The Roommate Years: Ranking #Shea’s Smaller Moments (Part 1: #21-15)

Batteries.

The road trip.

“You’re such an asshat.”

First tequila shots. First karaoke.

The hug in the hallway. The kiss outside the motel room door.

The sad goodbye, the mixed emotions reunion, the lightly tangled path to a shared apartment.

Most #Shea fans know these moments by heart… and if they didn’t by the end of S3, they’re getting PLENTY of time to reminisce via YouTube and other ports of flashback heaven.

And when they’ve had their fill of those early memories, they apparently keep spending time with that final 1:47 from 3.20 “I Love You”—it’s up to 1.2 million views now, as Tony mentioned in last week’s comments.

So we know how they started, and now we finally know where they are headed. But in between those two eras lie “The Roommate Years”… that spread of time that started after Shaun and Lea (and Hubert the Fish Albert the Fish) had worked out their living arrangement kinks, and ended just before the “Superbass” karaoke night catapulted them to The Next Level, whether they were ready for it or not.

That’s 24 episodes of TGD history, minus 9 of those 24 where Lea didn’t make a single appearance… 15 episodes worth of the smaller moments between these two. Fifteen episodes that got us through the lean times. And, by my count, 21 lesser-recalled scenes from those 15 episodes that deserve renewed acknowledgement!

Here’s how I’m doing this:

1)      In true countdown form, I’m starting at the bottom of the list (21^st) and working my way up… 21-15 in this post, 8-15 in a later post, and 7-1 in a post after that.

2)      These are just MY rankings; your mileage may vary, as they say. Comments, as always, are very welcome! (But don’t take the “rankings” too seriously… we all know any #Shea scene is a scene of value!)

3)      I’m only counting scenes that involved Shaun and Lea exclusively… I might make a very minor exception to this here and there, but scenes involving, say, Glassman or Jake (Lea’s boyfriend in the back half of S2) are excluded from contention.

4)      I realize Shaun and Lea were no longer roommates as of the “Mutations” episode, and that they may very well become roommates-of-another-kind, again, in the future. I’m calling this The Roommate Years anyway. Just go with it.

Ready? Let’s go—

21) “I have to change his mind” (from 2.17 "Breakdown")

IN SHORT: Lea attempts to sneak home after spending the

night with Jake, but Shaun is already awake -- pre-occupied (and still unhappy) with Dr. Han moving him to Pathology. Lea tries to boost his spirits, but Shaun is un-boostable. (This is the episode where Shaun walked to work instead of catching the bus, resulting in that hilarious “did he see us??” situation with Lim and Melendez.)

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: That’s the real reason I have this one down at #21… I didn’t remember this scene. At all. Maybe because it seemed to be more about setting up the comedy with Limlendez than it did about advancing anything with Shaun and Lea? Just a thought.

20) “You said you found the pattern ‘soothing’” (from 3.12 “Mutations”)

IN SHORT: Apparently as a reinforcement of his decision to continue things with Carly (and try to bury his feelings for Lea), Shaun agrees to end his roommate situation. And, faster than #Shea fans can say Wait, why does SHE have to move out??, they are divvying up dishware as Shaun insists that everything with Carly is about to be perfectumundo. (It’s easy to be “short” about this particular scene; it lasted around 45 seconds.)

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: The tailspin in which it left us. My original post about “Mutations”, which came down hard on TGD for treating Paige Spara only slightly better than a Hollywood extra in this particular episode, can be found here.

19) “Shaun… you need to text her back.” (from 3.7 "SFAD" )

IN SHORT: With Carly out of town attending a conference, Shaun finds himself struggling to communicate with her “the right way” via text. After this brief exchange with Shaun… well, suffice to say Lea was struggling a little as well.

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: The satisfied look on Shaun’s face as he sent the perfunctory  I have received your message to Carly… and the Oh, dear look on Lea’s face that followed.

(Which is cut off in the clip I included, so here it is...)

18) “When you start a new life event, you get pancakes.” (from 2.16 "Risk and Reward")

IN SHORT: It starts as an early-morning-in-the-life-of-Dr.Murphy episode, but the catch is clear: he’s not going in to St. B as a surgical resident this time. Lea (acting a whole lot more like a wife than a roommate in this situation, BTW) makes a batch of “fresh start” pancakes in an effort to encourage Shaun to embrace his new role in Pathology.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: two things… 1) the way Shaun brushes his hair before exiting the bathroom, then steps back in and gives the front of his head a little tousle as if to say I’m still me, no matter what department I’m in at work. 2) the fact that Shaun seemed pleased to see the pancakes until the moment Lea explained what they were for; he ended up leaving the house without so much as a bite of his favorite food. (I know it was to symbolize his deep disdain for the situation at hand, but I couldn’t help but feel for Lea… Dude, she went through all this trouble! Can’t you at least take a few to eat later?)

17) “Commencing a hang.” (from 3.11 “Fractured”)

IN SHORT: Shaun comes home from his first day back at work following the Wyoming trip. Lea, perched on the sofa with her laptop, tries to check in with him… but with his head swimming in confusion over feelings for Lea vs. feelings for Carly, he quickly takes Lea up on an offer to “just hang” (silently). But in the meantime, he’s taking something Dr. Andrews said very literally, trying to gauge if his heart truly does beat faster when he’s close to the one he loves.

NO, they didn’t lay it out quite that explicitly. But did he attempt this experiment with Carly? He did not.

Anyway, his experiment did little more than puzzle Shaun further, and generate some curious looks from Lea… until, of course, a phone call from Morgan sent him back to work.

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: Since this was Lea’s only appearance in the episode beyond the opening still-in-Wyoming scenes… and since she was suddenly the subject of multiple conversations (Shaun/Carly, Shaun/Glassman, even Shaun/Morgan)… I think we were all hyper-curious as to what would happen next with #Shea. We knew better than to expect a full 180 with Shaun and Carly at that point, right? So the unknowns persisted… until the ending minute of the episode, that is. (See #20 on my list.) As a stop-gap scene, I think “Commencing a hang” did the job just fine. But as a device to leave us wanting more (much more!) from Shaun’s interactions with Lea, it did the job SUPREMELY well.

16) “Maybe pathology won’t be that bad after all…?” (from 2.17 "Breakdown")

IN SHORT: Shaun and Lea are having dinner together at the apartment (at least it appears that they are both eating the same thing at the same time). As Shaun relays some details about one of the Cases Of The Week (a case that he’s still connected to, though now from the Pathology lab), the conversation bends so that Lea can point out the current positives of his situation: solving medical mysteries with “a co-worker you like who's nice to you” (Carly, who was just his colleague at the time). But Shaun, still unable to accept his situation as final, abruptly cites work to do and leaves the room.

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: Little things. The fact that they were sharing a meal together, chatting about work (at least to start). The way Shaun’s voice took on that more intimate tone when he said “(Carly) says we make a good team.” The frustration Lea for him at the scene’s end. (BTW, I think this was the last exclusive scene they shared until the final minutes of 2.18 “Trampoline.”)

15) “You never used to do that.” (from 3.15 “Unsaid”)

IN SHORT: For the second time in the episode, Lea (now a

new employee at St. B) finds her way to Shaun’s cafeteria table and, while venting about Glassman’s less endearing habits, starts eating food off Shaun’s plate. When Shaun tells her that Morgan has likened this behavior to “peeing on his leg” (!!!), Lea tames her annoyance with Morgan just enough to become the model of platonic reassurance… and just long enough for Shaun to have a medical epiphany and flee the scene (leaving Lea with his largely unfinished breakfast, heh heh).

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: There were several steps the “Unsaid” episode had to take in order to set up the climactic karaoke scene properly. We knew Carly’s jealousy issues seemed to be more under control at this point (evidenced most vividly with the elevator sequence between her and Lea), but as usual, we had very limited direct info about Lea’s true feelings. (Hell, even her sought-after advice to Shaun about handling the press in the “Influence” episode prior to this had been delivered off-camera.) So the TGD writers bring her to Shaun’s cafeteria table. Morgan talks about her in the OR. Lea and Carly share an elevator ride. Lea comes to Shaun’s cafeteria table AGAIN. That was already almost twice as much as we’d see Lea in any recent episode, and I didn’t even include the karaoke bar sequence!

What does any of this have to do with Lea’s “true feelings” being made clear? On the surface, not much—which is why we were truly on the edge of our collective seats wondering what she’d say when Shaun laid it on the line at the end of the “Autopsy” episode. But as TGD built up the “just friends” argument, they did a sly thing in this scene: what Lea said was (I’m partly paraphrasing) “I assure you, my voice and my actions are saying the same thing right now, which is pure, non-threatening, platonic friendship.” My thought: yes, she was saying all the right things in the right manner, but that’s hardly the same thing as speaking from the heart… and she stated as much in that exchange.

It’s all water under the bridge now, but still a distinction worth noting.

SO! You may be wondering hmm, that other cafeteria scene must be ranked higher on Kelli’s list. I wonder why?

I’ll tell you in future countdown posts!