Part 2 of The Roommate Years: Ranking #Shea’s Smaller Moments (#14-8)

Previously on my ranking of scenes from The Roommate Years of Shaun and Lea…

 

Shaun was too downhearted about work to accept Lea’s gift of weekday pancakes.

 

Lea attempted to school Shaun on the importance of text reciprocation when in a romantic relationship.

 

Morgan’s food-stealing/leg peeing analogy found its way into Shaun and Lea’s cafeteria conversation.

 

And much, much MORE, as you can go see right now if you’d like.

 

What are #Shea’s Smaller Moments? They come from 15 different episodes of TGD that aired between the settling-in-as-roomies stage and the “Superbass” karaoke night that effectively snuffed out Shaun and Carly’s relationship.

 

To recap how I’m doing these “rankings”…

 

1)  In true countdown form, I started at the bottom of the list (21^st) and am now up to scene rankings 14 through 8. Those ranked 7 through 1 will be called out in a later post.

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.

5) With, again, limited exceptions, most of these scenes are stand-alones (meaning, not part of an extended plot development).

 

AAAAND THE COUNTDOWN ROLLS ON…

 

 

14) “The walls were shaking… I’m surprised the cops didn’t show up.” (From 3.2 “Debts”)

 

IN SHORT: After his so-called “disaster” first date, Shaun is

ready to call a DNR on his pursuit of Carly. Lea, however, has other ideas. “You like Carly… you need to get back in the saddle,” she advises Shaun in the opening moments of the “Debts” episode. “And luckily, you have a totally awesome roomie who’s here to help you.” But alas, at that point Shaun was less than receptive to Lea’s efforts.

By the way… the “shaking walls” were in reference to Lea playing Talking Heads music loudly and Shaun not emerging from his room to ask her to turn it down, which furthered her concern that something was amiss. (Unfortunately she referred to the band as THE Talking Heads… oof… it is simply “Talking Heads” and I’m left to wonder if it was written in the script incorrectly, or if Paige Spara threw it in unwittingly and no one caught it/sought to correct it.)

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: This was the scene from which the following lines of dialogue made it into the Official ABC trailer for Season 3:

 

SHAUN: (responding with frustration to Lea’s line Everyone needs a special friend): I’m not like everyone!

 

LEA (waits a loong beat, then, calmly): No one is like everyone. We’re all unique. But… we’re also the same.

 

 

13) “Still talking!” (Also from 3.2 “Debts”)

 

IN SHORT: Later that same day (Shaun’s wearing the same shirt as he was in #14), the Case of The Week is how Shaun tries to lose himself as his frustration and anxiety for the situation with Carly continues to mount. Carly will, in fact, come directly to the apartment door in a few minutes and summon Shaun to take a walk with her… but first, before retiring to her room for the night, Lea pads into their kitchen to retrieve something from the fridge. And to stir Shaun's pressure-cooker of emotions, just a little. Because… Lea!

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: I liked the way Shaun was pacing around the breakfast bar, books open, ShaunVision® flying, and Lea bops into the shot from the other side of the room and dismantled it all—first by advising rest (“your neurons will be sparkier in the morning”), and then countering all his talk about needing to find “the right permutation” for his medical case with the fact that he was refusing to try any additional “permutations” where he and Carly were concerned.

 

Also, it was right after the tail end of this scene—where she agreed to shut up, yet continued to talk all the way to her bedroom door (prompting Shaun’s aggravated “You’re still talking!” retorts)—when a fellow TGD fan tweeted about how it was scenes like this one that confirmed the continuing chemistry between Shaun and Lea, and how it gave him hope for them for the future. Given that this was when all the focus was on Shaun and Carly getting off the ground, I appreciated that greatly.

 

 

12) “Hey Morgan… love your boots.” (From 3.15 “Unsaid”)

 

IN SHORT: In Lea’s first week of working for Glassman at St. Bonaventure, she seeks Shaun out at least twice for venting purposes—or as she says endearingly at the start of this scene, “I need a double dose of Shaunie, stat.” Of course, her thoughts on Glassman’s resistance to technology are soon eclipsed by Shaun’s questions about women saying one thing and meaning the opposite, as Morgan had suggested earlier in

the day. Lea tries to be helpful, but that’s tough to do when someone uses the word “think” a half-dozen times in the space of 15 seconds (as Shaun does) and then asks Lea what she thinks. Lea fares better when she simply assures Shaun that Carly is not likely to be hiding anything from him.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: … what happens next. Lea picks French fries off Shaun’s plate for most of the scene; it’s a nonchalant action that Shaun barely acknowledges… but… enter Morgan, coming

to tell him a surgery awaits and he needs to wrap up lunch. (And, apparently, taking notes on Lea’s territory-staking skills all the while.)

 

The “love you boots-thanks-love your sweater-thanks” exchange between Morgan and Lea seems to quietly upend some of Shaun’s confidence in Carly’s forthrightness—probably because even a man who has great difficulty reading social cues could tell that Lea and Morgan had ZERO love for each other’s apparel in that moment! And if those two could snap into the insincerities THAT quickly… “hmmm,” as Shaun would (and probably did) say.

 

By the way… the main reason I put this scene a little higher on my list than its follow-up (“You never used to do that,” a.k.a. #15 on the list) is because it’s also a series of “firsts.” First time Lea’s crashing Shaun at work in person (I’m not forgetting when she FaceTimed him to announce that Hubert The Fish was bored). First time she has work-related Glassy complaints. And, most important, first time we actually witnessed a Lea/Morgan exchange. And I’m most definitely rooting for more of that!

 

 

11) “How do I get an ice cream headache?” (From 3.14 “Influence”)

 

IN SHORT: Shaun’s excited about the case surrounding the

influencer (the basis of the episodic title)—so excited that he declines “lunch” (not sure if it was actual lunch or sex lunch, don’t care at this point) with Carly because he wants to get going on his research. Or does he…? Yes, in that he used his lunch hour to discover the agony of an ice

cream headache (something the influencer described as the feeling behind one of her symptoms). But it just so happened that he also made lunch plans with Lea. As Morgan rationalizes later, it’s not really a lie he tells Carly (“he’s incapable of lying”)… but definitely enough information he didn’t feel was necessary to share upfront to send his favorite pathologist into a tailspin.

 

So we get a new taste of the love triangle, AND some big news from Lea when she announces that she’s quitting her job. “You kicking me out was just what I needed,” she says… and as for me, my heart sank a little with the thought that she might be moving away again… this time, for good (see below). But half an hour later, she managed to crush a job interview with Glassman (Shaun’s suggestion, naturally) and make it impossible to be anything less than St.B’s newest employee.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: OMG she’s back onscreen!! Yay!!!!

That was the feeling a lot of us #Shea fans had upon seeing Lea meeting up for lunch with Shaun in this episode. We hadn’t seen her since the opening minute of 3.12 “Mutations,” and a few of us were beginning to wonder if they’d decided to write her off in favor of Shaun and Carly. Now, we saw them meeting for lunch just moments after watching him decline a lunch offer from Carly. It’s about as clandestine as Shaun is capable of, and we were There. For. IT.

 

 

10) “… That’s his fault. His. Not yours.” (From 3.10 “Friends and Family”)

IN SHORT: Shaun, Lea, and Glassman are in Casper, where they’d pulled up into the Murphy family driveway only for Shaun to panic and beg Glassman to drive away (which he did) as soon as his mother came out to the front yard. Now, at the motel, Lea comes to check on her re-traumatized best friend… and offer a little advice of her own while Glassman is not around to contradict her (a.k.a. pressuring Shaun to talk to and/or forgive his father while he’s still among the living). This is the scene that prompts Shaun to pay a visit to the cemetery where Steve is buried… and, eventually, to make his way back to see his father.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: The crucial counterpoint that Lea provides throughout this pivotal episode. Shaun isn’t confused about his feelings for his father, but thanks in part to Glassy projecting an unfair share of his own lingering parental guilt, that word forgiveness hangs in the Casper air like a lead balloon. It’s funny… normally to think of that word in symbolic terminology I think of something more like shackles. To forgive someone is to cut yourself free from something that’s heavy and binding to them, right? But in the case of Shaun, I end up saying “lead balloon” because that last, post-forgiveness 30 seconds with his Dad just sent shrapnel crashing right down on the forgiver… ugh.

 

But anyway, back to Lea. Over and over again in “Friends and

Family,” she’s the one encouraging Shaun to take his time. It’s in the car as they sat in the driveway. It’s here, in this scene (where she says if his dad dies before Shaun’s ready to walk into that house and see him, the fault lies with his dad, not him). It’s at the cemetery, right after Glassy re-states his case for getting back to the house ASAP. It’s at the lake, when she suggests to Shaun that sometimes the kind of closure Glassy hopes for is simply unattainable.

 

And, arguably, it’s there once more when Shaun declines Glassman’s offer to stay and talk, go for a walk, etc. right after delivering the news that Ethan Murphy had passed away… and instead wordlessly accepts Lea’s comforting arms, taking all the time he needed to feel better*.

 

*Around 8 hours’ worth, we suspect

 

 

9) “You’re a good dancer.” (From 2.12 “Aftermath”)

IN SHORT: All the residents, having just been knee-deep in the “Quarantine” 2-parter, are trying to rest and recoup in their own ways: yoga and meditation (Morgan), running (Claire), martial arts (Park). And Shaun…? Shaun lays still but awake in his bed. Lea, however, dons the earphones/cranks up Florence + The Machine/dances up a frenzy in and around the kitchen. Shaun eventually emerges from his bedroom, watching her silently but with intense fascination. After Lea discovers Shaun’s presence (and is sufficiently embarrassed), she makes suggestions on how to spend his day off (“no boring textbooks!”) and sends him back to his room, advising further that nothing he does should happen before 9AM.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: I just loved the way Lea was included in this montage featuring other series regulars. She really got to be the yin to Shaun’s yang (or is it vice versa?) here, and it was a joy to witness. No wonder Shaun couldn’t take his eyes off her once he was in the room. And her freak-out when she found him watching her—“Holy crap, Shaun! You’ve gotta give a girl some warning

before she makes a total fool of herself!”—might seem a little harsh, but she was smiling the entire time she said it. Nothing but charm in that scene!

 

 

8) “Do I look nice?” (From 2:18 “Trampoline”)

 

IN SHORT: Shaun’s just been released from the hospital (where he lay injured for part of the episode), and he’s got his surgeon job back. So—apparently trying to make it 3-for-3—he’s got flowers, chocolates, and a suit on when Lea comes home. But the question he has for Lea is not the question we think he has for Lea. (Is it, Carly?) Shaun then takes his chocolates and his flowers and his “very nice”-looking self and breezes right past Lea as he exits the apartment.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: It was another super-succinct slice in the life and times of #Shea, but it was also incredibly effective in the final minutes of Season 2. Lea’s true feelings for Shaun remained at-large… questioned, frequently, but still at-large… all the way up to her earlier scene in “Trampoline,” (where Glassy says “when he gets rejected, I’m glad it’s coming from somebody who cares about him”). By doing as they did, The Powers That Be kept the suspense going—what would Lea have said if those flowers were for her? And what was that expression on her face as he passed her by? Relief? Dismay? Both?—all while still giving Shaun a surprise victory and a course for the season to come.

 

Personally, I remember being somewhat let down by that S2 ending. But at the same time, I felt strangely good about it. The timing’s not right yet, I decided… but I think it will be. Soon.

Don't you love it when a plan comes together?