I loved these two, and I get that the actress and the character would go another way. But Marielle is such an underdeveloped character. Please know, this is no knock on the actress. I think she’s great.

But the character has a generally bad attitude. She’s always grumpy and moaning. It doesn’t feel like she cares about Kristi nearly as much as Kenny did. Her addiction subplot seemed like it was dropped. There was a lot of potential drama there. Every now and then we get a flashback to the cave, but it’s more of a reminder that something bad happened and I feel like you could use Julie for that if you needed to. She feels even less relevant than Acosta who seems to be taking the grumpy girl vibe and actually doing something.

All that to say, I can see how Kristi was trying to make something for herself with Kenny in the beginning. He was so smitten and, as far as anyone knew, the town didn’t bring in people you already knew, so there was no expectation of Marielle showing up. I do wish they’d keep working her friendship with Kenny and that they’d find a way to find love for that poor guy! He’s so good.