#all of del's trauma all of kat's trauma all of jacob's trauma because surely he has some because can you imagine??

[earl-grey-crow]

Trauma Trauma Trauma

[collectionoftulips]

Okay, so my thoughts on Del and Jacob! I think overall, the reason why I didn't write so much about them in the first post is sort of similar to what you highlighted in your post, and I think both characters have the same problem - they are contours of characters rather than characters in and of themselves, which makes me feel like they have all this potential that never gets fulfilled. They are both characters that are pretty reactive in relation to the plot and they are characters that the plot happen to rather than them having an active role in it. (more thoughts underneath cut - spoilers for 3x07 or whatever the most recent episode is)

Which is a particularly interesting problem given, for example, that the plot is sort of centring Del this season with the 1970s stuff. But I think that the problem still applies. If you asked me what Del's main characteristics are, I wouldn't be able to tell you with certainty. Like she's cold and standoffish and can be really rude, but I'm not sure whether that's an intentional choice, or whether it's a result of a lot of various aspects such as awkward lines or line deliveries or conflicts that appear and disappear at a moment's notice. She has a lot of sorrow and loss and is some ways defined by that, and we can see her slowly expand beyond that, but again while there is a little sense of who she is. She's certainly there, and in the show, but whereas I could describe Alice or Kat or even Elliot with fairly certain accuracy, Del keeps to me feel elusive because she's always to some degree been at the mercy of plot convenience rather than internal coherence.

Like you (or at least my read of what you wrote), I feel like we get half-baked Jacob storylines and there are so many facets and dimensions to what happened with Jacob and the consequences that arose from him coming back that we will just never see. Him having such a strong visceral reaction to Kat's revelation at the end of the most recent episode did not make any sense to me, especially as he barely remembers Colton in any meaningful way and it also didn't make much sense for Kat to blurt it out just there (or even to Del later). It all just smells of plot requirements rather than corresponding to where the characters are. As such, I find it really difficult to write extensively about Del and Jacob and the poor writing that they suffer because unlike Alice or Kat or Elliot, they suffer from an absence of writing in many ways rather than inconsistent writing. We have the contours of people, but not a huge sense of who they are because the parameters seems to shift constantly. Like Jacob gets really happy to be back, but then the next minute he's sad about not being in the 1800s and got PTSD, and it's not really done consistently.

Also, Settle for Me as a song to describe Elliot? PERFECT. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. It is so accurate and I actually really like Elliot as a character and the kind of tragedy there is about him, but it's when he's with Kat where I really don't like the dynamic between them and what it does to both characters, but especially to Elliot's character. Instead of the person you're in love with bringing out the best in you, it seems like Kat has a tendency to make Elliot's more negative traits come to the fore (and not in a 'she's responsible for his behaviour kind of way' I just think that there's so much trauma around Kat for Elliot that he can't cope with things in a healthy way, again something I'm not sure is intentional in the writing or not - it seems to vary from episode to episode).

So for the three people who are also watching The Way Home, I thought I would share my season three thoughts so far (3x05), for no other reason than I want to haha (the general gist - I have some issues with the writing)

I think that this season has some really deep fundamental problems. the most significant of which were the results of Jacob coming back. Most crucially, I think, the way it impacted Kat. Or, more accurately, the ways in which it didn't impact Kat. In the previous seasons, the show went to great pains to show the trauma and consequences of what happened to Jacob and the way that impacted Kat. It meant that she put a lot of blame on herself and had deep feelings of shame. She was so desperate to get Jacob back that she was ready, when finally confronted with that potential in S2, to fully sacrifice herself to make that happen, despite that she had Alice and others back in the present time that needed her. That trauma runs deep.

As much the return of Jacob has been presented as a 'closure' on that, to some degree, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We had some exploration of how disorienting it was having Jacob back with Del (badly done, in my opinion, but still) but we had absolutely none of that with Kat. She developed a lot of trauma-informed behavioural patterns as a result of losing Jacob and while he might be back, it doesn't make any sense for her to develop a sudden very different way of being. Which is sort of what has happened with the writing in season three and while I understand that they did a time jump to skip past the practical issues with Jacob's return, it doesn't really also apply for character writing. One does not come a different person in nine months or whatever it was.

I think it's fundamentally a problem where I feel like the writing has really shifted from being character-centric with plot relevant beats to a show that has plot-centric writing and the very occasional character moment. Additionally to that, the character moments are (especially in relation to Kat) nonsensical. The fact that she has a daughter has almost absolutely no bearing on her character at all, even though in S1 it was demonstrated how Alice would always be her absolute number one priority (barring getting Jacob back due to trauma). A central pillar of her character was sacrificed in order to get a 'shippy' moment with Elliot and for them to move in together - not really because it made sense for their relationship progression (also when relationship dynamic development happens off screen, it's not a good look). And at least personally the occasional line of Kay saying 'Alice knows I'm there any times she needs me' or 'I'm just across the field' isn't really parenting. That logic that these lines indicate (thrown in to make the plot make sense) is completely contrary to the type of parenting we have seen from Kat before.

Now the show is kind of hinting at them having moved in together too soon and while I think that makes way more sense given how the moving in thing happened and (in my opinion) Elliot and Kat already has the chemistry vibe of two people who really want a relationship to work, even though there's a fundamental disconnect between them. The driving pillar in their relationship is so heavily reliant on Elliot having carried a torch for her for years and how much he loves her.

Plus, as much as I clearly have a preference for Kat to be with Thomas (mainly because the kind of epic love and stuff that Kat has expressly said she wants a bunch feels like it is more evident with Thomas, plus I think Thomas is way more clued into who Kat actually is than Elliot who is too preoccupied with the idea of Kat), it's also very frustrating that Kat's storyline has basically been boiled down to (in any meaningful way) the question of which person she should be dating, all the while the show's writing seems to be going down on a 'let's try to appease all camps' route, which isn't really going to work. Because you end up with some moments and character choices where it feels so out there and disconnected from anything called reality it is actually angering. Last season, it was Elliot just offering up the coins that Thomas gave to Kat to save the farm without even so much as speaking to Kat about it first (and actively ignoring, in what came across as incredibly cruel as a result, that Kat has feelings for Thomas and that the coins meant a lot to her emotionally). This season, you have in the latest episode the show actively showing you (once again) that Kat has a tendency to completely suppress her feelings for Thomas, then project them onto Elliot and push her into situations that she is not ready for with him (the moving in part specifically, and not quite the same but the heavy make out session when she returned after having been reminded of Thomas would have really really really pissed me off if I wanted Elliot and Kat together). The show has her going between these men with little to no coherence, and occasionally Susanna as well (which again, would piss me off if I wanted Susanna and Kat as endgame).

I could really write a dissertation about why I don't think Elliot and Kat are good together and seem to bring out the worst in each other, but I will try not to. I will say though is that even if I was on board with the Elliot and Kat train, I would be so angry about how they are being written this season. Kat heavily making out with Elliot to push thoughts of Thomas out of her mind, her calling her living situation with Elliot temporary, and the writers seemingly just insisting over and over in dialogue that they are happy without actually showing the viewers, would piss me off if I was a fan. So much of their relationship progression happens off screen and key fundamental issues that they wrote into the pairing (in season two) never really got a meaningful resolution.

There's also how Del is being written and I honestly can't make heads or tails of her writing this season either, and the way that the complex difficult family dynamic between Del and Kat has sort of been swept under the rug but also not also makes the family relationship feel less authentic to how they were before, but also much more standard stock Hallmark-y in a way that bothers me. Like the dialogue in the episode before where Kat said something to the effect of "how about you stop judging me and my life, that should free up some of your time" was a really really cruel thing to say in context of the conversation that they were having, and instead of getting angry at Kat being cruel (the way 99.9999% of humanity would), Del just does the sort of most awkward laugh ever that does not follow with the dialogue that is being presented? What?

I don't know. I think for a show that had such character-grounded, complex writing in Season 1, the way the show is being written now feels very disappointing and so far away from how the show started. It's too preoccupied with plot but also all the scripts feel superrushed and unpolished.