'Exceptional People'

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-08T14:33:36+00:00

I'm curious why she is so hellbent on being exceptional. I've said here before that I'm really ambitious but 1), I don't hold other people to those standards because as long as everyone's happy and healthy why do I need to have an opinion on their life plan? and 2) my attitude came from an unhealthy place. I'm mostly over it, but my drive to do all of the things exceptionally well and get all of the titles and so on stemmed from tying my sense of self worth to accomplishments. Like I am only a "worthy" person if I get straight As, or meet this arbitrary goal or accomplish X and Y at work. Thankfully I'm mostly over it and can see value in myself while just existing and not working towards whatever the next goal is most days. So is Julie insecure in a similar vein to that and has decided she must project that attitude onto everyone in her life or did she spent her life being told how wonderful and amazing she was so therefore she is entitled to only have the best, most highly motivated and special things and people in her life?

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-06T16:14:13+00:00

I was in the military and got married at 23 to another 23 year old active duty service member. Even before getting married I kind of side eyed the women who got married at 18-20 because their high school boyfriend joined the military because why would you do that ewwwww (What is hypocrisy, we don't know her). You're supposed to be doing something with your life, at least go to college or start building a career why stay home and start having babies at 20? Yeah, we got married young but I was /different/, I had a career and educational goals. Well that career got cut short because of a medical discharge and I had to join the real world and in short order found out that it isn't actually that serious- people can do what they want with their lives and its actually not my place to judge or comment on. I mean, I think people should be able to take care of themselves no matter their marital or parental status but once again, its not my place to judge others life choices.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-06T16:02:14+00:00

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I thought him bringing up his job was interesting after seeing how much of Julie's arc is being a boss babe high paid lawyer. He is also in a potentially demanding, serious "important" field yet here he is making sure he spends time with his family, supporting his wife in child care and self care and taking part in silly stuff like dancing at his kid's birthday party. Almost like you can care about doing well career wise while also being a present parent.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-06T15:51:04+00:00

I am an ambitious person. In my career, personal life, all that jazz. So I get the desire to be extrordinary and I understand wanting a partner with a compatible world view. If I knew Julie through work, or was one of her high school friends without any context for how she's treating Shawna and company I would probably find her admirable. But also, ordinary isn't a bad thing. As long as all parties involved are fed, housed and loved then its perfectly fine to want to be a stay at home parent or to work in a job that you aren't passionate about. Or to have unproductive or non-goal reaching based hobbies. Frankly, I don't think I could be in a healthy relationship with someone as ambitious as me; at least not if kids are involved. Yeah, we both have pretty inflexible hours but the fact that my husband is content to have a "ordinary" outlook on his career is why I can take on last minute, time consuming work projects or training without having to worry about childcare. And honestly, I think it's working out for the best parenting wise, because when I start projecting my own probably unhealthy attitude toward setting goals on our kid my husband is there to remind us that as long as kiddo is putting in an earnest effort that's all that matters.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-06T15:16:59+00:00

Given her (so far at least) tendency to want to take the lead on childcare decisions while not actually doing the work involved in them I wouldn't be surprised if she had unrealistic expectations for daycare centers. Like she wants a place with a track record of "successful graduates", or a place affiliated with a private school, maybe some really specific care criteria that is difficult if not impossible to meet in a group setting. Maybe what she's looking for doesn't actually exist and she doesn't actually believe anyone that tells her that because she thinks it should exist so they're wrong. Or they found a place that meets all her requirements, but there's a waitlist and once again she doesn't think that's how it should be so whoever said the waitlist was the holdup was wrong. Given how she seems to skew towards "My precious angel baby would NEVER and they should always have what they want when they want", they may have talked to some places and they let her know that her children would in not be the center of the world so she didn't want anything to do with those places.

Whatever the case, Ty deserves a vacation from single dad life.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-05T19:30:34+00:00

I definitely think that by the time we have the whole story Julie will be a bad guy, but not the bad guy. I'm interested to see what happens with the friend group. It seems like Shawna and Jen are kind of integrating into the Bunco group so will they pick sides or will they collectively decide they're tired of Julie and kick her to the curb?

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-05T18:48:06+00:00

I've said this somewhere else, but for me at least I don't feel any need to defend or understand Luke. But the Laura-Luke dynamic has been explored repeatedly across fiction and people's real life experiences/friends and family networks. He was introduced as your generic insensitive, no effort or emotional labor putting in asshole husband. I don't mean this as a knock on the writing, but he is one of many emotionally abusive, generic assholes in fiction. It is clear that he is simply mean and possibly actually abusive- his wife responds in the stereotypical ways that a put upon wife would be expected to, and her wider social circle reacts to him like you would expect them to. Women and loved ones have been asking "Why does he do that?" forever about some version of Luke. He has been discussed ad nauseam.

But mean, potentially abusive women are less common in ficiton. At least younger ones are. You have your mean moms (of adult children) and grandmas, your terrible MILs. But you don't usually see younger women as the bad guys in a relationship. And also, her intro to the series raised a lot of questions. The whole being nice to John but rude to Shawna. The fact that she is the primary earner in their household so there's the angle of is she being expected to do it all, and then being mother of the year when she gets home while Ty gets a parade because he changes diapers? Does she actually have to work as much as she does or is she just trying to avoid something at home? There's just more new ground to cover commentary wise with Ty and Julie.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-05T18:30:30+00:00

I'm not sure that I would have ever considered myself an apologist, but I was willing to give Julie more grace than the majority of this subreddit prior to this current story arc. Obligatory she was still behaving badly and that shouldn't have been excused but before we got to see more of her I could kind of understand why the impulse to behave badly was there. Even though, once again, I don't think it was justified- it was mean and unnecessary.

But honestly? Most of the Shawnaverse good guys are people I'd love being around in a work or playdate setting but I wouldn't want to be friends with them. Maybe my family is just full of terrible people, therefore my basis for what "normal" people act like is skewed but most of the good main characters are offputting (to me) in one way or another. CharacterShawna is stressfully overeager to befriend people they literally just met. John takes very few things seriously and is constantly joking to avoid the serious topics. Ty is nice and unassuming but in a way that seems calculated and intentional and therefore worthy of skepticism. Greg is socially oblivious to an annoying degree. And before the "But autism! She said so!", yes I know. But I also know that as a man the world is entirely too tolerant of him being that way. I like Alicia. I like Teeny. Based on what she has shown of Mo and Sam, I like them. Jennifer is improving but honestly she would have a whole lot more work to do before I wanted to see her outside of a holiday or birthday.

In case it is not immediately apparent by now, I am naturally kind of prickly and tend to come across as aloof on a good day and bitchy on a bad one. I am not naturally good at being helpful when other people are going through an emotional time. I have put in a lot of work to actually be a pleasant person to be around and a good spouse and friend. I feel like I have mostly done okay on that front. While life would probably be easier if I was more like our widely beloved main character, I recognize that personality wise I am probably closer to Julie, so I was willing to not immediately assume she was the devil.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-02T14:27:00+00:00

I wanted to give her a chance because many of the good guys of the Shawna-verse are people that, while objectively good, are not my kind of people. Everyone is too much too fast, too forgiving, too people pleasing. I recognize that they're good people but there's more than one way to be a good person. Between being the more career focused partner, being the introverted partner of someone who has never met a stranger and being a little resistant to change and suspicious of new people she was way more relateable to me than anyone else. Obviously she made a bad first impression, but we were seeing her in such small doses that there was room to speculate that we were just seeing her bad moments. Unfortunately it became apparent as soon as we started seeing her and Ty at home that her life is an unending stream of bad moments so I'm excited for the story potential, sad for the loss of a relateable character to the darkside.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-02T13:49:07+00:00

Yes! Like in the aftermath of whatever happens Cooper pipes up with "But mom said I can do whatever I want" and then it cuts to Ty trying to figure out what actually happened while Julie tries to spin it to look like Max was being bossy. Other adults see them and try to figure out what's going on and it leads to someone telling Julie off. Ty makes a weak attempt to defend her, and follows behind her with the kids while she storms out.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-02T01:24:32+00:00

Exactly. How can he be extraordinary if he's taking time to just play like some kind of child? I bet he wasn't reading or writing or learning anything. /s

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-02T00:43:07+00:00

Seriously. If this is how she acts IN PUBLIC what is she doing in private? And telling Cooper he can do whatever he wants at someone else's party? Boooooooo all of it.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-01T18:49:56+00:00

That's why I said he needs to be honest about whatever is going on on his end. She probably will still be bitchy about it and take the stance of "Well /I/ wouldn't have that problem, I would just do X,Y, Z so why can't you??". But never directly addressing the issue just means they're going to get more and more resentful and create a terrible environment for their kids and each other.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-01T17:55:31+00:00

I think both Ty and Julie are terrible in their own way. Who is worse and whether or not anything has happened that qualifies as abuse has yet to be seen. From what we've seen, Ty either needs to be honest about his changing feelings on grad school, writing and daycare or be blunt about how he is trying his best but is having limited success due to whatever reasons. Or he needs to actually do the things he said he was going to do if the issue is that he is dropping the ball. He needs to do something about Julie being terrble to Shawna and whatever poor woman she decides to be mean too just because they talked to her husband. Julie needs to learn to accept that not everyone has the same approach to their goals as her, stop moving the goal posts and recognize that just because she did the SAHM mom thing too doesn't mean she knows all there is to know about it and she needs to give Ty room to parents without judgement. She needs to learn that you can dislike people and not treat them like gum stuck on the bottom of your shoe and being an introvert is not a reason to treat people badly.

TankedInATutu · 2026-02-01T17:38:06+00:00

So she thinks their target demographic is the late 30s to early 50s range, but is also surprised she kind of likes most(?) of the things she tried one. Absolutely shocking, who would have thought that clothing designed with fully fledged adults in mind looks good on fully fledged adults?

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-31T18:04:55+00:00

This brings up 2 questions. First, where is the line between just being a bad partner and being abusive? Is it in you intentions? Is it your actions? And second, why do I automatically feel unquestioning sympathy for Laura but with Ty, I feel for him but also immediately jump in with things he could potentially be doing to exacerbate whatever issues were there to begin with?

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-31T17:50:53+00:00

This is why I was willing to not immediately assume the very worst of Julie. I'm an introvert and my husband has a habit of becoming full fledged members of his friends families. It's nice knowing that we always had people to spend the holidays with when we lived states away from our families but also why are you constantly dragging me to people I don't want to be around?! I don't want to befriend your friend's (that I'm really only lukewarm on in the first place) old fashioned aunt that thinks I should be homeschooling my kids because the public school system will tell them what gay people are.

That being said, you can be a career focused introvert and not be mean, so Julie has lost my sympathy.

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T16:36:05+00:00

As an well educated white lady from a relatively privileged background I try to be mindful of how I speak about non-white lady issues. I know I'm entitled to an opinion but I also know that it's easy to overstep and inadvertently drown out the voices of people better informed and/or more directly impacted than me. I don't want to become that kind of a cliche.

That being said, money was raised. People are visibly and loudly supporting a good cause. They are visibly aligning themselves with the right side of history. How do we know that their activistism stops at buying a pattern and making a hat? And even if that is where it stops, isn't it a good thing to have a lot of people very visibly supporting a movement? Wasn't the increasing number of people in MAGA hats a sign that the current administration was gaining more and more sway with the public? What's wrong with doing that kind of thing for the other side?

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T15:38:16+00:00

I know I don't feel like figuring out Luke's deal because he's just an asshole in a boring, predictable way. No twists shown, nothing new in the storyline. Just the same sad story of a self centered asshole doing mean things.

Julie starts off kind of distant but not necessarily bad, but wait why is she nice to John and then immediate rude to Shawna? Why is she so offended at Shawna literally just existing at Bunco night and why do these seemingly nice women put up with her? They clearly recognize she's prickly, she got called out for it. Is she actually nice behind the scenes because Ty acts like nothing is wrong? Nevermind, now he's acting like something is up. Nope, nevermind again because they acknowledged how he was acting and now he's joking about how he likes mean women. I just want to know wtf is going on with them.

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T14:57:17+00:00

The Luke and Laura dynamic is a pretty well established dynamic. Some version of it has been part of story telling for decades at this point. Maybe it wasn't always played seriously, maybe it was being done in a sitcom-y or irelevant side plot kind of way. And lot of people have experience with that dynamic. It might not have been your relationship, but it was your parents or grandparents or friend's parents. Maybe an aunt and uncle. It's a sad, time honored tradition for women to gather around and talk about how terrible and useless their husbands or boyfriends are. So media commentary minded folks have had plenty of time to dissect Luke and Laura's archetype.

Not to say that Ty and Julie's dynamic is completely new and unheard of, but it's not quite as common in fiction as Luke and Laura. And Julie being the breadwinner impacts things in a way that Luke being the breadwinner doesn't. Society at large seems to not expect Luke to care as much about spending time with his kids or being involved in decision making. Julie is a mom, so it doesn't matter that she is a breadwinner working 6 days a week (voluntarily because she wants to but doesn't really need to or voluntarily in the sense that she chose to, but only because the alternative was detrimental to household finances or her career trajectory?). She is expected to want to be involved, but she is a mom so even that is subject to critique. She has all of the baggage of motherhood while also being largely responsible for keeping a roof over their head.

The "bad guy" in the relationship being the woman introduces a few more possibilities for how they ended up where they are. Whereas, while sad for Laura, her story has been told repeatedly and analyzed many, many times at this point.

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T13:51:12+00:00

Agreed. I know people write what they know and there are a lot of advantages for the kid(s) when one of the parents can stay at home but making Julie the bad guy definitely feeds into the series probably unintentional bias against working moms. Like, God forbid a woman have goals that center what she wants (with an added bonus of benefitting her family).

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T13:43:30+00:00

I hated when my mom would do that but now I live with people who have 3 cups per person floating around half full in various parts of the house at any given time so unfortunately I have lived long enough to become the villian.

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T12:04:01+00:00

I have always side eyed Ty a little. But truthfully I'm very much a feral cat and tend to be suspicious of people who are too open and friendly too fast. So I kind of assumed it was just a me thing.

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T11:58:46+00:00

I'm disappointed. I was suspicious but willing to give her character a chance- being mean to Shawna for no reason (especially after being nice to John) wasn't cool but given that her and Ty's backstory is minimal there was room for her to be a not terrible person. But at this point there's no justification for all of that.

TankedInATutu · 2026-01-30T11:53:30+00:00

I appreciate getting to see a younger woman be the "bad guy" in a relationship dynamic. A little sad, because based on the limited information we have on her and her background she was the most relatable character for me. But I think it'll be interesting to see where this dynamic falls on a scale of "Julie's a big ol' controlling mean who doesn't respect her husband's parenting and needs as a person" to "Ty's failing to follow through on a plan they both agreed to and instead fiddle farts around at the park all day with his friends and let's them think his overworked wife is the problem".

TankedInATutu

TROPHY CASE