The Roommate Years: #Shea's Top 7 Smaller Moments!

 

#SHEA Seeds...

The highlight of the week came early, when we were treated to an all-new footage S4 promo… and the endearing image you see above. Yes, COVID-19 is impacting the first two episodes of S4… and for Shaun and Lea, it’s definitely impacting the nascent stages of their budding romance as well. Take a look at this promo—which is actually a supercut of the newest 30 second promo, the semi-generic 30 second promo that preceded it, and the 15-second #Shea promo I showed last week—and you’ll see Shaun talking to her on the phone, Lea telling Shaun good morning virtually (over the computer), and both of them talking on opposite sides of the apartment door. (Many have noted that Shaun’s about to reach for a note that Lea must’ve slipped under the door.)

Before all this went down, were you able to catch last Sunday’s ComiCon discussion via Zoom with TGD cast? 

The conversation—which was not interactive as we’d heard it would be, but still quite enjoyable—runs about 42 minutes and can be watched here.

And WAY before all that went down, #Shea’s Roommate Years got mined for precious smaller moments…

#21-15 can be found here...  

#14-8 can be found here...  

And now, without further adieu!

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7) “Do NOT text Carly that.” (From 3.7 “SFAD”)

IN SHORT: Carly’s away at a conference, trying to engage Shaun via text as the day progresses. When she sends the eyeroll emoji, apparently frustrated with something he’s said (or, more likely, hasn’t said), Shaun turns to Lea for help. Lea opts to soft-pedal Carly’s intent with the eyeroll… but that doesn’t seem to help Shaun develop an appropriate response.

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: Shaun’s adorable re-creation of the eyeroll emoji itself.

Clocking in at a mere 1:07 (more like 1:00, since the last 5 seconds of this clip is TGD logo), this one definitely checks the box as a “smaller moment” between Shaun and Lea. But, hilarious as it was, it packs plenty into that minute: the irritation people with ASD surely feel with onset of emojis-as-acceptable-communication (“You get all that from one fake face?”)… Lea deciding on-the-fly how honest she should be about her interpretation of an eyeroll… then, 15 seconds later, trying to spare Carly some ASD relationship reality when Shaun admits she’s not on his mind throughout the workday. Of course, throughout it all is Shaun and Lea’s endearing friendship… particularly handy in an episode where Shaun’s female colleagues were both busy trying to give an adolescent, soon-to-be-blind boy a great last “seeing” day.

6) “Should I change my pants with you in the room?” (From 3.1 “Disaster”)

SETTING UP THIS CLIP: While recapping his first-date to Claire—privately, unlike his full-on grilling by the St.B’vites at other points in the episode—Shaun reveals that he attempted to tell a joke during his dinner with Carly. “No!” Claire gasps. “Lea said I should,” Shaun immediately responds in his defense. Cut to a flashback of date night prep at Murphy/Dilallo headquarters, and Lea saying “No, that is not what I said!” as if she was defending herself in real time during Shaun and Claire’s conversation. The scene picks up from there, as Shaun emerged from his bedroom…

 

IN SHORT: In Lea’s only appearance in this S3 opener, she’s offering not only wardrobe advice but suggestions on what to offer—and NOT offer—as conversation. “You have to know how to tell them. You have to know… WHEN… to tell them,” she warns Shaun.

Shaun, knowing neither of those things, stubbornly goes ahead with his joke at the restaurant… thereby adding to the “disaster” that he perceived his date with Carly to be.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: Speaking for myself, it’s “best remembered” as setting the tone for the Shaun/Lea dynamic of S3 (or at least the first half of it). And that tone was these two are still very important, but you’re not going to see them together much for awhile so pay close attention to every minute. (Or half-minute, in this case.)

I initially wanted to place this scene even higher in the countdown. Why? Because in the thirty seconds Shaun and Lea share the screen I came away feeling remarkably good about their relationship at that point:

 

-        “Does this tie look good?”/ “Yes, but not with those pants” immediately demonstrated the comfort level Shaun and Lea now had as friends/roommates. I loved the organic feel of that tiny exchange.

 

-        We see Lea kindly but matter-of-factly explaining first-date chatter to him, and we get instant confirmation of where she’s at with all this following a somewhat ambiguous reaction to his plans at the end of the end of the “Trampoline” finale of S2. (Translation: she’s being very supportive, even putting any plans of her own on hold for the evening until she can get Shaun as ready as he’ll ever be and out the door).

 

-        “Should I take off my pants…”/ “No!” is a testament to two things: 1) Shaun’s ASD challenges (he’s asking because he honestly doesn’t know what’s acceptable/appropriate), and 2) the ongoing need for boundaries in their relationship, especially if he’s testing the romance waters with other women. If she was just a roommate, Lea probably couldn’t have cared less where he undressed. But as “Friends and Family” confirmed later in the season, she cared about him much more than she was willing to verbalize. Telling Shaun to, literally, keep his pants on (twice!) was a good way to keep the boundaries in place as Shaun forged ahead.

 

And let’s face it—"taking off his pants with her in the room” is not something Lea is likely to object to for much longer. Which makes this exchange from 2019 even more precious.

5) “I AM going to rock it!” (From 3.5 “First Case, Second Base”)

IN SHORT: After some gentle teasing about his returning home late the night before (from Carly’s place), Lea finds herself advising Shaun through his latest dilemma—the “I prefer to only touch one thing at a time” issue—until a text from St. B eclipses all conversation. Shaun’s first lead surgery has been scheduled! He and Lea celebrate briefly—no hugs, just very exuberant jumping in place—before he bounds out the door for an exciting day of work.

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: “I AM going to rock it!”/ “Oh, hells to the yeah you are!”

 

Which is to say it’s remembered best for the absolute joy

Shaun felt in that moment, and the fact that it was Lea who got to share in it. We hadn’t seem him this happy since he asked Carly out for the first time, and we hadn’t seen him this happy alongside Lea since she agreed to become roommates (about a year earlier). This counts as one of their most treasured moments at ANY stage of their relationship.

 

But it’s easy to forget the significance of the conversation they were having prior to that text. Lea was now giving advice about something much more intimate than first-date protocol—and this time, Shaun took it. Him being him, he named Lea as the source of said advice when talking to Carly later that day—which displeased Carly, although Shaun was oblivious to her displeasure.

 

Is it any wonder, then, that Carly approached Shaun at work (less than an hour before his lead surgical debut!) and essentially showed him how to feel her up? At the time this episode aired, I must admit Carly’s bold move took me by surprise. (And the timing of it still does, though the debate about Carly’s early sexual “pushiness” rages on.) But in retrospect, it comes off as Carly’s first counterstrike in Lea’s general direction: So, Lea told you to tell me you want to touch only one thing at a time…? Well here’s “ONE THING” for you! Tell Lea how you feel about touching THAT!

(And oh, BTW, I’ve got another one you can touch. But not until later.)

 

I’m going overboard, but given what happened (and didn’t) all the way until “Fractured,” six episodes later… I think it’s noteworthy.

4) “You proved that just because something is hard doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”  (From 2.9 “Empathy”)

I know this is an unusual choice, as the Lea-teaches-Shaun-to-drive saga was scattered throughout “Empathy” and, cumulatively, took over seven minutes to unfold (longer if you include the final scene with them picking Glassman up for his appointment). But since it was far from the lead storyline of the hour, and yet something involving #Shea by themselves for four complete scenes… I’ve gotta include it.

But not all four scenes.

There’s the “visualization” scene in the empty parking lot, the

“panic” scene (when Shaun froze in the midst of traffic), the “pep talk” scene at the apartment where Lea dropped some cool-but-flawed analogies between driving and surgery that got Shaun back behind the wheel…

… which brought us to this one (the one I’m officially including in the countdown):

 

Wow, talk about checking all the boxes! Of course it’s easier to do when you have three other scenes setting up before it, but here… we had triumph (he’d successfully navigated the intersection he’d had trouble with previously). We had turmoil
(soccer kid runs out into street blindly, causing Shaun to swerve and knock over a trash can). We have the drama of Shaun’s self-doubt trying to overtake him as he returns to saying I can’t do this. We have Lea scrambling to re-encourage him when he’s twice as resistant as before. We have her clutch delivery of this task (Who else could have done so? Not so fast, Glassy…)

We even have a touch of chivalry (Shaun going over and opening Lea’s car door, even while distressed), a fair dose of TGD humor (“That soccer ball was a dropped Metzenbaum”/ “I... know, right??”), and last but not least, Shaun’s infectious optimism melding with Lea’s determination, bringing us all the way back around to triumph by the time the scene ends.

Now that their relationship has been re-established and upgraded, let’s hope a few episodes of S4 can spare THIS amount of time, development, and #Shea dedication!

 

(p.s. I looked it up… a Metzenbaum is a type of surgical scissors designed to cut delicate tissue. Keep that fact locked away until a TGD trivia game emerges!)

3) “That was NOT a good joke, Lea!” (From 3.10 “Friends and Family”)

IN SHORT: Lea, trying to get Shaun’s mind off of his troubling reunion with his dying father, convinces him to make a pit stop at a nearby lake so they can run in and back out for an off-season “rush”. Trouble is, Shaun doesn’t recall his dislike for a lake’s accompanying muddy banks until once they’re already there. When Shaun turns out to be inconvincible—despite some heavy persuasion attempts on Lea’s part—she hits the lake alone, disappearing under the surface just long enough to send Shaun into a panic. She emerges just fine, but not before Shaun has offed his shoes and socks in preparation to hit the water looking for her. (The consequential mud on his feet later triggers a memory for Shaun that, combined with the pancake house plea from his mother the following morning, prompts his decision to pay his father one more visit.)

 

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: Maybe nothing sticks out for #Shea fans, aside from this being a rare-at-the-time 2:30 of uninterrupted Shaun and Lea. But the more I’ve watched this scene, the more I’ve thought about how it fits into that sub-stack of #Shea moments that is fraught with the will-they/won’t they palpitating energy of an all-neurotypical twosome on the cusp of Something Bigger.

Ask yourself this: had Shaun willingly stripped down and hit the water alongside Lea… would this scene have ended as innocently as it did?

I mean, think about it. It’s a moonlit lake, and these two are completely alone. They have a romantic history (of sorts) together. He’s dating another woman, but he’s invited THIS woman. They’re in desperate need of a distraction from the misery at the Murphy house. Lea has proposed something that requires stripping down to their skivvies, and while Shaun never comes close to doing so, she certainly follows through. Then comes the flirting… and I don’t mean an endearing nudge of the shoulder like she did during S1. I mean body language. I mean facial expressions. I mean…

 

LOOK

                                             AT   HER.

                                                                                                               

Had Shaun been more aware of such things, and been more in-the-moment in general that night, he could have made an excellent case down the road for Lea leading him on in brutal fashion… for someone who would then turn him away once the declaration of love was made, I mean.

And of course, I don’t mean to suggest Lea was deliberate in toying with Shaun when he was especially vulnerable. In fact, he seemed completely unresponsive to her charms that night once “time for action” arrived. What I am saying is that this was, perhaps, another indicator that Lea was more attracted to Shaun than she realized. Either that, or she was fully aware but didn’t worry about Shaun figuring it out because of his ASD and/or devotion to Carly.

Either way, it was an innovative manner for the show to both re-introduce their chemistry (remember, Lea had been completely AWOL from the show for the two episodes leading up to this one), AND move the storyline with Shaun’s father along.

 

P.S. When Lea told Shaun that the “warm, tingly feeling” one gets from a quick dunk in a freezing lake was “the best high there is”… and Shaun thought a moment, and decided “That can’t be true,” were any of you thinking he was about to follow with something about sex probably being better?

Or was that just me?

I think the TGD writers could have gone down that road, but I’m not sure where it would have led to. Besides, they were saving all the big emotional guns for a certain catapult at the end of the episode. I love what this scene ultimately was… two and a half minutes of #Shea getting back into shape for the highly-eventful second half of the season.

 

2) “My life is better with you.” (From 2.13 “Xin”)

IN SHORT (more long than short this time, sorry): Dr. Glassman, still housebound and feeling exceptionally lousy from his chemo treatments, has flat-out told Shaun he doesn’t want his medical advice anymore and urges him to leave. Back at the apartment, a distraught Shaun has just updated Lea on all this when we catch up with the two of them.

 (Although we don’t see Jake this time around, the fact that Lea’s in her camisole and robe again—and exits to her bedroom and closes the door when she’s done talking to Shaun—implies Jake is waiting for her while she takes time with Shaun. That implication gets underscored later in the episode when Shaun puts on headphones—then leaves the apartment altogether—as Lea carries on with Jake in her room. But I digress…)

She advises Shaun to lay low with Glassman for awhile, but of course the conversation she and Shaun have is much quieter and even-tempered than when Glassman advised the same thing… so it resonates with Shaun this time. “Thank you, Lea,” he says just before she returns to her bedroom. “My life is better with you.”

And he turns back to look her way in time to catch the warm smile she offers in response. “Mine too,” she responds.

BEST REMEMBERED FOR: The tenderness of those last lines.

But to really appreciate what was being said, you have to take into account the way Shaun was introduced to the phrase earlier in the episode…

“Xin” is the one with the autistic roommates/sexual partners (Javi and Lana) that has Lana requiring brain aneurysm surgery, and has Shaun and Morgan trying to convince Javi to join them in the OR since Lana will need to be awake throughout the surgery. When Javi balks at the idea, citing his extreme light sensitivity, Morgan takes a different approach:

“You should do it because you love her,” she tells an initially alarmed Javi. “Your life is better with her. You’re a better person with her. You need her. That’s what love is.”

(And immediately we see the wheels turning in Shaun’s head as he considers this definition of “love”.)

“I don’t love her,” Javi says after some thought. “She’s my roommate.”

(And immediately we see the wheels turning some more for Shaun.)

So yes, Shaun is essentially quoting Morgan when he says what he says to Lea. But, especially without Glassman to talk to at the time, Shaun was piecing together an understanding of romantic love all his own. It would be another year before he put all the pieces together, summoned his courage, and professed his love to Lea out loud in that same apartment. At this point and time, my life is better with you was the biggest sentiment they could share.

That’s why it carries so much weight in the back half of S2, and why I put it so high on this list. Lea may not have realized what her reciprocation was specifically saying to Shaun, but that didn’t make it any less real on her part.

As you may recall, Javi changed course post-operation and told Lana “I think I love you” despite the fact she was his roommate. Shaun heard that part too. He didn’t follow suit with Lea, but by the next episode (“Faces”) he was getting much more curious about love itself… and much more real about his feelings for the Jake/Lea coupledom.

Which takes us to… #1!!!

 

“You want to… talk about last night?”

(From 3.11 “Fractured)

IN SHORT: They, uh, talked about ‘last night.’

 

I’ll get back to that in a minute. But think about what typically leads to a woman asking a man (or man asking woman, etc.) that question, in a hotel/motel room, the morning after ‘last night’. Was this—Shaun and Lea, holding each other tearfully (and fully clothed) all night—different from that?

I say yes and no, for while nothing happened in the traditional sense… something happened. And everything changed as a result.

Obviously the scene with The Embrace was way too pivotal to count

as a “smaller moment”. But rather than push the action back to St. Bonaventure (and a couple weeks later) at the start of “Fractured,” TGD writers kept the Casper motel room, the rumpled clothing, Lea still curled up asleep as Shaun sat on the edge of the bed, looking calmer than when we’d left him but deeply puzzled in thought. No jumping ahead; Shaun and Lea were doing the morning-after thing.

What could they say, though? Shaun was on the verge of realizing something new (or was it??) about his feelings for Lea, but his commitment to Carly remained intact. Lea was, I believe, realizing something new (WAS it???) about her feelings for Shaun, but if his relationship with Carly wasn’t keeping her quiet, her own fears and doubts were certainly doing the trick. Plus we have Shaun as difficult to read (and as short on words) as ever on the morning after… and oh, yeah, the man had just lost his father hours after being verbally assaulted one last time by him. What to say, indeed.

So when Lea suggested that yes, perhaps they should talk about last night, it’s not surprising that Shaun was startled (responding with “Why?”) and remained succinct as Lea veered towards the reason she’d stayed all night (“I feel better now… thank you.”)

Lea knows him well enough by now to know when he’s done talking about something personal, so it was up to her to figure out the right thing to say in that moment, with vulnerability still lingering all around the two of them. She kept it simple (“I’m glad I could help you”), but gave a for-what-it’s-worth suggestion too (“But I don’t think we should tell anybody I stayed all night… people might get the wrong idea.”)

He said Okay, then got up and started packing… and by the end of the week, he’d be asking Lea to move out of their apartment. I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes.

I can say that with the apropos shrug, now that we know things worked out for these two by season’s end. But back in January when “Fractured” aired for the first time, we were coming off a six-week hiatus that felt like… oh, I don’t know, maybe seven bewildering, pandemic-soaked months… and the what-happens-next aspect of #Shea was rather gut-wrenching.

But with dialogue so simple, wrapped in acting that had to be delicate enough to capture a dozen emotional branches in about a minute and 20 seconds, I think this scene hit us the hardest of all of #Shea’s smaller moments.

(And as codas-to-scenes go, Shaun's We slept together followed by Glassman's perfectly delayed Did you use protection? is TGD perfection. Cracks me up every time I watch it.)

What’s YOUR pick for the top 3? What would you have ranked lower? Higher? I wanna know! Lucky for both of us the Comments section is great for that kind of thing!