She/her, 30, ace, really wants a cat. How did this blog turn into an Arya Stark stan blog when it was about tv shows/books in general ? who knows ? Not me... Also liveblog of TV shows, random ass posts about Howl's moving castle (the book) sometimes.. @friedwizardwhispers is my main.
the thing about buckthena's dynamic is that i feel like there tends to be a compulsion to anchor their relationship to that of their individual relationships to bobby, in one way or another. either buck is bobby's child and therefore athena's child or buck is bobby's dog that athena kind of tolerates. and i think both views are kind of fundamentally misguided because buck and athena have always had their own relationship outside of bobby that informs their dynamic far more than reducing them to who they are to bobby. like, this duo has had their own dynamic since the literal pilot, before bobby and athena ever started dating. their relationship was founded on the ways that their similar strong senses of justice and stubborness combined with their divergent views on responsibility and accountability and authority lead to them clashing and then ultimately learning to respect and understand each other.
in many ways, while athena is often exasperated by buck and buck sometimes disagrees with athena's methods, they treat each other more as equals than people often give them credit for. they really love each other and have a friendship outside of bobby! buck goes to her when he wants to plan a surprise party and athena immediately takes maddie under her wing because she has an established fondness for buck! they sometimes solve cases together and get one another's heads on straight and yes, bond over their love of bobby, because he is someone that they both love. but more than that they're just like, two people who love each other, and i don't know that i need to analogize it in the terms of a nuclear family either way lmao.
Remember when the book readers were cautiously excited for season 1 of House of the Dragons because "it wasn't going to be like Game of Thrones this time, we pwomise 🥺".
Ugh.
Condal truly believe he is writing a feminist story while undermining every single female character since season 1.
They should have gone for the non-linear format with more seasons too.
I've seen quite a lot of "What if Eddie didn't find Buck until later in Mother's boy and he was brainwashed into being Derek" and not a lot of "what if Buck managed to find a key and got out into the desert before Earl could knock him out again" fic.
That could turn into a race to find Buck between Eddie and Bonnie and That would be interesting.
under-discussed opportunity for off-screen development is the fact that they tell us buck called their parents to inform them of doug's passing because it raises so many more questions than it answers... when was the last time buck or maddie talked to them.... did they know she was living in LA.... that she left doug.... did she have to ask them at some point in her trip across country to not tell doug where she was if he came looking for her.... how much did buck have to explain and how hard did he work to keep as much of it as close to his chest as possible because maddie was still in the hospital and he didn't want to take her story out of her control.... do you think that the conversation crosses a line past tense and buck blames himself in the aftermath for why they don't show up to check on maddie and help her in her recovery.... does the case reach national news and if so how do the people who hid a son from the world for 30 years cope with the people in their community getting this window into a different major family trauma... literally the possibilities here are endless for buckley family weirdness and i am chewing on all of it....
"You make it sound like something out of a soap opera, Evan. Like your sister was in hiding from her husband."
"She was," Buck says. He doesn't have to lift a hand to cover his face against the grimace deepening the tension headache he's been suffering from for what feels like days, now. He's already on the floor, an elbow propped on a knee, and his face half buried in a palm so he doesn't have to look around at Maddie's apartment-- everything carrying the faint aura of having been searched over by cops. "She wasn't safe with Doug, that's what I said. That's why this happened."
"I just…" she makes a sound that sends him reeling back in time, makes him smaller, makes him young, "I wish you would just be more clear. You're being so vague-- Maddie is safe and Doug is dead, but what actually happened?"
"I already explained," he grits out, presses the heel of his hand more firmly into his left eye where a steady, sharp pain just won't quit. "Maddie filed for divorce so Doug was able to find her. He kidnapped her, Mom."
"I think what your mother means," Phillip speaks up, his voice steady through the phone, just with slightly more distance between him and the receiver, "is that we don't understand how it ended with Maddie okay and Doug dead. We're confused about what happened in between. How does something like that happen if he was-- Well, he took her somewhere I presume, but--"
"He took her somewhere secluded," Buck says, "specifically to kill her."
He's blunt, perhaps too much so, but he's been on the phone with his parents for longer than he's spent on the phone with his parents maybe ever, and he has this stabbing headache and he still hasn't gotten enough sleep, even though he had the place to himself last night.
Eddie had to pick Buck up from the hospital after he finally got Maddie settled, after she made it clear that dragging her away from Chimney would do more harm than good for both of them. Eddie had to pick Buck up because not only was his car not there, but also by that point his vision was tilting and his level of exhaustion would have made him a drunk driver in all but name.
Buck's insistence on coming back here to where his car is parked and he could pack some of Maddie's things up for her rather than taking the offer of Eddie's couch, however, means that he has to be here. In this place. Blood on the concrete just beyond the door.
"Evan," she says his name in the tone of an admonishment, an old familiar adage on the lips of Margaret Buckley.
"He did. That's what happened. I don't know what you want me to say."
"Don't-- You don't have to be angry," she sounds weepier, now, with a thickness to her voice. "My daughter was almost-- You could be kinder, how you explain it."
"Well, you didn't like when I was being vague," Buck mutters. He's not sure whether they hear him or not, a murmur of their own just barely audible on the other end of the line.
They've always been like that, to a certain extent. The tendency to lean on each other, to rely on each other, even when doing so meant neglecting being there for their children. Buck has never quite been able to wrap his head around it, given the fact that they can be good with kids when they want to be. They're teachers, so it must be something about their kids specifically.
"How did it get this bad?" Margaret pleads. "We knew he wasn't right for her, but to be that violent? To actually hurt her?"
"We couldn't have known," Phillip says, clearly for her benefit, once again, rather than Buck's.
Buck who was the one Maddie came to when she finally got out. Buck who chased her halfway across the state when it all went wrong. Buck who watched Chimney nearly bleed out beneath his hands one minute and held Maddie's own collapsing body in his arms the next.
They couldn't have known? They couldn't have seen it? This is the thing that really breaks him, on the floor of the kitchen so he doesn't have to look at the living room where he found her abandoned phone and wallet, where he realized what had happened, when he recognized that it was coming to pass, the very thing he knew-- the whole damn time-- was the greatest thing to fear.
"You could have," he tells his parents. "You should have. You should have known."
"You blame us?" Margaret, still crying, asks. "We didn't even know she was in California. With you. Our own children, not bothering to keep us in the loop--"
"You took yourself out of the loop!" Buck exclaims, something like bitter laughter coloring his breath. "You cut her off the second she got engaged! I mean, I know-- I-- I know that Doug was a master manipulator. Men like him always are, right? It's the reason I didn't get to talk to my sister for three years. But he didn't even--" another bark of laughter, "have to lift a finger with you two! You took yourselves out of the equation without any interference. He would've killed her. He almost did. She was-- she was bleeding so much--"
"Stop! Stop it," she cries. "Why must you make everything so much-- so much scarier? Why do you have to embellish like that? With the violence of it?"
"Did you think it wasn't violent?" Buck questions in disbelief. "He wouldn't be dead if she hadn't had to protect herself like that. He made it so that only one of them was going to walk away and all that matters is that it was her. How would you prefer I explain that?"
"Oh, oh, I just can't. I can't with you. Not right now. You take bad situations and you make them so big, Evan. You make everything so much bigger than I know how to carry and I just can't-- Phillip will you--"
The fumbling of the receiver, crackling with movement, and their voices are less hushed this time but he can't make out what they're saying all the same. She's walking away, which he should have expected, but his chest clenches with a searing guilt to match that in his head.
They'll never come, now, even if Maddie were to ask. He's ruined it for her, for all of them, because there's no chance that their mother is getting herself together quickly enough to be here and be a support system. That's just not how Margaret Buckley works. She breaks down easily and builds back up with so much effort, so much time.
Give me time, she always begged of him when he got on her nerves and drove her to crawl back into bed in the middle of the day. Give me space, Evan, please.
"I wasn't trying to make it…" he trails off, when he hears Phillip raise the phone to his ear, the noise shifting and changing now that he's no longer on speakerphone. "I just didn't want you guys to find out from-- the news, or something. I thought it would be better coming from me."
Phillip hums out a sound of understanding, or maybe just acknowledgment. The room is spinning again and Buck should go back to sleep. He really shouldn't drive himself to the hospital like he was planning, but maybe Eddie would be willing… if he asked…
"I thought it would be better," he repeats, "coming from me."
"Well, son," his father sighs, "I suppose I can appreciate that you believed that."
Small parallel between season 1 and 9, when Michael announced he met someone in season 1 episode 2, the next scene is Athena calling a thief and flirting as a cover and in season 9 episode 1, after Bobby dies Athena is literally undercover instead of being at his memorial.
I still think the baby box is one of the most awful moments of the Buckley parents (that we see on screen).
I understand not having a baby box for Buck because when he was a baby, their other child was actively dying. I'm not thrilled about it. It's not great. But it's understandable, to an extent. They could have his later, though, but the point kinda stands. I kinda get it.
But showing it to Maddie as an adult while Buck was in the room ? Like, it wasn't going to be obvious Buck would ask about his ? And then just not answering him at all ? No apology? Nothing ? Chim had to be the one to say something, anything to make it a little less awful for Buck (and let's be real no one at this table believe they have a baby box for him).
