Let’s talk about Belly’s Affair, AKA Last Christmas…
The way it’s being directly and indirectly addressed is actually so layered. And the gradual reveal of its significance has been evolving throughout the season.
I think that what Belly says and doesn’t say about her Christmas with Conrad tells me more about her unreliability as a narrator than anything else does. It starts with one of the first things she says via voiceover in 3x01, about Jeremiah, “I want him for all seasons, not just summer.” This line has been nagging at me because, for us viewers, her winters belong to Conrad. So, that line feels to me like the beginning of a certain pattern of behavior that we’ve been seeing from her, in which she overcompensates in her downplay of Conrad’s continued significance to her.
Take the voiceover monologue that she gives us in 3x02, soon after we see the full Christmas flashback. She says, about Conrad, “For the rest of my life, I will think of him fondly, the way you do your first pet, the first car you drove.” That sentiment is so obviously and insanely inaccurate, it feels offensive. It hurts to hear her say that. However, it’s a perfect line because its absurdity is exactly what tells me that the truth about Conrad is the opposite of what she’s saying.
She is trying so hard to put him in her past, but we can see that, still, every time he shows up in her life, “the stars disappear.” Every moment spent with him means so much to her. She can’t help it. Conrad told Agnes that he couldn’t be alone with Belly. The thing that Belly won’t even admit to herself is that she can’t be alone with Conrad either.
Agnes encouraged Conrad to go to Cousins for the dedication in order to try to normalize the situation with Belly, because that would usually be a reasonable thing to assume is possibly achievable. But, again, we the viewers know the truth that all of the characters either don’t know or won’t say out loud, which is that Belly and Conrad will never be normal.
The morning after he showed up at the house during Christmas, Belly was so worried that he wasn’t still there that she ran down the stairs and wiped out. Belly loved the day she spent together/ not together with Conrad so much, that it feels to her like she cheated.
This is so conflicting for her because the situation doesn’t fit the standard exemplifications of cheating. They both just happened to be at the house, and they weren’t physical with each other. “Nothing happened.” Even emotional cheating would normally imply that something romantic was spoken between them, but they didn’t flirt or confess any feelings for each other or even outwardly address their history.
The “Last Christmas” flashbacks, and their placement within the season, mirror the 2x02 “Love Scene” Christmas in Cousins flashbacks because they signify the same thing. Belly and Conrad don’t need to be physically or verbally intimate, or even intentionally in the same room at the same time, to be loving each other so much that it’s a love affair. It just happens. Always.
Belly doesn’t understand this yet. That’s why she’s been feeling so weird about it. The thing is, last Christmas was the beginning of the end for her and Jeremiah. Why show us that sequence and have her give us the “first pet/ first car” line right before the proposal? Overcompensation. Jere cheated, so he proposed. Belly cheated, so she accepted.
And it’s not just about their end. By extension, it’s the beginning of Belly and Conrad’s new beginning. Belly, despairingly, said as much to Taylor in 3x07. This whole thing with Conrad started when they saw each other at Christmas. It’s just like how Steven and Taylor’s affair started when they ran into each other in New York. Their’s is just a more obvious and intentional affair.
Additionally, 🚨BOOK SPOILER ALERT🚨, in the letters that Belly and Conrad write to each other while she’s abroad, they both confess that last Christmas was their best Christmas ever.
In the show, the revelation of the significance of their time together at Christmas is still unfolding because Christmas is another one of their infinite loops. It was when they slept together for the first time, it was the beginning of their second chance romance, and, I suspect, it will be when they finally find each other again for the last time before they begin their happily ever after.
Belly said, “I want him for all seasons, not just summer,” because what she really wants is something infinite. Her relationship with Jeremiah, in so many ways, including symbolically (pool vs beach), is finite. Symbolically, she only had him for summer.
The one she always had and always will have, for winter and all other seasons, “no matter what happens,” still is…
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