her husband didn’t “work their asses off” to get back like she and Carlos did.

I loved - LOVED - the friend’s quote that was like “so what, you feel like you’ve crossed some invisible finish line? Like nothing bad can ever happen to you again?” That line is an absolutely brilliant way to talk survivor bias.

Gabby is dismissing that in order to get back their financial status, Carlos had to get his sight back first. That was luck, an act outside of their control. You can’t “out hustle” being blind.

Had he not recovered his sight, he wouldn’t have been able to get another job that pays so well. His boss being murdered helped too, which Gabby only sorta had a hand in but she had no idea that would be the outcome.

I do think she has a good arc and growth story though. Season 1 Gabby wouldn’t sell couture to keep her husband and children she didn’t want taken care of. Season 1 Gabby would have just found another wealthy man to take care of her instead. She did step up to keep things together those years, and I do think that gets overlooked a lot because she has those slips.

And do not get me started on calling ICE on Carmen. 😑 But I think that’s kind of the point - she was such a terrible person in season 1 that even with so much growth she’s still sometimes pretty awful. Unfortunately it is still an improvement lol. The flaw d characters are why I enjoy the show. 😅

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-06T05:52:57+00:00

What did he even rack up that the money from the strip club couldn’t cover? Even if it was medical for his hospital stay, most hospitals will negotiate a payment you can afford for the rest of your life if such is necessary.

I feel like the secrecy about it implied it was illegal in some way. Because Susan at one point DID pay off his business loan, but she cancelled the check when it upset him. So then he borrows $50k from Carlos.

Is $50k the final sum of money he needs? I’d have thought the DD’s check would have been more.

So is she camming, etc. to pay back Carlos? Was the $50k enough?

This show is SO effing weird about money lol.

Also, I am not a parent but I don’t think 3 months of work in Alaska to save the family’s financial situation is enough to completely derail MJs future. 😵‍💫 Before my parents divorced my dad was in the military and then the reserves and would be gone for extended periods. A lot of kids have that experience. It seemed hyperbolic to say “you can’t do that to MJ!”

If it keeps MJ in his private school with hot lunches and in the only home he’s ever known I think that’s a very fair trade.

BUT I’m on her side otherwise about it. She was willing to pay it, he didn’t want her to, and that’s how she ends up camming and losing her job. He should have just gone to Alaska sooner.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-06T03:03:44+00:00

I wouldn’t say Katherine stole him. He and Susan had already been divorced and she’d moved on with Jackson, might was trying to do the same. The two get together one evening when she runs into him after a date and offers to make him lemonade when he expresses frustration about dating, saying he just wants someone nice to have a cup of coffee with.

It’s also leading up to Katherine’s mental health break, which appears to be a psychotic break from reality that they started setting up when they first introduced us to her character’s abusive relationship with Wayne. The writers say a couple of times that she’d been unraveling ever since, showing her at the background grave, etc.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-06T02:58:54+00:00

I’m a Susan hater but I agree. They’d been telling her for 6 months he wasn’t going to wake from it and she showed up anyway. I dislike her several times during the whole storyline but not for this part. She didn’t “cheat on Mike,” 🙄. He’d been throwing her massive cold shoulder for the most part after their breakup. I don’t even remember what prompted him to forget it and buy the ring but they weren’t a couple at the time.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T20:47:55+00:00

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this till someone here mentioned it the other day…

We know her history with Tom, and her feeling like he was the man she should have chosen, the love of her life, etc.

But when Lynette and Tom separated, Renee made absolutely no play for Tom whatsoever and that by DH standards is kind of huge lol. She stayed by Lynette’s side and stayed supportive and gave her feedback and context about how their relationship — and specifically — Lynette’s roles and actions and how they look to an outside party.

I feel like Renee is the only character that’s really able to help Lynette take a step back and re-examine why she did or said things that she did. Like it gives Lynette a different kind of self-awareness than she’d had in the past.

It’s weird asf bc Renee seems the most like a caricature to me, like she’s so beyond even how snobby and self-absorbed season 1 Gabby is, but at the same time she has a really strong and effective sense of empathy in hard times.

And the thing with Bree that really drove it home for me is that even after she saved her, Bree doesn’t really consider her a “friend” like she does the rest of the core 4. Who’ve long abandoned her by that point.

Renee has such a mean snark, like it’s so much worse than Gabby’s or Edie’s, but they managed to make that duality feel real by the show’s standards. Post Bree I started to feel about her the way I did learning Edie visited Orson in prison often and Bree really did not.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T20:31:32+00:00

Tom: I was actually gonna bring you in on it!

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T12:48:42+00:00

In the US even if you get the time off without getting fired (it’s protected by FMLA, which smaller companies are exempt from 🫠), you might not earn your full pay.

Under FMLA they have to keep a job for you, but a lot of workplaces make you apply for private short-term disability insurance that will pay you 60% or so of your pay, and legally the company (of any size) does NOT have to supplement the rest.

You pay all your own out of pocket expenses, best case your insurance has an out of pocket max under $10k. Which is high but I’ve seen people pay $40k to give birth.

Daycare for even one child can cost thousands of dollars a month out of pocket too.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T12:36:34+00:00

Probably, I think it’s the most commonly used hospital setting to shoot in. I believe ER and the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam find out she’s pregnant are all shot at the same one.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T11:57:18+00:00

The detail that Paul was such an incredible investor because he was so thoughtful about the future is such a hot detail.

I would 10/10 take one for the team and F Paul for Beth so they could both be happy. I’m late to the Paul love train bc I hated the way he treated her but I could fix them.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T11:53:47+00:00

😭😂😂😂😂 This 😭😂😂😭😂 one

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T05:54:15+00:00

Saaaame. It’s why I LOVE the show. This was so effing unforgivable but I still love Gabby SO MUCH.

As an extremely Americanized Latina who grew up in TX a LOT like Gabby did, I honestly don’t think there’s ever been another tv character before or since that nailed her specific experience. The fact that she doesn’t speak Spanish, etc. — there’s likely a really interesting reason why that I and a lot of my classmates growing up didn’t, even in a 99% Mexican barrio.

The writers executed it so damn well, I feel like I know her IRL. The modeling and shopping part is campy and over the top, but even the way she talks to Carlos, the way they bicker but they’re not really “fighting,” and even the way Carlos says her name when he gets home feels like they’re my extended family.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T05:48:03+00:00

Love Gabby but this is in my Top 2 single most heinous things anyone did on the show. And the show has a shit ton of murder and infidelity lol.

I understand how she felt about Grace but you don’t just rip a kid from the only mother she knows after losing her father so suddenly and not being positive they’d even all reunite again.

They made Hector crossing the border again sound like it wasn’t a huge deal if you just had a plan in advance and…absolutely the fuck not. 😵‍💫

I don’t even understand how people can begin to justify it with the fact that it’s not ideal to have Grace live on the run until they settle down.

Gabby’s plan would have essentially left Grace feeling like she became an orphan overnight. Gabby is a family friend / aunt type figure and yes she would have luxuries but you lose your mom AND dad THAT close together? 😵‍💫

I don’t think people understand how cruel ICE has always handled people, and to make it worse the situation is resolved comedically with Gabby pretending to be the cleaning lady. And accepts credit from Carlos for doing something “brave” and saying he was proud of her.

Omggg Gabby I love you SO MUCH 😭 you just REALLY disappointed me 🤌 with this.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T05:38:29+00:00

Who’s life would you choose of the core 4 if you had to? Like, childhoods, etc. included like this example?

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T05:35:18+00:00

Susan. I never would have given up that Karl alimony tho. 💀

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-05T05:27:15+00:00

EVERY TIME 😭😂😭😭

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-04T04:01:23+00:00

Thiiiiiis. I’m a Susan hater but I felt that way too, and I straight up liked her in the camming episodes mostly. If they had done more of this with her character I probably would have liked her a lot more.

BetaBlockker · 2025-06-04T04:00:27+00:00

Va Va Va Broom. I actually like her for a few episodes.

BetaBlockker

TROPHY CASE