#this got away from me i'm just passionate about riley flynn and i know he did something real fuckin awful but he deserved better

[shelbymustange]

k but like midnight mass (maybe unintentionally?) has an interesting commentary on mental health vs the church because Riley really needed a mental health professional but all he got was court ordered alcoholics anonymous which starts in prayer, then he's convinced to take it with his childhood priest who just keeps trying to push God and God's forgiveness and gifts onto him, when what he very clearly needed his own personal forgiveness. And everyone around him is giving him shit about being a fuck up and losing his faith and his fuckin dad tells him he resents him (that scene was crazy) and he talks to the girl he loves about how if he wasn't alive he wouldn't have to live with the torment but what does anyone do?

His priest gives him eternal life in which he must live with his guilt of killing a young girl and his priest tells him, tries to beat it into him that it's a fuckin gift from God and he should be happy about it, but Riley says he's Angry and he's Jealous. Because he wants to be like Father Pruitt and see this as the ultimate gift but he just sees it as a curse. Because no one has helped him with what was actually the Problem, and that was his own forgiveness of himself. And that's why he does what he does.