one thing i found interesting was how very american mike & emma are. charlie says it, that the school shooter thing is a very american thing & rachel attempts to deny this, using mike as one of the “good” ones - oh my husband was a poor black man exposed to guns at an early age but he didn’t commit The Ultimate ThoughtCrime. and mike immediately slaps this down, that he grew up around guns because his uncle was a cop. but when charlie tells them about how emma could have possibly thought about something like this, he also lies & blames the death of the neighbor. but the thing is - emma being desensitized to gun violence bc her dad is in the military, and not thinking about a) the human cost and b) the way people would talk about her afterwards, this makes complete sense. the child of a cop might be turned off by their love of guns, and a military brat might be too interested in the aesthetic of the lone, tortured shooter! but that is too much for a liberal white person like rachel or charlie to take. it’s too real and it’s not stereotypical enough. especially when both mike & emma feel shame over the worst things they did while both charlie & rachel could not be less bothered. they have actual victims still alive out there! mike was a little shitty to a weird, entitled girlfriend of his & emma was a little too caught up in Making Them Pay but actually did nothing! and that’s something charlie eventually points out - she didn’t actually do anything wrong!!! maybe she turned from those actions for reasons that are self centered (like being upstaged, like what her reputation might be after she’s dead) but does rachel feel bad? does charlie? why is what she didn’t do so much worse than charlie actually kissing someone else?? yes, maybe, it is true that he loved a mask the whole time! but rachel’s ire is not that emma is wearing a mask, but rather that she was fooled by emma’s mask!
