can I just say that when debbie’s marriage ended, we see debbie despondent, drunk, and nearly delirious with grief*. Even though that Grief* is audibly and visually not because she misses mark, or even her big house and lifestyle her marriage provided her with, but she’s thrown off of her axis in a way that she buries herself in GLOW and tries to compensate with over-solidifying her position on that show. Because debbie loses her structure she’s sacrificed her voice and her independence and her confidence to live out her life without being encumbered by societal expectations and low self esteem. we see how debbie is when she loses the foundation of the life she didn’t even enjoy living, she pushes everyone away, *especially* Ruth, and it isn’t until she makes a drastic, (violent) mistake that she literally snaps out of it and actually can breach her emotional restriction and heal, and Ruth(’s leg) is literally snapping debbie out of it.
and that was the turning point for debbie’s repressed rage and emotional anguish and it helped her blossom into a reformed, better, healed person. and then we got to see (PERHAPS) how debbie interacted with ruth BEFORE the incident*. they make each other laugh, they understand each other, they’re on the same wavelength, they miss each other, they reassure each other in ways other people just don’t, they’re for each other; debbie’s got Her Person back. and it’s ruth who tells debbie - “don’t you miss when it was just us.” months after the success of GLOW, months after everything settles down, what ruth doesn’t even admit to herself is that she’s bored of GLOW, of the routine, of feeling safe, of trying to distract herself from something, and seemingly out of left field, it’s debbie she goes to with this emotional confession.
that through the motions of acting, it’s being with debbie that makes ruth actually enjoy doing what she’s doing. and when debbie is distracted with her new vegas boyfriend, ruth confides that she misses how it was, how it was just the two of them, not doing anything spectacular, but just living. and at first debbie is just in this haze that she was in when she was with mark, and she can’t hear ruth, but something inside of her is listening to ruth. and she double-crosses this boyfriend she is supposed to love and be happy with and settled down for, and through the smog she sees ruth reminding her of who she is, without controlling judgment - and this time, debbie listens. because after all they went through, debbie knows that the only satisfaction she’s felt is whenever she’s with ruth, and she’s so at peace with that that she’s even willing to stop running away from that, even if it means the possibility of one day acknowledging what that means.
debbie finally puts everything on the table, in a frantic excited childlike way we’ve arguably never seen, for ruth. for the person she distanced herself from by getting married to a man she didn’t love or want and having a baby she didn’t ultimately want (and I’m really proud of the writers for actually having debbie articulate the kind of regret that can come from having a child to save a marriage, while not demonizing her because she’s human and even though she pictures what it’s like not to have her son, she in absolutely no way takes it out on her son because she does love him, she’s just human and a woman where even today women are pressured to have kids to fulfill themselves and it doesn’t work for them personally but they can’t admit that without being a villain),
debbie running from ruth for the past however many years, away from acting, away from marriage, away from motherhood, trying to find her own peace that she feels when she’s with ruth, she ran. and to potentially end the series with debbie literally running to ruth, for ruth…. the idea of not seeing how debbie copes with that loss that she’s never had to lose before, after she finally reached that point to literally say “you and me, make a move.” and to be left. all I want is to see betty gilpin absolutely nail that potential character development in season 4.
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
