State of the #SHEA Part 28: Shame, Shame ("Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices")

 

Another splinter under the skin

Another season of loneliness

I found a reason and buried it

Beneath a mountain of emptiness

Shame, shame

-- Foo Fighters, "Shame Shame" 

--

As Dr. Claire Browne and Dr. Enrique “Boardshorts” Guerin leaned on the railing in that final shot of TGD’s 2/15/21 episode, bonding in the wake of all the eye-opening that had gone down in the past couple days at St. B, I thought about Claire’s last lines about “having to make white people comfortable” to get where they were in life (“they”= People Of Color)... 

And I thought of all the intriguing, maddening and crucial things in the episode that had little to no representation in the episode’s promotion… and of TDP (That Damn Promo) we did get, which had us #Shea supporters tied up in knots for three long weeks… and I thought, All that hype over a dream kiss that never came close to becoming real, that ultimately served as the comic relief subplot! Shame on you for toying with us, ABC. 

But then I thought about the concept of shame itself, and how its presence was felt in so many parts of the episode I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t the actual title… and that’s when TDP made more sense-- albeit in its own, twisted way.

Episode 4.9 was NOT named “Shame,” but “Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices.” We know why now, and don’t worry, I’m still covering all things #Shea (such as they were) in this post, but the episode was also informative, intriguing, greatly upsetting… and from what I can tell, not all viewers would attach those adjectives to the same aspects! Let’s jump in-- 

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Shame (The Headliner):

Lim’s refusal to address her PTSD sends her to her breaking point

It’s been difficult pinpointing the rise and fall of story arcs this season, in part because of 1) the COVID 2-part season opener throwing things off balance from previous seasonal set-ups, and 2) the staggered delivery of episodes due in part to COVID in real life (5 weeks on, 6 weeks off; 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off). So after Lim shared some pretty dark moments onscreen with Claire (in 4.8 “Parenting”), I kind of expected Lim’s storyline to tread water for a few episodes, with its dramatic climax arriving somewhere around episode 14 or 15. And I kind of pictured that climax to involve a tragic patient situation on Lim’s watch. Yes, I knew Glassman was paying her a Claire-requested welfare check this week, but I thought she might skate through it somehow while her disdain for Claire’s “help” intensified. 

But as it turns out, this is the ONE part of the ABC promo represented with accuracy... in that the PTSD storyline was intense, and important, and came to a head when Lim suffered a panic attack right in the middle of Rio’s surgery. For about 10 long seconds, she turned away from everyone in the OR and struggled to get a grip while her team awaited instructions on dealing with the air embolism that had formed. 

She ended up making a “nice save,” as Park called it, but the next time we saw Lim she was returning to her office and staring down an unfilled prescription for sertraline (an anti-depressant). By the end of the episode she’d informed both Andrews and Claire that she’d begun taking it-- a HUGE step, given not only the resistance she’d shared with Claire in previous episodes but her concern about her vulnerability as a rare woman of color in the Chief of Surgery position.

It appears, then, that Lim is on the downswing of her PTSD struggle. I tend to think that will open up some time for TGD to focus on neglected story arcs-- Morgan and Park are at the top of my list, and we’re around the mid-point of the season. Seems a good time for a shift in the momentum.

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Shame of Claire realizing she profiled Zara upon her arrival to the ER...

AND-- Shame of St. Bonaventure in general, via two sets of statistics

Think of Zara’s case as a portal into Black History Month… the kind of Black history that’s more tragic than triumphant. 

It started with Claire doing a bit of racial profiling when Zara entered St. B’s ER unit, so right from the start an interesting choice was made (having a fellow black woman doing the profiling). To be honest, I thought her making negative assumptions of Zara might have more to do with her Mom than anything else (a loud, singing, “messy” black woman who appeared to be on something? That was Breeze, in Claire’s mind.) But I see two reasons the writers opted not to go there: 1) it interfered with the very important points they were making, and 2) as it happens, Claire just referenced Breeze in the previous episode, telling Lim she’d embodied her mom when she’d (drunkenly) argued at the bar over Lim’s PTSD management. If she were to see “Mom” in Zara too, it might seem as if Claire still has lingering issues with her late parent. (Which she probably does, but…not relevant in this particular episode.)

Anyway, I thought the Zara story was exceptionally well done. Between the current pandemic, and vaccination efforts for said pandemic, there have been many stories brought to light regarding racial disparity in health care. But it’s not the kind of thing that will gracefully find its way into medical drama scripts very often. (Not that it should have to be done “gracefully,” but suffice to say there’s a fair amount of viewers out there who bristle at something that feels even remotely like a lecture rather than “entertainment.”)

So TGD went with the Go big or go home strategy, and created a story with multiple touchpoints… including:

• The aforementioned racial profiling

• The pleasure of a POC getting care from an all-POC surgical team (that won’t “talk down to her”)

• The fact that doctors are 22% less likely to give pain meds to black patients with the same symptoms as white patients-- a statistic you can also find right here in this Women's Health article from January

•  A brutally honest admission by the hospital president himself (Glassman) that when it came down to it, ALL the hospitals in the region had low numbers of POC patient satisfaction (But St. B was, apparently, the best of the bad)

• A report assembled (offscreen) by Lea, at Claire’s request, which backed up Glassman’s words with the revelation that St. B was systematically under-treating POC “by a considerable margin” with regards to pain management. 

Will we ever see a follow-up on this topic on TGD? That remains to be seen. With Claire’s pain management report largely overshadowed by Lim’s discussion of her PTSD, we saw very little reaction to the report itself, and zero indications that it will be a topic at the next St. B board meeting.  And the fact that the episode’s dialogue ended on a rhetorical question from Claire --“We had to (make white people comfortable), right? To be here?”-- reminds us how open-ended and ongoing the race conversation is, and has to be.

But with Zara’s story having closure (including as satisfying an ending with Claire as we could realistically hope for), I’d like to think the message has been received by at least a few (thousand? million?) more people.

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Shame (subplot): Shaun is terrified of his “work crush”

(This, as regular readers of this blog know, sparked a firestorm of preliminary speculation and/or debate, both with this post and this follow-up post)

So! How are you feeling about it now? Relieved Lea handled the situation so skillfully? Disappointed that it didn’t open up to deeper drama? Angry that Shaun’s dream kiss with Dr. Cintia D’Souza went on for about 20 freaking seconds (while Shaun and Lea’s physicality for this episode involved nothing more than linking arms as they left the hospital together)?

It all started with Morgan pitching her version of Claire’s Flirting Trifecta while she, Park, and Jordan watched Shaun and Dr. D’Souza from afar. Would Shaun have gotten D’Souza “in his brain” if those three hadn’t teased him about it?  We’ll never know, nor will we ever know much about D’Souza at all. But from what we did see, she seemed a perfectly nice young woman who at least found Shaun attractive… and if we don’t want to go so far to say Shaun was instantly drawn to her, perhaps we can agree he was responding (via mild body language) to being found attractive by an attractive woman. That makes sense, right? Let’s pretend it does because I’m moving on…

Next up was Shaun’s DREAM… a.k.a. the only place where “Do you mind if I lower the volume by four output levels?” sounds like foreplay…

Whether you watched the scene or skipped it out of sheer discomfort/dismay, you probably know by now that not only did Shaun dream-kiss the second-year radiology resident, but he kept on kissing her… which (briefly) turned into a horizontal kiss... all the way until D’Souza quietly disappeared, and Shaun sat up, startled as hell, in bed alongside a sleeping Lea. 

Why did they do so much with that when an “almost kiss” (with Shaun waking up the moment before it happened) probably would have sufficed? My guess is that director Felipe Rodriguez made that decision, opting for a more languid transition from the dream (and Shaun’s waking from it) to the final scene of the act, which was back at the hospital. And let’s face it… if it were a year ago, and Shaun had a dream about kissing Lea while sleeping alongside Carly, we would have appreciated that sequence to pieces. 

(NOTE: the Shea Endgame IG account created a hashtag this week called #WhereIsMySheaKiss, for obvious reasons… if you are on social media and are inclined to raise your voice on the matter, please consider tagging posts appropriately!)

Speaking of Carly, I was surprised she got a mention (first time anyone’s uttered her name on TGD since her final appearance during last year’s “Autopsy” episode). But she was mentioned for good reason-- Shaun was comparing his current situation to his prior one. It was telling the way Shaun asked, with so much sadness, if his attraction to D’Souza meant he was supposed to be with her (instead of Lea). In a totally Shaun way, it made sense to ask the question. But it was also crystal clear that he’s already with the one he feels he’s supposed to be with. 

During this scene, did Park win back anyone who wanted to throttle him early in the episode for telling Shaun love and attraction weren’t mutually exclusive? I mean, this time he WAS the one who put Shaun’s initial fear to rest with the assuring “You’ve loved Lea for years…”  (In other words… "This is nothing like when you were with Carly, dude.")

Next up, we had Shaun and Lea in the cafeteria (so much for that “nice dinner” Jordan suggested), where Shaun stated his Work Crush as if relieved just to be able to label it. Once he got to describing his dream, Lea cutting him off with an irritated “OK, I get it” was the closest thing we saw to her being upset by what she heard. And as she clarified soon after, there was little reason for her to be jealous when Shaun harbored no real-life intentions towards Dr. D’Souza.

Still Shaun seemed ashamed by the very thought of a non-Lea attraction… and that’s when Sherlock Dilallo took matters into her own hands. Was she checking out the “competition” when she stalked D’Souza in the cafeteria? Certainly. But she’d also wiggled her way into Shaun’s busier-than-usual brain by then, channeling just enough of his sensory-sensitive ways to come up with a plan for D’Souza defeat. 

And that plan? Nothing short of delightful. Only in #Shea land would a woman help her man in this way-- especially when it turned out that D’Souza’s cinnamon scent and peculiar affinity for earlobe massage were actually mild turn-ons to Shaun (eek!). But it was D’Souza’s Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices that proved her downfall… the focus that allowed Shaun to manage the “discomfort” that his crush had become.

(By the way, it took a deft touch to keep Lea being “serious” about D’Souza’s negative qualities without sounding like she was mocking Shaun’s ability to be totally turned off by them. Kudos, once again, to Paige Spara for striking just the right balance in that scene.)

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Shame of Shaun for having questions about pregnant transgender man Rio, and his relationship with Eli 

TGD brings it once again with the unique cases, and as always, Shaun has so. Many. Questions. that he doesn’t filter the way an NT doctor might. Often the script meets this with surprisingly open patients (“That’s okay, I don’t mind questions” after a fellow doctor gives the mildly reprimanding “Dr. Murphy…”), but this time Lim kicked Shaun out of the room the moment he started questioning how a gay man could consider himself “gay” when his partner was still biologically female. It wouldn’t be the only time Lim’s patience with Shaun ran thin this week-- she also brought an abrupt end to his “What makes a man?” wonderings in the ER later in the episode-- and given her own struggles, we could lay this at the feet of the PTSD monster without much argument. But especially in the first scenario, it could also be a sign of things to come for Shaun... less shocked/amused tolerance of his blunt queries, more “go figure it out, Murphy.” 

Which apparently he did, affecting him enough to offer the rare apology to Eli on his way to convince Eli to continue supporting Rio, even if he wasn’t in agreement with his choices. That was my favorite Shaun scene of the week, BTW (that didn’t involve Lea I mean). Cynics might see it as a crutch TGD leans on too easily, but I always enjoy it when Shaun finds a way to connect with patients-- and their loved ones-- through his personal ASD struggles. 

Curiously, the script paired Shaun’s frustrations with the trans relationship (“If I don’t ask questions, how can I understand?”) with his frustrations over Dr. D’Souza, even seeming to attribute both matters to his brain “not behaving the way he wanted it to.” Ultimately, scriptwriters Sam Chanse and Liz Friedman (about time I actually named them!) decided his questions about Rio and Eli were better left unanswered, at least on a scripted TV series like TGD. Which meant Shaun ended up defaulting to “the kissing dream” twice-- once with Park and Jordan, and again with Lea-- as a way of exhibiting Shaun’s need-to-know without actually delving into more conversation about it. 

Interesting tactic, huh? It makes me wonder which came first, frankly… the pregnant trans man storyline, or the D’Souza flirtation? As complex a story as it was, I think it was the former. After all, had Shaun been of the mindset that he needed to kiss D’Souza in real life...well, it’d be a story of its own and we wouldn’t be talking about this the same way. But perhaps Chance/Friedman thought of this the way so many of us did at first glance (Shaun betraying Lea, even with “just” a kiss? No way!), finding instead that his panic over the possibility could serve many purposes… not the least of which was a way to divert away from his Eli/Rio stream-of-consciousness efforts. 

Then came along the SHAME of ABC’s promotional department…

And let me just say off the top here that those editors had to work H A R D to find a shot of Lea looking “unhappy” in this episode. The fact that they were able to take this shot of Lea

(from the hilarious “Good news for you, bad news about Dr. D’Souza” scene), slow it down a tad, and turn it into part of their contrived drama? Genius. Seriously. 

But as the episode wrapped up, and I was thinking those Shame on you, ABC thoughts I mentioned earlier, I thought about the episode as a whole: In THIS corner, we have a gay couple, one of whom is a transgender man who happens to be pregnant. And in THIS corner, we have a black woman who is not afraid of demanding the care all patients are entitled to… even if it makes white doctors and/or hospital administrators uneasy.

In fact, if you look at the episode synopsis officially released by ABC for the “Irresponsible…” episode, you see a whole lot of careful wording:

Lim is challenged by the unique circumstances surrounding a pregnant patient with an aggressive tumor. Elsewhere, after misdiagnosing a patient, Claire makes a disconcerting discovery about certain practices at the hospital.

Don't ask if they could have been any vaguer with that description-- they couldn't, short of Lim did something and then Claire did something after doing something else.

Why bypass both unique (Rio) and vital (Zara) stories in favor of Lim’s PTSD and Shaun’s much-too-long dream? That’s why I was saying shame on ABC… I thought they’d chosen the easy way out. But as several of you mentioned when I posed the question on Twitter, they probably felt they had to downplay the controversial aspects of the script simply to get it an audience.

One look at the IMDB comments for the episode proves that point:

So over it! How many times to we need to be told the White people are the root of every evil in the world??? So over it.

The election is over. Can we just enjoy a tv show without politics?! I've never seen so much garbage in an episode. Stop talking about race and just see each other as humans without colors.

I've never hated an episode more than this one. Too PC if there's even such a thing. Don't watch this one and wait for the next is my advice.

I get some woke bs but come on man how much can you cram down someone's throat at one time? 

I'm ok with shows having a political inclination but this episode only goes to show that if that inclination turns into a plot device itself nothing good comes from it. No subtlety, no nuance, just in your face politics… This is not what made this show great. The only decent part of the episode was Shaun and Lea.

Well, as they say, even a broken clock is right a couple times a day. 🙄

“Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices” was penned by Liz Friedman and Sam Chanse, and while Friedman is a familiar name among the TGD scribes, Chanse is a new voice (you can find out more about her here). She’s a Brooklyn-based writer who tends to focus on theater; with her name now associated with an episode like this, it’ll be interesting to see how often she’s asked to contribute to TGD in the future.

If the general viewing audience is more reflective of the IMDB comments than the ones I’ve made here, well… maybe we won’t go down roads less traveled for a while on TGD.

In which case save that last “shame” for me, and anyone else who hoped for better.

NOTE: if you thought well of TGD’s “Irresponsible...” episode, please consider going to the IMDB site yourself and rating it… it currently has a 4.9 out of 10, which I hear is the lowest in quite some time.  

ANOTHER NOTE: The comments within this blog are another great place to share your thoughts on the show/episode/#Shea; whether you enjoyed what you saw this week or not, I’d love to hear from you!

Much Ado About... An "Irresponsible" 30 Seconds

 I think Imma brace myself for real hardships this time. As Andreas stated above, the hurdles for SHEA relationships have been... peaceful and too perfect. In this world, specifically in Shore world, such a thing doesn't last long...

Basically, I'm weirdly calm now after being so nervous since the promo aired, knowing somehow Shaun and Lea have a certain cow-bell lurking inside their apartment....So, bring on the heavy drama, Shore! Game on! -- Faghost 

With three weeks separating TGD’s “Parenting” episode from the “Irresponsible…” follow-up, there seemed plenty of time to blog about non-#Shea related things, as I do from time to time… Lim’s in deeper trouble now than when I last wrote about her, the Newbies are fighting for screentime and storytime, and is Park just going to stay roommates with Morgan indefinitely or what? To name a few topics…

But I can’t, because our initial shock and surprise from the 4.9 promo has morphed into an unrelenting pot of feelings that are at risk for bubbling over until the evening of February 15. So, like any decent cook who is trying to avoid a big, burned mess on the stove later... I feel a need to stay nearby and keep a hand near the temperature controls. (I’ll leave it to Andreas to stir the contents of this “pot” every now and again; he’s quite good at that 😉

As of today, “When That Damn Promo 4.9 Tells Damn Promo 4.7 ‘Hold My Tequila (Stat)’” has the most views of ANY post I’ve written about The Good Doctor since I started doing so 13 months ago. The second-most viewed post, “Realizing ‘What That Was’” (the big season finale post that dealt most specifically with the final minutes of 3.20 “I Love You”), has been available for about 10 months now. The TDP post? It’s been available for less than two weeks.

And, as I’ve mentioned here and there, over 80 comments were contributed between a dozen of us, including two longtime readers who felt inspired to contribute to the conversation for the first time ever! (Excerpts from said comments are scattered throughout this post.)

While I’m extremely gratified by such numbers, and thank every one of you for being here… I share this information mostly out of sheer fascination that a 30-second promo has generated all this. What is “this”? See, I hesitate to even put a name on it. All this… HEAT? No; that could be misconstrued as the promo itself being “hot” and that’s the very last way most  #Shea fans want to describe Shaun being attracted to another woman. All this… ANGER? Maybe, but that would dismiss the fans who have a more measured, analytical take on what they’ve seen thus far. All this… UNCERTAINTY? Maybe we go with that. Particularly if you’ve seen not only the ABC promo but also the CTV promo (Canada’s network for TGD), which sees the whole attraction thing through a much more lighthearted lens. 

By my count, here are the three big question marks that hang in the air regarding the 2/15 episode (officially titled “Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices”; I’m calling it “Irresponsible...” here):

1. Will we actually have to see Shaun kiss Dr. D’Souza (we’ve seen the set-up, but not an actual kiss)?

I don’t think I’m off the mark in saying many fans are livid
over the idea of Freddie Highmore kissing a guest star when, we assume for COVID reasons, we haven’t seen him liplocked with Lea (Paige Spara) since November. It’s a fact that has nothing to do with the storyline itself, but it doesn’t help matters. At all.

Having said that… in the CTV promo we see Shaun blurt out “We kissed” to Park and Jordan, followed somewhere in there with “My brain isn’t behaving the way I want it to.” My guess is that what we’ve seen thus far represents a dream kiss we won’t actually have to see carried through. My guess? Okay, my HOPE...

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn’t. We know the intention is there, and clearly that’s enough to set off a lot of us. But for argument’s sake… and keeping in mind how literal-minded Shaun is, as well as how much every millimeter of proximity and physical contact matters to him… it could be the difference between fidelity and infidelity in his mind. (Imagine him telling Lea “We almost kissed but we didn’t actually kiss...”)

2. Is it a fantasy/dream kiss, a real kiss, or both?

Some of us-- definitely not ALL of us, but some-- take comfort in the idea that the kiss is a figment of Shaun’s imagination and nothing more. And that’s definitely a possibility. But even if what we’ve seen thus far is Shaun’s brain in misbehave mode, we’re still left to wonder: if he’s overcome with thoughts of kissing Dr. D’Souza, will that culminate in him kissing her for real by episode’s end?

If so, why does it matter-- especially if it ultimately strengthens his feelings for Lea? Um…that’s a biggie. We’ll get back to that. Promise.

3. How will Lea react to whatever happens? (The idea that he’ll ‘tell her everything’ seems a bygone conclusion)

We got a big hint at the answer to this in the CTV promo, with Lea assuring Shaun that simply feeling attracted to others while in a committed relationship is normal (“I’m still attracted to other guys sometimes,” she tells him, allowing her eyes to follow a good looking man past their cafeteria table as she says it). But we all know that her (very brief) reaction shot in the ABC promo is more distressing. Is it indicative of a real-kiss confession? Will it be a line crossed?  Or is it a red herring, courtesy of ABC promotions?

Will she disappear for a day to clear her head? Put their relationship on “pause”? Head home and ring the hell out of that cowbell?

This one “matters,” of course, because it could be the difference between #Shea figuring out this hurdle together rather than separately. They stand a much better chance if they find a way to do it together, don’t you think? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

...Being happy in a committed relationship with someone doesn't mean that you stop noticing other members of the opposite sex. It's what you do with that attraction that matters.-- Amy D.

And then there are the even bigger question marks looming for the fans most unsettled by the promo:

1. Bigger question to the writers: why this? Why now?

As you already know if you read any of my “Now That They Found Love…” posts last summer (which speculated on challenges, unique and otherwise, that #Shea might face as a couple)... the words “jealousy,” “betrayal,” and “infidelity” are nowhere to be found. It honestly didn’t occur to me that either of them might find themselves in such a situation… not this soon, anyway. 

As far as I can tell, it occurred to very few of you either.

Could that be why the writers opted to go this route? And to do so with the less expected of the two characters (Shaun)? Maybe that’s part of it, but I suspect a lot more than shock value was in mind when the “Irresponsible…” script was written. (The ABC promo, on the other hand? Nothing BUT shock value. Important to keep the story and the promo separate, I think.) 

There are the all-important lessons Shaun has yet to learn about love, lust, and impulse control. There’s the matter of Lea’s confidence and self-esteem-- some of which might be built up via Shaun, but most of which has to come from within. (Think of what was confirmed this week about Lea’s role in the 2/22 “Decrypt” episode, and the fact that all that comes right after whatever “all this” will reveal itself to be on 2/15.)

There are the issues of building “more commitment and trust” that were touched on when Lea moved back in with Shaun. Is it better to tackle matters of (potential) betrayal now rather than later, if Shaun and Lea are to take the ultimate step towards a lifetime together? (Perhaps this is their answer to the “Why now?” question.)

How can any of this happen if Shaun has another woman on his mind? Whether this turns out to be a semi-humorous sidebar to the “Irresponsible…” synopsis, or a footnote of an incident to keep in mind for complications in #Shea’s future, or even one of those storyline catapults TGD likes to employ... they’re betting we still want to watch it unfold, even if we’re uncomfortable with the situation at hand. 

Are they right? Although some viewers have been quite vocal about wanting/needing to skip TGD 4.9 and move right on to episode 4.10, I’m gonna keep on saying it for the rest of the #Shea shippers: trust the writers, trust the process. Even when we don’t like the direction things seem to be headed. Maybe ESPECIALLY in those times. Isn’t that what faith is all about?

2. Bigger question to Shaun, if he could hear us: "How could you….?" 

Most everyone I heard from was as upset about the timing
of the 4.9 promo debut as they were about its contents. For barely a minute had passed since the final #Shea scene in the mighty good “Parenting” episode… one we had expected and looked forward to for months… and then, BAM. Stay tuned three weeks from now because Dr. Murphy-- you know, that guy who loves his girlfriend enough to take time out of his day to confront her parents and seek acceptance on her behalf? Yeah, he’s going to allow a virtual stranger to make a pass at him. Or not. Maybe it’s in his head! Find out 2/15!

So, there was that wicked little juxtaposition. 

As for the How could he…  part, reader Andreas shared (via the comments) the reminder that people with ASD are more likely to act upon their impulses than neurotypical people. (As an autistic man himself, I imagine Andreas is keenly aware of such tendencies. IF Shaun goes through with a real kiss… remember this.)

But as to how Shaun might feel drawn to another woman in the first place? Well… imagine being Shaun and finding an attractive woman drawn to you right away, clear as day, seemingly without any regard for your ASD. You grew up being either ignored or bullied by girls, ultimately either feeling completely invisible or painfully exposed. 

As an adult you’ve had 2 girlfriends… one never seemed to consider you as dating material until you mustered the courage to ask her out; the other (and current one) fought her attraction to you for years out of fear that she couldn’t handle your ASD needs, nor could you handle her NT needs. What if… given all THAT… a beautiful, talented, sure-of-herself doctor not only SAW you right away, but sincerely wanted to see MORE of you? Wouldn’t that be kind of astounding?

Maybe you’d be intrigued to the point that your “brain did things you didn’t want it to”...? 

Maybe you’d be confused enough to keep your distance while you figured it out (assuming you could if you worked with that woman)...?

Or maybe the attraction would override all other questions, including the one Shaun asked in the ABC version of the promo (“Shouldn’t loving Lea make it go away?”)...

Not trying to pour salt in the wound… just trying to see things from a different perspective.

I like the idea of seeing Shaun in new territory. For the first time, we're seeing him as the recipient of someone else's (deliberate) attraction while in a steady, committed relationship. There's the idea of temptation - and the opportunity to overcome it!-- Tony

And by the way, one more wild card in this whole storyline is Dr. D’Souza herself. IS she truly “crushing” on Shaun as I described above? Or might she be put off by his ASD, or is otherwise uninterested? And if she is attracted to him… Is she single, or is she in a committed relationship of her own? How would we feel if she puts the moves on Shaun for real and he bails immediately? Or how would we feel if Lea sought her out for a little chat somewhere in the course of the episode?

As usual, I’m surely thinking bigger than the amount of #Shea time allotted in this particular episode. But my point is there’s SO much we don’t know yet about what we’ll see Monday. 

3. Bigger question to ourselves: Why is this whole idea so deeply upsetting?

        
I confess that I don’t know how Lea will ever be able to trust Shaun again.-- Melanie Meirr

...We see this story reflected on personal stories, and that's why we think about the worst.-- Daphne

There’s a lot to unpack with this one… the more complex one’s thoughts are about fidelity in a committed relationship, the more luggage you’re carrying around:

• What qualifies as infidelity? A kiss? An improper touch? An improper conversation? Or is it only when something more explicit/sexual actually takes place?

• What qualifies as a “committed relationship” other than marriage? Does marriage still qualify if the couple is estranged or otherwise separated? Do the same rules apply to a couple living together without being married?

• How much of a deal-breaker is infidelity? Is it one-strike-and-you’re-out, no matter how far things went? Is it somehow tolerated to an extent? How many variations have you heard from friends, family members, or your own personal experience?

Everyone’s answer varies, and yet one thing might hold true: if YOU feel you’ve been betrayed by your significant other, it might be the one blow from which your relationship will never fully recover. It hits where many are most vulnerable; it shatters trust and self-worth on perhaps the deepest of personal levels. Even if the one who strayed feels true remorse and is willing to try anything to save the relationship… they can never undo what they’ve done. 

I think this is the part that upsets #Shea fans the most-- the idea that Shaun may be on his way to committing the “one blow” from which he and Lea might not recover. Let me rephrase that last part… the idea that SHAUN--of all people!!--may be responsible for the “one blow”...

Because we think of Shaun as practically immune from that kind of temptation, right? Why is that?

Andreas called us out on that, too:

I find it curious that you all want to believe that Shaun kissing someone else must be a dream. You might ask yourself if you are idealizing Shaun and his autism, projecting your wish for purity into a character whose perception is very different to yours...

And I say “us” because I think I’m guilty of it myself. Have I put him on a pedestal? How much of my personal dismay comes from thinking Shaun’s not the kind of guy that would do that… vs. Shaun would surprise me if he did that (because his ASD gives him an almost angelic innocent quality if I’m being totally honest?)

It’s worth a thought or two, isn’t it? I want to say Shaun’s not that kind of guy because he’s so devoted to Lea; the “straying” mentality just isn’t part of his personality… but how much of his personality is shaped by his ASD? A condition known for a lack of impulse control, as Andreas said?

It’s occurred to me, as I write all this, that Lea may have Shaun on the very same pedestal as the rest of us.... and she may not realize it herself until Shaun does/says whatever he’s going to do/say about Dr. D’Souza. We all remember what she said back in the “Autopsy” episode: “You’re a wonderful man, Shaun… maybe the most wonderful man I’ve ever met.”

If he does something heretofore unexpected in the “Irresponsible…” episode-- or even if he doesn't-- maybe it’s meant to be a necessary grounding moment for both of them.

And, by extension, viewers like us.

Just a thought.

(There are plenty of "thoughts" to go around on this particular upcoming episode... share yours in the comments if you're so inclined!)

(Especially if you're a guy... we probably need more male representation in the comments. Especially on this topic.)