STATE OF THE #SHEA Part 5: How I'm facing the "Sex & Death" Music

First up, a correction to my comments on MANY a Tweet about #SHEA over the past week… I’ve been calling the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (and in fact, some people did!) scene between Shaun and Lea 45 seconds long. But now that I have cooled my heels about “Mutations” enough to sit and watch it again, I got my timer out and clocked just that one scene. And… I was wrong.

It was closer to FIFTY seconds.

My apologies. (Insert the eyeroll emoji here)

And in case you can’t bear to watch it again yourself, here are the lines exchanged in the scene that should have been so, so different (and/or so many more scenes):

LEA: (carrying a box, sees SHAUN prepping dinner plates to be packed) Those are yours.

SHAUN: We bought them together.

LEA: Because you found the pattern soothing.

SHAUN: (Considers her statement; returns the plate he’s holding to the cabinet)

LEA: I’m gonna miss you, Shaun.

SHAUN: (Still facing the cabinet) I love Carly.

LEA: And that’s great. I am SO happy for you.

SHAUN: (swinging by LEA with more packing material; starts wrapping cups) Now you can hang the toilet paper incorrectly anytime you want, and Carly and I can go back to the way things were before our fight.

LEA: (after a beat) Sometimes couples need a little time to recover…

SHAUN:  (almost cutting her off) We won’t. Carly asked for you to move out; you are moving out. (Gives a little nod as if to say “and that’s that”.)

Shot ends with Lea watching him wrap cups with a knowing look on her face.

In response to one of my angry tweets about this scene, someone said—with a fair dose of snark, it seemed – I bet you didn’t predict that! To be honest, the “scene opens on Lea & Shaun packing boxes; any conversation about this HUGE change in their living situation has already been had” was on my list of possibilities… but to find it, you had to look under Worst-Case Scenarios. And to have it be Lea that did the moving out? No… my brain didn’t even allow it to register.

The main reason for that might be a tad dated now… I’m thinking back to season 1, where Shaun was first living independently and Dr. Glassman became increasingly concerned with Shaun’s ability to do so. Which led to him trying to find assistance for Shaun, which led to Shaun “running away” briefly via his road trip with then-neighbor Lea. Glassman ultimately backed off of all this for the remainder of the season, and when Shaun & Lea became roommates/besties, it became a non-issue. I made the suggestion that if Shaun had to move out for Carly’s sake, his sometimes friend/confidante Dr, Park would be a good roommate choice—at least temporarily—because it would solve the problem of Shaun living alone. Well, that was one of the reasons, anyway.

I suppose TGD writers consider my reason “dated” for sure, since the whole idea at the moment is for Shaun to consummate his relationship with Carly… to have the place to himself, where Lea’s not in the way anymore (at least not physically), where he can leave his clothes in a trail to his bedroom like Jack Tripper might have done on Three’s Company back in the day, giddy with anticipation for what’s about to happen after many stops and starts.

I realize, as I read this back, that I sound annoyed (at best) by the Carly/Shaun relationship progression in “Mutations”. Or maybe that I’m channeling Lea… were we to ever to get a hint that things were moving the way most #Shea ‘shippers are rooting for, that is. Despite how it sounds, I don’t really fault them for giving Shaun some happiness in that department. Did I want Lea to be “his first”, like I’ve seen many fans lament this week? Yes, I guess I did. But if (and I know, that’s still a big IF right now) Shaun and Lea are destined by the show to be long-term… and they see Carly as “his first” as a means to that destination… then I’m willing to come along for the ride.

But as of “Mutations”, I’m not feeling as confident that will be the case. And that makes the Shaun/Carly bedroom scenes difficult to take now, especially when I’ve come to expect the progression of their physicality in small increments and what transpired last week felt like the equivalent of being tickled with a steamroller… difficult to execute, and impossible to enjoy. I mean, we were clobbered these past 2 episodes with the notion that lingering feelings for Lea may have kept him from full intimacy with Carly. Then in the space of half an episode, they’re fully undressed and under the covers? And another ½ hour later they’re at it again… or, were… cue Shaun’s oh-so-happy face?

After a full hour of searching, in vain, for Lea to get a second scene (or for Shaun & Glassman to have ANY scenes together), I only felt the knot in my stomach tighten beyond resolution. Shaun, my dear, I’d say I’m happy for you but dammit, I’m just NOT.

As I’ve said before—for me, it’s not about disliking the character of Carly. I know that’s not the case for some of you (Boy, do I know!). I know that the more some see her interact with Shaun, interact with others, become more fleshed out as a part of TGD, and say Ugh. She just irritates me. She’s so insecure. She doesn’t treat Shaun like an equal. Or worse. 

But to the writers’ credit, I think we need that from a love interest for Shaun (that isn’t Lea). We need to see someone multi-dimensional, perhaps with significant flaws that reveal themselves gradually, so that if/when Shaun and Carly are no longer an item it makes sense. We don’t want Carly to simply be branded as KIND and PATIENT, do we? We need the two of them to have difficulties that stem from human foibles. neurotypical and otherwise, so that fans pulling for long-term “Sharly” can see what’s coming… and maybe, just maybe, be more accepting of an eventual future with Lea.

The women in charge of writing “Mutations” surely did so with a lot of “humanizing Carly” in mind; in addition to further it’s-not-you-it’s-me behavior with Shaun, we saw her nervous, uncertain, even downright sad at work when all we’d really seen before was varying does of attitude, depending on the speed at which someone was requesting test results. In watching the show a second time, I think they did a pretty good job in that regard. (I mean, they found a way for Shaun to both comfort her and call her “beautiful”, in very Shaun-esque ways... no easy feat). Unfortunately, the unbalanced—or dare I say, lop-sided—love triangle was so very out of kilter with this episode, I just couldn’t enjoy any aspect of said episode. Not the Fault-in-Our-Stars kids, not Claire & Melendez, not Morgan’s RA medication issues, not Glassman back in the OR, not even the brief scene we got—finally—with Shaun and Claire.

(OK, I’ll allow that I was impressed with the power of that brief catch-up conversation, but I also couldn’t help but wish it was longer. Maybe if Shaun wasn’t going to announce his new living arrangement to Glassman, he could’ve told Claire. And SHE could ask the bare minimum questions: How are you going to suddenly be able to afford that place on your own? How could you kick Lea out with almost no notice? Where did she go? Is she okay? Are you really so focused on Carly you didn’t have any of these questions yourself?... oh, if only.)

Maybe some of this will be addressed tonight with the “Sex and Death” episode we’ve heard about and/or dreaded for at least a week or two. Maybe Lea will turn up for two minutes instead of one. Maybe as Shaun crows about his new “status” to anyone who will listen (as I suspect will be the running joke, based on what I’ve seen), Glassman will take some of our concerns/frustrations and run with them in some fashion. Maybe this is a sort of honeymoon episode for “Sharly”; I suppose they’ve got at least one of those coming to them if drama is supposed to rear its ugly(??) head as season 3 moves forward…

I won’t know any of this until later in the week, because I’m not watching it in real-time tonight. I just can’t. I’ll probably keep an eye on Twitter again, sometime after the show’s over, to see if there are any signs of #Shea hope in this particular episode. There may not be. There may not even be in the promos for “Influence”, the episode airing two weeks from tonight, but I’ll try not to let that get me down too much as only the front-burner story tends to get that 15-second plug.

I don’t need #Shea to be front-burner anytime soon in order to keep the faith. I just need it to stay on the damn stove. Know what I mean?