#anyway it's late and I'm tired so imma post this bc i spent time typing it but its also highly likely that i wont reply to any interaction w

[bonnissance]

Salty(tm) thoughts about narrative choices re Serena’s now finalised storyline, bc the more I think about it, the more I’m beginning to see the logic of the choices the writer’s made, and I find I like what we got more than the alternatives.

I mean, Serena’s narrative pre-Bernie had already check off: professional humiliation, a cheating spouse, reconciliation + disastrous personal break up in a professional setting, the continued incorporation of personal issues into a profession setting, self grooming and physical abuse (+ being having her status outed at work), the supposed neglect of her family, plus shocking lack of friendships and generally just failing at romantic relationships. All of which is intermingled with continued and consistent confirmations of her failings as a human, a woman, a mother and a daughter (which comes w a heavy dose of emotional neglect), a doctor and a surgeon, and a colleague who just isn’t nice enough.

Bernie’s introduction and the possibility of being happy are wildly out of narrative form for the show, and the more I think about it, I seriously doubt it was ever meant to last. 

There aren’t that many other options that match and raise the severity of Serena’s past storylines. Except for maybe killing a patient, there aren’t many professional things that could go wrong for Serena. And personal life wise, Serena is too old to conceivably have more children, which eradicates any pregnancy+miscarriage+sad birth stuff storylines they might have gone with if she were a younger character. And the only way she’s end up in an abusive relationship is w Bernie, and given the show already had on screen abusive same-sex relationship so they couldn’t very well go an repeat that on two different wards, could they?). And that pretty much covers the narratives they could have gone to keep Serena’s continued narrative suffering up to and beyond the level it had previously grown. 

Thus, in continuing the narrative progression of Serena’s combined arcs, the writers left themselves no other choice but to have a crack at her family. And they only just introduced Jason so it was never going to be him and so: Elinor died, bc what better way to further traumatise Serena (without incorporating any kind of therapy into her narrative for healing) and continue to punish her for being a professional woman with a family than to take away the family?

But I find myself strangely grateful about this choice, bc the only other narrative the writers could have chosen that would have maintained the narrative trajectory and trump all that pre-existing suffering in Serena’s storyline, would be to physically injure her so severely she lost her ability to perform surgery with no possibility of recovery.

bc as painful as her grief is now, it is possible for her to recover and find some sort of happiness. It won’t be the same happiness as she might have found before, bc life will never be like it was before. But given enough time and therapy and support, Serena can still have a future that includes the possibility of some kind of happiness. 

bc at the end of the day she’s lost her daughter but she still has herself and her skills and the career she’s build for herself through the course of her whole life. But if you take that away - take away what Serena has build for herself w her whole life: medicine - even if she still had Elinor, it wouldn’t be enough, bc she wouldn’t have anything of her own to live for in that instance.

Serena is, at her v core, a surgeon and medicine is what she lives for, and if the writers took that away, took away her ability to perform surgery, there is no why in hell Serena would ever recover from losing her future in medicine. 

At least this way -  with the storyline that they chose to tell - Serena does have a future that she can grow and heal and live into. At least this way she has hope.