State of the #SHEA Part 19: Realizing "What That Was"

*** PLEASE NOTE—I PLAN TO CONTINUE STATE OF THE #SHEA THROUGH AS MUCH OF TGD’S HIATUS AS POSSIBLE, SO KEEP AN EYE OUT ON TWITTER… I’LL ALWAYS TAG NEW POSTS WITH #THEGOODDOCTOR ***

(Prelude to The Kiss, Part 3)

(Missed some of it? Here is Part 1 and Part 2 )

Have you ever walked up to a special person in your life and, much to their surprise, laid a kiss on them?

I have. It’s quite a rush.

In my case, I’d had a little time to think about it. The relationship—which, for a number of reasons and a number of years, had been a near-miss in the “love” department—was coming to a close. I was poised to do as Shaun’s patient Vera vowed to do (move on), both figuratively and literally. Departure time was just a few days off. But I’d decided to summon all my courage, make my way to this particular guy, kiss him (and mean it), and be on my way. In my case I knew it wouldn’t change the trajectory, and it didn’t. It was essentially a dare to myself. But it’s one of those moments in that particular relationship that I can look back on fondly.

There’s bravery at many levels of relationship development (and demolition), but I don’t know if there’s anything quite like The Unexpected Kiss. It is vulnerability personified; literally an extreme close-up with the rejection/acceptance question. And it’s having absolutely nowhere to hide if that answer is rejection.

Lea was clearly putting her heart on the line when she kissed Shaun in the final minutes of the “I Love You” season finale on TGD, but I think we can all agree that Shaun had been the one doing that for weeks (counting back to his profession of love in “Autopsy”)… for months (dating back to his decision do whatever it took to make things work with Carly in “Fractured”)… for a whole year, really, considering what it took for him to ask Carly out in the first place. It was definitely time for Lea to be the brave one. And oh, was she ever.

When did Lea decide to kiss Shaun?

I don’t know that a consensus is possible on this one, but

that’s what makes it fun to speculate, right? To me, the decision was made as she stood there in the early dawn, refusing to leave, hoping against hope for good news. I picture her head swimming with all that was going on during her walkie-talkie time—re-evaluating Shaun was maybe an overriding theme in her thoughts, but in the moment it was more about what she herself could do to get Shaun to safety. The counting to 180 was supposed to represent the amount of time it would take Shaun to do Vera’s amputation, which would then facilitate “freedom” for both of them. Only after their fate looked more negative than positive does it seem that Lea would have the wherewithal to start an internal dialogue like If he somehow makes it out of there alive, I WILL make things right at any cost.

But your mileage may vary, as they say. Maybe Lea resolved to kiss him earlier in the night when Shaun talked about her making him “more”. Maybe it was when she was counting. Maybe it was when she first saw him alive and well, coming up behind Vera. Maybe not until she was watching him from a distance as he finished his work. Maybe none of the above (?!). It’d be a great topic about which to leave a comment…

How much did I love that closing scene? Let me count the ways…

(I’m not going to say “closing sequence” because that’s a slightly different story that we’ve already discussed a little, and will discuss a little more later.)

  1)  The teaser

After all the struggles and setbacks in the final episodes of S3, was it possible that TGD could end the season with Shaun and Lea simply gazing at each other across an EMT-crowded street? Well not really, considering TGD ends each episode with Shaun in the scene. (Have they ever made an exception to this? I’m sure there are some eagle-eyed fans out there who know!)

But the buildup to what would actually happen in that final Shaun-scene left me, as a fan of this couple, anything but certain of their next step. I knew Lea was at a new place, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I was laboring under the (mistaken) impression that Shaun’s promise to Vera was unconditional. Plus, Shaun’s ASD often makes him a difficult read, emotionally speaking.

Plus we were looking over his shoulder at Lea for the most part!

I hate to admit it, but even with the other closing scenes (with Park, and obviously Melendez/Claire/Lim) being as emotionally charged as they were…I was probably bouncing in my chair (matching Lea, bouncing on her toes) waiting to get back to #Shea.

2) Twelve edits of magic

Yes, I went back and counted (once a production geek, always a production geek). Starting with the pickup OTS (over-the-shoulder) shot and going until that long, lovely crane shot that closed out the season, David Shore officially got Shaun and Lea to their happy place in about a minute and 37 seconds, three cameras (I think), and 12 edits. I’m really hoping the Vancouver weather cooperated and they were able to shoot this in-sequence (last), or at least last of the #Shea scenes for this episode. It’s such a joyous 1:37, and the more we see natural elements working in their favor—a hint of rosy dawn in the sky, a light breeze catching Lea’s skirt—the more magical it becomes. A “save the best for last” scene, to be certain. Shore gave us a big, sweeping, silver-screen valentine of a finish for these two. Can’t ask for much more than that.

3)The nonverbals

Think about how much Lea talked at times in the first season of TGD—sometimes spurred by anger (e.g. bursting into Shaun’s apartment and complaining about the landlord), other times by joy/excitement (the road trip). Now think how much she conveyed solely by facial expression in “Autopsy,” in “Heartbreak,” and of course the two-part finale. (I’m not forgetting “Friends and Family,” but the big non-verbal scene in that one was all about communication via physical touch, not facial expression.) Paige Spara has more than proven she’s got the acting chops to play alongside Freddie Highmore as his love interest—not just because of the chemistry generated by their characters, but because of the intriguing juxtaposition of Lea’s non-verbal communication to Shaun’s. Now that they’re on the same page romantically, I’m eager to see how this juxtaposition works both for and against #Shea in future episodes.

But right now, I just want to talk about her nonverbals in THIS scene.

Andreas starts us off:

“Look at the very first seconds of their last scene: Lea is standing at a distance, looking at Shaun. Her shoulders move slightly down, she exhales: Lea has come to a resolution. She takes a leap of faith, walks decisively towards Shaun, kisses him without hesitation, and relaxes totally after the first kiss ends. She has put her fears aside. Again, Paige Spara’s nonverbal acting was outstanding, yet subtle.”

I loved the way she kept her eyes closed an extra second before looking up at him… a combination of savoring the moment she’d created, and possibly postponing a look of rejection in Shaun’s eyes.

I was picturing a caption to go with the post-kiss looks on her face; Amy Danko captioned it very nicely with this Tweet:

“Without a single word, she's saying, "Tell me I didn't completely blow it for us. Tell me that my fears didn't make me make the biggest mistake of my life, Shaun." And he did.”

Once she clarified “what that was” (we’ll get to Shaun’s side of things in a minute), she gave him the second one-- love, love, LOVE the way she touched his chin with her thumb immediately after, with her fingertips resting lightly near his throat for the duration of the dialogue. At that point, the look in her eyes was similar, but a little more searching for his overall reaction.

(There was also a momentary, anxious tremble of her lower lip to help punctuate all that vulnerability. Or maybe I’m just seeing things at this point. I’ve watched that scene many times.)

(I’d better go check it again.)

(It’s research. Hush.)

Meanwhile, Shaun had a LOT to process. The most salient points he stated verbally, initially showing his true uncertainty as to what was happening as he gave a nod to their first kiss (“practice”) and their other kiss (“goodbye”), with one of Morgan’s old assertions about Lea’s intentions in the middle (“pity kiss”). For more about this, Sonya really nailed it—let’s hear form her:

“After the first kiss Shaun’s brain is swirling. He's got all these little bits and pieces he believes that he knows about this woman and how she really feels about him, and reconciling those earlier concepts of Lea with this new version of her that just... walks up and kisses him senseless, like a woman kisses a man, and says she loves him with everything she is...

“His brain is going "Shit, where does this new information fit in to the picture I have of Lea?" He quite literally does not know what to do with it. Most of the time that Lea has touched Shaun, to this point in their relationship, has been to comfort or reassure him. This moment is not designed to do either of those things.                                                                          

“She's not kissing him because she thinks he's limited. She's kissing him because she now knows from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, that he is more than any one thing.”

As for the only other thing he verbalized (“Vera didn’t die, so the promise doesn’t count!”), it was as if he was processing his own permission slip in real time—a totally Shaun thing to do, and say.

Which is probably why Lea didn’t even bat an eye before sealing the deal with “You make me more, Shaun.” Followed by the kiss that went on and on and on and on…

Kissing Carly vs. Kissing Lea

 

Maybe we already knew (or hoped we knew), as #Shea fans, that if these two ever got to kiss again it would be unlike anything we ever saw with Shaun and Carly. The “Friends and Family” embrace gave us a big clue to that, as it confirmed

a comfort and intimacy with Lea that he hadn’t yet achieved with Carly…. And, arguably, never did. (Including after he lost his virginity to Carly, but I know there are different schools of thought on that… over-the-summer discussion, anyone??)

But I, for one, was not convinced we’d get even ONE #Shea kiss this season… which is why I (and maybe you, too) were “just” hoping to see them hug each other when all was said and done. But holy cow, look what we got! Love out loud. Touching. Eye contact. EYE CONTACT. “Like a woman kisses a man” kissing. Shaun catching Lea by the waist and drawing closer, knowing exactly what to do once he fully understood what was happening.

And all because Lea, not Shaun, gave their relationship the ultimate catapult. Even though they’re back to a new beginning, I can’t help but think Oh, how far they’ve come!

Choosing Love over Fear 

Remember back in part one of the finale (“Hurt”) when all was still relatively well with Melendez (RIP), and he and Claire were focused on helping Marta— brewpub owner and host of the fundraiser? Well here’s another observation from Andreas I want to share:

“The more I think about it, the more I believe the key to understanding Shaun and Lea’s arc since 2.1 “Hello” (!) is a line of dialogue in 3.19 “Hurt” delivered by Marta (as she spoke to her wife): “I only found you once I stopped listening to my fear… […] of dying alone. Pushing that all aside made room for you, and you are my life.”

He goes on to point out how this line reflects on multiple characters/arcs in the show:

“The first half is true for all involved characters such as Morgan (being a surgeon), Park (love for his family), Melendez, Claire, Lim (all three being in love), but especially Lea with respect to 3.16 “Autopsy”… but the last bit about dying alone was a direct reference to Shaun’s biggest fear (shared with Carly in 3.9 “Incomplete”).

“The earthquake situation was a catalyst and a metaphor: it broke down the old and made way for the new. All characters were confronted with the ultimate choice: use it or lose it. In the last scene Lea took action, and Shaun trusted her enough to give into her.”

While I don’t think we’ll ever see Vera on TGD again, and I wasn’t a fan of everything she said down in the flooding basement… there was definitely something to her assessment that Shaun’s goal wasn’t Lea, but love itself.

What Vera didn’t count on was Shaun getting the resolution she’d wanted for her own life. Because by the dawn of that new day, he’d achieved that goal—it just so happened that Lea was still attached to it, hanging on for dear life.

When you think about it that way, I guess he got to rescue her after all.

*** AGAIN, STATE OF THE #SHEA WILL CONTINUE OVER THE SUMMER, HOPEFULLY ALL THE WAY TO WHENEVER S4 GETS ON THE AIR. NOT AS FREQUENTLY, FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, BUT THERE’S PLENTY TO DISCUSS… KEEP AN EYE ON TWITTER FOR UPDATES! THANKS AGAIN FOR READING ***

State of the #SHEA Part 18: Lea and All She Learned to See in the Dark

(Prelude to The Kiss, Part 2)

(Click here to jump to Part 1 if you missed it)

One of my favorite blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments in #Shea history came just before one of the toughest scenes of theirs to watch (until the rain of pain from the back half of S3, that is).

It’s from "Middle Ground" (2.2) when Shaun finally deals with his feelings about Lea returning from Hershey… and rather than keep avoiding her and deleting her texts begging to talk, he lets loose with the hurt felt in her absence, concluding that she should “Please go back to Hershey, or anywhere other than here!” before stalking out the door.

But ahead of all that, he placed a banana and a bowl of cereal in front of her at the table as soon as she got out of bed.

That gesture was quickly eclipsed by the baseball he placed on the table too—the one in its own case, the one that she initially gave to Shaun when she left in S1. It served as the launching pad for Shaun to explain himself, so its role in the scene was critical.

What the banana and the cereal represented was important too, though. It showed kindness—or at the very least, a modicum of concern for Lea’s physical well-being—even when he was angry with her. It’s not that I ever really doubt that Shaun cares deeply about Lea, or even Glassman. But a demonstrative nature isn’t on my shortlist of his most memorable traits—or that of anyone with ASD, I’m guessing.

Such has got to play a huge part in Lea’s conflicting emotions about Shaun over these three seasons. When she listed her character flaws as reasons to disregard a love relationship with Shaun in “Autopsy,” she wasn’t making up stuff to get rid of him—on the contrary, she was finally being as brutally honest as Shaun has been with her. And while the naysayers can wrinkle their noses all they want at what they perceive as a harsh, unfair judgment of Shaun, they should also try to count the ways—over the course of three years—that his words and/or actions towards Lea overtly expressed kindness towards the woman he loves. I think we can count them on one hand, MAYBE two:

1)      Shaun said “I don’t care what happened in Hershey… but I care that you care” in “Tough Titmouse” (2.4). Those were the epic words that turned things around between these two… though it only came after suggested-by-others gestures fell flat, and Lea was literally on her way out the door again.

2)      Shaun secured the apartment Lea wanted badly in that same episode (but actually secured it for both of them to share without getting her consent, so I’m not sure this counts)

3)      Shaun proved Hubert the Fish died for reasons unrelated to Lea’s care in the final minutes of “Hubert” (2.7).

4)      Shaun (eventually) gave Lea the privacy she requested with then-boyfriend Jake in “Xin” (2.13), occupying himself with headphones before giving up and going to check on then-ailing Glassman instead.

5)      Shaun convinced Glassman to interview Lea for the St. B job in “Influence” (3.14), but arguably did it because he wanted Lea around more since they were no longer roommates, so again… not sure that this counts.

6)      Shaun puts himself at risk when Lea is trapped in the earthquake in “Hurt” (3.19). And yes, this incredibly heroic effort looks weird on the same list as stories of goldfish and headphones, but that’s where we’re at.

It seems unfair to rattle off Lea’s list of overt kindnesses in return— hiding/whisking Shaun away from the Glassman situation in the Season 1’s “Islands” two-parter, trusting/adjusting to his needs as a roommate in Seasons 2 and 3, abandoning said roommate role at his insistence midway through S3, cheerleading and commiserating as needed throughout the series, comforting him in his most trying times. But that’s the point with neurotypical vs. non-neurotypical in any relationship, but especially romantic love—it’s going to be lop-sided in this regard. It will likely remain lop-sided, to some degree, for the duration of the relationship. Even someone who is NOT “needy and so, so selfish” could easily struggle. I know I would.

And even before love was out in the open between them—when Carly was still front and center-- Lea’s simple needs as a platonic friend (to get occasional time with him; to get his ear, his input, maybe even his advice) were seldom met with much satisfaction that we saw. Furthermore, her ability to remain a sounding board to Shaun through the first part of S3 gave her a BIG window into what a romance with her best friend might be like: bigger-than-usual communication issues (especially with everyday texting), social outing issues, and demonstrative affection issues, to name just a few biggies.

So when the time finally came to talk about THEIR possibilities together, Lea had seen things from several sides… enough sides, she felt, to say there are things in the way here that will keep me from moving forward with this.

And by things, I mean Shaun’s ASD.

So is that a form of prejudice?

When you look up synonyms for that word, you get slightly less cringe-inducing ones like Preconception. Prejudgment. Predisposition. Bias.

Most of those options (including “prejudice” itself, of course) contain the prefix “Pre,” meaning “before/earlier than/prior to.” That’s why Merriam-Webster includes “an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge” in its definition of the word.

That’s where the grey area lies in regards to Lea, I think. Did she have sufficient knowledge to make her initial decision about Shaun? On one hand, we say NO, SHE HADN’T GIVEN THEM A CHANCE YET. But on the other… it’s not like she ruled out romance the minute she realized he was autistic. In fact, it’s about as far from that possibility as one can get.

Which is why Freddie Highmore said (in this TVLine interview from February, released just after the “Autopsy” episode) 

“One of the really important things [to remember], and hopefully that comes across about this last scene, is [that the audience shouldn’t hate Lea] for feeling the way that she feels. She isn’t prejudiced toward Shaun because he has autism. It’s not as simple as that.”

But then David Shore said (in THIS TVLine interview from March, released just after the finale)

“Shaun was right in that prior episode: Lea was being prejudiced. He does have limitations and he does have weaknesses, but we need to look at the whole thing. So, we wanted something to force her eyes open to recognize — not to reassess Shaun, but to reassess herself and to recognize that she was wrong.”

So what do we do with these seemingly opposing viewpoints? In all honesty, I wish that word (prejudice) had only come up once—when Highmore talked about it. It’s not as simple as that, he said. Right. Exactly. But it’s a powerful word, a dramatic word, and it lent enough to the situation at hand that Thomas L. Moran and David Renaud used it as the exclamation point in Shaun’s tirade at the end of “Heartbreak.” And then Shore referenced that tirade in his interview, and in doing so over-simplified the use of the word (in my opinion)… which was exactly what Highmore cautioned against. And, exactly what we DIDN’T need when angry fans keep seeking fuel for their #SaveMelendez fires.

But take the idea of prejudice away and Lea was still dealing with a hell of a problem: she loved Shaun, but felt she couldn’t be with him, so she was on the verge of losing his friendship completely.

What turns that kind of problem around? A crisis, of course. One that put her on the verge of the most perilous possibility of all: losing Shaun completely.

But as that possibility ebbed and flowed throughout the night, Lea also got an amazing gift—the opportunity to see Shaun from sides never in her line of vision before.  

We also got to see (and at times, hear) more Lea than we’ve probably seen since the “Islands” two-parter…

+  She started out huddled in a blanket sitting on the side panel of a fire truck, pigeon-toed, somewhat inconspicuous, trying to relay essential information to Shaun.

+  As her distress rose she grew feisty, chasing down/hounding a firefighter about how to do his job… until she was informed the pressure was actually on her to get him out safely.

+  Pacing back and forth with the radio in hand, Lea made her pitch to get him to leave; when he said he couldn’t leave without Vera, she made up something out of desperation. When he called her out on “lying,” she hung her head, knowing she had one job to do and she didn’t get it done.

+  When she heard Shaun’s lengthy explanation of Civil War amputation techniques and his ability to cut safely even under current conditions, I can’t help but wonder if it fed into a new understanding of why his “certain way of doing things” (borrowing her line from the pivotal scene in “Autopsy”) helps make him such an exceptional doctor.

+  When Shaun directs her to count to 180—hey, that’s one minute for each year they’ve known each other!—she gets a new “one job to do”… which was certainly harder than it sounded (he had to shout “KEEP COUNTING!” when she got lost in his heroic actions).

By the way, did everyone realize Vera had long stopped “the screaming” by then? That’s what tells me the count to 180 was as much (or more) about him hearing Lea as it was about taking care of Lea’s needs. He was enduring one of the toughest challenges of his young career; if the woman he loved couldn’t be right there with him for it, having her voice in his ear had to be the next best thing.

+  (It also served as an awesome device to rachet up the tension a little more. Well played, TGD writers.)

+   As Lea gritted her way to 180, only to be faced with that deadly, climatic silence on the other end of the radio which sent her into a tailspin… that’s when the ball fell squarely in Lea’s court for the first time.

+  Footnote #1: the way the water stopped rushing when the two-way radio went silent would seem to indicate the entire space had become flooded… but I think at last glance, the radio had still been several inches above the waterline. Did anyone else notice that? (Though I suppose it could be argued that the radio could easily have toppled into the water and shorted out…)

+  Footnote #2: Some might argue that the proverbial ball was initially in Lea’s court during those moments on the walkie-talkie when Vera’s words seemed to be having their way with Shaun’s mindset. I know I was one of the TGD fans Tweet-yelling LEA! You’re UP! Start talking! out of fear that Shaun would send Lea on her way once he got out of there. But I think we need to interpret her silence as both generous and necessary. Generous because it allowed Shaun to keep his focus on his patient—how would it have gone if she started professing her love over the radio while he was sawing away?—and necessary because she probably couldn’t figure out the right words to say in those moments anyway.

As a result, we got a Lea who is true to her so-called weaknesses (“listen to me; I can’t even put a complete sentence together right now” from “Autopsy”), and also a Lea who is growing out of one of them (selfishness). For even when Shaun was safely out of the building, and all she wanted to do was lay that kiss on him***, Lea still kept her distance until Shaun had completed the job at hand (turning his patient over to the EMTs).

  ***Part 3 is gonna cover it. And cover it and cover it. Promise. 

But back to that ball in Lea’s court.

+  It’s unclear how much time had passed between “Shaun can you hear me?!?” and the firefighter calling Lea by name and suggesting “it was time to go”.

But the shot of her standing stoically in front of the fire truck, arms at her sides, keeping vigil for Shaun, telling the firefighter she couldn’t leave yet, willing some good news to emerge from the badly damaged brewpub—that’s when I saw a renewed spirit. She’d dealt with the very real possibility that Shaun had perished as only she could at that point… with denial. As long as she stood there, she didn’t have to accept anything. 

+  And the moment she heard “we’ve got something,” well… you know what she did. ZOOM. Off she went, into the building, no helmet, no thinking, just instinct. That’s our Lea.

“This was about Lea realizing she was wrong,” Shore said. So what did Lea learn about Shaun? In a few words… everything we, as viewers, have come to know and love best about Dr. Shaun Murphy. I mean, think about it—what did she know about him from a professional standpoint prior to the earthquake?

+  That he’s a doctor doing his residency at St. Bonaventure.

+  That he’s holding his own, three years into the program (although she also knows of his struggles with Dr. Han a year earlier).

+  That he’s already delivered his first baby (during the “Quarantine” 2-parter in S2).

+  That he got his first lead surgery last Fall.

+  That he’s prone to being pre-occupied with the details of his latest patient to the point of disregarding their conversations… sometimes walking away from them entirely.

I probably missed some stuff—those two-minutes-or-less exchanges are sometimes a little too fleeting to properly absorb—but in a few MORE words now, what did she learn?

+  He covers all the bases (pacing out the pain meds, explaining what he’s doing, shifting focus as needed)

+ He knows his stuff

+  He’s innovative

+  He’s the epitome of grace under pressure

+  He does incredible work under the most trying conditions

+  He takes huge risks, but they seem to pay off

It’s funny to think of how, early on, I thought an ideal “earthquake scenario” would be Lea needing to make heroic efforts of her own to save Shaun and/or get him through a meltdown—to prove, I guess, that she was as invested in him as he was in her. Silly Kelli! What she really needed was to see him as she’d never seen him before.

I know many of us have #Shea “playlists” of apropos songs for the couple—and I ask that you HANG ON TO THOSE LISTS for future blog purposes, please—but two lines of a John Mayer song I heard this week made me think of them:

'Cause if you give me just one night
You're gonna see me in a new light

It makes me smile because it underscores how unique this twosome is. The song (entitled “New Light”) is about a guy who has been friend-zoned by a woman seemingly forever, and he’s imagining that he could change the entire trajectory if she’d give him a chance… give him “just one night.” Shaun was basically asking that very thing of Lea during their argument at the end of “Fixation” (3.17)… and my goodness, look what’s happened. One tremendous, (literally) earth-shattering night later, she’s all his.

And they didn’t even see each other until the morning after!

Only in #Shea land, folks.

Part 3-- the finale to this finale recap-- coming next week!

State of the #SHEA Part 17: Of Tremors and Failure (Shaun’s Quake Journey)

(Prelude to The Kiss, Part 1)

“Please hurry!!” was the last thing we’d heard from Dr. Shaun Murphy in “Hurt” (3.19), a.k.a. part 1 of the earthquake two-parter. But if the other first-responders had been able to quickly reach the flooding basement he occupied with impaled earthquake victim Vera… well, we wouldn’t have had much of a finale, would we?

Here are the things I found most interesting about Shaun’s earthquake journey.

What we DIDN’T see at the start of the “I Love You” episode

True story: I came in to the “I Love You” episode about 2 minutes late, and when I backed up the DVR to catch it from the beginning, I actually did it twice because I was certain I’d missed something: OK, there’s Shaun, he’s talking to Lea on the 2-way, but…wait, when did she make her presence known? How relieved was he to find that she’s safely out of the structure? Did David Shore delete a scene here?

I really did wonder if there was a deleted scene—I’m sure there are more of them than we’d ever imagine—but now, I’m more of the mind that it was a deliberate fast-forward in the action. A curious move, considering how much of “Hurt” was driven by Shaun’s need to find Lea and get her to safety. An even more curious move, considering where we pick up the dialogue…

SHAUN (into radio): Hello?

LEA: Yes. Shaun?

SHAUN: Lea?

LEA: Yeah, it’s me. You okay?

SHAUN: Why is it still you?

LEA: I’m fine. I wanted to say and help.

SHAUN: I… don’t need you, okay? I need a rescue worker.

So not only does he seem unimpressed by Lea’s presence, he actually sounds irritated by it. What’s going on? Well, several things.

1)    Shaun’s goal shifted from “finding Lea” to “saving Vera” during “Hurt”, and when the aftershock triggered the flooding, it shifted again to “saving himself AND Vera.” So Lea was essentially third on the list at this point.

            2)    The “why is it still you?” line indicates he’d already spoken to her on the 2-way at least once before, therefore her safety was a given. And, also… third on the list.

             3)   Sure, the “I don’t need you” line could have been a holdover from the angst he’d been feeling about their relationship to that point—it hadn’t been long before all this, remember, that he’d sadly recapped why Lea didn’t seem to need HIM—but, again, I think his words were more matter-of-fact than anything else. He didn’t think Lea could provide him any information he didn’t already have.

He was wrong about that, though. She’d talked to at least one firefighter directly (Hell, by the end of the episode he was on a first-name basis with her), she knew what they were trying to do to help, she even knew they’d shut off the water source but were still mystified about the ongoing gushing. Shaun was in blunt, no-nonsense mode, but she went with it, keeping her cool, giving him what he needed in that moment.

Could that be why, just before the opening titles ran, Shaun suggested he could leave (without Vera) at any moment? I don’t know, but even if it was just a fleeting thought that ran out of his mouth unfiltered, it amused me to see Vera as stricken by the thought as Lea was intrigued/relieved by it.

An emotional—not sensory-- overload

I was amused by it because Vera had begun to get into

Shaun’s head in the back half of “Hurt” and I didn’t like it. Halfway through “I Love You,” she was really pissing me off. It’s not that she didn’t make good points (Accepting loss makes us stronger… not moving on prevents us from moving to other victories… etc.), but she’d admittedly been having her own issues with a would-be significant other, and now she was projecting her own solutions on to Shaun with very little information about his own situation.

Remember when Shaun had his chat with GhostSteve in “Hurt,” and I mentioned the theory that Steve now represented the other half of Shaun’s internal dialogue? As “I Love You” progressed, it grew clear that Vera now represented a living, breathing manifestation of that dialogue. It started in the episode as a continuation of what everyone else had been advising him to do…

It moved into what felt to me to be a somewhat patronizing riff on Vera’s part  (“You’re good at adapting to challenges, aren’t you?... Sawing (the rebar) wasn’t going to work (was it)?... But it wasn’t a failure. (Right?)”)...

Ah, Shaun’s least favorite word—FAILURE. The one that hangs him up; the one he felt compelled to add when his job was in jeopardy earlier in the season (“45 Degree Angle”), and he had to apologize to Dr. Lim.

“Isn’t ‘moving on’ just a euphemism for giving up, for failure?” he asks Vera early in the “I Love You” conversation… which lends insight to why he can’t yet move on from Lea: if he doesn’t move on, he hasn’t required himself to admit to failure.

But Vera challenges him on his need to “not fail” and uses that conversation about his adaptability skills to suggest he’s more able to pivot to a life without Lea than he thinks (“You’re goal isn’t Lea… it’s love.”). So by the time Vera asked him to make the promise about moving on if she didn’t survive his amputation attempt, Shaun’s increasingly fragile emotional state was in the palm of her waterlogged hand.

It was heartbreaking to see Shaun truly wrestle with

making said promise because we knew that, unlike some doctors in that situation, he would honor it. Lea knew it too; the resignation and regret was etched on her face in that momentary close up that followed.

What’s kind of hilarious to me, though, in retrospect, is how I did not hear it at the time as “If I don’t make it, you have to promise to move on.” I heard it as “If I let you do this…” and missed the writer’s loophole entirely. (Anyone else…???)  Honestly, if I’d been feeling better about the outcome at that point, I think I would have taken note of the loophole myself. But I heard it like Lea probably heard it: he is willing to do what he wants least in the world—to let go of Lea – in order to try and save Vera. That is what a Good Doctor does, after all.

By the way—it turns out (as you surely noticed) that there was no sensory overload for Shaun in either of the quake episodes, which left me scratching my head a bit wondering what Freddie Highmore had specifically been referring to when he said this in a preview article with TV Line:

Remember his public breakdown during Season 2's emergency quarantine, initiated by a buzzing light? This, Highmore promises, is worse. "[These episodes] take the emergency to a whole other level," he cautions.  

But the line just before this in the article makes reference to epic “on-site emotional tremors” for Shaun. So I suppose that’s in reference to what I’ve just recapped… and Lord knows that was more than enough drama for this storyline.

“Calm in a Crisis”: Shaun’s laser-focus

We got a sense of it in “Hurt” as Shaun (reluctantly) shifted from searching for Lea to tending to Vera, but his ability to keep focus on what mattered most at any given moment was on full display throughout “I Love You”:

+  The need for assistance that intensified post-aftershocks

+  The need to cut the rebar and free Vera (didn’t work)

+  The need to try and slow the water flow (also didn’t work)

+  The need to amputate Vera’s leg… which, I couldn’t help but note, was an option that only came to him when Vera stopped philosophizing and got noble instead (“Shaun, if you stay…we both die”). It was as if once his head wasn’t swimming with doubt about Lea, he could think clearly again.

+  The need to, somehow, amputate “cleanly” (without an increased risk for infection).

+  The need to “give Lea something to do (counting to 180)” while he performed the amputation (which I think was as much for him as for her, but we’ll talk about that in a later post).

+  The need to keep Vera from drowning while he performed the amputation… which meant not only having the presence of mind to tell Underwater Vera to exhale (“BREATHE OUT!!”), but then to go underwater and perform mouth-to-mouth once she’d done so.

In noting that Shaun not only kept his wits about him throughout this ordeal but likely performed at the top of his game professionally, my oft-mentioned contributor Andreas pointed to this passage from Tony Atwood’s 2007 book The Complete Guide To Asperger’s Syndrome:

"When discussing emotions, adults with Asperger’s syndrome may intellectualize feelings, despise emotionality in others and describe difficulties understanding specific emotions such as love. There is often a conspicuous emotional immaturity; the professor of mathematics may have the emotional maturity of a teenager. Despite their being notorious for becoming irritable over relatively trivial matters, I have noted that some adults with Asperger’s syndrome are renowned for remaining calm in a crisis when some typical adults would panic. This ability has been very useful for adults with Asperger’s syndrome who have been medical staff in Accident and Emergency departments of hospitals, or soldiers on active duty.”

“Tony Attwood is THE living expert on high-functioning autism aka Asperger’s syndrome,” Andreas says. “And the writing staff (of TGD) undoubtedly have read this book when conceiving the character of Shaun.”

And regarding the remainder of Shaun’s moments leading up to that final scene (which will ALSO be discussed in a later post—be patient!)-- I’m guessing it wasn’t lost on #Shea fans that, for all those pressing “needs” he’d addressed throughout the episode, his attention was right back to Lea in the end. When she rushed back to the lower level (where she fell through the floor at the start of “Hurt”), and Shaun emerges after Vera’s been lifted to safety, it looked to me like he was looking right up at her. I might have that wrong; he obviously didn’t know she was going to be standing there, and perhaps he was just looking up and forward in general. But they sure made it look like he was gazing her way.

And although he accompanied Vera to the ambulance and responded to her “it’s a new day” comment, I couldn’t help but notice he’d pivoted back to look at Lea yet again before Vera was even fully secured in the vehicle.

 

Was it because he was so relieved to see her safe with his own eyes? Or was it also because he was focused on one more “need”: to tell her he was now prepared to let her go (because of his need to fulfill the promise)?

For just a few more seconds there, he didn’t know Lea had been wrestling with her own internal dialogue all night long…

But she WAS, and we’ll talk all about THAT side of the story next time.