I've seen a lot of people say the reason Eddie keeps coming up in Buck's conversations about/with Tommy is because he's subconsciously in love with Eddie and projecting his feelings onto to Tommy or whatever (which, he's not that stupid, give him a little credit - also you can be attracted to more than one person??) but I really don't think that's the case.
Imagine being Buck, you meet this cool guy and you even manage to bag a tour of his workplace (air operations, cool as fuck), you're getting on great so you ask him out for drinks- he says he'd love to but he's busy. Ouch, strike one, rejection. Then, out of nowhere, your best friend (who's cooler and more important than you, has more in common- from your perspective- with the cool guy) and they've already pre-planned a trip which you hadn't even heard about, strike two. Why wouldn't someone as cool as Tommy want to hang out with Eddie? Then it turns out he's been over to Eddie's house three times (which buck was told by chris, not Eddie) and they're playing basketball together as well now. Strike three and out. You might as well not even ask this super cool guy to spend time with you because why would he want to, not when he's got your also super cool best friend to hang out with instead.
I mean it's well established that Buck has abandonment issues stemming from his home life, we've seen that even though he works on them it's not something that's just going to go away. He also repeatedly puts himself in danger over others so of course he thinks they're worth more than him. Eddie's being brought up as a comparison to Buck, not a comparison to Tommy. We're shown that significantly more than Buck comparing himself to Tommy (he does a bit when Tommy's at his flat and when it's in regards to Christopher, which is funny because I actually think Buck was only really jealous of Tommy when it came to Chris thinking he was cool), but most of the time when Buck brings up Tommy, it's asking about what he's doing and trying to get invited along, if he was actually jealous of Tommy he'd be trying harder to get Eddie to hang out with him before Tommy could ask.
i would like to point out the “you wanna go for the title” scene is still the gayest thing to have happened in bucks kitchen, and he made out with a man in there.
We finally get to see two macho men being queer and open to dating each other without pretenses or this idea of it being wrong. This has been what I wanted for years now. And the fact that ABC did it no questions asked speaks volumes to me.
one thing that i think really proves we only see eddie through buck's pov in this ep is that it's the first time basically ever???? we've seen eddie more or less ignore buck???? like, eddie. the same eddie who is so attentive and so attuned to buck's every goddamn micro expression that he knows what's wrong with buck even before buck does sometimes. the same eddie who has a laundry list of lines across multiple seasons that highlight the way he always know what buck is thinking and feeling. and tommy even confirms that at the end of the ep when buck asks if eddie's mad and instead he says that eddie feels bad bc he knows why buck is upset, bc he knows better than anyone about buck's abandonment issues and his possessiveness over his family. the reason it looks like eddie is ignoring buck is because buck feels like eddie's ignoring him and honestly it is So Interesting to get that insight into buck's head
Love that Eddie and Buck have been locked in the worlds weirdest gay chicken for YEARS because they’re both too scared to do anything more than make eyes at each other but then the second Buck turns that shit on Tommy he’s like “oh he wants to kiss”
Chris: So you're gonna date my dad?
Tommy: Huh? No, I'm just friends with Eddie -
Chris: Not dad dad. My other dad.
Tommy, blinking: ...Evan?
Chris, scrunches his nose: Who the fuck is Evan?