#I still anticipated that it might turn out to be a fakeout and he'd betray everyone again or something

[redshiftsinger]

He changed his behavior. That's pretty much it, but that's important.

Well, first he was just so incredibly, intensely pathetic that the whole crew felt sorry for him despite how much of an asshole he'd always been to them, and decided that no one, not even someone as petty, nasty, and horrid as Izzy deserves to spend the rest of their life forced to crawl around and believing that they can't rely on anyone for help no matter what. And good for them! Even the most horrible people in existence deserve access to basic human dignity, including solid functional prosthetics if they need prosthetics.

And then, after receiving kindness that everyone knows damn well he didn't "deserve" from the people he'd never shown a single scrap of kindness to himself, and having had lots of time to reckon with his own knowledge of what he did, he changes his behavior. Which is the more-important half of an apology than the words. Sure, the words matter! But anyone can say words and not actually do the work to behave differently.

Izzy spends the second half of the season actively and intentionally behaving differently, in ways that highlight that he understands that he was wrong in the past. I definitely think the show would have benefited from more time to give his arc room to breathe, but they fit the essentials of it in to let us infer. In his interaction with Wee John before the party, John is initially on the defensive, as if he expects Izzy to be nasty about his drag makeup. But instead Izzy listens to him, and shows genuine openness to the idea -- followed by, the next time we see Izzy, he's coming out on deck in drag makeup himself to perform a song. He's not saying the words "I was wrong, I'm sorry" but he is very directly putting himself in the same position that he once belittled when Ed was the one being sort and feminine and singing for the crew. He's doing the things that the Old Izzy would have been horribly cruel to someone for, and there's no hint of mockery or "this is ok for me but not for you" attitude in his demeanor.

He says "congratulations" to Ed about getting laid, instead of angrily ranting to himself over what he (thought he) overheard. He takes Stede's assumption that he's come to gloat about Ed leaving without flinching, like he knows exactly where it came from and how reasonable an assumption it is given his past behavior, and then defuses it with "I think you're good for him, it took me a while to see it but I do now". First, a calm refutation of the assumption, then an acknowledgement of it being reasonable and an admission of having been wrong.

None of this is a classic formulaic apology, but it has all the crucial core elements except that the expression of regret that's usually covered by the words "I'm sorry" doesn't get said outright until the very end, rather than at the beginning of the process.

Please, someone, anyone. I know Izzy had a redemption arc in season 2, but please explain to me what exactly he did to redeem himself. I love listening to podcasts and watching reaction videos of this show, so I'm not talking about the canyon here and how they believe he didn't even have to redeem himself to begin with.

More than once, I've heard complaints about Ed, saying he hasn't really redeemed himself, that he went way too far, that he has disappointed them and he should've apologized more... But then, they'll say that Izzy has become their fav in season 2 despite not liking him in season 1 because of his antagonistic actions. Ok? Apart from Ed, who exactly did Izzy apologize to then? Or is Izzy exempt from this? Izzy must've done something to redeem himself in their eyes to become their fav after not liking him, right? Or did they absolve him of everything because he shed a tear and was feeling bad? What did Izzy do that was enough to be redeemed (apart from the writers wanting him to have that arc), but Ed aparently didn't? He cried too, he was feeling really bad as well and Izzy himself had a hand in this. So surely it was something else? I keep trying to rearrange the pieces but it makes no sense? What am I missing?

Please, help me understand. I feel like I'm going crazy over this.

#49.