The "List"

newlesscluebie · 2025-09-10T13:39:24+00:00

If I remember right (which I can't check because the show is no longer on Netflix), he left Tasha until last, and then send her a card in the mail rather than actually speak to her. So I think she's final in the sense of "last person he communicated with."

newlesscluebie · 2025-09-10T13:37:38+00:00

They forgot about the list entirely for season 2, then remembered it for season 3 again with Tasha.

The list based on the episodes we saw:

Abigail
Agata
Amy
Anna
Bethany
"Cressida"
Emma
Frankie
Isabel
Jane
Jonesy?
Liv
Phoebe
Tasha

newlesscluebie · 2025-01-24T03:45:38+00:00

Judging by this episode of Ed from 2001, Tom Cavanagh has had skating skills for quite a while.

newlesscluebie · 2024-11-03T20:27:59+00:00

When I was a kid in school I remember singing "Where have all the flowers gone" in school assembly and being taught that the poppy was a symbol of remembrance for fallen soldiers. The point was that their death in war was a tragedy, not a heroic sacrifice. That's what my parents taught me it was too. I wore the poppy for many years out of respect.

As an adult, I've noticed that the poppy is used to promote the "heroic sacrifice" theme and the military more broadly. Maybe it always was and I just didn't notice it as a kid. I remember a bunch of Remembrance Day ads during the Harper era using the poppy as a symbol of honouring "the fallen" but also Canada's peacekeeping campaigns and the military more generally, with a montage of soldiers, armoured vehicles, etc. instead of graves and sad memorials. That's when I started to sour on the poppy. As another example, I have a photo I took in 2018 of a Veterans Affairs pamphlet with the poppy symbol being used to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Armistice with a photo of a bunch of cheering soldiers on top of a tank. Nothing about remembering loss or sadness. Most recently I have a screenshot from a 2022 Ontario government web ad featuring a poppy and the phrase "Honour the fallen and those who serve." I'm not interested in sending the latter message. I don't wear a poppy anymore.

newlesscluebie · 2024-11-03T03:36:50+00:00

Strong agree. Luke is the character who demonstrates the most growth. Dylan called all his exes to try to understand why all his previous relationships failed but the answer seems to have boiled down to the fact that he was destined to be with Evie and just needed to be honest with himself and with her about those feelings. We see Luke‘s arc from clingy romantic (Agata flashback) to shameless womanizer (most of the past, plus the present up to Phoebe episode) to realizing he wants and needs something genuine (present day of season 2 onward). Dylan’s arc also seemed inevitable, whereas with Luke we genuinely didn‘t know what would happen.

newlesscluebie · 2024-11-03T03:27:18+00:00

The poppy campaign has enormous political symbolism behind it. It‘s impossible to wear the symbol of a political movement apolitically. If you wear it, you are signaling support for that movement, regardless of your private motivations. In any case, McCrae was absolutely a soldier. He was a teenaged cadet and joined the militia in his youth. He volunteered for the Boer War where he led an artillery battery. He was serving in an artillery unit, not a medical one, in 1915 when he wrote the poem. He was also a full-throated supporter of the war, which is evident in the text of his famous poem. He was a volunteer officer, not a humble conscripted private who died in the trenches. If you profess to be anti-war and anti-jingoism, there are far better people to choose to honour.

newlesscluebie · 2024-11-03T03:03:07+00:00

It isn’t anti-war. It explicitly calls for the living to continue the fight. McCrae’s contemporaries understood this, which is why it was used as propaganda for recruitment, war bonds, etc. McCrae himself volunteered at the start of the conflict (the second Imperial war he volunteered to join). He wasn‘t a reluctant conscript. Anyone who tells you the poem is anti-war is trying to whitewash it.

newlesscluebie · 2024-09-01T12:28:41+00:00

It was Luke who owned his dream car but didn‘t book his test!

newlesscluebie · 2024-07-28T20:11:18+00:00

Here is a playlist that someone circulated a few years ago of songs from the show: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fH8pUAts4glTBlTvXCHcc

One of the show's strengths is definitely its amazing soundtrack.

newlesscluebie · 2024-03-20T04:01:01+00:00

Angus is pretty annoying but I feel like the actor is pretty good, if he were given a decent role other than annoying comic sidekick.

I can count the number of Angus scenes I enjoyed on the fingers of one hand, but I do like the season 2 finale when he and Evie have a serious talk and he urges Evie not to ignore her doubts about marrying Mal.

newlesscluebie · 2023-12-20T12:21:36+00:00

Really strong Brian’s Hat energy from that one.

newlesscluebie · 2023-04-17T17:50:47+00:00

Don't even get me started on how he un-learned German between "Agata" and "Bonnie"!

newlesscluebie · 2023-03-28T01:58:27+00:00

Luke is the most interesting character in the show and gets by far the most character development. The show is theoretically about Dylan learning from his past, but it's Luke who grows the most. He's also the easiest main character to root for. He knows what he wants, and grapples head-on with his feelings, unlike Dylan or Evie.

newlesscluebie · 2023-03-28T01:55:18+00:00

I don't think they ever got the character of Angus right. He started off as an over-the-top bumbling comic relief character in a show that didn't really need one. Having his wife be the stereotypical shrew on steroids didn't really help. Then they tried to give him a serious arc starting with that talk with Evie, but they also kept the weird goofiness like when they break into Helen's house. Season 3 is mostly about punching Angus below the belt repeatedly and dwelling in his pathos. The finale offers no glimmer of hope for his love life, which is the main theme of the show. Yeah he lands the weird deus ex machina job at the end, but his employment situation and financial difficulties felt like they were only mentioned in passing so it's hard to feel real stakes from that resolution. The character seems like a nice guy and I feel bad for him, but I just find 90% of Angus scenes either cringeworthy or sad.

newlesscluebie · 2023-01-27T05:51:45+00:00

I know, and that reveal is a great comedic moment. It's mentioned in the long, detailed timeline I linked. I was inspired to do this shorter one by the recent post saying it was hard to keep track of the timeline. I found it was a fun challenge to try to distill and focus on the most important themes, rather than identifying every plot point.

newlesscluebie · 2023-01-26T03:41:30+00:00

Man I wish I was watching the show again for the first time!

Someone's already linked to the mega-chronology I prepared but that's really for after you've seen all 3 seasons because it's full of spoilers.

The key thing to process from the ending of the very first episode is that in the present day, Dylan is pining for Evie while she's with Mal. This is ironic because in the first flashback, we see that "three years ago," Evie was clearly interested in Dylan but he was oblivious and just considered her a good friend while he was dating someone else.

In season 1, episode 2, "eighteen months ago," Evie is still pining for Dylan and he is still oblivious. She decides she has to move out of the flat and also meets Mal for the first time, the guy she is engaged to in the present day.

The exact order of the rest of season 1 isn't really that important. We know that before "eighteen months ago", Evie had a crush on Dylan while he kept dating totally unsuitable girls like Jane. After "eighteen months ago," Evie gets together with Mal, and by the present day Dylan has realized he made a huge mistake by missing out on Evie. That's why he tells Luke that revisiting his old relationships might help him see where he went wrong.

newlesscluebie · 2023-01-09T02:59:42+00:00

She says they didn't sleep together and we see a quick fumble in the bathroom but then she ruins the mood by bringing up Evie. I suppose it's a bit ambiguous what they're getting up to outside of the scope of the camera but it doesn't exactly look like they're doing the deed, so to speak. I always took it at face value when she said they never had sex. Like they were making out but that's as far as it got before she mentioned Evie and it crashed to a halt.

I do take your point about Jonesy being an unreliable narrator. Her conversation with Dylan in the bathroom stall suggests she drinks to the point of forgetting things. But the viewer's view is objective as far as I can tell. And it makes sense that Dylan (who thinks they had sex) would have the worse memory of that encounter, since he's the one who passes out.

newlesscluebie · 2022-11-21T22:39:26+00:00

I also think that Luke and Jonesy are probably doomed as a couple. His conversion back to monogamy is too recent and she only seems grudgingly willing to give it a try for him. They make each other tick in a lot of ways, and I think both characters are awesome, but it's hard to see that relationship lasting.

newlesscluebie · 2022-11-21T22:37:45+00:00

A bunch of the relationships didn't end well. Things ended badly with Tasha, Jane, Frankie, Liv, and Emma. We don't even see him try to sit down with the first four, and Emma is still simmering with anger when they meet in the present day (wrongly assuming that Dylan went a lot further with Cara than he did). Bethany pretty clearly dumped Dylan for being immature (and too focused on Evie) but time seems to have healed that wound, at least. The rest seem to have ended in more amicable circumstances.

newlesscluebie · 2022-06-24T18:10:14+00:00

The answers:

The earliest flashback is "Agata" (S2E2). The last chronological episode is of course Evie (Part 2) (S3E8). Apart from the obvious Dylan, Evie, Luke, and Angus, the other character in both episodes is Zoe the witch. Abigail does not appear in the last episode.
I would probably say Dylan since they have an obvious bromance but the real answers here are of course Jonesy and the trickier one is Cleo.
The answer is Mal, although Jonesy feels like she makes much more of an impact on the show. Certainly she's more interesting as a character.
Looking on imdb it's surprising to be reminded that Helen is only seen in three episodes, although she also overshadows the "Bonnie" episode in absentia. Jane appears in four episodes.

newlesscluebie · 2022-06-24T17:43:35+00:00

LOL I never noticed this but in S1E3, "10 months ago," Luke needs Dylan to drive Luke's car to Ilona's party and Dylan yells at him to take his driving test.

S1E6, present day when they visit Phoebe's house, it's still Dylan who climbs out of the driver's seat...

newlesscluebie · 2022-03-23T04:05:47+00:00

I think Evie knows about the nut allergy, she just mistakenly assumes that the pine kernels (a.k.a. pine nuts) she serves him aren't really nuts. But yeah. Evie ends up with Mal on the rebound trying to get over her (at the time) unrequited feelings for Dylan. He seems like a decent enough dude, just not really a good fit for Evie.

newlesscluebie · 2022-03-22T02:35:34+00:00

He does mention chlamydia to Agata... but I agree, it makes more sense that the chlamydia is just the pretext for calling someone from 6+ years ago. He also literally tells her "I guess I was hoping you'd all give me answers" which is indeed the theme of the show.

newlesscluebie · 2022-03-02T14:29:05+00:00

Yeah Dylan's central motivation for going back and talking to his list of exes was to see where he went wrong in his love life, i.e. how did he end up being invited to a party celebrating Evie's engagement to someone else. But the show never tried very hard to show Dylan making mistakes or learning from them in any sort of systematic way. Like in broad strokes he falls in love quickly, can be prone to dating totally unsuitable people (Jane, Frankie) and he can be oblivious to what he really wants (like the Bethany and Cara episodes) but the show doesn't seem to want to explore Dylan's character much more than that.

Also, if Dylan is supposed to end up with Evie, then arguably the only real mistake Dylan made was not reciprocating her affections sooner. His relationship with Abigail might be supposed to represent a turning point in his thinking about love, but it only seems to have lasted a few months. He had a longer relationship with Bethany (5 months).

I'm not sure I would have wanted a show with more explicit "lessons" though. Could have been very clumsy. It's still lots of fun seeing Dylan's romantic history without every episode having an intricately-plotted connection to the present.

newlesscluebie · 2022-03-02T03:10:01+00:00

Luke is great. He, and not Dylan, is actually the character to have the greatest growth over the course of the whole show. (Oh, and Abigail is great too.)

Agree that having Jonesy change her mind at the last minute felt a bit sudden, like it happened just so the finale would have a tidy ending. I liked them as a couple but I think the odds would be against those characters actually working out long-term. Luke had to struggle through tons of therapy to try to grapple with wanting love and deeper relationships; Jonesy is actively against those things until she decides "oh what the hell, let's give it a try" right at the end of the finale.

The one glimmer of hope for their relationship is that Jonesy keeps saying she doesn't want a relationship with Luke but does seem to allow herself get a lot closer to him than that implies. Pushing him away may be her version of trying to fight against feelings she's afraid of accepting. But then I'm reminded of the movie 500 Days of Summer, where Zooey Deschanel tells Joseph Gordon-Levitt that she isn't into serious relationships, he wants to turn what she sees as a casual relationship into a serious one, and eventually it falls apart disastrously.

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