#i'm already prepping champagne bottles for her departure

[lovecolibri]

Hey what do you think about the spoiler about buck? After the oliver interview in december I think that maybe not in 5x11, but 5x12 it should be good for us. It just that I'm dreading to see another episode where they try to show us how in love buck is. I want for once the reporter being clingy and buck being completely uninterested, I wanted him being sad for eddie, I completely feed up with his grand gestures to make her stay, I don't want to see her anymore

Nonnie, this is an absolute MOOD. Like, logically I know she has to come back and be in an episode for there to be a wrench in their "plans for happiness" as Oliver said, and for there to be a breakup, but I am SO TIRED of her, and of watching Buck being miserable all. the. time. and receiving no emotional support from her in return for all the emotional labor he is (almost half-heartedly, seriously Buck breakup with your girlfriend) putting into the relationship.

I was always worried about the "plans for happiness" line and now hearing he's making an "impulsive relationship decision? 😬😬😬 I feel like his reaction to the proposal idea during 5x10 should mean that he wouldn't propose on a whim, but also it could be the set up to show how impulsive and wrong the decision is to propose so 🤷‍♀️ IDK it could go either way.

But I really, really don't want that because like you, I'm also fed up with watching Buck do all these grand gestures out of desperation instead of genuine joy and desire to surprise and delight the other person like we saw in season 1 with Abby, and like we see him doing for Eddie (Carla) and for Maddie (the Christmas tree, which may have turned out poorly but he was earnestly trying to do a nice thing there).

My desperate hope is that it's about them finding a house or an apartment for them to share together, like she says something about things being small and cramped or not enough space for her stuff/it's too much like a "bachelor pad". My dream scenario is Eddie coming over and letting himself in with his key and interrupting them having a disagreement, maybe about the loft and making space for her (not another painfully awkward sexual encounter please I am literally begging), and that turns into her saying later that the need a place with a little more privacy and they should look for something together.

Buck agrees, but the wrench is that he keeps turning down places because they are too far from Eddie and Chris/too far for Chris to easily/safely/quickly get to him in case of emergency, or too far from the school for him to drop Chris off if he needs to since he watches him for Eddie on his days off sometimes especially now that Eddie is working a different job, or because they aren't accessible enough for Chris, and the list goes on and on and every place he is just more concerned about it being good for Eddie and Chris rather than good for him and Taylor. Bonus points if he doesn't really say anything to her, but is telling Hen and the team about all the places they looked at and all the reasons they don't work which are always about Eddie and Chris. We would get some quality Hen facial expressions and some more Bobby Nash Relationship Kiss Of Death advice and it leads to more arguments with Taylor and Buck realizing he does not in fact want to move with his girlfriend and that the relationship is maybe not what he wants at all. (Extra bonus points if he already decided not to renew his lease and has to move out of the loft anyway and ends up on Eddie's doorstep. Not that I think that will happen, but it would be nice).

But most of all, I don't want to see him looking at places, I want to see him talking about it with the firefam and maybe Eddie, but with the least amount of screen time possible for her and then have her gone quickly because she has taken up enough time from characters I actually want to see on my screen and it is LONG past time for her character to be gone forever.

[lovecolibri]

You and your anons😘 I'm all for slow burn, but we need some real signs. Imo they showed us perfectly how a/e weren't going to last and I expected the same thing with b/t that re 100 times worse. Instead we got him running after her like a lost puppy for an entire ep, and worring for her gift. The could've showed him answering differently to the ily or not aswering at all, or just good or ok, fine. He could have told hen that he didn't know what to get her, cause he doesn't know her

Part 2 I wanted buck to tell someone that maybe they went too fast and committed a mistake. A scene like the buddie one about Ana. Some camera works on his face to show how sad he is instead we had them behind a tree 🤔. I can wait but in 5b we need actual ints

Oh no! It looks like Tumblr cut of the other part of this. I got your note between these two that you were trying to send a second part but were having trouble, and I waited to see if the rest of this would come in, but it didn't, and then I forgot about it 😬

Anyway, I have to mildly disagree with your examples because those are the only scenes of hers I think we actually needed and the rest of her stuff was entirely superfluous. 🤷‍♀️

See, as much as I don't think we needed any backstory for her, the fact is we got it (🙄), but we didn't actually see any of it from her POV, that whole storyline was still all about Buck. Specifically, it's about him going through the motions that a Good Boyfriend(tm) would (also trying to follow that "step inside and keep them company" advice from Bobby in season 1 that has worked out so well for him in the past with his relationships with Abby, Maddie, and Eddie) while not actually putting any of his heart into it. You can see it on his face and in the way he hugs her (see literally any comparison of him hugging people smaller than himself and folding into them vs holding himself so rigidly with her), the way his face falls in every interaction, the way he is Doing The Right Things, but it's work like it never was with Abby. He wanted to know what to do to help her and actively sought out advice and followed it, but everything with bt feels so performative like he's going through motions he doesn't want to be going through, but it's just What You Do In A Relationship so he does it. I feel like the way he responded to the ILY was very in character because a) Oliver's acting is impeccable and he very much gave off vibes of being shocked/disappointed and then of being obligated to respond. Because Buck doesn't like to make other people feel uncomfortable so of course he says it back. And also, he's been spending all this time waiting for someone, anyone to say those words to him, so he can't just NOT say it back when it finally happens! Despite the fact that it feels nothing like he thought it would. Despite the fact that he doesn't feel it back. Despite knowing deep down it's not right, and not what he wants. Because what he wants has never been obtainable before, and he's used to settling, so why should this be any different? (Excuse me, I need to go cry for a minute about Buck and how he deserves the world and a love that makes him so full of happiness he can't stand it.)

We also see how totally unbothered he was about thinking they were breaking up. My guy was literally just mildly annoyed like, *shrug* "This is what always happens. Time to check out dating apps again I guess" *sigh* ("That's not how you talk about someone you love" coming out of his mouth will haunt me until he has his own realization.)

And then, ONE episode after thinking they were breaking up followed by the world's most uncomfortable ILY ("for it" which is a whole other thing), he's just casually throwing out how his buddy used to break up with women so he wouldn't have to buy them Christmas gifts and finishes that story with "big mood. 10/10 can relate". Like...My dude. My guy. Break up with your girlfriend, you are deeply unhappy and unfulfilled. I think seeing him spending an entire episode trying to figure out what to get someone he's been dating for over 6 months and is basically living with was important because it makes it crystal clear how unhappy he is and how wrong they are for each other. Buck is a master gift-giver for people he loves and you cannot change my mind, and in the end, he came up with a gift that was thoughtful and practical and still pretty to look at. Because, Hen got lost in the earthquake and in TX, Eddie got buried underground, Chim got attacked and stabbed, Maddie got kidnapped and got taken hostage at work, Bobby got shot, Athena got trapped in the mudslide and attacked on duty, Buck and Chris got stuck in a tsunami and then got separated. Like, it's not a bad idea for a gift for literally anyone else in his life and I'm sure any of them would have seen it as a gesture of him worrying about them, and making sure that while they won't always be safe, they'll always have access to help.

I think those were the important moments we needed to see to show how much this relationship isn't working, how they aren't right for each other, and to lead into Buck having the realization that someone saying they love him isn't enough if he doesn't feel loved, and seen (and found), and understood. If he doesn't feel safe to be open and ask for support, if he doesn't feel supported when he does and doesn't feel emotionally fulfilled, then it doesn't matter what the other person does or says, it's not the right relationship for him.

My issue is all of the other moments that we saw that we didn't need. The hacker thing from the blackout never really came back and Karen explained more of it than anything so we didn't need her there, the entirety of her involvement in Ghost Stories was unnecessary and took away stuff we should have seen (I will never, ever shut up about the 5 scenes that actress said she shot for the ghost roommate call, and the scene with Ravi startling Buck, and Buck and the firefam talking about ghosts and if they believe. Literally will never be over it. Release the original episode, Tim!). The argument could be made that the "not everything is about you" scene shows her fundamental misunderstanding of Buck, what he needs in regards to emotional support, and apparently his relationship to his family if she thinks a boss she didn't even know is even remotely comparable, but the scene later ("it's all about you" is...tone-deaf to say the least) wasn't necessary, and neither was any other moment of her being in his apartment or them talking because it doesn't add anything 🤷‍♀️. If she had been more in the background like Ana was, I could probably stomach watching her brief scenes, but as it is, I'll just be using them for bathroom breaks in the future because they're ultimately unimportant to the rest of the show and to Buck's character arc.

[lovecolibri]

So happy that I found your blog, bless you and your anons. Honestly i'd like to meeting the writers that thought it was a good idea to focus 5a on a character that nobody can even stand, instead of seein chim being a single working father maybe bonding with eddie, karen a beloved character since s1, ravi... I don't care about T, her father, her mother, her dog, her boss her aunt, her trauma nothing. And I hope in 5b the writers won't write more eps like 5x9-10

Where the only thing they made buck do was going after her for all america like a lost puppy and instead of worring for chris he spent 20 mins trying to find her present, and again he could have got her a crocodile and I still wouldn't care. I hope this hiatus cured their obsession with the reporter. Again thank you for your lovely blog and please rant about b/t whenever you want😘

Awww, thanks Nonnie, and I have been sitting on this for ages so I hope you manage to see it! I also do not care a single iota about her job, how she does it, how she feels about doing it, or anything about her family, and I'm eternally bitter we had to suffer through her taking up as much screen time as she did rather than seeing other calls (Ghost Roommate my beloved 😭😭😭), and other characters/dynamics.

I will say that I get what they are going for with the bt relationship with regards to Buck and his character growth but they managed to get the point across with Ana just fine so IDK why we needed all this background and screen time for a guest star. I will say it again, and forever, in a year when people are re-watching season 5, no one is going to care that the original air date was a week after Halloween, no one is going to care about seeing a side character investigating a call that has nothing to do with the firefam (that her involvement didn't even impact, because Lou already found the motel on his own and then the "hitman" confessed so....what did she even contribute?), and no one is going to care about seeing her backstory that also has nothing to do with the firefam or Buck.

Like, we didn't see all that much from Shannon but what we did see was directly relational to Eddie and Chris. We didn't get any backstory on her except in regards to how her choices affected Eddie and Chris because she wasn't ever meant to stick around. I don't know if killing her off was always the plan, but having her come back into and then leave their lives in the same season? It had to be part of the season outline. So we did see about her made sense because it was about Chris and Eddie, not about her.

Now, even the reporter's backstory was still framed from Buck's POV (we don't see her in a scene alone about it, we don't see her meeting with/talking to her dad or the lawyer or anything) it was still a whole bunch of stuff that's not directly relational to Buck and to his story, and the bigger plotlines for the show. That means, you can remove those scenes about her and not lose any of the threads of the show. And honestly, you could entirely remove every single one of her scenes for the entirety of 5a and...not lose much if anything important. The only thing I can think of that crosses over into the main plotlines are Buck thinking they are breaking up, and the Christmas gifts, which if they peppered in comments about a gf without showing her (like they did with Ali in season 2) and then had literally any random woman in 5x10 the story for Buck would be basically the same.

I have to say your crocodile comment made me think of 2x06 and the lizard that seemed to have a thing for her and it made me giggle! I also hope that their obsession with her is over now that Maddie and Chim (and baby Jee!) and Albert are all back. And after the way even the general audience has been frothing at the mouth to see her leave, fingers crossed she won't ever come back.

Thanks for the ask, sorry it took so long to respond to, and you are always welcome to come flail or rant with me in my inbox!