-It turns out impulsively moving your wedding from two years away to two weeks away is not the best idea if you have not done any planning for it. Wedding planners won't help her because it's impossible, her mom won't help her because even though she kicked this whole thing into motion Naomi Bunch is a selfish woman, and Paula can't help her because she's studying for law school finals with Sunil (Hi, Sunil! I've missed you.). Rebecca should give up but people have already RSVP'd and calling it off would give the impression that this isn't normal. So she decides to do almost all of it herself, which naturally leads her to suspect that a DIY wedding will be easier to pull off than a regular wedding, which only makes things worse.
-Rebecca attempting to copy the wedding of Dustin and Sasha from Halifax, Nova Scotia (Yay, Canada shout-out!) works on both a comedy level and a story level. Rebecca wants to be normal and a DIY wedding is normal so she springs for it. There's no time to actually come up with her own ideas though so she picks one at random and tries desperately to copy it. She takes something that is the vision of love, co-operation, and planning intended for two specific people and tries to weld her and Josh to that vision because she wants to be normal. She winds up lost and alone trying to bring dreams that aren't her own to life because she's scared of what her own dreams might be.
-When Seth Green first shows up as Patrick the delivery guy, it's a fun surprise, albeit a bit confusing. Why cast Green in what is essentially a bit part? As the episode goes on though and Patrick keeps returning, it becomes apparent that Seth Green is perfect for the role. Channeling his work as Oz from when he was on Buffy, Green makes Patrick the epitome of "normal", a laid-back regular guy who is genuinely concerned about this woman he barely knows, but also can't off the help or validation she needs because he doesn't know her. Green goes from feeling like a fun distraction to a vital part of the episode and he does it without really doing that much. Green is a master of the understatement when he needs to be.
-The stoic pleasantness of Green also makes him perfect as the focal point for (Tell Me I'm OK) Patrick, an honest aching plea to a person who has no preformed opinion of her asking him to tell her that she's normal and OK. It's a sad, moving song but it's also funny because Green is there staring blankly and trying to process what's going on as a near-stranger bears her soul to him until she starts yelling at him because she's convinced he has the manual to being normal in his truck. When it ends with her finally collapsing from exhaustion and him gently wrapping her with one of the wedding dresses she keeps ordering to try on before sneaking off, it's earnestly sweet.
-As (Tell Me I'm OK) Patrick played, I realized that this is the most vulnerable Rebecca has been in a song since Oh My God I Think I Like You back in season 1. There's been a fair amount of vulnerability in the music this season but none of it has come from her (Except possibly her part of You Go First, but that song is shared with Paula). As she's thrown herself into the delusion of a romance with Josh and then the distraction of female friendship and then back into the delusion of romance but on a grander scale, Rebecca has been guarding her true feelings from her fantasy life more and more this year. Tell Me I'm OK is the first time she lets it all out in a long while and it's all the more powerful because of how long it's been.
-Valencia has been out of focus for weeks now, save for one great scene a couple weeks back. That ends tonight as she returns just when Rebecca needs it the most. Initially though, she seems off and it looks like the episode is setting up the return of a jealous season 1-Valencia. But thankfully the writers avoid going this route, instead focusing on the idea that although she has moved past Josh, she had planned her whole life around him and is rudderless now that that plan is out the window. Her weirdness around Rebecca and Josh isn't really about Rebecca and Josh, it's about how Rebecca is stepping into the life she almost had, reminding her that she needs a new one. Once she confronts this though, she's able to help Rebecca and herself at the same time when she decides to plan Rebecca's wedding using the binder she had spent years building and it turns out she has a real knack for it. Of course she does. Valencia is confident, assertive, and stylish and her becoming a wedding planner makes so much sense for the character that it becomes blindingly obvious that's what she's meant to do the moment it comes up.
-Patrick was never going to be the person to give Rebecca the help she needs, but he manages to deliver it to her by informing Paula of what's really going on with her best friend. Following the reestablishment of their friendship, Rebecca has been making an effort not to make her friendship with Paula all about her and to give Paula a healthy amount of space. It's a nice thought, but it doesn't mean Rebecca should hide her feelings when she's in a place where she genuinely needs the help of her mother/friend. The scene where Paula watches Rebecca in awe of the dress her mother sent her before a flashback shows Paula ripping Naomi a new one to ensure that she would help her daughter is a nice culmination of everything the Rebecca/Paula friendship has been through this season. Watching Paula scream everything at Naomi that we as an audience have wanted to scream is also incredibly cathartic.
-There's a moment towards the end of the episode when Rebecca tries on the dress her mother got her and Heather remarks that she looks "surprisingly normal". The line and Rebecca's very touched reaction to it is played as a joke, but it's also very touching after the ordeal Rebecca went through. The only thing is there's a big difference between looking normal and being normal, which is something Rebecca is probably going to have to come to terms with sooner rather than later.
-Nathaniel starts the episode off demanding that the rest of the office be more normal, but this is the episode where everyone finally sees that he's just as weird and damaged as the rest of them. Also he poops his pants. Nathaniel's vision of normal is also skewed thanks to years of conditioning by his father to view being human as a weakness. That kiss with Rebecca meant something to him but he can't ever admit that because that would betray vulnerability. So in his efforts to exude strength and normality, he gets sick and gassy, but he keeps clinging to the kale smoothies he refuses to stop drinking and refuses to let his guard down. even as the rest of the office tries to help him. Just like Rebecca he reaches a breaking point, but where Rebecca's breaking point was the moment she tried to get a stranger to tell her she's OK, Nathaniel's is pooping his pants. It's a cheap joke, but a funny one and the sight of him in one of Daryl's spare, terrible suits later is a great image.
-Man Nap, Daryl's heavy rocker number about napping like a man isn't a particularly deep song. You could remove it from the episode without losing anything. It is however a terrific song and a lot of fun and the wigs alone justify it's existence.
-Of course the moment Nathaniel finally shows honest vulnerability and takes the nap his body so desperately needs, his father finally shows up and all the issues the show has been hinting at for weeks finally snaps into focus. Nathaniel just wanted to be normal for his father and he's come off as weak instead because his father is unreasonable. Confronted with his worst fear though, Nathaniel doesn't regress to the man he was when he first arrived. Instead, having realized that his father is never going to return his love, he emphasizes with Rebecca when she reveals her father won't be able to make it for her wedding and arranges for her father to be able to come after all. I'll never be sold on Nathaniel as a romantic match for Rebecca, but he has turned out to be much more of a kindred spirit than he originally seemed. What would be perfect is if the two of them connected on a personal level and helped support each other as they dealt with their separate lifetimes of baggage. Unfortunately neither of them are ready to realize how much they might need that.
-Bringing Rebecca's father back is huge. We've seen him in flashbacks but never have seen the actual man before. Rebecca's problems may not have started the night he walked out on their family, but they have been informed by that abandonment ever since. There is a huge amount of stuff to unpack with that part of her life and though it probably won't bring her the normality she wants or even the closure, it could start her on the road to actual recovery. Or it could all explode horribly. We'll find out next week.
-Josh spends this episode feeling like he's being shut out of the wedding process, failing to stay awake for the one DIY thing he wanted that Rebecca agreed with him on, and then making a stand for what he wants only to be shut down by the abrupt return of Valencia into his life. He seems OK by the end of the episode, but he also seemed to be getting awful close to that Sarah girl he was volunteering with. Remember, Josh doesn't want an equal partner, he wants a support system who will validate all of his choices, no matter how ridiculous (He wants a Sugar Ray cover band called Splenda Ray for crying out loud). This does not bode well for him showing up to the wedding next week.
-"Over my dead body". I thought the show had forgotten about Trent. It has not. Oh boy.
-All in all a great episode this week and a strong set-up to what will hopefully be a major finale. Next week: The season ends with the wedding of Rebecca Bunch and Joshua Chan. This is not going to end well guys.
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