watching as rinis and pws say rina is gonna crash and burn like the other relationships bc they can’t keep ppl together is so 😭😭 the narrative of the season is rina together is the love they both deserve. pw was a plot device from the beginning and rini literally had ricky regressing by the end of s1 yet i was supposed to assume they wouldn’t crash and burn? rina will no doubt have problems in s4 but they’ll prevail unlike others …they can keep couples together but just like with every other teen drama midgames happen before the endgame 😭😭
After all this time, after interviews with the literal showrunner & creator of the show that confirm everything we've been saying, they still don't get it.
Both Rini & pw were built to fall apart and reducing their respective breakups to just being for the sake drama or because "the writers are incapable of keeping couples together" is a disservice to every character involved.
The Rini breakup was a huge sign of development for both Ricky & Nini. For Ricky, it meant letting go of his past, accepting his parents’ separation and embracing change. A part of Ricky resented his parents for not trying “hard enough”, for not “fighting” to save their marriage. Being with Nini was not only a way for Ricky to hold on to the last shred of his past, of his life before things were complex and difficult and confusing and changing -- but it was also a way for Ricky to try to prove, to both his parents & himself, that any relationship can be fixed if you just try really, really hard. Ricky wanted to believe that things don’t have to change if you don’t let them change -- but the more he tried to keep his relationship with Nini together, the more it became obvious that it was breaking apart at the seams. Ricky’s desire for stability & sameness was in direct opposition to Nini’s desire for the unpredictable & the new -- no amount of deleted comments or attempts at getting Nini into the musical were going to change that. In the end, Ricky realized that he & Nini couldn’t give each other what they needed or wanted anymore. When he did the mature thing and broke up with his first love -- this representation of his past/childhood -- it was an indication that he was growing up, finally ready to say goodbye to a part of himself that he outgrew a long time ago. Even if it hurt to realize it, he knew that his mom had been right all along, “Not all couples are meant to be together. Sometimes people change.”
For Nini, their breakup meant independence & room to breathe. She felt suffocated in her relationship with Ricky and she knew that he loved her not for who she was, but for what she represented (”am I something to you and not someone? ‘Cause I feel trapped on this pedestal you put me on.”) + Nini has, canonically, always been the kind of girl who judges herself by what boys see in her (in s1, Kourtney quite literally told her this & in s2, she wrote/sang the lyric “all my life I’ve seen myself through your eyes”). Gone is the girl who needed EJ’s encouragement to feel she was even worthy of auditioning for Gabriella at the beginning of the series. Gone is the girl who ran back to the safety of East High when YAC got too difficult. Now she finally has the confidence & self esteem to really go for what she wants. She realized that it’s her opinion of herself that matters. Ricky wanted her to be someone she hasn’t been for a long, long time -- but now Nini’s life gets to be solely about what she wants.
People who ship Rini (In this, the year of our lord Tim Federle, 2022? Embarrassing.) really do not care about Ricky & Nini as individual characters at all because they hindered each other’s character development and became the worst versions of themselves (Ricky: clingy & vaguely controlling / Nini: neglectful & gaslighting) when they were together.
pw was quite literally built, like you said, to be a plot device for Rina. Gina told Ricky she doesn’t do anything right the first time and EJ being her first relationship/boyfriend is a representation of that. EJ’s inability to share things with, support, listen to, show up for or understand Gina showed her that Ricky can, has & will do all of those things for her and more. EJ showed Gina the kind of love she deserves by not giving it to her.
Ricky & Gina had to be with and breakup with Nini & EJ, respectively, in order for them to be fully ready for each other.
In the immortal words of the great philosopher Taylor Swift:
Sometimes giving up is the strong thing
Sometimes to run is the brave thing
Sometimes walking out is the one thing
That will find you the right thing
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